Thursday open thread: Listen to your MAGA Messiah!
The weather here in God's Little Acre is gorgeous. There's a nip of autumn in the air. And Donald Trump may be scuppering his party's chances in 2022 and 2024. How? Like this:
This is the problem with personality cults. If the Leader around which they're based is unhappy, the Leader has no use for the institutions which he took over to engender the cult. Trump has no concern for the Republican Party aside from it being a tool to service his own wounded, fragile ego. The party exists solely to cater to him; to the extent it won't, or can't, he will dispense with it. And his cult members will follow him out of the GOP tent. For them, the party is solely a vehicle for Trump's wishes. If it can't fulfill them, and by extension their own pathologies, what use is it? What use is it going to vote if their messiah is saying that it's pointless, as the election will just be stolen again?
This is why unlike maniacal blue check liberals, those of us on the calmer side of things just bided our time and kept our powder dry. A true demagogue would know that he needs a party structure behind him to complete his political plans. But Trump has no political plan. He's neither Hitler nor Mussolini. He is all raging id and damaged psyche. He has neither the patience nor the ruthlessness to pull off a democracy-ending coup. He doesn't know how to play the system to get what he wants. He expects to be handed power simply because he got lucky in 2016. He shot up his own supply, and now thinks that he is fated to be this country's dictator. But he has not the intelligence to pull that off. And if he loses interest, so will his lumpenproletariat. They follow what he does and says. And if he says that elections are useless, they will just stay home.
Now, some will turn to violence. That is a given. But most of them will withdraw from politics as being rigged against God-fearing Christians. It's what the evangelical right did, building structures to gain power over the Republican Party. But that movement was diffuse, and didn't rely on one charismatic leader. The Trump movement and its takeover of the GOP depends completely on the whims of an erratic moron. When his whims turn against that party, then his followers will tack with him. And Republican elites know this:
The statement below is another painful reminder that his pride is more important than his party. We can’t afford (literally) 4 more years of failed leadership from Joe Biden! Please show up to vote Republicans in ‘22 and ‘24 our future depends on it. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/YReSk0X6MB
— Geoff Duncan (@GeoffDuncanGA) October 13, 2021
This is not a man to be feared beyond the damage he and his cult can do in the short term. This is a man with no long-term political project save personal grievance. Crush him and his pathetic Brownshirts.