Longtime readers of this here eternal rant may recall that back in a more innocent time, I put out a few e-books under the "auspices" of the blog name. Two were annual compendia of blog posts from the years 2012 and 2013 (with some fresh commentary included; I would feel bad screwing you out of two bucks for something you had already read), and two were 100% new analyses of people in the news for those years, along the lines of the old Buffalo Beast's annual Assholes of [the past year] series.
(Not to shake anyone out of their hard-earned couch-cushion change, but if you have a few shekels you can part with, the books are still available, and I think you might be pleasantly -- or not -- surprised by how relevant they still are, more than half a decade later.)
So in the Assholes of 2012 collection, which had the catchy title 12 in '12, I ranked the current thing in the Oval Office as the #3 asshole in these here Yewnighted States, due to his toxic blend of birther conspiracies and shameless ignorance. In retrospect, that ranking seems at once to be prescient, while also giving outsized importance to what was then realistically a noisy reality-teevee gadfly looking to fill his bottomless psychic hole, his pathetic need for publicity every fucking hour of every goddamned day.
What I was ignoring, even as it seems apparent in a back-handed way with the second factor stated above, was just how pernicious and effective reality teevee has become on people. Sure, it's been a staple here since the very beginning, how it's made 'murkins stoopid and whatnot, but the fact is that, since I really have never actually watched any of it, I only know of its effects secondhand at best.
Now, another more recent common theme of mine since the bewigged gastropod has oozed its way in and ensconced itself there, is that while it presents a significant problem, the real problem is the prion disease eating the brains of the idiots who voted for it, and still inexplicably believe in it, despite failure after failure after pathetic, toxic failure.
How do you deprogram a cult? We've been trying to figure that out with North Korea, among others for decades. But at least North Korea's cult is obviously held in place with a very real, palpable fear. These slapdick rubes sincerely love Trump without reservation. Until they decide that they love their country more than they hate whatever caricature of "liberals" Fixed Noise is pushing on them today, they'll follow him right over the edge. Don't kid yourself otherwise.
The joke about "when we're all living under freeway overpasses, grilling sparrows on curtain rods, the Trump voter will look over at his neighbor, who has no sparrow, and consider it a victory" cuts closer to the cold truth than any of us would like to admit. Think about it for a second -- whatever choice you've cast for imperial custodian or congressional prelate or what-have-you over the years, did you ever factor as long as it fucks over the other guy into your choice? Yeah, that's not a normal thing. But it's sadly become all too normal and obvious.
Here's a little story, completely true, about the effects of reality teevee on otherwise sentient, normal, even nice people: an older person of my acquaintance for about ten years (let's call her Mary), very sweet, devout church-goer, even more devout reality-teevee fanatic, and currently deep in the thrall of He Who Shall Not Be Named. But Mary is also the kind of person who always asks about everyone's families, remembers the names of your kids, even gets them a little something for their birthdays and Christmas. A sincerely kind person, but one who has been immersed and baptized in the poisoned well of Rupert Murdoch.
So some years ago, back around the time of the e-books (it really was a simpler time, wasn't it), she was rattling on about some Bachelorette-type show, and I was alternating between ignoring her, politely nodding my head, and occasionally providing some gentle ribbing. But at some point, having written so many caustic observations in here over the years about what I perceived (again, mostly secondhand) to be a negative, perfidious cultural epiphenomenon, I wanted to get the point-of-view from someone who watched all -- and I do mean all, she did and does have an encyclopedic knowledge of this crap -- of these shows.
"What's the appeal?," I asked. "You know it's seedy and gross -- these people who could all easily hook up in any meat market on a weekday night, pretending to have to go on a show to look for love, but really just wanting to burnish their social-media cred. You spend weeks watching them winnow through dozens of members of the opposite sex, frequently in hot tubs and other unseemly situations. And in the end, they're not going to get married, and if they do, they'll be divorced within a year, because this is not how anyone meets people. It's weird that someone like yourself, who takes pride in having been married nearly fifty years, would see value in that sort of thing."
