10/12/2023

ID’ing A Trumper

After 7 years of this nonsense, Trumpers have become a “group” of their own. Like Republicans, they are a minority but also like Republicans they are grossly and powerfully overrepresented in society. As Wikipedia notes, “The label Trumpism has been applied to national-conservative and national-populist movements in other democracies, and many politicians outside of the United States have been labeled as staunch allies of Trump or Trumpism, or even as their country's equivalent to Trump, by various news agencies; among them are Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, Jacob Zuma, Shinzo Abe, Javier Milei, and Yoon Suk-yeol.” So, Trump’s brand of racist fascism has spread (or was already there and Trump allowed them to crawl out of their rat holes) to assholes around the world. Trumpism has become sort of a culture with some pretty obvious trademarks. As one source explained, “MAGA idealism which includes white supremacy, xenophobia, control over women’s bodies, capitalistic values and a lack of morality.”

Trump superfans dream of a run again, and of JFK Jr. on the ticket -  POLITICOCharacters like this guy don’t need the hat or the disrespectful shirt to be identified. You know by the expression on his face and the rest of his body language that he is uneducated, entitled, racist, ignorant, and proud of all of that. Likewise, this bunch of shouting, inbred, arrogant fools are easily identified as Trumpers. Opinion | How Never Trumpers Fell in Line - The New York TimesIf they weren’t Trumpers they’d be Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Hell’s Angels or Outlaw biker gangbangers, Blood & Honour America Division neofascists, Aryan Nation skinheads, Jewish Defense League terrorists, and nothing keeps these characters from belonging to all of the above clans of nutjobs and the many more “organizations” where white people join in mutual hatred of anyone who isn’t “like us.” The fact that there are so many young Trumpers proves that Kornbluth was on the money with “The Marching Morons” and the saying “stupidity kills, just not fast enough” is sadly true.

However, my inspiration for this essay came at my local YMCA. An old white guy (surprise!) is often wrapping up whatever routine he has when I arrive at the gym. He shaves at the Y and while there is nothing special about his face it takes him about 10 minutes to get the job done. All the while, he has the water running full force as he scrapes the dead skin and scraggly hair from his face. That kind of arrogant, entitled, wasteful, anti-environmental attitude just screams “Trumper!” and it got me thinking about the other identifying behaviors of Trumpers.

Deadline Detroit | Lapointe: Trump's Selfish Mask Resisters in Michigan  Reflect an Abnormal ElectionArrogance and entitlement are the primary hallmarks. Mostly, we’re talking about middle-aged to old white people, sadly not just men. Even more sadly, not just old men. When you see some one blasting down the freeway at 20+mph over the speed limit, weaving between cars like a video game, you likely automatically think “asshole” and “Trumper.” When someone tries to push their grocery cart in front of a long line of socially distanced shoppers, you know this is another Trumper. When someone is yelling at a cashier for some imagined slight or, back in the masking days of COVID, for asking the customer to either back off or wear the required mask, we think “Trumper.” An illegally loud vehicle--motorcycle, pickup, car, or semi--90% certainly a Trumper. Obviously, swastika or Confederate flag tats and patches and hats are Trumper ID marks. When someone takes an assault rifle into a business, school, church, or concert crowd and kills the usual mass murder quantity of innocent people, you think “Trumper.” When someone is commenting on science, technology, medicine, religion (especially Christianity), or economics and it is beyond obvious that they know nothing about that subject, you should probably think “Trumper” and 99% of the time you’ll be right.

You can always find an exception and, especially in this case, “the exception proves the rule.” You will be wrong in assuming any form of assholery to be Trumpism so rarely it will be of no consequence. That is one hell of a hallmark for a political/social movement: always wrong, never learns from mistakes, and so deep into the wingnut echo chamber that no new information ever seeps in.

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