“And this is what we’re up against: a group of people that made a really bad choice, are starting to see the consequences of that choice, but are having a hard time accepting the fact that they have made that bad choice. In reference to the above, if they accept the fact that Trump makes oversimplified choices, they too have to admit that they have made an oversimplified choice. Now imagine how hard that would be for an individual in the face of a reality that is making that all too clear to them. Imagine the denial one would be tempted to resort to.”
Another model to consider here is Kierkegaard’s Continuation of Sin. The point of it is that, sometimes, when a person commits an act that they know to be against a general sense of right, instead owning it, they’ll take the irrational step of leaning into the momentum of the wrong. For instance, I once saw a story on TV of two boys who decided (through a kind of weird incremental process that builds into an outside-of-the-norm act (to kill one of the boy’s parents. They, through the inertia of it, eventually carried out the act. And we can easily imagine them, having recognized what they had done (and completely intimidated and overwhelmed by the likely consequences and the guilt that was too much to own), choosing to lean into their sin (to become “pure evil” (in order to avert responsibility for it. We see a similar dynamic, for instance, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth as well as Sam Raime’s movie A Simple Plan. The two boys went on to do a school shooting.
And I believe we can apply the same dynamic to belief systems. We’re talking about a group of people (outside of the 1/3 of the American voter pool that are completely lost (who, out of frustration, decided to experiment with Trump and saw that experiment go horribly wrong. Imagine the blow to your sense of yourself as an enlightened individual. Imagine the temptation to double down or your previous indiscretion, to rationalize.
In other words, as progressives and democrats, we have to be gentle (and thoughtful (when taking advantage of the reality that is moving many of them away from Trump and the Republicans.