We don't fucking want you.
Stay home and put out your fucking trash fire. We have enough problems in Canada without importing you and yours, including the integration of more Syrian refugees in our tiny-by-population country than your enormous-by-population country has accepted (and that sickening parsimony, that should have had you out on the streets, was under the Democratic presidency you've been crying over).
The opposition to Trump and his supporters from Clinton on down has been based largely on contempt, and you know what, I feel contempt too. I don't understand how so many people have been culturally suicidal enough to have bought into a version of fascism that's even dumber than the 1930s version because the man at the head of it is a transparent rich-boy kleptocrat.
But now your shitty country is stuck with him, and it’s your job to figure out why 60 million of the people you live with thought the rich-boy kleptocrat was a good choice, and to figure out how to live with those people as your peers. And your job to figure out why other white people stayed home in droves this year when the stakes were so obviously high for their brown and black co-citizens. And your job to make sure your rich-boy kleptocrat ends up on the same figurative meathook that all fascist demagogues were born to end up on.
The 30s versions weren’t rich-boy kleptocrats, for all the other horrible things they were. They enacted policies that benefitted many of their fellow citizens, and enjoyed wild personal popularity for years and years. If you do your job right instead of whining and trying to run off to Canada, your new set of cunts will figuratively end up on their meathooks much faster and with much less chance to do horrible human damage. Not only because Trump won’t even cosmetically attempt the social improvement measures old school fascists used since he’ll be so busy asset-stripping, but also because history has taught you what to expect.
Or should fucking have taught you. But I’ve spent way too much time socializing with Clinton supporters over the last few months to have any fucking confidence at all that their grasp of history is any better than the jag-offs who just voted in the rich-boy kleptocrat. All I heard was name-calling and a baffling pretence that more of the same, in the shape of another Clinton presidency, was going to be good for people.
Well, stay home, and do better. We don’t want you.
Stay home and put out your fucking trash fire. We have enough problems in Canada without importing you and yours, including the integration of more Syrian refugees in our tiny-by-population country than your enormous-by-population country has accepted (and that sickening parsimony, that should have had you out on the streets, was under the Democratic presidency you've been crying over).
The opposition to Trump and his supporters from Clinton on down has been based largely on contempt, and you know what, I feel contempt too. I don't understand how so many people have been culturally suicidal enough to have bought into a version of fascism that's even dumber than the 1930s version because the man at the head of it is a transparent rich-boy kleptocrat.
But now your shitty country is stuck with him, and it’s your job to figure out why 60 million of the people you live with thought the rich-boy kleptocrat was a good choice, and to figure out how to live with those people as your peers. And your job to figure out why other white people stayed home in droves this year when the stakes were so obviously high for their brown and black co-citizens. And your job to make sure your rich-boy kleptocrat ends up on the same figurative meathook that all fascist demagogues were born to end up on.
The 30s versions weren’t rich-boy kleptocrats, for all the other horrible things they were. They enacted policies that benefitted many of their fellow citizens, and enjoyed wild personal popularity for years and years. If you do your job right instead of whining and trying to run off to Canada, your new set of cunts will figuratively end up on their meathooks much faster and with much less chance to do horrible human damage. Not only because Trump won’t even cosmetically attempt the social improvement measures old school fascists used since he’ll be so busy asset-stripping, but also because history has taught you what to expect.
Or should fucking have taught you. But I’ve spent way too much time socializing with Clinton supporters over the last few months to have any fucking confidence at all that their grasp of history is any better than the jag-offs who just voted in the rich-boy kleptocrat. All I heard was name-calling and a baffling pretence that more of the same, in the shape of another Clinton presidency, was going to be good for people.
Well, stay home, and do better. We don’t want you.
4 commenti:
I'm just filled with admiration that you can write - not just coherently but well.
I might have 'known' it was going to happen (call it Brexit-cognition) but I am so fucking raging that it has.
I don't know any 'ordinary' Americans (beyond (very) wealthy in-law cousins - one a venture capitalist who's donated to the GOP). But what you're describing is what happened here. This collective dumb-as-fuck obliviousness to what was right under their noses all the time: that there was a massive hunger for change; that folk get all emotional and vote with their hate when some Alt-right nutter triggers a fear and resentment sweetspot; that inequality isn't good; that it provides the manure that will grow a lot of anger and that that anger can and will be harvested by the ugly ones. Populism - the far right version especially - is finding a receptive audience and it is our failure that it is.
I feel like a veteran of this change-hunger now. It's not just been Brexit - it's also Scotland and the astonishing rise of Scottish Nationalism. The Scottish change-hunger manifested in anti-Westminsterism, Us Scots (me included) were ripe for that, having been ruled by a long succession of governments we didn't elect and who didn't resemble the values we tended to vote for. Given that those governments were right wing (or hawkish, pro-privatising Labour) then our protest was always going to go to whoever managed to carve a different offering.
