Not a Crump supporter. I don’t even use the dude’s name because I don’t want to bring him even a small step further into the world. But that said, there are some things I would like to say about him, but more than that, our reaction to him.
- I know you’re surprised. I see you asking questions like, “How can people be so dumb?” Well, I’ll tell you. People have very different opinions than you do on a lot of things. I know you’ve built a very safe, very homogenized internet world for yourself where we don’t say bad things about people of different orientations or tastes or whatevers and where we don’t use words like “retarded”, and what you need to know is that in doing so, in banishing “negativity” from your life online, you’ve muted a whole group of people who feel really differently than you. Which is a fine thing to do, and it’s actually something I encourage because who has the time? But muting those people doesn’t make them go away. You just aren’t talking to them anymore. Look up some friends on Facebook that you stopped following. The Jesus guy or the gun lady. Remember them? Because they’re still alive. Well, maybe not the gun lady. She might’ve blown her face off on accident. But the Jesus guy is still there, I promise you, and he hasn’t changed his mind. It’s like we all put the parental controls on our Netflix accounts, and then we’re surprised to hear people are still making Rated R movies. Because WE weren’t watching them.
- The people you don’t like still exist, and you don’t have to get along with them on the internet, but you do in real life. When it comes to voting, driving, all that stuff, you can’t just hit the mute button and only be around people who think like you. I wish I could. Merging would be a breeze. But that’s not real, and that’s why this is happening. It’s BEEN happening. You just weren’t listening.
- Stop talking about moving to Canada. That’s dumb. Lots of us are old enough to remember this same threat from George W. haters and how many people made good on it. Besides, what makes you think Canada wants you around anyway? You come from that damnfool country that caused the situation in the first place! Also, don’t be a coward.
- Something I don’t see many talking about is the fact that political choices have left us so empty that this has gone on as long as it has. We shouldn’t even be in the position to consider this option, yet here we are. Crump is someone who should have been handily defeated early on, but he wasn’t. A big part of the problem is that the other candidates on his side of the fence are reprehensible, crappy options who can’t hold their own against a stupid windbag. Unfortunately, we HAVE to pick a president from the group that’s running. It’s not like looking for a lamp, not finding the right one and just going without. We can’t just say, “These guys all suck, no thanks.” We have to pick someone, and to some extent, I blame the lousy pool of conservative candidates for this problem. You guys messed up. You couldn’t give us one decent candidate, and now the best qualification for your candidates is that they aren’t Crump. It’s become about their responses to Crump as opposed to their own ideas and policies. The center of the race is Crump, and that’s because not one other conservative candidate is good enough to hurdle the very low bar of being not horrible.
- Accept the fact that disliking Crump doesn’t make you a good person. Your alignment on him doesn’t put you in the Justice League. You’re not a hero for disliking him.
- Accept the fact that there are good people who would vote for Crump. I know you probably don’t want to hear that, and I know you’re probably thinking I’m full of shit. But think about the people you know, your family, your loved ones. There’s probably a Crump backer in there somewhere. That really nice person you chat with at Starbucks. The bus driver who stopped and waited when you ran after the bus. Accept the fact that it’s not simple. A lot of you wear pants I wouldn’t wear. It’s a choice, and people we like sometimes make choices we don’t like, big and small.
- It’s disheartening to watch many people who would lean towards regulation of speech, harassment, and threats online and on social media attack Crump with such brazen joy. Is it open season if the person just sucks? Is it because you feel like he started it? Is it just a joke? Do you feel like he deserves it, and therefore it’s okay for you to dole out the punishment? Because to me, these sound like the things people say when they’re defending harassment. It was just a joke. She was asking for it. It’s my belief that if it’s not right to do, it’s not right to do. It doesn’t matter if the target of your criticism is rich and mean. It doesn’t matter if he’s more powerful than you. You’re not the Robin Hood of dignity, stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor, because dragging down a piece of shit doesn’t elevate anybody.
- We should examine the difference between compliance with political correctness and agreement. Put bluntly, you can’t tell people they’re wrong and bad all the time, at every turn, and expect nothing will come of that. If there’s one thing I learned from comics, Spider-Man can fuck up Dr. Octopus’ shit over and over, but it doesn’t change Doc Ock. He just goes into hiding for a while until there’s a hyper serum or computer chip to steal or something. Pounding people, physically or verbally, is not the way to get them on your team, and I will tell you, people are feeling very pounded by political correctness. They comply, they say the words you tell them are the right words, but there’s a part of them in that villain lair of the mind that wouldn’t mind seeing PC culture take a fall. Spider-Man is right to push Dr. Octopus, but he inevitably gets pushed back. I’m not saying PC culture has bad goals and ideals, and I’m not saying that non-PC people are villains. I’m saying that when you force, when you push people, they push back. Supporting Crump is a socially acceptable way to push back against a PC culture that is sometimes right, sometimes silly. Examine your “calling someone out” and whether a kinder, friendlier, less public way of doing so might help someone see your side better than screenshots and other bullshit. Examine, when you call someone out, whether you’re doing it to change someone’s mind or so that someone who already agrees with you hits that LIKE button.
- Every time someone writes and/or talks about him, whether it be a joke or not, that’s more screen time, more web hits, more everything that feed Crump. It’s not without consequences to make your hilarious joke on Twitter.
- Frankly, I think you’re all dumb. It’s simple. Just get rich in the next year. If you’re rich before January 20, 2017, it doesn’t fucking matter who the President is. Duh.