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Purgatory: Oops - your Trump presidency discussion thread.

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  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    Golden Key wrote: »
    Isn't that one use for the concept of the devil?

    I'm not at all sure it is. Sure, you see people saying "the devil made me do it" on TV shows and cartoons, but in real life, how many people do that, or cherish a personal animosity for him? And it's personal animosity I'm talking about--not a theological stance or a distant acknowledgement that there is an evil power behind the dreadful events in our world. I'm talking about the personal hatred one (may) feel(s) for an ex-spouse, or a neighbor who blows his leaves onto your yard, or the idiots crowding the beaches during the pandemic. Sure, some of these people deserve it, but some don't--like the nail shop workers who come in for abuse because they are using their native language with one another. But the one thing these people have in common is they are all close at hand, visible, in-your-face, and probably unable to escape--unlike the devil. Which makes them ideal targets.

    IMHO the Trumpistas and their ilk are very anxious, unhappy people who are looking for someone to blame; and a Rent-A-Villain service would not only boost our economy, but it would provide a willing substitute to take the place of the current unwilling targets, like immigrants. We could run up a catalogue, even. Pick your villain and we'll set up a service schedule for you. Two phone calls a week in which said villain agrees to be screamed at for X dollars. Free photo, suitable for dartboards. Extra if you Skype or put the villain on a talk show.
  • I disagree. I think its dangerous to generalise, but many support him because he agreed to appoint pro-life judges and advance the various objectives of the so-called Christian right. Many support him because he acts the strongman, and is prepared to play to the undercurrent of racism in Anglo-American countries that has surfaced again after a brief 20 or so years under our countries' surface. There are other reasons.
  • FYI - CBC R1 8am world news reported that Trump's approval rating is now 49%, up 5 points from last month. Lies and bullshitting on the fly notwithstanding, he is gaining support: a triumph of cult over evidence. I think that that he wants to 'put America back to work' appeals to a lot of people (including those who have retired therefrom) as a return to normality, without their thinking through the consequences of being in close quarters too soon. People will be sacrificed to Moloch the Market.

    Perhaps a forced braking of capitalism wouldn't be a bad thing. An opportunity to readjust the dial. (Though, my money's on the opportunity being missed.) For my part I've signed the petition to get the provincial government to institute an Emergency Income and additional per child allowance for those who are unemployed or facing reduced income because of the various emergency restrictions.

    Perhaps in future the phrase "drinking the kool-aid" will be replaced by "drinking the chloroquine". Yes, I know, I shouldn't joke about this, because a man died*, but I have to wonder how profoundly stupid a person must be to do that. If you're literate enough to read "chloroquine" you should know that you don't fuck with that stuff (and the other stuff intended for your aquarium), especially since the science on this application of it is not in. Years ago I was on mefloquine, and it certainly played with my mind maliciously in a way that I noticed as it was happening, and I was on the light end of the spectrum.


    *But, everyone uses "drinking the kool-aid" and over 900 died at Jonestown.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I did think his approval rating would go up. But it pales by comparison with Bush's in the immediate post 9/11 period. Leaders who make even a passable show of crisis leadership always benefit short term.

    It will sink in that he's not doing a good job. And when the economy tanks .....
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    Barnabas62 wrote: »
    And when the economy tanks .....
    ...he will blame it on others for "ignoring his advice" and pitch himself to voters as the only saviour to get people out of this mess.

    One of the advantages of the mixed messages he sends out is that he can always point to whatever's actually implemented as being not what he recommended OR just what he recommended, depending on its success or failure.

  • Barnabas62 wrote: »
    It's the cult aspect of Trump support. I have no idea what the attraction is, nor why they can't see him for the narcissist freak he obviously is. Loyalty is a strange thing when it comes to cults. He clearly meets some needs. The question "what do you see in him?" seems a better starting point than trying to reason.

    Once more with feeling: they love him because he hates the same people they do. It's that simple.




  • I can't say it's that simple, knowing some of them. Hate does not characterize the Trumpistas in my family, nor the ones I know from my former work. Fear certainly does, however. Insecurity, a sense that the world is a very unsafe place, and that they need someone to protect them.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited March 2020
    Eutychus

    Oh sure. But to judge from history, just as a crisis tends to work for any incumbent, a tanked economy works against any incumbent. He'll keep his core support cult followers on board by the sorts of arguments you show, but I think Croesos is right about their size. It's the rest who will count in the end.