Mary replied simply, I want to believe the fairy tale.
I think that cuts to the heart of both the appeal and the treachery of reality teevee. Whatever else you want to say about how and why it su-su-su-suuuucks, the fact is that the people who assemble this schlock are very good at distilling it down to elemental narratives that we all had drummed into us by junior-high school, and carry with us in our daily adult lives, whether we know and use them or not. They're there: identifying cliques, choosing sides, likes, loves, hates, fears, what you can share with your "friends" and what you can't because they can use it against you with the rest of the clique, etc.
These are extremely effective tropes, and they've obviously been very successful at packaging them into interchangeable "entertainment" products to piece out in between endless scads of advertisements for fast food and insurance and feminine hygiene products and big ol' trucks.
But what we're seeing now with Trump is someone who really had been on the verge of being rightly consigned to history's dustbin as a ridiculous punchline, a perennial blowhard who tried to go all Ross Perot in the 2000 campaign and got reminded that the court had to put him on an allowance because, you know, he bankrupted a fucking casino, because he's about as good a businessman as he is a husband or father or human being. Until that fucking turd Mark Burnett pulled him out of that dust heap, brushed him off, cleaned up his ricockulous microweave hairpiece and spent the next decade presenting him to 'murka as a gin-you-whine boner-fried bidnessman.
And they bought it. And now they're buying it with him as an "outsider" politician, even though he's neither of those things. He's an "outsider" to the extent that actual billionaires want nothing to do with him, don't invite him to their elitist soirees, etc. But he's a trust-fund asshole through and through, never worked an honest day or made an honest dollar in his goddamned life.
But try telling them that. You can't change their minds with "facts" because they want to believe the fairy tale. So you have to come up with a better fairy tale, a more compelling narrative that clearly positions who the "good guys" and "bad guys" really are. Put it in Game of Thrones terms: you may enjoy the moral fluidity of, say, Varys and Littlefinger, but there's no doubt where Ned and Joffrey were on their respective points of the moral compass.
Farmers in the midwestern states are going through huge increases in bankruptcy filings, thanks in large part to Purznit Shit-fer-Brains' brilliant trade wars, which are good and easy to win. This in spite of the fact that over eight billion dollars has already been expended in bailouts and price supports, because these people literally have entire harvest rotting in warehouses, because it cost them more to harvest it than they can currently get on the market.
Now, on the one hand, I am a huge -- and sincere! -- fan of people getting what they vote for, and in this case, these people are getting exactly that, good and hard. So fuck them. On the other hand, if I were running for president, and wanting to win the people in these states back over, I'd work on crafting a narrative that cleanly and simply outlines exactly what went down, and who's responsible. I'd find a handful of these suckers in every state and trot them up onstage, get them to recite their litany of woes to the audience of neighbors 'n' friends, and then make goddamned sure no one left the building without understanding that Fuckface Von Clownstick is entirely responsible for every miserable, sleepless night they've endured going through their financial hardship, and that we're going to fix it. And make sure that the corporate media shows up and broadcasts that shit, again and again.
That all of this has the added benefit of being 100% true is orthogonal to the real challenge. Truth just makes it a bit simpler to craft the narrative, but you'll still have to add a bit of fairy tale, a little something that they want to believe, even when they know in their hearts it isn't true.
Maybe point out to these farmers that while they're trying like hell to figure out how to hang onto what their parents and grandparents busted their humps to pass along to them, Jared Kushner is selling our nuclear tech to the Saudis, because he's neck-deep in hock to them. Maybe point out that things aren't going too well with North Korea after all, despite all the stunt summits and hand-waving and time-share salesmanship.
