How can people be expected to care about democracy or “America’s place on the world stage” (let alone the war in Ukraine or NATO), if they’re struggling to make ends meet and keep their heads above water?  A low unemployment rate doesn’t mean very much if good jobs aren’t available and wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living.  A booming stock market making wealthy elites richer every day isn’t proof of a good economy but salt on the wound for people who have no investments and live in fear their car will break down.  We might assume that Kamala Harris and her fabulously wealthy celebrity supporters shouting about “joy” and “freedom” only made things worse. Taylor Swift may be an honest-to-goodness “childless cat lady,” but she certainly doesn’t need to worry about paying her bills.

Too many Americans are maxing out their credit cards because they have no choice, and I fear Donald Trump is about to do the same with the federal budget to keep his unrealistic promises (“promises made, promises kept”).  He passed a tremendous tax cut (mostly for corporations and the wealthy) during his first term, which is estimated to have increased the federal deficit by approx. $1.9 trillion, and now he’s embarking on a similar course, whether via ill-advised tariffs or otherwise.  Unless Trump drastically cuts government programs, putting a lot of people in a lot of pain and putting the economy in jeopardy, America will continue to go further into the red, kicking the proverbial can down the road with no endgame in site.  While Trump’s billionaire donor class (Elon Musk, of course, is in a class by himself!) takes an even bigger share of the pie, America’s middle-class is likely to be even worse off under a second Trump administration.

Kamala Harris was Unquestionably the Victim of Racism and Misogyny, but Those were Hardly the Only Problems. 

So much has already been written about the election that I hardly know what to add, but let me hazard some thoughts.  Despite what numerous liberal pundits have said, Kamala Harris didn’t run anything even close to a “flawless campaign.” Whatever the challenges she started with (including Biden not getting out of the race sooner), she can’t be excused for failing to adequately address the electorate’s two greatest concerns—inflation and the immigrant crisis at the southern border.  A “word salad” is a generous description for what came out of her mouth when confronted on these issues.  How is it possible that someone who served as vice-president didn’t at least have some thoughts to share, let alone an honest appraisal of the administration’s failings?  Even if she was never truly the “border czar,” for her to have nothing substantive to say about the border crisis is on par with Donald Trump still having nothing but “a concept of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act.  Not only did she try to dodge the inflation issue with a silly promise to stop “price gouging” at the grocery store, more importantly, she showed little real empathy for the pain that inflation and high interest rates had inflicted on so many voters.  Despite what she said on The View, wouldn’t she have done some little thing differently than President Biden?

“We’re not going back” was a respectable attempt to seize upon voters’ aspirations, but unfortunately most of them were focusing on their financial circumstances, not women’s bodily autonomy or racial justice.  Ultimately the Harris campaign blew through two billion dollars and Donald Trump ended up back in the White House.  I’ve previously bemoaned the fact that Democrats are no longer the party of the working-class, but it was never so painfully obvious—or had such a disastrous outcome for the country.

For millions of the GOP faithful, Trump’s daily attempts to breach new frontiers of hideousness are not offensive but reassuring. They want Trump to be awful—precisely because the people they view as their political foes will be so appalled if he wins. . . But plenty more want Trump to be terrifying and stomach-turning so that reelecting him will be a fully realized act of social revenge. . . A toxic combination of social resentment, entitlement, and racial insecurity drives many Trump voters to believe not only that other Americans are looking down on them but that they are doing so while living an undeservedly good life. . . This unfocused rage is an addiction fed by Trump and conservative media, and the MAGA base wants it stoked continuously.

Lest Trump’s MAGA base tries to escape its self-destructive cultural heroin, Donald Trump and his allies, such as Elon Musk and other assorted multi-millionaires and billionaires, have the American working-class, most especially its young men, right where they want them, down and desperate, with desperate being the operative word.  An increasingly technological information economy has robbed many of them of their hope for a better future and left them struggling to tread water (the recent spate of hurricanes and floods make for a painful analogy). Even if they know that Trump is a threat to democracy, they’ve fallen so far economically that many have no choice but to acquiesce; they’re down for the count and, if we’re not careful, the rest of us will go down with them.  

While Trump’s Working-Class MAGA Base is Preoccupied with its Addiction, His Donor-Class Enablers Happily Plunder Away.

Trump’s supposedly “middle-class” tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy and big business (i.e., the “Republican donor-class”), while adding an estimated $1.9 trillion to the federal deficit.  Incredibly, millions of Trump’s MAGA supporters remember those years fondly, seemingly because inflation and interest rates were relatively low—despite the fact that economic inequality was going off the charts.  These same people seem to suffer amnesia when it comes to Trump’s dereliction of duty in the face of the Covid pandemic, what it did to the supposedly wonderful “Trump economy,” and how his poor judgement and irresponsibility contributed to an economic catastrophe and well over a million deaths, something it took the country years (and the next administration) to recover from. 

Now Trump is championing an across-the-board tariff on foreign imports, something the vast majority of economists think will be a disaster for the American economy—and possibly the world’s.  I won’t recite all the grim predictions, but most economists agree it would lead to an economic downturn and very possibly a recession.  Most importantly, it will amount to a huge tax increase for middle-class consumers in the form of higher prices for many of the goods they buy. (Trump doesn’t understand, or claims not to understand, that tariffs are paid by consumers, not foreign manufacturers or their governments.) The end result will be another enormous transfer of wealth from the already shrinking middle-class to subsidize the ever-burgeoning coffers of the Republican donor-class, as if they don’t already have a large enough share of the pie—as if our economic inequality isn’t bad enough.  

If Trump is elected, he and his allies will not only have the American people down for the count, they’ll put on the screws, big time, until the fabric of our society is hopelessly beyond repair.

PLEASE, PLEASE, GET OUT AND VOTE AGAINST DONALD TRUMP!

Natural disasters create a perfect metaphor for the anger and resentment that’s driven much of the MAGA movement, and a perfect opportunity for the dangerous misinformation that’s permeating our discourse—and our election.  Many of the crazy stories now circulating claim the storms were “weather weapons” (courtesy of Alex Jones) created for such purposes as wiping out the population to make way for lithium mining or helping the Democrats by wiping out majority Republican areas.  Then, of course, there’s the rumor (courtesy of Donald Trump) that FEMA money is being siphoned off to illegal immigrants.  To call misinformation of this sort “toxic” is an understatement.  This insidious nonsense can discourage victims from seeking the FEMA help they desperately need and can even result in relief workers being targeted with violence (sending militias to facedown FEMA!). Needless to say, this unproductive distraction isn’t what America needs right now; at a time when we should be pulling together, we’re being torn further apart.

