When Trump is finally off the scene for good I think the future of the Republican party is likely to look a bit like what happened to the Communist party in the USSR after the death of Stalin.
The party isn’t going away for some time and they’re going to have a succession of new leaders who are all horrible and destructive in their own ways, but none of them will manage to achieve the same cult of personality that their predecessor built for himself.
Those are going to be some big shoessmall gloves to fill.
It might take a generation or so before Hollywood has the distance and perspective to do a proper dark comedy. Hard to laugh when the bodies are still warm.
Before anybody dismisses Trump as an irrelevancy, just remember: He got more votes in 2020 than 2016. After 4 years of random stupidity, sustained cruelty, and constant grifting, still more people voted for him than when he had never held political office.
This. The problem with creating a cult of personality is that it’s non-transferrable. You can’t just shift all that blind obedience to a new leader; it has to be rebuilt from scratch. And I don’t think Desantis is the one who can take up that mantle. He’s not charismatic in the con-artist way that 45 is. Desantis is a politician, and that is a big mark against him in the minds of Trumpkins.
He can parrot all of 45’s talking points, but it was never policy that gained 45 his following. It’s the odd hypnotism of his speech patterns and how he resonates with a crowd.
@anon61221983 Great comment! All the upvotes to you!
Normal people generally try to follow the rules, both written laws and unwritten societal norms. But there are always a few who demonstrate why you can’t play chess with a pigeon…the pigeon will just strut around like he owns the board and then will shit all over it.
Society is unprepared to deal quickly with that kind of person for just the reasons that you state. Eventually, the bully gets shut down, the liar gets exposed, the manipulator can’t bend the rules any longer. Unfortunately, it’s a slow process and lots of people get hurt in the meantime, and we all lose a little bit of trust in the possibility of an orderly and rational society.
I’ve maintained that a big part of his popularity is the fact that he continually says the quiet part out loud. He is a man too stupid to play the dog whistle which has ensured his popularity with those too dim to hear one.
Honestly, I kinda feel this way watching Space Force. It’s funny and has a great cast, but there’s a sort of existential stain on it because they are specifically mocking a thing Former Guy made because Former Guy made it and it’s dumb. But then you’re supposed to root for them in the end as the scrappy upstarts, and I just…can’t. They clearly avoid mentioning Guy also so as not to make it about him, but they occasionally reference a stupid tweet and… again…. I just can’t laugh at that stuff yet.
I don’t get why people ascribe so much cleverness to bullying and egomania. People always assume layers that just aren’t there. Maybe people don’t want to believe that plain old bullying works as well as it does, so they need to believe it’s n-dimensional chess.
I feel quite certain that she’s not upset or “bored” with Trump because he’s a fascist who tried to overthrow the government, but because he failed. So she’s done with him and has moved her attention on to those she sees as more likely to succeed… if anything, she’s just slightly embarrassed she backed a “loser.” That train wreck she helped create just wasn’t big or fatal enough to keep her entertained, as it were.
Also, he’s just so pathetic about it - all he does is just whine, in the most pathetic sorts of ways.
I’ve often heard it said that fascists being incompetent is part of the core dynamic - if they were competent, they wouldn’t have to resort to such undemocratic means to achieve their goals.
Also, for followers: sunk-cost fallacy. (“We couldn’t have expended all that energy supporting someone who was that incompetent and stupid…”) Also also I suspect just-world/conspiratorial thinking: even if those in control are evil, they must have come to power for a good reason (i.e. great skill and/or cunning). And an unwillingness to recognize how terrible people can be. E.g. Hitler used his amazingly persuasive oratorical skills and magic mustache to hypnotize the population into doing things they otherwise would definitely never do, he wasn’t a bumbling incompetent who was embraced by a percentage of the population because they were eager to have an excuse to murder their neighbors and feel righteous about it…
Was he really the one who did the most damage, or was he just the biggest turd in the tsunami of shit pouring out of the sewer pipe the Republicans have been hitting with a wrench for decades when it finally burst?
Take the Supreme Court for example. Technically Trump appointed the Justices that swung the court so hard to the right, but he didn’t really pick them. He was given a wishlist from a hard-right group that has spent 30-40 years grooming and supporting judges willing to bend the law in the direction of an extremist Christian Theocracy with the goal of getting a Supreme Court line-up like the current one. They did all the hard work, he slapped his name on it - pretty much his standard MO.
Yes, she had a major role in the rise of Trump. And she’s been sour on Trump basically since he pushed for the corporate tax cut, which was the Republican as usual stuff that none of the Trump voter base wanted. She has become steadily more anti-Trump since that time.
