by J. Pharoah Doss Last month, when US Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-TX, appeared on The Breakfast Club radio show, she classified the average Republican voter as “less educated” than their Democratic counterparts and described a Trump supporter as someone who “literally refuses to read and educate themselves on the facts.” Crockett claimed that the Democrats lost the presidency because they failed to grasp “how selfish people are” and stated that Trump supporters were “racists voting for another racist.” The Breakfast Club host agreed with Crockett’s assessment of White Trump voters but asked Crockett to explain why so many Black people supported Trump. Crockett said that she had no explanations. Therefore, her argument that the “least educated” voted for Trump applies to Black Trump supporters as well. Ten years ago, an online meme “quoted” Donald Trump from a 1998 People Magazine interview. Trump said, “If I were to run [for president], I would run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They love anything on Fox News. I could lie, and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.” Fact-checkers discovered the Trump quote was fabricated, but for Trump detractors like Crockett, the meme confirmed what they had always believed about Republicans, and Crockett continues to spread the stereotype of the “stupid republican voter.” Conservative content creators responded to Crockett’s Breakfast Club comments by listing all of the reasons that Black Americans voted for Trump, which ranged from domestic policy to international affairs. Crockett has heard all of their arguments before; she just dismisses them as “uneducated.” Crockett didn’t just fall for a meme. She fell into the “Trilling trap.” Lionel Trilling was a well-known literary critic and professor in the mid-20th century. His most successful work was The Liberal Imagination, a collection of essays that explored how liberal ideas were deeply rooted in American literature. However, Trilling made a statement that handicapped liberal thinkers for the next 75 years. He said that conservatives were devoid of ideas, making liberalism the dominant and sole intellectual tradition in the United States. Liberal intellectuals accepted Trilling’s viewpoint as absolute truth, but it was never a fact. Three years after The Liberal Imagination, Russell Kirk, a philosopher and literary critic in his own right, published The Conservative Mind, which demonstrated how fundamental conservative ideas emerged in Europe and became a recognized intellectual tradition in the United States. Kirk revealed that conservative ideals were not bankrupt. Unfortunately, Kirk was too late. Trilling’s perspective had already planted the seeds of liberal intellectual superiority. Booker T. Washington once stated that White supremacy has two victims. The first was the non-White treated as inferior, while the second was the White who developed a false sense of superiority. Liberal intellectual superiority also has two victims. Clearly, the first is the liberal thinker who falsely believes their set of ideas is superior. The second is the liberal intellectual tradition itself. Without a rival set of ideas or the metaphorical iron to sharpen itself against, the liberal imagination dulls, and liberal ideals lose depth over time. John Stuart Mill, regarded as one of the most prominent intellectuals in the history of liberalism, lived a century before Trilling, yet he acknowledged the importance of his conservative counterparts. Mill encouraged all liberal thinkers of his time to get familiar with the most compelling conservative arguments available. Mill believed that every true liberal should pray, “Lord, enlighten our enemies, sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and cleverness to their reasons.” Why pray such a prayer? Mill argued conservative folly, not conservative wisdom, was a threat to liberalism and society. It’s the pressure applied by conservative wisdom that forces liberals to recognize the absurdity of their own beliefs. Crockett fell into the “Trilling trap” by believing there’s an absence of wisdom on the right. Therefore, her liberal imagination has become so dull that she can’t conjure up one reason for the increase of Black Trump supporters. Right now, conservatives must pray for the left’s deliverance from the “Trilling trap”; otherwise, conservative ideas will also become dull due to the lack of iron to sharpen themselves against.                 The post J. Pharoah Doss: Jasmine Crockett, Black Trump voters, and the “Trilling trap” appeared first on Atlanta Daily World. ...read more read less