Come On. Don’t Ally With Glenn Beck.

Come On. Don’t Ally With Glenn Beck.
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For a fee, Donald Trump puts his name on buildings he doesn’t own. He also does this with ideology. The ideology that people like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and Glenn Beck helped to create and nurture has Trump’s name on it. Sure, he appears to be reinforcing it with everything he has, but what he has branded his and popularized didn’t originate with him. He didn’t set his own stage — others did that for him.

Glenn Beck helped create Trumpism.

Samantha Bee is creating some kind of “alliance” with him, too. This is what I would like to call “totally morally unacceptable,” and would also like to add “holy shit! What the fuck, Samantha Bee!?”

This is not how we beat Donald Trump.

Most people probably wouldn’t require a lot of explanation beyond this. “Oh right! Glenn Beck was pretty instrumental in creating the ideology and environment Trump would adopt and thrive thanks to.” That’s basically all I need to know — this is a person who has to do a little bit more than apologize and say he was wrong.

Some people do require more, though. I was immediately met with a great deal of resistance from, well, #TheResistence when I declared my intention to swear off Samantha Bee (which, to be clear, I am pretty resolute about). I’m okay with that, though. We can be much more specific.

Just a few months ago, Glenn Beck made it abundantly clear he hates trans people.

“Transgender bathrooms have come out of nowhere and are being jammed down our throat. I guarantee you, I guarantee you the next stop on this train is pedophilia. I guarantee it. They will normalize pedophilia.”

This is a really common means of attempting to delegitimize trans folks’ existence.

This provoked a response that shouldn’t be predictable, but I’m going to go ahead and call “predictable.”

The essential point, here, is to defend Beck on the predication that this was his views before he came out against our horrible soon-to-be President. Obviously, if one dislikes Trump, one’s entire ideology completely unravels and one becomes a great person.

First off, this view is to the right of Donald Trump’s — at least what he has said. Trump is a horrible garbage man about every possible issue, so forgive me for not believing it. Still, Trump is, at very least, not openly transphobic.

His policies will likely harm trans people, but he will do it while claiming not to hate them.

Glenn Beck has not made that claim. In that clip, Beck was open in his hatred of trans people and clearly intent on stirring action from transphobic people. That kind of action is usually harmful for trans people in one way or another — a lot of the time, directly violent.

Second problem with that? Glenn Beck is still saying the same shit (see attached tweet blaming trans people for Trump).

On top of that, Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” (a wholy-owned subsidiary of Mercury Radio, Beck’s “fully integrated multi-media production company”) employs none other than white nationalist Tomi Lahren to be a white nationalist on The Blaze. Her show, “Tomi” regularly attracts criticism for racism.

The response I’ve received for saying “a Bee/Beck alliance is offensive at best” has been oriented around the idea that I was, as all progressives were doing to Hillary Clinton Before, putting Samantha Bee through a “purity test.”

You see, I am apparently putting Samantha Bee through a “purity test” by claiming that making alliances with people who openly hate trans folks (nice to know your priorities, liberals). What one must begin to consider is that it’s entirely possible that people like myself were/are not demanding purity, but rather decency.

I’m also going to go ahead and say that “the neoliberal tendencies of the The Democrats are what is getting in the way of attaining their own stated goals” is not the same thing as “this guy is still openly transphobic.” How funny it is that suddenly the people who were putting the kibosh on any talk of systematic change are back to do the same when someone points out open bigotry against trans people because it “could help out the left.”

Tell me this: what strategic advantage does Glenn Beck give the left? Glenn Beck is no one’s keys to power. He has zero political clout in the Trump-dominated GOP and is considered a liberal defector — while employing white supremacists and openly declaring trans acceptance as “a stop on the track to normalizing pedophilia.” No one relies on Glenn Beck. No one needs Glenn Beck.

His keys to power are his viewership — and they are jumping ship. As stated in August 2016, Mercury Radio was/is laying off around 40 employees nationwide to satisfy requirements for a multi-million dollar bank loan. One can only assume that the reason they’d do that is because they are not making the kind of money they need to be.

The people lauding this alliance were angry Bernie Sanders tried to pivot from talking identity politics with Trump voters while actively trying to undermine their support of him. They tried to paint him as a bigot for saying “yes, Trump did say he will not be politically correct… I think a lot of people are tired of the same old, same old political rhetoric” in an attempt to pivot into economic talk he knew they wouldn’t immediately hate him for (but that Sanders is happy to engage in elsewhere)— the kind of stuff Trump will not deliver on at all.

Turns out these people are just fine partnering with Glenn Beck — a person who participated in the creation of Trump’s America?

What reason does anyone claiming to be “on the left” have to partner with someone whose distaste over Steve Bannon may specifically be because he runs a Breitbart competitor that isn’t doing nearly as well?

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