November 7, 2020

Trump's base, of course, has a base. The commonality is defiance. Trump exudes defiance, which draws defiant persons together, such as racists.

Trump defies every law that gets in his way, every standard of respectability that gets in his way, every requirement for orderly social existence that gets in his way. He said he could murder someone on the streets of New York and get by with it. That's defiance.

Name calling and degradation of other persons is defiance of humanness. Using the government for enhancing personal wealth is defiance of laws. Using the government for advancing his re-election is defiance of election procedures, for which he was impeached.

Trump shows that a government and social order cannot run on defiance. Laws break down and become nonexistence where power is defiant. A respect for social order must exist before there can be a social order.

No one realized that the social order, its institutions, government and laws were so dependent upon human standards and values. The assumption was that social institutions stood on a foundation of five thousand years of evolved processes, which should be as stable as the evolution of trees.

The fact that social evolution is not as stable as biological evolution shows the nature of humanness. Humans make decisions which override realities, nature doesn't. Humans can decide to defy what nature cannot defy—the history that produced the result.

Trump didn't originate the defiance which he exploited. He knew how to defy from a life-long history of defiance. He knew what he could get by with in a society strewn with defiance.

The defiance in society must be understood to deal with the defiance of radicals such as Trump. A few isolated examples show what the nature of the problem is.

Most recently, the habit of journalists pretending that Trump produced a positive economic result defies too much evidence. Starting with the stock market as an indicator of Trump's economic wizardry is disgusting. The stock market ceased to represent the economy decades ago, as it evolved into nothing but a gambling casino.

Trump's version of an economy based on tariffs and combativeness destroyed global economic relationships which are in the process of isolating the U.S. from the global economy. Defiant journalism buried that fact.

Defiant journalism did not allow criticism of fraud in science or technology in promoting the fakery of a greenhouse effect, renewable energy, electric vehicles or artificial intelligence for self-driving. Any number of scientists and engineers tried to correct the errors, while journalists silenced and degraded them often shoving them out of science and their jobs.

No one could miss the opportunity that developed for losers to step into that mess and defy everyone and everything and get by with it. Even someone as stupid as Trump could see the opportunity to defy as a ticket to success.

So the question is to what extent a rational social order can be held together with such a degree of defiance that Trump exposed, nurtured and trained.