Is Trump Pushing Civil War?
That's a rhetorical question, of course he is
Though I admittedly have a lot of shortcomings (except from the waist down, internet trolls), as a rule, I try not to spend too much time being disappointed in myself. Why be a navel-gazing narcissist when instead, I can look outward, being disappointed in so many others? And yet, I am disappointed in myself. For every time the cockeyed optimist in me thinks, “Okay, we’ve hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up,” we sink even further into the muck. Whenever I mistakenly believe we’re scraping ocean floor in the Mariana Trench – i.e., the lowest of low points – Donald J. Trump (the “J.” stands for “Jesus,” his disciples will tell you) whips out his auger, and tries to drill to the earth’s inner core, believed to be about the temperature of the sun. Or perhaps of hellfire. Maybe DJT just wants to advance-scout locations where he’s likely to spend eternity.
By now, ever since Trump rode into our dark hearts during that golden escalator descent in June of 2015, you know the pattern. One previously unthinkable abomination after another is committed, each of distinct character, or lack of, and yet all still blurring together: Birtherism-War-heroes-don’t-get-captured-Grab-em-by-the-pussygate-Impeachment-One-Impeachment-Two-Election-denier-January 6th-coup-instigator-Classified-documents-shoplifter-Serial-liar. That is a drastically abridged list. A full one could go on for pages. But if you take even a cursory look at a newspaper, at least at one of the few that are left, you already know this.
What’s new? Well, nothing much. Or maybe an escalation of atrocities, as we say in the culture war-crimes business. In the last several days, Donald Trump has decided to go public with his love for QAnon, the internet death cult that holds that Democrats and The Elites are Satanic pedophiles, from whom only Trump can save us. Never mind that he used to hang with young-girls fetishist Jeffrey Epstein. And that he still hangs with Matt Gaetz. Maybe he was just working deep cover. DJT is like the Serpico of Satanic-pedophile-sting-operators. Judeo-Christian children everywhere should rest easy, so long as the tangelo-flavored real estate developer is on the case.
But now, Trump, who previously merely flirted with QAnon, is full-on finger-banging them in public. First, Trump had a rally over the weekend, which played Q-Anon themed music, as all the Trumpbots raised their index fingers to indicate the number “one.” Not because they were U2 fans, hoping Trump broke into the song of the same name. Nor because they think Donald Trump is number one. Though despite his dropping popularity from the sheer weight of all his legal entanglements, in the RealClear 2024 Republican primary poll aggregates, he still is number one by about 30 points, no matter how hard Ron DeSantis tries to convince us he’s Trump without the baggage. (Or without the personality.)
No, the reason many extended their index fingers is because the music playing during Trump’s stem-winder sounded an awful lot like QAnon anthem “WWG1WGA,” short for QAnon mantra “Where We Go One, We Go All” (and which Trump played as background music on a video he posted of himself on his Truth Social platform back in August). Where are they all going? Right down the crapper, of course. But don’t tell them that. Cultists are always the last to know they are doomed. Just ask the Jonestown massacre Kool-Aid drinkers or purple-shroud-wearing Heaven’s Gaters, if you have a medium who can contact them on the other side of their mass suicides. Here’s the spooky video of the Trump/QAnon death pact in action from the same Ohio rally in which Trump also said GOP senate hopeful J.D. Vance “is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad.” (Even Trump tells the truth on occasion.)
In case he was being too subtle, Trump has also “re-Truthed” this illustration on his ironically-named Truth Social.
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There he is again with the WWG1WGA business, along with “The Storm is Coming,” yet another QAnon mantra. Just in case the point was lost (one suspects it takes a lot of these followers a while to sound out the two-syllable words), Trump is also wearing a “Q” lapel pin.
So…….let’s do something prosecutors and grand juries aren’t likely to do for Trump: let’s take him at his word. He’s a bona fide Q-nutter now!
Leading us to believe one of two things:
Trump is insane.
Or Trump wants other insane people to believe he’s as insane as they are, to ratchet up tension, to put pressure on prosecutors who might fear civil war, or at least instances of violence. And to once again crown himself the Iceberg Slim of division-pimps.
Neither of these are attractive alternatives. Either of these are disqualifiers to again run for higher office – as if Trump needed another one of those after trying to overturn an election. (Generally something we try to avoid doing here in free countries.) They might even be disqualifiers from walking around without a straitjacket.
Of course, while these might be the most egregious displays of overt affection, this is hardly Trump’s first go-around with the Qballers, aside from them experiencing robust representation as January 6 congressional invaders on the heels of his “Stop the Steal” rally. As Vanity Fair’s Caleb Ecarma has reported:
While that “storm” still has yet to make landfall, QAnon is now experiencing a significant revival of sorts, thanks in large part to Trump's full-throated embrace of the movement following the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago last month. The Justice Department's investigation into Trump's mishandling of classified documents has breathed new life into the movement, with Truth Social, the former president’s social media platform, serving as a unique breeding ground for the group's wildest claims yet. QAnon influencers have a symbiotic relationship with Trump: They pump up user activity on his app, where they can thrive without fear of suspension, while the former president disseminates their baseless theories to his millions of followers. Thus far, the platform's administrators have given Q-aligned personalities an element of legitimacy and authority that eluded them on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. According to data compiled by NewsGaurd and reported by The Daily Beast, 47 QAnon-promoting accounts have received verification badges on Truth Social, each commanding more than 10,000 followers. Trump himself has promoted 70 pro-QAnon accounts and “retruthed”—the Truth Social equivalent of a retweet—dozens of Q-related posts amid new developments in the Justice Department investigation. In one 24-hour period last week, Trump shared 88 posts to his Truth Social accounts, at one point demanding to have his presidential title restored, writing, “Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!”
