…Are Willing to Commit Atrocities for their Dear Leaders. Another Absurdity came to my mind as I slept last night. The Absurdity of believing that one human being can save an entire nation, much less of believing that some outside force chooses one human being from among all others for the task. First, the premise is an Absurdity: that a human being can be a Savior, can act alone as a supreme leader, has the mental and physical super-human capabilities to act alone in super-human ways. At no time in human history has one human being acted alone to save entire communities or a nation. Every heroic action deserves praise. However, every heroic action on a grand scale happened because a team, a tribe, a nation, or a family pulled together to fulfill the necessary action. I think of heroes during weather disasters, wars, and famines…heroes who saved their families, heroes who ran into fire to save their comrades, heroes who defied armies to take food to children. Once we grow out of childhood, we should accept the reality that the heroes of literature and film, such as Robin Hood and John Wayne’s characters and Superman, are fictional heroes, representations of the might and courage that each of us carries within us and has the potential to find when the right time comes. And many brave men and women have given their lives to the struggles of others. They were teachers, nurses, farmers, librarians, and states people. We know their realities. We know that despite resistance to their work, they had help from empathetic others.
The persistent belief in Donald J Trump’s abilities to Make America Great Again as the sole fixer and savior is an Absurdity beyond imagination. Most certain, the belief defies all evidence to the contrary. From the time in the 1980s that trump chose to present himself on the national stage as a celebrity and businessman, he has presented on the world stage his narcissism, his apathy for others especially for people in need, his sexual predation, his ineptitude in business and finance, his corruption, his weak subservience to powerful people like Russian oligarchs and political despots, and his low intelligent. He is a willfully ignorant human being, a man who rapes girls, and a rich man who without his father’s wealth to begin his life would be a nobody. These are indisputable facts.
But he as a pathetic Useful Idiot did get help. The floundering Republican party, splintering and lost from the Bush wars and the 2008-09 housing crash and the Tea Party absurdities, looked at trump and his crowds in 2015-16 and thought This pathetic excuse of a man loves only himself and the adoration of others; we can use his popularity among America’s gullible right wing to fulfill our Christian Nationalist dreams. Putin thought This pathetic excuse of a man loves wealth and public adoration; I can use him to defeat the USA from within its own government. America’s right-wing citizens thought This pathetic excuse of a man loves the Bible-thumpers’ devotion to him over the abortion issue; he will fulfill our White Male Supremacist dreams. So, trump’s rise to power truly began. Began although he alone is a pathetic excuse of a man.
Second, the premise that deity will choose one human being out of billions of human beings to do the deity’s work is an Absurdity. We will bypass the Absurdity of beliefs in supernatural beings for now. If a supernatural being with omniscient and omnipresent power exists, why would that deity be unable to fulfill its own plans? Why would that deity demonstrate such ineptitude, weakness, bias, and selfishness? Unless the deity is just like a human being. Skip over the rage I feel about human beings who in 2025 still believe that we are incapable collectively of helping each other and our planet survive peacefully and sustainably. Instead, we must focus on the Absurdity that millions of Americans belief that their God has chosen trump to create a White Christian Xanadu. The Absurdity is that these people exist…. in a nation that has (or had) the highest standards of living, the best schools, the best medical care, the best technologies, and the best form of government. The weirdos outvoted the rest of us!
Or did they not?
When we raise our daughters to be women that fawn over men like trump and Musk, men like Joel Osteen who preach a gospel of wealth while stealing from others, men like Princes and Kings with generational wealth and power, men like Obama who are flawed good men but are not Saviors, men like John Wayne who live fictional lives and are never heroic in reality – We teach our daughters to be helpless, craven, emotionally-driven, subservient, useless wrecks.
Let us raise our daughters to become women who can spot the conman a mile away, women who refuse to support self-serving churches and the shysters who run them, women who will demand respect and work to earn it at home and the workplace, women who can see that trump is a Snake and a Rapist, not a Savior.
Because we cannot count on American men to do what we must do to save our planet, to feed and provide for all children, to house the homeless, to build strong and positive progress in our communities, to elect representatives and legislators of integrity. American men have lost the plot. They’ve traded the male abilities we once admired for a slave’s disabilities. They serve White Male Supremacy. That makes them incapable of doing the good work that we must do.
Now, because millions of Americans willingly believe these two Absurdities – some people are subhuman; deity chooses one man to do its work – we will see these Americans willingly commit the Atrocities that their Savior dictates. MAGA Republicans are already committing the Atrocities. 500 tons of food that Congress previously allocated for hungry children across the sea was impounded before it left the ports, much of it rotted, and the rest will be destroyed instead of distributed. Children will die. The trump regime and the GOP in Congress wrote into law an expansion of ICE, making it the largest and most powerful law enforcement agency in the USA. Mercenaries and 01-06-2021 insurrections fill their ranks. They are already kidnapping people off the streets, separating children from their parents and guardians, kidnapping children from schools and adults from their workplaces, and forcing people into large concentration camps. Without due process. Most of them have no criminal records. Many of them are here legally or are US citizens. Because the Congress and White House cut federal dollars for them, rural hospitals, public media, public schools, public health programs, and social programs that aid the most vulnerable among us are shuttering their doors and operations.
The Atrocities will increase in number and in vileness as ICE builds itself with the money that MAGA Republicans gave the DHS for that purpose. The Atrocities will be committed for these reasons: to create chaos among the larger public so that government feels justified to institute strict civil policies restricting all our freedoms; to fulfill the aspirations of white supremacist and Christian Nationalist ideologies; to give distraction from and cover for the crime and corruption that the nation’s right-wing oligarchs and politicians will engage in. Some of the Atrocities will hit so personally and so near a MAGA American’s home that they will finally question their own loyalty to trump and the MAGA Republican party. Some people will become Woke; they might find the courage to actively Resist. Some will simply hide away from their families and communities, too cowardly to apologize or admit their wrongs, too weak to speak out, too ashamed to even accept the role of Bystander. But the Atrocities will continue until resisters demolish their source.
What are Absurdities? They are ideas and opinions that have no realistic premise, no evidential support, no arguable logic. Sans the reality, proof, and logic, belief in the ideas is willing and firm. Like a child who learns to accept Dad’s playful promise of the Tooth Fairy because there will be money under the pillow, and money buys toys, an adult learns to accept their Dear Leader’s Absurdities because there will be actions taken against the people and institutions that they despise. Perhaps that adult only seeks the adoring crowds. Attention seekers and opportunists are willing to believe Absurdities as well. Rarely are True Believers simply inexperienced and naïve.
What are Atrocities? They are actions taken to fulfill Absurd beliefs. They are cruel actions, causing pain, suffering, and death. They are not natural. They are the actions taken by human beings who believe in Absurdities to purposely harm other human beings.
In the next blog, we will write about the Absurdity of believing that a few human beings deserve the wealth, power, and privilege they have or can take, while the rest of humanity is less deserving and should be grateful in their subservience.