Aweh, My Dearly Beloved Fellow Ruminants & Groupies
A Quick Heads-Up
If you’re new here, hi: I’m usually more chaos and curiosity than crisis and collapse. But today’s post? It’s heavier. It’s personal. And it’s been building for a long time.”
Usually, this blog is a space for playful thinking and unexpected tangents. Today? We’re heading into heavier territory. No shame in skipping it. But if you stay, let’s look together. Right now, we need to talk about the hate that’s getting applause.
When the Wheels Fell Off
There was a time when I thought I had a vague general understanding of the world. That started to change in 2016, and then in January 2025, the wheels fell off completely.
Almost everything I thought I understood about the world no longer applied. Apart from the fact that the truth no longer matters, which feels like an old story by now, what has changed for me is the extent to which we’ve started hating each other, and how that hatred is now admired.
Trump Doesn’t Just Hate — He Headlines With It
Donald Trump’s world runs on rivalry, but hatred? That’s his headline act. He doesn’t just oppose, he detests. Journalists become “enemies of the people,” critics are branded “disgraceful,” and former allies who cross him get exiled with nicknames sharp enough to trend.
His hate isn’t hidden; it’s staged, shouted, and sold. He feeds off the boos as much as the cheers, turning every grudge into a spectacle. From Democrats to disloyal aides, from indictments to investigations, he paints them all as villains in his epic, because for Trump, hate isn’t weakness. It’s strategy, spotlight, and survival.
The Mirror We Don’t Want to Look Into
Trump’s hatred is loud, but it works because people want it to. His insults, his grudges, his chaos, they don’t just happen in a vacuum. They’re echoed, applauded, reposted, and turned into merch.
It’s not just about who he hates; it’s about how many people cheer him on for it. That’s the bigger issue: he’s not just a man with a megaphone, he’s a mirror. A reflection of what gets rewarded in this culture: power without empathy, noise over nuance, domination over dialogue.
And no matter what I think of it, that mirror’s not lying. That admiration? It says more about us than it ever did about him.
A Rupture in What I Thought I Knew
Watching Trump rise, not in spite of the hate but because of it, has ruptured my imperfect understanding of the world. And I mean rupture in the Mark Carney sense: a break in the system, a fracture in the stories I thought were solid.
I used to believe that truth wins, that character matters, that leadership was about lifting people. But this? This era flips that script. It rewards spectacle over substance, rage over reason, and somehow, people love it.
It’s like the ground shifted under everything I thought I knew, and the cracks aren’t just in politics. They’re in culture, in values, in the idea of what “good” even means anymore.
The Othering Instinct — and Its Consequences
What ruptures my world most is how easily Trump’s brand of hatred taps into humanity’s darker instincts, the old, dangerous urge to fear and crush the “other.”
It starts with words: stereotyping, mocking, reducing whole communities to threats. But it doesn’t stop there. That mindset makes repression feel justified, whether it’s surveillance, bans, or violent crackdowns dressed up as “law and order.”
The vilification of Somalis, Muslims, and migrants becomes a script, where cruelty is framed as strength, and empathy is seen as weakness. When leaders fan these flames, they don’t just reflect prejudice, they activate it.
And what begins as performance turns into real-world violence, sanctioned and spread, while too many look away or cheer.
I’ve Seen This Script Before
As a South African who lived through apartheid, I know this script; I’ve lived it. I’ve seen what happens when a state decides who belongs and who doesn’t, when suspicion clings to your skin, your name, your language.
I thought we had moved past the era where you had to carry your papers, ready to prove your right to exist at any moment. I thought the world had learned. But I was wrong.
Watching how easily these old tools of control resurface, ID checks, police raids, mass profiling, it’s clear the past isn’t past. It’s just been rebranded. The fear, the repression, the violence dressed up in the language of “security”, it’s hauntingly familiar. And this time, it’s global.
Will Democracy Work?
I keep asking myself: will democracy work? Is this just the pendulum swinging, a temporary backlash before balance returns in a few years? Or is that just wishful thinking, a comforting story I tell myself to avoid facing the scale of the rupture?
Maybe I want to believe in the resilience of the system because the alternative is too overwhelming. But what if this isn’t just the swing of history? What if something fundamental has cracked, in trust, in truth, in what people even expect from leadership?
