So this morning, Donald Trump was scheduled to “address the birther controversy.” What he did instead was pimp his hotel for 20 minutes, have assorted military personnel endorse him, and then at the end – almost perfunctorily – say that Hillary was the one who launched the birther controversy and it wouldn’t have been resolved but for him, and yes Obama was born in the United States.
The effect would not have been much different had he chosen to whip out his Lou Holtz and piss all over the assembled media, because that’s more or less exactly what he did. After being the leading light of birtherism for years and years – indeed, having built his campaign off the back of it – Donald Trump is basically daring the media to call him on being an abject baldfaced liar.
This is not something our political system is equipped to deal with. When Mitt Romney went on stage for the first debate in 2012 and basically argued the opposite of everything he was saying on the campaign trail, Obama was caught flatfooted, as was the moderator. The problem is, everyone assumes a certain level of dissembly and mendacity in politics, such that “everyone lies” and arguing the matter of degree is like the apocryphal tale about Winston Churchill and the society lady. But even then, there are (or at least have generally been) guardrails. No one that I can remember has argued vehemently that black is white for six years, then accused their opponent of fomenting that belief and claiming to have been the one to prove black is black. Our politics – hell, our society, our entire semiotics – can’t cope with that caliber of bullshit.
This is why I’m out of patience with people arguing for Trump supporters and claiming that they have real concerns and real points and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Hillary tried to say that – accurately pointing out how many racists, neo-Nazis and other assorted scum have rallied for Trump – and then say that fully half his supporters are behind him because they have real concerns that the system is broken and their lives are in limbo and they matter. And naturally, she got flayed for it by a whipped press corps in eternal catamite servitude to the god of false equivalence and fifty years of working the refs.
Here’s the thing: she’s wrong. It’s every Trump voter. Everyone and anyone willing to seriously pull the lever for a polyester-haired reality TV shmuck.
Spare me the Hillbilly Elegy bullshit: there have been people pushing back against bankers and outsourcers and fucked-up healthcare and shitty schools. They’re called Democrats. And at every opportunity for the last twenty years, given a choice, the hillbillies have run the opposite direction, straight into the arms of big business and wealthy elites. And then have the audacity to say that after eight years of uninterrupted slander, obstruction, vitriol and prejudice, it’s wrong to call them racist.
Fuck. You.
If those problems are real, if those concerns are real, then why not vote for the candidate who was out there addressing them? Why not vote for somebody who was trying to get health insurance to your redneck ass, who was trying to get a fiscal stimulus that would jumpstart the economy, who was trying to get a public works program that would get people jobs while addressing a badly-needed infrastructure problem? Oh, right: he’s colored.
Again: Fuck. You.
This election will determine whether we deserve to have a country. Because if there are enough people stupid enough to make their electoral choices in a way that results in a President Trump, we’re broken beyond repair. If we’re willing to privilege that level of ignorance and hatred and bullshit, if we decide that truth means nothing and experience less, if we’re willing to buy this line of crap – then fuck it. At that point, we simply are not a nation worth saving.