    I must say I've been pretty impressed by Andrew Cuomo's presentations during this crisis. A man whose facts-based approach and grasp of detail has been very illuminating. In sharp contrast to the Presidential idiocies.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Does this President really believe viruses respect administrative boundaries of high, medium, and low risks? Or is this just another cynical exercise?
  • LC, two things. I think that fear and hatred are joined at the hip. If you don't fear, you don't hate. You might be dismissive, condescending, think that someone is an Untermensch, but if you don't fear them, they are at most a problem to be dealt with. But fear, existential fear, begets hatred, and fear and hatred require so much more energy than dismissiveness. What do the cult of Trump fear? The Other, the Mexican, the Black, the Muslim, the gay (although I do know gay Trump supporters). Why do they fear them? Because they represent a change from what the cult thought America was supposed to be, a threat to a lifestyle that the cult never had. And that's why they hate them.

    As to the cult being gripped by fear because they feel unsafe, well, the world has always been a dangerous place, and always changing. America of the 1950s wasn't a paradise, merely stupefied by post-WW II consumerism into thinking that it was one. From this distance, to think that it was is to indulge in a Golden Age fantasy rather than actually coming to grips with real problems in society. And fantasies are dangerous because they are fantasies, immune to fact.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    I have been reading Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard. The last couple of chapters talk about how Charles and David Koch have had a heavy impact on American politics, especially in the last few years. Basically they built a web of interest groups who play into basic fears Americans have long harbored. In so doing, they set the stage for the monster they have unleashed--though it appears they really look down on the man. They just see him as a stooge they can manipulate.

    Obviously, the referenced "poll" is bogus if there are only three options one can select. It feeds into Trump's narcissism. It does not really reflect what is out there.

    But, if you ask me, Trump basically won because of racism. In so many ways we are still fighting the Civil War. Whites fear losing control of "their" country. Each generation since the Baby Boom has gotten more and more brown. I can remember I had a friend who was Japanese American. My parents would welcome her in the home, but they would tell me that they did not want to see me marry her. We broke up over other differences, though. My daughter married a Filipino with our blessing. Their daughter is now 16 and dating herself and she has had boyfriends of all different colors and ethnicities. Their only concern is that she avoids someone who may be abusive to her.

    Then too, there is strong, fundamentalist religious beliefs. People still doubt the scientific explanation of evolution--which translates to doubts about global warming. I use the term "global warming" because it can be shown how conservatives have sought to change the conversation by insisting on "climate change." (Time to call a spade a spade, here).

    Also, throw in feelings about reproductive rights (ie abortion) and same-sex marriage and transgender issues.

    For many people, the world has changed too damn fast.

    The other day, I went on a photoshoot in a couple of outlying communities. I went to one community where it seemed like every other house had a confederate battle flag was hanging from the porch. There is a great divide here in America.

    What I am seeing now is a build-up of cognitive dissonance in America. Americans want to believe that their president is doing what is right through this coronavirus outbreak, but I think it will come crashing in when they begin to see videos of military vehicles transporting bodies to open-pit graves much like what we have seen in Italy and Iran.

    This is fascinating, both for the content and how written. It shows the cultural divide of race in America. Which hss now got more cases of COVID19 than China and Italy. And squandered its advance notice.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    This is fascinating, both for the content and how written. It shows the cultural divide of race in America. Which hss now got more cases of COVID19 than China and Italy. And squandered its advance notice.

    In more ways than one, apparently.
    Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

    The 69-page document, finished in 2016, provided a step by step list of priorities – which were then ignored by the administration.

    The Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus — a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.

    “Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”

    The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.

    “Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels” within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.

    <snip>

    The NSC devised the guide — officially called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, but known colloquially as “the pandemic playbook” — across 2016. The project was driven by career civil servants as well as political appointees, aware that global leaders had initially fumbled their response to the 2014-2015 spread of Ebola and wanting to be sure that the next response to an epidemic was better handled.

