Guest post: Let’s hope they’re not zombies
Originally a comment by A Masked Avenger on The Way Forward.
All this huggy-bear stuff is bullshit.
That said, there’s a point to bear in mind that stands out starkly to me as a former right-wing fundie. My therapist made the cogent observation that the attraction of zombie movies is that zombies represent what jingoists want the enemy to be: relentless, implacable, utterly non-human, incapable of reason, incapable of showing mercy and undeserving of mercy.
When the enemy is literally beyond the reach of reason, literally relentless in their efforts to kill you without mercy or quarter, then there’s only one thing you can do: either you shoot them in the head, or they eat your brains. Separation is useless because they will chase you. Negotiation is useless because they can’t even understand you. Imprisoning them all is a practical impossibility. They have to be killed — there’s no other solution.
Unfortunately if that’s true then we’re fucked. For one thing, they have all the guns. For another, we have all the pacifists. (A zombie pacifist, like a zombie vegetarian, is an oxymoron.) Oh and remember, they regard us more or less the same way — as single-mindedly devoted to their destruction, incapable of compromise and therefore incapable of negotiation. They already more than half believe that a crisis is inevitable in which they will finally be cornered and forced to defend themselves with deadly force. When they talk about AmRev II (American Revolution 2.0), or debate the correct caliber for zombies (a stand-in for liberals, police, or UN shock troops, depending on context), they’re talking about that behind the thinnest of veils.
So while hugging them is absurd, and overlooking the harm they’re doing is suicidal, I sure as hell hope that they’re not in fact zombies. If they are, then we’re heading for an inevitable violent conflict that they will win. I draw some hope from the fact that I switched sides.
“Zombie” may not be off the mark. There are studies that show that conformity leads to a lack of activity in the prefrontal cortex while still maintaining the conviction of critical thinking. Also, perception is also influenced so that reality is incorrectly perceived. Obviously this doesn’t just apply to Trump supporters.
I seem to recall reading that the Trump campaign specifically targeted viewers of the AMC zombie series The Walking Dead, because it was a good way to identify people who were worried about America being swarmed with illegal immigrants and who believed that “toughness” is the solution to every problem.
I always thought that the zombie genre played on fears of deadly infectious diseases rather than immigrants; that fear was catered for by the little green men from Mars.
I’m far from well-versed in the zombie genre, but my impression is that it’s fairly flexible and has been used to address various themes: George Romero’s work was a comment on consumerist culture.
I figured out where I read about the Trump/Walking Dead connection: it was this article just after the election, which in turn is a summary of an interview with Jared Kushner. I’ll assume that it’s literally true that the Trump campaign focused ad buys on TWD. Whether that was based on anything more than Kushner’s own speculation, and whether or not it actually was an effective move is an open question — it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everything a winning campaign did was brilliant and everything a losing campaign did was terrible.
But I can see how TWD would appeal to potential Trump voters. It keeps hammering away at the themes that Outsiders are not to be trusted, the leadership of a strong law-and-order man will save us, violence is the solution to pretty much every problem, and anyone who thinks otherwise is useless at best and dangerous at worst and will get him/herself and/or others killed.
Strangely its Syfy counterpart is far more progressive (barring the whole mutant zombie mind rape thing). Amongst other things it has a black female lead, a female Big Guy, a diverse cast, social commentary, and sympathetic characters.
My grandson, who’s 7, got into a bit of trouble at school this lsst Easter. After listening to the story of the resurrection he asked if Jesus bit people after coming back to life. When his teacher asked him why he was asking such a silly question he answered that people who came back to life were zombies, and that biting people was what zombies do. Teacher was not best pleased.
He doesn’t half take after his grandad.
Job done Grandad!