Damn Nation
Jean-Francios Millet
there is enough treachery, hatred
violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply
any given army on any given day
--The Genius Of The Crowd,
Charles Bukowski
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline
--The End of the World as We Know It,
R.E.M.
The Left Wing is broken
and the Right's insane
--Pretty Pink Rose,
David Bowie
_____________________
[This will begin a series of dispatches on Lisa's observations of her nation almost six most after the election of a non-party favorite for President.]
I have trodden this earth a few decades, and have never seen such frightening, absurd and pathetic behavior from my erstwhile fellows as I have in the past year plus, the people who once called themselves "liberal".
They have lost that provenance, and it if they are ever able to return to those qualities, they -- and we -- will be forever changed by what we have seen. Their solidarity consists in their mass externalaized hatred.
I have lost friends and acquaintances over this election. They left because the media told them they would leave, that it would be an irreconcilable rupture if Hillary Clinton did not win. The world would be akimbo and out of kilter, and dammit, they would ensure it was it so.
Good people are afraid to speak about this election because of the liberal media's Spectarian Wall of Sound which mewls on about "What went wrong?" But the problem is, nothing "went wrong"; democracy functioned as it ever has.
The wrong to them was, after billions of dollars spent and years genuflecting before their presumptive next President, Mrs. Clinton, the people went their own way. They spoke with their vote and said they were tired of the Left-Right boilerplate (predictable, the same), and wanted some thing new.
President Trump has revealed us to ourselves. Half of the liberals were willing to swallow their disgust at electing a tainted candidate like Hillary Clinton simply because they were obedient and had always toed the party line.
To achieve this tenuous-yet-obvious conclusion, they pulled all stops, and nothing was too low. The New Yorker magazine devoted one issue to "trample Trump" cartoons, no matter how stupid or vile.
As though performing on a canned laugh-track, the cognoscenti all laughed smugly and sent the derision round their web of Facebook followers. Dialog was outre, and wherever I went, a jab at Trump was meant to elicit a complicit guffaw.
When the anger remained and in fact ramped up following Mr. Trump's inaugural, it seemed they had gone mad. These anger-driven partisans had lost their way, lost their grip on the high road, and were now trading in the darkest behavior of those they once derided.
These liberals where the New White Supremacists [more on their agenda in a following piece.] They are bullies, and feel entitled to what they want. They have no shame or fear of threatening those with whom they disagree.
Having been indoctrinated for so long that the White Man was the enemy, they operate under the agenda that the sooner they could superannuate him and make of him a "Dead White Male" (DWM), the sooner a new and preferential order could take his place.
Ironically, predominately white, their horsehair shirts and self-flagellation serve as a source of pride and serve as a self-awarded badge of savviness (Ain't no flyover sorts there, except maybe a contingent from Madison, WI.)
Trump personified The Enemy, and so became the repository for a self-loathing malignancy which had been implanted into liberals for the past 50 years. He became the bullseye of their long-held target (i.e., themselves), and they brought all of their firepower to bear.
The nuevo white supremacists refused to acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton was naught but DWM with a pudenda for a penis. She might have worn Little Red Riding Hood's cape (with that poorly accessorized overly-large bead necklace), but she was in fact, the hound cast as her nemesis.
She had already manned the levers of governmental power, and had shown neither mercy nor remorse. Her card was played, and thus some Democrats turned coat.
That's all, and now some party die-hards would have us believe that those who chose against Clinton are somehow mentally unhinged, raving bigots, or worse. The only dissidents who are marginally un-hounded are the Uncle Bernie supporters (those who voted for the Other Millionaire.)
Why are these the only ones untramelled, their Hybrid Leafs or 1979 Volvo wagons plastered with "Save the Whales", "Love Your Mother" and "Bernie 2016" safe from vandals?
Two reasons:
Bernie never was a viable candidate. He was only there to make Mrs. Clinton's presumptive win more palatable, as though she were not running on a banana republic ticket.
And these deluded partisans for the ineluctable Jewish Socialist (only in Vermont) were like the retarded kid in class -- we all know it's not nice to make fun of him in front of his face. So, "You can keep your Bernie, you pathetic losers," was the general position, the presumption being they would have to close ranks once the man was flushed.
Former President Carter now says he voted for Bernie.
Nuff said.
