Every right to be insulted
Hot damn this is a stupid piece for the Washington Post to bother publishing.
When supporters of former president Donald Trump hear media pundits analyze them with the usual collection of belittling observations, they must be tempted to respond, “Hey, we’re right here! We can hear you!”
So we shouldn’t think it’s stupid or evil or both to vote for Donald Trump for any public office at all, let alone the presidency? Why? Why shouldn’t we? He’s one of the most thoroughly godawful human beings on the planet, and possibly the only one without a single redeeming quality.
Yes, they are indeed here, and living among us. And they have every right to be insulted by being accused of believing a “big lie,” and by the implication that they are violent, or traitors, or mindless sheep — racist sheep, of course.
No they don’t. Trump is a very bad man, and he promoted racism, violence, treason, and mindlessness, and he still does. They have zero right to be insulted by being told that a vote for Trump is a vote for those qualities.
They’re fed up not just with the overt insults, but also with more subtle digs, such as former defense secretary Leon Panetta saying last week that he worries that Trump “will continue to try to somehow sway his followers” to attempt another Jan. 6-style uprising. Followers? No one refers to President Biden’s “followers.” It’s a word generally reserved for adherents of cult figures.
No shit, Sherlock, because that’s what they are, because there is zero rational reason to vote for Trump, let alone to support his attempts to overturn the election. That’s not because he’s a Republican or a conservative, it’s because he’s an evil sack of shit.
I’ll stop now. The Post can surely find better right-wingers than this chump.
H/t Mike Haubrich
There’ve been enough of these pieces since 2016 to wallpaper the Taj Mahal (if people still used paper.) What I really want to see is a piece to conservatives on a “liberal paper” site to be nice to liberals. But, I’m really kind of pissed that a news industry that is so hurting for money that they can’t pay good reporters, has so much money to shell out for this same old “be kind, you effete liberal snobs” column.
This stuff is easy. It’s paint-by-numbers, fill-in-the-blanks opinionating. It’s both boring and infuriating at the same time.
Seriously. It could have been squeezed out of a tube like toothpaste.
When liberal voters hear followers of Donald Trump analyze them with the usual collection of belittling observations, they must be tempted to respond, “Hey, we’re right here! We can hear you!”
Seriously, the shit they throw at us is worse than what we hit them with. And when is the last time followers of Trump were mowed down by a liberal with a car?
To be fair the Woke really are that bad to Trumpies… But that’s about the end of it. There’s plenty of people that voted for Trump for much the same reason as many of us voted for Biden.
The term of art, guys and gals, is ‘CLETUS SAFARI”
“We are here visiting Cletus and Rufus and the Hot Googie Diner here in Superating Mine Sore, West Virginia, lookng for insight as to climate change solutions and the potential for RNA vacines to treat cancer. Rufus opined that he expected to be raptured soon anway, so none of that sciency stuff bothered him, no siree. Cletus glowered that they don’tike any of them Jew reporters coming to Superating Mine Sore and the reporter better git.
What strikes me about the writer is the way that he complains about the condescension of ‘liberals’ towards Trump cultists while displaying a dripping condescension of his own towards the latter. To add to what Michael Haubrich rightly says about ‘this same old “be kind, you effete liberal snobs” column’, why is it always supposed that it is the ‘liberals’ who need to understand the minds of these cultists, but not the other way round? It is as if, for writers such as this one, the ‘liberal mind’ (assuming there is one) is tacitly regarded as a sort of Houyhnhnmic norm, superior, reasonable, uniform in its beliefs, and so needing no understanding, whereas those poor downtrodden Yahoos are sadly misunderstood, unfairly maligned, and generally maltreated. I find the hypocrisy of this kind of writing distasteful.
The following quote by Ece Temelkuran seems apt:
Thank you Bjarte – that’s a very perceptive comment. Who is Ece Temelkuran, by the way?
Ah, I have looked up Ece Teelkuran, and she sounds splendid. I shall order her book, ‘How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship’.
Tim
Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish public intellectual, activist, journalist, and dissident. The quote is from her book How to lose a country – The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship from 2019.
You beat me to it :)
Thank you Bjarte! I have ordered it.
Cool! I hope you like it as much as I do :)
@6 ‘It is as if, for writers such as this one, the ‘liberal mind’ (assuming there is one) is tacitly regarded as a sort of Houyhnhnmic norm, superior, reasonable, uniform in its beliefs, and so needing no understanding, whereas those poor downtrodden Yahoos are sadly misunderstood, unfairly maligned, and generally maltreated. I find the hypocrisy of this kind of writing distasteful.’
I also see condescension in the idea that only liberals are obligated to be openminded and understanding and to seek consensus…because the ‘Yahoos’ are both constitutionally and intellectually incapable of doing likewise.
@9 She’s spoken in my town a couple of times now, and her work is starting to get a well-deserved audience.
Yes, I agree, guest: there is condescension, there, too. But how easy it is for such as the writer of the article quoted by Ophelia when all human complexity can be ignored, and humanity reduced to two camps: snobby Houyhnhnms and wondrously authentic Yahoos, or effete Eloi and resentful, stocky, violent Morlocks.
Reading ‘Berlin Diary,’ and the flat denial in the face of the avalanche of evil and lies is almost a perfect parallel to this awful denial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jsl7JahstA
‘We must send them steel and oil and coal and everything they need
So their peaceable intentions may be always guaranteed.
Bit drunk myself this evening John, after buying a very large bottle of Japanese sake. Noel Coward’s song is splendid.
Thank you John for the link. I hadn’t heard that in decades.
I don’t even have the excuse of being drunk, not being a drinker, so I do hope that the shade of Noel Coward forgives me for this.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Cultists
When our victory is ultimately won,
It was just those Feminazis who persuaded them to fight
And their Zanottis and Choos are really far worse than their bite
Let’s be meek to them
And turn the other cheek to them
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.
Let’s give them air-time parity
And treat the rats with charity,
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Trans.
We must be kind
And with an open mind
We must endeavour to find
A way
To let the Cultists know that when the war is over
They are not the ones who’ll have to pay.
We must be sweet
And tactful and discreet
And when they’ve suffered defeat
We mustn’t let
Them feel upset
Or ever get
The feeling that we’re cross with them or hate them,
Our future policy must be to reinstate them.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Cultists
When we’ve definitely got them on the run.
Let us treat them very kindly as we would a valued friend
We might send them plastic surgeons as a form of lease and lend,
Let’s be sweet to them
And day by day repeat to them
That ‘sterilisation’ simply isn’t done.
Let’s help the poor old TIMs again
To occupy our loos again,
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Trans.
We must be just
And win their love and trust
And in addition we must
Be wise
And ask the poor detrans to join our hands to aid them.
That would be a wonderful surprise.
For many years
They’ve been in floods of tears
Because the poor little dears
Have been so wronged
And only longed
To cheat the world,
Deplete the world
And beat
The world to blazes.
This is the moment when we ought to sing their praises.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Cultists
For you can’t deprive a gangster of his gun
Though they’ve been a little naughty to J.K, Glinner and such
I don’t suppose those people really minded very much
Let’s be free with them
And share Olympic teams with them.
We mustn’t prevent them basking in the sun.
Let’s soften their defeat again
And let them rule the street again,
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Trans.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Cultists
When the age of peace and plenty has begun.
We must send them hormones, wigs and heels and everything they need
For their peaceable intentions can be always guaranteed.
Let’s employ with them
A sort of ‘strength through joy’ with them,
They’re better than us at honest manly fun.
Let’s let them feel they’re swell again,
Gaslight us all to hell again,
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Trans.