I was thinking the other day that Trump was kind of like Sham, the racehorse.
Sham was an excellent* horse who had the unfortunate luck to be a three-year old the same year as Secretariat. The first two races of the Triple crown he broke the records for both the Kentucky Derby Derby and Preakness – but still finished second behind Secretariat. He didn’t get awarded the winner’s purse anyway.
Third race he was eased and came in dead last. It was discovered a month later he had a fractured cannon bone.
But those 81 million are his, too! They just got changed to Biden! Don’t you know almost everyone in every state voted for Trump? I think that’s pretty much what he’s arguing but kind of dances around it by saying “votes for me were changed” and “I won in a landslide.”
His followers will believe he got 100% of the vote and the rest of us know that’s not true.
That would have been a fine thread title. But let’s face it, whether President, Ex-President, or Convicted Ex-President, Donald will always be butt-hurt.
He is the Eternally-Aching Butt. He is the Ever-Wounded Rump. He is the Victimized Keister. He is the Offended Caboose. He is the Suffering Heinie.
Donald J. Trump is the premiere Aggrieved Ass of this, or any other period of human history.
And this is what I don’t understand. Why anyone who likes to defer to The Authority like so many current Republicans would stand by an Authoritarian Leader who is such a whinging, crying, complaining titty-baby loser.
Wait, that’s what those are? Well, I had three boxes filled with Trump votes in my laundry room until they got emptied out today. Stupid cats, shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
My theory is that when being a crybaby is combined with having the greatest power any human being on this planet can have (the US military, including nukes), the result for those attracted to dictators is an enthusiastic faith that My Big Strongman Bully Has Been Unfairly Persecuted.
But after January 20, Trump will just be a random crybaby. A few followers will linger due to inertia, but many will start to tire of the Donald Has Been Victimized story. And he will become what he was before: a sniper from the sidelines, with only a small number of fans.
Seriously: these people worship power. Actually worship it. And his only power will be…them. Ever-decreasing numbers of fans. And that won’t be enough for them. Donald won’t be able to smite the non-whites and the uppity females and the Libs with anything but whatever Twitter allows him to say. No power of the government behind any of it.
They will look elsewhere for their Bully to Worship.
It’s already happening. Not long after the election, the number of Twitter followers on his account dropped by hundreds of thousands (though who knows how many of those were bots or socks?). And we all know ratings and Twitters followers are the only numbers that count. Not like those pesky ballots.
This relates somewhat to Toby Ziegler’s famous scene in The West Wing,
They’ll like us when we win
His point was that young people in some parts of the Arab world were being subjected to a constant stream of anti-American propaganda that made them hate us, and were simply unreachable. Anything we do or say to be nice will make absolutely no impression on them, because they will have no awareness of it. Our focus in the shot term must be simply to win in political or even military terms. Only then (laughable as the notion now seems) could the American values of democracy and the free exchange of ideas possibly prevail and give us the opportunity to win their hearts and minds.
I think there’s a parallel with Trumpism. We cannot possibly reach these people at the moment, because they are brainwashed members of a cult. They will never question the cult’s dogma when the cult is powerful. The only possible way to have a chance to reach these people is that in the short term we must win, and keep winning. Only if their cult’s power seems to be fading is there any chance that they may start to question its dogma and be more open to the truth.
But I don’t underestimate the difficulty of this when even a massive wave of death across the nation has prompted no reality check whatsoever among the great majority of Trumpists.
But to be fair, everyone’s power is only because people believe in them. It was brought home to me in one of those periodical “but the Queen still has some power, doesn’t she?” threads. You can’t really say that she in theory has a lot of power but in reality her only power is whatever voice she may choose to use. Because in reality, that’s all anyone’s power is.
If enough people no longer believe in democracy then Biden will no longer have power unless enough people believe in him enough to enforce it.
You just know that those declining Follower numbers are a big part of the reason Trump has been staying away from the cameras.
The vaccine has been rolling out in recent days, months earlier than anyone had a right to expect, and Donald could have been enjoying photo-op after photo-op, taking credit----but he’s terrified someone will mention the drop in his numbers.
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I agree–it’s a cult and the cultists will hang on as long as they believe that Their Side is Strong and Righteous. When it’s clear that their side is shrinking, they will bail.
But, yes: actual death hasn’t fazed them; for the vast majority of the Trump cult, the deaths among their own ranks are easily attributed to something other than COVID, so they can keep their delusions intact. (And the deaths of “the other” don’t matter, of course.)
Shrinking numbers–and/or a puncture in the right-wing media bubble–are the only things that have the power to disturb their fantasy-world.
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Not familiar with the use of “fairy” as a name for the posterior—a regional usage?
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On some existential level, yes, I agree. But practically speaking, when you can make actual things happen via Executive Order, you do have real power no matter what the beliefs of the voters.
I was playing on your later quote that he only has power because of his followers, similar to how fairies in Peter Pan can only exist if people believe in them.