On Democratic Trauma-tics, 2020

The jackass is dead, long live the jackass.

Of late, all conversations I have about politics with Democrats inevitably turn to me explaining to people that in one year’s time, Donald Trump will be one-week past winning reelection as President of the United States. In return, I’m greeted with pontificating harangues about how little I know about politics, oftentimes followed by dismissive denigration. My response? I calmly explain that for as much as they know more about politics than me, an “ignorant motherfucker,” I probably know more about humans and trauma than they do. And in America in 2019, related to the desecration of the existence of the Democratic Party, trauma matters.

True to wounded form, when a society like America’s turns post-political, it becomes a trauma state where protective self-interest rules the roost. Because there is no greater self-interested and impervious to trauma prosthelytizer acting under the guise of “politician” than Donald Trump, he will win again. At risk of sounding too gloomy (but ultimately too true), when Trump is victorious, the donkey-turned-jackass that is the Democratic Party as we know it, dies. The jackass is dead. Long live the jackass.

The main issue at play here is that the Democratic Party has, for so long, presented itself as a collection of intelligent…