“…President Trump has fueled a culture of fear, racism, and demonization as part of his efforts to resuscitate a culture of white Christian nationalism.” American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism, Henry A. Giroux

Excuse me, the late Joan Rivers, for appropriating your famous question. 

I need to have a serious talk with that half of the country that believes Donald Trump is the savior, the messiah, a deity, the most brilliant businessperson in the world, their protector against the hordes (oh, you know who he means), sharp, articulate, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, as powerful as a locomotive, and invincible to a speeding bullet zipping past his ear. 

Yeah, he is not any of those things. 

No, really.

The only people torturing Christians in this country are the elite capitalist classes, who are using them to distract from the deepfake they are perpetrating on them. 

All to distract you from the real source of your pain by creating imaginary enemies. 

You know who I’m talking about. 

We’ve been here before. 

I know it’s asking too much to try reading American history. Not the pablum they serve in school, on Faux News, or spouted by your uninformed neighbor. 

Throughout our history, from before the Declaration of Independence through the American Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, when the rich got richer on the backs of working people while working people got poorer (sound familiar), to the great union-busting efforts of the early twentieth century, to the post-World War II nation of the fifties (those commies) and the sixties (the coloreds and hippies and those feminists), right through the eighties (greed is good, and you bought it) right up until the promises of Trump (and all those tax cuts that put ten dollars a month into your paycheck and you thought it was wow), we (you know, ordinary folks) have been shoveled a load of horse manure diversions to believe that one plus one equals three, that right side up is upside down, and that Jack and Jill went up the hill white and came down black and brown (taking your jobs with them).

You cheer when he flaunts his vain soul like it’s some badge of honor (you know how sick that sounds and looks). 

Somehow, you and I are supposed to ignore his first term, 2017-2021—everything he said, everything he did.

I want to believe that his disrespect for people, including foreign leaders, elected officials, journalists, critics, and the flavor-of-the-day imaginary enemy, was some neurosis, a paranoia caused by his infatuation with the image built over the years by Roy Cohn, Public Relations and Marketing savants, his gratuitous ego, the Yes people around him, the adoring public who bought into the myth and the man. 

Still, then I realized he was not as dumb as I thought he was. I mean, he’s never been able to put together two sentences that made any sense unless it was scripted on a teleprompter, and even then, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t gnarl it.

And when he was able to articulate something, I could tell it was usually something so stupid and outrageous, like these:

• “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
• “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
• “I’m like a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”

What's sad is that many of you will read this and think, "Oh my gosh, he really is the badass we thought he was."

That is truly sad.

You refuse to see the hate, the division, the self-serving, the gratuitous mongering, the ego-driven delusional chest-puffing, the wacked-out word salads that give new meaning to what the f*ck did he say. 

You call him a genius, and I can’t tell if you’re messing with us or if you’re just as mad as he is.

That’s not sad. That’s insane. 

We got your number. 

You had us wondering if we were the bad hombres, the illegals, the worst of the worst. The problem was us. 

The hardworking, 60-70 hours a week, three-jobs, calloused hands, hunched over, unable to pay for health insurance, living constantly on the edge of disaster, feeling like we are the enemy, and we’re American citizens, while you lavish gold on your small penis, small mind, and small heart. 

Oh, you really are small people.

And you have finally done it. 

Pushed us to the brink of rebellion… okay, over the edge. 

Resistance. Quiet. Noisy. Passive. Active. In the streets. In the ballot box. In our minds. In our hearts. 

Sometimes, with our bodies. 

Your last breath will come. Your end will come. Your cruelty, hate, and vision for this nation's future will fade into the great wastebin of history.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” Mahatma Gandhi