Maybe point out that poor and working-class people, whether they're in Alabama or California, have a hell of a lot more in common with each other, than with a thin-skinned fake tycoon who lies about everything, even things that don't matter. Maybe point out that, just as in real life, treating your friends and allies like shit does matter, because sooner or later you want or need something from them, and they have no reason to help you.
Maybe point out that this could all have gone completely differently, if he had just been 30% less of an asshole, that he could have won over moderates and even some liberals by simply making good on promises such as infrastructure and the opioid crisis, and not siding with nazis and calling everyone who disagrees with him an enemy of the state. Maybe ask why wages are still stagnant in Duh Best Economy Evuh, or why Genius Q. Dealmaker, Real Billionaire Tycoon, feels so comfortable cutting their health care.
I mean, if you didn't know any better, you might start to think that, you know, he's always been a fucking bullshitter.
I hate to say it, but future Real Housewives of Scottsdale star Meghan McCain has the right idea: you don't have to take any shit from this doddering cartoon character. You really don't. I look forward to George Conway finally screwing up the courage to tell that mercenary cunt wife of his to make a choice -- your boss or your family. (Although I also hope that, whether or not this Magnificent Bickersons act the Conways have going is real or some weird cover-our-asses-for-future-employment gambit, they both spend the rest of their lives broke and despised, just like the scumbag they helped put into office.) I look forward to enough senators finally remembering that they took an oath to serve the Constitution, and not a particular man, especially one so deeply unqualified and unfit for office.
More than that, I look forward to Trump's continuing decompensation. He's unraveling fast now -- fifty tweets over the past weekend, whining about Saturday Night Live reruns and Fixed Noise anchors, and equally meaningless nonsense. But what it really reveals is how fucking miserable he is.
I said this about Trump long before he threw his ricockulous microweave into the ring, and transitioned from being a distributor of thick envelopes to becoming a recipient of thick envelopes: if you, Tonstant Weader, had a kajillionty bucks and could do whatever you want, would you spend your time picking Twitter fights with Bill Cosby and Rosie O'Donnell, giving dating advice to Twilight actors? Which is literally what he was doing at the time, when he wasn't LYING about Obama's birthplace.
But now he's the chief executive, with all the cultural "soft power" perks that come with it. It's the closest thing to a literal version of the old "if you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be" question -- he can reach out to virtually anyone from any walk of life, musicians, actors, writers, economists, people of skill and talent and expertise, and ask them to dinner. Obama made great and frequent use of this perk, not for cynical fundraising reasons (as the Clintons did, renting out the Lincoln Bedroom), but because he's a fan of art and science and people who do things most people can't. That's what a normal person would do.
Trump does none of that. He had (pfft) Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and former veep flop (and current reality-teevee flop) Sarah Palin shortly after the election, as a suck it libturds! moment. Since then, nothing, not even z-listers like Tim Allen and James Woods, people who would suck his tiny dick in Times Square if he asked them to. No, he bails to the Maga-Lardo every other weekend to hang out with thrice-divorced urologists and has-beens and never-weres like Robert Davi.
I mean, I think I know who Robert Davi is. Or was. He's still alive, right?
But that should give you an indication of how truly miserable Trump is. He can do literally anything he wants, and this is what he chooses to do. And he knows that the walls are closing in, that even if Mueller's report turns out to be a nothingburger with extra cheese, there are already enough wheels in motion just at the SDNY to keep him in court for the rest of his life, and that he stands a very real chance of going to jail and/or losing substantial assets. It's driving him nuts, and he was never all that tethered to reality in the first place.
And that brings me immense joy, because I can scarcely think of a more deserving scumbag. And that's not an exaggeration. He is scum. His adult kids are scum. His current wife and his ex-wives are scum. They're all fucking awful people, lamely pretending to not be fucking awful, but by definition not really knowing how to pretend convincingly.
They are all part of the same vile problem -- and it is the same problem that we saw last week with the celebritard college admissions scandal. It is the tacit admission by wealthy people, that the whole point of being truly wealthy is not simply having more money, or just having enough money to not have to worry about money, the way the little people do.
