There’s a well-known aphorism — nobody can remain at full alertness forever. People get tired and fatigued, they start letting things slip that they’d never miss when they were fresh, and so on.
That’s what Citizen Trump, and by extension his MAGA movement, are counting on. We’ve effectively been fighting against them since 2016, and we’ve won more than our share of victories in the process. But it never seems to actually finish the job, does it? Citizen Trump is always still there, always in the news, always being talked about, and it wears on us.
That’s because delay has always favored Citizen Trump. He’s relied on it all his life, because he knows that the longer he can stretch things out, the more likely it is people will get tired and effectively let him off the hook. We all know that. And, paradoxically, knowing that makes it harder to stay in this for the long haul.
I’ve seen plenty of articles and comments here by people who want Citizen Trump put away immediately if not sooner, because they rightly want him to pay for his crimes against this country and everyone who lives here. But an immediate resolution was never going to happen. Citizen Trump is accustomed to pushing for delay; he knows well by now how to throw grit in the gears to force them to grind ever slower.
With the SCOTUS agreeing to review his “absolute immunity” claim, there’s no doubt a lot of fear from people that it will delay his trials until after the election, and that if he gets re-elected, those trials will be quietly dismissed.
But fear is the mind-killer (Dune, Frank Herbert). As Herbert also wrote, when we face our fears, they pass through us and go on their way, leaving nothing of themselves behind.
So I’m here to say, don’t let your fears drive you to action. Whatever short-term benefit you gain by letting your fears drive will cost you dearly down the line. Face your fears squarely, and accept them for what they are — phantoms conjured by your brain’s ability to visualize the future.
We will always have fears, but we cannot effectively pace ourselves when we are letting them drive us. I’m sure everyone has seen horror movies where the victims run away from the movie monster that’s chasing them down, only to get worn out and eventually fall prey. The ones who survive — the ones who win — are those who look squarely at their fears and choose to act deliberately to prevent those fears from coming to pass.
So it goes with Citizen Trump. At the end of the day, he’s nothing but a tired, deluded old man who is fixated on pretending that he isn’t any of those things. And we’re all seeing how well that’s working for him, aren’t we? He knows what’s coming for him, and he’s frantically trying everything he can to delay it, and it isn’t working. Each day he loses a little more, Each day he falls apart a little worse.
He thought he was mighty and strong, a predator who would always get to do what he wanted to others without worrying about what might come due. Now it’s started coming due. Just ask E. Jean Carroll.
The SCOTUS may have chosen to passively aid Citizen Trump’s delay strategy, but that works in our favor, not in his. Remember how he acted during the Carroll defamation trial and how it led to him facing a far worse penalty than he would have if he had just kept his mouth shut and moved on. Does anyone seriously think that Jack Smith is going to let any grass grow under his feet? Once the SCOTUS rules that Citizen Trump does not have absolute immunity, we will see Smith moving forward as quickly as possible. This delay just means that the trial will be pushed back into summer or possibly early autumn.
Which means the news at that time will be focused on Citizen Trump’s criminality, and that will hammer him in the general election. No matter how much his supporters might want to pretend that he isn’t a criminal, the evidence will be out there for everyone to see, at the worst possible time for him. All the while he will continue to decline, able to make less and less sense to even his supporters.
So to get back to the subject, we may not be able to stay on red alert forever, but we can pace ourselves to outlast Citizen Trump. Because he sure won’t be able to last much longer, no matter what he does. He’s already lost so many times since he got elected in 2016. The 2018 midterms, his 2020 loss (which he’s never stopped whining about), losing both Georgia special elections the following January, the Red Wave That Wasn’t in 2022, and now his losses in the Carroll defamation trial and the New York fraud trial.
I have no doubt that Citizen will continue to lose going forward. So we no longer need to run scared of him and his losing streak. We just need to focus on extending that losing streak of his. And we can easily do that, because we’ve been doing it for over six years now.