Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Trump is doing exactly what supporters want him to do. Over and over.


     Ah. Now I see. Finally, finally I get Donald Trump. It all makes sense to me now.
     Took long enough.
     He has been president for nearly six months — the grim half-year anniversary is Thursday — all the while I, along with the rest of the mainstream media, have been baffled, thickly pointing our trembling index fingers at all the promises he repeatedly made and then glibly broke. There would be no border wall, never mind one paid for by Mexico. No overturning Obamacare. No infrastructure renewal. Coal's still dead, manufacturing still sputtering.
     But when we document this to his supporters, they don't care. They just shake their head and smile, or rather, sneer, pityingly at us, the lamestream media. "Sad!" they mocked, echoing their hero. They still love him.
     How can this be? It's easy to dismiss them as dupes, as ripped off, gulled, credulous marks who, pockets turned inside out, would rather hold tight to a fantasy than confront a difficult truth. And I did that for a while. But as the months clock on, castigation seems too simple. Too easy. Dismissing the other guys as mere idiots is what Republicans do. It makes a person feel good, perhaps, but leads nowhere. An empty high.
     
So I looked again. And realized that in one realm, Trump constantly and consistently delivers: invective, a steady stream of insult, against the media, against politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, against elites and whatever unlucky individual falls under his basilisk gaze. Machine-gun chatter of "Disaster!" Funny nicknames and repeated fabrications. This isn't the sideshow. It's the main act. Not a flaw but a feature.
     That's why he was elected. Donald the Destroyer, the scourge of liberals. And that dynamic makes perfect sense. The game was up, the world trotting toward its future. Part of the liberal miracle over the past 60 years is to take marginalized people—minorities, gays, women—and invite them into the tent. Good for them, bad for people who used to own the tent and now feel threatened by these interlopers. What about their hopes and dreams, of a white America that manufactures stuff out of iron? They were not going to be ignored.
     So they elected Trump, to flay the infidels. They'll hate me for saying it, but there's a clear parallel between right-wing America and radical Islam. Both see themselves mooted by a world they can only lash out at as it flies by. Both spend their lives bitterly resenting who they aren't rather than joyously being who they are. If you think America should be frozen in 1953, with Hispanic serfs hidden back in the kitchen, what do you do? The same as if you think any woman who isn't veiled is a whore: extract vengeance.
     Trump never has to create a job or lay a brick. All he has to do is say he will, any moment now, and keep a constant bead on those already long demonized by Fox and Friends. The soil was prepared for him, turned and broken and fertilized. Ready for Trump to bloom.
     The media has been slow to catch on. We are used to it playing news certain way—we keep reporting each new development in the Russian scandal, not realizing that Trump's shape-shifting supporters simply morph. Big thumbs up to Putin and the Russian Federation, our new best friend in the world.
     Then again, the media always tends to lag; newspapers still create a product out of mashed wood pulp that is thrown at customers' houses every morning. We still print comic strips. If a giant meteor were discovered that would end the world tomorrow afternoon, we'd report it on the front page but the baseball schedule for the rest of the week would still be in the sports pages. Slow on the uptake.
     And what would that headline be? "Earth to end today." Too weak. "Rock shock!" Better, but a bit New York Post-y. "WE'RE DOOMED!" feels about right, though we might want to save that one for Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.

18 comments:

  1. maybe its because I'm an old, white, christian, male, but i don't see much of what trumps doing affecting my life one way or the other. the actions by presidents simply dont have that much bearing on the lives of citizens. while its gauling and appalling to hear the garbage that comes out of his mouth, the health care situation here in the US wasn't his doing nor obamas, its the health lobby, big pharma, insurance companies etc thats got us by the balls. while the supreme court appointments have an important impact on people, who are we to honestly say the liberal philosophy is the right way forward? our country has been run by conservatives for decades and things aren't so bad. and this russian thing? sordid unethical and possibly illegal but if thats all they have on trump it aint much. reminds me of having the whitewater scandal shoved down our throats and it amounting to very little. and blacks and other minorities? a lot of their lives were still pretty shitty the day before he got elected. its not like we were living in some utopia thats been destroyed by trump. so long as he doesn't start a war that cost the lives of millions of people around the world most of the actions of the US president are inflated in importance by all media for ratings to generate income for their owners and share holders. left or right the system sucks but it aint so bad.

