Chicago, January 2026 - Selfies at Trump Tower

I listened to Trump's Davos speech, all of it, in real time. Which is to say, I had it on in the Chicago hotel room where I'm staying for a few days, between visits to family in Michigan and friends in New York. The speech was playing, with the audio on my laptop turned up, the entire time, but I confess I wasn't actively listening the whole time. To give Trump my active listening is a gift I'm neither inclined to nor capable of, so while the audio played, I alternated between thirty-second bouts of attention, scrolling internet live-commentary, pacing angrily about the room, and searching for the Simpsons clip that the speech couldn't help reminding me of:

I listened to Trump - for my own sanity now picturing him as a racist, megalomaniacal cartoon eulogizing NATO at Troy McClure's insistence - because of the potential implications for my country and my world, and also for less important but more personal reasons: I'm planning to go to Europe for a good long while, and have a ticket to leave from the US in less than two weeks. Some possible European responses to Trump's continued demand for Greenland include visa restrictions on Americans and selling off investments in the US, which could make my trip both logistically impossible (can't get a visa in ten days) and prohibitively expensive (the value of the dollar crashes). I'd be all in favor of the nations of Europe doing these things if they thought they would help - a few month's worth of ruined plans a sacrifice I'm willing to make - and if things were going that way, I'd want to know sooner rather than later.

So I listened to his droning, absurd speech. Not only threatening Denmark and Europe and Greenland with the use of force in the way of a poorly-written mob character, Trump also managed to project his gutter-racism overseas, constantly slur his words, and repeatedly forget what island he was trying to take over. It was horrifying, embarrassing, frightening, and laughable all at the same time (his hideousness is large; it contains multitudes). My strongest feeling though was one of disgust, and I had plenty of it to go around. Disgust at the man individually, at the potential of my being associated with him abroad, at the America that had elected him, and at the Americans who continue to support and enable him.

By the time the speech ended, and he'd begun an irrelevant ramble in response to a moderator's question, I was done. I turned off the feed, feeling no more certainty about the status of my trip. I had plenty of anger toward my racist warmongering President though, and luckily (maybe?) I had a readily-accessible target toward which to beam that anger.

My Chicago hotel happens to be located directly across the river from the Trump Tower, and if I stand all the way against the wall of my ninth-floor room I can actually see "TRUMP" in big gaudy letters on its side. Thankfully it's not visible in the most accessible view, which looks down the Chicago River to the west and features the Marina City towers I'd come to love from their prominence on the cover of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot:

So I stared out the window into the glare of the megalomaniac's tower, seeing figures through the windows inside. I wondered how many of them were there by choice, how many supporters he could possibly still have, and what kind of a person would you have to be to still support a man who has, even just in 2026, broken more international, domestic, constitutional, moral, and ethical laws than I could even try to count. Who could still be pro-Trump, after all this?

Soon enough, I got an answer. As I watched, a Tesla Cybertruck pulled up the street in front of my hotel, across the river from the Trump Tower, and parked (illegally) half against the curb and half in the traffic lane.

Out of this electric dumpster jumped a white man and woman, from my vantage point looking to be old Gen-Xers or young Boomers, who immediately started pointing their phones at the building across the river. They spent several minutes posing for selfies. I was flabbergasted. Had they not seen the speech? Had they not seen the past few weeks? The past year? The past ten years?

I watched very carefully to make sure, but at no point did it look like they were flipping the bird to the TRUMP sign (a much more sympathetic reason to take a selfie in that spot in my opinion) or exhibit any behavior that made me think they were anything but excited to be in the presence of such gaudiness. At one point a younger white man, who I took to be the couple's son, exited the driver's seat and eventually took over photo duties.

After about ten minutes, they piled back in the monstrosity and drove away. They left me feeling even more disgust than I did after the speech. It's one thing to be the incoherent madman rambling racism and imperialism on the international stage, to be the executive in charge of shooting civilians and trafficking children under the propaganda of immigration enforcement, even to be the crooked real-estate developer selling his name to aspirational faux-luxury. It's another altogether to be a fan of such a man. And I am struggling to understand the existence of such fans.

I saw a poll today that shows Trump's approval rating at 40%. The point has been made that this is an unusually low number for any president, but I'm fixated on the idea that it represents tens of millions of Americans who, even after all of this, still think he's doing the right thing. I had the thought that it wasn't a coincidence for me to look out and see these selfie-takers. That it probably happens all the time. And I don't know what to do with that thought, because it seems so disgustingly true.

A common refrain from a portion of Americans who disapprove of what the Trump regime is doing - to immigrants, to citizens, to the world, etc - is that 'this is not who we are', that 'this is un-American'. There's a big to-do about this language in my Bluesky feed today, which is why it's on my mind: an online argument over whether statements like that speak to an aspiration towards the best ideals of freedom and equality that America sometimes endeavors to achieve, or whether it papers over the long and foundational American legacy of racism and violence and colonialism that has always been with us.

Objectively I think that language can do both, and that America is at the same time a thoroughly racist, violent empire, and a community dedicated to justice and kindness. Both aspects of this America exist simultaneously, as we are seeing in Minneapolis right now, and the question is not so much which definition of America is more valid, but which will win out. But subjectively, as I watched this white American family leap out of a hundred-thousand-dollar truck designed by a Nazi to take selfies in front of the Trump name of a Chicago weekday afternoon, I kept thinking, over and over, 'this is who we are. This is who we are.'