You All Suck (Example #15 - It’s All in The Marketing…)

Patriot (noun)

1. a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.

2. a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.

As promised, I’m going to explain the phenomenon of The Modern Patriot.

The word has been flung about as carelessly of late as the word “racist” was not so very long ago, and in the casual use, is rapidly about to share the same fate. For much like the modern usage of “racist”, the word “patriot” is no longer a descriptive term of a physical thing (or person) but of a vague emotion, more symbolic of an ill-defined general feeling than of a legitimate state of being.

“Racist”, along with a lot of other words ending in “-ist” or “-ism” lost much of its power when the definition expanded beyond mere adjective to encompass a range of visceral emotional projections. For example, you may not hate people based upon the color of their skin or their ethnicity, and in fact, harbor no ill-will towards anyone, but the simple act of embracing or promoting an historical point-of-view – say, accepting the view that Christopher Columbus was not a genocidal maniac, but rather an explorer who may have been unable to foresee the consequences of his discovery --  is enough to garner the label from someone with an opposing viewpoint.

Likewise, pointing out objective facts – say, that African-Americans commit more crimes than any other sub-set of the American population – will also get you tarred as a “racist”, even though there is no animus, no ill-intention, on the part of the person who disseminates such facts. The point being that the epithet “racist” is an indication of the level of butthurt suffered by the person who finds this fact or that opinion to be offensive. Having their feelings hurt and having nothing to say in defense or in counter, they instead lash out in an emotional manner. According to the current social conventions of people who, on a good day, might be able to pour piss from a boot with instructions printed on the heel, this is a signal that you should a) shut up, b) go away, and c) will probably be ostracized for holding that opinion, repeating that fact. In which case, the word “racist is not intended as a descriptive adjective, but rather as a signal to conform to the social conventions and tender sensibilities of the person who uses it.

Who, more than likely, IS a racist, but believes she (it’s usually a “she”) can transfer the inner turmoil caused by her own guilt over being a (secret) racist on to you, by labeling you and banishing you from her circle of friends, so as to not be reminded by your presence of what a piece of shit she really is.

It has been a game the Left has played for 100 years now: the attaching of a label to another and linking it to a social convention which is a) detached from anything that can be called “social”, and b) was invented by a convention of mental cases for the purposes of tarring others as mental cases, while allowing the perpetrator to continue living in denial. If you disagree with their orthodoxy, then there is something wrong with you; you suffer from a "phobia";you have no soul; you hate. As always, when it comes to anything invented by the Left, the ultimate purpose is to either get an opponent to shut the fuck up (clearing out/disarming the opposition), or to change the usage and definition of words so that any argument you get from someone who WON’T shut up can only be fought on the leftist’s terms.

After a century of being hoodwinked by this phenomenon, it should not be surprising that – finally – the right has caught on, and started playing the game, too. The only difference is in style; the left, having sharpened the tactic over many years is, not surprisingly, very good at it and can do it without the usual, mediocre intellect noticing it.

The Right, on the other hand, like most things it copies from the left (managerialist politics, use of media, "grassroots" protest movements like the Tea Party -- does anyone still believe that?) does it less well, although to be honest, it’s not so much for lack of practice and polish as it is lack of good material -- both human and intellectual -- to work with.

After all, the Left presents it’s ideas in terms of Utopian visions of brotherhood, plenty, co-operation, egalitarianism, while the Right presents it’s ideas in the comparatively colorless and listless light of Objective Reality, Common Sense, or even worse, Religion.

To illustrate the point:

Universal Healthcare that doesn’t cost anyone anything and which gives everyone everything sounds a whole lot better than “increase competition across state lines, repeal the ObamaCare Mandate, increase the savings limit for independent Medical Spending Accounts, and reduce the regulatory burden that increases the cost of medical care”. One is a bright, shiny object, the other is a dry, recitation of ideas that would bore the average person in 12 seconds, if they had to listen to the details.

