23 Feb 2016
“Fasting is the change of every part of our life,
because the sacrifice of the fast is not the abstinence but the distancing from
sins.” ~ St. John
Chrysostom
Feb.
22, 2016 ~ 10:09am ~ TheBlaze
Matt Walsh: a blogger, writer, speaker, and
professional truth sayer.
Dear
Donald Trump Fan,
I’m
going to tell you the truth, friend.
You say
you want the truth. You say you want someone who speaks boldly and brashly and
bluntly and “tells it like it is” and so on. According to exit polls in
South Carolina, voters who want a president who “tells it like it is”
are an essential demographic for Trump, just as they’re an essential
demographic for Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. You say you want abrupt and
matter-of-fact honesty, and you want it so much, you’ll make a man
president for it regardless of whether he defies every principle and value
you claim to hold.
Personally,
I think you’re lying, and I’m going to test my theory. In fact, I believe I’ve
already proven my theory because you’re now offended that I called you a liar.
But Trump has called half of the Earth’s population a liar at some point over
the past seven months, and you loved every second of it. You said you loved it
not out of cruelty or spite, but out of admiration for a man who’s willing to
call people liars — even if he’s lying when he does it.
Yet
here I am employing the same tactic — accurately, I might add — and you recoil
indignantly. Over the course of this campaign season I’ve said many harsh words
about you and your leader, all of which I stand by, but you’ve never respected
my harsh words, or the harsh words of any Trump critic. Indeed, you insist that
our tough criticism of you only vindicates your support of Trump, while Trump’s
vulgar and dishonest criticism of everyone else also vindicates your support of
Trump. You’re tired of people being critical, but you love Trump because
he’s critical. You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his
style when it’s directed at him or you.
You say
you want someone who’s politically incorrect. You’re so desperate for political
incorrectness — a supremely ridiculous reason to vote a guy into the Oval
Office, but never mind — that your esteem for him only grows when he
belittles the disabled, mocks American prisoners
of war, calls women dogs, calls his opponents p*ssies, calls for the assassination of
women and children, says he’d like to have sex with his daughter, brags about his adultery, etc.
You’re
excited by the most vile statements and most cretinous behavior imaginable —
not remotely deterred by any of it, no matter how many times he gloats over
infidelity, curses his opponents, and publicly ogles his own children —
because, you say, it’s politically incorrect. That is how unfathomably
desperate you are for someone to come along and just say what’s on their mind,
you claim.
You’re
so fed up with political correctness that you celebrate political incorrectness
without distinguishing between the healthy sort and the “LOL I slept with
married women and I’m not sorry” sort. It doesn’t matter if you don’t
personally agree, you say, you just respect the hell out of someone who’s
willing to shoot straight, even when ”shooting straight” means comparing Ben Carson to a child
molester, calling the entire electorate of Iowa stupid, and referring to women
as “pieces of ass.”
Trump
won South Carolina on the support of Evangelical Christians who were so
impressed with his alleged straight talk that they overlooked the fact that
he’s a crass, cruel, unrepentant philanderer who says he does not need God’s
forgiveness, and who praises Planned Parenthood as “wonderful” and his radically
pro-abortion sister as a “phenomenal” candidate for the
Supreme Court. That’s how much you pretend to admire bluntness in a man. So
much that it overrides literally everything else.
By your
logic, then, you should be filled with an immense and irresistible affection
for me when I call Donald Trump a crooked, underhanded con artist and you a
reckless, ignorant dupe. You should fall madly in love with me when I accuse
Donald Trump of being a spoiled, overgrown brat and you of being a cultish
groupie enamored with fame. You should well up with pride and salute me as
I mention that Donald Trump is a stuffed, soiled diaper sagging in the
pants of American politics and you’re the poor, pitiful sap trying to elect it
president. You don’t have to agree, but man, isn’t it refreshing that I’m
willing to tell you what’s on my mind? Shouldn’t you leave a thousand comments
under this article praising me for being politically incorrect, willing to
attack not only Donald Trump but his blue collar supporters? In fact, if you’re
sincere in your alleged regard for the bold and audacious approach, I
expect you’ll have launched a nationwide write-in campaign for me by tomorrow
morning.
