Kathy Sheridan: What can liberals learn from the US election?

What a week. What a festival of finger-wagging and lecturing of the “libtards” (that’s a wounding mash of liberals and retards) on their refusal to “learn”.

All culminating in that photograph of the grinning crotch-grabber and Nigel Farage, posing before Trump's dazzling golden doors, sticking it to the gilded elite just as his poor, white supporters doubtless intended.

So, what are the lessons for the libtards? Peter Thiel’s theory has attracted much sage, chin-scratching.

The co-founder of PayPal and big Trump donor, opined that the media went astray because they insisted on taking Trump literally but not seriously, whereas many voters took him seriously but not literally.

“So when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’, or ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is ‘we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy’.”

The lesson apparently, is that many voters listened with their gut, not with their brain. That’s hardly new. What was stunning, however, was the complete disregard for what the candidate was actually saying.

Vile, misogynistic language

To recap. His mouth said twice that Hillary Clinton could be murdered by his Second Amendment pals if she won. He repeated that he would not accept the result unless he won.

He was exposed as a KKK-backed internet troll, who openly courted Russia – a hostile foreign intelligence agency – and its WikiLeaks stooge. He spouted vile, misogynistic language that is now the stuff of mainstream discourse and children’s conversations.

Meanwhile, back here, a national radio presenter claims that if “there will be war on the streets of America, then Clinton will be substantially responsible”.

One more time, lads: the Second Amendment folks waving their assault rifles were all Trump’s; she did not encourage supporters to punch protesters.

And the lesson of the email story that generated those witless, lock-her-up chants? It will go down the generations, not for anything that Clinton did – every single allegation faded away, remember – but to symbolise how false equivalence in the media can have catastrophic consequences.

Clinton’s major campaign gaffe, say the spinnerati, was her suggestion that half of Trump’s supporters were “a basket of deplorables”.

Let’s look at the stats. Just over half the electorate actually voted and less than half of them voted for Trump; that’s just under 26 per cent of the electorate in total.

Is it plausible that half of them – around 13 per cent – belong in the racist, misogynistic, homophobic basket that viewed Trump as the messiah?

If we assume that there are plenty of decent, white, working-class people who refuse to see poor economic conditions as justification for white supremacy or misogyny, who else makes up that 13 per cent?

Well, have a look at the types swaggering into Trump Tower this week. Breathe in that glad new morning of a White House stuffed with hitherto-despised lobbyists and corporate “consultants”.

Top of the chain now is Stephen Bannon, the KKK-approved racist turned White House chief strategist and senior counsellor, Harvard Business school graduate and a former Goldman Sachs banker.

Clinton, remember, was reviled merely for taking payment for the odd speech in Goldman Sachs. Bannon, however, is entrusted with “draining the swamp”.

Remember too, that a majority of the lowest income groups voted for Clinton (and that she won the popular vote by a couple of million).

And – when the second shoe drops – remember that 229 American daily papers and 131 weeklies chose to endorse Clinton. That includes many little papers from the nation’s heartlands, whose editors survive by representing their communities.

‘Ape in heels’

No libtard seminar is complete without a session on political correctness, because the Trump vote represents a volcanic eruption of rage from a people too long smothered by the PC brigade, apparently.

And so, for the fourth time, RTÉ bravely provided the oxygen for Katie Hopkins to "start the conversation".

This is a woman who suggested publicly that a 30-year-old female journalist should have her passport burned and be shipped off to the men of Isis with a bulk order of “lube” (yes, RTÉ, we’re talking gang rape).

Her enlightening political contribution this time was that the Trump victory was a backlash against Obama’s “failure to achieve anything in office”, even as her idol slumped slack-jawed in the White House, muttering about Obama’s great achievements.

Next day, she grabbed a Daily Mail headline by contriving a row about who first used the word "pussy" on the show. Classy job all round.

This week, AP reported on a social media exchange between Beverly Whaling, the mayor of Clay, a West Virginia town, and Pamela Ramsey Taylor, director of Clay County Development Corporation.

Pam: “It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified first lady in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a [sic] ape in heels”.

To which Beverly replied: “Just made my day, Pam.”

There has been a backlash and the posts have been deleted. Damn you, political correctness, you spoil everything.