Five Sides of the Same Coin

Some random shower thoughts about the current situation that we're... enjoying.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both symptoms of the same problem going on the country.  I mean, seriously, the 2016 election was nearly a contest between an orange-faced blowhard and an 800 year old socialist muppet.  In fact, the only reason that wasn't the case was because of side three of our coin: Jimmy Carter.



Carter was likewise a manifestation of a mad electorate.  The DNC didn't much care for that, so they changed their rules, which is why the DNC has so many super delegates.  Were it not for that change, it's very likely that Sanders would have won the nomination.  The Republican party, largely being free of super delegates, didn't have a party-boss panic button to prevent him from taking the nomination.

The other two sides are, broadly, the Alt.Right (which I'm using as a blanket term here to include the self identifying Alt.Right as well as the Alt.Light, Alt.White, and various other hard right/nationalist groups) and, broadly, Antifa (being used here to reference various Black Bloc, violent hard left protest groups).  For what it's worth, I'm not including groups like Black Lives Matter in this discussion; they're just a run of the mill Marxist front group that's been around forever.

So what on earth do Trump, Carter, Sanders, Alt.Right, and Antifa all have in common?  I'm glad you asked, and the answer is pretty simple: people are furious with the political class, the media, the elites, the establishment; whatever you want to call it.


The real problem here is that people are mad as Hell and they aren't taking it any more.  You'd think Trump and Sanders would be a wake-up call, but it hasn't been.  When faced with a furious electorate who was sick of being ignored and condescended to, the politicians and media responded by... ignoring and condescending.

So now we have riots in the streets.

I think we're facing a sea change here.  2018 may very well be a metaphorical bloodbath for sitting politicians.  The problem is, this may not be a good thing.  The current political class are horribly ineffectual, milquetoast, and mostly just concerned with hording their own power.  I'm not sure replacing them with lunatic firebrands will be an improvement.

Of course, the current environment of war in the streets isn't particularly good either.  All this stuff just has me re-reading this fantastic (and long) post and shaking my head at how everyone just wants to jam the gas pedal down harder.