The Distant Strollers, 31st Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Deneb): How is it that half of America looks at the Stable Genius, the most loathsome, despicable man on Earth, and doesn’t find him morally repellent?, David Brooks asked in The Atlantic. “He lies, cheats, steals, betrays, and behaves cruelly and corruptly, and more than 70 million Americans find him, at the very least, morally acceptable. Some even see him as heroic, admirable, and wonderful.” 

I've long held the theory that our feelings and attitudes are mainly determined not by our rational, conscious mind, as we like to believe, but by the mental maps and schema of our subconscious mind. The conscious mind merely comes up with excuses, alibis, and opinions to justify the predetermined positions of the subconscious mind. 

This is why I disagree with some of the classic Stoic philosophers who maintain that we can apply logic to determine how to best behave and to understand the world. The clever rational mind can use logic to convince itself that A = B just as easily as it can convince itself that A = C, or D, or C/D. or whatever conclusion is most useful to justify what the subconscious wants or needs it to justify its impulses.

I agree with David Brooks (which more often than not is not the case) that the Stable Genius is morally repellent. My logic looks at him and sees that he has cheated multiple times on multiple wives; that he lies reflexively, saying whatever serves his purpose in that moment; that he is cruel, boorish, and a bully; and that he is openly and blatantly corrupt. How can that be anything but morally repellent and unfit for the President of the United States of America?  

I have Republican friends. At least I used to, although they are far, far fewer now than before. When I bring up my reasons for loathing the Stable Genius, they come back with both-sides-ism. "You say he allegedly cheated on Melania with porn star Stormy Daniels?," they ask, "but what about JFK? What about Bill Clinton?" They may even go all the way back to Gary Hart and "Monkey Business,"  and accuse me of hypocrisy in condemning Trump for his supposed marital affairs but not disavowing Democrats. I point out that last I checked, JFK and Bill Clinton weren't president anymore, and one set of judgements is historical and the other is current events, but that logic's lost on them, just as their logic is lost on me.

Talk of the Stable Genius' cruelty just triggers retorts about the cruelty of drug cartels and specific incidents of crimes committed by immigrants, and how we need to "fight fire with fire" instead of just looking the other way like the Democrats supposedly have. Isn't it cruel, I ask, for masked policemen to jump from an unmarked car and grab a person on his way to Immigration Court and without any due process put him into an "Alligator Alcatraz" or a notorious El Salvador hellhole, never to see their spouse, children, or parents again for the crime of, what?, doing what the law requires? Their response is outrage that Biden invited millions of undocumented immigrants to flood into the country, and then bring up Laken Riley, none of which is an answer to the question about cruelty.      

Accusations of his lying, stealing, and corruption are just met with dismissal or blamed on the supposed fake news reporting of a biased press. My argument is that the most biased press is Fox News, which is nothing but a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party spurting forth spurious arguments to help its viewers justify their subconscious impulses.

I've also noted that the arguments offered by the left, such as the supposed bias of the press, are tempered with some relativism, e.g. "sure, there's some degree of bias in all reporting, but one side is far worse than the other." However, the arguments on the right tend to deal in absolutism: "The mainstream media has been completely infiltrated by the radical left, and Fox and only Fox is telling the real truth."

For many years in my professional career, I worked with engineers, scientists, and managers who I admired and genuinely liked, but who held deep-seated conservative views and most likely voted, probably several times, for the Stable Genius. How can otherwise intelligent people, I ask myself, form such wrong conclusions from the plain evidence right in front of them? They ask themselves the exact same thing about me.  

The reasons, I believe, is that their subconscious minds are driven by fear and a desire for personal safety and stability. My subconscious mind holds many of the same hopes and fears but is also driven by a desire for fairness and equality. Seeing the Stable Genius as someone who addresses their fears and offers them a solution to their anxieties, their conscious mind comes up with all sorts of ways to justify his behaviors and to dismiss data antithetical to their opinion. Seeing the biased persecution of immigrants, attacks on equal civil rights, and the tragic genocide of Palestinians, my conscious mind sees the Stable Genius as a repugnant person and can't understand how anyone sees him differently.

This isn't "both-sides-ism." I'm not saying we're both partially right and both partially wrong. I'm merely sating the reasons that some otherwise intelligent people hold such wrong views isn't because deep down inside they're all racists with hearts full of hate, although their side does include some such persons, but because we're using our conscious minds differently to different ends.

To be clear, I'm with Brooks in that the loathsome and despicable Stable Genius is, in fact, morally repellent.