The real point of being truly wealthy is having your own set of rules to play by, because you are insulated from the consequences that the little people take for granted. So you have a kid you want to get into college, but they not only aren't qualified to go, they don't even want to go? No problem, just bribe the right people in the right places in what is undoubtedly just another American racket, like health care and finance, just a grift designed to siphon money out of suckers.
And it worked until it didn't. Don't worry, America doesn't want to see the chick from Full House go to prison for a "victimless" crime, so she and Filliam H. Muffman will pay their token fines, and then go on PR rehab tours on the talk-show circuit, and go right back to what they were doing, which is whatever the hell they wanted.
But that's the same dynamic that Trump and his disgusting coterie of fellow grifters and enablers count on: that the little people really lurve their pelf-grubbing insect overlords; that they're too fucking dumb to understand the difference between knowing something about real business and just being a garden-variety chiseler; that they hate their fellow citizens more than they love their country.
And it just might work, not because Trump might steal the election next year, or refuse to leave if he loses, or any of that. It's because Democrats and liberals want to believe the fairy tale too, only their fairy tale consists of the disproven notion that most people are inherently good and idealistic and care more about facts than emotional catharsis. They need to recognize that their base is fucking hostile now too, and adjust their approach accordingly.
I don't give two fucks about how competent Amy Klobuchar (for example) may be. What concerns me is that her tepid, sensible approach reminds me of the beige suit known as Al Gore, who couldn't even get his home state to vote for him against a proven dipshit like George W. Bush. We want a fight, so either be prepared to get in the ring, or go the fuck home and weed your garden and draft policy papers touting the intrinsic benefits of gutless incrementalism.
What would be very nearly as bad as Trump legitimately winning next year, is the Democrats winning everything back in an indisputable landslide, and still not understanding that unless and until the current incarnation of the Republicon party is burned to the ground and the ashes pissed and shat upon, nothing will ever really change except the players. They have to deliver a convincing message of real economic justice for everyone, and couple that with a sincere conviction to end these cocksuckers, once and for all.
(Not to shake anyone out of their hard-earned couch-cushion change, but if you have a few shekels you can part with, the books are still available, and I think you might be pleasantly -- or not -- surprised by how relevant they still are, more than half a decade later.)
So in the Assholes of 2012 collection, which had the catchy title 12 in '12, I ranked the current thing in the Oval Office as the #3 asshole in these here Yewnighted States, due to his toxic blend of birther conspiracies and shameless ignorance. In retrospect, that ranking seems at once to be prescient, while also giving outsized importance to what was then realistically a noisy reality-teevee gadfly looking to fill his bottomless psychic hole, his pathetic need for publicity every fucking hour of every goddamned day.
What I was ignoring, even as it seems apparent in a back-handed way with the second factor stated above, was just how pernicious and effective reality teevee has become on people. Sure, it's been a staple here since the very beginning, how it's made 'murkins stoopid and whatnot, but the fact is that, since I really have never actually watched any of it, I only know of its effects secondhand at best.
Now, another more recent common theme of mine since the bewigged gastropod has oozed its way in and ensconced itself there, is that while it presents a significant problem, the real problem is the prion disease eating the brains of the idiots who voted for it, and still inexplicably believe in it, despite failure after failure after pathetic, toxic failure.
How do you deprogram a cult? We've been trying to figure that out with North Korea, among others for decades. But at least North Korea's cult is obviously held in place with a very real, palpable fear. These slapdick rubes sincerely love Trump without reservation. Until they decide that they love their country more than they hate whatever caricature of "liberals" Fixed Noise is pushing on them today, they'll follow him right over the edge. Don't kid yourself otherwise.
