Thanks, knuckleheads
For making America worse in every way
Jeffrey Denny
The vast majority of decent Americans are outraged and disgusted by President Trump.
But they misdirect the blame. Flailing for reelection, Trump is now a complete tool of his base, the red-hat, Fox-drunk MAGA mobs — the folks hooting at his red-meat actions, tweets and rallies as he incites their anger, resentment and hate, and hence, undying love for him.
Through Trump and the cowed GOP, MAGAs have been in power and running the country into ruin for almost four years. Why do they get a pass?
We all know Trump doesn’t care about all Americans, or even most Americans, just the dwindling ~35 percent MAGA ride or die. As his reelection odds skid, Trump is doubling down on dancing with the ones who brung him.
Many MAGAs may believe they’re stable geniuses too. But to this reasonable American, we’re on “Child Hell Flight,” a mock reality series that “30 Rock’s” Jack Donaghy “innovented” in which an infant is the pilot of a 747 with lives of trapped and terrified passengers in his fat, fumbly little hands.
So let’s give credit where credit’s due. Thank you, MAGAs, and bless your hearts:
· For electing Trump when everyone with half a brain knew he was wholly, dangerously unfit for office. Who’s surprised he would disgrace the presidency and make hate great again, especially against immigrants and other nonwhites, for you?
· For taking ornery pleasure in the mean, nasty, ugly, crazy, divisive, insulting, bullying things Trump says — not caring (since when?) that the President of the United States sets a repugnant, un-American tone for our country, political discourse and kids.
· For loving how he’s “shaking things up,” thrilling in the destruction, but not caring or having a clue about building something better. Breaking eggs without making omelets.
· For desperately spinning every Trump fail into Pee Wee Herman’s bicycle-crashing face-saving, “I meant to do that.”
· For thinking that snarky memes, videos and right-wing propaganda substitutes for a thoughtful, rational explanation of your provocative views and “owns the libs.”
Amid this pandemic, thank you MAGAs also:
· For spreading the coronavirus and killing people, especially our grandparents, with your rebellion against masking, distancing and other public health guidance to save lives. I haven’t watched “Law & Order” in years, but I’m wondering, accomplice to manslaughter?
· For being criminally stupid, believing the pandemic was a liberal media hoax because Trump and Fox said so, so you spread the virus.
· For your armed mobs storming state capitals demanding reopening while the virus raged on.
· For demanding law and order when it comes to protesters for racial justice, but calling it tyranny when authorities want you to wear a mask and distance to curb the pandemic and protect your fellow Americans.
· For the pandemic resurgence and re-shutting you’re now causing in Florida and Texas, setting back their re-opening, businesses, jobs and economies. Is it mere coincidence that most new spikes are in Trump Country?
· For not taking any responsibility for your reckless endangerment of others. Feeling no shame and taking Trump’s cue never to apologize, instead you defend, deflect, divert and whatabout the liberals.
· For sneering at scientists and experts who’ve devoted decades to studying, training and working to save lives and humanity, whether from the coronavirus or climate disaster. But when you or loved ones are ailing, you’re desperate for the most expert scientific doctors. Wouldn’t you worry if Trump were your surgeon?
On a related health matter, thank you:
· For letting Trump destroy, double rates and then try to kill the Affordable Care Act coverage for 23 million of your fellow Americans who need it, in the middle of a global pandemic no less.
· For not caring that Trump boasted he would deliver a much better, cheaper plan than ACA within 100 days and then never even began to deliver. Four years later, still no beautiful TrumpCare, but a new pledge to “protect preexisting” with no plan. Even though with Covid-shutdown job and private insurance losses, you might need ACA more than anyone.
· By the way, thanks for the hypocrisy of hating “government healthcare” but depending on Medicare either for yourselves or loved ones. (And no, we don’t “earn” our Medicare — as the libertarian Cato Institute confirmed, most Americans receive twice or more than what we pay in.)
· Incidentally, thank you for hating government control of our private lives, except when it comes to dictating reproduction.
Thank you generally:
· For sawing off the limb you’re sitting on, and taking us all down, by backing every Trump policy that hurts you and your fellow Americans — from his failed China trade dealings that devastated farmers, to allowing more industrial toxins in our air, water and soil that poisons poor people, including working-class whites, first and worst.
· For still believing a single word Trump says. Especially after his chronic lying and then lying about his lying and then lying about that. You probably know this is called “gaslighting” (“to manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity,” Dictionary.com). Still trusting Trump because he “tells it like it is” makes you look like the P.T. Barnum sucker born every minute.
Next, since as Constitutional experts you know and care so much about First Amendment rights to insult people you think are too sensitive, and Second Amendment rights to arm for Armageddon, thank you:
· For letting Trump treat the Constitution like Charmin and put himself above the law like England’s King George III. (Reminder: After our First Patriots defeated George III, they established a government with checks and balances specifically to prevent presidents from acting kingly.)
· Regarding the rule of law, thanks for your magical thinking that when the Mueller report concluded, “If we had confidence the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” it meant “total exoneration” because Trump and his media said so.
Thanks for all the ways you’ve made America the laughing stock of our adversaries and the world:
· For instance, for not caring that Trump asked China to help reelect him as he racially demonizes Chinese people, including Americans, because he knows you love it and don’t care about insulting people (“Kung Flu” — ROTFL!).
· Also for letting our top adversaries Russia, China and North Korea run circles around Trump, eat his lunch, flush his head in the toilet, teach him the real “art of the deal” and screw America.
Finally and thank you not:
· For not caring how it’s racist to respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “white lives matter” or “all lives matter,” which unlike black lives nobody said didn’t matter — that’s the point.
· For defending racist Confederate statues and Jim Crow symbols as our heritage but denying that the legacy of slavery and racism is alive and continues hurting our fellow Americans and rotting our soul.
· For failing or refusing to realize that denying racism is racism.
If I sound sarcastic, MAGAs, sorry.
It seems you love sarcasm, so I want to speak your language.
But in all seriousness, in this election season, for the love of God, the flag and America, please stay home and don’t vote.
Stop spreading the pandemic, not just the Covid-19, but the sickness that Trump, with your support, is infecting America with.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
