I got up to use the bathroom around 4:30 this morning, which meant I could return to bed for another half hour before the alarm went off. So I did that, and was asleep and dreaming in what must have been less than a minute.
It was a short but vivid dream—I was being confronted by a Trump supporter who was reprimanding me for muttering something under my breath after she launched into the tired line about how we have to listen to each other if there’s any hope of moving beyond the current entrenchment. I started to respond to her abrupt tone, which I guess I deserved, but then woke up.
I didn’t get back to sleep, because I lay there trying to formulate my response. I’ve just rushed through my journal entry and bypassed the Daily Writing Prompt—for now—to get to this before it leaves my head. So here goes…
There was a time, back in 2015 maybe, when such an effort might have been warranted— i.e., making the effort to talk to each other. Donald Trump, in certain ways, was an unknown quantity, and people were open to giving him a listen, even giving him a chance, since he spoke plainly and with what many took as refreshing honesty about issues that mattered to folks—cost of living, border security, etc.
From my perspective, I already knew enough about him to be highly suspicious and unconvinced that he had any business being considered for the job of President of the United States. He emanated a disconcerting vibe, reminded me of an entitled rich kid who always got his way. He appealed to peoples’ worse angels. He annoyed the hell out of me, and I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.
Even back then, he was laying out his “plan,” offering hints of things to come when it came to a crackdown on illegal aliens, and his hatred for Barack Obama. We were well aware of the slight he felt from things Obama said– and the fact that Obama had won a Nobel Peace Prize. Then there was the embarrassment Trump apparently took to heart after Seth Meyers laid into him at an earlier Washington Correspondents Dinner in 2011.
So, we all knew he filed things away, remembered the slights, always contemplated payback.
What we’ve come to learn since is that a monster was created, and let loose on us all, because payback is one of his main motivators. He’s a damaged child. He never grew up.
Cutting to the chase, the time for dialogue between sides is long over. There is nothing to parse, nothing on which to meet halfway, nothing that would soften my stance when it comes to Donald Trump. In some ways, he’s just the poster child for a more insidious problem, which is personified in the likes of Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Kevin Roberts, and Steve Bannon. Trump is just the sad point man, but since he’s POTUS—again!—he’s the one out front who gets the blame. As it is, he does and says enough stuff on his own to warrant numerous spit takes.
Anyway, if this morning’s dream had continued, I hope I would have been able to tell this person that some sort of truce is unseemly. The time for finding something of value in any opinion of someone who still supports Donald Trump is over. Has been for a long time.
Get it through your heads, MAGA loyalists: you’ve long backed the wrong horse, and the only reason you’re still with him is either because the stock market is doing OK, or he stimulates your misplaced religious fervor and your belief that White is Right.
Just remember—no one will escape his wrath. Even his most ardent supporters are just a means to some end. He doesn’t give a shit about about any of us, including those who can still say they love him.
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