Category: Features

“And how worried you should be about each of them.”

• The Apprentices

• Canaries in the Coal Mine

• The Enraged

The Apprentices: These folks admire Trump’s celebrity, his certainty, and his bluster. They don’t know much about the issues, so Trump’s habitual lying and refusal to learn the basic details about even a single subject is not something they particularly care about (or understand). He says he can solve the problems. Sounds good. They are, in a way, the voters America deserves. Celebrity-obsessed near-imbeciles who want Trump to win because he’s TV’s best show (although it was a lot funnier before they got rid of Little Marco and replaced him with that fat guy who just stands in the background looking like he’s about to throw up). He’s the show they can’t stop binge-watching. And come on, having Melania as the co-star is a major plus. For these voters, Trump’s presidency will be measured not against history, but against other forms of televised entertainment. And by that standard, there’s little doubt this will be the highest rated show on TV.

Danger Level: The existence of these folks can’t come as much of a surprise. Yes, the awareness of them depresses you every election season, but you can usually repress the bulk of your memories by Thanksgiving, and forget they even exist by Christmas. And fortunately, they can be easily distracted by other shiny objects. Worst case, we need to find someone funnier and with better cutdowns. Think President Jeffrey Ross.

Canaries in the Coal Mine: These folks have watched their fellow Americans on the coasts ride a tech, finance and real estate rocket ship, while their mortgages are underwater, their jobs have gone overseas or been automated, and the awareness of their critical value to the country has been systematically diminished. I’m a coal miner from Wyoming or West Virginia. For generations, my family has been powering America; literally providing the fuel that drove economic revolutions. And now, not only is my business shrinking, I’m being told by all the environmentalists, billionaires, and Hollywood types that my industry has been poisoning the world. That my sacrifices, my hard work and health risks, my father and grandfather, are all part of some historic wrongdoing. You have no damn idea how the rest of your country lives and works. You’re worried about climate change? I’m worried about dinner.

Danger Level: These people actually have a point. They’re just expressing that point through the wrong candidate.

The Enraged: These folks are pissed. You got your black community-organizing president. But then you had to stick it in their faces with the gay marriage, the political correctness, the stories that make our cops look bad and our criminals look like victims. F you and your political correctness, your self-righteousness, your gender BS, your Academy Award racial obsession, your thin skin, your campus trigger warnings, and all that shit about Caitlyn Jenner. This has gone far enough. Close the borders. Build the wall. And let’s remind everyone whose damn country this is. In general, these folks run the gamut from harboring an unconscious negative disposition towards members of certain demographics, to a whole-hearted embrace of good old-fashioned racism. In other words, they fall along a spectrum that runs from Archie Bunker to Benito Mussolini.

Danger Level: Look, I’m not gonna kid you here. Steam is escaping the pot, and it’s not unthinkable that the lid could blow off. And let’s be clear; Mitt Romney and David Brooks are not going to convince these folks with calm, reasoned arguments. You can’t push people to the limit for three decades and then reel them back in with a few speeches. It wasn’t unpredictable that we’d see a backlash to the historic breakthrough of the first black president and the long-overdue adoption of more progressive social values. It’s less predictable how that backlash will play out in the long run.