And here is where the critical difference lay:

The democrat WANTS to be tantalized by the bright, shiny object, and the details be damned. The Left's leadership has known this forever. The Right belatedly caught on, and when it did, it believed (rightly, if you ask me) that the Devil is ALWAYS in the details, and that all that glitters is not necessarily gold. While this a very mature and objective point of view, it engenders no excitement, no loyalty, no fervor, and in the end, many bad liberal ideas that fail get adopted because they’ve been sold in an exciting package, by energized spokesdouches, speaking to a mob that so obviously wishes to be lied to and to make someone else suffer for their misfortunes.

By comparison, the GOP is in the position of an ad man who has to sell “New and Improved AIDS”. He might very well be able to make a logical case for why you should like New AIDS better than Old AIDS, and how New AIDS is vastly superior to Old AIDS in every way, but…it’s still AIDS.


Lefties have learned the secret (metaphorically) to selling AIDS as something everyone wants, everyone needs, and that it should be paid for by someone else. I’m certainly exaggerating, but not by much; a political movement that sold government handouts as the “solution” to poverty would have been good at marketing AIDS as the hot gift this Christmas. A movement that managed to sell Abortion as a social panacea – and across a broad spectrum of American Life – the answer to poverty, to orphans, to undesirable people, the key to Women’s Liberation, could just as easily have turned AIDS into the McDonald’s of diseases, should it have decided it was worth it to do so, or should it have felt such necessary to advance it’s agenda and secure its power.

It (the Left) learned a very long time ago that people, literally, have shit for brains.

The Right gave Joe Sixpack too much credit by assuming that he could walk and chew gum at the same time AND understand basic concepts of economics, law, constitutional government, geopolitics, and so on and so forth.

If you needed any proof that the American Public is dumber than a bag of rocks, and susceptible to marketing 24/7/365, just turn on your television and you’re bound to see someone named “Kardashian”; you’ll certainly come across people who call themselves “journalists” who can’t seem to tell a believable story but still draw huge audiences; you’ll see the denizens of every trailer park and inner-city housing project turn up on Judge Judy, COPS, Live PD, The First 48, My 600-Pound Life, half-a-million afternoon “talk” shows flogging drama centered around paternity tests, incest, mental illness, the shallow thoughts of F-list celebrities, the constant commercials for anti-depressants, erectile dysfunction ; competitive obstacle racing, competitive music shows where everyone sings the same exact way and has no talent, competitive eating, competitive weight loss, competitive drag queens, and a re-enactment of junior high school locked inside an artificial aquarium with cameras (see: Survivor, Big Brother, and the like).

The point being that these things are around, and they thrive, because the people who watch them can’t muster up much intellectual firepower.

And just like the political left uses people’s own stupid against them in order to sell them a vision of paradise that will never come (like religion), the people who market these television shows use the average person’s inner dunce to force them to watch five minutes of commercials by interspersing them with 12-minutes of programming designed to turn their brains into oatmeal.

First rule of both politics and marketing: know your audience. If your audience happens to be a navel-gazing, butt-scratching, drooling mass of barely-sentient DNA, you’re golden. Which brings us back to this whole “Patriot Movement”.



We’re talking about a targeted audience. We’re talking about a word which has been expanded to encompass a range of emotions and, to a limited extent, an idealized lifestyle that is largely disappearing. It’s a shield against Objective Reality that has, to a large extent, come to represent the opposite of what the word's literal meaning truly is.

So let’s start with the basics: the target audience. The average, self-proclaimed “Patriot” is a confused person. Not necessarily mentally confused, but at a loss at how to deal with the changes Progress has brought with it. Like most Americans, he’s usually not very bright. Oh, he can fix engines, and often program computers, and maybe understand the legerdemain of organic chemistry, but he’s clueless as to the nature of the society he lives in. This is because he's been taught history, economics, an political science by unionized hamsters who are largely drawn from the bottom third of every graduating college class.



