REMARKABLE quote - from a disenchanted supporter. And frankly, I don't know what the immediate go-to is, regarding how one reacts to this. Disappointment? Outrage? Pity?
Part of me wants to shake people like this and roar into their faces - "WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK???????!!!?!?!?!?" Just how badly (or bigly) did you allow yourself to be conned? Not just WHY did you buy this, but HOW could you buy this? How could you not see this was a big fat con that was being pulled on you?
And then there's the part of me that thinks maybe the thing to do is try to go easy on some of these folks and TRY, anyway, to lead this horse to water and help him or her take the life-saving drink of fresh, pure, life-saving water. Except they WANTED to head straight for almost certain death by dehydration! And they were just sure it'd work out well, anyway, 'cause this guy sold it so well - it'll be easy, it'll be done in a day, there's gonna be so much winning, you're gonna get tired of winning...
I met one of these yesterday. A fellow who repaired something for me. When I drove out to pick it up and pay him, we got into conversation - inevitably, about current events. You should have seen his posture. His body language told all - even more than the words falling from his lips did. He'd voted for trump. And he was standing there, in much the same posture that John Kelly had, backstage, while grimacing through trump's fire 'n' brimstone about Charlottesville, the day he really dug himself down into the depths of the neo-Nazi apologist sewer. Slightly hunched over, eyes cast down toward the ground, a slumping defensive posture where you're literally protecting your soft underbelly. He was shaking his head. His voice sounding defeated and discouraged and disillusioned, but not quite ready to admit the fault was half his own for allowing himself to fall for the sales pitch. And it started. "I voted for trump, I don't know... I have a friend in New York who knew him and he was this very successful businessman who was gonna turn this around... "
Shit - I kept thinking "where do I start with the debunking job here?" Because I can't NOT feel that it's at least partially the fault of THESE VOTERS who allowed themselves to be conned. Who grasped at straws, thinking those straws were really life preservers. I'm sorry. WE all heard the same baloney. WE all heard the same sales pitches and sloganeering and cheap-ass easy-street slicky-boy talk. And WE weren't fooled. WE weren't taken in by a single syllable of it. WE had our heads screwed on securely and didn't let them float up into the clouds so it's not possible to see, with any clear vision, the pie-in-the-sky land that was being embroidered by this world-class phony-ass snake-oil salesman.
I listened. Tried as gently and subtly as possible to suggest that it was all a con - that this guy is in NO WAY ON EARTH fit to be anywhere near the White House, much less installed inside there. But I found myself mostly listening as this guy was finally trying to grope his way through the fog to that life-saving water to which we in the real world tried in vain to lead voters like him, last year. Tried very hard not to punish or sneer, or tell him what I really thought. Tried just to listen. The only message I tried to use to get through to this gent was "you CAN'T RUN GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS! You just CAN'T! They're TWO SEPARATE THINGS! They're NOT THE SAME!!! They DON'T have the same goals, they DON'T have the same objectives, and they DON'T have the same reason for being! Business is there TO MAKE A PROFIT. And ONLY to make a profit. Government is NOT there to make a profit!!!!! Government is there to serve the needs of the people, and take responsibility for managing and serving the greater good. Making a profit just doesn't figure in there. It's certainly not in the Constitution anywhere.
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