So This Is Who We Are

An under-educated, superstitious, faux-Christian, xenophobic freak show that worships a rapist and convicted felon.

Courtesy of Etsy

My MAGA brother sent me a photo of Donald Trump in his garbage man’s outfit — remember the one he started wearing just last week after his fascist rally at the Madison Square Garden ?— carrying two garbage bags. Photos of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were on the bags: “It’s trash day.” He followed that with a bunch of smiling emoticons.

He didn’t like my reaction and told me, “Come on, it’s time to unite now for the nation.” Have you noticed this is what the MAGidiots always do after Trump wins? They call for unity when it means we have to accept their fascism. My brother is smart and well-off. He worked at a very difficult defense job for 30 years. He is a white male who married only in his 50s because he was incapable of long-term relationships. He would become controlling and nasty. The women usually left. In this regard, he grew up, became more caring —  somewhat —  and married.

Why do I tell you so much about my brother? Because it’s the millions of men and women — like his wife — throughout the country whose votes for Donald Trump not just made him the president after all of his crimes; they also became America. While my brother is an intelligent person, he is a racist. He has spent a life never taking responsibility for his nastiness, crankiness, and the offensive words he used to say so freely — he has mellowed a little but still takes responsibility for nothing. 

As he has aged, and because he is cheap, he realizes he will leave this world with a lot of money unspent. Rather than leave any of that money to his many siblings, nieces, or nephews, he plans to give it all to the Catholic Church. He was never an altar boy like me. He never went to mass like I used to. He never read, let alone owned the Bible, like I did in the army. He has lived his life being the antithesis of a Christian. I know why he wants to leave the money to the church. He wants them to put up one of those plaques on a new row of pews that reads, “Thanks to the generosity and love of our parishioner so-and-so, whose life was lived in Jesus.” People from the future will look at the name and think, “Gee, I should live my life the way he did.”

My brother is the stereotypical Trumpist, and now, they are America. We aren’t. As proud as Joe Biden’s presidency and Kamala Harris’s candidacy made me feel, today I feel empty. I don’t recognize the United States of America. I don’t know who these people are who found Donald Trump, a man who, in one of the last rallies before Election Day, talked 20 minutes about combing his hair, fellated a microphone, and then threatened violence against a former First Lady, more qualified to be president than Kamala Harris.

All I can say is that the people who vote for them time and time again, and those who cast votes for him for the first time yesterday, are f****** stupid. They are prime examples of how our education system — high school — is not preparing them for the essential criterion that not only makes a nation great but keeps it so, which is the ability to think critically. Take Trump’s speeches, which are chock full of meaningless words, empty promises, and lie after lie after lie; it would require only 3 minutes of Googling to fact-check anything he said. Three minutes to find out that the old, orange, farting pedophile standing before them was utterly clueless and also full of shit. 

They didn’t do those easy checks because they were stupid, intellectually lazy, and lacked curiosity. They exhibit no signs of that very trait that quickly separated humans from other apes six million years ago. Had we left evolution up to them, they would have gone straight instead of bearing left and heading toward northern Africa. 

America today is a xenophobic, superstitious, faux-Christian nation. Remember the priests and the Catholic Pope who supported the Nazis? That is what Trump-supporting Christians are in my understanding of the teaching of Jesus. You cannot love Jesus, or any diety, and cast a vote for Donald Trump. But this is who we are.

You might disagree with me. You might say, I have been trying to reassure myself all day, “But wait, we aren’t as bad as this. We are better than them and certainly better than him.” Okay, let’s play mirror. “Yep, you look great,” I tell myself daily when I look at my balding head with the messy comb-over. I see the younger me and think, “Yep, there he is. Hey, handsome, a face only a mother could love, right?” I wink at myself and smile.

When I leave the house, the world sees the real me — the middle-aged man who still can’t decide whether to shave it all off or keep it in a permanent crew cut. They see me as I am today, not me from 20, 30, or 40 years ago.

The world today sees an American man whose country has just chosen fascism, xenophobia, faux Christianity, superstition, and hate. I can say what I want and tell them until I am blue, but if I am an American, that is who I have become on November 6th, 2024 — we all have thanks to people like my brother and millions of dumbass men and women all over their land.