Trump is our team
If many Americans cannot keep a job for very long, or love the same person for a lifetime, or live in the same house with our biological children, we can, by God, love and cherish and nurture and adore and follow the same sports team for a lifetime, until death do us part.
I've seen men laid out in a coffin wearing a Red Sox jacket, and no one in the room thought it was at all strange that Uncle Kenny chose to go to his last rest in shiny team gear.
Which explains a lot of what you need to know about the non-majority slice of Americans who still, and there's no other word for it, continue to "believe" in Donald Trump.
Trump is their team. The parallels between Trump worship and sports fan-ery are sharp.
Like the Yankees or Cowboys fan, the Trump fan owns and wears the cap, and quite often the T-shirt. The Yankees fan who wears his cap to a Red Sox game in Boston is delighted when the Sox fans display anger or hostility toward him. It's "owning the Red Sox fans," just the way your MAGA cap means you're "owning the libs."
The real fan won't abandon his or her team just because they stink. Real fans love their team even if it doesn't put in a World Series appearance for many decades. Did I mention I live in Massachusetts? Like the fans of a stumbling, bumbling football team, Trump fans won't abandon him even if he never wins the popular vote, as he never has yet. Lose the pennant? Wait until next year. Lose the presidency? Wait until 2024.
Any loss can be explained as the result of conspiracy. Blow the Super Bowl? It was because of bad calls or bribed referees. "Kill the umpire" was the old howl of the disgruntled fan. "Hang Mike Pence" took over. As the trainers of losing boxers say, "We wuz robbed," just as Trump fans said, "Stop the steal."
Real fans will forgive a sports star for anything, including marital infidelity, drug abuse, groping random women, stupid public statements and general jackass-ery. As long as you play for "our team," we will hold your narcissistic, ignorant, millionaire butt to a lower standard than we require of husbands, wives, children and friends.
And, of course, women count for nothing. Men play. Women cheer, fetch snacks and are dressed in the smallest possible scraps of team colors. Women are fans, too, perfectly free to sit down and watch the game after they wrestle those Pizza Rolls out of the microwave.
The slogans are short. "Here we go, Yankees!" "Make America Great Again!" "Defense! Defense!" "Lock Her Up!" "Block that kick!" "Build the wall!"
Before the American flag was a piece of clothing, in the heat of Civil War battle, if the man carrying the flag was hit by a bullet, another man would seize the flag so it would not touch the ground, back before the flag was a halter top you wore to a Trump rally.
Trump is out there now, insisting that every indictment is a bad call, that judges are just bribed referees, that the "real fans" love him, that we'll win it all next year.
© Creators, 2023