Nobody was more stunned by the Trumpocalypse, than Big Media. Like most of us, Big Media assumed Donald J. Trump was simply too absurd to be taken seriously. Also, following the deflation of the Romney challenge to Obama (in 2012) what force in the universe could possibly hold back the long-dreamt-of progressive permanent majority in America? There simply weren’t enough people in fly-over country to thwart the urban liberals. Every poll said Hillary Clinton would win. The secular god of statistical prognostication, Nate Silver — who gained world-wide fame in 2012 — said Hillary Clinton would win. Many opponents of Hillary Clinton (myself included) also said Hillary Clinton would win. She had every single strategic advantage that Obama had, in 2012. She faced a preposterous Republican challenger. Her rise to the Oval Office was essentially a foregone conclusion.

It was, as they say, in the bag.

Well, we all know how that turned out. 🙂

It’s now been three whole weeks since the Trumpocalypse — 21 days, during which a great deal of analysis (and shatbit nuckingfutz commentator insanity) has been expended.

Most interesting — to me at least — has been Big Media’s reaction to being hoist by their own petards. By now, everybody knows about Newsweek’s recall of the quickly-made-apocryphal Madam President special issue. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Examining a quick Newsweek roundup of aborted-release Clinton victory missives — from Big Media notables — shows us precisely the kind of tunnel-vision and identitarian hubris that ultimately sabotaged the Clinton campaign.

CADY DRELL (editor for Glamour magazine, formerly Newsweek):

But what we really want to tell you is that this is only the beginning. The glass ceiling isn’t shattered until women’s success is no longer news in and of itself. The history of feminism in this country has never been for the benefit of the trailblazer in question, just as any women who today voted for Hillary Clinton didn’t do it for their own gain. Women like Clinton, and the women who led the fights for racial equality in this country, and the suffragettes before them, and the countless women whose names we don’t even know before them endured what they did so that things would be a little bit easier for the women who followed them. We don’t celebrate the election of a woman tonight for our own sakes, but because we recognize that the fact of her election means it will be a little less shocking, a little less unlikely, the next time a woman is elected president. Maybe it will be one of you.

The irony of this statement centers on the fact that it wholly dismisses or ignores the possibility that anyone not voting for Hillary, did so because she was evaluated on her record, versus her vagina. Thus, at the same time passionate Big Media feminists cry for an era when women won’t have to “fight” on an uneven playing field, they miss out on the fact that Hillary Clinton entered the contest (with Trump) enjoying all the political, social, popular, and material advantages that should have secured her the victory, yet her record of Washington D.C. career climbing — replete with instances of flip-flopping, back-stabbing, rule-breaking, and outright dishonesty, if not treachery — were simply too glaring for even some former Obama fans to ignore. In simpler language, Hillary Clinton enjoyed bountiful home field advantage, and she lost the home field crowd — and the game — due largely to her inability to wave off half a century of political conniving. It wasn’t about gender. It was about the character of the person with a (D) next to her name. Next time, I suggest Democrats line up a better candidate. Surely there are more principled women in the Democratic Party? Hillary was bottom of the barrel, in this aspect. And voters noticed.

JONATHAN CHAIT (writer and columnist, New York magazine):

Sparing the Republic from the whims of a twisted maniac is no small triumph. Clinton’s skeptics have already been denying credit for her expected victory by noting that she benefited from facing the least popular major party nominee in history, and that a normal Republican could have defeated her. This misses the extraordinary nature of the opposition that produced this unpopularity in the first place. Clinton has absorbed 25 years of relentless and frequently crazed hate directed at her husband, compounded by her status as a feminist symbol, which made her the subject of additional loathing. Her very real missteps were compounded by a press corps that treated her guilt as an unexamined background assumption. She is almost certainly the first president to survive simultaneous leak-attacks by both a faction of rogue right-wing FBI agents and Russian intelligence.

I find it curious that a “press corps” — which is overwhelmingly progressive and votes Democrat 90% of the time — supposedly went to war with its own straw self, in the form of a “press corps” that eternally tried to hamstring Hillary. Uhhh . . . okay. Sure. But Chait is right: Trump’s net drag was huge. Which makes Clinton’s stumble at the finish line all the more impressive, just because you really, really have to fumble the ball, when you’ve got home field advantage, and everyone is proclaiming your victory ahead of time, and your opponent is not even on the other team’s second string; he’s some loud-mouthed walk-on who inserted himself into the lineup at the protestations of the coaching staff. Again, I ask: is it not even remotely possible, oh ye of Big Media, that Americans did precisely as they should, and looked at what Hillary Clinton has done, versus canonizing her simply because she’s a woman who wanted to be President? There would be nothing for the FBI to examine if Clinton had not operated as if she were above the rules. Many Americans are tired of Washington D.C. lifers who operate as if they are above the rules.

I am not going to fisk Katie Halper’s more expansive commentary, simply because Halper (in the article linked above) sees correctly who Hillary Clinton is, and doesn’t seem ready to have a spontaneous orgasm over Madam President’s historic (now alternate history?) win. And while Katie seems to wish for an even more alternative Bernie Sanders victory, her diagnosis of Clinton’s flaws seems essentially correct to me. Merely the longed-for end result is flawed. Perhaps as much as Trump himself, given the fact Sanders still wants to run the country according to the same playbook Fidel “I impoverished a whole nation!” Castro used.

MARIN COGAN (contributing editor, New York magazine, but this piece was prepared for Vox.com):

And yet: Hillary Clinton’s victory is historic—a triumph that should not be overlooked. It marks the end of centuries of exclusion of women from the nation’s top job. Even more remarkable was the way she won it: by running as a woman, who championed policies aimed at women, against an avatar of reactionary sexism. She won under politically tainted investigation, in spite of plenty of legitimate criticism, and in the face of an incredible amount of sexism. In voting for her, Americans rejected Donald Trump’s old, macho vision of leadership and embraced a new paradigm, one that values not only a new style of leadership but also a policy outlook that prioritizes women and children.

Once again, Big Media’s feminists rush to proclaim Hillary’s victory as a victory for women against sexism, yet this analysis is utterly blind to the idea that it was Hillary’s track record that did her in. To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, merely being a woman is not enough. The great failure of identitarianism is that it scuttles qualification in favor of demographics. Millions of Americans believed Hillary was uniquely unqualified for the job. Not because of her vagina. But because she had a broad-daylight history of self-interested, maneuvering, palm-greasing, dirty pool. It wasn’t just a single scandal that dogged Clinton to the finish line — and her collapse just short of the tape. It was an entire career of occasionally concealed and even sometimes brazen shenanigans. That she was too able to intimidate or buy off people who might actually put her in jail, did not stop millions of Americans from pressing the NOPE button on November 8, 2016.

