Good luck, America
Americans are the most open-hearted, open-minded, capable, generous, and professional people I have lived amongst. You deserve better.
I break with my regularly scheduled programming to send my readers in America a hearty virtual hug today, Election Day.
I spent most of last week blissfully, though not intentionally, off-line. But early in the week I managed to catch glimpses of utterly batshit posts coming from American liberals in such a state of reality-free hysteria that even after so many years of observing this phenomenon, I was gobsmacked.
One post in particular sent a shock wave through me. A person I know well - an intelligent, experienced, worldly-wise, person — shared a post comparing Donald Trump’s NYC Madison Square Garden rally to Hitler’s Nuremberg rally. It said “Not since 1939 has there been a Nazi rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Don’t be fooled y’all — just bcz Jewish people are not the primary target, the fear mongering, bigotry, and vile hatred permeating Trump’s rally is EXACTLY the same.”
Readers, friends, fellow non-libtards: why do I continue to be shocked by the depths of this delusion?
This Trump Derangement Syndrome is not performative. Even privately, many experienced media professionals express fury at outlets like The New York Times for their pro-Trump stance. Yes, you read that right. Many of the liberal normies think that the corporate media is too easy on Trump.
Do these people have zero pattern recognition skills? Do they pick up on even the faintest whiff of hypocrisy, when the party that off-ed its own leader and swapped in someone who had barely ever received any votes, screams ‘end of democracy!’ because millions of people want to vote for someone else?
Recently I listened to Mark Halperin — possibly the only recently mainstream media figure who is actually an honest broker of information — say that he worries if Trump were to win, Blue America will have a collect nervous breakdown of the kind no one has really witnessed before. And Halperin is one of the most well-sourced, centrist, straight-shooting pundits out there.
There has never been a more consequential presidential election in my lifetime. The thing I fear most is a Democratic Party victory. (If you are new here and want to review reasons for my loathing of Dems and this administration in particular, you can do so here and here.)
But I genuinely fear a Trump victory as well. Not because I think he’s Hitler. Because half of the country — a very influential half that just so happens to also contain most of my family and friends — has been so radicalised against him and his supporters that I fear the reaction his election would provoke.
The Nazi trope. The women-bleeding-out-in-parking-lots trope. The rapist trope. The Putin’s lapdog trope. At this point, these have all been debunked to one degree or another. But in the cacophony of the internet, it’s been too easy for the Trump-deranged to stay in their delusions. Because there is a huge media ecosystem set up with the express purpose of keeping them transfixed on the phantasmagorical horrors that Trump represents.
Trump is a very flawed character. I still find his way of speaking to be shockingly unpresidential, sloppy, and imprecise. Had the Democrats presented an alternative that was even a hair better, I may have stuck with them. Instead, they set off on a race to the bottom, to be the very worst they could be, and along the way, kneecap and character assassinate all opposition from within and without. The Democratic Party apparatus has no leg to stand on, ethically speaking. They sabotaged good faith dissent. They are sore losers, and cry-bullies, and flagrantly engage in every terrible behaviour they accuse Trump of. Does this make the Republican Party — or Trump himself — amazing and perfect? Of course not. But the Dems are going down in ignominy and they are determined to take every last sentient voter down with them.
If you base your entire platform on hypocrisy, harming children, and pouring blue-collar tax dollars into foreign wars while also claiming faux moral superiority, you deserve to be relegated into the dustbin of history.
If your aim is to create a society run by a bureaucracy so stupid and cruel, citizens’ pet squirrels and domesticated racoons can be executed by the state on a whim, to the bottom rungs of hell with you.
Still, I do not fully blame regular liberal Americans for continuing to support such a malevolent political party. Does a fish recognise the water it swims in? Besides, I know there are too many good people on that side to just write off entirely. But most of all, and I say this with a bit of guilt, having abandoned America over a decade ago in search of a more humane lifestyle — I love Americans. You guys are the most open-hearted, open-minded, capable, generous and professional people I have lived amongst. My own personal conflicted identity and the effete, cappuccino-sipping, European in me called me away. But you guys — the liberals, the conservatives, the unaffiliated — are the best. And you have been under the most sustained and sophisticated economic, cultural, spiritual, and psychological warfare of our lifetime. The fact that you have endured is a marvel. You are the best.
My heart goes out to everyone living through this in the US.
Who knows how long it will take this election to even be over — and I pray that we might wake up on Wednesday to find that it is — but until then, good luck everyone.
I love you. And may God help us all.
Online I’ve repeatedly banged away at the following, the building that Trump held his rally in isn’t the same one as where the German American Bund 1939 rally took place nor is it located in the same place. It simply has the same name. Exactly what having a rally at MSG - per se- is supposed to prove is beyond me. The Communists also held a rally there. I saw The Rolling Stones at the Garden and Neil Young. I’m fine with people not liking Trump but it would be nice if they’d actually stick to facts and not spiral out into fantasy.Trump might be - fill in the disparaging word- but this he’s a Nazi doesn’t even make sense.
You had me at the title!
Whoever wins, let us hope that we all have an uncommon case of common sense and re-unite as Americans.