August 12, 2022
The Trumpists. Ah, Christ. The Trumpists. Do you remember the world before these idiots, lunatics, fascists, and morons invaded decided what we all really needed was a rerun of the 1930s, only with MAGA baseball hats? It wasn’t perfect, but still. It was OK. It’s like remembering the world before Covid. Hard to do, anymore.
I know. You know. But this time? We’ve reached the end of a certain thing. The Trumpists have shown us who they really are. It’s true that they’ve been showing us, all along. They’d lift their veil, and beneath it, you’d catch a glimpse of a corpse’s face, crawling with maggots. They’d take off those idiot MAGA caps, and there, right there, where a brain should have been, and a skull around it, you’d just see a black hole, covered in pus, pulsating with hate.
But now? It’s different. They’ve finally taken it all off. They’re standing there naked. Now there’s no doubt. This is who they really really are.
What do I mean by all this? Well, consider the events of the last few days.
The FBI raided “Mar a Lago,” Orange Hitler’s fancifully named tacky dictator’s Potemkin mansion. And in response, the entire Trump-o-sphere lit up like it was the inverse Fourth of July.
Instead of saying things that might be, I don’t know, vaguely normal in a democracy, the Trumpists finally took off the veil altogether. They just threw all the garb of even attempting to hew to democracy’s or modernity’s ideals anymore, in a giant explosive baby tantrum of sadistic brutality.
Let’s go through a few of the choice things they said. They threatened civil war. They threatened the FBI. They issued proclamations of open, outright violence. Mass violence, aimed at…what, precisely? The everyday exercise of justice, which of course is one of democracy’s fundamental not just abstract values, but commonplace processes.
One called it “a perversion of justice.” Another, a “preemptive coup.” The insanity ranged from “[This] is the rogue behavior of communist countries, NOT the United States of America!!!” to “Failure is not an option. We must destroy the FBI.”
A Trump supporter who posted often on Trump’s social network TruthSocial attempted to shoot up an FBI branch, after posting on the social network, “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I.”
The Trumpists could have waited. They could have shown some restraint, some humility, some moderation, wiser counsel could have prevailed. But that was a stretch, because of course a zombie is hardly going to sit there and take the GRE. They are who they are, and now we know who they really really are.
Let me assure you that as a scholar and survivor of social collapse it’s profoundly, totally, off-the-charts abnormal for people to react like the Trumpists did. Nobody in a democracy is above the law. Not just “not even” a former head of state, but especially not. Civil servants in the highest offices must follow the law scrupulously, because of course they have all the more cause and power to break it, should they so choose.
And Trump’s behavior was hardly, well, above reproach. Let’s take a moment to — shudder — remember the Trump years. The pattern? An escalating sequence of abuses of power. The Trumpists might not want to admit it, but, for example, the very first year Trump was in power, Stern, one of Germany’s major magazines, published an issue with him doing a Hitler salute on the cover. The entire world knew that the word “Trump” was synonymous with “abuse of power,” from the ridiculous, like appointing his son-in-law and daughter, people with zero experience in governance, as “special advisors,” — to the grotesque, like “family separations,” which the last Nuremberg Prosecutor warned were literal crimes against humanity, fascist level.
The pattern, in other words was clear. The FBI raid, therefore, was hardly some kind of bolt from the blue. It came, after all, on the heels of numerous investigations, from the January 6th Committee’s to New York State’s. American democracy was trying to find some accountability for those long four years of shocking, flagrant abuses of power. To put that another way, if there hadn’t been a raid on a former President like Trump, that would have been more shocking in a modern democracy. That there was one was a signal American democracy’s heart was still beating.
Now let’s come to the raison d’être for the raid. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or to cry. The FBI searched Trump’s tacky estate…looking for…nuclear secrets. Pause for a moment to take that in, because it implies the FBI thinks that a former President stole nuclear secrets from the White House.
This is the erstwhile stuff of Hollywood thrillers and paranoid 1970s spy novels, and yet…here we are. A former American President is under a cloud of suspicion for possibly having stolen top secret nuclear documents. LOL — like I said. Laugh or cry?
It hardly takes a genius to instantly connect the dots here, because they’re the size of Jupiter and blinking bright red. Who helped put Trump in power? Russia did, with numerous military intelligence operations, as we know now. Everything from hacking Hillary’s emails — which the FBI fell for, leaving James Comey an international laughingstock and a name disgraced within America — to operations as of yet still uncovered. Russia’s head of state — another crazy dictator — has long been suspected of being a little too friendly with Trump, and now we know there was a literal meeting where installing Trump as President was priority number one among Russia’s various military intel agencies, decided personally by the head of state.
The dots? They connect themselves. After all, why exactly would you steal…nuclear secrets? Imagine you were the President. Maybe you grew wistful on your last day in the Oval Office, and you said to yourself, man, I’m going to miss this knick-knack Emanuel Macron gave me, even it’s just a bronze block of Camembert. Ah, man, I’m really going to miss this cool portrait of me with Justin Trudeau. Nobody’s going to notice. I’ll just…take them with me. Sorry, still not allowed. But understandable.
Nuclear secrets, though? Why would you take those with you? What, you need them because in your next career, you’re going to become a nuclear physicist? Or, wait, maybe you need them because you just grew so fond of them. Come now. The number of reasons a head of state hangs onto secret nuclear documents is incredibly small, it consists of exactly one item, and it’s incredibly disturbing to even have to think about, and that’s before you get to the context that it’s now a fact of modern history that Russia helped install Trump.
Why does all that matter?
This is who the Trumpists really, really are. Now we know the absolute bottom limit of their depravity. They’re willing to:
— go to war with the rest of America,
— for a President who’s their own personal demagogue,
— even if said President stole nuclear secrets,
— to give to another country,
— that America’s currently on the brink of war with.
