"He was not honorable."

     

     It's not nearly enough to say that Donald Trump sleazed his way into the Oval Office using the politics of white grievance. That's a bald and bland bromide at this point that's not even worthy of debate. However, as with every bromide, there's a hidden underlying truth to Trump's enduring appeal.

     And for every right wing apostate who's turned on Trump since the Capitol riots on January 6th, there are still many hundreds of thousands who, for one reason or another, will never have their voices heard. Jake Angeli, the so-called Qanon shaman, is not among them.

     That's because, despite being ordered to remain in jail until his trial, he still commands enough media attention so that when it's reported he hasn't eaten in two weeks because he can't get organic food from the jail, the mainstream media breathlessly reports on it. That's because Angeli became the iconic face of the riot with his red, white and blue face paint, bare chest and Viking horns (even though the Vikings didn't actually wear horns). In virtually every picture taken of him that day, he has his mouth open wide in a bellow and looking like a male water buffalo whose nut sack didn't quite clear that barbed wire fence.

     Jake, unlike Marjorie Taylor-Greene, is contrite these days.

     Perhaps no one's yet told him that he will never, ever live down being the face of the deadliest and most serious attack on the Capitol since the British burned down Washington in 1814. But contrition, I suppose, is a start. It's still a bigger step than the diminutive congresswoman from GA-14 has made.

     Jake's apologized for his role in the attack and has turned on Donald Trump, twice. No doubt, Angeli would be belting out another tune with that big mouth of his if Trump had given him a pardon that had eluded every single rioter and rally attendee in the Capitol that day. But he didnt and now the shaman's got the sads.

     And his newfound contrition and remorse points to a deeper issue explaining in large part Trump's enduring appeal. And it's not just white grievance. There's a world of difference between actual, legitimate grief and partisan- and race-based grievance.

     Grief is the legitimate feeling over losing something or, in most cases, someone dear. Grievance is feeling you've lost something you've never attained or something your ancestors had gained then lost in times past. Grievance, especially in the right wing Caucasian community, is feeling robbed of something to which you were never entitled.

     And behind and beneath Angeli's alleged remorse is an undercurrent of grievance that he was misled by someone who is palpably and obviously a con man, someone who's been a charlatan for decades. In other words, to use Marjorie Taylor-Greene's own incredibly passive phrase, Angeli "was allowed to believe" in Trump's lies and those of his surrogates.

     Like the other bald-headed idiot in the picture above, Mayor Rudy. Rudy had gone from being a SDNY US Attorney who took on mob lawyers to being one himself, or rather, a parody of one in a black comedy about the mob. Giuliani is also one of the hype men who'd helped whip the crowd into a frenzy at the Ellipse on January 6th, telling the crowd they had to engage in "trial by combat."

     In case you didn't recognize him without the greasepaint and fake Viking horns, that's Angeli shaking hands with Giuliani recently, proving a tangible link between someone in Trump's inner circle and one of the deadly riot's major organizers.

     Let's get one thing clear- The only reason Angeli is even feigning contrition is because he got caught and is facing 28 years in prison for violating several federal laws. His boy left him out to dry and now he's finally coming to the conclusion that Trump is "not honorable". If light dawned on Marblehead, then Marblehead must be in the northern hemisphere where the light doesn't shine for 40 straight days.

     He's essentially blaming Trump for his failures, as with the smattering of Qanon apostates who are given spots on national TV to jut out their lower lips to express their own remorse for getting sucked into the Qanon phenomenon that's now metastasizing throughout the Republican Party like a Stage 4 cancer.

     This is at the heart of white grievance, or the fifth and final stage, if it comes at all- Contrition over not doing evil deeds but getting caught doing them. Up to a point, those of us in the reality-based community can understand their feeling of befuddlement. Since 2015, they were told by their boy to beat up protesters at his rallies and he'd pay their legal bills. He'd told the head of the CBP to break immigration laws and that, if he got caught, he'd pardon him.

     They seemed to have his full-throated support at the rally at the Ellipse, even promising to march beside them (in spirit, obviously). And then... it was if he forgot about them. Suddenly, he was a failed and disgraced general after a losing campaign who rode his jeep past the carnage, not even deigning to look at the dead and wounded who'd fought on his behalf.

     Hitler had risen to power in 1932 by telling the German people it was not their fault for losing WWI and the struggling Weimar Republic's economy was not their fault, either. Instead, Hitler created the Bogeyman in German Jews. They were the ones who conspired to make Germany lose the war, they were the ones who'd rigged the economy in favor of themselves. The German people responded by making him Chancellor, then a lower office beneath the presidency.

     They were told in Germany that they were not responsible for the ills plaguing their nation, a point resurrected 83 years later by one Donald John Trump, who time and again told White America that the problems facing America were the fault of the Mexicans and Muslims. White Republican voters were told nothing was ever their fault and that, even if they violated the law, he would protect them.

     Until he didn't, choosing to pardon, instead, his fellow white collar criminals and anti Democratic subversives.

     Now they're blaming Trump, a guy who's never once taken responsibility for a fuckup, and there were many, in his entire life.

     The irony is killing, is it not?