One might think that having alienated the vast majority of the American electorate during his first term, Donald Trump would figure out the basic math of democracies: the person with the most votes wins. Unless you’re talking about the election of the President of the United States, and then it’s the person with the most electoral college votes wins. That’s very weird, and needs to end.
This essay is a revision and an evolution of a previous essay on this site titled “Reductionism, and the Strange Politics of Donald Trump.” It is updated from the original essay published in 2020 to account for events that have occurred since then. You know, indictments, insurrections, convictions and a host of strange actions and decisions made by a politician who wishes to succeed.
One of the most basic tenets of politics in the age of democracies is that politicians will generally try, as best they can, to appeal to as broad a base as possible. This is not to say that all politicians do this at the expense of the things in which they believe, but that they moderate their stance on these beliefs, realizing that compromise is the hallmark of a functioning democracy…and adulthood.
Donald Trump is evidently trying a different approach. Mr. Trump seems determined to reduce his constituency to the absolute smallest number possible, and hope that this will win him a victory in November, 2024. Over the space of his entire political existence, Donald Trump has sought to insult, degrade, and alienate every group of people in this country not solidly behind his political aspirations. It does not matter whether that group is identified by their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, political views, or any other characteristic. If they are not within his base, his hatred and complete contempt for them is proudly brandished every day.
Who are these people who make up Trump’s political base? They are primarily members of three basic groups: conservative christian evangelicals, white nationalists, and gun toters. Make no mistake, together, they make up a significant portion of the electorate, but they also overlap to a great extent, sharing several common characteristics which limits their percentage of the overall electorate. Many, if not most of them, are actually gun toting white nationalist christian evangelicals.
Specifically, they are politically unsophisticated, with little or no perception of what comprises a republic and its mechanisms of operation through the democratic process. They have little or no concept of the art of compromise, and how this purely adult form of conflict resolution serves to preserve and perpetuate any republic that functions on said democratic processes.
For the most part, they are poorly or under-educated and rarely have any college experience. Those who do lack a unified, holistic, and egalitarian view of the world outside of what is told to them by the governors of the Southern Baptist Convention (the religious teachings of which are essentially bigoted, exclusionary, nationalistic, and imperial), Fox News, Newsmax, and various other right wing mass media propaganda outlets.
They do not seek the truth. Rather, they are willing slaves to the algorithms that take them farther and farther down the rabbit hole of their racist comfort. If they sought truth, they would be in a different place altogether, and really, different people.
Encompassing the three groups mentioned above, Trump’s base consists almost solely of white people who live in a continuous cycle of fear, perpetuated by the propaganda outlets above, of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-conforming people. This fear cycle peaks when these groups demand equal justice under the law, and equal legal rights and treatment within society as a whole. When a member of the neoconservative right wing in this country argues against the ‘gay agenda,” remind them that this agenda consists of being treated with love, compassion, and basic respect afforded cis-gender, heterosexual white males in this country. Everybody should have this agenda…everybody.
The inherent problem with Trump’s strategy in 2020, and resumed unabated in 2024, is that people either on the fringes of this base, or who simply, for whatever reason, did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 are gone. They had four years of the carnival show that was the Trump presidency to completely alienate them from Trump and his personal brand of American fascism. Added to his time in the white house, they now see his flagrant threats to elected officials (“Mitch McConnell must have a death wish.”), multiple indictments for blatant criminal activity whether in office or out, vows to pardon insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the will of the American people on January 6, 2021, and more to come.
His purposeful alienation of the portion of our electorate that looks critically at candidates for public office with little preference for party affiliation reflects the true manner in which Trump has decided to practice this strange reductionism. He has enthusiastically and horrifically driven from him every rational and truly patriotic American who does not worship him, as does his base, but who may have considered supporting him in previous elections.
What, then, could his overall strategy be? It must be this: Donald Trump previously banked on the chaos and destruction that his core base would bring upon America when he lost the election in 2020. He promised, and to some extent delivered on January 6, 2021, the chaos he promised when asked what his strategy for reelection would be earlier in the cycle. His candidacy in 2024 looks to be more of the same.
When he rightfully lost the 2020 presidential election he issued his call to arms, claiming that the liberals had stolen the election, that they are out to destroy America, and that he would save them if only they would go out and kill, maim, and burn America to the ground in his name and for his sole benefit. He has said many times: “I am the only person who can save America,” and I will tell you this right now; when someone says something like that, and you don’t immediately flush your support for them straight down the toilet, you have no business living outside of a facility for the criminally insane, let alone voting. If you continue to support them, you have no business calling yourself an American.
The bloody and murderous insurrection of January 6, 2021 — which, if you’ll pardon the colloquial speech, really was some pathetic punk-ass bullshit. I mean, if you pin your hopes for revolution on a couple of thousand stupid, hillbilly jackasses with some pepper spray and no plan, you’re just an amateur, stupid jerk-off — is testament to what a person like Donald Trump can do to people who are intellectually akin to rudderless vessels drifting through space and heading for a black hole. As he said in an interview in the 1990s “If I ever go into politics, I’ll probably do so as a republican. Those people will believe anything you tell them.” He was right. Those people who make up his ever shrinking base will believe anything he tells them. But that’s okay, he had a television show.
If he somehow wins the republican nomination, and afterwards, of course, loses the general election in November, 2024, I think he will be surprised at how few people will actually be willing to go out and destroy America on his behalf. It will happen in small, sporadic events, make no mistake, but we must be willing to absorb this spasm of violence of his core base and continue, as one nation, dedicated to the propositions laid out in our Declaration of Independence, and codified in our ever evolving Constitution.
Eventually, Donald Trump will fade into history as a sickening footnote of what can happen to any nation when the people do not actively participate in its democratic procedures and allow religious fanatics to gut their education system.
When asked what type of government he and the other framers of the Constitution had designed, Benjamin Franklin is rumored to have said the following: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Today, Donald Trump is the greatest testament since Adolf Hitler, that we must rededicate ourselves to keeping it.
Related to Mr. Franklin’s attributed statement above is the following: “All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing.” We must, as a nation, in every peaceful and constitutionally protected manner possible, repudiate in the strongest possible terms, the toxic, racist politics of Donald Trump and make certain that his political aspirations die in 2024. We must then rededicate ourselves to keeping the republic that Franklin warned us would be constantly under attack from enemies both outside and within our own country. If we do not, then believe me, evil people like Donald Trump and his white nationalist, gun toting evangelical followers will prevail.
Peace and Love to All
Christoph Niemand, Citizen X