Something's happened to America and the underdog, the underclass, the victim.

My father who died this year grew up in the Great Depression, so passed on the stories of his youth - Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, people who survived by their wits and hard work. This included his father who lost more than one fortune but when times were tough could always return to farming, the land.

He wasn't much for socialism, hated the Communists, but he believed in charity, in helping out people with less, both at home and abroad. He was a "pull yourself up" type, but not immune to sympathy, and his ridicule was more political, not personal. His stance on racism wasn't always pure (though never heard him use a racist epithet), but he gave to black colleges as a way of leveling the field. Some drunk kids ran into him on the way to the lake one time, and in the end he just paid for the damages himself because they couldn't afford it and he simply wasn't out to punish some poor young yokels that were just out for a good time. He left the Republican party because they refused to raise taxes desperately needed for a collapsing school system.

Possibly if his mind had held out he would have shifted to the more acerbic modern twist, but I doubt it - there was always some logic and consistency to his stance, anti-gay or what not. And where things stood as general principles, they were always softened in the particular, in the personal.

That part's changed for the conservative movement, and for America as a whole - now, anything goes.

We've come to expect it in racial incidents - a black kid gets shot by police and they look for marijuana in his system to justify it; a dumb poor kid ends up in the morgue over shoplifting; a guy sitting on his mom's porch gets roughed up by police and it's cause he "didn't follow police instructions".

But then there's schadenfreude over other incidents - Kim Kardashian gets held up and tied up in a Paris hotel and her celebrity status turns her into an object of ridicule. Girls get raped on campus and they're pilloried for ruining the career football or doctor opportunities of their attackers.

The Syrian conflict largely exploded over our funneling weapons to a protest movement and insurgency for bipartisan-backed "easy regime change" that's gone wrong - yet we blame the million refugees from this conflict, as if they're al Al Qaeda or part of the thuggish Assad government many were protesting. 

Much of this started post-9/11 when we lost 3000 people and turned it into an eternal vigil and grievance match. We pushed a memorial ceremony at the 2004 Olympics and even later, even as the Iraqis were losing hundreds a day in inter-ethnic and Al Qaeda violence opened up by our illegal invasion, and despite 300,000 Indonesians freshly wiped out by tsunami 5 months before. And our Olympics channels cut away from in 2012 for the Brits' subway bombing memorial - "not of interest to our American audience".

American lives were worth more, and continue to be so. In 2003, the French had a horrible heatwave in which 3000 people died - which was met with derision my American conservatives still angry over French reluctance to join the Iraq misadventure. The irony of the similar # of deaths adds to the perverseness. It's one thing to talk about "Freedom Fries" - another to gloat over a deadly catastrophe.

The lack of interest in the current struggle for Mosul is also instructive - it's simply no longer our problem - even though we created the conditions for ISIS (thanks George, thanks Paul Bremer), we've backed away from the problem - and it's no longer our concern. Where under a conservative administration "support our troops" was the electric 3rd rail, everything's provisional now, depending on which party's  in charge. Empathy is negotiable.

So when there's a mass killing, it's open season twitter-wise on the victims, should any of them wonder why we still let hateful bastards roam the streets with open carry or easily buy guns when hunting ain't that popular and guns in cities kill more friends & family than intruders. In a perverse sense, anyone who's not carrying a gun is guilty and open to derision.

All of this victim shaming & blaming leads us further into hysteria and outright lies. The Bakersfield killings were awful, but the perpetrator didn't divulge his plans or show weapons to friends - that was a vindictive lie to cast doubt on other Muslims. Blacks aren't illegally voting - they're being discriminated against over and over, a renewed trend over the last 20 years tied into a spurious movement around strict IDs and saving money on polling places. Women aren't walking in trying to have late term abortions - most women have an abortion within 12 weeks as suggested, and the exceptions tend to be where abortion facilities or the abortion pill aren't made available or in the range 3-6 months the mother or child face death or horrid lifelong disabilities (there are almost 0 post-6 month "abortions").

How exactly does the right justify this? They just keep making themselves the eternal victim - if a black kid gets shot, it's the police who are the victims. Liberals are trying to steal Christmas and hunt down Christians. They're out for your guns. They're going to tax you to death. Obama's stealing your healthcare. And on and on - they don't actually have to pull themselves up - it's better being the underdog always. Check out the country song "Politically Uncorrect" - one of hundreds bonding them together.

