Angry Rant Time: The Stupid, the Ignorant, and the Deplorable

So pretty much everyone now knows about the disastrous results of the presidential election in the US. And it was clearly a disaster: it is no coincidence that voices of reason and sense from all over the world and from all walks of life have bemoaned it, while it has been celebrated by Russia (which also admitted to both regular contact with the Pumpkin Hitler campaign and to having a hand in the Wikileaks releases aimed at harming Hillary Clinton), the KKK, white nationalists in general, rightwing extremists in Europe, authoritarian leaders like Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey, genocide-promoting Islamophobic Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and ISIS. There is a great deal that can be said about this election, from how it is yet another incentive for ditching the outdated Electoral College and instituting a direct popular vote for president (Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial if not overwhelming margin) to what it means for the future (with a utterly unqualified, completely self-centered and generally unpredictable president-elect, it’s hard to tell – but it’s almost certainly going to be bad). However, I am going to focus my attention on – or to put it more bluntly, direct my rant at – those who brought about this result, starting with the millions of people who voted for this unqualified, bigoted, narcissistic, lying buffoon.

Basically, I long ago concluded that those who support Pumpkin Hitler (we’ll call him DT for short) have to be either stupid, ignorant, what Hillary Clinton rather generously called “deplorable”, or some combination of the three. My brother argues that the ignorant have to be considered a subset of the stupid, as he doesn’t see how any intelligent person could remain ignorant of either how awful DT was or how portrayals of the two major candidates as equal bad were clearly egregious examples of false equivalence, but while I also find it hard to fathom, I’m also aware that people, even otherwise intelligent people, have an amazing capacity to tune out information that they aren’t interested in listening to, whether because of a dislike of the subject in general (“I don’t like politics”) or because it contradicts their previously held beliefs and opinions (“all politicians are bad and dishonest, so it doesn’t really matter who I choose”). Of course one could argue that this sort of willful ignorance could just as easily be called willful stupidity, and I’ll admit the line is a bit fuzzy.

I should note here that when I talk about “stupidity”, it is not necessarily aimed at people with low IQs or diminished mental capacity. As the line in Forrest Gump goes, “stupid is as stupid does”. A lot of people with low IQs were perfectly capable of identifying DT as a terrible person and HRC as a good one. On the other hand, there were evidentially also lots of people of average or even above average intelligence who managed to ignore or rationalize all the signs that DT was a bully, a bigot, a racist, a pathological liar, and a complete narcissist, that he was an incompetent businessman who engaged in highly questionable business practices, that he was utterly unqualified to be president (you could hardly do worse if you picked someone at random off the street), and that there was very good reason to think he has committed sexual assault on multiple occasions, or who accepted the widely repeated but unfounded assertions that HRC was particularly dishonest or corrupt, that her handling of her emails was not only criminal but as morally questionable as DT’s behavior, or just that both were somehow equally bad. Exit polls indicate that a substantial number of people didn’t even decide who they were going to vote for until the last few weeks before the election. A majority of these, particularly those who decided a week before (in the days just after the FBI director took the unethical and possibly illegal step of releasing a letter containing vague insinuations against HRC, but just before he came out and admitted there was no new evidence of wrongdoing on her part) ended up voting for DT. How can anyone have still remained undecided so late in the campaign, and even more incredibly how can they have picked the obviously worse choice? Were they really so low information as to not know which was better, or was it a complete lack of critical thinking ability that made them incapable of determining who was better even with all the information that was available? In either case, it is appalling that so many people, when faced with such a huge disparity in options, could pick the terrible one. Exit polls indicated that a small majority of voters thought Clinton was qualified, while about 60% (including, evidentially, many who voted for him) thought DT was unqualified. When asked what candidate quality mattered most, voters answered “can bring change” (39%), “right experience” (21%), “good judgment” (20%) and “cares about me” (15%). Voters who picked the latter three qualities voted heavily for Clinton, particularly those who picked “good judgment” (66% for HRC) and “right experience” (an overwhelming 90% for HRC). But those who picked the first option voted overwhelmingly for DT (83%). Certainly he was the candidate most likely to bring drastic change. But why on earth would these people think that the change he was likely to bring was going to be good? It is astonishing that people could be so…well, so stupid. Unless, of course, we are talking about those people who belonged to the third (or second, if we lump the stupid and ignorant together) category of DT voters.

