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    frankwalsinghalmHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:22am

    Having just returned from the “heartland” I can state almost definitively that it’s about people having stuff taken from them and facing an uncertain future. There is a very real sense that tomorrow will be worse than today and the next day even worse.

    However, to know this on a human level you have to talk to people at dollar stores and Denny’s. And campaigns are careful to avoid less than optimistic optics. Doesn’t everyone behind the candidate have really great teeth!

    Trump is someone the established pols should really listen to carefully. He’s channeling an anger and desperation they ignore at their peril.

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      Doofenschmirtz, Inc.frankwalsinghalm
      3/21/16 10:28am

      Yeah, but it’s so much more expedient and fun to make fun of Trump’s hair and short fingers than to talk about that. And heaven help you if you talk about Hillary’s beer gut or canckles to even the playing field of insults.

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      frankwalsinghalmDoofenschmirtz, Inc.
      3/21/16 10:35am

      Trump is a LOSER who has discovered that it is easy and effective to appeal to the worst in human nature when people are desperate. Even his television show with it’s signature line — You’re fired! - was a piece of particularly cruel schadenfreude.

      My fear is that what comes after Trump may be worse — smarter, meaner, and more extreme.

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    StenchofaburnerHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:14am

    Anger at Muslims and Anger at police shootings of young Black men?! The premise to analyze this supposed anger is dishonest to begin with as both “angers” (as it were) are not equal and the same. They are not even expressed the same way or have similar goals. And there are four installments out of such premise?! I cannot even get past that single paragraph...

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      Quasar FunkStenchofaburner
      3/21/16 10:19am

      And “anger at political correctness.”

      Because that’s important.

      The sad thing is it does appear at least anecdotally to cause as much or even more anger as police shootings of young black men. Jimbob doesn’t care that cops are murdering these kids. He’s just pissed that he can’t call them niggers.

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      SJDubyaStenchofaburner
      3/21/16 10:32am

      It’s just a list. It doesn’t mean all the angers are equal.

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    PsonicPsunspotHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:14am

    Apparently, America is a metric fuckton of sentence fragments.

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      MEXICOCIXEMPsonicPsunspot
      3/21/16 10:42am

      Metric? Not American. We’re angry at the metric system.

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      PsonicPsunspotMEXICOCIXEM
      3/21/16 10:44am

      Oh, shit. That’s right. We’re measuring everything in “Trump steaks” now, aren't we?

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    TRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)Hamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:15am

    Someone already wrote this history and wrote it better.

    NO PULITZER FOR YOU.

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      Hamilton NolanTRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)
      3/21/16 10:38am

      This is the UNSETTLING— please don’t confuse the two very different things.

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    norbiznessHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:15am

    Kathleen Parker (?!) won the Pulitzer for commentary a few years back, so I just imagine that august committee is a cross between the out-of-touch Andy Rooney-like Academy Award voters and the coke-snorting epicureans of the Golden Globes committee.

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      TRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)norbizness
      3/21/16 10:19am

      Parker’s selection was a lifetime non-achievement award.

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      Corbettonorbizness
      3/21/16 10:19am

      I read this as the Golden Girls commitee.

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    DisinterestedPasserbyHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:19am

    So much anger out there in America...Specific anger and undefined anger and even anger about anger.

    That article reads like it came from a Hollywood writer’s idea of what a journalist does, kind of like how Amy Schumer was supposed to be a writer for Vanity Fair at the end of Trainwreck.

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      EvenBaggierTrousers4DisinterestedPasserby
      3/21/16 10:22am

      Or any episode of Sex and the City.

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      BlackMoonshyneDisinterestedPasserby
      3/21/16 1:42pm

      Spoiler Alert! man, not everyone finished watching that movie.

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    John StarHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 11:05am

    Fluff.

    And not a word about Reagan.

    Horrific state of affairs Reagan left. Like the guy that barfed all over your sofa last night, then this morning looked you right in the eye, and told you to just let your hungry dog lick it up.