More later ...
Labels: United States After Trump
posted by Lisa at 4:03 PM
16 Comments:
Hi Lisa,
Very interesting thoughts as always. I have one speculation and one comment.
The comment is I quibble with all the people who say Sanders was never a viable candidate. Neither Clinton nor Trump were viable candidates, in my opinion, except by default. Perhaps the inability of the ruling classes to put forward leaders who were competent and intelligent by any reasonable metric is a signal of the decline of the nation. Certainly it is the decline of something.
The speculation -- I wonder if, with enough time, we will realize what we're seeing here is the final crack-up of the modern left and the emerging of some new left-right political spectrum. Here's what I mean.
Set aside the things that made both candidates in my view unviable -- the rank incompetence and authoritarian tendencies of Trump on the one hand, and the unrepentant imperial hawkishness of the Clinton camp. Set aside also the fact that both are wealthy elites, representatives of their class who will be happy to send men to their deaths for dubious causes while sacrificing nothing of their own. I know that's a lot to "set aside," but take that as the political "given" right now.
If you told me five or ten years ago that the Republicans would run a candidate who promised to overturn economic globalization and rescue declining labour-intensive industries and that the Democrats would counter with someone who said that further global integration was the way forward, I would tell you to check whether you had your party names confused.
Perhaps it is meaningless in practice. Even if Trump was serious on the campaign trail, which I personally doubt, he is swiftly being brought to heel by the other representatives of his class in Congress and on Wall Street. In the long term, though, I think this election signaled the completion of the Democrats' abandonment of the working class, for whatever that may mean in the future.
Lisa,
I feel you. My experience has been exactly the same, to include loss of friends.
I have analyzed the situation from every angle I can conceive of. At bottom, I have come to the conclusion that the "resistance" is comprised of 1. people looking for an excuse for their perceived inadequacies and some freebies. The democrats are happy to supply both and Trump not so much. 2. Enablers of category #1 who wish to signal their "virtue" and/or control those people. 3. Snobs who think they are intellectually superior and reinforce each others' lofty opinions of themselves, but never leave their ivory towers and gated communities (this is actually probably just an expanded definition of category #2 with some overlap with category #1).
Category #1 is by far the largest and most vocal based on my daily perusal of facebook, blogs and other sources. These people are angry and generally unhappy people. And they were long before Trump appeared on the scene. They think they know how the world works and they think they know how to fix it. Usually the fix is to be radical and immediate. It's all so obvious and simple don't you see.
However, in reality, things only appear obvious and simple to these people because they have very limited personal experience with levels of society where power is held and decisions made. Additionally, they have been spoon fed carefully filtered social science data and history such that their biases are confirmed. They are the equivalent of the NCO that thinks he knows more than the Generals and, why, if he was in charge, the military would be a smooth running green machine and the war would have been over and won yesterday. Or the guy in the copy room that knows exactly what's wrong with the fortune 500 company and how to double shareholder value. They are angry that their genius goes unrecognized. They never had a chance to rise to the level that they deserve. It must be because of some systemic injustice that "the man" has built into the works. Liberalism seeks to remove personal responsibility and that has a strong appeal for these types. Things were starting to go so nicely until Trump came along.
So rational discussion is not possible because it isn't a matter to be assessed objectively. It's deeply personal and the politics are just an ink blot test of long ingrained individual psychological proclivities. Rejecting Clinton (or Sanders) is, really, a rejection of the individual voter. And people tend to not honestly self-reflect very well when what they would see is not favorable.
avedis
"Resistance" makes people feel important and gives their lives meaning. Kind of like "Tea Party."
I wouldn't disagree with you that there are plenty of people on the left who fit that description to a T. Mind you, I can go on my pick of leftist websites and read pretty much exactly the same analysis of Trump supporters: that your information sources are selected to confirm your biases, that you're searching for simplistic answers to complex problems, that you hitched your wagon to a guy who figured he could punch far above his weight (in this case, a New York landlord rather than an NCO), that you blame your personal economic difficulties on others rather than taking responsibility, and that it's impossible to have an objective discussion with you because you're too uninformed and emotional.
As you know, my opinion is that both sides in this propaganda war are being played for fools. Right now there are many liberals hooting in derision at the fact that people who voted for real change with Trump aren't going to get it. A smarter thing to do might be to reflect on how they experienced the same disappointment with Obama, but I suppose that is not how human nature works.
