John Fetterman Is Making You Feel Crazy
"They wanted the candidate who would best protect and project their version of the American way of life."
It was always a given that Republicans and right-wing media outlets and mainstream media – so easily cowed by fascists determined to neuter the fourth estate entirely – would contribute to making you feel like you've lost your mind during the second Trump administration.
That a Democrat in the United States Senate is joining the crazy-making cause is concerning and fucking infuriating, maybe a little of both. Definitely a little of both.
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I wrote last month about what was coming in 2025 and beyond: A political and cultural landscape very different from the one that Trump entered as president in 2017, when he was widely considered an illusion, a mistake of history, one that would be corrected in short order. After all, he didn't actually mean to win the presidency in 2016; it was all a tragic and dangerous bit that went too far. Trump was mostly rejected by mainstream culture in his first White House stint. This time he has been fully embraced by the same forces that mostly refused to play ball with his sloppy fascist bullshit the first time around. Those in power are afraid this time around. They are scrambling to Florida and begging for mercy from Dear Leader before he's sworn in.
Trump has been fully normalized. This, for untold millions of Americans, is what the leader of the free world looks like and acts like. It's why zoomers – a generation of Jokers – see Trump as perfectly normal and kinda epic and hilarious. And now congressional Democrats are helping to normalize the most radical, dangerous presidential agenda in history (this is why it was up to voters to hold Trump accountable; no one else is up to the job).
It's enough to make you feel utterly crazy.
Denny Carter
John Fetterman, once a fascinating case study in the power of rejecting the right's bad faith, is leading the charge to pretend the incoming Trump administration – stacked with far-right activists determined to make the US a less free nation – is perfectly normal and in line with other modern administrations. Fetterman is engaging MAGA freaks on Trump's social media platform, he's dismissing the potentially ruinous and inhumane policies favored by Trump officials, and urging anti-fascists to relax, to calm down, to stop being so damn crazy. A guy who tried to overthrow the American government is back in power. What's the big deal?
The second Trump administration, Fetterman quipped, will be a "kooky ride." I only hope Fetterman checks in with working class families and marginalized groups in a year to see if they too would describe this second Trump go-round as "kooky" or "ruinous and terrifying."
Denny Carter
Fetterman has said he will not "root against" the second Trump administration. By default – by its very definition – that means Fetterman will either stand by and watch as the administration terrorizes immigrants and imprisons people seeking abortion care and eviscerates Medicaid to secure tax cuts for billionaires, or he will outright support these policies. That's where John Fetterman stands: Trump is fine, and his policies will be fine.
The prosecution of Trump, a mob boss who happens to be a politician, was "bullshit," per Fetterman's first post on TruthSocial, a site teeming with some of the most odious, hateful rhetoric you'll find anywhere on the internet. Holding Trump accountable for his myriad crimes, according to the senator (hopefully the one-term variety) from Pennsylvania, was nothing short of a "weaponization" of the U.S. judiciary. To see Fetterman adopt far-right, bad-faith talking points about the prosecution of Donald Trump is as disheartening as anything I can remember since launching Bad Faith Times in 2022. It puts Fetterman in league with those who have gaslighted us for years about Trump's criminal behavior and plan to deploy the government as a weapon against Trump's long and varied enemies list. Trump's crimes didn't happen, they say, and it they did happen, they was justified and for the good of the country. Fetterman fully agrees. The gaslighting will continue until morale improves.
Fetterman said during a recent ABC News interview that he "knows and loves" registered Democrats in Pennsylvania who voted for the insurrectionist candidate who promises to use the full force of the federal government to forcibly remove immigrants – or those suspected of being immigrants – from the country on Day One of his second term. These Pennsylvania Democrats, Fetterman said, "are not fascists."
Fascism, he said, "is not a word that regular people use." By regular people, Fetterman of course means Americans who have no concept of history and zero context through which to view an incoming administration committed to various fascist ideals. Fetterman is correct: Fascism is not a word Americans use beyond describing someone whose politics irritate them. Perhaps Americans should read one (1) book. Then they might use fascism to describe the unwinding of representative democracy.
Every fascist's favorite Democrat talks to ABC News
"They wanted the candidate who would best protect and project their version of the American way of life," Fetterman told ABC News.
And he's not wrong. Untold numbers of Trump backers voted for him not despite the man's revolting blood-and-soil tirades about migrants poisoning the precious blood of our god-given fatherland, but because of those rantings. Trump, more than anything, pledged to re-establish racial and sexual and sociological hierarchies that Americans have increasingly seen as threatened in the third decade of the 21st century because they saw one transgender person on a national TV ad in 2022.
Trump said he would make clear the nation's hierarchies of domination and voters – even people of color, even women, even young folks – said yes please. John Fetterman sees this and appears to be OK with it. Sadly, infuriatingly, he's not alone. Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi of New York – who lives in a world where the Democratic Party has somehow veered hard to the left – has also pledged to work closely with the anti-democracy Trump administration in accomplishing its insidious goals.
Denny Carter
What Fetterman is doing here, and likely will continue to do into 2025 and beyond, is making you feel like you're insane, like it's you who has gone off the political rails over the past decade, as Trump's 21st century style of fascism has become part of the American cultural and political fabric.
The incoming president is like any other president, Fetterman seems to say with his pro-style gaslighting of well-meaning people who remain clear-eyed about what Trump's radicalized lieutenants plan to do with control over the federal government. Nothing has changed about Trump's agenda since he won the election a month and a half ago. He was a threat to the republic before the election and he remains so today. That he eked out a popular vote victory means nothing in this calculus.
That stench you smell, Fetterman tells us, has always been there. To suggest it has not means you are crazy, he says. Don't listen to Fetterman and his ilk. They have consciously or unconsciously adopted a right-wing framing of major political issues and will operate accordingly. They are not playing nine-dimensional chess here; they are capitulating in advance. You and I can reject this without feeling crazy. Because we aren't.
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.
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