The Winter Solstice Is Here. So Is the Trump Solstice

The annual winter solstice is the day the axis of northern hemisphere of the earth reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun.  It’s the shortest day of the year. Midwinter. For the earth the axis will slowly tilt back towards the sun. Spring and then summer will eventually come. However there’s still plenty of winter left to endure. Politics has a way of tilting back and forth on an axis. Some use the analogy of a pendulum and that works too. I think the winter and summer solstice works better. A pendulum moves in an exact arc back and forth and in a vaccum the speed doesn’t vary. However as with the earth, the political climate can go through some pretty severe times of heat and cold. More importantly the the political axis doesn’t change on a set schedule. This fall a look at Trump shows the political axis (of control) has moved away from him. So much so that we can go from hoping, to feeling sure the time is coming for a “detrumpitication.”

Yep, in politics history teaches us sometimes the shift in one Party or the other’s fortunes is so significant things never return all the way to where they once could be counted on to someday return. The same is true of individual politician’s standing with voters. Trump has in his second term created one mess after another. Bigger messes than his first term when he had at least a few “adults in the room” to curb the worst of impulses. He made damned sure not to have any of that in his second term. That of course enrages those who didn’t vote for him and disagree with his policies. What’s occurred to me is that the ever faithful MAGAs who’ve blindly followed Trump have begun to question him.  We thought, even feared such a thing might never happen but it has and it matters. Bigly.

For decades, since Reagan introduced the first “supply side” tax cuts more bluntly called trickle down economics there has been wonderment about how/why so many Americans would vote against their own interests. The whole ‘What’s the matter with Kansas’ thing. They believed Reagan, then Baby Bush and then Trump that these tax cuts for the rich would someday trickle down and benefit them too. What trickled down wasn’t prosperity but pain. Or to put it crudely what those Russian hookers are alleged to have ‘trickled” onto the bed the Obamas slept in in Moscow.  It seems like the latest version Trump pushed through in his BBB got folks in those big swaths of rural/small town America – Trump/MAGA country – to looking at things like Medicaid cuts. Hospital closings and medical practices shutting down.

Then there was the impending expiration of the Covid Obamacare subsidies. Democrats has been raising hell starting before the summer and were ignored. In fact prior to passage of the BBB MAGAs enjoyed ‘owning the libs’ on the matter.  It wasn’t  until the BBB and the consequences, the realization that it wasn’t “those people” but good ole white MAGA Americans would take a hit they payed attention. Then in the fall as Moses Mikey Johnson was keeping the House shut down to avoid a vote on the Epstein files they started getting an inkling about how much the cost of their health insurance would shoot up.

NOW they were paying attention, and combined with the question of why the hell Trump was stalling on releasing the Epstein files much as MAGAs tried to shut it out doubt about Trump started creeping in. He PROMISED them. And were certain (since Trump told them so) that nothing in there indicated he’d done the least bit wrong. Or even knew what a P.O.S. Epstein was. Plus, it wasn’t like legislation was actually needed. It wasn’t. If Trump told AG Bondi to release everything they’d have seen it all months ago.

As the holidays began it was to me at least apparent Trump had dropped two anvils – one on each foot. MAGAs might not have fully turned on him. All of us are capable of rationalization and sometimes to a ridiculous degree but the fact so much has been going on with MAGAs as to cause Trump’s approval rating even with THEM is huge. Yes, we’ve seen Trump’s approval decline by a lot to the point where he’s underwater on any issue you can name. However there’s a political divide but when you look closely you can see that even among Republicans things have dropped. That’s why Trump’s approval has cratered.

Now, the double whammy of Congressional Republicans refusing to extend the Obamacare subsidies (meaning health care premiums will shoot up after the first of the year) AND the Epstein files the Trump approval axis might well have shifted so far it will never get back to where it once was with MAGAs.  Come January many will lose health care through a combination of skyrocketing insurance costs and an acceleration of closure of hospitals and medical practices in small-town/rural America. And while they had started to wonder why it took an act of Congress to compel Bondi to release the Epstein files when Trump could have ordered them to do so Bondi (on orders from Trump) is STILL stalling!

I grew up in a small town in what’s now MAGA country. There’s even a GOP representative from my hometown in southern Illinois who has posted pics (as has his older sister I grew up with and was a classmate in school and a former friend of) of himself with Trump.  I also lived for ten (close to eleven) years in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia which is also MAGA.  Most of these people haven’t turned on Trump. However they ARE and in increasing numbers questioning whether he still deserves their unqualified support. This matters and more than I think is being talked about with the pundit class.

