Trump’s passionate detractors need him as much as his ardent supporters. He serves as a screen onto which we can project all of our nastiest impulses and feel cleansed and virtuous as a result.
It seemed for a moment that an honest conversation about the role racism plays in this society was inevitable. But that prospect was so scary that we collectively conjured Trump and can now gleefully congratulate ourselves with not being like him. Of course, not being endorsed by the KKK is a bit of a low bar to set but that’s the whole point. We will not allow Trump to fade away because it’s so damn easy to feel good when comparing oneself to him and his supporters. We can now award ourselves medals all day long for being so much more virtuous than Trump and his supporters.
The black sheep dynamic that we so often see in families works the same way in larger groups. When the status quo is threatened in any way and a group faces the need to acknowledge its demons, it often chooses to avoid unwelcome change by dissociating from these demons. And the best way to dissociate is to project them onto the safe, inaccessible space of a black sheep. The black sheep becomes a sort of a black hole where these negative feelings can be kept safe from analysis or change.
After Michael Brown, a discussion of race became inevitable. But that prospect was so unwelcome that we all collectively obviated it through locking ourselves into the loop of being scandalized by Trump and congratulating ourselves for being better than him.
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