Have you seen that woman on Twitter who posts those embarrassingly sycophantic pictures of Donald Trump? Her name is Brigitte Gabriel, and she likes to share images of the former president in heroic poses throughout history. One has Trump next to Martin Luther King Jr., with the caption, “Two of our nation’s greatest advocates for Civil Rights: MLK and DJT.” Another — complete with the caption “President Trump is on a mission to save the country!” — has Trump in a flight suit standing next to a fighter jet. Trump has also been depicted as a Founding Father, as a soldier in the jungles of Vietnam, and as . . . well, as whatever this is. The whole thing is absurd and embarrassing and unctuous, and, unless we do something about it, it’s going to be our future: A lackey memeing on a human face — forever.
Gabriel is just one person — albeit a person with nearly a million followers. But her approach serves as a neat illustration of where we now find ourselves politically — which is sitting in a world of artificially induced scarcity, trying desperately to bang square pegs into round holes. If the Republican Party wanted a candidate who matched its self-conception, it could find one. Instead, it’s trying to turn straw into gold. Artificial intelligence notwithstanding, Donald Trump is not, in fact, an advocate for civil rights; having claimed bone-spurs to avoid the Vietnam draft, he is not, in fact, a soldier fighting the Viet Cong; because he is a classic demagogue, he would have been shunned rather than embraced by the Founders; and . . . well, once again, he’s about as far away from being whatever this is as it is possible to be. In a country such as America, the instinct to treat any politician in a panegyrical manner ought to be mocked and resisted to the last. But that politician? How lazy can an electorate be?
Comments