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This is where Trump wins. This is how he got elected.

Who would predict he would defend his heinous, racist remarks? I figured he’d just let his statements float off into the ether.

Instead, he doubled down.

What the left doesn’t realize is it’s established a line, a third-rail, on so many subjects, that those not in the club of the offended are scratching their heads and saying HUH?

There are so many words, so many descriptions, that you cannot say.

There are so many protected minorities.

And this is how the left gets in trouble.

Like with the Oberlin case. Which got star treatment on the right, but has barely been mentioned on the left.

A black man gets arrested for stealing in a local bakery and the Oberlin mob agitates and protests against the establishment, causing the school to take action, canceling contracts, and then the bakery sues and gets double digit millions. And the guy who did the stealing admitted it! But since he was black…this was a racial offense.

Now there’s the trans issue. I ask you, how many trans people are there in America? And the issue of pronouns, we’re supposed to use “they” in certain circumstances.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fine to be trans, I don’t think their rights should be impinged. But is this the biggest issue in America today?

And of course, like the left so frequently does, they take it too far. They want these trans people to be able to compete against women in sports, even though female runners have been kicked out of competitions because of having too much testosterone, NATURALLY! Even Martina Navratilova has taken a stand against having female trans people competing against women in tennis, she called it “insane.”

And then you’ve got the strange case of Scarlett Johannson, who was excoriated for saying that she should be able to play any character. She backed down, don’t they all, you’ve got to pay fealty to the politically correct police.

But no, only a specific nationality can play that nationality, only people of a specific color can play that color. I’m not saying that there should not be people of color in the movies, but the last time I checked, they called it ACTING, not real life.

And then there’s the #MeToo movement. Found a man who’s stood up against it recently? Even spoken about it? No, it’s taboo. If you’re a man you’re not entitled to an opinion. There can be no discussion. How do you think all men feel about this? Sure, women have gotten short shrift in society, they deserve equal pay and the right to walk freely on our streets, but this hard line is doing them no benefit.

It’s not all bad on the left. We’ve got Megan Rapinoe, the star of the World Cup, refusing to go to the White House and not caving when confronted with her viewpoint.

But the left is so busy bending over backwards, reporting the right’s viewpoint, that the effect is neutered. That’s right, they essentially hang Rapinoe out to dry.

There are so many litmus tests on the left that no one qualifies.

And you can’t express a contrary opinion or you’re shouted down.

And then you have to APOLOGIZE!

It happens all the time. I’m not saying there should not be a penalty for abhorrent speech, but when an actor goes to rehab for speech, I’ve got to laugh. What’s next, rehab for speeding? Yelling? Smoking?

So Trump stands up to all the B.S., he stands up to their crap.

And of course, his statements are inane, but they resonate with a lot of people, like those who don’t believe immigrants should be caged like animals, but do believe we need a coherent immigration policy.

Trump has redefined the debate, as to whether you love the country or not. This, once again, is how the left lost the war. The concept of criticizing the country and still loving it gets no traction, despite repeated voicing. The left contributed to the with you or against you line in the sand, because that’s how it behaves on every other issue!

The left can’t even control a debate. It’s good on the small things, but on the big things, it’s a crybaby. What did my mother say when a bully threatened me at school? Stand up to him, fight him, and then he’ll stop bullying you, and it turned out to be true!

Furthermore, my mother refused to get involved in my issues, my friendships. Now everybody says their kid is being bullied and they’re calling the school and other parents and…

The school has to be a safe space. Where everybody must be calm.

But no, school is where you learn about society, how to behave in a group. And believe me, the bullies ultimately get their comeuppance.

No one likes their kid to be bullied, but what are you gonna do when the “child” is out in the workplace, in a marriage, you can’t protect them forever.

But mostly we’re talking language here folks. Remember when they banned “Ulysses’ and Henry Miller? Now in left wing institutions you have to have trigger warnings, cautioning students they might be offended by what is contained therein. How in the hell did we switch from the right wing being offended by language to the left? And it’s just LANGUAGE! Isn’t this supposed to be a country of ideas? Do words really hurt people? What do they say on the playground, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me?”

This apologizing has got to stop, this inhibition of discussion, this constant policing of statements.

