Dear Hillaryites, would I, on pains of death at not choosing, choose Hillary over Donald for reign in Hell for Eternity? I was asked that this past Friday (same HC). It's a stupid question. Would I choose Hillary over Donald if my vote and only my vote counted last Tuesday for the kids crying in Earthgirl's elementary school classes Wednesday? Sure.
But here, actually existing fascism.:
Rather than face up to the fact that Hillary Clinton has little appeal outside of Goldman Sachs and whatever the Project for a New American Century is called these days, Democrats are cursing Sanders fans, third-party voters, and non-voters with a hatred usually reserved for vegans. Since they can only imagine their own upper-middle class lives orbiting major urban centers, the loudest Democrats think that everyone who’s not exactly like them is a racist, woman-hating cretin, and hope “that they be educated and moved to the vicinity of the major hubs in the northeast and western parts, that they die off [or] that a country would attack the United States and obliterate them.” Rather than actually learn anything of substance, liberals are doing the only thing their politics really involve: sharing and commiserating over an extremely circumscribed set of insipid pop-culture references that flatter them and insulate them from reality. Those leftist critiques of Obama or Clinton that do manage to penetrate this fantasy-world get angrily dismissed as right-wing media conspiracy theories or Kremlin propaganda. And finally, as with any good whitewash, liberals are going to pretend that Donald Trump represents something totally alien and uniquely menacing, as though Obama hasn’t done everything Trump says he will.
Fuck me, I'm told when I point this out.
- I don't mean to poke for giggles. I by no means suggest those aghast and frightened at the prospect of Trumpism are wrong. Shit, though, needs working through, including but not limited to lesser-evilism. If we're ever gonna talk about his shit, when better than now?
- A sillyass Star Trek allusion.
- I don't mean to suggest that Trumpism shouldn't be fought. I do mean to suggest the goal should be more than a motherfucking Clinton/DNC restoration.
- Truth, facts, and politics in a digital age.
- Reckoning with a Trump presidency and the elite Democrats who delivered it.
- BTW, if Clinton had been as sneeringly ruthless towards Trump as towards Sanders I would not be writing this sentence.
- Only everyday life can survive the onslaught.
- Out of the past.
- Capitalism has always turned to fascism when threatened. It's not a movement - there is no Left - it's Capitalism's inherent contradictions - it's running out of rents to extract, it has no use for most of its ants.
- The unwanted guest.
- Gravity's Rainbow, page 419.
Here are yesterday's links that were below the fold. Few read on Sunday, fewer still click below the fold:
- Reflections on a democracy in crisis.
- When news broke that HRC blames Comey (and everyone and everything but herself) for her loss the angry surge I expected - did anyone think she wouldn't blame Comey? You didn't? Really? what the fuck did you think she would think? - didn't deliver the level of visceral contempt I expected.
- I'm here now, it's no more complicated than this: nobody wanted either. More wanted Trump less, trusted that enough others would vote against him and said fuck standing in line for hours to vote for another motherfucking Democrat, especially this one.
- Villager analysis: Comey and Third Parties.
- If the Comey Event has any effect it wasn't driving up Trump voters - Trump got fewer votes than McCain in 2008 or Romney in 2012 - but increasing the number of potential Clinton voters who, secure America wouldn't elect Trump no matter how shitty Clinton, said fuck this.
- Where American was.
- Hate, grief, new story.
- Calm the fuck down: I have a confession. I had accepted the conventional wisdom that Clinton would win, and shame on me for that. On election night, about 11 PM, when it began to become clear that Trump might win, I felt a small sense of relief. Not that I was or am at all happy that Trump has been elected. I didn't vote at all, since I am Against Voting in a system such as ours, and my strong preference is that the national government dissolve in a fine mist. But I found the prospect of a Clinton presidency unutterably depressing. I didn't know how I would withstand four years of it, let alone the possibility of eight, God help us. And when Trump actually won, I thought: "Well, at least it might be a little more interesting, and perhaps it will offer some unexpected developments in some ways." As indicated above, I think the likelihood for genuine surprise is severely delimited and, if there were to be a genuine surprise, it would probably be an awful one. But Clinton ... years of gray, lightless, airless drudgery, slowly grinding us into the dirt. At least, Trump holds out the promise of not being entirely boring and predictable. Given the nauseating spectacle of our national politics, I admit that that is not nothing to me. Hate me for it if you want to, but there it is.
- Maggie's weekly links.
- { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
Daniel Borzutzky (click, yo)
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