The Great Temptation: Donald Trump

What makes people vote for him? Fuck you, that's why.

“In every American community, you have varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” - Phil Ochs.

The end result of years of smugocracy.

I’ve noticed a trend lately. The former ardent liberal, gay activist, Democratic fundraiser now talks about how they’re now a Trump acolyte. They hated him, now they see. Trump is good, actually, Trump is great. Nothing better than Trump, he trumps everything.

Everything Trump does is now good. Even if it’s nonsensical, actively harmful, or just stupid. Even better, those stupid things are actually him playing four dimensional chess. They’ve sworn off liberalism, because actually, liberalism was all lies, and Trump is actually Good. Subscribe to my Patreon.

They narrate their journey into MAGA Land like recovered addicts who’ve now become wise - you know the type. They feel sorry for those who have not yet felt the golden touch of His Big Maccy Appendage. They assume we are all prodigal sons and shall soon be joining them, basking in an equally golden shower of poorly conceived tariffs.

I’ve read a lot of these articles, and to be honest, I can understand where they’re coming from. But a lot of people sit asking why, except their enemies, who use this as proof they were actually a secret Nazi this whole time.

Why does this happen, then?

Most of these people have said something that betrays they once believed in the concept of nuance, like ‘I don’t think giving free sex changes to federally incarcerated sex offenders is a good idea’, and then been burned at the stake as a witch by Twitter leftists as a result.

Not giving felons free sex changes is killing trans women, you see. You’re a violent Nazi murderer. How dare you question free sex changes for felons? You’re worse than Hitler and probably eat babies. Go vote for Donald Trump.

Now, our sensible person, who might well be incredibly pissed off after saying something rather sensible, goes out to seek more information. They hit what’s known as ‘peak trans’, and start to criticize the movement more. They get more rounds of attacks, even from close and dear friends who they were convinced would change their minds when presented with hard data.

Thus, our questioner, now isolated and upset, has even more questions - if this total falsehood is foundational to the left - if it is the left’s fundamental belief that a man can become a woman, given the way they’ve been treated - what else are they lying about? What else are they wrong about? Thus begins their journey into MAGA Land.

This isn’t solely an American phenomenon - these stories take place in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The United Kingdom is the lone exception, as the gender critical movement and its donors leans heavily left there. Otherwise, the left has decided this conversation isn’t worth even having, and anyone who does is a transphobic dog whistling Goebbels who wants to run the transgender death camps when they implement their policy of… let me see… not giving felons free sex changes? Oh my! That’s oppression right there.

The only place you can have this conversation is the right and the moderate center. So that is where people go. And if the left is wrong about free sex changes for felons, then it extends that they must be wrong about a whole bunch of other shit, too - after all, how else could they support something as hilariously absurd as free sex changes for felons? It’s not the only leftist canard that’s based on bullshit.

The left doesn’t help itself with its attitude either. The Democratic Party is now the home of the upper class college educated voter, and as a result, is now home to a particular type of Democratic activist or voter. You know the type. If you’ve grown up in a household that’s even worried about a recession, you know the type, too. They’re the type that screams HITLER at the drop of the hat at anyone questioning free sex changes for felons.

This type of activist? I’ll tell you something about them: they don’t worry about recessions, unlike you or me. They’re the kind of liberal Phil Ochs wrote songs about.

I’ve even come up with a neologism for them: the smugtivist.

They’re born of reading about Gramsci or Marx or Engels on Wikipedia and thinking deeply about injustice and deciding the only hope for the West is a communist revolution, while living in their parents plush home in a gated community. While you were scraping together money to pay for basics in college, they had trust fund money, allowing them to sit around reading commentaries on Marx posted on Reddit and tweeting ACAB while holidaying in Cancun, and as a result, they know everything. They’re the kind of people who take ‘if you saw someone shoplifting, no you didn’t’ seriously and believe it’s the height of morality. What unites the smugtivist, generally, is they are all insufferably sanctimonious and were raised in wealthy environments - regardless of their race, orientation, or sex.

The worst part of them all is watching them try to play the role of the working class. See, they’ll talk about the working class. They’ll exalt them. They are great, wonderous, born cultural critics of the capitalist state, hard-working folks. They’ll try and embody what they think ‘the working class’ is. This means cheap booze, saying ‘y’all’ a lot, watching football, being anti-intellectual and going to punk shows. Not you know, working a 12 hour shift that started at one in the morning, struggling to pay bills, or cancelling your first vacation in ten years because of an unexpected dental bill. That’s not fun, unlike moshing at a punk show.

That the communist revolution they preach about will never happen and the current system benefits your average smugtivist in disproportionate fashion goes unspoken. After all, raising taxes on them is an immediate threat to their lifestyle, whereas they can post about sending neo-liberal TERFs to the gulag all day in the current system and feel quite good about themselves. It’s a way of positioning themselves as completely righteous critics of the system, while making sure it stays the way it is - benefitting them, not you, peasant.