Big Media feminists would do well to realize that the end of sexism in politics, also means the end of using the specter of sexism as a bluff, when any woman’s track record (for office) is called into question.

CHRIS CILLIZZA (writer, “The Fix”—taken from this piece published on the Washington Post’s site):

Clinton’s path to the presidency—much like her last two-plus decades in public life—was not an easy one, defined more by her relentless drive forward than any sort of soaring movement like the one that propelled Barack Obama into office in 2008. And even in victory, Clinton survived rather than overwhelmed. Expected to cruise to an electoral vote victory, Clinton squeaked by—with Democrats fretting deep into the night about her prospects.

In short: It was a uniquely Clinton campaign—with all the good and bad that connotes.

Cillizza seems much more level-headed. Indeed, the Clinton drive for the goal was not the epic passing game many would have preferred. Hillary’s march to the Oval Office was a dreary, time-consuming display of short-yardage runs, occasional pitch-backs, very little in the way of forward throwing, too many tape and chain checks, not to mention penalty flags, all finally terminating with Hillary and her fans doing a victory dance in the end zone — with the clock still running, and the actual ball sitting on the grass at the 3; to be promptly scooped up for a spectacular 97-yard touchdown run by Trump and Co.

ALEXANDRA SVOKOS (political writer, Elite Daily):

Clinton was the first First Lady to have had a full-time job outside of her husband’s career before moving into the White House. She was the first First Lady to get an office in the West Wing.

Clinton was the first female senator from New York. She was the first First Lady to be elected to a public office.

Clinton was the first woman to clinch a presidential nomination and the first female presidential nominee for a major party.

Now, Clinton is set to become the first female president of the United States.

Again, Big Media feminists have to grapple with the fact that an end to sexism in politics (or any other arena) necessarily entails an end to using sexism as a raison d’être for putting somebody in office in the first place. Demographics are not enough. Oh, we’ll see a woman in the Oval Office eventually. Maybe Elizabeth Warren in 2020, assuming Trump blows it? Or, if he doesn’t blow it, maybe that woman will be a Republican? I know, I know, firsts are never allowed to be firsts, when the person making the first, plays for the wrong team. If Hillary Clinton were replaced with Condi Rice, and the (D) with an (R), the meteoric rise of a woman to coming within an inch of the White House would have been met with scowls and scorn — from Big Media — not euphoric adulation. If Hillary set precedents, they were mixed at best. Does a woman really have to be a serially dishonest schemer, who cheats and lies her way through life, to become President? Lord, let’s hope not! (C’mon Condi, get in the game. Your country needs you. Again.)

NEWSWEEK/TOPIX STAFF (prepared for a special commemorative edition):

On Election Day, Americans across the country roundly rejected the kind of fear- and hate-based conservatism peddled by Donald Trump and elected the first woman in U.S. history to the presidency. The culminating election of a career in politics spanning three decades and arguably more experience than any other incoming president, 2016’s was not an easy race to watch, comment on or be a part of—but when the dust cleared it revealed a priceless moment in American history. The highest glass ceiling in the Western world had finally shattered.

More end zone partying, while the ball is still sitting on the grass at the 3. Big Media feminists can’t resist the urge to subtly parrot Clinton herself, with her (now infamous) “deplorables” line. As if Democrats and Hillary apologists were not peddling their own brand of hate and fear, while evicting half of the country from the human equation. When you stop trying to persuade, and can only deride, you run the risk of painting yourself into a corner of irrelevance. Democrats — Big Media being a subsidiary — bought into their own prophesied dream, of manifest destiny: demographic permanent majority. Since those silly old white Republican assholes in fly-over country were dying off, the future was going to be a Democratic rainbow of eternal progressivism. Only . . . no it wasn’t. Demographics is not a political destiny. People change their minds over time. People also have the ability to distinguish issues that affect them directly — the un-recovery recovery, during the Obama years — versus a very distant and ultimately cerebral issue, like putting a woman in the White House purely for the sake of her being female. I said it above, I am sure we’ll get a woman in the Oval Office eventually. It will be interesting to see how Big Media reacts, if she’s a conservative. Five will get you ten, they will be largely silent; about shattering glass ceilings.

JON SCHWARZ (senior writer, The Intercept):

Okay. Okay. The 2016 election is over, and Donald Trump is not going to be president of the United States of America.

We’ve all hugged our children, husbands and wives, parents, siblings, neighbors, dogs, cats, parakeets, ocelots and so forth. Some of us may have cried with relief.

Now we have to figure out what to do next.

Top Democrats, top Republicans, the corporate media and big business all have overwhelming incentives to pretend, as of this moment, that the last year never happened. Maybe there was a small glitch in the matrix, they’ll say, but the update we just pushed has patched it. The system worked! Thanks for voting. We’ll handle things from here.

For everyone else, all of America’s regular people, it’s a matter of life and death to stop that from happening.

The fact that a Tang-colored monstrosity like Trump came this close to the Zero Halliburton aluminum suitcase is by itself a terrifying catastrophe. The U.S. has had several presidents who might have destroyed humanity on purpose, but Trump is the first serious contender who could easily have done it by accident.

In any functioning democracy Trump’s campaign would have sputtered to a halt in the fall of 2015 because all of the other Republican candidates refused to appear on the same stage as him.

Instead he tore through every barrier except the very very last like it was wet toilet paper. And in the end Trump wasn’t beaten by anyone but himself. Hillary Clinton was backed by two-thirds of the U.S. establishment, and much of the rest stayed out of it, yet Trump could easily have won if he were a tiny bit less stupid, lazy and vile.

If we look back over the last 15 years of American history and its culmination with Trump, we can see that U.S. elites have built a political system that’s like a killer robot that’s malfunctioning to the degree that even they can’t control it anymore. Working normally it murders African Americans and pregnant women and opioid addicts. The Iraq war was a minor hiccup that caused it to obliterate a country, several thousand Americans and hundreds of thousands of foreigners. The housing bubble was the result of a more serious bug that liquidated hundreds of thousands more from the poorer half of the rich world.

But with Trump, for perhaps the first time, the robot totally ignored the commands of its creators and put everyone in its crosshairs.

