Leave Malone Alone

In the current climate of non-stop opinion projection in the age of social media prosumers, brilliant but deadpan fashion models/intellectuals and whatever category this fucking asshole falls into, it’s hard to stake a claim as a professional critic in any facet of pop culture. It really doesn’t seem that long ago when “Everyone’s a critic!” was the cliched refrain of the creative types, before they all drowned a digital flood of hyper-productive amateur art fans. It seems so far away now, but critics used to be able to write critically acclaimed, Pulitzer award winning books, which is funny, because it implies anybody still reads anything.

And then one day, the internet happened, and with it came the slaughter of the musical critics- criticism was so abundant that people got rich by aggregating it to save people time, constantly fueled by the widely available everyperson, spouting opinions about things they barely understand. Everyone’s still a critic; it’s just that now they all have the means to send half baked, grammatically incoherent interpretations of anything to the far corners of the fucking globe, using only two thumbs and last year’s sauce-stained iPhone. Why else would we have Yelp?

So now, the self-described SERIOUS CRITICS have to climb to higher ground to plant their flag above the vox populi, and that apparently means they can’t just criticize the art- it means the only way forward is to haphazardly attach any artist they don’t particularly care for to whatever understanding of art their least favorite generation allegedly has, while appearing as disgusted as possible about the entire thing, the entire time. You can’t just write an article destroying an artists work anymore- where’s the ad money in that? You have to create Frankensteins strawman, and then use a list of 20 dollar words on the end of a crowbar to bash its fucking brains in.

And that’s when we get shit like this- here’s aWashington Post article that tries to decimate not just rapper Post Malone, or his fanbase, but all of their place in the current musical zeigeist. Short version:  Jeff Weiss, a 53 year old man who looks like everyone’s drunken high school vice principle, uses his expertise to attempt to dissect the current genre. This man was paid to say that rap music made by a white 23 year old with face tattoos is “meaningless”, “vacant,” and “the losing difference between appropriation and outright theft”. I bet he was listening to the Chariots of Fire theme when he shat this out.

And Malone isn’t the only one that these blowhards with delusions of enlightenment are trying to put against the wall- here’s Pitchfork using more than a thousand wordsto bitch and moan about how Greta Van Fleet doesn’t emulate Led Zeppelin to the exact standards of Led Zeppelin. (To be fair, an article that surmised every time Pitchfork looked down their noses down at modern music would take lifetimes to read.) And here’s MTV wondering if Lil Yachty is destroying hip hop, diligently writing out the same tired-ass story that people my age have been hearing since Jim Carrey did the same bit, only better, with VanillaIce.

Simply put: Fuck all of this. It’s nothing but the latest iteration of condescending drivel from over-paid ass hats. It’s the self righteous ranting of condescending snobs against the musical taste of 15 year olds. It’s the dull hum made by a bunch of geriatrics in unison- simultaneously using one hand to masturbate to the pornography of narcissism, and using the other to shake a fist and scream “GET OFF MY LAWN” when nobody’s within 100 feet of the house.

You’ve read the headline, friends. You know what’s coming next. To these self important shitbags, I say this: It’s time to give this a rest. Stop it. Stop bitching about the symbolic meaning behind the popularity of modern artists, and fuck right off.

And before you jump into the comments section and light me up, just hear me out for a second, because eviscerating music that’s definitely popular but not particularly intellectual isn’t a new phenomenon. This has happened quite a few times before, and – bear with me - it might be time for everyone to take a second and a deep breath, and evaluate if we really need to do this shit yet again.

Let me prove it. Allow me to present exhibit A: Limp fucking Bizkit.

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” - William Faulkner

Before they were the punching bags of music critics in the late oughts and early 2010s, before they abandoned by their fans and before they hilariously tried to resurrect their careers by covering The Who, a group of rock-rapping Floridian assholes named Limp Bizkit ran shit. Their first album was the result of a literal car crash- their eccentric and under-rated guitarist, Wes Borland, had recently quit the band because he absolutely hated frontman singer/rapper Fred Durst (something that apparently never changed,) but was convinced to rejoin the band after they wrecked their touring van driving to Los Angeles. 

After the girlfriend of producer Ross Robinson (Korn, At The Drive In, Glassjaw) heard their 3 song demo, she talked Robinson into giving it a listen, and he began working with them on their debut album.

For those too young or who, like me, might have repressed the memories, 3 Dollar Bill, Y’all$, (named after part of a Floridian homophobic slur and a denotation of southern twang, and for some reason a fucking dollar sign) reached #22 on the U.S. charts. The album contained a goofy, why-are-you-screaming cover of George Martin’s “Faith” and a bunch of other songs that sounded exactly fucking like it- including a song called “Counterfeit”, a diss track aimed at a collection of bands that sprouted up in L.B.’s hometown of Jacksonville that were allegedly stealing their sound.

(Two things worth noting: 1. Limp Bizkit is named after something I’m not going to describe in this post but if you’re somehow not sure and you have the stomach for it, you can read about here and 2. their album names, uh, didn’t get much better.)

So why bring up this band, and this embarrassing time in the lives of most men my age? Because even if the aforementioned artists that the diaper fillers won’t shut up about might not have any staying power, Post Malone, Limp Bizkit, Lil Yachty, and whoever is next in this firing squad have some things in common: 

1. They are objectively terrible 

2. They either have or will make all of the money

3. high handed, misguided fuckwads have been spewing out tbeta versions of the same bullshit that Post Malone and the rest get thrown at them since long before whining on the internet was a thing.

Does their music merit negative criticism? Maybe. Sure. I’m not going to spend any time trying to tell people that Significant Other is a timeless classic that holds up, because that’s not the point.

The point is that these artists’ respective 15 minutes of fame isn’t just meaningful, but in many cases, a revelation for their respective audiences.

In towns like the one I grew up in, all we had was the radio, and maybe MTV if it was on the cable channel package your parents paid for. Limp Bizkit’s seemingly infinite popularity existed well before streaming services and YouTube- if you didn’t get your music from what was available at the time, or your older siblings (of which I had none) then you had only a tangential idea of what kind of music was available. It wasn’t like kickass music wasn’t out there, there was simply no way for kids like us to even know what to look for.

Not like today- If you were to tell 13 year old me that one day he’d be able to hear a never-ending stream of songs that sound like his favorite bands just by clicking a button, you would have blown that kids fragile mind. (Although, if we’re being honest, that particular kid wasn’t exactly a genius. More likely than not, he would probably be wearing this T-shirt.)
For many people in that scenario, Limp Bizkit helped bridge the gap. Countless angry 12 year olds and drunk twenty somethings from the south heard Method Man for the first time on Limp Bizkit's  idiotic 1999 single “N 2 Gether Now”- and from there, found out about Wu Tang- I was right there. Most of us gave up on the Bizkit in high school, but the angry suburbanite snot-noses like I was have been listening to everything from Kool G Rap to Logic ever since.

