I’ve written about my friend, The Republican, before. He’s the one who, despite a lifelong loyalty to the GOP and a firm believer in “free markets,” etc. has refused thus far to vote for Donald Trump. Three times, in fact, he’s eschewed The Emperor.
If I recall correctly, he abstained from choosing between Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016. I don’t remember if he voted for Joe Biden in ’20 but he did, indeed, vote for the Dem candidate in ’24.
This is a fellow who reads things like the Austrian economist F.A. Hayek’s books and has urged me to follow suit. In fact, I bought Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom a few years ago. I couldn’t get past the second page. Hayek believes, as I understand it, that giving a helping hand to the less fortunate leads inexorably to Stalin and Hitler. Okay, that’s a totally simplistic way of putting it but, honestly, I’m not at all interested in delving further into it.
If there is a hell and I’m sent there, I’m sure I’ll be forced to listen to lectures by economists for the rest of eternity.
Anyway, this staunch conservative has been spouting off about The Emperor’s madnesses since he was elected again in November. He was no softer on 45/47 back in 2015 through 2021. His erstwhile party-mates were and are aghast. They’re roasting him.
The Republican expressed repulsion — as any sentient being would — in the wake of that fiasco in the Oval Office Friday, the one where The Emperor and his Squealer dog-piled on the Ukriane leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. Those still loyal to the Mar-a-Lago Macaque have called The Republican every name in the book for his apostasy over the years but now, I guess, he’s gone too far. They’ve finally pulled out the L-bomb for use against him this time.
Hail to the Chief.
The Republican, many of his ex-brethren and sistern are shrieking, is a Liberal! And that’s the worst thing you can call someone, several notches below child molester.The Libs, one says, are too worried about starving children. “They ain’t worth a dime to this country,” the guy says. I assume he means the Libs. Either that or starving children.
A number of huffers-and-puffers have told The Republican that what The Emperor and his Squealer did Friday was, at last, stand up for this country. We’ve been a doormat for far too long! they say. We’re sick of everybody walking all over us!
Now, they’re talking about the United States of America, the richest, most powerful empire in the history of the world. We and our corporations control the world economy. Our military reaches around the globe. We possess enough nukes to incinerate all the major cities of Russia and China and, if we’re still in a cranky mood, those in Iran and North Korea as well.
Doormat?
They can’t possibly be talking about the United States of America. They’re talking about themselves.
They feel like doormats. They’re sick of struggling. They’re sick of being dissed and abused by health insurance companies and Big Pharma. Every time they visit the gas station or the grocery store, they feel incrementally diminished. It all adds up until, finally, one man says, I’m with you!
The fact that they believe him when he says that is a topic for another conversation. I know, I know, it’s crazy. A big mouthed New Yorker who was set up in business with a half-billion-dollar starting stake from his old man, a bragging, cheating, reneging, pussy-grabbing, philandering, bronzer-daubing pal of Jeffrey Epstein — precisely of the ilk you’d expect most MAGA-ists to despise — has become their savior of the nation, their ideal of manliness. their very own gift from god.
Ignore the fact, for the moment, that their embrace of him is as whack as saying…, well, Ukraine started the war. The only thing that counts is they buy it.
The Emperor speaks in their language. He gives voice to their fears and loathings. He’s their Hercules — they know because he’s told them so.
And when he and his Squealer lashed out against Zelensky — a transparent set-up if their ever was one and further proof that 45/47’s genius is he understands that all politics is theater — he (and Squealer) spoke the words, expressed the feelings, that they feel every goddamned day.
It didn’t matter whom he spoke them to. Just that he spoke them. MAGA people, indeed, are sick of everybody walking all over them.
We all are.