The most recent Donald Trump story needs reevaluating.
Reevaluating Donald Trump mentally ill and crazy supporter narrative
Recently the mainstream media keyed in on a narrative of a mentally ill Donald Trump along with crazy fans. It may be ill-advised.
This morning a read I read an article by Casey Quinlan titled “Stop Calling Donald Trump And His Supporters ‘Crazy’” that is worth reading. There is a prescient passage that puts it all into context.
Focusing on mental illness obscures what’s really going on
We can’t lose sight of the reason that Trump has galvanized so many supporters in the first place — which has nothing to do with mental health.
In fact, Trump’s celebration of white supremacy and misogyny, without coded language or the pretense of an interest in “equality,” has touched a nerve in a population that perceives itself as losing its grip on the nation. Other Republican candidates have similarly called on the anger of white straight cisgender men who feel displaced in a country they say belongs to them, but Trump speaks much more candidly.
As the country becomes more racially diverse, as conversations about race, gender, and sexual orientation become more prominent, and as the Democratic Party and country as a whole moves further left, this population becomes angrier and more receptive to a figure like Trump.
The research bears this theory out. As U.S. demographics shift, the pro-white and anti-minority attitudes of white people become more apparent, according to New York University and Northwestern University researchers. And those who often read about these demographic changes are more supportive of conservative policies and are more likely to identify themselves as conservative.
Research has also found that Americans’ perception of social progress for minority groups does not align with reality, which can help explain why some white men may feel “attacked” for being white men.
Why is this important? Using the mentally ill narrative on Donald Trump and attacking his supporters as being crazy does very little in changing the dynamics of the election. His hardcore supporters will hunker down. And Donald Trump will continue to fire up a future insurgency.
Surrogates of sanity need to engage Trump’s supporters on a one on one basis. Those that are enlightened should themselves become surrogates of sanity within their communities. It is time to directly address polarization at a grassroots level by integrating interpersonal relationships away from the structured manufactured chaos created by political campaigns.