Americans, bah.

An interesting result of the election is the revelation of just how many people don't have a problem with blatant corruption, sexism, racism, and every other nasty aspect of American culture we normally keep hidden, at the highest levels of power.

I talked a little bit about it the other day, and a friend had a brief discussion with me in comments about the bubble you can live in if you want to, sticking to Fox news and so on, preventing you from seeing any competing views. Obviously this is an element, but the point I was trying to make was that despite all that there are still some things that shouldn't be acceptable, things the president has done and said that no one should even treat as normal, let alone okay or even desirable.

"grab em by the pussy" is a good example, no one outside of the most insane believes that tape was faked, virtually everybody accepts that he said it, it got universal coverage, if not condemnation, no matter the media bubble you lived in, however for millions that was not seen as a problem, or, god help us, that was actually seen as a good thing. Hell the very first speech he gave, way back during the announcement of the campaign, included the line "They are sending drugs, rapists, and some, I assume, are good people".

The fact that someone can hear that line, and think "yes, this man speaks to me" is a more damning indictment of this country than nearly anything else, and yes, the conservative media did their damnedest to put it in "context" and explain it away, but he still said it, we all heard it, it was played everywhere. Context should not have been an issue for anyone.

And so it went, every month, every week, sometimes every day, something that in any other time, would have been a career ending statement, explained away by the media that supported him sure, but never denying that he said it. And the American people ate it up. Every shady dealing he has had was brought into the light, examined, and ignored, every allegation of sexual assault, every bankruptcy, every incitement of violence at rallies. His supporters though that this what they wanted, more than that, it is who they are. Millions of little Donald Trumps, living their lives with every bit as much hate and ignorance as the man himself, without the money of course, but in aggregate just as powerful in a great many ways.

And they don't care, they revel in their cruelty, they believe, truly believe, that the country is theirs now and who can blame them? They won, sure they used a system that has been slowly but surely weighted in their favor since the late 70s, but they still won, with that candidate. You can't blame the conservative media bubble, not really, it helped sure, but blaming the media is really just a convenient way to ignore one inescapable fact:

The American people really are that stupid, or that racist, or sexist, or whatever stupid -ism or -phobia they see him as representing. They went to the rallies, heard what he had to say, and it resonated, even without the media telling them how to think, it was what they wanted to hear and they loved it.

I "joke" that I would prefer my candidates to be competent criminals, the idea being that I accept they will be criminals no matter what so I would prefer they be good at it, the same goes for the candidates being good liars. What the election has proven is that for nearly half of voters that requirement of competence is not really needed, the criminal part though? Well that does seem to be desired. It's state level politics writ large, Chris Christie learned those lessons well and began translating them to the national stage, only to be upset by a bigger gangster.

We got what we wanted folks, yes it wasn't what the majority wanted, but we are still talking tens of millions here, and that is quite bad enough.