Don’t Let Donald Trump Take Your Soul, Too

We’ve seen it happen before.

Hey guys. I’m subbing in for JVL today—and, fair warning: I get into my feelings a little bit in this one. But it’s been that sort of month. –Tim

1. The Temptation of LOLNMR

There was a phrase in vogue during the Pleistocene Trump years that became a rallying cry for professional Republican types who at the time were still trying to work through their comfort level with the party’s new overlord. It shielded them from having to really grapple with the moral compromises of their new station. If you were a Twitter addict, you will likely recall it:

LOL Nothing Matters.

In the chapter of Why We Did It in which I sketched out the different phenotypes of Trumpian enablers, I described these Republicans this way:

Then you had the LOL Nothing Matters Republicans. This cadre gained steam over the years, especially among my former peers in the campaign set. It is a comforting ethos if you are professionally obligated to defend the indefensible day in and day out. Their arguments no longer needed to have merit or be consistent because, LOL, nothing matters. . . . The LOLNMRs had decided that if someone like Trump could win, then everything that everyone does in politics is meaningless. So they became nihilists.

Sure the LOLNMR ideology was morally bankrupt and childish, but there’s no doubt why it was appealing. If a manifestly unfit Barnum & Bailey confidence man like Trump could become president, then why are the rest of us out here minding our p’s and q’s? Fuck it. Get the bag.

The case for such a mindset is, if anything, even stronger today than it was then. If Trump can win again? After all the scandals? After attempting the second-stupidest coup of the decade? At times it feels like not giving way to nihilism is the crazy reaction.

So I can’t exactly say that it was a surprise over the past week when I began to hear a lot of familiar-sounding notes from my anti-Trump friends. Many of them were now coming to the conclusion that nothing matters. That our cold, new world is Hobbesian, with everyone out to get theirs.

That mindset was reflected in the starkest manner in the reaction to President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter. Will Saletan catalogued examples of the reactions he saw on social media in an article earlier this week:

“America elected a convicted felon in 2024 and I no longer care about ‘norms,” one commenter shrugged. “The voters have spoken and integrity is passé,” said another. A third asked: “Why should he [Biden] sacrifice a single thing more for ideals the populace no longer believe in?”

Again, I get the sentiment. An adjudicated rapist felon who stored our national secrets next to his shitter is going back to the Oval Office, there are no rules!

In the days after the Hunter pardon I was inundated with variations on this theme. If I had a quarter for everyone who sent a tweet/email/DM upbraiding me for daring to even utter the word “norms,” well, I’d have a few Norms! six-packs at the very least. The notion that the Democrats need to stop caring about niceties and traditions and laws and respect was quickly catching on.

The old world where that stuff mattered is gone, they said.

Or as one friend texted, “There is no justice. Democrats were fucking morons for ever believing ‘when they go low, we go high.’ New plan: ‘when they go low, we go high—yeah, eyes, throat, nose.’”

But as disquieting as this widespread desire for retribution was, the LOL Nothing Matters sentiment was most dispiriting when it came from a place not of bloodlust but earnest sadness.

As we were watching the LSU/Oklahoma game at a bar last Saturday, one of my buddies told me that a colleague of his had begun listening to The Bulwark Podcast since the election to try to help process the dark thoughts that she was having. She is a doctor, a nice person, the kind whose whole life has been oriented toward helping others. But her resolve had been shaken. The election was a brutal intrusion signaling that people simply didn’t value being “nice,” that the country was somehow darker than she had ever really contemplated.

This listener was the epitome of that floundering “best” person that Jon Lovett described recently: “The worst people are vindicated and believe their worldview has been validated by this and the best people are uncertain and scared and angry and confused.” And so for many of these people, the fear and anger has led to a sort of surrender. A hardening of the heart. Accepting a new reality. One where the things they once thought were virtuous are not only disrespected but even harmful to progress.

And in that world, why should anyone care about any of this.

We can’t do what we do without the support of all of you. The best ways to ensure our work reaches the largest possible audience are to share it with others and become a Bulwark+ member.

2. Their morals, their code—it’s a bad joke

I can relate to all these sentiments. Almost more than I’d like to admit.

