The Death Logic behind Trumpism: Even nuclear winter would be worth it to own the libs
Not long after the inauguration of President Trump in 2017, I ran into a discussion of the Doomsday Clock on Facebook.
That year, the clock, that midcentury modernist data-viz illustrating the imminence of global catastrophe, showed 11:57:30 p.m. Two and a half minutes to midnight, two and a half minutes to doom.
This was the closest the world had been to ending, in the opinion of the atomic scientists who keep the clock, since 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union first tested hydrogen bombs. (In 2018, the Doomsday Clock ticked ahead to 11:58. The 2019 Doomsday Clock will be unveiled on Jan. 24.)
Most people discussing the clock on Facebook were, to say the least, concerned. The topic wasn’t politics but fear; doom isn’t partisan. But one commenter who repped MAGA consoled himself with his own calculus. “Better nuclear winter than more letters in LGBTQ,” he wrote.
Suddenly, the whole internet seemed to hold its breath. “I hope it’s all you dreamed,” I typed in a fury.
I signed off Facebook then, and, soon after, I signed off it for good.
Since that exchange, I’ve made mental reference many times to the terrifying aphorism of that Facebooker. It was, looking back, scarier than the Doomsday Clock ticking away.
His words laid bare the Death Logic that suffuses the philosophy of Trump and his supporters. The idea is that even the annihilation of humankind is worth it if it owns the libs.
This thinking is now regularly satirized in memes that illustrate how Republicans are cutting off their noses to spite … everything. Throw the nation into massive debt to own the libs. Align with fascism to own the libs. Crash the government to own the libs.
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