A most obscene act opened the floodgates: the re-election of a corrupt, criminal president keen for oligarchic autocracy. The widespread misery is predictable, and so is the open nosedive in MAGA loyalty.
Fact: how obtuse is any president, phony populist or not, who directly eviscerates his own base support, plunging from 50% when elected to endorsement a year later as low as 35%? And still falling, month after month after month. That means two-thirds of US voters reject and rebuke Trumpism 2.0! Plus, 30% of MAGA (15%/50%) concede their unwarranted blunders, taken in by what Cong. Raskin calls a “one man crime wave.” If shocked, these voters either never learned or willfully ignored how few structural or institutional stop signs impede an immoral, power-mad bully in full, self-serving destruction mode. For sure, MAGA has formidable enemies: law, legality and the majority.
In effect, 23 million real-life voters (of the 77.3 Trump 2024 totals) urgently want a do-over, distressed by consequences opposite all expectations. Hell, that number equals everyone in Pennsylvania and Georgia (fifth and eighth largest states). And when Trump’s approvals descend another half dozen points? In an era punished by radical, negative changes, some folks may start calling for a new election next year, the Constitution aside. What rules still count?
That makes the 2024 election a singular, doubly obscene, historic event – and exposed in record-breaking time. What makes Trump 2.0 “exceptionally” indecent is not only the staggering damage wrought, but that so many Trumpers have been shaken from deep sleep, now in opposition to their own abusive government. America First is now America Last. A third shocker is that not even disintegrating support impedes the fierce barrage of criminality and corruption, spearheaded by an abusive DOJ, the ICE gestapo and military invasions in “enemy” urban centers.
Now we know the knaves – and obedient fools
So, were misled masses just snookered, stupidly under-informed, off their rocker or hypnotized by violence to support a president now shamelessly betraying their short and long-term best interests? Who in their right mind rushes to install oligarchic excesses that batter what’s left of democracy? From early 2025, with unshakeable descent, abysmal numbers are no flash in the pan. Without even surface reforms, plus the Epstein cover-up, today’s backlash only expands.
For the record, I am not perplexed that Donald Trump was first elected to the presidency. He ran against a compromised, distrusted, hawkish Democrat and his “non-politician,” outsider upset channelled great dissatisfaction with the status quo, out of touch Dems, and a woman candidate with more baggage than ten 747’s. What I find staggering, even befuddling, is how a disgraced president, with indefensible Covid mayhem, capped by a violent, lawless, failed coup, still fooled enough of the people enough of the time. If Trump got elected, having no public record to assail, how did he then bury the most reliable predictor for the future: four years of failure, then sedition, then convictions?
How could nearly 50%, however mad at Biden and Dems, indulge in the impossible fiction that rewarding a dictatorial, unintelligent malignant narcissistic was a grand idea? How could aggrieved millions ignore the openly evil scheme, Project 2025, was absolutely the Trump 2.0 blueprint? What better guarantee that the second term would be worse, much worst, than the death-defying term one? Here was a spurned president, a multiply-convicted felon, racially hostile to melting pot diversity, instigating our only WH election coup, then forever promising he’d be “dictator on day one.” By what good sense or logic did 77 million voters think “what a fine president this insurrectionist would be”?
Was the choice that hard?
Did the most backward on now gratuitous civil, moral and legal rights not get their champion? Did the rightwing, white supremacist, gun-toting, Bible-belting contingency not run the table, adding Congress to their Supreme Court control? I accept Trump 1.0 as a rash, understandable experiment that fell flat on its face. But not that the learning curve for voters, flush with hard evidence, matched the predatory negative learning curve of MAGA Trump – empowered by its “mandate” to try every authoritarian, oligarchic trick to centralize power in the few – and the many be damned.
We’re not just dealing with the short attention span of the public (except oddly on Epstein). We’re talking about a propaganda brain worm blitz that negated four Orwellian years where failure was declared success, lawlessness legitimacy, and violent, racist cruelty good public policy. Did crossover ‘24 Trumpers just banish Trump’s serial Covid catastrophes? Or the endless, slanderous, bad faith defamations? Or criminal intimidations? Or repeated perversity on decent taxation rates shifted not at all in six years: giveaways for rich, corporate donors and crumbs for small-fry. How amazing that MAGA Trump, telegraphing its every move, pulled off the same indecent tax steal twice in a row!
Handwriting all over the wall
So, okay, the 2024 obscenity did not happen by chance or to voters without access to clear political outcomes: they utterly ignored Einstein’s warning about insanity – repeating the same trials while expecting different results. The key voter failure was to write off the endless MAGA Trump lies, as if unimportant, WHILE blunting the actual truths his campaign boasted – that unbridled Trump 2.0 would execute all the bad stuff undone in 1.0. That Trump is the same character, with the same crazed delusions of grandeur and power, is no revelation to anyone alert and sane. But even I didn’t expect such irrational, cult gullibility to reappear as if time and evidence were irrelevant, even contrary to picking top leaders.
So, was the instant DOGE massacre, let alone its magnitude, unheralded? What informed citizen did not anticipate a full MAGA Trump take-down of “deep state” federalism, or kicking off ICE detentions and deportations? Even invading northern cities? As this reign of terror, plus more, was predictable, so is the dramatic, boomeranging public horror equally predictable. What polling ever supported ICE abuses that mock legal and Constitutional rights? Or US soldiers barraging liberal cities falsely impugned as crime-ridden? Or inexplicable saber-rattling against Canada, Greenland, Panama, Nigeria or Venezuela? Even a hand-picked, black, liberal woman from California would have routed any bully who openly campaigned on Trump’s current, scorched-earth agenda.
Making America poorer
On economics, Trump has for decades been an infamous ignoramus, convinced indiscriminate, super-high tariffs would deliver: 1) lower domestic prices (when paid by consumers?); 2) spur domestic industry growth (when massive disruptions negate corporate decision-making/spending?); 3) all without devastating irreplaceable trade alliances on which our prosperity depends (supply chains, rare earth, basic metals?). When have scattergun tariffs ever produced prosperity, as top experts and history show?
Notably, as with other abuses, manifest failures have not deterred more trade blundering and manipulations, alienating nearly all of the globe. Who trusts any country electing an unqualified bozo (senile or not) on trade, agreements, disrupted alliances or complex military conflicts? Item: zero progress in Gaza or Ukraine, indeed the inhumanity continues, likely worsened by Trump. Further, bullying Canada or Denmark (despite enormous backlash) added to counterproductive calamities. How is America (even some of the 1%) not worse off?
Only millions of mesmerized, reality-deniers would blot out that Trump 2.0, unfettered by first term guardrails, would ghoulishly blast away whatever (legal, moral, Constitutional) obstacles that blocked the concentration of autocratic power. Historians won’t easily explain how the most unqualified candidate ever, upping appalling behavior between 2020 and 2024, won the nomination, let alone the WH.
The hypnotic spell over deluded centrists, especially minority young men who confused make-believe strength with genuine, positive strength, will go down as the greatest electoral scam in our history. And worst of all: where’s the structural deterrence now that can even minimize damage before 2026 and 2028. Relying on suspect courts to offset a juggernaut of unAmerican abuses is not my idea of a safe bet. Maybe something changes if MAGA faces 70%+ opposition. Maybe.
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