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The Trump Legend

 

     What is the Trump story?  It will be quite different for followers and detractors.  I believe the reason that so many people can have completely opposite views of the same person and events lies in great part to our American, and perhaps human, myths.

      I had occasion once to be watching a televangelist in the company of some fundamentalist in-laws.  Seeing this person crying while singing a hymn, I thought he was the phoniest person I had ever seen.  But one of my wife's aunts turned to me and said, "Isn't he the most sincere person you've ever seen?"  I didn't answer, but it occurred to me that we were sitting in the same room watching the same event with completely opposite views.  I love studying history, but I am now more careful to try and research the historian.

      Some of us like to believe in heroic leaders following their "gut instincts" despite evidence to the contrary.  Television characters such as Jethro Gibbs of "NCIS" are rewarded for their courage to defy their superiors when their gut tells them it's the right thing to do.  So many fictional characters, especially in television and movies, are portrayed this way.

      Connected to this is the notion that many crisis are averted because of the heroic acts of one person.  We enjoy the savior myth, that were it not for this one special person being there in the nick of time, all would have been lost.  This sometimes translates into the political and governmental realm with figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Often ignored in this mindset are the leaders whose gut led them and their followers to defeat and sometimes slaughter, such as cult leaders and out-gunned generals: Adolph Hitler pursuing the invasion of Russia in the winter.

     But on the other hand, we also enjoy the reality of the achievements of  many unknown people working together toward a common goal.  We especially note this in times of natural disasters: hundreds or thousands of people pulling together to save victims of floods, tornadoes, wildfires.

     So, for the Trump supporters, the former is true:  he is a misunderstood hero who ignores norms to follow his gut and lead us to victories previously thought impossible, or at least, improbable.

     To his detractors he is an insecure narcissist who continues to act in denial of all evidence to the contrary, not because he has the courage of his convictions, but because he is incapable of admitting fault, thus being incapable of changing.

     For me, both viewpoints have some merits.  The inexorable accumilation of knowledge through scientific endeavors is historically evident.  At times an Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein pops up with a substantial breakthrough, but generally it is the slow, sometimes plodding, relentless work of thousands of unheralded people that moves us along, so that we know much more now than we knew fifty years ago, and fifty years from now we will know that much more.

     As for the Trump story,  we will know much more in the future.  For now, whichever side we're on, let's try to have patience with the other side who believe in one or another of our American myths perhaps a little more fervently than we do.

 

- PeteBarkett.blogspot.com

11/10/20

 

 

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