Month: November 2020

Originally intended for a release last month, the #EndSARS movement in Nigeria pushed Davido to delay his third album, A Better Time. The Nigerian afro-fusion artist finally released the project on Thursday and one of its early highlights comes by the way of his “Holy Ground” track with Nicki Minaj.

The track was one fans anticipated for quite some time after Davido confirmed its existence earlier this year. As for the song itself, “Holy Ground” is a warm and heartfelt effort that finds both singers praising their love interests and labeling them a spiritual area that brings both comfort and happiness. Davido previously spoke about the Nicki Minaj collaboration and revealed it came after he sent a drunk DM to the rapper while he was at a party.

“I was like, ‘Yo, I swear to God, I’ll DM Nicki right now,’” the afro-fusion singer said in an interview with W Magazine. “I woke up the next morning and I forgot that I had messaged her the night before. I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, I was drunk.’ Nothing was really planned on this album—Nicki be charging people $500,000 for verses. And she did it for me for free.”

As for Davido’s A Better Time album, the project is a 16-track effort that presents guest appearances from American acts Young Thug, Lil Baby, Nas, Hit-Boy, and more as well as Nigerian acts including Mayorkun, Tiwa Savage, Sauti Sol, and more.

Check out “Holy Ground” in the video above.

A Better Time is out now via RCA. Get it here.

John Mulaney’s next gig is from the same company he last worked for: NBC. The stand-up and frequent Saturday Night Live host has apparently made the most of his time at Rockefeller Center these last few weeks and secured employment in a pandemic, namely on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

Mulaney is famous enough to appear on Seth Meyers — in fact he did just that following his latest SNL hosting gig that earned him a nice jacket from the lead singer of The Strokes. But apparently he’s interested in a writing gig, and on Thursday the show’s executive producer, Mike Shoemaker, tweeted that Mulaney had joined the staff of the show for “as long as John wants.”

“John Mulaney likes to work so this week he officially joined Late Night with Seth Meyers as a staff writer.” Shoemaker tweeted. “I hope he stays for 100 years but I will settle for as long as John wants’.”

Mulaney had yet to say anything about the apparent gig on Twitter, though he did appear on Seth Meyers with the aforementioned jacket last week. He also had a fitting follow-up to his “horse in the hospital” analogy he made about Donald Trump in the wake of him losing the election to Joe Biden.

Despite the initial lack of confirmation from Mulaney the move was reported by The Hollywood Reporter, and though a stand-up as famous as Mulaney taking a late-night writing gig may sound strange, well, that’s the kind of job any standup often settles into. And though THR said the extent of his role on the show is “questionable,” they did point out that NBC’s comedy circuit often has this kind of thing happen on its shows.

The move does seem very much in the wheelhouse of Late Night. Meyers and executive producer Lorne Michaels have used the show as a hospitable environment for infrequent collaboration. Fellow SNL alum Fred Armisen, who has several other jobs, serves as the leader of Meyers’ house band. And Amber Ruffins, who broke out as a writer and frequent guest on Late Night, continues to make appearances since launching her own late-night vehicle on Peacock.

It’s unclear if Mulaney’s work behind the scenes also means he appears on the show more often, but that certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing now, would it?

Fatman is, if nothing else, an exercise in completing a task. The film, opening in select theaters November 13th in advance of a November 24th VOD release, stars Mel Gibson as a sort of salty, small business-owning Santa Claus, whose workshop has fallen on hard times. The other players in the story are a bratty rich kid named Billy, basically the middle school version of Boss Baby, who wants to kill Santa, and the hitman (played by Walton Goggins) Billy hires to do it.

Mel Gibson as a grizzled Santa Claus and Walton Goggins as a weirdo hitman is a decent enough hook, but not since Seth Grahame-Smith’s series of books (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, etc) has a storyteller seemed so content to fulfill the bare minimum requirements of their own pitch. Eshom and Ian Nelms, who write and direct, offer a comedic or at least cute premise, and then shoot the whole thing with only the broadest strokes filled in, as if they were trying to rush from pitch to product as quickly as possible. It’s a conceptual joke in search of actual jokes. Like a C- term paper delivered on time, the most impressive thing about Fatman is that it’s finished.

