MAGA the destroyer in full demolition mode, misreading ‘success’ not as bridges built but bridges smashed 

Trump is now like the lone gunslinger, thinking his aim perfect enough to win by emptying six-guns in the first two minutes.

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MAGA Trump worships the juvenile, anti-historical craving for immediate, high level deconstruction, deluded that any future prospects must improve things. 

Irate toddlers, including a toddler president, have moments where they insist their willfulness be front and center, penalty downsides be damned. The recent, and blunt force takeover sh-tfits, do not bespeak self-confidence but a gambler’s high risk gambit, trying to cover all bets to pander to his hardcore base. What Trump stands for is politics as a scatter-gun blast against what he and his cult can’t stand. That explains the abysmal ratio of MAGA positive outcomes to negatives. Trump is now like the lone gunslinger, thinking his aim perfect enough to win by emptying six-guns in the first two minutes.

That turns the MAGA war cry into serial, maniacal No’s, whether towards “unpopular” judicial or legal decisions, tested expertise, scientific certainty, prudent pandemic management, legitimate elections, majority rule, expanded voting rolls, procreative freedom, diversity in culture, research or hiring, “dangerous” books or ideas, fair taxation, free trade, clean air and water regulation, and of course climate change, trivialized as a hoax. The first and last MAGA word is No, the sole, doomed default to manage wildly complex systems.

Big negative outbursts work fine during campaigns or protest schemes where the game is “exposing” problems. Thus MAGA so far is addicted to judgmental slams, righteous contempt, bad-mouthing and name-calling, plus demonizing slandered enemies—signs for me not of strength but unhinged grievance. Trump employs shock and awe to execute his slash and burn firestorm not to seed improvements but feast on victimization and revenge. Thus, the fantasy hemorrhaging “America sucks,” with blame unfairly dumped on targeted government policies and “enemy” officials. Most Trumpers revere simplistic “solutions”—and what’s more simple-minded than demanding an absolute power base with unlimited power? Really, come the MAGA murmurings, “how else does anything get done in a corrupt, fallen, terrifying world?”

That a convicted, criminal wheeler-dealer ends up as an overweening destroyer, at last acting out a lifetime of resentment, explains his pugnacious reliance on his singular tool: an epic Demolition Excavator. Trumpism is a wrecking ball who only sees what others have built as corrupt fire traps that incite the MAGA demolition derby. His latest stunt, with no small irony, is captured in Groucho Marx’self-satirizing song from the 1932 movie, Horse Feathers, entitled “Whatever it is I’m against it.” 

I don’t know what they have to sayIt makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I’m against it.

Marx was ridiculing know-nothing, knee-jerk cynicism that rejects all proposals out of hand. Don’t avid narcissists always “know better” (and/or are slaves to self-serving scriptures)? This reactionary   negativism invalidates whatever “they have to say,” “no matter what it is”—because robotic rejections defy even attempting legitimate reforms. Better, per prospects of change, to protect one’s insular  comfort zone.  That’s why MAGA Trumpism is so short of positive agendas, destruction being so much easier than construction, let alone recognizing the down-trodden among us. As religious fundamentalists chime in, “we all end up in heaven or hell, directly predestined by an omniscient, all-powerful divinity.” Imagine that backward cave man whose buddy just figured out the wheel, the bow and arrow or how to make a fire, intoning, “Whatever it is, I’m against it.”

The tantrum of glorifying NO!

Nothing better captures the onslaught of MAGA Trumpism, pretty much temper tantrums that loudly scream, “I don’t like what (I am told) pains me, and I want it smash it, whatever it is.” Legendary psychologist Erik Erikson identified the second stage of human development when toddlers are conflicted with control issues related, excretion-wise, to basic bodily functions. Remember infantile fascinations with dirt, certainly excrement, perplexed that the most physical human “output” (aside from sweat, spit, muscles or enlarged girths) exudes from insistent lower parts. Lowly spiders spin silky webs, sea otters remarkable fur, moose grow huge horns, birds magical wings, and “primitive”reptiles manufacture complex poisons. Plants are miraculous factories that turn carbon dioxide into life-affirming oxygen. And what do people in the main “produce:” “dirty” poop from clean, digestible food.

Trump acts like a control freak on steroids because he demands maximum control in all situations (and we are beyond caring why). Since unprincipled authoritarians are sure they know-all, they try whatever it takes to gain mastery, namely dominating both foes and enablers. Morality or justice, be damned. When the control freak is also not the brightest bulb who refuses to learn from experience, thus replicating blunders,  compound failures are inevitable. The delusion that one over-the-hill, close-minded, badly-educated (white, straight) fat cat (by inheritance and scheming) can successfully rule the U.S. is broadcasted by today’s MAGA Blitz. In the history of the world, this corrosive form of magic thinking—that one special “genius” can “fix everything”—stands among the most destructive, vainglorious sins anywhere.

‘Dictator for a day’ makes a knave into a fool—and vice versa

What separates Trump is not his personal deviance, whatever the hustler’s total confidence that believing his own B.S. is the road to fame and fortune. No, this Pied Piper has found millions of others backing his wobbly self-delusion: that throwing a tantrum will in the end get MAGA voters what they think they want. The emperor not only has no clothes (for governance) but the blindness to perceive that 1) clothes are important (unless he says so); 2) he is naked (inviting non-stop denials); and 3) no one else is privileged to tell him anything—and above all ever doubt, let alone correct his deviance (even when upping his standing). 

That’s how absurd is the delusion behind declaring himself dictator for a day, knowing that absolute power decides how long it rules. The glaring contradiction of “dictator for a day” is at the center of MAGA Trumpism—furthered by the even more dangerous, history-busting belief that anyone can over time pull off a “benevolent dictatorship.” The sustained success rate is appalling. Dictatorship by definition focuses on self-aggrandizement, domination and rather unpopular, abusive fates for resistant”freedom fighters.” 

Turns out, too many earthlings are just too persnickety to accept being told what to do with their lives, especially when commands are unfair, arbitrary, offensive or impossible to pull off. In the end, the blessedelectorate who once embraced democracy, if not individualism as the highest values, is no easier to corral than feral cats. Plus, intact, functional institutions resist yahoos coming at them with chainsaws. That is the ultimate fool’s errand and the fool in the end gets tarred and feathered, even scarified by new leaders, common folks and historians who survive the mayhem. 

Join Action Network and stop MAGA Extremists from Shutting Down the Government.

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