According to a recent post on X, meteorologists are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit.” But as one meteorologist replied, “murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” Unfortunately, even putting global warming aside, too many people blame the weatherman(person) for the weather.  Hmm, this seems awfully similar to the idea that news networks control election results based on who they declare the winner on election night. (Remember how angry Trump’s supporters got when Fox News called Arizona for Biden on election night in 2020?)  And nobody, of course, is enjoying this embarrassing exercise in illogic more than climate denialists and lobbyists for the oil and gas industry.

America Should Be Pulling Together, but Instead We’re Being Torn Further Apart.

These people have been living in their own world of bullshit for so long they’ve forgotten that reality exists.  According to Michael Caulfield at the U of WA, “the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” And as Charlie Warzel described it in his excellent article in the Atlantic, “It’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have disassociated from reality.”. . there is “a swath of people who would rather live in an alternative reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world.” This humble spirit shutters to think what those beliefs include!

All the while, people who thought Florida beach communities were a good place to retire comfortably on a modest income will continue to lose everything they have, and people of modest means who have lived all their lives in small Appalachian towns will see their communities and livelihoods destroyed. What’s true in the midst of this thriving misinformation ecosystem is that economic inequality, and injustice, is making life in America even more unfair.  It’s a lot easier to feed people’s grievances with misinformation they want to hear than address the fundamental issues that are the root of the problem.

According to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, “the challenges America faces aren’t really logistical, they are metaphysical” and as a result “the economic metrics used by economists and presidents to capture the state of the nation are masking a vast ‘spiritual crises.’” His ideas were summarized in the New York times: “The Senator Warning Democrats of a Crisis Unfolding Beneath Their Noses.” The senator defines his mission as “understanding how the version of liberalism we’ve adopted—defined by its emphasis on free markets, globalization and free choice—has begun to feel to many like a dead end, and to therefore come up with a new vision for the Democratic Party.” 

The problem, as he sees it, is that America’s leaders have long been guided by what’s often called the neoliberal consensus: the notion that “barrier-free international markets, rapidly advancing communications technology and automation, decreased regulation, and empowered citizen-consumers would be the keys to prosperity, happiness and strong democracy” In other words, the assumption that what’s good for markets is good for society—and what makes us prosperous, will also make us happy.

Too Many Americans Feel the World is Just Getting Worse

Needless to say, the old adage that “what’s good for General Motors is good for America” no longer holds true.  And it’s more than just losing the industrial powerhouses that once employed huge swaths of Americans, enabling them to live middleclass lives.  Does anyone seriously believe that what’s good for companies like Mehta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Nvidia (chips for AI), Tesla (Elon Musk), Apple (exploited Chinese labor), and Amazon (having to return what the Chinese make) are good for American society as a whole?  Their profits keep going up, as do their market valuations, but their stock is owned by a relatively small portion of Americans.  And even if their success could be shared equitably throughout society, there’s reason to think Americans are looking for something better, something more than simply material gain.

“The idea that modern life is a story of constant economic and technological progress steadily making the world a better place has stopped lining up with how Americans feel. You can look at statistics about suicide, depression, overdoses and declining life expectancy. . . and the astonishingly pervasive sense of loneliness that now seems to color so many American lives. But no statistics really capture the feeling, shared by growing numbers of Americans, that the world is just getting worse.”

It’s not just the cost of living and the lack of opportunity to improve their lives (a house would be nice) that’s angered people and prevented the Democrats’ message from getting through.  The truth is, it’s hard for most people to assess the state of the economy.  Unless there are circumstances such as occurred during the Great Recession or the Covid pandemic, asking people about the “economy” usually garners nothing more than how they feel about their own circumstances and prospects at the moment—which have lately been tainted by the grim notion that the world is getting worse.

“For over a year, the Biden administration and its allies had been promoting data showing an economic miracle, as friendly pundits described it — a record-setting stock market, low unemployment, and G.D.P. growth outpacing that of almost every other Western nation. But very few voters believed the story those metrics were telling. In poll after poll, they expressed a bleak view of the economy — to the frustration of both Democrats and many economists.”

We may not yet have discovered how to counteract it, but the fact is, “Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have tapped into a sense of deep alienation and national malaise, feelings that Democrats often have trouble even acknowledging are real.”

Presumably Trump knows these outrageous claims will not persuade suburban women to vote for him, so he must think his only hope of victory lies with motivating his core base of MAGA white men to come out in disproportionate numbers.  Trump understands that nothing stirs up those dudes more than xenophobia and fear of emasculation. (If there’s anything they hate more than the threat of losing their manhood to a scalpel, it’s when a woman of color achieves the power that was once reserved for white men.)

Just a little background—All the hoopla about the Haitian “invasion” of Springfield, OH seems to have started in early August when about a dozen members of the neo-Nazi “Blood Tribe” organization arrived in town, threatened city council members, and declared Jews were responsible for the city having been taken over by “degenerate third worlders.” Then, on September 1, another white supremacist group, “Patriot Front,” held its own protest against the “mass influx of unassimilable Haitian migrants” in the city. This past week, seemingly in response to Trump’s publicizing the issue, there were bomb threats in Springfield, requiring numerous municipal buildings and schools to be closed.  

Now Trump has promised to conduct a mass deportation if he is elected, the largest deportation in the history of the country, despite the Haitians being here legally (having received temporary protected status), something that Trump and his campaign blame on Kamala Harris. Trump has two big issues he can win on, immigration and the economy (inflation), and it’s clear he’s chosen the more emotionally charged fear of “losing their country” as the most expedient vehicle for pandering to his MAGA base.

The Haitian Immigrants in Springfield, OH Make Perfect Fodder for Trump’s Latest Big Lie!

Kamala Harris may have done a good job in her debate with Trump, but she failed to address the inflation issue or the Biden Administration’s failure to get the southern border under control until six months ago.  In addition to owing voters an explanation of the events that took place during her tenure as vice-president, she needs to demonstrate empathy for the pain (inflation) and fear (immigration) suffered by so many Americans.  Despite all the raving idiocy spewing from Trump’s mouth lately, I’m not the only one who thinks Harris could lose the election if she fails to adequately address these hot buttons.

