Donald J. Trump And The Politics Of Xenophobia

Because this issue is so critical to our national survival, I’m going to continue to burden readers with it. Yes, to truly understand politics one need first understand xenophobia in conjunction with how our brains are wired.

To begin, the all-powerful human tribal impulse flows out of our base primitive ego, which, as I have stated many times, is chiefly responsible for personal survival and for seeking advantage in every way toward that purpose.

The positive aspect of the tribal impulse is for peoples of like kind to band together for the common good. But there is an evil offset to this positive in that there is also an inherent dislike of those unlike us — xenophobia — that biases us toward fear and hate of the “other.” In other words racism, chauvinism, nationalism, sexism and bigotry of any favor are all overt manifestations of xenophobia. (Until this relationship between xenophobia and the brain becomes a basic course of education bigotry will continue to ramble on unimpeded.)

For those who allow their xenophobia to run wild (lacking intellectual objectivity) such negativity is mindlessly spontaneous. Having thoroughly insulated themselves from facts and reality by virtue of their prejudice, such folks see themselves as victimized by welfare queens and Mexicans stealing their jobs and other boogiemen, while at once clinging to a host of far-fetched conspiracy theories.

And since the tribal impulse originates in that part of our brain (the base ego), tied as it is to one’s survival instincts, it makes politics a white-hot topic between kneejerk xenophobes wallowing in pure mindless emotion and those of a broader toleration.

And of course that brings us around to the topic of the Donald, the master manipulator of the xenophobic impulse to hate the “other.” For some thirty years parts of the Republican Party and the right wing media lead by the late Roger Ailes of Fox News have been setting the table for the emergence of Donald Trump.

You see, since the GOP is the party of corporations and the super rich, and there are a heck of a lot more folks who are not super rich, it needed to find a way to distract the average Jane and Joe from the fact that its primary reason for existence is shoveling money to the well off. So beginning in the late 1960s, the GOP began pandering to the xenophobic impulse in order to stay completive, as demographics turned evermore against it.

With the rise of Trump, the once constructive core of the party has mostly eroded away in the face of its dog whistling of pure xenophobes. Thus we now see the destructive party of Trump working feverishly to attempt to undo all the political good of the last several decades, as it designs programs that suit the wealthy and undercut average citizens, all behind a smokescreen of xenophobic hatred, the mother’s milk of dangerous demagogues like Donald J. Trump.