It's the Cruelty, Stupid
One of the ways that Donald Trump and his odious minions have gas-lit the American people is by promoting the odious fiction that if you are deeply troubled by the effect the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president has had on American politics and life over the past nine years, then you are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The Trump cult reduces everything to losing and winning. In their minds, being gripped with anxiety over the prospect of Trump seizing unlimited power in a second term means that he’s winning and you’re losing.
They want you to think that being terrified by the prospect of four more years of Donald Trump being the most powerful, famous, and visible man in the world means that you’re weak. They want you to think that it means that you’re crazy. They want you to think that it means that Donald Trump has won. They want you to think that it means that Donald Trump lives rent-free in your mind, taking up prime real estate in a metaphorical golden penthouse suite.
They want you to think that Trump is a colorful, outrageous, but fundamentally normal politician, so if you see him as a threat to democracy and an aspiring fascist dictator, then you are hysterical, irrational, excessively literal, and should be ignored.
Crazy to think that someone who considered Roy Cohn their most important mentor turned out to be a jerk.
They want you to think that the hateful, horrible things that Trump says about the opposing party, his party, former members of his administration, and women and POC and women of color constitute nothing more than harmless bluster. It’s just locker room talk. He doesn’t mean it, they’ll say, and even if he does, who cares? He’s just firing up the base. They’ll tell you that you’re feeding into him by getting so upset when it won’t change anything, least of all of his actions and the actions of his base.
They want you to think that it is insane to get so worked up about what Donald Trump has done and the things that he has angrily vowed to do if given an opportunity.
It is not insane to worry about Donald Trump. It’s very sane. You don’t have to be an overly sensitive snowflake to have a visceral negative reaction to Trump’s relentless bullying; you just have to have a soul and some level of sensitivity.
Despite what Trump’s cult of cruelty might insist, it’s not bad to be sensitive. It’s a positive quality to be respectful of the feelings of others and your own feelings. It doesn’t make you weak; it makes you a decent human being.
I’ve always been sensitive and felt like an outsider. My mother abandoned me, my father was sick, and I spent much of my adolescence in a group home for emotionally disturbed adolescents.
I was bullied as a child and an adolescent. I was bipolar and had undiagnosed, untreated AUDH that I passed on to my sons.
As a neurodivergent father of neurodivergent children, I need accommodations just to get through the gauntlet of pain that constitutes existence. I need the world to be kind to me, but I REALLY need the world to be kind to my children. At the very least, I need the world not to be cruel. Being different is inherently difficult. It’s only gotten harder in a world where schoolyard taunts, crude insults, and relentless bullying are now cornerstones of political discourse.
That’s one of the many reasons I am terrified of Trump either getting reelected or getting power via some manner of coup or insurrection. I cannot stand four more years of cruelty. I cannot stand four more years of sadism. I cannot handle four more years where the most famous, powerful, and visible man in the world is a vicious bully whose childish cruelty is not only excused but celebrated by half of the country as speaking truth to power and fighting heroically against the sinister forces of political correctness.
With the possible exceptions of Diddy, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump is the worst possible role model. Yet because he is so famous, powerful, and popular, millions of parents will tell their children, implicitly or explicitly, that Donald Trump is someone to look up to, revere, and emulate through their votes, words, actions, and hat wear choices
In death, Trump will be to stupid Republicans what JFK was to Democrats of an earlier generation: not just a favorite politician, but a hero who embodies everything they believe in and think this country should be.
Half of the country has become pro-cruelty because the man-baby hurling crude insults in every direction in a frenzy of hate shares their political convictions and is the leader of their political party. It’s disgusting watching bible-thumpers and Puritans defend Trump’s sadism on the grounds that his words don’t mean anything, but the supposed crimes of the left mean everything.
Trump’s appeal to voters is fundamentally fascist.
Fascism divides the world into black and white, with no shades of grey. It inhabits a world devoid of sophistication or nuance, where there is only good and evil and nothing in between.
Fascism insists that we are pure good while our enemies are pure evil. They’re not just ill-equipped to govern; they’re insane. They hate our country. They would destroy us and everything we love if given a chance.
Because the enemy is so evil and insane and sick, to put it in Trumpian terms, then anything that you do to them is justified. If the other side hates America, burns down cities, performs post-birth abortions, cuts off little Timmy’s penis during lunchtime, and forces him to be trans without his parent’s permission or consent, then using the government to prosecute them for their crimes doesn’t seem so extreme or unreasonable.
It’s sort of like how if you think that Jews are blood-poisoning animals responsible for all of Germany’s problems, then you probably wouldn’t have too much of a problem if they started disappearing mysteriously.