The joke about "when we're all living under freeway overpasses, grilling sparrows on curtain rods, the Trump voter will look over at his neighbor, who has no sparrow, and consider it a victory" cuts closer to the cold truth than any of us would like to admit. Think about it for a second -- whatever choice you've cast for imperial custodian or congressional prelate or what-have-you over the years, did you ever factor as long as it fucks over the other guy into your choice? Yeah, that's not a normal thing. But it's sadly become all too normal and obvious.
Here's a little story, completely true, about the effects of reality teevee on otherwise sentient, normal, even nice people: an older person of my acquaintance for about ten years (let's call her Mary), very sweet, devout church-goer, even more devout reality-teevee fanatic, and currently deep in the thrall of He Who Shall Not Be Named. But Mary is also the kind of person who always asks about everyone's families, remembers the names of your kids, even gets them a little something for their birthdays and Christmas. A sincerely kind person, but one who has been immersed and baptized in the poisoned well of Rupert Murdoch.
So some years ago, back around the time of the e-books (it really was a simpler time, wasn't it), she was rattling on about some Bachelorette-type show, and I was alternating between ignoring her, politely nodding my head, and occasionally providing some gentle ribbing. But at some point, having written so many caustic observations in here over the years about what I perceived (again, mostly secondhand) to be a negative, perfidious cultural epiphenomenon, I wanted to get the point-of-view from someone who watched all -- and I do mean all, she did and does have an encyclopedic knowledge of this crap -- of these shows.
"What's the appeal?," I asked. "You know it's seedy and gross -- these people who could all easily hook up in any meat market on a weekday night, pretending to have to go on a show to look for love, but really just wanting to burnish their social-media cred. You spend weeks watching them winnow through dozens of members of the opposite sex, frequently in hot tubs and other unseemly situations. And in the end, they're not going to get married, and if they do, they'll be divorced within a year, because this is not how anyone meets people. It's weird that someone like yourself, who takes pride in having been married nearly fifty years, would see value in that sort of thing."
Mary replied simply, I want to believe the fairy tale.
I think that cuts to the heart of both the appeal and the treachery of reality teevee. Whatever else you want to say about how and why it su-su-su-suuuucks, the fact is that the people who assemble this schlock are very good at distilling it down to elemental narratives that we all had drummed into us by junior-high school, and carry with us in our daily adult lives, whether we know and use them or not. They're there: identifying cliques, choosing sides, likes, loves, hates, fears, what you can share with your "friends" and what you can't because they can use it against you with the rest of the clique, etc.
These are extremely effective tropes, and they've obviously been very successful at packaging them into interchangeable "entertainment" products to piece out in between endless scads of advertisements for fast food and insurance and feminine hygiene products and big ol' trucks.
But what we're seeing now with Trump is someone who really had been on the verge of being rightly consigned to history's dustbin as a ridiculous punchline, a perennial blowhard who tried to go all Ross Perot in the 2000 campaign and got reminded that the court had to put him on an allowance because, you know, he bankrupted a fucking casino, because he's about as good a businessman as he is a husband or father or human being. Until that fucking turd Mark Burnett pulled him out of that dust heap, brushed him off, cleaned up his ricockulous microweave hairpiece and spent the next decade presenting him to 'murka as a gin-you-whine boner-fried bidnessman.
And they bought it. And now they're buying it with him as an "outsider" politician, even though he's neither of those things. He's an "outsider" to the extent that actual billionaires want nothing to do with him, don't invite him to their elitist soirees, etc. But he's a trust-fund asshole through and through, never worked an honest day or made an honest dollar in his goddamned life.
But try telling them that. You can't change their minds with "facts" because they want to believe the fairy tale. So you have to come up with a better fairy tale, a more compelling narrative that clearly positions who the "good guys" and "bad guys" really are. Put it in Game of Thrones terms: you may enjoy the moral fluidity of, say, Varys and Littlefinger, but there's no doubt where Ned and Joffrey were on their respective points of the moral compass.
