The Most Powerful Clown: Part 2
So, what happened? Trump actually won the popular vote this time. But weirdly enough, he got close to the same number of votes he got in 2020. It’s just that way less people voted for Kamala than they did for Biden. But, of course, this doesn’t just mean that the same people voted for Trump and a lot of Biden voters stayed home.
Trump got 1.3 million more votes than he did in 2020 and Kamala got almost 10 million less than Biden got in 2020. Trump won the popular vote by almost 4 million votes and Biden won in 2020 by over 7 million. I had always thought incumbents were at an inherent advantage in elections. Clinton had 8 years. Bush had 8 years. Obama had 8 years. That’s the last three presidents in a row before 2016. That’s 24 years in a row and makes up a majority of my life. But whether that’s just a coincidence or not, whether incumbents had an advantage or not, it’s clear that they don’t anymore.
I feel like the rise of social media and the nonstop attention we pay to influencers’1 pretend perfect lives has a lot to do with our unhappiness about the state of our own lives, and therefore why people have voted out the past two sitting presidents after their first term. It’s just so much easier to be the opposition party now. Anyone can pull out a tiktok or an article of someone explaining the awful drone strike that happened under this guy or the failure to pass a deal for green energy or a new border policy from that other guy. There’s so much information and slop going around that we can throw in each other’s faces. Stock market at an all-time high? Who cares, egg prices are up. Egg prices back down? Who cares, gas prices are up and the stock market hasn’t hit an all-time high in over 10 weeks.
For everyone who was unhappy about grocery prices or their lack of job prospects, Trump could just lay the fault of their problems on Biden and Harris because they are the ones in charge. Inflation was worse than usual, yes. But it’s at normal levels just in time for Trump to take credit for it. And I’m gonna spoil the trajectory of egg prices for the next 4 years for you. They’re either going to stay the same or go up. But if they do go down, you’re not going to like that either, because it means something much worse will be happening to the economy.
Having said that, I don’t think the state of the economy was why most people flipped towards Trump. Some might trot out the excuse of the economy, and some might mean it. But I think that’s a small minority of people. And while Biden dropping out and the coronation of Kamala played a role and inflation played a role, I think the most important thing was the cultural issues.
There are plenty of people who can’t stand the trans issue and don’t want to say it publicly, or even privately to their family. So they talk about the price of eggs and vibes instead. But culture issues matter to people. Most people aren’t experts on economics and they know it. But you can bet every person over the age of 14 has a hot take on cultural issues. It doesn’t require a PhD in anything to weigh in on. Here’s the top comment that was made by someone after listening to Glenn Loury and John McWhorter review the lessons learned from the election, which I recommend listening to.
“I may not be a smart man but I know what a woman is, I know what legal immigration looks like, I know what medical overreach looks and feels like, I know what legal overreach looks like, I know what higher grocery bills look like, I know what irresponsible spending looks like, I know what competence looks like and I know what an empty/fake incompetent candidate looks like.”
So even though Kamala never tried to use identity politics to her advantage or go all “woke,” you and I and everyone else both know, before and after hearing her viral clip from 2020 about taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgeries for undocumented immigrants in prison, that when compared to Trump, nothing else needs to be said from her for everyone to know that he would never support anything like that and that she might. Why might she? Well, she could’ve made a proper statement saying she changed her views on that issue. But she didn’t. And being quiet on the issue just isn’t enough if you are trying to differentiate yourself from the fringe of the party. When everyone thinks you hold a view, and you think that view is gonna lose you votes, you might want to make a clear statement about it instead of avoiding the topic at all costs.2 And it’s not just her. It’s the people around her. It’s her staunchest supporters. It’s the lefty TV personalities. John Oliver said that "Trans kids, like all kids, vary in athletic ability and there is no evidence to suggest they pose any threat to safety or fairness and it is very weird for you to focus on those subjects.” He’s right about one thing, the weird part. It’s weird to fixate on something that affects so few people. But it doesn’t matter. They found a point of fairness and equality where the majority of people are on their side. And the left refuses to budge on the topic. So they’re going to run with it because it’s a winning issue for them, no matter how few people it affects.
