Donald Trump: The Beta Choice

I'm not a fan of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.  But where my rejection of Hillary takes the form of a simple "no thank you," my response to Trump and those who support him is something to the effect of "oh holy Jesus Herbert Walker Paint Sniffing Christ what the hell is wrong with you people?"

That's a rhetorical question- I already know.  I would advise all Trump supporters to stop listening now- you won't like what I'm about to say and you're no better than your Social Justice Warrior counterparts when it comes to someone criticizing your sacred cow.  

First, the empathetic response: I get why Donald Trump is appealing. I do. I'm not saying that to be condescending- in a world made sour and paranoid by the perpetual outrage mongering of Social Justice Warriors his cavalier disregard for political correctness is a tall, cool glass of water on a sweltering day.  We need people that can tell the cry bullies where to stick it but that doesn't mean we ought to stick Donald Trump in the White House.

I support Gary Johnson for president whether he has a hope in hell at winning or not.  I would have that position anyway, but its compacted by two groups- the R's and D's- telling me that I cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and vote my conscience during this crucial election.  Yeah- I've been of voting age long enough to weigh in on Kerry/Bush, Obama/McCain, and Obama/Romney.  First time I was die hard liberal in the bluest of the blue states and was actually excited about Kerry.  Well, not really- I was excited about getting Bush out of the white house.  Truth be told my Kerry boner subsided quickly when he accepted the nomination with the words "reporting for doo-dee."

Then there was Obama v. McCain and the diversity vote was finally on the table.  What would mean more for our country's social progress- having our first black president or our first special needs vice president? Well by that time I had devoured Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead so I was definitely in that initial period of "everything is socialist, everything is collectivist, everything is altruist and you have to point it all out" but even so, I voted for Chocolate Jesus. 

I sat out the following election cycle.  While it was entertaining to watch Chocolate Jesus battle the Mormon Cyborg I just couldn't get jazzed about anybody (even Gary Johnson) enough to vote. The night of the 2012 election I was walking through the parking lot of Murder Kroger and saw a single firework shoot into the distant sky followed by a solitary shout of "Obama!" I think that pretty much summarized the excitement level of the whole country.

Obama was our first black president- but that wasn't progress for our nation. Our nation won't really be over racism until we can elect a black president without anyone caring that he's black.  In that regard Herman Cain would have been a better choice.  Most of us who voted for Obama the first time were under some unspoken delusion that everything would be different if the president had a higher melanin content than his predecessors.  Now, after eight years of business-as-usual Washington bullshittery, most Americans are perfectly aware that electing someone on the basis of their chemical makeup doesn't mean a whole helluva lot. Yeah, when Hillary gets in there'll be another wave of "the first ____ to do ____" but that honeymoon will be over a lot quicker.  Setting aside the vagina, Hillary is just business as usual Washington bullshittery and everybody knows it.  So will it be meaningful to have the first woman president? No- it will be meaningful when we have the first woman president that doesn't campaign on being a woman.  

And then there's Trump.  A lot of people can't understand how you can be against Hillary and Trump.  Well, let me pull back the curtain for you:

-Hillary covering up for her husband's pussy hounding doesn't excuse Donald's animalistic attitudes towards women.

-Hillary's failed foreign policy doesn't excuse the fact that Donald doesn't have any.

-Hillary perpetuating the lie that women are paid less than men doesn't mean we ought to elect a pig.

-Hillary's hawkish devotion to business-as-usual Washington bullshitery doesn't excuse the fact that Trump doesn't know how government works.

The list goes on and on, but let's stay with that last point for a moment.  When I watch the Donald out there campaigning I'm reminded of a Dennis the Menace comic that I saw years ago where Margaret is trying to teach Dennis how to play chess and Dennis says "I bet when you're king you get to move as many spaces as you want and kick everybody else off the board." Dennis quickly loses interest in the game when finds out that's not the case.  It's not just for sake of a good analogy that I think of this- when I listen to Donald Trump I really do think of the single panel in that particular strip where Dennis goes into fantasy mode and imagines himself, scepter in hand and crown on head, kicking the pieces of a life size chess set.  I really do think Donald believes that if he wins he'll be crowned king- and that's very much not how the rules work.

Bill Hicks once said that if you're elected president the first thing that happens after you're sworn in is that they take you into a little room and sit you down in front of a television where they show you a video of the Kennedy assassination. But it's from an angle you've never seen before.  It's from a... grassy knoll.  Then they turn off the TV, turn to you, and say "any questions?" I don't know if anything that severe actually happens but Donald will be in for a very rude awakening when he learns that even though he's the most important piece on the board he still has to wait his turn and is only allowed to move one space at a time.  Even the team working the George W. Bush hand puppet weren't this unaware of how the job is actually done.

