SHIT THE BED – MAGA’S Mine-Or-No-One’s Meanness

PHOTO: The Needling

It’s no secret the last couple of generations of working-class Americans have felt a growing sense of abandonment, discontent and, many of them, rage. They feel cheated out of what they see as the “American Dream:” that everyone born in this country (and no one else), whatever the choices they’ve made about their work, their education, their aspirations, is somehow entitled to prosperity.
 
Their wrath is so intense, their imagination so limited, that their response has been not to work harder, not to retrain, not to compete or evolve, but, like a spiteful two-year-old, simply to shit their bed.

PHOTO: Zero to Three

They've defiled the very Democracy that championed their parents' and grand-
parents' dreams.

HOARD MENTALITY
The little monsters have soiled the very nest that’s reared and protected them. Defiled the welcoming, opportunity-rich, rights-protecting Democracy that championed their parents’ and grandparents’ dreams and made their lives possible. 

All because of two obsessions. First, with what they've been told are invading hordes of immigrants pouring across our borders, stealing their jobs, sucking up government resources…oh, and they’re rapists. 

(These folks must see their jobs as pretty menial if such worthless losers from other countries can snap them up them so easily. Oh, and those government resources MAGA’s so afraid are being sucked dry by Manuel, Maria and Mohammed? Aren’t those the same services these “anti-government” Billy-Bobs have been insisting for decades they don’t want to pay for? Like education, healthcare, roads, utilities and fire fighting?

And, the greatest irony of all, these NIMBY nitwits don’t see the hypocrisy of bashing immigration when their own parents or grandparents were immigrants.)

         What raises their blood pressure even more is that 
         these fancy-pants do-gooders might look down on them.

SMART, MY ASS!
Besides their xenophobia, these poor victims are also possessed by a deep hatred of what they’ve termed our country’s “liberal elite,” those mostly well-educated, cultured snobs whose permissive, “woke” values they blame for giving away their God-given, America-first entitlements in the first place.

ILLUSTRATION: L.A. Progressive

But what raises their blood pressure even more is their sense that these fancy-pants do-gooders might look down on them. (I’ve postulated HERE that this resentment might actually stem from the MAGA cult’s embarrassment at being forced to confront just how ignorant they really are.)

Very simply, MAGA folks, driven by these peeves, would rather live in a pile of their own excrement than in the Utopia handed to them by generations of their forebears who’ve toiled to build it, and who’ve fought and died defending it. 

PHOTO: Joe Rosenthal

It’s Democracy, the bold experiment of an oppressed colonial people, the most successful system of governance ever devised, the envy of the world for two-and-a-half centuries. Very simply, the Pedophile President and his cult fume that if they can’t get their perceived entitlement to all its blessings, then no one should.  

         The true patriots—will eventually insist the bed be changed.

IMAGE: AdWeek

RESIST…AND HOPE
This is the MAGA movement. This is the Donald Trump debacle, the con man of our age validating and acting out his own and his devotees’ worst instincts: aggressive insecurity, hatred, racism, vengeance. 

This is why I resist…and why I hope. Hope more and more Americans—the true patriots—will eventually insist the bed be changed, washing away forever the filth these temper-tantrum traitors have unloaded in the bed of American decency.

Protest on your lawn, in the streets, on bridges…anywhere. Pressure Congress to grow a pair and rein 
in TinyHands’s fascist agenda. Write opinion pieces 
and social media rants. Encourage fellow resistors. Donate to effective resistance organizations—like the Women's March, Indivisible or the Visibility Brigade.

…and keep the faith!

IGNORANCE, JUDGEMENT AND THE MAGA BASE’S NUCLEAR OPTION

PHOTO: Change.org

Thoughtful Americans have been trying for a decade 
or more to understand the mindset of those of our compatriots responsible for bringing this noble nation—admired by the world for nearly two-and-a-half centuries for its vision, values and leadership—to its knees. 

I’m still baffled at how such betrayal is possible, but I’ve come up with new angle to consider.

VENGEANCE AT ANY PRICE
Oh I know, we’ve heard this song and dance about Donald Trump’s poor base feeling unheard and un-
appreciated by us conceited “liberal elites.” About their fear of immigrants’ and the poor’s snatching what they see as their entitlement to the American Dream. And about how their perceived suffering merits as much credibility as our own aspirations.

