I Feel Your Pain, Really I Do

Dear Socialist Friends (of whom I have a few),

I know you feel wounded by the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the presidency of The United States, and I am sorry for you loss.  I want to tell you that I feel your pain.  Probably, I feel your pain more acutely than you felt mine on the election, and re-election, of the anti-Semitic and endlessly destructive Barack Obama.  But, never mind that, now.

I write to confess what you already sense:  that as much as I feel your pain, I cannot take it very seriously.  You will get over it.  I know this because, however real the pain seems to you right now, the cause is an illusion.  You are suffering from a political form of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.  In other words, Hillary Clinton wanted power so she and her friends abused you to get attention for themselves.

You see, controlling borders is what every normal nation does.  There is no war on women.  There is a war on Black men, but it is not being waged by the police departments of our metropolises and certainly not by Donald Trump.  And so on down the list of Democratic talking points.

During most of my adult life I have tried to understand the socialist mentality.  Gently and with respect, I poke and I prod, but most socialists are uncomfortable having their cherished misconceptions questioned, let alone challenged, so they tend not to be forthcoming.  When I do get a little further in the discussion, I usually find "no there, there."  Let me give you an example.

I have a good friend, let's call him Jack, who is maximally risk averse.  He pays a premium for rent on a shitty little Brooklyn apartment because it is rent stabilized.  He understands perfectly well he could get more apartment for less money, but he would have to give up rent stabilization.  For Jack, rent stabilization is insurance against the market uncertainty he cannot tolerate, and the extra rent is the premium he is willing to pay for that insurance.

I, for one, never saw such a thing coming.  Most people (I think) think of rent control as a way of keeping rents down.  It never occurred to me that someone would pay more to have rent control, which has become a good in itself.  But, never mind that, now.

Jack also tends to be politically disinterested, so it came as quite some surprise when he vehemently expressed a deep antipathy to Donald Trump.  Jack was so agitated by Trump that he was reluctant to even discuss the subject, at first.  Eventually, his concern came out.

All that Jack knows of Trump is that Trump wants to tear down regulations.  Jack concluded that Trump wants to eliminate rent control in NYC, so he felt personally threatened.  Hence the profound animus.  Jack has no concept of the federal structure of American government.  He was flatly unaware that some things are the business of the federal government and many things are not.  I tried to explain to Jack that the President of The Republic has no authority over NYC rent regulations, which are a matter of state law.  And, more than likely, the POTUS has much bigger fish to fry than Jack's rent stabilized apartment.

Jack was glad to hear it, but remains unconvinced.

What am I to think?   On the one hand, Jack is a friend and his pain is very real.  On the other hand, the pain arises out of a profound ignorance of American government.  Jack is terrified by an eventuality that will never happen.  Oh, NYC rent control may well be repealed someday (when Hell freezes over), but not by Donald Trump.  And yet, it is Donald Trump that Jack hates.

So yeah, I definitely feel poor Jack's pain.  But I can't take it seriously.  And so it is with most of my socialist friends and their political night terrors.