In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, ‘Now shut up and obey me.’ People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business

Max Weber

Like many liberals, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to crawl inside the headspace of Trump supporters, attempting to figure out what, if anything, could happen that would break their loyalty to the Orange One. In all likelihood, much, if not most of this Trump Derangement Syndrome (I actually don’t mind the term, because the appropriate response to non-stop lunacy and relentless cruelty is actually some form of derangement) has more to do with Trumpists than with Trump himself.

I mean, yes, virtually everything that Trump says and does is infuriating to libs, by design. But many of us endeavor mightily to re-focus our rage and frustration on how to crack the MAGA nut, instead of always worrying about OJC (Orange Julius Caesar). After all, Trump’s gonna Trump, so why waste energy letting him live in your melon rent-free?

So I find myself, actually somewhat sympathetically, trying to reason like a Trumpist, to put myself in their position, in hopes of uncovering some secret code that can penetrate the hermetically-sealed information universe in which the MAGA folks live. Because in reality, despite the assertions of many irate libs, not all Trumpists are flaming racists, misogynists, trans-haters, paranoid survival nuts, sociopathic tech-bros, Bible-thumping theocrats, and knuckle-dragging yokels. Yes, many of those elements run through Trumpism, but there is a deeper reality to this movement, one that is not purely evil and backward. And since I continually attack Trump and his immediate minions for fomenting dualistic, polarized hatred of the Other, I’m not going to stoop to the same tactic by demonizing tens of millions of Americans, even if I do think that they are sleep-walking us into societal collapse.

In that semi-sympathetic frame of mind, it has become increasingly obvious that Trumpism itself how has one huge, honking problem: Trump himself. The Donald’s second term, in any reasonable view, has now jumped more sharks than Ian Ziering and Tara Reid (look it up). His pivot from the populist rabble-rouser in the first term, to full-blown demented demagogue is now in full Versailles-esque swing, and even his most loyal supporters are now saying to themselves, “Wait, what the fuck is actually happening now? This is our new holy mission?”

Let’s frame it this way. Trump is only useful to his base as a weapon against all of their collected enemies, real or imagined: black people, brown people, women who drive and buy their own stuff, gay child-groomers, trans-freaks, drag storytellers, dirty atheists, baby cannibals, Sharia Law pushers, experts, elitists, globalists, people who eat sushi, anthem-kneelers, and other types of folks who would never watch the CMAs. This enemy list is obviously expansive (oh, I forgot people who say “Happy Holidays”), so Trump has made considerable hay, and burned a lot of time, going after all these enemies of America.

But at some point, two things have to happen, even from the point of view of MAGA die-hards. First, all the oppression and suppression have to actually, you know, like, pay off for the Trumpist faithful. Mass deportation of immigrants, firing all the DEI hires, and jailing all the liberal demons must start to deliver the goods, in real dollars and real power for the downtrodden, victimized salt-of-the-earth (i.e., white rural people). Even though I have recently described the MAGA crowd as having basically given up on the whole American system to engage in an orgy of (largely symbolic and vicarious) vengeance, you can still only subsist on rage and schadenfreude for so long.

The problem here, of course, is Trump himself. He actually doesn’t give a shit about anyone except himself and whoever happens to be useful to him at any given moment. None of his missions of retribution actually accrue to his supporters in any tangible way, excepting his penchant for pardons, which conveniently doesn’t cost him anything.

Now, the main reason that Trump doesn’t deliver the goods and goodies for his base is that he just can’t, because none of his actions for righting wrongs are actually based in realty and fact. Immigrants are neither economic drains nor catalysts of extreme crime, so mass deportations are actually making the US worse off economically, even in the red areas. And none of his witch hunts to jail nefarious libs ever amount to anything, because there is no evidence of anything that can stand up in a court of law.

[As an illustrative aside, consider the bizarre Trump practice of tweeting out constant passive-voice claims that “Obama should be arrested for treason!” But wait a minute, doesn’t Trump run the DOJ, the highest criminal law institution in the land? If there is evidence of Obama treason, then just have your guys go arrest him. Don’t toilet-tweet at 2AM, like an angry old man with prostate issues, that “Somebody should do something!” You’re the boss. If you had Obama dead-to-rights on treason, you would actually do something. But you don’t….so you don’t.]

