Ink Tea Stone Leaf

When I first saw a screencap of the Truth Social post made by Donald Trump, in which he not only demeaned director Rob Reiner following the news that he and his wife had been brutally murdered, but claimed that Reiner’s vocal opposition to Trumpism was the root cause of his death, I didn’t think much of it. It’s not because I am numb to the old bastard’s hateful language or insane worldview. Rather, I try to make a point not to believe that anything I see in the form of a reposted screencap is necessarily real. That was healthy internet skepticism in the days when Photoshop was the worst we had to contend with by way of misinformation, and it’s all the more so now. People with too much time on their hands, and a slowly-expanding void in the region of their soul that formerly housed their belief that anything matters, get a chuckle out of making fake Trump posts that are superficially similar to real Trump posts. I’d sooner gouge out both eyes than get my own Truth Social account just to verify every bit of drivel that filters out of its boundaries, so I try not to get worked up about the posts themselves.

Of course, it was no more than a few hours before Trump’s post was not only being reported on in the mainstream media, but the man himself was publicly doubling down on its contents. That’s epistemologically satisfying enough for me: he really said that shit, or else he has chosen to take ownership of the words of the hollow-eyed dweeb who ghostwrites his social media, which is substantially the same thing.

I want to be clear, this is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. That post of his will not, or should not at any rate, make any historian’s list of the ten (or even one hundred) most evil, stupid, self-defeating, or asinine sins of Donald Trump’s public life. But it may be superlatively petty and delusional, which is why I rise once more to complain that not only have a critical mass of my fellow citizens chosen to allow somebody to desecrate the spirit of the American Dream, but that the person they’ve endorsed to wield limitless arbitrary power over us is such an emotionally stunted loser. Like, god damn.

For more than eight years, “pro-business” conservatives have gritted their teeth and pretended he isn’t like this because he keeps gutting regulations and cutting taxes, which are basically the only things they care about. Religious conservatives have brainwashed themselves into believing he isn’t like this because he performs hollow and thoroughly unconvincing public acts of piety and has devastated the civil rights of women, children, and minorities, which are basically the only things they care about. Finally, a mob of cruel, vindictive, and ignorant people with no real values except for base selfishness have celebrated the incontestable fact that he is exactly like this, because being like this is basically the only thing they care about.

The rest of Trump’s erstwhile voters know he is like this and would really prefer that he were not, and they wish that he would instead focus all the energy he currently puts into perpetrating grotesque vulgarities into solving all the problems he promised he would fix, like inflation and the runaway cost of living. They seem to think the corruption and  clownishness is distracting him from what he really wants to do, which is help people. These are the only Trump voters I feel sorry for, because one day they may actually feel shame for their role in enabling his long con. The potential is there, anyway.

So much of what Donald Trump has achieved boils down to getting just enough people to overlook the fact that he is mean and incompetent, racist and predatory, megalomaniacal and out of his goddamned mind. Writers can’t seem to help themselves in describing this feat as a kind of “brilliance” or “genius,” when the whole trick of it lies in being born wealthy, literally never admitting he is wrong about anything, and never apologizing when anybody gets hurt. That isn’t genius, it’s just being a rich asshole.

Writers also cannot seem to help themselves in absolving millions of people of the responsibility for voting for him, because of the desperation they felt living in an economy that is increasingly unequal and inadequate to their needs; voting for a fascist who promises easy solutions to difficult problems is a cry for help. That is to say that electing Donald Trump to our highest office for eight years of a twelve year span is somewhat analogous to a national suicide attempt.

Seriously, are we supposed to believe that it is a reasonable thing to think that a man who regularly writes things like this (in his capacity as head of state) is lying awake at night, thinking about how to help us?

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

—Donald Trump

Are we supposed to believe that it is reasonable to think that electing a person this profoundly screwed-up inside just might be the kick in the pants that America needs to be “great,” no matter how many of us he hurts, no matter how much of our public money he steals?

I don’t believe it, I never have, and if this country is ever even an ounce better than it was before Donald Trump decided to make feebly papering over his embarrassing insecurities the entire world’s problem, it will be in spite of the efforts of such short-sighted people to drag us all down with him.