The Life in My Years

Call this a memory jogger. Or call it a cautionary tale. Call it both. This is a look back to that period between June 15th, 2015 and, well, now. It’s also a peek into what America’s future might look like.

The way we were

We didn’t know it at the time, but that June day in 2015 kicked off what was one of the darkest periods in the history of the world, certainly of the United States. That was the day that Donald Trump announced his candidacy in what was not so much a speech as it was an angry, racist rant. It was also a warning of what was to come. A warning that wasn’t heeded in November of 2016 and what might be ignored again this coming November.

There was no ambiguity at all. Trump laid his filthy cards on the table for all to see. In the best known riff from his speech, Trump put his racism out for the world to see as he blamed Mexico for willfully consigning criminals to the U.S. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Trump’s announcement warned us all that he and the truth are not on speaking terms. Hell, they’re barely acquainted – if at all. Among his lies that first day, Trump claimed that the Islamic State had built a hotel in Syria. Well, they didn’t build a hotel, they appropriated the Ninawa International Hotel after it was closed down in the middle of a war. And they didn’t run it as a hotel. And, it isn’t in Syria, it’s in Mosul.

With his boorish behavior on that day in June, Trump flashed a bright yellow warning light that told the world he’s a lowbrow, no class, asshole.

In those early days, most Republican office holders saw the impending iceberg and started heading for the lifeboats. Over the successive days, weeks, and months to come, when it appeared that Trump’s populist snake oil was being bought by the electorate in giant, economy sized jugs, that iceberg started looking more and more like an ice cube to far too many of those Republicans and they decided to take a ride on Trump’s ship of fools. (My apologies for the mixed metaphors. Sometimes I can’t help myself.)

Trump showed everyone exactly who he was when he publicly humiliated his opponents. He called Marco Rubio, “little Marco;” Jeb Bush “an embarrassment to the Bush family;” and called Ted Cruz’s wife ugly and his father an accessory in the JFK assassination. And all of those individuals showed just how cowardly and feckless they could be when they all folded like cards and ended up as disgraceful, whimpering lap dogs to Trump.

The whole world witnessed the mayhem that characterized Trump’s term. His foreign policy, if you could call it that, was an abject disgrace. He cozied up to Kim Jong Un while North Korea bloated its nuclear stockpile. He lionized Putin. He withdrew the U.S. from international agreements and institutions. He nearly broke up the NATO alliance.

At home? The list is long and undistinguished. He botched the COVID response that left millions to die when they probably didn’t have to (remember the dark comedy about injecting bleach?). He passed a tax cut for the rich that was supposed to benefit the middle class, but was just a game of three card monty that screwed the people who needed the relief the most. He packed the Supreme Court with two conservative hacks who likely perjured themselves, and one religious zealot. It’s a court that has done more to take away rights than any previous court in history.

And of course there was the boorishness, the misogyny (“grab them by the pussy”), the racism (fine people at Charlottesville, and the mingling with known racists), the meanness (remarking about a trip to a WWI cemetery that contained American dead, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”), the autocratic leanings, and the countless episodes of turning on people who weren’t reverent enough for his liking. The wretched cur that bites the hand that feeds him.

He was an absolute disgrace. He refused to hang Obama’s presidential portrait in the White House. When he invited the National Champion Clemson University football team to the White House he feted them with stacks of McDonald’s hamburgers (who in the fuck does that?). There were the temper tantrums that left ketchup on the White House walls. There was the violent removal of peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square, done just so that he could pose in front of a church, while holding a Bible (a book he’s never read).

After criticizing President Obama for taking a few golf trips (98 over four years) and promising he would be too busy, Trump spent all, or part of, over 260 days on the golf course at a taxpayer expense of over $144,000,000 (in his first term, Obama played 113 rounds of golf).

And then there were the lies. Donald Trump proved to be a world class liar. During a mere four years, Trump tallied an estimated 30,373 lies, from little stretchers to colossal whoppers. That comes out to an eye popping 20.9 prevarication per day. And that only accounts for the ones that could be reported. It’s actually a truly marvelous feat that could be worthy of a spot in The Guinness Book of World Records.

And it all culminated on January 6th, 2021 with an insurrection. That, after he damaged American’s faith in the legitimacy of elections.

