Rationalization in the Age of Hypocrisy

It’s hard to understand blatant hypocrisy in this era of video everywhere. I regularly see politicians make profound statements only to be called out by an old video clip of them saying just the opposite of whatever point they had just made. Sometimes the video clip is not that old, maybe earlier on the same day. Hypocrisy has a twin brother, and his name is rationalization. To be a good hypocrite you need to be able to rationalize your stance, both of them. I won’t say that Republicans have a monopoly on these character traits, Democrats have also been guilty, but, of late, the Republicans have taken the twins to new heights.

Our current president and wannabe dictator has found a way to twist and turn the truth in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. He has found a convoluted path into the hearts and minds of an estimated 35% of average Americans. He has appealed to their baser racist beliefs, religious fervor, and/or greed in a way that seems to justify all that he does, no matter how bizarre. All of this support requires a certain level of hypocrisy and a healthy dose of rationalization. How do you, as a white supremacist or neo-Nazi, rationalize the fact that Trump has a Jewish daughter and son-in-law and at least gives lip service to his support for Israel? How do you, as an evangelical Christian, rationalize his un-Christian behavior and hedonistic lifestyle?  How do you, as a fiscal conservative, rationalize his taking the national debt to unprecedented levels? How do you, as a proud patriot, come to grips with this draft-dodger arguing that he is wiser than the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the DHS, the Secret Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency?  The bastions of our vaunted defense, intelligence, and diplomatic corps have been excoriated by this president, except in those rare instances when they make him look good.

The bastions of our defense, intelligence, and diplomatic corps have been excoriated.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are good kind-hearted individuals, but none of us is perfect. We represent, as a people, a broad mixture of races and religions, we have been afforded varying educational backgrounds, and we all dwell in various strata of financial stability; all of which influence our behavior.

While I would never condone racism, I do understand where some of it comes from. It is human nature to fear the unknown.  In the segregated south, I didn’t have an African American classmate until I went to college in 1963. Communities in Miami were either white or black and everyone knew where the color lines were. We had colored and white water fountains in the stores as well as separate bathroom facilities. When segregation ended nothing abruptly changed, in fact, much of its influence is still with us today.

Little Rock, Arkansas Integration Protest, 1959

In my road-trip travels across our country, I can remember talking to a waitress in a southern state. She was white, and worked with and served other white people. In our conversation, it was related that she had never traveled beyond the borders of the next town. Having grown up in an almost exclusively white southern environment, and not having much, if any, personal experience outside her own race, it would be understandable if she turned out to be a racist. Racism is a learned behavior.

Trump has tapped into that portion of our country where racism is, at the very least, an accepted behavior. You don’t have to be a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi; you can just be someone who tolerates racism because that is what you know. Your parents and friends may harbor racist feelings, and if you don’t have anything else to steer you in a different direction, you too may end up at that same destination. None of it is right, it’s just that I can understand why some otherwise “very nice people” might end up supporting Trump and are caught up in the now condoned racist behavior that will rip and tear at the very fabric of our nation.

Trump has also seemingly struck a chord with some members of the evangelical movement. Even with his abhorrent behavior and instances of sexual predation, he has managed to enlist their support. They seem to be willing to overlook all his peccadillos as long as he continues to stack the courts with anti-abortion judges.

That one topic carries the day for the evangelicals. Some evangelicals would probably be found to be racists too. They would just use religion as a rationalization to justify overlooking Trump’s anti-Christian behavior that would otherwise violate many tenets of their beliefs. While recently watching a historical film shot during the segregation riots of the ‘60s, I saw a woman holding a sign where she quoted some bible verse that she claimed proved that segregation was God’s way. Twisting and interpreting the words of religious doctrine can be used to prove almost any point. It is the same thing now being done to the Koran to justify the evil of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

On a lighter note, we come to greed. Many of those people in the upper echelons of our financial stratosphere would easily agree to take a hit at a future date for a financial win today. They see the rapid expansion of the national debt as someone else’s problem. As long as they see an investment portfolio on the rise, they can put up with anything. It reminds me of Wimpy of Popeye fame who “would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” These bastions of Wall Street rationalize this anti-conservative behavior with Wimpy-logic. Trump sells this to the masses (non-rich people) by giving them a little taste of the crust broken from the much bigger pie he is sharing with his wealthy compatriots.

Wimpy, of Popeye fame.

In whatever way you justify your support for President Trump, it will generally fall into one of the aforementioned categories. Sometimes you may tick multiple boxes. I believe that racism, at least an acceptance of racist behavior, to be the most pervasive of these. Greed, religious fervor, and misplaced nationalism may have a racist common denominator. We would all like to think we have made great strides correcting the wrongs of the past.  We would be wrong. All it took was a clever con man to sell America a nightmare disguised as a dream.

We can perhaps take some solace in the fact that there were 2,864,974 more of us that voted for Clinton than for Trump. Also, know that 7,804,213 voted for a third party or other candidates. That means that Trump lost the popular vote by 10,669,187. The really good people of America outnumber the basically good people who were hoodwinked by the con man, by a wide margin. America is great, but it needs to be better; certainly better than the likes of Donald J. Trump.  We can and will do better.  As of this writing, there are 373 days until the election that will either end this nightmare or signal the end of our democracy for the foreseeable future.  October 27, 2019 - November 3, 2020 = 373 days.

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."  -- Donald J. Trump