It’s been disheartening watching Donald Trump ruin the United States. Made even more so by seeing MAGA’s almost rapturous acquiescence and support of his vile acts against the nation.

At least initially. Before his degradation started affecting the deplorables. As much as the scab is making vast numbers of Americans suffer and fret, there is enjoyment to be derived from increasingly discomforted MAGAs coming to the realization they too are in the manure pile.

During the 2024 Election campaign, the First Felon appealed to the numbest of the numb from the neck up electorate by scapegoating “those people.” Depending on what sort of Anglo or white ethnic listened to him, “those people” could’ve been black, brown, Asian, Muslim, or a Spanish speaker.

Say this for the scab, he can address the unfounded fears of the weak-minded. In MAGAs he’s found the ripest fields of mushiest brains. One could label exploiting their weakness, gullibility, and susceptibility his superpower, but only heroes have superpowers. Villains such as John Barron possess nefarious abilities dedicated to evil.

The sole satisfaction produced from this splattery decline of the United States is watching MAGAs discover one by one that they’ve become “those people” he unwaveringly harangued against on the campaign trail. Sad as it should be the realization their “savior” has forsaken them. Instead, it rings with satisfying poetic justice. The horrible attitudes the scab’s cultists nourished with their devotion then nurtured has turned on them. He’s betrayed them in the same manner as he has everything else throughout his rotten life.

Red-faced braying Anglos mistook him for one of them. He came across as a self-professed wealthy man who legitimized their biases and vulgarity. Oh, didn’t that thrill selfish, narrowminded Americans? Dupes he might acknowledge – that is if he’d ever experience an honest moment – as small, trifling, beneath him, if not beneath his contempt, were mesmerized by his crude appeals to their crudity. He shared their invented resentments and grievances. He lent his Queens mook drone to their despicableness. That the scab spoke aloud what most struggled to hide let them gladly ally beside him.

How miserable must their realization be the hate they stoked is the main driver of their own regression. They spurned those wanting to help them. Now they are left mired to sink in their own bile.

The best may be none ever saw their efforts on his worthless behalf working against their own interests. Where better, caring candidates offered to do what was possible to lift them, they preferred digging deeper holes by awarding the First Felon electoral pluralities. By throwing red pork to his blind and deaf suckers, the grifter in chief made it okay for Americans’ worst traits to bubble into general public acceptance.

The liar, thief, traitor, and child rapist has permitted “their kinds of Americans” to hamper and hinder “different people.” These only being targeted for disapproval by bearing the “wrong” ethnicity” or native fluency in a language other than English or whose darker complexion is found offensive or who somehow worship an unholy Almighty.

Now the worm has turned and the falsely elect must squirm.

The above alone is a good example of my favorite German word. Schadenfreude. That is taking pleasure in others’ distress. Which in MAGAs’ cases every true American should. However, another German word rises beside it.

Struwwelpeter.

It’s a bit hard to exactly define because its basis isn’t as simply explained.
Moreover, what it imparts is just so un-American. Yet seeing how more and more MAGAs are suffering fates they prayed for others, Struwwelpeter objects they’ve become.

Good.

Think of fairy tales. Though the tellings usually provide morally uplifting lessons, Struwwelpeters without fail don’t have happy endings.

Struwwelpeters are along the lines of Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons’ Fractured Fairy Tales episodes. Rather than uplift, just desserts are delivered through fables gone awry.

Ah! I can still hear the tinny Tales music grating my ears.

Unlike the 1960s animated series’ contributions, Struwwelpeters’ teach harsh, unforgiving, and frequently fatal lessons. These ends visited upon children. Not poor innocent lambs but badly behaved brats. These tykes suffer brutal comeuppances that satisfy.

See how Struwwelpeters apply to MAGAs?

Early during the scab’s second term, MAGAs gloried. As if they’d been redeemed … by Baal. Yet in the subsequent months rejoicing has subdued. With Cadet Bone Spurs’ reinvestiture into the presidency, it’s clear seeing how America has declined overall. Point crooked fingers at former President Biden as deplorables will, the imagined slides under him became one real avalanche with his successor.

Manufacturing has fallen off through factory closures. Increasingly, workers are either being laid off or fired. Credit card use has increased. That means more and more of us need to live on the precarious monthly revolving credit cuff. Delinquency rates in auto and home payments are rising. Slight brake on inflation as there might be, food prices remain high in our land of plenty.

On social media the change in MAGA fortunes, which aptly reflect those of the First Felon, shows up in thread comments. Early in 2025, MAGAs extolled the swine as if he’d revived America. This while his tariffs jacked up wholesale prices. It wasn’t even a “little pain now for rewards later” pitch. Deplorables saw the indications. They must’ve have. After all, they were puling more from their pockets to afford the same or less in commodities, comestibles, and durables.

The swindler’s “Morning in America” has become our “Mourning for America.”

Having swallowed the Queens mook’s lies often enough, MAGAs reflexively believed them. Must wonder when this became a defensive mechanism against the damning truths right before their very eyes.

Plenty of true Americans bandy around the word “cult” when referencing MAGA. I prefer “dupes.” It’s blunt. It’s a cudgel. Its use is suitably contemptible for the likes of MAGAs. And if you can’t be contemptuous of the contemptible, against whom can you be?

Again, before the tide turned and enthusiasm for the grifter in chief ebbed, it was a job slogging through all the pitifully imbecilic hosannas dedicated to the thief, liar, sexual abuser, and traitor on social media. The worst being realization all those throwing verbal rose petals before his flat feet considered themselves “good Americans.” That President Pedo embodied worthwhile American virtues that the tens of millions of us vehemently opposing him ought to appreciate and follow.

