Why People Like Trump

The president’s appeal explained in a meme.

It’s always a bad day when you have to watch the other guy take the oath of office. People process these things differently, and if you know anything about me, you’ll know that I tend to soothe my political grief by lashing out angrily at whomever I blame for it. You’ll also know that I tend to reserve my most explosive rhetorical bombs for people in my own camp who can’t or won’t get their shit together.

So consider this a content warning, and consider yourself on notice: if you’re seeing this, there’s a decent chance you’re high on my naughty list. And if you’re not going to enjoy the word-storm I’m about to rain down on you, I would recommend reading something else.

The new Ian Rankin is terrific.

If you’re online as much as I am, you’ve seen this meme. It gets shared a lot, and understandably so. Trump doing a schoolyard bully impression of a disabled reporter was a low point in a campaign that was already dredging the bottom of the pond on its best days. But we need to start challenging this framing of “I’ll never understand” [the thing we don’t like]. Ignorance is not virtuous. And it just got our asses handed to us.

Before we kick off, look at the date up there. November 14th, 2016; a little more than a week after Trump won the election against Hillary Clinton, and almost a full year after Trump made the offending impression. That was more than nine years ago. Nine years that we’ve had to digest this, to study it, to try to understand how an asshole like Donald Trump could make such an asshole move, and still get people to vote for him. I fear we’ve made little progress.

Now, I want you to open your mind, just a crack. Make it a personal goal that, by the end of this piece, and unlike the genteel Mr. Owens who was the original poster, you will understand why this wasn’t the end of Trump. Because it sure as hell wasn’t! And it’s really time we got it.

I picked this incident to make my point because, out of all of Trump’s outrages, this is one of the hardest to defend. There’s no “well akshually…” that you can apply to this and make it cool. He wasn’t making some broader point, or going for shock humor, or fighting fire with fire. He was nursing a petty, 14-year-old grudge and being a complete dick about it.

Trump’s target, Serge Kovaleski, wrote in 2001 for the Washington Post that authorities in Jersey City, NJ had detained some people who were seen celebrating the 9/11 attacks. Trump went on to wildly embellish this, claiming that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City were celebrating 9/11. Kovaleski effectively said, “I never said that,” which he hadn’t, and Trump didn’t take it well. Kovaleski has a condition called arthrogryposis, which causes contraction in the joints and a “hooked” appearance; the basis for Trump’s crude performance.

So. We have here an early example of Trump doing something outlandish, something beyond the boundaries of ordinary decency, and not only getting away with it, but getting rewarded. Dude got elected President of the United States. Twice now!

What gives? Are we really that cruel as a nation? Do Trump supporters just have a Nazi-esque hatred of the disabled?

Well no. And no. We aren’t that cruel as a nation. And Trump supporters neither hate the disabled, nor enjoy their mockery any more than liberals do. That’s not what this episode was about. It’s not what Trump is about.

Try to remember what the reaction to this was on the left. It should be easy. There was complete, unbridled outrage. It was seen as disqualifying. Evidence that Trump was not only unfit for the presidency, but unfit for polite society. A grown man who would do something so puerile and reprehensible should go away, then go away some more, and never, ever come back. In short, it was an attempted “cancellation,” the likes of which were becoming well familiar to voters by this point.

And that’s really the rub.

People didn’t see this and think, “lol, disabled people are hilarious,” and they didn’t say to themselves, “can’t wait to go out and rip on a disabled person.” I don’t know who needs to hear this, but conservatives have disabled loved ones too. I’d wager that many did not appreciate Trump’s little show, and probably even found it offensive. Why then didn’t they dump him?

Because again, this episode didn’t have anything to do with folks with disabilities. And not everyone shares the left’s fragility in taking offense. It’s coherent enough to believe that once a person has crossed a certain threshold of meanness, society should shun them for it. But not everyone shares that hierarchy of priorities, and those who don’t are not evil.

This is a flawed example, but the calculus is similar to that of a sometimes-abusive coach who gets results. What do you do? Do you fire them and maybe lose? Or suck it up, thicken your skin, and win? Rational people might come down on either side of that quandary. There are a lot of people on the right who find Trump every bit as uncouth and vulgar as his fiercest liberal opponents do. They vote for him because when all’s said and done, he’s giving them more of what they want than most Republicans or any Democrats would.

Trump voters (well, most of them…) aren’t in favor of puerile and reprehensible behavior. They just don’t want to live in a country where one, puerile and reprehensible moment can end your life as you know it. They don’t want to be defined by their worst deeds - who does? - and when Trump pulls stunts like this, what he’s really telling them is that they don’t have to be afraid anymore. That nobody’s going to go digging through their college photos, or scouring their social media accounts from 10 years ago, and coming up with dirt that’s dirty enough to ruin them.

