There are times at end of day puppy Henry grows unruly. He nips, gnaws, paws, won’t be reasoned or bartered with. Weary, Jane and I are watching a movie after dinner. Cut it out, we keep praying, it’s exhausting this restlessness, why can’t you just go to sleep!
Eventually we’ve had it. He’s wrecking our evening, making trouble. No, he’s not cute or fun, he’s a pain, and yes, we love him, but enough! I grab Henry and hug him hard – he’s getting strong but I still can. He wriggles, flails, grunts; relents, then resumes – he will not be straitjacketed – until finally he flops flaccid. He hates me this instant of surrender. Unexpectedly, I relax my grip. He looks up puzzled. No, he has not given up, he insists, but his little body demurs. Time to regroup, rethink! He is soon asleep.
Something like this happens to most of us from toddlerdom to totterdom. Overtired, we act up. Hopefully we’ve learned to rein our revolts but still they roil. Reason is overruled by the self-righteousness of rage: we’re sick and tired and won’t take it anymore! We may realize we’re a danger to others and ourselves but we can’t find our off button. Will somebody seize and squeeze us, please!
This is what’s happening to the Americans addicted to Trump’s ranting nihilism. Nothing they’re advocating makes a glimmer of sense. Tyranny, rather than democracy? Bad idea. Lies versus truth? Bad idea. Curtail civil liberties? Shred the social safety net? Cut taxes on gzillionaires? Go to war with Mexico? Slash environmental protections? Politicize law enforcement? Shut our borders? Support Putin against Ukraine? Each idea – if you can call them that – more noxious than the last. Harmful – not just to the American majority, but especially to Trump’s loyalists, whom the destruction of the economy, world peace, environment, and civil liberties will hurt worst. One group will benefit – initially – from the promised Trump dictatorship: the plutocrats funding him. They’ll make more money at ordinary folks’ expense – until the Golden Goose, cooked, quits laying its golden eggs.
Our Founders believed Americans would debate the wisest policies and, when we screwed up, self-correct. They did not foresee a nation of looney lemmings rushing to their demise. Tantrums, though, do not self-correct, only burn out.
Am I condescending to my fellow Americans, exhibiting a my-way-or-the-highway close-mindedness, which has been the MAGgots’ beef all along? Am I an elitist aghast at the MAGgots’ idiocy and inability to say one reasonable word in their defense?
You bet. I’ve been thinking and writing about humans and America for a lifetime and know what I know. Reason can eviscerate every MAGgot contention in a debate, only there will be no debate, no exchange of ideas, only insults, antics, lies, a. blizzard of bullshit. Confront a MAGgot with a discordant fact and what’s their defense? FAKE NEWS. HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP. HILLARY’S EMAILS.
Waste not a moment of the next ten months, friends, bewailing Trump’s stupidity. Stipulate it. Every word he utters is a lie and, if he happens to tell the truth, it’s only to froth his followers. Same holds, alas, for every Republican officeholder, for they’re all in this together, tolerating the intolerable to keep their jobs. Our efforts should be directed to defeating, not debating: persuading persuadables; energizing the disaffected; fighting fire with fire. We must win the war, not the argument, seize and squeeze these crazies till their tantrum subsides to sleep. We must remind patriots of all parties what’s at stake here, which is the dream of self-government, dreamed in America just two-hundred and forty-eight years ago.