The "Atlantic" explains why the rest of us were--and are--so dumb that we elected Donald Trump

"The Atlantic is a very liberal magazine.  It's read by--well, by absolutely all the elites, dahling. They're evah-so-cool, so hip.  Sophisticated.  Unless you live on either coast you simply wouldn't understand.

"What??  Of course we know there's a coast on the south.  No, of course we don't mean that one."

"Anyway, as everyone knows, all of the folks who read the Atlantic were absolutely horrified by the results of the election, when the most qualified person in history won the popular vote but somehow--probably Russian meddling--ended up losing the election because of some bizarre thing called the "electoral college."

"Conservatives whine that because that "electoral college" thing is mentioned in the Constitution, we have to run our elections by it.  But of course all the really cool people know the Constitution was written by white males two centuries ago so it's seriously out of date, and not relevant to modern life. So we need to change that.  But back to the story:

"A month after the election the host of The Daily Show--which is must-viewing for really cool people, you know--wrote an op-ed that was published in the Times--well of course the New York Times; is there another one?  Anyway the title was “Let’s Not Be Divided," and the author--the incredibly cool Jon Stewart--lamented the fact that Americans are so divided.

It quickly went viral among "progressives"--the same elites who read the Atlantic.

The author isn't sure how we got so divided, but the article notes that for months before the election the Daily Show constantly blasted the Republican candidate--among other things, for tweeting with “those fat little tiny fingers of yours.”  And for trying to think with  “that stupid head.”  And when the host sneered about Trump “maybe you should look in the mirror, asshole.”

The audience, of course, roared with laughter.

The Daily Show was hardly alone in blasting Trump:  All the late-night political-comedy shows, including Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight—joined in firing crude, nasty, humiliating screeds against Donald Trump.

So here's what the Atlantic had to say about Donald Trump in its current issue:

Trump is a man who on any casual summer day during the campaign could be found inciting a crowd to violence. This isn’t the slippery slope; this is the ditch at the bottom of the hill.  Once a man stands before a mob and exhorts the powerful to beat the outlier, it’s all over except for the cannibalism and the cave painting. “Knock the crap out of them,” said Donald Trump.

So  Trump has it coming, and so do the minions pouring out of his clown car, with their lies and their gleeful disregard for...“the fundamental decencies.”

"Lies," eh?  Wow.  Where was that outrage when Susan Rice went on five Sunday talk shows to falsely blame the killing of 4 Americans in Benghazi on an internet video when the Obama regime had known for days that that was a lie?  Or how about "If you like your doctor or your insurance plan you can keep them" 18 times--on video--from your hero Obama?

And a "gleeful disregard for...the fundamental decencies," ya say?  Would that be like a mob of enraged latinos beating 60-year-old attendees at a Trump rally in San Jose?  Or pelting women with eggs at that same rally?  Those "fundamental decencies"?


The late-night comedy shows are aimed at liberal sophisticates--who find the anti-Trump and anti-conservative insults hysterically funny.  The hosts, writers and their viewers are convinced that they're far superior--intellectually and morally--to everyone on the political right.

Two days before the election, every TV talking head--all our intellectual superiors--assured us that Trump didn’t have a chance.

Trump's million-to-one election upset drove 'em crazy.


When hard-working, tax-paying folks in flyover country--call 'em the "non-elites"--hear these crude, nasty jokes about conservatism day after day, they don’t just see a handful of comics mocking them. They see HBO, Comedy Central, ABC, CBS, and NBC.  But do the clueless folks at the Atlantic get it?  You can guess.  In fact they cluelessly summarize the problem this way:

In other words, [deplorables] see exactly what Donald Trump has taught them:  that the entire media landscape loathes them, their values, their family and their religion.

No, you clueless shitheads, we didn't need Trump to *teach us* that.  It's screamingly obvious--to all of us.  The author of the Atlantic article repeats the mistake all the lib elites make:  They think that without help, we're too dumb to see that "the elites" hold the rest of us in utter contempt. 

These people live in NYC and/or graduated from Hahvahd or Columbia so by definition they must be smart, hip.  Sophisticated.  If you watch hip shows and laugh at the jokes, you absolutely must be informed, nuanced.  And since we don't do any of those things, we must--by definition--be stupid hicks. 

