I got mad at the radio

I usually remember to emphatically mash my fist against the car radio when NPR segues from classical music into the afternoon news program. Unfortunately, today, as the clock approached 4pm and the final movement of Saint-Saens’ 3rd symphony faded out, I spotted a man wearing JNCO-sized basketball shorts walking down the sidewalk while chugging an entire 2 liter of Dew. The image of this horrible man so entranced me that I spent the next 10 minutes passively listening to the worst fucking schlock on the planet.

They interviewed David Brooks about the newest chapter in Hillary’s extended coal miner gaffe and for a minute or two I didn’t even realize it was him: his May 6 column asserts that to compete with Trump’s rhetoric her platform needs more Big Ideas. This is undeniably true. Hillary’s “America Is Already Great” message is largely responsible for her inability to generate any enthusiasm among young people. Her promises of tax credits and job retraining programs are not enough to win over post-industrialites, hence why they cut her speech short by stripping her mic cable with their teeth so they could harvest the copper wire inside. What does Brooks suggest as an alternative? That she emulate David Cameron. That she propose “migration zones” to truck the unemployed out of the Rust Belt and into a region with an excess of full-time jobs for long-term unemployed high school graduates (???). This is almost word-for-word what Kevin “Gay Dracula” Williamson of the National Review wrote about the white working class in March:

Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

This stuff plays great with the poor and downtrodden, much like “listen to Bill Cosby and pull up your pants” preceded a massive exodus of black voters to the GOP.

Next up was an excerpt of John Kerry’s commencement speech at Northeastern University, itself a perfect encapsulation of the modern Democratic Party:

First, the superficial appeal to diversity:

“You are the most diverse class in Northeastern’s history — in other words, you are Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”

Second, a vision of the world where American military adventurism is a positive good and the Third World is eternally grateful for our failed attempts at nation-building. Essentially the White Man’s Burden, but you can’t say that anymore:

“When you consider the range of challenges that the world is struggling with, most countries don’t lie awake at night worrying about America’s presence; they worry about what would happen in our absence. We cannot be seduced.”

Third, a defense of free trade featuring a namedrop of capital-T Technology so devoid of context that it makes Thomas Friedman look coherent:

“We will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt.”

Why does technology, gee-whiz, this stuff is nuts, we got all these apps on there and I barely even know how to turn the thing on, prevent us from adjusting our trade policies to benefit domestic workers? Whom amongſt us doth not underſtandeth the neceſsity to Uberize the global economy? I don’t know! Maybe there would be time for an explanation if the sentiment wasn’t expressed in the form of a literal, actual soundbite.

In conclusion,