It’s Time to Drop Your Trump/Republican Friends.
Because they act like they are at war, and we need to respect that fact.
Why is this 2020 Election so Close?
By the time of publishing this column, the 2020 Presidential Election is close. If you have been following me this far, you know good and well that this political race of U.S. President should not be this close at all.
If Donald Trump wins the 2020 election, he would be the first and only impeached president to ever win reelection. He would be the most derelict president who has ever lived. He would be the most sociopathic president to win reelection.
He would be the most pathologically narcissistic president to win reelection. Trump would be the most terminally ignorant president given a whole decade to ruin America.
He would be the most white supremacist president we will have ever seen in our lives. He would also be among the few presidents who don’t even own a pet, like a dog. I’m not sure how white people missed that one.
The fact that 70 million people voted for more totalitarian white supremacist fascism — who also helped 234,264 Americans needlessly die by way of profound terminal ignorance and neglect — is telling. Nearly a quarter of one million Americans are dead due to the fact that President Trump prioritizes nice-looking illusions over harsh realities that require leadership. If the racism alone didn’t sink this man’s political career, the pandemic response should have.
70.5 million Americans didn’t think so.
White people: providing concessions and appeasements aren’t working on your Trumpian friends. It’s time to drop them.
The Bus comes back
A few days ago I was hit up by an ex-friend who I used to make music with a long time ago. I put him on a bus stop a long time ago, and I referenced him before. Sometimes when you put someone on a bus, the bus comes back, especially if you were the greatest, genuine best friend.
He quoted himself in a track we wrote, I produced. “We brothers in arms, brothers among races”. The line appears to me as pathetic as a banana peel; devoid of substance. I told him I will have to love him from a distance, which was might register as a lie being that I wasn’t descriptive enough. The distance I have in mind isn’t of the physical realm but the temporal; I recognize and respect the fact that Ben H. 2020 isn’t Ben H. 2004. The person trying to talk to me now is not the same person I knew. Perhaps the best analogy would the famous thought exercise is the Ship of Theseus. If all the parts are replaced on a ship, is it the same ship at all? If enough parts are replaced, at what measure does one rule that the ship is different? Or the same? I will have to suggest that this ex-friend Ben H. of 2020 is fundamentally different than the young Ben H. from 2004. As a Trump supporter, I saw him on numerous occasions demonize Black activists and police accountability protests and other civil rights causes. In the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, he’s anti-medical science, citing “freedom”. He parrots the same conspiracy theories you’d hear from most who blindly follow Trump. He’s a Trump supporter now, and when I think about it, his past self would kick his modern self’s in the teeth. I won’t go into intense detail but please understand that this guy is radically different than his former self.
These People are Not the Same People You Remember
Those friends of ours are not the same friends they once were. The old person you knew is no longer there. In my perhaps racially unique situation, this man only wants that “black object” back. Not black friend, black object. Black “friends” are not actual friends of conservatives; we are Black objects of some sort of political utility. In my racially unique place, I am fully aware of this being once a Black conservative. I will not be this racial device again for fascism-enablers like himself.
“I can’t be racist, I have a Black friend.”
“No, you do not.”
If my voice of reason isn’t listened to or even considered, I know I’m not a friend. If he doesn’t consider my problems, issues, and fears but I consider all of his, what does that make me? What does that make him? He’s not a real friend, that’s for sure. The same proves true for you.
They only want to use you
These Trump supporters have already thrown away any friend-like value to your word, your critical thinking, and accurate analyses of issues. They are not friends, they are associates who do not care about your serious concerns. There’s only two reasons, or categories rather, that you can expect their counterfeit friendship to be based on. They are:
(1) Weaponized Tokenism, and;
(2) Shut Up and Dribble.
The weaponized tokenism is the part of the conservative gaze thing I mentioned a while back. The shut up and dribble part is the please-don’t engage-in-serious-topics-like-racism thing. The shut up and dribble category is where we our only value in their lives is to be one-dimensional ushers of some sort of entertainment. You can tell this by the way they talk, refer to you, look at you, and answer to the issues you raise. Any way you slice it, we are not subjects of our own movies, let alone subjects in theirs. We are objects in their movies who, by their direction and unique editing, move the plot that they star in devoid of the diversity of human character. We are that expendable Black guy in an old horror movie. And they have an undying support of the slasher in this slasher film, too.
I have spent a lot of time talking, explaining, and more importantly, listening to Trump supporter friends. I’ve even listened to your Trump supporter friends. Nothing is working. Just diligently explaining things out like logic, reason and science isn’t working, and does not work with Trump supporters. I have a couple of thoughts on this. 1) They love Trump more than they love you or I; 2) The Republican Party is technically at this point, a political cult; and 3) they behave, function, and act like this is a war. I want to talk about the third part.
