gracchusdixit

A century ago, the satirist, social critic, and consummate cynic, H. L. Mencken, served up the following mordant observation:

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.

That “great and glorious day” finally arrived, to the everlasting regret of most Americans, on November 8, 2016, when a “downright fool and complete narcissistic moron” named Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States.  Mencken would have been surprised only by the fact that it took nearly a hundred years for his prediction to come true.  What the Sage of Baltimore failed to say, however, was that “the plain folks of the land” would be no less foolish and moronic than the nincompoop they would eventually send to the White House.

From the day it became inescapably plain that Trump had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, liberals have been warned not to gloat, on the grounds that any expression of unseemly glee would magnify the outsized grievances of Trump’s worshippers, stoking their fury at the purported arrogance and condescension of the “elites’.  

I have no intention of heeding this warning.

For the last four years, the louts who love Donald Trump have reveled in “owning the libs”.  Now, as the moron they adore slumps before our very eyes into a slag heap of self-pity, scapegoating, and feckless attempts to overturn the election before he is prosecuted for his innumerable crimes, it is high time for “libs” everywhere to start owning the Luddites on the right for being stupid enough to elect the most corrupt and incompetent president in American history.  

I don’t say this out of political or social schadenfreude.  I say it, because sparing Trump and his supporters the condemnation they deserve would be to perpetuate an asymmetric game of political discourse that has hobbled liberals for decades, ceding to conservatives an immense but entirely undeserved advantage in what amounts to an existential battle for the future of our democracy.  The rules of this rigged game allow conservatives to lie brazenly, assert grievances that have no grounding in fact, and lay claim to victimhood when in reality they wield overwhelming political power.  

Liberals, on the other hand, are forever called upon to be reasonable, tolerant, and forgiving, and to abide by the norms of civil behavior, even as their conservative opponents are free to disregard or discard them.  Even the slightest failure by liberals to heed this call brings down upon their heads an avalanche of opprobrium and condemnation.

Donald Trump was allowed to slander Barack Obama outrageously.  And yet, when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorable” for believing his claptrap, she was assailed by caterwauling crowds, demanding that she be “locked up”.  Trump and his minions have spent years stoking racism, inciting violence, and attacking our democracy with impunity.  But the moment liberals uttered the anodyne sentiment, “Black Lives Matter,” they were accused of dividing the nation by pandering to “radical” identity politics.  Now, in the face of Trump’s resounding defeat at the polls, liberals are being told once again to bite their tongues, lest Trump voters have their tender feelings hurt.  

The hypocrisy of this lopsided game is simply breathtaking, and continuing to indulge it would be positively dangerous.  Donald Trump, and Republicans more broadly, are entitled to exactly nothing.  Whatever forbearance they might once have deserved—and that was precious little—they forfeited long ago.  In their stunning incompetence, cynical corruption, and outright cruelty, they have betrayed their oaths of office, cost thousands of lives, and may yet plunge the country into an economic abyss.  The “Trump Party” is little more than the political equivalent of an organized crime family:  rotten and putrescent, like the stinking fish at its head.

Nor are those in the general public who adore Donald Trump any less culpable.  On the contrary, they have earned every bit of contempt that can be heaped upon them.  We must put aside the notion that these people are innocent and unwitting “victims,” beguiled by an unscrupulous con man.  They are nothing less than willing participants in the con. 

From P. T. Barnum to Bernie Madoff, the bargain between a con man and his marks has always been reciprocal and symbiotic. Indeed, the con man’s drive to deceive depends for its success on the need of his “victims” to be deceived; on their eagerness to believe in fictions and fantasies, because their own lives are so pathetic and empty; on their desperate wish to imagine that they are not the gullible suckers and perpetual losers they actually are. That is why so many fools stream to the gaming tables of Las Vegas or squander their paybacks on lottery tickets. That is the reason so many idiotic Americans choose to believe in “miracles,” “angels,” and conspiracy theories, instead of confronting the world as it is.

No matter how stubbornly they deny it, such people know, down deep, exactly what they are.  It is therefore no surprise that they have turned to a titanic loser like Donald Trump as their messiah.  In him, they see themselves, because he, and they, are one and the same.  That he has deceived them does not matter, because he has deceived himself, which is precisely what they have been doing all their lives.  For them to acknowledge the reality that Donald Trump not only lost the 2020 election but lost resoundingly, would be the equivalent of psychological and spiritual suicide.

Just days ago, Trump bellowed to the crowd at one of his rallies in Georgia:  “We are all victims.  Everybody here.  All these thousands of people here tonight.”  For once in his life, he was speaking the truth—but not the truth he intended.  

Donald Trump and those who adore him victimize one another.  Each seeks to fill an  empty soul with empty promises made by the other.  Both participants in this hellish bargain are doomed to disappointment, for there is no escaping the fact that they are, in the end, not victims, but losers.