“How Will I Ever Look at America the Same Way Again?” (NYT, Frank Bruni, October 29) beautifully summarizes the pain that coastal elites suffer because, by an accident of geography, they are sharing a country with Deplorables and, as my Dutch friend points out, forgot to take away the Deplorables’ right to vote.
It’s always assumed that those of us who felt certain of Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2016 were putting too much trust in polls.
I was putting too much trust in Americans.
I’d seen us err. I’d watched us stray. Still I didn’t think that enough of us would indulge a would-be leader as proudly hateful, patently fraudulent and flamboyantly dishonest as Donald Trump.
We had episodes of ugliness, but this? No way. We were better than Trump.
Except, it turned out, we weren’t.
“We” in this case means people who don’t live in Manhattan and work for the New York Times, presumably. The Deplorables are far more deplorable than the sensitive writer could have conceived:
And it was a populace I didn’t recognize, or at least didn’t want to.
Trump snuffed out my confidence, flickering but real, that we could go only so low and forgive only so much. With him we went lower — or at least a damningly large percentage of us did. In him we forgave florid cruelty, overt racism, rampant corruption, exultant indecency, the coddling of murderous despots, the alienation of true friends, the alienation of truth itself, the disparagement of invaluable institutions, the degradation of essential democratic traditions.
And did the Deplorables see the light when the New York Times published material from Anonymous, a “senior administration official” who turned out to have no decision-making power at all (he does not look old enough to vote!).
In a sane and civil country, of the kind I long thought I lived in, his favorability ratings would have fallen to negative integers, a mathematical impossibility but a moral imperative. In this one, they never changed all that much.
No! There are still people in this country who prefer Donald Trump to the possibility of President Biden and/or President Harris.
This Times piece is worth reading, in my opinion, because it eloquently expresses what so many elites have been feeling. If God loves them, how could he/she/ze/they have dumped them into a redneck-filled land rather than some place where at least those without advanced credentials would recognize their intellectual superiority?
Exhibit A, someone with enough money to buy a Lexus, but without the sophistication to refrain from purchasing Alabama’s “God Bless America” plate:
Exhibit B, some folks in Easton, Pennsylvania who not only fail to boycott Chick-fil-A, but actually work there!
Related:
- Part of the same NYT series, “What We’ve Lost”, an opinion piece bemoaning the selfishness of the American people: As a nation, we’ve lost our sense of altruistic and moral purpose, a collective will to do what is decent and right and, as sociologists like to say, “other-regarding.” (but isn’t this the inevitable effect of mass immigration? Americans never cared deeply about poor people outside of the U.S. Why would they suddenly begin to care about tens or hundreds of millions of poor people merely because those people somehow made it over the border? There are some exceptions with huge hearts, such as Bill Gates, who care about all people everywhere equally. But most of us have always cared far more about the neighbors with whom we share a culture than about people in distant foreign lands.)
Yes, it’s an interesting phenomenon. There is pain among non-elites
too (example) but I agree that it’s more prevalent at the upper end of the social scale. Like most important issues today, it’s explicable in terms of the mouse utopia experiment that humanity has inadvertently run on itself for the past 150 years or so.
One characteristic of a successful society is an ability to manage internal conflict without excessive damage. (Communist states managed conflict by killing their own people in large numbers, which turned out not to be a viable long term strategy.) While fractious and more or less constantly at war, Western countries once managed feats of compromise and assimilation. The Anglo-Scottish union is an example, as is the US’s assimilation of millions of immigrants in the decades to about 1930. Why are Britain and the US now disintegrating?
Because the western world abolished the laws of Darwinian struggle. (Temporarily – we’re about at the end of that period.) The upper classes were immersed in mouse utopia conditions earlier and deeper than their poorer compatriots. It explains the asymmetry of the pain-and-hatred, stronger in the elite Woke than in the commoner Deplorables. The latter lost less of their instincts for compromise and empathy, so don’t return Woke hatred with the same intensity. Likewise, they don’t love Trump as ardently as the Woke hate him.
> As a nation, we’ve lost our sense of altruistic and moral purpose, a collective will to do what is decent and right and, as sociologists like to say, “other-regarding.
Deplorable or not, Jim Rogers thinks young people are screwed.
‘It’s good to be old. Young people have a very bleak future ahead of them.’
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-next-bear-market-will-be-the-worst-in-at-least-78-years-warns-co-founder-of-george-soross-legendary-quantum-fund-11604259054
I wonder if any elite universities will be asking him to give a commencement speech this year? And I’d sure like to know how the Woke NYT opinion columnists think they’re going to engender a glorious new age of altruism, decency and righteousness among a large cohort of the population when parents should be telling their children in high school and college that we’ve already crossed the Event Horizon?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon
Aside: I really enjoyed that article about Miles Taylor at the Federalist. It’s a real shame that only six other people have ever read it, and tomorrow is election day. He could have been a janitor at the DHS and the Times would have called him a “Senior Administration Official.” But as I once said, it’s like Luxembourg declaring war on the United States, places like the Federalist taking on the media establishment in this country are a little like Luxembourg declaring war on the United States.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/29/new-york-times-miles-taylor-op-ed-shows-everything-wrong-with-anonymous-sources/
I find the perspective of calling out the “costal elite” all the time very interesting. The red-state, Trump embracing, FOX indoctrinated part of the country is just as elitist in their attitudes. It is really a two way street.
