Thursday
I came across a good use of Alice through the Looking-Glass yesterday. Looking at how Donald Trump continues to obsess over his debate performance against Kamala Harris, Stephen Robinson of Public Notice observes,
Supporting Trump is like taking up permanent residence in Lewis Carroll’s storybook Wonderland where you must believe nine impossible things before breakfast, no matter if they contradict each other.
I should note that it’s six, not nine impossible things that Alice is challenged to believe before breakfast, and the episode occurs in the Looking-Glass world, not in Wonderland. Nevertheless, Robinson’s point still holds. There are any number of instances where we see Trump supporters called upon to perform comparable mental gymnastics.
Robinson focuses on Trump’s post-debate narrative, noting that it is “barely coherent”:
He claims the ABC moderators conspired with the Harris campaign to rig it against him, but he also insists he won. He’s gone as far as to compare himself to a prizefighter who scored a resounding knockout.
In Carroll’s novel, the comment about believing six impossible things occurs in an hallucinatory conversation that Alice has with the White Queen. The Queen is explaining how things occur in reverse in Looking-Glass world, including results preceding causal actions. The conversation then turns to how old each of them is:
“Now I’ll give you something to believe,” [said the Queen]. “I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Trump supporters have now had nine years of practice—more if they were following his career before he entered presidential politics—so perhaps six is underestimating their capacity.
In any event, here are six impossible things that Trump challenged his followers to believe in the debate:
–In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.
–I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF.
–But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay.
–Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue [abortion] to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.
–People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.
–Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down? You know why? Because they’ve taken their criminals off the street and they’ve given them to her to put into our country. … Millions of people let in. And all over the world crime is down. All over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof.
If you find these claims outrageous, however, here’s one that surpasses them all. Trump delivered it at an April 9, 2021 rally:
I’ve got to be the cleanest, I think I’m the most honest human being, perhaps, that God has ever created.
When it comes to believing impossible things, the White Queen is a rookie compared to Trump’s ardent fans.
