About Orangeglow - R.R. CXXIV · 7:57am Jan 20th, 2017
IN WHICH I TANK MY OWN POPULARITY
Okay, I'm not particularly highly-regarded on this site, but I just posted what I expect to be by far my least popular story. And I'm not even sorry.
Today marks exactly two years since I published my first fiction on this site: "Ponyville Holds An Election". It's been a wild ride, and I've had the chance to converse with some wonderful writers and picked up tips from some others. As I've said many times in the past, thank you all for your support. I appreciate it more than you could ever realize.
Now to Orangeglow. In nine hours, his real-world equivalent will become President of the United States (how long we stay united is an open question, however -- admittedly this would have been the case regardless of the outcome of November's election). I have made no secret of my absolute loathing for The Donald. I even had Aria kill him off in the Equestria Girls universe. That's a petty move for which I will NEVER apologize. Honestly, I'm legit worried that, due to my circumstances, I will not live to see the counter-revolution which is likely to come next decade. Hell, I might not be around two years from now if things get really hopeless. So I may as well say my peace while I can.
I'm well aware that there are many Trump supporters on this site. Possibly a majority, considering this is a fandom originally forged in the hellfire of 4chan. You're free to unfollow me, and/or to hate my story, but I reserve the right to delete any nasty comments that show up -- not like I get comments on my stories anyway, but I may as well throw it out there.
Do I want Donald Trump to fail? Well, that depends on the definition of "fail". In general, Yes I absolutely want him to fail, because most of his policies are likely to kill me and my friends, me through neglect of the healthcare system and my friends directly through tacit approval of intercommunal violence. But I'm not blind to the fact that when a powerful country fails, it throws the entire world into turmoil. So I hope that he does not fail as hard economically as I expect. On social policy, where he's more likely to succeed, I hope he crashes and burns. Most importantly, I hope against hope that he is able to overcome seventy years of conditioning and start to actually care about someone other than himself for once in his life. I tepidly hope he is not assassinated, at least not by a minority, because that would spark the civil war his people have been itching for for 20 years. Besides, Pence is worse. The people I really want to see taken out are Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn; those two are legitimate dangers to the world. Of course, if Trump continues to piss off power-players, all bets are off.
May you live in interesting times. A (fitting) Chinese curse.
Fuck it, I'm still feeling the effects of the booze I drank at dinner. I'm going to go watch some more Korra and then pass out while listening to playthroughs of Yandere Simulator. Peace out, y'all.
Full Disclosure: My family has known the Clintons since the 70's. My cousin interned for Bill in 2000 and worked for Hillary in 2008 and 2016. Had Hillary's 2,900,000 vote win actually meant something, she would have been in charge of wrangling entertainment (I imagine she takes some perverse glee in Trump's people barely scraping above the D-list trying to book acts). I worked on Democratic campaigns here until my anxiety got so bad I had to stop – these days I barely leave my room. Last year, I personally supported Bernie Sanders (of whom I've been a fan since 2002) until a week before primary day, when his hardcore supporters pissed me off and I reluctantly voted for Hillary -- but she was guaranteed to win my state's primary anyway, since she lived here for 18 years.
And hey, this blog!
Again you prove delightfully prescient since one of the two is gone already!
Bannon though doesn't seem to be going anywhere, but at least Orangeglow is failing to do anything of consequence as the courts laugh in his face.
4458247 - Having a degree in Political Science is both a gift and a curse in times like these -- you understand nearly all of what's going on, but almost no one is willing to listen, especially not to your crazy reform theories.
Prior to that, I was a student of history. Flynn reminds me of a general from the Cold War era named Curtis LeMay. He was such a hawk he made Bibi Netanyahu look like Nelson Mandela. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he tried to convince JFK to nuke Cuba and Moscow. He also wanted to nuke China. He was probably the inspiration for George C. Scott's character in Dr. Strangelove. Naturally, he ran as segregationist George Wallace's running mate in 1968 -- Wallace, to his credit, renounced his racist views late in life; LeMay never did. Bannon is, in my opinion, a literal reincarnation of Josef Göbbels and/or Heinrich Himmler.
I was shocked to see angry town halls with my rightwing Rep and Senator a couple weeks ago. Used to friendly crowds and talking culture war and taxes, they weren't expecting it. It's probably because I live in one of the only states in the South that expanded Medicaid (which helped over 200,000 people almost overnight -- that's ~10% of our population, minimum, liable to get screwed over).
I take some solace in the fact that, in my Equestria Girls universe, Orangeglow is dead. Aria Blaze stole his burrito and ate it right in front of him, which made him so angry his brain almost literally exploded (I'm very superstitious about even mentioning the "an"-word).
4458306 Oh, I'm well aware, since I share the cursed polysci degree. Combined with a psych one on top of that, because I got the polysci one accidentally since I found the classes fun.
And then discovered what I thought was a double major was me in fact completing two degrees.
I don't know I'd call Flynn comparable to LeMay. From what I can dig up, LeMay didn't hold racist views akin to Wallace; that said, supporting him was still reprehensible and a mistake.
But Bannon? Yea. Bannon is bloody terrible. Calling him 'Bloody terrible' does something of an understatement. The man is...ugh. Loathsome. And on the assassination front...
Pence is worse in many ways. But I don't doubt he would ultimately respect the rule of law in a way Trump does not. Pence would also have 0 odds of being removed from office and really drives home the banality of evil side of things. So it's a damned if we do damned if we don't scenario where the best thing we can hope for is the administration to remain completely hobbled by self-imposed scandal until we can kick them the hell out.
As for the ACA? I'm laughing so much on one hoof seeing the Republican birds finally home to roost and screwing them over. On the other? I'm livid that the public is so stupid they bought an 8 year long lie and are only now realizing it after allowing an incompetent Cheeto into office.
