title:  Patton Oswalt’s Screed Against Donald Trump Is Going Viral, And It Should
text: Patton Oswalt is a comedian, but he s also very seriously worried about the future of this country after the inauguration of Donald Trump.In his Facebook post on Sunday, Oswalt, who heartbreakingly lost his wife this year, is nonetheless worried about the rest of us.So, sixteen days into the reality of Donald Trump being our President-elect, and I m reading New Yorker and Jacobin and Slate and NY Times articles, trying to make sense of just what the fuck happened, and how the fuck do we go forward. The Democratic Party is in shards on the floor right now. I think we re going to have eight years of Trump and his clean-shaven looters scraping out the carcass of the country before fucking off and blaming it on progressives and lesbians and PC and rap music.Oswalt talks about the schadenfreude that seems to be resonating throughout Trump-i-verse. People, according to Oswalt, are telling the comedian that his type of comedy is over and now we have to be subjected to whatever Trumpsters call comedy. Obviously, Oswalt had the perfect answer for that:So many alt-righters (or just people on the right) are failed or frustrated comedians. Just as so many far, far left wingers are. Comedy is too PC! It s not PC enough! It s racist! It shames white men! IT DOESN T FIT TO MY STANDARDS, SO THEREFORE I MUST DESTROY IT!Being funny isn t something everyone is born with, and even the ones born with it have to work and evolve and have humility while they do so. For the untalented but still entitled, there s a gut full of envy to carry around when they see other people getting laughs where they can t.Oswalt went further and compared these times to the rise of the Nazis. He referenced an essay by Clive James, about Egon Friedall, an intellectual who committed suicide before being hauled off by the Nazis.Egon threw himself from his window as the SA men battered down his door, screaming,  Watch out! Get out of the way!  to the pedestrians as he plummeted.I think   I m guessing, I know   that Egon sensed something even MORE sinister behind the Nazi uprising. Something fueled not by nationalism or racial pride but by bog-standard showbiz envy.Here s the post in its entirety. It s definitely worth reading and sharing:It s an interesting perspective and if you think about it, conservatism, not just Trumpism, is based on envy. Conservatives are envious of people who have more talent, they are envious of people who they think are getting more attention. They are even envious of those who have much, much less than them.Conservatives try comedy again and again, and with the exception of just a few (like Tim Allen or Larry the Cable Guy), they nearly always fail. Their comedy, like their policies, is mean-spirited. Conservatives punch down while liberals speak truth to power. When conservatives fail, their envy leads to anger. More than anything, though, Trump has made being thin-skinned fashionable. Trump supporters, even after winning, think they are the consummate victims. When victimhood is given power, things can get very dangerous. It s what happened in 1930s Germany and it s what could easily happen in just a few weeks.Featured image via Bryan Bedder/Getty Images.