Think about all that for a minute, because it’s actually mind-boggling. You see, civil wars are one thing. They’re understandable. Happen all the time, over minor differences. You’re Sunni? I’m Shia. Let’s fight! You want this city? No, we want this city. Bang-bang. On it goes. But this? This is completely different. It’s on another level completely.
The Trumpists are so bereft of honor, decency, courage, reason, logic, working minds, history — anything at all — that they’re willing to back their demagogue to the hilt even if it means threatening civil war on the rest of America over modern history’s possible worst case of treason. They’re willing to start civil war over treason. They’re willing to double down on treason, with outright mass violence.
LOL. It’s laughable, and it’s frankly a little pathetic. Because while the Trumpists talk a good game, they’re all talk. If it came to full on civil war in America…well, it wouldn’t. Because while the Trumpists think having a closetful of rifles and a suit of body armor an overweight forty-something guy can’t fit into is preparation for combat…on the other side are America’s armed forces. And it’s eminently clear who’s side they’d be on. Not the Trumpists. Even if there are a few bad seeds willing to commit treason — guess what the penalty for disobeying orders at that level is? You don’t want to know. And neither do they, but it involves your life and future ending pretty damned fast.
There’s not going to be a civil war like that in America — no matter how hard the Trumpists crave it, no matter if it’s their own personal Pornhub. Sorry, not going to happen. It’d take less than, what, one platoon of Marines to dispense with all these jokers, in ways they’d never see coming and really wouldn’t like.
And yet that’s the depth of their depravity. It’s really, really important to understand that fact. They’re out there begging for civil war at this point. Asking for it. Over what? Over treason, even though of course civil war is itself treason.
This is why I said the mind boggles. Civil wars start for all kinds of reasons — religion, resources, poverty. But being willing to start one to defend a demagogue under suspicion of stealing nuclear secrets? Whew. Even most “third world” countries would balk at that. Even their extremists and fanatics would be like, “Well, OK, maybe that’s a step too far, and that guy needs a dose of justice. Whatever our differences, even we’re not on the side of selling it all out to our shared, common enemies.”
So what is all this? This is a few things. This is an extreme case of social delusion — a social group of nutcases with a few rifles actually thinking they’re going to be able to take on a trained military, no less the American military. It’s fascism, though, in that sense — they’re willing to go that far to build the ideal society they want. Because the reason they’re still rallying around their Dear Leader, of course, is that he still promises them the purified, cleansed society of their dreams — a society in which only the pure of blood and true of faith are “real” people, and the rest merely subhumans. And in that sense, this is the final level.
We now know who the Trumpists really are. Are they really…crazy, insane, delusional, bananas? Yup. To the extent they’re willing to kill the rest of us, in order to defend their demagogue, even in a case of what begins to look a whole lot like the highest crime in the book. Are they really stupid, idiotic, moronic? Sure, in the sense that they really think that threatening outright violence and having a gun locker is a match for even one platoon of real soldiers, and somehow, all that’s going to bring down democracy. Are they really this venal, backwards, and, well, fascist? Sure — they’re defending their demagogue because he promises them the purified society of their dreams, and that matters more to them than, say, the Constitution, Oaths of Office, the rule of law, democracy.
Now. That’s not to say they’re not dangerous. In fact, all the above is a testament to how dangerous these lunatics really are. Because leaving the extreme case of civil war aside, they do have a sophisticated plan to seize power. 50 January 6ths, which “steal back” the next election. A purge of the government afterwards, and its replacement, in totum, by hardliners and loyalists, meaning everyone from your mailman to your new Stasi agent keeps tabs on you and makes sure you’re not “aiding and abetting” women, minorities, gays, immigrants, “libruls,” all of which is now a crime.
That plan has every chance of succeeding.
And now we know what happens if it does. See these lunatics talking this openly about this much violence? It tells us how far they’re willing to go. If they’re threatening and screaming right now this much brutality — imagine how much worse it’ll be if they ever get their hands on the levers of power, where nothing’s left in the way of abusing power. Now it should be crystal clear to everyone that the Trumpists are bona fide fascists, who are not just willing to do very real violence in the name of their demagogue and their fantasy utopia-Reich — but are eager, standing ready to do such violence.
And that makes the plan to seize American democracy that much more dangerous, because now the stakes are not just real — but lethal. They’ve now openly said how much they genuinely want violence done against the rest — average Americans, functioning institutions, anyone on the side of democracy and justice and peace. Imagine what happens if they get the power to do it.
Then, there really will only be one way out left for America, and it involves the military, which will be cautious about going there. Things must not get to that point. And that means it’s incumbent upon every sane American left to understand, finally, who the Trumpists really, really are. You might have doubted that they hated the rest, that they wanted to do violence, that they’d stoop that low just to defend their demagogue, no matter how disgusting the acts he’d been found out to have committed. Now you know.
They’re not like the rest of us. They’re a lot more like the Taliban, ISIS, like revolutionary movements prepared to assassinate and kill their former neighbors and friends and allies. This is where America really is. Now you know exactly what’ll happen if it falls back into the hands of the Trumpists — because they’re out there screaming it at the top of their lungs. They’re baying for blood, and snarling for violence.
It’s time to put all doubts aside, and accept the reality that this is who this social group really is. Because this, too, must be the final knowledge — we’re willing to kill, start a civil war, intimidate, beat, threaten, hurt the rest of you, just to protect our demagogue, no matter what he does — that this social group is a profound threat to democracy, modernity, peace, justice, truth, decency. And therefore the central goal of the rest must be to prevent them from ever gaining power again, because, well, now there is absolutely no shred of doubt left about who they really are, what they really want, and how low they are willing to go.