They act like it is a war
War is definitely something I can talk about, and I’ll have to tell you that all the ignorance, arrogance, deception and aggression from our American conservatives is the behavior of warfare. Republicans — from seasoned politician to the voting population — act like they are at war with everyone else who isn’t them. If you realize how war is waged and you look at the whole Republican Party, it’s like a hive-minded army. These politicians aren’t just politicians, they are more like generals to them, even more so than actual ones.
The friendship we may have with a Trump supporter is like the small friendship a U.S. Soldier may have with a Afghan Policeman or Afghan Soldier. Sure, it might be called a friendship, but it isn’t a a real one, because circumstances might need you to having to place a bullet in his head one day, and you need to be prepared for that.
As a military vet, dealing with military-Trump supporter ex-friends, I’ll have to tell you that there’s this underlying feeling that this person quietly, silently wants to kill me. If that’s not the case, I do feel that if push comes to shove and the fascists are knocking at my door at full Orwellian strength, they’d most certainly let me die without a blink or gesture of concern. They might not want to kill me but they will let me die, let me be disappeared. Let me be erased from world history and human memory.
Because if a fascist totalitarian state can will things out of reality like a pandemic and 250,000 dead today, what’s stopping them from doing so to individual unloyals like myself? Or you? A president who enjoys pretending things out of existence is an extension of the will of the public who endorses him. If 70 million people can disappear 250,000 people out of national collective memory, then they can also do the same to anyone who isn’t kissing Trump’s feet like they are, when the fascist are at full-strength, kicking down our doors because we disobey their thought policing.
Lies, deception, and disinformation campaigns
When you look at it form their perspective, it begins to make sense. You might not even be designated as an enemy of theirs (yet), but the fact that you are not them, matters to them. It’s a factor in who they listen to. If you ever seen or heard this guttural animosity towards Dr. Fauci for example, think of it from their perspective: he’s not them. He’s not one of them. Trump acts like he’s an adversary, therefore they too, must act like he’s adversary, and they do. Dr. Anthony Fauci — longtime pandemic response expert who only exist for things like the coronavirus— is an enemy of their state.
With a war-state of mind, even if you’re not the enemy you are a local national; those Afghans or Iraqis in the background. You still don’t matter. Anything you say falls on empty ears, or it’s weaponized tokenism (look at me with Afghan kids!) or shut up and dribble (isn’t this Iraqi boy fun?).
Even if you’re not the targeted enemy you are not considered a objective reference to anything concerning. You still don’t matter. All that matters is Fox News and other conservative media entities that they consume 24/7. The vast amount of conservative propaganda they consume in who knows how many hours in a week isn’t going to be cracked by a three-day-long internet debate with only 17 minutes of reading material that you painstakingly crate-dug the internet for, that they won’t even check out. You are not in their in-crowd, and even if you were (like how I was) they already have a designation for you to anathematize you forever.
It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, or how you always been the voice of reason historically. It doesn’t matter how many times you saved them from getting jumped or beaten in a club or a bar, or how many times you jumped on the grenade as a wing-man, or what careers you saved. the political cult community Trump, republicans and conservative media has created is simply greater than that. It’s almost like anything you’ve ever done great for that friend, Trump has already done it better and your genuine history with this person doesn’t matter anymore. When we see these bizarre behaviors from Trump in his persistent pathological narcissism rallies, these Trump friends are getting endorphins off of those. They becoming hardwired radically different than you and I, or their prior selves.
In Closing
In regards to answers, I have no idea how to fix this problem. Brainstorming, I imagine that it would require legal intervention with how American media works. Venues who look like a news network must perhaps persistently state that they are not a valid news source. They must state they are not informative. They must be held liable for their part in stochastic terrorism, and blatantly lies. The public will need a massive psychological detoxifying process that removes the hive-like cult behaviors in them. Politicians must be penalized when they engage in grotesque measures of dishonesty that enable dangerous people to harm others. It will require a lot.
A starting point right now would be to drop your Trump supporting friends.
Our friendship — whether real or perceived — enables and validates their radical politics, whether directly or passively. They need to know loss; they need consequences, not hugs, and equivocating. The friend in my example in this column? I put him on a bus years ago; in 2016. He should suffer. He should remember the good ol’ days. Looks like he does. It looks like he has a bit of value for the genuine friendship we had. Now he has to value that friendship more than he loves Trump.
They all need do.
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