It is one of the ironies of our age that a lot of ordinary people who support one of the most flagrant, blatant pathological liars of all time – do so because they think he’s honest. They’re not entirely wrong. Trump is honest in some ways.
He’s authentic in his lies. He’s authentically a jerk. He’s authentically a narcissist. He’s authentically a racist. He’s authentically egotistical. And so on. None of this is the least bit hidden. His lies are so blatant and so blatantly self-serving that they’re obviously lies.
Other politicians are not so authentic. Sure they’re racist, but they try to pretend they’re not. Sure they’re jerks but they try to pretend they’re not. Sure they’re greedy and corrupt, but they try to pretend they’re not. Trump is obviously greedy and corrupt.
In some ways, Trump appeals to people who believe all politicians are basically like Trump. Those other politicians just try to cover it up. In fact, many of the people who find Trump attractive believe that all people are like Trump.
People, in this theory, are selfish greedy jerks and the more we acknowledge and maybe even celebrate this, the better the entire world will be. The Libertarian philosophy is essentially this writ large. MAY THE MOST SELFISH GREEDY JERK WIN!
THE LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY OF GOVERNMENT IS WRONG
There has never been a Libertarian paradise and there never will be because a Libertarian paradise can’t exist. The school curriculum staple Lord of the Flies tries to dramatize a Libertarian society of school age British twits stuck on an island. It doesn’t end well.
The people who believe that all people are like Trump or Libertarians or the kids in Lord of the Flies are wrong.
Some people are like Trump, sort of. Some of his supporters may be pathologically lying racist narcissists who experience themselves as selfish jerks and are tired of apologizing for it. Tired of trying to be anything but pathologically lying racist narcissists who feel like selfish jerks.
Tired of feeling like there’s no exalted place in the universe for pathologically lying racist narcissists who feel like selfish jerks.
None of this seeing yourself in Trump (or any other politician) has much to do with actually fixing any problems. A person like you may be terrible at fixing the problems that people like you face. After all, if you were good at fixing those problems, you wouldn’t have them!
Now, you could argue that there is no role for government in fixing the problems of its constituents. People have, in fact, argued this. They have argued that all problem fixing comes from private enterprise and all problems come from government.
RONALD REAGAN AND MILTON FRIEDMAN WERE WRONG ABOUT THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
The people who have argued this (Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, for example) are wrong. This idea, which has proven to be quite popular, is just stupid. We’ve had 45 years, more or less, of the glorification of private enterprise and the demonization of government, and you know what we’ve got?
A boatload, a shit ton, a mega banquet – of terrible problems that private enterprise hasn’t fixed. Or that private enterprise has caused. Government literally could not have done worse than private enterprise has.
The idea that private enterprise magically solves problems and government magically creates them derives from the deep-rooted pathological fear of communism and socialism that’s gripped the US since the robber baron era.
Yet when the chips are down, normal people don’t give a flying fuck what Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman thought. Normal people want the government to fix shit.
This is kinda difficult, given that the Reaganesque idea that government is the problem and should be smaller if not non-existent, fucks up the government’s ability to fix the problems people expect it to fix.
It’s kind of a neat trick what those billionaire ‘Libertarians’ did. They scooped up all the possible cash from a government they pretend to despise, and then do everything possible to prevent it from solving anyone else’s problems. (See Elon Musk for a notable example of cash-scooping.)
REPUBLICANS ARE WRONG ABOUT GOVERNMENT TOO!
The Republicans got on board with this as well as some angry but not too bright folks known as the Tea Party. And along with the opportunists and grifters, these folks have done everything they can to make it completely impossible to fix any problems whatsoever.
This is the ‘Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Are Not Already Billionaires’ approach. It’s very popular with billionaires. It would be even more popular except that it’s been so successful that even billionaires have abandoned all hope. Even some Libertarian asshole billionaires are creeping toward the idea that maybe a government that actually functions might be better than…. well, Trump.
Good times! Way to go Milton Friedman, you nerdy white dead man, you.
The upshot of all this is – you, as a voting individual, cynical and hopeless and angry as you are – have got to elect lawmakers who are interested in solving problems. Well let’s just go a step further and say lawmakers who actually fix problems.
Your criteria for any elected lawmaker should be:
- WHAT PROBLEMS HAVE YOU FIXED? PROVIDE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
- WHAT PROBLEMS DO YOU WANT TO FIX IF ELECTED? PROVIDE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
FIX THE PROBLEMS!
