Hamberder lovers vs. “burg-tards:” An analogy for life in Donald Trump’s America

I’ve been trying to come up with an analogy that captures my experience of living through the Age of Trump, and I think I found a so-so one.

Imagine you have a group of friends who gathers every couple weeks to cook hamburgers. There’s always been a range of opinion. Some say just salt and pepper on the patties, then into a cast iron pan on high heat. Some insist on grilling, others prefer stove top. Amongst the grillers some insist on real charcoal, others prefer gas. There’s even one person who mixes a scrambled egg into the meat.

Then a new person shows up and says “look, you have it all wrong. You have to put a tablespoon of salt and 12 whole cloves in each patty, press them under your armpit before cooking them in the oven at 250 degrees, and then inject them w/ bleach before serving.” Everyone looks at each other and is like, that’s nuts. But they do it, and a few people who are regular attendees say “you know, I think this is actually pretty good.” You look at your friends and think “wait, what is going on here. This tastes terrible, and is also toxic.”

But then the salty clove bleach burger guy opens up a restaurant in town (called Hamberders, of course) where he sells his specialty and a bunch of your neighbors actually go and claim to like it. “This guy breaks all the stupid old rules. Stop being haters. You’re just jealous!” Haberders, an objectively disgusting and toxic restaurant run by someone who has no idea what they’re doing, is now a beloved institution for 40% of the people in your town. These were the same people you used to argue about grill vs. stove top with.

The Hamberders devotees now scoff at anyone who won’t join them at their new favorite restaurant. “You’re all brainwashed,” they say. “How could you ever eat those tasteless salt and pepper burgers without that extra tang of bleach? Ew, disguuuuusting. Typical burg-tard.” Hamberders starts selling signature red hats and wearing one (or not wearing one) becomes a real badge of where one stands in the town’s burger wars. That old, diverse group of burger friends still meets, but now they’re scoffed at by the red hats as the “resistance burger club.”

Hamberders then opens a spin off joint called Thighland. It serves “the best wings in town,” which are actually chicken thighs. Fans of Thighland start making fun of restaurants that serve “fake wings.” Within a few months, for 40% of the people in town, chicken thighs are now referred to as “chicken wings” and chicken wings are referred to as “fake wings.”

The local newspaper wrote a review of Hamberders, “the controversial new restaurant in town,” where they note that “some public health officials say eating bleach is dangerous, but fans of Hamberders swear by it!” The restaurant reviewer tried to get into the article a clear statement about how objectively dangerous it was to consume bleach, but the editor nixed that line and threatened to fire the food writer if they continued to push back or said anything about it. After all, Hamberders and Thighland are some of their most important advertisers.

One last thought to add. Once Hamberders shuts down, all but the most diehard Hamberders fans will breathe a sigh of relief that at long last they can just argue about their different ideas about cooking hamburgers, rather than making everything about bleachburgers, pro or con.