Our World Post Trump

Let’s make a few assumptions:

• A few months from now, the pandemic is under control.

• In November, Trump is replaced by a garden-variety centrist neoliberal like Biden, whose administration restores America to the standard cruel capitalism and social injustice of the past, where no one really cares about human suffering, but at least we’re not going out of our way to generate it at lightening speed, and spouting out 12 – 13 bald-faces lies a day about the crimes against humanity we’re committing.

• There are no more acute catastrophes like the current one, e.g., no nuclear wars, and that humankind goes back to robo-consumerism, waiting for catastrophic climate change to ruin this planet in a 50 – 75 year time frame.

OK, let’s say this is exactly what happens.  What I will never understand is how Trump pulled this off.  Look at the meme here, and try to explain why 60 million Americans idolize this man, a hokey conman in a third-rate turn-of-the 20th-Century carnival.

The lies are horrible, but worse is the subtext they carry with them:

I have nothing but contempt for you stupid effing people.  I told you that I had a plan to wipe out ISIS, eliminate the national debt, restore coal miners’ jobs, replace Obamacare with something better, keep American jobs from going overseas, grow the domestic economy at 4%/year, implement a revenue neutral $1 trillion infrastructure plan, make Mexico pay for the wall, keep our air and water clean, “drain the swamp” of while collar criminals, force the Chinese to make a better deal with us on trade, improve the level of respect that the rest of the world views the U.S., and that’s just for starters.  Not one goddamn thing happened in any of those arenas.  Not one.

Now I’m lying to your moron faces every single day about the coronavirus, and you idiots still believe every word I say.  I am ruining this country.  I’ve robbed you blind, and now I’m killing you.  And you know what?  You deserve every bit of the pain and suffering I’m inflicting on you, because you are complete imbeciles.

Even if you figure this out, which you won’t, I’ve made sure you’re powerless to do anything about it.  There is no more rule of law left in this country than there is fairy dust.  You think the Supreme Court is going to bring me to justice?  What a pathetic joke.  How’d you like John Roberts’ performance at the Senate impeachment “trial?” A junior high school president of his student council could have hurt me worse. 

No, I’ll never get over this, and neither should you.