XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.usa

We'll long for gentler days, when bread was cheaper and circuses, at
least, entertaining

Donald Trump's legacy within the GOP is forever up in the air. Although
he enjoys steadfast support from large swaths of the Republican base,
few establishment Republican leaders fully endorse him, with a handful
openly wearing the "Never Trumper" badge with more pride than
prejudice.

Yet, this is nothing next to the solid wall of pure loathing Democrats
have built around Trump, brick by loyal brick.

No Democrat is indifferent to Trump. There's no middle ground, no
lukewarm disdain. Whereas some Republicans may betray him at the
slightest convenience, Democrats will always remain unwaveringly
hostile. They can be trusted to spit on Trump's grave, the absence of
flowers a silent testament to Republican embarrassment. They will write frightening verse and prose about the "Bad Orange Man" long after he's
dust.

This kind of loyalty can't be bought, not with money nor office. And
it's an ironclad reason to believe that Trump's notorious legacy will
endure.

To the Democrats, Trump must be stopped at all costs — or else he'll
persecute the opposition, throw civil rights activists in jail, make
racism public policy, and maybe kick off World War III. Luckily for us,
none of that has happened yet, right?

Their impassioned blindness guides the spectacle of Trump's legal
battles, blurring the lines between truth and imagination so thoroughly
that separating fact from fiction might just break reality.

One might be tempted to call Trump's trials and tribulations
"Kafkaesque" — conjuring images of shadowy practices and obscure plots.
But, outside the feverish dreams of E. Jean Carroll, there's nothing
Kafkaesque about them.

There's no grand mystery to unpack, where assigning purpose, reason, or
benefit becomes an impossible task. Everything is laid out plainly.

From public attorneys voted into office with clear mandates to target
Trump to judges who can barely conceal their scorn for him, there are
no dizzying mazes to get lost in here. The bureaucrats running the show
lack even the wicked dignity of remaining faceless. They campaigned for
it, they voted for it, plastered it all over the billboards, and made
sure everyone paid up.

It speaks to a very cynical perversion of the democratic ideals they
ostensibly hold dear.

The title of Franz Kafka's masterpiece on judicial surrealism, "Der
Prozess," plays a neat trick — meaning both "the trial" and "the
process" in German. That's precisely where Trump's at. It's not just
the court cases tearing him up; it's the whole "process" trying to
grind him down.

A key distinction exists, though: We are never told the alleged crime
for which Josef K., Kafka's protagonist, is persecuted. Trump's crime,
on the other hand, is well-known — and of a rather Socratic nature.

Socrates was famously accused of "corrupting the youth" of Athens
during a time when pederasty was a high art — a situation strangely
similar to today, where the meaning of "corrupting the youth" has once
again been completely inverted.

Trump, too, is accused of that type of corruption, though his most
flagrant — and successful — offense involves corrupting the blue-
collar, working-class Americans.

Like Socrates, Trump is clearly guilty as charged. Yet there are no
angry mobs in this witch hunt. Just as the ancient oligarchy believed
Athens had to be purified and reaffirmed through the purge of Socrates,
so too does the modern oligarchy believe that only by purging Trump can
they cleanse their power halls.

In these times, where "guilty" has been subverted, it seems inevitable
that the concept of "innocence" will lose any significance.

So what will that mean when a jury is asked if Trump is guilty or
innocent in today's context? Perhaps it no longer matters.

As Democrats continue to pile straw men onto a long-broken camel's
back, Trump seems to develop an extreme case of antifragility — almost
a sort of antimortality. His legend thrives not on the anger of his
supporters, as it's been said, but on the relentless hate from his
detractors.

Trump is the underdog bully, 100% American pit bull — perhaps sporting
a golden retriever toupee, but I digress — battling a pack of yapping Chihuahuas trying to kill him by a thousand bites. He's Rudy. Except in
this story Rudy Ruettiger is Bill Romanowski — but d**n if you wouldn't
cheer for him to make that one play.

At this point, some might say this is all a bunch of nonsense — and
perhaps it is. Yet this kind of nonsense could never be written about
Joe Biden or just about anyone else in politics. Trump is cut from the
stuff nonsense is made of. And that's irresistible. Unlike Biden, he's
not just a man of his time; he is the man for these times — when the
masses want their bread cheaper and their circuses, at least, a little entertaining.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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