David,
I am not going to argue with you that Trump supporters are perceiving pure unmitigated pure reality. They're not.
The big difference is that trump supporters whether they be rich or poor, educated or uneducated BELIEVE THEY ARE IN CONTROL OF THEIR OWN DESTINIES AND ARE SELF RELIANT. Whereas Clinton/Sanders supporters believe they are victims (or helpers of victims) in a cruel insensitive brutal world.
THAT is why friendships were lost and discussion futile. If you believe in a world full of victims and then someone you know votes against the perceived savior of victims for a guy who [you perceive] is a bully that picks on victims (poor illegals, poor helpless refugees, women, minorities,gays, etc, etc then your gonna assign all kinds of terrible attributes to your friend and de-friend the monster.
See my first comment for a description - my opinion, of course - of who sees themselves as victims.
That's what I mean when I say it's an ink blot test of one's personal psychology.
avedis
If people believed they were self-reliant, they wouldn't look to a political leader selling them promises that he could bring back their jobs and give them better healthcare. For better or for worse, I think self-reliance is an antiquated virtue these days. Every political movement now claims to be a victim of something. For the new left, it is white men. For the new right, is is globalists and the corporate media. I guess you can't have a proper social movement without all agreeing to hate somebody.
If I'm reading your third paragraph right, though, I do agree there. On the "savior of victims" part I said much the same to my friends who voted Democrat as I know I said to people such as yourself who were on the other side: do you really believe what you're saying? I mean for Christ's sake, Obama was supposed to be hope, change, and salvation, too, and what you got was more of the same. This didn't make much of an impact. "Ah, but this time is different. Hillary will be different."
Well, maybe.
It is a strange thing when working and even middle class people get so emotionally invested in which member of the same ruling class is going to pursue pretty much the same policies and screw them in pretty much the same way.
David,
Trump supporters weren't asking the government to take care of them. They were - and are - asking for the government to stay out of their lives. They just want Trump to undo all the crap that was done to inject government into their business and then step aside. That means undoing massive regulation, undoing the decision to import a gazillion backwards third worlders that hate us, refuse to assimilate and want free stuff while they breed and soap box their way to taking over the culture, stop with all the PC nonsense, stop sending our jobs overseas and to Mexico, stop with the stupid imperialist/interventionist wars, stop with forcing unwanted healthcare insurance, stop with forcing laws that are only quasi-relevant to less than 1% of the population (thinking the idiotic bathroom laws), stop with ....well you get the picture. The government over-reached and did a lot of things that Americans outside of the universities and big coastal cities did not want....not even a little bit. They want it all reversed.
That is different than seeing oneself as a perpetual weakling victim in need of nanny government.
avedis
David,
I was going to quibble with your initial statement:
Set aside also the fact that both are wealthy elites, representatives of their class who will be happy to send men to their deaths for dubious causes while sacrificing nothing of their own
And ask, "Didn't Obama send our men to their deaths, too?" But you corrected yourself later,
A smarter thing to do might be to reflect on how they experienced the same disappointment with Obama, but I suppose that is not how human nature works.
Yes: the Democrats sold the working class down the river, and they know it.
Lisa -- Maybe that part wasn't clear. My criticism isn't limited to Clinton and Trump. This election might be the last time a Vietnam-era man runs for office, but to take it in order, Trump dodged the draft, Hillary presumably would have if she was a man, Obama didn't serve but was too young for Vietnam, Bush went in the National Guard but probably pulled strings to avoid combat, Clinton avoided the draft. So it's a new phenomenon.
I don't think military service is a prerequisite for a political career, but it's characteristic of the elite class that they are willing to send others to kill and die while they sit at home in comfort.
Interestingly I read the other day that heirs in the British royal family still do regular military service, although I suppose that is because they have become expendable symbols as opposed to true elites.
Avedis
Please.
If you really wanted to get government out of business and private life, you wouldn't want the government to erect trade barriers to protect our working class from Asian and Mexican competition. You wouldn't want the government to protect Social Security and Medicare, or expand health insurance to more people who can't afford it. Yet Trump ran on all these things, successfully.
Look, if you want to have a conversation about libertarianism, I'm all for it, but all I see in organized politics at the moment is hypocrisy.
