hell, yes
Remember the movie Wall Street? Remember Gordon Gekko giving his “Greed is Good” speech?
Yeah, we all remember that. The thing is, most of the folks described in this essay have forgotten that Gekko was supposed to be the BAD guy in that movie.
That point in history, with all Reagan Era deregulation starting up, was when the American dream went from “I will have opportunities to make money” to “I will be a billionaire and fuck everyone else.”
And people, even poor people, still worship at this altar.
I can’t accept the idea that nearly half of all American voters were duped. Certainly there is a large portion of voters that heard what they want to believe, but there are also a lot of smart, thoughtful people who voted for him and those who ignore that do so at their political peril. Some of those people were voting against Hillary, some were voting for the Republican agenda, some were just so pissed off after eight years of Obama that they were voting against Obama even though he wasn’t running. I am sure that many people who voted for Trump did not do so because they believed everything he said.
They weren’t; that’s why his supporters still support him. They knowingly voted for a racist, sexist incompetent because that’s exactly what they wanted. Somebody who would hurt non-whites, hurt women, and hurt the nation in general. Every time Trump does something that hurts the US or somebody in it, that’s a victory for his supporters; that’s what they wanted. That’s why they still support him; they aren’t idiots, they know what Trump is doing and like it.
Spite was the primary force behind Trump’s election. And that’s why the “reach out to the Trump voters” idea is a non-starter, just as “reach out to the right wingers” plans are always non-starters. The Democrats have been trying to do that for decades and it’s led them to ruin.
There is NOT an ounce of trump in me and I despise every ounce of trump !
None of us are perfect. Of course we all have some of the bad qualities that can be easily identified in the worst people. But that doesn’t make us responsible for them. Not if we’re trying to fight those bad qualities. Not if we try to use those bad qualities in service of Good.
It is true that there are a lot of people who have enough of Trump in them to support him. But those are the people who voted for him, and not even all of them. What people miss is that only a small percentage of our country actually decides elections, because we are so devoted to the ideals of our party.
The vast majority of Trump voters, I am sure, voted for him because he had an R by his name. Because he would appoint a conservative Justice. They might also have liked some of his message, but they also intentionally ignored the parts that bothered them.
It’s not that most people were tricked. But it’s also not that most people are bad. It’s merely that enough of the right people are, and the rest of us just really don’t have any wiggle room.
And it sucks, because I know that, yet I can’t turn myself into one of the people who would actually matter. Not unless I voted for the ideology and person I hate. Instead I have to spend my time convincing those who do matter.
Fortunately, this disaster of an administration is helping me. I’m hoping the people who matter just needed an object lesson.
He won because Hillary and her ilk went out of their way to insult, denigrate, and piss off enough deplorables that they went out and voted rather than staying home.
And from what I’ve seen here, the liberals are going to do their damnedest for a repeat performance again in 2020.
Nobody’s going to pay attention to me, but even if you don’t convert anyone to your side by not being assholes, at least you won’t motivate them to go out and vote against you.
I have to disagree with the op’s assertion that this essay was eloquent or intelligent. The only thing I got from that article was; it’s all the republican’s/conservative’s fault going back {x number of years}, here are some inflammatory quotes out of context from various republican politicians from past to present, and here is a merest random spackling of false introspection and insincere motivational poster type of “we all in this together/we’re a team” or “the failure of one is the failure of all” sort of sentiment.
I found this writing to be full of nothing but contempt and disdain for conservative views and those that hold those views. I’m not really certain what the author was trying to express, but that’s what I got from the article.
Overall, I’d have to rate the article as sophomoric and juvenile in it’s attempt to convince anyone of anything, regardless of political persuasion.
My 2 cents worth is that what we see is an increase of neuroticism caused by a failure to reconcile reality with beliefs, a situation that has been put on overdrive with the raise of social media and the echo chamber dynamics it encourages.
In short, people, by and large, have lost the plot.
I didn’t say half–I said just enough in certain states. We all know how the Electoral College works.
Yes, a certain portion voted for him because of that, clearly. But if it were only for them, I don’t think he would have won. It was that certain portion of his voters who actually fell for his phony populism that made the difference, I think. Trump’s voters weren’t a single, homogeneous group.
That’s why I hold the media in large part responsible for his election. They would (naturally) decry his dog-whistling, (or his out-and-out racism), but that just made the racists happier. Meanwhile, they did very little to debunk his bogus populism. The out-and-out racists/nationalist were never going to change their votes, and the others were willing to ignore the dog-whistling if he would bring back middle-class jobs for those who are barely willing to finish high school.
No, they bent over backwards to avoid insulting those people, which was a mistake. The Democrats made themselves look like the standard Democrat “centrists” pandering to the right wing bigots, and alienated their supporters into staying home because there’s not much enthusiasm on the left for voting for backstabbers.
Trump on the other hand constantly threw out insults and threats, including calling for Clinton’s assassination by “Second Amendment solution”, and won. So much for the theory that being “polite” wins elections.
(Some posters seem to focus on whether it is 55% of Americans who’ve turned selfish (Trumpian), or just 45%. This seems rather besides the point, especially as there are varying degrees of Trumpism.)
At the height of the Cold War, John F. Kennedy said
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” If we read about a politician saying something like that today, we’d check the URL, suspecting that we’d strayed to The Onion or some other satire site. 