Just as the ill-fated Donner Party made it through the pass without realizing it, a tipping point with Trump has I think been reached without people realizing it. We’ll know for sure within a few weeks as filing deadlines for primary races hit. Even already more GOPers are leaving than Democrats and we’re told by experts that number and the gap is likely to increase. Again, in addition to polling directly about Trump by mainstream outlets Senators and Representatives have their own polling. One of the things they are assessing is how much Trump will drag down THEIR approval and therefore chances of re-election!

I know, I’ve done one of my infamous long-winded explanations but in my defense it’s been justified.  MAGA’s commitment to Trump has weakened to a point where we can actually look ahead to the time when “De-Trumpification can take place.  The process won’t happen soon, but will be in high gear come 2028. If we can retake the Senate as well as the House next November we can even get a head start on it. DeTrumpification, or UnTrumpening if you will.  As this article from Alternet tells us we really can look forward to some serious ‘detrumpening.’

The linked article cites reporter John Ford of The New Republic who acknowledges spending most of the past ten years thinking about one man – Trump. Yet he’s convinced not only that Trump will be gone and by January 20, 2029 at the latest but that a Democrat will be sworn in as his successor. Although it seems Ford doesn’t say so it’s safe to assume he believes at least one chamber of Congress will be controlled by Democrats as well. Because of this he feels it’s time to look ahead to what comes after. Not just look to, but plan for. Just as importantly he makes the point we should make a point about ‘detrumpification’:

Ford said the next Democratic administration will likely commit itself to purging the “aesthetic rot of Trump’s second term from our national life. Detrumpification must be celebrated as an act of victory and an exercise in joy.”

I wholeheartedly agree. If it would be wise to try to not make it too “in your face” we shouldn’t be timid or apologetic for not just repairing the massive damage Trump and MAGA have created, but we should make a point of forcing the enablers to see just how much damage was done. Ford cites a couple of obvious examples of recent Trump antics that have even MAGAs questioning him. Even those who might like the ‘owning the libs’ aspect are unhappy that he’s NOT doing the things he promised he’d do. The cost of living hasn’t gone down and in fact is going to keep rising. He’s telling them Affordability is a ‘hoax’ and ordering them to believe him and not ‘their lying eyes.” It’s not selling. Even MAGAs seem to realize he’s lying to them.

Ford also cites the monstrous act of demolishing part of the White House so he can build a grand ballroom. It seems to have sunk in with MAGAs that this was an awful thing to do, that he flat-out lied when during the summer he said the historic east wing wouldn’t be touched and most importantly that hundreds of millions would be built on a place where rich beyond all reason people could fete Trump and look down their noses at 99 percent of everyone else. Kind of like the Hunger Games (nice timing Trumpy on announcing your own version!) with the people in the Capitol gorging themselves on what all the people in the rest of the fictional country provided via almost slave labor. AND mocking them while doing so.  Ford even offers some specific ideas:

“I can imagine no greater visual for the next Democratic president’s first 100 days than demolishing whatever decadent monstrosity [Trump] builds,” said Ford. “The ballroom’s proposed architectural flaws will likely necessitate this either way, but the next president should make a real show of it. … [W]ire it up to one of those old-fashioned plungers that Wile E. Coyote uses when he tries to blow up the Road Runner. Perhaps the final push could be synchronized with fireworks on the Fourth of July, or at the stroke of midnight for some other historic anniversary.”

Just like Trump’s name shouldn’t be crowbarred off the Kennedy Center in the dead of night but on a bright, sunny day (and with Kennedy family member presiding and taking part) a big show should be made of the ‘detrumpification.’ Ford concludes by saying why it’s so important to shine a spotlight on the process:

“What Trump and his allies are doing, after all, is not really about honoring him. These tributes are meant to carry the same message as an unrepaired hole in the wall left by a violent domestic abuser’s fist,” said Ford. “The goal is to humiliate and to intimidate anyone who didn’t support him, to imply violence without leaving bruises, and to create a perpetual sense of unease, despair, and dread. To visibly erase his image and his name from American public life would not be a distraction from moving forward but rather a prerequisite for it.”

I’ve said that damage Trump has inflicted can be repaired with enough time and will but there will be visible scars the country carries for however long we last. Not unlike the scars that covered my dad’s torso from being wounded on a bomber in the skies over Europe in WWII and all the surgeries it took to restore him to physical health. He went to great lengths to keep them hidden. And some of the damage Trump has (and will) cause can be repaired without leaving a trace. The Kennedy Center can be restored to it’s former look. A new east wing can be built. Perhaps a better one but with the entrance and the parts that were so memorable to visitors toured can be recreated. That’s why it will be important to make a show out of ‘detrumpification’ – so everyone knows and future generations will know what it took to undo/fix the damage Trump and MAGA caused.

Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula

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