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    1. I'm right there with you, Neil. And to take the liberal agenda a step further, forget about tolerance of others; acceptance is what we should strive for.

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    2. As the father of two wonderful young men in their 20's, I see first hand the results of "conservative" philosophy that consists almost entirely of promoting tax cuts for the super wealthy, as well as less regulations on the businesses that make the super wealthy super wealthy. As more and more of the nation's wealth trickles upward, it is becoming less and less possible for young people like my sons to join the middle class. We are becoming a nation haves and have nots and, contrary to our nation's historical ideals, it is becoming harder to move up the economic ladder. When you add the GOP's radical efforts to undermine health care for the elderly, children and working poor, along with it's efforts to roll back protections for mother earth, the GOP begins to look more like an apocalyptic death cult than a political party.

      The country has been run by conservatives for some time and things indeed aren't so bad - if you are one of the handful of people that have benefitted from their welfare for the rich initiatives. For working people, the elderly, the infirm, and the young people who are our future, things aren't good at all.

      The GOP is hellbent on creating an economic aristocracy, and with useful idiots like Trump creating endless diversions, they are well on their way.

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    3. Addendum - The GOPs efforts to gut health care for over 20 million elderly, young, and infirm citizens is entirely an initiative to free up a trillion or so dollars to give tax cuts to our wealthiest citizens. They openly admit this.

      In any culture other than one that has been massaged by Fox News and Limbaugh for 30 years, anyone suggesting this would be run out of town on the rails and would never be taken seriously again. Trading the health of the least among us so a billionaire can add a few more gardening staff is obscene, the stuff of Dr. Faustus. Even considering this make me ponder that the country has gone mad.

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    4. 3 cheers to your post, Dennis.

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    5. so we should be acceptant of others just not conservatives? right

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    6. Any president has an affect on one's life. For instance. https://www.dcreport.org/2017/07/19/is-this-trumps-vision-for-america/ Of course congress would have to pass this. But appointments make a difference. For the most part they are rubber stamped. And don't forget there are many appointments that don't need Congress's approval.

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    7. What I found so shocking about the health care debacle is that the GOP, supposedly the party of businessmen, seems to know so little about how the insurance business works. What I learned in Econ 101 at the U. of C., taught me that financial underwriting of medical services for the whole population can't be delivered by private companies alone because you simply can't turn a profit insuring old people and poor people. It is a lesson all other modern industrial nations learned some time ago and have solved either with direct government financing, like the British National Health Service, or systems that employ subsidized and tightly regulate private insurance companies, along the lines of the Affordable Care Act.

      Tom

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    8. You have said very well about Trump who is doing exactly what his supporters expect him to do. Somewhere I also agree with that he has some dynamic which makes perfect sense. And I really want to explain this thing to students who have been taking academic writing services UK at www.eliteassignment.co.uk from our assignment writers who also looking forward for compressing higher education for better career opportunities. So it is good knowledge for them to take higher education and also need to think practically.

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  2. NS-Just give them 3 more years or so-when little has changed. Then they'll face reality.

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    1. You have said very well about Trump who is doing exactly what his supporters expect him to do. Somewhere I also agree with that he has some dynamic which makes perfect sense. And I really want to explain this thing to students who have been taking buy essay writing services UK at Quality Dissertation from our essay writers who also looking forward for compressing higher education for better career opportunities. So it is good knowledge for them to take higher education and also need to think practically.