PHOTO: Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call

I don’t buy it. It gives way too much credit to people who somehow managed to turn off both 
their brains and hearts and hire the con man of our age to avenge their grievances for them. 
A charlatan who figures they won’t notice that he’s destroying their country in their name—while not just impoverishing them, but enriching himself and his family to the tune of more than $1,000,000,000—and that's in just the past year.* 

GRAPHIC: AmericanProgress.org

For me, a better answer—perhaps the easiest one—would be that these Trump groupies are simply thoughtless, self-obsessed, philistine, chest-beating assholes. Idiots who’ll pay any price to stick it to people not like them. But the more I think about it, the more certain I am that that’s not the whole story either. 

     Trump literally tells them what they know and don’t know.

COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE
What makes more sense is that these Trump groupies are just so ashamed of their own ignorance that they're in denial, demonizing anyone honest enough to hold their noses to it. How dare you judge, they feel. Judge not just us, but anything at all! Beauty, kindness, sophistication, style, merit. It's all "woke," not because those attributes are invalid, but because they provide a reflection of their own soullessness. 

Judgment—the process of weighing and comparing the truth of stuff—lies at the very heart of intelligence. Along with curiosity and creativity, critical judgment is a key component of acquiring and applying knowledge. And that, to folks with little education and short attention spans, poses a huge threat, because all it does is remind them just how stupid they really are.

This is why their Dear Leader’s tack has been to systematically discredit judgement—and along with it truth. Because he knows his MAGAts not only can’t judge what’s true or not, but wouldn’t buy the truth anyway if it challenged their simplistic, fear- and anger-stoked beliefs.

Playing on those beliefs, their anger, their fears—and their latent shame in their ignorance—Trump literally tells them what they know and don’t know. (Listen for those slick little inter-
jections in his unhinged ravings: “Everyone’s saying…,” “Everybody agrees…,” “People know…” and “You know that, right?” )

ALTERNATE TRUTH
The response Trump has incited in his MAGA cult is the cultural equivalent of the nuclear option: I don’t get it…so I’ll be damned if anyone’s going to get it. Instead of elevating our own aspirations, we'll drag down yours. So, yes, let’s yank the U.S. government’s investment from any program, any institution, that stands, even remotely, for intelligence, refinement…or even basic human kindness. 

PHOTO: Dave Killen/the Oregonian

Add to the bogeymen hit list anyone purporting to honor the truth. Hey, after being forced to stomach these pompous educators,' researchers,’ scientists,’ doctors’ and journalists’ fancy-pants proclamations all these years, Dear Leader has finally given me permission to claim my own, “alternative” truth…about everything.

The blindness to reality is so complete that these suckers can look right at this master manipu-
lator, this draft-dodging sexual predator who espouses not one of Jesus Christ’s teachings, and believe he’s their model of patriotism, their personal gift from God. 

    A charismatic leader steps up and shows Americans…that 
    there’s a better, healthier vision for our country than Trump’s 
    deeply negative one.

A HEALTHIER VISION
So, that’s my half-assed theory. What of it? What’s to be done? Is there hope for our faltering “shining city upon a hill” Democracy?

I still believe a spark of love and kindness glows at the core of every human being. Like so many of our best qualities, though, it’s gotten buried under layer after layer of concerns and emotions that are very good at pretending to be important. Like fear, anger, conceit…and, yes, shame.

One answer might be for an extraordinarily charismatic leader to step up and show Americans—even those of us who’ve been exploited by Trump—that there’s a better, healthier vision for our country than his deeply negative one. (I think most folks yearn deeply to reclaim hope and joy from the hate fest Tiny Hands has promoted.)

And this figurehead must do more than out-Trump Trump with charisma; she/he must, with guidance from the Democratic National Committee, craft a message that’s more appealing to folks than the simple, disciplined—and highly effective—one of grievance and vengeance that’s driven the MAGA movement. 

SNEEZIN’ ON THE HOUSE OF CARDS
Another possibility is that Trump eventually miscalculates himself right off the precipice. Takes just one too many liberties with his power. Makes one too many assumptions about his supporters’ depravity. 

We’ve already seen a few Congressional Republicans dare risk their careers for integrity. With cause, more might join. Some editorial boards in the mainstream media will draw the line. The trickle builds to a tide, and then to a tsunami of love, generosity and hope that inundates even the most willful ignorance.

