This will all be over soon, America.
The sundowning of the MAGA movement is upon us.
The signs are everywhere.
As much as History can be an albatross in moments like these, alerting us to the terrifying ways in which we are repeating the past pathologies of inhumanity, she can also be a source of comfort; a reminder of the inevitability of the endings of all evil things.
If we consult her with a clear head, she’ll remind us that all brutal empires fall,
that all hateful movements dissolve, that every seemingly bulletproof regime reaches its extinction, and that all malevolent momentary victors eventually find themselves defeated and driven out.
Every time the pendulum has swung wildly toward barbarism in a society, it has invariably come back with even greater opposite force to bend the arc of the moral universe back toward justice again.
And History tells us that, despite the story in our heads or the one that comes through the partisan propaganda that we’re continually saturated by, our brutal national nightmare is likely in its final hours.
Few cults survive the passing of their leaders, and MAGA will not outlive the departure of Donald Trump from the White House or from this earth, whichever comes first.
His physical attrition and mental degradation can no longer be hidden or distracted from. His body is rapidly breaking down, laboring with simple tasks, hemorrhaging energy, and riddled with the unmistakable tells of a man whose systems are failing.
His already hate-addled mind is becoming more and more clouded in an ever-thickening haze of deterioration, drugs, and almost certain dementia. His outbursts have grown more impulsive, his decisions have become more desperate, and the once indestructible facade of strength is steadily crumbling.
The strongman is withering. He is a lame duck president whose once fierce death grip on political power is giving way to neutered impotence and growing irrelevance.
The rapacious brutality of his regime is being exposed and condemned.
The groundswell of public opposition is growing louder and more organized.
The defections from his party are accelerating, their unwavering allegiance weakening.
His cockroach accomplices are scattering in the raking light of coming accountability.
His supposed social media army of support is proving to be made largely of foreign bot factories. And there is no scenario in which is political power or cultic influence increases from here. It will all be an exercise in diminishing returns. He has peaked as a galvanizing presence, and there’s no GOP spin doctoring that can change that.
Whether is is taken by nature or by the Constitution, the gap left will be too expansive to fill, because although Trump didn’t create the unapologetic bigotry, or give birth to the unrepentant cruelty, or author the intellectual ignorance of teh MAGA movement, he alone was the catalyst for it.
His bizarre carnival barker charisma, his curated mythology of financial success, his lowest-common-demonimator soundbite sermonizing, and his lack of any moral requirements made him the singular human being to expose the worst of humanity.
He gave people permission to revel in the worst of their instincts, to give loud voice to their hidden hatreds, to discard their religious convictions, and to fully abandon empathy and decency. And once he is gone, MAGA will be gone too.
No, the tens of millions of Americans whose minds have been steadily poisoned by him, his willing political partners, comprised clergy, dudebro podcasters, opportunist internet vultures, and Fox New fakery will not sudden awaken from their cultic stupor and join the rest of us in benevolent and interdependent humanity.
But they will never again have someone who embodies the zeitgeist of grotesque impulses the way Trump has. His sycophants, disciples, and cheerleaders will all be scattered in his absence, no longer able to rally around a singular presence.
This doesn’t mean the coming days will be easy or painless; likely just the opposite. Like a wounded and dying animal, he and his cadre of ghouls will become more violent, more desperate, and more committed to destruction. But they know, as well as we do, that their time is short and that the clock on their stranglehold of this nation is ticking.
That should strengthen our resolve, lift our spirits and sturdy our steps. Take heart, good people. Time, gravity, and term limits are undefeated, and one way or another, the end of MAGA is near. And the dawn of the promise of America will break once again.