      Delete
  3. Seems to me we're paying way to much attention to Donald Trump (and his minions), which is exactly what Donald Trump wants us to do, which is exactly why he won the election. We liberals have an agenda and should stick to it. We've forged ahead despite vehement opposition and if we get bogged down demonizing Trump, Trumpism and Trumpists, we're playing right into their hands. I suppose I have to echo FME in saying that as a white male sinking slowly into senescence, I'm not much affected economically by who is President, but I much prefer living in a tolerant, progressive society enlightened and embellished by peoples from many nations, many creeds and many cultures and would feel personally impoverished were that society to be eroded by selfish creatures who happen to look like me.

    john

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  4. This is true but lets see that how things can happen in the next near future. We can just hope that things can go in perfect way as the tine will pass..!!

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  5. Here's a quote from an otherwise reasonable guy, responding to a liberal on a blog, that illustrates the point of today's column about as well as one could hope, I believe:

    "...I really didn’t think Trump was the best choice for the Republicans by a long shot, but the people like yourself that instead of talking too us talked down too us is the reason you lost the election, there were just more people in the correct places that were so tired of your condisending,higher than thou,you can’t possible think I’m wrong attitude, that we all got together and said fuck it were voting for Trump just to Piss people like you off."

    Bracing, no?

    Dennis, fine responses to FME above. This is a pretty long piece, but it deals with the issue of inequality that you addressed. "To my fellow plutocrats..."

    "The real threat to our republic is an alarming breakdown in social cohesion, and the cause of this breakdown is obvious: radical, rising economic inequality, and the anger and anxiety it engenders." ...

    "Over the last 40 years, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP have increased from about six percent to about 11 percent, while wages as a percentage of GDP have fallen by about the same amount. That represents about a trillion dollars a year that used to go to wages, but now goes to shareholders and executives." ...

    "In 2014, when I last checked in with you all, my home city of Seattle had just passed a $15 minimum wage ordinance. The derision thrown my way for supporting this initiative was predictable. ... 'Job killer' they screamed. When wages rise, they said, employment plummets. ... So how is Seattle doing?"

    "When the ordinance passed in June of 2014, Seattle’s unemployment rate already stood at a healthy 4.5 percent; in April 2017, it hit a record low of 2.6 percent (basically a labor shortage). Seattle is now the fastest growing big city in America. Our restaurant industry is booming, second only to San Francisco in the number of eateries per capita, with food service industry job growth far outpacing the nation."

    Well, this comment is way too long, so I'll just post the link:

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/18/to-my-fellow-plutocrats-you-can-cure-trumpism-215347

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  6. On July 20, I will ignore that "anniversary" & remember Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins going to the moon, as it's a far greater thing that happened.

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  7. Reminds me of reading a comparison to pro wrestling, which Trump has done. It's all for the show. While the ref is distracted a wrestler hits another guy with a chair - sure it's cheating but who cares? Are we going to analyze the specific rule violation? Assemble a panel of lawyers to analyze it for us? Write stories about it for weeks? Or just hope to see someone get hit with a table as revenge?

    On another level, everyone watching knows it's fake. (God, I hope so.) They're not calling the Better Business Bureau to complain, or boycotting a TV station for misrepresenting the facts. They're tuning in again later to be entertained some more.

    So what if Putin put his tongue in Trump's ear, that's nothing compared to what Jake the Jake the Snake will do Saturday night at 9!

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  8. Not sure why previous post was Anonymous, but that was me. I want to make it clear that I did not mean to impugn the character of Jake the Snake by comparing him to low-lifes like Putin and Trump. As far as I know Jake the Snake is an upstanding citizen and a fine entertainer.

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  9. You have said extremely well in regards to Trump who is doing precisely what his supporters anticipate that him will do. Some place I likewise concur with that he has some unique which bodes well. Furthermore, I truly need to disclose this thing to understudies who have been taking purchase paper composing administrations UK at Dissertation Help UK from our exposition authors who additionally searching forward for packing advanced education for better profession openings. So it is great learning for them to take advanced education and furthermore need to think for all intents and purposes.

    ReplyDelete

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