Not that this hasn’t been true for a while now, but the events of this week really put it into focus. And that is while you might think that anyone you know who is a Trump supporter is a fine person, it is fair to ask anyone who is supporting this horror show what the hell is wrong with them.

Yes, I am insinuating that your favorite co-worker, your dear old granny, your BFF since third grade, the nice neighbor who loaned you a lawnmower that one time, etc. just might not be a very good person on some level if they support this stuff. I know it is a hard thing to think about someone in your life.

But I gotta ask you, do you think you are the first to go through this? Do you think the Nazi supporters in Germany, or the Pinochet supporters in Chile, or the Putin supporters in Russia, were friendless creatures who one day crawled out of the ground, spawned by the Earth? Nope, they were co-workers and buddies and uncles and mommies and so on.

I am old enough to remember during the first few years of Trump 1.0 hearing a lot of lectures about polarization as The Real Problem and lotsa “why can’t we all just get along?” Plus, you know, both sides are at fault, see, and if we all just accepted that, we’d all be just fine. However, that child-like naivety did not take into account that the Trump side was never interested in the whole kumbaya thing and was more into the domination thing. Lee Papa tried to warn us (the first three paragraphs here capture the infuriating blindness of the so-called “moderate” worldview at that time).

And right now, what is the moderate position? How do you straddle the center about a president going after his political enemies like he is doing with just-indicted James Comey, Lelitia James, and Bastard Walrus John Bolton? What is the Common Sense Middle Stance regarding whatever awful reason Trump has to gather all of our top generals and admirals in one place next week? What is the Reasoned Moderate Ideal regarding the Worst Bond Villain Stephen Miller?

Stephen Miller last month: "The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization."Stephen Miller today: "There is an all of government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism…The central hub of that effort is going to be the JTTF."

— Home of the Brave (@ofthebraveusa.bsky.social) 2025-09-26T01:21:55.114Z

There is no Sensible Center here. Either you support a woman being thrown to the ground by government agents for no reason, or you find it reprehensible and against the morals and ideals of America.

Holy fuck. One gets inured to insanely brutal ice videos. But this one stands out. He just throws this woman into the wall basically

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T19:27:53.860Z

Look, I know that there are a fair number of people not paying attention, who are basically at the level of a C- tenth-grade social studies student as far as understanding what is going on, so they might not get why Comey being indicted is really bad. But let’s agree that 1,200 human beings disappearing from an immigration facility is indefensible.

The good news is that people are coming around to the idea that Trump is horrible and that democracy is under threat. His approval in reliable polls has fallen to 40%, or even a tick or two below that. But holy shit, America, this is still too high. Either you are for the American system of democracy, or you are for autocratic white nationalism.

It is a pretty clear choice.

The last word goes to The Minutemen.