Any lawmaker you send to Washington should be able to answer those questions. They should be able to answer them in a way that makes sense. They should also be able to explain that solving problems in Washington is complicated. And sometimes the problems are complex.
If the person that wants you to send them to Washington makes it sound like it’s all easy and they’re going to fix the problems with no problems – they’re an idiot! People who promise they’ll do shit they can’t possibly do – don’t do it.
Now I know you probably want solving the problems to be easy. So you want to elect someone who makes it sound easy. Don’t.
You’ve absolutely positively got to stop electing lawmakers because they’re like you. Get over it. Stop giving a fuck about that. You’re not that great. You don’t want yourself in Congress. I’m not that great either. I don’t want myself in Congress.
For example, maybe it seems like you need a neurological exam. At least that’s what your spouse keeps hinting around at. DO NOT ELECT SOMEONE WHO SEEMS LIKE THEY NEED A NEUROLOGICAL EXAM. Sure, you can relate – but don’t vote on the basis of relating.
Maybe you’re afraid to elect someone smarter than you. Many people, quite frankly, are. Get over it. If you’re at the median level of intelligence, half the people in the fucking world are smarter than you. Elect some of them. Let them do the work, while you lie around and complain. What part of that doesn’t sound attractive to you?
What you want in Congress is someone who is going to FIX THE FUCKING PROBLEMS. This is the criteria for success. Not what party the person belongs to. Stop settling for less than fixing the problems.
MORE WRONGNESS: IDEALOGUES AND WEIRDOS, EXTREMISTS OF ALL STRIPES
Idealogues and weirdos will yell at you for that. Extremists on the right (god so many of them these days) and extremists on the left will yell at you for that. Yell back.
This is what you can yell at the lawmakers who aren’t fixing problems and at the extremists:
SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Here’s the thing. There are people who actually enjoy things like passing the county budget. It’s weird, I know. But they actually like to solve local problems. They’re not that partisan. They don’t have fancy ideas. They’re not true believers in any shit except maybe that helping people and cookies are good. They’re not extremists. They know how to compromise and why. They know how to change their minds and why.
These are the people we need to actually do the shit that actually needs to be done.
Elect these people (if you can find them) and chase the rest out of town.
DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE ROLE OF LOBBYISTS IN GOVERNMENT THESE DAYS
Part of the problem with the problems that aren’t getting solved is that elected representatives only hear from two kinds of people. Lobbyists who represent corporate interests and those with beaucoup money. And screaming weirdos screaming about weird things.
During the pandemic, for example, people who were terrified of masks screamed weird shit about masks. People who were terrified of people not wearing masks screamed weird shit about masks. People who were terrified of vaccines screamed weird shit about vaccines. People who were terrified of people not getting vaccinated screamed weird shit about vaccines.
If your elected representatives screamed weird shit about masks, then you didn’t elect a representative. You elected a hysteric.
But I was one of those people screaming weird shit about masks and vaccines you say, so I did indeed elect a representative. Someone who represented my hysteria.
No, sorry. I get it. You think you want someone like you to represent you. Again, sorry, no you don’t. If you are terrified and hysterical, you do not want a terrified and hysterical person representing you. YOU WANT SOMEONE WHO WILL FIX YOUR PROBLEM!
SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY FIGURE OUT HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS. PUT THOSE PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT.
I know this will shock some, most people figured out how to solve their COVID problems without getting hysterical or extreme. Most people figured out how to deal with COVID without an extreme opinion. Most people figured out how to live their fucking lives.
That’s the kind of person who should be your elected representative. Your government should be full of people like that.
This flies in the face of decades of effort to make elected representatives more and more extreme and less and less practical. It flies in the face of decades of efforts to make elected representatives more beholden to some philosophy and deep-pocket billionaire than to the actual constituents they should be meeting with and hearing from.
There are lots of reasons for this but in the end they don’t matter. What matters is that the stupid ideas that driven government to the brink of madness and probably somewhat beyond – need to just go away. The era of Libertarian philosophical stupidity and idealogues and idealism and demonization and extremism and all that incredibly tiresome shit that literally makes people not want to bring kids into this world – it needs to end.
So what needs to happen after the ignorant Libertarian sluts and the extremists all move to Afghanistan where they will be much much happier? No kidding, the philosophies of Libertarian sluts and the extremists are not that different from the those of the land of the Taliban. Those folks would find a paradise of wonder and delight in that environment. If their philosophies are correct, of course.
LISTENING TO THE PUBLIC
Anyway, tedious things need to happen with Congress and all the representatives in government who are supposed to be governing. Super super boring things. Like listening to the regular public.
