They Rage, Rage Against the Light

Donald Trump, who hears — mostly from the voices in his head — that he’s the hardest-working president in history, erupted in another ragefest on Twitter this morning, triggered by Joe Scarborough reporting merely that Trump trails Joe Biden in polls.

‘Concast’ should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is ‘nuts’. Besides, bad ratings!

As usual, I wondered at the bland reporting of this. If any other president in history, from the laziest to the most industrious, had made a single statement like this, his sanity would have been questioned immediately. In just three sentences, Trump mocked a major corporation; slandered two TV presenters, implying one of them was involved in foul play; bragged that he “used” them to get elected before “dumping” them; and, as a fillip, claimed they were unpopular. In short, his usual brand of grade-school bullying.

But this was not an isolated incident. Almost every day of his presidency Trump has released a string of such statements. Most people have long since become numb to them.

I used to ask Republicans I know if they found this behavior appropriate for a president. Those whom I know are embarrassed by this behavior, but they don’t condemn it. I find this ironic, because Republicans used to be the people who worshipped at the altar of the Dignity of the Office. I remember how offended they acted when Bill Clinton besmirched that dignity by his sexual behavior, and when Barack Obama wore a tan suit and failed to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.

The Republicans I know, most of whom voted for Trump because they saw economic advantage in a Republican presidency, might wish Trump would break his thumbs, but the 44% of Americans who approve of Trump do so not in spite of but because of these degrading tweets. For them, the empty, childish insults were the reason to vote for him in the first place, because conservative media has been dishing out the same product for decades.

Long before Trump descended his escalator, these people were engaging in exactly this intellect-free criticism of liberals in every online forum that will allow it. You can see it right here any time a troll gets through the spam filter — insults that amount to nothing more than name-calling and rage. And it’s not hard to see why. These are people who think — accurately — that they are being looked down upon by liberals, and they lash out in their humiliation. They are frightened of almost everything — so much so that they have to carry weapons with them for the simple act of protesting.

This fury is not the means to an end. It is the point of it all, and while Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Trump himself have grown rich, the people who gobble up their vomitus derive no benefit from it. Their jobs have not returned, the immigrants have not disappeared and their fear and rage have not abated. It just continues in a vicious cycle that allows the rich to grow fatter at their expense.

For several years now so-called deaths of despair have plagued such people. If they have any goal but howling out their anguish, it is to take the rest of us down that road with them.