The nihilism at the heart of the 2024 Trump movement

2016 was bad. We knew how awful Donald Trump would be. We warned and we worked, but enough people in three states couldn't bear to vote for the email lady.

We lurched from one crisis to the next for three years. Then came 2020, and Covid, and we damned near lost everything, as a man unbelievably unsuited for the moment into which he was thrust did everything he could to insulate his political hopes, and by doing so made everything worse. Trump lived in a bubble in which he had always been feted and sycophantically complimented. Knowing that a majority of the country thought he was worse than a case of syphilis broke him.

But 2024 is something different.

He is promising vengeance. He is promising dictatorship. And men like Ted Johnson are all here for it.

Really, read the article. It is enlightening. It is a hard read. And in encapsulates why Trump voters are worse in 2024 than they were in 2020, and certainly 2016.

Johnson is retired military. He makes six figures. He lives in an expensive house. He has every advantage which many of his fellow citizens don't possess. And yet he's angry. Materially his life is to be envied. But there is a fear in his soul. There is an emptiness in his heart. And it can't be filled by wealth or privilege.

Johnson "does his own research". Which is always a tell. He has everything anyone could want, but it's not enough. It's never enough. What men and women like Johnson want is not just the trappings, but the ability to hold power over those they consider to be lesser than them. People like me. People like you reading this. “You do your own reading and your own research, and you’re like, ‘What the hell’s happened to this country?’” he said. What indeed has happened to this country, when a 22-year veteran of the military, in a country which has never had a coup d'etat or a military takeover of the government, now wants this country to be torn apart? And for what? If you read the article there's nothing there. There's nothing concrete to which Johnson can point. It's just, in the popular vernacular of the day, a "vibe". It just doesn't feel right. Because men like him no longer have absolute power. Because men and women like him can no longer be automatically deferred to. Because men like him see a changing country, a changing world, and have an inchoate knowledge that this new reality is not meant for them, or that at least they see it that way. 

"Our system needs to be broken, and he's the man to do it." What a dereliction of the oath he took, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What a travesty. What a betrayal. He is now that enemy. But he's not alone. This year's Trump voters are of a piece. They see this as their last chance to wrest control of a world they no longer recognize. Of a world before which they tremble. And if they can't control it? They will burn it all down. Even if they die, even if they fail, they will try to make a misery for the survivors. With their final breaths they will say, "Try rebuilding that."

We're not playing a mere political game. This is not a disagreement over policy. This is an existential moment, as much as 1939 was. The forces which lost in 1945 were never truly defeated. They were merely pushed underground. But they were always there. Many times they were used by the US and the West in its Cold War against communism. This accommodation allowed those forces to rebuild, to gather their strength, both here and abroad. There needed to be a complete extirpation of that ideology, of that evil; but things are never that simple. And here we are, eighty years later, taking up the war again.

The problem is that we are in an age which doesn't value history. The Holocaust is a myth. Things won't be that bad. I'll tell you who the real bad guys are. And so on. This is a war we will have to wage one person at a time, one soul at a time. I'm still convinced we will win. But it will go beyond this election, and the next. For this is a virus, one which seeks to raise inhumanity above humanity. Defeating it will not be an easy thing. But we have no choice. As I've written before: This is what we have been called to do, as our grandparents were. And we, my friends, are up to the task.

(Note: I want to thank GovChris for being the one to bring the Politico article to our attention. I began writing this as soon as I finished reading it.)

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