But
that’s not how this works, is it? You’ve already melted into a boiling puddle
of rage and self-pity, haven’t you? You’re incensed and offended that I could
be so “judgmental” and “dismissive” and “critical,” and 100 other qualities you
find so orgasmically satisfying when they’re displayed by The Great Trump. You
say you want some straight-shooting, honest, politically incorrect tough
talk, but that’s simply a lie. If it were true, my inbox would not be filled to
capacity with cartoonishly shocked and outraged Trump fans every time I utter a
word of criticism in his direction. It shouldn’t matter that my criticisms
are sharp and severe; you ought to revere me all the more for it. I thought you
were tired of people walking on egg shells?
It turns out you don’t want Donald
Trump to walk on egg shells, but you have fortified your own perimeter with
a thick layer of egg shells and you expect anyone who comes near it to tip toe
with extreme caution. It turns out you want to be coddled and cuddled and
pandered to and excused. You’re in favor of whatever Trump says because Trump
said it, but when it comes to how people talk about you and him, you expect to
be treated like a soft and delicate flower.
You
flock eagerly to a flamboyant, authoritarian billionaire fascist, and you feel
you ought to be completely insulated from criticism while you do so. Everyone
else ought to be subject to relentless and profane invective from an elderly
Manhattan real estate heir, but you and he should be above reproach.
Tell it
like it is? I’ll tell you like it is: In my life I’ve never encountered a group
of people more averse to being told how it is. Of course, you believe you’re
entitled to this attitude because you’re “angry.” Your “anger”
indulges you with the moral authority to take leave of your reason and
your common sense. Your anger, you believe, places you beyond judgment,
even as you attempt to drag this country into a future of (more) tyranny and
cultism. You believe the rest of us ought to take your supposedly righteous
rage into account while you refuse to take anything but your own
infatuation with spectacle and celebrity into account. Whatever concerns we
raise, including the ones I’m raising now, can be written off in an instant.
“WE’RE TIRED OF POLITICS AS USUAL! WE’RE ANGRY!” And that’s supposed to be some
kind of rhetorical hall pass, permitting you to do and say what you please
unchallenged.
Well let
me be the first and perhaps the only to say this out loud, although millions of
people share this sentiment quietly: I don’t care about your anger. There’s
some more truth for you, friend. There’s some more “tellin’ it like it is.” Two
can play at this game, you know. And the only difference is that I’m right.
I couldn’t take your anger
seriously even if I wanted to. After all, you say you’re angry that people are
too afraid to speak their minds, but, as we’ve established, you don’t really
want anyone but Donald Trump to speak his mind.
You say
you’re angry about the corruption in Washington, but you support a slimy
swindler and fraudster who
boasts of his bribery schemes and makes no apologies for shamelessly exploiting political corruption for personal gain.
You say
you’re angry about illegal immigration, but you rally around a guy who supported amnesty as
recently as 2013, employed illegal immigrants, and
donated millions of dollars to open borders politicians like Rep. Nancy Pelosi,
Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Hillary Clinton.
You say
you’re angry about the establishment, but you worship a candidate who said only a few weeks ago that
“you got to be a little establishment” in order to get things done, and who
admits he “was the establishment” right
until he ran for president.
You say
you’re angry that Republicans won’t fight, but you hail as a warrior the same
guy who says he’ll happily “work with the Democrats,”
which probably explains why Sen. Harry Reid praised him and Jimmy Carter
called him “malleable.” It is not uncommon for
me to hear from Trump fans that they’re angry at “GOPe” Republicans for
“cutting deals” and “compromising” in one breath, and in the very next that
they want Trump because he’s really good at cutting deals and compromising.
Right
down the list, you are blithely embracing every single thing you say you’re so
angry about. Trump is the very embodiment of corruption, deception, cowardice,
and elitism. He is precisely the sort of man you supposedly detest. Trump
is exploiting America’s frustration with men like Trump. Trump is running
against Trump. You are voting for Trump because you hate Trump. You are angry
at politicians because they act like Trump and make deals like Trump and go to
cocktail parties with men like Trump and look down on the little guy like
Trump and possess the integrity of Trump, and so you’re solution is to elect
Trump. Your anger at Trump leads you to Trump. Perhaps this explains why you’re
so worried about politicians who are “controlled by donors,” but you aren’t at
all concerned about a politicians who is the very donor you didn’t want
controlling the political process. “I’m sick of these donors influencing the
government! I have an idea: let’s make one president!”
