![Photo of Andy Arthur](/data/andy-headshot.jpg)
Trump sort of actually represents the American spirit
There is an ugly truth that a lot of liberals donโt want to admit. Wearing your heart on your sleeve doesnโt get you very far in this world, it certainly doesnโt solve the worldโs problems. Itโs not the thought that counts, which is too often Americaโs motto.
What created the opening for the Trump monster? Fakery, and lots of it. There is a reason why Trump is every day hammering his anti-DEI message, and itโs not just because heโs racist as are many of his supporters. Itโs because DEI has been a failure on many levels โ itโs about doing a lot of talking and not a lot of concrete action to change the relationship between the races, to lift up all people of different races and classes. Liberals have done absolutely nothing to reform the media, which profits via advertising that sells products by getting viewers by playing up racist memes about crime in society. Nor have they done anything to slow the chants of consume, consume, discard, discard (*as long as you put it in the blue bin)!
Too often in the mind of liberals, itโs okay to build that coal power plant as long as it has solar panels on the roof and commerical-grade landscaping trees in front of the coal piles. After all, we need electricity. And we need it cheap, to make sure the poors and the โjob creatorsโ can afford it. Itโs okay for the police to pull over, and smash the head of the African American man whose taillight is out, as long as the cop doesnโt first call him a nigger. After all, heโs probably a criminal, as most of people that the police arrest for crimes are black. Need to reduce crime, as it is scary and a threat, as we are constantly told on the news. Even if the real solution is to reduce poverty, improve mental health and build better communities with more recreation, parks, and things for bored youth to do.
Liberals love individual action and virtue signaling. Why undertake fundamental changes to public policy, when you can have a parade honoring a long dead civil rights leader or build a highly visible solar farm along the highway? Or better yet, condemn individual people for by being racist, uttering the word nigger in a blog post, and not woke enough, or being anti-climate action by driving a big jacked up truck and not having solar panels on the roof. You evil racist! You evil earth hater!
The truth is doing the right thing is not always popular. But we as a society canโt go on forever dependent on the automobile in far sprawling suburbs, with consumption of material goods subsidized and extremely cheap. Liberals canโt go on saying we canโt raise prices on consumption, lest we hurt the poor. The poor donโt need cheap stuff, they need housing, healthy food, recreation and good meaningful work. They need to be able to save and invest, and not be constantly bombarded with commercial messages saying to consume.
We need to move away from a society that constantly reminds us that African Americans are evil thugs. The news media needs to stop itโs racist reporting of crime, it needs to loose the commercial incentives to highlight violence and hatred. If people didnโt turn on the news every night to see the latest group of African American offenders paraded across them, then maybe we would have a different perspective on race. DEI isnโt the solution, but we shouldnโt have our media constantly reinforcing racist stereotypes and then pointing their fingers at who they think is racist.
Truth is liberals created the Trump monster. They made their often weak ideas into cartoons, their tepidness lead to mockery and an opening for reactionaries. If Biden canโt help me, maybe Trump will. At least Trump wonโt be into all the fakery that liberals have adopted, the thought goes. If things are dysfunctional, we might as well try something new. Even if that new is racism and drill baby drill. Itโs so awful.
Sun Drops In the Sky
Walking Along Lower Partridge Run Road
A pleasant January afternoon with not a lot of snow walking along Lower Partridge Run Road.