And had it not been for those frantic, chainsaw advocating dipshits, screaming awkwardly in tilted hats and colored contact lenses, I might have never tried to find a lot of the music I love today.

No musician, regardless of quality, exists in a vacuum, born free from influences. And the influences get advertised, one way or the other. Post Malone, a 23 year old moron, will often cover Nirvana at his concerts to people born 15 years after the death of Kurt Cobain. Lil Yachty, for all of his auto-tuned, brain dead droning, gathers cultural relevance (if for no other reason) by constantly feuding with musicians in similar genres of older schools- everyone from Joe Budden to Ice T have bitched about his place in hip hop- and even if TMZ headlines might be the first time his fanbase of teenage girls have ever heard those names, they're tangentially learning about music the same way that we did when we were their age. When people connect with the end result of a stream of influences, as stupid as that blossom could possibly be, they’ll follow the influential roots backwards to the sources. So fuck their music, and maybe fuck them, period, but their legacy of exposure is only able to help

And this has been happening forever. Let me present Exhibit B. The fucking Monkees.

The Monkees were a band created for no other reason than to star in a TV show in the 1960’s. Their first episode came in 1965, and then their careers, technically speaking, fucking exploded. During 1966-67, they sold more records than the Rolling Stones and the Beatles fucking combined. They influenced countless artists, and though there were reasonable critiques about how they essentially ripped off the Beatles, younger fans who didn’t know the names Lennon or Ringo were given a means to find out about them, and some of the best music ever written, and then find what influenced that- Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly. And it all stemmed from a shitball TV show created for snot nosed children of the 60’s.

But time is a flat circle, Rustin- and just like today, there were the haughty ass-bags of yesteryear, queasy with indignant rage, ready to decry any movement that didn’t appeal to their caviar sensibilities as a sign of the goddamn apocalypse. While there weren’t enough amateur critics to elevate the ire of professional critics to hate the fans, there were plenty willing to disdain the Monkees. The London Sunday Mirror ran an article calling them "A Disgrace to the Pop World.” They are blackballed as of this writing by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because of a 50 year old pissing match with one of the founders ofRolling Stone. You can set a clock to it. If the kids like it, and the elderly first heard their influences, then some arrogant putz will heave himself off his hemorrhoid donut to hide his nostalgia bias behind fake objectivity and gratuitous thesaurus use. 

In conclusion- Listen, critics. This vain, cynical, never-ending circle-jerk (or, if you prefer, this vain, cynical, never-ending game of Limp Biscuit) is not helping anybody. Fucking stop it. If people like something, it's not for you to tell them it's a symptom of a cultural disease, because even if we were going to ignore how bad music can turn people on to great music, it really wasn't that far back that you and your parents were doing the exact same shit. In the words of Mother Theresa, "shut those malfunctioning testicle washers you call your mouths, you judgemental tools."

And if it has to go somewhere, then trust me when I say that there are people in this world that deserve your rage and scorn, and I promise you, most of them don't have any facial tattoos or red dreadlocks.

That Time I Thought I Was Going to Get Shot In The Face

I’m floating around the South Congress side of Downtown Austin, knocking out errands between double shifts. The lunch rush was over an hour faster than it should have been, so now I have three hours to kill- no point in going home for an hour just to come back, eat, and re-pay to park. Time to get some shit done. The first one is easy- a 10 minute stop at the closest Wells Fargo branch.  The second is to buy a wallet, because I just ran out of those.

Buying a wallet is an objectively weird thing to have to do. Simply put, you’re spending cash on a tool that holds your cash. In a perfect world, we won’t ever need more than one of them; but just like healthcare, duct tape or protection money, it’s something we all have to pony up for every once in a while.

That’s probably why I get a strange reaction when I ask about wallets at a Patagonia near 2^nd Street. Surprisingly, I can actually form the words, but unsurprisingly, they don’t sound right. “I, um, need to buy a wallet?” More of a question than a statement. Driving home, much later, I actually practice saying “Show me where your wallets are, please.” Nobody wants to need a wallet. Doesn’t feel right.

The nice guy at the register (a stubbled, plaid shirted hipster caricature- beanie, rim glasses, the whole shebang) says “um...” like some kind of stumped replicant. His eyes roll up and to the right, with one eye squinting. Thinking. When he finally remembers, it’s like he just remembered the name of something that had been bothering him all day. I’m pretty sure that when it took me and my friends five minutes to remember the name of the Green Power Ranger (Tommy, not Jason) we probably had the exact same expression.

I’m not sure why it took him so long- the wallets are right at the corner of the register. These are apparently made with ultra high quality leather, featuring unobtrusive coin storage, and easy access for “4-13+” cards. There are two different places to put bills, and one allows you to hide them by folding them under a flap, like a kind of manila folder inside of a wallet. The first one I pick up has a brown exterior and a blue inside. I dig it. I like the idea of having vanity money and hidden money. The blue leather interior matches my Megaman tattoo.

Before the friendly Portlandia extra rings me up, I remember I need new sunglasses. A couple weeks back, I had cracked mine. A friend bought them for me over the summer- She knew I had a fat head, proportional to my tree-trunk torso (unlike my stick arms) and remembered me when she found wayfarers big enough to keep me from getting a headache after wearing them for half an hour. They lasted forever, relatively speaking. They survived river floats and hiking trips and being dropped on rocks from six feet in the air.

It was a dropped piece of silverware that finally did them in. I had them in my hoodie pocket while I was setting my store’s dining room floor one morning, and bent to pick up a fork I dropped. As soon as I heard the crack, I knew what had happened. Now, the right lens will never properly stay in place.

When I ask him, my PBR-swilling salesperson sure as hell knows where the sunglasses are. “We only have one kind- they’re made from recycled fishing nets, SUPER high quality.” He mentions something about the lenses, made in America, with a design that keeps them from breaking under even the most insane conditions. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m pretty clumsy, sometimes.”

It’s the wee hours of a weeknight, and I’m just getting done with a good shift- I made good money and didn’t break much of a sweat. I don’t have to work until late the next day, so I figure I can spare a couple of hours and a few dollars at my favorite local. 

It feels more like a hostel than a bar sometimes- there’s a dark, dirty interior, with a little game area I don’t spend much time around and a patio that’s always full of loud, drunk conversations between tired people, as they talk about politics or pornography or their terrible bosses. It’s a dive, but it’s my dive.

If somebody is checking ID's at the bar, I just give him a fist bump. I find a seat at the bar, and usually without even a word, there’s a beer in front of me.

By the time I go to sleep tonight, I’ll need a new wallet.

I’m not the kind of person who gets hammered as quick as they can- not anymore. While I’m here, I like to read comics on my phone, listen to whatever rock music blasts out of the jukebox, and talk shop with the staff. Nine times out of ten, there’s somebody there I know. Tonight, it’s a friend, another waiter, somebody I’ve worked with before. She’s possibly drunk, most likely furious, and almost definitely looks like all she needs in this world is somebody to talk to. Guess I’m not reading the new Moon Knight collection tonight. Dr. Sam is in.

