Today’s advertiser is Heywa. Although Beehiiv rules forbid me from asking or encouraging you to click the ad, if you do so, of your own free will and according to your own moral principles, each click will earn me $2.25.

Stay in any relationship long enough, and you will one day ask yourself: What happens when the other person dies? It could be your parents, your partner, your pets, friends, colleagues, enemies. None of them will last forever. And you, {{first_name|dear reader}}, will surely, obviously outlive them. What will it be like when they’re gone — when you can no longer DM them crude memes, when they can’t invite you to barbecues, when the adorably annoying way they sneeze begins to fade from your memory? And that’s perhaps skipping over the more painful question: How will you handle the days/weeks/months leading up to that inevitability? Will everyone stay cheery and pretend the end ain’t nigh, or will you all stone-facedly confront reality?

And, while you’re treading water in that dreadful suspense, will you at some point wonder: Maybe they should just die right now — it will be easier, kinder, better for everyone that way.

And this, {{first_name|dear reader}}, is where we’re at now with the president of the United States. Across the country and around the globe, at almost all points on the political spectrum, human beings have had enough. Everybody¹ wants him dead.

More after the ad…

A lot of that “everybody” is pretty obvious. It includes a good portion of the Muslim world, particularly in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and anywhere else that’s been suffering from the U.S.-Israeli war crimes machine. Throw in much of the American left, too. Sure, there were always angry radicals who dreamed of his death, not to mention the few incompetent nutsos who have haplessly attempted assassinations, but now even the most milquetoast liberals realize that as long as he lives, whether remaining in power or voted out of it, he’s going to menace our fragile democracy. They’re not deranged, they’re just exhausted — dead tired, you might say — and they want to put him out of their misery.

But the more interesting ones are on the right. Yes, his own people want him dead as well! This recent article in Wired spells out how everyone from conservative leaders to the Republican base is just done with him:

And that’s not all! MAGA Christians are done with him. White nationalist Nick Fuentes is done with him. MAGA conspiracy theorists are done with him. MAHA moms are done with him.

Regretting the president is, regretfully, not a sign that his supporters have changed political stripes. Instead, they see him as having betrayed the movement he and they started: Through his idiotic policies, pointless wars, and half-baked executive actions, he’s shown himself to be just as craven and elitist as the swampy neocons he was supposedly supplanting. He is now the main impediment to creating the America — the white, Christian, raw-milk-drinking, vaccine-eschewing, additive-free, immigrant-free America — they’ve dreamed of for decades. So now they want him dead.

What’s my evidence for this homicidal turn of heart? No, it’s not that I assume, sterotypically, that right-wingers dream of murder — come on, we know all Americans dream of murder! But in this case, my evidence is what these ex-supporters are not saying. That is, no one can come right out and say, “I wish the president was dead.” That right there earns you a visit from the Secret Service³, and who knows what kind of punishment or attention.

But everyone is thinking it. Everyone is dreaming of saying it. It’s on the tips of their tongues, murmuring unspoken in their throats. All across the right, they want him dead — because he’s more useful to them dead. If he’s assassinated, he becomes a martyr, and they can use that to try to ram through their un-Constitutional, un-American restrictions. If he merely tumbles down a small set of stairs and bonks his head pretty hard, then he can be remembered fondly, an inspiration for the present moment who, both sadly and fortunately, won’t get to see the future. Either way, the president has outlived his usefulness².

Me? I want him to survive! Obviously, that’s in part because I’m hoping he’ll have a massive stroke, become incapacitated, and have to rely on home health aides for the basics — eating, bathing, communicating, wiping his ass — for two or three decades more.

But it’s also because the president is not really “in the way” of the fulfillment of the glorious MAGA dream. His wars, his tariffs, his militarized anti-immigrant (and anti-citizen) police actions are not a betrayal of his supporters. They are the logical consequence of that dream. He is doing everything you would and should do if your political movement is founded on lies and hallucinations: Immigrants create crime! Foreign countries will pay our taxes! Christians are persecuted and must fight back! Believe those insanities, and act on those beliefs, and you’ll find your economy in shambles, your nation isolated, your citizens engaged in violence at home and abroad. This man is doing exactly what he was elected to do, and the longer he remains in power, the more everyone — especially on the right — will come to see that his movement was built on bullshit and corruption, and that there’s no escaping that rot for the Republican Party. Some of those ex-supporters may come to the side of light, and some may not; let’s hope those who don’t at least have the decency not to try this crap again.

And so please join me in wishing a long (if not necessarily healthy) life to Donald J. Trump, president of these barely United States! 🪨🪨🪨