I Have An Election Question
Joe Biden, currently has a record 72,263,868 popular votes (50.4% of the total), and counting in the 2020 election.
Donald Trump, has 68,508,167 votes (47.8 % of the total), and counting…
After all that has been revealed and all that has occurred, nearly half of the electorate remains solidly in support of the individual who appears to be hell-bent on the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’, the dismantling of the democratic process, and the outright destruction of American Democracy.
What’s wrong with the people who would still vote for Trump?
11/06/2020 @ 5:42 pm
I’m going to treat this as not a rhetorical question. I want to make very clear that this is a diagnosis. I will tell you what people think. They are generally wrong. Understand up front that I know this.
Did you ever read a post of mine called How The Angry White Guys Got That Way? That gets us most of the way there. If not, I’m going to have to go through some of that again, then go from there to more recent times.
It starts with the very end of the sixties period, actually into the early seventies. Civil rights had started for real in the early mid sixties, followed by feminism and then by the LGBTQ movement coming out of the closet. White guys had held a lot of people down, and now they, with a lot of media backing, were all holding them accountable for it when they were in some cases unaware of the extent to which they were doing it, mainly disagreed that they were doing it, and in some cases thought they were right to do it. Breadwinners became Male Chauvinist Pigs.
On Yom Kippur of 1973, Egypt surprised Israel with what was at first a successful attack. Israel’s existence is always a bit tenuous, so the US resupplied Israel. The chain of events that followed this led to the stopping of the rise of middle class standards of living. First, probably instigated by US oil companies, the Arab oil embargo started. This did two things: It made energy costs skyrocket, which in turn drove up a lot of other costs; and it created a market for small fuel-efficient cars. Japan responded by exporting them heavily, and the Big Three automakers saw their market share shrink drastically. Japan also exported a lot else here. They weren’t just exporting, they were waging economic war, which we were not responding to, possibly because of the Cold War. Our economy started to drop to the point where many thought Japan would become the world’s premier economy. Then came the 1980 election, and Republicans managed to blame our non-competitiveness on unions. Reagan came into office, the rich got conspicuous and proud, and labor lost a lot of ground and with it the American middle class standard of living. During this whole Japanese invasion period, a lot of key expenses rose drastically, notably the aforementioned fuel, credit, housing, and higher education. Incomes nowhere near kept up. The response was, out of necessity, dual income households. Men could no longer provide for their families themselves. Men looked at Affirmative Action (Black men the female part, White men the whole thing) and all they saw was unfair competition for their jobs.
Japan’s bubble bursts, but other Asian nations and Mexico (but Mexico buys heavily from the US) get technologically competent. Now US companies can save money by exporting jobs, which they do. But Republican PR is good, the Democrats are concentrating too hard on identity politics to stay with unions, and domestic competition gets blamed for what it did not and does not cause.
I think it’s during the Clinton administration that we get a new political wrinkle. Clinton of course is the sort of guy the right really doesn’t like, and they continuously charge him with stuff that he didn’t actually do. But onto the scene comes Newt Gingrich, and Gingrich introduces the idea that Republicans should not cooperate with Democrats in Congress. A bunch of Republicans get elected on this basis. This is the beginning of polarization getting really vicious.
Then came the turn of the century and the Bush 43 Presidency. The first big event is 9/11, which gets average citizens less friendly to Muslims. The second is the mortgage crisis, which screws up the economy.
Somewhere in all this comes Fox News. The other major news outlets tried not to be partisan but Fox was really more of a sales organization than a news organization, selling a viewpoint. The rest of the mainstream media did not treat them as pariahs when they still could. Also in all this is the internet. Now people are getting their information from non-mainstream places and they’re all built on the politics of resentment, of thinking undeserving people are encroaching on the ability of White males to earn a decent living.
Also during this period we see illegal immigration from Mexico. There are all sorts of worries attached to this that aren’t true. One is that the US is going to start speaking Spanish, but those worriers never looked at second and third generation Mexican immigrants. Those people are speaking English, like every other immigrant group. There’s the worry that their jobs are being taken, like they’d go pick lettuce. They’re worried about terrorism, even though there isn’t a record of a single terrorist entering the US from Mexico. And from a voting standpoint, the people most afraid of all this are the people farthest from our southern border. Texans and Californians aren’t afraid of Mexicans but Hoosiers and Buckeyes and MIchiganders are.
And then comes 2008. We have a Black President named Barack Hussein Obama. Democrats were anxious to prove we were ready to elect a Black President. We were ready to elect one, but Republicans instantly proved we weren’t ready to have one. Obama made his reputation at the 2004 Democratic convention as a conciliator and that’s how he approached Congress, but he never got a honeymoon period. Mitch O’Connell said Job One was making sure he didn’t get a second term before anyone had any idea what he’d be like to work with. He needed a health care plan. Which one did he choose? One commissioned by a Republican governor, written by the Heritage Foundation, field tested, and found to work. Perfect. Nope. Unacceptably Radical. Now we see serious and constant racism toward the President.
In the meantime, the LGBTQ movement is now moving far more heavily into transsexualism, and the US military is paying for Manning’s operation. Now we see bigotry ostensibly based on religion.
Through most of this, Republicans have railed against too much government. This has been true at least since Reagan, even though the Federal Government grew under Reagan (and shrank under Clinton). And Government was behind all sorts of regulations, including Affirmative Action.
