How to ensure Lord Stumblefuck doesn't become President Stumblefuck 2.0

It's surprisingly easy and will take only a few minutes of your time

Sometimes, I worry about what Trump supporters might be capable of should Agolf Shitler be elected in November. It’s not like we’re going to have to worry about them being gracious winners. There’s some history there; they weren’t in 2016.

Remember the “You lost! Get over it!!” taunts directed at those of us who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016? Yeah, I have a feeling that level of malevolence might be ratcheted up a few notches this time around if Donald Trump wins.

MAGAnauts will be excited over the prospect of forcing themselves and their newfound dictatorship upon all of America. However, it may turn into a “be careful what you ask for” problem for them.

If millions of people vote for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, no one can claim to be surprised when leopards begin to do precisely what they’d advertised all along.

“But I never thought they’d eat MY face,” faithful Right-wing voters will scream.

“How could they do this to me? I voted for the leopards! Why can’t they eat the faces of those who didn’t vote for them?”

Why? Because there’s a very straightforward answer to that question. Leopards aren’t going to check your voter registration card before they proceed gnawing on your face. And Republicans won’t give a damn who you voted for when they begin fucking wide swaths of America. They care about their corporate benefactors and how they can cut taxes for billionaires. Individuals and the middle class? Not so much?

Republicans care about the middle class only insofar as they need their votes every four years. Then the spend they spend the rest of the time ratfucking everyone except those who donate large sums to them and telling them how everything wrong with America is because of “them damned Libruls.”

But what if Lord Stumblefuck DOES win? No one seriously considered the possibility of a Trump victory in 2016—not even the candidate himself. He and his campaign were caught completely unaware of and shocked by his prevailing in the Electoral College, even though he lost by three million popular votes.

This time around, though, victory would not be unexpected, though it would almost certainly be loathed by a majority of the country, including those who can’t be be bothered to vote.

So what if he wins?

In analyzing the transcripts of TIME Magazine’s long-form interview with Lord Stumblefuck,

Aaron Rupar

and

Noah Berlatsky

identify a pattern of him no longer even bothering to keep the quiet part under wraps. It was a tour de farce,

in which the former president and current presumptive Republican presidential nominee painted a picture of his plans for an authoritarian and dystopian second term.

Trump promised to target marginalized groups and to use the power of the state against his political enemies. He said he’d let red states monitor pregnancies and talked openly of mass deportations and detention camps.

Trump’s proposals are terrifying. But they’re also remarkably incoherent. What’s most striking in the interview is that Trump, even after four years as president, has virtually no grasp on any policy issue beyond empty talking points, most of which are lies. When asked how he will implement his plans, he waffles, obfuscates, and delivers a stream of non sequitur boasts about how great he is or about how other people have said that he’s great. He lies all the time, but many of his statements on core policy issues are so garbled and gassy they don’t even qualify as lies. It’s like interacting with a chatbot programmed by a fascist parrot.

Trump’s blank, aggressive ignorance shouldn’t be a comfort. He has shown, over and over, that incompetence doesn’t have to undermine evil intent; often it can exacerbate it. He offers a vision of a presidency of cruelty and violence disavowed as it occurs, with every abuse of power accompanied by a vague flurry of denials and endless self-hagiography. Trump promises us, over and over, that he will do harm, and that he will learn nothing.

In most cases, performative ignorance wouldn’t present a problem. But, when combined with aggressive malevolence, gratuitous cruelty, an acceptance of violence as a legitimate problem-solving method, and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for any negative result…it’s easy to see that Donald Trump IS and would be the problem.

The motive doesn’t matter much, even to Trump. The interview as a whole paints a clear picture of a vain, vindictive man locked in an information bubble of one.

Trump does not want to win the presidency to advance an agenda to help Americans or create a better world. He wants to win the presidency to glorify himself and to harm those he hates — including immigrants, Democrats, and anyone who has ever contradicted or crossed him. He dismisses any obstacle to total power — like the Posse Comitatus Act — not least because he barely knows that such obstacles exist….

You don’t want to be ruled by a tyrant. You don’t want to be ruled by a fool. But God help us if we put ourselves again in the hands of this orange, hateful, bloviating tyrannical fool.

If Trump wins, which remains a big “IF” six months out from the election, there seems little doubt but that the evil will be more Evil, the cruelty more cruel, the hatred darker and more personal, and the corruption more venal. Donald Trump’s first term will have served as a dry run, an opportunity to work out the kinks. Come 1.20.25, the gloves will almost certainly come off and the character of American governance, which has remained remarkably unchanged for a quarter-millennia, will never be the same again.

(Well, it’s not good….)

In the quarter-millennia America has existed, has the term “imperial Presidency” ever been used more than it has been in association with Lord Stumblefuck?

Yes, we’re six months out from Election Day, but we should not delude ourselves into believing the worst case scenario can’t happen. We may believe it can’t, and we may not want it to happen, but all we need is to remember 2016 to understand that it can and DID happen.

There’s a very good chance it could happen again, and you don’t need to have read all 887 pages of Project 2025 to understand what that might mean. Indeed, I’d recommend NOT reading all of those pages (I’ve read many of them)…unless you need a good excuse to drink heavily.

I’m not going to begin screaming at people to vote. We’re adults and we should know what our duties and responsibilities as citizens are by now. If you can’t be bothered to vote, you deserve to live with the consequences of that decision, because not voting IS a decision.

Where we are now may not be perfect…but when has America ever been perfect? If we can turn down the temperature on the Sturm und Drang for a moment and practice a wee bit of objectivity, we should all be able to recognize that things are pretty damned good. Again, not perfect, but very good, and there’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Nor should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let’s not forget what Lord Stumblefuck did during his four years in the White House. It was a shitshow from Day One until the day Air Force One flew him back to Mar-A-Lago. Joe Biden spent most of his first year cleaning up the mess he inherited from The Former Guy ©. Then, despite facing furious opposition from Republicans in Congress, President Biden managed to get a lot done, far more than Donald Trump could ever claim.

Do we really want to go through all of that again? I certainly don’t. If you don’t, there’s an easy way to make sure that Lord Stumblefuck doesn’t become President Stumblefuck 2.0.

You know what to do.

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