autocracy

One of the most confounding things about Trump supporters, never more than now, is their comfort with mutually contradictory beliefs.

They love and hate the police (some will even beat a cop with a Thin Blue Line flag).
They’re committed to moral values and to an immoral leader.
They believe the election was rigged, since Trump lost, and that it wasn’t, since other Republicans won.

And so on.

Alice and the Red Queen, in Through the Looking Glass — *In “Through the Looking Glass,” the Red Queen tells Alice “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Image by John Tenniel via Wikimedia Commons*

Of course, Trumpists aren’t alone in being inconsistent. Think of the widespread belief in homeopathic medicine among people who also believe in facts and logic.

But in Trumpism, the self-contradictions are so radical that they seem to be of a different order. And I think they are.

We tend to assume that people with irrational beliefs are simply mistaken, or have been tricked.

But what if irrationality is what they want? What if they want to live in a dream?

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