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When I left America two years ago, it was in pretty good condition. Sure, poverty was abundant and Justin Bieber was culturally relevant, but our riots were minimal and public servants could be expected not to casually joke about banging their own daughters.

For all the rock dwellers and foreigners, here’s a basic summation of the last eight years of American politics:

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You may call this an oversimplification, but I call it a cartoon on the internet I made in five minutes.


The point is this – The Left got so used to calling themselves open-minded that a vocal section of them forgot to actually keep an open mind. Through this process “open-mindedness” became less about accepting others and more about villainizing and idealizing large groups of people based on race and gender – the exact thing they used to be against.

Here’s some simple truths:

if you’re judging someone based on their race, you’re being racist.

If you judge someone based on their sex, you’re being sexist.

It doesn’t matter how many liberal arts degrees you slap around those definitions.

How can you claim moral high ground over a racist if you judge them for their race? How can you lay judgement on a sexist if you judge them for their sex?

The last time I touched on these ideas I made so many personal friends angry that I stopped writing for over a year. I did this not because I thought what I said was untruthful, but because I didn’t want to feel I was contributing to the growing political division in America. But Donald Trump’s election represents a dangerous precedent that can’t be ignored.

He’s not Right or Left.

He’s a toddler with nukes. A self-aggrandizing populist who sees leading the most powerful country in the world not as a civic duty, but just another notch in the belt his father purchased. In his extensively documented seventy years of life, he’s proven to serve no one but himself, and will take on any belief he thinks will win him the most applause in that moment.

If racism makes him popular he’ll talk about building walls.

If gay rights make him popular he’ll wear a rainbow lapel.

If war makes him popular he’ll incite global violence.

Leaders who appeal to popular desires and prejudices rather than rationality are called Demagogues, and they have a long history with very few good results. But you can’t fight ignorance with more ignorance. Pretending The Left’s modern bigotry is a solution to The Right’s classical bigotry is not a solution. We won’t survive the next four years if we pretend it is.

I mean, I might. But a lot of my friends won’t, and a lot of my friends are pretty nice people. I know Americans do dumb things like electing Trump, but we also do smart things, like inventing the internet. So if the rest of world promise to let us off the hook for the next four years, I promise we’ll invent something at least as revolutionary as the internet once the next president rolls around.



7 thoughts on “trumpf

  1. The World needed you. Welcome back 🙂

    PS. Trump is very terrible. I was worried about him being elected for a long time and I certainly don’t feel better about it now. His election has destroyed a large chunk of my capacity for optimism. Which sucks because I’ve just had a kid so I want the future to be great for him and I want to BELIEVE that the future will be great for him.

  2. I don’t think that having an unpopular opinion that isn’t even demeaning to any group of people is contributing to the political division.
    But calling people names over it and unfriending them might.

  3. Thank you for this post. I’m Australian, so I’m not as directly affected by the results of this election as America is but what Trump’s election win has done is
    a) create an environment in which racist, bigoted parties like our One Nation party become more popular
    b) give people a “leader” who isn’t afraid to “tell it like it is” and therefore win their support. My sister mistrusts mainstream media and so Trump’s constant discussion of “fake news” speaks to her. As such, she supports him and dangerously ignores all the terrible things he’s done and said.

    Thank you for this post. It is wonderful. And it was great to find on today, of all days. 🙂

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