STOP Dumbwashing MAGA
They're Winning, while we point, laugh, and lose.
I’m so sick of it. Are you not all sick of it? The constant insistence that Donald Trump is the dumbest president, that his cabinet is full of idiots and lackeys, that they are incompetent and laughable.
“Trump says tariffs are going to fix the economy; does he not know basic macro econ? Does he not understand how tariffs work? He’s such a moron!”
—half the news media.
“They all are! Listen to all the dumb things he says about everything! So dumb!”
Am I sick of it because it’s the truth? No. I’m sick of it because we are dumb washing them. And while we do that, it detracts from the real damage, the real harm, the real intent of their actions.
What’s crazy to me is that smart, college-educated elites can sit there calling the MAGA side idiots, when the MAGA side has managed to grab the presidency, the House, and the Senate. These "incompetent assholes" have not only seized power in all three branches, but they packed the courts to get one. They broke norms to make sure the court was lopsided as hell, full of conservatives, Catholics, and conservative Catholics. Once that was done, Justice Roberts finally got to go mask off and granted Trump kinglike immunities.
“But the Republicans are dumb! They don’t know how to govern!”
LISTEN UP, DUMMY: THEY AREN’T TRYING TO GOVERN! Not in the sense that you think they are. They aren’t trying to solve problems—they are there to undo progress. And if that’s too much work, they sit on their hands and do nothing, then point at the government’s failure, using their own sabotage as proof of its ineffectiveness. And yet we call them the dumb ones?
Why do we keep analyzing them by the standards we expect politicians to meet, instead of understanding what their underlying goals actually are?
I can tell you now: the party of progressives will always have more trouble doing anything. Because progress requires hard work, nuance, creativity, and compromise. When I think of the modern progressive, I see someone trying to sally forth into the future with green energy and equality for all; a rocky road, full of ups and downs, small wins, and painful setbacks.
Compare that to the modern conservative movement, which is MAGA nationalism, and not conservative at all. They just want to undo progress. They don’t have new plans. It’s about destroying the system that "wronged" them.
My eldest is five, and I think of progressives and MAGA this way: when me and my eldest son play Legos, we can spend an hour building a city. Taking our time. Planning the pieces. But then my two-year-old comes in and can instantly destroy it. This is U.S. politics in a nutshell. How do you move forward when half the country is not only hanging on your leg but actively dragging it backward?
They aren’t dumb. And calling them dumb makes us look dumb. Because if they’re dumb and they keep winning? What does that make us? How intelligent are we if we get hoodwinked by these "dumb folks" again and again, every damn decade? Why do we think you can’t be dumb in one way and smart in another way?
Genius doesn't mean generally you are brilliant at everything, generally when genius is applied to someone it is in a specific field or area. For example to drive home the point, I would argue trump is a genius at understanding underlying grievance in a subset of Americans and has genius levels of charisma required to capitalize and captivate that population, that is real genius; where as if you asked him to locate cuba on a map, or do some simple math we would all laugh at his idiocy.
I remember watching the media laugh at Elon Musk when he bought Twitter for $44 billion. Financial analysts and political pundits sneered at the “dumb billionaire” making a stupid purchase. They thought it was all ego. But nobody looked deeper. People do things for more than one reason. In fact, we usually do. And it wasn’t until the 2024 election that it hit us…maybe Elon didn’t buy Twitter just to pad his ego and for the memes.
Like any industrious Nazi with bad intentions, narcissistic tendencies, and zero moral scruples, he bought the media for control. For power. Like Alfred Hugenberg in 1920s and '30s Germany, Musk understood: control the medium, control the message.
Now we call Trump dumb for his negotiations with China, we laugh at his TACO trades, where he announces tariffs, backs down, and everyone mocks him. But the market jumps, MTG goes from $700K to $22 million in a year. Pam Bondi buys in and sells off Trump’s crypto coins. Trump’s coin spikes up and down. And our big dumb president? A real Billionaire now.
He is dumb, but in traditional ways. He blurts out the quiet part loud. He doesn’t get geopolitics. He sucks at those types of negotiations. But none of that matters if your actual goal is to enrich yourself and your cronies. If the goal is to get rich, dodge your crimes, and cover for your buddies’ crimes, then stop analyzing him like he’s trying to run the country in good faith.
We are dumbwashing him and his goons while very smart people like Stephen Miller run roughshod over the Constitution. While we watch the clown show, the bombastic tweets, the circus antics, they rob us blind. And we point and say, “Look at the dummies!” We comfort ourselves: “It’s good that they’re so incompetent, otherwise they could do some real damage!”
And we pat ourselves on the back. “I understand how tariffs really work. I understand the rule of law.”
Do you still feel smart? Knowing what’s happening to your country? Knowing you’re powerless but to laugh and sneer at the “dumb dumbs”?
WAKE UP!
We are the idiots.
They are winning. Politically. Socially.
Stop dumbwashing this administration. You’re hiding the real harm. You’re masking the real crimes, the real damage, the real wins they’re racking up.
And when you do that? You’re masking our losses.
I don’t know about you but if we want to win, we need to understand and know how we are losing.
-CZ