We Must Understand How Trump Has Been Abusing America
Recently Anand Giridharadas told the story of Don, an 87 year-old veteran living in California suburb who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and historically had been a diehard republican. This year he will be voting for Joe Biden.
The story of historically republican voters abandoning Trump for Biden is not in itself remarkable; it’s actually pretty prevalent these days.
Don’s story, however, as Giridharadas relates it, reveals much more about the political dynamics that characterize not just Trump’s use and abuse of power but also the larger political and media culture in the U.S. that works effectively and abusively to capture segments of the American electorate.
Understanding the dynamics of abuse in our culture and politics, which work to entrap American voters, is important not just for this election, but for combating in future politics of what has now come to be called “Trumpism.”
We might more descriptively term it “coercive control,” borrowing the concept of Albert Biderman, a social scientist for the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War who developed this term in studying the treatment of POWS and the way they were made compliant without resorting to overt violence or torture.
