Don’t Be So Sure Trump Won’t Be Re-Elected. You Can’t Ignore The Nose-Blind Effect.
The people who dislike Donald Trump think it’s a given that he will be turned out of office by a tidal wave of opposition in 2020. I think that’s a risky assumption.
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
The Smell Of Prosperity
Suppose Megalomaniac Poultry proposed building its new chicken-processing facility in your town. There was widespread opposition and everybody assumed that the plan would fail, but it didn’t.
Somehow, out of nowhere, key members of the City Council switched their votes and the next thing you knew this huge building just outside of town was hard at work cutting up five-thousand chickens a day.
When the wind blows from the south the stench is terrible. Trucks hauling squawking chickens fill the streets. The plant manager is discovered to be an ex-convict living under a false name. Outrage ensues.
But time passes.
Nose Blind
After a couple of years people have started to get used to the smell. Sure, they still hold their noses when the wind shifts, and they still joke about the city having its is own dance, the Stinky Chicken, but somehow the factory doesn’t seem quite so bad anymore.
The ex-con plant manager is gone. The air is still full of feathers, and trucks still rumble down Main Street, but only at certain times of the day and people have gradually learned to be someplace else when the loads of poultry are scheduled to go in and out.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The factory employs a lot of people who spend money in town. The company donates baseballs and catcher’s mitts to the Little League. And the CEO has promised everyone, promised, that even more prosperity is just over the horizon.
Crazy Uncle Charley
In an odd way, lots of people have begun to view the stinky factory and its tons of rendered chicken guts and Megalomaniac Poultry’s bombastic CEO in sort of the same way they think of Crazy Uncle Charley who gets drunk at the Christmas party every year, grabs somebody’s butt and then puts a lampshade on his head.
Remember Saturday Night Live’s Crazy Uncle Roy?
Ha, ha, ha! Crazy Uncle Roy’s at it again!
Slowly, the factory and its CEO go from malevolent to weird, from crazy to quirky. People train themselves to ignore what the CEO says in the same way they will themselves into nose blindness at the awful smell.
Things Could Be Worse
Doesn’t the factory employ lots of people? Don’t they spend money in town? Doesn’t everyone get a 5% discount on chicken wings?
And what would they put on the site if the chicken factory were to go away? Some halfway house for drug addicts or a new County jail? Sure, it wouldn’t smell and it would employ people, but are they the kind of people we want in our wonderful town?
Bit by bit, the stinky factory and the CEO’s crazy antics become just a few more things that people have trained themselves not to see.
Will People Become Dishonesty-Blind?
I think the same thing might happen for Donald Trump. His endless lies could so erode the expectation of truthfulness as to render many people dishonesty blind.
Sure, he’s babbling nonsense, but everybody knows everything he says is all a bunch of BS, so what does his latest lie matter? Just ignore it. Chances are he’ll say the exact opposite thing in a month or two. One day Kim Jung Un is “Little Rocket Man” and the next he’s “very smart . . . very talented . . . and courageous.”
Everything the MIC (Megalomaniac In Chief) says is such BS that it just becomes white noise like the TV weather report that’s playing in the background while you’re screwing your wife.
His BS is just something else you tune out.
Some people will even applaud his lies, secure in the belief that relentless dishonesty is all part of his grand plan to keep his opponents off balance until he can bring the hammer down on their unsuspecting heads.
His Claims To Fame
He re-worked NAFTA to stem the flood of U.S. jobs to Mexico, didn’t he?
He got the Europeans to promise to pay more money for NATO, didn’t he?
He calmed relations with North Korea, didn’t he?
He’s going to get a better trade deal with China, right?
So what if he’s done a lot of bad stuff? He’s making America great again, right?
Nobody’s Perfect
Sure, he’s a dishonest, untrustworthy, misogynistic megalomaniac, but nobody’s perfect. Ignore all that crap he says and does. That’s just his quirky personality. Good Old Crazy Uncle Donald. Ha, ha, ha.
The Moral High Ground Is A Good Place To Get Shot
What the Democrats don’t understand is that three years after his inauguration, a great many people may well have gone nose-blind to Donald Trump.
In the minds of many voters the MIC may well morph into Crazy Uncle Donald who says and does all those silly things, but sometimes you just have to give people a pass.
You Can’t Win By Telling People The Other Guy Is Worse
The last time out the Democrats figured they’d win by telling people, “Vote for Hillary because Trump is worse.”
It didn’t work then and it won’t work in 2020.
Change Or Fail
If they are going to win, the Democrats are going to have to abandon the “I haven’t met a minority I don’t want to pass a new law to help” platform. They’re going to have to deep-six the “Let’s spend billions to pay for all kinds of free stuff” programs.
Unless the Democrats intensely focus on simple, fundamental ways to increase jobs, pay, and medical coverage for working people they may well find that nose-blind or dishonesty-blind voters have given Crazy Uncle Donald another four years in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but it’s something to think about.
— David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
