We be in the city.
We be in the city. Charles Mudede

Yesterday, the president-elect stunned everyone by claiming that he would have won the popular vote if not for the millions (yes, millions) of people "who voted illegally." Of course, this is complete nonsense, and almost all of the major newspapers said so in their headlines. There was no evidence for this claim. It had no basis in reality. It was not real information. In short, it was part of the fake news that is consumed from snout to tail by the most stupid and racist and sexist Americans.

Now, we in the cities are being told, again and again, that we need to make a big effort to understand these white people in rural areas and suburbs. They have been hit hard by a stagnant and declining economy. The cities are benefitting from globalization; the rural areas have been hurt by it. First, cities know all about globalization and de-industrialization. Best believe that. Look at Detroit. Look at how its population has declined over the past 40 years. Look at where thousands of its factory jobs went to. But also look at who the city voted for: Clinton. Next: In 2010, these basket bozos voted into power Republicans who deliberately limited Obama's options to rebuild an economy that a Republican had crashed. Not just that, the GOP reimposed austerity before the recession was over. The recovery was slow and uneven mainly because they, whites in the rural areas and suburbs, made it that way with their own votes.

As for cities, since the 1990s, they have purged their councils of almost all GOP politicians and programs, have become more and more progressive, and are dealing directly and realistically with issues of inequality, living wage, policing, and improving public forms of consumption. And now we are told we live in a bubble and that reality is actually out there by the barns or bopping about on ATVs. But how can we understand, let alone help, people committed to stupidity? The fact that Donald Trump makes up shit by the minute, shit with no relationship to reality, and this has no effect on his supporters, precludes reasoning with them.

There are, granted, lots of cultural things that made these people so self-destructively dense (history of racism, obsession with guns, food with too much class struggle in it, poor schools, bloodsucking pastors, Witch-like isolation), but that is their condition. And we in the city can do nothing about their self-imposed condition. It is a dry loss. Also, we have our own, serious problems, and need our wits to solve them, rather than pulling stupid people out of the mud of every kind of bad idea imaginable—the Mexican wall, Hillary's emails, Muslim vetting, and so on. And I'm inclined to believe that these people want to be stupid and want a leader who says stupid things because it is easier for them to be spiteful than to do the hard work of making real sense of their economic situation.

As for Trump's ridiculous tweet about the millions of illegal votes, it will only widen the distance between those who have their brains in order and those who just do not.