And guys, we need to own this. Because we absolutely did it. Cancel culture was not a *both sides* thing. It was the exclusive property of the left. Trying to spread the blame for it around is a bitch move, and I’m done letting my fellow libs get away with it. Are there examples of conservatives going tit for tat? Sure. And you can certainly point to any number of conservatives whose careers and reputations have been ended by bad behavior. But that is emphatically not what people are talking about when they say “cancel culture.”

They’re talking about the girl who tweets a wry joke about AIDS in Africa, gets on a plane, and lands to discover that she’s been fired, rendered unemployable, and that her name is infamous, world-renowned mud.

They’re talking about the teacher who gets fired for not bleeping out the n-word while reading song lyrics. They’re talking about the guy who cracks wise about an elevator stopping at the ladies’ lingerie section and then watches his entire career and life’s work turn to dust. They’re talking about the analyst who shares polling data indicating that rioting, unlike peacefully protesting, actually turns people away from the cause of the rioters, and gets instantly hung out to dry by everyone he knows.

And yeah, they’re talking about Elon Musk - a lifelong Democrat until a few minutes ago - who dared to remove draconian content moderators from Twitter and was swiftly designated Public Enemy # 1. They’re talking about J.K. Rowling, who dared to tweet her mild disagreement with trans activists, was drowned in rape and death threats, and accused of literally helping to murder children. They’re talking about their high school buddy who got fired for expressing an incorrect opinion within earshot of HR. They’re talking about their uncle’s business which had to close because a customer didn’t like his Facebook posts. They’re talking about every writer, presenter, comedian, shopkeep, barista, and dog-walker who ever had to drop to their knees and read out a hostage statement about how they’d “caused harm” and were “learning and reflecting” before being forced into exile anyway.

If ratcheting that down means accepting a guy like Trump as president, they’ll happily make that trade. It’s not even a hard choice for them. Neither of the two great, American political parties have done much to improve economic conditions in the 50 states. Democrats made exactly no big promises on that front during this last election, and Republicans really didn’t either. The parties may have different goals and aspirations, but their productivity is broadly (and weakly) similar. And in the view of most Americans, so is the extent to which they both suck.

Two items on the menu: a shit sandwich, or a shit sandwich. The only difference is that one comes with a side of judgment, scorn, and making you walk on eggshells for 10 years, whereas the other comes with a promise to end all that. That’s why Trump won again. He wasn’t running against disabled people, or gay people, or trans people, or black people, or Hispanic people. He wasn’t even running against Democrats. He was running against you. The online left.

Trump’s supporters don’t consider him a bully. Or if they do, they don’t care, because they think you’re the Real Bully. And worse, you’re a bully in ways that actually affect them. From their perspective, you spend your days crying on social media about how victimized you are, and your nights trying to starve them and make them homeless (which is what happens if you succeed in making a person unemployable).

Part of the left’s much-needed reckoning will have to address this if we ever want to win things again. “Cancel culture,” or “accountability culture,” or whatever your preferred term of art is, is not some right wing boogeyman. It is very real, and incredibly pernicious. Now, in my experience, the Venn diagram of *people who don’t think cancel culture is real* and *people promulgating cancel culture* is a perfect circle. Which is to say, if your reaction to this is along the lines of, “Cancel culture isn’t a thing, Dave. Stop parroting right wing talking points,” then you are almost certainly either a practitioner, or at least an enabler, of this culture. In other words, you are exactly who I’m talking about in this piece.

And if you are - if that’s you - then first of all, just…thanks a million, bud. Give yourself a hearty pat on the back for saddling us all with two terms of President Donald Fucking Trump. It’s quite an achievement: managing to make yourself so intolerably annoying that people wanted Donald Trump to be the president just so they could watch you cry. Really, he should’ve thanked you in his inaugural address, because without you, there’s no him. But I digress… In all seriousness, you really ought to find some answers for why you came to believe that the appropriate punishment for making an errant comment should be permanent exile and starvation.

Because if you ever played the game of, “I wonder if this guy’s employer knows what he just posted to Insta…” then that’s the judgment you made: this guy should fucking starve. We need to eat to live, to pay to eat, and to work to pay. Ergo, taking away somebody’s ability to work leads to….[finish the logic puzzle in your own time].

That will never not have been a fucked up thing to do, a fucked up set of moral priorities to adopt, and a fucked up pattern of behavior in which to engage. “I don’t like the cut of your jib, so I’ve decided to unperson you and put your kids on the street. Next time, just be kind.”

And lest you think I’m projecting here, it’s probably worth my taking a moment to clue you in on the complicated research methodology I employed to arrive at these conclusions. Are you ready for it? It’s pretty advanced stuff. I…listened to people who like Donald Trump. That’s literally it.

