Dear Liberals-- You Don't Need to Embellish
Trump's Presidency is a Horrorshow; There's No Need to Exagerrate It.
Dear Liberals.
We need to talk.
You’re all flaking out. Everything in this administration is causing you to run around with their hair on fire, screaming at the top of your lungs, anticipating the end of all civilization. And no, I’m not exagerrating there, that is actually a paraphrase from a Reddit board about how one particular liberal feels. To that I just want to say:
GET A FUCKING GRIP.
The last week, I’ve had to deal with dozens of armchair attorneys try and tell me about how I don’t know squat about the Constitution.1 Ahem. I went to law school, spent three years of my life analyzing every word of it and reading subsequent Court cases interpretting it and have had a career in the law since the mid-2000s. That’s a longer time than some of you idiots have been alive. I realize that it doesn’t help that our school system does a terrible job of teaching civics these days, and what do you expect when the Social Studies teacher is the basketball coach and school districts spend more money on gyms and athletics than school supplies, but don’t assume you’re smarter than people online—quite often you look foolish.
I want to point some numbers out to you. This is from Quinnipiac, as described by The Bulwark’s “Morning Shots” newsletter:
I want to stress this point because it hasn’t sunk in yet to many of you on the left; the swing voters didn’t vote for Trump because they liked him or thought he would be a good President, they voted for him because they look at you and want NOTHING to do with you. You’re erratic. You inflate everything. You protest the most minor of things. You’re overprivileged. You think you’re better than everyone and condescend to them. You think you know everything and are utterly intolerant of any dissent. Many of you with the loudest voices have never lived a day out of college. All you do is scream about what is wrong with the world and point fingers at who to blame. You’re Chicken Little with a Napoleon complex.
Trump is an ignoramous and his administration is a disaster. THERE IS NO NEED TO EMBELLISH THESE FACTS. Yet you do. Why? A straight up reporting of the news would allow people to absorb the magnitude and extent of Trump’s horribleness. When I sit with people hearing what ridiculous shit Trump does, the usual response is “That’s horrible!” Then the news goes to liberal commentators and people say “Turn it off” because Democratic and liberal messaging standard operating procedure is to amp it up to the nth degree. Worse yet, you completely turn on those very people who agree with you how Trump is a horrible human and an even worse President, BECAUSE THEY DON’T AGREE TO THE HYPERBOLIC EXTENT YOU DO. In fact, you group those objective, intelligent, sensible people IN WITH MAGA AS TRUMP DEFENDERS! Do you NOW get why nobody likes you?
It’s the “Boy who cried wolf!” too many times. You’ve stated over and over again how this time will be the line too far that crosses the US into Nazidom or brings about the end of Democracy as we know it, and yet we’re still here. At this point, nobody believes you. You have exaggerated everything so much that you have absolutely zero credibility. You’re like Joe Isuzu from these ‘80s ads.
They think you’re making shit up. Take just a few facts from this last week:
Elon’s “coup.” It’s not a coup. Elon is acting the same way a policy czar does, with the expressed authority of the President acting on the Executive branch. Now, a lot of what Elon is doing is dumb, possibly illegal,2 and some of what he is doing is shady as hell. It’s fine to report on that and describe your reservations about it in objective tones. Screaming online about how its a coup, how Elon is now President, how he’s taken over the US government in the same manner Hitler took over Germany, well that’s just insanity no objective person can take seriously. Nobody will listen to that, because they look at it and realize very quickly it’s not true. Trump could withdraw his authority at any time and kick Elon out; if it were a coup there is nothing Trump could do to take the reins of power back. You see, that’s how coups work. But here was a perfect opportunity to damage Trump and Elon, and instead, people became averse to the hysterical people shouting at windmills.
Trump’s Gaza Plan. Probably the dumbest Middle East plan ever.3 Trump threw out an absolutely insane idea that the US will take over Gaza. We’ll kick out the Palestinians, raze it to the ground and redevelop it into a modern Mediterranean Riviera.4 The Arab nations universally opposed the idea, Egypt and Jordan (who would have to accept the Palestinian refugees) rejected it outright, and the American public wants out of international kerfuffles, we’re not itching to start another altogether new one. That alone, if you let the story play out, would have been fine at demonstrating Trump’s incompetence at foreign affairs. And then as if on cue, the squad comes out and starts screaming how it amounts to “Ethnic Cleansing” and would be a crime against humanity. It’s as if they didn’t witness what was going on the last 18 months and decided they’d try and hang it all on Trump. This kind of messaging diffuses the hard hitting messaging that is actual on point and honest. And as if to underscore the point as to why this is happening to begin with:
Too many Nazi and Hitler comparisons to count. Not everything done by Trump means we’re in the second coming of the Third Reich.5 You know that saying that the first person to bring out Hitler usually loses the argument? This is now the point where you START most discussions. Says a lot.