    <snip>

    The document rested with NSC officials who dealt with medical preparedness and biodefense in the global health security directorate, which the Trump administration disbanded in 2018, four former officials said. The document was originally overseen by Beth Cameron, a former civil servant who led the directorate before leaving the White House in March 2017. Cameron confirmed to POLITICO that the directorate created a playbook for NSC staff intended to help officials confront a range of potential biological threats.

    But under the Trump administration, “it just sat as a document that people worked on that was thrown onto a shelf,” said one former U.S. official, who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations. “It’s hard to tell how much senior leaders at agencies were even aware that this existed” or thought it was just another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy.

    Click through to read the article about the high human cost of adopting a "do the opposite of whatever Obama did" policy. You can read the whole guide here, if you're so inclined.

    I'm beginning to think that "electing" an incurious racist moron with obvious cognitive problems to be President* of the United States might have some drawbacks.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Crœsos wrote: »
    I'm beginning to think that "electing" an incurious racist moron with obvious cognitive problems to be President* of the United States might have some drawbacks.

    Now that's a quoteable quote!

  • LC, two things. I think that fear and hatred are joined at the hip. If you don't fear, you don't hate. You might be dismissive, condescending, think that someone is an Untermensch, but if you don't fear them, they are at most a problem to be dealt with. But fear, existential fear, begets hatred, and fear and hatred require so much more energy than dismissiveness. What do the cult of Trump fear? The Other, the Mexican, the Black, the Muslim, the gay (although I do know gay Trump supporters). Why do they fear them? Because they represent a change from what the cult thought America was supposed to be, a threat to a lifestyle that the cult never had. And that's why they hate them.

    As to the cult being gripped by fear because they feel unsafe, well, the world has always been a dangerous place, and always changing. America of the 1950s wasn't a paradise, merely stupefied by post-WW II consumerism into thinking that it was one. From this distance, to think that it was is to indulge in a Golden Age fantasy rather than actually coming to grips with real problems in society. And fantasies are dangerous because they are fantasies, immune to fact.

    Ugh.

    Look, as I said before, I'm speaking from personal knowledge of some of these people. (Are you, by the way?) They are not ALL driven by hatred/fear of gays/Mexicans/immigrants/blacks/what-have-you, though indeed SOME are. But there are quite a few whose fear takes the form of "We are in desperate trouble (mainly economic) and nobody is helping us, and we will vote for anybody who can make us believe, if only for a moment, that the good times will come again. Or even that the bad times will get slightly less bad."

    This is NOT racism unless you add a whole nother dimension to it (that is, blaming the current bad times on some race). It is economic desperation. It is a sense of being left behind, left out, unable to provide for one's family, getting ever more tightly stuck in a dangerous hole. People freak under those circumstances. People make stupid decisions under those circumstances, like hoping a New York businessman will somehow find the miracle cure to coal going away and farm prices tanking. You can blame them for pie-in-the=sky thinking, but you cannot label such people as racist simply for following Trump. Their investment in him is of quite a different sort.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Lamb Chopped

    I do see that. You may not like very much my cult analogy, but it is true that good, idealistic, often intelligent people do get drawn into cults. And find the cult hard to escape. It provides them with meaning and belonging. People who get drawn in are not morally reprehensible. And once they are in, the perceived benefits membership make them very difficult to reach.

    The phenomenon of cults and their power to entrap has been examined a lot. It goes deeper than simply personal adulation.

    Is my characterisation unfair. I'm not saying it applies to all GOP members or all Trump supporters. But it does seem to me to be a reasonable description of the core loyalists.
  • All he had to do was offer working people hope, and some grabbed the illusion of a life jacket?

    Why don't they realise that he is a charlatan now? Has he actually produced a life jacket for them?
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    The charlatans who lead cults are always peddlers of false hopes. What makes them dangerous is their charismatic plausibility.
  • yes. The cult theory sounds OK to me, but I don't think it applies to the people I know who support him.
  • If the "economic anxiety" theory is true, why didn't black people and Native Americans fall for him? On average they're way, way worse off than the average white American. (I say on average, I'm aware individual circumstances may differ.) The black unemployment rate is consistently double the white rate.
  • Barnabas62 wrote: »
    Lamb Chopped

    I do see that. You may not like very much my cult analogy, but it is true that good, idealistic, often intelligent people do get drawn into cults. And find the cult hard to escape. It provides them with meaning and belonging. People who get drawn in are not morally reprehensible. And once they are in, the perceived benefits membership make them very difficult to reach.