Trump dehumanizes the people he does not like by depicting them as something less than human. They’re scum, trash, human garbage. They’ll slit your throat reflexively. They’ll rape your wife and kidnap, kill, and eat your beagle puppy. If they’re non-white immigrants, they’re monsters by definition, but if they support him, then they’re patriots, and nationalism of the white variety is very important to fascists, as is strength and adhering to conventional gender roles.
Trump depicts his enemies as the enemies of humanity. He repeatedly called the media “the enemy of the people” and Democrats, who are somehow both Fascist and Communist, “the enemy within” and more dangerous than external threats.
Fascism says that you need a strongman with an unlimited willingness to break laws and trample all over individual liberties so that he can crush evildoers who would destroy all they touch if given a chance.
In 2017, Godly Republican and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson co-founded a "Civility caucus.”
Along with Democratic co-founder Charlie Crist, Johnson put out a statement reading, “As the nation’s leaders, members of Congress should aspire to the highest standards and set an example of personal integrity, decency, and mutual respect for the generations of Americans that will follow. We can be stalwarts of our respective policy positions without tearing one another down. Although the members of this caucus will represent both political parties and a wide range of individual views across the political spectrum, our belief is that we can disagree in an agreeable manner and maintain collegiality and the honor of our office. Our aim is to help reverse the increasing divisions in and coarsening of our culture.”
It sounds like Johnson really cares about decency and civility. He even co-founded a caucus with the word “Civility” in its title. You might imagine that such a man of principle would come down hard on Trump for calling his colleagues Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi “the enemy within” and hinting/vowing that if elected, he will abuse his powers to punish them and the rest of the Communist, Fascist mob Trump is always ranting incoherently about.
An iconic image that really grabs you!
Nope! When pressed by Jake Tapper on Trump’s comments, Johnson pretended that by “the enemy within,” Trump was talking about dangerous gangs of foreign-born criminals running wild in the streets, not the Democratic politicians Trump has repeatedly and explicitly singled out as the “enemy within.” Johnson replied tellingly, “Donald Trump can bring order back to the chaos. They know that. So they’re willing to give a little on his social media posts and some fun language he uses at rallies.”
When the only two options are America-hating, child-torturing enemies from within who have plunged our nation into chaos, no doubt for their own sick, twisted purposes, or a wannabe dictator who will “bring order back to the chaos” but uses “fun language” at rallies and in his social media posts, then gosh, that “fun language” doesn’t seem so bad.
The truth is that we do not have chaos that only Donald Trump can save us from. Under Biden and Harris, crime has decreased, and the economy has improved, yet Trump has deceived the public into thinking that crime has surged and the economy is in the toilet by repeating the same lies over and over until even he starts to believe them.
Despite what Johnson might disingenuously argue, Trump’s words cannot be excused or dismissed as
“fun language,” “political incorrectness,” or “communicating without a filter.”
Look at these civil motherfuckers!
Proxies like JD Vance like to point out that Trump’s base loves it when he insults his enemies in crude terms as if that somehow makes it better and not worse. In his rallies and on the campaign trail, Trump is just another dinosaur playing the hits for his indulgent fans.
Trump is a bully and a coward who has created a horrifying precedent where a political leader can call their opponents stupid and crazy, mentally challenged, and either drunk or addicted to drugs and suffer no negative consequences.
In his wildly hypocritical statement on behalf of the Civility Caucus, Johnson warns against the “coarsening of our culture” when Trump has done more to coarsen our culture than any politician I can think of. He’s done more to create and cultivate division than any politician I can think of.
I cannot think of a politician who embodies the values of personal integrity, decency, and mutual respect less than Donald Trump. Yet Johnson dare not criticize Trump in any way out of fear and a desperate, pathetic desire to hold onto power at all costs. He can’t even mumble something about supporting Trump but wishing that he could be a little kinder and a little more selective in his language choices. Nope, Johnson had to go all in on the fiction Trump is saving our country and Western civilization, so if he wants to call Kamala Harris a dumb, mentally challenged, low-IQ idiot and a tramp who hates America and is only pretending to be black, then he’s more than justified in doing so. When they think you’re saving the country from brown people and the radical Marxist Fascist Left, you can do anything. You can say anything. And if anyone criticizes you, you have permission from the universe (or rather the entire Republican Party) to destroy them.
Trump backs up his cruel words with equally sadistic actions, but even if Trump were not a tyrant and a fool, his casual, reflexive cruelty and dearth of empathy would have a toxic and destructive effect on a culture and country that he has single-handedly made meaner, dumber, more gullible and more vulgar.
Words have meaning because they lead to action. On January 6th, 2021, we all saw what kind of action Trump’s words can lead to. Unless we take concrete action and defeat Trump and the cruelty he represents, the consequences could be not just disastrous but cataclysmic.
This election is about a whole lot else, but it’s also about the cruelty, stupidity, and the way it has infected and poisoned our culture.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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