Mark Carney talked about rupture as a break in continuity. Maybe we’re not in a cycle measured in years. Maybe this rupture doesn’t point to renewal, but to replacement not democracy reshaped, but something darker taking its place.
In Case I’m Flagged at the Border
At this point, I should probably start preparing for my next U.S. visa application to be “contemptuously declined,” or for an unexpected secondary screening in a windowless room the next time I land in JFK.
Maybe a not-so-cheery customs officer will ask, “Are you the South African blogger who wrote that thing?” But then again, let’s be honest, why would they bother?
I’m just one insignificant blogger screaming into the void from the bottom of Africa, armed with nothing more dangerous than a Wi-Fi connection and a few too many opinions.
Still, if this post mysteriously disappears, you’ll know it either struck a nerve… or I finally upgraded my editing standards.
I used to believe that truth would win. That empathy mattered. That hate had a shelf life.
Now? I’m not sure. But I’m still here, still watching, still writing, even if it’s just a whisper at the edge of the noise.
Until Next Time
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 
three things matter to Trump
last two feel like democracy in action, which tells us more about those voting
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Thanks Mark. Agreed but its not just about him but his supporters and enablers and wat that says about us!
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My own sense is that whilst I share your concern around where we are (and seeing some of the flames looking for fuel down this side of the world too) we are to a greater or lesser extent aware of this and able to sense so much due to the power – but also the toxicity – of the medium of social media as it is deployed and being used now. I think if you place Orango in a non social media / non 24*7 news world the message loses a lot of power.
And the thing I see in parallel with social media and easy access to “information” is that people follow, react to and amplify headlines and sound bites. All of this combines to become powerful accelerant for banal ideas which lack any substance or merit. I find time away from social media and “news” (since all down here are controlled by Murdoch) does wonders for how I am feeling. So my hope clings to the thought that if the current use of social media is driving things this way then surely the counter flow should also be possible – a lot of the (potential) power to do that rests on US midterms and the ability to start constraining and putting back guard rails around the structures that used to exist.
But as Americans have learned – a lot of what we understood about the world was built around norms and conventions we thought were rules / laws. And like individual country dictatorships / autocracies – the system coalesces around one powerful person and this allows them to control everything. This usually works well initially when the leader is more “benign” (although I doubt any strong leader is really that) but usually when the leader realises that if they have this strong system and they no longer control it, the next one along could use the same system to cause them a lot of pain- and hence they ramp up the nastiness and control. The world is seeing this effect as all became comfortable for the US to be the “benign” but increasingly super powerful leader assuming this would always be the case and “rules based order would always be the ultimate check on that power” – but now the leader has decided to use that same power more forcefully.
Two thoughts always help me cope at this point:
A. The leaders like Orango are ultimately weak as they rule from a position of fear and ego (and I guess stating the obvious they are mortal) and
B. The law of unintended consequences always applies in full measure so whilst they imagine themselves to have full control on all outcomes, that’s seldom how real life works longer term.
Good post and I am sure many are where you are at Bruce – no matter what I say above I too remain very concerned and somewhat down on where things are going. The starting of a different approach at the WEF suggests that whilst we focus on one leader the truth is that directionally US approach may be more set than we like to imagine or consider…..and plans should be made accordingly (see my point B).
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Thanks Bill. Yes lets see the law of unintended consequences and how that plays out!
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Peter Turchin said some time ago that america in the 2020’s is an extremely divided country.
Two major factors are causing that which is demographic pressure of mass immigration with the accompying confusion as what it is to be american(Identity conflict)
And the other is the elite over production where you have large sectors aspiring to be leaders but there are too many contenders for the position. Not only do you have all the male contenders but a whole range of female, which partly drives the woke wars and the extreme virtue signalling.
In addition the various lobby groups (the zionist lobby being the most powerful) dominating government policies dominate policy making, so that the individual is feeling disenfranchised and that democracy doesnt work for him/her. This creates the breeding ground for conspiracy theories (some of which will be true) and violent conflict.
Trump is the embodiment of much going on in america. But under Biden you had similar problems with senility apparent even from the beginning of his term.
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It is scary, but what makes me wonder is what led people to cheer him? What was happening before him that made people so fed up that they found in him a voice that utters their grievances? Are we facing a classical cause-and-effect response, or is a social collapse underway? My concern is that when he departs, the following will find other ways to manifest their inner frustrations, and that can become really ugly.
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