Schadenfreude for Trump voters?
Or are Democrats too woke?
Jeffrey Denny
History doesn’t repeat, but often rhymes, a former top influencer, Sam Clemens, quipped.
History tells us that powerful revolutionary militant populist strong men eventually screw the populace who lifted them to power.
It didn’t take long for Trump to start fornicatin’ his diehard MAGAs:
· Trump-voting farmers fret about their loss of subsidies and the cheap immigrant labor they depend on.
· Businesses large and small are anxious about Trump’s inexplicable trade and tariff war and the threat of recession.
· Poor MAGA whites in Red States — the most regal of welfare queens — carp about losing their socialist safety net as they carp about socialism.
· Hardworking middle-class families who depend on pensions and retirement funds invested in the stock market worry their nest eggs are shrinking faster than Trump’s affordable egg supplies. And how Trump’s Social Security and Medicare threats could impoverish them like the poor that Trump hates.
· Real American hardworking heartland citizens who hate the federal government and workers are getting a painful tutorial on how much they depend on the federal government and workers. While Spotify cues Joni Mitchell crooning, “Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
Suckers might say Trump, in his self-proclaimed brilliance, is playing omni-dimensional chess on infinite chessboards like a quantum physician.
The libs couldn’t possibly understand his brilliance. We should all lie back and think of Trump Making America Greater.
The morally turpitudinous Trump-fellating Republican Congressmen, hounded by irate voters waking up to the harsh reality of voting for Trump, are begging Trump to protect their pet programs and reelection.
These honorable Trump lickers are told to host their town halls remotely because they’re triggered, terrified, and traumatized by their voters. And like sad little bitches, the Trumpy Congressmen lie that the voters are paid protestors.
Trump voters are learning the hard way what every sentient mammal warned about: Not even his most passionate loyalists are safe from the chaotic, destructive, knee-jerk, impulsive, scorched-earth reign of revenge and retribution he promised. And now he’s delivering just as horribly as we expected.
And once again, the chest-thumping bully MAGAs are playing victim. But this time, it’s not the libs who are victimizing them but their hero.
The delicious irony is that everything Trump does, he does for his MAGAs. They demanded an end-of-days apocalypse of everything they and their media deemed woke liberalism. Not just DEI and climate protection but also feeding starving children, protecting Ukraine and Europe from Russian aggression, the independent free media, democracy itself, and the government they suckle from. And now they have to lie in the bedbugs they made.
Too bad likely few MAGAs know the classic Martin Niemöller warning:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
They surely don’t know or heed John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
Poets tend to be liberal, so of course MAGAs would ignore the point of these warnings: That once Trump is done attacking their imagined enemies to please them, he’s coming after them. What he’s already done is just the beginning.
What’s a lib to do?
Typically, as compassionate, ethical, woke secular humanist limp libs whose hearts really do go out when school kids are shot up — versus the theatrical thoughts-and-prayers revomitation by gun-slaven Congressmen — we never blame the victim.
Just as there are no bad dogs when they bite unto lawsuits, there are no bad people even if they voted for Trump again. He fooled them twice, but that’s not shame on them because they don’t know any better.
Not to further shame the poor Trump fools, but their proudly reckless ornery ignorance is hurting their fellow Americans and America they claim to love more than anyone. Then they’ll be bewildered and angry about what’s happening to them when the answer is in the mirror.
We can spelunk the depths of our compassion — maybe our horrible upbringing made us pleasers — and condescend MAGAs as victims of their horrible upbringing that made them so displeasing.
Or we can stop being so goddamned holy morally superior and admit we’re lovin’ the whole Leopards Eating Faces thing. And take malicious glee in the MAGA misfortune because they brought it upon themselves.
But that would be acting like MAGAs. That would be wrong, right?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
