Election 2016: shame and regrets

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Tomorrow (11/09/2016) will be the day after a work party that turned into a drunken orgy. You try to shower and wash clean the fuzzy memories of what just happened, and have the fortitude and denial required to make eye contact with your coworkers the next day... but you all share each other's guilt and shame.


Walk of Shame

Look, I'm more tolerant of individual behavior than groups. I get there's individual reasons to dislike opposing candidates, or reasons to pull a lever one way or another. And that's fine. So I don't judge individuals based on individual choices (much), because it's irrational to get judgy, unless you have all the facts... and we never have all the facts. So live and let live: I don't think ill of individuals based on their votes.... But I can still observe and make judgements about groups.

Group behaviors shows trends and averages about those group and cultures. The anonymity of groups gives me the freedom to judge like a baptist at a strip club (with other baptists watching). And the statistical averaging de-noises and filters out the individuality, to see clearly what the groupthink and group-values are.

Democrats and Republicans showed who they are.

Democrats

If Democrats had integrity, one or three of the wikileaks would have been enough to end Hillary (just like a single cattlegate scandal should have done two generations ago). It wasn't. They'll vote for a corrupt criminal establishment Wall Street-puppet racist hate-mongering misogynistic vile democrat crook (with an unhealthy pallor and evil disposition), as long as it is their corrupt criminal establishment Wall Street-puppet racist hate-mongering misogynistic vile democrat crook.But you can't support someone who attacks rape victims and claim you care about those women. You can't support a career criminal and claim you care about corruption and law and order. And democrats that would make Hillary their party representative, and support her anyways, tells you all you need to know about the democrats and their moral high ground as a group. They don't give a shit about any of it, compared to their agendas. They preferred power to integrity, and the election is their declaration of... "I'm with her".

Knowing who and what she is (or preferring willful ignorance to the truth), tells us all we need to know about the DNC and its most vocal acolytes, every bit as much as the Trumpettes. Palpatine for President: because at least she's not Finis Valorum.

Republicans

The same can be said of Republicans that vote for Trump. (I'm not letting them off the hook). They don't care about classist populist dogmatic power-grabbing egomaniacal insulting degrading bombasts, as long is it is THEIR version of the above. Republicans don't hate lying inexperienced racist-populist tax-and-spend outsiders like they claimed with 8 years of Obama, they just hate bombastic lying outsiders with Marxist and black liberation theology undertones and a (D) after their name.

Conclusion

No one comes out of this election looking clean. We are what we do: the sum of our actions.

Both could have voted integrity and 3rd party, they could have blocked Hillary or Trump as a candidate. But they didn't. They pulled the levers for their side. And we are what we do.

Of course Republicans aren't preaching they have the moral high ground on every issue, or that they care more for the little guy while putting on their jack boots... so at least they're not quite as much the flaming hypocrites as the media and DNC. Republicans at least plug their noses and vote for Trump knowing and admitting his flaws, and are even willing to joke about it. While many more of the democrats (as a party) are practicing a form of group-hysteria and self-delusion by denying there's any validity to the many opposition claims against her (and the mountains of evidence that includes her own and her campaigns emails). And that willful denial is far more scary to me than anything Trump or his supporters have said or done. A Trumpette might be a classist bigot, but at least they're self aware enough to admit it and feel shame. While the DNC is by-and-large only self-aware enough to believe that "only the other side has flaws".

And sure, there's lots of mitigating factors (like how bad the opposing candidate is, and other rationalizations). But in the end, an election and parties leader and their campaign is a reflection of them: their voters and the culture.

Looking in the post election mirror, we should see the same sallow complexion, and shame in our eye's, that we would after any horrible mistake in judgement.

We can pretend not to know what we just did. But deep down, we know.

Welcome to post 2016 election America.

2016.11.08