In that quote, Oliver says that trans people don’t pose a threat to fairness in sport. Why skirt around the fact that men are more athletic and better at most sports than women? Neil DeGrasse Tyson was on Bill Maher’s show recently and did the same tiptoe of the topic. He just wouldn’t admit that male and female athletes have biological differences. He of course didn’t hesitate to point out that women are better at long distance swimming than men though. Why is it so hard to point this out? The emperor has no clothes. It’s ok if you don’t care about the topic. But when confronted, how hard is it to say that, yes, the average man has more muscle mass than the average woman? And it’s obvious to everyone. Again, you don’t need a PhD to know men and women are different in a lot of ways. And it only cuts one way, not both ways. People have no problem talking about how much more women attend college these days and that men are being left behind. How much better women are than men at reading and writing scores. It’s only okay when we’re announcing the results of an oppressed group beating out a group with more privilege. When we’re punching up. The privileged can take it on the chin but the oppressed women cannot. Haven’t they suffered enough?
I know it’s a faux pas to admit in public that some people are better at some things than other people. Because admitting this inherently admits that some people are worse at those things. And if we admit that, we start to tap at the glass that might shatter the whole meritocratic narrative and growth mindset. And we can’t have that. But that’s where you’re wrong. That’s where you say meritocracy still matters even if it’s easier for some people to reach the top than others. That’s where you say we have to support those of us who just aren’t as lucky as the others. That’s where you say this isn’t an attack on me as a person or on my gender or on my race, I was just born this way. And everyone is better or worse than me at something. And that hard work may not be enough to overcome my weaknesses, but that’s okay, because my society supports me and there’s a million other things I can do. And that in some careers or hobbies, your past matters, your genes matter, your chromosomes matter, and they change how you think and who you become as a person. And it’s nobody's fault.
My biggest hobby is running. I’m decent at it. But I know that if I place in the top 5% or top 3% in a race, that most of the people I’m beating are not skinny guys aged 25-35. For the girls that run the same times I do, they get top 10 out of multiple thousands of people. And I almost never talk about these differences with my running friends because it’s super awkward to talk about. And it’s fine with me personally if we never talk about it. But it should be ok to talk about. The girls I run with are truly exceptional at running, whereas I am just above average. And I know my runner friends are all aware of this asymmetry. But I also don’t feel inadequate for not being as athletic as other people. I don’t take it as an attack on my self-worth when other people are better than me at something. And the point is, we shouldn’t be taking it upon ourselves to feel this attack of self-worth on somebody’s behalf, to be offended on their behalf. If someone called me slow and called a girl who runs the same speed as me fast, I’d not feel bad at all. And they would be right. We have to be ok with offending not just privileged people, but oppressed people as well. If I called a 75 year old woman slow because I can run faster than her, that’d be a pretty stupid thing to say. But if it’s a joke made in good taste with a friend, with the right sarcastic intonation, and said to her face, I’d expect her good sense of humor to not take offense and to laugh it off. We shouldn’t presume on behalf of other people that they cannot take a joke or an insult. No more bigotry of low expectations.
Look, I know that trans women competing in men’s sports is a trivial issue because of how rare it is. There are obviously more important things to worry about. Sam Harris recently said “If we have fewer biological men in women's sports, are we also going to have fewer democracies? Is that a fair trade?” And he’s right to point out the difference in seriousness between the danger of Trump and the danger of letting a trans person have an unfair advantage in a game. But whether we like it or not, most people are willing to overlook his insanity and stupidity because they agree with him on these social issues.
I think most of you already heard the insane stat that Trump gained among every single racial group except white people. I saw a statistic that showed the shift in Asian majority precincts, 2 in Texas, 1 in Chicago, and 1 in New York City. The Texas districts shifted almost 20% toward Trump compared to 2020. In Chicago, it was 24%, and in New York the shift was 31%. This means that while they voted 35% more in favor of Biden in 2020, this election they favored Kamala by less than 4%. Do you think it was because eggs are too expensive? Do you think they just felt too betrayed by the Democrats for trying to hide how old Biden was? No. I happen to live in New York and I can bet you all the money I have and will ever have that I know why that 30 point shift occurred. I see it every day on the subways and as I walk along the streets. There’s homeless people everywhere you go. And some of them say or do things that make everyone around them feel uncomfortable at the least and fearful for their lives at worst. And I also see it in the acceptance rates among elite universities. Asians suffer more than any other racial group because of affirmative action.