She doesn’t feel like anyone cares; she feels like she only gives, because she cares about people, but when she needs somebody (like today, when she got out of the ER for something “not serious”) and needed a ride. Nobody was around, and/or nobody could help. She’s moving to a college town 20 miles south of here, but she’s about one bad hour away from moving to Costa Rica. When I ask her, she tells me her ideal space in life is to be a massage therapist, living in a treehouse in Costa Rica, somewhere she doesn’t need to worry about the bullshit.

Before I leave, I make sure to give her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t know what’s really going on,” I say. “But I think you’re going to be fine.” She beams. I pay my tab; it’s 11 dollars- I tip five and I go home.

When I turn right into the apartment complex, there’s somebody pulling out. The car’s got one person in the front seat, and somebody in the back seat, but nobody in the passenger seat.

This should have told me something.

They’re halfway out of the parking space, and driver’s logic dictates that the person who’s spent the most energy getting into the situation we’re in should be the first to find their way out- but they’re not going anywhere. Polite. I pull around, park, get out, and start walking to my apartment. That same car pulls around, parks a little ways down from me. The guy in the back gets out, and walks towards me. Now, I understand that this is Texas, and that anything under 65 degrees is the coldest day of everyone’s life, but his jacket still looks bigger than it needs to be. He has blue jeans that roll down to bright white shoes. I say, “Can I help you?”

He doesn’t say anything. For half a second, I think he’s staying quiet because he has tape over his mouth. Nope. Just a bandana. He pulls out a semi automatic pistol- silver frame with a black slide. He cocks it, and then points it at me. I say, “Oh.”

These “SUPER HIGH QUALITY” sunglasses look like shit. I don’t know if the tire-tread rubber material on the bridge and bars is a design choice, or some kind of inevitable aftermath of making sunglasses from fishnets, but I can’t wait to have the conversation with whoever I’m trying to impress with them-

“Aw, c’mon baby! sure, it looks like an ATV ran over my face, but these things were made out of recycled fish nets! Well, of course they’re still vegan!”

How much are these fucking things worth, anyway?  I ask, in nicer terms.

“Uh, 130.” The wallet is 90. Then, he looks down. He knows what happens next. He probably knew as soon as he saw me that this was above my level. My hair is done, my nails are trimmed, my hands are clean, but I still look disheveled- I’m currently rocking a black batman shirt that isn’t large enough to cover the white undershirt I’ll wear later under a restaurant uniform.

This guy sees the kind of people who randomly have 90 dollars to spend on a wallet, and I’m pretty sure I don’t look like them. It’s gotta be the shoes. The shoes are a dead giveaway. They’re only meant to pass for dress shoes on only the most half-assed inspection. I like them because they’re comfortable, and because it doesn't really matter: Considering what my old work shoes looked like by the time I was done with them (destroyed), nobody really seems to care about what my shoes look like. 

That is, unless I stumble into their store, looking like I don’t know how to shop, because the last time I needed what I need, I didn’t have a high school diploma yet.

“Eh… I’m good,” I say. He gets it. No point in spending all of your money on something that holds your money. “Have a nice day and Merry Christmas,” he says. I try to reply the same way but all that comes out is a muffled misfire of consonants, and then “Christmas- you too.”

I carefully put on my broken sunglasses, making sure the lens doesn’t slip out, and buy a wallet next door. It’s discounted, 24.95. Black. Plenty of card storage, but nowhere to put the coins. It’ll do. It’s super stiff, and it doesn’t feel right in my pocket. Probably won’t for a while. I like the feel, but I need a second opinion. The nice lady behind the register thinks it’s cool- “I like how the part you put the ID in isn’t a separate piece.” I remember- my old wallet had one of those pieces; a transparent part that held an ID, but it was just an insert into a wallet. I threw it away, or lost it, or something- a decade ago probably. This isn’t just sewn on, it’s a full-blown feature. I wonder how you clean it?

When I get my ID, supposedly in 3-5 weeks, I’ll have to try it out. I hand my voice of reassurance my new temporary debit card, and when prompted, I enter the same pin I had for my last one- hope it’s the same. At least something feels the same.

Right now, I only have a temporary license- you might have had one before. It has all of my information, but it doesn’t look real. There’s a black and white picture and a couple of signatures, printed on regular old printer paper. Give me a laptop and 10 minutes, and I could make the same thing in Microsoft Paint.

It’s valid, but you can’t do much with it. Not just because it’s basically a piece of paper, but because it’s not convenient to take it anywhere. I folded it to keep it as small as possible, to where you can only see the relevant information, without all of the extra bullshit, like receipt numbers and the cost of replacement. It’s stapled to keep it in place. It still doesn’t fit into my wallet, so when I get back to my car, parked in the garage under my workplace, I put it and the pamphlet from Victim’s Services (which has my case number written on it) in the glove box.

I take out the money my Mom gave me- an early Christmas present- and my temporary debit card and put it in the new wallet. Wallet goes in the back pocket. It still feels weird. I pull it out, then put it back in. Yeah, feels weird. “Nothing I won’t get used to,” I say out loud, probably just to myself.

I have a few hours to kill before the second half of my double shift, and it’s Thursday. That means only one thing- pot roast. I walk West, but not before reaching in my pocket to check my phone, make sure I have time. 

I can’t find my phone, and I panic- I check my pockets, and I wonder if I’m going to have another panic attack. But then, I relax. I just forget that I no longer have a phone. The lens falls out of my sunglasses. I pick it up, then ask the guy smoking by a trash can what time it is. He’s apprehensive- it’s hard to blame him. He’s currently being approached by a hairy guy with a batman shirt over a much larger white undershirt, wearing sunglasses with a lens missing, who might be having a panic attack and isn’t sure what time it is.

He’s nice. He lets me know that I have two hours until I’m back on, more than enough time. He watches me throw away the sunglasses. He’s smoking, so now I have to, and he offers me a light. I say “I’m good.” He says “Merry Christmas.” I stumble and say “Christmas- you too” and curse under my breath.

The guy with the gun’s English isn’t spectacular, but he’s definitely got a few phrases down. When he says “give me your shit,” I barely detect an accent. I very, very slowly grab my wallet, my phone, my keys, and half a pack of cigarettes. As soon as they hit the ground, I hear “You got other stuff? You got other stuff?” The gun’s pointed at my abdomen, held with one hand. I’m guessing this guy is left handed. I’m trying to notice anything else. Bright blue, North Carolina blue bandanna. Brown eyes. Possibly bald.

He circles behind me, grabs my back pocket. We both feel the heavy thing at the same time. “Whats zat mang? Za fuck is zat, mang?”

Oh yeah. That. I forgot about that.

Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit.