This time it missed. It might miss the next time, too. But if it’s not dismantled, you better believe it’s going to get us all eventually. It’s not trying to kill us because of specific bad people whom we can replace, but because of America’s deep, structural problems.

This one’s long, but it does a lot to reveal the minds-behind-the-faces of Big Media. Trump most probably does not represent imminent global doom, any more than the Presidents who have preceded him. Already, Trump appears to be doing a reasonable job of assembling a staff who will reasonably advise him on reasonable policy. Maybe not policy to make progressives smile, but hardly an immediate pushing of the Big Red Button, precipitating World War 3. But for Big Media progressives, Trump has become the avatar of everything they detest and loath in the world. So much so, it’s not even Trump the guy they seem to hate, it’s a curious straw effigy of Trump who is deranged, maniacal, as absurdly stupid as he is fiendishly wicked, and determined to bring woe and pain to the whole universe. In other words, hang that effigy next to similar effigies of Romney, Bush, Dole, Bush’s dad, Reagan, etc. In so many ways, Big Media has been crying wolf. Looks like it bit them in the ass this time, finally.

He’s right about one thing, though: the elites have built a political system that acts robotically. Jon would just be shocked to realize he’s part of that system, and his response to Trump is as precisely robotic as the lining-up-behind that occurred with Hillary Clinton — despite her own mountain of disfavorabilities that followed her around like a squall of abandoned, unhappy children. Again, had Clinton been Condi Rice, with an (R) next to her name instead of a (D), Big Media’s reactions would have been startlingly different.

Really, it’s hard to blame Big Media, since they are more of a symptom, than a disease. As someone who voted for Clinton in ’96 and then Gore in ’00, I’ve watched as the shine’s not only worn off the Big Media apple, the apple has shown itself to be infested with worms! Behind the cracked, shabby patina of neutrality, Big Media is a wholly political apparatus which works at the strategic and the granular level to dispense a “proper outlook” to U.S. citizens, whether it’s pedaled soft, or pedaled hard. But Big Media would have no influence in our lives if we did not accord them that influence. We allow them to shape our perceptions: how we think, how we react, and how we interpret events in our world. When we the citizens actively pay someone else to spoon-feed our paradigm to us, we get the Big Media we deserve.

But that’s a whole other Oprah.

For now at least, it seems the script has been derailed.

Big Media was left — with the rest of us — standing goggle-eyed and open-jawed in the end zone, their colorful “I’m with her!” pom-poms dangling limply at their sides, as President-Elect Donald J. Trump and his team took the ball all the way back, and properly won the game, according to the way it’s supposed to be played. Maybe Hillary’s team did have more yards in total, but it’s not the ground you gain, as much as it’s the points you lose.

Every time Big Media perpetuated the concept of demographic permanent majority, Hillary’s team lost points.

Every time Big Media hyperventilated about Trump’s aberrant character and unfitness, they inadvertently cast a reverse spotlight on Hillary’s even more obviously aberrant character and unfitness. More lost points.

Every time Big Media lapdogged their way through an “analysis” of the Clinton campaign — having previously humped Obama’s leg, twice — they sent a very loud message to Middle America that Big Media had taken a side, and therefore could not be trusted as a non-biased source of information. Still more lost points.

If the job of Big Media is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable, Middle America shook its head in knowing disgust, as Big Media lined up for tony caviar parties with Madam Millionairess, while Middle America got called names, and was left out in the cold. Huge, gaping chasm of lost points.

As I have stated before in this space, Trump may be a peculiar or even terrible kind of champion, but he was the only guy — other than Hillary’s husband, ironically — to have said that Middle America was still worth a damn. Big, titanic points for Trump’s column.

Lessons learned, folks. Lessons learned.

What’s needed now — and no, I am not holding my breath either — is a wholesale Big Media cleanup. Enough with newsrooms that swing 90% Democrat. Stop coddling the corrupt who have a (D) next to their names, simply for the fact that they are (D). Washington D.C. can’t be fixed if the objective is to solidify one-party (D) rule. If ever a true permanent majority — of any kind — is achieved, the amount of corruption and abuse of power will dwarf anything we’ve yet seen. It won’t matter who has a (D) next to her name, if most of the (D)s are liars and schemers of Hillary Clinton’s cloth. Stop taking sides. Stop being a publicity machine, for either party. Hold the bastards accountable. All of the bastards. Not just the ones with an (R) next to their names. Big Media is an immensely powerful weapon, against sclerotic establishment rot. But not when Big Media is itself part and parcel of that sclerotic establishment rot.

Alas, a cleanup seems doubtful, at best. A few Big Media people have clued into the fact that they got caught up in their own mass hallucination. Those analysts and reporters who go full John Stossel — and don’t promptly return to the ways and modes of propriety (cough, progressive idea-pushing and personality-promoting, cough) — will be exiled to City Journal, Fox News, The National Review, or even (gasp) that nasty den of Faustian misogynist transphobic KKK evil Nazi sturmtrumper deplorable hate-baddery, Breitbart.

So, we know without even having to think about it, that the majority of Big Media will mercilessly hound Donald Trump. His every peep of tourettes-style thinking-out-loudness — as witnessed on Twitter — has become cause for international Big Media calamity. (One almost suspects Trump and Co. are trolling Big Media. For the lulz. Did I just see Trump tap his finger to the side of his nose, with a small smile on his face?)

But what about the next time there is a (D) sitting in the White House? Will the sweeping calls — by Big Media, for a “return to the traditional role” of Big Media — suddenly fall silent?

Moreover, Middle America might not give a damn either way.

If Big Media worry about relevance — and they should — they need to take a long, hard, overdue look in the mirror.

The universe has now had 8 whole days to process the Trumpocalypse. Hillary is gone. Out of the picture. Poof. In one night, the inevitable trajectory of history was not just derailed, but thrown against the floor — where it smashed to pieces. A great many Americans, and other people around the world, still can’t get over it. There have been protests. Riots. Demands for the government to arbitrarily change the rules, so that Trump might be prevented from being sworn into office. Threats to assassinate Trump. Calls for California, Oregon, and Washington to secede. Not to mention a flash revival of Bush-era classics such as #NotMyPresident and #AbolishTheElectoralCollege.

Beyond the caterwauling contempt of the Hillary faithful (for Trump and his voters) there is a sobering question: how did the Democrats get it so wrong?

