Who Cares if Senators Remember to Wipe Their Chins After They Finish Blowing Chevron?
The entire commentariat seems to think this is the week to pivot from shitting on Bernie Sanders like a flock of diarrhetic seagulls to explaining, once again, the populist ascent of Donald Trump. Like darts thrown in the dark, we are flooded with bullshit explication of voter psyche.
I really can’t stress enough how no one actually understands the psyche of the working class voter. No one. I’ve been working in this field, trying to understand why people think the things they think, and oh, lord, let me tell you, no one knows why people do the mad shit they do. All people are weirdos. Please remember that. That’s the latest science.
But experts on TV and farting out op-eds on WashPo need to sound confident that they know better. This is why Paul Krugman — an economist — continues to pretend like he’s studied human psychology deeply enough to mansplain why a millennial voter is voting for Bernie Sanders. Never mind that he’s not even an expert in the field in which he is shitting comments, he nevertheless feels more than comfortable speculating my ignorance from a position of privilege, expertise and authority. Much like when you turn on the TV, the campaign advisers for every candidate look just as calm and assured as any other about the viability of their candidates on the eve of crushing defeat. That’s what I mean when I say it’s a pale circus.
I watch a lot of the cable news fuckery. For months, multiple channels have been complicit with the same strategy: gaslight the Bernie Sanders supporter. Make them feel like they are throwing their vote away. Make them feel as if not voting for Hillary Clinton is a vote for Donald Trump. Above all else, convince them that Hillary Clinton is the most rational choice.
From the media’s perspective, the Left had to be reasoned with, made to see the irrationality of revolution. Quite literally that. It had to proselytize increments and evangelize pragmatism. Any undecided voter had to be made to sound completely chocolate chip banana muffins for doubting the inevitability of Hillary Clinton’s Presidency.
If you think about it — the liberal drive to see qualifications rewarded irrespective of outcome is the same liberal drive behind paying McKinsey consulting fees. And that’s why the Democrats are the official U.S. Party of Uber.
But will this strategy of obsessing over rationality and qualification work on Trump sympathizers? Probably not. Why? Because people finding inspiration in Trump don’t care if they’re being seen as reasonable and respectable by their friends on Facebook. They are used to being seen as absurd. Invisible. Cut off. Insignificant. What do they care if you think they’re not smart if you don’t care how they pay their bills? You don’t care if they lose their kids to a heroin overdose. You care about Game of Thrones and Doritos, Matt Yglesias. Who was the last prole you actually talked to?
I feel like any strategy the media takes to make Trump supports feel more defeated than they already feel will only backfire. They know they’ve already been abandoned by the bright shiny future. They know their kids aren’t moving to Palo Alto to find their siblings tech salvation. What hope should they see in Hillary‘s promised finance orgy?
At that fundamental level, Trump’s voters are absolutely right not to give a fuck about the mythology of Clinton’s qualifications, professionalism and ability to “get things done.” What do they care if Senators remember to wipe their chins after they finish blowing Chevron? There’s no legitimizing their behavior. You can read the corruption of very qualified experts plain in the Wikileaks cables.
The wound is naked and raw, open to infection and disease.
To ignore its unmissable stench is to give yourself up a fool.
But to deny the legitimacy of the anger is to give yourself up to proverbial guillotines.
Yet, despite this, every liberal pundit is going to take a swing at explicating this working-class anger as something else. No doubt, they’ll continue to paint Trump supporters as bigots and idiots and Trump supporters will continue to see themselves portrayed by the Liberal media as bigots and idiots. The working class will continue to see Liberal elites as shallow assholes who think they know what they’re talking about when in fact they know nothing of what it means to be dispossessed in America.
The American dream has been dead for some time. For most of America. The only people who seem oblivious and immune to disaster are the editors at The New York Times. Pretty much everyone else has no choice but to see it.
Bernie Sanders continues to be the best shot America has at uniting the dispossessed. I don’t give a fuck about the delegate counts. I couldn’t give fewer fucks about the delegate count if I tried. Because the DNC is dead. The RNC is dead. The Party machines on both sides are rotting cancer from the inside out, infected with the disease of corporate finance.
If not for closed primary election states, I imagine Independents would outnumber Party members by a margin of 2 to 1. More people in America are so disgusted by the Party binary than ever before. A Party delegate count is not a legitimate way to choose a President when the majority of Americans no longer wish to belong to a Party. This whole pageant is beyond the pale, snowballing absurdity. The abominable snowman will come out any second and eat my ski free character just to put an end to the madness here.
Trump or Sanders supporters are not crazy. They are the angry majority. The minority is, literally, the tiny number of people who seem to want to stay in either the Republican or Democratic Parties. And they weirdly defend the idea that Parties should retain so much control over the election process and that this is not somehow antidemocratic.
These people are ding dongs.
If I had my way, we’d actually be discussing the implications of so many wishing to defect from both parties. We’d be having achingly long discussions about the nuance between a working-class Bernie supporter and a working-class Trump supporter. What makes them vote differently? But then if I had my way, we’d be directing local politics on our phones, the functioning of the government would be largely automated and, oh, full communism. My way is terrific. Stay tuned.
But I don’t have my way. Instead, I have to deal with an ostensibly Liberal news weaponizing ignorance with synthetic ranch flavoring.
Pinch me, handsome, I’m dreaming.
