Bugs Bunny with a Body Count

Guess who’s “controlling the narrative” again?

Donald Trump, the insatiable ego with a growing body count, is literally screaming right now that he’s about to be arrested this Tuesday.

Wake me up if that actually happens.

We’ve had so many false alarms at this point that I feel like I’m living in a dorm where pulling the fire alarm lever is what bored kids do to liven things up.

Who knows? It might actually happen this time. By now, Trump’s committed pretty much every crime we have a name for, and certainly deserves to spend the rest of his infuriatingly long life behind bars.

I’m not holding my breath, though. Right now, it just seems like this week’s grift.

Oh, yeah – he’s begging for money again, too. Shocker.

Money and attention: The only things Donald Trump adores.

He claims there’ll be civil war if he’s arrested. That’s certainly his plan, anyway. If something actually does happen, I’m sure we’ll see a rash of terrorism in his name. Thing is, civil wars demand logistics, diplomatic support, economic foundations, coherent ideology, manufacturing bases, foreign allies, and many other things MAGA claims but does not possess. A bunch of yeehaws with AR-15s can make a short-term mess among unarmed civilians; one detour into downtown Atlanta, though, and they’ll run back to the hills they came from.

Maybe they’ll even convince the cops to treat them like Black people for a change.

Again, I’m not holding my breath for that one.

Trump’s battle cry is this: “They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you. I’m just standing in their way. And I will always stand in their way.” This remark, as false as it is, gets to the heart of Trump’s popularity and the Jonestown loyalty his adherents give that man.  

The primordial appeal of Donald Trump is that he appears to exist outside constraint or consequence. Like Bugs Bunny or Tyler Durden, he does what he wants, says what he pleases, and seems to bend reality to his will. Like them, he’s a cartoon who lends vicarious exceptionalism to his fans.

Remember when Nuke was a parody of Rambo, not a former president inciting civil war?

For decades, the archetypal Trump has embodied American exceptionalism. An impish tycoon, he’s an aspirational figure for people frustrated by the limits they feel are imposed unjustly upon their lives.

The fact that this image is bullshit remains immaterial.

Trump doesn’t merely employ memes: Trump IS a meme. He has been one for longer than some of his devotees have been alive. Even when mocked, he seems iconic. His name (another illusion) combines the folksy “Donald” with the winning Trump.

He seems relatable, yet superhuman.

Trump defies both law and order. Laws, by definition, constrain freedoms in the name of the common good. Order, by definition, reduces chaos. Whether or not those things do what they’re supposed to do is, again, immaterial. That’s what the words mean.

Trump exists outside both.

To Trump’s devotees, reality becomes a cartoon. And since Trump is the(ir) hero, whomever opposes him must therefore embody evil. When they say Trump “fights for us,” they mean (consciously or not) that he does the things they can’t while telling him they can do those things too.

Given license by Trump’s cartoonish image and behavior, his fans become cartoons as well. MAGA is a hall of mirrors and magnifying glasses where Americana icons get distorted and magnified beyond all reason.

And so, real life becomes an MCU from hell.

The more that realities of time, age, law and consequences bear down on Trump the man, the more Trump’s devotees rage back against reality itself.

Their vicarious icon defies such limitations, therefore those limitations must be wrong.

The alternative is inconceivable.

Biden and Clinton MUST be evil masterminds. Democrats MUST be pedo-groomer-blood cultists. A Deep State MUST exist, and Trump MUST still be president.

Otherwise, this freedom promised by an iconic trickster must be lies.

Which means Trump’s fans are NOT actually free and great.

No wonder that idea drives them to violence. In MAGA’s American mythology, “freedom” means the ability to live beyond laws and limitations save the ones you’re free to impose on other people whose existence offends your sense of right(s).

The aggrieved MAGA cry “If they can do this to Trump, they can do this to you” sounds an alarm about the end of this illusion. If Trump is subject to law and consequences, then Trump’s America is subject to the same treatment.

And that’s not what “freedom” looks like to them.

