If you are a racist-sexist-homophobe like me you are struggling to figure out the Democrats. Really? They think they can get elected "defunding" the police? Really? They can call riot and arson a "fiery protest?" Really? They think they can win elections by insulting non-liberal whites as "white supremacists?"
I find myself asking myself: what planet are they living on?
The answer, though, is simple. They are living in their liberal bubble.
And everyone lives in a cultural bubble.
And in my gentry liberal neighborhood there are no Trump signs, not one.
- There are Black Lives Matter yardsigns.
- There are hand-drawn Black Lives Matter signs.
- There are #WeBelieve signs, mark one and mark two.
- There are Hate Has No Home Here signs.
- There are Be The One signs.
- There are Biden 2020 signs.
- Oh, and there is a Bye Don sign. Get it?
There is one, very modest, house with a Thin Blue Line flag.
This morning I went by a house with a hand-lettered "I Can't Breathe" sign. That, I assume, is predicated on the notion that George Floyd was being prevented from breathing when he was being restrained while police were waiting for the Medic One to arrive. Only, his autopsy established that his lungs weighed twice the normal, because of the weight of foaming water, probably due to Fentanyl.
One of the things that has struck me during the recent George Floyd era is the bullshit that police have to put up with from Black men that they stop and interview. Their arrestees seem to be expert in a just-short-of-active resistance to arrest.
And then, a lot of the time, the arrestee is strung out on drugs.
If I were a cop, it would drive me crazy.
But, as we know, if the police don't treat their Black arrestees with the utmost patience and courtesy they will get the book thrown at them.
Of course, I live in my bubble. But there is a difference between my bubble and the liberal bubble.
I always know what is going down in the liberal bubble, because the liberal bubble is the default cultural norm. It's what you get in school. It's what you get on TV. It's what you get from The New York Times.
When you are a racist-sexist-homophobe like me you have to know what is going on in liberal land. Just like you have to pay attention to the weather forecast.
But you can still hope.
And what I hope is that the present liberal craziness is like the liberal craziness of the Sixties, when liberals thought that they were riding a cultural revolution that was going to bury the horrid Fifties middle-class suburban conformism forever.
Only the American people elected Richard Nixon, twice. In 1972 Nixon won with a 61% to 38% of the popular vote.
As I say, it took until 1992 for Democrats to say, No, we've changed, we are New Democrats now. Then they got elected and immediately proposed to nationalize healthcare. So Americans elected the first Republican Congress in 40 years. Then the Democrats got moderate, for a season.
Is history repeating itself? No, of course not. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
Ever since the Obama election in 2008 Democrats have started to believe that this time is the time when we will transform society with politics and activism and programs and peaceful protests.
Are they right?
We Don't Know.
So we will have to wait until election night to find out.
My guess is that on election night my gentry liberal neighbors will discover that they have been living in a bubble, and that ordinary Commoner Americans will vote for law and order.
And then, as seems to happen whenever a Republican wins a presidential election, all across the nation therapists will be discovering a new post-election stress disorder.
But I could be wrong.
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