I’ve been reading about Donald Trump for almost 9 years. And in that time, he has grown into one of the world’s most malevolent forces that I have seen in my lifetime. He is a rancid specimen of North American masculinity: brash, profoundly stupid, utterly self-serving and narcissistic.
Still, up until relatively recently, he was America’s problem. Flush with a second term “success” and backed by a posse of the greediest human beings on the planet, Donald Trump is set to “disrupt” the world as we know it, with his stupidity and moral depravitude.
I look around at the world we’re living in now, and I feel sick. Everywhere I turn, there are new divisions, deeper cruelties, and visible confirmation that we’ve forgotten how to care about each other at all.
While most of our current world conditions are years, if not decades, in the making, I lay a lot of the blame for the sharpness of today’s failures at Donald Trump’s feet. The only good thing about Donald Trump is that he’s old and unwell and won’t be with us much longer.
Many people struggle to wave it off by saying Donald Trump is just an idiot or that he’s crazy. I don’t buy that. Idiocy is something that can’t be helped. Madness might also absolve someone of blame, but Trump is neither. He is a deliberate, calculating wrecking ball, happy to tear down anything that doesn’t serve him or his wealthy backers.
He’s the worst kind of entitled. Born rich, born insulated and born to believe that everything he touches should turn to gold for him. He has used his fortune and privilege to evade accountability at every turn, stiffing contractors, evading taxes, and escaping bankruptcies unscathed, while workers have lost everything. And it’s not just about hoarding money. He gets off on humiliating people – the surest sign of a truly small and weak man.
Why I Hate Donald Trump ctd..
Donald Trump stood on stages and bragged about sexually assaulting women. He mocked a disabled reporter to cheers from dimwits. He told a country in pain that immigrants were rapists and Muslims didn’t belong. He began his political life by trying to erase Barack Obama’s legitimacy with racist lies about a birth certificate. Then he spent years proving that cruelty wasn’t a flaw in his system, but rather the entire point.
He promised coal miners he’d bring their jobs back, knowing he wouldn’t. He assured struggling farmers that trade wars would somehow make them richer, while his tariffs crushed their markets and forced them into desperate bailouts. He told laid-off workers that he’d revive manufacturing, while he and his cronies use cheap foreign factories to keep profits high. He slashed environmental protections, delivering massive gains to Wall Street, and left ordinary families choking on more pollution.
And he didn’t just damage the U.S. The rest of us felt it too. He has threatened Canada repeatedly by imposing tariffs and “negotiating” in bad faith. He has insulted allies. He pulled out of the Paris Agreement, withdrew funding from global climate initiatives, and encouraged other polluters to slow-walk action. He trashed the Iran nuclear deal, soured NATO partnerships, and gave Russia everything it could hope for, all while calling Putin a genius.
The Cronies Who Made It Possible
Despite what he wants you to think, Donald Trump is not some lone genius pulling strings. He is simply the perfect mascot for an army of billionaires and politicians who have been waiting for someone shameless enough to say in public the hateful, greedy ideas they used to keep private, which allows them to push through their grasping agendas without having to pretend to care.
Steve Bannon laid out the strategy, promising to “flood the zone with shit” so nobody knew what was true anymore. Mitch McConnell packed the courts with hard-right judges who will be gutting our rights for decades. Rudy Giuliani spun wild conspiracies to feed Fox News, while Tucker Carlson made bigotry and stupidity a prime-time event. The Koch network poured millions into making sure tax cuts and deregulation stayed locked in. Rupert Murdoch’s empire turned every outrage into a ratings bonanza.
Even people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who posture as tech rebels, stood right there collecting their windfalls. The Supreme Court, stacked with hard-right judges, has become a reliable tool for wealthy interests. Billionaires are paying even less in taxes, regulations have vanished, and ordinary workers are trying to hang on through wage stagnation and lost healthcare.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin (another moral pustule in the body of a human being) has happily kept the trolls and bots working overtime, flooding our social media with garbage designed to pit neighbour against neighbour and keep democracies in constant chaos.
The Wreckage He Is Manufacturing
Donald Trump is gutting democratic norms in real time. He’s pushed for mass deportations that are ripping families and entire communities apart. He’s using the Justice Department like a personal hit squad, promising investigations and prosecutions aimed squarely at his political enemies. Judges who rule against him are publicly smeared as corrupt, while in states like Texas and Ohio, Republican “lawmakers” rewrite laws to limit court oversight of elections, strip judges of powers that might block partisan gerrymanders, and fast-track appointments of loyalists who will back Trump’s agenda without question.
Meanwhile, the “poll watching” armed militias of 2024 are still around – bragging online, flashing rifles at rallies, and gearing up to patrol polling stations for local races – all under the banner of patriotism and “election integrity.” Courts and watchdogs that push back are dismissed as corrupt. Honest journalists are smeared regularly so that inconvenient information can be dismissed as fake.
The very idea of shared facts has rotted. Millions cling to conspiracies about stolen elections or global plots because it’s easier than facing the truth that they were badly conned. He has helped boost every far-right authoritarian who saw how easily lies and hate could be packaged as populist rebellion. From Hungary to Brazil, Donald Trump gave them a playbook. Here in Canada, we have our own convoy cosplay crowds who picked up his contempt for science and love of conspiracy.
The truth is so warped now that people proudly wear shirts calling journalists liars and demand teachers stop mentioning history that makes them uncomfortable. Power has become about who can be the cruellest, who can inflict the most damage on vulnerable people, who can strip away the most protections from the poor while fattening the rich.
Conclusion
I could write a book about Donald Trump’s evil antics – as I’m sure many others could and will – but the truth is, I’m tired. I’m tired of how long this has gone on, how deep the damage runs, and how willing people are to keep letting him, and men like him, tear everything apart.
The only small comfort I take is that he’s old and unhealthy. I sincerely hope nature will do what decency, democracy, and accountability have failed to do. May it rid us of him asap. But even that is hollow, because I know deep down he’s not unique.
Donald Trump is just the loudest, crudest version of the same greed and cruelty that’s always been there. There’s a long line of eager replacements ready to scoop up his playbook, slap on a fresh grin, and resume dismantling the world for their own gain.
So yes, I hope he dies soon, so at least we’re spared a few more years of his lunacy. But I also know the rot runs far deeper than him alone. And that might be the saddest, most infuriating truth of all.