In his New York Times editorial last week, entitled “Harris Can Win on the Economy, but She Needs a Stronger Message,” Duke Law School professor Jedediah Britton-Purdy provided an insightful analysis of why many Americans feel our political and economic system needs major changes or should be torn down entirely, that the economy is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful:

“People feel powerless, ripped off by monopolies in everything from phone service to concert tickets. They can’t get ahead in an economy where real wages have fallen behind the investments that wealthier people hold, which have skyrocketed in value. They see great fortunes made from addictive drugs and addictive platforms, and the pirates of high finance bailed out when bankruptcy looms. . . The Biden administration reversed decades of flawed economic policy by attacking corporate concentration, investing in domestic industries and infrastructure and refining Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods in strategic areas. But partly because of Mr. Biden’s limitations as a communicator, his administration never had a cohesive narrative about what it was doing. Inflation, which everyone sees every day, filled the vacuum and became the economic story. . . Although Democrats see Mr. Trump as a chaotic bad boss in chief, many supporters see him as the real defender of economic security, decent jobs and a safe and orderly world. . . As long as voters feel threatened and aggrieved in their everyday lives, the politics that gives voice to that feeling will have the advantage, even if it is reckless or ineffective.”

As John Lennon liked to say, “there are no problems, only solutions.”  While Donald Trump focuses his campaign on debunked rumors of eaten pets, baby killings, and an epidemic of sex change operations, Vice President Harris has the opportunity to truly address America’s real problems and lay out a vision for the country’s future.  Let’s hope she seizes upon it.

Does anyone really believe that Trump could care less about the Americans who died in a suicide bombing at Kabul Airport in 2021?  As with everything else, Trump’s motivations are purely transactional; he wanted a photo op to highlight the admittedly disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that took place under the Biden/Harris Administration.  As someone who deeply regrets having been responsible for the deaths of soldiers fighting on both sides of the Civil War, I can assure you this humble spirit felt the loss of those soldiers intently—but their parents are sadly mistaken if they think Donald Trump has ever cared about their children.

As for Trump’s staff pushing a cemetery employee for simply doing her job—how inappropriate and disrespectful is that?  Rather than apologize, Trump’s spokesman claimed the woman had a “mental health issue”—how insulting and uncalled for is that?  Neither Trump nor his team ever admit to wrongdoing or apologize for anything.  Trump fancies himself as someone who’s always right, never wrong, always an aggrieved victim, no matter how blatant and unforgiveable his transgressions.  

Do Trump’s MAGA followers ever question the absurdity of this conceit?  Hardly—they love it when he belittles or defies (defiles!) authority figures and institutions; that’s what many MAGAs would do if they had the power and/or the guts.  These supposedly law-abiding, “patriotic” Americans are even more aggrieved than Trump; that’s what we witnessed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6^th, when Trump gave his followers license to act out their rage.

The Rest of America is Getting Tired of Being Pushed Around by Trump and His MAGA Followers.

Which brings us back to the cemetery employee who opted against pressing charges because she feared becoming a target of retribution from Trump’s followers.  Thanks to Trump, an employee at Arlington National Cemetery must fear for her safety merely for doing her job.  Putting aside January 6^th, this is hardly the first time we’ve seen Trump’s MAGA mafia in action threatening his opponents.  As later recalled by Republican Senator Mitt Romney, many members of Congress hesitated to impeach then President Trump because they feared for their safety and that of their family.  Fear of being voted out of office is one thing, but fear of physical harm is quite another—something common in banana republics but not the US.

Part of the problem is that Attorney General Merrick Garland was too slow to prosecute the legal cases against Trump, for both election interference and mishandling classified documents.  According to Garland, the usual way of prosecuting organized crime and white-collar cases is to, “follow the money” and “begin with the people on the ground and work our way up.” But in these circumstances building a case against those at the top based on what they learned from those at the bottom took way too long.  Garland should have ignored Republican claims that Biden was “weaponizing” the DOJ and appointed a special prosecutor at the onset.  As it now stands, with Trump’s trials pushed until well after the election, if Trump regains the presidency, Merrick Garland is likely to be among the first targets of his promised retribution.

Trump has gone so far as to depict a pleasant suburban neighborhood as “Your Neighborhood Under Trump” and contrast it with a chaotic scene of Black and Hispanic migrants captioned: “Your Neighborhood Under Kamala.” How blatant is that? “Import the third world,” his post declared. “Become the third world.” (Talk about replacing his trademark dog whistle for a bullhorn!) And, of course, he continues to insist that countries all over the world are emptying out their “insane asylums” and sending the patients to the U.S.  It’s hard to imagine that even the dumbest MAGA really believes this nonsense, but when has that stopped him before?  And lest any of Trump’s “greatest hits” collection be forgotten, the “neighborhood” post went beyond his fixation on migrant crime to highlight his campaign’s embrace of the “Great Replacement” theory—the fear that Black and brown migrants will displace white Americans in the voting booth, the workplace, and neighborhoods near you.  The plots yet to be hashed by the evil (socialist, communist) Democrats know no bounds in MAGA world!

According to Donald Trump, “All We Have to Do Is Define Our Opponent as Being a Communist or a Socialist or Somebody That’s Gonna Destroy Our Country.”

Trump’s livestreamed conversation with Elon Musk on X put the Trump campaign in perspective: if you don’t have anything to offer your voters then, heck, frighten them into submission by offering up their primal fear of the “other.” Musk and Trump’s other billionaire supporters expect him to champion their wishes—lower taxes, less regulation, no government interference in business, etc.—even if it requires his supporters voting against their own economic interests.  In order to support Trump, MAGAs must accept his notion that “a communist system [is] where everyone gets healthcare.” Needless to say, If that were the case, a lot of MAGAs would be far better off in a communist system!

After they lost the Civil War, the “slavocracy” sought to protect their power and wealth by portraying everything that would give their former slaves a chance for equality—land, education, opportunity, and the right to vote—as coming out of poor whites’ pockets, and thus communism and socialism.  Yes, it’s true that establishing equality for Blacks would require taking resources from whites, but whites had taken Black’s slave labor for over 200 years!  This is how MAGA Republicans ended up labeling things like business regulation and infrastructure spending as forms of communism and socialism. One need not look too hard to see the origin of V.P. candidate J.D. Vance’s false claim that Kamala Harris “wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes.”

