When money is literally the only currency you have, it’s hard to imagine that everybody else doesn’t look at life the same way. When your soul is bereft of any loftier goals, making more money dictates every decision you make and every action you take.
Once you understand that mindset, you understand the current president. One of Trump’s treasured tropes is to claim progressive protesters are paid to march. Most recently he claimed (without the bothersome encumbrance of facts) the scary caravan of brown people headed on foot to the U.S. border from points south all have pockets bulging with donations from the Democratic party.
You kidding? These people DREAM of having pockets. They have left home with, yes, literally, just the clothes on their backs. Trump upped the ante with talk of how they had been promised luxury cars and free healthcare by the Dems upon arrival (“others have said…” which is Trumpspeak for ‘I’m fixin’ to tell a big whopper.”)
I can imagine the conversation inside dimly lit tents all over Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador– between warring gang gunshots, of course.
He: “This place sucks but, don’t worry abuela, the American Democrats are going to give us new cars if we just get together and head north on foot.”
She: “The Democrats? Is that an American gang?
He: “Oh, no! They aren’t THAT organized.
She: Hmmmm. OK, I’ll round up the nietos. I’ve always dreamed of heated and cooled seats and the Sirius radio. Also drinking water that doesn’t have worms floating in it and a working toilet.”
Remember how Trump maintained the marches orchestrated across the country protesting his policies were made up of paid agitators?
Every one of them, he said. Very strong people who know things say this. (Cue incoming whopper.)
It’s not in Trump’s DNA to imagine such a thing as voluntarily marching and speaking out with folks of like mind to protest the smorgasbord of injustices served up by this administration.
We do it because it needs doing. It has long been a Republican myth that Democrats pay poor people to vote for their candidates. Not in a quid pro quo but literally: “Here’s $20, now go vote.”
Why is it so hard for Trump and his ilk to understand that it’s not always about the money?
Sometimes, and I don’t want to get all weepy here, it’s about speaking out against social injustice.
But in the toxic trampoline that is Trump’s brain, what kind of an idiot would get on a chartered bus with a sketchy bathroom in the dawn’s early light (or, as he sings it: “the bluh-bee-dee-do-dah”) to ride for hours to protest and not insist on getting paid for it?
These are, to use one of Trump’s kinder words, losers.
There are always protesters outside Trump’s many post-campaign rallies these days. What’s the going rate, he must muse as his motorcade passes the “mob.” I bet it’s cheap. They look like illegals. People have told me. Very big people…