Lost in the Cruel World of Trumpland

Donald Trump supporters watching the inauguration on screens at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, on Monday. Mark Schiefelbein/AP

It’s been a tough week for anyone who cares about the rule of law, decency, pluralism, democracy, tolerance, and a healthy national discourse. After being sworn in as president and delivering another ugly, falsehood-ridden, me-me-me inauguration address, Donald Trump immediately picked up where he left off—encouraging violence (the disgraceful January 6 pardons), promoting nativism (an unconstitutional—and court-halted—executive order ending birthright citizenship), dehumanizing and targeting immigrants (with a series of draconian orders), waging a war on science and public health (a withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and the blocking of reports from government experts), and the implementation of a revenge-a-thon and authoritarianism (assorted moves to turn the federal workforce into loyal shock troops for Trump and to punish a variety of Trump’s foes and critics). And this summation leaves out other horrors of his initial blitzkrieg.

Not too long ago in these pages, I highlighted a definition of fascism concocted by Robert Paxton, a noted historian, political scientist, and expert on this dictatorial movement. He said:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraint goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

That’s virtually a Trump checklist.

Preoccupation with community decline? “From this moment on, America’s decline is over,” Trump bellowed during his inauguration speech. Cults of unity, energy, and purity? His following is cult-like, and he and his acolytes claim that MAGA is the only way to preserve the country. Committed nationalist militants? See January 6. Working in uneasy but effective collaboration with elites? See Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk. Abandoning democratic liberties? Trump tried to blow up American democracy after losing the 2020 election and is now issuing executive orders that may be ruled unconstitutional. Pursues redemptive violence? See January 6. Without ethical or legal restraint? Trump has displayed no regard for ethics, looking to cash in on the presidency with the release of a new phony cryptocurrency days before returning to the White House. Goals of internal cleansing and external expansion? Mass deportation and talk of annexing or seizing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada.

Per Paxton, there’s a fascist in the White House. And what does that say about us? Or, more specifically, those Americans who voted him into office, despite his well-established record?

Last time around, Trump promised infrastructure revitalization and better and cheaper health care for all, and he didn’t even bother to cook up a proposal on either front. He mismanaged the response to the Covid pandemic, lying throughout the crisis, as hundreds of thousands of Americans died, with tens of thousands perishing in avoidable deaths. Then he tried to falsely claim victory in an election and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol. To sum up his first stint, he broke his promises, was responsible for much death, and failed to defend the Constitution. Afterward, he stole top-secret documents, became a convicted felon (for covering up hush-money payments to a porn star), was found liable for sexual assault, and indicted for scheming to overturn an election. Yet despite all of this—as well as his narcissism, avarice, and never-ending grift—tens of millions of Americans wanted him back in charge.

Who are these people? And…why?

I know there’s no easy answer. Still, on inauguration weekend, I went searching. On Sunday morning, Sam Van Pykeren, a Mother Jones digital producer, and I headed to downtown DC to walk among the tens of thousands of Trump fans who had come to the nation’s capital to celebrate Trump’s restoration. Because Trump had canceled the outdoor ceremony and parade and moved the inauguration into the Capitol Rotunda (which his violent brownshirts had once defaced), tens of thousands of Trumpers were looking for alternatives. For many, this meant getting in line at 6 a.m. and waiting for hours in frigid temperatures and sleet and rain, in the hope of obtaining a seat at Capital One Arena for a “victory rally” in the afternoon that would feature Kid Rock, Stephen Miller, the Trump family, and Trump himself.

Sam and I managed to join a pack of Trumpers somewhere in the middle of the line that seemed to stretch for over a mile. Technically, we did cut the line. But we had press credentials, and these MAGA-ites didn’t seem to mind. Later, when it became clear there was no way this group and thousands of people ahead of them and behind them were going to gain entrance to the arena (where a good portion of the seats were reserved for VIPs and donors), we found a way to, uh, sneak into the venue. (How did we do that? I’m going to treat this as proprietary information.)

Altogether, we spent a morning and afternoon with die-hard Trumpers. And the next day, I returned to this scene, where once again tens of thousands of Trump fanatics were trying to squeeze into the arena for an inauguration watch party, which would include an indoor version of the canceled parade and, yes, a visit from their newly installed emperor.

