Because we concern ourselves here with progress, we have to talk about former reality television performer Donald Trump. At the beginning of his first term as president, we found the perfect display for his approach to governing.

I stand by this. It has aged well. Though he can’t figure out how to rep his own neck ware as well as Junior, he very much was and remains a Problem Child.

His view and exercise of power is vulgar and pre-pubescent. Like a brat he creates a scene and then gets his jollies watching others react like lunatics. You can imagine the joy he’d take connecting his whole family to electrodes, never tiring of watching Eric or Melania or his dad convulse.

Don’t take my word for it. Trump laid bare his view of power when he summed up his approach to his grade-school plan to develop Gaza:

But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.

Trump barfs out ideas and watches the world squirm. And like a toddler, at the first sign of resistance from an adult in the room, he gets scared or throws a tantrum.

In the same alternate reality where his show The Apprentice was entertaining, his childish routines might warrant the four seconds of attention the average TikTok video earns, and no more. On antics alone Trump is awful, but not so awful you can’t—as The Simpson’s Vin Scully-ish baseball announcer put it—take your eyes away! It’s like watching a monkey swallow a hand grenade.

The world would be inestimably better if we could turn our attention elsewhere. The problem is not only that he is once again president (and living proof that the universe likes a morbid joke). In his first term, though we feared the lasting damage of his most dreadful appointees, a handful of capable surrogates and advisors kept him from acting on a not insignificant percentage of his stupidest ideas.

No such luck this time. Nowadays, he’s further off his rocker, and his crew more venal and unqualified. Theirs is a perpetual reality warping machine: they worship Trump as an almighty, and he enables their twisted ideas about liberty for the few, justice for those who can pay. JD Vance, the Catholic in Sadducee’s clothing, once called Trump a “total fraud”. Now vice president, Vance cheers on his boss’s cry-cries and can’t muster even the shame of Judas.

This is not to say that Vance was once a good person. Maybe he was born this way.

No, the tragedy—indeed the one and only point—of Trump is that he affects a lot of people. Mostly for the worse. In fact, he’s retarded the ethics and the rational thinking capabilities of great swaths of the world. And he’s normalized this widespread idiocy, this adoption of Idiocracy, and given people a green light to ignore and in some cases abandon what used to be known as character: the truths you stood by, the ones you could not forsake for money or fame or without at least a tinge of guilt.

How or why such a senile man-child can mesmerize so many so thoroughly will be a much-studied question for decades to come. But no matter how deluded the droves of his supporters are today, none can deny that the hagiography is a sign of a mental break. What is missing from your lives, from between your ears, to cause you to worship a person? A person like that?

Some of the less enthusiastic go with the cop out I don’t agree with his tactics, I only believe in him for the ends. Which begs the question: If you can be bothered to hold your nose and stoop to such depths, why bother fretting over the means at all? If it’s OK to suggest your own general should be hung for treason, or the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband was a joke, or January 6th rioters were as civil as a tour group, why not just get on with it? Hang the general, hammer the husband, torch the Capital.

Others opt for the argument that we need a “man” in charge because this is how the world works. Never heard that one before. But what exactly is so manly about being a raving lunatic, or playing endless rounds of golf? Or, when it comes to admirers, what is so manly about wearing plaid or firing a gun or burning diesel or laughing at shrinking biospheres? Do the hunters who go along with his manly play acting look forward to stalking prey in parking lots? Because with Trump’s environmental policies that’s where they will be setting up their blinds.

Who do we blame for the moral shrinkage that Trump has wrought?

Go ahead, blame inept Democrats if you like. They had and have problems to last lifetimes. Social media, insecure billionaires, GOP organizers. Blame them all. Blame especially everyone who voted for him. Blame them, but you’re still at least partly wrong.

The full fault lies with everyone who did not vote against Trump.

They had no excuse. Brain damage? Racism? Hatred of women? A love for money above all else? Doesn’t matter. No eligible voter had an excuse. Anything, any single thing, would have made a better president than Trump.

Think of the time we’d have saved, the sanity we’d have preserved, the mistakes we’d have avoided, the damage we’d have dodged, the energy we could have put into building something lasting, worthwhile, and productive.

Instead it’s been an ongoing hate-filled kindergarten of farce. Trump is the Used Cars of presidents—without the laughs or the integrity.

Just over a couple of months into Trump’s disastrous second term, which of his accomplishments do his voters like most?

• Is it the confidence he’s given to consumers? – The Conference Board
  

• His crypto-hustles? – Gizmodo
• His family’s full-time grift? – Wall Street Journal
• The way he’s sacrificed nature in red states? Who needs clean air and water, after all? – NY Times
• What about how well he’s protecting the rest of America’s natural bounty, a gift from god, don’t you know. But no Trump voter has ever been to Yosemite, so no big deal. – SF Gate
• His populism? The front row of his inauguration was overflowing with small business owners, wasn’t it?

