The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The votes are still being tallied in Arizona and North Carolina, and there will be a recount in Georgia. Joe Biden has surpassed 76.3 million votes, the highest vote total in American history.

Electoral College Map

But that’s not the big mystery of this election. The trillion dollar question is, why on earth would 71.6 million Americans vote for Donald Trump?

After all the lies, the sickness and death, the economic hardship, the constant, daily craziness. This can’t be explained away simply as racism or blamed entirely on Fox News. There is more going on, and social scientists are now puzzling over these questions.

The Atlantic took an early stab at it Tuesday morning, one week after Election Day, with these theories: How Trump Sold Failure to 70 Million People: The president convinced many voters that his response to the pandemic was not a disaster. The psychology of medical fraud is simple, timeless, and tragic.

“Trump’s enduring popularity clearly has much to do with factors beyond the pandemic,” The Atlantic writer, an M.D., admits. “Much of what he said and did as president was thinly veiled white supremacy, misogyny, race-baiting, and class warfare. But Trump’s vacuous promises about the virus were more than self-serving, disingenuous, and deadly; they were also convincing and appealing to many people. Understanding why will be crucial to America’s pandemic response even after Trump is out of office.”

So Donald Trump is simply the world’s greatest snake oil salesman, ever?

In evolutionary terms, are we still living in Mark Twain’s 19th century?

We could add tribalism, which was written about a lot before the election. Once a Tar Heels fan. Always a Tar Heels fan. Once a Republican, always a Republican. Some choose the red team, others the blue team.

We could try to blame it on religion, or more specifically Christianity, but that would not get it either. Millions of Christians voted for Joe Biden. He could not have won without them. The framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution knew this. They reached out to them in language because they were needed to fight the American Revolution against the British Empire (long a theory of mine, written about before).

Do 44 percent of the people in the United States misunderstand what democracy means, and/or don’t care enough to keep the American experiment in “government by the people” alive and going? Would they really rather go back to monarchy, where famous royal families run the country with the tacit approval of The Pope? Or do they really trust corporations to run things more than election accountable public officials?

Is the education system in the U.S. to blame? Have we simply failed to teach history and civics?

A Campfire Chat on Civics

On Saturday night after the election, Eliza Newlin Carney joined our campfire near the Washington, D.C. line in College Park, Maryland, to listen to Joe Biden’s address to the nation and celebrate the outcome of the election. A former senior editor at The American Prospect and a writer for CQ Roll Call and the National Journal who studied at Columbia Journalism School, she now runs a non-profit called The Civic Circle.

The organization lists its Vision like this.

“All the nation’s children should know and embrace their civic rights and responsibilities as Americans.”

The Mission?

“Bring democracy and civic values alive for primary school students through music and drama, using assemblies and after school programs that celebrate civil discourse, media literacy, community service, and public leadership.”

So the trick is to get to kids when they are young and teach them the values and give them the tools they will carry for life. Maybe they can never be fooled by a snake oil salesman like Donald Trump ever, like our generations were?

Sounds good to me. I’m all for it. It sounds like a great program, and I hope it spreads all over the country and the world and is well funded.

But that was supposed to be one of the goals of public education, right? What happened? What went wrong? Go to work social scientists and communications scholars. We want answers.

Anyway, for now, that’s not going to convince many Trump voters that they were fooled by a mad man whose ambition was to be America’s first dictator. Hopefully, in four years, Trump will be too old or discredited with lawsuits and criminal convictions or exile to make a comeback.

Do the Republicans have anyone on the bench who could ever rival Trump for outlandishness and his inexplicable ability to dominate media and public attention?

Certainly not Mike Pence, or Mitt Romney.

Another problem is Joe Biden is most likely too old to serve a second term. Who do the Democrats have who can sooth the souls of freaked out millions and turn the tide back toward science and social justice like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

Well, there is Kamala Harris.

We will see.

We will keep looking for answers about the popularity of Trump. As I have said since way back before he was elected, he learned how to hold the media’s attention back in his days in professional wrestling. I won’t bore you with the link again.

But as I have taken to saying by campfires of late: “It’s show business.”

Like they say in the film “Shakespeare in Love,” it’s show business, where somehow things always seem to work.

“How?

“I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

That’s Trump and his popularity.

One big, fat, ugly, stupid mystery. At least a majority of Americans saw fit to hand him his hat in defeat, and say “you’re fired, loser.”