Quelle bouffée d’oxygène, putain de merde!

unz |  Now, at this stage of the exposition, I feel I have to make a general point, which is this: just because I am writing about a phenomenon, even inventing a term for it (ARRF) does not mean that I presume to understand it fully. For example, in an earlier essay, I defined the term “High IQ Idiot”, or HIQI. I described the phenomenon and tried to provide some framework of analysis, but I certainly do not claim to fully understand why so many high IQ, highly educated people are so helpless against the propaganda matrix and all of its cartoonish, synthetic narratives. Similarly, I have often wondered how many people really believe — I mean strongly believe — in the various politically correct, ARRF propositions, like same-sex marriage. For example, I have heard the claim that support for gay marriage is now the majority viewpoint, but I don’t know whether to believe that. If one’s source of information on something like that is the mainstream media, that is problematic, given the MSM’s pro-ARRF bias.

I don’t think it is easy to know. You see, a lot of people will proclaim (even loudly) their belief in all sorts of dogmas when they feel it is in their interest to do so, that this is what is expected of them. That is true now just as it was in Medieval Spain or Soviet Russia. That is one way that elites can become pretty disconnected from reality. Surely a lot of rich, powerful people believe themselves to be very witty and funny because everybody always laughs at all of their jokes. They would believe it because they want to believe it and also because nobody ever tells them that they suck.

I’m writing this not long after the 2016 presidential election, and like so many others, I am still trying to absorb the news, make sense of Trump’s win. I have to admit that I had long assumed that a Hillary Clinton presidency was inevitable. That’s what the mainstream media was telling us and I believed them, silly me. So, yeah, they had me conned, but that is of little importance, of course. More importantly, they had themselves conned! Basically, Hillary and the people running her campaign must have believed that they would have an easy victory if they configured the contest as a sort of ARRF referendum. I guess this is because the whole ARRF narrative is so dominant in the mainstream media that it was kind of an echo chamber and they were there believing their own bullshit. Well, Marie Antoinette allegedly said: “Let them eat cake.” That showed how out of touch she was, but that’s already a lot more realistic than “Let them eat feminism and gay rights.”

Hillary’s entire campaign message was very much a sort of progressive, ARRF narrative — that she, Hillary Clinton was going to fulfill historical destiny by becoming the first woman president. Actually, I guess it was part of a larger, triumphant ARRF narrative. She was the logical progression from Obama, the first black president. Not that the order was necessarily that important, I suppose. Had Hillary prevailed in 2008, then they would have had Obama waiting in the wings this time round. I also reasoned that, after Hillary was done and we’d had a black and a woman, we were going to have an openly gay president after that. I felt it was, as the Muslims say: Maktub. (It is written.) Or as the Borg say: “Resistance is futile.” Whatever. It was divine destiny, the next inevitable chapter in the world according to ARRF. Okay, it wasn’t so inevitable after all, but that is how they were trying to present it, and they certainly had me fooled.

Actually, it almost worked! Trump’s margin of victory was really razor thin. I mean, when you lose the popular vote but then eke out a win in the electoral college, that is something very close. If Hillary had got an extra 1% in Florida and Pennsylvania, she would have made it. Trump won by a hair really, but it wasn’t supposed to be close at all. Hillary was supposed to win in a landslide.

When Hillary referred to the core of Trump’s support as coming from a “basket of deplorables”, the deeper meaning was that these people were heretics or infidels, blasphemers against whatever sacred ARRF dogma — a motley crew of racists, sexists, homophobes… the “alt-Right”… All these infidels were standing in the way of progress. (Well, her progress, anyway…)

“YES, THEY DESERVE TO DIE! AND I HOPE THEY ALL BURN IN HELL!!!”

“OH, SHUT UP, HILLARY!”

Not only was Hillary’s candidacy an ARRF candidacy, Trump was very much the anti-ARRF candidate. Time and again, the mainstream media claimed that Trump was committing political suicide by saying whatever politically incorrect thing he said and, in retrospect, it only seemed to make him stronger. But this can be understood. If much of Trump’s appeal was that he was the anti-ARRF candidate, then he was hardly hurting himself by being politically incorrect! (It’s not a bug! It’s a feature!)

So Trump’s victory was, to a large extent anyway, a triumph of anti-ARRF heresy. That is my own way of expressing it, other people will doubtless express the same approximate idea using other terminology. Regardless of the exact language one uses, this paradigm can help explain why there is such a diverse group of people, not just in the U.S.A., but around the world, who take such delight in Trump’s win. Within 24 hours of Trump’s victory, a visibly elated Dieudonné put up a video congratulating Trump.

At 0:19, he says: “Quelle bouffée d’oxygène!” What a mouthful of oxygen! Of course, in English we would say “a breath of fresh air”. (Actually, Dieudo said: “Quelle bouffée d’oxygène, putain de merde!”. But I won’t translate the latter part.) A breath of fresh air, just an expression, but if you think about it a bit, if the victory of Trump, the anti-ARRF candidate is a breath of fresh air, that means that the ARRF candidate, or ARRF itself, is the opposite of that, i.e. there is something suffocating about ARRF. And isn’t there? Isn’t political correctness terribly mentally oppressive? “You can’t say this, you can’t say that…” So when Trump did say this and did say that and won anyway, for many people, there was something very liberating about that.

I think it’s safe to say that, for the most part, people are far happier about Clinton’s defeat than Trump’s victory. The practical consequences of a President Trump remain to be seen. For many people it is more about the symbolism of the event.