Why I'm Alright with Getting Things All Wrong

I am currently in the process of lovingly slapping together the two Donald Trump-themed kindles 7 Days in Ohio and Kanye & Trump I’ve written with a new title and a new cover. I don’t like to brag about all the “cheddar” (or “money”) I make from self-publishing on Amazon, mainly because I don’t want people to break into my Victorian mansion and steal the fortune in gold doubloons and bejeweled chalices I keep under the floorboard of my library. 

I know I write about struggling financially a lot here on this blog but you need to understand that I am in the curious financial state of being extremely cash-poor but also extremely gold doubloon and bejeweled chalice-rich. I could, conceivably, sell some of my gold doubloons and bejeweled chalices and instantly erase all my money problems but is a life without crates full of gold doubloons and bejeweled chalices a life worth living? No, no it is not. So I will be holding onto my gold doubloons and bejeweled chalices, thank you very much.

On average, I make anywhere from two dollars to four and a half dollars in monthly royalties for 7 Days in Ohio, which has done very well commercially, relatively speaking, and Kanye & Trump , which has not. I’m hoping that by repackaging these two thematically simpatico pieces I can up that income to six, or even seven dollars a month. 

Sweet ass cover, though. One of the best things about it.

Looking back at these two pieces, the first written in 2016 and covering a surreal week spent attending both the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio and the Gathering of the Juggalos in nearby Thornville (Thornville stand up! I will be with y’all in spirit at the Gathering this year but with my wife, Dex, Ghost and newborn son in Atlanta, otherwise) and the second published last year and dramatizing the fabled meeting between evil lunatic Donald Trump and musical genius and noted crazy person Kanye Trump, I realized that I got huge things very wrong. 

When I wrote, edited and published 7 Days in Ohio in 2016, I was very much under the delusion that Hillary Clinton would destroy Donald Trump in the Presidential election and that we would look back at his campaign with the same gobsmacked disbelief that we now view, say, H. Ross Perot’s hugely important yet inexplicably half-ignored run for Commander-in-Chief. I thought we were experiencing a strange cultural fever that would soon break and we’d return to normal. 

That, needless, to say, did not happen. Turns out Trump wasn’t a particularly ill-advised crush: we married the fucker, and have been coping the awful, awful consequences ever since. 

Also a great cover, courtesy of Romy Maloon

I similarly thought that Kanye’s fascination with Donald Trump and his vulgar, gold-plated brand of tough-guy faux-populism was a weird side effect of a manic episode and would end when the episode did. That sure appeared to be the case but then Kanye re-upped with all this MAGA, Trump-loving garbage, becoming BFFS and intellectual soulmates with Candace Owens, getting all into Scott Adams and arguing on fucking TMZ that slavery was, on some level, a choice. 

Yes, I sure overestimated the American people and the judgment of Kanye West, and I have a very low opinion of humanity in general and understandable skepticism about the choices Kanye makes. Yet I nevertheless assumed they’d both get over their weird infatuation with Trump and return to their senses but that doesn’t look liable to happen any time soon in either case. 

I was wrong but I’m okay with that. I’m okay with being wrong in general. People come here because I have a strong point of view and work ethic and write about the things I love and abhor in a way that’s hopefully funny and compelling and heartfelt, not because I’m always, or even mostly, right. 

Every once in a while I do get something objectively right. Just before Louis CK’s dramatic fall, for example, I blogged about how in the context of #MeToo and the Weinstein Effect it had become impossible to suspend judgment and support CK in light of the rumors that had been swirling around him for years.

More recently, I wrote a blog post arguing that the parental separations at the border were making the perception-obsessed Trump look so bad that he’d sign something to end them, if only to stem the intense flow of bad publicity. 

I was pleasantly surprised to be right but I don’t shame myself for being wrong. We all make mistakes. I’m just more open about mine than most folks because I believe in celebrating our imperfections and messy humanity. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. 

I make my living mainly through Patreon, so if you would be so kind as to slide a few dollars to me over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace it’d be groovy