In this environment, we've just experienced the 2nd great political thefts of our lifetimes, and this one was even more blatant and multi-faceted in a way that should scare us more - but instead we're blaming the victim - "Hillary was flawed, should have done better, should have factored in these events". Yes, right:

1) she should have factored in a year-long email "scandal" that grew wings out of 11 bullshit Benghazi investigations

2) she should have factored in the national decision especially including media to no longer fact check her opponent's bizarro lies, even when saying contradictory things in the course of 1 sentence

3) she should have factored in an apparent state actor friends with her opponent that hacked her campaign chairman's emails and would drip out and spin tidbits for months, with the FBI or NSA doing nothing to stop it, despite their greatly expanded powers on surveillance and snooping and anti-terror.

4) she should have factored in that the press would treat a sudden illness not sympathetically as a sudden illness, but confirmation of a great right-wing hypothesis about her being terminally ill and negligence to her duty in front of the press.

5) she should have factored in that people would accuse *her* of attacking and mistreating her husband's purported mistresses as a guilty party, rather than do the normal thing of sympathizing with a woman who's been wronged by her husband (contrast with the admiring reception of Beyoncé's album about betrayal and vengeance)

6) she should have factored in that the head of the FBI would intervene 3 times over the last 3 months - twice in the last week - to make the bullshit scandal of #1 topical, and

7) the Republican closing of black polling places, strict IDs, rejection of registrations, intimidation at the polls, that probably weakened her turnout in Florida if not the complete cause.

It's not even worth discussing anymore, because people see character assassination as acceptable, especially if it's Hillary. When Nixon broke into Ellsberg's office to damage him, the left was alarmed - when Russia andt/or Wikileaks breaks into Hillary's campaign manager's emails, it's a public right to know - even though dripped out vindictively over months. 11 days before the election, Hillary had trounced Trump in 3 debates and had a huge good vibe going  with rising poll numbers.

And then the head of the FBI stomped on it with a completely bullshit innuendo-filled-but-false claim about more emails. And after a 9 days issued a "never mind, just duplicates" memo on a Sunday before Tuesday's election. And still, Hillary won the popular vote, while limping into 2nd in 4 key states (PA by 68,000, MI by 12,000, FL by 120,000, and AZ by 85,000 - well within Comey's margin of damage) - for a swap of 76 winning electoral votes.

And what do Democrats say? "She was a flawed candidate". "Bernie would have done better." "She didn't have the right vision". "She didn't speak to white America enough". and so on. We might as well add "what was she wearing", but we already know it's a pants suit. There has never been a female president and she won the popular vote in an anti-establishment year, pulling white educated liberals, blacks, Hispanics, women, millennials, LGBT, unions and other factions together, despite attempts to break them apart, with arguably the most progressive agenda we've ever seen from a candidate.

And to add insult to injury, we're taking typically flawed exit polls to exclaim how Trump got more women, she didn't get Obama's numbers among blacks (like duh), she didn't do enough Hispanic GOTV, etc.

We are so stupid. This is exactly the self-immolation the Republicans want out of us. It was stolen from her and us, but instead of calling the cops or protesting or suing or some proper response, we're going to rail against the Clintons (sic) and talk about how we need to get more clever, more thorough, create a more attractive platform to gain MORE THAN THE 53 or 54% HILLARY LIKELY HAD COMING BEFORE THEY STOLE IT.

(California & Washington still have 4.7 million votes to count, New York some more - guess which way they'll fall. )

Giuliani already said he had leaks ahead of time from the FBI; the Russians said they had contacts with Trump - you'd think our outrage would be obvious.

But no - we worship success, and shit on failure, whatever the cause. Americans aren't cutting it in the new economy? work harder, go re-educate, lift yourself up. Women are getting raped in the military and on campus? their fault for holding men back. Blacks getting shot and choke-holded to death in police brutality? well, they shouldn't commit so many crimes, poor police are scared to use proper amounts of force. It's our smashball response to 9/11 and then Iraq and then Katrina and everything else up to now. Look at Obama's Supreme Court slot - they just fucking stole it, with various shifting excuses, but they stole it. If they keep on kicking the shit out of us, stealing from us, and we keep blaming ourselves for it all, well, like Ewan McGregor said, "it's shite to be Democrat - the Republicans are wankers but we're overrun by wankers".

We've sustained ourselves on holding onto the Presidency while they stole all the legislatures, governorships, House, Senate. And now they've come back for the Presidency and the Supreme Court too. What more do we need to stop playing the victim, to fight back? Another woman? Another exhausting 2 year ordeal to have them steal it again? Among all the reasons for Hillary's loss, I don't see anyone say "we look weak and ripe for picking". But in the end, that's probably what got the Republicans back to Trump - because immoral or not, they wanted to be in on the spoils, and his career is based on stealing and defrauding and intimidating his way to success. What more could they want? They are the overly vulture capitalist party, after all. And what are we?