While we’re at it, protests every week generally are dumb. Hundreds of people standing outside a building shouting at the top of their lungs? You know how many people it convinces to your side? None. In fact, it deters a lot of people who only want to get to work or go to Starbucks and have to navigate a mob instead. Sure, protests can be effective, when they’re rare. Protesting for the sake of protesting is just toxic activism, and that dissuades even people who tend to agree with your goals, who then turn away because they hate you.
The amount of stories and posts that include “Trump could now…” or “Elon would…” or are assumptive and forward looking are mind numbing. This is how you go down these rabbit holes that annoy everyone. It’s just a short leap from that to “Trump IS…” and that is where you guys go way overboard. You DONT KNOW AND QUITE OFTEN ARE WRONG. None of your assumptions are factual, they’re all based on conjecture. When people point this out, you never admit mistake, but instead attack the person who pointed out your logical error.
I realize that many out there are like “I didn’t vote for this and I’m going to stand up against this!” I get it. But you know what else you didn’t do? You didn’t convince enough people across the country to vote WITH you either. And looking at the current polling, they’re fleeing you in droves. Your messaging is altogether negative. You don’t trust that people can make up their minds for themselves and instead believe you have to bludgeon them to death with ennui and overstatements. You feel unless everyone is pushing things to the limits like you are, that they’re insufficiently opposed to Trump.
You’re wrong. Have more faith. Calm the Fuck Down.
Because right now your credibility is so shot that Trump COULD usurp the entire power of the government, you COULD try and point it out to the teeming millions out there. And nobody will believe you. They’ve been through this B.S. way too many times already. They expect you to make a big deal about every ludicrous thing that if a real issue came along they couldn’t tell the difference.
Genuinely, I want to be on your side. I agree with a lot of things you believe in, and that the country needs to go in that direction. I just wish you’d make it a helluva lot easier to be on your side, because frankly, it’s much easier to write this piece describing why it’s so easy to hate you and ripping you guys to shreds than it is to be your ally.
Sincerely,
PurpleAmerica.
PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner
So there have been these protests planned for this week for awhile now (the protests were a national dud). Early protest posters didn’t even label a reason for it, just a protest for the sake of protesting (it’s since morphed into being “anti Project 2025,” which was still pretty vague). In a nutshell, they hate Trump, they knew they’d protest, and came up with a weak justification for it after the fact.
No lie, I made a meme using the image of Gary Oldman yelling “EVERYONE!” in The Professional to mock the protests, because it just seemed liberals/Democrats were just protesting everything for the sake of protesting everything.
To my surprise they adopted it and it was the most upvoted response on the page.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
A group of ravens is called “An Unkindness.” I’m thinking of calling all the idiot liberal protesters “Ravens” because collectively they are unkind to everyone who actually agrees with them and believe in the very ideals they profess, but choose to be more discriminant in how they advocate. The problem is they’d probably adopt it as a badge of honor, the same way the right wing turds adopted Pepe the Frog.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
Seriously, I’m on the verge of giving up. It’s just not worth it anymore. I’m torn between my morals and ideals of what I know is right, and my utter antipathy for everyone who claims to represent them.
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
One person had the audacity to claim “She knew more than me” because she was a vetrenarian and had spent likely more time in school than I did. Word to the wise, don’t assume you know more than the person on the other side of an online argument; you don’t know what credentials they actually have and you can end up looking like a fool. Now, if she wanted to get into a discussion of which Trump appointee looks most like a horse’s ass, I’d defer to her, because she has a degree in which she learned an awful lot about horse’s asses.
You can bring the charges, but it would take a court to determine if it really is illegal.
And Middle East history goes back a long time.
That is, if you can handle the terrorist shelling, mortars and suicide bombers while you’re sipping your pina coladas, sunning on the beach.
Although I will admit, some of the things he does and says, and way too much that Elon says and does, are Nazi adjacent.
Wow. I like your newsletter, always look forward to the read when it comes out a few times per week. I don't know what kind of online conversations you're subjected to outside of this substack, but I hope today's missive got that out of your system. Maybe just don't engage them? Let your writing speak for itself and don't rise to the bait if people are trolling you?
I think Trumps Gaza plan was deliberately insane to shake the Middle East out of 70+ years of the same old same old. Now I read that Egypt and Qater are working very hard on an alternative. And that seems like progress. Repeating the ‘pour money on the Palestinians’ process makes 0 sense to me.