This originally appeared on my old blog in 2016 as Fist Bump the Trump. I was amused to learn that Jay-Z (however you spell that) referred to Donald Trump as a superbug during the Grammy Awards with potentially the lowest ratings of all time, so I thought I'd publish this here and see how my angry nerd rants of guerilla ontology perform on Steemit.

First Bump the Trump

I must confess that I did not follow the 2016 United States Presidential Election as it unfolded, because I have no skin in this game. I only became interested when I saw the crocodile tears on Facebook.

What fascinated me more was that the Trump supporters came out of the closet for the first time to voice their opinions. Virtually none of these Trump supporters espoused racist, misogynistic or any of those kind of deplorable views. Most of them were just pointing fingers at the know-it-all Clinton supporters.

What characterised this election?

Rather than enlightened liberals waging a culture war with backward rednecks and hayseeds, three things characterised this election for me:

1. Shared hubris: Our candidate is bad, but the other candidate is even worse. Both parties seemed to espouse this sentiment.
2. Joe Sixpack's Revenge: Based on voter turnout and based on for whom the largest voting group voted, this election was the revenge of the average American. That is average American by sheer number. Nobody bothered to market themselves to this segment. Everyone seemed to be either puffing up themselves, or pretending to stick up for some minority segment on their behalf and for their own good.
3. Backlash against the Social Justice Warriors (SJW). This was just a knee-jerk backlash against the elitism of college educated Stepford Students, who are educated in Sangoma sciences, and yet are convinced that they are qualified by virtue of that fact to make decisions that affect the lives of ordinary people.

Why am I happy that Donald Trump won?

I am one of those people who are happy that Donald Trump won. Or rather, I am happy that Hillary Clinton lost. Given the characteristics above, I am horrified by both candidates, but I do think Clinton is the worse candidate of the two. I am happy that Joe Sixpack is sticking up for himself, but mostly, I am overjoyed because Trump's victory represents a backlash against the politically correct SJW culture.

Why did Trump win?

Presumably, an election should revolve around policies and not around the candidates or the adequacy of their respective cheerleaders. Wikipedia has a great summary of the policies of both candidates. When one starts there, as I have, a few things become clear:

• Trump didn't have any real policies. He had a few choice controversial statements, but didn't have any real policies in place. He was open to suggestions in a Populist manner - something he repeated in his acceptance speech.
• Hillary had an answer and a final solution for everything. The implication is that Hillary is a package deal. You either had to trust her and accept her entire package, or you were somehow incapable of making choices for yourself and you were worthy of being treated like a leper.

The problem is that Hillary's campaign relied on trust. Americans did not trust her, given the Wikileaks revelations, her ties to bankers, the foreign money in her pockets and her blatant lies.

It turns out it is a naive assumption to presume that policies have any bearing on an election. These policies are just empty campaign promises, so it's evidently about the slogans.

Trump's catch phrase, like Obama's catch phrase before him, was short and sweet and simple and it is something people believe in. Everyone wanted change when they voted for Obama, but they did not see that change materialise. Now, everyone wants to make America great again.

What was Hillary's slogan again? I am playing the woman card, just deal me in.

Did Trump really win or did Clinton lose?

Trump's victory has been labelled a Whitelash (White backlash), but that labelling in itself is part of the Progressive strategy. I think it was more of a backlash against this Progressive strategy of labelling everyone and everything, thereby placing them in neat, plausible and bent out of shape boxes.

Hillary labelled everyone, including herself (Progressive). The comments from Trump fans I saw were especially critical of this divisive strategy.

What is the Progressive Strategy?

"Democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is ever a prey to shibboleths" ~ H. L. Mencken.

A shibboleth is a stylistic variation in words or customs used to differentiate between in-groups and out-groups. The Progressive strategy is to distinguish between in-groups and out-groups, and then to cast an indisputable value judgement on the out-group. In short, the Progressive strategy is to create a division between us and them.

Of Progressive Basket Cases

The in-group self-identifies as Progressive. Omnipotent and politically correct. There are only two fruit in the Progressive basket, freshly plucked from the garden in paradise: Sanctimony and unaccountability.

"The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors— psychology, sociology, women's studies— to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers" ~ P.J. O'Rourke.

How do you get initiated into the in-group? You can achieve piety by accepting fatalism in the product of society sense. Next, you can become canonised when you denounce bad things like income inequality or just inequality in general. Finally, you may receive enlightenment when you cast judgement on those lesser beings who belong to the out-group.

How can you come to accept fatalism? Firstly, by making excuses for yourself, then by making excuses for others. You, yourself? A product of privilege. The invisible hand of fate dropped you in the lap of luxury and now stirs the pot with generous helpings of Middle-Class Guilt.

The Deplorable Fruit Basket of Deplorables (did I mention deplorable?)

They, themselves? Those others over there? The inevitable outcome of not having had the same privileged background. We must save them. If we're all products of society, then Trump voters must be a result of being misinformed by post-truth news on Facebook. Those poor Trump voters just don't know any better, but instead of engaging with the lepers to examine the sinners, we jump straight to diagnosis. Truly, they are the inevitable outcome of being misinformed. We can fix them by doctoring the Facebook news feed algorithm to get rid of fake news until they recognise us as their Messiahs.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters are more likely to be informed by South Park and 4Chan than by Big Media. Social media is just a trolling playground - nobody takes news seriously in this post-truth age, and nobody should. The REAL news, after all, got all the polls wrong.

It seems that these Alt-Right Deplorables just wanted to have their voices heard. Paradoxically, they just wanted a safe space to protect them from those safe space missionaries.

Denounce! Repent! The end is nigh!

How do the Progressives denounce bad things? They own the media. Remember, they themselves are mere products of Manufactured Consent thanks to Big Media. They have internalised this Big Media message. They dwell barren, in self-imposed echo chambers on social media resulting from the sacraments of unfriending, un-following and banishing those with dissenting views.

Speaking of banishment, nothing drives home a good banishing like smear campaigns against out-groups. The Big Liberal Media kept repeating their deplorable candidate's name in conjunction with one or more of the deplorables. The missionaries opportunistically handed remaining members of the outgroup a Basket of Deplorables whenever they could by checking their privilege and imposing the self-flaggelation of forcing them to check their own privilege. You don't want to check or even admit your privilege? Must be something wrong with you. You refuse to accept salvation. You refuse to repent. You deserve to burn in hell, you brought it upon yourself.

Deplorables upon Deplorables

The out-group consists of the Basket of Deplorables: Sexist, racist, fascist, homophobic and a few other bad apples I may have missed. Anything that's not Progressive enough. How do you get initiated into the out-group? You trigger someone. Anyone. Over anything.

Somehow this backfired. These ridiculous standards inadvertently established an extremely low bar for any potential opposition candidate. Certainly, Clinton had a great package deal, but due to this Social Justice Warrior activism, everyone lived in fear. In the Progressive mindset, the worst thing that could happen to a person is to be labelled as one of the deplorables. This means getting banished from the inner sanctum's delicious Kool-Aid.

If the shoe fits, it won't bother you. If it doesn't fit, it would bother you, but then you're already shunned and you're already lumped with the rest of the deplorables. Crying wolf happened so often that it lost its shock value. This backfired so spectacularly that #basketofdeplorables was trending on Twitter in an ironically re-appropriated way. Instead of an effective shaming symbol, it became a badge of honour.

After this weapon of mass media hysteria didn't fend off the infection, Trump was a superbug. He could just wing it willy-nilly, hapless, incompetent, blundering and barely intelligible, but at least he appeared tolerant by comparison.