Granted, not everyone is willing to face the music. A small stampede of progressive pundits have rushed to reassure the faithful that Hillary did not fail America, it was America who failed Hillary. The country is even worse than Hillarists knew it was, back before the Trumpocalypse. A misogynistic, sexist, racist, homophobic hell-hole. Clearly, the solution is to get even more confrontational, more rude, more mean-spirited, call people even more names, get up in even more faces, and so forth.

But as British political satirist Tom Walker (playing Jonathan Pie) noted, hurling insults doesn’t work anymore — nor does being perpetually offended.

But Walker wasn’t telling people anything they hadn’t heard before. Way back in April, left-moderate pundit site Vox noted the so-called Smug Style which had come to typify the American progressive political landscape. And how this whole attitude — a sort of cute, clever, holier-than-thou in-crowd approach to dealing with alternative ideology — was very much driving people into Trump’s arms. Because those people didn’t see or experience compassion (for their “side”) as much as they felt like they’d become the butt of jokes. The heartland was being laughed at nightly, by Jon Stewart and his fellow media travelers. All while the middle class — lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle — was being commanded to show respect, deference, sympathy, and understanding for a virtual hospital ward filled with narcissistic, neurotic victim personalities.

Quote Tom Walker, “Of course Trump f—ing won.”

Now, I didn’t see it coming either. From the instant Trump rose to the top of the Republican pile, I assumed Hillary would bury him. I was as shocked as any liberal, come 10 PM on that fateful Tuesday night, with Trump rapidly approaching the tipping point (in his favor) in such Democrat bastions as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

I’m still a bit shocked.

But some clarity has been emerging from the murk.

1) Hillary was a poor candidate. “Status quo, in a change year.” That was the NPR quick take, the Wednesday after Trump won. More than that, though, Hillary was corrupt. I know Hillary fans cannot bring themselves to admit it, but Hillary was not an ally of the little man. Hillary had spent her entire adult life swimming in the Washington D.C. shark tank, rising to become one of the toughest, most indestructible Great Whites. A documented liar and manipulator, Hillary’s chief claim to the White House basically boiled down to, “It’s my turn, dammit!” While she simultaneously labeled 1/4 to 1/2 of the country deplorable — a preposterous tactical move for any candidate to do in a tight race. But like so many of us, Hillary clearly thought she’d won the race merely because Trump was absurd, and unthinkable.

2) The Hillary loss cannot be pawned off on isms. Not exclusively. Again, even NPR was saying it, come Wednesday morning. Confirmation bias may have sent the progressive cognoscenti into a howling rage, about how America is a hopeless den of sexists, racists, and gay-haters. But this is lazy analysis. Yes, that’s right, it’s lazy. It’s the equivalent of running to a safe space, curling up on a bean bag, and sucking your thumb. It does not address the millions of women who voted for Trump, thus becoming vagina traitors. It does not explain the significant number of former Obama voters, who also voted for Trump, thus magically becoming racists. Blaming isms for the Hillary loss, pretends that Americans could not or would not evaluate Hillary on her pedigree. Isn’t that the whole idea, behind equality? That no person should have to be evaluated on gender? That it’s character which counts? I seem to recall some important guy once said something similar. The Hillary faithful should go look that guy up. I think he was right.

3) Mocking, deriding, and ignoring Middle America is a losing proposition. The Obama years led many progressives to believe that a kind of ideological and demographic tipping point had been reached, so that the Reagan Coalition was in the rear-view mirror. The corn belt and the rust belt didn’t matter, it was the tech sector kids with their skinny jeans, hipster beards, and man buns. Put down and shoved out, Middle America felt forgotten and abandoned — until some orange-haired blowhard named Donald Trump reached out his hand and said, “Come with me, I will be your proverbial fist punching Mr. Jon Stewart Man Bun in his smug little face!” Trump may be a terrible kind of champion, but he was the only guy who seemed to be saying that Middle America still counted for something. So, Middle America gave Hillary Clinton their middle finger, which was also aimed at the press, Washington D.C., and the culture of neoliberalism.

4) Neoliberalism: where taking selfies and posting hashtags substitutes for actual discourse, and it’s cool to make fun of blue-collar Caucasians, because blue-collar Caucasians are stupid and ignorant and morally backward. I mean, some of them go to church for Pete’s sake. Church is so over. Working-class values are sooooooo over. Compassion for the less fortunate? Right, only as long as they belong to a pre-agreed set of trendy victim identities. Which nobody in Middle America can qualify for. Too white. Too Christian. Too hetero. Too Republican. Soooooo Republican. Sickeningly Republican. Being Republican is uncool. Being conservative is uncool. Point and laugh, boys. Point and laugh. The conservatives’ days are numbered. The future is now Southern California Buddhist Transsexual, doncha know? F— Middle America.. Go hang out at Starbucks and talk with all your friends about how lame flyover country is. Not like the metrosexualized urban villages of Seattle, Portland, L.A., and San Francisco. Where cool people get to be cool all the time, and coolness is as much about regurgitating cool politics, as it is about wearing cool fashions and buying cool things, and living a cool lifestyle. Not feeling cool enough? Get on social media and decry others for their privilege. Make sure it gets re-shared and re-tweeted a lot. Bazinga. Coolness restored.

5) Obama’s cult of personality was obviously not transferable to Clinton — nor, probably, anyone else in the Democratic Party. Two elections of decisive Obama wins seemed indicative of a real, and permanent majority — of progressives, for progressives, by progressives. But it didn’t translate into numbers. Lots of Obama voters stayed home. Lots of Obama voters actually picked Trump this time. What went wrong during the Obama years, to make so many people sit it out, or worse yet, cross over to the “wrong side of history?” Again, it can’t be pawned off on the usual isms. People are tired of the non-recovery recovery. They’re tired of feeling like the ruling class gives only lip service to real problems. They’re tired of not working enough, not being able to get ahead, and not being listened to — by a patronizing bunch of elites who mouth the words of compassion, while swanning about in ivory towers.

Now, the Trumpocalypse by no means represents any kind of long-lasting win for Republicans either. Trump is a New York Democrat wearing the plaid suit of a Republican carnival barker. He said what he needed to say, to get the win. This is Trump playbook we’re witnessing. And neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any clue how the next four years will go. It’s quite probable it’ll be a train wreck, and then the Republican brand will be in the toilet — again. American politics is cyclical like that. The winner gets a big head, gloats, overreaches, underperforms, then fortunes shift.

Trump is the strangest kind of bellwether, because nobody really knows what it means for the future.

