Third Term

I will never understand the impulse of some people to say that someone who is obviously not joking is joking. One group that's guilty of this is Kanye West fans, who continue to insist that his constant praise of Hitler, his selling of swastika-branded merchandise, and his open loathing of any non-Jonah Hill Jewish person is just him being a silly guy. Another group that falls into this trap all too often is Trump supporters. To them, any act or statement from the man that draws criticism from the left is just "trolling, we do a little trolling," and therefore, just some harmless lib-owning.

There are a whole bevy of things wrong with this assumption (the first being that it's somehow acceptable for the leader of the free world to engage in trolling), but the most plain is this: Donald Trump, when he says or does something that would be repugnant by any standard, is rarely (if not never) trolling. The idea that Trump is just an old prankster is a lie that Republicans tell themselves because they, too, are troubled by the things he suggests (at least, they are if they have any moral compass, which is far from guaranteed these days).

Case in point: the mythical Trump third term. Floating another four years seems to be something of a national pastime for Trump and his army of Washington bootlickers, but every time it happens, the team of ground bootlickers insists that he's just trying to rile up the woke leftists into a frenzy (never mind that the president suggesting a third term should be cause for alarm, no matter what). It's all just one big troll! He doesn't mean anything he says, and he totally one hundred percent respects democracy! Don't you get it?

Which brings us to today, when Trump, in an NBC News interview, said that he was "not joking" about pursuing a third term, stated that "there are methods" for him to do so, and said that a lot of people want him to continue leading the country (or whatever will be left of it in four years). You can't spell it out clearer than this. He is basically beating us over the head with his intent at this point. He wants to overthrow a core tenet American democracy so that he can hold power until the day he dies (which, I tell you, cannot come soon enough). Once he's thrown out that rule, he's tumbling down the slippery slope. Nothing is sacred. Trump-era politics is a game of breaking progressively larger rules until nobody even notices that you've broken an essential one. We can't let him get his hands on this rule, because once he has, he'll keep grabbing more and more, like the other thing he famously likes grabbing.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Trump supporters, unfortunately, have missed the first million times, but it's never too late. Realize that the man you've elected has no respect for American democracy, and understand what he wants to turn this country into. If you clear the years of Fox News brainwashing out of your head, I guarantee you'll be as angry and frightened as I am.