It's easy to pick on the MSM, in the most fish-in-a-barrel sense, but it can't be pointed out enough that the people they cover are worse, whether they're political candidates or rally-going yahoos.
One particular type of piece I've come to despise over this particular scampaign clusterfuck is the what are Drumpfkins really thinking profile, where we try to plumb the shallows of these goobers' intellects. Well, no, intellect is exactly the wrong word, because if there's one thing all these pieces have in common, it's a need to discuss how these sainted folk reach important decisions, gain some insight into their wisdom:
Every time a journamalist prints some false equivalence assertion like that last sentence there, a cuddly baby animal dies a horrible death. Bokay? Stop doing that shit, people. There is simply no "left" equivalent to an entire state of blue-collar peckerwoods living in a place they call Cancer Alley, mired in generations of poverty and failure, either working dead-end shit jobs or not at all, knowing at least one person stuck in substance abuse and/or grifting the system with fake diseases, rabidly supporting a fake billionaire who wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
Drumpf is fucking joke, and the broke-ass dopes who slavishly hang on every word of his are even worse. When you point out that more often than not, their hero sounds like a blackout drunk on a barstool, they insist that he will surround himself with "good people." Really? Like his scampaign managers -- a townie asshole who got "fired" for manhandling a female reporter; a career dirtbag on the Kremlin payroll; and now the proprietor of a mainstreamed white-power site and a Stepford wife, both of whom are involved with a secretive hate group? Those "good people"?
The part that makes me sick, like literally physically ill, is the thought that two months out now, Drumpf still has a chance, and in fact has been closing the gap as of late. There is no rational world or set of circumstances in which this fucking clown gets within three touchdowns of a reasonably competent opponent. Yet he clings, like he always has, a blood-engorged hemorrhoidal grape fused to the painfully itchy asshole of America. He won't go away, and Preparation HFC seems unable to shrink the swelling.
This is our fault as much as the fault of the media. The guilt lies with every dipshit rube that makes decisions based on their wittle feewings, or refuses to address the hypocrisy between what they say and what they do. The polticians get away with being hypocrites because the fucking voters are even worse hypocrites. The guilt also lies with every bien pensant journo that invents false equivalences in order to make their take seem more even-handed, more objective, less biased.
They seem not to realize that there are times when facts and reality are not objective, are not striving for balance. Frequently facts and reality are biased. If you climb up on a building and jump off, you will fall, period. There is not a countervailing "objective" alternate outcome. If you live in a toxic environment, and you keep voting against environmental regulations because they are "job killers," well, guess what? You'll get your shit job at which you eke a barely tolerable existence, but you get the added bonus of an early grave, or watching your kid die or your friends or their kids die. But before such early deaths, you all also get the added indignity of having to hustle and panhandle your friends and community for help, maybe with a fundraising spaghetti feed, or a cup at the local market checkout, with a slot cut into the plastic lid, maybe a photo of the beneficiary. But hey, no fuckin' way you give that sociamalized medicine a second look, amirite?
It's extraordinarily difficult to take seriously any of the folks profiled in the Mother Jones article, except perhaps Albert, maybe Sharon. They want to work, they expect the same out of others in their community. Nothing at all wrong with that.
But there is a collective failure to see the bigger picture in play, and a tendency to cling to nonsense like "you can't say 'Merry Christmas' anymore." This is especially true of the angry codgers, who are past the age of employability, and therefore have nothing else to do but listen to shitty music and shittier talk radio liars, misremember how great things useta be, and enjoy the smell of their own verbal farts. They are not only clinging to bitter nonsense, they are collectively abdicating their stewardship of what their children and grandchildren should inherit, as far as the kind of life and country they should have.
I agree with the underlying premise that these folks live in a country that has fucked them over and left them to rot. The problem is that they seriously think Drumpf will look out for their interests even a little bit, or that he's some sort of alpha male. Seriously? What sort of alpha talks shit about the large country to the south for a full year, ramps up the shit-talk at every available opportunity, and then goes to visit, and totally changes his tune? Maybe that's something different in Loozyanna; where I come from that's called being a pussy.