Spending two days with all these Trumpists left me a bit puzzled. Most of them were friendly and pleasant people. Of course, they were in a good mood, since their favorite autocrat had prevailed. Most were willing to chat with a reporter. None recognized me. (I guess they don’t watch much MSNBC.) If asked about my political proclivities, I admitted that I was no Trump aficionado but wanted to understand why they were here and to share their stories with my readers and viewers.

I asked basic questions: Why are you willing to stand in the freezing rain for Trump? What concerns of yours does he address? What would you like him to do first in office? Did the January 6 riot “give you any pause”? Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump?

None of the responses were surprising. The supposedly “open” border and rampant “crime” were the big worries. In fact, criminals from prisons and mental hospitals in other countries are being dumped into the United States, right? Inflation caused solely by President Joe Biden (not the post-Covid recovery) has nearly destroyed the nation. The economy flourished during Trump’s first term, and Biden wrecked it. January 6 was, well, complicated. Sure, it’s not good to engage in violence, but there was something fishy about how the protest turned violent—as if the FBI, antifa, the Secret Service, or some other shady outfit had done something to instigate it. And, okay, maybe Trump went too far with the Big Lie, but, then again, there were lots of questions about the elections. We may never know what really happened. Isn't it outrageous that men are playing in girls’ sports? And Trump is a high-energy change agent, a champion for the little guy, a no-nonsense, common-sense fighter for…me.

The replies were usually shared in a thoughtful manner with a touch of of-course-you-know-this-too. These interactions reaffirmed a notion that occurred to me while covering the campaign. For Trump’s supporters, he is the media. They see him—and embrace him—as a trusted source of information. Forget the conventional media—the national newspapers, the news networks, etc., which all have agendas and don’t give a fig about being accurate. But Trump—what he says is the God’s honest truth. Figuratively and literally.

That’s why so many of them repeat the rhetoric he spews. China controls the Panama Canal. No one used weapons at the January 6 riot. Trump cares about us. Though perhaps kind in personal exchanges, they have absorbed the cruelty at the heart of Trumpism. Inside Capital One Arena, whenever a speaker, including Trump, declared war on immigrants or made a sharp and mean-spirited comment about a political opponent or target (say, a transgender person), they roared with delight. They cheered wildly when Miller proclaimed, “America First,” endorsing the un-Christian and unfriendly view that their concern should be only themselves. A community that stretched beyond that was out of the picture. They applauded when a pair of Christian podcasters proclaimed that God should “condemn” Trump’s detractors. (Premium subscribers, see below.)

At one point, I was talking to John Cyndr, a 29-year-old from Brooklyn. To sum up his affection for Trump, he recited his favorite Trump line: “They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you, and I just happen to be in their way.” I asked, “Are they coming after you? Who? For what reason.” His answer was telling in its vagueness: America “has really been in decline for a while, and there are people who try to take advantage of the everyday person, and he has stepped in and has stopped all their nonsense.” He was echoing Trump’s paranoid-drenched, fear-mongering sales pitch. Cyndr may not like the policies put forward by the other side—even those that may help him or others he knows. But they’re not coming after him.

The hardcore Trump voters are not reachable. Trump has forged a closed feedback loop with them. He describes a false reality that addresses their grievances, fears, and desires, and they happily reside in that make-believe world. They will not be persuaded by well-written op-eds or well-informed and articulate politicians with a different approach. Trump can do no wrong that cannot be explained away. As a post-election debate continues about whether Democrats need to reach out to Trump voters, it seems many of them are unreachable. And no one should forget the election showed the US is essentially split 50-50 politically. A shift of 2 percentage points could change everything. Does that require a wholesale reimagining of Democratic ideas and strategies?

The full-force Trumpers—call them cultists, if you like—will not be moved. It sure sounds elitist to say this, but I will: They are invulnerable to rational debate. As those of us who are aghast at what has transpired this week and worried about what’s coming down the pike ponder how to move forward and save our nation, we ought to see our fellow citizens clearly. They are lost in the land of Trump. They may make good neighbors, but they eagerly and enthusiastically live in a world that thrives on lies, cruelty, fundamentalism, and hatred, and they worship a false god. They cannot be won over. For now, they have what they want.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Several Accomplice Watch regulars had good seats at the inauguration, such as Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook. Did you see Bezos shoot a cutesy wave at Trump? But Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, gets a special mention this week for a tweet he posted two days after the ceremony.

