Loving Blindly

"ONE DOES NOT LOVE, who does not regard the faults of the beloved as virtues" (Goethe). Goethe, as always, was correct. Love blinds us to reality. Whether the object of our affection is our children, our favorite baseball team, our country, or our political leader, love blinds us to their faults, and inspires us to only see the good. Even when we criticize the performance of our favorite football team, we do so with a blind eye, with a steadfast conviction that the object of our criticism is an aberration, or, in our parlance of the day, an "outlier". Our team is basically the epitome of virtue and glory; if only we could replace that under performing, mistake prone right fielder or quarterback. Our bumper stickers read: "proud parents of a child who is perpetually on the honor roll". And so it is with Trump supporters. they conveniently omit mention of the more than fifteen thousand blatant lies with which the pathologically dishonest president has tried, to the derision of objective observers, has tried to con the American people. Among trump supporters, the fact that their man is a self proclaimed sexual predator goes unmentioned. Trump's vicious attacks on American heroes like John McCain and others whose only crime was disagreeing with Trump, Trump supporters ignore. Goethe said: "We are never deceived. We only deceive ourselves". Among Trumpers, any comment made in the news media unfavorable to the president, no matter how well supported by fact, is regarded as fake news, a sure indication that the news media is in the hands of a gang of unpatriotic liberals. So ubiquitous is the self deception of Trump supporters that eighty percent of the conservative Christian evangelical community still support him, even after years of barbaric behavior and policies, promulgated in plan sight, in public, available for all to scrutinize. The more devoutly religious the American voter, the more extreme right wing politically, and Trump, the very antithesis of Christian values, fills the bill. After all, say the enraptured Christian fundamentalists; we all sin. they fail to mention that one is forgiven for one's sines when one confesses them, repents of them, and atones for them, none of which their sin ridden icon has shown the slightest inclination to do. Contrary, Trump seems to take pride in his vicious, immoral, criminal behavior, and the more of it he displays, the greater the loyalty of his sanctimonious sycophants. When Trump is gone, driven form office finally by the majority of Americans who remain reasonable in the face of the lunacy of the Trump base, the Trump base of support will likely quietly vanish like frightened mice into the concealment of anonymity, where they properly long, in ignominious obscurity, harmless at long last. If nothing else, they can say that they have known, if only briefly, true love.