The Fascist Orange Potato Monster
The original version of this was a blog assignment in my ‘Anthropology of Evil’ class in 2018 while I was still a broke-ass grad student in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Since then I graduated, moved back to the States, we all lived through a global pandemic, FINALLY voted Trump out of office… until, well now. Also worked for NOAA, started and left a PhD program and started doing archaeology Cultural Resource Management (CRM) full-time. My job is going out to protect history, to protect the land, all the important things that Trump wants to dismantle and destroy. Since so much has changed I had to update the blog. I seriously can believe that people could be so stupid, but for so many. For anyone who already regrets their choice, you screwed all of us over and sentenced so many more to worse fates.
Over the last eight years, people on both sides of the aisle have called President Donald Trump many things. Personally, I hold fast to the notion that he is an insane, misogynistic, manipulative, unfeeling, depraved, deplorable, delusional, narcissistic, racist, bigoted, abusive, liar who fewer people should’ve been afraid of if he was an actual storybook boogeyman character that parents in the middle ages told of to their children to keep them out of the woods. Of course, I’m biased, being a left-leaning, world-traveling, Master’s-holding archaeologist who actually attempts to be respectful to and to gain the respect of people from all cultures because we are all human beings, so, if I am overstepping my bounds, I’m sorry for being overly insulting. But, after all, if I am part of the democratic elite because I have a higher education, even though I have no control within the US government, Trump has himself stated, “You ever notice they always call the other side 'the elite'? The elite! Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I’m smarter than they are. I’m richer than they are. I became president, and they didn’t” (Blake, 2018). At this point I am part of the “enemy within”, because I want rights for everyone and I don’t want people killing each other. Crazy isn’t it.
Figure 1 - Codex Gigas (Giant Book): created in 13th c. Bohemia.
Take a look at who this man is, a business capitalist who has lied about the size of the crowds that come to see him speak. The amount of people who voted for him to become the current president of the United States, and his approval ratings. Trump’s supporters wanted the country to be led and run by the workingman, how he had depicted himself throughout his campaign, which was also a lie from whom Weber would describe as a charismatic leader, “carried away by – demigod status” (Weber in Eisenstadt 1968:49). The constant tweets about his “…so-called low approval ratings” insisting that he matched Obama’s approval in 2009 “…which was 47%” according to a poll from Fox & Friends - the news show he watches every day at five o’clock in the morning (@realDonaldTrump, 30 Dec. 17). The poll he referred to was the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports which did have Trump at 46% while Obama had 47% on the same date in 2009, but as this does present an in party bias a national poll would have been better suited, winding up with Real Clear Politics’ combined score of 39.3% for Trump vs Obama’s 49.9% in 2009 (Wigglesworth, p1-5). This just shows how obsessed Trump is with his approval; it’s as if “if his charismatic qualifications fails”, or he “is for long unsuccessful”, his “charismatic authority will disappear” (Weber, pp49-50).
Personally, I can’t wait for that to happen because according to Weber, and what is shown through the majority of his actions, this (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Overcrowded conditions for migrant detainees in McAllen, Texas were observed by inspectors from the federal government in June 2019 (Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General 2019).
Figure 3. Two public tweets in which Trump falsely claims that child separation at the border is a law (it's not) and then supports it (Twitter, 2018).
… Project 2025 is going to be so much worse. And, of course, there is so much more trauma to come. It’s like they pretend that NO ONE can remember what they did last time.
Works Cited
@realDonaldTrump. 30 Dec. 2017 1:46 a.m. “While the Fake News loves to talk about my so-called low approval rating, @foxandfriends just showed that my rating on Dec. 28, 2017, was approximately the same as President Obama on Dec. 28, 2009, which was 47%...and this despite massive negative Trump coverage & Russia hoax!” Twitter.
Blake, Aaron. 21 June 2018. “Analysis | President Trump Wants to Know Why He's Not Considered 'Elite'.” The Washington Post. WP Company.
"Management Alert – DHS Needs to Address Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults in the Rio Grande Valley (Redacted)" (PDF). Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. July 2, 2019.
Karl Marx in Robert C. Tucker (ed.). 1972. The Marx-Engels Reader. Second Edition. “The German Ideology.” New York: Norton. pp. 146-175.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar. 2006. Satan: A Biography, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Magliocco, S. 2003. ‘The opposite of right society: witches, terrorist and the discourse of evil’, Ethnologica Europaea. Museum Tusculanum Press, 33(2), pp. 13-22.
Östling, Per-Anders. 2012. Witchcraft trials in 17th-century Sweden and the Great Northern Swedish Witch Craze of 1668-1678, Studia Neophilologia, 84: sup 1, pp. 97-105.
Weber, Max in S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.). 1968. On Charisma and Institution Building. “The Pure Types of Legitimate Authority”. “The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization” and “Bureaucracy”. Heritage of Sociology Series. University of Chicago Press. pp. 46-61, 66-77.
Wigglesworth, Alex. 29 Dec. 2017. “Trump Tweets That His Approval Rating Is the Same as Obama's. It's Not.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times. www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-updates-everything-president-trump-tweets-that-his-approval-rating-is-1514593910-htmlstory.html.
