One of the most stunning things about the last near-decade now is how much the country has been contorted by one man. We're in this fucked beyond fucked moment, teetering on the brink of totally and irrevocably fucked, because of Donald Trump. Yes, it's also everyone who voted for him, everyone who elevated him, everyone who kowtowed to him, and everyone who wipes his ass so that he keeps going. But, in the end, it comes down to one goddamned man. It's perfect example of what happens when your nice little democracy relies too much on basic human decency and when the decent ignore or elide the acts of the indecent.
The seeds for Donald Trump's ascendancy were planted over 40 years ago, with the rise of the Moral Majority and Reagan's openness to a portion of the craziest motherfuckers on the right, allowing the evangelicals and the John Birch Society leftovers a place at the political table. It continued, with the odious Pat Buchanan's nativist campaign, openly saying shit that Republicans had been implying for years. I'm not going to summarize the entire history of the ascension of the modern bugfuck insane conservative movement (besides, Geoffrey Kabaservice has done it far better than I could), but it's a straight line from the 2000 election fuckery to the enforced patriotism of the post-9/11 era to the Imperial Presidency idea of Dick fuckin' Cheney to the Tea Party to Trump, with lots of other events and ideas in-between.
Trump is the vessel this evolving right-wing oligarchical threat was waiting for. Imperfect, for sure, but a populist who ran for office with a built-in audience that would sustain any efforts he made? That just makes the whole effort that much easier. If you get a skilled carnival barker to get the rubes to drop their hard-earned cash so they can enter the tent, that's half the battle. The other half is convincing them to suspend all reason and logic so that they'll believe it when a woman is sawed in half or rabbit appears out of a hat. They won't believe it's a trick at all, no matter how much someone tries to convince them it was sleight of hand or forced perspective. A skillful barker will get the rubes to not only believe in magic, but to insist that anyone who tells them it isn't magic is a fool: "Goddamnit, that woman levitated, and you can't tell me she didn't."
Metaphors aside, we find ourselves in this extraordinarily dangerous moment, yes, because of that entire history, but primarily because of Donald Trump. Without him, this effort to completely undermine the electoral process of the United States wouldn't have gotten any momentum. How do I know that? Because it didn't get any momentum after 2000, when George W. Bush actually lost but no one did a goddamn thing, and after 2004, when there were allegations of shenanigans involving voting machines in Ohio. No one exploited that to discredit voting all around the country. Hell, John Kerry didn't even challenge the results.
But Trump challenged results even when he won in 2016 because his fragile little ego couldn't handle that he lost the popular vote. He insisted that he lost California only because of non-citizens voting, which was absolute hogshit. It didn't happen. It's never happened that more than a statistically insignificant number of non-citizens has voted and virtually all of those were mistakes, not malice. Instead of accepting victory with some measure of decency and perhaps humility because of the popular vote loss, Trump barreled ahead with the brazen assertion that he really won the popular vote and anyone who said otherwise was lying.
And it fucking worked. It became an article of faith among his MAGA idiot hordes that Trump was robbed of full victory. It's magic, and the reality of the trick didn't matter. That set the stage for the 2020 election and all the violence and violent rhetoric that came from one man's refusal to accept the outcome. You might have forgotten or suppressed it, but between Election Day 2020 and January 6, 2021, it was one long howl of false outrage and lies, including unnecessary recounts, dozens of failed court cases, and, finally, attacks on the people who take on the job of making sure our democracy functions like a democracy when it comes to voting. Trump called any election officials or state officials who dared to say he lost "enemies of the people" and he and his goons ruined the lives of ordinary Americans earning a paycheck. (Although some have gotten gratifying revenge on these abject cockmites.) The kick in the nuts of the whole pathetic exercise is how many millions of people believed and still believe him. It's like mass fucking hypnosis.
To put it simply, Donald Trump had no problem completely undermining one of the foundations of this country, and he had no issues with making a significant number of Americans lose faith in how their states and the nation run elections. It didn't matter that the 2020 election was a goddamn miracle because it took place in the middle of a fucking pandemic and should have been one of the great moments of communal triumph in our history. No, we couldn't have that because Trump, who was expected to lose, lost. And now just 28% of Republicans are confident that the votes in the 2024 election will be accurately counted. It's fucking madness, and one man is responsible for that plunge from 55% in 2016.
It's not that big a leap to say that if Trump can so easily throw aside the integrity of our elections which, 2000 aside, has been pretty fucking decent for a couple of generations, for his own ends, then he can just as easily throw out even more norms and foundational aspects and, well, fuck, laws. He'll keep plodding along, with a Supreme Court decision that lets him basically do whatever the fuck he wants, until none of us recognize the country anymore. It's already fading away in the MAGA haze that can't be penetrated, in a fog of racism and hatred and a desire for the blood of perceived enemies to be spilled. It's not that it can't happen here. It's that it is very much already happening.
If you feel like I do, like we're existing in a panic attack wrapped in an fever dream covered in a secret sauce of anxiety, then understand this: the only way it ends is to be done with Donald Trump. We need it to fucking stop, so he needs to lose and then we need to go through whatever avalanche of bullshit Trump is going to subject us to as he flails about in his last gasps of electoral relevance, aided by Elon Musk's billions and supported by the MAGA drones who would lay down their lives for their right to continue to be racist and dunk on the libs and beat up trans kids and tear apart migrant families. We need to go through it and come out the other side and see what's left and build it back to some kind of normal again.
I don't think all of this (gestures at everything) continues as it is once we're done with Trump. There is no one who scratches the celebrity itch and gets the stupidest people to vote. All those wannabe successors are worthless, and even the famous MAGA suck-ups don't have Trump's P.T. Barnum-like ability to corral the rubes and get them to give their money and their freedom to protect him. Unless Trump himself anoints a successor, which he would only do if he won this election. Otherwise, he'll try to insist that he can run again in 2028, and that'll just be sad.
We can be done. Really. This can be over. Think about how that would feel, how we wouldn't have to hear his slurring, sloppy voice or read his idiot brain droppings and pretend that they matter. Think of the feeling of liberation and the sense that maybe there is a future where we make things better. We need this.
It's one fucking guy. For fuck's sake, we should be able to step over his ass and move ahead.
