Trump isn't Hitler, He's Joey Tribbiani
Hard Hitting Political Analysis
Friends was an extremely popular fantasy TV series in the 90’s/00’s.
I call it a fantasy series because:
The show involved six people having deep friendships well into their 30s
None of them were particularly rich, although they were able to afford three different apartments in the middle of Manhattan.
They appear to live in some alternate version of New York where 9/11 never happened.
If the show was made today, Monica would open every episode with a 10 minute land acknowledgment, Chandler would be addicted to ketamine, and Phoebe would have an OnlyFans account in order to make ends meet.
Anyways, I want to talk about one episode in particular: season 6 episode 18.
Even from the title alone you know that this episode couldn’t be made today.
In that episode, two of the friends, Rachel and Phoebe, set fire to their apartment. Since it was Rachel’s fault, she is forced to live with the out-of-work-actor-full-time-womanizer Joey Tribbiani, while Phoebe gets to stay at the much nicer “Hotel Monica”.
As the episode synopsis puts it:
Rachel is surprised to find she actually enjoys living with Joey due to his easy going nature, while Phoebe quickly gets annoyed with Monica's constant need to impress and strict rules. Exasperated, Phoebe tries to switch apartments with Rachel, but the latter enjoys living at Joey's and declines.
You can see the pivotal moment in this clip here.
TL; DR Rachel, despite living in objectively shittier conditions, realizes that she can just be herself with Joey. That alone is worth more than the fancy food and extra living space that Monica provides.
It's a cute little story except for the fact that it describes the entire goddamn American political system
As expected, many people across the various platforms have been trying to do a post-mortem on the election.
Specifically, people on the left have been trying to deconstruct “what went wrong.” While the nontraditional democrats have been able to look at the situation through a more sober lens, analyzing the patronizing way in which the left looks down on working class people, the vast majority of the commentariat continues to swallow the delusions of identity politics.
One of the ironies that I keep seeing is the fact that the Democrats acknowledge that they were terrible at informing the voters on platforms in which they actually consume (streams and podcasts, for example) – but then they doubled down and blamed the audience for being “low information” voters.
Beyond this, one of the things that the majority of the leftist commentariat agrees on is that they still have the better policies for the American people, even in domains such as immigration and economic policy.
Let’s set aside the question of whether this is actually true – my contention is that it doesn’t matter.
When these online progressives talk about their better policies, and how the working class have “voted against their interest” they come across like Monica from friends, trying to explain that she has the better apartment to live in. Her place has the better living space (housing policy), the better food (inflation policy), and it’s normally the spot where everybody gathers (social policy).
The point is, none of that shit matters if a person is going to be scolded every time they do the equivalent of dropping spaghetti on the floor.
People don’t want to live in a nanny state where everyone has to abide by the correct terms, only have the correct thoughts, and follow the correct rules.
Remember that joke about Puerto Rico?
The one where Tony Hinchcliffe compared it to an island of garbage?
Liberals were sure that this would alienate Puerto Ricans and Latino voters. People briefly thought the entire election hinged on that joke. And yet it was quite literally the opposite — Latinos showed up for Trump in record numbers. How could that possibly be the case?
Well, first we need to ask ourselves: What was so offensive about the joke?
At first glance you would think it was obvious. A comedian told a racist joke at a rally. But if that’s your take away, you’re just wrong.
Anybody with half a brain cell and an Internet connection can figure out that Tony Hinchcliffe is an insult comic. He tells risky and offensive jokes for a living. It’s how he got invited. No, Tony wasn’t being offensive when he told the joke, and the Republicans weren’t being offensive when they invited him on.
It was the liberals who were being offensive in believing that Puerto Ricans are so stupid and sensitive that they would decide the fate of their democracy based on this single joke.
Even if Puerto Ricans found the joke to be in bad taste, even if they were genuinely offended, the vast majority of them can understand the joke for what it actually was: a swing and a miss.
Tony Hinchcliff dropped the spaghetti onto the carpet, and the liberals expected everyone to freak out about it, the same way Monica from friends would.
Meanwhile, I would argue that it is genuinely racist to believe that an ethnic group (a group of people who have gone through hardships) need to be coddled because some random guy said some naughty words on a podium.
Go to any construction site; you'll see that insults like this are the basis for male friendships. The more we like each other, the more we insult the fuck out of each other. The only thing genuinely offensive is the fact that liberals believe Puerto Ricans are somehow distinct from this dynamic.
Depressingly, it seems to be a lesson progressives never learn. In this clip, the hyper progressive woman tries to stand up against Donald Trump's 2016 immigration policy. She tries to champion the minorities.
Her argument? “If you kick every Latino out of your country, who is going to clean your toilets?”
A lot of society isn’t doing so well right now
They’ve had the equivalent of their apartment burn down. They don’t want fine dining, they don’t want luxury — they just want to sit back and watch TV. They want to drink a beer and toss clumps of wet newspaper against the wall. They want to be themselves without having to constantly look over their shoulder in fear, wondering if Big Mommy™ is going to chastise them for violating some norm.
For these people, Trump isn’t Hitler, he’s just Joey Tribbiani.
I never thought I’d appreciate a Friends analogy, but there you go. Interesting take.
This was rather good! Cool analogy!