Fear Itself: Maybe We Shouldn’t be so Afraid of It

In my relentless attempts to understand the Trump base, I’ve reframed the question we keep asking: “Can you imagine how the Republicans would be reacting if Obama did the same things?” The consensus answer to this is that the GOP would have had their hair on fire from Revelation One, even as we find it inconceivable that Obama could have ever done 1/100 of the crimes Trump has gotten away with.

But for the sake of argument, let’s imagine Obama engaged in some kind egregious conduct within the first two years of his Presidency, revealed only after he passed so much progressive legislation. Let’s even imagine that we on the left reluctantly agreed he had crossed a line, and done something genuinely impeachable. When I do this thought experiment, I have no trouble imagining how extremely reluctant I would have been to support Obama’s impeachment, no matter what his guilt, because I couldn’t have borne the possibility that the first chance in 8 years we had to really move this country forward might be thwarted, and the 2012 election put into doubt. That scenario would have absolutely panicked me, and I think most of you.

So when I apply a mirror version of this thinking to the Trump base, I have to also re-imagine what they feared before he was elected. In their minds, the country was galloping towards a future in which they were…