So a thing happened yesterday.
A lot of pundits are saying that uneducated white Evangelical people voted that way because of economic policy. Because they felt left behind in the world and they feel like Trump will help them. That's partly true. A lot of others are saying it's because white Evangelical people are really racist, misogynistic, homophobic, jingoistic nutjobs. That's partly true as well.* But I think both groups are missing the point.
There is a big swath of this country that doesn't want to look at us.
Us as in anyone who is LGBTQ. Us as in anyone who is of color. Us as in any woman who doesn't know her place.
These people remember the days when everyone in their world was, or at least appeared to be, white moral christian Decent People™. Being a Decent Person™ and male automatically got you the best job you could handle, no fancy, complicated education required. When you went to work you only had to answer to better Decent People™, usually male, who were obviously better because they had more money.
When the world was made up of Decent People™ men looked like men, ladies looked like ladies and sluts you could grab looked like sluts you could grab. You didn't have to think too hard about how you approached people, and you almost never made a mistake and got embarassed by it.
When the world was made up of Decent People™ brown people were only around to do menial labor and then went away somewhere. They knew how to behave around you and if they misbehaved it was over there where you didn't have to deal. It was all their problem.
When the world was made up of Decent People™ all that immoral stuff was hidden away downtown or in New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco or maybe over in France where Decent People™ didn't have to look at it. They didn't have to explain it to their children. All they had to do was say that so-and-so was a confirmed bachelor or a spinster who lived with his or her roommate at most. No icky discussions needed.
When the world was made up of Decent People™ everyone went to the same church, or at least to a similar church, and everyone played by the same rule book. You didn't have to worry about if they were going to do anything to you and yours because you knew how they would behave. They even taught kids the rule book in the schools.
Remember, these are not intelligent people. Dunning-Kruger is a thing.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of those of low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
They don't understand the world like those of us in the 40% do.
I've been following their websites for years now and from what I can tell they honestly believe that there is a global conspiracy to make them look and feel stupid. We're taking their jobs away, going to close up their churches, dumbing down their children, forcing them to have to teach their children to be immoral, and so on. I know this isn't true, you might know this isn't true, but they believe it. They believe that we have been inventing new rules, new technologies, new businesses, new cultures, new marriage and new genders just to make them look stupid when they can't navigate it all, and that we are laughing at them.
They believe we are the bullies.
And like all bullies we attack harder when they complain. No, you can't use that kind of language. No, you can't not hire those people. No, you can't keep that job. No. No. No.
For the past few decades they haven't been able to do anything to stop us. Life has become more confusing and more difficult and whenever they complain it just gets worse. It's a giant conspiracy to drive them into the nut house and into the poor house.one pronoun at a time. Now they have elected the ultimate Bossman, with his buildings and planes and wives, and he has been saying everything they've been feeling. Now that he's in charge they can say it too.
What do they want?
They want us to disappear. They want us to go back in the closet, back to the ghetto, back to the asylum, back to the reservation, back to our home country, back in the shadows. If we're going to be out in public they want us to obey their rules, be respectful and deferential, not wave our relationships around, look or act very male or very female and never be anything in between. And while we're at it they want us to take our new technology and new cultures with us. They want a world where you can do the work with pencil and paper, no computers or smart phones needed. They want a world like you see on the police procedurals, so popular on TV, where the older white male is in charge and everyone knows their place, including the geeks who do all the computer stuff for them.
The problem is that the world doesn't work that way.
If they want us to go away, I say we go away. Leave them to their spaces, where they only have to deal with Decent People™. We will take our people and go away to the coast, to the North East, to the cities. We will go away and leave you alone. We will disappear from your lives.
For the record nothing will change. People of color will still enjoy their cultures. Women will still work to support their families. Gay people will still fall in love and form families. Trans people will still go on building lives that fit them. Computers will keep on taking over the world. We just won't try to incorporate them anymore. They don't want to look at us, they have made that clear so we might as well stop forcing the issue.
Granted this means we will no longer shop in your stores, work with your businesses, visit your tourist destinations, help you out when disasters hit or in any way support you economically except through the barest minimum of taxes. And I will be supporting the Calexit and Cascadia movements to succeed and even stop that much. Granted you're likely to say that you'll do the same. I think that's just fine, The less we have to look at each other the better. Very Low Contact is our best plan here.
Granted this means we will no longer shop in your stores, work with your businesses, visit your tourist destinations, help you out when disasters hit or in any way support you economically except through the barest minimum of taxes. And I will be supporting the Calexit and Cascadia movements to succeed and even stop that much. Granted you're likely to say that you'll do the same. I think that's just fine, The less we have to look at each other the better. Very Low Contact is our best plan here.
Now we get to see how well that will work.
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Politico has spoken on this subject as well.
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The Friendly Athiest also spoke about last night. One of his commentators, EIR, made a very good point which I would like to expand upon.
St. Mark, who wrote the original gospel, as near as we can tell, may have had some good ideas but you people are not following them. Not in the slightest. So don't even talk to me about morality. Ever.
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