Trump put the losers in their place

 

 

 Garry Wills

Any one of us who kept mispronouncing a proper name, after repeated coaching on the right way, would be written off as stupid. But Donald Trump kept calling his adversaries Barack HUSSEIN Obama and Ka-MAH-la Harris as a sign to his followers that these creatures, exotically named, were not one of us. They were part of the THEM that WE must keep out. The THEM he had in mind is a large and varied lot, since the WE is such a select body. It has no room for losers, for captives or corpses or the needy­—not even for the bodies of men who died defending their country. Trump’s courtiers allegedly had to spook a battleship out of his sight because it was named for a man he had denounced for having been a captive.

All outsiders are losers. They cannot say “America first” because they are not real Americans. Anyone who needs help is a loser. Women who go out of their place are losers—they should stay to be grannies and take care of the children of other women who stay in their place. Experts and regulators, relying on fancy degrees and studies, who tell us how to live, are losers and the fomenters of losers (out of their “deep state”). The sick, the disabled, and their caretakers are losers, wasting the time and money of the winners. The needy are losers. The winners do not need them. Trump’s dictatorial buddies—Putin and Xi Jinping and Viktor Orbán—do not use power to help the helpless. That is what makes them winners.

Well, Trump’s election shows us who wins. He put the losers in their place. Like women, they must learn to stay in it. Pardon me if I do not celebrate. I, like everyone I know, am a loser, in the past or future or now. I am currently losing to age, and need those expert doctors with their wasteful caretaking. I always needed regulators who kept poison out of my food, and water, and air. The THEM that Trump is extruding includes all who need or care for the needy. 

 
That is a lot of us, though at times we do not recognize our right to be in the THEM being condemned. We should not only own that right and build on it, but also see that we share it with all the losers being overlooked by Trump’s dictator pals, like the Palestinians being slaughtered in Gaza with American weapons. We losers have a lot to learn. But we are doing it. Trump is our teacher.