I only have two excuses for not chasing my dream: (1) I'm not that good, and (2) I know it. As sure as I know that I'll never dunk a basketball or hit a home run, I know that I'll never be as eloquent or concise as George Will and I'll never have David Brooks's eye for insights.
Yet, I recently had a revelation when I came across Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who gives hope to mediocre writers everywhere.
Matt Walsh had a short and unsuccessful stint writing for the Huffington Post, where he did a poor Andy Rooney impersonation, airing curmudgeonly grievances about rude customers and participation trophies. It would take an above-average wit to enliven such cliche topics, a trait that Walsh unfortunately lacks. If you've seen any of Walsh's work, you know that he has the writing style of an internet troll and the insight of a drunk uncle. Not surprisingly, Walsh's time at the Huffington Post didn't last long.
And yet, he is making it. Walsh started his own blog where he had an epiphany: he didn't need to write like a Pulitzer Prize winner to have success--he just needed to give people the thinly-reasoned demagoguery that they want. Walsh ditched the droll slice-of-life topics in favor of controversial, attention-grabbing headlines like, "There's No Way I'll Send My Kids to Public School to Be Brainwashed By the LGBT Lobby," and "While You Were Crying Over a Dead Ape, 125 Thousand Babies Were Murdered." Every post was an explanation of how the apocalypse was coming in the form of sexual deviants and social liberals.
The blog went viral. Irate christian conservatives couldn't get enough of Walsh's liberal-bashing diatribes. Reputable sponsors--like the company pitching "A Weird Trick to Make Women Obsess Over You"--flocked to the blog. Glen Beck even picked Walsh up for TheBlaze.com.
Walsh has become a real-life Rumpelstiltskin, spinning non sequitur and hyperbole into gold. He is to literature what The Black Eyed Peas are to music, proving that when it comes to getting noticed, talent is overrated.
So, in the hopes of achieving my dream of becoming a professional writer notwithstanding my mediocrity, I've decided to stop aspiring to write well-reasoned and articulate posts. Instead, I'm going to give the angry public the insult-laden red meat that they obviously crave.
So here it is. Following the Walsh Elements of Style for Mediocre Writers*, here is my post on why Donald Trump's travel ban didn't go far enough.
Why Trump's Immigration Order Hasn't Gone Far Enough (and Why He Should Ban British People)
Thanks a lot, liberals. Thanks to you and your lying, hysterical ways, people will die. I hope that you're all happy.
Allow me to explain. A few weeks ago, President Trump tried to DO HIS JOB by protecting Americans from the hordes of radical Muslim extremists who are coming here to blow us up.
And how did you all thank him? By doing what liberals do best: hyperventilating. And while you were hyperventilating, you managed to do the other thing that liberals do best: lying, this time by calling the executive order a "Muslim ban."
As usual, the mainstream media poured gasoline on the leftists' burning hair-dos by airing bleeding-heart liberal propaganda: images of dejected and confused refugees who had cleared a long, rigorous vetting process only to be turned away at the last moment. Had the media been reporting the truth, we would have seen airport terminals full of bloodthirsty terrorists who, upon learning about Trump's executive order, threw their machetes to the floor and shouted, "damn those tricky Americans, we almost had 'em!"
Here's a headline that you won't see on the New York Times (because it's true): Trump's Executive Order Was Not a Muslim Ban. Just read the order itself. It isn't that complicated. A third grader could have written it. Trump simply banned everyone, Muslim or not, from seven Muslim-majority countries (with an exception for people who are not Muslim). Now how could that be a Muslim ban?
But alas, the pro-immigration (i.e., pro-death) lobby tattled to the federal courts and Trump had to go rewrite the thing. So now Middle-Eastern Christians are going to be treated just like everybody else. What's worse, the administration caved and decided to exclude Iraqis from the ban.
And as a result, people are going to die.
Unless you are either an idiot or a deluded leftist radical, you will acknowledge that America would be safer if we let Trump keep immigrants out of the United States entirely. Think of it this way. Most immigrants are harmless. But a few--maybe one in a million--will kill someone. In other words, the government is sentencing one random American to death for every million immigrants that it lets in. Obama, who let in eight million legal immigrants during his presidency, basically offered one American per year as a human sacrifice to appease the leftist god of tantrums.
Sure, since 9/11, no terrorist from any of the seven Muslim-majority countries has succeeded in killing an American on our home soil. But that doesn't mean that Iraqis are safe. It just means we've pushed our luck long enough.
Besides, when we talk about the dangers posed by immigration, terrorism just scratches the surface. There are plenty of other ways that an immigrant could kill or seriously hurt you. Are you, like millions of Americans, suffering from high cholesterol? You probably have some foreigner's irresistible cuisine to thank (the Chinese have been slowly poisoning us with General Tso's chicken for decades). Do you like having your teeth drilled? Didn't think so. Well don't forget that some of those innocent-looking Syrian immigrants are actually dentists, hell-bent on coming to America to do exactly that.
Maybe you do like dying of eggroll-induced heart disease or having your teeth drilled, but the rest of us were perfectly happy with the original travel ban. In fact, the only rational objection that a sane person could have to Trump's immigration order is that it didn't go far enough. It probably should have included Saudi Arabia, a hotbed for terrorism, Colombia, a hotbed for drugs, and France, a hotbed for French people.
It also should have included the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Indonesia and Japan, hotbeds for dangerous drivers.
