Admiration of the Oppressor

The instant Trump railed hypocritically against hate speech in South Africa, one of the shards referenced in this article resonated even with former victims of apartheid. They brushed aside Trump's expansion of the false narrative of a genocide against Afrikaner South Africans to jump aboard their own domestic, albeit unrelated anti-corruption, anti-ANC bandwagon. However noble their regional agenda, it is numbing their choice of spokesperson from the international podium. During the height of apartheid they may have harboured a secret admiration for the finger-wagging bravado of the architects of our oppression. Their Stockholm syndrome found fertilizer in Pretoria.

Trump's style is based entirely on the evangelical playbook of mass hysteria. His showmanship has no depth. Listening to his ramblings with an expectation of the coherence of a university-level lecture is like attending a magic show in Vegas to gain insight into particle collision at CERN. Trump and his cabal are better likened to a barrow load of apes hurling their scat at walls to see what sticks, then scratch their armpits gleefully at the adhesive property of roughed-up surfaces.

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Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.

I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.

If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy. 

If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.

If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.

It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.

Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”

And that’s the part that should chill us.

Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?

Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.

Now the mask is off. Now we know.

And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.