And, because I'm a total sucker for cute kids...

Here's one who makes the point better than I ever could.

You're doing it wrong.

As if waking up the day after election day, and realizing that shit really happened, all over again, isn't irritating enough, imagine seeing this on Ye Oulde Facebook notifications tab:

Facebook, you couldn't do it more wrong with a month of planning.  I already know who represents me, and despite various claims to the contrary backed by men with guns, attitude, and impunity, it is, and ever will be, nobody beyond the extent of my own skin.

There's a reason they call it the TwitFace.

Behold:

Well there, Massuh Superior Being suh, that's quite a statement there.  (Personally, I'd say the worst insult anyone could throw at me is to call me a v*ter in the first place, but then I'm a known heretic.)  It deserves a far more thorough fisking than I have any time to assemble here.  Nonetheless, presumably you, paragon of civic virtue and All That Is Good, Healthful, and Nonfattening, "supported" a different candidate, and very likely "supported" the current administration through both of its terms, as well.  (I suppose it's possible you didn't, but somehow that seems vanishingly unlikely from the evidence here.)

It would be childishly simple to ask you, in light of your strong declarative statement, why you would prefer a candidate (and a sitting president) who believes that dead Mexicans (that's brains-blown-out dead--we're not talking about a bigotry of words here) are an acceptable political cost of manufacturing the public impression that American gun dealers are arming narcotraficantes on the sly.  (Oh, you never heard about Operation Fast And Furious, reported on almost daily for what, a year?  In which the ATF deliberately armed the cartels so that their crime guns could be traced back to US gun dealers, supporting the FedGov's claim that 90% of Mexican crime guns trace back to the US?  Yeah, both Hill and Barry were all over that one.)

It would be similarly easy to ask you, again in light of your morally upstanding and good-for-the-climate statement, why you would support candidates and presidents that not only argue openly for extrajudicial killing and indefinite detention, but practice it regularly.  As but one example, assassinating not only an American citizen without trial, but shortly thereafter his teenage son, offering the functional equivalent of "sucks to be him, he should have had a better dad" by way of explanation.  How many hundreds have been killed with drones, or more traditional methods of extrajudicial war?  

You're okay with all that, right?  Seeing as how "there is no middle ground", and all.

One could go on.  It's not difficult.

But you're smart, and enlightened--so much moreso than half the American public, which you keep telling me has simply lost its mind because it doesn't move in lockstep with your beliefs.  (Oh, you don't put it that way, but that's always what it comes down to.)

Obviously they must have been conned.

I'll bet you think you appreciate irony and wit, too.

So when do we find out...

...that this sudden rash of caricature-level stories about "Trump supporters" is pure post-election agitprop?

Oh, I've no doubt that there are a few loons out there, who may feed all the right stereotypes.  This, though...it has that same "too perfect to be true" feel as the mass shooting that happens almost on cue for some scheduled push for (further) victim disarmament.

I don't know what they're all bitching about anyway;  it's not like this wasn't perfectly inevitable.  By casting their v*te at all, they willfully legitimized a system they knew perfectly well was going to put one of two revolting, horrible, awful people in a position of power over their lives.  And guess what?  The Establishment heard this call for legitimacy loud and clear.  Just about a hundred twenty million people sent the clear message:  You can even give us two choices as crushingly insane as Mein Trumpf and Hitlery Clinton, and we'll still v*te for 'em, rather than even consider something so crazy as simply saying no*.

What do you suppose the chances are that your protest v*te--your "anyone but [impostor of real human being]" v*te--got interpreted for what it was?


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*Still, there is hope.  If I can believe the numbers, the clear plurality of eligible v*ters did stay home--and it sounds like the percentage was even bigger than it was last time.

It takes a special snowflake...

...to be that committed to not learning the takeaway lesson in the "shocking" Trump victory.

"Shocking"?  Please.  The American public has been begging for this farce for years, even generations.

It's been pretty ridiculous thus far, among the channels I follow.  People who I know are otherwise intelligent, and even reasonably perceptive, are nonetheless shamelessly shouting out their best entries for Fainting Couch Theater, and looking like utter and complete fools doing it.

