The losers of the Trump era want their power back
CNN’s Jim Acosta is calling it a slow-motion coup. “Some 14 states have enacted 22 laws to make it harder to vote after Trump lost,” Acosta explains. “More than 100 scholars said it best this week. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.”
Meanwhile that screeching, months-long cacophony of disbelief you’re hearing is called the whine of cognitive dissonance. Republicans cannot reconcile their vision of the future, a succession of administrations where every president is named Trump and every Congress is Republican, with this jolting reality. Congress is Democratic. The President is a Democrat. Real progress is actually being made, and made at light speed.
Trump’s defeats include (but are not limited to) his failure to build a wall, his failure to make Mexico pay for what little wall was built, his failure to destroy Isis, his failure to reduce the deficit, his failure to reveal his taxes, his appalling estrangement with America’s allies, his cozying up to loathsome dictators, his traitorous remarks at Helsinki where he betrayed America’s security services for Vladimir Putin, his racist comments about Charlottesville, his immature and pitiful redrawing of a hurricane map to “prove” he was “right” after all, his pathetic and murderous handling of a deadly pandemic, his tone deaf response to the murder of George Floyd, his staggering laziness, his time-wasting and dangerous and disloyal hate-tweets, his golf games without number, his partisan-to-the-point-of-criminal maltreatment of blue states, his anti-woman, racist policies, his raping past. Trump is the most loathsome human being to ever defile the sacred People’s House.
And he lost. This twice-impeached bastard lost the House, lost the Senate, lost much of his base and lost the election. He lost by more than 7 million votes this time just as he lost by almost three million votes last time. He is a loser. He lost Facebook, lost Twitter, lost his blog. He lost. And people who continue to fall down and worship him are losers — just like he is.
But Mr. Acosta is right. We are not out of danger. We cannot let down our guard. The party of Trump wants their power back, and they are cheating to get it back by trying to make it harder for people of color and people in large population centers to vote. They are cheating by spreading lies about the 2020 election. Most of the people in power, the Republican Senators and Republican members of Congress, know with certainty that Trump legitimately lost the 2020 election. But they continue to promote the lie that he won it because they serve their lord and master and Trump, and they know that members of Trump’s base are stupid, too stupid to know an obvious lie when they hear it.
Meanwhile a much reduced, physically flagging Trump is back giving his speeches of lies, hate, stochastic-terrorism and bile. He is loathsome and they love him for it because they are loathsome as well. They expect to take the country back in the next three years. Let’s further disappoint them and continue to show them what they are and what they always will be: losers. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.