And Donald Trump's fools-gold empire, wobbling on its foundation of hubris, collapses, swept away by a smarter, nobler, more joyous vision.

IMAGE: Adobe Stock

But none of this will happen without ever-more-massive public displays of defiance. We must continue to assert our hopes, raise our voices and apply our talents to The Resistance. 

We must continue to live our truth, honor our values. Call and write our representatives in Congress. Write opinion pieces. Support thoughtful, principled candidates. Stick our necks out on social media. And, finally, we must display our sheer numbers, joining with other true patriots to take our resolve to the streets.

Don’t lose sight of the vision of a kinder, gentler, renewed America. Do not lose hope.

* Trumps Take-Counter, AmericanProgress.org

HISSY FIT – How the Trump Chumps Got Their Way While Losing It

Since a crass, bigoted reality-TV star somehow, incredibly, broke and entered the pantheon of the U.S. Presidency, I’ve not hesitated to speak up about my disappointment, my apprehension and my deep embarrassment for our country.

Usually, I get ample proof from my friends and followers that I’m preaching’ to the choir. But lately I’ve also received a few of precisely the kind of responses I might have expected from some of Trump’s supporters. Comments like “You lost; get over it!,” “I’m sick and tired of all you cry-babies bitching and moaning!,” and “It’s your turn to be a loser, college boy; why don’t you just man-up?” And those are the polite ones.

Really! We’re the cry-babies?

AN INVISIBLE HOLE
So…a big chunk (not a majority, mind you) of the American electorate apparently has perceived themselves as oppressed, muzzled, getting short-changed in their share of the American Dream. This despite ample proof that, overall, the quality of life in this country has never, ever, been better.

After the Obama administration’s helped dig us out of the deep hole dug during the “Dubya” years, we now enjoy the best job growth in 18 yrs.; strongest dollar in three decades; gas a bit over $2 per gallon; unemployment cut in half; the annual Bush deficit cut by two-thirds; recovered housing market; growing exports; Dow Jones average tripled and surging once again…

What am I missing?

        What they'd really lost...was their ability to control.

They say they’d lost their voice, their power. And even some more charitable liberals than I believe them. But I’m going to call them on it. What they’d really lost during those eight hard-fought years of progressives’ gains was not the American dream. It was their ability to control.

And it was not simply control over themselves and their own fortunes they so lusted for. It was authority—control over land, people not like them, other countries, ideas they see as threatening to their rather narrow quasi-religious ideology. That’s what this election was really about.

LILY-WHITE CLONES
For the last eight years, while we progressives have been thinking positively, constructively, of ways to make the world a better place—connecting people; creating opportunity; trying, against the best-funded, most powerful lobbying efforts in history, to preserve a natural environment we’re proud to pass on to our kids and grandkids—conservative ideologues have put all their eggs into one big basket of NO!

          He held out a few cheap promises like a candy bar 
          to a health nut's child. 

By their own admission, their one and only goal during the eight-year administration of one of the most intelligent, visionary, positive-minded, decent presidents in history has been to derail absolutely anything he’s proposed. Not exert their own version of leadership, not offer constructive alternatives, not paint a picture of a better America; no, just stifle every glimmer of hope for a kinder, gentler nation.

What is it you want, folks? Federal hands off of public lands so you can gouge out more mineral wealth on the cheap, wallow in more ATV mud holes and build more rifle ranges? A sub-prime mortgage on the environment we leave our grandchildren in return for a few jobs in unsustainable industries? Your own little nation of God-fearin,’ lily-white clones?

THE PRICE OF A CANDY BAR
Well, looks like your political temper tantrum has, against all odds, gotten you the attention you so craved. And now the rest of us must live, for at least the next four years, with the consequences: a president who—at precisely the moment in history when we most need a leader with a constructive vision—has already proven himself an utterly ill-prepared, emotionally unstable, uncurious, vulgar, pompous, self-serving narcissist.

And none of this charlatan’s destruction should come as any surprise to those who ganged up—apparently with a little help from one of our nation’s arch enemies—to push him into office. He held out a few cheap promises like a candy bar to a health nut’s child. And you totally reached out and grabbed it.

Congratulations, you poor, self-styled victims, your little hissy fit worked big-time. You little brats set the house afire over a fucking Milky Way.

“We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.”  ~ NEAL GABLER