A Modest Salute to President Trump's Faithful

Salt Lake City Protest, April 2025

A few days ago I posted this satirical piece I put to together with my imaginary new friend, Samuel K., and linked it to my Facebook page. Someone I've known for many years, but not kept up with over those years except cursorily on Facebook, responded to my post commenting "You do realize you are calling your friends stupid?"  I knew immediately her question was meant to be rhetorical.

I do know not all people who support President Trump are stupid, but took my Facebook friend's response to my post as mostly defensive. I have no idea if she'd only seen the photo at the top of the piece I took at a protest in Salt Lake City back in April which said that 1 out of 3 Trump supporters are as stupid as the other 2 and not read the satirical piece below it, but admittedly wasn't particularly curious about that.

I couldn't necessarily blame her for not reading my post as i was mostly playing around entertaining myself in these times of daily what the hells and reallys!!? 

I found the protest sign funny at the time I made the photograph, but in no way did I feel obligated to take the sign literally as the truth. Unlike my Facebook friend, I haven't completely lost my sense of humor.

I can easily offer evidence that those supporting President Trump are many other things too like dull or willfully ignorant or selfish, self-serving pricks (See Also:  Trae Crowder here). I offered up some alternatives, not those, to "stupid," all true, but she responded she was "none of the above." I'd even offered that I assumed some of the president's supporters "may be good people." 

So it goes.

Welp, I figured I should again consult with my new friend Samuel K. (a composite of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut whose voices would be helpful in these times) and ask them to offer a defense of President Trump's supporters. After not a few exchanges with them, here's what my new imaginary friend has to say.

By Samuel K. Von Twain

It is a remarkable thing to watch the last tattered remnants of the American experiment flutter like a moth around the golden hair of President Donald J. Trump. The people who still support him—God bless their sturdy skulls—are proof that loyalty is a powerful glue, particularly when poured directly into the ear and allowed to harden.

I say this not in judgment, but in admiration. It takes a special sort of tenacity to cling to a man who has been impeached twice, indicted more times than a back-alley loan shark, and yet claims persecution so convincingly you’d think he’d just been dragged from a Roman coliseum in chains.

The President’s admirers are not merely his voters. No, they are his apostles, each ready to spread the gospel that the man is both America’s last hope and the world’s richest underdog. And in the spirit of Mark Twain’s suggestion that we give the people what they want—and Vonnegut’s suspicion that humanity may not deserve better—allow me to defend them.


The Education Problem That Isn’t One

You might think our national tendency to elect con artists, carnival barkers, and snake oil merchants has something to do with the quality of education in this country. But that’s just elitist talk. Education, as it once existed, tried to cultivate curiosity and critical thinking—two dangerous traits for a democracy that now treats reality as a choose-your-own-adventure book.

We don’t really have public education anymore; we have a system of glorified babysitting where the main lesson is how to sit still for standardized tests that measure compliance rather than intelligence. And now, thanks to the administration’s noble attempt to dismantle the Department of Education altogether, we are spared even the pretense that young Americans should learn inconvenient things like history, science, or why “irony” doesn’t mean “made of iron.”

See, indoctrination is when the other side teaches their version of events. Education is when our side teaches ours. The trouble is, without referees like the Department of Education, there’s no one to argue about which is which—meaning the loudest voice wins. And my, does the President have a loud voice.

The Dunning-Kruger Waltz

The Dunning-Kruger Effect—named for two men who discovered that the less you know about something, the more certain you are that you’re right—should be etched in marble outside the White House. In the current age, ignorance isn’t a handicap; it’s a form of patriotism.

And why not? If you believe you know as much about epidemiology as a virologist, climate science as a meteorologist, or geopolitics as a diplomat—because you once saw a Facebook meme about it—you are exactly the kind of citizen the President cherishes. Experts are a nuisance, always reminding you that two plus two equals four, when the President assures you it equals whatever will make you feel better about yourself.

The Truth Is a Luxury We Can’t Afford

In healthier times, knowing the truth about an issue was considered necessary for a functioning democracy. Now it’s treated like contraband, available only to those who can afford the mental risk of changing their minds. The rest are happy to outsource reality to whichever cable network speaks their language—Fox News, Newsmax, OANN—all of which have become the presidential press office in everything but official title.

This arrangement is efficient: the President says something, the network repeats it louder, and by nightfall it’s been baptized into Truth. If evidence to the contrary emerges, it is either ignored, or more elegantly, recast as “fake news” cooked up by the “deep state,” a phrase that conveniently applies to anyone who isn’t already on the payroll.

 Faith as a Feature, Not a Bug

Evangelical pastors now preach the gospel of Trump as if the Book of Revelation contained a hidden clause about tax cuts and deregulation. Here, faith and politics have achieved the perfect marriage: an absolute certainty that cannot be debated because it’s been stamped with divine approval.

Faith, in its pure form, can be a beautiful thing—a humble recognition of the limits of human understanding. But faith in politics often functions as an industrial-strength solvent for critical thinking. If you believe God Himself picked the President, it becomes downright rude to question him. Besides, who needs to fact-check when you can just faith-check?

Why I’m Defending Them Anyway

So yes, I defend the President’s faithful—not because they are correct, but because they are tragically, almost artfully wrong. They are living proof of the human brain’s ability to spin gold from straw, to find comfort in the arms of a man who sees them less as citizens than as useful props in a never-ending rally.

Twain once observed that “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” Vonnegut would probably add that humanity was designed that way, perhaps as a cosmic joke. The faithful prove both points.

They may not be helping the Republic, but by God, they are making history interesting—like a train wreck viewed from a safe distance, except the train is on fire, the engineer is golfing, and half the passengers are insisting that the flames are a liberal hoax.

So let us salute them: the steadfast, the unshakable, the willfully misinformed. They are the guardians of a new American tradition—where truth is optional, ignorance is a virtue, and the President is whatever we need him to be in the moment.

And when the whole thing comes crashing down, they’ll still be there, hats on heads, hands over hearts, ready to declare with unshakable pride that none of it was their fault.
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