Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Mark Mamerow
Donald Trump has wasted no time making some truly shocking, in-your-face appointments to Cabinet positions. The most jarring is Matt Gaetz for AG. But the national security picks– Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence–are almost as appalling. These nominees are the polar opposites of qualified! Clearly, Trump is flexing his trolling muscles to bring the Republican Senate to heel.
Pundits and editorial boards are rightly alarmed. Guests on the Sunday shows are tut-tutting. The ladies on The View don’t know what hit them. The media elites are virtually sputtering with indignation, and who can blame them? This is a clown show of epic, dangerous proportion, and anyone who is even mildly politically engaged is aghast.
But what about Trump’s popular vote majority, the voters who made his stunning comeback possible? It’s a good bet that they don’t care. In fact, most Trump voters aren’t even aware of these developments. The obvious Trump forecast is a hurricane of MAGA chaos, but most of his voters have no clue what’s about to hit us. Some of them may have a dim memory of the constant turmoil of Trump’s first term, but if they do, it didn’t bother them.
This was the LOL-Nothing-Matters, Burn-it-all-down election. Voter nihilism ruled. And it continues to rule. As The Onion survey respondent on apathy cried “I don’t care enough to be apathetic!”
And it’s not an accident, either. Voters’ complete alienation from politics has been the express goal of right wing politics for over 40 years.
Remember Ronald Reagan’s signature quote? “The scariest nine words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Tax lobbyist Grover Norquist was proud to say, “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” In Norquist’s 1990s –2010s heyday, he had Republican lawmakers by the short hairs. If they didn’t sign onto his anti-tax charter, he sicced the Americans for Tax Reform organization on them, and the hapless pol would be lucky to win his or her next primary.
Newt Gingrich made an art of not just criticizing Democrats, but verbally disemboweling them, along the way converting Congressional politics from reasonably amicable, good faith opposition into no-holds-barred trench warfare. Rush Limbaugh and his legion of squawk radio imitators exercise nihilism at its finest–-a struggle of all against all. No goals, no program, no ideology. Just tear down the libs.
Look where the NRA has taken us on guns. Their goal is to turn American society into an armed camp, where we all carry weapons to defend ourselves, and don’t rely on the police for protection. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke openly warned us not to bother calling 911. Just blow the other guy away.
Republicans have perfected the art of the government shutdown. Does it ever win them approval, or votes? Of course not. Tactically, shutdowns are a losing maneuver. But the government shutdown reveals the conservatives’ long-term strategy in its purest form: to get people disgusted with “both sides” in Washington. It works! As shutdowns have become as common as Marjory Taylor Greene meltdowns, voters have come to view all politicians as feckless incompetents. Do you remember Trump jawing with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi on TV in the Oval Office, just before the longest government shutdown in history? That little bit of theater was the perfect example of “both sides” beclowning themselves–-and Trump loved it for its “great ratings”.
The Right has also assiduously weakened government agencies, under the theory that the best government is that which does the least. So, we are left with an IRS so diminished that it can neither audit the rich nor answer phone calls on its 800 number, and a DOT that can barely fund basic infrastructure. The idea is to get the taxpayer disgusted with the government’s non-performance.
Trump’s election, and now his triumphant return, are the capstone to the decades long project of destroying all faith in government and politics. Trump follows the overriding maxim of his crony Steve Bannon: “Flood the zone with shit”. There is so much chaos and confusion, so much hue and cry over Trump’s lies and erratic behavior, that the unengaged voter doesn’t know what to think. What’s the natural response of the voter? Throw up your hands and turn it all off. Then, while nobody’s looking, the corporate tax rate is cut, federal agencies dwindle, and the Christian Right takes over the schools.
To a greater extent than ever before, America’s institutions have to stand up to Trump, because voters are no longer paying attention. The military. The courts. The press. Academia. The Congress. Since the voters don’t care, these institutions are the last defense against an authoritarian takeover. Are you feeling nervous about this? If you’re not, I want some of the stuff you’re taking.