But the usual liberal “answers” on race, gender, sexuality, and economic class, break down against the wall of a Trump victory. Trump has been and continues to be a shock to the system. Perhaps a necessary shock — as many Trump fans insist — like two paddles to the chest, and the EMT yells, “Clear!” Only time will tell if Trump is a net good, or a net ill.

The caterwaulers are already trying to write the history books, condemning Trump as literally the worst kind of person to ever step foot into the Oval Office.

Problem is, those same caterwaulers said the same thing about Romney, and McCain, and Bush, and Dole, and Reagan, and just about every other Republican since Eisenhower. The little boy has literally cried wolf one too many times. Americans can’t be terrified into voting the way progressives want anymore, because too many Americans have been mislabeled as being part of the problem, not part of the solution, and they’re sick of the blame game. They want a swamp-drainer. Somebody to go into D.C. and take heads. Trump may or may not be that man. My money is on him being all talk, and no walk, in this regard.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t experiencing a bit of schadenböner over the great wailing and gnashing of teeth, currently running through the ranks of America’s progressive establishment. As a non-Trumper who is every inch a “deplorable” in Hillary’s book, I think the progressive establishment — the neoliberals! — have had this coming for far too long. A significant comeuppance of no small proportion.

But don’t just take my word for it. Take Piers Morgan‘s.

When a notorious progressive like Piers Morgan is taking you by the scruff and using a cricket bat on your ass, it’s time to pay attention. The days of Smug Style are done. It’s time to engage on the issues, not on the identities.

Otherwise, you’re just promoting another Trump win in 2020.

Paradigm shift. It’s painful. to discover that your assumptions about the fundamental workings of things, were wrong. I’ve only ever been emotionally invested in one Presidential election. That was 2012, when Romney lost, and it seemed to me I did not understand my own country. I thought Romney had it in the bag. I thought there was no way the country could sign on for four more years of Obama. I didn’t sleep at all, after Romney conceded. I was in a supremely unhappy state the following day. A great many things made no sense.

I thought, “This is probably how the Kerry voters felt in 2004.”

Now, the pendulum swings again.

I wasn’t invested this time, the way I was four years ago. Mostly because I so disliked both major candidates, I felt like I’d “lost” the instant it became clear Trump or Hillary would claim the Oval Office. I still kinda feel that way, though I confess relief that a known crook such as Hillary has been denied access to the highest levers of power — bad things happen when that lady is given control. Bad things may happen, now that Trump is the man, but there is a degree of chance and uncertainty, whereas Hillary was a known quantity.

So, Tuesday night, I felt like I didn’t really have a dog in this fight, just because Hillary and Donald seemed equivalently unpalatable. But I watched with fascination as Trump did the impossible. Or, rather, Hillary’s true unfitness made voters do the impossible, and vote for Trump.

Then, I watched the unbelieving outpouring of emotion, from Hillary’s faithful. Confusion. Denial. Gradual realization of what was happening. Anger. So much anger. A tidal wave of anger. It could not be happening. It must not be allowed to happen. Who let this happen?! What is wrong with our country that this is happening??!?

Yep, I get it. I really do.

I’ve lived through ten Presidential elections, of which I was old enough to be aware. Six of which I was old enough to vote in. Out of those six, only two times did my choice actually win the Oval Office. I was very bummed when Perot lost — it was my first time — but I was a teenager, and it’s easy to move on when you’re a teenager. By my twenties I was voting Clinton (second term) and then Gore (hanging chads!) and I was bummed about Gore losing too; it’s easy to be a small-l liberal in your twenties. Not until after 9/11 did I really start taking things seriously — talk about a paradigm shift, 9/11 was a life-changer! I was relieved when Bush won the second time (we will be debating the Bush years until I die) and then I wrote in Romney/Rice for 2008; because I knew McCain would get crushed.

Then came 2012, the election I was sure would go to Romney. And when it didn’t, I was supremely bent out of shape. It took me the better part of a week to calm down. It seemed like my countrymen had been offered a clear choice between hope, and doom, and they chose doom. It also seemed like my countrymen had rejected me personally in the process. Or at least, a part of me. The part which had been all in. The part which had given a damn. When Rachel Maddow spent the morning after the Romney loss, gloating, and concern-trolling conservatives and the Republican party, it felt viscerally scalding. She was so pleased with herself and her “team” and she was so eager to rub our (the Romney fans) faces in it. Her smug cup runneth over.

Come November 9, 2016:

Well now . . . . sauce for the goose, and all that.

Probably, Maddow and Co. feel (about the Hillary loss) like I felt about the Romney loss. If the outrage and protesting I am seeing since Tuesday night are an indicator, Maddow’s sentiment is widely shared. Hillary’s fans were all in. They had given a damn. And reality chose to deviate from their expectations.

In the words of Lemongrab, it was (and is) wholly unacceptable.

I get it. I really, really do.

The thing is, American national politics is a pendulum. Every time one “side” thinks they have a permanent majority, or a mandate, or some kind of endless license to ill, or they make a raft of pie-in-the-sky promises, they always overreach, underperform, become embroiled in scandal, then the fortunes reverse. Democrat, to Republican, then back to Democrat, then back to Republican again. Liberal, to conservative, to liberal, to conservative, yadda yadda yadda. It’s probably inevitable in a Republic governing almost 400 million people, all of whom span a spectrum of belief and ideology. If the mechanisms of democracy are functioning correctly, that pendulum should probably keep swinging. Therefore, a Trump win after the Obama years is as predictable as the Obama win after the Bush years.

I know each “side” keeps wishing the pendulum would swing their way, and get stuck. Forever.

But it just ‘aint gonna happen. After living through the Reagan years, then the Clinton years, then the Bush years, then the Obama years, and now come the Trump years, I think I’ve seen this oscillating waveform enough to be certain that it’s going to continue like this for the rest of my life. Maybe, for the rest of my daughter’s life too? And beyond? Again, we’re 400 million people spanning a spectrum of belief and ideology. Barring the instituting of an autocracy, or one half of the spectrum simply dropping out of the vote, these oscillations are baked into the fabric of the country.

I probably won’t ever be all in for a candidate like Romney again. I sorta suspect I learned some things about myself and about this country, during that traumatic loss.

Hopefully, most of the Hillary faithful will learn the same things. And chill out a little bit.

I don’t think Trump won, as much as I think Hillary lost.

I’ve already seen the cries of sexism and misogyny echoing around the web-o-sphere.

