Bleach America until it makes sense again
An examination of Trumpian-MAGA nihilism
This piece was written prior to President Trump’s call to use military to crack down on protests of the police-involved homicide of George Floyd.
After three years of Trump, I am very good at focusing on the broader cloud of fiery idiot bees, not each individual flame-spewing, stupid-assed bee. Still I was broken on many spiritual and intellectual levels by the President of these here United States speculating about filling your veins with UV radiation and sweet, sweet bleach to fight off the economy virus. And as I sat there in the shards of my being, I pondered how in the living fuck anyone has rallied around Trump in the vaportrail of his mismanaging the country into the edge of oblivion since the start of the year. (Sorry, Chris Cillizza.)
Please note that this isn’t a discussion where I’m going to blame the logical schism in American minds on “partisanship” or “polarization” or some sort of bullshit euphemism that blames both sides because you don’t want offend one in particular. The person who walks in the door and shoots somebody because “PEANUT BUTTER!” is not acting rationally or thoughtfully in some way that can be understood. The other people in the room are perfectly valid in fundamentally disagreeing, even being a little upset about it. Trying to treat “PEANUT BUTTER” shootings as some sort of difference of opinion is a copout by someone who doesn’t have the sense to care, or still sees an opportunity to profit off the situation. (Sorry again, Chris Cillizza.) It also short changes the conservatives I know who acknowledge that problems exist regardless of who is the president and try to, you know, fix them, instead of posting “SOLIDARITY IN PEANUT BUTTER” memes and defending a man’s right to think everyone is awful and therefore the world should burn ever so sweetly.
How we got to the latter Trumpian nihilism is the more useful conversation, and it speaks to a divide in the country that is so fundamental that it cannot be summed up by a discrete action. Yes, a number of Trump supporters’ actions frequently are racist, but it’s not just racism. Some of them may be behind him because of real economic anxiety, not the kind that is a code word for racism, but it’s not that either. Nor is it just the full-fat belief that America was much better yesterday, whenever yesterday was.
The difference in my experience is that it is not about ideology so much as needing the math of life to add up, when life isn’t math. Life is unfair, cruel, and frankly, more than a little nonsensical.* Thinking otherwise is an American commonality, frequently expressed in the equation “You work hard + you do right = you buy a personal watercraft.”
The nuance is that the elements of the equation varies person to person. It could be “You are born white + you get money = you buy a personal watercraft.” Or “You aren’t gay + you shun people for being gay = you buy a personal watercraft.” Even “You aren’t a woman + You try to feel up women = you get sex, and you buy a personal watercraft.”
This illustrates two points:
- There are many paths to a personal watercraft, and many of them are horrible.
- There are formative notions you internalize when you are small, and what you learn when you are small usually fucks you up for life.
The problem, and boon, of this era is not that the world has changed so much as it is harder to hide from how it really is, and always has been, no matter what you plug into the equation. The information was always out there, but now it’s the easiest it’s ever been to gather and find the kind of enlightenment that makes you want to break shit.
Depending on how someone has done their existential math, the full weight of reality can be a threatening, leveling proposition. And if there wasn’t ever really an equation that worked at all, then why not toss on a MAGA hat and own the snowflake libs by carrying your assault rifle outside, threatening a governor, licking every water fountain you see, and dying alone in an ICU with a machine trying to breathe for you?
The answer is that life is not always about you, and when you try to break things to numb that existential ache, you don’t just break yourself. The shrapnel hits other people, and makes life unfairer.
Even if the world is a touch less orderly than you reckoned, burning the whole thing down, while fun, bears out as less soothing to your soul than, you know, fixing the problems you can in the time you have.
*Lest I, The Author, look like I am not doing my part, I have raised life’s unfairness to life’s Manager and am awaiting a response.
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