As much as this humble spirit believes American democracy is in serious peril from Trump and his “Project 2025” cronies, President Biden continually muttering about the threat to democracy just wasn’t cutting it for most voters.  Not only did more people think he and the Democrats posed a greater threat to democracy than did Trump and the Republicans, but spending all that time in Europe commemorating D-Day was completely lost on many young voters who don’t even know what World War II is, let alone understand the threat of fascism that it defeated. (Some even suspected he wanted to be photographed with D-day veterans because they’re the only people older than he is.) On that score it’s a sad commentary that 59-year-old Kamala Harris seems young by the standards of today’s geriatric politicians, but I suppose everything is relative.  

So far Trump’s response to the Harris candidacy has been panic and name calling, the highlight being his claim that she isn’t really “Black” but merely “turned Black” when she thought it was advantageous.  The man is clueless regarding the history of racism in this country and seemingly ignorant and insensitive when it comes to the growing number of biracial people in America today.  If he thinks he’s trying out a new version of “Birtherism,” he just looks out of touch, which he most assuredly is!  Insulting Black journalists may be red meat for his MAGA base, but being obnoxious one more time will hardly impress the swing voters he needs to win.  

While Harris Promises “Freedom,” Trump Threatens a Christian Nationalist Dictatorship.

Speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, FL, Trump made his plans to become a strongman clear: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” And if you’ve wondered why the six conservative Supreme Court justices aren’t concerned that a left-leaning President will receive the same immunity from prosecution they gave Donald Trump, it’s a good bet that, like Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation, they assume the right-wing is “in the process of taking this country back” and Donald Trump will be our last democratically elected president.

In response to Trump’s denials about Project 2025, the Harris campaign said that “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.” This humble spirit couldn’t agree more!

It’s hard to know exactly how we got here, who knew what and when they knew it—and what they reasonably could have been expected to do about it.  Medical science has advanced considerably since my day (that being 1838-1863) and extended the human lifecycle considerably in advanced countries like the United States, but unfortunately it hasn’t stopped the decline of people’s cognitive abilities.  In fact, it’s made things worse.  Back in the nineteenth century when people died at a much younger age, there was limited opportunity for their cognitive abilities to decline as they do now.  In simplest terms, our physical longevity is outstripping our mental capacity.  Hopefully that will be remedied in the not-too-distant future, but right now we have a lot of people struggling with the impacts of old age, including responsibility for parents and relatives who may be in a state of cognitive decline.  

Will Kamala Harris Inherit Biden’s Campaign Team?  Let’s Hope Not!

We don’t know how much the president’s dwindling capacity adversely impacted his campaign, but I suspect he was a convenient scapegoat for an incompetent organization.  The campaign’s spokespeople have been out there for months spouting the same driveling talking points that are all but irrelevant to most voters.  As I’ve said before, the Biden campaign has been an ineffective disaster, a case study in bad, tone-deaf communications. (Trump may be a vile and demented aspiring authoritarian, but he oftentimes seems more in touch with voters’ priorities than did Biden.) In particular, do the Biden people realize how many times they’ve said, “we have work to do”?  There’s an understatement!  Given the threat Donald Trump poses to American democracy, it’s high time they got cracking!

As the weeks and months passed, the Biden campaign’s pathetic haplessness was only becoming more apparent.  It’s obvious they had no idea what needed to be done and/or no idea how to do it.  Even prior to the president’s disastrous debate performance, they were unable to move the needle, despite having a fundraising advantage. The dangerous far-right insanity contained in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” has fallen in their lap, but they need to better communicate the administration’s accomplishments along with an inspired vision for the future. “Reproductive freedom” is an extremely important issue, which holds great potential for Kamala Harris, but it can’t be the Democrats’ only issue in the face of voters’ ongoing concern over inflation, high interest rates, and chaos at the Southern border.  

Biden Campaign Workers Should Apply for Jobs in the Secret Service—It’s the Only Place They’ll Find People as Incompetent as They Are!

Finally, what can we say about the Biden campaign’s delusional interpretation of the polls.  Forget their silly talking points, up until now there is little evidence of it being a close race; no, it’s been a potential wipeout waiting to happen.  Why do I say that?  In both 2016 and 2020, Trump did way better on election day than the polls suggested he would; he currently leads in all the swing states; and based on the electoral college strongly favoring Republicans, a Democrat has to be ahead by at least 4-5 percentage points nationally to win—something that has yet to be the case. Yes, despite the threat Trump poses to American democracy, up until now it’s been a wipeout waiting to happen.

It may be hard to believe (you can believe this former Confederate officer, because I was there to see it!), but the “slavocracy” that took eleven Southern states into the Confederacy in 1861 also fancied itself to be fighting a second American Revolution. The tyranny they were fighting wasn’t the English crown, but the prospect of losing what they considered their God-given right to enslave other human beings for wealth and power.  To their way of thinking, freedom and liberty meant their freedom and liberty to own other human beings; their chattel slaves had no human rights they were bound to respect.

Project 2025’s “Second American Revolution” is Really the Third.  The Confederacy Already Claimed its Fight to Preserve Slavery was the Second. 

And don’t forget, the Confederate revolution of 1861 had its willing and coerced foot soldiers, poor whites who made up the bulk of the Southern Army and died like flies in “hallowed” places like Gettysburg, Antietam, and Shiloh for a cause they mistakenly thought was their own.  Despite the popular mythology, they were not “rebs” fighting for their independence; they were pawns fighting to preserve the wealth and power of a small minority of very wealthy slaveholders, the lords of the “Cotton Kingdom” (If there was anything I hated, it was the Cotton Kingdom!). The poor white soldiers of whom I speak were the forebearers of Trump’s loyal MAGAs, people willing to fight passionately for a cause they think is their own but is nothing but misplaced loyalty to someone else’s wealth and power.

The Slaveocracy’s Confederacy Proved that Every “American Revolution” Isn’t a Fight for Freedom.

