Donald Trump's hair is the colour of your gran's couch and his stomach is bigger than any of his real estate. He strives for the oratory flair of Churchill but always ends up sounding like a wedding DJ, saying things that are neither this nor that but are projected so loud they sound good to the 10-teeth-between-them groups of rednecks that attend his rallies. The foundation of his foreign policy is driven by the idea that ISIS is sitting as one in a garage, waiting to be bombed and once even admitted to wanting to shag his own daughter. He also allegedly produced caps in China despite blacklisting them as one of America's many boogeymen of his entire campaign. The guy's a moron.
And yet he's just been elected the 45th president of the free world - for precisely the points I just made.
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Just with Brexit and the general election before that, satire lost out, despite people convincing themselves otherwise along the way. All the takes on Facebook, the 'destroying' done by late-night talk show hosts, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown comedians and anyone with a basic sense of superiority meant nothing and did nothing to stop Trump smashing the swing states and taking the victory last night.
This deeply shocked and upset those who had made the jokes. 'You mean my tweets about Trump's fake tan didn't convince broke, rural Americans to vote Democrat?' The conceit was there on June 24 and it's here today and no-one has learned anything. No-one has learned that newsfeeds aren't a political force and memes, regardless of how amusing, are just echo chamber equivalents.
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The apologies came in, and not just from Americans. Professional megalomaniac Laurie Penny, re-establishing her post-Brexit tweets, wrote of the result: "To every panicked American who has asked for my hand in marriage in the last few hours: can't help you, my country hates immigrants too," simultaneously making herself a spokesperson for Britain and a critic of it.
Blue-collar America is to blame here. They were given a vote and they messed it up. Before elections, 'every vote counts', so long as it fits the 'right' narrative, in this case the one of the Democrats. God forbid people simply disagree with that. Again, the boasts of liberalism and unity were brushed aside once that disagreement was cast. Fuck 'coming together', that was all bluster. We're moving to Canada!
More and more, this becomes the norm: pretend to speak and sympathise with the plights of 'ordinary people', only to scrutinise them if they say no. It's why the vote went the way it did.
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People protesting a democratic decision in Oakland.
This is nothing to do with policy, and I think Trump voters and overseas endorsers would be happy enough to admit that. They don't care about economic strategy or 'veterans affairs reform' plans, they just enjoy backing the phenomenon of Trump, the idea of him. They are fed up of having the political-class prioritise non-subjects over common issues that have been dismissed under 'white privilege' and are using him to blow that apart. They see someone speaking both his and their mind.
We all realised last night that pollsters, the media, and experts are effectively useless at guessing anything. Trump might prove himself to be a sociopath and nuke countries like it's going out of fashion or he might make office-dogs compulsory. No-one knows. No-one knows what voters think or how they feel, and if the media keep augmenting this clever vs thick, us vs them discourse, no-one ever will.
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