Mel Gibson’s Chris Cringle runs Santa’s workshop out of North Peak, though his location is protected by the government, who also subsidize his business as a way to stimulate Christmas business more broadly. Trouble is, Cringle’s subsidy check is short this year, on account of his subsidy is based on volume, and the increasingly misanthropic Santa has begun giving out more coal than presents lately. This is, again, sort of cute I suppose, but it’s strange how much time Fatman spends explaining the economics of Santa’s workshop compared to how much time it spends fleshing out the characters or story. It feels a bit like when I rewrite my first paragraph 30 times and then rush through the rest of an article in 20 minutes to hit a deadline.

Meanwhile, Billy (played by Chance Hurstfield) loses the science fair for the first time in four years, tortures the girl who beat him with a car battery until she signs an affidavit saying she cheated, and hires Walton Goggins to go kill Santa. This after Billy finds coal inside his present (a stocking would’ve been more traditional, but no, it comes in a wrapped box). I’d like to explain the Goggins character’s… whole deal, but the movie never gets to that. The rest of the film half-assedly goes through the motions of connecting these story strands, leading to an inevitable shoot-em-up finale, which seems neither fun for them nor us. It’s the kind of movie that makes you wonder who it’s actually for. It’s a Christmas movie that’s rated R for a few F words, but lacks both the gleeful vulgarity of Bad Santa and the gleeful gore of Død Snø. Mostly it lacks glee in general.

There’s so little fun to be had in Fatman that it has the feeling of a make-work project, something that was meant to keep the Nelms brothers busy for a while. Maybe that’s unfair, I don’t really know. I’m only speculating, on account of Fatman feels sort of like the filmmaking equivalent of begging your dad to sign you up for flag football and then having to stick it out for the next eight weeks after realizing you hate it.

‘Fatman’ hits select theaters November 13th, and VOD platforms November 24th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

The 2020 NBA Draft class will finally get to hear their names called by Adam Silver on next Wednesday night when the delayed draft takes place, but the future of the league beyond this year is what has draft folks most excited. While the 2020 class has some good players, it lacks the star power that really makes draft classes pop, but that’s not the case for 2021 or 2022.

Next year, Cade Cunningham, Jonathan Kuminga, Evan Mobley, Jalen Green and others top a highly regarded draft class and for 2022, the name currently getting the most buzz is Minnesota high school star Chet Holmgren. On Thursday night, the 7-footer got some time in the national spotlight with a game on ESPN2 against Emoni Bates, the top player for the Class of 2022 (and expected to be a top pick in 2023 in the NBA), and the two put on quite the show.

It wasn’t the prettiest first quarter to the game between Holmgren’s Team Sizzle and Bates’ Ypsilanti Prep, but Bates did open the game with a thunderous display of his athleticism on the break.

Both players had monster performances as they so often do, with Bates finishing with 36 points and 10 rebounds, while Holmgren had 31 points, 12 rebounds and six blocks in a 78-71 win for Team Sizzle. Holmgren showed off his terrific skills as a rim protector with those six blocks, as his length is tremendous and he has a great understanding already of verticality. On offense, his ball-handling abilities were what really shined, as he put the ball on the deck to get to the rim and score with relative ease. Bates meanwhile hit 4-of-11 from three (11-of-22 from the field) as the two dueled in a pretty thrilling game.

Holmgren also showed his abilities on the glass and at the rim on offense, as no one on Ypsi Prep really had an answer for his length — and it doesn’t help when absolutely no one boxes him out.

His biggest play of the night came as he brought the ball up against Bates and put all of that athleticism and ball skill on display with a dazzling drive and dunk.

After the game, draft folks were buzzing about Holmgren’s showing as an all-around player, with rim protection and offensive ability that has earned him comps to Kristaps Porzingis.

The question for Holmgren, of course, is how much of that production will continue to translate as he moves up to college and pro ball and is facing much larger and stronger opponents, but the skill makes it very easy to see why he’s so highly touted. Bates, likewise, gets some huge comps, like Kevin Durant which is always handed out to a lanky wing with great shooting, and as the reigning Gatorade Player of the Year, where he became the first sophomore ever to win the award, he’s likewise headed for a bright future in the pros after a stop at Michigan State.