Which brings us back to Mr. Roberts’s veiled threats of violence.  I may have some empathy for those who joined the Confederacy because they were duped into fighting a war they didn’t understand, but this humble spirit has no sympathy for people like Roberts who are happy to risk years of American progress and the future of our democracy to promote of their own right-wing cottage industries (Roberts admits the Heritage Foundation is now dedicated to “institutionalizing Trumpism”!) 

Now Even Donald Trump is Disowning “Project 2025”

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump’s social media post reads.  Despite this absurd disavowal of any knowledge, he continued: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.  Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” (If the things they’re saying are so “abysmal,” why would he “wish them luck”?)

Why would Trump attack the proposed agenda for his own administration, despite overwhelming evidence that many of his closest allies and advisors have been intricately involved in its development?  Well, as former Republican strategist Rick Wilson put it, Trump may have been trying to distance himself from Project 2025 because “most of it polls about like Ebola,” the deadly virus that causes severe bleeding and organ failure and has a mortality rate of 80 to 90%.

In a nutshell, Trump wants to eliminate income taxes and replace the lost revenue with a huge tariff on imports, the results most likely including a global trade war, a dramatic rise in the cost of living for the middle class, the destruction of American businesses that rely on imports, and a tremendous increase in our already excessive national debt—which Trump already increased by $7.8 trillion during his first time by cutting taxes on business and the wealthy.  To call this destructive policy “regressive” taxation is an understatement.  The result, in effect, would be a massive tax cut for the very wealthy and a tremendous increase in consumer prices for the middle class. (People who think importers pay the cost of tariffs are mistaken; the largest portion of tariffs are paid for by the end consumer.)

Abolishing the income tax would drastically reduce the federal budget and all but obliterate the administrative state, thus helping facilitate the primary goal of Project 2025.  To make up for the lost tax revenue, Trump would very likely have to impose a tariff as high as 100% on all imports, meaning the cost of imported items such as clothing, electronics, and appliances could double.  This would create a downward spiral, in which huge price increases would drive down the demand for imported goods, decreasing the revenue generated by the tariff.  America previously experimented with a dramatic increase in tariffs (the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930), which is widely considered to have worsened the Great Depression, which lasted more than a decade. The end result of Trumponomics would inevitably be massive federal deficits and the necessity for equally massive government spending cuts, very possibly including entitlement programs—which is, of course, what the far-right authors of Project 2025 really want.  

Trump’s Proposal to Eliminate the Federal Income Tax in Favor of Higher Tariffs Would Be an Economic Disaster for America!

Even if you accept the thoroughly debunked theory of “trickle-down” economics, if the economy is destroyed, there won’t be anything left to trickle down.  If people think they’re suffering from inflation now, it’s nothing compared to what they’ll experience if the cost of imports increases by anything close to 100%!  The rich don’t pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes now, but removing the income tax would mean they’d pay almost nothing compared to the rest of us.  Putting the overwhelming injustice aside, don’t Trump and his right-wing cronies realize that if they cut programs like Social Security and Medicare it would be a disaster for the economy, let alone people’s lives, many of whom are their own MAGA voters?

Trumponomics may not have been included in Project 2025, but enacting this ridiculous, destructive proposal would go a long way to destroying the administrative state so hated by the far-right.  These right-wingers want to go back to the days before FDR’s “New Deal” helped create modern America and return to the rampant inequality of the “roaring twenties,” when much of the population lived in abject poverty, even before the advent of the Depression.  Unless Trump is stopped by electoral defeat in November, he will continue to harness his MAGA suckers to achieve new heights of selfishness and greed.

Too many Americans have given up on democracy because they think it’s failed them, but these Trump supporters still reflect the pre-Enlightenment notion that ordinary people—the “masses,” the “common man” (and woman)—are subject to being used and manipulated by communists and Marxists, influences Trump and his MAGAs have more recently taken to calling the “radical left” Democrats.  To their way of thinking, anyone who wants a more equal and just society is their enemy.  Ideally, American democracy always holds the potential for equality, but true equality inevitably threatens these people’s wealth and power.  As Jamelle Bouie said in the New York Times back in the fall of 2022:

Trump is the chosen candidate of reactionary billionaires and fanatical opponents of racial and gender equality for a reason. Strip away the thin veneer of “populism,” and what you have in the Trumpified Republican Party is an old-fashioned movement to restrain democratic self-government for the sake of capital and hierarchy. . . It is not that Trump and the Republican Party are opposed to voting and elected office in and of themselves; it’s that they are opposed to a more equitable distribution of wealth and status, which a robust democracy — and only a robust democracy — makes possible. They are opposed to anything that might undermine the domination over others by people like themselves.

The Far-Right Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” is a Radical Plan to “Roll Back Nothing Less than 100 Years of Liberal Encroachment by the Administrative State.”

For the Republican donor class, “liberal encroachment” means anything that threatens the domination Mr. Bouie speaks of.  I’ve addressed it before, and fortunately it’s already sparked a good deal of alarm, but if you want to know what a second Trump presidency will do to America, take a look at the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” including an 887-page plan called “Mandate for leadership” that outlines their goals for the next Republican administration.  Under the guise of dismantling the mythical “deep state,” the plan calls for defunding or totally eliminating many executive branch agencies, including the departments of Education, Commerce, Justice, Labor, Transportation, and Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.  Among the casualties would be the public education system and many forms of business regulation, including worker safety and child labor laws.

Make no mistake, hiding among the plan’s 100+ right-wing idealogue authors are a wide range of private sector lobbyists and consultants whose goal is to push for unprecedented deregulation.  These people are nothing but whores who could care less about the damage their actions do to the country or its citizens.  Among their top priorities are rules gutting fuel economy standards, halting the EPA’s “economy-destroying agenda” and “extreme green policies” (say goodbye to any progress on climate change!). In simplest terms, why do you think Donald Trump solicited $1 billion from fossil fuel industry executives?

All the while, “common MAGA” voters root passionately for Donald Trump and against their own economic self-interests—and as a result America could be heading for even greater economic inequality.

The election is now less than six months away and most polls show Biden losing in the critical swing states, which is tantamount to losing the election, a.k.a. a disaster for the country.  For months now, Democrats and left-leaning media pundits have been claiming that polls conducted so far in advance of the election are nothing but meaningless “snapshots in time.”  But as the weeks and months pass, the snapshots aren’t getting any better and taken together amount to a tracking poll that’s tracking nowhere fast for the president.  The Biden campaign has received endless advice from the regurgitators, but so far they haven’t done much of anything, despite having a considerable war chest to work with.