Farmers in the midwestern states are going through huge increases in bankruptcy filings, thanks in large part to Purznit Shit-fer-Brains' brilliant trade wars, which are good and easy to win. This in spite of the fact that over eight billion dollars has already been expended in bailouts and price supports, because these people literally have entire harvest rotting in warehouses, because it cost them more to harvest it than they can currently get on the market.
Now, on the one hand, I am a huge -- and sincere! -- fan of people getting what they vote for, and in this case, these people are getting exactly that, good and hard. So fuck them. On the other hand, if I were running for president, and wanting to win the people in these states back over, I'd work on crafting a narrative that cleanly and simply outlines exactly what went down, and who's responsible. I'd find a handful of these suckers in every state and trot them up onstage, get them to recite their litany of woes to the audience of neighbors 'n' friends, and then make goddamned sure no one left the building without understanding that Fuckface Von Clownstick is entirely responsible for every miserable, sleepless night they've endured going through their financial hardship, and that we're going to fix it. And make sure that the corporate media shows up and broadcasts that shit, again and again.
That all of this has the added benefit of being 100% true is orthogonal to the real challenge. Truth just makes it a bit simpler to craft the narrative, but you'll still have to add a bit of fairy tale, a little something that they want to believe, even when they know in their hearts it isn't true.
Maybe point out to these farmers that while they're trying like hell to figure out how to hang onto what their parents and grandparents busted their humps to pass along to them, Jared Kushner is selling our nuclear tech to the Saudis, because he's neck-deep in hock to them. Maybe point out that things aren't going too well with North Korea after all, despite all the stunt summits and hand-waving and time-share salesmanship.
Maybe point out that poor and working-class people, whether they're in Alabama or California, have a hell of a lot more in common with each other, than with a thin-skinned fake tycoon who lies about everything, even things that don't matter. Maybe point out that, just as in real life, treating your friends and allies like shit does matter, because sooner or later you want or need something from them, and they have no reason to help you.
Maybe point out that this could all have gone completely differently, if he had just been 30% less of an asshole, that he could have won over moderates and even some liberals by simply making good on promises such as infrastructure and the opioid crisis, and not siding with nazis and calling everyone who disagrees with him an enemy of the state. Maybe ask why wages are still stagnant in Duh Best Economy Evuh, or why Genius Q. Dealmaker, Real Billionaire Tycoon, feels so comfortable cutting their health care.
I mean, if you didn't know any better, you might start to think that, you know, he's always been a fucking bullshitter.
I hate to say it, but future Real Housewives of Scottsdale star Meghan McCain has the right idea: you don't have to take any shit from this doddering cartoon character. You really don't. I look forward to George Conway finally screwing up the courage to tell that mercenary cunt wife of his to make a choice -- your boss or your family. (Although I also hope that, whether or not this Magnificent Bickersons act the Conways have going is real or some weird cover-our-asses-for-future-employment gambit, they both spend the rest of their lives broke and despised, just like the scumbag they helped put into office.) I look forward to enough senators finally remembering that they took an oath to serve the Constitution, and not a particular man, especially one so deeply unqualified and unfit for office.
More than that, I look forward to Trump's continuing decompensation. He's unraveling fast now -- fifty tweets over the past weekend, whining about Saturday Night Live reruns and Fixed Noise anchors, and equally meaningless nonsense. But what it really reveals is how fucking miserable he is.
I said this about Trump long before he threw his ricockulous microweave into the ring, and transitioned from being a distributor of thick envelopes to becoming a recipient of thick envelopes: if you, Tonstant Weader, had a kajillionty bucks and could do whatever you want, would you spend your time picking Twitter fights with Bill Cosby and Rosie O'Donnell, giving dating advice to Twilight actors? Which is literally what he was doing at the time, when he wasn't LYING about Obama's birthplace.
