re: #208 Nerdy Fish

The power that man has over the collective Republican consciousness is terrifying. The thing that bothers me is that I don’t understand how. He’s ugly, he’s a complete and total failure as a businessman, he’s a court-proven con artist, a rapist, a serial adulterer, and yet people trust him to the exclusion of all others.

If you’ve read the second volume of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, you may see a parallel. In it, the plan the scientists had created to restore a galactic civilization over a 1000 year period was destroyed because a man came along that none of their planning and theorizing had ever considered. It turned out he was a mutant who had the ability to adjust the minds of people in subtle but important ways. Trump is that mutant that the designers of our democracy could never have even fathomed. He has some way of hiding his true self to a substantial number of people. Even when presented with document evidence, they choose him and reject the evidence. It is both terrrifying and inexplicable.