    The phenomenon of cults and their power to entrap has been examined a lot. It goes deeper than simply personal adulation.

    Is my characterisation unfair. I'm not saying it applies to all GOP members or all Trump supporters. But it does seem to me to be a reasonable description of the core loyalists.

    I wasn't replying to you. But since you ask, "cult" is probably a very useful way of explaining the phenomenon.

    Within cults (at least the ones I have studied) there is a strong effort to isolate the believer and to make sure that no messages reach him but approved ones. (Fox News does this quite well, as does the Facebook algorithm.)

    There is also an effort to cut them off from people (family, neighbors, friends) who might unmask the cult for what it is. We get this sort of divisiveness too with Trumpists. They tend to group together, and children etc. who disagree are regarded with extreme suspicion (IME) and find themselves outsiders in the family.

    There are often loyalty tests, which take the form of asking people to do uncomfortable or unreasonable things (send lots of money to build an impossible wall! Tell the world you agree with my bullshit! Believe in a non-existent "Deep State" on no evidence, and refuse to believe in evidence of Russian interference when Putin is all but singing and dancing, "I did it! I did it!" Wear this freaking hat that everybody else has a massively negative reaction to!).

    There is at least one inner ring, whose members profit from their association with the leader, and where "loyalty" is the only criterion for admission. Nepotism is common, possibly ubiquitous. The rank and file members may envy those positions, but stay in line in the hopes of someday breaking in to a deeper inner ring via protestations of loyalty and $.

    There is a cult of personality, focusing on the Dear Leader as idol, and occasionally extending to his family members in various roles. These live a luxurious lifestyle which is justified and envied by the rank and file.

    High ranking insiders who leave are treated as demons, and usually go on to write exposes.

    There is no financial accountability. And members of the cult, if they're not happy with that, keep their mouths shut until the day they can take it no more and defect.

    Rank and file members of the cult quickly come to see the outer world as dangerous to body and soul, and live in fear of it. If they become disillusioned with the cult, they may find a way to "check out altogether" rather than simply switching their loyalty to a more reasonable target. It's Trump or no one.
  • carexcarex Shipmate
    Boogie wrote: »
    No problem, It’ll all be over by Easter and the Churches will be full.


    Perhaps the Unorthodox Easter follows the Autumnal Equinox?

    (Of course, he didn't specify a year...)
  • If the "economic anxiety" theory is true, why didn't black people and Native Americans fall for him? On average they're way, way worse off than the average white American. (I say on average, I'm aware individual circumstances may differ.) The black unemployment rate is consistently double the white rate.

    nice point...
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    edited March 2020
    He’s getting desperate about the economy (linked to his own success) and still has no idea of the scale of the human problem his country is facing.
    “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “The real people want to get back to work ASAP. ”

    It’s high time he started listening.

    No walls, deals, bluster, bullshit, lies, blame or threats will stop this virus.
  • TonyKTonyK Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    All this raises an interesting thought, which American shipmates may be able to answer.

    Can President Trump declare a National Emergency because of the virus/economy/whatever and then suspend/postpone the November elections, leaving him as president for the following period?
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    It would hardly seem to fit with his stated aim of getting America back to work, Tony. But I suppose he could be being devious ..

    Lamb Chopped. Very helpful post, thanks. Gave me a lot of pointers about how to pray.
  • I believe strictly speaking elections are held by states, not the feds. Could he refuse to let the Electoral College sit? I don't think there's a Constitutional mechanism for it.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Boogie wrote: »
    He’s getting desperate about the economy (linked to his own success) and still has no idea of the scale of the human problem his country is facing.
    “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “The real people want to get back to work ASAP. ”

    It’s high time he started listening.

    No walls, deals, bluster, bullshit, lies, blame or threats will stop this virus.

    The problem is, 45 is so narcissistic he is unable to listen to others and he is not able to take responsibility for his actions.

    It is a good thing to see even conservative governors are stepping up to his bluster and taking actions to safeguard the people they are responsible for.

    It is said Nero fiddled while Rome burned around him. They have very similar personalities.