Really, c’mon now, progressives. Do we have to retreat there? At the risk of sounding like a concern troll, let me tell you that the amount of sexism and misogyny at work in Hillary’s collapse was a tiny thing compared to the overwhelmingly negative reputation Hillary has accumulated for herself across almost five decades in the public spotlight. At some point you have to quit hiding behind accusations, and face the reality that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a scheming, conniving, selfish, self-interested, lying, manipulative, altogether terrible candidate for President.

I know it’s gospel doctrine for everyone under 40 that the only reason anyone didn’t vote for Hillary, is because her vagina terrifies the Red Staters. But really, if people can peel themselves away from Jon Stewart re-runs long enough to examine Hillary’s collapse with a non-biased eye, it comes down to a glaring lack of credibility on Hillary’s part. And all of the most egregious wounds were self-inflicted. Nobody forced Hillary to call 1/4 to 1/2 of the entire country deplorable. That was a cute remark entirely of Hillary’s devising, because she assumed — oh yes, we all assumed — that Hillary was protected by a demographic and political bubble through which nothing about her past could penetrate.

Hillary knew in her heart she had earned the White House.

I thought for sure she’d earned it too — crookedly, and in true Clinton style.

So I confess to being utterly surprised by these results. Even more than I was when Romney lost in 2012. And I thought Romney had it in the bag.

My belief, therefore, is that Hillary — and her supporters — fantastically miscalculated. All of us did, really. Us Trump doubters and nay-sayers. We assumed that identity politics would carry the day. That the nation would be in too much of a hurry to elect TEH FURST WOMAN PRESADENT to notice that Hillary Clinton is unfit for command. She belongs nowhere near the levers of genuine power. When she is, people literally pay. Sometimes with their lives. I assumed not enough Americans saw this, to care. And I was wrong. And so were all of Hillary’s avid fans, who selectively gave themselves amnesia about all the times Hillary fibbed to them, to her superiors, to the public, and even to her own party. Trump was simply too awful to permit him to win.

Except, apparently, no. Trump’s awfulness is like the chewy center of an expired chocolate from a box of sweets. Hillary’s already been gnawed in half. Her staleness is well-known. Trump? He offers the chance of change. Of difference. Of no more same-old-same-old. And no, I don’t think I believe Trump will be any better than he is. I think Trump’s still the same hot mess I thought he was on day one. I just think Americans are choosing the New Hot Mess, versus the Old Hot Mess. Because they’re desperate for a tornado of fresh air in Washington D.C.

And that’s what I would like Democrats to understand.

It’s not misogyny. Hillary’s sins were simply too obvious to hide. And too many voters were sick of seeing business-as-usual down in Foggy Bottom. Not to mention being fed up with all the histrionic knee-jerk nuclear-option name-calling — by progressives, at everyone else.

Liberals, seriously, the name-calling tactic was shopworn 20 years ago, and it’s even more shopworn now. Americans are sick of being bashed for not toeing the progressive party line. Do Democrats and progressives understand? They cannot use these meaningless labels to dodge the issues anymore. The American public seems to have finally refused to be afraid of nuclear-option labels. As Bill Maher admitted, progressives have cried wolf too often. Americans saw Hillary for who she is, and there could be no more sweeping under the rug, of Hillary’s misdeeds — by people who cannot grapple with the fact that they lined up to support a wholly cruddy candidate.

And yes, Trump is cruddy too. It’s just that, he’s new cruddy, and he’s willing to give the name-callers his middle finger. Having been called epithets — by compassionate, caring, tolerant liberals — for years and years, Americans took a look at Trump and said, “Fuck it, why not?”

I am sure the political pundit world will be on fire for months, after the final tally is counted.

My hope is that we hear a lot less about how everyone who wasn’t a Hillary voter, is the devil. And a lot more about how or why the Democrats ever thought running Hillary was a good idea in the first place.

And yes, running (President) Donald is and was (and will be) terrible too. But in every election season, it’s the losing team that has to look hardest in the mirror.

Here’s your chance to get real, progressive America. Enough with the smug style. Tend to your house. Stop excommunicating your fellow countrymen from the human equation. Admit that there are real complaints with actual merit, on the conservative side. Force yourselves to face the fact you do not have all the answers.

Then, maybe, we can have an actual conversation.

P.S: for all the Trump fans, feel free to feed me a truckload of crow in the comments, I’ve clearly earned it.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) wrote some interesting commentary this week. How familiar it all sounds, given the SF/F storm of 2015. I agree with Scott. It’s a disheartening thing when any Presidential candidate excommunicates half the country from the human equation. That’s basically what Hillary Clinton did, with her quip about “deplorables.” She’s reading from the 21st century progressive playbook. I call it Moral Majority 2.0, which has taken all the worst qualities of the so-called Moral Majority of the 1970s and 1980s, and valorized them — with a progressive flavoring. It’s now perfectly okay to hate, despise, lie about, abuse, bully, browbeat (or physically beat!) people who are “bad” — because the “bad” people deserve it.

And who are these “bad” people, and how can we know them?

Why, they’re everyone who’s not voting for Hillary, of course.

I know, I know, it’s unconscionable — to not support Hillary. I mean, are we crazy? How can we not vote for Hillary? Even if she is a serial liar who evades accountability by buying off and/or intimidating people who might call her on the carpet? She’s going to be the first woman President in U.S. history! Why do we want to be on the wrong side?

I’ve seen and heard a lot of that kind of talk — about people being on the wrong side of history — during both the Obama years, and now the (soon to come) Hillary years. Usually issuing from the keyboards of so-called liberal opinionators who believe human civilization is on some kind of straight-line “ramp” ascending ever-upward to an idealized nirvana of economic, political, and social perfection.

To the liberal opinionators, they and theirs are on the ramp, while all the rest of us are merely hapless ideological road kill. We didn’t (or don’t) pick the right “team” therefore the choo-choo of inevitability is going to leave us behind — or run us over.

Like Moral Majority 1.0, there is a smug certainty to the declarations of Moral Majority 2.0, and Hillary’s “deplorables” comment was made precisely so as to tap into that smugness. For Hillary — and her ardent fans — the country is theirs, and theirs alone. The rest of us are just squatters. We’re going to be run off, or burned out. If not literally, at least figuratively. We didn’t pick the correct “side” so we will not be given a place at the table. We have been made “bad” according to the doctrines of Moral Majority 2.0 and there will be no redemption for us.

