Donald J. Trump will be the next president of the United States of America. The constant media ridicule, which continues as the newspaper of record in its post-mortem tries to explain it in social justice terms, reveals only the failure of its own vision.
There has been a growing disconnect over the past decade between the elites and the people. The people want jobs. The elites want genderless bathrooms. The people want security. The elites want rights. The elites thought that electing a woman, any woman, president was more important than retaining the traditions they were raised on. The people have spoken. As Mike Cernovich twitted,
Power to the people.
This wasn’t an embrace of Trump policies so much as a rejection of Hillary’s, of the new Utopia, of our political establishment. This was your mother and father giving you a smack and telling you to snap out of it. They’ve worked too hard to have you huddled up in your safe space with a puppy, whining about how everything is horrific and exhausting. They’re exhausted too, but they still go to work every day in their unpleasant jobs because that’s how they earn the money to pay for you to eat every day.
You’ve been told that it’s evil to be a male, or to be white, or to be straight. It’s not that it’s evil to be female, black or trans, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. You can have equality. You cannot have control to the exclusion of the majority. You cannot create a nation that exalts the tail at the expense of the dog. The dog doesn’t like that, and will only take so much before it will bite.
Contrary to the cries of racism, sexism, deplorable, this is a return to neutral. The elites went too far, way too far, from the norms of American tradition. America doesn’t want to be your progressive Utopia. It doesn’t want to be controlled by the demands of every identity group, recreating itself, its rules, its norms, all so that you aren’t sad. It wants to be America.
Trump didn’t win so much as Hillary lost. The elites lost. You had the power and blew it. Your parents took back control when they came to the realization that you weren’t ready, you weren’t mature enough to know when to stop. You were so caught up in your ideals that you lost sight of why traditions became traditions, why the norms of American life made this the home for so many. The people love America, the nation they were born to, came to, suffered to become a part of, and you wanted to change it and told them they were all horrible people for not giving up everything they believed in to be just like you. America said no.
What will happen under a Trump administration? Who knows. It’s never been clear how he would accomplish any of his simplistic policies, conclusory goals. The closest he came to explaining anything was “believe me,” an unfulfilling answer. Most of it is subject to the checks and balances that were meant to constrain a runaway executive branch. The same constraints that you hated when it blocked the goals you wanted. For those of us who persisted in arguing that no branch of government should be free from checks and balances, maybe now you understand why. Or maybe it’s too soon, and it’s hard to understand anything while you’re still “literally shaking.”
Grow up. Toughen up. Open your eyes and see reality. Living in your fantasy world didn’t work, so now is the time to put your feelz aside and start coming to grips with a future that will require you to come to grips with the fact that America would rather have as its president a man with no qualifications or working knowledge of government than the future of your feelings. That’s how much America rejected your world of emotion.
This morning, your parents will wake up, put on their work shoes and do the heavy lifting that makes a nation happen, while you will hug each other, quiver and cry. That’s why American elected Donald Trump.
Thanks for this. Eloquently summarised what I couldn’t quite articulate.
Sounds like there was a landslide. Was there a landslide?
Yes and no. In the scheme of politics, Clinton should have won by 20%. She had the money, the newspapers, the elites, behind her. Had she failed to win by a huge margin, it would have been a defeat. That she lost, under these circumstances, is a landslide.
I wonder if the elite, the media, and the SJW’s will finally come to realize that you can only tell people what the believe in is wrong for so long before it comes back to bite them in the ass. If anything, this election proved that America is tired of politics as usual, and any change is better than the status quo.
One of the points I keep making to people who call for revolution is that the opposite of bad isn’t necessarily good. It can be worse.
Agreed, but there comes a point when the potential rewards outweigh the risks, and people say, “Screw it, let’s see what happens.”
Chris Arnade, who used to be an options trader, likens the situation of some Trump voters to traders stuck in a bad trade. When you’re stuck in a bad trade, the only thing that can help you is volatility. It’ll probably make things worse, but it might help, and nothing else will. If you do nothing, you stay stuck.
…. It’ll probably make things worse, but it might help, and nothing else will. If you do nothing, you stay stuck.
If nothing else, it will change the circumstances and maybe present new options.
Agreed,
And we just saved millions of dollars for large and small business everywhere, no need to replace all of the bathroom signs.
Changing bathroom signs is the least of the problem, and maybe they should be changed. But for the right reasons and after America decides it’s time to change the signs.
Your post on that was spot on a few days ago, and applies to what happened last night, the left thought they had a mandate and were moving way to fast for the average American
For me, it’s a criminal defense lawyer thing. We deal with reality, no matter how ugly it may be. Pretending otherwise never changes reality, and only leaves us unprepared and incapable of dealing with it as best we can.
