Bored to Death by Trump

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

 

I am inordinately bored of Donald Trump.

 

I’m bored of the man himself. I’m bored of his opponents. I’m bored of his supporters. I’m bored of the manner in which every last question that animates our politics is eventually plotted onto a graph that has his face at its center. You name anything Trump-related, I’m bored of it.

 

It’s utterly inescapable. Before long, every political topic, every prominent politician, every historical trend becomes about Donald Trump in some way, shape, or form. Every piece of journalism does, too. I haven’t yet published this piece, and I’m already bored by the responses that it will engender. That’s how bad it’s gotten: I’m pre-bored — by the emails, by the analyses, by the snark, by the desire to make every last thing in American life about Trump. Nothing is safe. Bring up something almost as old as the nation itself — the Fifth Amendment, say — and within a few minutes, people will be debating whether it is functionally pro-Trump or anti-Trump. They’ll ask if it’s Trump-adjacent, or Trump-resistant, or anti-anti-Trump, and then, without missing a beat, they’ll move on to the next topic. That Genghis Khan guy. Know who he reminds me of?

 

Yes, we know. We know, because this is our politics now. Donald Trump does something — or, just as often, someone does something to Donald Trump — and everyone immediately looks down to make sure that they’re standing in the correct place on the game board. Trump said what? Then it must be wrong — or right, depending on your position. Wait, you think it might be a bit of both? Whose side are you on, anyway? Are you trying to Save Our Democracy? Do you not Know What Time It Is? Whataboutism! Bothsidesism! RT if you agree!

 

“Trump broke us,” people say. Indeed. We used to talk about ideas, rules, positions, consequences. Now we talk about him. Previous generations argued about slavery or tariffs or free silver or the interstate commerce clause. We argue about Donald Trump. And even when we don’t, we end up referring to him obliquely, as if he were the Earth’s core. “What do you think of the governor of Maryland?” someone will ask, and, immediately, it’s back to Trump. What do you think of the decision in Dobbs? Because, you see, Trump did that — or didn’t do that, if you prefer. Nothing can ever be about what it’s actually about; it has to be about Donald Trump. A few years ago, someone told me that my opposition to Trump’s position on American libel law was “actually” driven by my snobbish dislike of his “Queens accent.” Me! A guy who was born in rural England. Does that really seem likely? Never mind.

 

The whole thing has become disastrously totalitarian. People who disagreed with a lot of Trump’s political positions now pretend to support them, lest their dissent be cast as disloyalty to the man himself. People who once agreed strongly with the positions that Trump chose to adopt now oppose them vehemently, lest they be accused of alignment with the man himself. During the Trump administration, I was frequently asked by the president’s supporters whether I had yet clambered aboard “the Trump train.” I had no idea what that meant. A blood oath? Fealty? An agreement to switch off my brain? All three, I now see. A similar trend is developing among my progressive friends, who have started insisting that I must “denounce” any politician in America whom they consider to be insufficiently hostile to Donald Trump. No, thank you. I don’t think I will.

 

During my vacation, I went to a museum of maritime piracy, and I was amused by the rank obsequiousness within the various laws that were on display on the walls. On and on and on they went, so that, before long, you forgot what it was they were meant to tell you about: “WHEREAS, the King’s most Excellent Majesty, which is beloved in Great Britain and the Colonies, and which hath blessed us by his beneficence with favours, and which is protected by the Great God, whom we implore to direct, and guard him from on high. . . . ” It struck me that this — or the polar opposite: “who is the very Nature of wickedness and sedition . . .” — is how we now all sound when we talk about politics. Since Monday evening, I have received a good number of messages about the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, and every single one of them opened with a brief, throat-clearing disquisition on Donald Trump in general, as if it were now legally mandatory for anyone with an opinion on anything to include an explanatory preamble. “As you know, I don’t like Donald Trump, but . . .” said some. “I like Trump, and voted for him twice,” said others, before sharing nervously that, in this case, they thought he might not be so swell.

 

It is so, so, so boring — and there are still six more years of it to go.