Of course Trump’s tweets were reprehensible. But he instinctually knows people are sick of the blowback, they want a certain freedom of speech, and as a result, he turns the accusations on their head and it resonates with people, not only his base, but more.

But the left is so offended!

But it’s been offended since day one. And what does it keep doing? Report it to the principal, i.e. the left wing press. It rarely stands up to Trump, it rarely defines the debate. All it keeps saying is impeachment is not prudent, and the Presidential candidates are too far to the left and…

You can’t even fit in in your own party.

Oh, what a country.

Only Trump has figured this out in the social media age, one with incessant messages, most of which go ignored.

Used to be even if you were ultra-famous, you never heard from the hoi-polloi. The average citizen was a nobody who could only vote by consuming or not. Furthermore, there were few offerings, and real estate was precious, on television, in record racks, and the game was to find something that appealed to everybody.

That game is over.

Be happy if you have an audience at all. But if you do, you’re gonna have haters.

You see you have what someone else wants, the aforementioned audience. And those people below the attention status of yourself are angry, they think they’re better than you and deserve the attention, and as a result they try to tear you down, make you blink, hopefully so they can take your place.

Even successful entertainers are victims of this paradigm. Howard Stern has a rabid fanbase, but unlike in the pre-internet era, he’s inundated with negative social media comments. The key is not to blink.

Used to be it was about research, you tested the audience, tried to deliver what it wanted, shaved off the rough edges, pleased the boss.

First and foremost, today YOU’RE the boss. If you’re pleasing someone above you, you’re doing it wrong. That’s one of the problems with doing corporate sponsorships, the chilling effect. The man doesn’t say what you can’t do, but you’re wary of doing it, you’re inured to those bucks.

But the key to success today is making your own bucks. Hell, that’s one of the reasons Trump won, irrelevant of the truth of the matter.

And in a world where there’s no universal fact-checker, where there’s no single news outlet that can hold you account, you can lie with impunity. Rock stars wrote this script. Hell, they’re even employing it today! All those shows they say are sold out, a lot of them are not. It’s all about image. And it used to be the mainstream didn’t care about music, so there was no ink, but today there’s so much information, the mainstream gets no traction re the faux pas of even bigger constituents!

Look at Ticketmaster. People don’t stop railing against it, governments investigate it. But Ticketmaster doesn’t care, it’s aware it’s fronting for the greedy acts, they’re the ones responsible for fees, i.e. the fees are not commissioned, it’s the only way for Ticketmaster to make money! There’s usually no profit in the tickets themselves.

So Ticketmaster doesn’t fight back, and neither should you!

And then there are those who still can’t fathom someone moved their cheese. Blowhards who believe they can stop the juggernaut of streaming. Bitching they’re not making as much as they did in the physical/sales era. Well, let’s go back to sixteen baseball teams. Three networks. The era of no smartphones. The future arrives, he or she who is caught in the past is ultimately irrelevant.

But that does not mean they don’t attack you.

It’s so easy to do, just fire up your app of choice!

So the creator…is overwhelmed.

This is a new paradigm and there’s no instruction booklet. Kinda like when FM went rock. They were inventing it on the fly. The usual suspects were talking about ratings and three minute ditties but it was what was on FM, longer, different, that ultimately triumphed.

It’s hard to stay the course. But that’s why people like you to begin with!

Look at Frampton, who catered to a theoretical pop audience with “I’m In You” and went straight into the dumper, overnight. It’s taken him decades to rehabilitate himself.

But it happens faster now. And the truth is you’re remembered for your successes, not your failures. Which means the biggest people can fail, but when they succeed later, the failures are forgotten. Bieber has had a lot of stiffs with his hits.

And if you’re trying to be the biggest, you’re gonna get blowback. This is what Taylor Swift doesn’t realize, they don’t hate her music, but her! First her “aw shucks” behavior and then her retaliatory songs and then her girl squad and now her rainbow-embracing. She’s trying to appeal to people who don’t exist! She’s got her fans, she should be happy with that. As for the slings and arrows, she can’t stop complaining about them, when the truth is they’re a badge of success, she should just ignore them!