    I have been watching a video history of World War II. I think it was produced by the BBC. The last segment I watched was dealing with the Battle of the Bulge. It shows Hitler was so deluded by time (because of a cocaine cocktail provided by his physician combined with his narcissism) that his decisions were deadly to the German people. I am seeing this whenever I try to watch the daily briefing with 45.

    The question the video history asks in regard to Hitler was why didn't his generals stop him. There was one failed attempt, yes; but what about the other generals. I have the same question in regards to 45, why doesn't the cabinet stop him.

    Going to Lamb Chopped's point about people being so economically desperate that they were willing to grab on to the lifejacket 45 was offering, I get that. It is also the main reason why Hitler came into power too.

  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    A life jacket full of holes.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    TonyK wrote: »
    All this raises an interesting thought, which American shipmates may be able to answer.

    Can President Trump declare a National Emergency because of the virus/economy/whatever and then suspend/postpone the November elections, leaving him as president for the following period?

    No. I discussed this over on the U.S. Election thread. It's not a long read, but the tl;dr version is that such power, if it exists, is vested with the U.S. Congress, not the president*. It should be remembered that the U.S. held a presidential election in the middle of a pretty vicious rebellion so arguing that it would be impossible to convert all fifty states (plus the District of Columbia) to all vote-by-mail or absentee ballot elections by November seems like a pretty hard case to make, especially given that five American states already have all-mail elections and three more allow the option on a county-by-county basis.

    My big nightmare is Trump using some kind of carefully targeted emergency declaration declaring a shelter-in-place order in a few Democratic-leaning urban precincts. Let's say in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Milwaukee. The election gets held and Trump is "re-elected" because of razor-thin margins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

    One interesting twist on this is that, Constitutionally speaking, Trump's current term ends on January 20, 2021. There's no Constitutional mechanism for extending a presidency beyond the term of four years absent re-election. There is, however, a Constitutional and legal mechanism for filling a vacant presidency. Absent re-election Mike Pence's term as vice president expires at the same time as Trump's current term, which would mean the president would be whoever the 117th House of Representatives elects as its Speaker.
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The question the video history asks in regard to Hitler was why didn't his generals stop him. There was one failed attempt, yes; but what about the other generals. I have the same question in regards to 45, why doesn't the cabinet stop him.

    I came across a Twitter thread today addressing just this point.
    Saving lives, and in general mounting a competent response, is clearly in his interest. It still isn't happening.

    Partly this is just Trump. As far as I can tell, he is incapable of long-term planning, and seems to think that all problems are PR problems.

    I think it's hard for normal people to imagine just how impaired he is in terms of dealing with issues like this.

    All short-term impulses and pettiness; no ability to understand that such a thing as a serious response even exists, let alone that he is not now engaged in one.

    People who know me from my blogging days know that I have no great love for GW Bush, but I think that by now, even he would have been knocking heads to get things done.

    Not Trump.

    However ...

    I think part of the blame also falls on today's GOP. I can remember (decades ago) when the GOP was basically a sane party with a DEFEASIBLE skepticism of regulation and government interference in the market.

    Those days are long gone.

    They are now mostly a bunch of hacks who have reflexive responses to everything. It's always time for more tax cuts. Any government anything will turn us into Venezuela. Regulations are not just presumptively bad; they are ALWAYS bad. When Trump says that if he invokes the DPA to get companies to manufacture ventilators or PPE, we will turn into Venezuela, I hear his advisors talking. (Many bad thoughts are second nature to him, but I do not think that this is one of them.)

    And I think that having people around him who are not just the sycophants he deserves, but also contemporary Republican hacks who would never think that it's appropriate using the government's power to get industry to manufacture things, or to coordinate production, AND who lack the seriousness to think: wait, stop, maybe I should rethink things at a time like this -- that is, I think, a necessary condition for Trump's total failure to act.

    He LIKES dictatorial powers! He likes declaring emergencies and ordering the army to the border and trying to browbeat Jeff Bezos and stuff like that!

    The fact that NOW, of all times, he's gone all "oh no, mustn't interfere with the FREE MARKET!!!" is not, imho, HIM.

