08.02.16

Nowhere left to go

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall at 3:24 pm by George Smith

Every day delivers news of the allegedly rabid presidential candidate. A psychologist attests he’s mentally ill. Trump throws a baby out of one of his rallies. (At first I read the headline thinking he’d actually waded into a long rant attacking a crying child.) Trump is unfit, declares the president. There will be thermonuclear war with him in possession of “the football.” And, of course, full time now, the ongoing cruel feud with the Khan family.

This kind of news doesn’t have any effect on the people who are going to vote for him and against HRC.

They just don’t care. I don’t care, either. Which is not the same thing as saying they’re universally equally mean or as prone to great flights of unreason as Donald Trump.

Many obviously know exactly what he is and will vote for him to throw a bomb into the establishment and Clintonism. And while there MIGHT be more productive ways to show dissatisfaction with the rigged system that we have, it’s still an understandable human reaction.

The constant call of “look, look, look how horrible he is!??? and the we’ll all be doomed if he’s president thing that comes out of our side, the place of so-called betters, ahould be seen as a repetitive sneering. It deserves contempt, too. By now everyone knows Donald Trump.

Here’s the multiple meme, full on 24 hours a day now, about how America is again great, the sun is again shining and then, the other America, for Trump:

If you’re in the ascendant half of the population – as I’ve pointed out here before, it’s inaccurate to tar them all as “elite” – it’s hard to see how anyone, let alone nearly half of Americans, could think otherwise. The U.S. has the best economy in the world and by far the finest universities, driving further global dominance; new technologies are opening up a host of even greater possibilities, from elimination of manual labor to the ability genetically to engineer longer life, better health and greater abilities; minorities and women increasingly succeed on equal terms and people can marry whomever they choose; and one can easily travel almost anywhere in this amazing world – but needn’t, because there are Thai restaurants on almost every corner.

Unfortunately, not everyone is part of that wonderful world. Rather, for many, it stands as a threat.

Include me in the Trump-half of America although I won’t vote for him. I find it astonishing that he’s been able to carve out positions to the left of the Democratic Party, positions most certainly meaningless. But still the Democratic Party’s candidate has left no place to go, which is acknowledged.

I have nothing in common with those whose world is the first paragraph. Almost all of my face-to-face friends in Pasadena are from it. And to them I appear as an outsider, at best a nice person, who appears odd but one who can be tolerated in various situations, trusted to look after pets or house-sit.

“[Today], that [other] half is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) white, male, religious and poorly educated. Since that’s pretty much the definition of what, until recently, has been the dominant culture in the U.S., basically no-one else cares,” continues the piece.

No, that’s not right, either. But there’s no way through the walls.

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In other matters

Book(s) to be read:

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks.

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones.

2017 War with Russia by Buck Turgidson some retired general.

Pirated ebooks encouraged until a new Kickass comes along.

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