The elections have been about 50/50 for quite awhile.
There was no way she would have won by a “huge margin”.
Going in, roughly 50% of the population was never going to vote for her even with all that behind her.
Trump isn’t the same sort of candidate that we’ve had in quite a while. Maybe since Jackson.
Trump is a wimp compared to Jackson.
Fact check: True.
True but that marked difference still didn’t change the 50/50 split. That is, it didn’t appear to matter.
There is more involved here than just the split. You may not have noticed, but Trump bears none of the indicia or qualifications of any person ever elected president. The data point of the split is only one factor. There are others at play here.
A giant flip-off to the establishment, to Obama, to the wealthy donors, to Wall Street, and to the media who thought they had this in the bag. Probably most at issue is the public’s weariness with the self-appointed social elites who believe their purpose on the planet is controlling the speech and thoughts of others. There will surely be crying and shrieking at the “nonpartisan” ABA Journal today, and nobody is getting that bucket of palliative cookie dough away from the editors until it is empty. Whatever this proves to mean for the country as a whole, it has certainly borne out that (free-listening) track on the B. McLeod Soundcloud page entitled, “There’s No Place for Crone.”
You have that Woody Guthrie thing going. Are you secretly wearing Birkenstocks?
I was wearing my AND1 flip-flops for that one. So, I was pretty comfortable. I think if Woody was still around, he’d have a pair of AND1 flip-flops.
And just think of all the free advertising Sunkist will get from having an orange in the Oval Office!
Orange is the new black.
Great….now we have #OrangeLivesMatter to look forward to.
As a ginger i resemble that remark
I really should have thought of that.
I blame the new coffee I’m trying this week. It’s quite tasty, but the caffeine content seems a tad on the thin side.
Hey, he’s only half orange.
So half-orange is the new half-black?
That would seem to follow.
Dude, I’m seriously starting to worry about you. The rust belt flipping was about the economy, not your raging hate boner for Social Justice.
The myopia got Trump elected. It will take some time before your eyes clear and you can read what I wrote. It will be hard, but I have faith in you.
“Raging hate boner.” Heh. You kidz.
Yeah, it is hard, what with the unclear antecedents, sentence fragments, and tense problems, but I’ll give it a shot.
Your post begins with an inaccurate and misleading analysis of the NYTimes article, which was nothing about Social Justice. Coincidentally, this is the mistake you’re accusing me of making in my original comment.
The first two sentences of the second paragraph allude to the real problem. But then it all goes haywire by pretending that what the ‘elites want’ is more Social Justice when we all know what they really want is a continuation the policies which ensure lower taxes for the rich, unequal access to justice and opportunity, and reductions in regulations which protect the environment and public health.
The next seven of your nine paragraphs are filled with an assumption-filled rant about social justice and ‘my parents’…Not the economy.
Give it time. Not only will the tears dry but you’ll grow up a bit more in the process. Give it time.
Whatever…I’m on to you Scooter. I’ve been around here long enough to see the patterns.
In any case, two years from now, when the manufacturing jobs have not returned and America’s still not ‘great’ there will be nobody to blame at the polls but Republicans. Maybe then America will drain the other swamp (Congress) and we can get on with some actual progress.
You may well be right about that. That America rejected Clinton doesn’t mean Trump has the answers. And should America learn that Trump is no better, or worse, then it will seek different answers. And it may learn that those answers don’t work either. Live long enough and you learn hope and dreams don’t always pan out the way the young believe with all their heart they will. But we keep chugging away and hoping for better.
Some of us don’t necessarily want manufacturing jobs; just any good-paying job will do. A manufactured job might be Okay for a while, just to be able to pay our bills and get out of debt. Let those manufacturing jobs go the Mexico and China! They were drudgery, filthy, dirty, dangerous. Some of us want clean jobs,… you know, sit in front of computer screen and talk on the phone while texting with the other hand, aka multi-tasking. We want a paycheck, and a good one at that. Ha.
Finally, “progress” is in the eye of the beholder. (GE: “Progress is our most important product” was the mantra way back when.) Some of us are just trying to maintain what we already have. TrumpMaster speaks to that sentiment, albeit at times incoherently.
“Donald J. Trump will be the next president of the United States of America.”
That is not a certainty.
Considering all the hatred against him, with many people apparently convinced that he is Evil Incarnate, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he was assassinated.
Hopefully that won’t happen, of course, but the over the top hatred against him is cause for concern.
Let’s not go there.
