All They've Got

It’s doubtful Trumpists want their children and grandchildren to die of the carcinogens he has deregulated. Because it’s likely they share other human characteristics, too, we assume they, like the rest of us, prefer a livable planet for their progeny; unflooded cities, temperatures compatible with human life, oceans able to support sea life. 

If forced to make the choice, one can’t doubt most Trump voters would choose the health of their grandkids over the pleasure of seeing undocumented children in cages at our borders, shouting “Lock her up,” or calling Democrats stupid names.

It’s pretty certain that, faced with the known consequences, they’d rather see money spent on education, roads and bridges, sustainable energy – maybe even childcare and programs aimed at helping people overcome poverty – than on enriching the already rich and tax cuts that increase our national debt while doing little for everyone else. 

Those would be logical choices for any thoughtful person, if Fox “news” were turned down and Trump stopped tweeting long enough for people to hear themselves think.  

Though Trump’s capacity for empathy is congenitally absent, we presume it’s present in many of his previous voters. It’s possible they could come to understand how having large numbers of people struggling without hope is a threat to our economy, democracy, and, therefore, eventually to themselves. 

Willingness to think beyond the short-term and past their current cloistered comfort is all that’s required. The ability was once inseparable from American greatness. Their current unwillingness is what separates Trumpists from everyone else.  

The point is this: except for conspiracy theorists, the already-rich, and people who need someone to hate in order to validate themselves, there’s nothing at the core of today’s Republican Party to attract “regular” Americans. Party leaders know this. 

Which is why they’re focused on making voting as hard as possible for likely Democratic voters, and on pre-discrediting election results, should they lose. Not to mention turning attention away from their absence of ideas and toward the tiny part of our population throwing rocks at police.  

First, it was egregious gerrymandering. When some plans were struck down by courts, they turned to voter ID laws, aimed at disenfranchising minority voters “with surgical precision,” as an ethical judge wrote while disallowing North Carolina’s. 

Undaunted, encouraged by SCOTUS gutting the Voting Rights Act because there’s no racism, red states set about removing polling places in minority neighborhoods, forcing citizens to travel far and stand in line for hours.  

But they forgot about voting by mail, which circumvents their favorite suppression methods. Quickly, that time-tested, virtually fraud-proof way of voting, used for decades by US citizens overseas, especially military members, and by several states, was declared corrupt. Despite being used by Trump et uxor and White House staffers, including those repeating his lies about it.  

Ah, but Trump came up with an answer to that, too: unable to force states to abandon vote-by-mail (he’s suing some), he called upon another ultra-rich, inexperienced donor; this time to delay mail by gutting capacity. 

Now, seeing states distributing ballot drop-off boxes that don’t require the USPS, he’s lying about them, too. Classic Trump: claiming Democrats are trying to “steal the election,” when it’s he and his doing just that.  

Not satisfied with Republican plans to deploy intimidating “poll watchers,” (and affirming his disregard for the Constitution), Trump threatened to send troops to polling places, too; sowing distrust of voting and Squaring the circle of repression he’s been employing since day one. As in Red- and Tiananmen-Squaring.  

They’ve admitted they have nothing else. In remarkable capitulation, Republicans wrote no party platform for this election other than pledging unconditional, abject fealty to Dear Leader. They’ll run on the fact that he kept the Obama recovery going (till he didn’t), neglecting to mention that, unlike President Obama, Trump did so by way of exploding deficits and damaging deregulation. 

Otherwise, as their convention demonstrated, it’ll be Trumples all the way down: ignoring the current economic pain of millions and the consequential future problems we face, in favor of peddling fear of, hate for, and lies about Democrats. By the outhouse-full. Plus “up-is-down” fabrications about the pandemic and the economy.

The contrast with the DNC was stark, as Trumpists set aside reality, literally calling Trump their savior. It’s beyond a cult: it’s religion turned upside down. Under Trump, Republicans have become prostrate idolaters, eschewing positive ideas in favor of outright lies. Trump’s incendiary doomsday demagoguery ties directly to the violence we’re seeing from rightwing militias. 

Calling him “the savior of Western civilization,” Trumpists are, in fact, all but ensuring its downfall. Cheering Trump’s flagrant, confident mendacity and his televised law-breaking, their convention proved it.

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