Why do people vote for Trump?

On By Littum

Remember, remember, the fifth of November

—Seventeenth-century English Nursery Rhyme

And Happy Eugene V. Deb’s Birthday to all those celebrating.

I woke up this morning with absolutely nothing to say. I stayed up as late as I could and watched the two presidential candidates give their final speeches at their final campaign rallies. As each of them walked off the stage for the last time, they stopped being symbols and went back to being people looking for a well-paid temporary job. It must be kind of liberating, at least for a moment.

The speeches were not significant. The vice president drew a large crowd in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, right there at the foot of the Rocky step. The former president* filled part of an arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but he assured those gathered there that the vice president “couldn’t have had a hundred people at his rally.” After I noticed that the former president* had gone so heavy on the bronzer that he now looked like he was completely coppered, it occurred to me that if he went out in the rain, he would be all green in the morning . Then I went back to what he said, and the gross idiocy of his lie about the size of the vice president’s crowd was finally enough. I went to bed. And I woke up this morning with absolutely nothing to say.

If the former president* wins, a majority of the country as defined by the Constitution—and we’ll get to that in a moment—will have voted affirmatively for racism, mendacity, authoritarianism, and the vengeance of blind animals. After four years of his presidency, and the four years of his previous presidency that were somehow even more damaging to the republic, there are no excuses left. If you voted for him, you voted for a crueler, dumber, meaner America because that’s what you wanted, and you want that America to be led by a mentally deranged clown. He is not Hitler. He is the rebel leader from Woody Allen’s Bananas who, when he finally overthrows the dictator, demands that all citizens change their underwear every half hour and that underwear be worn outside so the government can check.

What is the Spanish word for straitjacket, yet?

The former president* is a dying civilization unto himself. An entire independent reality that goes supernova right before our eyes. If you can’t see that and you choose to live in the expiring imaginary universe, you deserve exactly what you get for doing so. In 2004, when the American people inexplicably re-elected the former worst president ever, my late friend Clif Garboden put it on the line in The Boston Phoenix the morning after the election.

Many of us effe Easterners want to know: What the hell is wrong with you?! You voted against your self-interest at every turn (you dumb asses in South Dakota deserve special credit for voting out one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate) and re-elected an ignorant cowboy who can’t be trusted to remember a lunch order , never mind running a country. What in God’s name…?! Wait, that was in the name of God, wasn’t it? Made weak and ignorant by a spoon-fed climate of fear, you slack-jawed inbred flatlanders have sought refuge in the traditional twin towers of thoughtlessness – jingoistic patriotism and fundamentalist religion.

Uncivil? You bet? Realistic? Damn right. And if things go sideways this year, the country will deserve every drop of Clif’s scorn and more.

A few days ago, an interesting email landed in my inbox. It was a long way off Tablet with the title Hunter S. Thompson was a strange visionary before drugs and politics ate his brain. The author, Jeff Weiss, let the spirit of the late Dr. Thompson’s monumental statement about the 1972 presidential election, which remains the finest passage in the history of modern American political journalism:

This may be the year we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally sit back and say it – that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms at all about killing anyone else in the world who tries to us uncomfortable.

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his vague talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who has run for president of the United States in this century. who really understands what a great monument to all the best instincts of mankind this country could have been if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?

That question, it should not be necessary to point out, is still open.

But as I said, I woke up this morning with nothing more to say.