The Quintessential Irrational President And His Casts Of Useful Idiots

Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

Reel Urban News Op-Ed

The current occupant of the White House is the quintessential irrational president. He is empowered and supported by his casts of useful idiots ( i.e. donors, sycophants, electronic media who lust for high ratings).  He is not the first of his ilk. There are presidential predecessors who were irrational (I am thinking of the slave holding classes, the racial separatists and purveyors of Native American genocide). And there were and are other irrational aspirants to the highest office in the land (i.e. David Duke and Lindsey Graham). All share a common but unsustainable irrational worldview.

Here an irrational worldview is defined as seeking fanaticism – an alternative reality.  In short, an alternative reality is “mythicizing and irrational [and it] turns reality into a false (and therefore unchangeable) ‘reality’” according to Paulo Freire the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Sociopolitical and economic irrationality then has become a deadly anachronism.  It is not in step with any tenable future for the people of this small and crowded planet. In order to survive global warming for example, world leaders must accept science and rally around specific data points and certain facts (not to mention that a similar strategy must occur to eradicate COVID-19).  

In short, in a democratic society, leaders have garnered a reputation that they can be trusted, respected and responsible for framing the boundaries of reality. Democratic leaders then are ideally accountable.  They are supposed to possess moral character. They are supposed to tell the truth however unpleasant it may be. If not, many people will not accept or understand what it is taking place and what it takes to reverse deadly diseases and pandemics that are caused by human flaws. Unfortunately, there are never shortages of useful idiots. 

White privilege, another example, is an anachronism – it can no longer be sustained without deadly consequences. This does not mean however that there are not failed cause segments of the world’s populations that still believes slavishly its white mythologies and will fight to maintain hegemonic control over two – thirds of the world’s majorities – yes people of color are two-thirds of the world’s populations and therefore the world’s majorities. 

In order for irrationality to be effective politically, the current occupant of the White House has a supporting cast of useful idiots. As mentioned, some are donors, sycophants, and lustful media after high electronic ratings.  However, some are elected federal, state and local officials and still others are church going, Kiwanis club members, pillars of communities and still others are invisible community residents and still others are community’s social outcasts but all a part of the quintessential irrational president’s casts of useful idiots. What is evident, together they share an irrational worldview. We do not have to look any further than the 2020 presidential campaign. 

In fact, the Republican National Convention was framed rhetorically and psychologically for the fall presidential campaign: The birth of an authentic democracy versus the dying need to maintain at all costs White supremacy.  There is no other way to describe it.  Throughout the propagandist Republican (Dixiecrat) Convention, the speakers have used coded language that is thinly veiled xenophobic speech (or fearmongering). Other speakers have not made any attempt to nuance their positions.  They are sycophants spewing spurious anecdotal White supremacy speech. 

Of course, some of the good people we have met have expressed their horror and seemingly are embarrassed by the Republican Party’s open display of racism, fascism and other “isms” under the bars and stripes of Old Glory.  They have witnessed the openly weaponized word – American, used to reinforce their long and abiding skin privilege and faith in White supremacy. Yes, for them, White supremacy is synonymous with being an American. This is an old and reliable playbook that all have witnessed since the nation’s founding but highlighted during the current White frenzy. 

In recent times, we have witnessed the playbook implemented by useful idiots namely; the electronic media. Few can forget Senator Barry Goldwater the Arizona conservative.  He presented himself as a rustic viral white male.  Goldwater thought of himself as a kind of Matt Dillion figure from the Old West. Goldwater was among the first to publicly use television and radio to warn if not manipulate White America that it was facing looming danger. The danger was, as is, the end of White domination over all other people groups.  

Somewhere in this emerged the Reverend Billy Graham.  Akin to Goldwater, Graham’s message was rustic, viral and appealing to the fearful White masses. The masses chose to believe Graham who thrived on a message of appeasing White guilt. He told them to repent from their individual sins.  Individual sins are unavoidable for Graham because it is a necessary evil to be the dominating head and not the tail. Therefore individual sins will not condemn the White masses or so Graham seemed to communicate.  He sounded as though he was assuring them that they were not and are not responsible for the ills of this fallen world.  It simply is a world they were born into and there is special absolution for those who happened to be chosen by God to be born White in America – it is the White man’s burden. He did not mention that their plutocrats created this society and they however continue to benefit from White corporate sins. 