• Do they like how well he’s stood by the Arabs who supported him? Never mind. – The Hill
• He might not live or talk or act like a god-fearing man, but surely all the religious types among his apostles (including the Catholics) are thrilled by the very god-like results he delivers. Aren’t they? – National Catholic Reporter , America Magazine
• Do they love the way he’s made it easier for elites like himself, his entire Cabinet, all his friends, and his biggest donors to buy their way out of trouble? – Popular Information
• Do his fans love the way he’s stood up for fair drug pricing? – STAT
• Or the way he’s powered Wall Street, and managed to do so without understanding tariffs or money? That is impressive. – MSN / Wall Street Journal
  • BTW, if tariffs are going to bring in “trillions and trillions of dollars,” why keep delaying their implementation? – CNN
• Surely it’s the support he’s shown veterans? – AP
• Perhaps it’s the corruption? – Gizmodo
• Could it be that most of all they like destruction of the institutions that made America endure? Or do they not get that precisely what’s allowed America to survive and thrive? – NY Times
• Is it the error prone way his blue-collar helper Elon Musk so assiduously cuts jobs and life-saving soft-power programs, or the way he does so with such glee? Or is it that he does so with such irony, for no subsidy is too big for his interests (nor any slight too small to penetrate his thin skin). – Newsweek
• Maybe it’s Trump’s renewed commitment to and affinity for sex traffickers. It couldn’t be, could it? – NY Times
• Or is it his decision to shut down effective consumer protections and reduce oversight of banks? It’s not like these guys had anything to do with the 2008 financial disaster. – Wired
• His diplomacy? The way he’s sided with Russia and North Korea, just like in the good old days? Oh right, that never happened. – Semafor
  

• Perhaps they most love the international relations advice from his saddest son?

• Maybe Trump lovers most appreciate his long-running shakedown of Ukraine, insisting on payment for protection like a two-bit thug. Same as his predecessors did to America’s European Allies during WWII—except the exact opposite. – Center for American Progress
• Is it the size of the trough he’s built for Musk? – NY Times
• His loyalty test is possibly quite popular–and normal? – Bloomberg
• Do his followers swoon most for the numerous steps he’s taken to reduce protections for employees? – The Guardian
• Is it the way he’s made U.S. elections less secure? – ABC News
• Maybe it’s something subtle, like his Stalinist relationship to a free press? NBC News
• Do Trumpists most adore how he invokes god? If his supporters’ god—which sure doesn’t sound Christian, maybe it’s a Norse god, or a Mayan god, or the one that saved Hitler from his bomb attack—did push the assassin’s bullet aside, why don’t they pray to that god to just finish the job, build that wall or whatever, brick by brick? – CBS News
• Perhaps they admire most of all the way his royal ambitions remind many Chinese of Mao’s Cultural Revolution – DNYUZ
• Is it the way he brought back “free speech” as long as it’s speech he agrees with? – NY Times
• Or how he’s “managing” the government like a business?
  

• It could be his support of law enforcement, which he reaffirmed in the Capital Building.

• Or how effectively and efficiently his administration is improving government efficiency and efficacy? – AP
• Maybe they really dig the way he admires guys who commit crimes against humanity. – BBC
• Is it the care he has taken to strengthen relationships with America’s closest allies, to the extent they’re now seriously talking about the outlook for a decade’s long war…with the U.S.? – Calgary Herald
  • As an aside, how tone deaf, ignorant, disrespectful, and sheltered do you have to be to not see how offensive, counterproductive, and gross his rants about taking over Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal are? Well, totally.
• Quite possibly, they best like the confidence his leadership has instilled in investors–though to his credit he only talks about markets when they’re rising.

• It could be they love that you have to agree with every single thing he says… and once you don’t, you’re the enemy. That’s not odd. – The Telegraph
• Or it might be his patented unpredictability. Know what else is unpredictable?

As the late Bill Paxton said:

If only.

CalTech recently concluded that if you measured all the coherent things Trump has said since his first election, you could fill a teaspoon. The rest would overflow the Gulf of Mexico.

That falls in line with the actions of the chatbot MIT built using Trump’s speech. Shortly after turning it on, it begged for death.

Makes one think that Trump’s family should be up on charges of elder abuse. Where Biden’s kept him locked away, Trump’s are cruelly—to him and the rest of us—parading him around.

If not any of these gifts from heaven, then perhaps Trump’s worshippers most like his attack on all things diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Who better to make judgements about fairness, hiring, and qualifications than a silver-spooned predator and his Heil-throwing advisors? Voila, America is a meritocracy again.

