I suppose I should be looking backwards right now. Instead I am staring into a dangerous and troubling present. I realized what the actual problem/situation is a few hours ago. It all comes down to bullies, cowards, hanger-ons, and children. This is in fact what the democratic party is lacking and has been since Obama left. I remember very clearly the Republicans feeling like Obama and his Chief of Staff were bullying them. This 2016 post is evidence of that. Nobody likes a bully… bullies are bad. Forbes even got in on it back in ’13 calling him a bully. They expressly stated how wrong it is for him not to heed the voice of the minority. Yet… Here we are in 2024. Where are those dissident voices?
Trump is a bully and a petulant child. He acts on instinct and says whatever he wants with the expectation that he will not be challenged or stopped. If he is then he chooses to attack even harder. He holds grudges and puts people in power who are ‘loyal to him first.’ None of this is a good thing for a President who is supposed to lead a nation. It is very good for a small collective of people who choose to believe they are the voice of the majority (and flail angrily like children and make up lies when they are seen as not being that). I believe Trump won for a handful of reasons–the unwillingness to elect a woman to be prime among them. Yet right behind that is the fear that people would continue to cry foul. That squeaky wheel therefore got ALL of the grease and we are sliding right out of a democracy into something far more autocratic.
I am very exhausted by all of it already. I am not looking forward to several more years of this continuous madness. Just recently the Director of Homeland Security acted like an absolute child, taunting “51st state” repeatedly while straddling the line between Canada and the US. I’m sure it will be spun as a joke. Yet the need to spin it at all–the willingness to act in a way that insults a neighbor and ally while questioning their right to be a sovereign nation is straight up in poor taste. Yet, that is who we have chosen to be as a country. Bullies who behave arrogantly, flagrantly, and in poor taste while demanding to be respected no matter what we do. Or, as the creators of South Park put it TWENTY+ years ago…