Let me reiterate: I can tell you why they were wrong every step of the way, but that’s not my mandate here.
And then, in the 2016 election, we see the ultimate rebel. We see a Presidential candidate who doesn’t care about the government at all. He rails against Muslims. He rails against Mexicans. He says he’ll build a wall. Everything the Right hates about government Trump is taking on in a way no one else is because everyone else running is Of Government. He’s our guy. He says we’re right about all our resentments. He even hints that we’re right about our racism. Been a long time. What a relief.
And then the mainstream media repeats their mistake with Fox. They held Hillary to a professional standard and didn’t hold Trump to any standard, not remembering that the guy needed to be held to standards if he was going to occupy the Presidency.
And he occupied the Presidency. And it didn’t matter what the government rule was, Trump was willing to break it. How satisfying. The Presidency changes people because of the insane responsibility. It didn’t change Trump because he never accepted the responsibility. He never accepted any responsibility for anything. So Trump the candidate was just as good to the resenters (as resenters) as President as he was as a candidate. That’s why he continued to emphasize the wall. And he protected his racist supporters through anything, including Charlottesville. And they loved him for it.
And Trump lied. And lied. And lied. And it took a while for the press to call him on it to the extent that was responsible. And Fox amplified his lies. And websites amplified his lies. And Russian agents online amplified his lies. And soon his followers weren’t following or believing mainstream media about anything. Except for Fox, which had a mainstream image but not mainstream content.
And he did outrageous things, impeachable things, and McConnell protected him. The Guys Who Knew Better found him useful.
And then came COVID. And what should have been a successful effort became a horror as he continued to lie and continued to be supported in his lies by his followers, including media followers. We’ve got way over 200,000 dead and his followers still think wearing a mask is government interference.
That’s why.
I assume there’s some stuff I left out that I didn’t want to.
11/09/2020 @ 9:19 pm
I finally got around to watching the Tim Wise video you posted in your last post. What I found was that he gave a pretty good answer to your question. Trump is a human opiate and his followers are addicts. Were you dissatisfied with his answer?
11/10/2020 @ 3:21 pm
Trump has been able to exploit the fact that the false concept of American meritocracy is unsustainable and broken…
He has tapped into the fact that White people are unable to endure and withstand the pain of self discovery, social reality, and the economic truth without the benefit of scapegoats and opiates…
Opiates can cause addiction. However, as a symptom of a larger problem, Trump as a ”walking, talking, human, opiate” may temporarily alleviate the ‘pain’ whites feel, but he is neither the cause of it, nor is he the cure for it…
The immense set of sociopolitical privileges that insulate and protect white people teaches them in sometimes implicit ways that not only are they better than people of color, but also that racial others are subordinate.
Despite how ridiculous this presumption of superiority is, it is repeatedly steeped in the consciousness of white people from a very early age.
In discussing what it means to have merit among a diverse population, it should be considered that there are different definitions depending on the perspective of the author and the context of use or application.
White merit, or white privilege, may be defined by privilege and access, and is dependent on specific adherence to unspoken rules protecting whiteness.
In spite of decades of UN declarations against racism in the 20th century, today we are witnessing, often unapologetic, racist discourse and images in the name of freedom of expression.
This is not only the result of social media hype, but also, and probably more importantly, an issue of political and other public leadership, which paved the way for racially offensive discourse to become respectable over the past few decades.
Anti-Black racism is at the heart of the phenomenon.
Manifestations of entitlement racism, or white privilege as I have called the practice of claiming the right to say whatever you want about ethnic and racial groups, regardless of the consequences, has been on the rise in the 21st century.
Entitlement racism involves hurting and humiliating those perceived as religious, ethnic or racial Others.
It appears that humiliation, a relational phenomenon, has always been a key element of racism. It is an attempt to destroy or violate the dignity of the racialized Other.
While it can have the impact of repressing resistance and undermining the self-respect of the Other, it also compromises the dignity of those who humiliate.
In addition, the sense of feeling humiliated can trigger unpredictable responses such as voting against self-interest in order to achieve the retaliatory and retributive humiliation of the scapegoated Other…
The Trump phenomenon is both a manifestation and an explanation of why more than 70 million people voted for four more years of racially motivated deconstruction of the administrative state, dismantling of the democratic process, and the destruction of American Democracy.
11/11/2020 @ 12:33 am
Are you answering your own question?
11/11/2020 @ 3:23 am
@Koshersalaami;
I am responding to your reference to the Tim Wise video and your mention of the unconscious affront to the innate human dignity of black people on the part of Nicole Wallace…
There is a high degree of interconnectedness re the posts and comments on the topic/subject of race and racism here…
I’m just trying to connect the dots and keep them connected….
11/10/2020 @ 6:29 pm
Tru dat the majority of ‘Trum-pets’ cannot pronounce I Ching…sorry…Beulah and I are in the fallout shelter.
Tornado Varnings.
We got down here just as Old Glory snapped asunder off the silo.
We’ve a Big Gen backup and LO;} just LO;}…Sparkling Bell & Howell trilight…and shucks — Gordon Lightfoot’s Rainy Day People balanced apropos at once after Jimi’s Watchtower and Bob Seger’s Night Moves.
Three coins in the champagne fountain!
Set ’em up JOE!