It was clear throughout the campaign that DT was attracting unprecedented levels of support from the people that Hillary Clinton somewhat charitably referred to as “deplorables”. These included white supremacists, extreme xenophobes, virulent Islamophobes, misogynists, anti-Semites and more. But even among supporters who were not outspoken in their hate for one or more groups of “others”, there was clearly an undercurrent of racism, even if it was couched in less blatant language (“make America great again”, with the implication that it was last great back when men were men, women stayed at home, and minorities knew their place or simply weren’t around). It was no coincidence that after a campaign in which he blamed all of the US’s problems on outsiders and minority groups (e.g., the “certain groups” that he claimed would engage in vote fraud in order to steal the election), white people voted heavily in his favor. He won almost two thirds of the white male vote, a fact that makes me ashamed to be in the same demographic. He even won a more narrow majority of white women, despite all the sexist remarks he made and the credible accusations of sexual assault (supported by his own taped remarks). While among these voters it’s impossible to be sure where the stupidity and ignorance (see above) ends and the racism and bigotry begins, the latter surely played a role for a substantial number of voters, just as has been the case for right wing parties in Europe and elsewhere. An interesting side note: some time back I saw a poll of British citizens regarding their preferences in the US election. A large majority picked HRC, men by almost as much as women. The poll was also broken down by UK party, and majorities of Labour voters, Liberal Democrat voters and even Conservative voters preferred Clinton. The one group that preferred DT? Supporters of the right-wing, xenophobic, anti-Europe UKIP. It’s also surely no coincidence that DT is the preferred candidate of nearly all of the most foul-mouthed of the Internet trolls. In fact, he is practically the king of the Internet trolls. What does it say about the US that it would elect an Internet troll to lead the country?

But aside from the outright racists, white supremacists and trolls on the one hand and the subconscious or semi-conscious racism and xenophobia of many others who voted for DT, there is one other group of voters who supported him even though they were by no means ignorant of his flaws. This group was the fairly large contingent of Republicans and conservatives who claimed to strongly disapprove of DT’s character and at least some of his remarks and actions. A number of these people no doubt retained sufficient principle to follow through with their claims that they couldn’t support him and either voted for someone else, left the top of their ballots blank or didn’t vote at all. But exit polls indicate the vast majority of self-described Republicans did vote for him in the end. In fact, some who condemned him still openly declared they’d vote for him. I saw one rightwing evangelical make the argument that because DT was running on a platform of policies he supported, he’d vote for him even though he thought he was morally speaking highly flawed. In essence, these people voted for a candidate that they knew was both extremely unqualified and morally unsound just because he (mostly) supported the policies they supported. Even leaving aside the problem of whether the policies they want are good or bad, this begs the question: exactly how morally depraved would a person have to be to lose their vote? If Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot rose from the grave to run on the Republican platform, would they vote for them? Perhaps they figure that since DT appears to be rather uninterested in the actual work of governing, he will just run around making self-aggrandizing statements and grabbing the crotches of any women who aren’t able successfully avoid him and will leave it up to Pence, Gingrich, Priebus, McConnell, Ryan, Giuliani et al to run the country. Perhaps, but that still amounts to condoning both his personal flaws and his outrageous rhetoric. By voting for him despite knowing what he was, they said that they didn’t care if minorities and women were going to suffer under his administration, or that seeing a person who bullies, insults and even sexually assaults others could still get elected president set a horrible example for children. Either you condemn a character like DT or you are condoning him, and by voting for him, they picked the latter. In other words, those who voted open-eyed for a candidate they knew was terrible because he’d cut taxes, reduce regulations, ban abortion, end gay marriage, or whatever else it is they support are just as deplorable as the outright racists and bigots.

