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Republicans have Stockholm syndrome

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Patty Hearst holding up a bank with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Patty Hearst holding up a bank with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
(Image by bsing from flickr)
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By Bob Gaydos

A news report to ponder as the House January 6 Committee prepares to resume its hearings on Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results: 61% of Republicans contacted in a recent poll do not believe the aforesaid former president had classified government documents stored at his home at Mar-a-Lago.

In that same poll, conducted by the Marquette Law School, 65% of independent voters said they believe there were indeed classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago and 93% of Democrats agreed.

Why the disparity? Stockholm Syndrome. I'm convinced the Republican Party was taken hostage by Donald Trump more than six years ago and, for a variety of reasons, like Patty Hearst, they have fallen in love with their kidnapper. We've all been paying the ransom, but few Republicans seem to want to actually be freed.

Rather, the majority still support, implicitly by their silence or explicitly by their words and actions, Trump's claim that Joe Biden was not legally elected president in 2020. In the same manner, the majority support Trump's claims of having nothing to do with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020. And, as this new poll indicates, they support Trump and all his outrageous claims about the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, including the fact that the FBI planted them.

Stockholm Syndrome.

While it is not an officially recognized mental health disorder, studies of the syndrome have found it to be present in victims of kidnapping or abuse. Or, in this case, both.

In October of 2016, I noted in a column that Trump, as the Republican candidate for president, said he might not accept the results of the 2016 election if he lost. The crowd cheered. Republicans remained silent. He made good on that threat in 2020.

In the interim, he has kept his followers in line by promising to give them what they want - in large part, assurance that people who don't look like them (white) or think like them (ultra-conservative Christian) will take away whatever they feel is important to them (an illusion of power). He alternates this con job with threats to punish them if they challenge him. The latter strategy has been especially effective with elected Republicans lacking the courage to speak the truth about Trump lest he campaign against them. Safer to work with him. Stockholm syndrome.

All the while, Trump has played the victim and raised enormous amounts of money from his sympathetic supporters for bogus campaigns. Over the years, many, probably a majority, of Republicans, have formed a bond with Donald Trump that belies their true relationship. He has made a mockery of everything this political party one said it stood for, repeatedly encouraging the use of violence to achieve his goals, turning the party of law and order into a mob that attacks police at the United States Capitol and threatens to attack the FBI.

In October, 2016, I wrote: "Republicans, Trump is not one of you. He is Trump. Period. You created him... He has sullied us all. And he has destroyed you."

But those documents he declassified by thinking about them, even though they weren't actually there and the FBI planted them anyway and he still wants them back, although they really don't exist.

Apparently, they still can't get enough of it.

Stockholm syndrome.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

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Bob Gaydos is a veteran of 40-plus years in daily newspapers. He began as police reporter with The (Binghamton, N.Y.) Sun-Bulletin, eventually covering government and politics as well as serving as city editor, features editor, sports editor and (more...)
 

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