In other words, we are blocked from having moral validity, as well as virtue. The river of moral worth has been dammed up at Hillary Clinton. If you’re downstream, forget it. No moral worth for you. Either get with the program and be on the reservoir with the rest of the “right thinking, right voting” Hillary supporters — even the ones holding their noses — or you’re an outcast. You are cut off from the light of righteousness. Banished from the circle of humanity.

“Either you’re voting for Hillary, or you’re with those Nazi racist Trump voters!”

I’ve said in this space (before) that I am taking a Treebeard approach to the 2016 election: Side? I am on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side. Forced to swallow Fish Hook #1 or Fish Hook #2, I choose a third option.

But that doesn’t mean I think the people voting for Trump are awful. I also don’t think the people voting for Hillary are awful, even if I think Hillary herself is an awful choice, in an awful election year. I fully respect the personhood of both voting blocks, even if I think neither of them is going to get anything like what they’re hoping for — from either of the two main, miserable candidates. So, I try to be careful to distinguish between my dislike of the candidates, and the voters supporting same. I’ve got good friends and even family who are voting for both Hillary and Trump. I don’t think this makes them awful people.

But there does seem to be a significant number of Hillary supporters who aren’t willing to accord me and mine — to say nothing of the Trump supporters — similar courtesy. To them, if you’re not standing with Hillary, you’re scum.

Remember how Bush (last decade) was excoriated for declaring, “Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists”?

Progressives and liberals loathed, derided, and detested that sentence. They considered it proof of Bush’s retrograde, one-dimensional policy. Zero nuance.

Do any of Hillary’s proponents think twice, in our current election, before sneering about misogynist, racist, homophobic, Trump voters and independents?

If not, they probably should.

Frankly, if your first instinct is to label anyone who doesn’t behave or believe the way you do — racist, misogynist, homophobe, Nazi, etc. — I think the problem is far more on your side of the table, than not. You’re neither caring, nor compassionate. You’re merely impressed with your own moral and political rightness.

You’ve become a hoarder of rectitude. All for you, none for us. Nobody else is allowed to have any goodness. Only you — and everyone you deem worthy — gets to be good. Meaning, your monocultural opinions and ideas are the only ideas given any standing in a given conversation. Everyone else who isn’t “smart” enough to believe and think just like you, is a moral monster.

And we all know that monsters are fair game. You can vandalize their property, call them bad names, call their family and their children bad names, lie about them and spread lies to defame and undermine them, threaten their jobs, stage repeated on-line mob sessions or street protests resembling 1984’s infamous Two Minute Hate, and much worse. Because monsters deserve what they have coming to them.

Monsters aren’t on the “team” pushing this country up the “ramp” leading to the perfection of the human condition.

Therefore, anything done to or said about a monster, is perfectly okay. Even terrible, hate-filled untruths, designed to evict decent folk from the human condition. It’s all good. They’re only monsters.

When Hillary called us “deplorables” she was saying we not only do not matter, but that we’re terrible people who do not exist in the realm of individual dignity. In true Hillary fashion, everyone who is not useful to her, is deemed an outlander. We’re off the chart of civilization. We are just in the way of Hillary’s vision of progress.

This kind of thing has happened regularly throughout history. The many Moral Majorities — and their bold leaders — which have marched brazenly across every continent. How or why we don’t learn from the past, is probably explained by the fact that self-righteousness is a hell of a drug. Convince a man that he’s got the moral “right” to be terrible to another human being, and that man will do all manner of atrocity — in the name of what he believes to be correct. Or true. Or virtuous. Because he’s been given an excuse.

The various Marxist movements of the 20th century were all certain that their “way” was the inevitable — indeed, scientific — path forward. Hundreds of millions of human beings suffered and /or were killed, for the sake of the Marxist certainty that their ramp to societal perfection, was so just and so absolute, that nobody could deviate without being an obviously amoral and pernicious individual. Worthy of jail. Torture. Execution. And other heinousness.

Of course, the Marxist road to a perfect society, predictably crumbled beneath them. Because history is not a straight line. It is an oscillating waveform. Depending on your view, the present time may be a peak, or a trough; or maybe somewhere in between? The “inevitable” course of history has an uncanny tendency to swerve sharply from expected trajector(ies).

Thus it may be that the finger-pointers of 2016 — those who happily mock and abuse us “deplorables” — will learn a little humility.

Or not?

Again, self-righteousness is a hell of a drug.

It’s been roughly a century since the United States embarked upon one of the nation’s most foolish moral escapades: Prohibition. Temperance movements — well-intended, we have to grant — had deduced that alcohol consumption was at the root of any number of household and cultural evils. Therefore, the country was going to be dried up. And since politicians are more interested in getting re-elected, than in having common sense, they went along with these temperance movements’ assertions. And for over a dozen years, the United States was officially a no-booze zone.

Except, that’s not how it really worked. There was booze all over the place. The common citizen was still drinking. The politicians never stopped, either. Even the cops were having a drink, just on the quiet. Everybody knew it, and everybody tacitly agreed that Prohibition had turned into a bad joke. They even invented a new word, for the millions of otherwise straightlaced Americans who were all getting sloshed on the sly: scofflaw.

A combination of the words scoff and law. It meant precisely what it says: a person who flouts the rules.

By the advent of the Depression — surely an event to make even the most stalwart teetotaler consider lifting a glass — the country had come to its senses, and we eventually scuttled the booze ban.

Which should have taught us an important, enduring lesson.

But it didn’t. You’ve heard of the War on Drugs? More Prohibition, that. Just the target of the blockade is different. Equally well-intended, but equally wrong-headed. It guarantees that crime (organized or not) will have a ready cash source, throws countless young men and women into jail, and does not at all stop or deter people who want to do drugs, from doing drugs. In fact, it lends a rebellious kind of cool to the drug scene, that lures millions of teenagers every year — some of whom wind up bottoming out in a state of heroin or meth addiction, which can often be lethal.

If we try to ban guns, I can guarantee you it will be more of the same. Why?

1) You can’t close the barn door, when the horse has already run out to pasture. If firearms were a new(ish) sort of import to these shores, you might have a realistic chance to keep the ports shut to guns. But guns are a thriving domestic industry, as well as cottage hobby. Some estimates place the number of privately-held firearms at or about the number of privately-driven automobiles. You cannot ban or restrict something which already exists here — legally — in such high numbers. There is no known force capable of policing them all up, much less disposing of them. It was the same for the booze.

