There is a word, a word in Yiddish, the kind of Yiddish we speak in America, and the word is “alrightnik.” An alrightnik is a person who’s done well for him/herself, made some money, but is still a crude, ill-mannered slob.
Since language is always on the move, I put my head to what’s going on in America and decided to change that word a little, to make it “alt-rightnik.”
The alt-right is what you call Nazis today. You don’t call them “Nazis” because you’re talking about people who live in the suburbs, people who drive SUVs, people whose kids dance in “The Nutcracker” every Christmas season. They know the difference between merlot and pinot noir. They don’t live in rental property.
And you can’t call ‘em Nazis because, by God, their grandfathers fought in World War II.
They’re doing all right. They live far enough away from the blacks in the city. They have cable. A lot of ‘em went to college. They have health insurance so when their soccer-playing son, Adam, gets hooked on heroin, he’ll go to rehab instead of to jail. And they’re not right-wing crazies. You see them at the megachurch or the Chili’s, but you won’t see ‘em in bed sheets, firing up a cross on the Feldman’s lawn.
They’re not greasy people. They don’t spend their work lives getting greasy, and they don’t eat greasy food.
And a lot of them are, to be polite, bat-crap crazy Nazis. You know, goose steppers, oven operators, sieg heil sweethearts. They don’t get all foamy at the mouth about the international Zionist conspiracy, but they’re gonna get excited if a homegrown half-price Hitler runs for president.
Everyone thinks Donald Trump got elected by three-fingered cousin Ray-Ray out there in Lonesome Lizard, Okla., but there ain’t enough of those guys to elect anyone.
Most Americans don’t live in the country and they don’t live in big cities, either. They live in the suburbs, on the cul-de-sac, about two miles from a commercial strip that includes a 7-Eleven, a Pizza Hut, at least one dojo and, if you’re far south enough, a gun store called Ray’s Second Amendment.
They’re white people who are doing all right, though not as good as they’d like and not as good as they were 10 years ago. They hate the government, but they’d love a government job. They “want” term limits, but they don’t vote and they love their state rep. because he got the high school a new tennis court.
You can’t win without them, or you can’t win if they’re not willing to look the other way while you herd the real bigots down the road to lynchland. They live in suburbs where there hasn’t been a murder in 15 years, but they’re armed to the teeth and waiting for drugged-up Negros from the city to try and rape their wives. Then the lead’s gonna fly.
They’re all right and they’re alt-right and, when the killing starts, it won’t be their fault. They’d vote for Jim Crow, if some legislator would just have the sense to call it “The Family, Property and Neighborhood Rights Defense Act.”
They’ll let America go fascist before they’ll let it go socialist because socialism never delivers on its promise of equality, but fascism always delivers exactly what it promises.
They’re the “good Germans,” and it won’t be their fault. They’ll just stand there and watch it happen.