It's too bad about these folks and their lives; it really is. But they've been doing it to themselves for decades, generations. I don't hate them, but I don't feel sorry for them either. They whine about other people getting free shit, but the second it's there for them, they're on it with a quickness. They can stuff their cheap platitudes about "principle" and such like up their asses. They have no principles; they just can't stand it that blacks and women and fags aren't kept in their places anymore, and that white people got nothing out of this "equalizing" of rights.
There's no "deep story" to any of this, and there never was. They're simply too lazy or dumb to inform themselves or read a book once in a while, and so they stew and fester in their dead-end lives, and begin seeing things through the bitter eyes of the old and angry, suspicious of change, envious of anyone in life who seems "luckier," but maybe actually worked for it by staying in school or learning a skill or -- you guessed it -- reading a fucking book now and then, and getting their information from somewhere besides talk radio.
The attempt to present this narrative even-handedly, as if it were all just a matter of sheer chance or circumstance, is a well-intentioned but misguided effort. It is an attempt to impose a sense of "balance" where there is none. Facts are simply asymmetrical sometimes, and false equivalences are not only unnecessary, but end up legitimizing that which does not deserve to be legitimized.
Take a look across the aisle. You think anyone at the Wall Street Journal, not to mention in-the-tank journo-shitholes like the NY Post or Breitbart, gives a hairy rat's ass about fucking objectivity, about what makes a liberal voter tick? Fuck no. There is no attempt to understand because there is no need to understand.
You want the Deep Story for these people? Here it is, summed up in far fewer words:
A Goldwater-level blowout isn't enough; these assholes need to be crushed beyond recognition.
One particular type of piece I've come to despise over this particular scampaign clusterfuck is the what are Drumpfkins really thinking profile, where we try to plumb the shallows of these goobers' intellects. Well, no, intellect is exactly the wrong word, because if there's one thing all these pieces have in common, it's a need to discuss how these sainted folk reach important decisions, gain some insight into their wisdom:
As we pulled up to her home, Sharon reflected on various theories her mother had. "Have you heard of the Illuminati? The New World Order?" Sharon asked so as to prepare me. "I'm tea party," Sharon said, "but I don't go along with a lot that my mom does." Whether they clung to such dark notions or laughed them off, tea party enthusiasts lived in a roaring rumor-sphere that offered answers to deep, abiding anxieties. Why did President Obama take off his wristwatch during Ramadan? Why did Walmart run out of ammunition on the third Tuesday in March? Did you know drones can detect how much money you have? Many described these as suspicions other people held. Many seemed to float in a zone of half-belief.[emphasis added]
The most widespread of these suspicions, of course—shared by 66 percent of Trump supporters—is that Obama is Muslim.
What the people I interviewed were drawn to was not necessarily the particulars of these theories. It was the deep story underlying them—an account of life as it feels to them. Some such account underlies all beliefs, right or left, I think.
Every time a journamalist prints some false equivalence assertion like that last sentence there, a cuddly baby animal dies a horrible death. Bokay? Stop doing that shit, people. There is simply no "left" equivalent to an entire state of blue-collar peckerwoods living in a place they call Cancer Alley, mired in generations of poverty and failure, either working dead-end shit jobs or not at all, knowing at least one person stuck in substance abuse and/or grifting the system with fake diseases, rabidly supporting a fake billionaire who wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
Drumpf is fucking joke, and the broke-ass dopes who slavishly hang on every word of his are even worse. When you point out that more often than not, their hero sounds like a blackout drunk on a barstool, they insist that he will surround himself with "good people." Really? Like his scampaign managers -- a townie asshole who got "fired" for manhandling a female reporter; a career dirtbag on the Kremlin payroll; and now the proprietor of a mainstreamed white-power site and a Stepford wife, both of whom are involved with a secretive hate group? Those "good people"?
The part that makes me sick, like literally physically ill, is the thought that two months out now, Drumpf still has a chance, and in fact has been closing the gap as of late. There is no rational world or set of circumstances in which this fucking clown gets within three touchdowns of a reasonably competent opponent. Yet he clings, like he always has, a blood-engorged hemorrhoidal grape fused to the painfully itchy asshole of America. He won't go away, and Preparation HFC seems unable to shrink the swelling.
This is our fault as much as the fault of the media. The guilt lies with every dipshit rube that makes decisions based on their wittle feewings, or refuses to address the hypocrisy between what they say and what they do. The polticians get away with being hypocrites because the fucking voters are even worse hypocrites. The guilt also lies with every bien pensant journo that invents false equivalences in order to make their take seem more even-handed, more objective, less biased.