I worked at a Tex-mex place for years before getting the job at a higher-end rustic Italian place, so I definitely needed to brush up on my wine-opening skills. What I’ve learned about myself is this- I can only find the right way to do something by finding a lot of ways to do it wrong first. For example, when you’re opening a bottle of wine using nothing but a standard corkscrew, once you've figured out how to cut the wrapper the right way, the next thing you need to do is get the screw into the cork. The tricky thing is that it's counter intuitive- you want to hold the handle perpendicular to the wine bottle, so that the corkscrew goes in at an angle. But the cork is too tough for that; it has to be, to preserve the wine. Try it, and all you’ll end up doing is uselessly dragging the screw across the cork, shredding it, instead of screwing into it and getting these irritated people the booze they’re paying you for.

So you have to start by pushing the point straight into the cork, then quickly correcting, pointing the corkscrew down so that you don’t screw in sideways. If you’re doing it right, the screw never touches anything but the cork. If you do it wrong, you can break the corkscrew. Do it really wrong, and you’ll break the bottle.

For some reason, using a heavier corkscrew makes this easier for me. I don’t know why for sure, but I think there’s something about the weight that lets me intuitively equate that I’m using the tool and the bottle together, instead of using a tool on a bottle.

I didn’t know if I needed to make the investment until I tried using one. I got to borrow one from the Service Director for the restaurant group that owns the restaurant I work in. He’s a certified sommelier and he’s probably worked in the industry as long as some of my coworkers have been alive. It’s worth mentioning that he could, on a whim, fire the people who can fire me. So presumably, he knows his corkscrews. The brand he uses is the one I use now. He described it best: “It’s a tank.” It’s shiny, and heavy, and the blade on it rips open wine wrappers like nothing I’ve used before. The lever is perfectly placed. Handy.

The corkscrew is so fancy it actually has a name: It’s called “Prestigio.” It was thirty dollars at Austin Wine Merchant, which I thought was kind of a lot for a corkscrew. But there’s a confidence I get from having it- if I’m talking somebody into buying a wine that’s 9 dollars more than they said they wanted to spend, seeing that I’m not messing around when it comes to the tools I use to serve wine will always help ease the anxiety of buying wine they might not think is worth it. 

And honestly, as far as that corkscrew goes- its role in the time I thought I was going to get shot in the face notwithstanding, I still think it was a solid investment. 

Finding this thing in my back pocket almost sets this guy off- Up until the guy finds the corkscrew that I forgot I had, this robbery is going fairly straightforward. I slowly reach into my pocket, slowly enough that the guy has time to make his way back around me and adjust the gun, holding with two hands right now, close enough to my face that I can see the dark of the inside of the barrel. “WHAT THE FUCK IS ZAT MANG?!”

“It’s a fucking corkscrew, dumbass!” I slowly set it down. I’m glad he doesn’t speak enough English to understand what I just said- insulting somebody you just frightened is a dick move, regardless of whether or not he’s holding a tool that can rapidly spread your brains across your apartment’s parking lot.

He calms down- he honestly seems relieved- and says “Acueste.” I didn’t know what he was saying at first, I thought maybe “sequester,” which would have been fucking hilarious. Thinking about it now, how he might have been describing the robbery he was committing in real time using strictly legal terminology still makes me chuckle. The truth is more boring- all that word means is “lie down” in Spanish. Whatever. I don’t know Spanish as well as I ought, but I can figure things out from context. I lie down.

He takes the phone, the wallet, and the cigarettes (asshole) and then kicks the keys to my Honda across the parking lot. He runs off, and gets into the back seat of the car he arrived in. I’m lying behind a giant truck, maybe a newer model f-150, so I can’t see much, but a with a little shift over, I can tell that he’s getting into an Asian sedan of some kind, maybe a Civic or TL or Camry. It has a spoiler and paper tags. And faster than it takes to read this sentence, he and whomever was driving are gone. He doesn’t even touch the corkscrew- provided he can’t figure out the code to my phone, it would have been the most valuable thing he could have taken from me.

On the south side of 6^th street, about halfway between where I work and where I’m walking to, there’s a little lane you can pull into that lets you use a mounted post office box. Until then, I didn’t realize what that lane actually was, so I’m usually fine to walk down the middle of it, like some kind of lost, apathetic buffalo. I make this walk a few times a month, but usually it’s with headphones in, blasting Czarface or Circa Survive or Porter Robinson. It lets me drown the noise out from whatever else could be happening, be it the incomprehensible stammering from legions of hammered well to dos throughout the bar scene on west 6^th or the elevated collective anxiety of the poor, stranded fucks trying and failing to beat the traffic home. I don’t get that privilege today- it’s just street noise. And that’s all it is, at least until I find out what that lane actually does- I think I hear something, and turn around to see a very patient lady in a Lexus waiting for this big, lumbering hairball to get out of the road so she can send her last minute Christmas presents or whatever.

As I get out of her way, it occurs to me- I just got snuck up on by a car. There are a few ways to take this- On the one hand, it means I’m not so paranoid that I won’t allow anything to surprise me. On the other hand, in the aftermath of a traumatic experience, I definitely haven’t gained spider senses. Guess I have to look elsewhere for silver linings. As the lady drives off, she waves at me. Food is three blocks away, and I walk faster.

It's nice to find common ground, and in that spirit, I think I've found a tautology: It's really, really hard to be sad while eating pot roast. 

For me, pot roast happens every Thursday- it’s a blue plate special at a sister restaurant. I missed it last week, and as I walk in, 1 hour and 45 minutes until my second shift, three people who work there asked me why (wasn’t feeling well). I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten so much pot roast that it’s actually newsworthy when you don’t, but it’s a condition I typically call happiness. Today, while I’m eating, I drink two half-liters of Mexican coke (the kind made with real sugar cane) and when there’s nothing solid left on the plate, I get some toast so I can sop up what’s left on the plate. When I ask for my bill, I don’t get one.

Instead, I get a 30 second drawing that the bartender scribbled on receipt paper- it’s a Christmas tree and a present, with a giant “HO! HO! HO!” splayed across. Definitely solid for 30 seconds of work. I leave a 20 as a tip, and almost forget to leave without asking her to sign her work.

Now that drawing lives in the wallet, with some handwritten notes from somebody who wants to make sure I have their number, and contact information of hairstylist my friend recommended. As I’m writing this, I’ve only had the wallet for a few days, but with the unfaced bills and growing collection of white paper notes that don’t fit anywhere neatly, it’s already a mess, a signature feature of most things that I own. Welcome to the collection, wallet. Looks like you and I will get along just fine.

I don’t go for the keys right away. Adrenaline kicks in, and for the first half hour, I know what I need to do: grab my corkscrew, jump into my patio, break into my own house, intentionally wake up and unintentionally scare the shit out of my roommate, borrow four of his cigarettes and use his phone to call the police. I throw up a facebook post to let my friends know what to look out for. I go back outside.

A smarter man than I once said “you never have reason to panic, you have reason to act.” After the phone call, I find my keys and wait. Police are quick on the scene, and it suddenly becomes painfully clear that I can’t really tell them anything useful. There are two cars parked near us that match the description of the car I saw drive off. I don’t know what the guy looks like. We’re out on East Oltorf, one of the last areas in this city that’s still affordable on any level, so, with as much respect as I can muster, I’ll make the claim that telling police that somebody didn’t have a firm grasp on the English language doesn’t narrow down the suspect list all that much.

