The philosopher and social critic Bertrand Russell wrote that the great democracies tend to believe that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man. Our politicians, he says, take advantage of this by pretending to be even more ridiculous and stupid than nature made them.
This is essentially the key to understanding Trump and the rise of Trumpism and the painful and frightening turmoil r0iling American politics.
Trump’s greatest skill, other than relieving trusting people of their money, is self-destruction. He is proving it once more.
I am a Freudian, I spent years in Freudian therapy. I believe Trump hates himself much more than anyone else in the world could possibly hate him. He blows just about every serious thing he has done in his life.
Trump, whose political career is built on the authoritarian idea that people who disagree with him are false and treasonous ( R.I.N.O’.s, Republicans In Name Only) is fast becoming the R.I.N.O now, as growing numbers of Trumpists have decided to run amok with Trumpism but to leave Trump behind.
He can keep his silly and foolish endorsements. He is becoming the political world’s greatest liability, a flame to the moths.
Since the only genuine people are those absolutely loyal to him, how does a mind like that process this growing truth: his own movement is leaving him behind, in search of the real thing. He has learned much from his favorite foreign pal, Vladimir Putin.
This happens a lot when it comes to revolutions.
Like Jefferson, I believe some revolutions can be a good thing for government. They usually occur when the government has lied to the people, as ours has for years. “A rebellion now and then is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” Perhaps we’re getting the shakeup we deserve.
Trumpism is a movement all of its own, and it is a revolutionary movement, one that wants to fundamentally change the way our government and democracy work.
They are strong and committed revolutionaries, flirting more and more with violence, political and real. They hate democracy. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that they are beginning to splinter, as revolutionary movements due, while the other side is coming together once again to challenge them.
They will regret it. I believe women are the future of politics and democracy. Women are rising up again all over the country, thanks to Trump and his legacy.
It is a grotesque optic to see White Christian Nationalist Straight men dictate how women can or cannot have children. My first prediction of this year: it will blow up in their faces. I’m two for two on predictions on the blog.
Curiously, the extremes on the right tend to always overreach, as do extremists on the left. This is why neither one can really win.
This is the Achilles heel of fanatics and ideologues, they have no perspective, and there is no give.
Revolutions occur when large numbers of people hate their government. That is the central ideology of Donald Trump’s rise. He saw that and responded.
Revolutions are driven by anger and vengeance, and revolutionaries often become addicted to both.
When they have no clear or noble goals, that’s why and when they become more dangerous. Anything goes, enemies are everywhere. Yesterday’s heroes of the revolution are the next ride in the night.
Because of Trump, we are “woke” beyond Governer DeSantis’s wildest dreams. That is Jefferson’s “good thing.” Castro was a student of revolution, that’s one reason his revolution worked and lasted so long. And unlike Trump, DeSantis is a smart politician.
“A revolution is not a bed of roses,” he wrote. “A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.”
There is no better way to describe the revolution we are approaching in our country today. It’s the last stand of the white Christian man.
It had to come. Trump just bumbled into it at the right time. He isn’t interested in governing. He wants to rule.
When revolutions get older, they begin to eat their own, because anything that is old and powerful must be mistrusted and attacked. That’s the point.
Over time, the revolutionary founders lose trust, they can never really be revolutionary enough, or tough and ruthless enough. They are corrupted by power, just like the leaders the revolution was formed to bring down.
Is there any politician in American history more corruptable or corrupt than Donald Trump? Does he stand for one single good thing, apart from himself and lying addictively taking advantage of people to get their money?
In just a few years, Trump has made it so that the most revolutionary act one can engage in is, to tell the truth.
Now, in 2022, it’s Trump’s turn to be the R.I.N.O.
Under his leadership, a genuine populist movement has turned itself into a national wacka-a-doodle circus of real-life former Batman enemies – sexual predators, conspiracy theorists, bigots, haters, demented congresspeople, riddles, jokers, white nationalists, and people whose only qualification is that they are rich or were on TV once.
