For quite some time, we attempted vainly to fathom some rationally conceivable, explanation for the sustained, lemming-like worship of the bizarre and perverse Donald Trump. Does not Man. universally value family loyalty, patriotism, and military service? Does one not affirm the humanism demonstrated by the assistance to the needy and disabled, the promotion of healthy and safe working conditions, clean water, and a salubrious environment? Do such people candidly elect to scuttle the beneficial responsibilities of government to its citizens, including protection of the rights outlined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights? Why would Trump’s quasi-religious cult of MAGA acolytes be in any way, willing to sacrifice their precious democratic benefits in the name of their lemming-like worship of Donald Trump, the latter person a despicable, egoistic, and amoral miscreant? Is it not obvious that his ascendence empirically portends the decline of the American salubriously free way of life, affecting, as well, such thoughtless, lemming-like Donald Trump sycophants? Is it not indisputable that he has declared his intention to rule as an autocrat if elected to the Presidency?
After much unsuccessful contemplation our epiphanic realization was triggered by a chance, enlightening recollection of John Frankheimer’s dark and frightening, psychological film,, “The Manchurian Candidate.” The film, set in the era of the American-Korean War, cinematically presents a disturbing scenario in which captured, loyal American soldiers, are expertly and tactically “brainwashed,” with the result of unconscionally obliging them, after release, to mandatorily comply with an internalized, instruction to assassinate the American President. It created the virtual epiphany by way of the conceivable projection relative to the MAGA adherents as in the case of the cinema’s fictional presentation, analogically subject to the effects of a Manchurian brainwashing;; but, in our contextual subject, the dynamic product of an entirely different etiology, but with the identical result as the cinematic portrayal of the tactical program of brainwashing.
It is our present conception that the identical effect of “brainwashing” of the thematic Trump adherents, had its singular origin, but, contrastingly, not in the cinematically portrayed, tactical, repetitive message, repeatedly delivered, and ultimately, effective, to the affected recipient, but, by contrast, in the case of the devout MAGA acolytes as a ubiquitously perceived and seductively ignorant, perceived Trump-inspired, demagogical panacea for eternal grievances and previously, thought immutable,. mundane discontent.
Like thin, dry wood kindling awaiting ignition, the prodigious number of insufficiently educated, and poorly informed populist Americans, proved to be easily ignitable by the stimulus of a demagogic, orange-dyed-hair, snake oil salesman, tactically proclaiming unspecific but complete relief from universal, long-held grievances, and the extant plethora of intangible, but persistent feelings of implacable and non-specific discontent. In contrast to the patriotically oriented cinematic protagonists who required intense brainwashing and deeply infused psychological persuasion,.the potentially brainwashed nascent Trump populist had been previously already possessed of sufficient and ready impetus to venerate anyone or any doctrine, that perceptively offered a transmogrification of his discontented life to a perceived acceptable one, buttressed by the support of a large and accommodating fraternity of like-minded grievance-laden-others. The dry kindling had long been prepared for ignition when a spark happened ton the scene. While the causation was different, the result was similar to the Manchurian syndrome, now with a new orange tint.
We take comfort in the optimism (especially, after the disastrous and unhinged performance at the Presidential Debate of the populist-, perceived Orange back alley route to Valhalla will be universally discredited and lose its Mad Hatter” illusionary attraction.
-p.
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