I tell him what he stole- a wallet containing my ID and a debit card and a library card and some random business cards.  I had a single dollar in cash and a coupon for a discounted pack of Newport smokes, something I intended to give to a guy I work with, who I call my grandson for reasons way too stupid to bother explaining. The phone was at 3% battery when he was taken, so it’s probably dead, although I suspect the only reason he took my phone was to keep me from calling the police sooner than I did.

The police officer and I have the same birthday, to the year. He’s constantly doing that police thing where he holds his radio closer to his ear and stares off in the distance, listening to something I can’t hear over a police channel. One of my best friends works for the Sheriff of Dona Ana county, southern New Mexico. He always tells me his two goals after work are to come home to his own bed, and to not end up on Youtube. I wish somebody would put this guy on Youtube- he’s doing everything I want in a police officer. Before I can relay this, however, he’s suddenly in a hurry to get somewhere. “What’s the fastest way out of here?”

I tell him he needs to flip a bitch, get out the way he came in, and take a left. He’s gone.

What I realize, right then, is that this isn’t the way my friend with the gun left earlier. He went the other direction. If you go that way, you’re not getting out nearly as fast, and that’s if you take the fastest way. Make a wrong turn, and you’re having the same conversation everyone’s had at one time or another- “How the fuck do I get out of this apartment complex?” Whoever was driving didn’t have that problem- they were just gone. That might mean they were lucky. That might also mean they know the complex. That’s when my adrenaline wears off, and the fear sets in.

“You don’t have reason to panic, you have reason to act.” Well, sometimes the only action you have is panic. Luckily for me, there’s never really been anything to keep me from going to sleep, although staying there can be a problem. So that’s what happens. 

 

The day after the robbery, I get the temporary license, but don’t have time to get anything else done- it takes me way too long to find the DMV without a phone feeding me directions. All I have time to do after getting an ID is head to work and eat. I took the time to let people on facebook know what happened, so that if nothing else, I can say I did my part to make sure nobody got robbed. Hopefully people were smarter than I and made it home before last call. From what I’ve heard so far, it looks like everyone is fine. Also based on what I’ve heard so far, it doesn’t look like they’re going to catch the guy that robbed me.

It’s the end of my shift, the night after I got robbed. I’m tired, and grouchy, but physically and mentally, I feel better than I thought I would. My last tables close out, and I’m ready to start doing my sidework to go home, check my emails, and play some Grand Theft Auto. This is right before the first panic attack.

A friend of mine does something nice for me- gives me most of a fancy Italian soda that’s already been opened and can’t be saved. He’s trying to make me laugh when he points his finger gun at my face, pretending to threaten me into drinking a soda.  (This will be funny in a month, I think.)

I have to go outside. I start chain smoking. I could have fucking died last night. I could have fucking died. I knew that to be factual ever since it happened, but it didn’t even register. That’s why work was so easy, relatively speaking. There’s a difference between knowing that water freezes at 32 degrees, and dealing with the aftermath of slipping on ice and falling down some stairs. I’m breathing fast, tears are streaming, and there’s nothing I can do. I won’t get my stuff back. They won’t catch this guy. There’s no repercussions and there’s no sense of personal satisfaction I’ll gain from this. I could have died. I went from completely fine to a second away from death and back over the course of 4 minutes. It happened that fast.

No action. Just panic.

But panic, after all, is an action- sometimes it’s the only thing there is to do, so you do it, and then, after a while, you stop. That’s what happens. I wipe my face, finish my work, and I go home.

You got what you wanted.

Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Nicholas Cage's character in the move Lord of War all said some variety of the following-

“There are two great tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it.”

If you're a Trump supporter, you now have what you want. 

First things first- I don't think you're a racist or a Nazi.

You didn't vote for Trump because of the what he's said about Mexicans or black people or women. You know Mexicans, black people, and women, and they know you. You don't grab women by the vagina and you don't think Hillary Clinton really started ISIS.

And I bet you know that if you were around this guy in any other situation, where he wasn't running for president, you would want to punch him in his mouth, because of what he might say to your wife or daughter. Who knows? You probably want to anyway. You don't like the guy. You know he's a piece of shit. That isn't why you voted for him.

Here's why you voted for the guy:

You're hurting.

Your house might have been foreclosed on when you were fucked over by a financial institution. Maybe you took out gigantic loans to spend on a public university, only to realize that the degree society says you need isn't worth anything at all, and now you're completely without the means to pay it back.

Maybe you spent your career getting really good at some kind of manufacturing skill, the kind your company told you would keep you employed and comfortable, which became useless whenever they found somebody in China who can't do it as well as you, but can do it for 1/6 what they pay you. Maybe you work in the oil industry, and now your job is in jeopardy because somebody that lives four thousand miles away from you thinks it's bad for your environment.

Maybe you own a farm, and as you were scratching and scraping and cutting out every excess to figure out how you could make ends meet, you got blindsided by products from a different part of the world that are so cheap you can't possibly hope to compete with them. Maybe you've got a business whose customers are all of these people- when they took the hit, so did you. 

 Your whole life you grew up believing that if you worked hard and played fair you'd be OK, and then suddenly that didn't happen. Your town is still screwed up from when they closed that factory, things are still way too expensive, wages are still too low.

All of this bullshit, for reasons that the people you elected haven't gotten around to explaining yet.

Obama's second term is over, and things haven't gotten much better for you. Maybe you have a third-teir health plan that doesn't do much for you but you have to pay for anyway. Maybe gas is a little cheaper. Whoop de fucking do. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this system doesn't work for you, and that there isn't anything you can do for it.

But then here's this famous guy who nobody likes saying he's going to make your country great again. He says that he's going to put tariffs on car companies that move their factories to Mexico. He says he's going to prevent illegal immigrants from taking jobs. He says he's going to start making trade deals that actually work because deals are the art of a businessman, not a politician. He says that only he can fix it, and when you look at who else there is to choose from, you can't really disagree.

His opponent is somebody who has likely been in politics your entire life. She gets paid stupefying money to speak to the asshole bankers who foreclosed on your brother in law. She openly rigs the primaries so that this other guy doesn't get to run against her. Every time you see this person, you can't help but feel like she and people like her have spent their time in politics doing nothing but swindling you.

Politics being what they are, what's supposed to happen is that her and Your Guy are supposed to talk nicely and debate about meaningless crap, and then after it's all said and done and everyone is properly annoyed and the sun comes up on Wednesday, you'll look and see that nothing will change. But not with this guy. This guy said he was going to jail the person that swindled you.