Even in his younger days the president wasn’t the best orator, and he can’t help it that he’s old, but with the exception of his State of the Union address, he’s been missing in action when it comes to making his case to the American people.  He mumbles about the threat Trump poses to democracy, but too many people no longer value democracy and think they’d be better off under an authoritarian dictator who would be their champion.  If you think democracy has failed you, why vote to save it?

People Don’t Understand that “Bidenomics” Means Building the Economy from the Bottom Up, Not Inflation

Don’t the Democrats and the “Biden campaign” do any opinion research?  Don’t they have speech writers and communications people to offer the president guidance?  Speech after speech, such as his commencement address at Moorehouse College, feel like lost opportunities.  This humble spirit hates to sound insensitive, but how many times is the president going to tell us about his wife and daughter being killed in a car crash and losing his son Beau to cancer?  Does the man not understand that young Black men, along with the rest of Americans, are more concerned about issues relevant to their own lives?

I’m not among the camp that thinks Biden is senile, but it’s all too evident that his frame of reference is the distant past, just as it is for many older people.  No matter how experienced and well-intentioned he may be, one gets the impression that a part of him is still somewhere in the 1970s and 80s.  Even though Donald Trump is less than five years younger, increasingly incoherent (including a recent reference to putting on his trousers every morning!), and can’t stop talking about the 2020 election and “retribution,” somehow he seems more in touch with voter’s immediate concerns (such as inflation and the southern border) than does President Biden.  And that makes for a really scary prospect!

The governor didn’t have to kill Cricket and she certainly didn’t have to recount the episode in her memoir.  What a revealing display of the MAGA mind, its lack of tolerance and compassion; these people want to kill or otherwise dispose of anything or anyone that doesn’t comply with their own worldview.  The governor was no doubt confident the MAGA “base” would understand her message—talk about a dog whistle!  To their way of thinking, violence is something necessary, and ultimately unavoidable, that requires resolute strength.  Translation: in MAGA world it’s okay to dispose of minorities and the marginalized, anyone who poses a threat.  All her sick talk of how “it had to be done” sounds like the worst authoritarian rationalizations for disposing of undesirable elements—Stalin’s Gulags or Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

That brings us back to Donald Trump.  You don’t need to know all the tawdry details of the Stormy Daniels “hush money” trial to know he has a serious problem with women.  But why don’t such revelations, including his previous conviction for sexual assault, offend his Christian base?  If these people truly feel their Christian values are under attack, what could exemplify it more than Trump’s behavior?  Well, perhaps it’s a matter of what they hate and fear the most.  What could be more offensive to the college-educated women they love to hate, a more blatant insult to their sensitivities, than Donald Trump, a 60-year-old married man, having sex with a 27-year-old porn star?  These people may love Jesus, but not nearly as much as they hate the “radical left’ and all its threats to their world. They perceive Trump as their savior, regardless of his flaws and crimes.

For Evangelical Christians Who Support Trump, the Teachings of Jesus Will Just Have to Wait.

We know that evangelical Christians form the core of Trump’s base, despite his being one of the least Christian men who ever lived.  We’ve heard all the explanations of why they forgive him for his sins, that God uses strange messengers and so forth.  We’ve become accustomed to antics like holding a Bible upside-down in front of a church he didn’t attend, but the hush money” trial has brought the extraordinary contradiction back to the fore.  What attracts these supposedly Christian people to this horrible man and why are they so steadfastly loyal?  

Given this humble spirit has asked these questions before, it should be obvious I don’t have the answers.  But I’m convinced it originates in their terrible fear, a phenomenon the right-wing media machine stokes constantly—fear of the multi-racial society America has become; fear of a wider world beyond the confines of their beloved “real” America, fear of what the future holds in an increasingly globalized world.  Too many of these people have lost their hope and aspirations; they are desperate for a strongman like Donald Trump to fight their battles, slay their enemies, and protect them against the impending reality.  Their hatred and downright mortal terror demands vengeance and retribution at every turn, and the teachings of Jesus Christ will just have to wait.

A lot of people weren’t surprised by the revelations in the hush money case; it’s why they mistakenly thought Trump could never run for president.  But they didn’t yet understand that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5^th Avenue and no one would care.  

Is there any question that it takes a village to destroy a democracy? The first generation of Republican sellouts (snatched bodies!) included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, along with such stalwart party prostitutes as Ted Cruz and the indomitable (insufferable) Lindsay Graham, who following the January 6^th Capitol insurrection completely reversed his condemnation of Donald Trump when confronted by an irate constituent at the airport.  Most of these people know better (many have said as much in private), but desperate to hang onto power, they bend to Trump’s misguided MAGA “base.” 

The second generation of lost souls, people like former A.G. Bill Barr and Governor Chris Sununu, both of whom have said disparaging things about Trump since he left office, now support him in a rematch with President Biden.  Why?  What’s driving their change of heart?  They claim to fear Biden’s so-called radical liberal/leftist policies more than they fear Trump.  Translation: they fear letting down the republican donor class far more than they fear the destruction of American democracy—just so long as their authoritarian leader supports that same donor class.  These people should know better, but like much of the MAGA base, they don’t put much stock in democracy anymore.

And let’s not forget the pathetic Trump sycophants who have been indicted one by one (e.g., Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis). What attracted them to a man like Trump and why would they remain loyal to him unless they agreed with the awful venom he spews?  Even more perplexing are the people working for Trump’s 2024 campaign; what makes them think their fate will be any different from that of the last batch of suckers?  If Trump can’t pay his own legal bills, he’s unlikely to pay theirs.

The Economic Interests of the Top 1% have Melded with the Rage of White Christian Nationalism.

Politicians are always beholden to their benefactors, but what we have now is something very different.  The Republican donor class and all the snatched bodies know how horrible Trump is, that he’s a bogus conman and potential authoritarian who will put the entire American democratic experiment at risk, but they remain unphased.  I fear that what we have is the perfect melding of the selfish interests of the top 1% with the sudden growth of white Christian nationalism, the result of which is very different—far more dangerous and insidious—than the old ploy of simply using social issues (God, guns, and gays) to instill anger and fear in working class victims. . .  I mean voters.

