Adam Serwer, writing about Trump in 2018, came up with an excellent explainer of Trump and MAGA (and all fascist regimes, actually) “the cruelty is the point.” It is, indeed. Public cruelty to cow people and make those who love sadism thrill to the in-your-fucking-face-asshole aspect of the cruelty is exactly the point. Think of the disgusting excesses of ICE, Trump’s masked gestapo, and how, somehow, no laws apply to them anywhere in the United States because they have jurisdiction over immigration and customs. An immigrant who shows up for his immigration hearing and gets grabbed and sent to Sudan? BINGO — cruel! Consider the recent FBI raid on John Bolton’s home in Bethesda, Md. The FBI closed the street he lives on at 7 a.m., sent in a dozen vans with sirens blaring and lights flashing, not because Bolton posed any threat to anyone (though he is one of the most despicable neo-con assholes of the last 30 years) but to make a very public spectacle of humiliating this Trump critic in a naked act of revenge using the full power of the state.
So, absolutely, the politics of cruelty is an essential feature of Trumpism/fascism, got to try to keep everyone scared into compliance. What strikes me over and over in the Age of Trump is the incoherence of the relentless conman and his administration, and the MAGA insistence that incoherence, from the mouths of their leaders, is just as valid as the most well-reasoned, evidence-based arguments. Trump is the same as Hitler in this regard, or Stalin, or Putin, or any other boldly incoherence-spouting thug that has attained that level of power. Of course Ukraine started the war with Russia, it’s vicious insistence on its right to exist as an independent nation is an eternal provocation that must be redressed with overwhelming violence! What choice did Putin have?
As destructive, or more destructive, than the cruelty: The Incoherence is the Point. Destroy the possibility of truth and any dialogue not based entirely on lying, outrageous, hyper-partisan talking points. The incidence of voter fraud in all elections since 1982? Vanishingly small, statistically insignificant, something like 0.0001% of all votes cast — nonetheless, voter fraud is, according to MAGA, and amplified on ‘both sides’ corporate media (not to mention on Fair and Balanced FOX), the gravest threat to democracy our threatened nation of American carnage has ever faced. Tax money invested in renewable energy? Waste, fraud and abuse, based on a liberal hoax spread by climate alarmists, people who irrationally hate fossil fuel!
Vaccines kill, they don’t save anybody from anything. Food and medicine for starving children outside the USA, waiting in warehouses as Congress appropriated the funds for their distribution long ago? Let it rot, it’s all waste, fraud and abuse, 103 dying per hour worldwide is fine, it’s not happening here, those are shithole countries. Making voting too easy for everybody kills democracy. The party in power may do whatever it likes to retain power and disenfranchise political opponents, that is the will of the plurality that gave them their overwhelming mandate to rule. Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell totally exonerates “gentleman” Trump of allegations of sex with minors! She said so herself, in exchange for transfer to a nicer prison, fair is fair! There are countless examples of childish senselessness every day from Trump and his lackeys.
Here’s a beautiful illustration. What kind of demented idiot wears a hat, referring to himself in the third person, announcing that he was right about everything? You guessed it.
You can see the thought bubble over his sleepy looking face.
“He was right to take the classified documents and lie about having them, he made a shit ton of money selling them and got away with it, so no crime. He was right to foment a riot to try to stay in power, after the fake elector plot was foiled by a traitor vice president, because everybody around him was a coward and a liar who pretended the election wasn’t stolen. History proved him right, and all the so-called convicted rioters were totally vindicated of ‘wrongdoing’ with pardons on day one. Fraudulent use of charitable donations? Impossible, the money was given to him, to him! And by ‘he’, of course, I mean me. Always me, a person who is and was and will be always right, about everything, obviously!”
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