When did we elect sadists and cowards into office?
Land of the free and home of the brave? Not in office.
I knew Trump 2.0 would be bad, but I didn’t expect America to turn into Hogwarts under Dolores Umbridge overnight. The new Trump administration is full of sycophants and sadistic loyalists. Congressional Republicans are following orders like they’re preparing for the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, Democrats are still in a state of shock and disbelief after they lost the election.
While the courts are the last standing bastion for the rule of law, universities and law firms are quickly bending the knee. As they said in Game of Thrones to signal dark and treacherous times ahead, “Winter is coming.”
There really isn’t much surprise in Trump’s behavior. The red flags and warning signs were as easy to spot as Where’s Waldo at a nude beach. Before his first election in 2016, an article in The Atlantic written by a psychology professor at Northwestern University warned that Trump’s “narcissism, disagreeableness, and grandiosity” could shape his presidency. The journal Logos published an article in 2016 calling Trump an “authoritarian populist” based on psychological analysis. In 2017, twenty-seven psychiatrists and mental health experts published a book warning about the dangers of his personality. Then came his first presidency, where we witnessed his lies, the 3 AM tweets, and rampant attempts to undermine democracy. His niece (who happens to be a clinical psychologist) published a book in 2020 giving us the backstory on him and his need to appease his sociopathic father. In case anyone didn’t read any of the books, their mere presence made headlines.
By the time Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, he had already shown his true nature by inciting the January 6 insurrection. Even in 2024, more than 200 health professionals wrote an open letter warning of Trump’s dangerous personality traits, stating, “Even a non-clinician can see that Trump shows a lifetime pattern of ‘failure to conform to social norms and laws,’ ‘repeated lying,’ ‘reckless disregard for the safety of others,’ ‘irritability,’ ‘impulsivity,’ ‘irresponsibility,’ and ‘lack of remorse.’” These traits are becoming more evident by the day.
With that in mind, Trump’s return to power is playing out exactly as expected—but the real shock is how easily his opposition is folding.
Trump seems to delight in his enemies' pain and suffering. Witness accounts of Trump at the White House on January 6 recall him delightfully watching the live footage of the insurrection at the Capitol Building. He enjoys using Guantanamo Bay and, recently, El Salvador for deporting migrants. After the news of deportations to El Salvador broke in the media, Trump wrote on his social media: “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!” It’s worth noting the D.C. Court of Appeals said, “Nazis got better treatment” during its appellate hearing regarding the deportations to El Salvador.
Trump and his administration celebrated their bombing of Yemen. In line with everything we were warned of and saw unfolding during the first time Trump was in office, we see the grotesque sadism. The more he sees his foes suffer, the more he enjoys himself. And he’s willing to push the boundaries a bit farther each time.
The obvious cowardice is Congress. So far, the Republican Party is marching in lockstep with Trump. They appointed every cabinet member and pushed through his agendas without question. Mitch McConnell made a symbolic vote against a couple of appointees like RFK Jr., breaking from the party. Turns out that polio was a rough enough experience to not agree with the anti-vax guy. That was about as dissentful as any Republican got.
While the Republican stormtroopers are marching behind the dark lord, Democrats are nowhere to be found. An article in The Nation published today (March 25, 2025) was titled “The Democrats Have Disappeared.” That sums up the current situation and the sentiment felt by Democratic voters. Politicians are largely cowering when they should be sounding the alarms.
During Trump 1.0, his advisors who broke the law were convicted and sent to prison, while others who refused to break the law kept him within the bounds of the Constitution. The courts held up; even Republicans still had a backbone and were willing to stand up to him. Of course, his first time around, the Republican vanguard still had respectable and formidable challengers who would stand their ground and could sustain political backlash from the MAGA crowd, like Senators John McCain and Mitt Romney. This time around, Trump picked loyalists over expertise in his cabinet. Other longtime Republican senators like Lindsey Graham are ready to kiss his ass like Vince McMahon in a wrestling stunt.
His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, refutes the truth from the White House Press Corps like Dolores Umbridge denying the return of Voldemort. (Make sure to click that link because the similarity is uncanny.)
Democrats are still in a state of shock and disbelief after they lost the election. The party needs to rally and unite. In the meantime, those who disagree with Trump are looking to the courts as their last hope to keep democracy and the rule of law intact. That’s not a winning strategy. It’s a safety net. The courts are slow and can be bogged down. They weren’t built to handle the blitzkrieg of the MAGA party.
The narrow exception is Bernie Sanders and AOC, who are touring the country and rallying Democratic voters. People are flocking by the thousands. The American people are hungry for dissent. They want a plan. They want a leader. But one lone senator and one representative wield next to no power in Congress.
In Trump 1.0, Republicans made sure to get as many judges as possible (especially Supreme Court justices) in their favor. They even held the spot hostage during the end of Obama’s term until Trump and the next Congress were in place. This time Trump has been going after universities and law firms hard. Why? He can’t bear the thought of dissenters or those who would stand in his way. He doesn’t want an educated and free-thinking population. He doesn’t want an education system that teaches anything counter to him. He certainly doesn’t want lawyers who keep beating him in court or even to have the judges who oppose him.
He doesn’t just want to win the game—he wants to crush everyone out there. Since he can’t win the match on his own or by following the rules, he’s going to make opponents weaker, and he’s going to keep changing the rules in his favor. Trump doesn’t want to get in the ring for a fair fight like Ali and Frazier; he wants to get in the ring while those below his weight class don’t even step inside. After he changes the rules, it’ll be like three-year-olds challenging a chess grandmaster. Who (aside from MAGA) wants to watch that?
Typical imagery of the United States includes the flag flying high, a screeching eagle symbolic of freedom, the Statue of Liberty, fireworks, and all the other cliché things that one associates with the Fourth of July. We love words like “freedom, democracy, independence, and liberty.” We tend to think of our nation as “strong” and “the best.”
Those clichés are dying fast. Democracy is failing. We are in a constitutional crisis. While our freedoms and liberties have ebbed and flowed through one crisis or another, the rule of law is now in question. We need both parties to survive MAGA. A conservative party has its place. A liberal party has its place. This is no place for a dictator or a self-proclaimed king.
Hopefully, someone besides the judges will find a backbone and stand up to the MAGA king. Winter isn’t coming. It’s here, and this is only the beginning. The only way to defeat MAGA is to stand up courageously and push back. Not just in court but in the voting booth and with every elected politician. If our elected leaders don’t have a spine, they need to be voted out and replaced with someone who does.
About the Creator
Hayden Searcy
Reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago inspired me to go to law school. It is one of the most devasting books ever written. I don't want to see that kind of authoritarianism rise again. I write to make my voice heard.
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