After all, you might make them feel bad if they had to actually question their place in the capitalist system, and their feelings are more important than your economic reality.

I have run into an innumerable number of these people over the years - almost always have I ended up having to restrain either my tongue or my fists. They are generally some of the worst human beings I have ever encountered. No hyperbole. If you have to tell me how kind you are, you are not kind. It’s not kind to ruin the only soup kitchen in town because they didn’t take a stand on the ‘Palestinian genocide’. Hobos don’t give a shit, they need something to eat, dumbass.

If you’re gonna be a rich asshole, at least be honest about it. Donald Trump is honest about it, that’s part of the appeal.

Unfortunately, because they have the time and money, these are the people running a lot of left-wing parties today. They’re the ones with the time to post on X about how Elon Musk is a Nazi, and they’re the ones with the connections to get into opinion writing at online publications. So you hear a lot from them if you’re a normie, and they get to shape discourse for a lot of Democrats.

Even more unfortunately, their number one sacred cow appears to be the trans movement. Communist revolution, eat your heart out, Bob from Accounting needs estrogen for his gender affirming moobs!

It lets them be left wing activists and go on protests and ‘fight for change’, without really changing anything, because that would be deleterious to them - by pushing the left movement into identity politics, they can play Che Guevara in their twenties and then Goldman Sachs in their thirties. It’s in their class interest to turn the Democrats into the Monster Raving Tranny Party, because any achievable reform that favours the working class is viewed as a zero-sum game by these people.

Better to assuage their conscience by all-or-nothing advocating for the communist revolution that won’t happen, and arguing for nonsense like free sex changes for felons. Public option? That might cost health insurance executive Daddy money, that can’t happen.

Of course, these people are anathema to normal people. Most working and middle class activists arrive at a left-wing set of politics out of necessity, or personal experience. They had a large insurance bill, they got laid off and couldn’t get help, or they want improvements to public schools. They experienced actual discrimination based on an immutable characteristic. They don’t care about any of the modern identity politics shit. They are reasonable human beings, therefore they are total anathema to the communist trust fund baby brigade. When they run into each other, sparks fly and the witch burnings commence.

Once you’ve run into your first smugtivist, it sticks with you.

These people drive your average person to perfectly reasonable reaction - hatred. Faced with these abominations, poorly dressed monuments to too little parenting and too much bad taste, you feel an urge to sign them up to a Scientology mailing list, just to piss them off.

Because when faced with a sanctimonious little shit who’s lecturing you about queer theory and settler colonialism, a normal person wants to do at least two things: give these people a slap, and also find a way to wipe that smug grin off their face. It’s human nature to look upon the smug scion lording it over you and want them to be brought low. It’s why everyone loves Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. When former rich asshole Ben Affleck is sitting around in a fat suit in the end credits, totally defeated by working class Vince Vaughn, everyone cheers.

And the easiest way to watch these people have an enormously entertaining nuclear meltdown is exposing them to anything to do with Donald Trump. Everything goes out the window when it comes to the fake tan melonhead.

I’m not gonna lie - I enjoyed the meltdown when he was elected. Sure, it was terrible. But man, those meltdowns, baby! People I had long hated swearing that it was the end of the world, that Trump was gonna push the button, put them in death camps, and send Putin flowers, despite doing none of that in his first term. That for all their rants about Black Lives Matter and diversity and ‘undocumented immigration’, the smugtivist has done the biggest damage to the multi-ethnic Democratic coalition in decades. Trump improved his share with black men and Hispanics and working class people in general.

The meltdowns from idiots who voted for him were even better, like the guy who didn’t think Trump was serious about tariffs. Yes, for all the great journey’s to MAGA Land I read about on various Substacks, about how Donald Trump was great and was gong to end wokeness, this is the reality:

Boy was this a good laugh.

Most importantly, Trump represents the inmates running the asylum, at least to the smugtivist. Instead of jumping on their populist moment, the Democrats crushed it, and Bernie Sanders was cheated out of a fair primary. Meanwhile, it turned out the Republican primaries were actually somewhat democratic - and Trump just kept on winning.

This is because for much of the working and middle classes - the people who felt the 2008 recession, the people living in milieus awash with fentanyl or who watched industry move out of their town because of NAFTA - Trump is the ultimate fuck you.

The great worldwide populist wave post recession has mostly been built on this emotion. Fuck you. Writers and political activists are not immune to this urge. The social contract in much of the West is being broken - it is impossible to buy a house in many cities, a problem especially amplified outside the US, impossible to pay off that student loan you used to get ahead, impossible to find a nice rental condo that doesn’t cost you $100,000 a month. When your rental choices are between a $10,000 hovel and another, slightly dirtier $10,000 hovel, while the Smugtivists of the world preach about how city councils need to hand over millions of dollars for free sex changes for felons, you feel kinda fucked off. You worked hard for that money, and they want to cut Rapist McPedophiles dick off for him with it.

