Well, this was no way to start the day...

[hunter]

27. Trump convinced the deplorables that they could be themselves in public.

Unfortunately about a third of the population is deplorable.

About half the population suffers anti-intellectual religious beliefs and ideologies that celebrate ignorance, scientific illiteracy, and innumeracy. They may be able to read and write, but most of what they read and write is crap.

There's quite a bit of overlap between the two groups.

I've run into too many old classmates who wear their avarice, ignorance, racism, and misogyny with pride. I'm never polite, I never let them go away unchallenged.

Yep, I still think Ronald Reagan was an empty-headed meat puppet who would do or say anything for a blow job. And I refuse your invitation to tour his filthy tomb. (Paraphrasing a true story. My actual language may not have been so polite, something about a good location for a squat toilet. I might pay thirty dollars for that. Alas, pay toilets are illegal in California.)

After such encounters these former classmates will back away nervously, maybe muttering, "Heh, that Hunter guy, still just as crazy as ever."

I know a surprising number of people who once pretended to be hippies and other sorts of leftists. But when I look back they were just tie-dye wearing pot smoking conservatives. They may have been eating granola instead of bacon for breakfast but they still thought their women should be at home barefoot and pregnant and they were completely oblivious to the fact that they enjoyed social privileges that their queer, black, and brown "friends" did not.