How a Table-Top Role Playing Game Made Me Understand Trump
30th August 2022
The current American ruling class is obsessed with the exact correct use of language. You can’t say China-virus and you need to know the exact pronouns towards whatever gender construct was made yesterday.
Then Trump comes along with his big New York accent; his funny hair; his golden yuge-sized ego; and his genuine love for the lifestyles and values of middle America. He is like a Crab clan Samurai with a funny northern accent talking about making money and drinking low-class tea with the peasants. (The crab clan are slightly larger members of Rokugan who are known for being uncouth but practical. They also love building large things to protect the borders of Rokugan.)
Above all, it is Trump’s unpleasantness of speech that so infuriates the NTers. Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg, JPod, David French, Sam Harris, Steve Pinker, William F. Buckley the younger, Charles Cook, and Kevin D. Williamson all make money from how good they are at words. I like most of what they write, heck I even quoted an article from Kevin D. Williamson a few paragraphs ago.
As for the political elites, the John McCain, Liz Cheney, and Bill Kristol types. Trump is simply an outsider who doesn’t have the right to rule. This makes his unpleasant language all the worse. Trump will never read as much as Victor Davis Hanson and he will never write with VDH’s clear and compelling prose so VDH doesn’t need to feel threatened. However, political and media mediocrities have every right to feel threatened.
Think of what propelled him to popularity. He spoke about trade imbalances, the poverty and hopelessness of the rust-belt, and illegal immigration. What all these positions had in common was that they were favored by the elite and talking about them was taboo. Trump promoted the opposite positions of the elite and defended them in a rude way.
If you don’t believe me, look at how the MSM treated George Dubya vs. Barack Obama. Obama often didn’t say anything of importance but he looked good and he said the pretty words that make you a good person. He was popular in the Noble Court. The policies on the little people outside L.A., New York, D.C., and all the other elite enclaves didn’t matter all that much. They are just little people after all, practically peasants.