This guy knows you, and he's said things that no other politician has ever said. And you can't wait to vote for him. Since the day you decided you liked him, it's been an avalanche of people accusing you of being a racist or a sucker or a Nazi. Every time one of your liberal friends posts some dumbass meme about something stupid your guy said, you know they do it with this massive, smug sense of self satisfaction- if they bothered to check, you'd probably be just fine telling them that what matters to you isn't what a candidate says on a tour bus but whether or not you're going to have a job next year. You have mouths to feed and bills to pay, but you're supposed to change your mind about who you vote for because the guy got divorced? Get the fuck out of here.

You march in on voting day, and you cast your vote, and you know that if nothing else you get to throw the finger to the entire crooked system.

You vote for him because he sounds like somebody who wants to help you. You vote for him because he understands you, and is hated by everything that you hate- the media, the banks, the politicians. You vote for him because you remember when it used to work, and it doesn't feel like it's worked in a long time.

And then you win!

And you don't just win the Presidency- the house, the senate, and the Supreme Court will suddenly all be Republican. There is now a perfect alignment for things to change for you. Things will get better!...

...Right?

Well, it wasn't just you who got what you wanted.  While you were voting for this man because you thought he could protect you from financial systems and economic inevitability, some people were voting for this man because they wanted protection from diversity.  There are some people who see the very existence of minorities as a threat, and who would do callous, horrible things- to hurt others, destroy property,  and figuratively and literally destroy lives- who are rejoicing the same way you are now.  I know you're not in a great spot right now.  But there are many people who will be emboldened to do terrible things because of what you've done.

I know that isn't what you want. You don't want to see black people arbitrarily ostracized or see gay kids get beaten up.  You've actually met a couple of Muslim people, and they weren't so bad- I'm sure, at the very least, you'd think it would be a big waste of time and money to round them all out and put them somewhere else.  Besides, you know a lot of those people have dogs. Who's going to take care of them after everyone gets deported?

Here's the truth: regardless of how you feel he's going to do for your financial situation, electing him will hurt people.  That's morally wrong.  I still understand why you did what you did- you felt the need for self preservation, and you thought the minorities and the gays and women could take one for the team- after all, that's what you've been doing.  It's wrong, but you had to do it anyway.

Now, you have to hope. You have to hope that a man with no political experience whatsoever can now effectively hold the most powerful position on the planet, and actually make things better for you. You have to hope that hatred isn't the only thing that comes from this.  

You need results, or else history will remember you as evil, when all you were trying to do was survive.  You need this man to do something for you. You need a response whenever a minority looks you in the face and says "I haven't done anything to you.  How could you do this to me?"

So... What is he going to do? Well you don't know.  You don't know for the same reason none of us know- when it comes to the specifics of his policy, he's either said different things or hasn't said anything at all. But you can still read his platform, presuming you haven't already.

As you're reading, look for specifics. Find out how things are going to get paid for, which agencies will be reviewed, and by whom.

This will take a while- there aren't an insane amount of facts available. There are plenty of accusations, grievances, tautologies. There's plenty of words like “good-paying jobs” and “constitutional liberties” in there. But facts? Reasoning? 

No. Those were for career politicians like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and Rick Perry. Losers. What Trump cares about, what you care about, is that you know he isn't Hillary Clinton.

He's going to do something- you just can't quite be sure what, yet. And when he does, it's going to improve your life.  It has to.  It has to be worth the hatred. It's going to re-open factories and increase wages. It's going to make you feel safe and improve the quality of your kids lives. It's going to halt global warming, and decrease poverty.

Or it isn't. Maybe things will get worse- much, much worse. Maybe a war starts. Maybe an industry crashes, and there won't be anybody who knows how to fix it. Maybe negotiating trade deals and peace settlements is a lot more difficult than slamming your fist down on a table harder than the other guy.

Or even worse. Maybe Trump won't actually be the president. When he originally offered the vice presidency to John Kasich, he stipulated that he would allow Kasich to be in charge of “foreign and domestic policy.” Maybe instead of the anti-establishment president you voted for, you'll actually get Mike Pence- a man who's been working in politics since 1988.  Ask the people of Indiana how that worked out for them.

And you'll realize that you were so happy to vote for somebody because he understood you emotionally, and then when you got what you wanted, you realized he didn't understand anything else. Maybe you get to find out that you defeated a politician who you thought was cheating you by electing somebody who cheated you.

I say keep the celebration going for as lomg as you like, but sooner or later, you'll have to reckon with a sobering question: What if Clinton was a better choice for you?  

Perhaps she couldn't have opened the mill, but she could have given you some tools to get an education to help you build something different.  Perhaps she couldn't wipe out your student debt, but she could make college cheaper, so that you're kids wouldn't have to put up with the same shit you did.  Maybe she could have made sure your wife got paid what she deserved, or that you got some paid time off, or that you were guaranteed a decent wage.  Maybe she could have given you a healthcare plan that actually worked for you.  Maybe she could help make sure your daughter refrained from getting pregnant at 15. Maybe she could have helped your parents retain the social security they worked their whole lives to pay.

What if you find out what you did wasn't just morally wrong, but economically wrong?  What if you voted to not just hurt other people, but put yourself in an even worse situation?  What could possibly feel worse?  When that person asks you "Trump made my life worse, so why did you vote for him?" What are you going to tell them?

You'll tell them that you wanted something that turned out to be horrible. History will hate you for it. People like you will distance themselves from ever voting for Trump, but the world will always know.  People see you now.  When he doesn't help you, and you turn on him, you'll see how awful he made things, and know that you allowed your emotions to make things worse.  That won't go away.

I pray that doesn't happen to you. But I think it will.

(Although, knowing my history with predictions, maybe take this with a grain of salt.)

This is my twitter.  My email is swellbo@gmail.com.

Trump's going to lose- now what?

Embed from Getty Images

Donald Trump is probably going to lose, and by most accounts, he's going to lose by a lot. This happens to coincide with his party members jumping ship on him- an unholy combination of Trumps decreasing popularity and his claim that he's capable of handling women's crotches with impunity.

For Republican politicians, it's an incredibly fine line. This man is the walking embodiment of political Russian roulette. Un-endorsing the current presidential nominee (and implicitly endorsing Hillary) could cost governors or senators or mayors dearly in the eyes of today's all-or-nothing voter base. Supporting him means attaching your name to an unstable nuclear reactor. The next thing he does (or the next thing he's discovered to have done) could not only ruin his odds, his brand and his life- it could also do the same to them. To those paying attention, the line he crossed seems hilariously arbitrary: This man has talked shit about Popes and prisoners of war. He's been accused of sexual assault and peeping at underage women. He's made fun of a person with atypical arms and advocated for killing children.  But if you think that's bad, get this- one time, on a bus in 2005, he made a lame joke about grabbing vaginae. TUCK AND ROLL.

Actions are taken when the perception of circumstances necessitates them, and conversely, the actions taken indicate the perception of circumstances. When Republicans blasted away from Trump at warp-speed it was because they knew Trump had finally pussy grabbed his way past salvation. The timing, though, didn't go unnoticed.

