Happy holidays. If you work for the federal government, as tens of thousands of people do, then there is a significant chance that ten hours from now, you won’t be getting paid.
As Trump prepares to jet off to, as Stephen Colbert referred to it, the Winter Kremlin, the Senate is desperately meeting even as I write this to find a way to avoid a shutdown. But hey, at least Trump said that he would own it. It will be a Trump shutdown. He said that to Pelosi and Schumer, he said it in front of a room of reporters, he said it on camera. Schumer grinned broadly as Trump flat out said the Democrats would not be on the hook for the blame. He would take it. All him.
“The Democrats now own the shutdown!” he declared two hours ago.
Because he lied. Again. He lies thirty times a day, on average. This was just another lie, from the most dishonest president in the history of the country. Despite the fact that Republicans are no more enthused about the wall than the Democrats–indeed, polls show a majority of Americans oppose it–he has attempted to foist all the responsibility onto the party that he swore, to their faces, would not be held responsible. Maybe Schumer was smiling because he knew full well Trump would go back on his word and they could throw it in his face.
And yet no one will care.
That’s kind of what I want to focus on here.
Trump lies so routinely, with such facility, that the Washington Post has had to invent an entire new category called “Bottomless Pinocchios” to cover lies he has told repeatedly. He lied from the beginning of his campaign, through to his election and to this day. He consistently denies wrongdoings, condemns the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” even though dozens of people have been caught and jailed because of it, still claims that three million fake voters put Hillary over the top, still condemns the stream of desperate refugees heading this way as being terrorists or disease carriers without offering a shred of proof.
And yet people still support him.
Let’s face it, if President Hillary Clinton had paid off a pørņ star to cover up her affair with him, she’d already have been impeached. Yet the same people who howl “Lock her up!” at rallies turn a blind eye to Trump’s activities. The religious right is perfectly fine with a man married three times who cheated on his wife with a pørņ star.
I mean, do his supporters understand that they’re hypocrites? That’s assuming they even understand what the word means. How can it be that they are so fixated on their causes such as preventing a woman deciding what to do with her body that they’re willing to stay on board with a man unfit for the presidency. A man with ties to Russia, who worships at the feet of dictators and strong men and wants to emulate them. A man who is destroying our alliances and condemns NATO, of all things. A man who drives his own party and his administration nuts with his inability to be depended on to keep his word about…well, anything. A man who can be so easily manipulated that when a bipartisan agreement puts forward a means of keeping the government open, he refuses to sign off on it because Fox News shouts at him about the wall he swore hundreds of times that Mexico was going to pay for.
Indeed, lately on Twitter when I’ve posted something critical of Trump, I get deluged by idiotic responses from people either spewing the Fox party line, repeating Trump’s falsehoods as if they’re reality, or suggesting I stick to comics. They dismissed out of hand the notion of thousands and thousands of people receiving no money for their jobs, claiming it would only be for a short while even as Trump states the shut down could be for a “very long” time. The fact that they’ll be paid retroactively means nothing if you can’t pay your mortgage or rent, utilities bills, or for food right now. Yet it didn’t matter to the responders who felt it was no big deal.
How can they not care that Trump lies? How can they not care that people will be suffering?
I think it stems from Trump supporters praising him because “he says what he thinks.” That’s the most common refrain. This may be why these people hated Obama so much. Obama always clearly thinks about what he says before he says it. He considers the ramifications of his words and determines how it will appear in cold hard print before he speaks. This is how a reasoned, thinking person acts before he speaks, and since Trump is neither reasoned nor thinking, and barely qualifies as a person, naturally he does the exact opposite.
It may well be that that’s the attraction. Normal people have to be careful about what they say because there are ramifications, especially in the current era of social media where one recorded instance of someone using a racial epithet can bring the world crashing down upon them. Yet whatever Trump says, whether he’s condemning Mexicans as rapists, describing black nations as being “šhìŧ hølëš,” or boasts about grabbing women’s genitals, winds up sliding right off him. He’s the 21st century Teflon Don. If a normal person lied and insulted as much as he did, they’d likely lose their job, their friends, their family. Yet Trump says whatever he wants, and yes, people get upset and angry and bìŧçh and moan, but then we pass into the next news cycle and it’s all forgotten.
