Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:32 pm
The media is anxious to tell us all how great Donald Trump’s “ordinary Americans” really are, and how elitist it is to look down upon them for voting an openly racist, bigoted, sexually assaulting man into office.
No doubt they are so anxious to do this because they simply love to feel they’re being “Everymanish” by embracing white flyover men and their wives as the New Discovery, except they are always the same discovery. See 2010.
And no doubt they are most anxious to do this because if these people are indeed racists empowered and normalized by Donald Trump and his media enablers, then the media is to blame for much of their rise.
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Instead, I give you the Heroic Racists of Our Times. Please don’t compare this to how Occupy protesters were treated, who by the way cited the same issues, but were denigrated by the media. And for heaven’s sake don’t compare it to BLM, lest someone be insulted that black people would appreciate not being shot for walking down the street.
From the LA Times we’re told that Trump voters have real feelings and look up to Trump as someone who is rude but is a workingman’s billionaire (talk about media malfeasance, they might have known about Trump’s failure to pay the workingmen who worked for him in those “jobs” he created):
They see an outsider unbeholden to a corrupt and rotten political system and brave enough to stake bold positions. They consider him fearless enough to defy the confines of political correctness. They view him as a vastly successful businessman, but possessing a common touch: a workingman’s billionaire.
To hear them tell it, Trump supporters want a government that no longer works to make the rich even richer, offers handouts to the undeserving and caters to the whims of Washington’s army of lobbyists and special interests.
Perhaps more than anything, they want a president who pays attention to the half of the country bereft of hope: That, they said, would truly make America great again.
Yeah, except President Obama did exactly that, it was the Republicans in Congress who refused to pass a jobs bill or any infrastructure bill that would help create even more jobs. Why didn’t the media inform these voters that Donald Trump’s economic plan will destroy 11 million jobs, whereas President Obama has made history adding private sector jobs. Why didn’t they inform Trump voters that Donald Trump’s transition team was stocked with lobbyists?
If the media did inform these voters of those facts and the voters did not care, what does that say.
We are told in the New York Times that the left’s elitism is the real problem, and they shouldn’t be shaming people (the real reason they are shaming Trump supporters is for beating up black protesters, cheering the sexual assault of women, mocking the disabled and smearing minorities).
Instead of challenging this ideology of shame, the left has buttressed it by blaming white people as a whole for slavery, genocide of the Native Americans and a host of other sins, as though whiteness itself was something about which people ought to be ashamed. The rage many white working-class people feel in response is rooted in the sense that once again, as has happened to them throughout their lives, they are being misunderstood.
That’s an old right wing canard, not sure why it’s being passed along by Lerner, but actually no one is trying to shame anyone for being white. Only defensive white people suggest such nonsense when confronted with their cultural appropriation. Sure, the left cares about helping people understand privilege, and many in the left have privilege themselves of some kind. But conflating that with the outrage against Donald Trump is intellectually dishonest to a degree that is unfathomable.
Donald Trump said his opponent might be shot if she won. Donald Trump’s aides said she SHOULD be shot by a firing squad, more than once. Donald Trump ran a campaign of “Lock Her Up!” and cheering on his white supporters as they beat up black protesters. Donald Trump offered to pay their legal fees. Donald Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women.
These are the things the left is shaming Trump voters over, and by the way, the media should be too. Instead they are normalizing it. I wrote about this the day after the election- how the media is blaming “anger at the elites for their own smug sinking of Hillary Clinton.” Now they’re busy making sure everyone knows that the real elites are those people who have a problem with vile hatred being normalized.
Michael Lerner tells us, “The left needs to stop ignoring people’s inner pain and fear.” Oh, right, because our fear of having a president who encourages violence against us is nothing. Whose pain and fear is being marginalized here? Not exactly the Trump voters, who are allowed to do and say anything and be forgiven, because pain. Maybe the problem is the progressives that Lerner hangs around with, because down here on the ground, I don’t see a lot of privilege. I see desperate, scared people.
Trump voters aren’t exactly impoverished, unlike the some of the vulnerable people in the Democratic coalition. Polls showed they made $70,000 a year on average. So tell me again how that pain is so big that they had to overlook Trump’s hatred and endorsement by the KKK and neo-Nazis. Tell me again how the pain of Jewish Americans is nothing compared to the pain of the average Trump voter who is so entitled, apparently, to ignore violent hatred because they are sick of allegedly being shamed. (Translation: they are sick of being asked to think of others and be a little more generous and empathetic.)
Trump buddy Piers Morgan also thinks liberals are elitists and Trump voters are the “ordinary Americans.” Elites like Muslim Americans, gay Americans, the disabled, women, people whose children will die if Obamacare is repealed — the “elites.”
The elites are the media. And they need to get off of their high horse, their elitist high horse, and explain to us “ordinary Americans” what exactly makes us wanting equal rights so snobby. Why being outraged by anyone supporting and indeed empowering Trump’s actions and rhetoric is so snobby.
And what exactly is elitist about not wanting a president who incites violence against women, gay people and minorities. Help me out here. Just because the working class of the left is comprised of minorities and women doesn’t make them any less real Americans.
It’s a little difficult to listen to media elites wax on about people among whom they don’t live. I live in Trumpland. Yes, there are real economic concerns for some, but most are well employed. Trump is more about a “feeling” for them. But for those whose jobs have left, Trump isn’t the answer for them and their concerns are no more intense than the millions of impoverished Democrats (those “elites” we keep hearing about and whose plight is so rarely elevated by the media) whose very lives are on the line should Trump keep his promise to repeal Obamacare.
Here’s a pro tip: Yes, if you voted for Donald Trump you are a racist and a misogynist and a bigot. How do I know?
Because if you weren’t, you could not have brought yourself to vote for him, no matter how much of a tax cut it would bring you or what magical jobs you convinced yourself he could conjure. And yes, I know plenty of “safe” liberals who make enough to care about their tax rates but who didn’t even hesitate because they have other more important values, like noblesse oblige and patriotism.
You know what the media should be doing? They should have shunned Donald Trump’s racism and hatred the moment he stepped on the political stage. They should have called it out. It’s the truth and it’s dangerous.
Instead, they’ve given us the Poor Noble Racist Heroes of Our Times. Such suffering. Other people want the same rights as they have. So, so horrible for them.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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