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2020: The Middle Finger Election

joker44
In the wind
he Middle Finger Election Charlie Sykes The Bulwark

If Trump wins, explains Rich Lowry, editor of the journal founded by William F. Buckley Jr., it will be because he is “The Only Middle Finger Available.”

Voters will back Trump not because he stands athwart history, yelling “Stop,” or because he offers a compelling vision of a Trumpian Morning in America, writes Lowry, but because he is a giant opportunity to say F*ck You to the media, academia, Hollywood, professional athletes, and entire world of woke culture.

He’s not wrong.

Lowry’s argument is part description and part rationalization. He notes that the middle finger “may not be a very good reason to vote for a president, and it doesn’t excuse Trump’s abysmal conduct and maladministration.” But, he explains, “Trump is, for better or worse, the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide.” He has become the anointed vessel “for registering opposition to everything from the 1619 Project to social media’s attempted suppression of the Hunter Biden story.”

To put it in blunt terms, for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.

The tweets, the insults, the bullying aren’t the bugs; they are just different versions of the middle finger — and his people love it. Conservative ideas are just the gloss. [ie, Convenient references to past conservative principles no longer relevant to Trumpers, used primarily to distract from baser motives related to resentment fueled by aggrieved entitlement - joker]

I suspect that Buckley himself would’ve had a different word for this: nihilism.

[...]

As Ben Shapiro explained, his most important reason for backing Trump this time around was that “Democrats have lost their fucking minds." [ Pure Projection, Shapiro - joker 😄 ]

Four years ago, Shapiro had posted a six minute video on YouTube titled “Donald Trump is a Liar.” The next month, he wrote, “I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump: Here’s Why.”

But, like Lowry and National Review, he has evolved. [ dare we say 'got woked' LMFAS joker]

Shapiro explains his reversal by pointing to what he sees as Trump’s record as a conservative, but he strains to rationalize Trump’s mendacity, which he acknowledges. So he’s left to argue that however bad Trump is, the “damage that President Trump has done to the country, on a character and rhetorical level, has already been done and cannot be undone. I don’t see it as getting worse day by day. That is the new status quo unfortunately.”

In a recent endorsement video, Shapiro insisted that "I have been very clear on my feelings about Donald Trump's character. I have serious reservations to say the least...” He worried about “the soul sucking of the Republican Party to approve Trump’s bad behavior; people nodding and grinning at bad stuff Trump did….”

But, he insisted, “Trump has some good qualities.”

“He’s a hammer in search of a nail. Sometimes he hits a nail and it is super satisfying and sometimes he hits a baby and it is far less satisfying….” Apparently, you have to smash some babies to make an omelet, or something.

Shapiro dismisses all of this because, he says, “whatever damage he was going to do has already been done.”

But this is a Vesuvius of wrongness.

With Trump, it can always get worse, because there is no bottom. In just four years, Trump has already made the conservative movement, dumber, crueler, more dishonest, and more extreme. Rationalization has turned to acceptance. As the toll rises from the pandemic the pro-life party increasingly behaves like a death cult.

10 comments

  • joker44
    4 years ago
    This middle finger image appeared in the original article. I endorse its use here.😄
  • xpando
    4 years ago
    I saw a flag on a boat this summer : - TRUMP 2020 - BECAUSE FUCK YOU AGAIN.
  • Icey
    4 years ago
    No I think there just a lot of hateful bigots who feel he's one of them
  • Dave_Anderson
    4 years ago
    2016 was the middle finger to the establishment. 2020 for Trump because he's shown he is actually a damn good President. Imagine if he didn't have the mefia running him down 24/7/365 for the last five years and had just a little bit of cooperation from Congress and the bureaucracy rather than this unprecedented "resistance." He could really have been an amazing President. As it is, he's still been pretty good despite the constant opposition and unfair media bias.
  • TheeOSU
    4 years ago
    Trump has faced more attacks and resistance than Slick willy and nobama combined yet was still able to get some positive things done.
    Here's to 4 more years of shoving it up the opposition's ass!
  • joker44
    4 years ago
    The Farce is especially strong these last few days in Magatard Nation.

    Trump Cultist can’t defend Trump’s own statements and actions, but they can find plenty to criticize in his critics. This
    allows the right to indulge its hatred of liberals and liberalism while sidestepping the need for a reckoning with the disaster of the Trump administration itself.

    Here is how it works: Rather than defend President Trump’s specific actions, his conservative champions change the subject to:
    (1) the biased “fake news” media,
    (2) over-the-top liberals,
    (3) hypocrites on the left,
    (4) anyone else victimizing Mr. Trump or his supporters and
    (5) whataboutism, as in “What about Obama?” “What about Clinton?”

    'Bout sums up 99% of combined Little Dave's and TheeOSU's magat-posts.
  • joker44
    4 years ago
    Trump, A Martyr In His Own Mind??
    One of the characteristics of narcissistic character disorders like Trump: always blame others for their own failures and misfortunes, never see them as a consequence of their own actions and never, never accept responsibility for the results.

    https://tuscl.net/photo.php?id=5920

    Just for you, bid on it!
  • joker44
    4 years ago
    @TheeOSU - Scouts honor, my intial reaction to your For OP link.

    Jeez, this dude is so, so uncreative. Then I remembered some of your old flame war attempts at other members. The longer it went on, the shorter and more mundane were your pathetic insults.

    My response. Prefer not to waste it on some anonymous TUSCL magat. This is where it really counts:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/El7GxSaXEAIi…
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