When it comes to the idea that Democrats should fight harder, take a few cheap shots, kick the Republicans in the balls when they aren’t looking, sign me up. I’m down for that. As for the rest, well, I have told several people lately that I am concerned this election will be my Joker origin story.

But I keep pulling myself back from the brink—I think, in part, because I’ve seen how the nihilism infected my Republican friends. That cold, hard-heartedness is an ugly thing. I’ve seen the result of the LOL Nothing Matters ethos at scale, up close, and the result is horrifying.

This mindset doesn’t just corrupt people. It destroys their souls.

Don’t believe me? Just watch Rick Scott:

<Shudder.>

Turning into that is a fate best avoided, for all of us. We all of us have to summon the strength to resist the call of the nihilists.

Can I be corny for a second? I mean really corny. Dad corny. Like roll-your-eyes-so-far-back-in-your-head-that-they-get-stuck-there corny.

Because here it comes.

There is one thing that does matter in this life. And it’s the only thing you actually control: Acting in accordance with your own integrity. In a way that lets you feel good about yourself.

That’s it. Everything else out there? It’s chance. Luck. Atoms colliding.

All you can do is make choices that align with the person you want to be in the world. And periodically do a little self-examination to ensure you are doing right by yourself.

Sometimes it’s really hard. Painful, even. And you won’t always get it right. We all fail. We have blind spots. Temptations. Pride. We convince ourselves that something we want is actually something that is right for us.

That’s okay. As long as you are still keeping tabs and trying to become the best version of yourself.

So, in short, what matters is you.¹ Your choices. Your integrity.

The rest of this politics stuff, yeah, it matters too. Of course it does: Lives will be upended. Good people will suffer. Undeserving people will reap unimaginable rewards.

But that’s all out of our hands now.

You can’t make Donald Trump not president. Can’t make your neighbors nicer. You can’t make them care more about the rape cabinet the president is assembling. You can’t make them value democracy or Haitian refugees or climate or reproductive rights or whatever else it may be that’s keeping you up at night over their own interests.

That’s all in the books already.

All that’s left is living your values, so that hopefully, one day, you will feel good about playing a small role in whatever movement emerges to stop the current menace. Or, if that’s not in the cards (and why would it be?), at least you will know that you retained your honor as our nation succumbed to kakistocracy.

Not great. But better than the alternative.

Because that other path? The one that sounds so good in our lizard brain. Where we stop giving a fuck about corny shit like “acting in accordance with our integrity” and decide its time to laugh as the world burns? The path where we all decide that Donald Trump was right about rules and norms and values being for suckers? That’s a dark and scary path indeed.

And if somehow we eventually manage to extricate ourselves from this current predicament, I’m not interested in a sequel with a mango monster of our own making.

So I want to leave you with this.

I’m trying real hard to live a life that is fulfilling and meaningful, where I grow and if I falter I get up again. One where I examine my own actions and choices and take them seriously. Where they matter, if not to anyone else, at least to me.

I refuse to let Donald Trump take that away from me.

And you shouldn’t let him take your integrity from you either.

Because if you do, his final victory won’t be 11/5/24 or when he’s elected again as Lara’s VP in 2028. His final victory will be over you.

It might be cold comfort at this moment. It sure is for me. But that doesn’t make it any less true. At this point Donald Trump has conquered the world. But your soul is the one thing that he can’t have . . . unless you give it to him.

✌️

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3. But Trump Can Have “Y.M.C.A.”

So apparently a member of the Village People has gone MAGA and is denying that “Y.M.C.A.” was a gay anthem. Sure, why not.

I have to admit that this is a bit of an L for me. There was a moment in 2020 where I argued that the gays should take back “Y.M.C.A.” from these MAGA losers. Play it at clubs, put it on playlists, use it as the soundtrack for instagram thot photos. Refuse to let our culture be their costume.

But alas this article marks the end point of this grassroots campaign. MAGA wins again, they have taken “Y.M.C.A.”

Read more about the history of MAGA anthem “Y.M.C.A.,” if you care.

1. I told you it was going to be corny.