What Trump's Core-Supporters have just done.

They declared war on reason.

Consciously, deliberately, defiantly, in the face of all the intellectuals and eggheads and the scientists and the experts. They know that they are stupid and ignorant and they are throwing their defiance in our faces, even if it kills us all. I should have seen it coming, because after Obama was first elected they declared war on him as well, blocking and obstructing every move he tried to make to channel the country in a sane, progressive direction. They were mostly successful and they suffered the consequences. They did not care, because for once they won. Now, they got a champion who gave them permission to go berserk and gave them the marching order for irrational rampage. And they love every minute of it. There is nothing more intoxicating than being allowed to spit in the face of your betters. The dumbing-down process finally reached its logical conclusion.

Added explanation (after one of my readers yesterday called it 'cynical'.)

Please note that I was not talking about ALL of Trump’s supporters, but only his CORE supporters.

The mob you could see at his rallies, tens of thousands each time, chanting in almost religious ecstasy: “Lock her up!” and “Build the Wall!” and “Drain the swamp!” while he was walking up and down the stage, beaming, soaking it up.

The same mob that attacked the democratic senators in Obama’s first term, who tried to inform their constituents about the intended health care.

It is shocking to realize that in today’s America there are millions of them and they are running the show by sheer volume and intimidation.

Yes, I know that many people have very complex motivations, but if you examine and analyze them carefully, you will see a few dominant ones.

The most important one is what I call: "Willful Ignorance" or "Selective Blindness". Of not wanting to know, even though they do.

It is impossible not to know that the candidate they voted for:

- approved of and wished to escalate torture
- suggested to execute family members of suspected terrorists (Hitler's Gestapo comes to mind)
- intended to tear millions of American families apart and destroy their lives
- Suggested to disregard and dismiss thousands of top level environmental scientists
- Planned to greatly increase coal production leading to runaway environmental catastrophe for the whole planet
- Planned to appoint judges to the supreme court who would ban abortion and prenatal planning
- Planned to severely curtail free press.
- Declared his intention of spreading nuclear weapons to more countries around the globe
-Planned to rip up economic treaties that could benefit all of the US instead of only the super rich as it is now.
- Planned to give massive tax breaks to the super rich by gutting social and environmental programs and increasing the national debt.
- Slashing most of the remaining regulations that protect the country from the piranhas of industry and wall street
- Triggered and encouraged escalation of racial and religious hatred that could lead to civil war
- etc., etc., etc.

This is what his supporters voted for.

I wonder how many would have, if this rap sheet I compiled above was attached to the ballot under his name with the question: "Are you sure you want to vote for this?" like warning of toxic content on bottles of chemicals.

These are just the highlights of his platform, repeated over and over, for anyone to hear.

And if you are tempted to excuse him by saying that he didn't mean any of this, that "it was only locker room talk" then take a look at the list of those he appointed to high positions so far. Environmental morons, Nazi sympathizers, racist bastards, white supremacist advocates. The list will go on.

If someone voted for him, in view of all this, it can be because the person was unbelievably stupid, or an unethical bastard who didn’t care about the morality of it, as long as s/he could cash in on the crumbs. Probably a bit of both.

NONE of it could be due to lack of information. They could not help knowing this and they did not care, did not want to think about it.

I have a neighbour who once told me that she did not know whom to trust in the news, because everybody lies. I lent her a small Chomsky book and she returned it unread a few days later. She said it is too depressing to read.

She did not want to know, because if she did, her conscience would have urged her to do something and it would have been ‘inconvenient’.

You see, in every system there are the defining structural elements that determine whether the system is sound, functional or not.

The TITANIC was an extremely complex machine. However, it was one structural failure that doomed the ship after it hit the iceberg. The bulkheads in the ship’s hold, separating it to water tight compartments did not reach the top as they were supposed to. They saved money by going up only three quarter the way. When one compartment was filled with seawater, it spilled over the top into the next one and the next, and the next, until the ship could not stay afloat. All the magnificent and complex machine the rest of the ship was became irrelevant at that point.

You see, I am a theoretical Physicist, always looking to identify these structural elements that define the behaviour of a system: be it physical or human.

In case of the Trump supporters, it is a mixture of fear, moral blindness, willful ignorance, greed and, in the case of his core supporters that I was writing about: undeniable hatred and malice.

It was, as I wrote, a war declared on reason itself.

People often mix up two concepts and use them interchangeably: these are ‘cynical’ and ‘realistic’.

Stating facts bluntly is often called ‘cynical’ even though the word implies self serving manipulation of the truth.

By one definition “concerned only with one's own interests and typically disregarding accepted or appropriate standards in order to achieve them.”

I hope you will see the difference.