I'm now going to do what you did for me the other day (and say stuff you know anyway): Clinton (for all her failings) won the popular vote. More people voted for her. Trump and his despicableness won approx 18% of the total electorate. There is a large number of folk who could mobilise against him - if they have the will to do so. Surely among all of them there will be someone with the talent and skill and strength to articulate a change that isn't based on hate and fear.
Yeah, you're right. About everything. And I haven't actually shaken my Pollyannaishness, you know. But it's very hard nonetheless to feel optimistic for the US itself. The way they're not only formally politically organised but educated there, from the youngest age through the highest levels of schooling, is so - fucking - oppositional and this was the natural outcome of that; that a vicious, opportunistic shyster was going to be able to present himself as enough of an iconoclast while facing an opponent so establishment she shat superdelegates (and was a woman) that a combination of indifference and anger was going to get him into power.
And now what? US political discourse is based on taking turns disenfranchising half the country while both halves shout at each other, which seems to be the main use they make of their right to free speech, and that's what led them to this fucking embarassment. How do they change that? How do they even try to change that while also trying to limit the ecological and human damage the next four years are going to bring? It'd be complicated anywhere and out of all the Murricans I know (many - my main employers are based there, and as expats Canadians and Americans tend to mingle a lot) there are maybe three who have the perspective on themselves and their own country that would equip them for that sort of thing. And two of those have been living in Europe for more than a decade.
I feel like the US's best bet is just to hope the Netherlands has nothing to do for the next four years, ties it to a bunch of chairs, and patiently explains the polder model over and over until they can take it on board. In the meantime, I figure the world's best bet is to treat the whole country like a cautionary tale, openly take a Merkel-esque approach to the dangerous creep heading it, and basically try to ease the place into becoming the banana republic it looks to be yearning to turn into, trying to stop it from blowing up the world on the way.
Chinese military commentator quoted in the Economist this week: "If Trump is in office for eight years, he will successfully be the first US president to lead America’s economy from number one in the world to number two. Yes he can!”
Ha. Yes he can!
I've had a hissy outpouring of frustration every single day since the sma' hours of Wednesday morning. Mainly fighting with R - who agrees with me for fuck sake! - so it's mainly me shouting with him in the room saying 'I know Yvonne. I know.' He's said a few things over the years when my suspicion and (snobby) contempt of all things American got too much for him. Like: 'HBO Yvonne'. Ah fuck.
I wish someone would beam me up - or that I was someone who just couldn't think and wasn't much bothered by any of it. But between the folk dying in the Mediterranean or being blown up in Alleppo; the prospect of Putin embarking on his own lebensraum project; fear of Alt-right EU politicians hitting their electoral stride; Brexit (and the fucking evil bastards who populate the British government) and now Trump - I fear for my kids.
I am still at the shouty stage. Shouting obscenities at the tv or the paper or the ipad or laptop. I need to get myself past that.
Our little-Merkel (Nicola Sturgeon) - our First Minister - has condemned Trump and made clear her antipathy. But on the bigger GB stage, May is a fucking cretin who will be sucking up as much as possible. She is being shafted by Trump already though, because Farage will be the first British politician to meet Trump since the result - a very calculated slapdown of May and of every Minister who dissed Trump. My latest fear is that Trump will back Farage in some way that will mean he is already well on his way to becoming Dictator-in-Residence in Britain.
The hassle? That there is always something in a populist's demagoguery that identifies 'the problem' that we all knew about but were somehow unwilling or unable to identify and repair. Globalisation has destroyed industries here - with steel etc migrating to countries (China. India) where it's cheaper to produce. But to identify it has often attracted cries of either 'you're an economic illiterate' (true) or 'you're a racist' or 'you're a communist'. Trump said it all out loud - it's just he tacked it to hate and fear and racism and we all know he's not going to engineer things so that repatriated industry somehow benefits the indigenous American worker.
You're right about the polder model, consensus decision-making is surely what every mature democracy ought to be practicing.
But there are such massive inequalities in America - unless they are addressed (and we know they won't be) the country is doomed.
"HBO Yvonne" is going to be my new calming mantra any time I catch myself just wishing the whole place would sink into the sea even faster than its citizens can keep drilling all those holes in the hull. I need at least two more years to see how Game of Thrones ends.
I'm scared for my kids too. We were out for lunch today with some other expat friends - Greek and Italian. I was complaining about how we weren't able to plan much in the way of holidays or family visits for awhile because of all the hoop-jumping and waiting to get the new kid a passport, even though it's eligible for three. The F-word poked a little gentle fun at my "collection" (sheltered Australian darling) but the Greek and Italian just wanted details . . .
So yeah. I'm scared too, but I'm also taking on board that makes me absolutely typical of every mother, everywhere, of any species, ever, and all I can do - in fact the best thing I can do as a creature, let alone a parent - is try to equip them to resist, dodge and link arms with others against the bullshit of this world.
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