I want to say I'm amazed that, after four years of a Trump Presidency, so many people remain oblivious to the true nature of Trumpism.
But I'm not. Because, as someone who's written about pretty much nothing but Trumpism and racism, the one key point I keep harping on is that the media has been consistently misreading (or perhaps deliberately ignoring) the profound moral and intellectual darkness of Trumpism.
Short version: Trump isn't the problem. His millions of supporters are. Every single thing you hate about Trump applies to the Americans that voted for him. If "The Media" truly has an agenda, it's been to pretend this isn't the problem by focusing all of their scorn on Trump himself, while breezily hand-waving his supporters away as "blue collar rural whites with strong ingroup solidarity" and not, you know, stupid racist assholes that would stab you in the back in a heartbeat if told to do so.
Because let's be 100% honest: If someone told the politically incorrect truth, that these ignorant hicks aren't warm and cuddly country folk, that their differences from us are not superficial aesthetics, but profound and fundamental, that they truly do not understand or love this country on a level deeper than bumper stickers and slogans, that writer would be out of a job.
The sick truth is that all the repulsive things Trump encourages--the anti-intellectualism, the absence of critical thinking, the mindless subservience, the racism--are features, not bugs.
Right now, Trump voters are literally attempting and rabidly supporting a fucking coup. We're not as angry as we should be because it's too pathetic and inept to pose an actual threat, but that does not change the fact that they are trying to end democracy, collapse our most vital institutions and traditions, and illegally install an unelected dictator that would casually let hundreds of thousands more Americans die from COVID.
They. Don't. Care.
It's like if someone unknowingly pulled an unloaded gun at you, pulled the trigger multiple times, then threw the gun away as if nothing had happened.
Yes, it is in everyone's benefit to support Biden. No shit. That's been true since 2016. But if Trump supporters were rational, educated people acting in their own best interests, they wouldn't have supported the most useless and deranged motherfucker in all the cosmos.