Of the million ways that an immigrant could kill you, vehicular homicide probably tops the list. Since immigrants make up about 13.3% of the U.S. population, they must account for about 4,278 car fatalities every year. If that mortality rate continues, you and every other native-born American will eventually be extinct.
In fact, immigrants probably account for more than their fair share of traffic deaths because they can be downright horrific drivers. Take British people, for instance. Brits--along with Indians, South Africans, Japanese, and Indonesians--drive on the wrong side of the road (moral anarchists might refer to it as the "left" side of the road). That is all well and good so long as they are all driving on the wrong side of the road together in their home country, but when they come to America and drive on the wrong side of the road, carnage ensues. Brits are killing Americans all the time this way.
I'm not calling for a permanent ban on British immigration, just a temporary hiatus so that immigration officials can develop a vetting process that will give a 100% guarantee that no British immigrant will kill me by driving on the wrong side of the road. Until then, letting Brits into America is like throwing American children into speeding traffic. It's the same exact thing.
If you are a Christian, you've probably heard some godless heathen tyrant maniac (a.k.a. a Democrat) tell you that your support of Trump's immigration policies is a “betrayal of your faith”--as if you have some sort of moral obligation to ease the suffering of others. Apparently you aren't a Christian unless you're willing to roll out the red carpet and hand machetes to Islamic State fighters as they parade off the docks into New York City.
Lest you feel the slightest pang of guilt, allow me to misconstrue a Bible passage to legitimize your callous attitude toward foreigners. When the Bible tells us to love our "neighbors," it refers to the people who live in our neighborhood. Last time I checked a map, neither Iraq nor Syria didn't have a U.S. zip code; they're clear on the other side of Jihaadistan. So say a prayer or two, but don't lose any sleep over images of drowned children. According to the unassailable word of God, they're not your problem.
Besides, it isn't a government's job to help foreign refugees. It's a government's job to (1) protect its citizens, and (2) have immigration policies that will prevent its citizens from helping foreigners, thus ensuring that they will direct their energies on more pressing issues, like keeping transgenders from strolling around women's restrooms with their penises out.
Just look at the Canadian government, which is so intent on importing could-be terrorists that it allows groups of private citizens to sponsor refugee families and take an active part in their assimilation. In 2016 Canadians, including many Christian groups, resettled about 18,000 Syrian refugees through the program. Canadian Christians were so distracted that they didn't even see that the apocalypse had arrived in the form of a 52-year-old "transager" who is currently ripping apart the very fabric of their society. With everyone so focused on helping the helpless, there was no one to call attention to that deviant's attention-seeking fetish.
As much as leftists like to pretend otherwise, Trump won the election. He won. So liberals should shut up and let the president do whatever he wants. That's how the electoral college works. Let's all turn our attention to the important issues of the day. Like Colin Kaepernick. Or who those spineless cowards running the Boy Scouts of America are letting into their club. Or whatever garbage those effeminate millennial progressives on MTV are talking about.
Whether Donald Trump is dishonoring the American tradition of serving as a refuge for people of all faiths is small potatoes.
__________________________________________________________________________________________ *The Walsh Elements of Style for Mediocre Writers is comprised of five simple rules for success:
1. Know your audience. Angry people. That's a mediocre writer's ideal audience. The angrier the better.
Ideally, a mediocre writer will target an audience that is really angry but doesn't know why. It's a mediocre writer's job to tell them why they are angry. In that respect, Matt Walsh has the recipe for success. He features a steady stream of posts about abortion, transgenderism, promiscious Millenials, and Beyonce's babies. Topics like that are a perfect way to get those indignant juices flowing.
2. Know your enemy. As a rule, mediocre writers lack the persuasive ability to engage with normal, reasonable people. So don't try. The best mediocre writers have have a gift for finding the most abnormal, irrational fringes of society--incest activists, for example--and writing as if they represent the popular mainstream.
A mediocre writer that is having trouble finding a straw man can simply make up a foil that doesn't actually exist, like feminists who want to murder children or scout leaders who give out merit badges for sexual experimentation.
Remember, mediocre writers won't draw a crowd by illuminating the nuances of controversial topics. They should make their enemies as one-dimensional as possible so as to tickle their readers' angry bones most effectively.
3. Throw logic out the window.
The beauty of being a mediocre writer is that mediocre writers aren't constrained by traditional rules of logic. Angry people just don't expect the kind of justified inferences and careful reasoning that characterizes more polished work.
The key is to make non sequitur sound logical. Take this example from Matt Walsh's blog: according to Walsh, allowing people to vote without paying taxes is a form of "taxation without representation." See what he did there? (Hint: representation without taxation and taxation without representation are not at all the same thing.)
Once a mediocre writer breaks the shackles of reason, he will be amazed at the creative arguments that he can make.
4. Use insults. Insults serve as a suitable substitute for logic as a centerpiece of a mediocre writer's work. If you were bullied in junior high, a blog can be a great place to vent all the rage that you've been suppressing. Matt Walsh, by all appearances, was picked on by the gay, feminist, and liberal bullies at his school, and now uses his blog to compile all of the feisty comebacks that would have earned him a swirly in 2001.
6. Talk about Jesus a lot. A mediocre writer can effectively camouflage questionable logic by claiming to have the savior of mankind on his side.
Also, picking on liberals can feel a little unwholesome after awhile, even for angry people. So the mediocre writer should throw in enough Jesus-talk for the audience to feel that its indignation is of the righteous variety.
5. Use hyperbole. Mediocre writers use this a lot. So use it until your readers' heads explode.
