They’re
Just Plain Stupid
August
21, 2023
There are certain
undeniable facts about former president Donald J. Trump. These things are
simply true. They are not a matter of opinion, they are a matter of established
fact. The facts about Trump relevant to my inquiry here include:
·
As president Trump was impeached twice.
·
Though the Senate did not convict him in either
impeachment, the Senate vote to convict in the second Trump impeachment was the
largest, most bipartisan such vote in American history.
·
Most of the facts Trump alleges in his public
statements are false.
·
Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to
President Joe Biden.
·
Trump refused and continues to refuse to acknowledge
that he lost the 2020 presidential election.
·
Trump continues to claim that he won the 2020
presidential election.
·
Trump calls the 2020 presidential election “rigged.”
·
Trump says that his alleged victory in the 2020
presidential election was “stolen” from him.
·
Trump engaged in a broad range of activities in
an effort to reverse his loss of the 2020 presidential election.
·
Trump has been indicted for around ninety
felonies by three separate prosecuting agencies.
·
None of the criminal law cases those indictments
have initiated against Trump has yet come to trial.
·
Trump is not, as of this writing, a convicted
criminal.
·
As a legal matter, though not necessarily for
any other purpose, Trump is presumed innocent of all of the criminal charges
against him.
·
Trump has been found civilly (not criminally)
liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a civil case against him brought by
E. Jean Carroll.
·
Trump denies all wrongdoing.
·
Trump says that the indictments against him are
the result of a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
·
On January 6, 2021, the day Congress was to
convene in joint session to accept and affirm the presidential and
vice-presidential electoral votes of the states, a session to be presided over
by Vice President Pence as President of the Senate, Trump gave a speech to a
crowd in Washington, DC, in which he told the people to go to the Capitol and “fight
like hell” because if they didn’t they would not have a country anymore.
·
Trump insisted that Vice President Pence had the
power to reject electoral votes from the states.
·
Trump pressured Vice President Pence to reject
electoral votes from the so-called “swing states” that Trump lost.
·
There is a consensus among reputable legal scholars
that under the US Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 the vice
president has no such power.
·
Trump is running for the 2024 Republican
presidential nomination.
·
According to the polls, Trump holds a very
substantial lead over all other candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential
nomination.
·
Some polls show a presidential election between
Trump and President Biden as essentially even.
These are the facts on which I
base this piece. I have not called Trump a criminal. He has been indicted for a
large number of felonies, but as of this writing he has not been convicted of
any of them.
All of which
gives rise to this question: Given the undeniable facts of Trump’s presidency
and developments after his presidency, how can so many Americans, mostly but
not quite exclusively Republicans, continue to support him for another term as
President of the United States? I can find only one compelling answer to that
question, namely, that Trump’s supporters are just plain stupid. Let me
explain.
It is, I suppose
obvious that the explanation of any statement that someone or something is
something or other must begin with a definition of whatever it is that you are
saying that someone or something is. People often assume that everyone
understands some word or concept they same way they do, but serious authors are
well-advised not to make that almost certainly erroneous assumption. So I’ll
start my explanation of my claim that Trump’s supporters are just plain stupid
with definitions of the word “stupid.”
The online search
“define stupid” in bing.com produces as the first definition of stupid “having
or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.” That search also
gives a link to mirriam-webster.com. That site defines “stupid” more fully as “slow
of mind,” “obtuse,” “given to unintelligent decisions or acts,” and “lacking
intelligence or reason.” These definitions suggest that that the opposite of
stupid is “intelligent.” The search “define intelligence” in bing.com, using
the noun rather than the adjective, which makes no difference here, produces as
the first definition of “intelligence” “the ability to acquire and apply
knowledge and skills.” Once again, mirriam-webster.com gives a more complete
definition of the word in question. It defines “intelligence” as “the ability
to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations, and “mental
acuteness” among other definitions. To be stupid, then, is to lack
intelligence. It is to be slow of mind, obtuse, given to unintelligent
decisions acts. It is to be unable or at least unwilling to adapt to new
situations on the basis of evidence.
Trump’s supports
are stupid in precisely this way. They show themselves again and again as unable
to grasp and accept actual facts. They are either unable or unwilling to draw
valid conclusions from actual facts. The facts of what Trump has done are not
really in dispute. Most of Trump’s supporters don’t deny them. Rather, they refuse
to accept them and act on them. They refuse to use them in making their
decision about which presidential candidate to support. They refuse to base
thoughts and actions on well-established truths. For example, they know (or at
least could easily know) as well as anyone what Trump said to his crowd of
followers on January 6, 2021. They’ve surely seen at least parts of the tape of
Trump’s speech that day as often as I have. Or if they haven’t, it’s just
because they have decided not to and watch Fox News rather than a valid news
source. I don’t watch Fox News, but I assume that it rarely if ever shows that
tape, so damning is it for Trump.