You're so convinced this is true that you can't believe any of us would realize that the media and Hollywood and folks who write for rags like the Atlantic hold us in contempt.  According to your brilliant analysis we had to wait for Trump to *teach us* the obvious.

Guess thats another example of your "intellectual superiority."

In case you think I misinterpreted the article, here's the Atlantic again, doubling down:

No wonder so many of Trump’s followers are inclined to believe only the things [Trump] or his spokespeople tell them directly—[that] everyone else on the tube thinks they’re a bunch of trailer-park, Oxy-snorting half-wits who divide their time between retweeting Alex Jones fantasies and ironing their Klan hoods.

In what the Atlantic calls "this bizarre new political reality"--not realizing that they've created it with their constant contempt and sneering jokes--any late-nite host who treats Trump the way other  presidents have traditionally been treated commits the unforgivable sin of “normalizing” him, as Jimmy Fallon did last  fall:

Trump had appeared on Fallon’s Tonight Show before  the primaries, in September 2015, back when he was still the joke candidate, back when a lighthearted interview with him wouldn't make the elites go crazy.  But when Fallon had him on again a year later--just before the election--that had changed.  And Fallon didn't see the trap.  Here's the Atlantic:

Now Trump was the Republican nominee, and his bag of tricks—inciting violence in crowds, threatening religious tests, calling the press a pack of liars—was no longer so amusing. 

In a scripted gag Fallon leaned toward Trump and said, “Donald, I just wanted to ask you if there’s something we could do that’s just not … presidential, really.”  After Trump agreed, Fallon reached over and mussed up Trump's hair.

The next day twitter was loaded with venom for what the elites saw as an effort to "normalize" the awful Republican nominee.  The Atlantic adds, approvingly

...and rightly so.  By then Trump had exhibited enough ugly and norm-breaking behavior to have made treating him as a lovable bridge-and-tunnel celebrity...beyond the pale.  Trump had already revealed himself to be a dangerous person; perhaps the best thing that can be said about the man is that he let America know exactly what it would be getting if he were elected.  It was a huge mistake on Fallon’s part, one he has been paying for ever since—his  ratings have not recovered from it.

That's not just reporting.  It's a warning to other late-night hosts:  If you don't get with our program, your ratings will suffer.

Contrast this with how the media reacted to Bill Clinton’s 1992 appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, where he played the saxophone.  The media swooned.

The Atlantic implies that no one out in flyover country was smart enough to notice the difference in how the media treated the two.

The author says Trump’s appearance with Fallon

...was the last fleeting glimmer of anything approaching goodwill—and possibly  of anything deserving it—between political factions. Since then it’s  been a race to the bottom, as the crudeness of the president is matched by that of “the resistance....”

As I [started] writing this essay Trump had just made what was then the latest in his endless series of preposterous moves:  He had tweeted, without evidence but with certainty, that Trump Tower had been “wiretapped” by Barack Obama in the final days of the campaign.... The  episode was one more stunning reminder of how this impulsive, self-obsessed leader—who holds grudges, lies recklessly, and appoints family members to substantive positions—is making America into a laughingstock around the world. We are a country with the greatest creed in all of history—the Constitution of the United States—yet we are looking more and more like a banana republic.

One hardly knows where to begin:  The Atlantic writer calls the Constitution "the greatest creed in all of history"--while ignoring the constant, relentless efforts of "progressives" and Democrats to destroy it--most recently by calling for abolishing the electoral-college system.  He castigates Trump for "lying recklessly," ignoring Obama's and Hilliary's many lies. 

Perhaps he thinks those were careful lies rather than reckless.  Perhaps his complaint is not with lies per se but with the adjective "reckless."

But perhaps the most amazing thing is that the Atlantic--like all the elite mags and talk-shows and network talking heads--is totally convinced that none of us out here in flyover country ever noticed the contempt and the double-standards until Trump supposedly "taught us."

This, liberals, is why Trump is president.  He may only last one term--maybe not even that, given the huge media and "entertainment" armada arrayed against him--but he's fired up a lot of us "non-elites"--people who have been willing to tolerate your liberal bullshit. 

With any luck, no longer.