#224 — The Key to Trump's Appeal

welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris okay well it is the day before the presidential election and i don't know why it's taking me this long to understand this but you be the judge as to whether this should have been at all hard to understand as all of you know i've been struggling for years to understand how it is possible that nearly half of american society admires or at least supports donald trump i've spoken with trump voters in search of elimination but illumination never came for instance i had scott adams on a podcast to explain this to me and he described trump as a master persuader perhaps the best he's ever seen but the problem for me is that i find trump to be among the least persuasive people i've ever come across whenever i speak i see an obvious con man and ignoramus in fact trump seems to be so unaware of how people like me judge a person's credibility that his efforts to appear credible such as they are always make him look ridiculous and even deranged so the claim that he's a brilliant persuader makes as much sense to me as a claim that he's a model of physical fitness would right in my world the claim can be disproven at a glance and yet one thing is undeniable but half the country views him very differently now until a few minutes ago i had more or less reconciled myself to never understanding this but i believe at this late hour on the very eve of the 2020 election i have discovered a significant part of trump's appeal in particular i think i finally understand how he is supported because of his flaws rather than in spite of them that really is the key how are all the things i find despicable in him not merely things that people are willing to overlook but reasons in and of themselves why people support him that's what i didn't understand until this moment now i have repeatedly described the man's flaws on this podcast to my eye he lacks nearly every virtue for which we have a word wisdom curiosity compassion generosity discipline courage whatever your list he's got none of these things but his supporters know that and he's a paragon of greed and narcissism and pettiness and malice real malice and this is a man who wears his hatreds on his sleeve and he will suddenly revile people who he claimed to admire only yesterday so while he demands loyalty from everyone around him really above all else he is an amazingly disloyal person all of this is right on the surface so his appeal has been a total mystery to me but i believe i have now solved that mystery again i don't know why it took me so long because many of these thoughts have been in my head since the beginning and i've certainly heard people describe some parts of this picture but the whole image just fell into place for me it's like one of those magic eye illustrations where you're staring at a random dot stereogram forever and then finally the embedded 3d image just pops out and this picture of trump's appeal is really best understood in comparison with the messaging of his opponents on the left and that's how you can see it in stereo that's how the image finally pops out so taking the trump half of this picture one thing that trump never communicates and cannot possibly communicate is a sense of his moral superiority the man is totally without sanctity even when his every utterance is purposed towards self-aggrandizement even when he appears to be denigrating his supporters even when he's calling himself a genius he is never actually communicating that he is better than you more enlightened more decent because he's not and everyone knows it the man is just a bundle of sin and gore and he never pretends to be anything more perhaps more importantly he never even aspires to be anything more and because of this because he is never really judging you he can't possibly judge you he offers a truly safe space for human frailty and hypocrisy and self-doubt he offers what no priest can credibly offer a total expiation of shame his personal shamelessness is a kind of spiritual balm trump is fat jesus he's grab them by the pussy jesus he's i'll eat nothing but cheeseburgers if i want to jesus he's i want to punch them in the face jesus he's go back to your shithole countries jesus he's no apologies jesus and now consider the other half of this image what are we getting from the left we're getting exactly the opposite message pure sanctimony pure judgment you are not good enough you're guilty not only for your own sins but for the sins of your fathers the crimes of slavery and colonialism are on your head and if you're a cis white heterosexual male which we know is the absolute core of trump's support you're a racist homophobic transphobic islamophobic sexist barbarian tear down the statues and bend the fucking knee it's the juxtaposition of those two messages that is so powerful now i'm sure many of you have understood this before me but for whatever reason this image just became crystal clear needless to say everything i've said about trump previously still stands for me i consider him to be terrifyingly unfit for office i consider most of his personal flaws to be public dangers i think because of who he is as a person he has harmed our politics and diminished our standing in the world to a degree that might take decades to repair so i sincerely hope we rid ourselves of him tomorrow but i believe i now understand the half of the country that disagrees with me a little better than i did yesterday and this makes me less confused less than judgmental less than asshole probably which is always progress which is always progress