Some people have asked me why I don’t engage with Trump supporters, try to understand them better, invite deep conversations with them, or something along those lines. I think it’s a valid question, and the answer is simple: I don’t see any real potential in such relationships. For me they all land somewhere on a scale that spans from dumb to dumber to dumbest.
It’s not the people that are the issue per se, but the behavior pattern of supporting Trump during this time is so rotten to the core that I don’t see anything redeeming there. There’s no hint of depth, value, or worthwhile discovery. To the extent that I’ve engaged with such people over the past few years, the result has been various degrees of being creeped out.
Some people have said, “But some of them are nice people.” I disagree. In order to frame such people as nice, I have to stretch the definition of nice way too far for it to work. At best I’ll end up with some version of “nice and dumb” or “a nice moron” or “a really nice pile of crap.” I can’t really think of anyone as nice once they’ve been Trumpified. The Trumpification of anyone trumps any niceness, rendering it far removed from anything nice.
Imagine the nicest person you know being bitten by a zombie and turned. Will you still regard them as nice while they try to eat your brain? Does the nice zombie label really work? No, all zombies are zombies. The closest they get to nice is when they’ve been rendered mostly harmless, such as by having their lower jaws removed, so they can’t bite you. It never really makes sense to see them as nice.
Really the closest I can get to labeling such people as nice is to go with mostly harmless, which does indeed apply pretty well to some. But that’s still a pretty crappy connection offer.
When an offer is so horrendously bad, I find it best to say a blanket no to it. Toss those cards in the muck, and let’s see the next hand.
Does this mean if I went earnestly digging for nuggets of goodness among Trump supporters that I wouldn’t find anything worthwhile at all? No, I’m not saying that. Maybe there is something decent in there, but there’s just such a huge mountain of excrement, falsehoods, and ignorance to dig through that a few diamond shards aren’t gonna cut it. The stench is too repulsive to engage with.
One reason I’ve leaned in this direction is that I explored other possibilities first, and nothing quite felt aligned till I thought, Hmmm… what would happen if I took the evil exit here and just declared the whole lot of them to be a stinky pile of excrement?
At heart I’m an explorer, and I’m willing to keep trying different approaches to life to see what works best for me.
Am I saying that you have to use my approach too? Not at all. I think you should find your own path here, and if your approach is different from mine, I celebrate that difference. Don’t clone my approach. Find your own path to alignment through this. But do keep asking if what you’re doing is working well for you, and if not, be willing to change your approach repeatedly till reality seems to affirm your choice.
I noticed that when I was more tolerant of Trump supporters, their presence in this reality kept bugging me. I kept thinking, Are millions of people really this dumb? Seriously, WTF…
And 30,000+ lies later, that attitude starts wearing thin.
It’s easier to deal with a pile of shit when you see it as just a pile of shit and not as a pile of shit that might have some gold or diamonds in it. It’s the feeling that maybe it’s worth digging through that stench that causes problems. Interestingly, this stems from a scarcity mentality, right?
Do you see that? Why deal with Trump supporters socially at all, even if you think they may have some redeeming qualities? Why deal with the smell? What you’re missing is that in a different social direction, there are way more gold and diamonds that aren’t covered in shit. You just need an abundance mindset to see them.
A Trump supporter isn’t going to be a good social match for me by any stretch of the imagination. The smell is always going to be an issue, and the gold and diamonds they may offer socially will never compensate for the smell. So as I see it, it’s a sensible response to just call this a “hell no!” all around.
Once I realized that engaging with Trump supporters had to be a hell no for me, it did feel a bit extreme at first, but I’ve since gotten used to it. And the more I’ve gotten used to it, the more a different direction of social abundance started opening up to me.
I’ve been seeing a gradual increase in positive results from this mindset, which is why I continue to double-down on it. By saying no to the stenchiest stench of the social realm, reality no longer has to simulate this kind of nonsense in my close-up presence, so it can devote more resources to expanding the aspects of life that resonate with me. Consequently, I’ve seen more opening and expansion in directions that feel aligned and intelligent.
It was like I said to reality: Stop wasting resources simulating the dreadfully dumb and stinky. Reassign those resources to more aligned connections, opportunities, and invitations – anything that smells good.
And that’s been working well indeed.
As a simple recent example, yesterday I just loved the livestreamed script reading of The Princess Bride, which was also a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Democratic Party (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post). That was a superb treat! There were more than 100,000 people on the call.
I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve made a political contribution, and I was happy to finally lose my political donation virginity. I love how this invite showed up in the form it did – a chance to engage in a fun way with my all-time favorite movie and many of its cast members. That was an easy yes.
It was great to see actors standing tall against the current Trumpian nonsense too. I felt a stronger sense of oneness from that, like we’re all in this together, pushing back against a zombie horde of 30,000 lies. It’s time to shift this reality in a more positive direction. It was really wonderful to see so many comments coming in from people who are similarly aligned with creating a positive future.
By saying a firm no to 100% pure crap and the people who are wallowing in it, I see beautiful doors opening in the part of reality that isn’t crap.
I felt tremendous respect and admiration for Cary Elwes for making the event happen – one actor stepping up to bring us together in this way.
Lately I’ve been experiencing a rising sense of hope and optimism. I’m feeling better and better about the direction this reality is going.
This is common when we step up our boundary management. Say a really bigger no to the misaligned and stop engaging with it. This doesn’t mean denying the existence of the misaligned. It means acknowledging: I see that you exist – and that you really are a pile of shit that doesn’t belong anywhere near me!
When you see a pile of crap on the sidewalk, do you feel inclined to talk to it and see if you might improve your relationship with it? Or is the sight and smell enough of a turnoff for you to simply call it as you see it and step around it, or shovel it off to the side, so no one else steps in it?
Now there is a nonzero chance that some crap contains gold or diamonds. Is that enough for you to go digging into it each time?
When I label the shit as shit, I needn’t give it as much attention, which frees my attention to focus on legitimate sources of social gold. Engaging with the real gold is fun and rewarding and way less stinky.
So my preferred approach to dealing with Trump supporters isn’t to engage with them – I have zero interest in subjecting myself to the vapid nonsense they spout. I prefer to marginalize the hell out of them. Squeeze them to the borders of my reality, so I barely notice them anymore. Send them back to the simulator to repurpose as something more useful, like fresh spatulas.