2) Are you going to throw Granny in jail? How about your uncle? Or your brother? Or your best friend? Yes, many people will voluntarily turn over their weapons, if a ban is made into law. Americans are — despite the protestations of the cognoscenti — a generally decent lot. Law-abiding, by choice. But far more Americans will conclude the law is absurd, and simply refuse to comply. Do you go out and put the cuffs on? Lead the country to the slammer? Where to house the millions of instant criminals? How to try them? Especially when most of the law enforcement will also conclude the law is absurd — and in fact, many of the law-keepers will be law-breakers too, just like during Prohibition.

3) The underground gun scene will thrive like kudzu. Secret gun clubs and gun ranges will become the new speakeasies. It will be chic and daring, to belong to such organizations, and to be seen in such circles. Again, the rule of cool: flouting stupid laws has always been the hallmark of adventurously free-minded people. The dumber or more clumsy the law, the more it’s flouted. Having and shooting guns would become like having and smoking weed used to be; and in some places still is — something the “cutting edge” do for fun, as well as pleasure. And to hell with the risks. Life is short! Go for the gusto.

4) Because the underground gun scene will thrive, the underground gun market will also thrive. Both the cottage machinists, and the black market importers. Price will be no object. In fact, the competition (to cut out or undermine the competitor) will be so fierce, rival black market operations may start dividing the country up into zones of turf. And since laws never stopped true criminals from having and using guns anyway, the amount of gun-related crime will climb as ordinary petty crooks and gun-runners alike, along with average citizens getting caught in the endless dragnets, will stuff the courthouses to overflowing. Not to mention the morgues.

5) Fly-over country don’t give a damn, no how. Small-town America will basically pretend that federal gun bans do not exist. County judges will suspend sentences. The cops will develop “paper bag eyes” for good American citizens who just happen to have and keep firearms in the home. Both the authorities and the common man will collude to keep the dreadful news — that guns are not, in fact, going away — from reaching the eyes and ears of the gentrified do-gooders from the cities. Special dispensations will be invented, to quietly circumnavigate federal prosecution. Own x amount of land, for y amount of farming? Why, you just got to have a critter gun. Or three. Or twelve. Plus ammunition. Don’t want coyotes getting into the chickens. Surely we can open up a loophole for that?

And so, the great moral crusade to “end” guns in America, will go down in historic flames. Being essentially unenforceable, the law(s) will eventually hang like stones around the necks of those politicians who supported such laws in the first place. The gun-banners will be voted out, and voted down, and the law(s) will be struck from the books.

Or . . . we can save ourselves a lot of grief and heartache, and just not go there in the first place.

No gun bans. No silly laws with good intentions, but achieving opposite results.

We know this dance. We’ve done it before. We ought to have learned by now. But memories can be short, and do-gooders always think that human nature can be bent to suit any kind of moral reform program. Which is essentially what the gun-banner brigades are after: moral reform.

Except, you can’t do it like that. Nor should you want to try. The answer to “gun violence” is to merely remove the noun, and focus on he verb. Why does a disturbed young Muslim man walk into a gay club and begin capping people? Could it possibly be that he’s been raised in a belief system that is amenable to violent “solutions” to the moral decrepitude he sees around him? Hell, in Da’esh territory, they chuck gays off rooftops, and Allah smiles. Or so the mullahs of the Middle East say. Maybe that’s got something to do with it? The Boston Marathon bombers used pressure cookers to inflict carnage. Same intent: to murder in the name of Allah. Just different method. You can seek to ban the method six ways from Thursday, and never even touch the intent.

And it’s the intent that we — as a culture, and a nation — should be most concerned with. Grappling with and confronting intent, whether it’s Islamist fanatics (Orlando) or emo outcasts (Columbine) would be a direct way to confront “what’s wrong with America” rather than concocting effigies of “gun culture” at whose feet we pile blame, every time there is a media frenzy about a crime involving firearms.

Again, simply passing a law, won’t solve anything. In fact, the only law which will be obeyed, will be the law of unintended consequences.

Is all of this supposed to assuage the outrage of people upset that we’ve had (yet another) spectacular spree murder? No. But then, we lose tens of thousands of Americans on the highways and freeways of America. Every year. And you seldom hear the same outrage. Not even when it’s a multi-auto pileup on the interstate. We’ve successfully conditioned ourselves to accept these deaths as merely the cost of doing business, in a world which is (rightly) free to engage in impulse travel on public roads.

I, for one, would love to invent a magic solution — to events like the Orlando gay club murders.

But I have lived enough life to realize that there is usually no such thing as a magic solution.

Want to curb murders? Convince the next would-be spree slaughterer that (s)he’s better off finding a different hobby? Join the club! All of us law-abiding gun owners are right there with you, hoping that there might be a way to reach these people, before they decide to begin taking innocent lives. We’ve got friends and families too. We think about them every day. Some of us have raised our hands in front of the flag, dedicating life and limb to the defense and protection of the very laws that ensure our freedom and prosperity in this country. We literally are the “well-regulated militia” so often debated in that controversial Constitutional phrase. And we do what we do, so that you — American man or woman — can go into a firearms store, and purchase the means to protect yourself from rapists, thieves, and murderers.

Is freedom idiot-proof? Nope, alas. Nor is it safe-spaced against all potentially random harm. And that’s a shame. But you still get in your car, and expose yourself to the bone-headedness of your fellow citizens — for minutes (or even hours) every single day. The joker texting on his phone, when he ought to be watching the road, is far, far more likely to hurt you or the people you love, than “gun culture.” In fact, you’ve probably been that joker a few times yourself — yes, even you “good” drivers. Don’t look embarrassed. You’re just normal.

As nearly every law-abiding firearms owner, is also normal.

Should you be punished, because some jackass in the other car decided to cause a wreck today? No?

In the end, we’re wired to buck the system, if the system is too much of a pain in the ass. That’s why we speed like hell, all over the country, daring the highway patrol to catch us. We know that speed limit is there for our safety. We also know that we can handle it, going well over the limit. So we do. And the “game” of daily cat and mouse (millions of mice, only a comparatively few cats) occurs with ritual-like predictability. Even when speeding is a contributor to any number of serious auto accidents in any given week: accidents which take lives.

Do we ban the car? Nope.

Do we lash out at all law-abiding drivers, indiscriminately? Nope.

Do we label those same drivers domestic terrorists in the making? Nope.

Look closely at such answers to such questions, and you can tease out an important conclusion. About who we are, as human beings. And why some things shouldn’t be tried, no matter how well-meant they may be.