Trying to reason with Trump advocates on moral, political, religious, or even financial grounds is a fool's errand. His followers don't mind that he abuses women, plans to remove health care and all other assistance programs, disdains every Christian attribute, admires dictators like Viktor Orbán, or hates minorities. They don't even care that he can't string together coherent thoughts when answering (or avoiding) questions during a presidential debate.
None of this matters because, as his fans are wont to say, "Trump hears me."
Well, he may hear you, but hearing and listening are separate and distinct processes.
He hears you enough to enjoy the adulation at a rally or to cash the check you send his campaign, but he isn't listening when you worry about getting sick and losing your home to medical bills or when your entire community is thrown into chaos because of a lie he tells as fact, or when women are forced to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term and jeopardize the financial and emotional stability of their families and themselves.
He hears you the way you hear a plane fly over. Or the wind rustle the wind chimes. Or a police siren wailing miles away. You are Trump's background noise, and he can ignore you as easily as you can ignore the other noises that fill the edges of your lives.
If he were actually listening, his campaign would revolve around making this country whole, bringing together disparate parties, and finding common ground. If he were listening, he wouldn't base his campaign on Balkanizing America—essentially removing the "united" from U.S.A.—on dividing and conquering instead of uniting and governing. Now, after two attempts on his life, he bewails violence. If he had any understanding of irony, he'd keep his laments to himself or try to change the undertones of rhetoric that for nine years has encouraged and accepted violence.
Trump hears you all right, as he hears himself, but he's not listening.
And by the same token, you're not listening to him. If you were, you might have been stopped short by his reference to Hungary's Viktor Orbán as one of his admired world leaders. Orbán has built his reputation on imposing restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights and stifling the press and the judiciary. He has cozied up to Putin for years. He calls his system of government an "illiberal democracy," in that people are issued certain rights—they can vote, for instance—but elections are often rigged and rights are summarily violated. In truth, there is no such animal as an illiberal democracy. Maybe Orbán doesn't want to call it an authoritarian regime, but I'm not bound by the same euphemistic restrictions. It's a dictatorship. If you're ready for that "leadership" here, Trump hears you.
If you're one of those "it can't happen here" types and think I'm spewing more liberal scare tactics, trace the history of Hungary over the past decade or so and learn how little the "dêmos" has to do with this so-called democracy. In 2018, Orbán said, "We...do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed: we do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others...We do not want to be a diverse country." Trump's hero. Not surprising.
Nor is it surprising that so many Americans confuse this racism with patriotism and remain so ignorant of and oblivious to the history of their immigrant nation and even their own immigrant families. My grandmother came from Italy a hundred years ago. I never thought of her as an immigrant. She was my grandmother.
Yes, Trump hears you. But he listens to Orbán, Putin, Stephen Miller, Nick Fuentes, et al. You're more of a scripted cheerleader and fund-raising contributor to be summarily ignored when the struggle ends.
Of course, nothing I said here will change the minds of true MAGA supporters, but if they would stop claiming that he hears them, I'd feel a little better.
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