Should leftists be praising Trump? Ought we?

Political praxis in a dark age

The past few years have been dizzying. I won’t bother enumerating all of the factors making us feel like human colored fragments in an ever-turning kaleidoscope – and it’s the dog in the burning-house “everything is fine” meme turning it – but I’ll provide one example. A libertarian U.S. judge, who I knew from his show on Fox back in the 2010s… that is, Fox, the most rightwing network in the off-the-charts rightwing U.S. media system… now has a guestlist that matches that of Democracy Now! from two decades ago: Matthew Hoh, Ray McGovern, Aaron Maté, etc.

Mind: blown.

But over the past week, developments have been such that the various pieces of my mind, blown around the room by the last shock, have themselves been blown into smaller, more far-flung pieces.

To wit: the genocide in Gaza has stopped. For now, that is. But it has stopped. And it has stopped because Trump appointed a fellow real-estate asshole as envoy, and he apparently forced a ceasefire (again: for now) down the Netanyahu administration’s throats. The Times of Israel says, For the first time, Israel just lost a war.

Then there was the interesting choice of Trump sharing the following video of Jeffrey Sachs:

All of which could, in the end, mean little. There is every reason to believe that Trump will get rolled by the Blob, the Israeli government, the Israel Lobby, and their legions of bought-and-paid for representatives in Congress. There is even good reason to believe that “rolled” is the wrong word here, and that Trump has always been, is now, and will always be subservient to the Blob, including its Israeli corpuscle; and that this move by Trump is just a means of providing respite for the Israeli military before expanding its our mass murder in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran. Even this video share can easily be explained away as Trump hearing Sachs criticize Obama, clicking ‘share’, and not listening to the end.

All of that may be – and I think likely is – true; yet it does not change the fact that the Gaza genocide has stopped for the past five days. Countless people who would otherwise have been murdered or maimed are still alive and intact. Democrats’ “lesser evil” bleating has been turned on its head: to those of us for whom genocide is the ultimate evil, the only imaginable moral calculus is one in which Trump – not Harris – is demonstrably the lesser evil. Trump – yes, that Trump, the rapist felon who committed mass murder in Yemen, set the stage for the Ukraine war and October 7th, did his best to further omnicide by ecological catastrophe and nuclear war, and countless other crimes – turned out to have been the lesser evil, when compared to Holocaust Harris.

I’ll admit to being wrong: when some Arab-American groups announced their support for Trump during the election, I thought that there was no good reason to believe that he would be any different from the administration of Genocide Joe Butcher Biden. (To be fair to myself though, at least I didn’t write any insufferable sermons in Dabiq for Liberals, lecturing Arab-Americans about how Trump is bad, actually, and doesn’t have our communities’ best interests at heart. Gee, really? I’m sure that essay pulled the wool from these Arab-Americans’ eyes, since their decision had nothing to do with the genocide – a word that doesn’t appear in the essay, under the watchful eyes of Dabiq for Liberals’ editors – and all they cared about was making sure their communities in the U.S. were comfy and living swell.)

So should we leftists <cough> be <gag> praising <retch> Trump? Allow me to introduce an important difference between should and ought. Ought tends to imply a moral duty, as if, in this case, Trump is owed praise on account of the morality of his recent actions. Ought leftists praise Trump? No. Obvi not (the word doesn’t merit all four syllables here).

But should leftists be praising Trump? Should can have a different implication: leave morality aside, and consider whether something is in our interest. Let’s think this through. We know that Trump is a narcissist, eager for public approval and praise. We don’t know what is going on in his head right now. 0.1% is the chance I would assign to him actually having grown a backbone, and that he is planning to buck the Blob and its Israeli corpuscle by forcing a lasting ceasefire, the reconstruction of Gaza, and the formation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state. (It’s fun to imagine though! First up: how would he be assassinated for taking this course of action? My money would be on a poison that gives him a heart attack in his sleep, to keep the yahoos from storming DC.) Yet Trump’s ignorance and narcissism means that there is the possibility – let’s say 2% now – that with sufficient public push and pull, he could be coerced into actually doing the right thing.

Of course, “sufficient public push and pull” would require an organized Left. Not a bunch of disaggregated individualists scattered over the internet, shouting into the void; but a The Party, an organization in which members follow orders so as to make an impact greater than the sum of its parts. We’re far from that in the United States.

But my pessimism of the intellect has recently been getting in the way of my optimism of the will. So I’ll drop the former, accuracy be damned. Leftists, the whole disaggregated mass of us, the great cabbage whose lack of coordination has made us impotent, let’s reconnect with our Republican family members, take to social media, stand on a soapbox, and praise Trump for ending (for now) the genocide. Not because we ought to, but because we should; that is, because it is in our interest.

Open a Truth Social account – why not, the NSA already has your backdoor keys, just give them the keys to your front door as well – and say, “I’m a leftist, and I want to join MAGA! I praise Donald Trump for doing what Genocide Joe was too weak and cowardly to do! Donald J. Trump is our only hope of defeating the Deep State!” Offer useful services to Trump fans, like teaching them how to talk to their liberal grandchildren, and all the while, let them know that you are a newly minted MAGA Trump-lover, all because Trump ended the genocide (for now). Even better, say that you are a former leftist, a convert to the MAGA cause, who has seen the light and now supports President Trump, ender of Joe’s Genocide, scourge of the bloodsoaked Democrats, and liberator of America from the Deep State’s despotism.

Organize a protest in front of the White House, with large signs reading “LEFTISTS FOR TRUMP”, “WE USED TO HATE YOU, NOW WE LOVE YOU TRUMP”, “NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR TRUMP”, and the like. Accept all media interview requests, and explain that you are a leftist who now supports Trump, because he ended the Gaza genocide – and you can’t wait for him to establish a Palrael one-state solution, or a sovereign Palestinian two-state solution. Tell everyone who will listen that you, a former leftist antifa thug, now loves Trump, and you give him your undying support to establish lasting peace with Iran, Yemen, and Palrael.

Will it work? No comment. Ought we? Definitely not. But should we? Absolutely.

- Peter