It’s not that they don’t care that he lies. They envy his ability to lie and not have to pay any price for it. Gary Hart got sunk in his presidential campaign for actions that, as far as Trump is concerned, would just be things he does on an ordinary day. He lives the life that they would love to have for themselves: the ability to say and do whatever he wants and not have to pay any price for it. That’s what they wish they could do, and as long as they can’t, they get wish fulfillment in watching him do it. Especially when he does it to Democrats, whom they despise beyond the pale because we care about things they don’t like…I dunno…rights.
Trump’s supporters live their lives based entirely on letting their emotions guide them. We’ve been listening to Mister Spock speak about the foolishness of living one’s life that way for over half a century, but the lesson has not sunk in. They think not with their brains, but their guts, just as Trump states he does and assures them that his guts know better than politicians, intelligence officers, and heads of state. The notion that they don’t give a dámņ about people going without salaries means that they have taken it a step further: they are emulating Trump’s example of not giving a dámņ about people. We know that Trump is that way because he’s a narcissistic prìçk, but they are emulating that behavior because it’s what their leader does. It’s a deterioration of the American spirit, and as long as Trump is in charge, it’s just going to continue.
PAD
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Tiny is going to end up being impeached, or resign in a snit. I don’t see how he is going to make it to the end of his term.
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The Democrats want him out because because they recognize his his incompetence, crimes and treason and support the rule of law. Mueller’s report is going to come out and give the Democrats in Congress all they will need (not that that don’t have it already) to vote to impeach.
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The Republicans want him out because the economy is headed for recession, if not worse, under Tiny’s management and the goobers in Tiny’s base carry less weight than the Wall Streeters who pay the GOP’s bills. The Republicans will move to get Tiny out and Pence in. They’re already talking about expecting to do so. (https://thedailybanter.com/2018/12/21/robert-reich-donald-trump-impeachment/)
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He’s going to be out. And the wingnuts in Tiny’s base will revolt. Right wing violence has been on a steep rise because their Dear Leader has been telling them it’s OK. When he’s removed they’re going to explode even more.
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It’s going to get really, really bad.
It’s going to be worse, because Mike Pence really wants to be the President of the United States of Gilead.
While the current President is unquestionably male, he is not by any sense a man.
All part of the modern Neo-Fascist playbook. “I’m the only guy that tells it how it is”, “I’m not a crooked politician like those others”, “I am a real man in an age where masculinity is under attack”, “I do have a sense of humor, my enemies don’t”, “I speak what everybody thinks, except they’re too chicken to admit”, “At least I admit that power is the only thing that matters”, etc.
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Yeah, I hate it, but the sad thing is that it plays very well with a portion of the population. And the sad thing is, they manage to lie while saying they’re honest, they manage to say they’re not politicians when they clearly are, they say they represent real men while being extremely insecure about their manhood, and their sense of humor vanishes when THEY’re the butt of any jokes.
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We could be talking about Trump, we could be talking about Bolsonaro, President-Elect here in my country. I bet Erdogan, Putin, that guy in Hungary, also fit some of this profile. These guys are surprisingly similar all over the world. I’m not sure if it’s a movement, or just similar personalities taking advantage of the zeitgeist.
“I mean, do his supporters understand that they’re hypocrites?”
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Yes, they do. But they lie about it. They lie to themselves about it and they expect you to play along with the lie. Then, while they’re ignoring their own staggering hypocrisy, they climb up on their soapboxes and wag their fingers at you.
Where I an American voter with the power to do so (no such critter, unfortunately), I’d shut down government. Or, at least, the top two or three layers of bickering children and withhold their pay until they learned to play nice. Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t work as all too many politicians at that level are already well off financially and thus wouldn’t be as affected as the front line workers – the ones who do most of the useful stuff – would be. *Sigh*
If that were true he’d talk less than Buster Keaton.
Fear, victimization, scapegoating, and revenge.