This actually happens on occasion. I recently read about it happening in Arizona of all places. The governor got people to talk to each other about water. Water is important. It’s local. It affects daily life. So people talked to each other. And talked. And came up with some solutions. Just like they’re supposed to.
Guess what happened? An extremist legislator in the Arizona state government knocked them down and wouldn’t listen to the public. Wouldn’t listen to her constituents.
Guess how old that legislator was? Really old. 80 years old.
Guess what happened after that? The public yelled at her. They yelled at a little 80-year-old woman. That’s what the public is supposed to do when legislators don’t listen to them.
This is a hard concept for legislators to understand. It’s easy for a legislator to think it’s bizarre that the public should be heard or actually participate in decision making on matters that affect said public. The reason legislators find this a bizarre idea is that in many cases they have actually met members of the public. And they don’t like them.
MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC
Members of the public are weird. And shouty. And not very bright. They don’t come up to legislators with their hands stuffed with wads full of cash ready to dispense for the legislator’s re-election campaign. They don’t come sidling up the legislator like a member of the elite, winking in a ‘we’re both insiders’ kind of a way. Members of the public don’t flatter the legislator’s ego with unearned praise for simply existing.
Members of the public are pains in the butt. If you don’t believe me, go to your homeowner’s association meeting. There you will find board members who are extremely easy to hate with a white-hot passion, along with homeowners who are busy hating them with a white-hot passion.
The board members want to raise fees. The homeowners HATE this. The board members want to put off maintenance and improvements. The board members want to enact maintenance and improvements. The homeowners HATE this. The board members are making up the most stupidly ridiculous stupid rules in the entire world. Not enough homeowners HATE this.
And so on. There’s a pretty good chance your representatives secretly think you’re as bad as Trump (and they think Trump is really really bad even if they support him). Yep, your representatives have a really low opinion of you, and they don’t even know you!
This attitude, although understandable, is not a good attitude for legislators to have. Because representatives are supposed to tell the truth to their constituents and share the important information about what’s going on. Representatives don’t want to do this.
They don’t want to do this for good reasons. Most of the information they have, if they are doing their jobs really well, is incredibly boring. They can share information with you like ‘plans for construction on the renovation of the civic center are proceeding, with the next plan review meeting scheduled for August 2.’ They are happy to share this information with you if they’re not corrupt. But you don’t care about this information, and they know you don’t. So it’s not as fun to share as it could be.
CORRUPT REPRESENTATIVES
But sometimes they don’t share it for reasons they consider to be very important. Such as, they are corrupt. If you find out about some meeting they’re having with a construction company bidding for a contract to renovate the civic center, you might attend and find out the construction company is giving them a kick back. Or that their brother-in-law owns it. Or that the company has had 16 local contracts over the past 7 years and has gone over budget on all of them and yet the executives drive around with the government officials in fancy cars with literal cigars and cocktails on their lips. Stuff like that.
It really pisses off elected people when you find out stuff like that. But not as much as it pisses them off when you try to do something to make it stop. ‘What is the fucking point,’ they think to themselves, ‘of having a public service job serving those awful members of the public if you’re not steering truckloads of cash your way. Or at least steering truckloads of cash toward people who will help you enjoy the kind of life that truckloads of cash can buy.’ They can kind of get offended that anyone would interfere with what they see as their god-given right to corruption (see Robert Menedez of New Jersey).
What about the Press?
Back in the day, there was this thing called the ‘press.’ It was called that because newspapers were actually printed on things called printing presses. Who knew?
Then, Marshall McLuhan, a very famous academic, decided to call stuff ‘media’, like ‘mass media’. So somehow or another what used to be journalism became media. And what used to be the press became – well, became pretty much total shit.
Lots of things are to blame for that. But for now, we’ll just blame Ronald Reagan (eliminated the fairness doctrine that made broadcast media – you know, fair) and everyone’s favorite substance – money.
At any rate, back when the press was the press and not the media – it took the press part of itself really seriously. It pressed people. Like pressured them. They would press lawmakers and politicians and so on.
Nowadays, that doesn’t really happen. Now that the press is the media, it’s more about evoking passionate emotions in consumers. I mean the Murdoch empire is not about truth in any way shape or form. It’s about passion and emotion and riling people up into the kind of mob that tried to kill Frankenstein. Which is weird. But not really the point.
