I Was Right Before It Was Cool

In this moment of national discourse, you and I seem to have found some common ground on an issue I see as having paramount moral importance, so I thought it would be a good time to remind you: I was right before it was cool and if you ever try to agree with me on something again I will remind all the world what a poser you are.

Look: I get it. In a moment of reflection, you realized you needed to speak up and contribute to a growing national consensus on a specific issue. But where were you back when I was basically the only one who was smart and compassionate and with it enough to be right and being wrong was all the rage? You had no taste, that's where you were. Maybe it's because of the way you were raised or because you mistakenly think you actually have a point on some other issue or just because you made poor choices about your demographic characteristics. I don't know. The point is: you were wrong and unless you want to go back in time and change all your opinions to have matched mine always, you're hopeless. You just don't get it.

Other people might praise your individual stance on this issue with disclaimers about how they know you're usually not that with it to make sure everyone knows they're way more right than you are, but those people are also posers. I was right before they knew it was cool, because they still don't know what is right or why it's cool. They've just memorized a bunch of talking points. Pathetic.

To be honest, it's better this way. If most people weren't wrong most of the time, the whole being-right movement would just seem so unoriginal and derivative and I'd have to go be wrong about something ironically just to live with myself.

So please, can we just forget this moment where our interests could have aligned to move the nation forward? I'd like you to go back to being a walking caricature of all that is wrong with America while I go back to being extremely satisfied with myself and how cool and right I am.

I hope it never goes mainstream.

A parable (with some profanity)

"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" senators who did not know they could still be shocked heard President Trump say yesterday during negotiations on policy for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and several other countries. Today, the president disputed those accounts, suggesting he probably used slightly different abusive language to communicate his contempt.

How do I feel about that language? Icky. But what do I think about that language? I think I see a pattern. 

Remember when Donald Trump called the White House a "real dump"?

Remember that speech he gave that speech at his inauguration talking about how crappy and rundown the United States is and how its neighborhood (among the other countries on planet earth) sucks and everywhere you look people are garbage?

Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm like two Nobel prizes short of enough points to get into the country on Trump's proposed merit-based system. I'm starting to suspect that the man has a low opinion of everyone and everything--except, of course, himself.

Maybe he just figures that there's a certain limit on the amount of quality in the world and he takes it all up?

I don't know how this story ends, but I already know the moral: everything looks like a shithole if you are a giant ass.