America: The Land Where the Unfit are Elected by the Uninformed

 

Okay, I admit “unfit” is far too weak a word to describe Donald Trump. He would be unfit to serve as dog catcher. And “uninformed” is also not nearly expansive enough to describe all the groups who voted for Trump. The most rabid Trump voters are disinformed, meaning they have believed his lies, which are ceaseless. But many who voted for Trump are also woefully uninformed. Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor who authors the daily email series “Letters from an American,” included this tidbit of info the day after the election: “Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information.” These people are certainly unaware of all the highly visible Republicans and members of Trump’s former administration who warned against a second Trump presidency and came out in support of Kamala Harris.

I’m sure the disinformed and the uninformed were also joined by a large number of misogynists, racists, white supremacists, and Christian nationalists, who truly believe in the program Trump is about to unveil. But a lot of Trump voters just haven’t been paying attention. And that includes a lot of Mormons. I refuse to call them Latter-day Saints, because there is nothing saintly about ignoring everything their religion teaches them, including specific instruction in the D&C about electing “honest men and wise men” and “good men” (D&C 98:10). None of these words describe Trump. Maybe because the revelation mentions only “men,” these Mormons rationalized that that disqualified Harris because she is a woman. But I haven’t heard anyone make that poor excuse.

No, most Mormons voted for Trump for the simple reason that he is Republican (although he certainly isn’t conservative), despite the First Presidency letter in 2023 that warned against straight-ticket voting. If you look at the Utah voting map, which is still incomplete, you see that Mormons in the state voted for Trump at much higher rates than non-Mormons did. There were only three counties where the majority voted for Harris, and these are the three counties with the largest non-Mormon populations: Salt Lake (54 percent for Harris), Summit (58 percent), and Grand (53 percent). Summit County is where Park City is, and Moab is located in Grand County. In rural Utah and Washington County (St. George area), Trump took more than 70 percent of the vote, in some counties as high as 87 percent. In the more metropolitan areas (aside from Salt Lake and Summit counties), Trump took between 60 and 69 percent of the vote. San Juan County, in the southeast corner of the state, was a slight outlier with Trump taking 57 percent.

In short, non-Mormons in Utah voted for a law-abiding and Constitution-upholding former prosecutor who is also a biracial woman at a much higher rate than Mormons, who overwhelmingly voted for a convicted felon, confessed sexual predator, pathological liar, tax cheat, vindictive and vulgar demagogue, and boorish braggart, whose incompetence was on full display during the COVID pandemic. And you can’t even use policy differences to explain the disparity here. I’ve heard some of my fellow Mormons say, “I don’t like Trump’s personality, but I love his policies.” Ask them what policies they love, and they draw a blank. This is supported by surveys that used the blind-taste-test method to see what voters really think about the candidates’ policies. When respondents were asked how well they like various policy proposals without telling them which candidate they are from, even Republicans like Biden/Harris policies far more than Trump’s policies. This is part of what I mean by uninformed. People are voting without reliable information. Maybe they don’t know where to find it, or maybe they’re lazy, or maybe they’re watching Fox News. Who knows?

If you have seen the Jimmy Kimmel late-night talk show episode filmed the day after the election, you might remember his Lie Witness News segment, where they stopped people on the street in Los Angeles and asked them if they were going to vote that day. Everyone they showed in this segment said they were going to vote, even though election day had already passed. Some said there were long lines that day at the voting locations in their neighborhoods. One young lady said she was voting for Harris and hoped her vote would make a difference. If this is an accurate picture of even a thin slice of America, it is easy to see how people who are not just uninformed but totally clueless damage democracy.

I can’t begin to describe how this election affects my feelings about my fellow Church members. As you might remember if you’ve been following this blog, my opinion of Mormons wasn’t very high during the pandemic, when a majority of my ward ignored the First Presidency’s direct plea to wear masks and get vaccinated. They were too invested in individual freedom, not understanding that sometimes we have to sacrifice our own freedoms for the greater good. But this is far worse in my mind. Voting for a man who is everything Jesus Christ isn’t just seems unimaginable to me. What it tells me is that the vaunted gift of the Holy Ghost, that we boast about so much in the Church, is virtually inoperable when it comes to politics, and maybe when it comes to a lot of other aspects of life. Tribalism trumps everything: common sense, ethical principles, the Constitution, the gospel, advice from the First Presidency, you name it. The Holy Ghost apparently can’t break through the brick wall of political partisanship.

It pains me that someone like Dick Cheney, who lied America into a long and expensive and tragic war, has more moral sense and more devotion to the Constitution than 70 percent of my fellow Mormons. And they consider him and Liz and Mitt and even Mike Pence traitors. There’s no place in today’s Republican Potty for people who refuse to wallow in Trump’s private cesspool.

All I can say is that these disinformed and uninformed Trump voters are going to get exactly the government they deserve. Unfortunately, those of us who voted against him are going to get the government we don’t deserve. Heaven help us.