Spite vote

The thinkpieces are innumerable. The excuses plentiful. The blaming unstoppable. The amount of blithering and blathering over who’s to blame for the mess that is a Trump presidency is large on smarts and intellectualism, but short on actual, tangible explanation.

I guess this is a follow up to the previous post, which pointed to the media as the one to blame for the current shit fest that’s awaiting to unleash upon the United States come Inauguration Day, but I think it warrants clarification.

One thing that I simply knew was going to be on the agenda, whoever won the White House, was Electoral Reform. If Hillary had won, you can be fucking sure that there would  have been steps taken to ensure that the likes of Trump couldn’t come within a whiff of a candidacy, let alone presidency. That is the issue that I now see discussion happening, but it just smacks of business-as-usual with the media.

Audience trust in the media is at an all time low. Even with Trump’s blatantly horrendous views on women, foreigners and KFC cutlery, people still looked beyond that and voted for him. People seem to be done with the classic personal politics and have grown weary of the pretense that politicians need to be these unsullied pillars of virtue, because every politician ever who has suggested they’re perfect has always been far less than. The people now accept that politicians are flawed. People, I believe, don’t give a shit because all they want to see is someone who listens. Someone who will fix things, rather than offer a promise with a smiling face of purity while holding out the public purse to the vested interests with the hand up their ass.

The wealth gap is large. The middle class views itself as under attack, even though they have been promised protection from charismatic people.

Then along comes an election, and the media is telling people “Here! Here is the perfect person for the job! Isn’t she lovely?” and then with the other hand say, “Look at this other buffoon! He’s not a politician. He doesn’t carry himself like a politician. Isn’t he silly?”

The people have dealt with the former candidate for decades, and it has resulted in shit. They are beyond “the devil they know” now, and they want to remind others that the people are in charge. So when the media is clearly promoting one person and mocking the other, is it any surprise that people discarded the character assessments and voted for them anyway?

It wasn’t a protest vote. It was a spite vote. The media and the wealthy clearly wanted Hillary, and people, despite their better judgement and despite Trumps idiocy, said “fuck you for trying to tell us what to do.”

It was spite. And people will continue to spite the media until the media starts earning some trust back, and they can only do that with attempting balance and avoiding the drama.