But again, it takes a village to destroy a democracy, and when it comes to the breadth and scope of Trump’s enablers—from the Supreme Court to the hapless fools in the “clown car”—we should consider who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.  Sadly, many members of the “Grand Old Party” are willing to sacrifice anything and everything to defend white, Christian patriarchal America. I fear that is the overriding cultural imperative driving the MAGA Republican conspiracy against democracy—white Christian’s fear of losing control of their country per the “great replacement” theory.  And even worse, should all the spineless, soulless zombies fail to accomplish their task through the electoral process, a sizeable portion of Trump’s MAGA followers now say violence might be necessary to “save” America.

That should tell you something about the status of healthcare at the time the Arizona abortion law was enacted.  As for the status of women in 1864, things weren’t much better; they didn’t yet have the right to vote and weren’t equal to men under the law.  And Black people?  The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dredd Scott Decision declared them lesser beings unfit for citizenship, and the 13^th Amendment, which finally ended slavery, wasn’t passed until late 1865, following the Confederacy’s defeat.  Is it any wonder that an abortion law enacted in 1864 might be a trifle antiquated?  Thank goodness the world has changed since my day.

I’ve often spoken of MAGA’s nostalgic version of America’s past, including their desire to return to the idealized world portrayed in Little House on the Prairie. Putting aside the 300-year genocide of native Americans necessary to free up the land on which the little house sits, something conveniently missing from their romanticized version of history are the grave markers that often surrounded houses of that sort in the 19^th century.  While the graves sometimes contained grandma and grandpa, they most frequently contained children who died as infants, newborns, and even miscarriages.  And they also contained the bodies of women, the pioneer’s previous wives who had died during pregnancy, childbirth, or shortly thereafter, as was frequently the case due to the lack of modern medical knowledge or care.

NEWSFLASH fanatical anti-abortion MAGAs—”women’s reproductive healthcare” isn’t just a catchy slogan dreamed up by pro-choice advocates to obscure the fact that abortion ends the life of the fetus.  Women’s reproductive healthcare is something that wasn’t available until recent decades and shouldn’t be taken for granted; without it women can suffer and die.

MAGAs Would Like to Take Us Back to the Days Before the Civil War.

It’s hardly surprising that right-wing MAGAs are happy with an abortion law dating back to 1864; they’d probably be happy with just about any law from that era.  They don’t want women to have equal rights, they don’t want African Americans or other people of color to have equal rights, and they certainly don’t want LGBTQ people to have equal rights.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Opposition to reproductive autonomy isn’t based on concern for the unborn, it’s based on the desire to maintain the patriarchal power structure—the notion that a woman is a child-bearing vessel rather than a human being who is a man’s equal.

Something else I’ve frequently spoken about is how MAGAs want to go back to the time before the civil rights era, back to the “happy days” of the 1950s. Well, once again the joke is on this humble spirit—the 1950s would hardly satisfy their obsessive need to go back in time.  If given the opportunity, as now presented in Arizona, they would like to take the country back to the days before the Civil War freed the slaves, even if it means sacrificing humankind’s progress during the last 160 years.  Never mind what life was really like for their ancestors, never mind all the graves surrounding that little house on the prairie.

Alas, the man knows no bottom and his lack of respect for his Christian “base” and their faith is boundless. He has the audacity to compare himself to Jesus Christ, while failing to live a single Christian virtue. He proudly casts himself as a Christ-like martyr (“I’m being indicted for you”), and some of his loyalists even say he was “appointed” by God and that his critics are trying to “crucify” him. No matter if all this godliness is in direct contrast to his threats and boast (“I am your retribution”), the base doesn’t seem to care.

Trump portrays himself as the defender of Christianity (the Bible debuting Easter week, no less!), while he is on trial for paying off a porn star he had an affair with. He says, “Christians are under siege in this country and we must protect content that’s pro-God,” but there is nothing pro-God about either his selfish life or his cruel policies. He claims the Bible is his favorite book and he has many in his home, but when asked about his favorite verse, he’s hard-pressed to respond, because he’s obviously never read the bible and has no intention of doing so anytime soon. (What happened to “thou shalt not lie”?)

Trump has Proclaimed Himself to Be God’s Chosen Emissary on Earth.

Putting the snake oil issue aside, inserting the text of the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence in a “God Bless the USA Bible” is the ultimate gesture of Christian Nationalism, the very antithesis of separation of church and state. A sizeable portion of Trump’s white Christian base has decided that America was founded as a Christian nation, a notion about as valid as their belief the 2020 election was stolen. This humble spirit grew up in a devout church-going family and lived during the 19th century’s second and third “Great Awakenings,” but I’m here to tell you, these people have totally lost it!

If you look back on Trump’s life, it’s nothing but a series of grifts and frauds, and above all, a colossal failure. He has never contributed anything of value to anything or anyone, least of all the country or the MAGA supporters he so falsely purports to love. His life has played out like an over-the-top parody of the “American dream” that reminds this humble spirit of John Updike’s novels about a character named Rabbit Angstrom, a successful car salesman—Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest. And what has Trump given us? Rabbit Declares Corporate Bankruptcy Six Times (which includes a special bonus section, Rabbit Screws Over Atlantic City Contractors), Rabbit Grabs Women by Their P******, Rabbit Attempts a Coup, Rabbit Aspires to Becomes a Fascist Dictator, and, finally, out of desperation to stay out of prison, Rabbit Hawks Tacky Christian Nationalist Bibles.

Democrats not only have a messaging problem, but I fear that much of what they’re touting is nothing but nibbling around the edges of the overwhelming elephant in the (American) room—our ever-growing, incredibly dysfunctional, economic inequality.  Things like “shrinkflation” and junk fees are valid issues, but even something as important as reducing drug costs is relative minutia in an economic system that’s so out of whack it no longer works for most Americans.  The fact that corporations and the wealthy aren’t paying what Biden calls their “fair share” of taxes is a gross understatement.  But ever since the advent of Ronald Reagan’s “trickledown” economics in the 1980s—with help from globalization, automation and technology—nibble is pretty much all the Democrats can do—and in 2024 it’s at risk of coming up short.

