The sour grapes of wrath
A still-unhappy Trump is back to trample his enemies – and, inevitably, his followers
By Sam Bellamy
No one, on the left or the right, expected Donald Trump to disappoint on his first day stomping back into the White House. He didn’t.
He’s every bit as loathsome as he was the day he descended his gaudy escalator at Trump Tower to announce his first candidacy for president. This time, of course, he returns with a felony record to go with the first-term memories we’d rather blot out, including rioting by his followers in the very Capitol Rotunda he stood in.
In the long windup to his pledging once more to uphold the Constitution he probably hasn’t read, likely doesn’t comprehend and certainly doesn’t respect, Trump could be seen looking around him in disinterest as a succession of Democrats pleaded – and not at all perfunctorily – for a continuation of almost 250 years of American democracy.
During the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club’s performance of Battle Hymn of the Republic, Trump – who contends he did a better job as president than Lincoln – scowled as if impatient to get on with the business of fulfilling his malicious whims and petty wishes.
He probably felt the rousing tribute was befitting a man of his stature, but it was taking entirely too long. Let’s get on with those sour grapes of wrath.
The sour grapes all rolled out during his speech, of course, when Trump delivered a mostly monotone and restrained version of his campaign rally speeches.
He attacked his alleged persecutors, fingerpainted a self-serving portrait of how the world has fared in his absence from power and rattled off his increasingly ridiculous claims about the dastardliness of undocumented workers, who on the whole are safer to be around than many of his Cabinet nominees. Twice as safe if you’re a woman.
Notably, he said that under his presidency the United States would once again become a “growing nation” that “expands our territory.”
Perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t realize that the rebirth of the fascist-sympathizing America First movement also encompasses a rebirth of Manifest Destiny. Does he think the Battle Hymn line “So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave” applies to him? And does that include upper-casing third-person references to him? Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan and the like would likely go along with that, but are we expected to as well?
While all this was happening, an increasingly prominent Jan. 6th rioter – now pardoned – was apparently somewhere in Washington, D.C., hailing what he pretty clearly thinks might be the rebirth of a regrettably-thwarted Third Reich.
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who – to my surprise – I’ve found myself writing about more than I care to, is a convicted rioter from New Jersey who is turning into something of a mascot for the returning Trump administration and, I fear in my darkest moments, a harbinger of what’s to come.
Little Timmy is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, who – as The Washington Post pointed out amid the inauguration festivities – posted on X what appears to be his official invitation to attend the events. It’s not at all far-fetched; he spoke twice at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey at fundraisers for the legal defense of Jan. 6th rioters.
All you really need to know about little Timmy is that he wore a Hitler mustache to work at a Naval Surface Weapons Center in New Jersey and that his colleagues recall him expressing admiration for Nazism, lamenting that Hitler didn’t finish killing all Jews, and declaring that babies with disabilities should be shot in the forehead. There’s much more, of course, but as I said, that’ll probably do it.
In court, of course, little Timmy was remorseful. “My behavior that day was unacceptable, and I disgraced my uniform and I disgraced the country,” he said. Now, of course, he does backflips worthy of Lindsey Graham, using his X posts to try to explain all the ways that Jan. 6th rioters like himself are as innocent as kittens, if you can imagine a kitten with an Adolph hair part and stache.
I haven’t spoken since the inauguration with any neighbors or family members who voted for Trump, including a generally decent fellow who explained to me not long ago that he doesn’t support Trump but that he would vote for him because he liked many of Trump’s ideas. I didn’t know where to start in my response, and having just blasted the guy for what appears to be homophobia deeply ingrained in his religious faith, I let it pass.
As I imagine many of you in similar circumstances do, I give wide berth to such folks on the topic of Trump and generally avoid them entirely. I don’t feel good about it, but I mostly hold my tongue in their presence because I have yet to figure out how to calmly express my rage at their acquiescence to what strikes me as the obvious malice and incompetence of the man they vote for. That, and I know I have no hope of breaking their trance.
Recently, I watched in dismay as two rescue squad workers carried a loved one down the front steps of my home, and it occurred to me in that moment – because even then, the state of our nation is never far from my mind – that these men were very likely Trump voters, given the deep-red community we lived in.
Like my Trump-loving neighbors and family members, these men are the ones Mr. Rogers advised kids of all ages to look for in times of trouble – the helpers, the people who are doing good when all around them chaos rules.
I think we all need to remember that Trump’s supporters include the little Timmy types, whose intentions are clear and repugnant, but also the people in our lives who muddle the principles they really should grasp by now – equality and respect for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual preference – but try to live decent lives and often do overcome their worst instincts.
If we end up having to take that Battle Hymn directly to the Little Timmys and forcibly shut them down, I’m confident the latter group of people, most of them anyway, will see the light, make the right choice and stand with us.
We all need, including me, to find it in ourselves to remember that many Trump supporters are the type of humans who’ll dutifully tend their end of a stretcher when we need them, who’d never, ever think, “This is a liberal (or black, or Jewish, or gay, or name the Trump target) home. I’m not helping them.” They’ll show at your door, time after time.
Right now, for reasons I can’t fully understand, they’re in thrall of a man who is the worst of humanity, whose easy and wrong answers to sometimes-real problems are inexplicably appealing to them.
They’re duped by “news” organizations that feed them conspiracies, who divide our country into an “us and the other” mode, an age-old trick used by the rich and powerful to conquer those who can enrich and empower them. If we’re busy fighting among ourselves, we have no time to see what’s really going on and fight the real cause of our struggles.
Those of us who see Trump for what he really is must resist falling into that trap too.
While Little Timmy and pals will likely never join reality and civilization, our neighbors and family members who are lost right now just might. They aren’t permanently “the other,” they aren’t little Timmys. They can be redeemed.
We need to be there for them, to carry their stretchers when they’re inevitably wounded by the malevolent forces of MAGA.
I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive them or not view them with suspicion and probably a tad of contempt. But if we’re to survive as a nation, we need to recognize that they are neighbors, they are family, they are Americans, too.