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Yeah, Trump says whatever he wants and gets away with it, and they love that, but that’s not the REASON they support him. It’s a symptom of their love. He gets away with it BECAUSE they love and support him.
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The bottom line reason is the reason racism and sexism and religious fundamentalism (or lip service to said) exists. It’s a reaction to being “a loser.” And I don’t mean that in a judgmental sense (although that’s certainly a take away, and one both sides try to hammer home with intensity and vitriol), but in the realistic sense of being on the failing, losing, wrong side of society and history and life in general.
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As a very close friend recently pointed out, it’s not that the left is lying or biased when they point out alleged facts, it’s that science and society and facts genuinely do have a left wing bias. Because the moment you make facts, morals and social issues, into political issues, there will immediately be a correct side and an incorrect side, and the people that choose the correct side instantly gain a moral advantage and superiority. You don’t get to argue facts, you’re just right or wrong. Rights ARE supposed to be universal, equality IS just, science IS real, Blacks and Latinos and Jews and Asians and Women and Muslims and Gays DO deserve the same as White Straight Christian Men, poor people AREN’T evil, greed IS corrupting the world, we ARE killing the planet, this is just reality. And the more you argue reality, the more wrong you become.
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The first problem that arises is that tying these “fact” issues to politics means, if you’re going to firmly bind yourself the “wrong” side, even if only because you adhere to a side of certain issues that maybe you CAN argue (like certain economics, or foreign policy, or Constitutional law, things that CAN be debated and DO have degrees of nuance, ACTUAL political issues), you’re inadvertently hindering your debate position by towing a party line that embraces a set of social issues that are simply facts of which you’re flatly on the wrong side. And people get very frustrated very easily when they go to debate topics that are actually debatable, and they’re undermined by their own morally, flatly WRONG belief systems. You can’t argue a point when you’re demonstrably incorrect on so many other factors.
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The second, and much greater problem is that almost no one likes to be proven wrong. ESPECIALLY when it comes to long-held beliefs. Beliefs come from people you TRUST, people you LOVE and RESPECT. Beliefs are ingrained, reinforced, they have an emotional attachment and personal resonance. You have an investment in beliefs, you define yourself by them, they’re part of your identity. That’s why they’re so hard to let go. By contrast, facts are just knowledge that you’re fed by people you’re told you HAVE to accept. It’s recitation, it’s data, it’s cold and sensible and emotionless. This is true ‘cuz we said so, period. There’s no emotional acceptance there, just resignation. And if facts directly contradict beliefs? Well, the fact is just what this person I don’t give a crap about told me. The belief? Well my mother taught me this from the age of three! Who am I gonna discard first? (This is why having beloved teachers passing on genuine knowledge is so important, because then the facts become beliefs. Also why teaching creation in schools is so INCREDIBLY awful and dangerous)
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So, here we have a pretty MASSIVE country – third largest by population in the world – without the appalling population density issues of the other two. Millions of people, but most of them spread out over millions of square miles, and many of them a lot more disconnected than us urban folk realize. Do you know how much about 80% of our population is limited by bandwidth, by flow of information, by ready availability of everything from medical care to telecommunications to ethnic diversity to non-local food sources. Hëll, I live in rural PA, only 10 minutes from State College PA, home of Penn State University, a major internet hub for the East Coast. I’ve got bandwidth you only dream of, and I can go to a dozen different grocery stores that sell goods from all over the world, and shake hands with people from 10 different countries in half an hour. I drive 30 minutes in the opposite direction, and there is no cell signal, no ISPs, no food other than your average home-town general store and maybe a McDonald’s, no place of worship but the Lutheran church that’s been there for 150 years, and the only foreign language they’ve ever heard is the occasional German from the Amish that live down the road.
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You grow up your whole life surrounded by people who have lived there their whole lives as well, as did their friends and families and parents, and theirs before them. You grow up seeing the same people day in and day out. They’re your confidants, your support, your friends, your lovers, your preacher, your teacher, your sustenance, your whole world. You’re gonna grow up to be a farmer, or a miner, or a construction worker, or a mechanic, or a nurse, or a cosmetologist, or a stay-at-home parent, and those really are all the options. And hey, maybe your parents did all right for themselves, and you’ll go to college, but not some far-away school in the city, because you remember Billy? Remember how he went to school in New York, and he came back all judgmental and rude? Nah, some local community college, where you can be close to family, that’s for the best.