    Reagan: Huge tax cuts for the rich, then increased taxes on middle class. Tripled the national debt. Iran Contra... $Billions USD in illegally funded cash trades w/Iran, profits ending up as guns and money in the hands of Contra rebels . Gave more secret $Billions USD to the Mujahidin (financing terrorism?). Unemployment the day Reagan took office: 7.5%, the day he left 11.5%.

    America has never been the same after Reagan. Hillary says “Never again.” Trump says, “Hey kids we’re just getting started.”

    And people are all mouthy about ‘angry’ now?... Wimps.

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      PoodletimeJohn Star
      3/21/16 11:37am

      *************************** ....

      I got no GIFs, but all of the stars for you! I believe that people consistently underestimate the influence of He Who Must Not Be Named on all things political and cultural. And it’s not just the factual stuff, like you described: it’s the revival, like some horrible zombie, of the pre-Dickensian ideas about poverty. “Poor people are parasites; poor people are unwise spenders; poor people are simply not virtuous enough; poor people are lazy; poor people aren’t good workers; poor people never bothered to get an education.”

      Yo, Donald and Ronnie! Poor people are poor because they do not have enough income. Life has gotten very expensive in the United States: housing, health care, and education have become HUUUUUGGGGEEEELY more expensive, while people’s overall incomes have fallen. It’s that simple.

      Tl;Dr: I also blame Reagan, with a tremendous blamingness. If I could, I would dig him up, re-vivify him, and whap him with a big fish overandoverandoverandover until I felt better.

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    gramercypoliceHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:40am

    Next, we met Delano Dwayne Shifflett, a rodeo clown from Gibsonton, Florida who was volunteering for his first political campaign, working to elect Rick Scott to a term as governor of British Columbia. Why was Delano, known as DD to his friends and enemies alike, stuffing envelopes and handing out flyers in the parking lot at Tampa’s dog racing track for a candidate who is not eligible to run for office in Canada? “I guess I’m just angry about something,” Shifflett explains. “We all are, ain’t we? That’s what I hear anyway. Angry about no more styrofoam cups at Starbucks and anti-lock brakes. Angry at the Obamacare for making me go to Manchester, England to see my doctor about my bursitis. And I’m mad because the rodeo requires me to have insurance. What do I pay taxes for anyway? Plus, I also thought I better volunteer before I got drafted in the Army.”

    When we reminded this rascally rodeo clown that there is no draft no more — anymore — he looked at us with a grim, brave smile and said, “There was one?”

    We couldn’t be angry at the adorable Delano Dwayne if we tried.

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      GoBackItsATrapgramercypolice
      3/21/16 10:42am

      Lighten up, Francis;)

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      Krugerrantgramercypolice
      3/21/16 10:53am

      Rom is that you?

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    raincoasterHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 12:38pm

    My favourite newspaper series isn’t even American: it’s the Story of Cities in the Guardian. The one on the history of Baghdad was incredible. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/ma…

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      Lilchumraincoaster
      3/21/16 10:35pm

      Yes it’s the best! Also the city Benin, I never knew it existed and it was so amazing

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      raincoasterLilchum
      3/21/16 10:56pm

      Agreed 100%. And to think it was there recently enough that it was photographed, and now it’s been wiped off the face of the planet.

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    XrdsAlumHamilton Nolan
    3/21/16 10:18am

    The WaPo has spent the last 35 years so focused on inside baseball coverage of “This Town” that it didn’t notice America growing up into the angry monster it is today. Now they're playing catch-up while the house is burning.

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      10" Rubber BilboXrdsAlum
      3/21/16 10:34am

      My wife went to a science conference at the NIH a year or two ago. The kid and I figured it would be cool to tag along, go into DC and see museums, etc.

      I have to say: Bethesda is another world. Like Manhattan, except instead of working for banks, everyone works for intelligence agencies and lobbyists. I took my 4-year old to a playground near our hotel early in the morning. By 9:30 PM there were like 15 other little kids playing there. But no actual parents: Just their 15 Peruvian nannies.

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