“And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil—for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power; and also a third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency; And they were thrust down, and thus came the devil and his angels; And, behold, there is a place prepared for them from the beginning, which place is hell.”
(Doctrine and Covenants 29:26-38)
“Having done so many polls and focus groups, I think it’s clear that Trump’s base is about a third of the country, and they approve of everything he does. Everything.”
— GOP Pollster Frank Luntz, quoted in “Trump Survives a Brutal August, ” by Jonathan Easley, The Hill, Sept. 2, 2017.
When I read the above quote from Frank Luntz it confirmed a growing sense I had that a large percentage of the American public has completely given up any sense of objectivity or critical thinking and replaced it with blind, irrational, fandom. It does not matter what Trump does or says – he is their hero. It does not matter what the media uncovers – anything critical of Trump is “fake.” They have replaced discussion with shouting, policy with slogans, and reality with fantasy. Any attempt to show them their error is met with stubborn, even angry, deafness.
The educator in me recognizes this as a familiar frustration. How do you reach the student who consistently refuses to learn or even pay attention? How do you show him that his stubborn ignorance is only hurting himself? You try repetition, firmness, discipline, ignoring, cajoling, silence, example, humor. You seek help from authority figures and from his family and friends. You are patient and caring and concerned. In nearly 40 years as an educator, I only very rarely reached the end of a school year having completely given up on trying to teach a student.
But these are adults. They should know better. To me, the number of Americans who still support Trump, one third of the country, seems unbelievably high. To be willfully, even enthusiastically, blind is hard for me to understand. But then I recalled the scriptures about the War in Heaven. As hard as it may be to comprehend, one third of the hosts of heaven actually chose to follow Lucifer rather than Jehovah.
I believe a key factor in both of these tragedies is a lack of humility. A person who falls into this trap becomes unteachable. If you believe the idol you have chosen to worship has all the answers, you stop asking questions and you stop listening to others. You refuse to consider, or even to see, facts which may contradict your adopted world view. You give away your agency to the devil who promises to fix all your problems and make everything “Great Again.” Thus the victim adopts the hubris of the demagogue and shares in his eventual destruction.
“And thus we see that the devil will not support his children at the last day, but doth speedily drag them down to hell.” (Alma 30:60)
Sadly, thanks to the bizarre, minority magnifying, influence of the 2016 Electoral College, we will all suffer from this insanity. Good governmental policy is the result of good intentions, accurate information, and hard work. None of those requirements are possible under the current administration. Those of us who still believe in facts need to work hard to bring reason back to America.