Peace, Love and Understanding
What's So Funny About MAGA Accusing Democrats of Sowing Political Violence
Today is my birthday, and all I want is just a little more peace, love and understanding in this country. Is that too much to ask? As Elvis asked, what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?
Well, pleas for peace certainly sound funny coming out of the mouths of Donald Trump, Junior Varsity Vance, and the other hate-spewing MAGA Republicans now calling for Democrats to tone down their rhetoric following the second assassination attempt on Trump in as many months.
Hatred, division and violent rhetoric have been Trump’s political brand since day one. He descended his golden escalator to declare his candidacy in 2015 and immediately used dehumanizing terms to describe immigrants and Democrats — ugly, provocative rhetoric that only got worse over time.
So it’s kinda funny that Trump immediately blamed Democrats and their rhetoric when two nutballs wielding assault rifles they shouldn’t possess tried to take him down. While Democrats condemn the attempted shootings and call for lowering the overheated political temperature in this country, Trump quickly dialed that temperature way up.
“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump told Fox News the day after the latest shooting. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country.”
Ah, so Democrats shouldn’t say you’re a threat to country because that provokes political violence? Got it. Or maybe Trump shouldn’t threaten the country with violence, division, dehumanizing rhetoric, refusal to accept election results, and promises to cozy up to Putin and other authoritarian strongmen?
Because that’s actually what seems to have provided this latest shooter, not Democratic political rhetoric. The guy wrote a whole book about how important it is to defend Ukraine from Putin, in which he condemned Trump as a “fool” and “buffoon” and advised Iran, “You are free to assassinate Trump.”
That book came out last year, before the current presidential race even started, so it’s pretty clear he was triggered by Trump and not Democrats. And given the would-be shooter’s history of domestic violence and standoffs with police, he wouldn’t have even had a gun if Republicans didn’t keep blocking reasonable gun control measures like red-flag laws and background checks.
But MAGA Republicans never let the truth interfere with a provocative accusation, particularly one that riles up their gun-toting base. But Vance can’t even come up with plausible lines in his hypocritical and overheated attacks on supposedly incendiary Democratic rhetoric.
“Look, we can disagree with one another, we can debate one another, but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected it is going to be the end of American democracy,” Vance told CNN shortly after Sunday’s thwarted assassination attempt.
Two things here: One, Trump shouldn’t talk like a fascist and try to subvert American democracy if he doesn’t want to be called a fascist who might end democracy. Secondly, Harris hasn’t been calling Trump a fascist — that’s what he’s been calling her.
“She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist,” Trump said at an Arizona rally last Thursday. “This is a radical-left, Marxist, communist, fascist,” Trump said at a news conference the next day.
Nevermind that it’s impossible to be a communist and fascist, two opposite political poles. Beyond Trump’s political ignorance, the point here is that Trump uses these labels as pejoratives meant to provoke hatred and violence, not as descriptors of an ideology, as Democrats do.
That’s what’s so funny about MAGA world’s invocation of peace, love and understanding.
Trump is responsible for inciting political violence and creating this dangerous political climate, even the forms of it that target him. But our thoughts and prayers are still with him and all politicians threatened by extremist rhetoric and actions, and I just hope we can make it through this end times year without even greater tragedies.
Trump’s Hate: Want another example of Trump and MAGA followers spreading hate? On the night before his regular golf game got interrupted by a would-be assassin, Trump was up late rage-tweeting and posted on his failing Truth Social site: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Hate? Who can possibly hate sweet Taylor Swift? Trump’s hatred was brewing since his terrible debate performance against Kamala Harris, which Taylor followed by announcing her endorsement of Harris and chiding Trump for posting fake images indicating Taylor had endorsed him.
Taylor had already been subjected to all manner of threats and bile from MAGA world after her endorsement, including from Trump BFF Elon Musk, who threatened to impregnate her and bring her into his strange stable of baby-mommas. I really hope Musk bumps into Taylor’s football star boyfriend Travis Kelce sometime, ideally in a dark alley (not that I advocate violence, I just want Elon is wet himself at the possibility).
