Saturday, June 16, 2018

When You're A Con, You're A Con All The Way

I don't know how many Trump supporters read this blog. If they do, after everything I've said, they're probably really nice people. And I know there are really nice people who support Trump. Those are the people I'd like a word with. I won't yell, I promise.

I know you're out there. You voted for him, but if we ask you what you think of his behavior or demeanor, you cringe. You wish he weren't quite so crude; you wish a lot of things were different about him, but you believe with all your heart that he is on your side, and if everyone just gave him a chance, he'd make a big difference in your lives. He's a tough-talker, he's rich, he must know what he's doing. So if some of us worry about his careless and bellicose approach to the world, well? Maybe he'll shake things up by forgoing diplomacy. Maybe diplomacy is for losers. Maybe the guy with the tough talk will win it all for us. And if nation after nation loses respect for us, well, maybe they're the ones that are wrong, and we're better off on our own, and it just goes to show how special we are. And maybe all politicians are alike. They all make mistakes and say stupid things, so we should give this one a pass.

But he's shown us who he is all along. The man who mocked the disabled reporter, the man who put a photo of his wife next to Ted Cruz's plainer wife and considered it a campaign poster, the man who boasted about his dick during a televised debate, the man who demeaned his opponent Carly Fiorina by saying "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?"--the man who, for God's sake, took the basest, most overtly racist lies about Obama and threw fuel on them, for years, for years, knowing they're not true, the man who uses coy innuendo to plant lies, smear opponents, and inflame mobs, that is who he is. And yet so many of you hope he will somehow come through for you that you keep quiet, and wince a little, and even pretend that you don't hear Nazis and white supremacists chanting his name--because that doesn't have anything to do with you, does it? They've got the right. It's a free country.

I don't know. Maybe your only news source is the one manufacturing "news" straight out of a think tank funded by billionaires for their own purposes. Maybe you buy into the bullshit memes the Macedonians and Russians have been putting out. Maybe you help them go viral because they confirm what you already believe. Maybe you believe everything you hear.

Maybe you believe Trump was the only one who cared about you. Maybe you think that other party, the one that tried to get you affordable health care and equal pay and protect your water and air, was filled with snobs who thought they were better than you. Maybe you think this guy'll bring your job back, or bring your medical premiums down, or stop all the brown people he's instructed you to hate from coming into the country. But he won't.  

He has no idea what to do about health care other than tear down the previous compromise with nothing to replace it. When it doesn't work, he'll blame the Democrats for obstructing him, because that always worked before. You bought it before.

Here's what he has done. He's given you a tiny temporary tax cut and cut billions of tax dollars on corporations and the rich permanently. In a country with the most powerful military in the world that can't even provide clean water for its citizens and insists on a $7.25 minimum wage, he's put 700 billion dollars into the military. He's ripped up environmental safeguards that were already inadequate so that fossil fuel corporations and their shareholders can keep racking up profits, while hoping you all are still watching the actors on the "news" channel who are being paid to tell you climate change science is controversial. When we must be going all in on innovation in new energy and a sustainable future--one might say any future at all--he's barreling straight into the past on the fastest coal train he can find.

You're being played. He doesn't care about you. He just wants your vote. He'll tell you migrant workers and asylum seekers and Muslims and black men kneeling are your enemies, because he knows people with enemies can be talked into anything, and then he'll promise to protect you, to get your vote. He'll pretend he gives a damn about abortion to get your vote. He'll tell you four conflicting things about gun control so that you can pick the one you like and choose to believe that's the one he believes, too. And get your vote.

He'll make sure the violent MS-13 gang, which has operated on both sides of the border and internationally since the 1980s, remains on the front page, because he wants you to associate the gang with brown people, so he can sell you a big, beautiful, useless, 18-billion-dollar wall, while our own infrastructure is crumbling. And he wants you to worry about that gang every day, so you won't notice his own gang is dismantling the middle class and throwing the poor into the river to enrich the super-wealthy. His gang. The one that's rushing to tear down the protections put in place for you after the financial meltdown of 2008. Because the financial sector--a.k.a. "the swamp"--has long since made off with your pension and benefits and transferred your wealth to the wealthier, and they're eager to do it again as soon as Trump and his gang of Republicans gut the restraints. He is ballooning the deficit and debt. He's proposing billions of dollars of cuts to your Social Security and Medicare. He told you he had a 1.5-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan for you but asked for only 200 billion in his budget--after cutting existing infrastructure programs by the very same amount. Did you notice?

It's a con. He doesn't care about you at all. He cares about himself, he cares about money, and maybe he cares about his daughter, the sexier one. He doesn't give a damn about you. He wants your vote so he can continue to rake it in. To privatize public assets for profit. To deregulate for profit. To destroy unions for profit. That profit is not for you. It's for the super-wealthy. Look at that bad, brown gang over there, this man says; don't look at mine.

Does he believe what his Nazi admirers believe? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe he's not that guy. Maybe he doesn't care about Nazis any more than he cares about anybody else. He damn sure doesn't care about you.

36 comments:

  1. I’ve been reading The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, written before Trump’s candidacy. Even though I know all the information, even though I treated the victims of sociopathy often and, briefly, a few of the perpetrators, even so I am chilled icy by Stout’s descriptions of society under the sociopath with real power. She could not have nailed it harder if she were reporting it, rather than predicting it. I want to buy hundreds of copies and hand them out in this little, deluded town of mine.

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    1. I'll put it on my library list, even though it sounds like it will scare the bejeebers out of me more than Stephen King ever could....