It wouldn’t kill you to just say that, at least at the highest levels of competition, that we should have a cutoff where people with above a certain amount of testosterone or whatever other hormone, just compete against men instead of women. This should be a non-issue that is easily solved by a couple new rules. Trans people should absolutely be able to compete in whatever sport they want. But the people you compete against should just be based on your hormone levels and whatever else is circulating in your body that matters for the particular sport you’re competing in. There are already huge organizations that preserve the integrity of sports from people using steroids and drugs to get an advantage. They already test for testosterone levels in women. They could expand their scope to this issue and solve it very easily.
Most people are economically liberal and socially conservative. Or at least, socially conservative in this day and age where social values have been dramatically pulled towards the left in recent years. And some of this pull to the left has been for good reason. Gay marriage is accepted among both parties these days when it was accepted among neither not that long ago.
But the progressive left has moved far past gay marriage. We’re onto bigger and better things. Gays aren’t the only oppressed people in the world, you know. There’s trans people, homeless people, minorities that can’t get a leg up in life because of racism, women that can’t get a leg up because of sexism. When it comes to cultural issues, social values, whatever you want to call it, most of the country is getting whiplash from how fast we’re flying past gay marriage and into the rights of all other oppressed people. But it’s not their equal rights that progressives are fighting for. It’s more like their right to affirmative action. Because they already have equal rights. Gay marriage is accepted now because the message is very clear and simple. Gay people should be able to marry anyone they want, just like any straight person would. Trans people can marry anyone they want too.
But if we go further and try to help trans people feel less like outcasts by being more lenient toward their choice of bathroom or sports team, or get homeless people off their feet by being more lenient on crime, or help minorities get into universities or job positions that are mostly held by people who don’t look like them, we are offering them a special treatment that no one else in this country gets. This is not equal rights. This is equity.
Some forms of equity negatively affect the people who don’t receive this preferential treatment. Some things in this world are not a zero sum game, like gay marriage. But some things are. Getting a spot in Harvard, or a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, or a software engineer position at Google, is zero sum. Every person that isn’t you that gets in is taking a spot you could’ve gotten. Conversely, two gay people getting married doesn’t prevent other people from getting married.
Winning a sporting event is also zero sum. If a trans woman gets first place, or second, or third, she is taking that medal away from someone else. If people get away with shoplifting and jumping turnstiles and punching people in the face, everyone else pays the cost for that, whether it be increased grocery prices or increased punches to the face.
This is all just affirmative action being instantiated in different ways. Poor people with terrible childhoods are more prone to crime? That’s true. So what’s our solution? To be more forgiving of their crimes? So they can do what? So they can have a chance to make it like those of us that have lived a privileged life? No. Being more forgiving of crimes doesn’t help them towards that goal. Being more forgiving toward lower SAT scores doesn’t help towards that goal. Being more forgiving about what competitions and bathrooms people can enter doesn’t help towards that goal.
Trans people want the freedom to be themselves while also fitting in at school and work, aka “passing”, right? For those who don’t know, “passing” is to be seen by others as the gender you feel you are and choose to be. So, what’s our solution to helping them blend in as the gender they choose to be? Giving them special treatment to let them go in whatever gender bathroom or competition they choose because we don’t want to hurt their feelings and make them a social outcast does not let them blend in. Unfortunately, “passing” depends on how others see you, not how you see yourself. That’s just a fact of life when you’re looking to win the social approval of others.
Look, I get it. This is not a big deal because this barely affects anyone. But principles matter. People care about this, even when it doesn’t affect them personally. And we need to have a better answer than “this doesn’t concern you” or “we are standing up for the oppressed.” I know I already went over it earlier, but this is the bigotry of low expectations. And from the outside looking in, from people who aren’t trans and aren’t a minority trying to get into Harvard, they view it as completely unfair. Why should some people get graded on a curve? Instead of grabbing people from the bottom of the economic and social ladder and artificially placing them somewhere else, we should focus on making the bottom of both ladders not be so awful. And let people sort themselves however they may.