Not only that, but the people who say they represent you, that they represent hope and change - they let the guys who ruined the economy off scot-free with bailouts while your home was foreclosed on.

Fuck you.

The social contract at the end of the Second World War was built on an understanding that the working and middle classes were sleeping giants. If conditions got too bad, they would rise - just look at the French. Turns out, rather than the communist revolution, all they really wanted was a good chance at home ownership, meritocracy, raising a family, a nice car, the occasional vacation, and an eight-hour workday, paid well.

Most of these things are becoming increasingly rare or increasingly difficult to obtain.

And the left-wing parties have decided to completely abdicate on these problems in favor of arguing for Rapist McPedophile having a tax-payer funded sex change. They’d rather be the perpetually on the right side of history Smugocracy instead of trying to bring in a public option. They’d rather curl up to the right billionaires, and campaign with Liz(ard) Cheney than talk about actual left-wing economic reform.

Ergo, fuck you.

At least Trump is honest about wanting to fuck you over royally, you know? And not only is he honest, he won’t let Rapist McPedophile go to a female prison because McPedophile claims to have a ~female soul~. As far as most people are concerned, that’s being less fucked over than voting Democrat right now.

The insistence of the smugtivist on this nonsense is undermining the entire left-liberal project and establishment - and given the class interests of the average smugtivist, that may well be the point. Poor argument it may be, but it is one that rings true for your average voter - if the left believes a man saying the right magic words makes him a woman, why should anyone believe anything they have to say, if they’re willing to so bare-facedly lie?

If your entire project - no matter how wonderful it is - is predicated on a complete falsehood, then it’s undermined from the start, unless you clearly market yourself as a religion.

It’s costing the left elections, and it’s costing the left good people, who end up doing one-eighties on their entire politics, entirely over the smugocracy and gender ideology. If they were really so concerned with ‘fighting Nazis’, they’d present an electable platform focused on improving living conditions for the vast majority of Americans. Instead, Trump could truthfully assert that Kamala Harris wanted free cosmetic sex changes for felonious illegal immigrants on the taxpayer’s dime. They’ve completely lost sight of the working class they claim to fight for. Instead of working with unions, Kamala Harris trotted out a bunch of rich celebrities and billionaires. It’s nice they can afford a private jet to campaign with you on environmental issues, Ms. Harris, but that private jet flight cost twice my yearly salary. Fuck you.

It’s so obvious, it’s dumb, so only a idiot jester like me can point it out, because all the smart people are certain they must have missed something. I’m no David Axelrod, but the equation is clear - the vast majority of voters in the West have zero interest in this shit, and if they find out about it, they don’t want to vote for it’s promoters. Hence, fuck you, I’m voting for Trump. Fuck you, I’m voting for Nigel Farage. Baisez-vous, je’vote pour Marine Le Pen, avec les gilets-jaunes.¹

And you know what? I get it. I get why all those people I talked about decided to venture into MAGA Land and bask in the chintzy golden light of Donald Trump. There’s a part of me that dislikes these people so much that I revel in making them upset - and the thing that makes them most upset is Donald Trump winning elections.

It is what it is; I am human, I have been poorly treated by these people, ergo, kicking over their sandcastle brings me great joy. It warms the frozen cockles of my heart watching smugitvist beardy bros have a meltdown that someone didn’t ask for their pronouns, or that Trump farted on national television, or that Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions appear to have conveniently hit peak trans.

As much as Trump looms over me like a specter, the devil on my shoulder telling me to kick over the sandcastle to own the smug libs, who I hate with a burning passion, I can’t bring myself to do so. I still have principles, beyond fuck you. I can’t vote for nonsensical tariffs, Tesla infomercials on the White House lawn, and quid pro quo with corrupt mayors like Eric Adams. I want to remodel the sandcastle back to representing working class interests again, not kick it over and take a shit.

But I couldn’t bring myself to vote the other way, either, because they’re so homophobic that it’d be like voting for self-annihilation. I resigned myself to not voting at all. I had gazed upon thee, and I beheld the insight that both sides were flaming bags of shit. I wasn’t going to vote for the people who screamed Y’ALL NAZIS at me for pointing out their entire worldview is based on a series of falsehoods around men becoming women, and I wasn’t going to vote for modern-day Know Nothings².

I mean, if you could choose between eating one of two flaming bags of shit would you eat one, or would you opt out and start laughing at the absurdity? They say laughing is good for you, you know.

1. Slight note: the FN in France are actual Nazi fascists. They were founded by former members of the Vichy government. Yeah, European politics is kinda wild.

2. Screaming NAZZSHEEEEE at Trump is dumb. He is clearly not a Nazi, which is why that line doesn’t land, nor stick, outside of a group of people who are convinced anyone who disagrees with them is a NAZSSHHEEE. He is a clear continuation of the anti-immigrant populist sentiment that birthed the Know Nothings in America, the Australian Labor Party, and Enoch Powell in the UK.