Trump’s supporters are quite open about the things that inform their approval of him. Number one, with a bullet, on that list is that they think he’s going to sort you out. Armed with that knowledge earlier, you might have done any number of things differently. Perhaps most simply and obviously, you might have tried to become the kind of person who isn’t utterly despised by half the population of your own damn country! That is actually not normal, and is a direct consequence of so, so many of you having chosen to calibrate your sense of self in opposition to your stupider, eviler countrymen. If I’m coming across a little prickly about all this, it’s because if more on the left had just fucking listened to people. Not judged, not argued, not shamed, not projected paranoid, evil motives onto them, just listened to them talk about the things that were bothering them, we might not be in this mess.

Now yes, clearly, Trump plays an outsized role in this. The guy is toxic garbage. I’m not trying to imply that the left bears sole responsibility for the tribal rancor infecting American society. That’s not remotely the case. I’d just like to see more lefties accept some responsibility for the part they’ve played in the breakdown, and I mostly don’t see that. Trump is a flamethrower, yes. But flamethrowers are only appealing when folks have something they want to burn. And if I have to endure another four years of liberals traipsing about, shellshocked and flustered, like they have no idea how that thing could possibly be sweet little old them, I am simply going to throw up until I die. If you want to get in someone’s face, fine. But own it then. And don’t act scandalized in the event they take a swing at you.

Remember back in school, how there were two, different types of annoying kids? There were the openly antagonistic little shits, who just got a rise out of how much they were irritating you. They’d flick boogers at you, scribble on your drawings, and just generally do or say whatever it took to get you to focus your attention, however negative, on them. Then there were kids who were more subtle about it. Kids who would say things like “calm down” when you were already calm, or dime you out for saying swear words, or comment loudly on how trash your handwriting was to others at your table. These kids would force you to let them join in your games, get hurt or upset, cry, then go have the teacher shut it all down to spite you.

You know who I’m talking about. Of course you do. You remember. Well Trump supporters are that first kind of annoying kid and you’re the second kind. Yeah, they’re trying to fart in your applesauce, which is insidious as hell. But right after that, you’re in the principal’s office squealing that another kid brought his GameBoy to school and they can find it in his locker, which you only know about because he showed it to you and let you play it, you treacherous fuck.

Okay, moving on…

Legislation cannot end this, and neither can the courts. Only culture can. Trump, by being his own, horrible self, is the annoying kid to end all annoying kids. And he’s cancellation kryptonite. When he does something horrendous, and his supporters watch him fail to pay any price for it - when they watch him double down - it gives them hope. It makes them think they’ve found a bigger junkyard dog to sic on the one that’s been harassing them for the last decade.

Liberals make the mistake of assuming that Trump’s supporters, in excusing his many bigotries, must necessarily share them. That’s understandable, but it’s wrong. All this “waaahhh, they voted for cruelty” malarky is entirely off point. In Leftworld, yes, that’s absolutely how it would work. To continue to stand next to a radioactive person would risk making you radioactive.

But conservatives have formed a parallel values system in opposition to that framework, and it’s vitally important to understand it if we don’t want the guy after Trump to be even worse. Instead of “ditch the radioactive guy” it’s more like, “rally around the radioactive guy, because the next radioactive guy could be me!” That may be a lot of things, but *stupid* isn’t one of them. And neither should *confusing* be.

Once you understand this about the modern right, two things will happen: the landscape of American politics will become much more comprehensible to you, and you’ll also become less angry. You’ll stop viewing your neighbors on the other side of the political aisle as a bunch of racist orcs who hate everyone different to them, and recognize that maybe, a little bit, you’ve been kind of a shitty neighbor. That you’ve made yourself into the kind of person who others stop their conversations and cross the street when they see coming.

So what you need to ask yourself moving forward is: is that really who you want to be? Would you enjoy being neighbors with someone who called the HOA every time you cut your grass wrong or parked on the street? I’m guessing not. Because people like that fucking suck.

Every time Trump misbehaves and the left has a meltdown, all that’s happening is that his opponents are reminding his supporters why they like him so much. Speaking out against Trump is like trying to fight fires with a super soaker full of gasoline. We need a new approach. That can’t happen until we at least recognize that the current one isn’t working, has never worked, and never will work.

Fair enough, you might think that Trump should’ve maxed people out by now. It’s not like that gross impression of Serge Kovaleski was his only bad moment. But Trump’s every outrage goads liberals into doing the exact thing that makes conservatives hate us in the first place, so it ends up being a wash.

Please. Retire, forever, the construction, “I’ll just never understand.” Instead, maybe…try to? Because really, you’re not impressing anyone. You’re not helping anything, your purity doesn’t make you special, and after 10 years of watching this cycle repeat, you just sound like an idiot.