The over-the-top hatred of Billary Clinton’s machine politics is not to be misunderetimated either. It may be of even greater “concern”. The common folk have voted and thereby expressed their disgust, if not hatred, of the woman who aspired to her prior husband’s achievement. If this was not nepotism, well then what was it? Will she go quietly into that good nite, or will she hang around and continue making herself a pain in the a$$? That you bring up the A-word, that too is of concern. Shame on you. When you assume, you make an ass out of U and me.
He was not and has not been assassinated. Make that, “..if he were to be …” , a hypothetical which we trust will not happen again in these great united states. Maureen Dowd’s long-standing wish may now be achieved, God willing.
I still hold with W.C. Fields: I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
He may be the most influential political philosopher of all time.
The “parents” pressed “reset”? More like the kids trashed the family car. But don’t worry—we’ll pick up the tab in four years, even if the alignment will always be a little out of whack.
Anyway, your claim to having an illuminating read on the social, psychological, and political reasons underlying this remarkable outcome is perhaps undermined by your bold, confident tweet reply to me three weeks ago: “Trump is irrelevant. He won’t be elected.” (October 10, 2016.) That hasn’t aged well, has it?
Didn’t age well at all. I would have made the same point by the fact that Clinton didn’t win 80-20, given that Trump demonstrated no working knowledge of “law, civics, governance and Constitution.” I grossly underestimated the degree of disaffection in America for the status quo.
…. I grossly underestimated the degree of disaffection in America for the status quo.
Since almost everyone else underestimated it also, I guess the question is why it was missed so badly?
An excellent question. I don’t know, but I do know that Big Data ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I think the polls and media projections were manipulated, for an intended “get on the bandwagon” effect. It may have actually boomeranged, by causing a lot of voters to conclude they could cast a ‘protest’ vote for Trump or write in Bernie Sanders with no prospect of changing the outcome.
I doubt that the issue is big data. I would be willing to bet quite a bit that had someone that actually had “big data” (facebook,google,amazon) done a proper analysis they might well have come to the right conclusion.
My guess is that the reason none of them did is similar to why quite a few ships were sunk in WWII even after engima was decrypted and the US and UK were able to read German dispatches.
“You’ve been told that it’s evil to be a male, or to be white, or to be straight.”
Evil. Not misinformed. Not unhip. Not even just dumb. But evil. Profoundly immoral and malevolent.*
So the working class kept their traps shut and kept working or looking for work and taking care of the house and kids. And then got up even earlier on a workday (or used up their precious lunch break) and used the voting lever as a middle finger.
*Plus baby killer if you owned an AR-47.
I believe that most of Trump’s voting demographics also have little knowledge of “law, civics, governance and Constitution.” Older, white, male, minimal College/high school education who have been blamed for all the misogynistic and racial discourse in the country for the past 50+ years.
Incontinence and impotence also probably motivated them for the nuclear option.
Time for payback.
On the brighter side, maybe Billy Bush will get his job back.
Kinda amazing that they could elect a president when everyone else was for the other candidate. They must have mad election skillz.
Billy Bush will never get his job back. He’s term limited. He has a library to work on and meaningless speeches to make ad nauseam. The alarming thought is that Hillary waits in the wings for a re-match, something like Nixon waiting for the Kennedy-Johnson era to crash-land. Nixon came roaring back after declaring, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Poor loser that he was, he came back for more punishment on the national stage. May he rest in peace. Thanx for ending the war and putting us into a massive recession which many will not forget. Terrible days back then.
He tried to pull a Pewtin, using wife Hillary as shill, but the country proved wise to the skullduggery-apparent. We’ve decided once and for all time (?) that the Clinton’s dedication to public service and contributions to the public (feminist) dialogue (while getting rich in the process) has come to an end.
Wait? Billy Bush is building a library?!?
Will it be filled with books on the Kardashians, and dioramas of visits to the set of Grey’s Anatomy? Will Maria Menounos work the reserve desk? Will Pat O’Brien give dramatic readings of his voice-mails?
I will be first in line for a library card.
“I believe that most of Trump’s voting demographics also have little knowledge of “law, civics, governance and Constitution.” Older, white, male, minimal College/high school education who have been blamed for all the misogynistic and racial discourse in the country for the past 50+ years.
Incontinence and impotence also probably motivated them for the nuclear option.”
Sounds like you only want voters who have been subjected to several years of schooling (or indoctrination would probably be more accurate) in the liberal SJW havens that our colleges and universities have become.
Then again, since those aren’t cures for incontinence and impotence that may not help you either.
Poor Zoe needed to vent, so she wrote a foolish comment to prove her anger and hatred. Nothing more than that.