This all stems from one thing. The unwillingness to admit that some people have different talents than others and that society values these talents differently. To bend the knee at the altar of meritocracy while pretending that everyone can make it if we just make the world equitable enough. But this is not true. And we know it’s not true, but we don’t want to tell ourselves that. We don’t want to believe it because it means some people have no bright future in their life, no matter how equitable we make their lives. We don’t want to believe some people are just broken. Just unlucky. And we don’t want to hurt their feelings. We don’t want to admit that we fed them this lie that anybody can make it if they try hard enough. We don’t want to face the fact that no matter how educated everyone becomes, some people will still have to work at McDonalds. This is the foundation of this equity and affirmative action problem, and the punching down and oppressed peoples problem.
I personally find it outrageous that a doctor or lawyer can make $300k+ a year and a cashier can make $40k. In the same city. I understand why it happens, and of course we need some degree of income inequality, but no one at the bottom should be struggling to pay rent and eat. This is one place where I am on board with equity. Equity of wealth. And we already have a little bit of it with our progressive tax brackets. And a large share of people, even poor people, complain about that too just like they complain about affirmative action. They complain that it's unfair to those who get taxed at higher rates.
We need to just give poor people more money. Not to mention the children, elderly, and disabled who can’t work.
By having some semblance of equity when it comes to wealth, we remove the excuse for equity in other areas, like leniency on shoplifting. Or letting less qualified people into elite universities. Although I’m sure people will look for another excuse. If not going to an elite university, and therefore not having a shot at the best jobs and the highest incomes, wasn’t a big deal because the rising tide of the welfare state lifted all boats, then we should rightfully care a lot less about who gets in these universities and who doesn’t. If homeless people were able to afford rent or were given places to stay, but chose not to and committed crimes, I think a lot more of us would agree we need to be less lenient with them. And get the ones who need it some psychiatric help while also making sure they can’t harm anyone.
Missouri voted for Trump but passed propositions to overturn their abortion ban, increase the minimum wage, and require paid sick leave. Most people are economically liberal. And pro choice, pro freedom. Even when it comes to abortion. That’s why Trump didn’t go completely against it and Kamala leaned into it as much as possible. It’s a winning cultural issue for her. But that’s about where the winning cultural issues end for Democrats. I know some of you might disagree with me on this, but I think a lot of Trump voters know that his tariff plan is trash and his care for the working class is non-existent. And they tap dance around the implications of January 6, trying to downplay it as a nothingburger. It's not that they like him because of these things. They like him in spite of these things. They put up with it because they agree with him on cultural issues. No more DEI in the workplace. No more keeping petty criminals out on the streets because we feel bad for jailing someone who was dealt a bad hand in life. No more “healthy at any weight” acceptance. For the third time, no more bigotry of low expectations. There’s a difference between fat shaming people, telling a fat person they are healthy at any weight, and truly supporting a friend who is overweight and could use someone to tell them the truth that they should change their lifestyle or talk to a doctor if they want to make a change. Only the third option here is the right one.
Trump doesn’t demean his base and talk down to them like he knows better than they do. He’s not sanctimonious. This was as relevant in 2016 as it is now. He is not morally superior to you. He doesn’t make you feel shameful about yourself and your values. Meanwhile, on the other side, if you’re not on the side of the oppressed and in full support of giving them a leg up so they can compete on an even playing field–if you don’t care about homeless people–if you don’t care about trans people being able to enter whatever bathroom they want–if you don’t care about desperate people from Central America coming over to the US for a better life–then you are a bad person. You’ve committed a sin. You should feel shameful. You are morally bankrupt.
Some people don’t have the mental bandwidth to care about anything other than themselves and their own family. They’re looking out for number one. And if you make them feel bad about feeling this way, they’re not going to vote for you. The Democratic party is seen as full of elites who all went to college and have a high income and family wealth and a great life. And because they already have their life figured out and their problems solved, they can afford to think about those less fortunate and try to make things better for the people who aren’t as lucky as they are. AKA, for the oppressed. But that’s going to alienate everyone else who, like I said, doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to worry about other people’s problems.