Art runs on emotion. So when someone hits you unexpectedly, it’s hard to fathom, it changes your mood. Which is why, supposedly, artists didn’t read their reviews. But today, you just cannot avoid the feedback. You’ve got to have a thick skin and brush it off. Otherwise, not only did they win, you probably compromised yourself.

Your fans want you. It’s your fans who will spread the word. The rest are irrelevant.

And the markers have changed. Like with the Blanco Brown track. It may not be number one on country radio, but if you have traction online, who cares? And genres are nearly irrelevant. Country artists rap and… All those people agitated about lines and crossing over…THE AUDIENCE DOESN’T CARE!

But too often artists fall for it.

You’re on your own path.

And if you’re not, you’re me-too, and nobody wants me-too in the internet age, we’re all looking for fresh and different. That’s one thing Hillary missed, which is why she lost. Never forget, research will tell you where you’ve been, but not where you’re going.

It’s those who think outside the box who gain attention and become victorious in the long run. It’s much easier to imitate what’s out there, and you might get a moment of fame, but then you’ll be instantly forgotten. That’s another facet of the internet era, you can get universal press, be a kingpin (queenpin?) in your era, and end up broke in your hometown slinging burgers. Which is why those with a brain get an education and find their way, you don’t want to end up as Snooki or Rebecca Black.

They are out to get you. Assuming anybody cares at all.

And if they’re needling you, what they want most is a reaction. Respond and you’re doomed. Trump and AOC blocking people on Twitter is unfathomable to me. Almost no one is gonna see the hate, and by calling it out, you create a conflagration.

Which means that even the famous don’t have it all figured out.

But you’ve got a chance. Yes, you can promote yourself for free online, but beware of the incoming negativity.

It’s a new game.

But one thing’s for sure, when you veer off course, by acknowledging haters, when you adjust because of the criticism, you’re on the wrong road, you’ve left your mission and are in a backwater.

We’re looking for singular heroes (heroines). We’re looking for people to believe in.

Forget the idiocy, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop. It’s only the intelligentsia who truly care, she’s got traction with them and they’re pissed they didn’t think of it first!

But Goop is a sideshow, without many acolytes. Without all the hate she’d be doomed.

Yes, hate can bring you attention, but still, you’ve got to ignore it, you can’t acknowledge it.

Techies were the artists of the last few decades.

But that era is over. The internet is solidified. There’s no radical change coming in the immediate future.

So we’re back in the era of art, a message can have much more impact than a product. The software of music and movies and TV is now much more important than it was in the past two decades.

Everything you remember, from Jimi Hendrix to David Lynch, started on the outside, and don’t forget “Twin Peaks” wasn’t Lynch’s first project.

You must pay your dues. The more immediate attention you get, the quicker you will fail, we learned this in the MTV era.

You can woodshed in public, and if you’re good, you’ll gain some followers. The key is to keep developing and not change your viewpoint.

And that’s hard to do, because everybody is telling you to.

Should they leave from those Revolutionary War airports?

I’m stunned, positively stunned I tell you, that Democrats and the press believe that by publicizing the inanities and ignorant behavior and statements of Donald Trump they will somehow get change.

Change comes via Congress, and the Democrats refuse to impeach Trump, where his behavior would be on full display, reported in all media.

But that’s America, where the right unifies and takes action and the left argues amongst itself and does nothing, trying to fend off the blows of aggressors, refusing to define the debate. After all, it was the Democrats who allowed Hillary Clinton to be labeled as the nasty woman the right portrayed her as, causing those deaths in Benghazi, why didn’t she take a G5 over there and get into hand-to-hand combat? And using that damn private e-mail server… Hillary didn’t grow a set until after she lost the election. Meanwhile, the right is still making hay on her, she is the President on Fox News and in Trump’s brain, she’s the focus of his re-election campaign. It’s like Meek Mill dissing CeeLo.

You don’t use the strategies of yore to fight a new disease. Isn’t this how the U.S. lost in Vietnam? By not knowing how to engage in guerrilla warfare? Right is irrelevant, power is everything. And Trump’s got it, and is employing it, to the point where the never-Trumpers are thinking of aligning with him. Never forget, in America it’s all about family, we’re tribal, very few people won’t defend their relatives, blood is the most significant tie they’ve got.