He most likely does not speak a foreign language. He is not likely to have read much of what constitutes The Western Canon.
He has been anesthetized by religion, televised sports, 500 other channels of complete crap, cheap (but effective) booze, physical safety from foreign military invasion, a standard of living that is the envy of the civilized world (even if he falls into the category of "poor" and qualifies for government aid), and modern, technical advancements that give him the comfort, convenience, and spare time to watch the Notre Dame-Michigan game on his smartphone while taking a dump.

And still, much of this progress that has gone on around him didn’t drag him along in its wake, because to think too deeply upon it would be a waste of time, and it's utility in expanding his knowledge and experience isn't even 90th on his list; he is intellectually incurious, and was trained to be that way by the Public Schools. Often, this is a matter of limited horizons – living much or all of his life in a small town in the provincial backwaters; cleaving to traditions that may be described as anachronistic, or which serve no useful purpose, or because he belongs to an organization which has long conditioned his thinking with a deliberate aim of keeping him ignorant on some level (like his church, or his favorite radio host).

None of this makes him a bad person. Doesn’t necessarily make him a threat to himself or others, either, because he doesn't see beyond himself. I’m generalizing and stereotyping to an extraordinary degree.

 However, the majority of people I encounter – in real life, online, in business – who proudly portray themselves as “Patriots” usually fall into the same series of holes – they listen to the same talk radio stations and personalities, they read the same books, they hold a nostalgia for a culture that is largely gone, they go on and on that Things Aren’t Like They Used to Be, they largely express ignorance as to why, and, to a greater extent, how they bear some of the responsibility for their present circumstances.

And much like the butthurt and confused person who fires “racist”, “sexist”, et.al. bullets hither and yon,  retreating into an emotional fantasy world for lack of an exegesis, or response, based in reason.

 To be “a Patriot” today, I’m told (too often) is to embrace a range of stuff that indicates a questionable intellectual acuity. For example, I’m supposed to eagerly cleave to all things American in a reflexive fashion. America cannot be wrong, because America. The Flag is sacred, something on the order of the Holy Sepulcher, the Temple Mount, and the Dome of the Rock, all rolled into one plus 100. The National Anthem something akin to a hymn. The country is threatened by invisible forces – the New World Order, The Joooos!, traitors in our midst (every democrat, and assorted people categorized as RINOs or “Establishment” – all working in cahoots to deprive the red-blooded, inbred, tractor-drivin’, tobacco-chewin’, Marlboro Man, Junior, of his birthright to be superior in every way to everyone else. Donald Trump is the Messiah. Jesus is coming back, any day now.
If I’m not standing in solidarity with people who believe these things with every fiber of their being, and who eat, sleep, breathe, shit and sweat these things, if I fail to bleed Red, White and Blue on command, well, then I’m part of the problem, see?, and there’s no place in this country for people like me.

(To quote Chesterton: "My country, right or wrong", is a thing no patriot would think of saying. It's like saying "My Mother, drunk or sober").

What makes them “A Patriot” is that they’ve bought into the marketing and adopted the lifestyle; they mouth the slogans, they buy the MAGA hats, they tune out the NFL, they spend all their spare time cleaning their guns and disseminating the latest clickbait headline from garbage websites aimed at them all over social media. Typically, these are of an extraordinarily hysterical and unhinged quality: “Hillary Confesses!”, “Secret CIA Files on Obama’s Un-American Activities Revealed!”, “Exclusive Video: Mitch McConnell engaged in Satanic Sex Rite With Rhesus Monkey!”.


Curiosity overcomes even the best of us, and when I do, occasionally, take the clickbait, I’m treated to an article which was written by a functional illiterate who might – if he were lucky – have finished 3^rd grade, imparts no details that justify or embellish the headline, and in the end are little more than a sickening diatribe vomited up by a disturbed person out to do dirt on someone they don’t like.It's mind porn for people with no minds.

It's also often loaded with anti-Semitism and conspiracy theory so whacked out that you wonder if the supply of Thorazine has run out, and if the doctors know Patient #3457 is using the internet without supervision again.

