Every now and then, even Donald Trump tells the truth, sometimes accidentally in a rhetorical question.
This occurred last Wednesday morning when the felonious former Republican president crowed to a crowd in Florida after beating Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election for the White House.
“Look what happened,” the 78-year-old demagogue said as he extended his arms wide to his cheering cult. “Is this crazy?”
Well, yes, Mr. President-elect — Sir! – your second election is, indeed, crazy – Sir! — at least as defined, in part — Sir! — by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, as “ . . . Not mentally sound . . . Marked by thought or action that lacks reason . . . Insane . . . Impractical . . . Erratic . . . Unusual.”
In the past, the United States has suffered demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy, Father Charles Coughlin, Governor George Wallace, and Pat Buchanan. But none reached the Oval Office even once. Trump, who literally dodged a bullet during the campaign, now has us all in his figurative sights.
How?
In the “blue wall” state of Michigan, he defeated a Democrat for the second time in three tries, this time with 49.8% of the vote. Despite Trump’s proud and defiant misogyny (or, perhaps, because of it), both vanquished foes were female, with Hillary Clinton the first, in 2016.
Trump’s appeal to a certain type of white, male, suburban, working-class, blue-collar, Middle American voter was personified in Brian Pannebecker, who served on campaign stops as Trump’s Michigan mascot. He’s from Macomb County and darn proud of it.
A retired plant employee who led the “Auto Workers for Trump,” Pannebecker — at a rally in Warren — attacked the “electric vehicle mandate” designed to reduce air pollution and lessen climate change. But what about their mileage range?
“We don’t want to drive those things,” Pannebecker said. “How do you pull a trailer with four snowmobiles on it up to Traverse City when it’s five degrees below zero in an EV? You can’t do it.”
Trump may be the perfect reflection of the American empire in its current stage of decline, a volatile mix of reality TV and pro wrestling.
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Ignore, for the moment, how much environmental mess four snowmobiles might make on a winter weekend Up North. And don’t even think about how much gasoline must be burned to tow four snowmobiles 200 miles or more on a trailer hitched to a car or a big pickup truck.
Instead, think only of yourself. Imagine how much you might suffer if someone asks you to reduce your personal pursuit of happiness. Because everything is all about you. One good thing for Trumpists is that issues like “the economy” and “EV mandates” served as smokescreens for more sinister fires.
Those came in the TV commercials about immigrants, especially men, destroying your community with crime, especially rape and murder, especially by men of color against, especially, white, female victims. Of course, this was blamed on the administration of President Joe Biden.
In heavy rotation, they combined with another fear-mongering message involving “men in women’s sports,“ right-wing code for opposition to the LGBT+ movement. Hey, ad men on Madison Avenue know the audience appeal of sex and violence, even in the negative.
These themes blended to stoke resentment about “illegals” (even those in prison!) getting sex-change operations with your hard-earned taxpayer dollars — money better spent, no doubt, on snowmobiles.
Look for more of this backlash in the second Trump regime, thanks in part to the votes of religious fundamentalists — the so-called “evangelicals” — who see as their savior a sybarite like Trump, a proud adulterer who bears false witness, steals, and covets pretty much everything.
His right-wing media has convinced his cult that Trump the bully is really Trump the victim and that God saved Trump from assassination for a sacred purpose. And beware of Trump’s apostles who vow to inflict his vengeance against “vermin” and “the enemy from within.”
Foremost among them will be JD Vance, the vice president-elect who, just 40 years old, is about half Trump’s age. A cynical and calculating chameleon, Vance will bide his time in the on-deck circle, right behind the back of Trump, who has recently shown increasing signs of cognitive decline.
We know the 25th Amendment says the vice president’s opinion is crucial in determining whether the president is unfit to continue. Also be wary of Tucker Carlson, the exiled Fox propagandist and current podcaster who has appeared often in public with Trump and has grown close to Vance.
Carlson recently revealed he was scratched in his sleep by a demon. He’s also expressed admiration for Trump’s totalitarian pals, the strongmen Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary. Another one lurking in the Trump background is Stephen Miller, a singular demonic presence.
Miller was a “senior advisor” to Trump with a special kind of cruelty. He formulated Trump’s family separation plan at the border that locked Hispanic kids in cages away from their parents. And Trump has vowed mass deportations of refugees.
“America is for Americans,” Miller says, “and Americans only.”
Harsh and vindictive, Miller writes some of Trump’s most venomous speeches. He looks like a cobra or, perhaps, like Roy Cohn, a lawyer who served as an attack snake for Senator McCarthy in the Red Scare of the 1950s and later served as a mentor to — wouldn’t ya know it? — Donald J. Trump.
And what are we to make of Elon Musk, a flamboyant, immigrant oligarch who is supposedly the world’s wealthiest person? Last week, Musk joined a phone call between the president-elect and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a head of state Trump once squeezed for dirt on the Bidens.
Will Musk be deputy president? Also, look out for Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who might remain Speaker of the House. He says his world view is Bible-based. He’ll help build a crusade of white, Christian nationalism now that short-sighted voters have given Trump a second chance.
With his blend of greed, lust and coarseness and his appeal to our worst instincts, Trump may be the perfect reflection of the American empire in its current stage of decline, a volatile mix of reality TV and pro wrestling. Now, he is our reality, all of us, like it or not.
Eight years ago, after Trump’s first victory, I wrote that it was as if we had tossed our car keys to the biggest, loudest, meanest drunk in the bar and said “Here, Butch, you get us home.” It feels the same now. The only change is that all the traffic signals are broken as snow and sleet have iced up the roads.
