Splitsville THEY DON'T REALLY CARE. DO U?

Second in a still-fairly-new series of newsletters

M. Gessen, a writer for the New Yorker, published an op-ed in this past Sunday’s New York Times in which she quotes Balint Magyar, a scholar of authoritarianism, who delivers as accurate and succinct a description of Trump, and MAGA, as we’ve seen.  “Trump promises that you don’t have to think about other people.”

Ain’t that the truth? Of all the possible binaries and dichotomies that can be used to describe the two contending nations that now constitute these Not All That United States, this might be the most fundamental. It applies, of course, to those grinning idiots at Trump’s rallies in their FUCK YOUR FEELINGS sweat shirts. And, naturally, to their leader, the Great Narcissist himself, for whom not thinking about other people seems to be a point of pride.

Although wait. We’re being unfair. To say, of Donald Trump, that he never thinks of other people, is simply inaccurate and wrong. He thinks of other people constantly. He thinks about how to deceive, how to gull, how to intimidate, how to harm, and how to dishonestly exploit the work and obtain the wealth of, other people. Also: how other people, mean people, have hurt him.

 Apart from that, he literally couldn’t care less about other people. And MAGA, his orc army of worshipers, love that about him. To them, not caring about other people is synonymous with two kinds of “freedom”—the freedom TO assert their desires, prejudices, and hatreds, and the freedom FROM having to listen to and be judged by censorious, condescending liberals. To them, the recent video clip of a woman defiantly telling her school board (or whomever her audience was) that she fully intended to keep using the word “retard” (the noun version, pr. “REE-tard”), was an example of plucky, rugged American individualism,  displaying the kind of independent, don’t-tread-on-me, fuck-your-feelings heroic indifference to so-called common decency that “real” Americans (the ones who live in the “real America”) proudly disdain.

Caring about other people—especially those who aren’t like you, who aren’t in your poker group or golf foursome or girls’ night out gang or church congregation or klavern—is for weaklings, cucks, and bossy, judgmental, bleeding-heart libs. Conservatives are particularly sensitive to the kind of censure these nanny-state elitist snobs like to dish out. For example: Let someone say, “Maybe it’s not a good idea for private citizens to own AR-15’s and other battlefield weapons,” and a thousand right-wing patriots will get carpal tunnel syndrome angrily typing, “Oh, so now we’re not ALLOWED to defend ourselves against tyranny!”

You may think that, in so doing, such people are casting themselves in the role of children (who are, quite naturally, allowed and not-allowed to do this and that), and identifying liberals as their parents (who do the allowing), and that this reveals more about their psychological immaturity than any principled position about gun ownership. Or you may simply think, “Jeez. Lighten up. Stop wailing like a teenage girl slamming her bedroom door and yelling ‘You never let me do ANYTHING!’” But then, you may be unaware of how Trump-like such whining is. Trump, who was given a fortune without having to lift a finger and has spent a lifetime getting away with crimes, routinely pules about how “unfairly” he’s being treated.  The man who has cheated at literally everything, from business to marriage to golf, demands that things be “fair.” (So, too, his acolytes: Ultra-skeevy Matt Gaetz, on withdrawing his bid to be made—this is science fact, not science fiction—Attorney General, bemoans how his confirmation is “unfairly becoming a distraction.”)

These poor Republican babies. The world is so unfair to them.

Of course it’s hypocritical. Of course it’s intellectually dishonest. That’s the point. In Trumpworld, in MAGAland, in the Real America that is one of the two Americas that uneasily co-exist within our Splitsville’d USA, moral consistency and intellectual honesty are only important if you care about other people. If (like Trump) you don’t—if you don’t see other people as being worthy of respect simply because they are people, but instead view them as mere counterparties to transactions via which you hope to get what you want, and therefore to “win”—why bother? Why temper your desires or suffer the inconvenience of having to be consistent? Why tell the truth, why assume some accountability to others, why be decent, if there’s nothing in it for you?

We found a similar observation from Thomas Zimmer, a German-born historian who teaches at Georgetown University and whom we quoted previously in “The Road to Splitsville.” Zimmer discusses, on Bluesky, a bill proposed by the repellent Rep. Nancy Mace banning trans women from Capitol Hill women’s rooms—a measure Mace admits/brags is aimed directly at newly-elected Sarah McBride, who is openly trans. Zimmer points out that Mace—who seems to relish every opportunity that comes along to announce that she is a “rape survivor” and “suffered PTSD” from the experience—is apparently unstressed, undisordered, and happy as a clam to support a President who is an adjudicated rapist and who has been credibly accused by more than two dozen women of sexual assault. Zimmer writes:

That is the key promise of Trumpism, after all: “You will get to abandon all norms of decency, ignore all conventions of social behavior, and rage against those you despise, the most vulnerable—and exert power over those you regard as lesser. You will dominate and be revered or you will punish.”

Sure, it sounds like fun—but only if you possess either the sick-o soul of a bully or, alternatively, the also-sick-o soul of one of the bully’s cadre of admirers. You may be fond of punching down, and inflicting pain on those weaker than yourself. Or you may simply like to watch someone else do it, because you ascribe parental powers to the bully in order that you may applaud him, and please him, and thereby feel safe, while taking perverted pleasure in the sensation that the suffering of others is somehow a compensation for the suffering that life has (unfairly!) given you.

If you fit either one of these descriptions, congratulations: You’ve come to the right place. You are about to witness, over the next few years, an absolute World’s Fair-scale extravaganza of undeserved misery, experienced by people about whom you don’t, and don’t have to, give a fuck. So enjoy it. And—

What? What if some of that distress, like ash from a barbecue, happens to blow back on you? What if the orgy of corruption and destruction and chaos to come—the one that you empowered with your vote--somehow causes you, or your loved ones, to suffer? Well, of course, that will be unfortunate—for you.

But why should we care?