Twilight of TheDonald

First, a Winkie family announcement. My brother wrote a goddamn movie, sold it to Hulu, and the trailer dropped this week. I'm enormously proud of him! It's called The Ultimate Playlist of Noise, and it will be the funny, indie-rock teen heartache you need as we enter the uncertain months ahead. Watch the trailer here, and please stream the film when it hits Hulu on January 15th. Shout out to Mitchell Winkie, don't spend it all in one place, kid.

And now, onto the Posts.

--

Joseph McCarthy's eyes are photoshopped to glow a neon red on TheDonald.win. He stands in front of a vintage U.S. map, long before the annexation of Alaska and Hawaii, lost in the middle of one of his quixotic lectures identifying the many pinkos plotting against the benevolent forces of liberal democracy. I have witnessed countless grotesque spectacles during my pilgrimages to online Trumpist assemblages since the election, but a McCarthy hagiography was still not something I saw coming. "If only you knew how right he was," comments one user. "He was wrongfully condemned by the nation!" adds another. "We'll be shipped away if we don't fight back real soon," adds a third.

A quick history lesson for any non-American readers of On Posting: Joseph McCarthy was a Wisconsin Senator who sparked a disastrous and deeply embarrassing era of communist paranoia after World War II. He encouraged God-fearing Americans to eavesdrop on their contemporaries and report back any perceived Leninist inclinations, ironically pantomiming the paranoid KGB-style morality inquisitions they'd learned to fear. Another quick history lesson: "TheDonald.win'' was conceived as a continuation of the former "TheDonald" subreddit. TheDonald, (the first one,) existed as the watering hole for Reddit's reactionary community until the brass of that company neutralized the forum due to a laundry list of conduct violations. (Those included: Rampant Islamophobia, gleefully conspiratorial proselytizing, and a penchant for stark cruelty.) TheDonald.win was the rebuke to that excommunication; it was formed in late 2019 as a failsafe haven as Reddit slowly pried the original TheDonald from its servers. Once that happened in full, TheDonald.win experienced a windfall of uncouth diehards eager to make landfall on a website far off the map. They are here still, keeping the dream alive

This migration served its purpose. I don't have to tell you that revisionist McCarthyism would probably not fly on mainstream channels. But in this new hemisphere? Old Joe's face is stickied to the top of the forum, like a poignant manifestation of the psychedelic dissociation from reality that most Trump voters are experiencing as we enter week six(?) of #StopTheSteal. We're in the endgame now baby. All the other efforts have failed. The recounts were a bust; the certification boards did their job; and last Friday, The Supreme Court told the GOP to kick rocks after Texas' Attorney General filed a specious lawsuit aiming to disenfranchise millions of Joe Biden voters. The sicko base was left with no other option than to retreat and fortify — forming a Spartan-like phalanx of warmed-over Pepe memes — with the hope that some empyrean Constitutional footnote will descend from onhigh and save them from their decisive end at the hands of a 78-year old dude in Delaware.

"HERE'S THE SHORT TERM OUTLOOK," announces one poster on TheDonald.win, shortly after Trump self-immolated at the highest court in the land. "The Chicoms [that is Chinese Communist Party] will likely detonate a dirty bomb or EMP over US soil and use the event to shut down most independent communications. They will unleash roving death squads to hit specific targets based on known leaders, key influencers, and key positions of power. … The violence will be blamed on white supremecists. The authorities will use the emergency to clear rural areas while herding everyone else into urban 'safe zones' and into traps of quarantine, disarmament and loyalty-testing genocide funnels. During this crisis, excuses will be found for the mass importing of Chinese workers, fighters, and supplies into controlled ports. … Don't let them take your weapons. Don't let them put you in cuffs. If you do, you'll burn in the camps."

I've lurked on TheDonald.win almost daily since Trump's joyous defeat in the electoral college, and I possess the presence of mind to admit that my impulse is rooted in an unsustainable praxis. It's telling that my first instinct following Biden's ascension was to jump on the conservative internet in order to witness my enemies cope hard. I have zero faith in the President-elect's agenda; in fact, the only way I'm able to feel positive about his victory is within the fresh, pungent agony of the MAGA chuds. Just desserts, as far as I'm concerned, for how they gorged themselves on all those LIBERAL TEARS following 2016. But what are we left with? A political apparatus rapidly spiraling to ruin, offering cheap emotional serotonin boosts in lieu of any comprehensive answers to the manifold crises bound to degrade and dehumanize our way of life. Until then, our sole legislative currency is a very nihilistic, carnal ownage. And while I'm loath to admit it, that ownage does put a smile on my face.