It feels like one of those zombie movies sometimes. They just keep coming.
This threatens the Republican Party far more than any Democrat could or has. I don’t think most of these people could sweep a sidewalk.
Of course, it makes sense that Trumpists are increasingly abandoning Trump himself; he is old hat by now. even boring. Stale and weak. He has nothing new to say, he just repeats the same old thing. The old fire is going out, he is, after all, heading for 80, the next Joe Biden.
And he is vulnerable.
The sharks are circling all around him. After all, from a distance, he is just another crazy old billionaire holed up in a tacky castle.
You can’t control the whole world from Mar-A-Largo. That is a Mansion, not a base. Time for something new, something more aggressive and hateful. Something young. The movement is loaded with them.
Trump is not the stuff of real revolutionaries. Mao lived in caves for many years and walked across China with his soldiers. Castro hid in the mounts of Cuba for years.
Gandi never even had a house to live in. The true revolutionaries would laugh at the very idea of Trump. They would never lower themselves to fear him. Among other crimes, he has betrayed his own people, just about every day.
Washington spent eight years on a horse.
In the not-so-brave new world that Trump created, you can never lie, hate, whine, or be incompetent enough. The test of a Trump revolutionary is one who can break the boundaries of civil and democratic discourse, now considered elitist claptrap. The most outrageous and offensive acolyte wins.
There is no need for government experience or even the most minimal policy ideas.
The poor and people of color are enemies in need of replacement. Trump politicians are not interested in roads or poverty, they are hungry for new battles in their never-ending culture wars – Dr. Seuss and the war on transgender children, even Mickey Mouse – and demonization of the opposition. Anger and grievance replace truth.
The most sacred and revered symbols and traditions of American life are all targets – that the modus operandi.
Trump used the media and broken political system to gain power. But he never understood what it was that he had done or why. And he is helpless when it comes to repeating it, or even controlling it. The monster is out of the castle.
Lying and making things up will only get you so far, even in America. There has to be something more.
Trump is yet another victim of Mary Shelley’s great prophesy. You created me, said the monster, you are responsible for me.
Trumpism began as a genuine and, in many ways, understandable revolution against a government that had become remote, elitist, and corrupted by corporations who have managed to buy our civic system and set its agenda.
Our representatives don’t represent us anymore, they have mastered deep pockets to serve those who pay for their campaigns.
As Trump has proven, the system is broken, and no one is accountable. The Judeo-Christian ethical system that shaped the country for so long is in shambles. Most revolutions target the rich, this one elevates and protects them.
The greatest revolutionaries have been people like George Washington, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and the more ruthless Fidel Castro. They were, in most ways, genuine populists and careful and practical people. They were talented strategists. They were ruthless in pursuit of their mission.
Washington was a farmer and soldier; he and Gandhi and Castro were shrewd pragmatists. They inspired people to follow them. Trump inspires people to hate him and vote against him and his party.
His evolving movement is showing every sign of carrying out his work without him. Only he’s a target now too.
Of course, he is.
Hail the King, the King is dead.
“A revolution is not a dinner party,” wrote Mao, ” or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
It isn’t a bunch of Tweets either.
When it comes to politics, Trump is astonishingly inept and self-destructive. He blew the 2020 election, which he had in his pocket when his megalomania overtook common sense, and he alienated one group of people after another. He’s doing it again. It’s not just about him, you have to stand for something.
Instead of choosing and endorsing candidates that might appeal to women and blacks and mainstream America, he has endorsed a list of extremists, liars, and celebrities that have almost no chance of winning in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Ohio, among others.
These are the “swing” states that are actually up for grabs and which will determine who controls the Senate and, beyond that, the White House.
Two years ago, he cost the Republicans control of the Senate by insisting that the Georgia votes for Joe Biden were fraudulent when there was no evidence that this was true.
The Pennsylvania race may be the most important political race in America this year. Trump has just given it away, as he did Georgia two years ago (and is doing again).
