Shot this yesterday in the wild while out running errands.
Everything but the windshield was festooned with big, dumb wingnut signifiers, including the names "Pritzker" and "Biden" being pissed on by a cartoon Calvin.
The "Fuck Your Feelings" flamboyance of the display is a little unusual, but the sentiment is not. This is where I live. Trump country.
And here's the thing.
You know all the many, many Never Trumpers, Sanctimonious Centrists and Potemkin Liberals like, say, this goof --
The New York Times
Opinion | In the Age of Trump, It’s Hard to Be Humble
By Nicholas Kristof
Conservatives are so wrong so often that they are pumping us liberals full of worrying smugness.
-- who are constantly bellyaching about how teddibly, teddibly smug Liberals are? How full of ourselves? How insulated from the outside world we are?
You may have noticed that pretty much all of these kvetching divas are either denizens of or professional habitues of deep blue cities like New York, L.A. and D.C. They are embeds, reporting from the Land of Progressives, enjoying all the civilized perks and perquisites of living in places where tolerance flourishes and no one bats an eye at drag shows.
But have you also noticed that the converse is not the case? At all? Anywhere?
Pretty much all successful lefty podcaster are also rooted in those same, deep blue cities. They also enjoy the civilized perks and perquisites of living in places where tolerance flourishes. And by and large they only talk to and about each other.
OK, I get it. It's a closed shop, which is what it is. But I am moved to wonder how it came to be that the opinions of Conservatives living in blue zones carping about the bad habits of Liberals can be so wildly overrepresented in the media, while the opinions of Liberals living in Trump country accurately warning about the growing derangement of the GOP rank-and-file continues to be aggressively unwelcome in the media. Which, in turn, has resulted in professional Havers-of Opinions being hilariously surprised, over and over again, to discover that the Right is exactly as racist and exactly as nuts we Liberals living in Trump country always said they were.
If you want to know which way the wingnuts are gonna jump, don't bother with the New York Times' op-ed page or the talking heads on cable teevee.
If you want to know, just ask a Liberal who lives in wingnut country. We don't need to convene a focus group to suss this stuff out. All we need to do is keep our ears open at church, at the park or in line at the Farm & Home.
6 comments:
jd vance with his book hillbilly elegy found the sweet spot between taking a dump on liberals and making sure they ate it; all of it.our compassion is hackable, reliable and never ever reciprocated. rode that stuff all the way to the senate..
it is one of the best keys to the kingdom in our heads and a thing we treasure that simply isn't present in the maga't world or even in main stream conservatism. compassion, the former considers it a sign of weakness and the latter knows it goes against their central precept, their motivating force...greed. and the mainstream conservatives keep the hooples riled by calling our compassion patronizing..that was vance's 'lane'.
i've never seen it more succinct:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith
Where's the truck nutz? Seems like a poser to me.
Good night (as a greeting), Mr. Glass.
"But I am moved to wonder how it came to be that the opinions of Conservatives living in blue zones carping about the bad habits of Liberals can be so wildly overrepresented in the media, while the opinions of Liberals living in Trump country accurately warning about the growing derangement of the GOP rank-and-file continues to be aggressively unwelcome in the media."
When it comes to being a good person versus being a bad person, do you want the Biblical quote about the straight, narrow path...or Yoda's "quicker, easier, more seductive" quote about the Dark Side?
Best to you and your loved ones.
Having lived and worked nowhere but Trump Country my entire life (and I’ve lived/worked in several places) I am always fascinated that there are, and a little jealous of, parts of this country where liberals can indulge in any kind of arrogance. I would love nothing more than know there are places where people sit in diner booths debating the merits of social democracy over statist socialism when I have to spend all my time hearing how Democrats what give everything made by hard working white people to the undeserving blacks and illegals at the border.
I know the ‘arrogant’ liberals the conservative courtier class endless bitches about are by and large upper middle class whites whose money and zip code makes them as immune to material reality of state and federal government policy as the author/pundit/etc. In most cases, the ‘arrogance’ that pisses these thin skinned monarchists/fascist/authoritarians is these dinner party guests remember things like what Republicans said how Presidents are supposed to behave when Clinton was in office and that there was even a Bush Administration all the while quaffing down the host’s best Malbec.
I know liberals from marginalized classes can’t be ‘arrogant’ even in the most ‘blue’ of cities, which again, are only ‘arrogant’ where the money allows. I spend my time around liberals who have to be careful what they say even if ‘safe’ spaces while, like you, my race and gender gets me an earful cause Republicans immediately assume I am on their side. So the utter bullshit that liberals are making the Right into a bunch of racist fascist reactionaries who would rather burn this nation to the ground than not be its default, unquestionable, immutable leaders is beyond frustrating.
No doubt, Mr. Driftglass, those of you who live cheek by jowl among the infinitely reprogrammable meatsticks have a particularly visceral view of things, but in your words I perceive you dangerously near succumbing to a wingnut/mainstream media frame that divides the virtuous yeoman Heartland from the effete coasts. You distinguish the liberal in the Deep Red from the "kvetching diva" pundits and media writers of the Deep Blue, and imply that these kvetching divas characterize the Deep Blue liberals generally. However, it is precisely this equation - that the so-called "liberals" given voices in the media represent the liberals in the cities out there living daily lives - that justifies infinite interviews of Trump voters in diners and renders the actual liberal/left invisible in the mainstream media, and without voice, so that those on the Right who dominate the media, as well as the kvetching pundits themselves, can create the liberal/left in whatever caricature serves their purposes.
I've lived in Deep Blue cities all of my life. These cities are filled with liberals/leftists in all economic classes, laborers, service workers, office workers, teachers, professionals, etc. They may not be obsessed with politics like you and I, and could not trace the straight path from electoral strategies mapped out 60 years ago to Donald Trump as can you and I, but they have sound values, vote Democratic all the time (as the lesser of evils), know what's what, are as much the "salt of the earth" as any American anywhere, and aren't represented in the slightest by those on the teevee and in the papers of record who purport to be, or are taken to be, liberals.
To add to such cars (if you can get away with it):
https://tinyurl.com/Iamdelusional
Post a Comment