A Genealogy of Political Insanity

Political pathologies don't spring, fully formed, from the head of some operative. They have a history. Minority rule in a democracy is a kind of dysfunction. Simple explanations have a lot of appeal, by dint of their simplicity, but usually don't hold up for long. 

On the other hand there are often undertakings or events that give thematic cohesion to insanity. And observable dysfunction should require an attempt at explanation. So, how did we get to the Trump dysfunction? What is the genealogy of the pathology?

Formally there isn't one because opportunism doesn't constitute belief. Trump's the opposite of an ideologue. He doesn't care about anything, except himself, for which he expects to be praised. Far from being held to a fixed idea Trump is entirely untethered. 

Or he is, more plausibly, tethered only to himself. 

He really is an island. Now, then, as such he's only buoyed by a political pathology so we have to look at that liquid medium, Trump voters. Their sickness is rooted in America's original sins, racism and greed. The players are an arrogant North and an injured South. 

Ronald Reagan used Jerry Falwell for votes and then ignored him. Surprise, people don't like being used and ignored. There's a long history of Northern insults and Southern hurt. Desegregation was a plate of crow and there was no face-saving way out for the South.

Yet again they were under the boot of self-righteous Northerners, never mind that the boot had been their favored tactic with an oppressed minority forever. And there was a face-saving way out and they rejected it and retrenched into racism and violence. Oh, well. 

Falwell was probably genuinely shocked to be treated like a hick and a dick, so he founded the Moral Majority, the righteous ass, and the rest is our history. The South has always been a separate entity, a debauched substate, and is now asserting itself in the crazy cause. 

The South is doing so by taking over the country. Read the writings of the racists, especially the Calhoun era stuff. Read the Confederate Constitution. Hell, read Jerry Falwell. It isn't hard to see it, once you look: the South has risen again and we are living in it. 

Welcome to Dixie, the voting base of Donald Trump, the sine qua no-Trump, his core of true believers and America's preeminent losers. And woe to someone if Trump turns on this base. His favorite attack appellation is "loser." They aren't going to like it if he turns it on them.