They seem not to realize that there are times when facts and reality are not objective, are not striving for balance. Frequently facts and reality are biased. If you climb up on a building and jump off, you will fall, period. There is not a countervailing "objective" alternate outcome. If you live in a toxic environment, and you keep voting against environmental regulations because they are "job killers," well, guess what? You'll get your shit job at which you eke a barely tolerable existence, but you get the added bonus of an early grave, or watching your kid die or your friends or their kids die. But before such early deaths, you all also get the added indignity of having to hustle and panhandle your friends and community for help, maybe with a fundraising spaghetti feed, or a cup at the local market checkout, with a slot cut into the plastic lid, maybe a photo of the beneficiary. But hey, no fuckin' way you give that sociamalized medicine a second look, amirite?
It's extraordinarily difficult to take seriously any of the folks profiled in the Mother Jones article, except perhaps Albert, maybe Sharon. They want to work, they expect the same out of others in their community. Nothing at all wrong with that.
But there is a collective failure to see the bigger picture in play, and a tendency to cling to nonsense like "you can't say 'Merry Christmas' anymore." This is especially true of the angry codgers, who are past the age of employability, and therefore have nothing else to do but listen to shitty music and shittier talk radio liars, misremember how great things useta be, and enjoy the smell of their own verbal farts. They are not only clinging to bitter nonsense, they are collectively abdicating their stewardship of what their children and grandchildren should inherit, as far as the kind of life and country they should have.
I agree with the underlying premise that these folks live in a country that has fucked them over and left them to rot. The problem is that they seriously think Drumpf will look out for their interests even a little bit, or that he's some sort of alpha male. Seriously? What sort of alpha talks shit about the large country to the south for a full year, ramps up the shit-talk at every available opportunity, and then goes to visit, and totally changes his tune? Maybe that's something different in Loozyanna; where I come from that's called being a pussy.
It's too bad about these folks and their lives; it really is. But they've been doing it to themselves for decades, generations. I don't hate them, but I don't feel sorry for them either. They whine about other people getting free shit, but the second it's there for them, they're on it with a quickness. They can stuff their cheap platitudes about "principle" and such like up their asses. They have no principles; they just can't stand it that blacks and women and fags aren't kept in their places anymore, and that white people got nothing out of this "equalizing" of rights.
There's no "deep story" to any of this, and there never was. They're simply too lazy or dumb to inform themselves or read a book once in a while, and so they stew and fester in their dead-end lives, and begin seeing things through the bitter eyes of the old and angry, suspicious of change, envious of anyone in life who seems "luckier," but maybe actually worked for it by staying in school or learning a skill or -- you guessed it -- reading a fucking book now and then, and getting their information from somewhere besides talk radio.
The attempt to present this narrative even-handedly, as if it were all just a matter of sheer chance or circumstance, is a well-intentioned but misguided effort. It is an attempt to impose a sense of "balance" where there is none. Facts are simply asymmetrical sometimes, and false equivalences are not only unnecessary, but end up legitimizing that which does not deserve to be legitimized.
Take a look across the aisle. You think anyone at the Wall Street Journal, not to mention in-the-tank journo-shitholes like the NY Post or Breitbart, gives a hairy rat's ass about fucking objectivity, about what makes a liberal voter tick? Fuck no. There is no attempt to understand because there is no need to understand.
You want the Deep Story for these people? Here it is, summed up in far fewer words:
We are strong, therefore they are weak. They have undermined our "traditions" because they hate this country (because again, their weakness makes them hate those who are strong). Attempts to "understand" them would be tantamount to sympathy, collaboration, and ultimately to treason. All issues are rendered in stark black-and-white clarity; nuance is weak and therefore the calling card of the librul pussy traitor.That is what you're up against, whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not. And the more their malevolent fucktard clown of a candidate lingers around the margin of error, the more the usual Gooper grading curve kicks in, the same lowered expectations that let a mouthbreather like Fredo Arbusto get a weighted score against a skilled, policy-strong debater like Al Gore. We all know that they work the refs, but these "balanced" portrayals of unbalanced people is just another way that happens.
A Goldwater-level blowout isn't enough; these assholes need to be crushed beyond recognition.
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