    You need both a President who is seriously impaired in terms of his ability to recognize the need for or to execute a long-term response, AND advisors who are just a bundle of Heritage Foundation reflexes, not beings capable of independent thought, to get where we are now.
  • LC - In my absence other have replied to you pretty much in line with what I would have said, so I won't bother rehearsing their responses.

    To answer your question, whether I speak from personal knowledge of Trump supporters, as I said explicitly in my initial post, I actually know gay Trump supporters. Mercifully, not many.

    To pick up on your point of the fear being economically rather than racially based, I doubt whether any public question in the US can be divorced from race, but for the sake of argument I'll go with it. I can understand economic desperation as a motivating factor. How desperate must one be to support someone who doesn't even deign to sell snake oil because he can't stay on-message even for that? Who is a shadow puppet? With a dubious business background (oh, there's that race thing again). The only thing that Trump has in common with his proletarian* supporters is that they hate the same people, "elites". The general antipathy in American culture toward anything associated with the government is almost pathological. (Who can forget the woman who shouted at a protest that the government should get their hands off her medicare? Breath-taking incoherence.) Even the proletarian support is exaggerated. I think that it was a 2017 Pew survey that revealed that Trump's most solid demographic was white males over 55 with an annual income over $85,000. (My numbers might be slightly off.) These are not the desperate - these are the people who want to protect their pile without regard to the broader society.

    I get that in this forum we're talking about people you love, and that you feel that we're demonising them. Well, actually, sometimes we are, and that's unfair of us, and does us no credit. Sometimes we love idiots (I can name a number from my friends and family). I don't love them any less for it, but I don't defend them. As you yourself have said. You defended them from the charge of racism. I'm not accusing them of being even crypto-racists, but they are supporting someone whose record on race is really beyond debate. And that you cannot deny.

    What I don't get, other than resorting to an appeal to Marxian "false consciousness", is how people can support - enthusiastically, not reluctantly as the last best hope - an administration, led by a charlatan, which consistently act against their best interests.

    *Yes, I know that Americans hate that word, a nomenclature altogether too commie, and that in their political imagination they and everyone are middle class. Their consciousness may be bourgeois, but their tax returns argue otherwise.
  • TonyKTonyK Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Crœsos - many thanks for your detailed reply. It didn't occur to me to look on the other thread - which would have been a more logical place!
  • When they say Trump's ratings are going up because of the way he is handling this crisis, does that mean by people in general or just his followers?
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    When they say Trump's ratings are going up because of the way he is handling this crisis, does that mean by people in general or just his followers?

    I think it's going up despite his handling of this crisis. In a crisis most people want to believe that their leaders are competent and are handling the situation well. So they do. It should be noted that the bump in Trump's approval ratings are relatively small, both by historical standards and when compared with other world leaders dealing with COVID-19.
  • edited March 2020
    How far from the truth about what he thinks? https://twitter.com/kenolin1/status/1242852430582341639?s=20

    It's also very funny.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    NPR had a discussion as to whether the elections can be moved. The commentators were in agreement, that as far as the primary elections are concerned, that is a matter of the state parties to decide how to proceed. They in turn work with their states on how to accomplish it.

    As far as the national election is concerned, there is a Federal law that mandates it is to be on the first Tuesday after the first Sunday in November. The law was passed in 1845, by the way. The constitution only states that Congress shall set the date for national elections, not when they have to be held.

    States, though, have the right to determine how that election may proceed as long as their determinations do not violate the Constitution--and here is where there is a lot of grey area that we continue to hassle about. Some states now allow mail-in ballots. I would not be surprised if more states will go to this mode.

    Of course, when one votes in the national election, he/she is not directly voting for a presidential candidate but for an elector to represent the state in the electoral college. It is my understanding, that the electoral college must complete its work by the Tuesday of the third Wednesday of December so that the votes can be counted on November 6 in the US Senate and then the new president is installed by 20 January. The reason for all the delays had to do with the rural nature of the country when the constitution and the applicable amendments and laws were written.
  • LC - In my absence other have replied to you pretty much in line with what I would have said, so I won't bother rehearsing their responses.

    To answer your question, whether I speak from personal knowledge of Trump supporters, as I said explicitly in my initial post, I actually know gay Trump supporters. Mercifully, not many.

