Matt Walsh:
Dear Donald Trump Fan,
I’m going to tell you the truth, friend.
You say you want the truth. You say you want someone who speaks boldly and brashly and bluntly and “tells it like it is” and so on. According to exit polls in South Carolina, voters who want a president who “tells it like it is” are an essential demographic for Trump, just as they’re an essential demographic for Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. You say you want abrupt and matter-of-fact honesty, and you want it so much, you’ll make a man president for it regardless of whether he defies every principle and value you claim to hold.
Personally, I think you’re lying, and I’m going to test my theory. In fact, I believe I’ve already proven my theory because you’re now offended that I called you a liar. But Trump has called half of the Earth’s population a liar at some point over the past seven months, and you loved every second of it. You said you loved it not out of cruelty or spite, but out of admiration for a man who’swilling to call people liars — even if he’s lying when he does it.
Yet here I am employing the same tactic — accurately, I might add — and you recoil indignantly. Over the course of this campaign season I’ve said many harsh words about you and your leader, all of which I stand by, but you’ve never respected my harsh words, or the harsh words of any Trump critic. Indeed, you insist that our tough criticism of you only vindicates your support of Trump, while Trump’s vulgar and dishonest criticism of everyone else also vindicates your support of Trump. You’re tired of people being critical, but you love Trump because he’s critical. You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his style when it’s directed at him or you.
You say you want someone who’s politically incorrect. You’re so desperate for political incorrectness — a supremely ridiculous reason to vote a guy into the Oval Office, but never mind — that your esteem for him only grows when he belittles the disabled, mocks American prisoners of war, calls women dogs, calls his opponents p*ssies, calls for the assassination of women and children, says he’d like to have sex with his daughter, brags about his adultery, etc.
You’re excited by the most vile statements and most cretinous behavior imaginable — not remotely deterred by any of it, no matter how many times he gloats over infidelity, curses his opponents, and publicly ogles his own children — because, you say, it’s politically incorrect. That is how unfathomably desperate you are for someone to come along and just say what’s on their mind, you claim. You’re so fed up with political correctness that you celebrate political incorrectness without distinguishing between the healthy sort and the “LOL I slept with married women and I’m not sorry” sort. It doesn’t matter if you don’t personally agree, you say, you just respect the hell out of someone who’s willing to shoot straight, even when ”shooting straight” means comparing Ben Carson to a child molester, calling the entire electorate of Iowa stupid, and referring to women as “pieces of ass.”
Trump won South Carolina on the support of Evangelical Christians who were so impressed with his alleged straight talk that they overlooked the fact that he’s a crass, cruel, unrepentant philanderer who says he does not need God’s forgiveness, and who praises Planned Parenthood as “wonderful” and his radically pro-abortion sister as a “phenomenal” candidate for the Supreme Court. That’s how much you pretend to admire bluntness in a man. So much that it overrides literally everything else.
By your logic, then, you should be filled with an immense and irresistible affection for me when I call Donald Trump a crooked, underhanded con artist and you a reckless, ignorant dupe. You should fall madly in love with me when I accuse Donald Trump of being a spoiled, overgrown brat and you of being a cultish groupie enamored with fame. You should well up with pride and salute me as I mention that Donald Trump is a stuffed, soiled diaper sagging in the pants of American politics and you’re the poor, pitiful sap trying to elect it president. You don’t have to agree, but man, isn’t it refreshing that I’m willing to tell you what’s on my mind? Shouldn’t you leave a thousand comments under this article praising me for being politically incorrect, willing to attack not only Donald Trump but his blue collar supporters? In fact, if you’re sincere in your alleged regard for the bold and audacious approach, I expect you’ll have launched a nationwide write-in campaign for me by tomorrow morning.
But that’s not how this works, is it? You’ve already melted into a boiling puddle of rage and self-pity, haven’t you? You’re incensed and offended that I could be so “judgmental” and “dismissive” and “critical,” and 100 other qualities you find so orgasmically satisfying when they’re displayed by The Great Trump. You say you want some straight-shooting, honest, politically incorrect tough talk, but that’s simply a lie. If it were true, my inbox would not be filled to capacity with cartoonishly shocked and outraged Trump fans every time I utter a word of criticism in his direction. It shouldn’t matter that my criticisms are sharp and severe; you ought to revere me all the more for it. I thought you were tired of people walking on egg shells?
It turns out you don’t want Donald Trump to walk on egg shells, but you have fortified your own perimeter with a thick layer of egg shells and you expect anyone who comes near it to tip toe with extreme caution. It turns out you want to be coddled and cuddled and pandered to and excused. You’re in favor of whatever Trump says because Trump said it, but when it comes to how people talk about you and him, you expect to be treated like a soft and delicate flower.
You flock eagerly to a flamboyant, authoritarian billionaire fascist, and you feel you ought to be completely insulated from criticism while you do so. Everyone else ought to be subject to relentless and profane invective from an elderly Manhattan real estate heir, but you and he should be above reproach.
Tell it like it is? I’ll tell you like it is: In my life I’ve never encountered a group of people more averse to being told how it is. Of course, you believe you’re entitled to this attitude because you’re “angry.” Your “anger” indulges you with the moral authority to take leave of your reason and your common sense. Your anger, you believe, places you beyond judgment, even as you attempt to drag this country into a future of (more) tyranny and cultism. You believe the rest of us ought to take your supposedly righteous rage into account while you refuse to take anything but your own infatuation with spectacle and celebrity into account. Whatever concerns we raise, including the ones I’m raising now, can be written off in an instant. “WE’RE TIRED OF POLITICS AS USUAL! WE’RE ANGRY!” And that’s supposed to be some kind of rhetorical hall pass, permitting you to do and say what you please unchallenged.
Well let me be the first and perhaps the only to say this out loud, although millions of people share this sentiment quietly: I don’t care about your anger. There’s some more truth for you, friend. There’s some more “tellin’ it like it is.” Two can play at this game, you know. And the only difference is that I’m right.
I couldn’t take your anger seriously even if I wanted to. After all, you say you’re angry that people are too afraid to speak their minds, but, as we’ve established, you don’t really want anyone but Donald Trump to speak his mind.
You say you’re angry about the corruption in Washington, but you support a slimy swindler andfraudster who boasts of his bribery schemes and makes no apologies for shamelessly exploiting political corruption for personal gain.