Trump’s Con

Is Trump conning people about what’s happening to animals? Yeah, no.

I promise I am not going to write yet one more piece for those who hate Trump as to why I think so many people like him. Or at least why they vote for him. I honestly find most people very perplexing, even about much smaller issues, and I’m really not the one to figure this out.

But one thing that seems obvious is that Trump, like all con men, and all leaders, finds a way to tell people what they want to hear. That’s what people want. They want confirmation. Con men do it so they can flimflam people for their own benefit, and leaders do it so they can change people's minds to make society better (or at least different). One is motivated by self-interest, one is motivated by a vision, good or bad. 

Trump seems to be, or at least used to be, very, very good at this. He has a preternatural talent for figuring out what people are responding to, even on the fly as he is speaking, and feeding it back to them. I think he is total con man, driven by self-interest, and not at all a leader driven by a vision (even a warped one). But I’m not sure that matters.

Ok, that’s enough of that. I promised I wasn’t going to write about this, and here I am. But I am really doing so, not so I can figure out why people like Trump, but so that I can work out what it is he is telling them that they want to hear so I can understand it better. At least about the issues I focus on, which have a lot to do with food.

For one thing, Trump is clearly telling people (or at least men) that it’s ok to be fat. He is fat. He doesn’t even have to say anything about it. Perhaps this is a minor issue, but I doubt it. Americans are very fat. No matter how much fat positivity is out there, most of them don’t like it. Even if they aren’t fat, plenty of the people in their families, or whom they love, probably are. Having someone tell them it’s ok, that he is one of them, that no one cares, is nice.

But it goes beyond telling them it’s ok to be fat. He tells them, without even telling them, that it’s ok to eat McDonald’s for every meal. This is the kind of food that most people love, most people can afford, most people find incredibly convenient. It’s also the kind of food that most people are literally addicted to, that most people are told is bad for them, and that most people feel guilty about. He tells them it’s fine. This is also not a minor issue. People think about food all the time. (Ok, young men think about sex all the time. But everyone thinks about food a lot of the time, when they aren’t thinking about sex.)

This relates to sickness.  We all know that our people, in spite of our very expensive health care system, are not well. Diabetes, heart disease, etc., etc. I think it’s at least possible that a lot of people probably suspect that this is not just the way things are but that there is something wrong. Trump’s willingness to eat bad food and not exercise tells them not only that it’s not their fault if they get sick, but it’s not the fault of our corporate food system — which makes the food they love and are literally addicted to. I’m not actually sure what they think. That it’s always been this way? That they are unlucky? That they don’t have access to the right pills?

Climate change. He tells them it’s not happening. Case closed. That is definitely what people want to hear. If you are thinking that people don’t want to be lied to about something so important, think again. You are apparently not like most people, at least about this issue. It’s not that people want to be lied to or that they consciously put their heads in the sand. It doesn’t get that far. They want to believe what they want to believe. If it’s what they want to believe, and they can find someone who will tell them it’s true, that’s where the thought process stops. You probably have things like that too. We all do.  But hopefully not about really important things. Because you don’t even know you are doing it. 

There are also plenty of other ways in which he is telling a lot of people what they want to hear, but they are not really my topic, and honestly, I don’t listen to him enough to really get it. Obviously, he tells people things about masculinity and the relationship between the sexes that a lot of people want to hear. He tells people that we don’t have to keep letting in more and more immigrants who are willing to work for less than they do and never complain because they are desperate. He tells people that America is different, that we can close the doors, that we can go back to a mythical past. Etc., etc., etc. 

But he doesn’t really tell people anything about the topic I focus on — animals, and, specifically, farmed animals. There is no con going on about what is happening to animals because they don’t even enter the conversation. It is much more of a conspiracy of silence.

I’m not sure this has always been the case. I think there used to be more of a con going on about animals, one that told people what they wanted to hear — that animals don’t matter or don’t feel anything. Not very long ago, people used to be much more likely to say that than they are today, and there was a whole scientific theory – behaviorism – to back them up. 

Nowadays, though, it’s all really pretty much unstated. I think it’s possible there is a sense that this belief – that animals, or most farmed animals, are not conscious or sentient and they don’t actually suffer – is still held by many people, but it’s very, very lightly held. If you were to push back on it, many people would have trouble holding on to it. So they don’t let you push back. They just refuse to go there.

It’s not like climate change, where the evidence is still mostly scientific and anyone can still deny that the hurricanes and the floods are worse than they used to be. There have always been hurricanes and floods. Who is to say they are worse, and if they are, why? (Unfortunately, by the time it becomes completely obvious, it’ll be too late, but that’s a different issue.)

It’s also not like health, where the connection between eating McDonald’s all the time and diabetes is not so direct that it can’t be denied. The overwhelming number of theories about what we should eat sort of guarantees that everything is more or less deniable. And, look, Trump does it and he is not dead (clearly, he has an unbelievable constitution, though it does feel like it’s breaking down). 

With animals, it seems easier for regular people to suspect the painful truth — that chickens and pigs and cows are real and have lives and don’t like to be tortured. They don’t need science to tell them this is true. We viscerally know that animals are real and have feelings and it takes much more psychic energy (or psychopathy) to pretend they aren’t, and even more to accept that they are and not care. So the conversation doesn’t get that far. We don’t talk about it, so no one thinks about it, so no one has to deny they care. In this, Trump is joined by almost all other politicians, including most Democrats. If we don’t say it, we can all pretend it isn’t happening. 

No wonder they hate us so much when we say it out loud.