Trump and the Frum World - guest post

 A small minority of the frum world has long been asking why a large majority of the frum world is so fervently supportive of Donald Trump, a political figure whose character and value system are flagrantly and forcefully antithetical to everything we claim to believe is important. Sam Harris, a conservative, atheist, pro-Israel commentator, put it best: “Trump lacks every virtue we have a name for.”

Rav Schwab famously opined that it is incorrect to vote for some of poor moral character. How did we end up so far from that perspective? (To suggest that Kamala is also very immoral is a weak attempt at leveling the playing field; it is a good bet she is no tzaddekes, but there is really no comparison between the level of depravity of the two.)

I know people who voted for Trump either because the only issue they care about is Israel or because they acknowledged how dangerous he is, but felt the other camp is more so. I can respect these positions, even if I disagree with them. Turning a blind eye to the threat that Trump has explicitly put forward does not strike me as a reasonable position.

So why are so many people in that group?

Answer #1: Tribalism + black-and-white thinking

Frum people are rightly opposed to the aggressive agenda of the woke left. That puts us in the same camp as Trump on issues like Israel and identity politics. Admitting that he is as awful as he is means to many people that our own position is weakened.

Inflexible thinking means we have to rally around our own, even when they manifestly do not deserve our support.  (Witness the repeated rallying of our community around frum people, especially those in positions of power, accused of sexual abuse; or the sickening justifications for Israelis who have done truly terrible things to innocent Palestinians.)

People feel they have to raise Trump up as much as possible while downplaying his (many) faults as much as possible in order to avoid having to acknowledge that one of “ours” could be flawed.

You see examples of this kind of behavior daily. Recently Qatar announced that it would be expelling Hamas from its country. Trump was of course credited with this (because they obviously are terrified that he will clobber them) even though the decision was actually made before the election. But hey, any opportunity to show how great Trump is.

Simultaneously, his fans will dismiss any criticism of him. Who can forget his immortal comment about grabbing women by their genitals, which his supporters don’t hesitate to wave away as no big deal.

But this is a lack of mature thinking. Black-and-white thinking – either we’re right or they’re right; either our candidate is great or he’s terrible – is a cognitive distortion that doesn’t reflect the complexity of life as it actually is. (It also leads to a lot of misery, as any practitioner of cognitive-behavioral therapy will tell you.)

The reality is that the woke left is indeed dangerous and objectionable. But so is Trump. Rationalizing away the serious problems with his personality and political aspirations may allow us to support his opposition to the left, but may also leave us with a host of equally worrisome problems – as I fear we will all soon see.

Answer #2: People actually like what Trump represents

Most people actually like the way Trump does things, whether or not they admit it (to themselves or others).

Winning feels good. Crushing the opposition feels great. Revenge is sweet. These are normal human feelings.

Even now, when you imagine arguing against someone in the opposite political camp (perhaps me), you imagine victory as delivering a crushing argument and forcing your opponent to concede or to slink away with their tail between their legs. You do not envision as the ideal outcome a handshake and a “let’s agree to disagree.”

The urge to be powerful is powerful. But of course, that is not what we are on this planet for. (Omnipotence is not one of G-d’s attributes that we are meant to emulate.) The Torah calls us to grow as people: to be humble, to be mevater, to seek shalom and peshara. But our animal nature pulls us in the opposite direction.

Trump lets all of that loose. And people love it. Somewhere deep down (or, for many people, not so deep down at all) they want to be just like that – to put down and mock their enemies, to crush anyone who gets in their way, to win at all costs, to demand loyalty and get it (without the obligation to offer it in return).

Trump personifies strength and domination, and that speaks to a very essential part of us. Everyone wishes, to some extent, that the world would conform itself to our personal desires. Some people try to enact that by exerting power over others to make others do what they want. That’s why there are so many fights in marriages, so many crimes committed every day, and so much war all over the world. Islam is the fastest growing religion because and not despite its mandate to convert the rest of the world by the sword or else subjugate it.

Me, I don’t want the world I live in to look like that. I want a world that looks more like what G-d has asked us to build. I want a world where people talk and people listen, where there is collaboration instead of control, consensus instead of authoritarianism, love instead of self-interest.

(I am not saying we should try to sing kumbaya with terrorists. We certainly must show strength when dealing with violent enemies. But that is something we should do because we have to, not because we like to.)

The more Trump mocks his opponents, gets his way, asserts power, and gets away with it all, the more people who want to live by strength will be drawn to him – and continue to rationalize in the most naked and unintelligible ways how really he’s not so bad after all.