"Batman isn't coming to save us," writes a poster under the username Thunderpussy. "Fortunately, some of us saw this coming and have been busy preparing for such a moment. The Democrats will use the chaos as an excuse to gun grab and further tighten the screws over people. Even a moron should be able to see this is their plan."

These are the two dueling theories that encapsulate the reeling in TheDonald.win contingency. Some, like my man Thunderpussy here, believe the fix is already in. It's time to head for the hills — embracing that militia-forming, Campbell's-stockpiling, libertarianism-as-a-clinical-disorder credo that always formulated the core of the MAGA Guy's moral development. Honestly it must be kind of nice for these men to go back to their anti-Washington roots; wearing questionable camouflage bandanas, chopping firewood until that prophesied Red Dawn shows up at their doorstep. 

"If they certify it, take us down to Defcon 2. Order the arrest of all election officials and judges who ignored the evidence," adds another poster, who I imagine is renting a cot in Thunderpussy's bunker. "Deputize 80 million conservatives with federal police powers to enforce martial law so we don't have to rely on a deep state-controlled military and tainted generals like Mattis."

Elsewhere, TheDonald.win's more optimistic lifers believe that another shoe is sure to drop. This is perhaps the cruelest thing Trump has inflicted upon his ardent supporters over the past four years; electoral failure is a uniquely humiliating trial, but by his refusal to cede the results — this insistence that he is still a few moves ahead on the chess board — he's condemned the base to a sadistic Sisspyhean cycle where the night of November 3rd will never end. They are doomed to lose in perpetuity; getting their hopes up for yet another dog and pony show drummed up by a cadre of conservative grifters eager for one last big score. This allows them no self-reflection, no regrouping, no internal processing; they are Charlie Brown in a MAGA hat missing the football over and over again.

"This was never part of the Trump team's original plan to victory. We must stay the course. There are a number of options left to exhaust," writes one user, minutes after the Supreme Court ruling came down. "Trump will not be forced out of the White House under any circumstance, let's get back to fucking work."

"I think the plan all along was martial law and military tribunals," parrots another. "The swamp has been exposed and this is the only way to properly drain it."

The scary thing is that most of these talking points don't deviate far from the Trump Administration's hallucinatory Final Crisis. The idea that the sitting President, a historically lazy and unmotivated figure, would put in the hard work to quilt the map with kangaroo courts in order to hang on to a final shred of tyranny is tough to imagine. But then again, Sidney Powell, who was formerly a central part of Trump’s clownshoes legal roster, has basically floated the exact same game plan. Meanwhile, Texas GOPers are emerging as the party of Stonewall Jackson by indulging in a small taste of secession mania. This will all culminate in January, where there will almost certainly be a floor fight when Republican congressmembers mewl about the previously symbolic task of counting the certified votes. The maniacs in the Republican party may not be cut from the same harebrained crackpots on TheDonald.win, but they are certainly aware of who represents their coalition in 2022 and beyond.

"I tried to tell people about all these Catholics that Trump was nominating to the Supreme Court. Catholics can not be trusted," writes user MyDogHatesDemocrats3, who I imagine is currently sporting a freshly polished buckle-hat and is still getting their land legs after disembarking the Mayflower. "America is a Protestant nation as founded. Catholics follow the doctrines of their imagination."

"Just make it so only landowners can vote," writes another user, who mysteriously has internet access in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts. "By requiring owning land you only get voters that want to improve the state of things so their property value increases."

"Even before I owned land I was in agreement with this," someone replies. 

I am certain that TheDonald.win will push through this moment of precarity. At this rate, #StopTheSteal might be Donald Trump's 2024 campaign slogan. After such a long, protracted courtship with the wackjobs, no reckoning can suppress them for long. America shall not escape the derangement so easily, and I think we all know that in the darkest parts of our soul. That's why I must bathe in the hot viscera of their ownage; for I know that it is only a matter of time until I am owned again.

--

One last thing. I'd like to thank all of you for your support of On Posting. This might be a controversial take, but 2020 has been a challenging year. Writing this newsletter has been one of the few bright spots. I'll see you in 2021.