Frankenstein legs

For the past few days I’ve been trying to comprehend why this Epstein-Frankenstein has such legs. I think I’m finally understanding, and for that I have to thank a trump supporter friend. 

To be fair, she’s not hard core. Like so many Jewish trumpies, her support centers on trump as somehow the bulwark against antiSemitism and defender of Israel. In a conversation she said, ‘Could you imagine what would be happening in the Middle East today if Harris had been elected!” The implication being that Harris would never have the ‘guts’ to order the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites. My response is that this is pure speculation and not worth discussion - all the while thinking, that her question stems from engrained sexism (against her own gender!) Putting aside the question of whether bombing Iran was a good or bad decision in the long run, I believe Harris is thoughtful and competent and would have made sound decisions based on the facts, the risks and policy, unlike trump. It’s at least just as likely we’d be in a better position and one that is a step closer to actual peace if she were president in my view. But I don’t say this, because my friend is not actually interested in a discussion. 

I do however direct our conversation toward things that can be known. I ask her what she likes and what she dislikes, if anything, about trump. She doesn’t like him as ‘a person’ she says. She finds him crass and vulgar. I often hear that reaction from wealthier more educated trumpies. She also thinks he’s quite mentally deranged, but she considers this a plus, because it means he will do ‘crazy’ things, and that keeps other ‘establishment’ politicians off balance. She likes that he is unpredictable and a disruptor. Of course I’ve heard that many times before from trump supporters as well. And I typically try to point out that being ‘crazy’ and unpredictable is normally not a positive attribute for any position of responsibility, let alone the leader of the free world. And then I pivot to the distinction between supporting the reform of institutions and supporting their craven, abject destruction. My friend, like other trumpers I’ve spoken to, are not thinking about consequences. They are revelling in the spectacle of destruction, and suppose that whatever replaces it has to be better than what we have now. That’s just how bad things are now. Echoes of trump’s ‘carnage’ speeches.

And this is what leads to my insight, again not terribly original. The reason why Epstein-Frankenstein has the most hardcore trump supporters so up in arms, like nothing we’ve ever seen before - to the point where they are publicly burning their MAGA merchandise (heresy!) It’s because they are suddenly waking up to the possibility that trump is not actually one of them. He might actually be playing for the other team. The establishment team.  

To most of us sitting in the bleachers this was obvious. As obvious as his gold toilets, golf courses and Palm Beach private clubs. All the ‘drain the swamp’ stuff was always just BS sloganeering. Trump was always among the super rich and powerful. His interest was their interest. Angry,  tear-it-all down, working class MAGA had somehow been hoodwinked into believing he was their champion. And every time he did something outrageous, every time he acted unconventionally, and was prosecuted criminally, it burnished his reputation in their eyes as their victimized anti-establishment hero. But he never cared about them. He was never on their team. He was always the swamp. In fact, like Epstein, he was the lowest kind of predatory reptilian Florida swamp creature.

And now they are seeing it for the first time. The cover-up may indeed prove to be worse than the crime in this case, although the crime is pretty horrific. The Epstein files has dropped the scales from their eyes. Maybe it’s registering with trump’s crowd that, as in Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster was never the creature, it was always the creator.