Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The "Payback" Election?

by JASmius



It it turns out like this, I'd call it the "F**k you" election or the "self-cannibalism" election, because the aftermath will be a disaster of such magnitude that I don't even want to attempt to contemplate it:

The most important takeaway, though, is this: The politics of resentment won Tuesday night. It hasn’t had a showing like this in the United States maybe since the 1890s.

Donald Trump and [Bernie] Sanders have a remarkably similar and remarkably simple message, and it’s this: You’re being screwed. They agree that international trade is screwing you, that health care companies are screwing you and that Wall Street is screwing you.

And yet they would be the biggest screwers of you yet, if you put either of them into power.

Look for yourself:

Sanders says he’s going to throw bankers in jail, raise everybody’s taxes — and provide universal health care.

Trump says he’ll deport every illegal [alien] [which is impossible], keep Muslims out of the country until “we can find out what the hell is going on,” [which would be highly advisable, but is also impossible] force Mexico to build a wall [laughably impossible], levy a 45% tariff on [Red] China [which would deepen the depression and probably start the next World War]  — and provide universal health care [just like Barry and Bernie]

Simple, straightforward and catchy — that’s the key. And none of it is your fault. Everything bad that’s happening, everything that makes you nervous and worried and uncertain about the future, is the result of a great wrong that is being done to you.

Even though the truth is that "you" did it to yourselves with your voting choice in the past two presidential elections.

Sanders says it’s being done by malefactors of great wealth. Trump says it’s being done by morons and idiots who run Washington and are getting their hats handed to them by canny malefactors in Beijing and Mexico City.

Will this message carry beyond New Hampshire? Of course it will, whatever happens to the candidacies of these two men....

Don’t look for uplift. Don’t seek vision. This is probably going to be the payback election.

An endless series of them, actually, since revenge is a dish that is never served just once, but over and over and over.  But payback of whom?  With what?  To accomplish what?  For what purpose?  These questions matter, and it's far better to calm down, turn on our brains, and obtain answers to them now than nine months from now.  Because emotional binges are temporary; their horrible, ill-considered consequences are not.  Hell, just look at the preceding eight years.

Call it the "mass temper tantrum psychosis" election.  Because that sort of election always turns out so well.

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