Everybody’s trying to explain what happened on the morning of November 9, and how someone like Donald J Trump, a noted racist, misogynist, and bigot, could become the President-Elect of the United States.
How this came to be is pretty easy to understand, but you have to step outside of yourself to do it.
It all started on January 23, 2009. Newly-elected President Barack Obama, who campaigned on post-partisanship and unity, who said that he would consider all good ideas no matter who proposed them, held a meeting with congressional leaders of both parties about the budget. When Republican congressman Eric Cantor expressed concerns about spending, President Obama said to him, “Elections have consequences. I won.”
He had made it clear that there would be no compromise. No unity. He proved it by instituting ObamaCare, a deeply unpopular government takeover of 1/5 of the American economy that has proven disastrous to working families across the country.
Obama-supporting independents, so-called moderates, and progressives took their cue from that. They modeled the president’s “I won” attitude for the next several years, despite consistent electoral defeats in mid-term elections. Obama’s re-election cemented the attitude further, and why shouldn’t it? They had the news media, entertainment media, and all of academia bolstering the “I won” attitude.
With the “I won” attitude came a constant drumbeat of name-calling. Any resistance to Obama’s policies was met with claims of racism. Insufficient support for the president’s agenda was dismissed as bigotry. And homophobia. And sexism. Progressives were the winners, and winners are superior. Because they won. Winners don’t have to defend their ideas.
With winners come losers, and the losers are, by definition, inferior.
The rest of us, the inferior untermenschen, noticed this, but we didn’t say much about it because it’s stupid to say, “I’m not a racist.” We didn’t like being called racists for opposing ObamaCare. We didn’t like being called bigots because we think that only women should use women’s private areas for private functions. We didn’t like being called sexists because we think that a human life starts at contraception, and that it’s murder to abort that life. We didn’t like being called backward because we believe in the God of the Bible.
But you progressives kept doing it. Your stranglehold on the news and entertainment media made you believe that you reflected our common culture, when the truth is that your clumsy hands molded it into something that many of us have begun to reject. You began to believe your own press: that through the simple act of name-calling, you had achieved an innate superiority over the racist, bigoted, sexist, backward inferiors who held different beliefs.
Somehow, you got it into your heads that having an opinion automatically conferred moral authority. You decided that your intentions mattered more than the results, and that your transitory feelings trumped individual rights. It didn’t matter what you did: it mattered what you felt.
We inferiors took notice of this, and we voted with our feet. Another four years of virtue-signaling, unearned moral superiority, and constant name-calling were three bridges too far. So in this election we voted for the guy who didn’t hold us in contempt the way you and your preferred candidate did.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: we know that this election isn’t going to change your attitude. We know that despite all evidence to the contrary, you still think you’re superior. Your policy prescriptions are harmful both domestically and abroad, your leaders are utterly without principles, and over the last six years you’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of government seats from state legislatures to the presidency, but you still believe you’re better than we are.
We see what you say on social media, because you never shut up about how you feel. You’re disappointed in us. You can’t believe how racist, bigoted, and misogynist we are. You’re disgusted. And while disappointment that your candidate lost an election is natural, insulting half the country isn’t.
Me, I’m not doing business with anyone who holds me in contempt and calls my wife a racist because we pulled a different lever in the voting booth. I’m not buying your products, I’m not working with you, and I’m not spending any more time in your presence. It’s fine to call Trump an idiot, a dickhead, a shitheel. People do that to presidents all the time. But when you imply that we hate women or blacks or gays or anyone else because we voted for him, you go too far.
You’re not superior because of who you voted for. You’re not superior because you think or feel a certain way. You’re not superior at all. It’s long past time you recognized that.