HIGH SCHOOLS

[markberwyn]

Anybody who considers "lipstick on a dumb shit" to be reasonable political discourse and who publicly declares her resentment for paying for her daughter's education has no business claiming the high ground and proclaiming others to be "mean nasty" people.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - another saying I like although it's not I guess what you would consider to be reasonable political discourse.  Although, the only reasonable political discourse is the one you consider to be the "right" one.  BTW, my other daughter is a liberal lawyer who works for the government and we still get along.  She believes in the power of reasonable debate.  WTF???

Did you tell your daughter how much paying for her education turned your stomach?

[MRS. NORTHSIDER]

Anybody who considers "lipstick on a dumb shit" to be reasonable political discourse and who publicly declares her resentment for paying for her daughter's education has no business claiming the high ground and proclaiming others to be "mean nasty" people.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - another saying I like although it's not I guess what you would consider to be reasonable political discourse.  Although, the only reasonable political discourse is the one you consider to be the "right" one.  BTW, my other daughter is a liberal lawyer who works for the government and we still get along.  She believes in the power of reasonable debate.  WTF???

Did you tell your daughter how much paying for her education turned your stomach?

Wrong daughter.  And yes given her liberal views, it does slightly make me sick to my stomach.  But, hey I have another chance for redemption with this daughter.  Looking at Hillsdale College right now.

[markberwyn]

And yes given her liberal views, it does slightly make me sick to my stomach.

Why?

[berwyn senator]

I hope all can understand why Trump won!!!!!!!!

[markberwyn]

I hope all can understand why Trump won!!!!!!!!

It's becoming clearer to me now. I think a lot of it was predicted in the book excerpt I'm quoting below. I've quoted it here before and it makes people mad, which is why I think it's on to something.

It comes from "The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood," by David Simon and Edward Burns. I think it says a lot about how many Trump voters perceive themselves, and how they've been trained to perceive social issues around them.

I also think a substantial percentage of Trump voters would take pleasure in receiving a red baseball cap embroidered with the last line of this excerpt---it's effectively a blunt translation of "Make America Great Again." Few, though, would have the nerve to wear it in public. Anyway, here's Simon and Burns:

In the end, we'll blame them. We always do.

And why the hell not? They've ignored our warnings and sanctions, they've taken our check-day bribe and done precious little with it, they've turned our city streets into drug bazaars. Why shouldn't they take the blame?

If it was us, if it was our lonesome ass shuffling past the corner of Monroe and Fayette every day, we'd get out, wouldn't we? We'd endure. Succeed. Thrive. No matter what, no matter how, we'd find the fucking exit.

If it was our fathers firing dope and our mothers smoking coke, we'd pull ourselves past it. We'd raise ourselves, discipline ourselves, teach ourselves the essentials of self-denial and delayed gratification that no one in our universe ever demonstrated. And if home was the rear room of some rancid, three-story shooting gallery, we'd rise above that, too. We'd shuffle up the stairs past nodding fiends and sullen dealers, shut the bedroom door, turn off the television, and do our schoolwork. Algebra amid the stench of burning rock; American history between police raids. And if there was no food on the table, we're certain we could deal with that. We'd lie about our age to cut taters and spill grease and sling fries at the sub shop for five-and-change-an-hour, walking every day past the corner where friends are making our daily wage in ten minutes.

No matter. We'd persevere, wouldn't we? We'd work that job by night and go to class by day, by some miracle squeezing a quality education from the disaster that is the Baltimore school system. We'd do all the work, we'd pay whatever the price. And when all the other children are out in the street, learning the corner world, priming themselves for the only life they've ever known, we'd be holed up in some shithole of a rowhouse with our textbooks and yellow highlighter, cramming for finals. Come payday, we wouldn't blow that minimum-wage check on Nikes, or Fila sweat suits, or Friday night movies at Harbor Park with the neighborhood girls. No fucking way, brother, because we pulled self-esteem out of a dark hole somewhere and damned if our every desire isn't absolutely in check. We don't need to buy any status; no, we can save every last dollar, or invest it, maybe. And in the end, we know, we'll head off to our college years shining like a new dime, swearing never to set foot on West Fayette Street again.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores—when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters—when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound.

It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance and circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values—we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about us.

Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkingly assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now possess. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine truth.

Why? The truth is plain:

We were not born to be niggers.