Up North Progressive

The Up North Progressive has been quiet since the election, and for good reason. As the election night returns came in, and it was obvious the most unqualified bigoted moron to ever run for the office was about to win over the most qualified, progressive candidate to run for the office, a phrase repeated over the past eighteen months proved to be true: Nothing matters.

Facts, words, and grammatical constructions were pointless and unnecessary. We can completely make it up and get elected on it, then we’ll accuse the person who did everything right of doing everything wrong to deflect from our own incompetence.

“Hillary Lost because she wasn’t trustworthy!”
Donald Trump tells easily disprovable lie.
“Democrats need more trustworthy candidates!”
Chris Christie lies about Trump’s lie.
“Establishment Democrats are corrupt!”
Trump appoints paid Russia Today consultant as NSA chief. His children with security clearances will administer assets while sitting in on meetings with heads of state.

”But why didn’t the Democrats run a more truthful, transparent candidate?”

Trump tweets about something he didn’t do and fake news sites spread it to the four corners of the earth as gospel – and still hasn’t released his tax returns.

”If we just get more progressive we can turn things around!”

Trump wins the election even though he is two million votes under Hillary Clinton thanks to Citizens United, states like North Carolina removing 300,000 voters from their rolls so Trump could win by 27,000 votes, Bernie Bros refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s just sooooooo evil, And butt hurt Flint residents staying home because President Obama took a sip of some Flint water when he visited.

And that is an honest to goodness recap of the 2016 election.

In the aftermath, Bernie Bros who didn’t vote for Clinton blamed Trump supporters who didn’t vote at all. Then came the I told you sos, the anger, the demonstrations in the streets, and the rise of racist vandalism and intimidation all over the country, emboldened thanks to the bigot, racist candidate winning the election.

The other thing that doesn’t matter is Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees or unsecured private server after all. Getting paid to speak is only a bad thing when Hillary Clinton did it. Using unsecured private communication devices is only a bad thing when Hillary Clinton did it.

Receive an unreturned invitation to an art exhibit and the Trump-fueled conservative media accuses you of being a Satanist. Literally say in public you admire Satan and you can be a chief advisor for a president Christians consider the face of their movement. He’s probably the first “Christian” president to have a cameo in a playboy softcore porn video.

Steve Bannon: “Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.” https://t.co/zbxIcsISjy pic.twitter.com/ilGSAMxsOB

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 20, 2016

And what about Bernie Sanders? Thanks to Karl Roves’ superpac buying him ads and repeating the same lies the Republicans repeated about Clinton, a large block of progressive voters transformed into willing useful idiots to make sure Trump was elected. It was surreal watching Republicans and Bernie Bros alike sifting through wikileaks offerings looking for any dirt on Clinton, the woman who must be stopped because she’s so corrupt.

Fun fact: Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, is an inlaw of Karl Rove’s.

But of course, none of that matters. It also didn’t matter when Bernie Bros called Up North Progressive “establishment” and “fake progressive” and “Republican in disguise.” due to support of the only real progressive candidate who had a chance of winning. It became increasingly difficult to tell the difference between Sanders supporters and Trump supporters: They used the same lies and false equivalence talking points to demonize Hillary Clinton. The misogyny was acute on both sides as well.

And here we are, in the post-political decorum age. We can lie, cheat, obscure and people could care less. Integrity, transparency, and facts are useless.

The election is over, but it’s obvious we will be in this space of nothing matters for some time. While writing this, it happened again.

The big story, the story everyone should be tweeting about and making memes about and talking about is the fact that Donald Trump settled his Trump University fraud lawsuit for $25 million on Friday. Anyone who pays out that much money to end a lawsuit is guilty as hell. Does it matter? How silly to even ask. Once again the thing everyone should be paying attention to was buried when Trump started another twitter war over Mike Pence being booed when he showed up for Hamilton Friday night. Anyone talking about Trump University today?

So here we are. Trump oozed his way into the White House. As he puts together his cabinet of white nationalists and tosses around names like Betsy DeVos and Michelle Rhee for Education Secretary, the Bernie Bro contingent demand the “establishment” hand over the reins of the Democratic Party so they can turn it into something that will have even less chance at winning the White House in 2020.

The Up North Progressive will continue focusing on what matters to the Up North Progressive: Speaking up for those who are too young, too old, and too poor to matter in Washington DC or Lansing, and quietly watching Donald Trump fold on every promise he made while lying and cheating his way through a presidential election. The people have spoken. They want cult of personality over substance because nothing matters.