Move over MAGA
The ersatz tempest of MAGA outrage over Donald Trump’s prospective arrest included an anaemic half dozen in front of Trump Tower and a promise of a “run on the bank.” (One thinks of hammers smashing piggy banks.) What’s left of the once bitten twice shy MAGA warriors from January 6 is, as they say, a shadow of their former selves.
The truth of the matter is that demonstrators who want a Donald Trump indictment are far outnumbering MAGA supporters who don’t — so far. Tuesday morning outside the Manhattan Criminal Court was another case in point. It was the pro-indictment protesters, not the MAGAs, who gathered in force.
Too many Americans want to see Donald Trump punished for the harm he’s done to their country and not enough want him to get away with it. Perhaps Trump has finally reached a tipping point where the hatred he’s created is no longer sufficiently nourishing to produce protests of much power.
To be sure, hatred and bigotry did make for temporary surges large enough to elect him in the first place. But there’s a palpable law of diminishing returns here. Those diminishing returns could be showing a distinctly identifiable lack of renewed passion.
Don’t get me wrong though, there’s no en masse defection from the Republican to the Democratic Party. But there is an identifiable diminuendo in violent rhetoric. Even Roger Stone struck a non-violent note. “If you do choose to publicly protest,” Stone said, “it is vitally important that you keep your protest peaceful, civil, orderly and completely legal.” I don’t often agree with Stone, but on this one point we are completely in accord.
Of course it should make no difference ultimately what the MAGAs threaten. “Let justice be done though the heavens fall,” as the saying goes. But it would be nice if the good guys started to win again, and if the preliminary signs are any indication, it’s starting to look like they might.
So protesters are in the streets. But instead of shouting racist slogans they’re instead angrily voicing their outrage with chants such as, “No one is above the law, ” and “Alvin Bragg do your job!” With any luck they will see examples of both very soon.
So where are all the MAGA warriors? In jail, perhaps? Maybe a larger percentage than we realised of the total sum of MAGA bad guys who went to Washington DC on January 6 wound up in jail. We saw what a failure the predicted “Red Wave” of 2022 was supposed to bring, this could also be an extension of it.
So I hope it’s not premature to say it, but, Move over MAGA, the Truth just might be winning again. Maybe with the arrest of Donald Trump we Americans can finally start to take our country back. And wouldn’t that be glorious? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.