The Trump Problem Revisited, Wherein the Author Asks the Question, Why Have White Guys Lost Their Collective Minds?
An Introduction to a 3-Part Series
Here’s a prose poem where the narrator is frustrated by his inability to deal with the white male anger he sees around him. The next four posts will deal with some of this anger and where it’s currently gotten us.
A Dinner Speech That Could Have Saved the World If Anyone Was Listening
I was making a list of people I’d like to see waterboarded, then forced to watch a hundred back-to-back episodes of The Jersey Shore—this fantasy inspired by a woman who was arrested for wiping her Covid-19 spit onto organic Pink Lady apples in the local market. “Now that’s a metaphor that could use deciphering,” my friend said, seemingly disturbed by my fantasies. “So it’s okay for people to spray the police with battery acid,” I replied, “or to beat them with American flags, yet I’m supposed to be calm, I’m supposed to be fair, and not call people names. As if the solution to our presidential problem will occur over an urbane dinner table of mashed potatoes and meatloaf, or in sweaty locker rooms among reasonable men bragging about their 401ks, or knitting circles of bony-knuckled soccer moms admiring each other’s abs. But how to stay calm when people point paintball guns at you, practicing for the real thing? I admire the usher who beat a guy with a flashlight for not wearing a mask, or the librarian who threw a rock at a heron for devouring the Koi fish he lovingly nursed for two long years. You have to make choices, right? Today I chose to go to Four Town Farms and guard the tiny turtle eggs their parents have entrusted to nature. I threw myself madly before a family of geese to keep them from wandering into the road. In spite of rednecks stalking polling stations in their oversize pickups, in spite of those blue-suited politicians whining like babies as the earth burns up like a fried egg, I will soldier on, by God, I will soldier on!”
“Boy, that was a mouthful,” my friend said, passing me the catsup, wanting to know if the calamari was worth it.
After I had written a three-part Substack series a few months ago, called, “Whatever Happened to White Guys: The Trump Problem,” I felt as if I had said my piece and that it was time to move on. Certainly, I assumed, guys of every color and from every socioeconomic class would have had their fill of the school bully, would have seen him for what he was (and is), and would have gone back to being decent men. You know, doing things like coaching their kids, making dinner for their wives more than once a month, maybe even going to church.
But with Trump deciding to run for president again, the anger and cruelty in my gender, especially in white guys, has awakened yet again. I’ve actually come to believe that all of us white guys are born with this abhorrent gene that most of us keep in check but is always ready to go into hyper-gear if a certain catalyst, like a Hitler or a Jim Jones appears. It’s like a microchip embedded in our brains, resting next to the other microchips that QAnon followers believe have been implanted by Democrats, who themselves are, in fact, three-eyed lizard aliens with four penises who frequently transport themselves back and forth from the yet-to-be-discovered planet, Zeno.
With all of this said, and having just read that Trump and Biden are in a dead heat, I have decided to rewrite and republish this three-part series during the months of November and December, stupidly thinking that I might change the world—an unrealistic aspiration we writers still cling to.
Let me start by asking my fellow white guys a few questions. Back in the old Tamer Trump days (before he advocated for executing Generals, judges, and prosecutors), you guys accepted his misogyny, his racism, and his outright ignorance. Back then I asked many of you: What would you do if an old guy talked about grabbing your daughter’s genitals? How long would it take you to punch out a fat old rich guy for calling your working-class wife and mother of your children a “fat pig,” or saying she looked like a dog? What would you say to a coworker during Covid if he suggested that ingesting bleach might just be the answer to the virus, especially if you, like I did, lost family members to the insidious disease? And finally, how would you respond to parents from another town who got so mad because your high school football team beat theirs that they broke into your school and rubbed their excrement over all the championship sports trophies your high school had earned, and then tried to break into your athletic director’s office and hang him? (In case you’re brain dead, I’m referring to January 6).
The correct responses to all of these questions are so obvious that I refuse to take the time to mention them. I mean, this is all crazy shit, right? Any decent, cogent person would be aware of the utter insanity all of this dangerous nonsense.
And yet as Trump keeps upping the ante and stoking violence, you guys are still enlisting in his white supremacist army, and liberals are still cautioning us all not call you out for fear your feelings will be hurt and you won’t vote for Biden, which you weren’t going to do anyway, even if Trump took out half your family with a shotgun..
So what I offer over the next few weeks are reasonable explanations for the above weird phenomenon, and I feel especially qualified to tackle this subject because over my 72 years I have worked with and associated with white guys from many different socioeconomic and intellectual backgrounds.
I’d also like to discuss why any woman would vote for Trump, but I’m not stupid enough to take that on unless I had a pair of cast-iron jockey shorts to absorb hard kicks to my groin area. But the possible role of women as saviors will be discussed in the last essay of this series.
So listen up Ladies and Gents . . . and hit the share button so this series gets around.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments even though he has a publisher for it by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss
brilliant