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These are people who turn on the TV (just basic antenna channels, mind you . . . even if cable DOES run out that way, it’s like $100 a month, and who can afford THAT?), and they see every movie and television show is either set in New York or Chicago or LA, and there’s crime and swearing and violence and sex, and so many “other” types of people, and almost no God or religion (‘cept Catholicism . . . notice how ALL Christians on TV are Catholics? And how they’re all portrayed as backwards or secretly sex offenders?), and if there ARE episodes set in the country, they’re all backwards hick stereotypes and people to be made fun of and derided or pandered to and patronized (why is “reality TV” so popular? Because it often takes big city folk and takes them down a peg or five . . . look at these garbage people and their melodramatic garbage lives and how awful they are . . . glad I’m not THEM!). And they see the news and how awful people in the cities treat each other, or they talk about politics from countries that mean NOTHING to us, or they hear about how politicians in THIS country are either paying lip service to their values using them as pawns to further their agenda (Republicans), or outright belittling them as backwards hillbilly “deplorables” (and they’re OBVIOUSLY not going to vote for THAT side). And they see award winning comedians taking the side of the Black guy president or the rich white “deplorable” city lady candidate and her party, and they see FOX at least defending them and their values and the beliefs they’ve been taught all their lives. And sure, they could maybe spend hours doing research on the phone (but that takes minutes, and 2G is REALLY slow, and they can’t afford an unlimited plan, what are they gonna do, drive to the closest big town and sit in an internet cafe? Who has time for that?), but it’s not like the opposing side actually cares about you, or they wouldn’t look down on you CONSTANTLY. So why bother trying to see their point of view?
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And note, I’m just talking only about 40 minutes to an hour from a major cultural center in PA (which itself is a major highway hub for massive metropolitan centers . . . NYC above, DC below, Philly to the East, Pittsburgh to the West, and Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Chicago just a few more hours beyond. Quick boat trip across a lake, you’re in Canada!). Another hour drive, it’s MUCH worse. Now look at the “fly-over states,” a name that is by definition an acknowledgement of how marginalized and forgotten the residents are. How do you think the disconnect with “facts” and “social issues” is there? EXPONENTIALLY worse.
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“Representation” has become such a big thing in the mass media. Black people need more representation. Asians, Latinos, LGBTQAs, women, diversity is important. And that’s absolutely true, no arguing it. But when we say that white people are already completely represented, we tend to ignore that representation can be defined more than one way. If all the white people you see are middle-class to wealthy, suburban or urban, college educated city people, that ignores a HUGE segment of the population. But media moguls don’t care about that, ‘cuz those people don’t have money, they’re not the target audience. If all your rural white representation is back-woods redneck bumpkins who bang their cousins and hate all ethnic groups and non-Christian religions, clearly bumbling morons, comic relief at best and absurdly over the top stereotypical villains at worst, that sends a message to a massive swath of the country that “the media is AGAINST US.” And those people ARE NOT WRONG. And even they got the message skewed, even if the media is only against certain belief systems, those systems have been TIGHTLY WOVEN INTO THEIR IDENTITIES, and they need to be separated BEFORE you can attack them. Otherwise, you’re just turning off and writing off the PEOPLE, not dismantling the toxic BELIEF.
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Mining is dying. Renewable energy is growing, because it HAS to. The rich don’t invest in small, rural communities, they invest in cities. More and more people are moving away. Highways are bypassing their towns, where people used to stop and shop and get gas, and now their local economies are tanking. More and more people are abandoning or outright attacking their old religions, and their old ways of life. Behaviors that they’ve been told are sins from one generation to the next for centuries are now considered legal, acceptable lifestyles, perfectly safe and harmless and normal. And almost every media resource available is telling them “YOU’RE the wrong, stupid, ignorant, backwards-thinking, ancient, out-of-touch hicks. YOU need to change. THESE are facts (that fly in the face of EVERYTHING you were taught by the people who love and care for you, as opposed to people out here who clearly don’t know you or have any respect whatsoever), and you MUST accept them, because FACTS!”