For nearly four years, Trump has been throwing a nationwide, oh woe is me, pity party. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear, “treated unfairly,” “treated badly,” “persecuted,” and his all-time favorite, “witch hunt.” All of this from a pathetic snowflake who has made a career out of bullying people. Any parent would send such a petulant child to timeout, if not a trip to the woodshed.

Trump’s reckless, self-centered behavior has caused destruction that will likely not be repaired for years if not decades. As my wife often says, “He’s ruined this country.”

And maybe the most maddening part is that the ruination was caused, not by a man with a political philosophy or a cogent world view, but by a mean spirited two bit con-man; a narcissistic charlatan without a cause.

But that was then.

“I did not like the look of him at all. Something significantly ill-omened which I could not yet define emanated from him.” ~ From The Black Prince, by Iris Murdoch.

What is to come?

In a word, autocracy.

Donald Trump hasn’t made a secret of his plans for a second term. He said he’d “be a dictator only on day one.” Take him at his word on the first part, but take the second part with a large chunk of salt.

He’s never hidden his desire to follow in the steps of Putin, Orban, Erdoğan, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. He’s never been shy about showing his envy for their militaristic trappings, their brutality and particularly their unbridled power.

Case in point? As Putin unleashed his illegal war on Ukraine, Trump said, “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s (Putin) taking over a country – really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.” That’s exactly what Hitler did starting with the Sudetenland. And then much of Europe fell after that.

As of this writing Trump’s house guest at Mar a Lago is Orban himself. One wonders if Trump is selling Orban a few state secrets to cover that bond he has to secure. What a heartwarming scene it must be to see those two old autocrats sitting by the pool, sipping their umbrella cocktails and swapping ideas about stifling gay rights, whitening their respective nations and torching constitutions. Ah, what a painting of GOP Americana it would make for. Where in the fuck is Norman Rockwell when you need him?

***

Trump wasn’t ready for his first term. Luckily for the world he sort of blundered along, a man with no geopolitical philosophy, no sense of history, no real knowledge of how government is supposed to work, a literal disdain for the Constitution, and no appreciation for protocol, tradition and the dignity of the office. He appointed people to high positions who weren’t ready for primetime; characters such as Jared Kushner, and Rex Tillerson.

Trump 2.0

The next time it’ll be different. This ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has cobbled together an insidious roadmap for Trump to transform the United States from the world’s first democracy into a white nationalist, theocratic, autocracy. A close look at the roadmap, titled Project 2025, defines a route that will destroy institutions, cave in our democracy and turn The United States into a place the founders never could have imagined. I described a few elements of Project 2025 in a previous post, The Too Clever By Half Progressives.

Project 2025 is a dark dystopian scheme that purports to celebrate, “the Blessings of Liberty,” but is in fact a game plan for rolling back any and all liberties that the planners of Project 2025 don’t like. It’s a contradiction of liberty and a perversion of democracy. Below are a few excerpts:

“An individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.” I’ve no real quarrel with Thanksgiving, but I do have a big problem with a government that leans heavily into that Creator shit.

“America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth.”

“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.“

The next Health and Human Services head should, “proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure.”

The plan calls for the CDC to, “eliminate programs and projects that do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine family formation.”

The blueprint outlines plans for deporting over 11 million immigrants. One can picture an American version of the Germany of the late 1930s, with federal agents busting into homes in the dead of night and transporting families to mass camps separating out the men, women and children. Mike Davis, a potential Attorney General under Trump was quoted as saying, “We’re gonna be putting a lot of kids in cages. It will be glorious.” Glorious!

The architects of Project 2025 and the MAGA minions are unapologetic hypocrites. Since the first charges were levied against Trump, the right has complained about the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department and yet Trump and his acolytes have made it clear that using the Justice Department as a weapon is part of their game plan. Trump has been on a nationwide revenge tour. Meanwhile, Paul Dans, the chief architect of Project 2025 told journalist McCay Coppins, “The notion of the so-called independence of the Department of Justice needs to be consigned to the ash heap of history.”

Make no mistake, revenge and retribution is what the far right wants and they know exactly where to exact it. In another plan called Mandate for Leadership, The Heritage Foundation has produced an enemies list (yes, you read that right, an enemies list) that includes welfare recipients, lazy and liberal civil servants, anti-business regulators, environmentalists, union bosses, scientists, woke bureaucrats, woke educators, woke diplomats, woke generals and admirals, and woke G-men. I would imagine that the amended version will include woke bloggers who insult the orange Jesus (when they send me to the gulag just bake me a cake with a file inside).

