The Republican Party Is Now the Party of White Grievance
Courtesy of Trump.
Nick Szabo, a computer scientist, and cryptographer, according to Wikipedia, and I’m sure sitting on a big fat pile of Bitcoin (and worshipped for this by Silicon Valley nerd wannabes and Twitter trolls), is the perfect example of the base recruited by the latest version of the Republican Party — white and male with a massive chip on his shoulder.
In four years, Trump turned the party into the party of white male grievance.
Szabo fits this category Nick Martin describes brilliantly in a piece for the New Republic, describing the carnival that was The Republican National Convention,
It’s the modern Republican Party, preserved in amber: Wealthy grievance warriors living the double mandate around top-down class war and white identity politics.
You don’t have to spend even five minutes, try one minute, reading Nick’s Twitter feed to get a glimpse into the emotion and delusion behind the Trump supporter and his hate for…well, just about everyone who isn’t white and male complaining about something they didn’t get or don’t have. Szabo’s feed reads like a conspiracy plot from a B movie script never picked up.
Last night, during the presidential election, Szabo’s tweets went from arrogant to conspiratorial in a few hours. He has 250K followers. He is misleading all of them with false information.
The above tweet caught my eye, not because I follow Szabo but because I follow Naval Ratikant. Ratikant retweeted the above tweet (it has since been un-retweeted) Not sure why Ratikant un-retweeted it; I can only assume he doesn’t want to be associated with the delusional, even though during his interview released last week with Tim Ferriss, Ratikant refers to Szabo as “brilliant.” As has Tim Ferris in the past.
When election night started, and the electoral college map was looking pretty red, Szabo directed said tweet to Nate Silver of 538.
Basically, mocking Silver for his stats and polling predictions being inaccurate. Well, yeah, when he wrote this tweet, it was way too early in the night to be able to assess if any predictions or poll numbers were accurate; people were literally still voting at the time of his tweet.
The map started off red, as it does every year.
During this time — when there were mostly red states on the board — the vote was perfectly legitimate for Trumpsters. As soon as the map turned a little blue, the conspiracy tweets and the grievances of “cheating” and voter fraud started flying like saliva at a Trump super-spreader event.
Here are just some of the untrue tweets Szabo retweeted as the night wore on, and Biden picked up more electoral votes. (Currently, Biden has 264 Electoral votes.
Chaos and anarchy — the Civil War white supremacist groups (Trump supporters) keep threatening if Trump loses — would for sure make some of that currently useless Bitcoin Szabo is holding worth more, instead of just code sitting somewhere on a computer, at the very least chaos increases the price of Bitcoin. Why else would he be a Trump supporter? It’s certainly isn’t ‘brilliance,’ I mean, unless the word ‘brilliant’ is the new word for ‘ignorant.’
I guess you can be good at computer science and buying Bitcoin and still be a heartless prick.
Trump has separated babies and toddlers from their mothers.
Some of these kids will never see their parents again. They were ripped from their mothers during the attachment stage of child development. The Trump fuck up show can’t figure out where the kids they ripped from their parents belong.
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics called President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy separating families government-sanctioned child abuse. Anyone who voted for Trump is responsible for the trauma and outcome for these children.
No one with character can sit quietly by and not voice that the policies of this administration are inhumane, undemocratic, and not what the majority of people in this country stand for.
You aren’t happy if you are a Trump supporter, even if you are sitting on a big pile of Bitcoin and Tim Ferriss calls you “brilliant.” Read Szabo’s Twitter feed; the dude is angry. Once again proving, money does not buy happiness.
There isn’t enough Bitcoin in the world to fill a soul who is willing to vote for a person who separates children from their parents. Same for corporate giveaways and tax cuts they love Trump for.
Democrats, disheartened on Election night to see a sea of red in the middle of the country, proves two things, Trump’s ignorant base are easily moved by Trump’s fear and race-bating to come out to vote. Either fear or a deep psychological inferiority complex is behind people with so many perceived grievances — people who are actually in power. Trump is president.
For a little while longer anyway.
The second thing it proves is the redistricting and gerrymandering Republicans ushered in during the Obama years was successful. The election of a black man, twice, galvanized Republicans into redrawing district lines to benefit one party — to make it easier for Republicans to win — the ultimate cheat. Rig the game, so you have a shot because you no longer represent the people you claim to represent.