Let’s compare the “Patriot” to the definitions above:

In relation to definition 1, there is no doubt of the torrid love affair with the nation, or at the very least, with a certain vision of the nation which is separated from the reality. The Small Town life of Middle America and the South is disappearing; the “Patriot” sends his children off to college as part of their mission to “create a better life”, and his kids either don’t come back (the experience having opened vast, new, and exciting horizons for them), or, they fall under the evil spell of academics who largely make their living by indoctrination, rather than by instruction (and who often escaped the stifling hell of a small town, themselves). The Circle of Life is broken: the family is separated not only by the vast distances between New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and Chickenspit, Arkansas, or Cousin Porker, West Va., but by the equally vast distances between what the Rust Belt or the Kudzu Nation have to offer, economically and socially. This is disturbing to “The Patriot”.

Mass migration and illegal immigration have turned their tiny worlds upside down: southern towns of traditional conservative values now find themselves inundated by inflows of northeastern liberals drawn by cheap real estate, or tethered to a relocated job, who’s first instinct is to complain that life here sucks, and who’s second instinct is to turn Dogpatch into a replica of Boston, New York or Philadelphia. The illegals who are hired because the "Patriot" likes his landscaping (just not the effort required to do it properly), he loves a clean swimming pool and his local diner, and can't be bothered to clean his own house, establish Little Guadalajara’s that soon become no-go zones for people who may have roots in the area that go back centuries. The tragic part, from the “Patriot” point of view, is that the newcomers not only bring their (to them) obnoxious attitudes and filthy habits, but also their politics with them, and there’s just too much change to bear.

The System of Politics, as the “Patriot” once understood it, is no longer an agent of either protection or a means of having his rapidly-diminishing voice given equal standing in American Life. He has seen a succession of politicians who represent his “values” either subverted by the realities of American Politics into modifying or rejecting their previous stances, or seemingly abandoning them altogether while still paying lip service to them. The problem, as they see it, is that “The System” no longer works for them, and yet, they still send the same douchebags back to Washington. Repeatedly.

Americans may hate Congress, but everyone appears to be in love with their Congressman.

And when that love affair with the Congresscritter finally comes to a screeching halt, like all unhappy affairs of the heart, this, too gets very personal and extraordinarily messy. Because it’s not about politics, anymore, but about feelings. And much like a jilted woman, the “Patriot” is not only out to make her ungrateful ex-lover pay for all the sex and money and love and emotions she’s wasted on the bastard, no --- she has to psychologically scar the fuck out of him FOR LIFE.

Hence, Donald Trump and Roy Moore, two guys who would normally not even catch a “Patriot’s” eye, the one too pushy, too brash, too loud, a braggart and a cad, the other a former democrat with allegations of pedophilia plastered all over him just like the advertising on a NASCAR racer. They’re over-the-top in their adoration and support and (metaphorical) tingling va-jay-jays for these guys not for who they are, and what they can do, but because it’s a gigantic “FUCK YOU” to the people who (as they see it) used, abused, and then dumped them. If it makes them look foolish, if the open wound of their broken hearts, the mental disarray attendant to the traumatic break-up, should cause them to make errors in judgement with the new boyfriend (like putting too much faith in him, too), well, that’ll be someone else’s fault, also.

On the second definition, it’s rather doubtful many who accept the label “Patriot” actually KNOW what the National Interest is, primarily because they confuse “National Interest” with “Self Interest”, which largely consists of returning life to the comfortable, familiar state of stasis. Much like democrats might present their mental diarrhea as “for the children”, or the communist his evil as “for the good of humanity”, the “Patriot” claims this self-interested and stale view of life is for “the good of the country”… but is it really?

As a for-instance, remember the hullabaloo when Trump “saved” 1,200 jobs at a Carrier plant in Indiana? Those jobs, we were told, were headed for Mexico because Carrier just couldn’t afford to stay in Indiana and be competitive in a global market. Trump came in, talked a lot, brokered some back-room deals (which probably included strong-arming Mike Pence), and “saved” those jobs by getting Carrier a paltry $7 million in tax breaks, some momentary good/bad publicity, and then we watched the jobs go to Mexico, anyway. But the point was “Trump did SOMETHING”, the fact that it didn’t work as advertised is conveniently forgotten. The effort was the important thing. And 1,200- people still lost their jobs, but let’s not criticize Our Lord and Savior too harshly, shall we?

