Politics
You Can’t Worship Trump and Claim to Love America
Donald Trump represents the worst of this country.
Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist, a con man, a liar, a racist, a misogynist, and a sociopath. And if you still worship him, you support all those horrible things.
In the days before the January 6 insurrection, Trump was meeting with his brain trust-Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Louie Gohmert, Rudy Guiliani, etc.-to try and come up with a way to overturn a free and fair election. Trump wanted Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral votes, thus ensuring Trump at least another four years.
For some unknown reason, Mike Pence finally grew a small pair of balls, called a constitutional expert, and stood up to Donald Trump. I can’t do this, Mr. President, Pence told Trump, it violates the Constitution. And Trump exploded in rage.
Trump is a Mussolini wannabe. You may recall the episode of The Daily Show where Trevor Noah compares Donald Trump to African leaders and warlords.
By now, any normal patriotic person would realize Donald Trump is a truly monstrous person who is unfit for any public office. But there are still millions of Trump worshippers out there, wearing their Q-Anon shirts, buying signs reading “Let’s Go Brandon!” and screaming to anyone who will listen that the election was stolen and somehow, Trump is still president.
Dip your toes into the right-wing internet, sites like Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Newsmax, and Info Wars, and you’ll see the reason we need Xanax in the fucking tap water. You will be confronted with people who call themselves patriots while in the same breath pledge their souls to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump doesn’t love this country. He loves himself, as all malignant narcissists do. I once compared Trump to a family annihilator, and I still think I’m right. The problem is the “family” he wants to annihilate is the rest of us.
Those of us who do love America, and also see her flaws. Those of us who believe an 18-year-old should not be able to buy a semi-automatic weapon of mass destruction because AR-15s are sold as “hunting rifles.” Those of us who support equal justice, and equal rights, and want law enforcement officers to please stop murdering African Americans.
Al Franken wrote “We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow.”
For Trump worshippers, America has been replaced by Donald Trump. They don’t even pretend to love this country anymore, they just love him. What they want is a Daddy to tell them who to hate, when to punch a black person, when to drive a Charger into a crowd of peaceful protestors, and when to march to the Capitol to smear human feces on the walls and try to overthrow the government.
You cannot call yourself a patriotic American if you worship Donald Trump, anymore than you can call yourself a Christian if you hate everyone different than you. Whenever I see a Trump flag, I know the person in that house hates me and hates this country. And that is both sad and terrifying.
This op-ed was inspired by a documentary from Frontline, “Lies, Politics and Democracy.” I highly encourage you to watch it. We need to understand how close we came to losing our democracy, and what will happen if Donald Trump manages to slither his way into the Oval Office again.