Trump’s
supporters have available to them as much information as the rest of us about
the things Trump did in his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election
that he lost, things for which he has now been criminally indicted by both the
US Department of Justice and the Fulton County, GA, district attorney. The
facts stare Trump’s supporters in the face, but they refuse to accept them.
They refuse to understand them. They refuse to draw conclusions from them,
conclusions that are obvious to anyone who approaches them who isn’t stupid.
Trump’s
supporters also display their stupidity in the way they accept an incorrect
conclusion from a particular assertion that Trump ceaselessly lays on them. He
says that his criminal indictments are politically motivated. He calls them a “witch
hunt.” He clearly expects his followers to accept the truth of that assertion
though he can offer no real evidence to support it. Trump expects them to
believe that his four criminal indictments are therefore improper because they
are based on the political positions of the prosecutors and not on the law and
the facts of those cases.
That conclusion
is simply untenable as a matter of simple logic. Let’s assume for purposes of
argument that Trump is correct here. Let’s assume that the district attorneys
in Manhattan and Atlanta are out not to enforce the law and bring a criminal to
justice but just to bring down Donald Trump. Let’s also assume that Jack Smith,
the special counsel US Attorney General Garland has appointed to conduct the
Justice Department’s investigation of Trump, is likewise acting only from a
desire to damage Trump politically. I personally do not believe that either of
those assumptions is correct, but I’ll posit them here to show what they don’t
actually mean.
Even as we assume
those probably false things to be true, it remains also true that they make no
difference with regard to Trump’s guilt in the cases brought against him. A
prosecutor’s motive in a criminal case in no way affects the law or the facts
of the case. The facts of the case and the evidence that either establishes
them or doesn’t just are what they are. The law applicable to the case remains
what it is. There is no suggestion in Trump’s cases that the prosecutors have
made up facts or dummied up evidence. I have heard no one make that assertion,
and even if someone did it would be obviously baseless. No prosecutor no matter
how corrupt can dummy up new laws. Statutes and cases say what they say. Facts
based on valid evidence and the law just are what they are regardless of any
prosecutor’s motivation in pursuing a case.
Of course
opposing parties in an adversarial proceeding like a trial can assert different
interpretations of the facts and the law of a case. Trial attorneys do that all
the time. Trust me on that one. I spent over twenty years practicing as a trial
attorney.[1]
But different interpretations of the facts and the law do not change the facts
the evidence establishes or the wording of the statutory and case law that
applies to the case. The motivation of the attorneys asserting those different
interpretations have nothing to do with it. Trump wants his supporters to
believe that a prosecutor’s motivation for pursuing a case affects the validity
of the case. It doesn’t, but most of Trump’s followers are stupid enough to buy
Trump’s assertion to the contrary, giving the matter no critical thought
whatsoever.
Given all of
these truths, I cannot avoid the conclusion that Trump’s supporters are just
plain stupid as I defined that word above. Intelligent people do not willfully
reject well-established facts. Trump’s supporters do. Intelligent people will
consider what well-established facts mean. Trump’s supporters won’t and don’t. Intelligent
people accept no facts without doing a least some critical analysis of those
alleged facts and their source. Trump’s supporters do no such critical analysis
at all. Trump’s supporters are simply stupid. American history is full of
popular movements that were just plain stupid. The Donald Trump movement has
joined that parade of horribles wholeheartedly and without reservation.
For better or for
worse, Trump’s supporters’ stupidity deprives them neither of their right of
free speech nor of their right to vote. There is no way to stop them from
supporting Trump except by making reasonable arguments, something that is
futile because Trump’s supporters won’t accept those arguments. It would not be
ethical or moral to seek to force them off Trump’s bandwagon. The right of free
speech means nothing if it does not include the right to be wrong. None of
which changes the unavoidable conclusion that Trump’s supporters are just plain
stupid.
As I was
composing this piece I kept thinking of some lyrics I wrote some time ago set
to the tune of the Mexican folk tune De Colores, known in English as Sing
of Colors. My lyrics go like this:
Sing of morons.
Sing of morons
who over the earth in profusion are springing.
Sing of morons,
Of the dopes in
their dumbness who go on inanities flinging.
Sing of morons,
Of the morons
whose thinking the rest of us all does appall.
Sing of morons
who cover the earth,
And give thanks
that they haven’t yet done in us all.
Sing of morns who
cover the earth,
And give thanks
that they haven’t yet done in us all.
Trump’s supporters are not the
world’s only morons. There are morons everywhere. But Trump’s stupid supporters
are the morons who most threaten us in the US today. I pray that they will
never be able to force me to change my lyric “they haven’t yet done in us all.”
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