Day 180: One Scandal to Rule Them All

 

Recently, I had an unexpected confrontation with two MAGA fanatics on X. I didn't expect it because the verbal assault was triggered not by any comment I made about Trump, but by a response I made to New York Governor Kathy Hochul's post about her successes for the state.  Apparently, my flippant comment about how Democrats were leading the country while the GOP was doomed to go the way of the failed Whig Party got under the thin skin of two Red Hats.  

Now, the first question one might ask is, why would two hardcore Trumpists be lurking around a Democrat governor's social media feed?  Good question! I wish I had an answer.  Perhaps they were paid trolls whose job was to troll the governor - it should be 'governess' to be precise, but politically incorrect - but I don't think so, as their attacks were so facile as to be meaningless. If I had to guess, I would say that they were acting as MAGA cultists always act: as jilted lovers stalking their heart's desire. To clarify, I am not suggesting a romantic interest. Rather, I have noticed that MAGA hates anything they want to be but cannot. This is why, for example, higher learning has come under attack by MAGA. Deep down, it has nothing to do with "woke" indoctrination, as they claim, but because MAGA is envious of the higher education others have received and they lack. I know this to be true because back in 2016, I was routinely attacked by MAGA cultists merely for listing a college education in my social media profiles. In this case, I suspect they envied the Empire State being in the hands of a non-authoritarian Democrat.

Be that as it may, the two launched broadsides at me. Now, when I say "broadsides", I don't mean booming cannons as much as wet firecrackers. The first assailant, let's call them MAGA Uno out of spite, did little more than spit bumper sticker slogans at me, i.e., "Trump is great, Democrats are failures!", while the second, MAGA Dos, did the verbal equivalent of holding MAGA Uno's coat and nodding along with them.  

MAGA Dos wouldn't be in the fight for long. In many ways, MAGA Dos was typical of the caricature of your typical MAGA fanatic, which is to say, ignorant and profane. In their clumsy attempt to support MAGA Uno, they merely hurled gibberish at me, such as "I call Biden 'the corpse!'", to which I would retort with a "I call Trump '34' after his felony convictions." This type of entry-level sparring went on for a bit until MAGA Dos exploded with frustration at the failure of his (her?) self-assured witticisms to leave a lasting impression, resulting in the accusation that I fornicated with my mother and sister (I wonder how far down the family tree MAGA Dos was willing to go). To this unexpected attack, I quipped that they must be one of those MAGA intellectuals I heard so much about. That really got under their skin - again, recall the jilted lover analogy - causing another profane attack, followed by them blocking me, which is ironic since it was they who injected themselves into my jousting with MAGA Uno.  This is typical MAGA incoherence.

As for MAGA Uno, our back-and-forth exchanges continued. Unlike MAGA Dos, MAGA Uno was never profane. Rather, I would characterize them as a Reagan-esque "happy warrior" - an insipid warrior, to be sure, but happy, nonetheless. Our disagreement never became profane or filled with ad hominem attacks. In fact, we parted on, well, not amicable terms, but certainly not with the burning hatred of the clearly radicalized MAGA Dos.

As I wrote above, MAGA Uno's commentary never rose above the level of MAGA chants and bumper stickers. Arguing with such empty-calorie content can be challenging, requiring a creative response. For example, once MAGA Uno opined that Trump's power would never wane, to which I asked if this was the part where I start reciting Shelley's Ozymandias. They didn't get the reference. 

In the entirety of our exchange, MAGA Uno said one thing that stuck with me. After another one of their pointless Biden sarcasms, I retorted, "How are those Epstein files working out for you?" Their response was stunning:

"I don't know and I don't care."

Those words burned themselves onto my retinas in the same way Sauron's Black Speech burned the "One Ring to rule them all" inscription onto the cursed One Ring. That was the only time I was caught off guard by MAGA Uno.

I would expect such a flippant response if I were enquiring about, say, Trump's antediluvian trade policy, or his Big Bastard Bill, but about sexual trafficking? You don't know AND don't care? Over one thousand girls, some as young as fourteen years old, were sexually exploited, and you don't know and don't care about the details?  I suspect that Maga Uno did know and did care when Donald Trump was not up to his neck with incriminating statements, photographs, and, now with the revelation of his profane birthday card to his pal Epstein, "enigmas" that don't age.  However, with this kernel-level MAGA conspiracy, one championed in years past not just by Trump, but also by Don Jr., Pam Bondie, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and many, many other MAGA stalwarts, blowing back on "Doe 174", which was Donald Trump's designation in the Epstein documents, suddenly apathetic disinterest replaces righteous fury.  Funny how that works. And scary. 

This is why I suspect it must be so damn hard to be a MAGA cultist.  MAGA Uno's casual discarding of the very moral principles they so loudly champion (particularly on the evangelical MAGA right, where 80% voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2024 despite a life of open corruption and scandal) is less a rhetorical defense and now much more of a mantra for living in the world of Trumpism.  It is a binary modus vivendi, a studied indifference to the cognitive dissonance often encountered in the MAGA fever swamps. They have no choice; this is their only way to survive in a world governed not by rationality but by the ever-changing whims of a mad king.  It is something observed the world over, from fringe religious cults to other personality-based authoritarian regimes.  When one is governed not by laws and not by principles, all that remains is government by raw emotion that can change its course more frequently than the tides, especially when the dear leader is emotionally unwell himself.  Trying to live in such a world must be like making camp in Bedlam. 

While Sauron said, "There is no life in the void, only darkness," in Trumpism, there is no constancy, only shifting madness.  And, as with the One Ring, MAGA, which is to say the maniacal whims of Trump, promises power but only delivers enslavement to a dark master, one who demands loyalty above all else, including truth, morality, empathy, and even family. It was the same with Hitler, the same with Stalin, the same with Pol Pot, and the same with every other tyrannical monster this world has ever produced.  In 1964, Ronald Reagan warned that if we didn't protect America as the last, best hope of man on earth, we would sentence our children to take the first steps into a thousand years of darkness. When people, especially on the religious right, suddenly proclaim that they don't know and don't care about sexual predation at the highest levels of government when it involves their god-king, the trek has already begun into the darkness of Mordor.