Bret W. Lester

Trump isn't Nothing

I don’t follow politics very closely but receive enough information passively through Twitter and podcasts to get the general tenor; to form an opinion. But I change my mind. A lot. So as soon as i write something down it's at risk of becoming wrong by morning. But today I'll walk that plank anyway. Lets engage in some littoral larping with strands of truth, per se.

Anyway, since we’re talking politics there’s no avoiding the orange elephant in the room; the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue. “What do you think about Trump”?

If I were to summarize, I’d say something like Trump is what the establishment deserves; a manifestation of a disconnected, post industrial society, devoid of tradition and culture. A harbinger of things to come.

Here’s something I wrote on the topic but never published until today:

Trump lacks a level of sensitivity and empathy that is essential in any society founded on relationships of mutual benefit.

He is a mere manifestation of a government-corporate culture where success is characterized by the abandonment of civility in favor of whatever fosters money and power.

In such a culture, those who rise to the top are further and further divorced from civil society, therefore becoming more and more foreign to the population at large.

In other words, he has just the right kind of sociopathy to make it to the top of America’s corporate-political landscape. The right stuff.

The Country is in the midst of a phase shift, now recovering from a post-industrial hangover. What awaits us on the other side appears as if it’s going to be some kind of decentralized information society. Nobody really knows exactly but it’s pretty clear that the establishment is old and decrepit and it needs to be pruned like California’s fire-prone wild lands.

There is no greater representation of the establishment today than the Democratic party. Not to be dehumanizing but you can’t make this shit up. Their candidate to appose Trump is an actual marionette; a reanimated corpse; the last vestige of a teetering corporate-bureaucratic-industrial-military apparatus.

A Democrat today is the very picture of “nothingness” like the dying socioeconomic structure they wish to perpetuate. They say a lot yet say nothing. A sea of platitudes. Every utterance is pre-calculated for its possibility to offend in the slightest. The result is nothing. Nothing to say about the lawlessness and violence erupting in American cities. Nothing to say about the rot in our Universities. Nothing to say about the homeless in California. Nothing to say about China. Nothing that could possibly be interpreted as offensive. The ultimate HR department.

For all his negative qualities, at least Trump cannot be accused of nothingness. He has a pulse. Like no other politician in modern memory, he actually says what’s on his mind. Who would have thought that something as simple as talking like a normal, somewhat sociopathic human being would trigger such mayhem among the corporate-media-democratic establishment?

One might hope, as a nod to the populism that got him elected, that the Democrats would make at least some attempt to beat Trump at his own game. Unfortunately however it has become clear that their response is simply "business as usual". As if ignoring it long enough will make it go away. It's clear that if Democrats take power in November we can expect more papering over problems; more postponement of the inevitable; more nothingness.

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