The Infantilization of Trump's America

     

     One of the mainstays of consolation among liberal, indie and Never Trump conservative bloggers and journalists is that, after January 20 next year, we can finally stop writing about Donald Trump. We've been afflicted with this shambling homunculus for five and a half years now since the day he came down the escalator and labeled Mexicans as "rapists" and "criminals."

     By noontime on January 20th, Trump will be like an unplugged laptop: He'll still be on, but getting dimmer and dimmer until finally the battery runs out. Then we can stop paying attention to this failed fascist douchebag, right? Right?

     But we know we won't be able to stop writing about his latest antics, his latest outrage or his latest lawsuit in which he'll be the defendant. Letitia James is after him. Cy Vance, Jr. is after him. The SDNY is after him. And that's just in New York State. Four years after his so-called "election", he's lost his mojo. He's fat Vegas Elvis, still pulling in the parishioners but more as a cultural dinosaur, an ambulatory specimen of the fossil record. No one of any consequence or cognitive ability will care when Elvis finally leaves the building.

     We'll continue writing about him like we'll continue writing about the coronavirus long after we've flattened the curve for good under a pragmatic presidential administration that actually does care if people live or die and won't use even a problematic, untested vaccine as a political weapon.

     And we'll still have Trump's screaming hordes with which to contend, the red-capped residue left in his wake.

     These would be the Deplorables, the MAGAts, Trumpanzees or whatever name you wish to append to them. These psychopaths were always among us. They were originally vocal supporters of George W. Bush, the best friends neocons ever had. They were the ones who helped stop recounts, resorted to thuggery at polling places as self-appointed guardians of the electoral process.

     They became the Tea Baggers who screamed a decade later about "death panels" and succeeded in voting in a new class of cynical Republicans who'd cynically run under the Tea Party label and even formed its own Freedom Caucus in the House, which still exists to this day.

     But in Donald Trump 15 years later, they found their avatar of white nationalism, white grievance, a man affecting empathy for the white working class without that perennially clueless demographic ever once entertaining the notion that he was just another wouldbe politician with pretensions to populism when the end game was really all about exponentially expanding his power and fortune.

     With Trump, they were finally allowed to let their freak flags fly high and proud, snapping smartly in the wind. While George W. Bush somewhat restrained them by tamping down racism and Islamophobia (despite invading and endlessly occupying two Muslim nations without any connection to 9/11), with Donald Trump, they had a babysitter who simply didn't give a shit how badly they acted and acted out.

     Donald Trump got down on the carpet and kicked and screamed along with the rest of them and showed he was unto them. This is especially and painfully evident since the election was won by President-elect Joe Biden. Five years ago, their grievance supposedly became his and now his grievance has become theirs.

     It would be terrible enough if this was just a grassroots phenomenon but it isn't. The Washington Post recently surveyed all 249 Republicans in the House and asked them three questions. The top question was, "Do you think Joe Biden won the election?"

     A mere 27 Republicans, all anonymous, said they did. Two said no (Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks) and 220 ignored the questions. That's 88% of House Republicans who are denying Biden his due. Hardly a Republican in the upper chamber has also publicly admitted that Biden won, although that number goes up dramatically when they're allowed to speak privately and off the record.

     But there are still some true believers in Congress, including the usual suspects like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Louis Gohmert and the aforementioned Gosar and Brooks. Under the so-called leadership of professional sawhorse Mitch McConnell, Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail to keep from admitting that Biden won. In fact, just today, the previously little-known JCCIC, or the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies that was created by the 20th Amendment 120 years ago, decided to abrogate its constitutionally-mandated duty to pave the way for President-elect Biden's inauguration even as they're building the stage right outside Trump's bedroom window.

     The Committee is made up of six members, three Democrats, three Republicans, and, in a typical party line split, 3-3, the three GOP members, Roy Blunt, Kevin McCarthy and (you guessed it) Mitch McConnell decided to reject the resolution, essentially denying that Biden won the presidential election. In the spirit of true right wing audacity, Roy Blunt tweeted on the JCCIC's official Twitter account, 

     "Now, nearly 120 years since Congress formed the first Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, it has been our charge, really our bond, in a nonpartisan way to host what is really this iconic symbol of democracy. People watch all over the world."

     ...just moments before they denied the palpably obvious results of an election with an identical Electoral College outcome as 2016 (which Trump called "a landslide"), neglected their constitutionally mandated duty and were most certainly not nonpartisan. The JCCIC is generally formed every four years and is a committee that's little more than a formality, a tradition, like the House certifying the results of the 538 electors' votes after a presidential election. The only true thing Blunt said in that tweet is that, yes, the world is watching. And it's not impressed.

     This kind of childishness has a method to its madness. They fear not Trump, whom they privately admit won't be in power after January 20th. They fear the most radical, most extreme elements of his base. But that base is the one that grabs all the headlines when they fire guns into crowds, interrupt coronavirus press conferences, run their cars into counter protesters and plot to murder state governors. We're talking about a fringe minority of so-called grown adults who, thanks to the mainstream media, tend to suck all the oxygen out of a sound stage and become the news, giving Republican lawmakers, and the American people, the illusion that this is a more massive consensus than it truly is.

     We'll never know the exact number of such people, of course, but consider they get diluted across all 50 states. Given effective enough gerrymandering, they can sway a House seat once in a while. But if the presidential election and Democrats picking up at least one seat in the Senate is any indication, their numbers aren't effective enough to change a whole hell of a lot of anything (as long as Democrats maintain if not elevate their 2020 level of electoral engagement). Republicans fear a phantom menace that really is no more menacing than dead people or illegal aliens voting.

     But these infantile Trump supporters, starting with certain members of Congress, think if they file enough lawsuits and scream loudly enough, they'll succeed in overturning the results of an election that became obvious to sane, rational adults on November 7, when Pennsylvania was called for native son Joe Biden, pushing him to 279 electoral votes and into the White House.

     But as long as the media keep giving the limelight to the lunatic fringe who mass at state houses and embarrass themselves on TV, Republicans and many Americans at large are going to continue believing that all 74,000,000+ who voted for Trump, to a man, are going to slice their throat when they're not looking and are just standing back and standing by, quivering for the attack command to come from their lame duck leader.