Trump is blowing it again, and the comparatively sane Republicans like Mitch McConnell know it.
In politics, hubris kills. Our media can’t help us, they live now, and they don’t have time to step back and look at the future.
Last week, Trump shocked many Republicans by endorsing his TV pal Dr. Mehmet Oz.
As political endorsements go, this is a testament to Trump’s political incompetence. Dr. Oz has only one known asset – he is also a TV celebrity, which makes him qualified to run the country in Trump’s mind.
A few months ago, Dr. Oz, a liberal physician before hooking up with Trump, didn’t even live in Pennsylvania; he registered to vote, thereby giving an in-law’s address. In explaining his endorsement to thousands of cheering Trumpies (some were booing), Trump said, “his show is great. He’s on that screen. He’s in the bedrooms of all those women.” (Yuk).
Oz is a Greek tragedy all of its own. A once famous and brilliant surgeon and abortion rights supporter, he met with Trump at Mar-A-Largo and drank the cool-aid. He turned into a Tucker Carlson hate machine overnight, claiming the 2020 election was rigged and supporting a nationwide abortion ban.
All sorts of flunkies and lackeys would have happily kissed Trump’s ass to get his endorsement, but he decided that TV celebrities could save the country, just like he didn’t.
Many ambitious people seem happy to transform themselves into nut cases overnight in exchange for Trump’s endorsement.
And Trump forgets the great law of TV celebrity: it always ends. People tire of celebrities, just as they tire of politicians. They always want something new eventually. Trump will learn this soon enough, I’m guessing he already is.
Trumpism is real and will be a challenge to democracy for years. Trump won’t be a part of it. This is his pathetic legacy, the thing history will remember about him.
Who would have thought it? Is Trump too moderate?
Trump’s biggest problem is that many of his followers know what it is like to be betrayed and abandoned by corrupt politicians; they’ve seen that happen all of their lives.
They know what it looks like. They have always insisted that he was speaking truth to power, but it becomes more apparent every day that he is a stranger to truth, the passion is what he wants. He is a pure hedonist. He is speaking bullshit to all of us. I am sorry for the people who send him their hard-earned money. He has the longest list of victims in financial history, according to Forbes Magazine.
“Dr. Oz had an enormously successful career on TV,” said Trump, “and now he’s running to save our country.” Really? This is an insult to his own followers as well as the rest of us. They are not all that gullible.
As I write this, Oz is in great danger of being overtaken by another even weirder Trump lover, Kathy Barnette, an African-American bigot famous for her online assaults and slurs about Muslims. Republicans can’t believe Trump didn’t endorse her!
I imagine the real revolutionaries are spinning in their graves.
George Washington was America’s Greatest Revolutionary. He set the right tone for the country, it lasted for years, for all of its flaws.
When fighting the British head-on didn’t work, he took to the woods and invented guerilla warfare. When he could have been a King, he chose to walk away and be a farmer.
He knew when to use power and when to let go of it. This is the significant failure of Trumpism. It has no stirring goals or visions. It is really only about gaining power.
The gasoline that fuels this movement is hatred. It is already beginning to burn itself out, as hatred inevitably does, the thirst for enemies can never end. When they run out of enemies, they can always turn on one another.
Trump is indeed no Hitler, as he insists. He is no Mao or Stalin or Castro or Gandhi either. The great revolutionaries are all very real. They are not brave-on-Twitter-only heroes.
They grew up around real people and knew how to arouse them. Trump is no Hitler, not just because he doesn’t want to be.
He is not Hitler or Mao or Stalin because as evil as they turned out to be, they were each a lot smarter than Donald Trump.
History has its own sense of justice. Trump is his own “R.I.N.O” now, a leader in name only, like some Shakespearan creation, doomed to melt into irrelevance while raging at the world from his guarded castles, surrounded by moats and paid-to-be loyal bodyguards and slaves.
You know, people you can never trust when you turn your back. People like him.
