Whaddaya Want? A Cookie?

One of the things that Trumpists excel at is projection -- led by their leader Donald J. Trump. One example of projection that I hear all the time is that those of us who oppose Trump, whether we're liberals, progressives, mainstream Democrats, old school conservatives, libertarians, disaffected Republicans or just about anyone else, is that we don't really have reasonable, rational reasons for opposing him and his actions. They accuse us of having "Trump Derangement Syndrome", i.e. an irrational hatred of Trump and everything he does; or that we have bought into the left-wing (or sometimes fake media) narrative. They can't imagine that we can look at what he says and does and come to the conclusion on our own that it's dangerous, illegal, unethical or unconstitutional. They have convinced themselves, not only that we are mindless haters who refuse to see the greatness of their leader, but that they have come to their conclusions by careful weighing of the facts and appreciation of what they see as real accomplishments. 

What they don't consider is that for many anti-Trumpers, the Democratic Party isn't much better than the Republicans and we engage in criticism of the party leaders when warranted. We don't have a central figure whom we would support no matter what. A lot of us are as distrustful of the legacy/mainstream media as the Trumpers are. It's true that for many of us the default position is to distrust Trump, assume that he is lying, presume that whatever he is doing is some kind of self-dealing grift. But is that an irrational position to take? When someone who lies as much as Trump does, isn't the safe bet the bet that he's lying again? When he's taking actions that are arguably, if not obviously, unconstitutional, wouldn't the patriotic response be to oppose those actions? But I don't know how many times I have laid out my reasons for opposing some executive order, or expressing revulsion at some horrible thing Trump has said, only to be told "stop watching CNN" (MSNBC, or reading the New York Times) as if I was doing nothing but reposting memes. 

On the other hand, Trumpers have demonstrated that they will cheer for anything that Trump does no matter how bad. It doesn't matter if they were fanatical about inflation and free speech one week, they'd be all for inflation-causing tariffs and arresting people for posting on Facebook the next if Trump started singing a different tune. Indeed, Trump coming and out all but promising higher inflation and admitting that reducing prices was beyond his power has not dissuaded many of the faithful. When Trump changes priorities his followers will change theirs, even if the new priority is something that they would have been against if the other candidate had proposed it. 

In addition to the mindless adherence to whatever Trump says, there's the celebration of "accomplishments" that simply didn't happen. Elon Musk's team was promoted as a drive to increase government efficiency by rooting out waste, fraud and corruption. They haven't done any of that. By  redefining certain programs a priori as "waste" they have illegally eliminated thousands of positions within the government. There's no evidence whatsoever that they have uncovered any fraud or corruption. (If they did, you know that Trump would be crowing about it on social media) Yesterday I responded to a post that claimed that Trump had lowered drug prices and ended the conflict between India and Pakistan, neither of which happened. I've even heard that we should be giving him credit for "at least doing something", or more even more pitiful "at least he's trying". Sure, let's get him a participation trophy. 

There are so many things wrong with how Trump is doing his job that I often don't know where to start. But it's certainly not some imaginary "derangement" or a mindless parroting of some media "narrative" that causes us to point them out and to resist them to the best of our ability.