In four years their golden goose will be cooked. Hopefully…
So it happened. Despite it being against their interests, the MAGA turkeys voted for Christmas. Their political wet dream came true. On 20th January their supreme leader will become president once again.
Is there any cause for optimism? Well, in a little over four years* it’ll all be over — forever. A US presidential term is fixed at four years and no one can serve more than two, so Trump will never be able to run again. He’ll be finished and he’ll take MAGA with him. The Republican party will be left wondering what to do and how to hide an enormous embarrassing orange stain. And although a Trump presidency brings much fear and uncertainty, four years is no time at all. There are already plenty of online timers out there, such as this one, counting him out before he’s even come back in (I can’t help but think it would be nice to see one in the form of an oven timer, counting down to when this turkey’s goose will finally be cooked).
We can also acknowledge that there may be some genuine benefits from the Trump presidency, amidst the horror. For example, it is likely to be positive for the protection of women’s spaces and women’s sports. Though in this election women were always caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Anyway, that’s about it for the optimism. To make matters worse, there's the small matter of that footnote...
* This does rely on the assumption that Trump will be removed from office if he refuses to go willingly. Up until quite recently, it would be ludicrous to have to state this assumption. But we are in uncharted waters. The events of January 6th 2021 and Trump’s unconscionable behaviour in the preceding weeks make anything possible. It’s a breeze to picture him using some crisis, manufactured or otherwise, as cover to pass emergency legislation to keep him in power. It’s not hard to see him simply proclaiming that the term of office restrictions are merely ‘fake law’:
“That’s just fake law, so fake. Only losers respect that law. I am the greatest president in the history of the United States, I am the greatest person who ever lived, so great. So why would anyone deny our great nation the benefit of me, Donald J Trump, being president for life? Let’s not kid ourselves, we all want this. So we’re gonna update the constitution to remove that fake law. It was the twenty-second amendment… can you believe that? How can anyone respect something that came in twenty second? It’s a loser amendment. So anyway, it’ll soon be gone. Then it’s gonna be wonderful, so wonderful …”
So why did Trump win? Well, that’s been done to death. You can find a thousand articles and theories, all reliant on some degree of subjective analysis. I’m more interested in one disturbing and inescapable conclusion from the result — many people who knew he was lying about the 2020 election voted for him in 2024 anyway.
Some people still believe the 2020 election was fraudulent. No surprise that they voted red this time. Though they are deluded, to a quite staggering degree, their vote for Trump this time is entirely consistent with their warped view of reality. There isn’t anything interesting to say about these votes.
But the rest of the red voters, now that’s much more interesting and much more alarming. These are people who believe the 2020 election was fair, which means this year they voted for a man who they believe lied on an industrial scale in an effort to overturn a legitimate election, an election for the most powerful office in the world. That people would do this, eyes open, is beyond belief.
(By the way, what about those claims Trump made on the 2024 election night, “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!” …not heard much about this fraud now, eh? 🙄)
Anyway, let’s look into this group a little further. Why would someone vote for a man who they believe is a liar, a man who they believe has no regard for democracy?
They don’t believe in democracy or don’t value democracy
They think democracy can withstand the damage of electing someone who tried to destroy it / any damage done is outweighed by their perception of the damage that would have come about from a Democrat victory.
I can’t think of any other options.
Option 1 is a dark prospect indeed. There’s nothing wrong with criticising the inherent flaws of democracy (two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner) or campaigning for ways to improve its implementation (reform of the electoral college, proportional representation, etc.), but there are no convincing arguments for alternative forms of government. As Winston Churchill famously said:
”“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…
So you have to wonder about the education and/or state of mind of anyone in this group. History bears out Churchill’s stance. It is irrational to believe that democracy is not the best system, despite its flaws.
Option 2 is a more slippery line of thinking, but it’s just as irrational. If Kamala Harris had been Saddam Hussein or Pol Pot then maybe, just maybe, this logic could have been justified to steer the country away from the abyss. But no rational person, no rational Republican (obviously we’re removing the MAGAs here) would accept that four more years of Biden policies would be catastrophic, or even disastrous (though they could certainly make a case for them being damaging). So there’s no argument for it being a deadly trade-off that had to be made. More fundamentally, it’s a bankrupt argument because what happens if the person you elect extends their corrupt character into how they behave in office? (A slide into corruption is a risk with any politician, but in this case these voters already knew Trump was corrupt — in business parlance, it was no longer a risk, it was an issue).
What if they become a monster, what if they come after you or your interests, and what if they change the law to prevent their removal from office? This is what happened to the German people in the 1930s. Yes, some lunatics would still have voted Nazi in 1932 if they knew the full horror of what was coming, but the majority would have wanted no part of it. The tragedy, of course, is that all the signs were there. Nine years earlier Hitler had tried to seize power in a coup (the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923). After its failure, he was convicted of treason and served a year in prison (during which time he wrote the fascist blockbuster, Mein Kampf). And yet nine years later the German people elected him and his party to power — they chose him via a legal democratic election; they chose him in the full knowledge that he was a convicted criminal who despised democracy. Sound familiar?
Now I’m not saying Trump is Hitler. There are many differences, for example, Hitler didn’t like golf. But a big part of our darkest lesson from history — recent history — has been ignored, forgotten or never learned in the first place. That is shocking and disturbing. And once this type of thinking gets normalised, once it gets a grip, it will open the door to people far worse than Donald Trump.
Merry Christmas.
Colton.
If you were disturbed by this article, why not make yourself a stiff drink and dive into the redemptive waters of the Miracle of Jesus and the Espresso Martini? 😃
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