I know I’ve spent most of my time so far trying to explain all of the democratic party’s faults and the baggage that Kamala had to drag with her. And, deservedly so, because they’re the ones that lost. And Democrats and their voters might actually change their tune. On the other side, conservatives won’t turn away from Trump. They fully embrace all of Trump’s flaws, no matter how bad they are or how many there are. But that won’t stop me from highlighting those flaws. Because there is something they see, or don’t see, in him that shows they either don’t care or don’t know enough about how great and precious of a society we have. They just want to shake things up and roll the dice. Or maybe they never took the time to truly internalize the last thing he said or tweeted, because if they did, they’d see how crazy and stupid he is. What’s that line again? They take him seriously but not literally? Or was it the other way around?
A week or two before the election, Ben Shapiro, yet another past Trump hater turned Trump endorser, wrote an article trying to make his case for why Trump was worth voting for. In it, he writes about Trump’s ability to deter other world leaders from starting wars.
"Trump innately understands deterrence. I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth telling it again: When I held a fundraiser for Trump a few months ago, he told this story. He said:
You want to know why Vladimir Putin never invaded Ukraine on my watch? Because I called him and I told him, “Vlad, Vlad, don’t you do it.” And Vlad said, “Why not, Mr. President?” And I said, “Because, Vlad, if you do, I’m gonna bomb the s*** out of you.” And he said, “No, you won’t, Mr. President.” And I said, “Well, I might!”
And then Trump turned to me and said, “And you know what? If there’s even a five percent chance that the United States military, the most powerful military in the history of the world, is going to bomb the s*** out of you, you don’t do it.”
Trump knew that innately. That’s why the world became far more peaceful under Trump."
Are you kidding me? Would you say that Kim Jong Un, otherwise known as rocket man, is also a genius and understands deterrence? Because he exudes the personality type of "batshit crazy", so he and his nukes are the reason why everyone leaves him alone? And that this is not just ok, but smart? And safe?
Do you think that no other president or high ranking member of the military has ever thought about this strategy before? You think Trump's the first one? Hey Biden, if only you were as sharp as Trump and pretended to be a lunatic, you too could have stopped Putin in his tracks. Surely this is the foreign policy we should project to the rest of the world. That the strongest military power on the planet is unhinged and will roll the dice to see if they landed on the 5% chance to bomb you.
And if my critique here of the unhinged rocket man strategy masquerading as good foreign policy isn't working for you and you're fine with this strategy, then let's turn to something more simple and clear cut. Trump just announced he is going to have RFK Jr lead the Health and Human Services department. The guy is an anti-vaxxer. Nothing else needs to be said. But I'll continue anyway. I'm not even going to criticize the removal of fluoride in the water that he plans on doing. That is at least somewhat debatable, since there are other first world countries that also don't fluoridate their water. There's much easier targets here. He said that COVID was engineered not to infect Jews and the Chinese, but to target black and white people. I don't think he's anti-semitic, I just think he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to science. And health. And he’s terrible on many other topics pertaining to health, but you really only need to learn about the anti-vax side of him to know he’s unfit. I’m happy for him for trying to learn and be invested in health issues. But he is the ultimate example of the Dunning Kruger effect. Him and so many other suburban moms who want to be the picture of good health as they get older and want their kids to be strong and healthy—they have a problem. The current scientific consensus is not good enough for them. They’re looking for ways to squeeze out every ounce of “health” or longevity they can possibly get. They want those secret cures for cancer that a cabal of doctors at the FDA and CDC don’t want to tell you about. Surely just getting your vaccines, not smoking, and not gorging on ice cream and fast food can’t be all there is. It can’t be that simple. There must be some secret health serum. No. There isn’t. And scientists and doctors who study these things know more than you ever will on this topic. And no, they aren’t being paid off to keep the cure for cancer behind closed doors.
