Donald Trump drinks liberal tears!

The twisted joy of watching your opponents in meltdown

A few years ago I was listening to the James O’Brien LBC talk-show. He was asking a caller why he’d voted Brexit.

“Because it annoys people like you” the man replied.

It was just a flippant comment, and O’Brien moved on. But I thought it was one of the most interesting and insightful sentences I’d heard about politics in years. It’s stuck with me ever since. I did it, because it annoys people like you.

As the years have passed that strange motive – annoying the people you disagree with – has become more than just a side story. I have a sneaking feeling that, for some people at least, it’s what politics is about.  

We all have guilty pleasures. I secretly enjoy watching a hard-line and sanctimonious left-wing pundit getting taken down on TV.  Why? I personally find herd-like righteous indignation the most irritating of all political traits. There is no-one quite as irking as Tolstoy’s Oblonsky, and that’s probably because he’s ubiquitous.   

“…[his] tendency and opinions were not his by deliberate choice: they came of themselves, just as he did not choose the fashion of his hats or coats but wore those of the current style. Living in a certain social set, and having a desire, such as generally develops with maturity, for some kind of mental activity, he was obliged to hold views, just as he was obliged to have a hat.” 

But with the election of Trump, the because it annoys people like you phenomenon has reached a dramatic and depressing crescendo. And – my timelines at least – were flooded with endless memes and compilations of ‘liberal tears’. Videos of liberals in catastrophic, end-of-days meltdown.  

Trump drinks liberal tears! He takes power from them – he swims in ‘em!   

This strange new online trend is the purest form of culture war politics, where the W isn’t simply getting the 270 electoral college votes. It’s watching the vanquished liberals scream and wail and weep. It’s not enough that I succeed, all others must fail! As Make Mongolia Great Again visionary Genghis Khan once said.