Next week will be all about this year’s draft class coming in but the talent pool for the near future is loaded and we saw two of the very best go at it on Thursday night.

The late Alex Trebek is still hosting new episodes of Jeopardy!, and he will appear as the host of the show until Christmas Day. His death on Sunday, however, has sparked an outpouring of grief and tributes from fans and former contestants who loved the show’s host and the legacy game show he helped create.

Monday brought an on-air tribute to Trebek before the new episode that ran in syndication, the first since his death from pancreatic cancer was made public on Sunday. And later in the week his wife, Jean, also shared a thank you to fans for their tributes in the wake of Trebek’s passing. Jean Trebek posted a message to Instagram on Wednesday along with a wedding photo of her late husband, thanking fans for their support and the kind words that have been shared in the days since he died.

“My family and I sincerely thank you all for your compassionate messages and generosity,” Jean wrote. “Your expressions have truly touched our hearts. Thank you so very, very much.”

Thursday also brought another message from Trebek himself, filmed for a campaign to help children understand the concept of compassion.

“We all know that bullying is a problem in our society, and often is in our schools,” Trebek said. “And so is a lack of understanding of others’ situations.”

It’s yet another example of the impact Trebek tried to have both in the community and among the legions of fans who continue to mourn his loss in the trivia and game show community. Trebek will certainly be missed, and whoever takes over for him once his run of new shows is over will certainly have big, compassionate shoes to fill moving forward.

It is okay if you do not watch The Queen’s Gambit. That’s the first and most important thing here. There are plenty of other shows you can watch or rewatch, and hobbies you can develop, and things around your house that probably need doing. Maybe you even started it and decided it’s not for you. That’s fine, too. None of this is meant to shame you or anyone for not watching the popular show that Everyone Seems To Be Talking About. The point of this is to try to knock down one specific objection I’ve seen from people who have not jumped in yet: “I will not like it because I do not like/understand chess and/or think it is boring.” I understand this objection. I feel it deep in my bones. It was why it took me a full week to finally get started. But it also makes me, as a self-confessed Big Dumb Chess Idiot, qualified to report that it is a load of hooey.

Let’s start with the most general explanation: It is possible to like a show without having a deep knowledge of or appreciation for the things its characters do. I know very little about the cooking and distribution of high-end methamphetamine — as far as any of you know — but I was hopelessly hooked on Breaking Bad. I was and still am heartbroken about the cancellation of GLOW even though I do not particularly care about professional wrestling. One of my favorite shows of 2020 so far was Betty, an HBO series about a diverse group of close-knit female skateboard teens in New York, which I found deeply charming and fascinating even though I am a straight white dude who lives in the suburbs and is twice their age and whose skateboard experience can be summed up by “played Tony Hawk on a PlayStation for most of one summer.” The things the characters on a show do are rarely more important than why they do them and what dominoes topple over as a result.

Zoom out even further to look at the show’s main character, Beth Harmon, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Beth is — very general plot spoilers incoming — an orphaned child who achieves great success in her chosen field thanks to a specific kind of genius that she almost squanders thanks to repeated self-destructive behavior. You’ve seen that character before. You’ve seen almost that exact character before, in another show you liked: She’s basically Don Draper from Mad Men, but with chess, right down to the part where she gets wasted in fashionable 1960s attire. And I bet you didn’t know all that much about the world of pre-Woodstock advertising before you jumped into that show, either.

But fine, let’s talk about the chess. Again, I am a huge chess idiot. I know almost nothing about it. I am, in the most general sense, aware of the pieces and the way they move. I know there are pieces called rooks and bishops and knights, although in a moment of panic I will call them “the castle” and “the pointy guy” and “the horsey.” There are many moments in the show where Beth will move a piece like one square to the left and people around her will gasp, and I assure you I have no idea what she did or why the people around her reacted that way. None of that stopped me from being absolutely enthralled by most of these scenes. (“Oh shit, she got his horsey,” I would say to myself, with a quiet wonder in my voice.) There are, I think, three main reasons this happens:

• The scenes are shot very well, with the tension rising throughout and long closeups on Taylor-Joy as she stares lasers through the series of overconfident chess dopes seated across from her
• Watching anyone do anything at the peak of their field can be endlessly fascinating, which I say as someone who developed very strong opinions about fencing while watching the Olympics on a rainy afternoon in 2012
• People who play chess at the highest level are freaking intense

To illustrate this last point, let’s look at this very good piece in The Ringer by David Hill, which dives into the career of Walter Tevis, the writer who wrote the book of the same name that the show is based on:

All was not lost, however. In addition to publishing the feature on his experience, he soaked up the scene in Las Vegas and found inspiration for a new book. Much of what he witnessed there he would later use in The Queen’s Gambit. “There’s been more competitive excitement, more aggressiveness crackling around that dumb little high school gymnasium or third-rate hotel ballroom, in which chess tournaments are being played, than I have seen in any other kind of activity, and I spend a lot of time in poolrooms around pool players playing for big money,” Tevis told Book Beat in 1983. “I used to shoot nine ball for fairly large sums of money, and I’ve been around a lot of games, a lot of betting. I made my living gambling for quite a few years. Never seen the intensity and the vicious aggressiveness that chess players occasionally exhibit.”

Tevis knows a few things about gambling and competition, too. Prior to The Queen’s Gambit becoming a phenomenon on Netflix, he was probably best-known for writing two other books that eventually made their ways to screens around the world: The Hustler and The Color of Money. Both of those were about self-destructive loners hellbent on squandering their substantial natural gifts, too. Pool and chess are even similar in a lot of ways. They’re both games that require sharp focus and a strategic mind and are usually mastered by weirdos who don’t get along with the general population. The main difference is that pool is cooler and more romanticized by popular culture, whereas chess is treated as a hobby for brilliant but socially awkward dorks who smoke pipes and wear sweaters that have elbow patches.

All of which is to say… well, what, exactly? I think I can boil it down to a couple of things. The first is that you should try — like, make a good faith effort as often as you can, which feels like a reasonable ask — to not let the subject matter of a television show prevent you from giving it a try. There are gems out there everywhere, about everything, and, if they’re doing it right, the things the characters are doing are just the Trojan Horse to try to tell you a cool story about people. That’s really all you can ask for out of a few hours of television. Cool stories, done well, about interesting people. The Queen’s Gambit is very much that, and much more than it is A Show About Chess.

The other thing is that it is relentlessly satisfying to watch Anya Taylor-Joy cook those chess dopes over and over, especially the kid pictured in the center of this article, whose character on the show is named Benny Watts and who dresses like Indiana Jones for no discernible reason and who is apparently based — very loosely — on real-life chess prodigy Bobby Fischer. I don’t know why I hated him so much, for reasons I never fully grasped, even as his character changed for the better throughout the series. I suspect it’s the jacket. Whatever it was, Anya Taylor-Joy could have beaten that guy at anything and it would have been riveting television. Darts, competitive cup-stacking, pulling a 747 down a runway with their teeth like competitors in a strongman contest, whatever.

Chess worked out just fine, though.

Facebook is under fire once again for decisions regarding content shared on the massive social media network, this time after Steve Bannon’s inflammatory comments that saw his profiles removed from other sites. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was forced to defend the company’s decision not to ban Bannon from the network, both the public and privately during a weekly forum with company employees.

According to Reuters, Zuckerberg says the company will not remove Bannon from the site completely, though it did delete a video he posted last week. The move, and Zuckerberg’s decision to defend it and by extension Bannon, comes after a November 5 video in which the former Breitbart editor and Trump White House employee said FBI director Christopher Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci should be beheaded for being disloyal to Trump.

“I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone,” Bannon said in the video.

Facebook removed the video but left up Bannon’s page, which has about 175,000 followers. Twitter banned Bannon last week over the same content.

“We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely,” Zuckerberg said. “While the offenses here, I think, came close to crossing that line, they clearly did not cross the line.”

Zuckerberg apparently also addressed president-elect Joe Biden and comments he made on the election trail about both Facebook and Zuckerberg, who he called “a real problem.” Biden admitted that he’s no fan of Facebook, which has been used by both foreign countries like Russia and others to spread disinformation, fuel baseless conspiracy theories like QAnon and attack liberal politicians.