There’s a reason we pasteurize milk. The raw milk fad is just like all of the other “natural” or “homeopathic” remedies. If processed foods are bad and unprocessed foods are better for you, which, in general, is true, then surely the logic should continue that medicines and unnatural alterations of food products like pasteurization and emulsification and GMOs and pesticides are bad too, right? Well, aside from pesticides, no. Monsanto is not trying to kill its customers. Pesticides are bad, but that’s something everyone agrees on. That’s why the fruit you buy at the grocery store says “please wash before eating.” It’s not going to kill you if you don’t, but probably best to wash anyway. Pesticides are a necessary evil so that we’re able to produce enough food without pests eating them. The formulas and techniques used to deploy these pesticides have been fine tuned as much as possible. The experts who research and work at the companies that provide you with your food already know what you know. And they know a lot more than that too.
One would think the president defers to the experts around him when confronted with a problem that they know more about than he does. Unfortunately, Trump has never met a problem he hasn't thought he could solve with his own genius. I wouldn't mind if an incompetent moron became the president because I would assume that they would have qualified people run the country and make all of the tough decisions. But we have the ultimate package with Trump. The arrogance that radiates out of him when he speaks is palpable. He is not only extremely unknowledgeable about almost everything (besides real estate, according to his friend Jeffrey Epstein), but also suffers from the Dunning Kruger effect. He’s like if RFK Jr. had no curiosity, no drive to find out the truth, but still wanted to spout off about whatever thought happened to pop into his mind at any given moment. There’s a difference between skepticism of experts and the complete dismissal of experts just because they’re experts. There’s people who will visit doctor after doctor until they find one that agrees with their take on vaccines. Most people have already arrived at their conclusions. And they dig up info from the back of their mind, or the internet, to support those conclusions. They dismiss the experts because the expert opinion conflicts with their already held opinion. Everyone on both sides does this.
But these skeptics end up trusting the word of authority one way or another. They either trust the authority of experts, or they trust the authority of someone like RFK Jr. Either way, you’re not doing “your own research”, you’re just finding someone else online who says that they did their own research and their conclusion happens to be one that you think is true based on your prior assumptions. Sam Harris recently had a good, short episode on the topic of authority and experts. I’ll share what I thought was one of the best points.
“Relying on authority can produce errors, of course. (In the same way that some of the money in your wallet could prove to be counterfeit.) But not relying on it—shunning it, just “doing one’s own research”—is guaranteed to produce more errors, at least in the aggregate. After all, what is one doing when one is “doing one’s own research”—if not seeking out what the best authorities have to say on a given topic? …
You don’t trust what the Mayo Clinic says about vaccines—and now you’re afraid to get your kids vaccinated—because you’ve listened to 14 hours of RFK Jr. on podcasts. And now you’ve started trusting him as… what?… a new authority.
We can’t break free of the circle of authority. Of course, I’m not denying that it’s possible to do truly original research—where you become the new authority—but that is not what we’re talking about here. Doing one’s own research almost never entails running the relevant experiments in virology oneself, or searching the Soviet archives oneself, or translating the speech from Arabic oneself, or interviewing the long-dead politician oneself. Most of the time, we simply have to trust that other people did their work responsibly, that their data isn’t fabricated, that they didn’t devote their entire careers to perpetrating an elaborate hoax.”
It will be interesting to see how the trust in our institutions change after Trump is gone. He may have brought this mistrust into the world, but when he finally leaves, the trust isn’t going to grow back as easily as it eroded.
Do you know how my life would’ve changed if Kamala won? It wouldn’t. I'd continue on without worrying or thinking about how she could ruin the country with the arrogance of thinking that she should make every decision and not the people she hires to lead their posts. I would let her and the experts she hires run the country and not worry about her being a dictator. I wouldn’t have to worry about the pay-to-play that Zuckerberg, Bezos, and others are playing wide out in the open, where they’ve donated a small sum of one million dollars to the Trump inauguration fund so that they can be in his good graces. They either did this because they are afraid Trump will go after them with the power of the federal government behind him if they don’t donate, or because they think he will do favors for them and use the power of the federal government to help their companies if they do donate. No matter which of the two reasons they did it for, both are equally alarming and show that Trump is already a tyrant who does not hesitate to use his power to enrich himself and those who bend the knee, while also sending the message that those who do not cooperate will not be so lucky.