As someone who has made a damned good living using modern technology to automate people out of work, the problems facing the American corporation and the American Worker go beyond the regulatory burden, the corporate tax rate, the consolidation of businesses into more-centralized operations that shed unproductive plants; labor is just no longer valuable, and the demands of the American Workforce and the American Employer have diverged to the point where there is no longer any happy medium. Today’s production requires smarter, more technically-skilled workers who are likely to be in very short supply in Pigsnot, Mississippi. The multi-national corporation has access to a global labor pool which works just as well, is just as technically-proficient, and which has a much lower standard of living than even the poorest jackass in Smell-My-Finger, Oklahoma.

Technology has either replaced a vast swath of workers by making their jobs obsolete, or transformed production in such a way as to increase productivity with fewer workers. The workplace of the past, where Billy Bob got up at 6 am, went to “the mill” or “the plant”, put in a 10-hour day, and lived a life much like his father and grandfather did, is disappearing.

For a start, “the mill” is more likely to be in Indonesia, since people there don’t join unions and don’t expect to be vastly overpaid for a repetitive-process job that is mostly done by machine, anyway, and can be creditably done by someone with a lower IQ – with often superior quality – or a baboon. “The Plant” is no longer the same place that Daddy and Gramps worked in: it’s liable to be full of sophisticated computerized tools, production monitored and controlled by computers working with specialized robots, linked by a network that constantly talks to buyers, suppliers, salespeople in the field, and logistical elements, run by people with snooty, high-falutin’ MBA’s instead of that nice Fred Fuckerman who used to live next door and sing in the church choir.

A diploma from Central High and a good word from your uncle doesn’t get you in the door, anymore, assuming they didn't ship the door to China, too.

And when you get someone like a Donald Trump who parachutes in to “make a deal” and “save” your job, what you’re likely to get is something along the lines of the employer being given a great, big gift of tax breaks, a dispensation from certain regulations for a short period of time, a low- (or no-) interest government loan and a few other sweetheart deals, who announces a move of production facilities from Vietnam to a no-income-tax state (and double dips, because the state gives him similar deals), builds a brand-spankin’-new facility with all this government largess, providing some temporary jobs, and then….automates the fuck out of it, anyway. When all the blood gets squeezed from that stone, they’re off for the sunnier climes of South East Asia, again.

In international affairs, which the majority of people don’t understand, anyway (experiment to prove the point: ask 10 people of average intelligence if they can find Copenhagen on a map; ask them if the know the difference between the EU and NATO; ask them to provide a pro/con argument for/against the WTO; ask them if they’ve ever been outside of the country at any time that DIDN’T include military service). Oh, they know a few things -- Islam breeds terrorists, the Russians are bad, The Iranians are bad, The North Koreans won’t last 30 seconds in a war with the United States, but they couldn’t tell you much of the history behind these things, they will know nothing of the cultures involved, they will be totally ignorant on many of the major issues.

All they know is that America must prevail (and they’re right), but the means by which America can prevail and how present policy will lead to American victory eludes them.

Finally, we get to the most obnoxious part of the matter, and a foundation stone of this whole “Patriot” nonsense, which is religion. I have yet to meet or speak or correspond with a self-proclaimed “Patriot” who doesn’t loudly and proudly announce to the world that he’s Christian and damned proud of it, and that he’s being persecuted for being “a person of faith”.

