By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
Raise your hand if you love America. For what it is; for what it can be. Nope, sorry, MAGA folk; you lost that claim when you gave yourselves over to Donald Trump.
The last weeks have seen what some might call a role reversal. More accurately, because the truth has always been out there, it’s a perception reversal: Democrats and liberals, it turns out, are the ones who love the real America. MAGA Republicans don’t. They resent what it is and fear what they’re told to believe its future will be if not for Trump. They resent its strength-deriving diversity. And, like Trump, they reject its laws, especially those protecting fair elections and equal rights.
Compare the Harris-Walz rallies to Trump’s and Vance’s. Who presents a positive vision of America and its potential? Whose audience is chanting, enthusiastically, “USA! USA!”? Which candidate said to a huge, happy crowd, “We trust the people, we see the people, we know the people. You know one of the things I love about our country? We are a nation of people who believe in those ideals that were foundational to what made us so special as a nation. … We love our country.” (OK, MAGA nation doesn’t believe, but still … .)
Which candidate, speaking from the darkness of Mar-a-Lago, said the U.S. is “a very, very sick country right now”? Which voters marinate in the carefully crafted animus they feel on hearing that?
“We’re not going back” is the opposite of “Make America Great Again.” It’s “Again” that says it all. MAGA is about going back to the time of straight, white, native-born, male-dominant, Christian majority, where everyone else knew their place; silent and submissive. “Not going back” is about liberation from the oppressive heaviness of Trumpism’s doom, gloom and dishonesty; its rejection of America’s founding ideals, the nastiness (and craziness) of a Trump rally. “Not going back” is a joyous expression of relief, hope for democracy, an end to Trump’s autocratic fantasies.
When his crowds chanted “Lock her up,” Trump stood silent, basking in the wave of fawning lawlessness. When some in a Harris-Walz crowd started shouting “Lock him up,” both Kamala and Tim shut them down. Let the courts take care of it, they said. Our job is to defeat Trump at the polls. That difference is everything.
Echoing creepy J.D. Vance’s desperation in facing heartland’s Tim Walz, Trumpists have sunk to attacking his military record. After 24 years in the National Guard, he retired to run for Congress, months after which his unit was deployed to Iraq. Had the Guard thought his retirement affected mission readiness, they could have disallowed it, which they didn’t. Like the swiftboating of John Kerry, it’s what Republicans, footstepping the invective of Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich, do to people demonstrating the decency their leadership lacks. (We pause to recall five-times-deferred Trump’s fake bone spurs and saying avoiding STDs was his “personal Vietnam.”) (tinyurl.com/personalvietnam)
J.D. has more: claiming the Harris-Walz campaign is resorting to name-calling and bullying, he ignores Crooked Hillary, Crazy Nancy, Birdbrain Nikki Haley, Lyin’ Ted, Ron DeSanctimonious, Sleepy Joe, whatever Kamabla is, and more. When Trump and Trumpists accuse someone of something, it’s they who are doing it. Psychiatrists call it projection.
Unless applied to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima, “meltdown” is an over-used cliché. But what better describes Trump descending ever deeper into madness as Harris-Walz surge past him in polls, their massive crowds outnumbering his? Last weekend he claimed their Arizona crowd was faked; that there was no one there; that it was all AI. Robbed by Foxotrumpification of the ability to recognize lies, believers believed. From a favorite troll, I received the Trump-referenced “proof-positive” picture. Since I sent him video proof of news accounts of her overflow crowd and technological debunkery of Trump’s confabulation, I haven’t heard back. Distinguishing fakery requires intellectual effort that MAGAs have been taught to eschew.
On loop, Trump is also claiming the polls are fake. The only way he loses, he bleats, is by Democrats cheating, deliberately prepping the soil for another, more deadly insurrection, in which he’ll revel as before. Despite repeatedly experiencing it, he’s incapable of graceful acceptance of defeat. Nor are those who, hearing his lies and seeing his incoherence, believe him still (X: tinyurl.com/coocoo4u). Even when he says (wishes) Joe Biden will retake the nomination (Huffington Post: tinyurl.com/back2joe).
So desperate are the Project 2025 crowd to implement their power-cementing, democracy-ending agenda that they’ll continue to prop up a man whose increasingly obvious deterioration makes him unfit to preside over dinner, much less our country. Likely, they see that as a plus, making him all the more easy to convince he’s in charge, while they call the shots. Think about it.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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