I wouldn’t worry that Kamala was hiring incompetent people like Hesgeth and Gaetz and Gabbard and RFK, or any other TV personalities I forgot about. Sure, it'd be boring. But I want politics to be boring. I want experts who, when explaining HHS or FDA or EPA or ICE policies, to speak esoterically and for me to not fully understand because I haven't been doing what they have been doing for over 20 years. I want to know that vaccines are going to continue to be administered to children even though I don't know every ingredient that goes in them and how they are distributed to hospitals and how much they cost. And I trust them to be safe because the overwhelming majority of doctors and scientists think they are safe and these experts understand vaccines more than I do. I want to be able to board an airplane without RFK on it just asking questions if the pilot is really that qualified. Expert consensus is a thing that should be respected. It can be questioned of course, and people can do their own research. But in order to change the policy of the entire country, the "do your own research" crowd needs to have a lot more evidence to overturn expert consensus. They need to actually convince the experts that they were wrong. And until that happens, I'm on the side of the experts. Are some experts being indoctrinated in medical school to call women "birthing people"? Yes. Does this mean that RFK Jr is more knowledgeable about gynecology than they are? No. If you think all they do at medical school is talk about gender fluidity and abortions, you need to take a break from Twitter. The access to surface level information about any topic, which is exactly what the internet offers, has turned half of our society into walking Dunning-Kruger effects.
Hey, I get it. It's entertainment just listening to Trump bloviate like a raving lunatic. Just imagine how entertaining it would be to watch a 12 year old boy get up on stage in front of an audience and talk about things that are so out of his depth that it is instantly obvious within 10 seconds of hearing him begin his speech that he is just shooting from the hip with no clue what he’s going to say next. You get to watch his mind wander to whatever captures its attention, whether that be someone who waves at him in the crowd, or whether it be him remembering the previous weekend where he played some golf with his friends and started wondering how big Arnold Palmer’s dick is. Or how his uncle is a genius who has great genes.
It's like watching the old hit show "Kids Say the Darndest Things". The source of entertainment is the same. You just don't know what silly thing they'll say next. Except he’s the kid, not the host. Although he does share a lot of the same qualities of the original host of the show.
The fact that this doesn’t get pointed out more shows that Trump gets treated with kids gloves. Even in the liberal media. You have MAGA supporters getting angry at the NYT for posting misleading truths, or outright lies, or covering for all the bad things the Democrats do. But when it comes to covering Trump himself, he’s treated as a serious person with serious thoughts and intentions. Covering every lie or every time he says something that makes no sense would be like reporting on the quality of each breath of air he took at one of his rallies. It’s just too common and blasé to even write about. He’s so beyond the pale, and it’s so obvious, that it doesn’t get mentioned anymore in liberal media. Obama wearing a tan suit was a deviation from the norm of him never doing anything gauche or uncultured. Obama always dressed and looked amazing, but one day he wore a suit that didn’t look good on him. It was a deviation from the norm. But for Trump, there never is a deviation from the norm. Because for him the norm is wearing a tan suit every single day. Except that’s just his skin, not a suit. Why care about the man’s ridiculous orange tan when he looks like that every day? Why report on the man talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country? Because that’s par for the course for him. It’s just another day in Trumpistan.
Anyway, even if the liberal media did do a good job showcasing how awful he is, it wouldn’t matter to most people who support him anyway. They brush his many flaws aside. Because he's rich, famous, and speaks confidently, he gets treated as if his insanity and awful vocabulary are either non-issues or don't exist at all. Just imagine he was some blue collar coal worker from West Virginia with no fame to his name. And in response to an interview question from Jordan Klepper at a conservative rally asking what we should've done in Iraq instead of what we actually did, he says that we should just take their oil. He said this in 2011. The reporter asks him if he would keep troops in Iraq, and he says “I would take the oil. I don’t want Iran taking over Iraq and taking the oil. So we should take the oil. I don’t want our soldiers that died there to die in vain.“ And also in that interview he says “I’m only interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don’t take the oil, I have no interest in Libya.” This is your foreign policy guru for peace.