While Twitter has flagged election misinformation and several tweets from Donald Trump in the lead-up and aftermath of the election, many have been critical of Facebook’s more lax policy on all of the above. It doesn’t seem like Zuckerberg’s comments indicate anything will change with Facebook, which means that criticism both inside and out of the company will continue as well.

[via Reuters]

Deftones recently released their ninth album Ohms back in September. The release was the band’s first full-length effort in over four years. Less than two months after the album, the band is still pushing and promoting the project while working on their next release, a 20th-anniversary re-release of their third album White Pony. Unfortunately, the task does not come without a bit of controversy which comes as a result of comments made by guitarist Stephen Carpenter.

The guitarist recently joined the conspiracy theory podcast, Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli, as a guest. During his appearance, Carpenter suggested that there has yet to be an effective vaccine and that the Earth is flat while casting doubt on the coronavirus pandemic and the effectiveness of wearing masks to prevent its spread.

Regarding his thoughts on vaccines, Carpenter said, “[There’s] never been one single vaccine that’s ever worked ever. All poisons, you can never get it out of your body, [your] body has no means to expel it.” He added, “It’s stuck in you forever and you just suffer with whatever it becomes.”

As for his Earth theory, the guitarist said, “If you think you live on a spinning, flying space ball, you’re in a cult.” He continued, “The simplest terms for my perspective with flat Earth is simply, I know we’re not on a spinning, flying space ball. Now, what it actually is and all that and, and, and to what depths it goes to, that’s all still to be discovered and people are working on those things.”

Last but not least, Carpenter’s comments on masks and the coronavirus pandemic was the lengthiest of them all as he labeled it as “bullsh*t” and that most people know the masks are “worthless.” He also said the mass participation in mask-wearing is similar to a “clown show” and asked people to stop “embarrassing” themselves.

All propaganda all the time. No matter how many times you want to present to people that it says right on the box that it says that this protects you against nothing, you know it won’t matter. I mean they could read it themselves and who wants to admit they’ve been played? I mean who wants to own that they were the sucker. That’s hard I guess for most people, because that’s what we’re going through.

Most people know that it’s bullshit. The germaphobes we’re not… we can’t do anything but try to help them out because they genuinely believe that there’s a deadly virus going around and they would have believed it already. They already thought life was deadly and dangerous. So this is no help to them. But everyone else part-time wears the mask, they already know it’s worthless. You know they all got their little favorite little logo matching their outfits. It’s like clown show. Please stop, you’re embarrassing yourself.

And that’s no disrespect to those who’ve fallen ill and even those who died from whatever they may have died from. Obviously none of that is disregarded, but I do not connect that to what this is, you know? What this is some, this is just some mental trickery.

And it’s unfortunate that everybody just gave in. It was a two week event when it started, and then it just now it’s forever… Thank you to all your mask wearers for making this permanent, good job.

If your heart desires to listen to the Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli episode, you can find all one hour and 49 minutes of it here. Ohms is out now via Warner Records. Get it here.

Deftones is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It is kind of difficult to “push” a week when you’re picking five football games against the number. In Week 9, though, that is exactly what happened in this space, with a 2-2-1 performance that (easily) could have been both better or worse. 2-2-1 is anything but disastrous, though there is a bit of additional motivation to get back in the win column as the final eight weeks arrive.

Before we dive into a five-pack of hopeful winners, let’s take a step back and glance at the progress through nine weeks.

• Week 9: 2-2-1
• 2020 Season: 24-19-2

Come get these winners.

Los Angeles Chargers (+1.5) over Miami Dolphins

Two weeks in a row, the Dolphins have won while being pretty much dominated in the box score. There is something to be said for picking up victories by any means necessary, but Miami is a bit overvalued in the market as a result. In contrast, the Chargers are snake-bitten and seemingly unable to close out a victory. Give me the team that nobody wants right now.

Denver Broncos (+4.5) over Las Vegas Raiders

The Broncos are getting healthier on defense, and I think this line should probably be three. That might not be terribly sexy from a handicapping standpoint, but 4.5 is too many.

