I am going to start today, by actually giving the America-attacking Trump credit for something: He understands far better than any politician in America that the majority of the American public is comprised of complete morons.
The sooner Democrats figure this out the better. And by sooner … I mean RIGHT NOW.
It’s a national emergency.
We’ve all been tortured by these dreaded political operatives, experts, analysts and partisans endlessly ranting at us about Democrats’ inability to craft a message that resonates with the American public. The party is viewed by roughy 80 percent of America as out of touch and irrelevant. I’m sure I have punished you by writing about this 15 times myself.
And while this is no doubt true, it’s actually far worse than that, because even if Democrats could communicate like Abraham Lincoln, they’d have absolutely no idea how or where to reach the people who need to hear what they have to say.
The Democrats have become expert at going high and talking to each other in the clouds, instead of going low and reaching the tens of millions of morons out there who could stand to hear what they are saying, despite themselves.
Since bursting on the scene like a racist hand grenade in 2015, Trump has proven beyond all doubt he understands the American electorate better than anybody. The man is so sure of himself that he went right out there and said he could shoot one of his supporters in the middle of the street and not lose their vote.
Now, there’s confidence, folks.
When you reckon with the fact that most Americans are morons as Trump has, and start expecting less instead of more, the way forward will seem less daunting.
We don’t have an over-thinking problem in America, we have an under-thinking one.
I’m not wrong about this.
Look, the most important issue facing America, and the entire world for that matter, is climate change. In addition to costing us trillions of dollars, our overheating planet will eventually end all of us if it is not addressed with the urgency it demands.
Spoiler: It won’t be.
It’s hard to get a moron worried about something that they either don’t believe is happening, or if it is, most likely won’t affect them in any meaningful way during what’s left of their moronic lifetime.
When the world ends, they’ll be long gone anyway, so why bother?
I was standing on a beach in North Carolina quietly taking in the breathtaking Atlantic Ocean last summer — true story — when a friendly chap my age approached. We made some small talk before he said quite unprompted that all this talk about climate change was “a bunch of bullshit.”
According to him none of it was happening. It was nothing but political hooey designed to get us all worked up.
I’m certain he thought the old, white guy he was talking to would be a sympathetic ear for his moronic denialism, so when I told him that the ocean we were staring at was going to swallow us all whole someday, he said again: “No. That’s just bullshit.”
And then just like that he tipped his cap, told me to genuinely have a nice day, and skipped away to assault the next unsuspecting beachgoer with his pale-full of ignorance.
In the year since I was mentally assaulted on that beach, the pyromaniacs in the new administration are doubling down and literally throwing gasoline on our heating planet.
What the hell are we supposed to do with that, Democrats?
I mean we can’t ignore climate change, and must do what we can to mitigate it, but continuing to make it a central campaign issue is worthless because of all the damn morons out there.
I was sure democracy was a pressing issue, too, especially after the violent attack on January 6, 2021. Well, not only don’t most people much care about it, the morons who perpetrated the attack have been hailed as heroes by millions of other morons, and are back out on the street and free to try it again if and when necessary.
So I ask again: What we are we supposed to do with that?
And don’t even get me started about vaccines, a woman’s right to choose, or myriad other issues that are killing all of us …
I began typing this on Monday afternoon and was scratching my head after watching a press gathering in Scotland, where the Prime Minister of UK had just surrendered himself at Trump’s golf course.
You read that right: the leader of Great Britain was a visitor in his own country.
Can you imagine if Sir Keir Starmer roared into the United States and promptly summoned Trump to meet him at his beach house?
That place would be flattened by a tomahawk missile, with Starmer in it, five seconds later.
I actually felt embarrassed for my British family and friends over there, until I remembered that as bad their leader just looked, we are getting the moron who emasculated him back in our White House in a couple of days to water his racist house plant, Stephen Miller.
Anyway, Trump said more stupid things in 30 minutes, than Joe Biden has said in 30 years. Words just came out of the guy’s mouth that meant absolutely nothing. We’ve all seen him do this. On Gaza, for instance, he breathlessly said this:
“We’ll be helping with the food. We have a lot of access to food. We have a lot of food ourselves. So we’re going to get them some good strong food.”
Strong food …
Go ahead and watch if yer brave enough.
And it’s always the steadfast confidence and determined stupidity in which he addresses the world’s most pressing and obvious issues as he discovers them all for the very first time. He’s the 2-year-old who bashes his head with a rock, and earnestly brags to his mother how hard it really and truly-ooly is.
His head, I mean.
And let’s not forget the fact that he was double-dipping by doing business (playing golf) on one of his properties on our dime. But it’s the public servant studying climate change that needs to be run out of her job …
And, hey, I am the guy who wrote the book on this stuff back when I thought it was all just some terrible anomaly and America would get back on track in 2020 after four years of word salads, and 250,000 needless deaths.
I simply underestimated how big our moron problem in America was at the time.
It’s staggering, it really is.
Now, seven years later, Trump’s complete idiocy and lack of command about anything resembling policy have been completely normalized, and I have grudgingly come to understand most average Americans are just fine with it.
Taking somebody’s healthcare away might be serious, but eating their dogs and cats?! Well now … we need to have a serious talk about that one, buster.
So Democrats need to start meeting the majority of Americans where they are: most likely staring at their phones and communicating with each other in Emoji.
Healthcare for all: smiley face
Billionaires are bad: grumpy face
Stop worrying about people like me, Democrats. As a haughty independent who pays attention, you most likely have my vote for the foreseeable future, just as long as voting is still a thing in this country, or you decide to eat my cat.
It’s the disaffected out there you need to start reaching with alacrity by hitting them where they’re at, and preferably with a dumbed-down message any moron can understand.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)