But aside from Trump’s schemes not working to help his base because they are built on falsehood and profound unreality, there’s the added problem that Trump just doesn’t give a fuck. When asked if he considers people’s financial conditions in his “war” against Iran, he said, basically, “Nah, I don’t think about that stuff at all.” Now, that got spun by Trump’s handlers as him being nobly and laser focused on stopping the (non-existent) Iranian nuclear threat only, not a larger unconcern for people’s day-to-day economic fortunes. But his words really were spot-on for his outlook on the nation in general. For Trump, we’re not his employers. We’re his subjects, and our only duties as citizens are to show him deference and give him admiration. Anyone who doesn’t is a traitor.

In Trump’s brain, the leader-people dynamic of democracy is reversed. He is not privileged to be our selected leader. No, we are privileged to be his subjects. It is a purely royal mindset, through and through. Thus the Trump desire to cover anything and everything with gold, the gilding of the kingly tyrant.

A good example of this monarchial indifference is the blatantly illegal and stupendously arrogant effort to loot the federal government of $10 billion, through his bullshit lawsuit against his own IRS. Trump created a fake legal action, in order to generate a $1.8 billion payout for January 6th traitors, along with his real objective: giving himself, his family, and his organizations eternal immunity from any IRS actions against them.

Now that a judge has halted this travesty, the latest news is that Trump might just scrap the whole thing anyway, because an actual trial would demonstrate how bogus the original lawsuit was. But the side effect is likely that the J6ers won’t get any of that sweet windfall for their seditious actions. They had been counting on that as a huge, material, actual payoff for their loyalty to Trump. But since the original suit was bullshit anyway, Trump will probably just shelve it all. He doesn’t really care, as he’s making his billions elsewhere (foreign bribes, insider trading, crypto manipulation, shady contracts, etc.).

So as far as bringing tangible rewards to the MAGA faithful goes, Trump himself is becoming a problem. He’s proving himself to be all comb-over, no cattle.

But the second way that Trump is now a thorn in the side of Trumpism is that there is no easy way to succession-plan for a narcissistic, dementia-addled tyrant. It is incredibly difficult to institutionalize the dominance of a crazed emperor-wannabe. This is becoming blatantly obvious as Trump focuses his second term on ridiculous vanity projects: a gilded ballroom, a reflecting pool, a gaudy Trump arch, his face on cash and national park passes, his name on any building that has extra signage acreage, his White House Idiocracy cage-match, etc. Even the most elegantly-mulleted must be saying, “OK, that’s pretty cool, but I still can’t pay my car insurance bill.”

As this orgy of spray-tanned self-stroking unfurls, Trump’s would-be successors are in a pretty awkward spot. They have to keep pretending that this is all normal stuff, the great things you would expect from a great man, a man with the greatest brain, the likes of which we have never seen. This week, Marco Rubio had to testify before Congress that, no way, he has never seen Trump fall asleep in any meetings, ever. He’s probably just pining for the fjords.

But this is all very bad for the would-be heirs, as it locks them into the Trump-as-Savior fairy tale, forever having to define their own lives and careers as faithful torchbearers of Trump’s amazing legacy. Except that….there’s nothing amazing to fulfill and carry on. They are inheriting the wind. Despite the seeming weight and oppressive substance of Project 2025, the thing Trump had never heard of but that somehow still managed to (accidentally?) become the blueprint for Trump 2.0, the entirety of this conservative revolution, from court-packing to gerrymandering to outlawing abortion to the dismantling of the “Deep State,” is still doomed to fail, because it is built on sand, on a cosmic unreality that will not be able to resist the unstoppable trends in ecological, social, cultural, and economic change. The furious energy of Trumpism is undoubtedly damaging and dangerous, but it is ultimately an empty fantasy that cannot last, because it is just not…..true.

Just try to imagine Trumpism after Trump is gone. His heir, whether it’s JD Vance, or Little Marco, or Platform Boot DeSantis, will flail around on Truth Social and Fox News, trying to summon up the ability to utter the famous words, “Quiet piggy!”, with the same idiotic bluster as the original version, all the while claiming to carry on that glorious banner of DJT onto the battlefield against the libs — only without the same shamelessness, dishonesty, and monumental arrogance as the authentic article. It just won’t work, largely because epic falsehoods can really only be convincingly faked by an ultimate conman carnival-barker, and there just ain’t many of those around.