Perhaps the most skillful demagogue was George Wallace. He was a White House aspirant.  His hate speech soared even above that of Lester Mattox and still others of that historical period. Richard Nixon continued the Wallace like demagoguery with his so called “Southern Strategy.” Although April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee; the useful idiots voted to double down on their tyranny of people of color. On November 5, 1968, they elected Richard Nixon who manipulated them with a law and order agenda. Yes it was Wallace –like rhetoric and a Wallace – like agenda but it was Ronald Reagan who perfected it.  

On August 3, 1980, Reagan launched his presidential campaign from the Neshoba County Fairgrounds with a speech called “States Rights.”  The speech was delivered about seven miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi. This sleepy southern town is memorialized infamously into American history because of its duplicitous association with the murderers and murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner in 1964. There is no doubt that Reagan refused to make an attempt to heal the nation.  Instead, he used the historic setting to once again double down on the racist playbook, the “Southern Strategy.”  

Reagan was the successor of Walt Disney, the man who came into our homes every Sunday night. He appeared harmless but he was a masterful manipulator, luring millions of people into his theme parks every year.  Reagan understood Disney’s appeal and therefore took upon himself this kind of public persona and mastered it.  Reagan and Walt Disney masterfully manipulated the irrationality of the people who foresaw the signs of an impending and looming, threatening end, to White supremacy.  

Reagan then comes to Mississippi and relieves them of their personal sins in a Graham – like fashion and promises them that in theory, they were called and justified to be guardians of a States’ rights agenda.  He agreed with them – the southern proletariat was right always – “right” – and their racist’s bigotries – and this irrational worldview was theirs to have and no federal leadership could make them conform to new national social norms.  Indeed for Reagan, these folk’s ancestors were good people that we have met. Like the quintessential irrational president, Reagan’s message was there are good people on both sides.   

We keep in mind that the citizens of Mississippi then and now are entrapped in unrelenting poverty and ignorance which makes them an easy target for manipulation. They needed someone to blame for their underperforming industries and their undereducated populations. As a result of their failed cause institutions (my way of renaming the lost cause), their underemployed citizens were examples of an anachronistic southern caste society.  This was a result of their irrational visions and mythical hope of re-litigating the outcome of the Civil War or the War Between the States – as they would say.  

What is more, this is an irrational people entrapped in an irrational culture and an irrational belief system.  Still, they have not only maintained their belief system; it has continued to spread throughout pockets of the nation. What once was referred to as southern irrationality is now irrational White nationalism rooted in failed cause mythologies.  This happened because of the failure of good people we have met. They did not abolish this irrational belief system. They did not measure the systemic and toxic depth of human irrationality which is unscored by human pride. Neither human pride nor White irrationality has not died.    

On Thursday night, the quintessential irrational president assembled 1,500 useful idiots on the south lawn of the People’s House (The White House). On the lawn, they donned their new mask which is not wearing protective masks to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus (Covid19). Underneath the pageantry of patriotic symbols which was nothing less than thinly veiled fascism at best or a Ku Klux Klan rally at worst, his narcissism was on full global display. He told them and those of us who suffered through his rambling and incoherent speech that he alone can fix the chaos for which he has created.  He shifted political responsibility and moral accountability by his condemnation of his democratic presidential opponent. He blamed him for the failing economy and the Coronavirus. He told his useful idiots that his opponent will permit unlawful protestors (blacks) to spread their hatred of America to the suburbs and they will pillage and plunder their properties.  And more than likely because they share his irrationality, they believed him willingly. 

 The nation has reached the fork in the road. They must choose one or the other: the birth of an authentic democracy or double down on White supremacy.  All will know the path taken in a few months. The quintessential irrational president has presented the nation with 1968 all over again.  In the literal 1968, the useful idiots elected Nixon. In this figurative 1968, unless there is a large turnout of voters, gravely the nation will gain spiral again into ashen and pale times.  

.