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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| I love America. It's Americans I hate |
| 2017-01-10 |
| [TheWeek] For years, my friend Jenny Boylan and I have had a recurring conversation about the purpose and value of our work. Jenny, an LGBT activist, has always been a buoyant believer in the power of language to overcome ignorance, misconception, and prejudice. She says: "It is impossible to hate anyone whose story you know." She engages with the public through public speaking, TV, and social media. I, a polemical cartoonist, would laugh in her face at her sweet naiveté. The public is a swarm of hostile morons, I told her. You don't need to make them understand you; you just need to defeat them, or wait for them die. The 2016 election gave us both occasion to second-guess our positions. Since that election, our debate has gone national. A lot of chastened liberals are telling each other that we need to really listen to the plaints of Trump voters, to try to understand them — exactly the sort of earnest effort at empathy that conservatives love to mock. Others wonder whether it isn't a misguided strategy to extend the benefit of the doubt and give fair hearing to people who have never once done the same for us. The time for civil discourse and debate is over, they say; the only course left now is resistance. A few of us are talking, after a couple drinks, about buying guns; if it comes to a fascist state or civil war, we figure, we don't want the red states to be the only ones armed. Like a lot of people, I'm still trying to figure out what policy to adopt, and what marginal role I can play, in the incoming dystopia. My official policy toward a Trump administration is straightforward enough (even if implementing it won't be): Defy, paralyze, and undermine it in any way I can. What's going to be more complicated is formulating some coherent attitude toward the 62 million of my fellow Americans who elected that administration. How to reconcile my convictions with the actual human beings — family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors — who voted for this man? What I see is that this guy and his ilk will go from attacking conservatives and Trump supporters, to attacking Trump himself. Tactically that is a bad move. Trump will survive their slings and arrows intact, but the rest won't be as understanding. They still have to deal with the supporters and conservatives. A vote cast for Trump is kind of like a murder; there may be context to consider — a disadvantaged background, extenuating circumstances, understandable motives — but the choice itself is binary and final, irrevocable. There's a case to be made that it's indefensible; that his supporters have forfeited any right to be respected or taken seriously. The conservatives of the heartland have lashed back against the coastal elites' condescending, classist prejudices by defiantly confirming them: that they're pathetically dumb and gullible, uncritical consumers of any disinformation that confirms their biases, easy dupes for any demagogue who promises to bring back the factories and keep the brown people down. Trump wasn't even my fourth choice, but I went for him because he was all there was left. My prejudices include a preference for a small government that takes less from people and which does not allow itself to be used to attack its own citizens. That may not be remedied under Trump, but a hostile government that takes more that it should would have been encased in stone. Ignorance and bigotry are actually the best possible motives for having voted for Trump — they are at least honest, if not honorable. But I don't believe all Trump voters are ignorant, or bigoted; most of them are just evil — evil being defined not as anything so glamorous as beheading journalists or gunning down grade schoolers, but simply as not much caring about other people's suffering. They're willing to consign someone else — someone Mexican, or Muslim, or trans, not anyone they know — to exile, arrest, or second-class status, in exchange for... what? A tax break? To send a message to Washington, or the mainstream media? Just out of spiteful, petulant rage? Nothing stops Mexicans from applying for emigration to the US the right, legal way, As for tax breaks, I would prefer a general reduction of revenue and spending for government, The reason is that a small government will not have the resources to use its power against its citizens. More at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #19 Lib soft sciences "twofer": Lousy writing and pedestrian propaganda. |
| Posted by: Blossom Unains5562 2017-01-10 21:15 |
| #18 A few of us are talking, after a couple drinks, about buying guns Please do. And get your gun training from TV shows. You'll shoot yourselves, or each other, and save us the bullets - and the paperwork. |
| Posted by: Barbara 2017-01-10 21:10 |
| #17 How many Christians does this guy dream of killing every morning before lunch? |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2017-01-10 20:02 |
| #16 charger, your Hillary submission lacks a URL. Please leave a note in the O Club with that information, or we won't be able to use it. Thanking you for the moderators, trailing wife |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2017-01-10 19:52 |
| #15 — evil being defined not as anything so glamorous as beheading journalists or gunning down grade schoolers, but simply as not much caring about other people's suffering. On the contrary, he thinks those things are perfectly OK. |
| Posted by: charger 2017-01-10 19:40 |
| #14 "Stronger together" doesn't degrade gracefully. If the signal is corrupted the swarm dies. Once madness creeps into the talking points, "stronger together" becomes "crazy together."Richard Fernandez, Belmont Club. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2017-01-10 18:20 |
| #13 We couldn't have survived that idiot Clinton. End of story. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2017-01-10 16:23 |
| #12 "What's going to be more complicated is formulating some coherent attitude toward the 62 million of my fellow Americans who elected that administration. How to reconcile my convictions with the actual human beings — family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors — who voted for this man?" The most productive thing you could do toward formulating a "coherent attitude" toward your fellow Americans would be to seriously consider the possibility that everything you think you know-- and I do mean EVERYTHING-- is pure, utter bullshit and that your "convictions" are nothing more than intellectual and moral sewage poured into your head by a Progressive media/education establishment determined to convert you into an unthinking jackass. You are a moral cretin. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2017-01-10 10:47 |
| #11 If Trump doesn't achieve anything else (and I believe he's will), he still was the right choice because he made the masks come off. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2017-01-10 10:17 |
| #10 The reason is that a small government will not have the resources to use its power against its citizens Badanov, another reason is that a small government removes motivation for rent seeking. Apply the Willie Sutton Rule logic and make lobbying the government a high cost low return activity. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2017-01-10 09:27 |
| #9 So clueless he doesn't even know he's clueless! Dunning-Kruger. |
| Posted by: Spinesing Gray3122 2017-01-10 09:05 |
| #8 Sarte: "Hell is other people" Liberals: "People who aren't in lockstep with my views are icky, but I sooooo love 'the idea of America' (as defined by me) Because LGBT and stuff..." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2017-01-10 08:10 |
| #7 Defy, paralyze, and undermine it in any way I can I never did that to the soon-to-be former President - I hoped for the best and feared for the worst. I let Obama earn his legacy. Why can't you losers just stand aside? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2017-01-10 07:44 |
| #6 A house divided against itself can not stand. All they want is power and anything that stands in the way must be thrown down. There can be only one. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2017-01-10 06:38 |
| #5 Leftists say the love the people, to balance their hate for all the persons they meet who have to indecency to make different choices. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2017-01-10 04:00 |
| #4 A few of us are talking, after a couple drinks, about buying guns; if it comes to a fascist state or civil war, we figure, we don't want the red states to be the only ones armed. So clueless he doesn't even know he's clueless! |
| Posted by: gorb 2017-01-10 02:52 |
| #3 most of them are just evil — evil being defined not as anything so glamorous as beheading journalists or gunning down grade schoolers, but simply as not much caring about other people's suffering. Virtue signalling. These people are unbelievably shallow. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2017-01-10 02:42 |
| #2 I still have not seen one shred of evidence that Trump is a 'racist'. And no, enforcing federal law by building a fence is not 'racist'. And keeping out follows of an religion who either kills innocent people for terrorism or does nothing about it out is not racist either. Religion is a choice - not a race. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2017-01-10 00:40 |
| #1 Don't worry. Americans hate you too. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2017-01-10 00:02 |