Welcome to the Rise of Zombie Trumpism
Trumpism’s Not Dead Yet, But It’s Not Alive Either. So What Is It? It’s Undead, And It’s Going to Get Bloody
by umair haque
I’m going to keep this short and sweet, because, well, we’ve all got a World Cup to watch. I say that every day, and I fail, so let me do what honorable people do, which is try and fail again.
There’s something sinister, strange, funny, and creepy happening to Trumpism, which was already all those things to begin with. What do I mean? Well, in case you didn’t hear, Trump just called for…the Constitution to be “terminated.” LOL.
Here’s what he had to say: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” There’s a doozy of a sentence or two for you to take in.
Why did he say that? On the heels of — let’s pause to recount a tedious, idiotic set of events, even for this decade — what the World’s Creepiest Billionaire, the one who bought Twitter, billed as a Major Event. Breathless, he announced that he had evidence of a world-changing, history-altering nature. Which turned out to leave even conservatives underwhelmed. It amounted to internal Twitter emails about a tabloid newspaper story about…sigh…what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop…and not to allow links to it…as the Democrats had requested…because it fell under hacked material policy…and that oh-so-damning stuff on the laptop? Naked pics of Hunter Biden.
Go ahead and laugh. How ridiculous is all this? So much so that, like I said, even conservatives were underwhelmed — and then mad. At being led on by their new flame, and then let down, the Cheesy Billionaire. History-altering? World-changing? LOL. They’re just naked pics, dude. Chill out, buddy. I thought we were gonna reveal that Hillary Clinton really did drink the blood of children in a satanic cult along with George Soros so they could live forever, and that Twitter had the evidence to prove it! Jesus!! Isn’t that why you bought it, you loser! What the hell…the hell…is this?
Now let’s talk about it seriously, because all this is indicative of something, as tragically idiotic as it is.
Where is Trumpism now? What is Trumpism now? It’s not really dead. That’d be going too far. And yet it’s not really alive, either, in the old sense, either. A better way to think about it — and I mean this almost literally, as I’ll explain — is that Trumpism is undead. Welcome to the rise of Zombie Trumpism.
Consider the events above — in the larger context of what just happened in American democracy. Trumpism was soundly, firmly, vehemently rejected by American voters. Both liberal and conservative. Trump’s chosen slate of candidates lost big-time — and he was humiliated. So much so that his announcement to run for President again was largely met with indifference and or laughter.
The midterms were a repudiation of Trumpism, from both left and right. Americans rejected fanaticism and extremism. They said, wearily, angrily, we’re sick and tired of the Big Lies. We just want a working country again. Even for those who once bought into Trump’s outsider-riding-across-the-Rubicon to save the republic by destroying it schtick…January 6th was a step way, way too far, and American came together, remarkably, to reject violence and lies and bigotry and ignorance and so forth.
The midterms were a turning point for America, in a very real way. They meant that Trumpism is dead. In three specific ways. As a mainstream movement. As a politics of change. And as a populist cultural current. Trumpism is very much dead in all those forms, and that really means something. Because it’s a Big Change. Do you remember when places like the New York Times would run fawning profiles of Trumpists…even neo-Nazis…as if they were great intellectuals and friendly neighborhood superheroes? I do. Those days are over. Trumpism has little to no legitimacy or credibility left as a mass political, social, cultural, or economic movement or moment.
And yet, there Trumpism still is. You can see it in the way that, as many people were quick to point out, the GOP refused to disavow Trump’s insane — and the only word for it, really, is insane — comments to “terminate the constitution.” But how does a major political party and side refuse to disavow…terminating the constitution? You know, the very one they’re all…uhh…sworn to uphold?
So Trumpism’s still very much alive, too, at the same time that it’s dead. Though it’s finished as a mainstream political-economic-social movement, it’s still, weirdly, brain-spinningly, alive. There it is, lingering on, in the halls of power, where the GOP’s still captive to it, even if Americans have rejected it resoundingly.
How can both these things be true?
Think again about the events above. What really just happened? Something so comically sinister that it’s almost funny. The world’s richest dude bought one of it’s major comms platforms to try and keep Trumpism alive. You can extend that, of course, to far right movements beyond Trumpism, but this whole bizarre thing — burning billions to buy Twitter — appears to be a last-ditch, desperate move to try and save Trumpism. Under whatever ridiculous guise there is now, from “free speech,” which was a bit more veiled, to the way this guy teased the lead up to his so-called earth-shattering announcement. LOL — the world didn’t shatter. It…yawned.
Now, nobody’s going to buy you or me a billion dollar Christmas present. And yet that’s how desperate some are to keep Trumpism alive.
So Trumpism is alive in the following senses. Number one, it has plenty of fanatics and lunatics who back it. Two, some of them are very rich and powerful, and they’re using their influence to try and keep it alive. Three, they’re trying more and more desperate efforts to reanimate the base, which is, like I said, yawning, losing interest, moving on, wearily, from the Big Lies.
And that is how you end up with a zombie political movement.