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And then . . . they get a guy who just says whatever he wants, and spews a lot of the same stuff their (admittedly, kinda wacky and nuts and really racist) uncle says, and he supports mining and coal and all those old values their parents and preachers taught them, and FOX supports him, and ALL those other awful media outlets who are constantly making fun of them say he’s a monster, but he’s calling them all liars and fake news, just like they always thought . . . .
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. . . Who they gonna believe?
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Have you seen Daniel Radcliffe’s movie “Imperium?” The quote at the end really clarifies it:
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“It’s victim-hood. I blamed black kids, I blamed the school, I blamed cops, I blamed everybody. I was gonna everyone else the way they hurt me.”
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This is the fundamental source of Trump support. It’s where racism and bigotry come from, and it’s where his base is stuck. They see a world that’s out to get the because they’re “losers.” They’ve lost the culture war, they’re on the wrong side of history with their beliefs, they’re on the wrong side of facts because of politicians, they’re part of a failing economy because of globalization and technology and climate change, they’re uneducated because they legitimately don’t have access to the resources (because as much as we like to fool ourselves, no, the internet is NOT ubiquitous in this “first world” country, and public education SURE AS $#!+ isn’t up to the task because of money and politics), and all their deeply held “truths” that were passed to them and woven into their sense of self by the people they loved are under constant attack because THEY ARE JUST WRONG. And no one likes to be wrong, everyone wants to feel like they’re doing right, doing good, and standing up for themselves. And if the world is going to marginalize and ridicule and patronize and scold them, they’re going to fight back.
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They’re afraid of the future and that they’ll never be right. They see themselves as the victims of verbal bullying (and they’re NOT WRONG about that, even if the reasons for it are legitimate) and cultural mockery and oppression. They blame the rest of the world for losing their way of life (and again . . . NOT WRONG. Even if their way of life is totally outdated, it’s still not fair that they’re being left behind as a result). And they want to fight back.
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Fear, victimization, scapegoating, and revenge.
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They support Trump because he’s a voice for that and a means to that end. And it doesn’t matter how disingenuous he is, whether or not he’s actually one of them (they know ÐÃMN WELL he isn’t cut of their cloth, but that’s not the POINT), and it’s not that he says whatever he thinks where they can’t (trust me, they have NO qualms about speaking their minds themselves). It’s that they’re tired of arguing the point with the overwhelming wave of mass media and modern progressives who are unilaterally and vehemently and condescendingly insisting “YOU ARE WRONG AND BAD AND WORTHY OF MOCKERY AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD AND CHANGE.” Trump is the response to that. He’s the angry door slam of “Fine, you’re not going to treat me with any respect? Then argue with HIM!” And the more we employ the same tactics of hammering home how wrong they are to support him, the more we just prove their point . . . that we’re not actually listening to what they were saying to begin with.
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You can’t just TELL people they’re wrong. They have to learn it. Mockery and scolding and smacking the desk with a ruler won’t do it. All you get is the kids giggling as the class clown trolls the teacher to insanity, or the parents show up at PTC night and demand to know why the teacher is incapable of connecting with the class and won’t teach their kids the way they do and “maybe our child needs a different approach, one we can’t get in public school.” You want them to change their minds and learn and grow? You need to earn their trust and respect, and that requires that they believe you respect and care about them first.
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They support Trump because he’s a middle finger to a party and belief system and mindset that is absolutely, 100% RIGHT . . . but has gone about being right in the most arrogant and self-righteous and judgmental way possible. And so they’re reacting just like anyone who is wrong AND insulted would do . . . they’re telling us to @#$% off.
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And few methods have proven more effective at @#$%ing liberals than the very existence of Donald J. Trump.
That is a very good summation of Trump’s appeal and the reason why it’s so hard for us Liberals to fight back.