@LinePilot: Maxine Waters just vowed to “never forgive” any Black people who vote for Trump: “They Will Go Down In History.”
She’s D-43 in California, which is certainly coastal. What does it mean when someone like her says people are “despicable” for voting how they want?
She warns them: “They aren’t going to get a dime from these people.” So essentially she’s telling them that they should vote for Biden for money.
https://www.mediaite.com/election-2020/maxine-waters-promises-to-never-ever-forgive-black-trump-voters-they-will-go-down-in-history/
@LinePilot: And the idea that it’s a “two-way street” is completely ridiculous. It’s a “two-way street” with six lanes in one direction and an unpaved bike path in the other.
LinePilot: “elite” as I am using the term is not about an attitude. It is about wealth, income, and educational credentials that can be turned into wealth, income, and status. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/25/us/politics/trump-biden-campaign-donations.html describes rich people with college degrees being the supporters of Biden while the working class is supporting Trump.
You could also say that those who profit from low-skill immigration are the “elite” while those who pay the costs of low-skill immigration (about $500 billion/year) are the “non-elite”. See the Harvard study described in https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216
@LinePilot: “The red-state, Trump embracing, Fox indoctrinated part of the country is just as elitist in their attitudes.”
If this was a different place, I would say: “Dude. Time to lay off the weed.”
They may be united, by something, but elitist they ain’t. And that’s the central issue here, isn’t it?
And she doesn’t call them “despicable” – she calls them “crazy.” Mentally ill people who will never be forgiven and will Go Down in History for deciding to vote how they choose, if it’s different from the way she thinks they should vote, for money. You can sit here all night long and try to tell me that’s not coercion and a tremendous insult to them, but I think you’re really, really wrong.
Should have organized a Trump train car parade for Cambridge on Wed. That would be hilarious to be a part of. Wonder if Cambridge proper will get any of the burning and looting. Hmmm I am running a little low on Harvard insignia clothing, but do I want to wear any during Trump’s second term…
It’s religious pain, Philip. The fact is that the Government is God. Simple people who think differently are heretics.
I think we should really change all the nomenclature and frankly describe people who run the Government, decide who wins and loses, who is forgiven, who is “crazy” and who lives and dies, as various functionaries in the Real Church. Because that’s what it is already, and pretty soon, the transformation is going to be complete.
Manhattan’s 5th Avenue is being boarded up in anticipation of Trump supporters rioting to protest a Biden victory. News trucks outnumber shoppers. Times Square has become deserted with the cold weather.
A fellow deplorable became a town crier for Trump here in Forest Hills.
Trump is from Queens, and he looks, sounds and acts like it. Totally uncool. Airports are always in undesireable areas. We have two major ones in Queens.
NYT lying again. It will be antifa riots after joe is sent back to the basement by Americans.
That article at the NYT reads like a prayer, because that’s what it is. It’s a prayer to the Government. “Maybe, just ahead, there will be moments of grace, enough of them to redeem us.”
It’s not about the elite or educated versus everyone else. It’s about decency and integrity. You don’t need a college degree or a million bucks to spot an asshole or a bullshitting con artist. Half of the country seems to celebrate and revel in ignorance, anti-science and anti-government sentiment. I preferred it when the racists and stupid people kept it to themselves. A large percentage of the population seems to think those things are great, and that make america great again means they can express those things without shame once again, taking Trumps lead.
As I understand it, “anti-science” doubts the prevailing heterodoxies. By this reasoning, all scientific pioneers are “anti-science”.
“Racism” has expanded into a term that describes anyone who does not subscribe to neo-Marxism. I wonder how they discuss “white privilege” in Rwanda? Whoops. I should have said Tutsi-privilege.
Fuck you.
All of you.
I assume this will be moderated, so I want to be as broad as possible:
Fuck you, deplorables. Yes, you.
Fuck you, those who refused to evaluate a Supreme Court judge with 9 months time, yet were fine rushing another a week before the elections.
Fuck you, “learned” people who are happy to screw the also learned who still believe in decency, in telling the truth, in accepting that medical doctors are better suited at dealing with diseases.
And finally, fuck you, dear moderator.
We deplorables will take a line from the Russians here, “We will bury you.” We are not the anomalies. The antifa, BLM, and all democrats are. You may think that you can control us, but we are everywhere and we will not be controlled. We will not ever stop fighting this stolen election or supporting Trump and MAGA. You will not win and you can’t run this mother fucker without us bitches. We on the other hand do not need or want you. It is not fuck us. It is fuck TPI over and over with a wiggle ball bat.