Looking away is not an option

The American people are fickle, and soon the majority will bear the economic, security and moral consequences of their vote. There are two long years before the first referendum on MAGA rule. Trump will enter the presidency as a political colossus, an angry, vengeful Caesar, who will tear down America’s institutions that were imagined by FDR, created by Truman and Marshall, and protected from Eisenhower through Obama without interruption.

A propaganda machine that depicted the most powerful nation in world history as a rotten hellscape, immoral, corrupt, failing and occupied by an “enemy within” prevailed because it is stronger, more powerful and better funded than anything that exists in opposition, but this is nothing new. The wave that has been building for 30 years hit the shore, and it will travel far inland before it recedes. When it does, things will be very different in America.

Let’s be clear about something. Biden and Harris lost. They are not part of what happens next, but all of us are. What the American people have chosen was chillingly previewed by the X post of a recently empowered man-child who has never worked an hour in his life, never succeeded at anything, whose life is a tabloid joke, and is as ignorant about the world as a person could conceivably be. Here is what he shared on Instagram, originally posted by Sarah Palin, directed at the Ukrainian head of state in the third year of a war, started by Russian aggression, that has killed or wounded almost one million people:

America’s 46-year-old dime-store Uday was elected by no one, not even Kimberly Guilfoyle, but his father indulges his children, apparently in order of their nitwittery.

Jesse Watters of Fox News functioned as Bill O’Reilly’s trained monkey for many years before the tide of $40,000,000.00 in sexual harassment settlements and the rise and fall of Tucker Carlson. They left an audience idiotized enough for a man who combines the qualities of a jerk-off with the dignity of an asshole to produce a program that would be sinister if it could be seen through the blinding light of its bottomless stupidity. Watters thinks it will be “hysterical” to rip people from their homes:

He seems euphoric imagining the cruelty to come.

Speaking of that, Tom Homan, whose name while not yet well known, will be one day carved in the hard granite of American ignominy. The former ICE director crafted and then oversaw Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy, resulting in almost 2,000 children being separated from their families. He will become Trump’s “border czar,” and has at least presented that what is coming will be humane. Pretend for a second that it could be. Would Watters be disappointed?

What exactly is it that Watters imagines is going to happen? What does he see when he pictures what is to come? Why does the suffering of others make a rich, famous, powerful person happy?

Cruelty has always been a feature of MAGA. MAGA has not been shy regarding its declarations that might makes right, the strong inherit the Earth, and the rich have a right to rule over their lessers — so long as they are obedient to Donald Trump.

Here is Donald Trump’s leading candidate for attorney general, Mike Davis, appearing on a right-wing podcast, The Benny Show. He can’t wait to put kids in cages:

I will rain hell on Washington D.C. have five lists ready to go and they’re growing. List number one—we’re gonna fire. We’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch of the deep state. Number two—we’re gonna indict. We’re gonna indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumball sleazeball Biden, except for the 5-year-old granddaughter who they refused to acknowledge for five years until political pressure got to Joe Biden.

Donald Trump is going to create the most extreme and servile administration in history. It will be utterly lawless. It is going to smash every institution, collective security agreement and scientific agency it can.

The first year of the Trump presidency will seed the catastrophe to come. At first the people will cheer, but then it will start to slip away day by day by day. Trump will be undone by his own overreach, arrogance and insecurities. Democrats don’t have to do much but antagonize him, by referring to Elon and JD as co-presidents. Musk and Vance will destabilize the administration, and bring it to its tip-over point at a rapid pace.

Trump has the ball, and it’s of the wrecking variety. He intends to use it. The American people want to watch their government burn, and the fire is going to be a big one. At some point, they will want to put it out, but by then the inferno will be raging.

It is not the job of the Democratic Party to put out the fire. Only the American people can do that. The Democratic Party’s job is to stand for something better, and be ready to receive the support of millions of Americans who will come back home when trust is restored.

There are better days ahead, but there are going to be many shocking ones before we get there. The consequences of this election are going to be very real and very awful. Looking away is not an option because Trump is every bit the threat I have said that he is.

Donald Trump is writing our future. It’s what we chose as a country.

What a shameful act.

The price will be immense.

---

---