Look at the winner of the popular vote in the last four elections — Democrats.
It is not that republican values and ideals are the majority opinion in our country; keep in mind, they are not.
In 2016, three million-plus voters’ values were more in line with the Democratic Party’s platform. More people in this country were in agreement with the ideas and values of Hillary Clinton — most of us want affordable healthcare (a quarter of the conservative base is on board with single-payer health care), the majority wants affordable childcare, the minimum wage to increase, free college, for a woman’s right to choose to be protected under the law — in every state — and to protect the health and well-being of all children, to strengthen the social safety nets that catch children who fall through the cracks.
Biden will also win the popular vote by millions of votes.
A majority of registered voters approve of a statewide mask mandate, but not the party of white grievance; they want to be able to go out and not have the terrible burden of wearing a mask, no matter how many people they kill or put in danger.
The country is in wide agreement that chokeholds, no-knock warrants, local police militarization all need to go. Not so with the white grievance party who produced Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot two Kenosha protesters and the group who plotted to kidnap Michigan Governer, Gretchen Witmer.
These white males are under the false (and illegal) impression that it is their civic duty to restore order with military-style weapons, that voting is rigged, but only if their guy loses.
In my research of Szabo, I read he has a law degree from George Washington University Law School; you’d think he would believe in the rule of law that Trump continues to crap all over, or at least know better.
If Trump wins, there is no voter fraud. If the other side wins, it’s fraud.
Two-thirds of voters agree that the government is not doing enough to combat climate change. Two-thirds. But if you watch the Republican National Convention or any Trump super-spreader event, you would think they were speaking to a different country.
They are.
The white male grievance brigade, loud on Twitter, shouting their “whoa is me” mantra for everyone else to have to listen to.
The majority of the country is tired of hearing about your white male privilege and your fear of it slipping away.
The dwindling republican base standing on a quickly sinking pile of backward ideas they’ve been running on since Nixon ran against the Civil Rights Movement is the minority. They are currently holding power by the skin of their teeth. They grabbed power in 2016, not by a mandate, but with the help of foreign interference into our election, redistricting and gerrymandering, voter suppression (not the same as voter fraud, which has been disproven), and in the current election, actively trying to suppress the vote by using lawyers to discount legitimate ballots.
Tim Ferriss (who I like very much, but question his elevating Trump supporters on his platform), and no, this isn’t what is wrong with the world, that I can’t talk to the “other” side, that I’m somehow culpable for the shitshow we are in because I don’t feel bad or understand the economic anxieties of the white working class. I understand them perfectly, but I draw the line at white bigots and anyone who supports Trump.
The problem is the white bigot, the white supremacist calling for civil war because he doesn’t like the outcome of the democratic process, or because he missed school the day they taught how elections work in his civics class.
The electorate decides who will represent them, and mail-in ballots are a legitimate way to vote.
Szabo lacks tolerance, education, critical thought and is easily manipulated by the biggest bigot of all, Donald Trump.
Tim Ferriss occasionally mentions what a genius Szabo is (otherwise, I wouldn’t know his name), but I can’t find any indication of his brilliance, not from his Twitter feed; all I see is him defending Trump and retweeting Giuliani and propagating misinformation. I’ve read his angry tweets about how responsibly containing the virus is hurting the economy and how there is fraud in the 2020 election. (grievances)
The Republican Party has used white male grievances to galvanize its base since the Civil Rights Movement. The trotting out of Patrica and Mark McCloskey at the Republican National Convention is a perfect example of this, self-described victims, even though they were the ones pointing a loaded gun at peaceful protesters.
The white woman in Central Park who called the police on a black man who was bird watching because he had the gall to ask her to put her dog on a leash, Amy Cooper’s how-dare-you-tell-me-what-to-do-black-man look was all over her white face.
White grievance is simply racism, not wanting “others” to get a piece of what you have.
The Nick Szabos of the world are dwindling, as is the Republican Party, and perhaps why their ‘whoa is me’ cries are getting louder and more desperate.
But rest assured, they are in the minority, not silent, but shouting the loudest to hold onto their priviledge with all they’ve got.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering perfectionist. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
