Trump is not making America great. They are destroying it as fast as they can.
In 2016, I wrote an article entitled “The Vengeance Election.” In it, I pointed out that the support for a worthless idiot like Trump was not based on any coherent ideas or vision for governance or policy, but rather on a primal desire to have vengeance on the rest of the country for allowing the black man to be President. Vengeance for allowing someone to take a different approach to policy and actually try to reform one of America’s incredibly broken systems ( e.g, healthcare). Since the average American, and especially the average MAGA hat wearer, has no understanding of what constitutes good policy or proper governance, it was much easier for them to process the idea of getting even for all the perceived “wrongs” done to them.
This is especially true when one considers that many of the orange monsters’ most ardent supporters live lives of privilege, benefitting immensely from the very policies they wished to destroy. I’ve seen this in my own personal life – watching people who should know better – descend into madness out of nothing but a selfish desire not to see anything change for them. And most of the time, when you examine their personal situations closely, you will see the hypocrisy of their positions. They live, as I said, lives of privilege and cannot bear to see anyone else receive the same benefits. It would be funny, except the results of their ignorance are just, well, tragic. Hurting thousands of innocent people.
Now, during the Shitgibbon’s return tour, the effect of this primal urge for brutal vengeance is readily apparent. These are not just “conservative” policy positions – they are putting forth ideas that are destructive, benefit no one but a favored few, and are ruining the country as a whole. Timothy Snyder wrote that essentially, it is the desire of these selfish souls to commit “superpower suicide.” Trump’s MAGA movement, despite its branding, is not about returning to past American greatness or building anything like it in the future. MAGA is throwing a decade-long tantrum over demographic and social change it cannot stop.
Snyder sees a movement with Donald Trump as its figurehead, as “a regime of the bullies for the billionaires”. “There is no idea of the future,” Snyder says. “There’s just day-to-day enrichment. We’re pursuing policies inconsistent with being a superpower.” Or, for that matter, even a decent nation based on democratic principles.
Stephen Hinton noted this destructive trend, saying, “It is rather surprising that the dominant business paradigm is capitalism, and yet it runs on degrading capital. On a finite planet, this is surely not good business, let alone good for the planet.” Or for a democratic republic run on extraction, which is the only one Trump and his hangers-on know.
There are plenty of examples of this:
The Iran War – and the needless destruction it is causing.
RFK Jr’s insane public health policies, which are literally killing people.
The refusal to raise revenue through taxes, while massively increasing spending, even though they know the burden of the increased debt will drag on the economy. Trickle-down has never worked.
Our refusal to counter climate change.
Our insane immigration crackdown, which is also literally killing people.
The list of destructive policies goes on and on.
The long and the short of it is now, after a year and a half of this insanity – anyone still supporting these maniacs is doing so for only one reason. “If they cannot have America for their own, they just want to burn it down. “ And because so many of these worthless souls live in a bubble of privilege, they have no concept that ‘burning it down’ will destroy their lives as well as those of whom they hate. They love their country — it’s THEIR country — and if they can’t have her, on their terms, then nobody can.
It’s both murderous and treasonous at the same time. A betrayal of the supposed ideals that the United States tells itself it was built on. The current government is a mockery of the ideals of “freedom” that we mistakenly tell ourselves America stands for. Snyder is quite right – what is happening now is a foundation for national suicide.
We, as a nation, or at least a noisy minority of our population, have chosen to take this poison pill. In the process, they are dragging the rest of us into the grave with them. We deserved so much better.