Arizona Cardinals (-2.5) over Buffalo Bills

We had Arizona last week and it didn’t go according to plan. However, the Cardinals pretty much did what we expected in the box score (as noted above in the Miami section), and it was the little things that burned Arizona. Honestly, it isn’t easy to back Kliff Kingsbury’s bunch after some of the game management messes in recent weeks, and I’ll own that. With that said, the entire universe is on the underdog in this spot, and that is usually a good sign for our principles. Lay the small number with Arizona.

San Francisco 49ers (+10) over New Orleans Saints

This number steamed all the way from as low as 6.5 to 10, and honestly, I get why. Still, the shift is now an overcorrection and getting double-digits with San Francisco is the only way to go. The Niners aren’t close to full strength, but they are well-coached and the market is going a little bit crazy after what the Saints did the Bucs last week.

Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears UNDER 43.5 points

The Bears are breathtakingly bad on offense and very potent on defense. There is some concern that a) Minnesota is shaky on defense and, b) Dalvin Cook is going insane right now. However, the Bears aren’t going to let Cook do that against a competent defensive front, and the bet here is that Chicago takes the air out of the ball and keeps this one ugly. Unders in games involving the Bears are 6-3 this season, and we’re rooting for punts and field goals on Monday evening.

Many Americans had been hoping for an overwhelming Biden landslide win in this election. Not just the clear majority victory that it turned out to be, but a full-on tsunami that would thoroughly wash away the stain of Trumpism from America forever.

That didn’t happen. And we really shouldn’t be surprised by that.

As in 2016, there’s a push in the social discourse to try to understand why 71 million Americans thought Donald Trump was a better choice than Joe BIden. (Cue the thousandth media interview with a rural, small-town American.) But Trumpism isn’t that hard to understand. It’s multi-faceted and multi-layered, but it’s not complicated. In fact, simplicity is one of its key features, which I’ll explain in a minute.

I am going to speak frankly and somewhat forcefully about my fellow Americans here, but first I want to be clear about my perspective. I am a political independent who would best be described as “leaning left,” though I hate those kinds of labels. I have always voted for both Democrats and Republicans, including on my own state’s ballot in this election. The only real passion I have for politics is my disgust with our two-party system, so don’t take my words here as toeing some partisan or ideological line.

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I also believe there is a distinct disconnect between why Trump supporters think they support him and why they actually do. I’ve spent four years listening to their reasoning. I’ve tried to make it make sense. And though entire books can and will be written about this, I’ve landed on what I see driving Trumpism the most.

Though partisanship certainly plays a role in his number of supporters, the support for Donald Trump isn’t about political parties. Yes, there are people who will vote Republican even if they have to hold their nose or sell their soul to do so (same with some Democrats, I would assume). For some people, elections are all about one issue—usually abortion or taxes—so they vote Republican, but Trump hardly represents the traditional party identity.

I mean, let’s be real here. Anyone who thinks a serial-adultering, porn star banging, pussy grabbing, charity stealing, student defrauding, non-church-going, faith-mocking, unrepenting man like Trump is a reflection of true conservative values is as delusional as he is. And anyone who thinks that a military-bashing, deficit-building, debt-ballooning grifter is a true Republican is fooling themselves. There’s a reason why many lifelong Republicans rejected Trump from the beginning.

Despite appearances, Trumpism isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats. Political parties are merely weapons Trump wields in his battle for personal glory. After all, this is a man who changed his political party four times in less than three decades. He’s not now and has never been about party.

No, Trump is about Trump. It’s what he’s always been about and will always be about. He is a textbook malignant narcissist, always and forever obsessed with what will serve his personal need for power, glory, and adulation.

The question then is, how did Trump get 70+ million voters to believe he’s all about America or all about them? He did it the same way every demagogue with authoritarian tendencies throughout history has done it—by keeping the message painfully simple, appealing to people’s basest human instincts, lying egregiously and relentlessly, and undermining people’s faith in the real-world journalism and fact-checking that keep them from being sucked into his unreality.

Let’s start with the messaging. Trump’s gist is this: “The government is broken. I’m an outsider, but clearly a powerful one because I have money and fame. I alone can fix what’s wrong. The problems are simple and are caused by [insert ‘other’ group—undocumented immigrants, Muslims, Democrats, long-time public servants, etc.] and the solutions are simple too [build the wall, ban them from the country, vote for me—I’ll drain the swamp]. Yay, America!”

