Dear Privileged, Rich, Condescending Tech Bro:

So Trent Lapinski, self-proclaimed Libertarian Entrepreneur who is really just exactly like all the average Americans who sold their technology company for a big million dollar payday has a lot of condescending thoughts for us about the election.

His whole piece is infuriating, especially coming from someone who is rich enough to never have to experience the consequences of Trump and the Republican Congress’s assault on public services, but this is the bit that moved me to respond:

If you’ve been following my Twitter or Facebook account during this 2016 election you probably would have thought I was a Trump supporter. However, I am a former registered Democrat, a Bernie supporter, and consider myself a progressive libertarian. This was the first election I ended up voting 3rd party, but my second choice was Trump. I simply could not vote for Hillary Clinton because of her mishandling of classified information, and stealing the nomination from the people’s choice Bernie Sanders.

Hillary never should have been nominated in the first place. The first clue was when she was under FBI investigation, and the second clue was when she rigged the primary elections.

So let’s review, shall we? The FBI investigation was entirely politically motivated and it found no evidence of wrongdoing at all. His anger about the primary is entirely justified, and I agree with him on that one point: the entire leadership of the Democratic Party needs to be replaced, and the Democratic Party Establishment needs to be torn down completely. Not just because of this election, but because of the abandonment of the Left wing base of the party in the pursuit of voters who are never going to support them. That’s a whole other post, though. Let me get back to what’s so infuriating to me about this guy’s post and his condescending, smug, arrogant dismissal of the consequences of his actions.

The fact is, when the primaries were over, we had a clear choice between a deeply flawed candidate and a man who has never held a single elected office in his lifetime. That was the choice.

He says:

The reason Hillary Clinton did not win this election is because she never should have been nominated in the first place. There was a better choice.

Maybe. But the reality is that, after the primary, our choice was between Clinton and Trump. We had a clear and obvious choice to make between a flawed candidate and Donald Trump. I know that’s not the choice a lot of people wanted to make, but it’s the choice we had. We had a responsibility as Americans to protect our republic from Donald Trump and everything he represents. That was our choice. So I responded:

We’re all going to get the nightmare of the Trump presidency because of people like you. You will likely not personally suffer because of Trump’s presidency, because of your demographic. Because you “sold my company for a successful exit” to the tune of a million dollars, you’re insulated from the very real dangers that Trump’s presidency presents to women, people of color, LGBT people.

Because of you and people like you, we are looking at:

• Ben Carson for Education.
• Jamie Dimon for Treasury.
• Newt Gingrich or John Bolton for Secretary of State
• Rudy Giuliani for Attorney General.
• The Ryan Budget.
• The end of the Affordable Care Act, which means people are going to die.
• The defunding of Planned Parenthood, and other organizations that millions of people depend upon for no other reason than they haven’t been lucky enough to found a company and sell it for a million dollars so they can become an entrepreneur.
• A SCOTUS majority that will be in the mold of Scalia for the next 40 years.
• The normalization of racism, anti-semitism, xenophobia, and misogyny.

Presumably, because you supported Bernie Sanders and were once a Democrat, those are all things you didn’t want to support. But you can pat yourself on the back and be smug and condescending because you were super pure and didn’t compromise your fucking precious feelings. You own this, Mister Technology Millionaire. You own everything that happens to people who don’t have the good fortune that you have.

Because you and people like you threw a tantrum when you didn’t get your way, because you destroyed the good when you couldn’t get the perfect, this is what we get. Hillary Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate. Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, and America will never recover from him.

The fact is, when the primaries were over, we had a clear choice between a deeply flawed candidate and a man who has never held a single elected office in his lifetime. That was the choice. All these reasons you cite for throwing your tantrum may have been valid if there had been a normal candidate running against Hillary Clinton. But Donald Trump represents a unique and serious threat to the entire world. And you helped elect him because of Wikileaks and alt-right news.

I hope your money brings you the comfort you don’t deserve and protects you from the people you helped put into power, you smug, condescending, privileged person.