The fact that people in the MAGA movement feel justified in imposing every imaginable extremity on their perceived enemies – harassment, militarized cops, mass arrests and executions, civil war – underscores the mythic good vs. evil nature of this apocalyptic cartoon.

Because our media (including some I’ve produced myself) have spent decades priming us for apocalyptic showdowns, this all feels perfectly natural from the inside even when it is, when viewed from other perspectives, breathtakingly irrational.

America, as I’ve written elsewhere, is a myth factory. We produce and consume myths on a scale unmatched in human history.

And Donald Trump is among those myths.

His image remains iconic even by American presidential standards. In that sense, he is still the president.

It’s no wonder his followers dress themselves in costumes and rep cartoon characters like Captain America and the Punisher. Even though those characters would, in media, beat the crap out of MAGA types, MAGA folks identify with such (anti)heroes because their icon is one himself.

Trump the icon gives them permission to be iconic – to act out some grotesque cosplay masquerading as Americana, bottom-feeding from a bottomless trough of myths. Each compounding absurdity succeeds because it is absurdity. Freedom from reality means freedom from constraint.

I say this as the author of a series of books about reality wars: That’s empowerment.

Trump the Icon empowers his followers.

Trump the man, therefore, cannot be bound by constraints of reality or law. If he is, then MAGA is, too.

And such limits are for other people, not them.

That sense of aspirational empowerment helps explain why a man whose personal and political histories feature litanies of bigotry and betrayal still commands loyalty from the same sorts of people whom Trump and MAGA have consistently oppressed: If they’re with him, then they, too, can do anything.

Great Men (a concept that, by definition, excludes female and/or marginalized people) stand beyond laws and orders. They reshape reality in their image by refusing to be bound by it.

That’s what “greatness” means: Big. Massive. Huge.

Words Trump himself employs.

Greatness means you defy limitations you can impose on others.

In that sense, America has always been great.

To recognize limitations on America is to make America NOT “great.”

Therefore, the MAGA movement defies limitations on itself. Including limits of reality and law.

Irrationality is baked into MAGA. That meme and its associated myths are, by definition and origin, counter-rational.

A primordial affront of “social justice” is that it imposes consequences and limitations upon people who feel they should be beyond such things.

That, for decades, has been the rallying cry of so-called “conservatives”: That imposing such limits on them is tyranny.

Limits and consequences are for them to impose on other(ed) people. In the name of freedom, naturally.

Such free! Much libertease!

And yes, I do mean “naturally.” As shown by Trump’s attempt to define civil rights through “natural law,” such people view this as the rightful, natural order of things.

From that perspective, Trump the man must remain immune to constraints of law. Because that man embodies an icon, and that icon represents America.

As any “patriot” of “real America” understands, to oppose that man and his iconic freedom is to oppose America itself.

Because both history and reality adore irony, Trump the man has become an ironic prisoner of Trump the Icon.

It can’t be fun being Trump these days. I’d imagine it’s pretty miserable. Even for an egotist, the weight of living that way must feel unbearable.

Also ironically, a man who endured similar iconic status without being an asshole about it appears to be doing just fine these days. Compounding that irony, Trump rose to political power by attacking that man’s right to become iconic for America.

It’s tempting to read an arc of justice into that situation. Perhaps there even is a greater justice at work here.

To people who cling to Trump’s iconic status, though, because it sustains their own identity, this feels like tyranny – an affront to their nation and themselves.

And so, Trump the Icon – the Bugs Bunny /Tyler Durden mashup of MAGA trickster identity – must remain free from all laws, constraints, and limitations.

To accept otherwise is to acknowledge that it’s all just a big show, and that American myth must bow before a greater reality.

To people who define themselves by American’s greatness meme, this acknowledgement is unacceptable.

And so, our empire – like Trump the man – has become a prisoner of our mythology.

I wish I knew where we go from here.

I’d like our newer, more rational myths to prevail.

Both history and mythology, though, suggests it won’t be that easy.

We live in an age of sound and fury.

What that all signifies, in the long run, is up to us to decide.