You know, I was halfway through writing a big piece that boiled down to "What if Donald Trump was a raging liberal who promised to do all the things I want? Would I be just ashamed to support him at this point?" I stopped because it was all so, so fucking obvious.
But I really want to know from Trump voters: Does any of this embarrass you? Any of the shit with Michael Flynn and Russia? Any of the ridiculous things Trump says, like threatening to "destroy the career" of a state legislator? Any of the ludicrous comments and promises he makes? His complete lack of understanding of the way the government actually functions? His complete lack of knowledge about the United States's relationships with other countries? The disastrous and unnecessary military mission in Yemen? The fact that he is literally doing the things he said he was going to do, like tearing families apart? The demonstrable lies? Does any of it make a dent with you?
I stopped, too, because I realized that it doesn't. And that reasoning with most Trump voters is like running a flea circus. You can fool people into thinking the fleas are doing tricks and acrobatics, but it's just fleas being fleas. Whatever frame you put on it, they're gonna do whatever the fuck they please.
Whenever we face the joke of a presidency we're forced to endure right now, we're not merely facing the pumpkinheaded doom goblin at the top. We're facing all of his supporters who are unmoved by any ethical lapse, any law broken at this point, even the Constitution itself. So we either have to write them off as a mad tribe that has taken over the temple and hope they orgy themselves to death or we have to reason with them, however terrible it might be to walk up to a group of convulsing idiots and ask them to listen to your insights you got from watching CNN.
The takeaway from the blog post was going to be that I'd like to think that I'd be embarrassed. I'd like to think that it would matter even if President Stumblefuck McBleedingheart was going to tax the wealthy more and rein in Wall Street and get rid of money in politics and spend shit-tons on infrastructure and alternate energies and make reversing climate change a top priority and attack poverty with education and jobs programs and on and on. If he was as dumbly evil and evilly dumb as Trump, I'd like to think I'd be able to say, "Yeah, but, holy fuckballs, man, can we just impeach him already?"
Shame is a powerful tool. We need to deploy it more and make Trump's ardent supporters feel like outcasts for denying reality.