No matter how ridiculous that all sounds to many of us, there’s a significant portion of the country who relish in such simplicity. We don’t want to have to think about complicated problems or work through unclear solutions. Making things black and white, removing all the gray area and nuance and complexity from the issues, feels refreshing to a lot of people. It doesn’t matter if it’s based on falsehoods instead of facts. Keeping problems simple and making it seem like solutions are cut and dry makes people feel safe.

The problem is, in order to reach that simple, safe world, you have to appeal to people’s prejudices and fears. People of every persuasion are easy prey for fear-mongering. Prejudices are common, fear is an easy instinct to manipulate, and Trump is shameless about combining the two. Scary caravans of immigrants. Scary Muslims coming in from scary Muslim countries. Scary gang members moving in next door. Scary poor people coming to live in your suburban neighborhood. Scary rioters. Scary ANTIFA.

I know there’s some debate about exactly how racist Trump is, but we don’t even have to quantify that. It’s very clear that he utilizes and allows for racism when it suits his needs. Same with xenophobia. Same with partisan tribalism. Again, Trump is all about Trump. And pushing people’s prejudice buttons, indicating when they should feel fear or enmity and then convincing them he’ll keep them safe with this simple solutions is a strategy that works.

One of the weirdest things for those of us outside of Trumpland, of course, is that it doesn’t matter whether anything he says is true at all. His followers don’t seem to care that he lies constantly and egregiously. I’ve heard some try to brush it off as “Oh, all politicians lie,” but no, all politicians don’t lie like Trump. Trump doesn’t just stretch the truth or mislead by creative wording or omission like most politicians. Trump does the Big Lie thing, where if you say untrue things enough times and with enough conviction, people will believe you, even when what you say is verifiably false.

This part of Trumpism gets tricky, because in order for it to work, you have to also successfully discredit the people who hold politicians accountable and fact check them. Hence the outright dismissal of mainstream media. Hence the constant “Fake News!” drumbeat. Hence today’s Twitter rampage against Fox News for actually reporting facts instead of constantly praising him. Hence the proliferation of right-wing news outlets that keep going further and further into conspiracy theory land.

Misinformation is Trump’s engine and praise and flattery are Trump’s fuel. The more he gets, the more he pushes the simple messaging and fear-mongering that give people the brain chemical releases they crave. (If you think people don’t like having their fears triggered, there’s an entire horror movie industry that disagrees with you.) And the more he gives people what they want, the more they give him what he wants—big crowds and rabid fandom and heaps and heaps of adulation. And so the cycle goes on, with Trump seeing himself in the thousands of faces in the crowd, which serve as narcissistic mirrors in which he sees his power and glory.

Which he then turns around and claims is all for them. And they believe him because at this point, his reality is their reality and real reality doesn’t exist anymore.

Of course, not everyone has full-on fallen into the Trump cult. We can’t discount the role that good old-fashioned self-interest plays in some people’s decision. There are a whole lot of people who simply don’t want to pay taxes, don’t care who Trump’s policies hurt, and think destroying the dignity of the office of the presidency is a small price to pay for filling their own pocketbook. There are also those who will put up with anything if they think it’ll “own the libs.”

So yeah. Trump’s support is not hard to understand. Between playing on people’s loyalties, prejudices and fears, and manipulating people with misinformation, Trump’s demagoguery works the way it has always worked in other cultured countries throughout history. Americans are not immune to the psychological pull of a “Dear Leader” type—we’re just incredibly lucky that this particular demagogue also happens to be an incompetent fool.

I know that Trump supporters will fall all over themselves trying to claim that I’ve gotten them all wrong here, but here’s what they’ll miss. If they genuinely believe that a known conman who has embarrassed the country on the world stage and whose pandemic oversight has caused countless American deaths is a truly a better choice than a man with more than four decades in government and who is personally well-liked on both sides of the aisle, then whatever they believe about either Biden or the Democrats is almost assuredly based on misinformation pushed in Trump’s unreality.

At this point, you can’t support Trump and be living in the same objective reality as the rest of humanity. You really can’t. And if you are living in objective reality and chose him anyway? Sorry, but you need to search your soul to figure out what made you such an ass.

There’s nothing more to be understood at this point.