Story by Emmjay.

With every announcement of Trump’s latest malfeasance, I ask myself how does it come to be that the world’s richest and most powerful nation can contemplate – much less actually elect a complete and utter moronic rapacious self-interested boof-headed lying maniac toupee with attached clown..

I imagine that the main reason is that Trump’s simple message of “Making America Great Again” speaks to the massive underclass of Americans who enjoy no economic power, have sporadic employment in impossibly low-paying jobs – or no jobs at all – as do those inhabiting the rust belt states where manufacturing is a distant memory.  We have seen them on TV – toothless denizens living in ramshackle squalor with no prospect of ever having a decent life; generations of poverty, poor health with no access to social services, no access to quality education and NO WAY OUT.

Hillary called them the “deplorables” – and what a vote winner that quip proved not to be !

I guess that if everything is basically shit, what’s there to lose in electing somebody who promises to shift the disenfranchisement across international borders ?“  He’s gonna smash those fat cats in Washington.  He’s gonna whack Muslims and anybody else we have been trained to hate.  Great !  Damn the collateral damage – full steam ahead.  Nobody seems to demand an answer about for whom the new America WILL be great – or just how that greatness will pan out in hillbilly heaven.

How can anyone be so bone-headedly stupid to believe Trump – or even for that matter the local Hansonite loonies ?  Hispanics for Trump – is that an oxymoron or what !!

I’m betting that here we have a perfect storm of cause and effect.  America’s notoriously unsuccessful education mess (who would call it a system ?) leaves many people unequipped to understand simple facts and concepts,  or to be able and wanting to question lies – far less understanding complex issues like their own welfare.  The people who unquestioningly do what they’re told to do by the loudest redneck media for the reward of a fleetingly short illusion of being included – in anything – for the first time in their lives.

Does anyone with a scintilla of an education ever vote for arsehats like Trump ?  Certainly a large number of gummy hillbillies do !  And women who don’t think rampant misogyny is any big deal.  Not when pussy-grabbing has been, for them, a family sport for generations.

“I’s toothless because I cain’t afford no dentist”.  Same or worse for medical care.

This is something I just don’t get.  Why is it that the impoverished are so against Obamacare ?  Why is it that so much disease and ill health is caused by incredibly poor lifestyle choices like diets composed exclusively of fast food, hi carb fructose-laden  shit ?  Well, it’s because BIG FOOD is monstrously powerful politically and flogs junk food with impunity.  And probably also because a black man conceived their first shot at affordable health care.

And guns.  How difficult is it to join the dots between a lack of gun control and mass shootings ?   The USA – dumb and dumber.

I also struggle understanding why it is that such an allegedly God-fearing nation is so ignorant about ethics.  “I have built a fortune selling shit to masses of stupid people.  God has helped me do it.  So it must be OK.  God is not aginst anyone getting rich   … and since I don’t have a camel, I’ll be right getting into Heaven.”

I would like to believe that a decent education is a fair preventative – for stopping or reducing the compulsion for anyone to vote for a complete arsehat.  That may or may not be right however – I give you Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, George Brandis, Adolph Abetz, Tony Abbott, Arthur Sinodinis and Barnaby Joyce.  Perhaps a fairly good education is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for preventing fuckwit voting.  I’ll grant you that in the US, it was a diabolically hard choice – between a very questionable Democrat and the ultra-right of the Republicans.

To explain the Trump win, perhaps we need to throw in plebeian susceptibility to swallowing a good media bashing.  Maybe a dash of herd mentality, a soupcon of casual indifference, a scattering of snickering malice and a penchant to resort to abuse in lieu of debate.

A Guardian article told a story about some of the heavy hitters from Silicon Valley already fuelling up their Lear jets in anticipation of the coming apocalypse.  The piece said that the dude who created PayPal – a Facebook board member has led the charge to a place as far away as you can get from Trump’s shitstorm – New Zealand.  When a NZ parliamentarian asked how was it that this chap could buy $4 million worth of lakeside land in the South Island without foreign investment review, the reply was that this chap had already taken the precaution of becoming a New Zealand / US dual citizen …. So, no problem….  Nice.  Nothing quite so fine as being in the upwardly mobile.

The education line of argument is a compelling one in my book.  How is it that fat cat western nations are ever going to secure peace in the world ?  Not by thinking “us and them”.

But by educating our populations to understand that no matter how hard the west bombs the crap out of belligerents, or raises walls against the poorest refugee, peace will be elusive until the west understands the source of belligerence, respects the fact that those folks have a genetically-held belief in their position, a right to fair humane treatment and that force and violence against them will work no better than their use of it against the west.  Otherwise we will remain stubbornly in the dark ages of Trump and his ilk. Complex problems are never going to yield to simplistic solutions.  We need the hoi-polloi as well as the elite to know stuff – and be able to apply logic to sort out the mess and to be able to fend off Trumpwits.  Locking the front and back door is no long-term solution when the hordes come over the barricades.

I read a quote in the Guardian a few days ago that said Trump is a good thing because he will take the US and possibly the rest of the western world to such a low place that the only future direction is up.  The way to a strong democracy is via a pernicious fascist dictatorship.

Wow.  Great !