Have you heard Trump’s speeches lately?  They’re nothing short of frightening, full of his trademark “retribution” and downright dystopian, including a “bloodbath.” Mostly he just rails incoherently for over an hour.  The rest of us may not understand much of what he’s talking about, but his diehard fan base laps it up.  They love him and sincerely believe he loves them in return.  If there’s one thing this humble sprit has learned in his 150+ years hovering about the earth is how hard it is to know anything for certain, but I’ll go out on a limb and say Donald Trump doesn’t love these people. (It’s doubtful he loves anyone except his vulgar, orange self.)

It’s Become a Cliché, but MAGAs Vote Against Their Own Economic Interests.

I’ve said it before, but I can’t say it enough: Biden and the Democrats claim to be defending “democracy” against Donald Trump and his MAGAS, but far too many Americans no longer think democracy is working for them, so why shouldn’t they turn to an authoritarian demagog, who at the very least speaks to their grievances?  Too many people think democracy just means being stuck in a system that’s hopelessly rigged against them. Maybe MAGAs vote against their own economic interests, but it’s the overwhelming conundrum we’re stuck in.  

It’s a sad state of affairs when the rest of us consider MAGAs—a sizeable portion of our fellow citizens—to be the American “Yahoos” (think Gulliver’s Travels, not a big tech company) about to overrun the castle gates (not an unreasonable fear given how they overran the U.S. Capitol on January 6), but that’s where we are. 

“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this.” He held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”

Well, what a lovely sentiment.  Despite almost 200 years of observing humanity’s embarrassing foibles, this humble spirit can’t get over just how blatant these MAGAs are about their intention to dismantle America as we know it.  It’s hard to know where to begin, but once again I’m struck by their shameless audacity, their presumption that the rest of us will all sit idly by as they destroy our democracy—seemingly in favor of a theocracy (I’d say autocracy but note the reference to a “cross necklace”)—and burn our country to the ground.

The reason these people hate democracy and want to overthrow it is because they know they are a minority whose far-right, fascistic agenda can no longer prevail in a democratic system—unless, of course, they lie, cheat and steal (elections).  What I’ve never understood about the “Big Lie” or the January 6 insurrection is why MAGAs believe it’s acceptable to try to steal an election and, in effect, disenfranchise millions of their fellow citizens.  Donald Trump and his MAGAs clearly exemplify the adage, “if someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

Who in Hell do MAGAs Think They are, Trying to Hijack America for Themselves?!

MAGAs not only want to dictate to the majority, somewhere along the way they decided they own the trademark on “America” and fervently believe that people who share their right-wing views are the only “real” Americans inhabiting (Sarah Palin’s) “real America,” presumably a place filled with white people who wish to return to a time before the Civil Rights era and relive “Happy Days” forever while they cling to a cross necklace. (Except for the ones still reliving “Little House on the Prairie” while clinging to a cross necklace.) The big question, of course, is what constitutes a “new American Republic,” the country they intend to force down our throats, and what will satisfy their obsessive desire for “retribution”?  I fear the answers aren’t pretty.

A good portion of their wish list is outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” including an almost 900-page “collective” document entitled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” screeds that lay their intentions bare and definitely show us who they are.  The 400 so-called “conservative scholars” who contributed to the latter’s authorship presumably think they have a “mandate” to “deconstruct the administrative state” even if it requires stealing the election.

Although it remains unclear just how this MAGA cult of real Americans has been “betrayed” and how far they will go to achieve satisfactory “retribution” for their many grievances, they make no secret that the remedy requires dominating and controlling the rest of us, our freedom be damned.  A project of that sort clearly entails taking things a good deal further than what’s included in Project 2025.  That’s where it gets scary—and why your humble spirit is glad to be up here rather than down there with you mortals.

As I’ve discussed before, it should be acknowledged that we have a tremendous problem at our southern border based on a confluence of factors, but MAGA fear of brown immigrants “invading” the country (“they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” etc.) is way overblown and clearly harkens back to white America’s primal fear of slave rebellions and Indian uprisings.  If there’s anything these people hate more than Critical Race theory (CRT) it’s facing the inescapable truth that white-skinned Europeans conquered North America for Christendom and grew wealthy and powerful because the “Cotton Kingdom” enslaved Africans for profit.  American school children were taught that everything their white Christian nation did was unquestionably noble and righteous, a fantasy-laden version of a history that wasn’t very pretty.  In fact, to their minds, “taming the wilderness” is at the very core of what made America great, and can seemingly make it “great again”—with the help of an authoritarian leader like Donald Trump.

MAGA Christian nationalism seeks to give that old fantasy-laden version of American history a new lease on life, the perennial lipstick on a pig. Perpetuating this fantasy is a terrible burden, a cross to bear, if you’ll pardon the terrible pun.  Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect people to abandon a fantasy of such mythic proportions—the biggest lie among all America’s big lies—but forcing the rest of us to live in their fantasy is no less unrealistic.  In fact, if Donald Trump’s first term in office is any indication, it’s downright painful.

Trump’s Romance with Putin is an Ugly Symptom of White Christendom’s Battle Against Pluralist Democracy, the Non-White, the Woke, and the Inevitably Global.

MAGAs’ inability to confront the reality of history is driving them to seek the protection of a terrible demagogue, Donald Trump, who pretends to be their champion and savior. Trump not only doesn’t care about NATO or Ukraine’s destruction, as Putin’s most useful idiot (in a close race with Tucker Carlson) he’s happy to allow the murderous Russian dictator to restore the Russian empire, the world order of 75 years and the future of the NATO countries be damned.  Afterall, bombastic white men’s empires are something Trump’s stupid, narcissistic mind can easily relate to, and MAGAs don’t care if Putin is sending thousands of Russian soldiers to their death on behalf of a mythic “Russian motherland;” no, they see him as an ally in their battle against the non-white, the woke, the pluralist, and the inevitably global (never mind that Ukraine and the NATO countries are “whiter” than many of the far-flung ethnic Russians Putin is sacrificing on behalf of his war effort, something that is also fodder for a separate discussion, pardon another sad pun.) 

MAGAs are frightened and looking for a king who will protect them.  They consider anyone or anything that threatens their fantasy to be their enemy, and they’ll seemingly fight a holy war to the death to preserve it.  America fought a revolution to escape living under a monarchy, but now MAGAs want a king, whether it be Trump, Putin, or even Viktor Orban, Trump’s idol in Hungary (no, not Turkey, Donald!), any authoritarian white man they mistakenly think will fight for their, inevitably lost, cause.