But he also uses woke when he is referring to our military.
He’s always “in the moment.” with his thoughts.
Which one would give me a stapler for Halloween?
I think one would try to maintain a functioning economy so that you could buy a stapler with wages you can earn, and the other would promise to give you a really big stapler, with no intention of following through and only a vague idea what a stapler is, anyway.
A huge stapler that will bring tears to your eyes, no one’s ever seen a stapler like that, they’re all telling me that.
…or would promise to take staplers away from any undocumented, librul, woke or LGBTQ trick or treaters who show up.
Forty percent of Americans have a favourable view of Trump. I’m sure Sam Stone’s synopsis is true for many of them. Not sure if it is so for all of them. Many may see Trump’s troubles as evidence of partisanship, deep states, judicial or media dysfunction, or a reaction to an “only I can save America” cult of personality.
But most people aren’t actually very political or particularly well informed. Some voters may be influenced by disinformation, views of family and friends, media bubbles, disliking alternatives, peer pressure, identifying with a party instead of a candidate, identifying with local candidates, not liking Biden or local democrats, agreement on single issues (social conservatism and the judiciary, taxes, foreign policy, being unable or unwilling to properly value democracy and its institutions, immigration, xenophobic rants or disliking identity politics, etc.).
People are often more complicated than simple explanations. The problem with seeing any compromise as a weakness is that people actually want stuff done eventually.
Actually, he specifically linked that to the anti-trans bullshit. He pointed out tgat, five years ago, they had no idea what “trans” even was, highlighting how it’s an entirely artificial controversy.
I think the truth is his voters don’t care about any specific thing. They’re rabidly excited about whatever the propaganda they’re mainlining has told them to be excited about. This week. They’re loving being part of a shrieking mob. What the mob is shrieking about is immaterial to them.
which also says the mob can be re-aimed at will to shriek about nearly anything.
Yes, it has inertia, so the propagandists could not spin a 180 overnight and start the mob pushing for universal pre-natal care or greenery. But there is a lot of flexibility to drive the mob wherever the controllers want it to go.
But the crowd itself is in love mostly with being told what to think and being told they are good for thinking it. And thereby believing that they are fully paid-up members of the anointed special people who get it right.
True enough; but it’s a lot easier to stir the crowd with hatred and spite, to appeal to tribalism and contempt for Those Others. Just gin up a target and light the fuse.
Yep.
The danger is that people get used to being manipulated and led. And can accept ever crazier direction.
The other thing is that if the manipulation is withdrawn, many will lose their “mission in life” and be lost, adrift, and alienated from everyone and everything. And be functionally insane, lost, and turn into the classic “rebel without a cause”. Which rather than driving cars off cliffs in teenage games of “Chicken”, more often they decide to gather their weapons and make a stand. Perhaps in a grocery store near you.
Thank you. It’s sometimes difficult keeping track of all the baloney that comes out of his mouth. You’d think one of the few times he tells the truth it’d stick in my mind more.
It’s like a rocket; you can’t steer it like a go-kart, you have to lean on it and it will gradually shift.
Case in point, Trump touts his success in fast-tracking Covid vaccinations, but his cult has been fed on a steady diet of propaganda that Covid is fake, or its severity is overplayed, or the vaccines are garbage and you need alternative medicine like parasite medication or bleach injections. Trump couldn’t just suddenly say, hey guys Covid is serious but the vaccine will help and I did a great job getting it to you. A lot of his own people booed him.
So you’re right, they can be controlled but they can’t change quickly.
yes. And my perception is that the real risks are still ahead of us. We do not know, and almost cannot predict, to what use this frothing mob may be put in the future.
There’s a range of obvious potential trajectories, but there’s also the surprises we haven’t thought of. One of the big ones that worries me is the trump will die or stroke out or whatever eventually. The point being that he is absolutely, positively not going to be a factor and everybody, even his fans, gets that.
At that time his personal mob of followers will be up for grabs. A well-resourced and ruthless tyrant-in-waiting with access to the reins of the propaganda machine could “easily” capture that mantle and ride it to the successful capture of the US government that trump has so far failed to accomplish and probably will fail to accomplish in 2024 or indeed ever.
I agree, I think that’s a great insight by @LSLGuy , and I immediately thought of @Atamasama 's specific example of trump getting booed when he tried to convince his cult that the vaccine was a good thing so he could take credit for distributing it.
The analogy to LSLGuy’s insight I thought of was that trump and his cult is like the lion tamer / lion relationship. The collective trump mob is like a wild animal that trump seems to have complete control over, but fail to feed it a steady diet of what it wants, or try to force it to do something completely against its nature, and the tamer is in danger of getting mauled.
This I’m not so sure about. Not saying I disagree, just that this whole trump phenomenon has seemed like a bit of a black swan to me. Look at DeFascist-- he is as awful as trump, and seemingly smarter, more organized and goal-oriented. Yet his attempts to take on the mantle of ‘trump 2.0’ have been a dismal failure. Granted, that’s while trump is still around. Without a trump, maybe a DeFascist would have much more success.
The critical thing that the successful replacement populist Fascist leader will need is Capital-C Charisma. Or at least the odd sort of charisma that appeals to wannabe-followers-of-authoritarians. Whatever that mysterious secret sauce is, trump got it. DeSantis don’t. The braying mob wants the sizzle; the steak isn’t 100% optional, but that’s not what gets them fired up to actually order from the far-right menu.
Who else has the sizzling secret sauce or might have it? I know I don’t know. But there are certainly understudies aplenty out there practicing in front of the mirror or rabble-rousing on social media. By turns, Limbaugh, Hannity, or Carlson might have been able to make the jump when at the apex of their influence had the rest of the competitive landscape been auspicious. It wasn’t and they didn’t.
I’m not sure who’s filling a similar role today and who’s up-and-coming behind them.
Yeah, I know this is correct, and trump’s so-called charisma in the eyes of his followers goes to the heart of this OP, answering why he is still viable as a candidate. Still, though I (think I) understand intellectually why his followers find him ‘charismatic’, emotionally and viscerally, trump and DeFascist seem equally anti-charismatic to me. But of course, I’m not the intended audience.
Whenever I read one of these stories, I always wonder what the next day after the story breaks is like for the respective US ambassador to Egypt, for example. Though I’m sure they’re told before it goes to press.
Robert Shelton, Grand Dragon of the UKA Klan organization, in his interview with Playboy in August 1967 said something* like, “You’re looking at a can of mixed nuts and assuming it’s all the same kind of nut when it’s really different kinds of nuts.”
*I’ve looked and can’t find the exact quote so I’m paraphrasing.
It might help to have the correct year, the interview you’re discussing was from August 1965 according to multiple sources I’ve found. I even found a photo of the first page of the article, but can’t find the actual text of the article itself.
Wish I could get the exact quote for you word for word, seems like an interesting one.
Google Books to the rescue.
" There is several Klans, you know. That is the trouble of throwing every kind of nut in the same bag ans saying its all the same kind of nut."
I’m not sure what relevance the quote has to this thread, though.