He’ just kidding

Trump apologists play the downplay game. It’s usually along the lines of, “Oh that’s just Trump being Trump,” as if he’s just trying to get a rise out of the audience; that Don, he’s just a wild and crazy guy.

Recently Trump told a fake story about a European leader asking Trump if he would come to the aid of a country that didn’t meet the NATO spending guidelines. Trump’s response? It was a dog whistle to his mentor Putin, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” This from the man who has a notorious reputation for stiffing his contractors. (To be clear, each nation is expected to commit 2% of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense spending. Trump makes it sound like a country club in which each member has to pay dues.)

After the brouhaha over Trump’s statement Marco Rubio told CNN’s Jake Tapper that there’s nothing to see here, “He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.” No Marco, that’s not how it works. A frontrunner for the presidency doesn’t get to speak in a vague, tongue in cheek manner that could have disastrous repercussions. You know, repercussions like the Russian Army marching into Poland.

The sinister face of MAGA

Those who think that the MAGA threat is overblown hyperbole should take a peek at Mark Robinson, the newly minted GOP candidate to be the Governor of North Carolina. It doesn’t take a deep dive to see just what MAGA means. A good starting point is 2020, when Robinson said, in front of an audience, “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.”

Robinson is a conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, having proposed that; Democratic donor George Soros was behind the Boko Haram kidnappings, the moon landings were staged, and 9/11 was an inside job. Robinson has called gay and transgender people “filth” and called the Parkland shooting survivors “spoiled little bastards,” and “media prosti-tots.”

On X, Robinson posted that it’s “sad” that religious freedom applies to Muslims, and on Facebook he opined “Until they let us build churches in Saudi Arabia, we shouldn’t let them build mosque (sic) in America.”

Robinson is a holocaust denier who also thinks that domestic violence is just a joking matter, having posted on Facebook, “So if someone beats the bird dog hell of their spouse at the mall…. is it still “Domestic Violence?”

No surprise, Mark Robinson is a minister.

Don’t think he’s MAGA? Wrong again. He’s Trump’s guy. Trump gave him a ringing endorsement calling Robinson, “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Robinson is the very face of MAGA.

You might be thinking, ‘Oh hell, a guy like this could never be elected to office.’ Wrong again, he’s already been elected. He’s the Lt. Governor of North Carolina. Now he wants to be top dog and – he’s the front runner.

Patience lost

Which leads me to the garden variety everyday Trump voter – the MAGAt. I’ve tried, lordy, I’ve tried to be understanding and patient about MAGAts. I’ve read the oh woe are they books about how they feel left out; feel like they don’t have a voice; that the country has left them behind. They’re tired of career politicians, poor babies.

Bullshit!

They’ve had nine fucking years to figure it out. Nine fucking years worth of evidence that Trump and The Heritage Foundation and everything MAGA is everything that is un-American and un-democratic and counter to the basic concepts of basic human decency.

Not liking career politicians isn’t an excuse for voting for a disreputable, disgraceful pirate. It’s time to recognize that part of the electorate for what it is. The MAGA faction that would still vote for Trump and has put the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tommy Tuberville, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, and Bob Good into office are intellectually, politically, and morally destitute. Yes, Hillary Clinton had it right about the “basket of deplorables.” She just didn’t have the political sense to keep her mouth shut about it.

For me personally the MAGAt tipping point came with Trump’s Hitlerian assertion that immigrants are “vermin”, “poisoning the blood of our country.” He made certain that there was no ambiguity about where the toxins are coming from, “They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world,” he said.

My wife is Filipina. My U.S. born daughter-in-law is the daughter of immigrants from The Philippines. My children have Asian-Pacific blood coursing through their veins. In Trump’s mind that is tainted blood and my wife is “vermin.”

You don’t get to separate that sort of vile, Hitlerian, nationalistic shit from the rest of the Trump package. There is no, ‘Well, I think he’s wrong there, but …’ excuse. If it isn’t the bridge too far for you then you must be on board with it.

To those friends and family members who are still on board with Trump –

you’re dead to me.