Thanks for a great piece. I see this as cynicism weaponized. What we’re witnessing isn’t just manipulation — it’s a worldview grounded in a brutal kind of social Darwinism: if you’re the mark, if you fall for the lie, that’s your failure. You were weak enough to believe in a savior, desperate enough to crave clarity, entitled enough to think you deserved more — and so you got conned. Trump and his cohorts don’t even bother hiding their contempt for these people. They exploit it. They depend on it. Because in their eyes, being conned isn’t a crime — it’s natural selection.
And that’s the rot at the heart of all this. Not just the con itself, but the cultural acceptance of the idea that gullibility deserves punishment. That if you were deceived, it’s your fault for being stupid. And the grifter? He’s just doing what winners do.
In 2025, this kind of callousness shouldn’t be a badge of honor. It should be a warning. Because once we start believing that the victims of the con had it coming — that it’s not the liar who’s to blame, but the believer — then we’re not just losing our empathy. We’re giving up on democracy. We’re saying the game belongs to whoever plays it most ruthlessly.
One could credibly argue that this all took root when Reagan proclaimed government to be the problem. You know, the government of, by and for the people. So the coded message was that people were the problem, because people elected their government. Reagan and his pal Lee Atwater were master propagandists (it was Reagan's job during WWII), and often employed coded messaging masked as economic policy and uber-patriotism.
Since then, Republicans have worked relentlessly to convince people that government was the enemy. They even convinced Democrats & progressives that their own leaders were corrupt corporate shills, even as the vast majority of corporate special interest money flowed to the right side of the ledger. They convinced people that there was no meaningful difference between the parties, seeding cynicism, apathy and disengagement. They achieved critical mass in 2016, and here we are.
Saw this in a FB group and it was excellent. Thank you for the rebuttal to this insanity of “it’s a republic”
Thanks for a great piece. I see this as cynicism weaponized. What we’re witnessing isn’t just manipulation — it’s a worldview grounded in a brutal kind of social Darwinism: if you’re the mark, if you fall for the lie, that’s your failure. You were weak enough to believe in a savior, desperate enough to crave clarity, entitled enough to think you deserved more — and so you got conned. Trump and his cohorts don’t even bother hiding their contempt for these people. They exploit it. They depend on it. Because in their eyes, being conned isn’t a crime — it’s natural selection.
And that’s the rot at the heart of all this. Not just the con itself, but the cultural acceptance of the idea that gullibility deserves punishment. That if you were deceived, it’s your fault for being stupid. And the grifter? He’s just doing what winners do.
In 2025, this kind of callousness shouldn’t be a badge of honor. It should be a warning. Because once we start believing that the victims of the con had it coming — that it’s not the liar who’s to blame, but the believer — then we’re not just losing our empathy. We’re giving up on democracy. We’re saying the game belongs to whoever plays it most ruthlessly.
And that’s not politics. That’s predation.
One could credibly argue that this all took root when Reagan proclaimed government to be the problem. You know, the government of, by and for the people. So the coded message was that people were the problem, because people elected their government. Reagan and his pal Lee Atwater were master propagandists (it was Reagan's job during WWII), and often employed coded messaging masked as economic policy and uber-patriotism.
Since then, Republicans have worked relentlessly to convince people that government was the enemy. They even convinced Democrats & progressives that their own leaders were corrupt corporate shills, even as the vast majority of corporate special interest money flowed to the right side of the ledger. They convinced people that there was no meaningful difference between the parties, seeding cynicism, apathy and disengagement. They achieved critical mass in 2016, and here we are.
Well stated.