Of course, if we’re apportioning blame, there are plenty of other people who should get some share, even if they didn’t go so far as to vote for him. While we can’t blame the conspiracy theory pandering, “HRC would be worse than DT” nonsense peddling Jill Stein and her voters for the final result, we can blame them at least in part for DT’s victories in Michigan and to a lesser extent Wisconsin, as his margin of victory was less than the number of votes Stein received. Whether it was Stein voters or self-proclaimed progressives who left the top of the ballot blank, they also are responsible for DT’s election. As I noted above and many times in the past, only the frankly stupid or ignorant could possibly think that HRC was even close to as bad as DT or that a HRC presidency would be nearly the disaster for minorities, marginalized groups, or the entire country (and even the world) that a DT presidency is likely to be. As one left-wing writer obviously leery of HRC noted, sometimes the lesser of two evils is a lot less evil. This was clearly the case here, and anyone living in a swing state (or even one where the polls were within single digits) who claims to be a progressive but did not vote for HRC shares the blame for the disaster that occurred. This also applies to anyone who was registered to vote, didn’t want DT to win, and yet didn’t bother to help make sure he didn’t. Unfortunately, the left wing also has its share of stubborn-to-the-point-of-idiocy idealists and even conspiracy theorists, such as those who were constantly claiming the DNC or even Hillary herself had “rigged” the primaries (for example, the comments on articles on The Nation are often full such claims). This claim was as nonsensical as the various conspiracy theories fomented by the right, and yet it’s possible that enough left-leaning voters bought into it (through ignorance, extreme bias or lack of critical thinking skills) to refuse to vote for HRC, despite the risks – though of course the risks most of these voters face pale in comparison with the groups who will be the first targets of this administration of extremists. Incidentally, while it is possible that another Democrat would have done better, especially given the absurd slant in media coverage (see below), there is no way to be sure. Bernie Sanders would not have been able to keep his high approval ratings in a long general election campaign, and even if Michael Bloomberg had not followed through on his threat to enter the race if Sanders was the Democratic nominee, there’s no guarantee Sanders would have won, and the same is true of other possibilities, such as Joe Biden. Ironically, even when it was clear that Clinton was going to win the primary, you’d see a few Sanders supporting calling on the party to ignore the primary results and pick Sanders as the stronger candidate, which would have been a far more serious case of the DNC interfering in the process than actually occurred. Now, of course, some are back to insisting that Sanders would have won. But when the other option was someone like DT, it shouldn’t have mattered whether the Democratic nominee was Clinton, Sanders or Biden – for any progressive, Democratic-leaning, or just intelligent centrist voter the choice should have been a no-brainer. And yet here we are.

Then there was the media. There were certainly some journalists out there doing their jobs and investigating DT’s deeds and misdeeds, and even the major media entities showed flashes of real journalism. But overall the media as an institution was a colossal failure and bears a very large share of the responsibility for the results of the election. Much has already been said about all the free coverage they gave him early in the race, completely ignoring other candidates in order to cover his rallies. While you’d think that all that exposure should have helped people see how inane and lacking in substance (not to mention occasionally offensive) everything he said was, apparently not. But the media is too attached to spectacle to pay any attention to substance. And though in the general election the media did start to give him some negative attention, all sorts of incredibly scandalous things in his record were virtually ignored or at best talked about for a day or two and then forgotten. But just as big a problem was their coverage of Hillary Clinton. The media spent a vast amount of time talking about her emails and almost none talking about her proposed policies. This in spite of the fact that the emails were a complete non-issue that were hardly worth a day of coverage. But by repeating ad nauseam vague insinuations that there was something scandalous about her emails and spending relatively little time on things in DT’s record that were a hundred times worse, they created an image of false equivalence in many people’s minds, such that they really thought the two were equally bad. To be sure, it still seems that just a bit of critical thinking ability would allow voters to tell that there was a vast difference, but if the media had done its job properly it wouldn’t even have been an issue.

All this is not to ignore other factors that amounted to cheating by the other side. Voter suppression by the Republicans may well have made the difference in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida. FBI director James Comey’s interference, already mentioned above, may have swung enough last minute undecideds away from HRC to make a difference. The Russia-Wikileaks alliance helped to damage HRC as well. But none of these things, especially the latter two, should have mattered if enough voters had the basic analytical skills to distinguish between black and white, which is really what the choice amounted to. Even before the election, I said that it was disgraceful that the electoral vote wasn’t going to be 538 to 0 in HRC’s favor, and I might have added that it was a disgrace the popular vote wasn’t going to be something like 75% to 25%. Surely the number of racists, unrepentant misogynists, xenophobes and other deplorables isn’t more than a quarter of the population. But if so, what’s wrong with all those other people? In any case, this election (despite good results in some local and state-level votes) didn’t do much for my already shaky faith in humanity. Yes, I know I should be looking forward and starting to think about how to win over – or more accurately educate – some of these people, but at this point I’m not in the mood.