The implications, when you think about them, are insane: Somewhere, in a meeting room, somebodies political adviser has almost certainly said the phrase “Sure, voters were cool with lies, stupidity and advocating war crimes, but this Billy Bush situation is going to really piss them off.” Jump off the Titanic and hope to hell you can swim far enough away to avoid getting sucked down by the whirlpool.

The question isn't so much whether or not Trump's implosion will drag the whole party out to the woodshed, because it probably won't. The only thing Trump supporters hate more than a Democrat is a loser, and when Trump lies beaten and broken, there probably won't be anyone willing to stick around. Winning is what he has always claimed to be able to do, and he had a flawless political record to back it up. This might be his first campaign, but he's never lost a campaign.

It's really how he got there in the first place. He didn't come out of nowhere- before he was screaming about the Mexican rapists and email servers and untenable plans for a wall, he was a massive public figure. He was famous and successful on at least a superficial level. In the beginning of a political career, especially when starting at such a high level, name recognition is everything, and Trump isn't just his name- it's his brand. Call it the Trump tautology- he is a successful person because he is great, and he is great because he is successful. It's a fun narrative, and it works, even if it the story isn't super conducive to words like “settlements” and “divorce” and “bankruptcy”. It didn't matter until later, when words like "grab them by the pussy" got thrown in as well.

When he loses the election, he'll lose some of his identity, and some of his brand sheen, and some of his speculative wealth, if not actual. But this probably isn't good news.

As fun as it is to wallow in the irony, there's always a backlash- if the GOP has done their job, the narrative will change. Two years from now the story won't be that Trump was the symbol of the party or its members or its backers, but that he was just another washed-up jerk-off that crashed and burned, while the rest of the party shook their heads. This means a difficult task for anybody trying to link Trump to any future party candidate.

In the upcoming elections where Democratic candidates pay for commercials that show side by side profiles of Trump and whichever white male they're trying to paint him over, it won't stick: Trump himself will become the problem, not the things he said. So once the election is over and they completely disown him, they'll guaranteed their survival for at least a little bit. Their entire platform exists as a contrarian position to people they can paint as bad guys, and since the election is almost certainly going Hillary Clinton's way, it doesn't look like they'll be running out of bad guys for at least four more years.

Nobody who likes Trump now won't like the next Trump. Even though their candidate will lose, So what? They don't need to change their mindset, because it was their candidate, not their ideals, that self destructed in the final weeks of the campaign. There will still be a federal government in which there is at least one Democratic representative or executive or judge, meaning there's work to do.

What has become abundantly clear in this election is that what people want isn't policy discussions- they want wars of attrition, to see whose good luck and good publicity and gaffe defenses can last long enough to inspire enough people to get off the couch or spend a few minutes more on the drive home from work to hit a voting booth. The name of the game is elimination, not governing.

Even when the GOP had a majority in the House and Senate after they won the absolute shit out of everything in 2014, the actual act of governing was more like a snake pit under a throw rug than an actual responsibility. Attempting to push policy usually means somebody pushing back (arguably as our founders intended.) Today, though, compromise is seen as failure- the fact that the Democrats maintain the ability to resist equates to a GOP loss. And if this election will teach us  anything, it's that some people don't mind supporting psychopaths, but nobody would never support a loser.

The Trump supporters aren't going anywhere, even if he is. Trump didn't create the xenophobia or resentment that his base nurtures- he simply gave them a flag to fly over it, swam out, and rode the wave (right into the rocks). Trump might lose a few billion dollars in brand value but the base isn't going to fade into the background. If anything, they'll only become more and more angry- and the anger will build, only to find a candidate who is somewhat competent, and knows enough about elections to not run for office when there's the possibility of somebody digging up a recording of them bragging about trying to fuck married women.

The classic problem of current identity politics boils down to this: there is a party that claims to want to help people by enacting policy, and there is a party that claims to want to help people by first destroying the other party, then figuring the rest out later (and honestly, who knows what the truth actually is.) Oh, sure, there are certain stated policies, but ask everyone in rural Illinois that owns a “make America great again” hat about Trump's position on getting oil from OPEC and let me know what they say- I imagine the vast majority of answers will involve a shotgun.

But really, you can't blame them for being angry. The political landscape was already bloated and ineffectual, and when news comes at you constantly, from every direction, then on the slight chance that any law gets passed, the trickle-down is so staggeringly slow that the conversation has pivoted five-hundred times, so that we don't know what is and isn't the result of it. God forbid anyone we elect actually takes the time to consider it, debate the minutiae of it, make it better. Cooperation is for the weak, and that's how both parties want it, apparently.

Try this at home- a copy of either party's official platform and sip (SIP) a drink every time the platform, which by definition is supposed to list the policies they want enacted, mentions the opposition. Christ, you could probably just subtract the specific number of policies from the total of times one party blasts the other and you'd still be too wasted to walk. Even if Democrats get ever-so-slightly more specific about the exact actions they want the federal government to take, the reasoning behind it never strays far from “because the other guys don't want that.”

When Trump loses, the smarter Republicans will disappear for a minute. There's no plus side for Ted Cruz or Chris Christie or whoever to be seen shaking hands with people who claim the elections are rigged, even if they'll be slitting each others throats to make their message resonate louder with that same group in three years. At this point, fuck policy- it will be a full time job trying to retain the public image of being Trump without being Trump. Like it or not, in two and a half-ish years from today, we'll get to see what happens when GOP presidential hopefuls need to lean on the fervor of the Trump supporters of today- will they try to throw equal parts policy minutiae and loud-mouthed insanity into a blender, then splatter the result on the wall and figure the voters will go along with whatever, or will Trump go down in history as a prototype of the more suave politician that's willing to rub elbows with the post-deplorables?

Today's Trumpers are now the main driving force behind the dogma that, at one time, could be at least superficially controlled by the overly emphatic patriotism and the swirling speeches of whichever prominent white person was willing to spend 24 days a month speaking at different county churches. Back then, the racism was subtle, implied, never stated because as long as we weren't “racist” like the Nazi's in The Blues Brothers, we weren't really racist. But then there was Trump, who presented racism not so much as mere demagoguery, but like one would present a thesis. “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're bringing guns, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.” He explicated the inner monologue of every bigot everywhere. Give the guy some credit- he said it straight-forward enough to mortify the planet, but with enough of a vague cop-out at the end that it forced the GOP to jump in line behind him, lest they lose out on some of that sweet, sweet vote from the batshit sect.

Unless we've all grossly underestimated the size of the the “fuck it, let's just vote for this guy to see what happens” crowd, we have to assume that one political loss in one election year won't be enough to convince the “hang Hillary” folk to address American politics on some sort of traditional “this is what I think about what you think” level- the fire's already been started, and there's no turning back. The monkey is out of the bag, man, and it ain't going back in, unless the party gets enough of a hold of itself to convince the Trumpers to shut the fuck up long enough to convince enough Hillary 2020 voters that she's ineffectual, so much so that they'll forget to vote on November 8^th.

