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You've may have heard about dudes "rollin' coal"--modifying their diesel trucks to belch clouds of oily smoke.
Credit: Wikipedia
Sometimes they blast out the soot on the open road, but at times the blasts target bicyclists, pedestrians, and--a favorite--those environmentalist Prius drivers.
You can see rollin' coal in action here.
It's not cheap. According to Wikepedia, it can cost up to $5000 to make the changes.
What's the payoff? I'm guessing it's basically the pleasure of saying "fuck you" to the world, written in black smoke. The bigger and blacker the cloud, the stronger the statement.
Finding out about rollin' coal helped me to wrap my head around Trump's core supporters, and especially why it is that the worse Trump acts the more popular he gets. (See my post, "Most Trump Supporters Extremely Enthusiastic," Sept. 16, 2016, or at the Daily KOS).
Like the good old boys rollin' coal, Trump gives his followers a thrill and an ego boost every time he insults women, threatens to ban Muslims, deport Mexicans, stop and frisk African Americans, or floats a mind-bending new lie. The more outrageous the statement, the more exciting it is, especially when it elicits outraged howls from such despised others as liberals, progressives, and the press.
You can read a similar take on the smug satisfaction Trump and his Alt-Right supporters get from saying (and soon doing) outrageous things in a piece by Jeremy Sherman at this URL.
As the pollsters and pundits have been saying for months, there are a lot of aggrieved and angry people out there. I respect their intelligence enough to find it hard to believe that many of them really think that Trump can or will live up to his grandiose promises--re-open the coal mines, bring back all those blue-collar jobs, make America great again, whatever that means, and actually make their lives better in any tangible way. With the exception, of course, of his billionaire backers, who will make billions more through deregulation of financial markets.
But the aggrieved and angry can see that Trump is making the lives of the rest of us worse every time he opens his mouth. What a rush that must be.
It's not cheap. According to Wikepedia, it can cost up to $5000 to make the changes.
What's the payoff? I'm guessing it's basically the pleasure of saying "fuck you" to the world, written in black smoke. The bigger and blacker the cloud, the stronger the statement.
Finding out about rollin' coal helped me to wrap my head around Trump's core supporters, and especially why it is that the worse Trump acts the more popular he gets. (See my post, "Most Trump Supporters Extremely Enthusiastic," Sept. 16, 2016, or at the Daily KOS).
Like the good old boys rollin' coal, Trump gives his followers a thrill and an ego boost every time he insults women, threatens to ban Muslims, deport Mexicans, stop and frisk African Americans, or floats a mind-bending new lie. The more outrageous the statement, the more exciting it is, especially when it elicits outraged howls from such despised others as liberals, progressives, and the press.
You can read a similar take on the smug satisfaction Trump and his Alt-Right supporters get from saying (and soon doing) outrageous things in a piece by Jeremy Sherman at this URL.
As the pollsters and pundits have been saying for months, there are a lot of aggrieved and angry people out there. I respect their intelligence enough to find it hard to believe that many of them really think that Trump can or will live up to his grandiose promises--re-open the coal mines, bring back all those blue-collar jobs, make America great again, whatever that means, and actually make their lives better in any tangible way. With the exception, of course, of his billionaire backers, who will make billions more through deregulation of financial markets.
But the aggrieved and angry can see that Trump is making the lives of the rest of us worse every time he opens his mouth. What a rush that must be.
Credit: Mike Licht/NotionsCapital.com
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10/4/18--Trump exhibited an especially ugly version of this in his mocking of sexual assault victim Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at a rally in Mississippi. As Atlantic author Adam Serwer summarized, "the cruelty is the point."
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