pyesetz | People are still really mad about the US election (Reply)

Wil Wheaton is depressed. His preferred candidate did not win the election. That's understandable. The election told him things he didn't want to know about the people of the country he lives in, so now he is caught in a whirlpool of lies he tells himself that make him feel bad while avoiding the real issues. Having studied his affliction, he is only too aware that the things he says to himself are not true (such as the climate of Los Angeles, which actually gets an average of 35 rainy days each year) but his self-knowledge that he is in a whirlpool of his own making does not cause the waters to recede. There are things I could say to him, but they would not make him feel better, so I'll say them here instead.

Star Trek: The Original Series was a fantasy. It wasn’t *really* an egalitarian paradise, it just *said* it was. The Federation *said* it came in peace, but Captain Kirk & crew were constantly starting wars with planets whose only real crime was disagreeing with them about the proper philosophy of government. The Federation were a bunch of self-righteous bullies, much like the Americans of the 1960’s and the Hillary-voters of today. Sometimes it seemed the only reason the Federation fought with the Klingon Empire was because they were in constant need of some enemy to fight in order to justify their militaristic society; this also seemed to be Hillary’s only reason for picking a fight with Russia.

American presidential elections are morality plays: the lesser-evil candidate wins. The candidates spend the entire election lying about everything, trying to create the impression that they are evil enough to deserve mega-donations yet somehow good enough to deserve votes. You can’t believe a word that either of them says about anything. If you allow yourself to believe the hype, you’ll get a post-election depression even if your preferred candidate wins. I remember when Barack Obama won, and started doing stuff that did not match his campaign rhetoric. The phrase “hyperdimensional chess” was briefly popular among Democrats. You see, Obama must be playing a game in which he pretends to be evil in order to better position himself for doing good things later. But “later” never came and eventually people realized that Obama is just another corrupt politician like all the others. I like to think that Barack does actually *want* to do good (such as the ACA), but most of the time he just can’t because of the constant overriding need to suck up to Wall St in order to have any ability to get anything at all done. The presidency does not have as much independence of action as many people like to think. Our current president is Black but still life sucks for ordinary Black Americans; the president-elect is a White supremacist but I expect that life will continue to suck for ordinary Whites (though less than Blacks). We are in year 16 of what will probably be a 20-year global economic recession and there isn’t much that a president can do about that.

I found Hillary’s campaign rhetoric to be extremely offensive. Donald’s misogyny makes him completely unfit for the presidency, but Bill Clinton’s very similar misogyny was — shut up, don’t talk about my husband! Hillary’s actions in Ukraine and Syria probably amounted to war crimes, but — Shut Up! Hillary has NEVER done ANYTHING wrong EVER!!! Hillary’s adamant refusal to secure her email server showed appallingly bad judgment and probably should result in her being banned from having a security clearance — SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP DONALD IS A POOPY HEAD THAT’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. But you can’t win an election by telling people to shut up all the time.