Just because it’s going to be a dumpster fire
GQ talked to five voters who have somehow managed not to decide which is worse, Trump or Clinton. Anonymous “Politics reporter, 42, Washington, D.C.:
I’ve struggled with this the entire election season. Some days I’m really tortured by it, and some days it’s, like, laughable. But I’ve never really felt this way as an adult human. And it’s really—it’s messing with me.
I cannot stomach Hillary Clinton. I just can’t get with her. Maybe because I know too much. I find so much of her world hypocritical, reprehensible. I think the rest of the country sort of gives her a pass, like, “Oh, she’s always been attacked by Republicans, it’s not that big a deal, email shmemail!” But I’m like, “WHAT! This is a huge deal.”
The rest of the country? Apart from the huge segment that has always detested Hillary Clinton, mostly for bad reasons, you mean? If the rest of the country gives her a pass, why has there been so much time wasted on the emails? Why did Matt Lauer burn up half her time talking about the fucking emails and then interrupt her to tell her to hurry up for the whole rest of the interview?
And no, it’s not a huge deal, especially given the fact that Trump has lied and stolen and cheated his way through life.
But he’s not too sure about Trump either. He likes his “blow everything up” approach, but not so much his “saying, “What do you have to lose?” to African-Americans. Like, WHAT? What?”
He wants to vote for him though – because he’ll be so much more fun.
I think I would just have to sort of give in to my chaos theory of Trump and just hope that he surrounds himself with the right people enough that it’s not a total disaster? Or Hillary would have to do a really convincing and honest come-to-Jesus with the media. A real press conference.
I cover this stuff every day. So for me, four years of Trump, selfishly, sounds a lot more enticing, just because it’s going to be a dumpster fire. And a Clinton administration would be more of what we’re seeing now, which is carefully orchestrated speeches, behind-the-scenes Wealthy McWealthysons going in and out of the White House, and really horrible transparency with the press.
So Trump would not be rich people in the White House? Or really horrible transparency with the press? I’ll give him the “carefully orchestrated speeches” part – I agree that Trump’s speeches would not be carefully orchestrated, or thoughtful, or intelligent, however many clever people he found to write them. What I don’t agree with, though, is the idea that ignorant chaotic speeches are preferable to “carefully orchestrated” ones.
I also, of course, disagree sharply with his longing for the dumpster fire.
It’s not like it’s going to affect him either way assuming he’s white and straight. He simply lacks the decency to give a shit. This describes many of the undecideds.
Yeah, it’s not him or anyone he cares about who’ll be burning in the dumpster fire. Nihilistic twit.
Even if you’re devoid of empathy, doesn’t doing what’s right matter?
Apparently not. part of the problem with having lived decades with no large scale wars, famines or starvation actually on the ground in our homes affecting US, is that many in the west have become deeply inured to what the consequences are of things going badly wrong with political life. Sure, over the last 10 years we have seen more graphic footage and images faster than ever before, had more information dumped on us about government than ever before. Yet, somehow, for the bulk of the population that has been like water off a ducks back. Irrelevant and inconsequential. I can’t even call it a young persons problem. I think it’s just lost in the comfortable mists of time. until people live through a war on their own ground, watch their kids starve in a famine, or loose their own stuff as the result of a politicians incompetence or evil nature they just can’t bring themselves to consider it real at a visceral level.
I’m no great lover of Hillary, but there are things to admire about her and, faults and all, there is just no comparison between her and Trump. My greatest fear is that even if she wins (fingers firmly crossed) and Trump sinks without trace (unlikely), the next shit-stain of the mark will be smart enough to be a plausible version of Trump. That will be a disaster.
@Rob This is my fear. Not that Trump wins, that seems unlikely. But that he has enabled all the elements that could lead to a more competent but equally unpleasant individual who could win.
This guy should wake up. It wouldn’t be a dumpster fire, it would be a PLANE CRASH and we’re ALL ON THE PLANE! I really don’t get some people.
For everyone who “cannot stomach” or “has no great love for” Hillary Clinton—can you imagine any other woman having gotten into a credible run for the presidency much differently? Can you imagine any other woman who somehow wouldn’t’ve received three decades of obstinate opposition, knee-jerk distrust, and misogyny from the vast reservoir of bigots in the Land of the Free? Can you imagine any other woman who, after having had every detail of her life examined ad nauseum and each “scandal” (which would have been, and in most cases has been, simply shrugged off when and if a male politician were to be caught up in similar circumstances), would not have developed the same instinctive distrust of the media and the same instinct for secrecy? Can you imagine any other woman able to stand up to three decades’ worth of unrelenting scrutiny and vituperation for, at worst, engaging in the same kinds of transactions that male politicians have been profiting from since before George Washington ever heard of Saratoga? Can you imagine any woman who *wouldn’t* have had to face such scrutiny, and such vituperation, for daring to credibly challenge what has heretofore been an all-male institution?