    To pick up on your point of the fear being economically rather than racially based, I doubt whether any public question in the US can be divorced from race, but for the sake of argument I'll go with it. I can understand economic desperation as a motivating factor. How desperate must one be to support someone who doesn't even deign to sell snake oil because he can't stay on-message even for that? Who is a shadow puppet? With a dubious business background (oh, there's that race thing again). The only thing that Trump has in common with his proletarian* supporters is that they hate the same people, "elites". The general antipathy in American culture toward anything associated with the government is almost pathological. (Who can forget the woman who shouted at a protest that the government should get their hands off her medicare? Breath-taking incoherence.) Even the proletarian support is exaggerated. I think that it was a 2017 Pew survey that revealed that Trump's most solid demographic was white males over 55 with an annual income over $85,000. (My numbers might be slightly off.) These are not the desperate - these are the people who want to protect their pile without regard to the broader society.

    I get that in this forum we're talking about people you love, and that you feel that we're demonising them. Well, actually, sometimes we are, and that's unfair of us, and does us no credit. Sometimes we love idiots (I can name a number from my friends and family). I don't love them any less for it, but I don't defend them. As you yourself have said. You defended them from the charge of racism. I'm not accusing them of being even crypto-racists, but they are supporting someone whose record on race is really beyond debate. And that you cannot deny.

    What I don't get, other than resorting to an appeal to Marxian "false consciousness", is how people can support - enthusiastically, not reluctantly as the last best hope - an administration, led by a charlatan, which consistently act against their best interests.

    *Yes, I know that Americans hate that word, a nomenclature altogether too commie, and that in their political imagination they and everyone are middle class. Their consciousness may be bourgeois, but their tax returns argue otherwise.

    As for economic desperation, I'm thinking primarily of people in farming and the extraction industries (coal, oil, timber) who are and have been in a bad place for a long, long time, and it's not getting better and not likely to. Suicides are alarmingly high among farmers, I know. (as for oil etc. workers, I do realize there are billionaires at the top. I'm referring to the rank and file exploited workers, who haven't got the ability to get into other jobs--you know, geographically tied to those industries? You can see why they'd be desperate.

    And being human beings, you can see why a sizable percentage of them would be fool enough to believe the one person who addressed their situation, even though he was fucking lying. Because they saw nobody else, and went with the off chance that he might actually DO something right for once. Which is, of course, wishful thinking of the highest order, but humans gonna human.

    As for racism being an attribute of all Trumpists: My family (yes, let's get it out there) includes two Trumpistas (God help us) who are respectively a Mexican-Irishman whose father crossed the border in the 30s, and a white woman who married a person of Cherokee extraction. She chose African American godparents for her kids, and has a Vietnamese son-in-law and a Jewish daughter-in-law (really, the whole family, since son converted). Her friends through the years have been largely Filipina. To the best of my knowledge, they hate nobody. Not the poor, not the gay, not the whatever.

    I think we can cancel out the race thing here.

    But not the safety / fear thing. They are boomers, and they are seeing healthcare get shittier (and worked in the industry), and are heavily dependent on it themselves. they are also financially worried about their future, though I think this unreasonable, being an order of magnitude poorer than they, but we all have our little quirks, right? They are lifelong Republicans (as many immigrants are! Were, anyway--we'll see next election) and worry about Things Changing. Which realistically is probably a function of age.

    As for seeing through the bullshit of a shadow president, well.... Both have no more than a couple years' of university, and for both it was more in the way of vo-tech. One is ex-Army, one a nurse. She reads romance novels occasionally, he reads almost nothing. Fox News blares morning, noon, and night, with Rush Limbaugh to fill in the spaces. This is not a situation likely to lead to deep thinking, and our attempts to discuss basically anything with them meet with deep, deep defensiveness. (We kids are the over-educated threats to their ego integrity, and they must keep us in our place.)

    Their neighbors in their most recent home are white and elderly (yes, they are living in one of those retirement type communities, de facto if not de jure). It's been five years since they lived in a community where the average child went to classes where 22 nationalities and 5 religions were represented. There are no children in their new neighborhood, and out of sight, out of mind.