Then we're right back to where we started before this entire shit-show nuked modern politics into Fallout 4 territory. Four years from now we'll get to hear all of this again, but in the GOP best case scenario, the voice will be quieter, and probably not going on coked-out twitter rants at 4 in the morning.

What will happen to Donald Trump? Probably nothing. Almost certainly, he'll get lost in the clusterfuck that will be the new era of the GOP sad-sacks trying to shit on President Clinton 2: Electric Boogaloo's legacy, with probably equally ineffective results. If we're lucky, he'll fade into oblivion, making sure to preemptively check for microphones on whoever he's cheating at golf or trying to fuck via a trip to the furniture store. But if we're luckier, he'll remain in the public eye, long enough to convince James Woods or whichever Baldwin brother decides he has enough of a chance to carry on the crazy torch. If the crazy train comes in again, well, at least now we know how to deal with it- we simply won't deal with it, and let it destroy itself. Grab some popcorn, enjoy the rest of the show, and pray we get to talk about policy sometime before we die.

Here's my twitter. swellbo@gmail.com is my email.  Say hello!

In US Politics, Context is Everything and Everything is Meaningless

Keith Olbermann is now making videos for GQ. This one is 17 minutes long, a 2500-word tirade in which he lists a collection of “Donald John Trump”’s worst hits. On the website he posts it, there is a transcript, in which there are tons of links to solid, concrete evidence. The first, where Trump supposedly attacked the pope, links to Trump’s own website, where he claims (or at least strongly implies) that the Pope is “disgraceful” for suggesting Trump’s border wall platform “isn’t Christian.”

Olbermann spent the time to write 2500 words, then presented them, well documented with links and historical references. And nobody at GQ or his loved ones or any sane person had the goddamn common courtesy to tell him he was wasting his time.  The true things he says aren't true.  This sentence is false.  2+2 = 5.

How?  Context.  In an effort to eliminate obfuscation and emphasize objectivity, the only things that Olbermann says are facts.  Because while it is objectively true that Donald Trump said things that, based on the uber-strict definitions used by people to define words do indeed mean certain things, it doesn't mean he really attacked the Pope. Because with context, all things are possible- including disproving every single thing that KO wrote. Through the power of sheer will and stubbornness, we can decide that anything is false.

I recently asked pro-Trump friends of mine what they thought about this video, and the general consensus from their feedback states that every (objectively and demonstrably true) statement made by Olbermann is either false by fact or false by context. But what’s really crazy about this is the more I think about it, the more I can believe them when they say they don't believe it. Through the advancement of ego politics, we can take anything said by anyone and make it mean pretty much anything. Let’s demonstrate:

In his candidacy announcement speech, Trump says the following:

[Mexico is] sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us[sic]. They’re bringing drugs. they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

From here, we can go one of two ways. Method one is to declare that this is a complete fabrication (a very effective argument, since literally forcing somebody to actually watch or read something that contradicts their beliefs is probably a crime, unless you’re the Church of Scientology.)

The other method involves a very strange dance with ideas, collectively known as questioning the context.

“Sure, that might be the words that came out of his mouth, but the framing that you’ve used to present them implies that they mean a specific thing- that Trump said immigrants fall into a Venn diagram of rapists, drug-bringers, criminals, and assumed good people. If you were to show the rest of what he said, the real meaning would come across completely different.”

So let’s look at the entirety of the speech segment that Trump dedicated to Mexican, um… immigration?

When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.

Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people.

This is almost perfectly vague.  He had to get a little further into racist territory to avoid sharing the same PC space as Rubio or Rand Paul.  But any closer to the statement "All Mexicans are rapists" and it's a cakewalk to criticize and condemn, the kind that even the deepest drop in the Bucket of Deplorable would have to walk back. 

So to get into the mind of people who believe this, or people who don’t want to believe that this is what is being said, we need to do some work here.  Let the rationalizations begin!

First sentence:

When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically.

So… When do we beat Mexico at the border? Objectively speaking, I don’t think we literally beat Mexico at the border. Nor do I think there is a lot of solid evidence that we literally beat Mexicans at the border. Now, if goal is to prevent the illegal crossing of the border of any illegal immigrants, and Mexico’s goal is to transport immigrants across that border (a statement which can’t be proven false, technically) then really, they’re winning. They’re beating us. So in at least one way, his question is legitimate.

Economically speaking, I’m certain there are ways in which Mexico is making strides that we haven’t. If we were, say, running a two country contest as to who could be 15^th in global GDP rankings, well, they’ve done that for basically a decade, while we’ve been first or second (bested in some estimates by the European Union.)

This is already getting messy.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.

Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Hooo boy. OK. So let’s say that it’s not beyond the stretch of the imagination to say that when he means “Mexico is sending” he really means that “Mexicans are coming.” It’s not that far of a reach. Remember, one of the things that makes this man appealing is that he doesn’t sound like a politician. Hillary Clinton has people on her payroll that are in charge of shaping her words for her. Trump either doesn’t have the luxury or (more likely) doesn’t care. So if you can forgive the guy for not spending the resources to craft a perfect public persona, then you have to forgive him when he doesn’t say exactly what he means.

From there, if we can argue that “some, I assume, are good people” can theoretically apply to every Mexican immigrant that isn’t bringing drugs, crime, or rape to the United States, then we can argue that Trump could be talking about only two drug-smuggling criminal rapists who just happen to be Mexican immigrants. The rest, he assumes, are good people.

So, depending on how much work you’re willing to put into thinking about these remarks, Trump is either talking about the vast majority of Mexico, or two Mexicans. The meaning of his words can change to suit somebody’s perspective, which is a way of saying that they don’t mean anything alt all. All this is meant to do is 

People have to work such insane mental gymnastics to attach validity to insane and stupid things, but they do it, because it turns out that all of that work is nothing compared to the act of changing their minds. As this election h as shown, figuring out how, exactly, it isn’t offensive to claim that Mexican immigrants are bringing drugs, crime, and rape to the Unite States is the go-to thought cycle of those who wouldn’t even consider an ideological alternative. It’s easier than considering Crooked Hillary! Sad!

I’m not going to pretend that this hasn’t been this way forever- reach back as far as you can into history, and you’ll see that objective evidence has always been thrown to the wayside when people’s politics are attached to their financial or psychological self-interest. It even ruined John Kerry’s chances of winning the election a dozen years ago. Kerry was for the Iraq war, but then learned somethings, considered the topic, and changed his mind. He was branded a “flip flopper,” and the diabolical act of rethinking his policy made him lose to this fucking guy.

But I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen a nexus between candidates this polarizing, a myriad of horrifying true statements that mean nothing when reality becomes politically inconvenient, and a stage this large.

Upton Sinclair once wrote “It is difficult to get a man to understanding, when his salary depends on him not understanding it.” Change that to "salary and psyche". As long as we can take a sentence and make it mean whatever we want, we aren’t changing shit.

Sam lives in Austin, TX.  Follow him on twitter.  Send him email here.  Feel free to interpret this sentence however your mood strikes you.