The fractal ironies seem to be lost on this legion of hyperventilating, Holier-Than-Thou thespianics, who with great sanctimony and without irony ascribe to the vast, undifferentiated mass of people who outv*ted them, every single talking point attack that Team Blue managed to come up with.  And so I  am repeatedly informed that there are well over fifty million racist, misogynist, homophobic fascists out there, QED, simply because the Team Red buffoon won, so there.

Keep in mind these are the same people who are so (loudly) frightened of the mindless mob-mentality they see in Trump's authoritarianism.  The irony is simply lost on them, and you will not make any friends suggesting that they should just maybe look in the damn mirror.

And it's just childishly amusing to hear all this doomsday talk from the very selfsame who just about eight years ago went to such pains to..."reassure" critics that all our obviously racist thoughts about BHO were unfounded, and that we really needed to relax and take a nap.  Because this, of course, is different.  (While on that point, betcha we also see the return of the term "war criminal", which has been conspicuously missing in action since January of 2009.  Dissent will no longer be considered racist and antigovernment, but once again "the highest form of patriotism".)

The tone-deafness is really stunning to consider.  As just one example, I've seen multiple calls to abolish the Electoral College, because they are just sure that plain old mob democracy will produce their preferred result, and not this insult to their progressively superior way of thinking.  Did they somehow miss the fact that, for all Hillary's institutional advantages (e.g., "I want a love who looks at me the way the press looks at Hillary"), and against all the predictions and punditry, that very mob just matched them?  (Arguing minutiae is pointless--the popular v*te was supposed to favor Hillary heavily, and instead it was essentially a dead heat.)

This is a crowd who believe themselves to be self-evidently superior beings, and are quite uninterested in the existence and influence of their lessers--so much so that they appear unable to believe that an actual revolt against their rainbow-shitting-unicornverse is possible, even after it occurred!  "How did this happen?" is the exact, precise equivalent of what Jeff Cooper would have called "getting caught in White":  they never really believed that their nightmare could happen in the first place, and now that it has, the excuse-making and condescending rationalization will have its out--"those people" are simply subhumanly stupid*, or they got hoodwinked by all that massive right-wing propaganda, or they cheated...anything at all to avoid the realization that "Never Hillary" is just as valid and rational a position as "Never Trump".

Which doesn't say that much anyway, because neither of those awful cretins should ever be entrusted with the life of a single housecat, much less the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings.  And  there's the biggest punchline of all:  the one thing both Team Red and Team Blue agree on wholeheartedly, is that only by supporting the system that would actually elect a de facto king, from choices representing some of the very worst examples of all humanity, can the system be improved.

And they got their legitimacy loud and clear.  Just about one hundred twenty million people, most of whom probably believed they were protesting by selecting the lesser evil, cast their vote for the other evil.  And once again the system is renewed, staffed comfortably with evil, and in absolutely no danger of actually having to change.  (Why?  Sixty million wanted Clinton, sixty million wanted Trump.  What's the problem here, folks?  It's not like you said "NO" or anything...)

For all the sound and fury, Americans once again, as they always do, elected the Establishment once again.  (Yes, Donald Trump is perfectly acceptable to the Establishment.  How do we know this?  Because he was allowed to remain on the stage.  We know from long experience that actual threats to the established order are removed long before they become a problem.)

See how this works?  Here's a handy review, as it will be precisely the same next time:
Step 1:  Complain loudly about how inevitably awful the Establishment choices are.
Step 2:  Hone your complaints to focus on the jingoistic mob mentality of your chosen opponent.
Step 3:  Go cast your v*te, because not v*ting is insane, fattening, and un-'Murickan.
Step 4:  Wear your "I Voted" sticker with no irony whatsoever.
Step 5:  Act surprised at the outcome you produced.  Tell everyone.

"This time for sure!"

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* You think I'm kidding.  Actually, I have lost count of the number of article links on the TwitFace that go to a title of roughly this construction:  "Half of all Americans simply do not have the mental capacity to understand [insert progressive unicorn here:  climate science, economics, healthcare, voting, etc.]"  The dehumanizing condescension that inheres in this mentality really is breathtaking to behold.