And sure, Nancy Pelosi is a well-experienced player in the old game, but she doesn’t seem to realize it’s a new game. She’s like all those companies that got plowed under by the internet. First, they wanted no change, then they wanted gradual change, then they disappeared. And who destroyed them? Aged baby boomers? No, young ‘uns! Young ‘uns that still flummox Congress. They can fine Facebook $5 billion, but that doesn’t really hurt, hell, they can just raise ad rates, and the fact that Chuck Schumer uses a flip-phone… That’s like someone who uses cassettes telling you what goes on in the digital age. It’s all about experience, going into the unknown. Have you seen “Star Trek”?

Forget Trump’s base, they’re never gonna see the left wing light.

But the reason Trump won, despite all these hosannas about a great economy, is because his base is broke and those with any cash don’t want to cough it up. Ironically, those on the extremes of both right and left have the same problem, they can’t make ends meet. So Trump creates bogey men and the left keeps saying radical change is too much, we’ve got to fight for the center, meanwhile, we’ve got the Squad waving its arms, telling the Democratic leaders change has occurred, and the usual suspects tell them to take a seat at the back of the bus. And Trump senses this discord and pours gasoline on it, telling these women to go back to where they came from, even though three out of four were born in the United States, and it highlights the problem for all to see, making the situation worse.

Yes, the loser in today’s outburst is the left, not Trump. How can that be?

This is what happens when you lose control of the narrative, when you refuse to change, or do so gradually, when you refuse to unite with a philosophy.

That’s right, Trump scared traditional Republicans, he was unelectable, but then he won the nomination and the Presidency. But you’ve got to be a middle of the road peacemaker in the Democratic party. Biden is running on a record when America was completely different. It’d be like running Kenny Loggins for President, he’s a recognizable name, the old folks like him and the younger generation goes…WHO?

The younger generation, ruled by hip-hop and Instagram. Their heroes are influencers. Nobody cares what musicians have to say today, just those with a following online. The rank and file can relate to them. But every oldster with a brain says they’re no-talents, undeserving of attention. Today there’s a generation gap as wide as the sixties, but the boomers, dieted down to nothing, wearing their kids’ clothing, believe they know what’s going on when they don’t!

You fight an old man with youth, not another old man. After all, the youth will inherit the earth. On the left, everybody keeps talking about student debt and the climate crisis but they won’t let the victims have a voice, or they keep them at the kiddie table. Do you wonder why the youth aren’t inspired by alta kachers?

Hell, the left can’t even keep a story alive. Mueller in the hot seat is like grilling Paris Hilton, it’s already an old story no one cares about.

You win today by making news every damn day. Trump knows this, but the Democrats are still running like it’s the last century.

And it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake, mistakes are forgotten in the tsunami of information. Old artists take years to make an album that is instantly forgotten. Can you say Madonna? Can you say Springsteen? Meanwhile, Ariana Grande puts out multiple albums a year!

So the left needs to plow ahead with new rules. You make the news, you define the debate, you lead. In today’s world, the naysayers get little traction, they can be ignored, ever notice the follower counts of those criticizing you? They’re almost always low, they live to hate, it makes them feel powerful.

You need to ignore them, just like Trump.

You must focus on your own mission.

You’d be better off reading Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma” than any newspaper.

Today’s wars are always fought off the radar, by time they hit the mainstream the insurgents have already won or been forgotten.

Trump tapped into discontent.

There’s even more discontent on the left. Focus on rallying your constituency, not railing at this tired old man who was elected king. Don’t you get it? It’s not the dyed-in-the-wool right/base who pushed Trump to victory, but the disillusioned left/middle who were sick and tired of being talked down to by the Democrats, who wanted change which the left refused to give to them.

Steve Jobs blew up norms. Replaced them with the future. He knew we were living in a changed world. Remember when the music industry was pissed-off about the Rip/Mix/Burn campaign? Now not only do computers come without disc drives, a healthy percentage of those eligible to vote are unaware of that campaign and never ripped a CD in their lives. Appeal to these people, they are the future.

We’re never going back.

It was a new day yesterday, but it’s an old day now.