I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read “Elect a clown; Expect a circus”. Trump’s presidency has certainly been one of ongoing entertainment as we swing from amusement to dismay on any given day. But as our nation’s attention is drawn time and again to his sideshow, are we noticing how people relate to him?

Since Trump’s election, he has continued to cull a following. The underlying Republican message and theme is always the same. It’s the Democrats’ fault; no matter what happens. Whether it was election interference, the impeachment hearings, the falling stock market or the coronavirus, everything is blamed on the Democrats.

This tactic has been applied so uniformly that Trump supporters no longer question whether such thinking is even realistic. They are told that Democrats are trying to take down Trump and this idea generates an even fiercer devotion.

When people refuse to take in any information simply because it is coming from a Democrat or a media source labeled by Trump as “fake news”, we have arrived at a total denial of balanced information. We’ve crossed a line when people take Trump’s words literally and some won’t self-quarantine because they heard he said the coronavirus was another “Democrat hoax”.

This campaign strategy of creating a group convinced that only “their leader” can speak Truth is the definition of an autocracy. The autocratic threat to our democracy is that the “leader” isn’t always right. But Trump followers will only believe him.

This prevalence of parroting whatever Trump and Republicans are saying without ever questioning or considering other perspectives is more concerning to me than the daily fascination with the Trump reality show.

Martha Hodges

Massena