I think we'll survive, but I'll readily admit the last year with this + Brexit has destroyed my faith in Democracy as anything more than 'The least worst among all current terrible systems of government' and I am now placing my hopes in the Enlightened Despotism of The Culture coming to pass. Give me Sufficient Gravitas anyday, at this point, because I no longer believe people are capable of intelligent self government, and won't be until there is a massive revolution in education & economics.
But, hey, in the interim I guess I get to watch politicians bluster about which bathroom I get to pee in because apparently nonexistent sex predators using women's bathrooms are the current bogeyman.
4458313 - Cross-listed classes. That's how I also ended up with Public Administration under my belt. Part of the P.A. degree was that I had to take some pre-law classes, notably Admin Law (which I loved). My final project for that class involved actually reading the ACA. What the GOP was saying about it did not jibe with what I read and wrote briefs about, and just made me hate their hypocrisy even more. The ACA is not perfect, far from it, but it directly helped many of my friends.
Incidentally, I had a trans friend who accidentally became a high-profile local activist. After Agent Orange won, he possibly received death threats, probably had a psychotic break, and (egged on by his roommate, a lesbian SJW) left the area without saying goodbye to anyone.
Maybe LeMay wasn't a racist (at least no more than anyone else in the military at the time), but I still think it's fair to compare Flynn to him, as they're both known to have spouted off conspiracy theories.
Pence has two good qualities (and one bad one): The bad one for people but good for him is that he's actually competent and can work with Congress. Also, because he's long been part of the system, he's more willing to respect it than Agent Orange. On the other hand -- and this is the good part for "real" Americans -- he has zero charisma and cannot win a national election; had he not been picked VP, he would have lost his reelection according to polls at the time.
I legit don't expect Trump to make it to 2020. Maybe the Russian connection brings him down. Or, more likely… he's 70 and not in the best of health no matter what his quack says, and his temper is nastier than mine or Bill Clinton's (though Bill has mellowed a lot since his heart surgery), and reports say it's getting worse and he's increasingly paranoid -- it's been less than two months! That's a recipe for dying in office of natural causes right there. If that happens, I'll be terrified, since I alluded to it last summer in one of my stories.
4458347 For me? I had a parent go 'Rawr you can take a bigger class load!' and I did. Then I realized I was running out of psych courses. And polysci was fun. So I took those. Then I was like 'I'll double major!' and, oops, apparently double majoring is not 'Complete the degree requirements' but something else?? I never figured out what it was, actually.
Thankfuuuulllyyy I never had to read the ACA. I still miss my classes on the modern Middle East though, it was always fascinating to study more on how like...Iran is arguably the best hope we have for a developing Muslim nation because if they would just sliiiightly liberalize they can become a beacon in a way the Saudis never will.
As for the SJW sorts - the actual SJWs drive me nuts. I've known a few and am glad I don't have to deal with them anymore because they do more harm than help, and it's infuriating to constantly have to do damage control because of their crap. At least I seem to be slowly getting through to my siblings that, like, winning arguments involves being persuasive, not just angry all the time.
As for the Cheeto...mm. All viable. On some level though I want him to make it to 2018 so the Repubs can suffer in the midterms; Pence as President would actually get legislation passed, and I'll take 2 years of paralysis over letting the insanity that has overtaken the Republican party from actually....well, doing things.
I wish we could resurrect Eisenhower and let him take the party back over. Or hell, even Nixon.
4458392 - I also had the good fortune to take a class on the modern Middle East (totally agree with you on Iran, by the way), as well as a religion class on Islam -- still have my Qur'an and try to read it from time to time (it is the Saudi translation though, so I question its wording at times, like how Surah 2 gets very ranty about Jews; I'm curious to find & compare a different translation) -- and got to speak with the local Imam. Nice guy.
4458832 I do want to do more modern religious exploration just as part of kind of a modern mystic-quest-ey thing.
Iran is one of those issues current administration makes me super depressed on because Obama was making inroads in actually getting some progress there and yea, the Cheetoh has already ruined all of that. At least the thawing of Cuba appears to be on a slow but inevitable path forward, at least as long as Putin doesn't find some way to fuck that all up too.
Unfortunately barring the rise of a truly amazing statesperson on the US end I think the current geopolitical instability is going to remain at least another decade since it serve's Putin's interests and he clearly has no problem letting chaos reign as long as he's top dog in his little fiefdom.
4458852 - One of the top-level classes I took was called "Politics of the Cold War" (still have the book even though it's been a few years; I am a packrat). One of the things my prof pointed out was that progress in the US/USSR relationship was only able to happen when both sides had leaders willing to try, and that only happened a few critical times… Kennedy/Khrushchev post-CMC, Ford+Carter/Brezhnev (pre-Afghanistan), Reagan+Bush/Gorbachev. In the post-Soviet era, Clinton/Yeltsin and Obama/Medvedev (Bush Jr. to his credit tried to work with Putin).
Ugh, Putin. The one upside with him is he's created such a cult of personality around himself and is so convinced of his own greatness that he hasn't bothered to groom a successor if anything happens to him, an uncharacteristically rookie mistake that will bite Russia in the ass eventually. He's also not as good at securing his own backyard as he thinks he is. China is a bigger threat because they're smarter and playing the long game (which the USA has always sucked at thanks to our short election cycles).
4458900 I'm far less worried about China though. They want global hegemony, yes, but they've recognized the way to achieve that is mass economic prosperity and I figure the inevitable liberalization of policy there is going to happen in the next generation. Hopefully, anyhow.
But yea. Totally agree with nigh-all you have written there!