    Back to racism. do they know the president is racist? Surely. How could they not? How do they get around that, then? Well, I have watched Asian immigrants show shock when they realize he calls them "animals", but then go on to rationalize that you don't expect leaders to be good people anyway (think of the regimes from which they came) and in the meantime, at least he is doing X and Y (which when analyzed, turn out to be wholly unintended byproducts of Trump's erratic policies, which he could easily do a 180 on at any time. Example: he has caused China to back off from Vietnam. I can totally guarantee you that T had no intention of doing such a good deed, and if he could monetize the opposite--or was just bored one day--he'd reverse it. But they cling to it--and therefore, to him.

    so, they're being human. They pick out the good bits (which are usually atributable to people who are NOT Trump, and often in direct opposition to him! But they don't read or analyze, remember?), they give him credit for those, and they gloss over the rest. Humans gonna human. Which sucks.
  • "Humans gonna human." "Human" as a verb... I love it. I may steal it.

    I entirely understand about the economic desperation. I grew up in mining town, so saw the ramifications of fluctuations in metal prices. Even in bad times, times were not so bad compared to other places and industries. My parents told me that even during the Great Depression, people came to our area looking for work. As well, miners can pick up and move the family, I gained and lost school friends that way. My father left us for eight months to work at a remote (no roads) mine. That's a "luxury" (if you can call it that) that a farming family does not have. However much the family farm is still idealised, it's tough, dangerous work on the edge of bankruptcy. But, then, to support Trump when his policies with regard to China are a kick to the gonads for farmers beggars comprehension.

    Tangential to your comment about immigrants' support for a leader and not expecting good behaviour, because of their experience "back home", years ago, my default party, whose policy regarding the Constitution has always made me uneasy, came out with a truly boneheaded statement that I could not support, so instead of working for them I went to work as a poll manager for Elections Canada. We had paper ballots. I encouraged the electors to put the ballot in the box themselves, if they were physically able. I believe that the physical 'ritual' reinforces the connection between the person and the process. One woman (mid- to late-20s) told me as she was putting her ballot in the box that it was the first election she had ever voted in because "back home" no one trusted the results or the winners. Here, she clearly expected good behaviour. That has stayed with me, and makes me tremendously proud of my country.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    How interesting. Trump has not shown up for the daily briefing.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate, Glory
    LC--

    Very good posts from you. And "humans gonna human" is great! :)

    PG--

    I used to make a point of voting at SF city hall, in the elections dept. Ballots turned in elsewhere, or mailed in, don't always make it to city hall. Figured voting there and watching while they added my ballot to the others was my best shot at getting my vote counted. And I kind of liked being there with a bunch of other people. (Was quite a trip when we first elected Obama--the line of voters was out the door and down the street!)

    These days, I vote by mail. It's better than nothing, but I prefer my old method.
  • Make America Great = America First
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Make America Great = America First

    Obviously, Theodore Geissel, aka Dr. Seuss. The inclusion of Communists as pro-fascist leads me to assume the cartoon dates from the period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    45's lawyers are threatening defamation lawsuits to TV stations that air this ad or revoke their licenses.

    Meanwhile, his campaign is having to dump their whole campaign strategy touting a roaring economy.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    45's lawyers are threatening defamation lawsuits to TV stations that air this ad or revoke their licenses.

    How can it be defamation when they're all actual things he said?
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    He's a bully. He's just throwing what he thinks is his weight around. He hopes to scare them off. He's done it all his life.
  • Is the ad still being aired? Its a ripper.
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    Frankly, I find him absolutely terrifying and evil!
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited March 2020
    The ad will do nothing to convince his base and makes this all look like the intro to Homeland. Making him look like a movie villain might offer some short-term gratification to his haters but is not the same thing as putting across a consistent and constructive alternative. Then again, when did US campaign ads last do that?
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Not sure his base can be convinced from without. Disillusionment might break out from within. But as for us outsiders? We're conscious or unconscious supporters of the Deep State and Fake News?

    The ads are directed at the fringe supporters, those who gave Trump their vote last time not out of adulation but some sense of fed-upness with the way things were.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    But it's possible to put together a series of damning soundbites from just about any politician. Of course it's exceptionally easy with Trump, as he says an exceptional amount of bullshit, but a lot of the things that he's quoted as saying are nonetheless taken somewhat out of context, and that can be demonstrated. I think there are stronger criticisms to be made of his leadership, but they probably wouldn't convince anybody either.
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