Now, a religion which was founded upon martyrdom is apt to convince it’s followers that they, too, are constantly under constant attack by enemies, whether it’s Satan, Islam, The Joooos!, permissive society. In some forms of Christianity, this paranoia is imparted with the Baptismal Water, and while there is certainly a shitload of evidence to support that traditional notions of Christianity are being rejected, no one is crucifying Christians on a vast scale, or leading them into the arena to face the lions. Being sued for not wanting to bake a Gay Wedding cake is not the same as being shot full of arrows, tossed into the Tiber trussed up in a sack full of snakes, or gladly committing suicide rather than have your virginity taken by the barbarians. It’s a nuisance, not a matter of life and death, but since being sued over the wedding cake is a shameless ploy to get something for nothing (What? That was the only bakery you could patronize?), it is something that is remedied by the same courts that turned it into an Olympic Sport, and by legislatures who need to grow a pair of balls and put an end to this nonsense.

Unfortunately, when your only choice is between the pol who promises to protect your Gun Rights,  the other one who Promises to Run the Fags Out of Town, the third one who promises to frog-march the abortionists to the ovens, you quickly discover that even if they manage to get elected they are rendered ineffective (outvoted) by people who don’t share their narrow points-of-view, or who at least have a sense of perspective, or who aren’t batshit insane. See: Todd Akin, for example. The worst part is, your selection was limited in the first place because you demand a candidate like that. You end up shooting yourself with your own stupid, because you can’t find it in yourself to vote for someone who just might make you feel inferior by having something approaching brains and experience beyond tractor pulls and Junior Rodeo, or who differs slightly in opinion from you on a single issue. Then you complain that you can’t get anyone you like elected, so have to “settle” for someone who would be lucky to get a slice, instead of the whole loaf, which you consider to be the same as getting no bread, at all.

It becomes a cycle of failure that reinforces itself. But it's never your own fault; it's everyone else's.

 “Patriot”, then, is merely an identity for the Age of Identity that largely describes a pissed off idiot.

He feels neglected; he feels abused; he feels alternately taken for granted and taken advantage of; his collective ass is chapped as he sees his way of life flickering like a candle in a stiff breeze, laboring under the misapprehension that he can live in a snapshot of the past as the rest of the country races into the future. He feels entitled. His continued failures have taught him nothing, and have instilled a sense of superiority in him, as if it's everyone else who has the problem (lefties think this way, incidentally). He feels that he doesn’t need to change and adapt to new circumstances, and that everyone else needs to be yanked back into his medieval mindset. His shrinking world, his inability to maintain his material comfort or articulate and productive act upon his rage, all lead to refuge in radical politics.

Just like Lefties, If you can't beat 'em, then join 'em.

Hey, if being an asshole worked for the Niggers, and the Fags, and the Women, and the Wetbacks, then why not for the slobbering doofus who never made the great leap out of the Reagan Years, if not the Eisenhower Years? It’s also the counterpart to similar movements based on disaffected people under the impression they’re under assault, trying mightily to understand a world and circumstances that are beyond their experience, frustrated by that what they want isn’t being given to them, as they consider it a birthright, laboring under the mistaken impression that that which does not kiss their ass is out to get them, and therefore, must die, and if we have to tear this motherfucker down in order to do it, then that’s what we’ll do.

It's a nasty little appellation, this “Patriot” thing, when you think about it. Essentially, the attitude is “If I can’t get what I want, I’ll fuck up everyone else’s shit”.

It's exactly this kind of mindset – that if democracy does not work for us, if we’re not getting what we believe to be our just due, if we are forced to compromise when we don’t want to – then democracy just isn’t worth keeping. Trump isn't President just because he offered a different vision from politics as usual; he's a radar-guided virus deliberately injected into the system for effect by people who no longer care, and who are willing to jump on any bandwagon that promises to sooth the purple hemorrhoids.

Let's get this straight; this is not the modern version of the Minuteman ready to march on Lexington and Concord at a moment's notice to fight on behalf of (Classically) Liberal ideals; it's a street gang looking to fight for turf.

This is the first rumbling of a brewing right-wing fascism that is learning to adopt the same methods and mentalities as the existing left-wing fascists.

“Patriot” and ANTIFA are opposite sides of the same coin.

UPDATE: Blogger seems to have trouble digesting something copied-and-pasted from MSWord. if the paragraph spacing seems all screwy to you, this is the reason why. I'm trying to fix it.