Because until you can, your dislike of Hillary Clinton seems as likely your problem as it is hers.
Seth, Yes I can imagine all of that actually. Let me introduce you to Helen Clark the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and currently in the (distant) running for UN Secretary General. I voted for her Party as long as she was the Leader (we don’t directly elect PM). She’s not perfect, but then none of us is. Hillary isn’t perfect, but then the US political system pretty much makes any normal human being unelectable for various reasons. If I was in the US and eligible to vote, I’d vote Hillary. She’s not as bad as many say she is. She’s also not a saint and she’s made compromises to get where she is – as needed. She’s made mistakes, but then who hasn’t in 30 years of doing anything other than ditch digging. Well, even then…
However, lets not pretend that making those compromises is a good thing. Instead, lets acknowledge that all the other politicians and power brokers have made the same compromises OR WORSE to get into their positions of power also.
So, what was your point again?
Ah, my. Sure, warming their hands on the dumpster fire, is it?
Y’know, there really needs to be more vicious mockery of that whole too cool/too jaded to care bullshit that keeps coming up from voices like these. It’d make a better world, y’ask me.
I mean, yes, dears, I’m sure you are too cool to care about the house you’re in burning down, and the most vulnerable among you paying first and dearest. Slow clap, here. How very sophisticated of you. Just can’t tell you what a wicked great look that is on you, either. Oh, and how original. Seriously. Sleep with me, I beg you, I’m so very impressed. So very avant garde it is, this petty, predictable, tapioca nihilism of yours. Such a deep and thoughtful thing that is, oh you wounded and deep soul for whom the system is just so too terribly dirty for you to sully yourself with actually fucking thinking about it.
Oh, and sure, I’m sure you really are convinced it’s a near equal disaster however you vote, and it’s not just complete fucking intellectual laziness on your part or nothin’, that you might reject being called upon actually to weigh things, like a fucking adult, not at all. Nor just that you are, in fact, really just kind of a useless piece of shit throughout your life, your incredibly shallow approach to civics hardly even the beginning of it, nor that you’d rather just go home and watch reality TV or some damned thing. Nor that you wear this cynicism with all the thought with which a thirteen year old from the burbs wears the $500 aviator jacket he bought at the mall, sure it’s a statement about something, if not too sure what… Nor that you bought your lousy attitude much the same way: off the rack, cranked out in a factory that was only too happy to make it only too available for you, and it was one of hundreds your size in the wholesale outlet, and you’re only wearing it because you saw a bunch of other people wearing exactly the same damned thing. Nor, finally, that it’s just a complete rejection of yet one more responsibility that does tend to come with life, if you go and stand still long enough, and go and wind up a citizen of a democracy. Sure, I totally buy it all, this pose you’re selling, how you really don’t care that one of those choices is, in fact, flirting with speech inflammatory enough that people absolutely will get hurt, and badly. Oh, and how very gauche of the rest of us to let this bother us in the least.
Sure, that’s it, dears. Let’s not not say any of that. But do tell us, too, how alienated you feel, I guess. And let’s all also pretend you’re not just a manky little coward who secretly fears you’re really only any good at setting fire to garbage and watching it burn.
Somewhere in the wartime ‘Letters and Essays,’ Orwell reports a pub conversation with a British pacifist. The pacifist scorns the notion of resisting Hitler and speculates about how English culture will be BENEFITED by a Nazi occupation.
Orwell asked him how his life would be affected; ‘Oh, I’ll just go on painting!’ was the response.
The idea that public life, politics, economics, etc. are not part of ‘real life’ has become normalized here in my country. Willful ignorance; utter credulity to any claim from within the paranoid conspiracy-minded troop, whether Limbaugh or Chomsky; and above all a sense of detachment from real consequences for real acts.
The big lie out of Clinton’s campaign is that she’s not ‘just another politician’.
The big lie out of Trump’s is that he is. People voting for him are deliberately turning aside their heads from the fact that he is not the same as his predecessors on the GOP ticket; he’s not even a merely worse version of the same. He’s wholly and completely different–a result of their race to the bottom approach to politics, yes, but beyond a threshold that separates him from what came before. He’s an actual, literal fascist, and he needs stopping, and the party that spawned him needs a solid rebuke in order to get them to correct course.
Yes, but that is one of the things that makes her “just another politician”. All my friends said the same thing about Obama – he’s not a politician. Yes, he is. And pretty much status quo. It’s just one of those things you’re sort of required to say now, just like “God Bless America” and “Support Our Troops”.
It is simply not possible for Trump to surround himself with the right people. The “right people” do not exist in the republican party. No matter who he selects they will all be deplorables.