MAKE THE MEDIA GREAT AGAIN
The point is – MAKE THE MEDIA GREAT AGAIN. Make it stop being the media and start being the press. When the media starts acting like the press, then those people in Washington will stop lying like lying motherfuckers and there’ll be just the tiniest bit of credibility restored to the whole notion of well, representative government. And problem-solving.
How can you make the media great again? Well, you probably can’t. But you can stop hanging out on media that’s like Fox News Channel or MSNBC that are not only godawful annoying but also designed to not press anybody on anything but to cheerlead for demonization of the other side.
In fact, sorry to tell you retired folks this – but TURN OFF THE GODDAMN CABLE NEWS altogether. Just turn it off. Turn that shit off. Cable news completely distorts your sense of events and makes you less informed.
And then – start pressing the government yourself. Ordinary people are actually pretty decent at this. When politicians foolishly do what they’re supposed to and host town halls and the like, people who are not screaming maniacs actually get some really good questions in. They press people.
You know why ordinary people are good at this kind of stuff? Because ordinary voters are actually quite thoughtful. They don’t actually vote for a living, so they’re pretty decent at it. Admittedly, all American voters are weird, because America prizes individuality so that each person has their own opinion on everything, but Americans are willing to press politicians.
Meanwhile, the people who get paid to have opinions about elected officials or people who are campaigning to become elected officials – are stupid.
PUNDITS ARE STUPID.
Okay, I don’t mean stupid like they have no brains. I mean stupid like they say stupid harmful shit.
They may be stupid because they are getting paid so much to create so much content to fill up so much space that they can’t help being stupid while they’re in such a rush. Constantly reacting to what just happened.
Or maybe they’re stupid on purpose because they think that’s what people like. Maybe they’re stupid because they think the people who consume their content are stupid. I don’t know why they are stupid – but damn they are stupid.
PUNDITS ON THE LEFT = BAD. PUNDITS ON RIGHT = BAD.
I will give 2 examples. One is someone spreading a pundity misleading bit of crap about Trump posting photos of fake Taylor Swift endorsements. And then following that up with him seemingly uttering some conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift actually being a Republican. All this in the service of making Trump look stupid and confused.
Okay, it is entirely possible that you might consider Trump to be stupid and confused if you actually dig down into his opinion. As he stated in the original source – he thinks Taylor Swift is a country singer. He thinks country singers are mostly Republican and conservative. So he is surprised to hear that some people consider Taylor Swift to be a liberal.
So the underlying reality seems to be that Trump is an old guy who doesn’t really know that much about Taylor Swift. There are plenty of old guys who don’t know that much about Taylor Swift. There are college students who don’t know that much about Taylor Swift. I’ve broken bread with some of them.
And Trump is right – back in some distant era (get it, era?), Taylor Swift was considered a country artist. That was a long time ago, but Trump doesn’t keep up with Taylor Swift.
Trump is also right that lots of country music figures are outspoken red-state Trump types. So Trump is surprised that Taylor Swift doesn’t fit that mold.
You know what Trump’s surprise on this front adds up to? A big fat nothing burger.
The pundit who cannot figure that out is stupid. The pundit who cannot figure that out is a lot stupider than the people who get exposed to this content – unless they are rabid partisans.
Rabid partisans have a tendency to be stupid.
That’s just cuz it’s hard for your brain to work right while you’ve got the equivalent of rabies fueling your overwhelming passion for (or mostly against) some group of people.
So that was a leftist morsel of media punditry stupidity. But it goes the other way as well.
I ran across a website announcing that the governor of California had hired a photographer for the office of the governor of California. Yeah, maybe not all governors have a photographer on staff. But lots of governments, national, state, and local have photographers. Turning hiring a photographer into a lead article news item with the intention of stoking OUTRAGE against the governor of California is stupid.
It’s stupid in the sense that it’s like ‘have you no idea that there are professional photographers?’ Wait, aren’t you using photography on your stupid punditry website designed to stoke OUTRAGE against people that quite frankly, we need to have doing a good job?
There’s a line from Shakespeare: “Let’s kill all the lawyers.” I don’t think it would be truly good if we changed that to ‘let’s kill all the pundits.’ But if that sentiment showed up in some modern-day classic work of dramatic art – I’d sure understand why.
So what’s the takeaway from all this? Oh you know what the takeaway is. It’s time to GET PRETTY FED UP with political pundits.
It’s time to GET PRETTY FED UP with Libertarians and idealogues and weirdos and extremists.
It’s time to GET PRETTY FED UP with people in government who don’t solve the fucking problems that need to get solved.
Peace out.
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