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  2. Don't forget the power. Money and power. The man is dangerous. And getting worse.

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    1. True, but he's the one who was able to get to the ultimate position of power and enable others to profit ...

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  3. Sigh. On the other side of the world some of us watch and cringe. And others watch and are encouraged and inspired.

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    1. The end of the world is going to be spectacular on so many fronts.

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  4. Watching the new "Lost in Space" and can't help but see the female Dr. Smith antagonist as the same type of smarmy, crocodile tears sociopathic manipulator as the current president. (BTW whenever I hear a radio commentator say "the president" I still think it's Obama - can't reconcile that horrid name with the title and never will). Just before I read this, I read a blog posted by an arch-conservative Christian friend. I offered him yours as an intelligent alternative. https://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/2018/06/08/christians-who-hate-trump/

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    1. Holy crap. And I mean that.

      Trying to get my blood pressure down now--noticing that one of his commenters referred to Jesus' "crucifiction" helps.

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  5. Sarah Vowell once referred to W as "the current president," which gave the comfort of not saying the name AND the implication that each presidency is finite.

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    1. And G. Keillor called this one the Current Occupant.

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  6. Murr, you see the problem in the above comments, right? You're reaching the choir, the dissatisfied never read it, never hear of it. The True Trump Supporters, and also (gotta put it quotations) "...really nice people who support trump..."
    Ain't no such thing, sorry to bump your aircraft, but the percentage of people who voted for trump were not confused, intelligent people who thought this would be a good change for the country: Idiots.
    The others, as have be described, are deplorable. And there are a hell of a lot more of them than we'd like. Survey my relatives in Madras, Redmond and Bend.
    Many of them don't care what trump's policies do to them or their families; what they care about is keeping the 'libtards' out of power. Making their very minority view, cultural, religious, political, whatever the proscribed view of the US. That's what we're up against, and we ain't figured that out yet.

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    1. I guess I was being hopeful. I will admit I doubt one single Trump supporter would be at all moved by anything I say here.

      That post Cindy McIntyre linked to in her comment gives a good idea of at least one segment we're dealing with. And there ain't no dealing with it, although I do have an idea how to go about it, if I were going to put a comment on it. But that sort of thing rarely makes me feel anything but worse. I'll just stay here with y'all.

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    2. I wouldn't dare say a word here. I am deplorable, and some say likeable...but obviously way below the intelligence of all of you (according to all of you).

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    3. Thanks for visiting though, Lou.

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  7. Another great read: Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean. There really is a vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and it's purpose is to enrich the rich and to hell with everyone else.

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  8. The only thing T wants more than your vote is your adoration. He wants you to worship him, to trust him without question, to kiss his ass as you hand him your child and your future. He wants to be king, and then there will be no need for your vote.

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    1. I would agree with that--which makes him different from his gang, who are happy to stay under the radar and let him do his thing, so that they can do theirs.

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  9. I have nothing to add to this. You've said it all and so well too. I hope the ones who need to read this do so and learn from it.

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    1. Won't happen. But I had to try to get some of it out of my system. That works for a few days.

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  10. The election of Trump continues to astonish me. That there are so many of my fellow citizens and taxpayers who think this man has legitimate qualifications for the position he holds is utterly stunning. The harm that his administration is doing to countless people and kids (and plants, animals, birds, fish, butterflies, bats and other countries) is beyond comprehension. Frequently I wonder if there isn't a case to be made for having to pass some kind of test in order to be allowed to vote. I know that won't happen an probably would be something too easily abused anyhow, but...here we all are because of the thousands of people who thought it would be a good idea to toss a turd into the punch bowl, and they all had the turds to toss.

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    1. They honestly like that turd. Or they've drunk the punch, one.

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  11. For those of us who campaigned, knocked on doors and went the extra mile. As we watched the DNC manipulate the system to favor Clinton. Steal Bernie’s chances. Watching Trump do the same to Clinton just seems like karma.
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    The system is broken by two corrupted political parties. With out campaign reform and term limits it will be the same in 2020. Not sure which party I hate the most.
    I enjoy your blog posts.

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    1. Thank you joeyj. I disagree on term limits. I don't think all politicians are corrupt and there are experienced ones I want to vote in every time. Somehow disassociating the money from the elections would be great, which Bernie was able to do more than most, if not all. I understand frustration with the Democratic machine, but am unpersuaded that it reached the level of corruption--some of what I've read sounds like the work of Russians or Macedonians, and deliberately meant to divide the left (further). And it's STILL working. Unlike you, I have no trouble whatsoever choosing one party over the other. None. It's not even close. There is not a single policy proposal that the Republicans put forward that is less than catastrophic. Whereas the Democrats are at least pointed in the right direction. The system is driven by money (there's your corruption) but I think those of us who believe both parties are equally complicit in the service of the wealthy to the detriment of everyone else and the planet (PLEASE DO NOT FORGET THE PLANET) are not paying enough attention to The Gang. There are many ways they seek to divide us--don't fall for it.

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  12. I haven't seen any comments about this and wonder if I am the only one taking offense. After commenting that when Kim Jung Un speaks, his people stand at attention Trump stated that he wished that "his" people did that for him. HIS people!!!!! Since when are the American people owned by he or any other president? Excuse me, I feel the need to go watch some cute cat videos for awhile.

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    1. You are very, very far from being the only one taking offense. It's just hard to name all the bullshit in one post.

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  13. And I just got the shingles worrying and worrying. Betsy

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