Oy.  From the FaceTubes, a comment on a friend’s posting about Donald Drumpf’s call for violence from the podium:

So, the fact of the matter is that the leftwing (primarily blacks and hispanics) violently attack impoverished whites tens of millions of times each year in america. We are a very violenced, crushed people and the oppression is building against us, and people act offended if we mention it and then commit violence against us some more to make themselves feel better. I’m exactly sure how empowered white libs are able to sweep this under the rug: they want poor, unempowered whites eliminated from society due to the violent cut-throat competitive ideology of the left. Look into how non-white poverty is tended to versus white poverty, and it’s shocking that this nation is committing a genocide against multi-generationally impoverished whites in front of everybody’s face, and everybody’s mad at the impoverished whites enduring it and still trying to silence and slaughter them. it’s happening in Britain as well. Trump is the first time we as whites have had something like representation in this country. He’s not ideal, but at least he gets it and is brave enough to face black/brown violence and do the right thing. Remember, rightwing whites aren’t the ones calling for violence. The left is just implementing some sort of Opposite Day brainwash as they pull this genocide off. The bible talks all about it.

I mean to say, what??

It’s a solid wall of paranoia, a veritable Plato’s Cave of alternate reality, and I don’t really know how to approach it.  For one thing, there’s not a single verifiable fact in the whole post.

• blacks and hispanics violently attack impoverished whites tens of millions of times each year in america
• [impoverished whites] are a very violenced, crushed people
• oppression is building against us
• “people” act offended if we mention it
• commit violence against us to make themselves feel beter
• white libs want poor whites eliminated from society
• violent cut-throat competitive ideology of the Left [what??]
• non-white poverty vs. white poverty
• this nation is committing a genocide against multi-generationally impoverished whites
• trying to silence and slaughter them
• It’s happening in Britain
• Trump is the first time whites have had something like representation in this country [what??]
• [Trump] gets it and is brave enough to face black/brown violence
• rightwing whites aren’t the ones calling for violence
• the bible talks all about it.

Mercy. I can’t mock this because it’s so sad.  The author is stuck in a fever-swamp of resentment, and I’m willing to believe that from where he sits there’s a lot to resent.  For a good long read, far better written and more qualified to say so than I, see “I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump,” by Jonna Ivin.

It would be easy to dismiss this posting by saying that the author is mentally unstable in some way, but I think we need to be careful in ascribing our opponents’ political views to insanity (or stupidity).  Certainly, if this man truly believes what he has written—although indeed my first reaction was to re-read it as satirical (cf. Poe’s Law)—then we must ask ourselves how we can deal with him and those like him.

Attacking him won’t work, of course; it would just confirm his worldview, not to mention being unkind.

If he were a personal friend, I might ask him to explain his concerns in a personal narrative, i.e., what has happened to you to convince you of these truths?  Sometimes that allows the narrator to begin to realize that those Others might have the same story and in fact might be the victims of the same system as he.

Sidebar: I do think that unempowered poor whites are victimized. Their jobs have vanished, their neighborhoods decayed, their healthcare nonexistent.  Their death and suicide rates are rising.  But I can’t see that the “Left” (by which our author seems to mean “Stalin” or something) has done this.  On the contrary, it’s the conservative business class who have created the economic situation that oppresses the poor.  I don’t think that the overlords have done this “to” the poor whites, however; they don’t actually give a shit about whom their transactions might harm.  But asking our author here to pick through any kind of Marxist dialectic is expecting Plato’s cave dwellers to break their own chains.

The friend on whose feed this was posted is a kinder, gentler hippie than I, and she asked him if he had any links to the “tens of millions” of acts of violence against poor whites, or to the “genocide” being perpetrated in front of everybody’s face.  I’m not sure this will have any kind of effect since having data is not the kind of thing this type of speaker usually does, and I’m not sure he has a firm grasp of the technical meaning of “genocide.”  But kudos for her for trying the Socratic approach!

Mostly I find this man’s post depressing and disturbing, because he is not alone.  Donald Trump is clearly and deliberately appealing to this very attitude of victimization with every step of his campaign, and just as clearly there is nothing anyone can do to break that spell he has woven.  The very fact that there are no facts in the post—or in Donald Trump’s spewings from the campaign stump—means we are dealing with millions of stampeded amygdalas, and there is no way to stop that stampede with rational measures.  All we can do is hope that when they plummet off the cliff that they don’t drag us along with them.

But it’s not looking good.