Disruptions

Holding the line

Remember this?

The first time I saw it, this is what I read:

Which is to say, I thought it was a pro-Donald campaign poster—because the people who voted for him in 2016 really did love Donald’s hate and the extent to which he justified, condoned, and validated their own. The shared hatreds of his voters (supporters, followers, cult members) continue to be essential to his base’s devotion to him. And, apparently, it causes them to confuse vitriol with trust.

Seriously, wtaf?

The category of respondents in this poll isn’t very well-defined. Are the “Trump voters” polled people who voted for him in 2020 and/or those who plan to vote for him in 2024 ? Also, the n isn’t specified and the margin of error is large. I don’t put much stock in this kind of poll, but we can still infer two things from the results. First, a not-insignificant percentage of the American electorate (in the tens of millions) claim they trust a man who, according to Washington Post fact checkers, told 30,573 public lies during the four years of his administration. (The Post never made the distinction between public and private lies—perhaps they assumed it was implied—but I think it’s important to make that clarification; if we also consider how many lies he told privately, Donald was likely lying almost as often as he was exhaling). Second, anybody who believes Donald Trump at all let alone more than those they are close to is past reaching. I don’t trust conservative media figures or religious leaders on the right, either, but the idea that people exist who would trust Donald Trump more than or as much as their family or (especially) their friends, is gob-smacking.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, I was often asked how people who planned to vote for Donald in 2020—whether they’d voted for him in 2016 or not—should be approached. In other words, how do we persuade them not to vote for Donald? At the time, I believed there was nothing anybody could say or do to change their minds, so there was no point in wasting our time trying.

After Donald invented the Big Lie (and as he continues to perpetuate it); after the January 6th Insurrection; his four indictments and 91 criminal charges; and every cruelty and obscene act he’s committed, this continues to be true. Our efforts are needed elsewhere.

The bottom line is this: We shouldn’t care what anybody who continues to support Donald Trump says; we shouldn’t care about their grievances; and we shouldn’t care what they threaten. We must ignore all of them and go about the business of making sure the Democratic Party wins by sufficient margins (which need to be much larger than they were in 2020) so we can start setting things right—and that includes everything from voting rights to civil rights to LGBTQ+ rights to climate change to Supreme Court reform and every other tenet of liberal democracy the fascists seek to undermine and destroy.

I want to point to something else that’s troubling about this poll that may not be immediately self-evident: Has this question (“Who do you think is more truthful, the politician running for president or your family, friends, church leaders, or conservative commentators?”) ever been asked about any other candidate? I don’t think it has. The question itself changes the contours of the discourse around our political leaders and the role they play in our lives. The media, as they’ve been doing in an accelerated fashion in the last seven years, continue to bend the conventions in order to accommodate the games Donald plays and to validate—indeed, encourage—the pathological attachment certain of his followers have to him.

As I mentioned during the last episode of The Nerd Avengers, with the latest indictment against Donald in Fulton County Georgia, it feels like we’ve entered a new era. In a way, it also seems to have brought us closer to the general election. I can’t say with absolute certainty that Donald is definitely going to be the Republican nomination but, one, it kind of feels like he already has and, two, it would take an extraordinary event to change that (which, it seems, is what his alleged competitors in the Republican primary seem to be banking on).

We’re also entering an extraordinary era of gaslighting from the right, normalization from the media, and and the prospect of massive amounts of disruptions caused by the four trials of defendant Donald Trump. All of this because a man who attempted a coup against his own country; who stole highly classified documents from the American people; who committed election fraud by paying off a woman with whom he had an extra-marital affair; who has been accused of running a crime syndicate in Georgia for the sole purpose of helping him steal the 2020 election is still being allowed to run for president in 2024.

The Republican Party will do everything in its power to implicate President Biden in crimes he did not commit and potentially impeach him over fabricated infractions. The media will do everything in their power to keep the focus on Donald while preserving their coverage of the horse-race. In other words, this will all be so much noise. To the extent that it’s possible, we need to ignore it. The trials will be protracted by unnecessary delays; Donald’s social media accounts will continue to be grotesque and unhinged. None of it will be worth paying attention to. Instead, we must martial our resources and protect our sanity. The next fourteen months leading up to the 2024 election will be the wildest and most draining in modern American history.

If Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t win, it will be the last free and fair election we ever have in this country. I don’t say this as a partisan (although I am one); I say this as somebody who believes passionately in the project of liberal democracy. Anything outside of reaching this goal is a distraction and we need to shut it out. Staying focused on the what really matters will take energy. So, take a break when you can (don’t wait until you don’t have a choice) and stay connected. It’s going to take all of us.