Altman has been feuding with Elon Musk for years over AI. They were both co-founders of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, when it was a nonprofit, and Musk left the organization in 2018 under not-so-happy circumstances. Now the pair are clashing again. This week, Trump expressed support for a major AI joint venture called Stargate being pulled together by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. But Musk, who’s also in the AI game, is no fan of this deal and publicly dissed it—thus undermining Trump. This led to back-and-forth between Musk and Altman on social media, as they argued over the financing of the operation. Then Musk went nuclear. He posted an Altman tweet from late 2021 that read, “Very few people realize just how much [tech billionaire] @reidhoffman did and spent to stop Trump from being re-elected—it seems reasonably likely to me that Trump would still be in office without his efforts. Thank you, Reid!”

Musk was clearly trying to push Trump to sour on Stargate by highlighting Altman’s past criticism of Trump. Within minutes, Altman responded on X: “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him (i wish i had done more of my own thinking and definitely fell in the npc trap). i'm not going to agree with him on everything, but i think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!”

What a suck-up. “NPC” is short for “non-player character” in a video game. As internet lingo, it refers to someone who cannot think for themselves. In other words, Altman was saying he had been a mindless boob when he was a Trump critic. But now—as he craves Trump’s support for Stargate— he has seen the light. Remember, humanity is counting on brown-nosers like Altman to make the right decisions about AI so that it doesn’t destroy our civilization.

And we can add another tycoon to the roster of accomplices: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he gave a boost to Trump’s plan to implement extensive tariffs, which are likely to increase inflation: “If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it. National security trumps a little bit more inflation.” Dimon certainly doesn’t have to worry about the price of eggs. He’s worth an estimated $2.7 billion.

Jules Feiffer, whose wonderfully insightful and acerbic comic strip ran in the Village Voice for four decades, died at the age of 95 last week. The Voice was a powerful influence on me when I was a kid, as I recounted not long ago. And Feiffer seemed the soul of the alternative weekly. His work was irreverent and passionate, conveying insights about politics, current events, and basic human nature. He was a renaissance man: a screenwriter (Carnal Knowledge), a playwright (Little Murders), an illustrator of children books (The Phantom Tollbooth), and much more. As any good artist and satirist does, he helped his readers form their own sensibilities.

In the New York Times obit, Garry Trudeau explained his impact:

“It’s hard to overstate how transformative to cartooning Jules’s early work was,” Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip “Doonesbury,” wrote in an email. “By stripping down the art to a sequence of elegant, repetitive images, he found a way to convey astonishingly sophisticated ideas without distraction. No balloons, no screens, no backgrounds, no panels, just simple line drawings and the flow of bright, witty dialogue.”

“Like ‘Peanuts,’” Mr. Trudeau added, “‘Feiffer’ reflected his generation’s obsession with psychology and the examined life. In ‘Feiffer’s’ world, the mind was a war zone, and the protagonist was usually his own worst enemy. And no subject was off the table — not politics, sex, religion or war. I’d never seen anything remotely like it, and it set me and many others on a path toward a new kind of comics.”

If you read Feiffer’s stuff today, it still rings dead-on true. Look at this strip from 1974:

The most absurd comment of the week, the judges wish to point out, came when Donald Trump took the oath of office and said, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This guy had previously violated this oath by trying to annihilate the constitutional order after he lost the 2020 election and incited the violent attack on the US Capitol. His latest promise to safeguard the Constitution was one of the most ludicrous moments in US history.

Leave it to the folks at Apple News to normalize fascism. This notification appeared on iPhones on Tuesday:

Trump pardons 1,500 violent insurrectionists who tried to subvert American democracy, and it was just part of a busy day. He must be so tired!

There were so many idiotic responses to Trump’s pardon of the J6 rioters, which sent a dangerous message: If you break the law for me, I will protect you. Asked for a response to the pardon, Sen Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said that the  J6 marauders had already served enough time and that he hadn’t seen video of rioters hitting police officers. Is the guy blind? Or just a gaslighter? Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) offered this gem, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forwards.” That’s a coward. House Speaker Mike Johnson took a similar line, saying it was time to move past all this. Yet he insisted Joe Biden’s pardoning of his family members was outrageous and ought to be investigated by Congress.