In mitigation, Its hard to sense the disaffection for the status quo in New York or Washington. One really needs to be living and socializing in other parts of the country, where the jobs are shite and the middle class and poor whites are downwardly mobile, to see what is in the air.
If we applied that standard to who gets to talk, it’d be Mike Cernovich vs. Scott Adams. Forever.
Well, there’s always Matty Iglesias, provided you take him as a per se contraindicator.
Although Scott Adams observations on the 3 act structure of Donald Trump’s election may be astute, I think it was anticipated by artists such as David Mamet in his book ‘Three Uses of the Knife – On the Nature and Purpose of Drama’. There’s a world of viewpoints outside the US, and some of those come from people such as Vladimir Putin, who played a minor role in Donald’s second act. It’s possible for us to learn much about the views of these minor characters, and I think Putin called it as well as, if not better than, Mr. Adams, in his presentation in Valdai shortly before the election. ( https://youtu.be/Xs40t57rcBk?t=623 ). In Hillary’s second act, the drip, drip, drip of small embarrassments provided by WikiLeaks was turning a minor character into a 3rd act monster. Like a republican under indictment, I put my support behind Trump, so that no young man or woman dies needlessly to promote political slogans designed to manipulate the ignorant. Now, the ending always ties back to the beginning, and once again, we’re at the start of a new 3 act play. So the question is, will it be about slaying monsters, or slaying misunderstandings (foreign or domestic)? I’m optimistic that the country can live up to FDR’s quote, which was posted here in regards to a prior election:
With the direct control of the free choosing of public servants by a free electorate, the Constitution has proved that this type of government cannot long remain in the hands of those who seek personal aggrandizement for selfish ends, whether they act as individuals, as classes or as groups. It is therefore in the spirit of our system that our elections are positive in their mandate, rather than passive in their acquiescence. Many other nations envy us the enthusiasm, the attacks, the wild over-statements, the falsehood intermingled gaily with the truth, that marks our general elections, because they are promptly followed by acquiescence in the result and a return to calmer waters as soon as the ballots are counted
I didn’t make it past the first sentence, but since I’m posting pretty much everything today, why not?
Everything?
I ♥️ SHG for SCOTUS
How quickly I come to regret my decisions.
I second the motion. Seriously. I’m German, so I can’t be ironic.
But only if he sits next to RBG. Wanna know if she’ll try tiny little hands shenanigans under that really big desk.
I want justice for that poor little judge in
Nebraska.
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
At oral argument today, RBG wore her special “dissent” jabot, the one she wears when she reads a dissent. No opinions having been announced today, it was not exactly subtle.
Not exactly meaningful either. She won’t be around many more years, and President Trump will be appointing her successor. He probably won’t even ask her for suggestions.
We got thru this comment it w/out comprehending everything. However, the last paragraph was excellent, we thought. And true, bye the wayside. The gloom-and-doomers will be proven wrong. A lot of women and librals are mourning today the loss of an election to which they subscribed so much impotence. No champagne for them! Some are wringing their hands, gnashing their teeth and beating their collective heads against the walls. It’s horrrible when you loose; it truly is. We feel your pain. Just picker-up, ladies and gentlemen, and get on with it. That’s you, Gloria SteinBerg. We know you can do it! (And a few others.)
It really is not the end of the world, even if Dow Jones Chow Mein drops a few thousand points. (Donald will instruct you when to get back in; it’s in once of his books!) It always seems to come roaring back, for reasons unknown–to the chagrin of those of us who think the financial markets are “rigged”. Ha. The gloom-and-doomers are almost always wrong. And when they’re right, their timing is off something terrible. You cannot “bank” on em. Not now, not ever!
The Trump success against all odds proves the force of sheer bulldoggery. We do it better than anyone else in the world, trust it. So, not to worry! Or shall we say, please do not be in a hurry to worry. There’s plenty of time left for that. What did Bush #43 say? Go out and spend money. Yea, if you have any.
We wonder what Paris Hilton has to say about thi? Khardashian, get back in your cage. That’s an order.
You’re using up all your comments until at least the end of the year, Bill. Are you sure you want to do this?
We did not know that there’s a quota? We did notice that you were being generous today, as noted somewhere above or below. Thanx for being so generous on post-election day, 2016. We will try to constrain ourselves and resist the urge to merge. And to proof-read more carefully! Today, we’re flying while others are crying.
Reply button over there is missing.
For me, it’s a criminal defense lawyer thing. We deal with reality, no matter how ugly it may be. Pretending otherwise never changes reality, and only leaves us unprepared and incapable of dealing with it as best we can.