It
seems more like schizophrenia than anger. Aside from chronic mental
illness, there are only two explanations for a person who avidly supports the
continuation of a thing because he’s angry at that
thing: either he’s fantastically stupid, or he’s not actually angry
at all.
Friend,
I should tell you the most popular theory among non-Trump supporters is
that you fall into the former category. When we talk to each other in private,
almost everyone agrees you’re stupid. Again, you should, by your own words,
hold me in the highest esteem for telling you this uncomfortable fact. People
think you’re stupid, just as they thought about Barack Obama supporters in
2008.
The
parallels between the two groups are indeed profound, as exit polls attest. Once again,
people are voting because “they want change,” unconcerned by the fact that the
change is ambiguous, non-specific, and, in fact, not really ”change”
at all. A lot of people, grasping for an explanation as to how voters might be
suckered by the same shtick three times in a row, just chalk it up to
stupidity.
By the
way, you should doubly love what I’m doing here because it appears very close
to apophasis, which is a rhetorical device where the speaker coyly makes an
accusation or insult in the context of denying or distancing himself from the
unkind remark. “Many people believe my neighbor Jim is a thieving jerk who
borrowed my garden hose last July and didn’t return it, but I’m not going to
talk about it.” That kind of thing.
It’s a
strategy Trump employs all the time, and you always go along with it, like
when he called Megyn Kelly a bimbo by saying “I
refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo because that would be politically
incorrect.” Like clockwork, you insisted that he didn’t call Megyn Kelly a
bimbo; he merely brought up the fact that he would call her a bimbo if it
weren’t so rude to do so.
Well,
in similar fashion, I’m not calling you stupid, I’m just saying that other
people call you stupid. You should therefore defend me against any accusation
that I’ve called you stupid, just as you would Trump. But the difference is
that I’m not being coy here. I really don’t think you’re stupid. I certainly
don’t think I’m any smarter than you. I subscribe to the second theory: I don’t
believe you’re really all that angry.
Your
anger, to whatever extent it exists at all, is surface level. It’s a purely
emotional experience, fed by a mob mentality. You’re angry in the way a rioter
or looter is angry. Your temper might be flaring and your heart rate
jumping and you might be filled with the uncontrollable urge to break a window,
but underneath that anger is really something much closer to boredom and
apathy. You don’t feel a real, intense, profound, deep and meaningful disgust
at the corruption and malfeasance in Washington, because if you did there is
simply no way you would support a man like Trump.
Unless,
like I said, you’re stupid. But you aren’t stupid, and a non-stupid person, a
serious person, who truly, deeply, intensely loathes the current state of
affairs, who genuinely desires that his country be revived for the sake of his
children, would not be turning to a blustery, boorish reality TV character with
a catchphrase and a fake tan for answers.
I’m
just telling it like it is here, friend. I’m telling you what’s on my mind. I’m
being completely and painfully honest with you. I don’t believe your anger.
I think you want a spectacle, not a solution. A celebrity, not a
statesman. A circus performer, not a leader. I think you want to be
entertained. I think you’re not taking this seriously enough. I think you’re
intellectually lazy so you’ve accepted authoritarianism as a stand-in for
strength. I think you’re following the trend of the day. I think you’re wrapped
up in media hype.
In
other words, I think your anger, if it exists, is misplaced. You should be
angry at yourself, because if this country falls finally and irrevocably into
despotism, it’ll be your fault. You’ll have chosen it. You’ll have elected it
and applauded it. That, my friend, is what makes me angry.
And
that’s just how it is.
To
request Matt for a speaking engagement, email Contact@TheMattWalshBlog.com. For
all other comments and death wishes, email MattWalsh@TheMattWalshBlog.com
–
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3:25 PM (2 hours ago)
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