Another one of his more famous hits is "Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart.” I’m gonna stop there because it only gets worse. But perfectly encapsulated in that famous speech about nuclear (nuclear weapons we can only guess, since he doesn’t mention it) is the showcase of how he has no control over his thoughts whatsoever. He just blabs about the next thing that pops into his head instead of thinking before he speaks.
If Kamala’s the DEI candidate, then what is he? It's as if our next president strolled into the room in a wheelchair and everyone said he could win a boxing match against Mike Tyson. But instead of being physically handicapped, Trump is mentally handicapped. And he gets the DEI pass for it every day of his political life because it advances the policy desires and careers of those who ignore his obvious mental incapacity and stay loyal. Exhibit A and Exhibit B: Tucker “Demonic Force” Carlson and JD “America’s Hitler” Vance. Your god emperor has no clothes.
Speaking of JD Vance, I’m hopeful that he can be the sane voice in the White House. The difficult part of pulling that off will be getting Trump to actually listen to him.
If JD Vance can be a role model for young male Trump fans, then maybe we might get some good out of the administration. And we need male role models now more than ever. Well, we really needed them at least 5 years ago, but the next best time is now. It’s no mystery that they voted more in favor of Trump than women did, and that young men in particularly, who used to be solidly liberal, are veering to the right.
Here's a snippet from Scott Galloway's blog. He is an NYU professor and the disaffection of young men is one of the areas he's very in touch with.
"I receive a lot of emails from worried parents, particularly mothers, along these lines: “I have a daughter who lives in Chicago and works in PR and another daughter who’s at Penn. My son lives in our basement, vapes, and plays video games.”
Young American men are in a crisis of underemployment and under-socialization. Soaring college costs affect people regardless of gender, but since 2011, the percentage of young men enrolled in college has dropped from 47% to 42%. Manufacturing jobs, once a ticket to the middle class for men without college degrees, have been offshored. Housing is increasingly unaffordable; nearly 60% of men aged 18 to 24 live with their parents and 1 in 5 still live with their parents at 30. Many men are stuck: isolated, despairing, and unproductive, prone to obesity, drug addiction, and suicide, susceptible to misogyny, conspiracy theories, and radicalization. They make inadequate mates, employees, and citizens."
JD Vance is the first person that comes to mind that is in Trump’s good graces that is also not a colossal asshole. And doesn’t pride himself on pretending to be one either. We’ve got people like Andrew Tate and Elon Musk doing everything they possibly can to win a contest of who can act like the biggest asshole. JD Vance actually cares about something other than inflating his ego. Maybe we can count on him for being a kind of Trojan horse. The same kind that John Kelly and Rex Tillerson were. Where they actually stand up and say no when they think Trump goes too far. And they aren’t afraid to speak out against him in public. I think JD Vance is like them. I could be wrong, but let’s hope not. And let’s hope there isn’t a reason for him to have to make that stand in the first place.
As for what we do once January 20th rolls around, we have a chance to learn from and redo our reaction to his 2016 election. Getting stressed and exhausted trying to keep up with every crazy thing that he does isn’t worth doing. It might be the morally right thing to do, but I’m not gonna have that added stress on my life anymore. I’m just going to continue on living my life as if nothing happened. After all, the college educated whites that voted overwhelmingly for Kamala are the ones with the least at stake under a Trump administration. Or any administration for that matter. White collar liberals will have no issues getting access to healthcare and emergency abortions. They will have no issues if social security or medicare are taken away. They will be the least affected by vaccine mandates being removed because they are the ones most likely to get their kids vaccinated. They will be the ones who can afford the price increases that come from any new tariffs. I understand you want to look out for the less fortunate among us, but that’s Trump’s job now. I’m only going to waste my breath on him when something terrible happens, and when speaking up about it might actually do something. I suggest you do the same.
I’m bad at grammar, help
This does not apply to Trump, because no rules apply to Trump. He can dodge issues by saying things like “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” and “Project 2025? Never heard of it” and he won’t lose any votes. He can equivocate on abortion and IVF. Kamala can’t dodge trans issues by just ignoring them like Trump ignored Project 2025. No other politician gets away with what Trump gets away with.