So why is it that so many people get behind the Donald even though the words "lacks experience" should be carved into his forehead and set on fire?  Because he's an alpha male- and a lot of people dig that.  Yes, I said it- Donald is a total alpha.  There's no denying it.  But that doesn't mean his the right alpha for the job.

In recent times the Alternative Right has emerged as Trump's wettest cheerleaders and while they fancy themselves the purveyors of an intellectually refined form of nationalistic fervor they are simply recycling an age-old formula and their reductive, buzzword laden vocabulary is proof of it. Disagree with the Alt Right and they tell you that you're a beta. Agree and you're an alpha.  Too bad that isn't how the whole alpha/beta thing works.

In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is the dominant male of the pack- the one that eats first, mates first, and does anything else of importance first and to challenge him means that you either become alpha yourself or end up in bloody shreds in the nearby foliage.  The other males that conduct themselves in subservience to the alpha are the betas. 

In human society it is commonplace to assign these animal designations to human hierarchies.  In such a mode the alpha takes the form of kings, emperors, and other types of assorted overlords while the betas are the passionate supporters of that grand potentate. That doesn't mean that the betas are weak- quite the opposite.  King Arthur is an alpha type and the Knights of the Round-table are his most loyal betas. So go pick a fight with Lancelot or Galahad and you'll find out that they're anything but pussies.  But Kahn Noonien Singh is also an Alpha type.  So which would you prefer ruling over you? King Arthur or Kahn?  They're both alphas, just different types of alphas.

So yes, Donald is an Alpha. So is Hillary. No, she doesn't convey her alpha status as flamboyantly and insecurely as Donald does but she's absolutely an alpha.  These are both people who seek to rule over you and their most ardent defenders are betas.  The Alt Right's perception of this is just clouded because in their vernacular "beta" is the new word for "faggot."

So if the passionate supporters of the R's and the D's are just betas for undesirable alphas, does that mean that Gary Johnson's supporters are also betas for him?

No.

Libertarians are not betas. 

Or alphas.

We're the ones that realized the alpha/beta thing is bullshit.

Friedrich Nietzsche is so often associated with his views on the master/slave dichotomy that many have assumed that he's a champion of it when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Whether you want to call it a master/slave relationship or an alpha/beta relationship or a dominant/submissive relationship, Nietzsche was not championing the masters over the slaves- he was arguing that the master/slave relationship is the essence of the herd. He, more than anyone, realized that herd behavior is a vestigial remnant of our evolutionary rise from beast to man- that the essence of man is to realize that we are not bound by the standards of lower animals and that knowing we are evolving we must direct our evolution towards something greater- the ubermensch. That term is often translated as "super man" but my favorite (and, as I understand, more accurate) translation is "beyond man." True enlightenment, Nietzsche argues, comes when we stop trying to be a part of the herd- of man's evolved version of animal behavior- and live in the pursuit of something greater than that.  

That is what Libertarianism offers: an opportunity to stand apart from the herd. To be that greater stage of human evolution that Nietzsche called on us all to aspire to. No rulers, no subjects. Just the transcendent state of freedom from the herd.  This country was founded on some very Nietzschian principles- the notion that casting off the bonds of the serf also required throwing away the crown of the king; that one cannot exist without the other.

As I write this the majority of the country is in an intellectual quandary- they know that there's something not right about this choice between Clinton and Trump but they aren't sure what. Well, here it is: you who are Americans are the product of one of the greatest social experiments of human history: this is the first nation to base its founding principles in a fundamental belief in individual rights and personal liberty.  (Yes, I know the founders were slave owners- but at the time even the belief that white male landowners didn't require a king was revolutionary.) So modern Americans, the social progeny of the founders, have grown up in an atmosphere where individual freedom is assumed to be the natural state of the human being.  Sadly, the individual members of a species do not evolve evenly and large chunks of our populace are still stuck in the alpha/beta dichotomy- and the professional wrestling par-per-view event that has been this election is the result.

So vote for Donald if you think he's your ideal alpha- King Arthur is certainly preferable to Kahn Noonien-Singh.  But have the decency to stay out of the way of those who have realized that your animal social structure is the product of a bygone era and it's starting to smell.

Cheers,

-Jordan


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