Over the past few months I’ve been using the term dip shit frequently. It’s never been a place holder in my vocabulary like “insensate” or (my favorite) “sub-Cartesian” (the latter so perfect it squeaks.) One chooses to not think and adopts the corresponding identity. It’s more than an insult, it’s a fact; a dessert mint, a breath mint…. But nowadays I’m hobbling with dip shit.
Americans are adept at self-inflicted insults and if you prowl for dip shit in the Urban Dictionary you’ll find in addition to meaning a contemptible or inept person it’s used to demean working class folks, the tortured souls who work at the Department of Motor Vehicles, receptionists, fellow motorists, etc.. If you pronounce everyone willfully vile you can be assured you’re the brightest bulb in the grimy marquee.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once said people in the United States are so downtrodden they’ll actually shout “here goes nothing” when jumping out of airplanes. Our brand of capitalism relies on crushing any hope of achieving self worth. So we walk about without health insurance, adequate social relief, access to good and affordable housing, education, public transportation—and we call the most oppressed dip shits.
I know the history of dip shittery.
What I’m now describing is the New Dip Shittery. It comes from a belief floated by the Tea Party and then the entire GOP that “the elites” are the principle problem in America. Why, so the thinking goes, if you can just rid the nation of professional politicians, experts, egg heads, smart women, and all pesky purveyors of nuance and scruple (tip of the hat to William Safire) why then we’ll be in business! The New Dip Shittery is self contempt not on steroids but on amphetamine—its a neurological highjacking—the new Dip Shitter doesn’t have time for the instructions, true journalism, a book, or for that matter to follow public health advice. The new dip shitter is the revenge of the old dip shitter. Poorly paid, unappreciated and exhausted people decided that the American political system wasn’t doing much for them. Of course Hilary Clinton would have done more for them than Trump but that’s a thought that takes too much time to reckon with.
Americans are proving they don’t have time to think about anything. Reality is too inconvenient. Trump is betting his re-election on this. His daily pressers are designed with the New Dipshittery in mind. Every expert is to be distrusted; every fact is too much to acknowledge; that woman reporter is a really nasty person. “Trust me,” says Trump, “I’ve never been elite.”
The New Dipshitters will vote for Trump though America leads the world in Coronavirus deaths.
Planet of the Blind 