Thursday, August 24, 2017

Had It With You

Charles P. Pierce is done with Trump supporters.

A guy basically went mad, right there on the stage in front of you, and you cheered and booed right on cue because you’re sheep and because he directed his insanity at all the scapegoats that your favorite radio and TV personalities have been creating for you over the past three decades. Especially, I guess, people like me who practice the craft of journalism in a country that honors that craft in its most essential founding documents. The President of the United States came right up to the edge of inciting you to riot and you rode along with him. You’re on his team, by god.

Are you good people? I keep hearing that you are, but let’s go back to Tuesday night’s transcripts and see what we find.

One vote away. One vote away. We were one vote away. Think of it, seven years the Republicans — and again, you have some great senators, but we were one vote away from repealing it.

(CROWD CHANTING)

But, you know, they all said, Mr. President, your speech was so good last night, please, please, Mr. President don’t mention any names. So I won’t. I won’t. No I won’t vote — one vote away, I will not mention any names. Very presidential, isn’t’ it? Very presidential. And nobody wants me to talk about your other senator, who’s weak on borders, weak on crime, so I won’t talk about him.

Right there, in the passive-aggressive fashion of the true moral coward, he made a bobo out of a former POW who currently is undergoing treatment for what is likely a terminal brain cancer. And you chanted and cheered. Do good people chant and cheer a rhetorical assault on a dying man of respect and honor?

I have no more patience, and I had very little to start with. I don’t care why you’re anxious. I don’t care for anybody’s interpretation of why you voted for this abomination of a politician, and why you cheer him now, because any explanation not rooted in the nastier bits of basic human spleen is worthless. I don’t want any politicians who seek to appeal to the more benign manifestations of your condition because there’s no way to separate those from all the rest of the hate and fear and stupidity. (And, for my colleagues in the Vance-Arnade-Zito school of Trump Whispering, here’s a hint: They hate you, too.) I don’t care why you sat out in a roasting pan since 5 a.m. Tuesday morning to whistle and cheer and stomp your feet for a scared, dangerous little man who tells you that your every bloody fantasy about your enemies is the height of patriotism. You are now the declared adversaries of what I do for a living, and your idol is a danger to the country and so are you. Own it. Deal with it. And, for the love of god, and for the sake of the rest of us who live in this country, do better at being citizens.

I get it why people are sticking with Trump.  For whatever reason, be it racist backlash against Barack Obama and his genteel and maddening way he put up with the vulgarities, never letting them get his goat, or the misogynistic madness against Hillary Clinton, or whether they truly fell for the balls, bullshit, and poppycock that Trump sold them on in the same way a late-night infomercial sells boner pills and teddy bears, and now they’re damned and ashamed to admit that they were snookered.  Or they’re genuine racists and sexists and have as low opinion of the rest of the country as Trump does; they’re even envious of his ability to acquire wealth, wives, and stiff hair.  But the show’s over, folks; not only has Elvis left the building, he keyed your cars on the way out.

2 barks and woofs on “Had It With You

  1. The last sentence of the first paragraph about rioting, I have been saying since last summer that Trump is doing what they got Abbie Hoffman for, crossing state lines to incite riot. This is another law he is guilty of violating. And I have time to comment as Harvey hasn’t got here yet. Am making my check list and battening down the hatches.

  2. The thing is: one day in the not too far away future a reporter will be killed either by a crazed Trumpist or a mob. Nick Kristoff speaks to this. It’s a genuine honest-to-goodness sense of foreboding.

Comments are closed.