You and engineers. The bridge doesn’t care about your feelz, if you don’t build it to spec and load it too much, it will break. For all the “Yes, we can do it!” mentality in the cubicles, overly super-cooled liquid oxygen still does bad and explosive things to carbon-fiber fuel lines. The FORTRAN compiler doesn’t care what gender or color I am; if I write bad code, I’ll get bad results. And so on.
Comments only nest 5 deep. The last reply button is the one to use. “FORTRAN.” You’re older than I thought.
Don’t make me get out the paper punch cards…
SHG, you just blew away your tech creds.
FORTRAN is still used today.
I think it was more like hitting it with a hammer than hitting reset.
The vibe I got from it was, “Hold my beer and watch this.”
Down here, deep in flyover country, not surprised.
I’m not hoping for much, but we’ll see how it goes.
That’s all anyone can do, see how it goes. But this is why dismantling the checks and balances for Obama, or any president, isn’t a principled way to achieve a goal.
There you go, making our Little Potato seem loaded with gravitas. Claps hands slowly.
One can still hope that The Donald emulates William Henry Harrison, thereby solving the problem for us.
Then Pence would be president. Are you sure that solves the problem for us?
I hate to say this, but I think you’re ascribing too much thought for how the decision to elect The Donald went down. As a low income white male stuck on the edge of flyover country, I am somewhat involuntarily versed in the culture in this arena. They weren’t seeking to shake things up, they didn’t think Trump would solve any problems. They WERE sick of being screwed over, and wanted to see see someone else get screwed for a change. People here are drooling with anticipation of watching riots and carnage as police are ordered to round up and deport the millions and millions of illegals they’ve been told exist. And when you ask them, they acknowledge it wont help their situation one whit.
Are you claiming that we don’t have 10 million illegals?
Are you claiming that there are grammar police who aren’t pedantic?
I think that amongst the population in general, there is a vast conflation of migrants, immigrants, and illegal immigrants when it comes to those who are brown (heard anything about the illegal Irish problem lately? It exists, but no one cares.) So, I suppose, to whit: No I seriously doubt it. That would imply that a hugely significant portion of the Mexican/Central American population as a whole lives in the U.S. illegally.
10 million would be about 8% of Mexico’s population. A Google search should be sufficient to convince yourself. 10 million is considered a very conservative estimate by most sources.
I’m sure they’ll get right on that, as soon as they’re given a comprehensive and accurate list of the names and addresses of all the people who aren’t documented anywhere.
Trump wins and SHG opens the comment floodgates. Is this the apocalypse everyone was afraid of?
Did you not read Bill’s comments? Apocalypse doesn’t begin to cover it.
And we’ve yet to hear from Barleycorn
He’s more of a morning guy, though he hasn’t had much to say in a couple days.
Even though I never understand anything he says, I hope he’s alright.
Few writing methods bother me as much as the royal “we”, so, no, I usually can’t read past the first few words. Of course, maybe he uses “we” because the voices. Not sure that helps, though.
The voices seem most likely.
We’re not taking this gratuitous, un-Constitituitional insult lying down around town. Cut to the chase: Scru you, Charles and the horse you rode in on. Nobody tells ME how to write MY submissions,… except the Host. And not too often, at that. Not even Mother Teresa! We hereby pledge never to read Charley-boy again. And that’s affirmative!
For the record: We attended the Donald Trump School of Creative Writing and are applying to the Trump School of Law, as we speak. Actually, if Charles had been paying attention, he would have noticed that this so-called royal affect was addressed and answered brilliantly by Patrick Maupin on this very blawg, a few weeks ago. It’s not sufficient that an idiot like you come on here and shoot from the hip without knowing what the hell you are talking about. Somehow you slipped thru the screed, and SHG took the bait. We smell something is burning on your stove!
Case closed.
Furthermore, be advised that bona fide scientific research is being conducted into the topic of “hearing voices”. Naturally, it’s a complicated and variable topic. Common-sense notions of this phenomenon are, naturally, way off the mark. Check it out. OUr source: NPR, Science Friday, last week.
Finally, we miss Barleycorn and hope he’s not in hospital. Too many of our friends and associates have been visiting the hospital lately. Not a pleasant thought, and you complain about the “royal we”!?! May you dance with Hillary till sunrise w/out stopping. It’s been 22 hours since we made a submission. We are restraining ourselves in the face of intemperate and unwarranted criticism
from the peanut gallery.
Intemperate *and* unwarranted? You’re asking a lot.
“Trump wins and SHG opens the comment floodgates. Is this the apocalypse everyone was afraid of?”
Don’t forget the Cubs winning the World Series…that would be a third indicator