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That is also why I always cringe when the Left tries to fight Trump by doubling down on political correctness and multiculturalism and white/male/straight privilege theories (that can be correct, but the underlying emotional message is “you’re on the wrong side!!! and you should denounce yourself and always put minorities first, even if they’re middle class and educated minorities”)
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IMO, the way out of this mess is for Leftists to shift their approach to economic policy, and adopt a softer approach to cultural issues.
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But the challenge with this approach I defend is that it isn’t right to entice rural white folks back into the fold while throwing minorities under the bus and telling them that they should be a little quieter. A careful balance must be struck. And THAT is dámņ hard.
As I’ve said before: It’s the Belief Engine.
Hmm, I can’t quite agree that the left mindset is 100% right (or perhaps “correct” is the better word given the other meaning of right). Some on the left take identity politics too far, claim that if you say x you might mean y and z, and don’t always see wrongness in terms of degrees (e.g. some see inappropriate touching and full penetration rape as equally bad). That said, I could probably go along with 80% correct, and I basically agree with your conclusions. The right is on the wrong side of history on some fairly significant issues but belittling them just cements their feelings, as does using elitist terms such as “toxic masculinity” that almost no one who has never gone to college or university would say. Trump as you say is a big F-u to that, the ultimate bull in the china shop. Also Trump reinforces the belief by the left that the right are idiots, and by mocking Trump’s idiocy and narcissism (something that’s hard not to do; even two years into his presidency he still finds innovative ways to shock me), it in turns reinforces right wing beliefs about left wingers. Megan Phelps-Roper, a defector of the Westboro Baptist Church did a good Ted Talk on what got her to leave the church, and her points are worth considering. For example, ask questions of the other side not to attack them but to genuinely understand them. You open a dialogue and some might be more open to asking questions back in return. You can’t change everyone, but you can change some if they feel the are being heard. Here’s a link to the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVV2Zk88beY
Well, identity politics is like a lot of other philosophies and religions. It has a lot of good stuff going for it, a lot of wisdom and truth, but when you try to apply it too forcefully upon a world that is complex, messy, and full of complicated human beings, it often misses the mark.
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For one, it’s very consequentialist. SJWs are always saying that intentions don’t matter. It doesn’t matter that Mark Twain was trying to denounce racism in his time, the only thing that matters is that he used the n-word, and then CONSEQUENCES. The consequence is that the N-Word is hurtful, and intentions be dámņëd.
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The problem with this approach is that SJWs then turn around and treat people like Twain as racists, as bad or worse as the “intentional racists” of his time, because those other guys at least where open about their racism, etc.
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Also, they’re very keen on consequentialism, but they HATE it when you turn the consequentialism on THEM, and ask them what if, despite their noble intentions, they’re making race relations worse on the long term. Then they really go berserk and accuse you of concern trolling or whatever.
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Also, they love to jump from consequentialism to implying evil intention. For instance, the whole Women in Refrigerators thing started as a consequentialist and structural critique on superhero comic books. At first, they were careful to point out that individual writers were not sexist for creating such stories, just that taken as a whole these stories indicate a bias and that they have the consequence of making (some) women reject comics.
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But then they start imagining all sorts of evil intentions for writers of such stories. I very much doubt that PAD hates women just because he wrote “The Death of Jean DeWolff”. Most guys who wrote such stories actually value women a lot. They probably realize that killing a female character has more impact than killing three or four male characters, because we guys are somewhat more emotionally connected to the women in our lives than to the men in our lives.
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But then they see the evil intention of belittling women and reducing them to plot devices and stuff, when actually the reducing to plot device thing is more a consequence than an intention.
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And identity politics is full of stuff like this. And perhaps the greates disconnect is when it come to privilege theory. The basic theory is very sound: that white people have an easier life when compared to black people when all other factors are comparable. Hard to argue with that.
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The problem is that they often forget the “when all other factors are comparable”. A black guy that is poor will be worse off than a white guy that is poor, true. But if you try to compare a middle class, college educated black guy to a working class, barely educated white guy, then it’s much harder to say who has the tougher life. And it’s often the middle class, well educated ones that are the greatest defenders of such theories.