Thursday, November 24, 2016

Da Mic Drop: Austin "Teebore" Gorton

Da Mic Drop is a regular segment, where we look at people who make such a pointed "standing-ovation-worthy" commentary in regards to a person or issue that it has to be highlighted. 


Kinda sad (and yet oddly appropriate, on this political climate) that some of the most insightful commentary on Trump's election to presidency is from a comic-book site. And yet Austin "Teebore" Gorton, proprietor of the perpetually entertaining Gentlemen of Leisure has taking a break from recapping 90s X-Men comic (one of the few things almost as horrifying as a Trump administration) has delivered an epic post on the feeling of despair that gripped many people after the election results came in It's all a good read, but the end is especially powerful:

America just told all those people, my wife, my son, the planet itself, that it doesn't value them, it doesn't like them, it doesn't care what happens to them so long as they can feel safe and pretend new jobs are going to magically appear out of nowhere and go about their lives like it's still 1950 without anything anything even slightly outside their definition of "normal" coming along to shatter that illusion. 
Yesterday, I went to my polling place and exercised my constitutional right to vote, an act which has always made me feel immensely proud to be an American. 
Tomorrow, I will try to take heart in the fact that those of who didn't give in to fear and hatred yesterday are strong, and technically more numerous than those who did. That the majority of us are fundamentally good people, and that even the good can occasionally fall, that the better angels of their nature can be, momentarily, overwhelmed by their fear or ignorance, and that they'll eventually see the error in aligning themselves with the truly evil, those who legitimately believe the hatred and bile routinely spouted by our new president. 
I will try to believe that we will pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, and continue to fight the good fight, continue to do good, no matter how much harder it is now, no matter how many obstacles are put in our way, for as long as we have a planet to fight on. 
Because doing good is the right thing to do. But today...Today, I have never been more ashamed to be an American. (emphasis mine)

Exactly.

Actually that whole thread is a must read. As many of the comments are just as profound. Particularly fantastic is this retort from regular poster "Jason" regarding the constant contrarian-scold concern-trolling excuse-making for Trump supporters calling voting  against their best interests some kind of "political revolution":

People are tired of the guys who spout fucked-up and incoherent messages, so they voted for Trump.
That makes sense. I myself am tired of this persistent,pesky cough I've got so I voted for the bubonic plague.

(Applause)

Indeed, this will now be my go-to response to the 5,987,654 such hand-wringing articles that pop up about how we need to treat such attitudes as "sincere political reform" and not the illogical, destructive behavior it is. But we sure showed that ol' cough a thing or two, eh? (Hack, wheeze, ack!)

In a related note I gave a response that noticed an unflattering link between the characters featured in the books Teebore usually reviews and the regrettably  frequent "characters" that enabled this idiot to rise to leader of our country (Warning: Chromium Age nerd culture alert) :

In a bizarre case of ironic timing, this site has recently covered the beginning of the "Iceman's bigoted dad" subplot in Uncanny X-Men #289. And we are currently only a few issues away from Graydon Creed's appearance in #299. The funny thing is that when both of these people appeared, at the time they were being derided for being too exaggerated and over-the-top with their prejudice to be believable. Before this year, that was an assessment I would have agreed with. Now though...

There seems to be an effort on too many voters to reduce themselves to caricature, to find "identity" in conforming to the most outlandish stereotype. That's just sad, people! (especially when you end up less nuanced than 90s X-books.)





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