But the Trump “hate” post created a flood of support for Taylor and promises to turn the army of Swifties against him. Once again, Trump has shown himself to be a petty, angry man who would rather lash out than be smart and strategic. He’s his own worst enemy, and that’s saying something.
Meanwhile, social media is awash with the breezy response Taylor sang about Trump and men like him a long time ago: “You Need to Calm Down.”
Eat the Cat: My social media feeds are littered with funny memes, songs and videos mocking Trump’s most ridiculous recent lies. They’re pretty hilarious and they demonstrate what a buffoon Trump is, but there’s also a dark humor to them that reveals real danger.
Trump’s debate claim that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s dogs and cats is paired with cute videos of pets in pots or on plates. And Trump’s rally whopper about parents sending little Johnny off to school and returning days later after school-instigated transgender surgery is also fodder for cuteness, with little boys coming home as girls wrapped in toilet paper bandages.
To be clear, there’s no truth at all to the discredited right-wing conspiracy theories that Trump is parroting here. New reporting shows Vance knew the pet-eating claim was false before he spread it. Trump was told by debate moderators on live TV his pet-eating claim was wrong, but he refused to believe it because he said someone said it on TV, so therefore it must be true.
It’s hard to know for sure whether Trump is lying to create a racist distraction that feeds his base, or whether he wants to believe the outrageous shit his followers say so much that he just doesn’t care if it’s true. Is he divisive and calculating, or gullible and dumb, or maybe a mix of both?
Either way, it’s dangerous for a president to be so untethered to reality, so quick to believe the most outrageous claims by anyone who likes or flatters him, and so willing to stoke hatred toward disfavored groups for his own political gain. It’s dangerous for society, and for him, it’s truly pathological and indicative of deeper problems.
Springfield, OH, where the pet-eating rumor started as a way to denigrate the community of legal Haitian immigrants there, has been subjected to bomb threats and other right-wing terror campaigns. And now Trump says he plans to visit that powder keg, double down on his lies, and hope the ensuing explosion somehow helps his campaign.
During the last debate, you could almost see Trump’s monster ego deflating before our eyes, with the dissonance between his clear defeat and his narcissistic personality disorder on vivid display. I really thought he might storm off the stage in a huff at one point.
But afterward, he slipped right into never-admit-defeat Trump mode, claiming he won a debate everyone knows he lost. It reminded me of the 2020 election, when his fragile ego and ruthless quest for power wouldn’t let him accept defeat, triggering the felonious “stop the steal” crime spree that landed hundreds of his supporters in prison.
Can we please get a little peace, love and understanding now, before it’s too late.
Birthday Wish: As I said, today is my birthday, so let me end this scary post with a little warmth and hope. After feeling the late summer joy over our hopeful new Democratic Party presidential nominee, things are starting to seem a little bleak and ugly again, the polls too close for comfort.
Trump, the master of projection, is aggressively pursuing an election strategy of trying to destroy the country, like he accuses Democrats of doing, hoping we’ll embrace an authoritarian leader once things really bottom out.
But we won’t. This isn’t Trump’s country. It doesn’t belong to the men who can fly the biggest flags or proclaim their performative patriotism the loudest. They’re just a small part of a big country.
It’s our country, and Kamala Harris’ country, and Taylor Swift’s country. It’s a grand and glorious experiment in multicultural democracy, built on the hope that we can progress beyond our original sins and failings and aspire to someday live up to the soaring aspirations found in our Declaration of Independence.
So today, I’m going to give myself the birthday gift of peace, love, and understanding, and try to spread it around as much as I can. And the funny thing is, if we all try to do that, it might just start to drown out the hateful noises emanating from Trump’s vile MAGA movement.
Get well, Steve. And Harris will destroy tRump.