to the degree that you haven't convinced these backwards types of their backwardness, then yes, you have failed to communicate the clearer view you have of the

to the degree that you haven't convinced these backwards types of their backwardness, then yes, you have failed to communicate the clearer view you have of the world from your mountaintop. studies of over-intelligent people repeatedly confirm how lonely they can feel in a world where stupid is normal. so what. you had one job to do (I'm running away with the idea that this is a giant missive about the election results) and you screwed it up. you screwed it up by putting on an elitist face that says "we know whats best for you" when the voice speaking it was not a trusted voice nor a voice that actually DID have the concerns of those being spoken to at heart. The premise of calling the electorate ignorant racist etc is belied by the 2 terms of Obama. silly presumption. I contend that it was a referendum on elitist pols represented by one of the most unpopular faces in insider quid-pro-quo politics of the last 30 years. Should have run Sanders, you rich privileged outta-touch bi-coastal self-hating Americans :D see, you think you have rid yourself of the stench of redneck but your snarky gabby talkshow hosts, your fancy globetrotting cuisine, and your view of the world all belie this by reasserting what really stinks about us Americans: know-it all, we do it better than anyone else, we have a solution for your backwards ass, heavy-handed, unilateralist, non-listeners who just want to tell people how to live or ideally force them into an uneasy compliance and dependency upon our cultural products. Hollywood makes lame 1 dimensional propaganda films with the same basic plotline ad nauseam, our dot-com industry makes more mobile phone apps to keep people staring at their choice of hand-held status symbol, and we try to shove GMOs and overpriced pharmaceuticals in everyones face via one-sided trade agreements like TPP. We already are Donald Trump, collectively speaking. We ARE the ugly American so stop pretending that our embarrassment begins with G.W. Bush and ends with Trump. The world has been both in fear of our nuclear arsenal, and laughing at our foibles for decades now. Our polite presidents engender as much amusement as our cowboys, because behind the scenes its the same shitball of unilateralist global empire that should benefit our fat-sofa-asses back at home. If you unplug the bubble it's this reality that should sink in to both the coasts AND the midwest. Only then can we confront and tame our inner monster, as so long as we pretend that our coasts and interior have nothing to do with one another, or that our "liberal" coasts are not also involved in the same "team america, world police" activities, that is basically a lie in service to no one. We need to own our ugly rump side. Pretending that our cousins are stupid and backwards while not seeing the oppression we are also part of creating (for example the PC culture of no-platforming, etc. completely goes against the actual principles of the left, of a fair and just society. we have allowed PC culture to hijack the stillborn tiny baby of our nearly non-existent left wing. any leftist movement that forgets labor is elitist and will die or be absorbed as another mask for fascism, which is what our PC culture has become- observe the Hill-bots treatment of Sanders and the creation of "Bernie Bros" as part of their strategy to kill any leftist movement within the DNC, thus handing the victory to Trump as the only populist on the list...) yeah, if you guys would turn your lens inward that would be great. take a frikkin look in the mirror and then think about how you failed as a communicator. I am an ugly american. I've started to become ok with it, as the village locals refer to me as "the American" I can joke about it with them in Portuguese...I grew up in the midwest, did 20 years in California and after over a decade of global travel for an odd line of work, find myself on a mountainside in rural Portugal where I realized that the local country folk have more sensible knowledge of how to live sustainably than most of the new-fangled "permaculture" folk who moved here to farm. In the end, I realize that its our media and self-image that's doing the most damage- we are lying to ourselves about who our country is and what its history is. Shame is not the desired end result, but a recognition of what has happened can allow for healing...