And calling Trump’s bonkers cult a death cult is not at all hyperbole. Let’s put aside the five people who died after the January 6th coup attempt. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump has aptly demonstrated, QAnon-inspired murders, committed by people who have lost their minds after mainlining this internet poison, are now actually racking up a body count.
Does Trump want civil war? Of course he does. Or at least he wants us to think that storm might be coming if he gets prosecuted. Which is about as cynical as it can possibly get for a man who just two years ago, was leader of the free world, and who seemingly wants to be again.
Does he want the body count? I can’t say. I’m not inside his head, thank God, or else I might start looking for Q-drops on 8kun. But he’s expressed zero remorse about the deaths that have occurred. So whether he actually welcomes death in his service is between Trump and his god (himself). Though it wouldn’t surprise me. Sacrificial propitiation is often deific validation, at least to duped believers.
Bonus Track: Color me skeptical that a civil war is coming. As I’ve written before: “It’s pretty difficult to believe Americans would grow so irate or radicalized that they’d change out of their pajama bottoms and take their finger off the Amazon-Prime order button long enough to head for the hills and eat hardtack (it’s not even gluten-free).” However, if we do head that direction, we’ll need good Civil War musical accompaniment. I suggest Steve Earle’s “Dixieland.” If you want to skip the chitchat of him explaining the song, the music starts around the two-minute mark. It’s just Earle’s vocals, mandolin, and boot-kicking percussion. It almost makes me want to change out of my pajama bottoms and take up my musket:
Before Trump was in the national spotlight, I had the totally random chat with a commercial real estate dude from Manhattan. And no, I don't run with a crowd even resembling that reptilian or wealthy crowd. Anyhoo, he was talking about Trump in terms that were somewhere between mocking and gagging. He claimed that Trump was literally hated by that Manhatten crowd, and if not for Ivana, he would have never have been invited to a basement poker game, much less a philanthropic soiree. What you see now is a much more refined version than what he was then.
Let's move up to the 20 teens. It became obvious to a national audience that he was narcissistic (I know this is a shock, but it's true!) I mean, doesn't everyone love to be an armchair shrink? He loved adulation, but mostly any kind of attention, pos or neg, would usually do. Narcissist was an apt name so it became part of our national vocabulary. Welcome to the DSM-V, everyone!
Then he became El Presidente. We started hearing whispers of more psych lingo, like "sociopath." This is a pretty rough diagnosis, and a little scary, especially when it refers to a leader of people. In short, it means he lacks empathy and has less than normal concern for human suffering, other than his own. Yes, I mean people clearly saw that Trump only thought well of people who could boost him - until the boosting stopped.
Now, I'm going to throw in another diagnosis from the DSM -V. Psychopath. OK, now you think that's going a bit far. Let me explain. A sociopath is someone that can't relate to another's pain, and doesn't really care to. These lovely folks can do harm, but it's the consequences they want to avoid, so that hems them in a bit. But psychopath is a different animal. In fact, it gives non-rabid animals a bad name. A psychopath is not just someone who cant relate to someone else's suffering, it's someone who takes a giggling delight in causing it. It's like a sociopath on Meth. It's an extreme fetish. It's what even an atheist would call evil.
Have I gone too far? Am I a histrionic ninny? (I've been called worse) Take a look at the evidence that Matt just laid out. There is absolutely no evidence that Trump has regret for the DC metro cops, or tens of thousands of corpses caused by the underplaying of the virus. He knew that his fanboys were armed on Jan. 6 and would spill blood for him. He appears to enjoy tittlating his Confederates with the the wet dream of a civil war and I'm sure that if it broke out, he'd be front and center of his 4K cheering on a bloodbath as if it were an Ohio State v. Michigan football game in November. He wants dead bodies. He wants to watch his gladiators slaying the weak libs. He wants to draw first blood.
** Spoiler Alert ** This post may come close to revealing just how old I really am.
Way back in the Jurassic Period of American politics, I remember a fun bunch called the SDS. It stood for the Students for a Democratic Society. Most of the radicals that populated it were brought on board by the draft which sent their fellow Americans to a war overseas that was based on falsehoods, bad policy and flawed execution. They were fairly insulated from the blowback of being relocated to the rice paddies of a Southeast Asian country (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia . . . Did I mention falsehoods?).
But they took their outrage seriously and it was pretty absolute. "Tear it all down. It's all too corrupt and immoral. It's a system that has to be destroyed so we can have true Jeffersonian participatory democracy." (It reminds me of "Nuke it from orbit. The only way to be sure.") I remember thinking "Okay, but are we sure of how we make the leap from one system to the other? I mean, what's the plan?"
As some of you may have learned in history class, a lot of the air came out of the balloon when they ended the draft. The hard core revolutionaries like Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn kept on with the Weathermen faction but most people drifted to the reality of adult maturity: jobs, spouses, kids, car payments, home ownership (which, of course, has led to the cohort of entitled baby boomers who are only happy when they are being catered to. Sorry but if the orthopedic shoe fits . . . )
Can we hope that the most hard core civil war proponents will take the same path to irrelevancy? It hinges on one big factor: Can they get laid. I have long held the view that most of the violence perpetrated by men could be mitigated by involvement with a female. Heck, the Unabomber would never have made those bombs if he had a wife demanding that he get in from the garage and fix the garbage disposal.
I'm only joking a little bit. What will really do it is when they get injured in the melee and their insurance won't cover their hospital bills. That will convince them they can't afford a civil war.