America, class warfare and Donald John Trump

I want you to watch the following very short comedy skit.  It's one minute long, it might be unfunny, but it's key to getting what I'm about to share with you.

Done?

Okay.

It's just a comedy skit, right?

Wrong.

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For decades, the blue tribe has waged a form of psychological class warfare against the way of life and the values of many tens of millions of Americans.  The "ad" above is just one example of such an attack — clumsily presented as an innocent joke — but make no mistake: the warfare is waged on many fronts beyond comedy.

The target of these attacks is the red tribe — a class of people that the blue tribe seeks to denigrate as white trash, bigots, assholes, filthy, stupid, illiterate, backwards, poor, incompetent, powerless, lascivious, inbred, losers.

Why?  Well, such class warfare is a particularly effective tactic that a blue tribe member can use to shame others into falling in line; that power to manipulate others' behavior is the end goal of such warfare.  Whether the end goal is to punish anyone who displays a Confederate flag, or to punish anyone who questions third wave feminism, the mechanism is the same and the effects are the same — the aggressor prevails and imposes his whims on the victim.  Stigmatization — simple, yet effective.

In sum, blue tribe class warfare is "red tribe is bad, good people must hate red tribe, you must act like blue tribe".

Because this warfare was so effective, the blue tribe has had the longest incentive to expand the scope of the attacks, in order to cover an ever-increasing size of the population.  The more people that can be insinuated to be "red tribe" thus "bad", the more people whose behavior can be manipulated.  Because society had internalized that "red tribe bad", it suffices for the blue tribe member to label preferences and beliefs they want to stamp out as "red tribe".  "Not a feminist?  Lemme smear you as a member of the red tribe, thus bad."

As such, the category red tribe — which originally meant only people living in flyover America according to blue tribe classist beliefs — has grown to encompass a much larger demographic of "enemies" that the blue tribe has declared war against: non-feminists, religious people, nonbelievers in blank slateism, gamers, conservatives of all stripes, white men in general, et cetera.  To the blue tribe, anyone who does not support blue tribe causes, dogmas and shibboleths is by definition to be treated as a member of the red tribe.

In other words: the more people that can be shamed as "red tribe", the more power the blue tribe has over everyone.  This can only be good for the blue tribe, right?

Heh.

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This sort of class war has an inevitable end game.  Eventually, the perpetual expansion of the class war creates a group of victims so powerful, so angrily resentful, and so large in numbers, that they suddenly get past the threshold to realize: (a) they are big; (b) they are victims together, even if they share little else in common; (c) they must have each other's backs; (d) the time is coming to finally to strike back at the blue tribe.  And that time has come, as you will see shortly; it was only a matter of time.

Call this phenomenon the rise of the red tribe class consciousness — a new mental model for seeing themselves and their group.  Large, strong, diverse in beliefs, powerless, and pissed off.

One man was savvy enough to divine and then exploit that class consciousness.

That man is Donald John Trump.

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It is not relevant who Trump is.  What is important is what and who he represents.

Trump is very much not a member of the blue tribe.  Sure, he is a powerful man, but his apparent similarities with the blue tribe end there.  He has made it exquisitely clear, to anyone who can listen or fill circles on a ballot, that he does not give one flying fuck about the blue tribe, that he despises them, and that he is not going to take shit from them.

Red tribe members intuitively understand that, and so they perceive Trump as one of them.  They feel represented and empowered by Trump with an intensity no other candidate can possibly hope to achieve.  Trump is the missing puzzle piece that completes the red tribe class consciousness, transforming that mass of people from large, strong, diverse, powerless and pissed off, to large, strong, diverse, powerful and pissed off.

With the coming of Trump, the red tribe has finally found its immune system against blue tribe class warfare.

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This is obviously very bad news for the blue tribe.  They know full well that Trump in power brings the blue tribe's chickens home to roost, after a long many decades of the class warfare they waged to undermine and stigmatize the red tribe.  They are rightfully terrified and desperate, because they can already foresee that, after a Trump victory — which looks more and more inevitable every day — they are going to lose much of the power they had filched by othering and stigmatizing people with their decades-long class warfare.

And they have no fucking clue what to do about it.

To date, the blue tribe has reacted (quite predictably) by doing the only thing they know to do: they've dialed the class warfare up, desperately attempting to smear ("stump") Trump and every one of his supporters with the standard stigmas they have been using for decades.

Except this time, as you all might be aware of already, that class warfare is backfiring, spectacularly, comically, Pepetastically.  The class consciousness of the red tribe has give them powerful immunity against class warfare: every attack against Trump is perceived as an attack on them, which obviously can only generate more loyalty and solidarity for Trump.  Incidentally, attacks against guys like Rubio or Cruz do not and cannot generate the same loyalty for them — the common red tribe reaction to them getting attacked is "fuck that establishment guy, he's not one of us".  This explains why Trump's tactic to fend them off has been to point out consistently (and truthfully) how they are not "one of us".

Trump knows that attacks on him generate loyalty for him.  He's been cashing in on the attacks by simply remaining calm, never pleading, and never falling into the shaming trap set up by blue tribe psychological warfare -- applying a sort of Gorilla Mindset to the problem, and reaping the rewards.  The red tribe joyously celebrates this attitude, to the point that they've named it: you can't stump the Trump.  Trump's demeanor couldn't be clearer: "you classists have no power here — the red tribe is no longer the weak tribe, and you classists are no longer in control".

Better still, since Rubio and Cruz are not members of the red tribe, they don't enjoy the immunity against blue tribe psychological warfare that Trump enjoys.  Trump is thus free to wage blue tribe class warfare against Rubio and Cruz... and, oh boy, has Trump stumped them successfully, numerous times!

o

Scott Adams was probably right to predict Trump's victory by a landslide.  The sociological meaning of the victory, however, is far deeper than a mere president.  It took a few decades, but it was meant to happen.  The dozens of millions of Americans deliberately disenfranchised by the blue tribe have finally found a way to strike back and say "no, fuck you, your bullshit is over".

The blue tribe's decades-long warfare finally succeeded in creating the red monster that they constantly cried wolf about. That monster is about to eat them alive. and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Where we go from here, it's anyone's guess.