Those of us with brains preferred not becoming lemmings.

Once more, let me repeat such unreconstituted MAGAs remind me of my favorite Colonial Era story, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s titled My Kinsman, Major Molineux. Running throughout it is a marvelous thread leading to a deflating denouement. The sort MAGA boobs by the bushel are experiencing today. Much to my enjoyment and that of countless others who instinctively saw the scab for what he really was, we being those who never bought the snake oil as soft soap he peddled.

In the mornings I join countless millions mining social media. Living in the Pacific Time Zone, that means much of what passes before my eyes is at least several hours old. Sometimes half a day since sent because I’m not a steady online presence. For me it’s pretty aligned. Depending on what’s occurred, maybe a few morning hours, then resuming after a break beginning in late into afternoon. Now, though, attention has expanded into evenings as Operation Epstein Fury stumbles along against Iran.

Morning comments generally come across as knee jerks. Or put plainly, thoughtless. Anger ignites such commentary. Anger at being fooled then eruption afterwards through having been proven a fool. That’s tough to rebut. But tougher is meekly taking one’s medicine. Therefore, responses are offered no matter how unfounded, insipid, or asinine.

In the early hours, when a comment from me has dragged the Chief Thief or fellow-traveling loon, or some patently propagated misinformation gussied up and presented as true gen, it doesn’t take any effort to imagine the respondent having typed furiously at his or her keyboard. Frothing red-faced for surely all MAGAs are rabid.

The Chief Chode has appealed to their basest stupidity. In America that’s a deep well to draw from.

Overnights are oftenest when MAGAs have gotten running (okay, it’s MAGA; waddling) starts. Full to overflowing with themselves, they’ve tossed decorum to freely spice their harangues with racial or sexual insults, followed by degrading mental or physical attributes of the unseen. I’ve surmised they resort to these because even unconsciously they know all they’re offering in return is weak beer. Seems that happens the most when facts have derailed their backwash.

Which is occurring with greater frequency as the scab sinks further into his own quicksand. At least later in the day correspondents have had opportunities to think. Sometimes a few even do.

When presented opportunities to correct invented certainties circulating on social media, I respond in the most direct manner possible. Whoever my Journalism 101 profs were might be proud. Sparing with adjectives and adverbs, the sentences simply declarative. That infuriates MAGAs. Instinctively they know their beliefs undermined. These beliefs held tightly. But it takes a lot of confidence in self to accept being disproven. MAGAs lack that. And wilting pride is just as unbearable as being shown in error.

Like the Chief Chode himself, a majority of MAGAs are inarticulate. What good is fervor if the cause can’t be promoted with rhetoric so sharp it either pierces or converts? Listening to the scab or having his belches repeated by a loyalist, one hears relays of gassy non sequiturs.

They’re angry, all right. Angry they’re frustrated. This state born through their own intellectual impotence.

The smart ones get back on their hindlegs and stay quiet. The dense ones try and make falsehoods real. Which open them to any ridicule they’ve requested. And get.

Gradually and painfully all but the most blindly committed MAGAs are realizing that not only are their champion’s feet made of clay, but a bloated wobbly shell stands atop them. They thought him fine during the campaign when his rages resonated among easily misled audiences yearning for simple answers.

Amazing how that always works when problems are complex yet those assembled prefer finger-snap solutions.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the root of the President Chisler’s appeal was returning America to its whitewashed homespun past. Meaning when “those people” knew their places; women were servile; while foreigners who weren’t the “right kind” could be suspected of all sorts of underhandedness; the genders firmly identified; and slurs could pepper our daily speech with little worries of being called out.

Of course, excised from his red pork rants was that a better, fairer, more just, and equitable America had replaced a country proud to laud its lowest common denominators. Looking back, the scab sold a rosier America that never existed, promising to restore it if only we could again lead prescribed lives of a narrow past.

Somehow in our country we love having plenty materially at the cost of fuller lives. Many will read that and go, “Huh?” Those would be solid Trump voters. They share his shallow avarice. Which made them so easy for him to pluck.

Unfortunately, only now are his supporters, or as those of us who knew from the jump he was phonier than a three-dollar bill call them, suckers, coming to see that in his piggy eyes they are dispensable. Just like the nation as a whole.

Farmers and ranchers have probably been his stoutest chumps, uh, adherents. Now, if remedies aren’t developed for the agricultural sector’s financial plight, plenty of both could find their homesteads foreclosed then acquired by investors who’ll bloodlessly bring collectivization to the United States. Financiers will call the results of such consolidation far more efficient and productive agriculture. But there’s no romance or pride to be harvested from merging acreages that, yes, may improve yields though certainly will fatten bottom lines for the soft-handed few.

The scab talked a good game regarding American industry. In doing so he neglected any workable solutions. If any who toiled in the industrial sector truly listened, they would’ve heard smoke and fog. In reality what he offered men and women aware Industrial America a dinosaur facing demise even without the comet was at best a palliative. A weak one at that.

Automation and other technological innovations will increase production with greater realization of profits from less human presence. Republicans and the oligarchs who own them are indifferent to addressing any questions about prevention of laboring masses entering redundancy. They don’t bother worrying whether entire segments of Americans become obsolete and, therefore, judged useless.

Left to them they will insist we look forward to our being shoved beyond the farthest brink.

But then narcotization through sweet-sounding pandering has forever had ways of making Americans forsake then neglect their own futures.

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