Whacked Out in Waco

 “There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation.” Christopher Hitchens, Arguably

Of course Donald Trump used Waco, Texas as a backdrop for one of his insane political rallies on the 30th anniversary of the siege between law enforcement and the Branch Davidian religious cult. Of course he did because Donald Trump is both mentally ill and an anchor around America’s neck.  

My perception, humbly offered, is that most Americans don’t grasp how seriously Trump and Trumpism threaten what remains of our anemic, sputtering democracy. Trump talks like an authoritarian because he desires to be an authoritarian almost as much as he needs the shield of public office to remain a free man. Trump is a walking, talking, lie-spewing, threat-issuing danger to everything that is good and decent about this country. Listen to what he says. Get past all the self-serving and self-pitying gibberish. Skip past his lies about stolen elections and a Radical Left that exists only inside his skull. Instead, listen to the violence in his words. The threats. It’s probably the only time he tells the truth. Trump believes he, and he alone, stands beyond the reach of the law -- so far beyond that even charging him with a crime isn’t permissible. Trump admires -- and I think he envies -- the way Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi in India, and MBS in Saudi Arabia rule their countries with relatively few restraints on their power. Bibi Netanyahu in Israel is doing his best to join this club. That’s the kind of power Trump craves, in the first instance to enrich himself and his family, but also to vanquish his political enemies, real or imagined. 

And the imagined list of enemies is always growing, expanding, adding new villains and injustices against the righteous and infallible Trump…

I’ve noted many times that Donald Trump appears to be a physical and moral coward who talks like a mob boss but scurries at the first sign of trouble. He employs others to do his dirty work and heavy lifting. Imagine the audacity of a draft dodger who ridicules people, like John McCain, who answered the call and served. Who has never been tested like McCain was tested as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. McCain survived, and that kind of grit is admirable. I disagreed with McCain on politics, but I never had any reason to expect that he’d deliberately undermine the country’s core institutions as Trump did. Power like that cannot be handed to a man like Trump, a man with no shame or honor or sense of fairness. An adulterer. A tax cheat and business failure. A man whose bumbling and politicized response to the pandemic cost thousands of American lives. Pitting red states against blue states for supplies and equipment.  As the slow and tedious wheels of the American legal apparatus turn and indictments loom on his horizon, Trump tries to rouse his most die-hard supporters to stand between him and the authorities, claiming, falsely and illogically, that if the Manhattan DA or Jack Smith comes for him, they will be next. 

That’s mad shit from an American politician. There’s no parallel in my lifetime. 

As journalist Ian Masters often says, you’d have to scour the country from stem to stern to find a person as despicable as Donald Trump. Grotesque and comical, carnival barker and bully, con man and coward, physically weak and morally debauched. Search hard and long, in rank big city alleys and small town taverns and churches, on the Mexican border and in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on Lake Okeechobee in Florida and in the Colorado desert; search under rocks and beneath the rubble of dead steel plants, and you’re unlikely to find anyone as devoid of humanity as Trump. 

Why do so many Americans buy the rank and rotted meat Trump is selling? What need does supporting such an odious, cruel, and ignorant man satisfy in them? Is it just Trump’s twisted and childish simplicity, his black or white, good against evil, worldview? Or is it the overt, almost joyous racism and misogyny and anti-Semitism? Do they really believe that their Christian god chose Donald Trump to carry the torch of Christian nationalism? Almighty God couldn’t find anyone else? He picked a man who’s not even a Christian?