Everybody Loves Trump

The Trump circus marches on, dauntless and unbloodied. It ’s going to keep doing so right to reelection, when the Democrats discover, too late as always, that while the Biden/Harris ticket made the Beltway thrill, it left the rest of the country totally cold. Empty rhetoric about making America moral again and calling Trump a racist meanie might make you feel virtuous, but it doesn’t put any meat on the table. Once again, the Democrats will have fallen for the siren song of centrism, assured by all The Right People that it was a sure winner, and once again, all The Right People will have been proven wrong. They’ll blame Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Vladimir Putin, and resume collecting six figures and opining on MSNBC, no skin off their backs.

There is a very simple point about Trump that needs to be acknowledged: People like his racism. They like it when he smears brown people. Every American Legion Hall in the country erupts with joy when he tells brown-skinned female Representatives “go back to their own country.” Every ape in MAGA land chortles with glee when he calls Mexicans rapists and serial killers. Trump pisses off all the people they hate and they love him for it. This is why no evidence of criminality will ever bring him down. If Trump was videotaped having sex with a box turtle in the White House basement over a dead body and a pile of cocaine, they’d still stick with him. He’s their boy and they’ll never quite him, and as long as that’s the case, the entire Republican party will fall in line and support him.

The Democrats can appeal to the better angels of our nature all they want. It isn’t going to work. Trump is playing a role in a reality TV show and he’s giving his core audience exactly what it wants. As long as he has the magic 40 percent, he has the entire Republican party. Game, set, match.

Nothing short of an economic collapse or a military defeat will unseat Trump, and even those things are doubtful. He”d have no trouble blaming in on the Democrats or Obama or the RHINOS, and his brain dead, Fox News addled supporters would buy it hook, line, and sinker.

I just can’t tell you how many normal, sane, theoretically non-racist old white guys I've heard completely supporting Trump in his Twitter war against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and the so-called “squad”. Those women are hated simply because they are young and brown. They represent a sea change in American culture and politics, and the old whites dudes are running scared. I know of one in particular, a lifelong long union carpenter and Democrat, who instantly devolves into the most bitter, hate spewing, Archie Bunker style racist the minute those women are mentioned. He mindlessly accepts all of Trump’s slander about them as gospel truth. Every bar in this town is full of guys just like him. It’s a thing.

I’m deeply afraid that it’s going to get much worse before it ever gets better. I’ve always had a somewhat fatalistic view of history. I think America is, in its own dark and stupid and blundering way, fulfilling its natural destiny. Someone like Trump was baked into the cake the minute white people settled in North America. All of American history was but a winding, meandering road to Trumpism.

When empires go down, they reveal their true character. It is, to use a phrase I hate, a reality check. Rome became more oppressive and warlike; Bourbon France became more clueless, frivolous and out of touch. Czar Nicholas II clung ever more tightly to his religious nut bag wife and her fruitcake religious guru, Rasputin. America, in its twilight phase, engages in permanent warfare and chooses a racist reality TV star and hustling con man as its leader, Q.E.D.

And what of the so-called resistance? Well, very recently its putative leader, Joseph Biden, was bragging about working with one of the most vicious segregationists who ever came out of the bowels of Mississippi, James Eastland, in order to prove his “bipartisan” chits, and he did it to telegraph to Trump’s racist base that he’s cool with them. Trump is burning down the house and the leader of the opposition is triangulating and attempting to win over knuckle-dragging racists. This is how countries die.

Way to make us moral again, Grandpa Joe!

They are also cozying up with the FBI and NSA and the other national security state organs to whip up anti-Russian hysteria. It is irresponsible and politically stupid. Repeat after me, fellow lefties: The FBI and the NSA are not your friends. Never have been, never will be. Empowering them for the sake of opposing Trump is suicidal stupidity.

The perfect epitaph for the Trump era was spoken by the former CEO of CBS, Les Moonves, who told his stockholders, "Donald Trump might be bad for America, but he’s great for CBS. Go Trump!”

There you have it in a nutshell. Trump is a horrid racist bully, but he’s great for business, so viva Trump. This is the cowardly, short-sighted and venal attitude that pervades our entire business and political class. This is why phony strong man Trump can defeat them, and will continue to defeat them, time after time.

(I suppose it’s also fitting that Les Moonves turned out to be a serial groper and sexual harasser. Gee, who’d have known that these self-important, egomaniacal CEOs, these billionaire masters of the universe, these hallowed and sacred “job creators” that American mythology requires us to worship and adore, are in fact boorish, crude, sexual harassing pricks? What a surprise! I think this calls for more tax cuts!)

Reality TV nation has a reality TV star president, and there is nothing to oppose him but vacillating, temporizing, triangulating “moderates.” They tell us that we can”t afford Medicare for all, even though we spend 700 billion a year on the military. They tell us Trump is Hitler, then they goad him to war in Syria. They say Trump is a dangerous idiot and a Russian spy, then they mindlessly sign off on his exploding military budgets. Um, why give a dangerous idiot and a Russian spy more money, bigger toys and more power? What does “the Resistance” say about this illogical contradiction?

They say nothing because they are frauds.

Donald Trump is the greatest, most profitable show on planet earth, and everyone in our corrupt and decadent establishment class is benefiting from him. The day Trump leaves office will be the darkest day in the history of CNN and MSNBC. Rachel Maddow will be inconsolable. They were so hooked on hating Trump — so hooked on those booming ratings and all that sweet, sweet cash — that his absence will cause actual physical withdrawal pains in them. Make no mistake: Everybody loves Trump. Everybody, especially the people who claim to hate him most. Trump knows this and continues to exploit it to the hilt.

The Trump circus marches on and continues to win because everyone secretely wants it to.

We don’t have a Trump problem. We have an America problem.