Life after the presidency for Donald Trump will be drab and scary. After he’s pardoned himself for every crime he can, other felonies and misdemeanours will surface and he’ll spend years at the mercy of the courts trying to fend off savage and gleeful litigation. But when it’s all over and he’s served his time, what will be his enduring legacy? At the moment, he’s an angry orange pustule on the GOP ass which they’ll eventually need to lance and drain, even though it will hurt, take a long time to heal, and leave a scar for the whole world to see. But that’s karma for you isn’t it. Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas, etc.
Speaking of GOP ass, who remembers Sarah Palin? The beauty-queen Vice Presidential nominee who helped John McCain lose to Obama/Biden in 2008? Palin (like Trump) was out of her depth, rewarding the lampooners and mocking cartoonists of the world with ample fodder. Her legacy? She inspired ‘Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?‘ (2008) and reignited Lisa Ann’s porn career, so there’s that. Google metrics confirm her popularity was largely based on smutty Photoshopped images of her which objectified her as nothing more than a pretty face attached to a nice set of tits. Palin bitches about not being taken seriously, yet leveraged those same assets to claw her way into politics in the first place. Palin is more famous because of Lisa Ann’s parody; without it, she might’ve ended up hosting some godawful reality tv show or something.
Donald Trump may be parodied by the adult film industry, but unlike Palin it won’t be flattering. I’m thinking of him whimpering in a cell after a solid buggering by some big African-American guy. But what happens to bad presidents in real life? Slick Willy Clinton was impeached but cleared by the Senate. Nixon might have gone to Attica had Gerald Ford not pardoned him. If the ‘justice system’ couldn’t slot a single banker for the subprime lending practices that triggered the Global Financial Crisis, what chance do the Trump litigants have? He lost the 2020 race, but the GOP remain united behind a man who attracted more votes than any losing presidential candidate in US history.
Pause and think about the numbers. Almost 73,000,000 citizens wanted Trump in office. Luckily, closer to 80,000,000 wanted him out. Maybe Donald Trump’s true legacy is to open our eyes to “the other side”. We stand cheek by jowl with humans who are perfectly okay with racism, overt sexism, blatant abuses of office, and corruption at the highest level. They want more, in fact. Who are these people? We need to dissect some and study them at the cellular level. Perhaps homo sapiens sapiens branched into two species without anyone noticing? But what to call a subspecies that revel in the worst of what we regard as human behaviour? Maybe Neanderthals didn’t die out; they live among us and vote conservative.
The second leg of Trump’s legacy is to open our ears to “the other side”. I might create a Parler account just to lurk among the sulking right-wing. Like many on the Left, my reaction to conservative rants has always been a reality-check, and their reaction is “Fake news!” to my unwanted facts. They don’t want the truth. Maybe they can’t handle it? But knowing that we co-exist with a tribe of insecure bigots will help moderates and progressives alike. We have time and the slow march of demographic change on our side. Sometime soon the uneducated angry white male will be a minority that can be safely managed while ‘the elites’ (women, gays, blacks, ethnics, educated white males, and everyone else) make society bearable again.