Will Trump Supporters Hit The Streets? Plus,
The gentlefolk's agreement on the courts, plus some angry music
Will Trump Supporters Hit The Streets?
Yeah, maybe, probably. They have in the past, in protest of pandemic safety measures and not dying from childhood disease and other stuff. The more salient question is who will be directing them at what?
One of the fascinating things about what Musk and Trump are doing is the degree to which they openly and absolutely do not give a fuck about non-wealthy Republican voters beyond feeding them the racist and vengeful authoritarian red meat. Social media and news outlets have been flooded during the past few weeks with reports of Trump supporters explaining to the pair that they should get their federal jobs back, or their USAID produce contracts back, because they’re loyal supporters and they know that the axe that fell on them was wielded accidentally.
In Congress, panicked Republicans representing rural and other low-income districts are under great pressure from Trump to approve a budget bill that as is could cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid across ten years. Nearly 80 million Americans, including a fuck-ton of Trump supporters and their kids, get medical coverage from Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program, to the tune of considerably more than a trillion dollars annually. Voters in those GOP districts both at present and prospectively affected by cuts to jobs and social welfare support are already out for blood barely a month into the regime’s tenure.
The response from Democratic voters has often been to mock the lamentations and tribulations of those Trump supporters under assault by the regime; the “leopards eating my face” meme has made a big-time comeback. Democratic lawmakers, as feeble as their responses to the unfolding coup have been, at least have the sense not to do that, tempting though it may be.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is on the road between Senate votes, campaigning against the whatever the fuck this is in swing states and swing districts in red states, holding town halls with every stripe of citizen, and with much the same response that so baffled Fox News personalities when they hosted him in 2019 and found near-universal support for his Medicare for All proposals.
He sees these assaults against the working class’s prospects and pocketbooks as a prime opportunity to organize people of every inclination, just as he always has, and he’s at his best when he’s unencumbered by stumping for candidates like Clinton and Biden who were so deeply compromised by their support for and from some of the worst corporate and oligarchical elements of our society.
This is not to say that Sanders has given up on electoral politics and Democrats—he’s obviously looking toward the midterms (should they materialize in meaningful form), and he’s specifically attacking Musk and Trump.
But he’s out there stumping alone because the Democratic party leadership aren’t much up for rabble-rousing off the teevee—in fact, as Sanders was kicking off this most recent campaign against oligarchs a few weeks ago, Hakeem Jeffries was in California sucking up to them.
Democrats in recent days have been lacing into Musk as he wreaks havoc on the federal government, viewing him as a more polarizing — and less popular — foil than Trump. But the moneyed tech world that Musk hails from is critical to Democrats’ fortunes in 2026.
“There is a significant fear that these tech folks, who have been with us for a long time, will say, ‘fuck it, we’re going with the other guys,’” said Alex Hoffman, a Democratic donor adviser who works with donors across the country but did not attend the event. “These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they’re not.”
Yeah, you really can’t take that show on the road.
The primary division between Trump supporters and the rest of us, aside their obvious macro interpersonal difficulties, is who we blame for our common ills. Among the theories circulating about the price of eggs, for instance, is one that denies the existence of bird flu and ascribes all that culling of laying hens to an anti-Trump cabal which still hasn’t been rooted out of the CDC, and another positing that the illness is bio-warfare waged by (probably) the same Musk-proof deep state cabal.
Regardless, the eggs are too damn high, a lot of people are angsty about it, and the more advanced the regime’s demolition project gets, the more difficult blaming it on you fucking commies will get.
Further, those boisterous GOP town halls indicate that, while some constituents may agree that government needs to be shredded, they nevertheless suspect who’s to blame for job losses and attacks on social welfare programs (although the same some of them may not know explicitly that social welfare programs are government programs).
So barely more than a month into the regime, we’re seeing widespread if sometimes free-floating anger on the precipice of rage from the masses of the right, and if someone like Sanders—more than one someone, necessarily—is able to exploit that before or more effectively than someone like Steve Bannon, with his diatribes against Medicaid cuts, they’ll have a large majority of the country ready to be aimed.
To do that, though, you have to get out there in the fields and hollows, and you can’t have corporations and billionaires hanging off you like limpets as the majority of our Democratic federal legislators do.
That’s a conundrum, but a resolvable one. The impetus for the movement Sanders is always talking about has, as he is also always talking about, to come at the state and local level, from state and local officials and organizers from outside institutional politics, and it has to include Trump supporters to offer any promise of success. I’ve written elsewhere that the notion of a white supremacist, Christian nationalist, fascist-oriented regime intending to allow future elections that threaten their various projects of decades in the making seems really optimistic, and the same applies to the survivability of a mass movement consisting solely of preexisting regime opponents.
That compromised majority of Democratic leaders at the national level have, according to me, to be sidelined as messengers; liberals have to stop punching left and punching down; and we all have to step up. Watch this space and keep an eye out elsewhere for opportunities to do that. Things are bleak and meaningful mass protests are fraught, but it’s what we have.
The gentlefolk's agreement on the courts
Our country is founded on an agreement between the courts and the executive branch that when federal courts say no, the executive branch will indulge them. The only enforcement mechanisms those courts enjoy are wielded by the executive branch. That agreement is stretched to the breaking point.
Angered Music
DEADLETTER, Hysterical Strength, “Mere Mortal;”
Bodega, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life, “Tarkovski;”
Sleaford Mods, UK GRIM, “Right Wing Beast;”
Protomartyr, Ultimate Success Today, “Day Without End;”
The Darts (U.S.), Boomerang, “Pour Another;”
Coach Party, KILLJOY, “Micro Aggression;”
IDLES, CRAWLER, “Meds.”
If you love me, let me know.
Platonically, rhetorically speaking. Click on the little heart thingy, share the post around, tell your friends and loved ones, and if you’ve not already, consider subscribing. Free subscriptions get the same as paid ones do except the near-orgasmic pleasure of affording me the occasional sashimi bowl.
Be well; take care.