Trump, Trans, and Treason

This is a very different blog than most that I write so please don’t feel any pressure to read on if it is not what you signed up for! Many people are juggling the balls of lockdown schooling with other responsibilities; in my case I would describe it more as dropping the balls. I hope to return to easier writing eventually but it will continue to be sporadic for a while! I started writing this as a mental exercise, in order to explore whether some of my own recent theological reading and reflection could offer any helpful insights in relation to recent political events. It addresses a topic which some colleagues and friends are discussing and this is the best platform I have with which to share my ideas.

Trump, Trans, and Treason

It seems bizarre to write these three words in the same sentence. Less than two weeks ago we were celebrating the end of 2020, the Year of ‘what could possibly happen next’. Alas it took only a few days to prove wrong any forecast of a return to normality. So here I am, starting a blog with the words ‘Trump, Trans, and Treason’ - three words which I am convinced are closely connected! 

To avoid misunderstanding, I want to say at the outset that I am not here writing for or against transgender theory. This is something about which we all have strong intuitive convictions. For the sake of this blog, I will accept as fact that transgenderism makes sense to many people today. It is also a fact that the very thought of transgenderism was incomprehensible to my grandparents. The history of how this change occurred is the fascinating topic of several books I have been reading over the last few years. These books, by influential social commentators, are not tied to traditional moral or religious frameworks but rather explore the cultural and philosophical factors which unconsciously inform and shape contemporary intuitive responses to sex and gender.

When you dissect the various currents that flow into the main current of transgender thinking some key themes emerge. First of all, transgender thinking requires a view of your ‘self’ which is defined psychologically rather than biologically. Consider the statement “I feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body”. We have a psychological angle - “I feel like a woman”. We have a biological angle - “I have a man’s body”. In the transgender understanding of a ‘self’, the feeling overrules the physical. Such a person is not seen as a man with the wrong feelings, they are seen as a woman with the wrong body.

Another factor is the implied sense of psychological victimhood. This is not a woman living and thriving in a man’s body; it is a woman trapped inside a man’s body - a victim of chance biological forces. If the right medical and technological advances give the power for such a person to change - to escape the prison - is it not humane to support them in doing so? In such a framework, it is not surprising that autobiographical narratives often express a desire for and experience of liberation (e.g. think of the significance that the phrase “I came out” carries for many in the LGBTQ+ communities).

For different reasons, another person is convinced that the ‘self’ is actually defined by physical traits. They say “You have a man’s body so you are a man”. Far from intending to offend, this comment might be equally motivated by humanistic impulse: if it is the feelings which are out of sync with the real, physical self, and the means are available to change these feelings, wouldn’t it be right to do so?  Of course, to the transgender person, who defines ‘self’ according to an inner psychological sense, this will seem very inconsiderate. To assert that physical factors determine selfhood will be received as taking sides with the oppressor (the physical prison) and attacking the person (the psychological identity).

Again it is not my purpose here to debate the rights and wrongs of all this. I have chosen a transgender example for the sake of clarity. Similar dynamics play out in various contemporary discussions relating to gender and sexuality, and at times, race too. There are also easily identifiable parallels with much modern occultism, and the various ‘mind-cults’ that have arisen particularly in America, like Christian Science, where mental activity is believed to have the power to shape physical realities. The historical development and emergence of this prevalent concept (i.e. that the self is defined psychologically) have been traced in detail for anyone who has the time and the will to wade through a few fairly substantial hardback books. Until fairly recently, political causes relating to psychological self-hood and victim-hood (race, LGBTQ+) have generally been championed by progressive liberals. Nevertheless, the influence of this psychological approach to self-hood and victim-hood, and the  power which ‘narrative’ has in this context, spread well beyond the boundaries of liberal politics. In fact, we are all influenced by it and frequently and unconsciously take it for granted.

This is where, I think, it gets interesting. Donald Trump is clearly not a snowflake-liberal. However, he and his supporters (like the rest of us in the West) are influenced by this same cultural force just as much as the strongest LGBTQ+ advocate. 

In a contemporary Western political environment you do not win a following by presenting facts: you win a following by playing to felt identities using narratives of victimhood and deliverance. This is what Donald did so well. At a grassroots level many conservatives were already sucking heavily at the breast of victimhood. The liberals have dominated the education system, attacked religion, removed prayer from the public sphere, manipulated the voting system and so on and so on. They (the liberals) are stealing the country from the true patriots (the conservatives).

Whether this liberal takeover was actually occurring, in a factual sense, matters less than the existential phenomenon: many conservative felt that their American identity and way of life were under threat. It does not matter whether blacks and Latinos are actually a threat to American jobs and traditional way of life if the ‘patriots’ feel it to be so (this feeling may be particularly strong in locations where there are historical racist undercurrents). What Trump did successfully was to affirm this felt identity (“you are the patriots”), and the felt victimhood (“we need to take America back and make it great again”). He then promised to remove things which were felt to threaten that identity (“we have to build a wall”), all the time feeding a narrative of deliverance in which he was saviour of the real America. The millions of regular working folk who voted for him started to feel that he was one of them, someone who feels the way they feel - but with power!

Objective facts and reasoned arguments have never had a part to play. Sadly, it doesn’t matter whether a conspiracy theory conforms to facts; it only matters whether it confirms the feelings of identity and victimhood, and the hope of deliverance. Trump believes he is a winner; the physical fact of an election defeat matters no more than the physical body of a person with transgender feelings. If you have the power and means to change it, do so. In an extreme outworking of this, we see  crowds of people storming the Capitol, baying for blood, sincerely feeling that they are both the victims and the patriots. Objective definitions of ‘treason’ are more or less irrelevant.

One possible response to the current political crisis would be to assert the actual facts of the election. But why would facts matter now, if they have not mattered before? In this framework, if a ‘fact’ undermines the victimhood narrative it is rejected because it also threatens the psychological sense of self.

If the ‘facts’ are asserted by someone who denies the victimhood narrative, it tends to simply affirm the sense of oppression - in the same way that a transgender individual might react to a person who asserts that self is defined by physical traits.

You hit similar problems if you assert the objective standards of law through seeking to impeach or arrest Trump and his supporters: that would simply confirm the oppression narrative. There is always a danger in giving a movement a martyr. Of course if there is no legal response Trump will likely spend the coming months and years telling supporters that there was no case against him! It is a no win situation!

Some have suggested starting a new, alternative, reasonable Conservative party - but what impact will that have unless the grassroots supporters feel that it represents them, unless it both connects with their felt ‘true patriot’ identity and releases them from the psychological victim narrative by offering a deliverance which is constructive and unifying rather than destructive and divisive? I am at as much of a loss as anybody else as to what sort of approach might meet those demands. It is at least an argument for diplomacy - a challenging pursuit which always involves careful selection with regards which ‘facts’ are given relative emphasis or neglect. Personally I fear that this will rumble on until a Statesman of herculean strength and ability arises within the existing Republican system - though that might seem beyond the realms of possibility to those closely involved. You need a leader big enough to justify having their own statue erected next to the Lincoln Memorial. And why not? In God’s grace, America has produced such leaders before.