Mr. Backlash

When Mr. Backlash was just a little boy, he didn’t know what he wanted to be.

Other than powerful, respected, and RICH.

He let other little boys watch as he bossed around his parents’ gardeners, cooks, drivers, and maids….

It was quite a rush.

If not for antagonizing his family’s employees, little boy backlash would have had a terribly boring childhood.

But being an unbearable little turd is really quite fun!

He started to build a very high opinion of himself, started to learn (believe) that he really mattered more than them. More than the little boys with no servants, and more than the servants themselves, obviously.

Around this time he stopped bothering to make friends.

That isn’t to say he had made or enjoyed any satisfying number of friendships. In fact, he hadn’t made any. But he stopped letting that bother him.

See, Little Boy Backlash was kind of an asshole— not just to “the help” but to anyone he thought mattered less than him (so, literally everyone).

That isn’t to say he didn’t want his peers to like him. He actually craved their approval to such a cloying degree that it repelled anyone with an ounce of honest self respect.

A couple hangers-on stuck around, purely out of greed. They loitered the same way a dog hungry dog wags its tail under the table, hoping to gobble the unwanted scraps.

In other words, even as children they subconsciously bought into the idea of trickle down economics, and they didn’t mind getting trickled on by their wealthy acquaintance.

Consequently, they flattered him at every turn— hoping he might be so distracted by their adoration that he’d fumble a few extra morsels down to them.

They sold out.

They were yes men. Well, they were yes boys.

And the ass kissing never made them rich, but little breadcrumbs here and there made them feel rich. So they stuck around, (sunk costs hypothesis, and all that). For years, they followed and doted on Little Boy Backlash, and as he grew into Mr Backlash he amassed quite an entourage of insufferable douchebags.

And whatever foulness was his by instinct and nature, well it was magnified— even glorified by his followers.

He began to throw his weight around, making deals left and right.

And he’d be applauded.

Not because he’d made excellent deals, no.

They were just manipulative, dishonest, sneaky deals. The kind of deals a rat would glory in.

Still, he’d be applauded simply because.

It wasn’t empty, vapid applause. At least, not to him. To Mr. Backlash it was a testament to his worth. Wordless, but since when did the words matter? There applause proved value, his superiority.

And when the deals soured, and went in the red, as they so often did, he reneged.

In short he was living the life!

Sure, it was the life of a viper, but it was the type of slithering, predatory life that business men everywhere idolize and emulate: the life that is the American Dream.

Mr backlash puttered around, tanking businesses and blaming others, nabbing as many cash grabs as he could, paying for the attention of women (and girls), and “pretending” to be a heartless scumbag on reality TV.

Then one day, he announced his candidacy for presidency.

Now, that was just an attention grab and from another simpering, insecure billionaire.

It wasn’t in earnest— excepting the earnestness of delusion.

He wasn’t smart. He wasn’t articulate. He wasn’t kind. He wasn’t charismatic. He wasn’t honest. He wasn’t inspirational. He wasn’t a visionary. He wasn’t a leader.

He had zero political experience and his only strategy was to boast hard, desperately hard. And to shift blame, to obfuscate the public’s views of his obvious deficiencies.

He was the political and social equivalent of a water ballon filled with barf.

He should have been unanimously laughed down as a low quality clown.

But… well, this is gonna be sad to admit, but the truth is: his country had just enjoyed the second prosperous and peaceful, presidential term of a dignified and intelligent Black man in the office of the presidency.

That’s not the sad part. The sad part is: seeing this kind of achievement and inspiration come from a man with brown skin, that really rattled closeted white racists— it contradicted their notions of white superiority…

They were triggered.

They were hurt.

They were confronted with the boldest proof against their needy little “comfort lies.”

You know the kind of lies I’m talking about: The lies that bolster self worth through the sloppy denigration of others.

Before they were forced to witness a respected, admired, and celebrated Black president, they’d “freely” think, “so I’m ugly, so I’m not very bright, so I’m poor, so I’m tiny in the trousers— at least I’m white!”

But then, their comfort lies were cast against the rock of hard truth— the undeniable notion that measures of character and worth are more than skin deep.

The concept of white supremacy had an opportunity to fall apart.

But that would take supremacists putting pressure on the cracks in their own reason, digging into the fault lines and letting the whole foundation crumble.

But

It’s easier for a the owner of a sinking house to build over the rot than it is to tear up their whole foundation and start over. A sensitive, insecure brain will double down, reinforce the cracks, and selectively ignore contradictions before it ever accepts criticism or revision.

Show me a racist and I’ll show you someone who’s too fragile to correct themselves, to insecure to introspect, and really to deluded to grasp their own flailing notions.

It wasn’t even about Mr Backlash. It was about what he represented:

A morally bankrupt, ethically repugnant, physically ugly, intellectually meager, and all around BAD white man who could be assigned as much worth as a good Black man.

The cult was already there.

They’d fight tooth and nail to push the pendulum back the other way.

Politics swung up towards progress, and the Cult of Fragility would make damn sure to send the back swing into the deepest regress possible.

For revenge. Revenge against the way the world questioned their secret comforts.

They’d push their symbolic white scumbucket into the presidency— especially if that white scumbag were visibly inferior to the Black president in every single way.

They needed a festering dirt bag, scraped from the very bottom of the ethical barrel.

So, Mr. Backlash, the man who never should have had a chance was launched into the highest seat in the country.

He was white and he spoke the right code to appeal to fragile, racist voters and that was all it took.

The knee jerk impulse of the sweaty underbelly of society planted him where he least belonged.

Mr. Backlash’s election was the sociopolitical equivalent of a toddler cramming his fingers in his ears and shouting: nananana boo-boo, I can’t hear you!

It was a shame that it ever happened. But the real horror is the fact that somehow, even after Mr Backlash has used his term in the presidency to prove himself utterly unfit for the job, he still has followers, who are so desperate for their comfort lies that they want him to stick around.

To them it doesn’t even matter that he incited treason and proved himself crooked and felonious.

He keeps blasting those racist dog whistles. And that remind his most loyal support base why they put him there to begin with.

And remember, they put him there because their perceived status was threatened by the fact that the preceding president was a man with brown skin.

Now, they’re even more threatened by the notion that our next president could be a woman with brown skin.

You can practically see them preemptively wince and cower away from the blow to their egos that will come if she takes office.

They’re trying very hard to push him in again, despite all better judgment.

They’re railing against the thought of her beating him.

If she wins, let’s just hope the Cult of Fragility wear themselves out before the next election, because if they rally we could end up with someone even worse assuming the mantle of Mr. Backlash.

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Authors note:

I know not every person who votes for trump is a white supremacist. But they do make up a large portion of his support base.

I wrote this opinion piece because I’ve hated trump since the first one I saw him on the apprentice. He just seemed like such a self important piece of shit.

I don’t think you can be a billionaire and a good person, but most of ‘em try to pretend. Trump just takes the idea of “rich scumbag” and runs with it.

Given his clear disdain for POC, women, foreigners, the working class, personal honesty, and the country… I’m just baffled that anyone would still support him.

I know this is either going to get bland agreement from the leftist echo chamber or denial and hostility from the alt right fragility cult.

And neither response will be terribly useful, so I hesitated to post at all.

But this is what I’ve been thinking about, and sometimes you just gotta rant a bit.

You can rant at me in the comments I won’t grudge you.

Edit: aaaaand, trump won. America, we’re looking really pathetic and silly right now.