Thus, since in Trump’s eyes Matt Gaetz is qualified to be the Attorney General, Pete Hegsworth–whose worldview is far worse than his behavior–makes a fine Secretary of Defense. But if the honorable military service is the only prerequisite for that job, why not hire this guy for the role? Oh, wait.

And if he could run Defense, then surely a fella who happens to be your son-in-law’s father–a fella who committed crimes that judges called “disgraceful and reprehensible”–would be the perfect ambassador to France. In fact, there must not be anyone better for the job.

Where pure meritocracy rules, these kinds of Fox News wunderkinds naturally rise to the board at the Kennedy Center:

Of course, in such a meritocracy, a crank like this is best qualified to be the Secretary of Health.

Yet we know, anyone with a flicker of activity in their brain knows, that these hirings are akin to Herb picking Homer (all due respect) to restore his car company to glory.

No, Trump is no Herb. And Trump did not restore anything, he installed himself as King in the Kingdom of Failing Upwards.

Perhaps many, even most, people favor the pullback on DEI. That doesn’t alter the fact the “war” on DEI is bizarre. Sure, some DEI pronouncements went too far, some rules got too exclusionary… in the name of, at least in part, asking us to look at the world from another perspective. In the long run, that expansion of empathy helps everyone.

Yes, some DEI programs went wild blowing through their budgets. But not every dollar saved from government programs is a dollar well spent, despite what the military contractors say. And not every dollar spent on programs is somehow a dollar of profit stolen from the assured wisdom of the free market. Ask Meta.

Of course, there’s the argument that DEI programs were ineffective. Certainly, many have not succeeded. Has the clock run out already? A few setbacks means shut the whole thing down? If you look at any selection of rights movements, you’ll notice one thing: None were given a thing. None made an inch of progress without fighting like hell for it.

The folks who built DEI programs were in a fight. They are in a fight. What’s strange is Trump and his followers stand in opposition to DEI as though it is the biggest crisis in the world–as though it is the source of countless deaths and the cause of immense piles of money washing down the drain. They’re wrong, obviously. Bad habits, willful ignorance, and wars America had no business being in all cost a lot more money and lives.

It is confounding, though, how a coterie of such manly men can feel so hurt, so threatened, by DEI. How, in all their burliness, are they unable to overcome the unfair hurdles thrown up by DEI programs?

It’s disheartening that even some of those who see Trump for the fragile and confused shell of a person he is, still whine in sympathy with him at the evils of DEI. Brett Stephens–who wrote a sharp forecast of how Trump’s reign will end (not well)–falls into this group.

He complained that the “equity” part of DEI “in practice meant pervasive racial and gender gerrymandering based almost exclusively — and unconstitutionally — on considerations of group identity rather than individual qualifications.” And the Soviet-style DEI infrastructure made people sit through seminars that were “by turns saccharine and scolding, treacly and tendentious.” 

DEI training bored you, boohoo.

Next you’re going to tell the world that no friend or son ever got hired in place of the very best candidate, that every white man who landed a job–not only before women could vote or blacks were considered people, but also after–was indisputably the best candidate available.

Then you’re going to say that now that DEI programs are out, the U.S. is again a meritocracy. And every woman and every person of color has as legit a chance as anyone for employment wherever they want to work, to graduate from wherever they want to study–even when they lack the connections and the alumni networks and the money and their social safety net is fraying and their public education is in the tank.

Finally, you’re going to say even with a history of slave ownership and lynching, of denying women the right to vote, of institutionalized and casual racism, bigotry, and misogyny, you cannot bear any effort–an admittedly imperfect effort–to help make up some time, to help make up some generational wealth and to provide better access to worthwhile education. You’re going to say such an effort is a crime against humanity because it bores you.

How pathetic. But that about sums up Trump.

There is a ship called the S.S. United States. A wonder of engineering and luxury, it is the largest passenger ship ever built in America. The ship was launched in the 1950s–the decade Trump and his followers glorify and mis-remember as some sort of Golden Age. Perhaps for a few it was.

The ship is a sad metaphor for America.

In 2025, the S.S. United States is a rusty behemoth that can’t move under its own power. It is being towed to the coast of Florida and sunk.

There are too many good and great people in America to believe this is the end of the empire. But my god, by opting for a second date with that dismal and dangerous old man, the country has taken a giant step backward, toward the dark ages–and dragged the world along with it.

A bounce back from this madness is not assured. Survival of all that was good in the U.S. is not guaranteed. The circus tent is on fire, the clown is in charge, and his clown family and clown friends are fighting for the spoils before they go up in an ash heap.