But now he's the chief executive, with all the cultural "soft power" perks that come with it. It's the closest thing to a literal version of the old "if you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be" question -- he can reach out to virtually anyone from any walk of life, musicians, actors, writers, economists, people of skill and talent and expertise, and ask them to dinner. Obama made great and frequent use of this perk, not for cynical fundraising reasons (as the Clintons did, renting out the Lincoln Bedroom), but because he's a fan of art and science and people who do things most people can't. That's what a normal person would do.
Trump does none of that. He had (pfft) Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, and former veep flop (and current reality-teevee flop) Sarah Palin shortly after the election, as a suck it libturds! moment. Since then, nothing, not even z-listers like Tim Allen and James Woods, people who would suck his tiny dick in Times Square if he asked them to. No, he bails to the Maga-Lardo every other weekend to hang out with thrice-divorced urologists and has-beens and never-weres like Robert Davi.
I mean, I think I know who Robert Davi is. Or was. He's still alive, right?
But that should give you an indication of how truly miserable Trump is. He can do literally anything he wants, and this is what he chooses to do. And he knows that the walls are closing in, that even if Mueller's report turns out to be a nothingburger with extra cheese, there are already enough wheels in motion just at the SDNY to keep him in court for the rest of his life, and that he stands a very real chance of going to jail and/or losing substantial assets. It's driving him nuts, and he was never all that tethered to reality in the first place.
And that brings me immense joy, because I can scarcely think of a more deserving scumbag. And that's not an exaggeration. He is scum. His adult kids are scum. His current wife and his ex-wives are scum. They're all fucking awful people, lamely pretending to not be fucking awful, but by definition not really knowing how to pretend convincingly.
They are all part of the same vile problem -- and it is the same problem that we saw last week with the celebritard college admissions scandal. It is the tacit admission by wealthy people, that the whole point of being truly wealthy is not simply having more money, or just having enough money to not have to worry about money, the way the little people do.
The real point of being truly wealthy is having your own set of rules to play by, because you are insulated from the consequences that the little people take for granted. So you have a kid you want to get into college, but they not only aren't qualified to go, they don't even want to go? No problem, just bribe the right people in the right places in what is undoubtedly just another American racket, like health care and finance, just a grift designed to siphon money out of suckers.
And it worked until it didn't. Don't worry, America doesn't want to see the chick from Full House go to prison for a "victimless" crime, so she and Filliam H. Muffman will pay their token fines, and then go on PR rehab tours on the talk-show circuit, and go right back to what they were doing, which is whatever the hell they wanted.
But that's the same dynamic that Trump and his disgusting coterie of fellow grifters and enablers count on: that the little people really lurve their pelf-grubbing insect overlords; that they're too fucking dumb to understand the difference between knowing something about real business and just being a garden-variety chiseler; that they hate their fellow citizens more than they love their country.
And it just might work, not because Trump might steal the election next year, or refuse to leave if he loses, or any of that. It's because Democrats and liberals want to believe the fairy tale too, only their fairy tale consists of the disproven notion that most people are inherently good and idealistic and care more about facts than emotional catharsis. They need to recognize that their base is fucking hostile now too, and adjust their approach accordingly.
I don't give two fucks about how competent Amy Klobuchar (for example) may be. What concerns me is that her tepid, sensible approach reminds me of the beige suit known as Al Gore, who couldn't even get his home state to vote for him against a proven dipshit like George W. Bush. We want a fight, so either be prepared to get in the ring, or go the fuck home and weed your garden and draft policy papers touting the intrinsic benefits of gutless incrementalism.
What would be very nearly as bad as Trump legitimately winning next year, is the Democrats winning everything back in an indisputable landslide, and still not understanding that unless and until the current incarnation of the Republicon party is burned to the ground and the ashes pissed and shat upon, nothing will ever really change except the players. They have to deliver a convincing message of real economic justice for everyone, and couple that with a sincere conviction to end these cocksuckers, once and for all.
Except that most mainstream Democrats are themselves only more tepid versions of the sellouts and even grifters that dominate the Rethugs.
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