Hey Everyone!
Today, I want to talk about something I noticed a while back but don't think I've ever blogged about. Every time there's a Trump rally, it really reminds me of the "two minutes hate" from 1984. It seems like a bunch of people are frustrated and angry about the fact that it's virtually impossible for regular people to get ahead in this country. The American Dream gets further and further away from realization for most people, and they're looking for someone to blame. Much like the people in Orwell's 1984.
Also like Orwell's characters, a lot of people in this country seem to have difficulty articulating what is bothering them. They know there's something wrong; they know they're getting screwed. But they have a hard time identifying and naming the source of the problem. Partly through lack of education, but also partly due to a systematic failure by our media to do their job. So there are a lot of people who exist in a perpetual state of discontent, but they have no concrete nemesis to hang the blame on.
Enter Trump with his facility for creating scapegoats. "It's the Mexicans!" "It's the Muslims!" "It's MS-13!" Do most of these people have any personal difficulties with anyone in any of these groups? Not for the most part. They almost certainly have some general racism and xenophobia incorporated into their world view, but I doubt most of the people at Trump rallies have any close, personal experience interacting with a member of the MS-13 gang. Or maybe it's four Congresswomen of color. Congresswomen who have had the temerity to speak out boldly against the president. Perhaps they're to blame for all the troubles his supporters are plagued by. Maybe if they "went back where they came from" everything would be good and the systematic injustice that is tearing this country apart would cease to exist.
I'm being sarcastic, obviously, but I think that's the psychological mechanism at work here. Trump gives his followers a focus for their anger and the opportunity to express it freely. This leads to a catharsis of sorts, one that's amplified by the fact that they're experiencing it surrounded by so many other people who are experiencing it with them. If they all feel it, it must be real, right? And it feels fucking fantastic to let all that anger out. To finally have someone to blame and validation for their feelings by their fellow Trumpnitized and their dear leader.
And like the characters in 1984, I think they come to crave that release. I think it becomes a drug to them. And it doesn't matter what he says; whether his speech is hateful and obscene, or whether it's simply nonsensical. Because it's not about the sharing of ideas; it's about the way it makes them feel to stand in a crowd of people and express the rage that dwells within them and have it justified by the fact that it's shared. They can hear anything they want to hear in his rhetoric because he rarely actually says anything. But it's the emotion that brings them back for more.
Peace!
Two Minutes Hate, 1984, George Orwell
"The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp......At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of 'B-B! ...B-B!' -- over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second-a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise."
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