The Fraternal Order of Police, though, topped them all—with silence. When asked by HuffPost reporter S.V. Date about the pardoning of hundreds of cop-beaters, the group, which endorsed Trump for president, said this: "We don't have a statement about that."

A hero of the week yielded our winner. When Trump and his family attended a prayer service the day after the inauguration at the National Cathedral, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde took a courageous stand. From the pulpit, she implored Trump to show mercy and care for immigrants and members of assaulted communities, such as LGBTQ people:

The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors...may I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away?

Trump looked peeved as the bishop admonished him and afterward complained about her remarks. But Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga), a MAGA extremist, outdid the boss with a tweet declaring, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”

Deport a bishop who expressed concern for the least among us. Deriding such a person is exactly what Jesus would do, isn’t it? For such an un-Christian statement, Collins gets to wear the crown.

Speaking of misguided Christianity, I wrote a dispatch about a disturbing display of Christian nationalism at Trump’s pre-inauguration rally. Two Christian podcasters who host a show called Girls Gone Bible delivered the opening prayer, and they called for God to “condemn” those who oppose Trump. Thousands cheered. I saw nobody else in the media pay any attention to this—a sign of how Christian extremism may well be normalized during Trump’s second administration. Read about it here.

There’s been a lot of talk lately that many Democrats and progressives have tuned out since the election, reading and watching less news. In terms of Our Land subscriptions, I see the opposite—a modest pickup since Election Day. But this week, there was a drop-off in the mail. The team in the mailroom didn’t mind. And I can understand. There’s a lot going on; perhaps writing in about it is not a top priority these days. But remember, when you’re ready to engage, we’ll be here.

Harry Freiberg did send in a short comment responding to the pre-inauguration issue.

From brownshirts to billionaires. To borrow a phrase: “Sic transit gloria Civitattum Foederatarum Americae.” Keep on keepin’ on.

“Sic transit gloria mundi” is a Latin phrase that means “thus passes the glory of the world.” That is, all greatness is fleeting and nothing on earth is permanent. He was applying that to the USA. To be more low-brow, I’m reminded of a line from a song on Elvis Costello’s King of America album: “It was a fine idea at the time. Now it’s a brilliant mistake.” I hope that’s a premature conclusion for our country.

Cheryl Geyerman emailed:

In your latest Our Land, you noted, “But I believe there’s a lot else involved, including a lack of desire on the part of many Americans to stay informed and engaged. How to address that?” I have to agree, engagement is lacking. My friends are horrified at what Trump represents and plans to do, but some have disengaged from political reading because it stresses them out. Others scratch the surface of the news by reading headlines, summaries, or hearing it on the radio or TV. During election season, most of my friends rely on me and another friend to tell them who we are voting for, so they don’t have to spend time learning about the candidates or the ballot measures. I’m talking about almost exclusively retired people who have time.

I think we need to gear up engagement on social media that doesn’t take time to read but is informative while also being fun, hilarious, and shareable. Maybe Moxie should have her own platform. That could be on Substack or Bluesky—it just needs to make news so it could go viral. Many of my acquaintances (not me) are on Facebook and often tell me about something amusing they see there. Some are viewers of Instagram and share with me what they see since I rarely look at it. But it is almost always some funny person or animal gif. People want to laugh. We need to flood the landscape with truth the way the right floods it with misinformation and outright lies.

One obstacle might be Zuckerberg with his bent to Trump, and he may block things. Still, we need superficial ways of getting people to pay attention, and maybe they will seek out Our Land and Mother Jones and other in-depth platforms.

Cheryl, Moxie thanks you for the confidence you have in her. But here’s the thing most people don’t know. It ain’t easy to use social media to spread important information because platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, and others deploy algorithms to control the flow of posts. And their algorithms suppress posts of a political nature, especially those that convey a left-of-center sentiment. So it’s not just about cooking up the right content. It’s about finding ways to get it in front of people—a tough task when tech titans are standing in the way. As for Moxie….

“It’s been a tough week.”
“I know, Moxie, a very tough week.”
“Yeah, all that snow and ice, and low temperatures. We couldn’t play outside with the ball.”
“Indeed, and everything else.”
“There was something else?”