11-8-16 is the Left's 9/11

Matt Drudge linked Kurt Andersen's essay in Atlantic, "How America Lost Its Mind." Instead, he revealed how he has lost his mind -- in the political sense only

I write this response in the hope that Drudge links me.

Andersen's piece is from his upcoming book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History.

He co-founded Spy magazine, which is best known for first calling Donald Trump "the Short-Fingered Vulgarian."

When the magazine subsequently folded, Spy became the first to discover feuding with Donald Trump is suicidal.

Just a side note, a vulgarian is a man of the people not to be confused with vulgar language, which Trump uses. The audience for Spy were elite Manhattan-ites. Evidently, there were not enough of them interested to keep Spy alive.

So Andersen has a score to settle with President Trump, but his real ire is with the 62 million people who dared vote for President Trump. Andersen believes they are fools living in a post-truth world of paranoia about government, distrust of the media, and conspiracy theories.

However, he offers as his proof a television show that mocks conservatives.

From Andersen:

I first noticed our national lurch toward fantasy in 2004, after President George W. Bush’s political mastermind, Karl Rove, came up with the remarkable phrase reality-based community. People in “the reality-based community,” he told a reporter, “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality … That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” A year later, The Colbert Report went on the air. In the first few minutes of the first episode, Stephen Colbert, playing his right-wing-populist commentator character, performed a feature called “The Word.” His first selection: truthiness. “Now, I’m sure some of the ‘word police,’ the ‘wordinistas’ over at Webster’s, are gonna say, ‘Hey, that’s not a word!’ Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true. Or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. I don’t trust books—they’re all fact, no heart … Face it, folks, we are a divided nation … divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart … Because that’s where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen—the gut.”

But the audience for that show was not conservatives.

It was self-satisfied and smug liberals.

Colbert did not influence conservatives with his nonsense.

He was as conservative as Al Jolson was black.

Colbert created an imaginary world in which conservatives are proudly illiterate and ignorant. In so doing, he put liberals at ease. He fed their giant ego monkey.

A dozen years later, Colbert is King of Late Night.

Be careful of what you wish for, because what drives his popularity are millions of liberals who cannot accept that Trump is president.

They turn to MSNBC and CNN and the late night shows for confirmation that President Trump is failing.

While Andersen's piece mocked conspiracy theories from 15 to 50 years ago, he ignored the current kook conspiracy that Trump is in cahoots with Putin who rigged the election because that is the only explanation that Marxists will accept for Hillary's debilitating and humiliating loss to a rookie candidate who spent half as much money.

Andersen truly believes that people who disagree with him are conspiratorial.

He wrote:

How widespread is this promiscuous devotion to the untrue? How many Americans now inhabit alternate realities? Any given survey of beliefs is only a sketch of what people in general really think. But reams of survey research from the past 20 years reveal a rough, useful census of American credulity and delusion. By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world.” More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God—not a vague force or universal spirit or higher power, but some guy. A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it’s a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists. A third believe that our earliest ancestors were humans just like us; that the government has, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, hidden evidence of natural cancer cures; that extraterrestrials have visited or are visiting Earth. Almost a quarter believe that vaccines cause autism, and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2016. A quarter believe that our previous president maybe or definitely was (or is?) the anti-Christ. According to a survey by Public Policy Polling, 15 percent believe that the “media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals,” and another 15 percent think that’s possible. A quarter of Americans believe in witches. Remarkably, the same fraction, or maybe less, believes that the Bible consists mainly of legends and fables—the same proportion that believes U.S. officials were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

He defined himself by what he sees as imaginary: God.

Andersen denied the Book of Genesis, that there are angels and demons in the world, that God is involved in the lives of people.

Sad.

And liberal.

He defended the Establishment:

The word mainstream has recently become a pejorative, shorthand for bias, lies, oppression by the elites. Yet the institutions and forces that once kept us from indulging the flagrantly untrue or absurd—media, academia, government, corporate America, professional associations, respectable opinion in the aggregate—have enabled and encouraged every species of fantasy over the past few decades.

He believes in the Divine Right of Elitists to rule.

Why not? He went to Harvard. He catered to the upper crust throughout his lengthy career as a magazine writer and editor.

Sure. It makes sense from his point of view. I am not trashing him because he lives in a world where people accept at face value what authorities say. I am just pointing it out.

For example, scientists say the world is burning up because of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and he believes it. End of discussion.

Abortion is a right. End of discussion. Affirmative action is a right. End of discussion. Health care is a right. End of discussion. Immigration is a right. End of discussion.

Anything a liberal says is right. End of discussion.

We should never discuss anything with them because they are right. And because the facts are always on their side, any discussion not only is unnecessary but post-truth.

Liberals know this is untrue because Stephen Colbert mocked it as truthiness.

You can see why people with great education credentials and all these always right facts on their side were shocked on November 8, 2016, when the people in 30 states (and Maine's second congressional district) rose and elected that Short-Fingered Vulgarian president.

How can that be?

All the polls said he would lose.

It must be the Russians. Or Jim Comey. Or Fake News. Or something in the water.

The elitists have nine months later still have not come to grips with the election.

They never will.

After reading Kurt Andersen's piece, I am convinced that 11-8-16  is the Left's 9/11.

They will never get over it.

They will never get over it, even if they impeach, imprison, and humiliate Donald John Trump -- burn all his buildings, plow them, and salt the land -- and impoverish his children and grandchildren.

11-8-16 will haunt them all the rest of the days of their lives.

It devastated them.

Andersen ended his piece with a half-hearted and veiled call to rescind the First Amendment:

We need to adopt new protocols for information-media hygiene. Would you feed your kids a half-eaten casserole a stranger handed you on the bus, or give them medicine you got from some lady at the gym?

And fight the good fight in the public sphere. One main task, of course, is to contain the worst tendencies of Trumpism, and cut off its political-economic fuel supply, so that fantasy and lies don’t turn it into something much worse than just nasty, oafish, reality-show pseudo-conservatism. Progress is not inevitable, but it’s not impossible, either.

Did that hurt your feelings?

It did not hurt mine.

Made me feel pretty happy and today is a topdown day.

I wish Andersen luck with his book because I am a nice man.

Besides, I am enjoying watching the left lose its mind over an election. And that really is "How America Lost Its Mind."

Well, how the 48% who voted for Hillary lost theirs.

***

Please enjoy my books on how the press bungled the 2016 election.




Caution: Readers occasionally may laugh out loud at the media as they read this account of Trump's election.

It is available on Kindle, and in paperback.

Caution: Readers occasionally may laugh out loud at the media as they read this account of Trump's nomination.

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