David,
You're way over-simplifying the situation. The government made it more favorable, in many instances, to do business OCONUS as opposed at home. Immigration law is in the Constitution. Most all of agree that the govt should be doing what the C says it should, though we'd like it's interpretation of the C to be limited to original intent.
I think most people have reached the point where they accept that having government mucking around in their lives is a fact of life here to stay. Ergo, do mucking that is favorable to our needs and fight the muckers that go against what we need. The feds have long ignored the needs of anyone not living at universities and big coastal cities. Trump tapped into that and Clinton doubled down on disdain for the "deplorables" - as did Obama. Big mistake.
I am not a libertarian. I think we should pay taxes and that govt should be doing some things. I just think that taxes should be much lower and the list of things that govt does should be much smaller. That's where most of us on the right are at. The left? Those guys are all about state control of everything, redistribution of income until everyone is equal, laws that eliminate non-financial differences between people while being legally able to indulge in any perversion tickles their fancy. Basically, your typical leftist dreams of living in Sodom or Gomorrah with Karl Marx as the mayor. Their politicians keep pushing for that and so we need to push back. Big Govt seems to have a permanent niche now as a result.
avedis
Your last paragraph is a fine comic-book-villain version of the left. I won't insult you by pretending you believe most of it. I assume it's an attempt to fight hyperbole with hyperbole.
The government "made it favorable" by removing regulations, which is what you said you wanted them to do, and then getting out of the way of business, which is what you said you wanted them to do. I suppose government could get out of people's lives in other ways, too, by eliminating Social Security and Medicare, but for some reason I feel like a lot of Trump supporters wouldn't like that.
Please don't take this just as an attempt to call you a hypocrite. My point is, if you cut away the layers of bullshit division and paranoia from the culture wars, it turns out that people on both the left and the right think the government should have programs they think are a good idea, and shouldn't have programs they think are a bad idea. Some of those programs obviously are different. Some of them, like rolling back free trade and getting out of foreign wars, are exactly the same.
But we can't have a discussion about which government programs are a net benefit and which are a net negative, because as you've probably noticed, every political discussion between liberals and conservatives devolves, after a couple of minutes, into one side calling the other Stalinists and the other side calling them Nazis, both of which, obviously, are not true.
Who benefits? Well for starters you might have noticed that the same ruling class is still in control of the government while the proles and the deplorables fight it out away from the Capitol. I hear they're often talking about giving themselves a nice tax break and expanding the imperial war in Syria. Ain't life grand.
David,
One reason US business is stifled and struggles to compete with foreign business is that massive amount of govt regulation. Another is the massive taxation. Trump is beginning to remove al of that. So your depiction of a free market causing business to go overseas is just completely inaccurate. I do not accept it. In fact, the situation is 180 degrees from what you describe.
If a comic book version of the left fits, then they should wear it. I think it fits. Every democrat? No. Of course not. It does fit a lot of the loudest ones and it's the loud ones that get the attention and drive policy formation.
Harvard is having a separate graduation ceremony for black students. The left wanted that. That's how nuts they are. They're so into race issues and so anti-white that they are now indulging in segregation. Tell me again how the left isn't insane.
avedis
Harvard is not having a separate graduation ceremony for blacks? Right. I'm sure they are. Maybe some black rights student club is holding a graduation party they didn't invite whites to. Maybe.
You insist that we should have a serious conversation that doesn't over-simplify? Fine. You can begin by checking your own facts.
David,
Read this article on the Harvard situation and tell me, seriously, if you don't see racism, segregation and hatred: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harvard-black-commencement_us_5911cbe4e4b050bdca5f702d
I note that the art. says blacks make up 13.7% of the student body. Well that is about exactly the proportion they comprise of US society. Yet they gripe and demand separatism. And I bet more of them got free money for tuition and were lower qualified than non-black applicants.
avedis
According to that article, the black event is being organized by the "Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance," and not by the university.
So it is as I predicted, then.
I do not know what you remember of your university days, but my impression is that student clubs get sillier by the year. (So do universities, but slightly more slowly.)
I won't challenge the second part of your statement, though. I'm sure it's tough taking the Man's money to go to the Man's school.
You insist that we should have a serious conversation that doesn't over-simplify? Fine. You can begin by checking your own facts.
goldenslot
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