I have a hypothesis that may help explain why Americans have become so Trumpian:
During World War II, Americans all “rowed together.” After that War, the war spirit survived for a while and, anyway, we had more wars: Korea, then Vietnam, not to mention the Cold War. We were all in these wars together because there was a draft. During earlier epochs there were other major wars. Previous periods noted for greed and decadence — the 1890’s (‘Gay Nineties’), and ‘Roaring Twenties’ — were, like the present, periods with no major war in memory. (WW II was much more serious for America than was WW I. Present wars like Afghanistan are more like light entertainment than national efforts.)
But it has been almost 45 years since the Draft ended, and nearly 30 years since the end of the Cold War. Americans who are fearful of violence today, are mostly fearful of fellow Americans. The lack of comaraderie, the lack of a sense of shared purpose, is one reason (though perhaps a minor one) for the growing Trumpianism which James Traub identifies. (But no, I am not trying to make a case for a new major war!)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I’m afraid you may be right, Projammer.
Odd. Others condemned the essay for not singling out “conservatives” for blame. You take the opposite view.
You, guestchaz, seem to be severely misinformed about the on-going political tragedy. To satisfy my curiosity, would you please identify an “inflammatory quote out of context” and show the correct context?
Neither; *both *the Republicans and Democrats represent a minority of Americans. And it’s malice, not mere selfishness that drives them.
We certainly did not. Look at what happened to Japanese Americans, for example.
The golden age of American unity never existed; it’s just in the past the kind of people who now vote Republican were in a position to trample over everyone else, abusing and silencing anyone who dared defy them. Their greatest anger is that they are no longer able to treat everyone else as subhumans and victims without resistance or criticism.
They want to go back to the “good” old days when everyone but them was disenfranchised and ground down, or worse. The days when women were slaves in all but name, when homosexuals could be casually tortured and murdered, when blacks lived under segregation or were chattel slaves, when religions other than Christianity barely dared admit they even existed, if that. That is what the Right idealizes.
Yes, that is largely true. One might say that “we” all got along so well back then because what is now the Trump coalition was much, much larger. In fact, that is often the reason given for that coalition feeling so threatened now-- because they used to be the majority and now they see their numbers shrinking. A Trump supporter (White, Christian, on the xenophobic side) might have felt perfectly at home in 1943 America. He (and they are mostly male) might not have felt the need for a “Trump” to represent him since public policy was so much in his favor already.
However, it’s not uncommon for a nation to rally around an external threat, so the WW II years should be seen as, at best, an anomaly. The Bush presidents had astronomical approval ratings near the Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan, respectively. I’m not sure that being at war is worth the kind of national cohesion it generates, especially since much of it is based on dehumanizing an enemy.
I’d also like to take issue with this:
I’m not going to go back and count posts from the GD thread on the GOP tax plan, but that strike me as a gross mischaracterization of that thread. Does anyone else think it’s correct? And I say that as someone who did post about the negative impact that tax bill is going to have on me. However, I also posted plenty of times how I thought the bill was bad public policy and largely a big, unnecessary tax cut for the very wealthy.
There was also a thread in MPSIMS discussing actions people should take before the end of the year to mitigate the effects next year, but that was a much, much shorter thread and there is no reason we can’t have a discussion about such things since the tax bill was constantly changing, and there was not a whole lot of time to react to its effects before the end of the year.
@ John — I’ll stipulate that I was exaggerating, but I think my underlying point is correct. Do you agree that Great Society initiatives or a statement like
***“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
*** would be utterly impossible in the present climate?
And recall discussion of Occupy Wall Street: Even here at the “liberal” SDMB, there was little in the way of constructive suggestions, just ridicule.
Whether I exaggerate is not the issue. Do you agree with Traub’s conclusion? :—
Our political elite will continue to gratify our worst impulses so long as we continue to be governed by them. The only way back is to reclaim the common ground – political, moral, and even cognitive – that Donald Trump has lit on fire. Losing to China is hardly the worst thing that could happen to us. Losing ourselves is.
You mean the America of the Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Nixon, dozens of race riots and the assassination of 2/3 of the people on your list?
That’s just silly. Just because someone voted for someone, doesn’t mean they take credit for every success or failure of the candidate they voted for. Once in office the candidates make their own decisions, often these decisions are contrary to what they campaigned on. Am I responsible for everything Obama did because I voted for Obama?
Trump’s deficiencies a politician and a person were obvious during the campaign. I’m comfortable blaming the people who voted for him for the mess we’re in. Even if we somehow come out of this next 12 to 36 months of Trump without serious damage, voting for him was still a terrible thing to do.
Then they are responsible for moral failing not an actual failing. To me you are forgoing reasonable standards of evaluation and instead have inserted morality where these standards should be. To me this is sort of the tribal “Trump in all of us” that is leading to tremendous divisiveness.
And what difference does it make to someone who is not particularly attached to any of these political tribes? If I didn’t vote I’m responsible for Trump!, if I voted for Trump, I’m responsible for Trump! if I voted third party I’m responsible for Trump!
Really, the only people who are morally absolved in your scenario are the good hearted and enlightened quarter of the population that voted for Hillary.
Yes. Imagine electing a goat as POTUS. It’s so far out of the norm it cannot be excused or explained away. We’re not talking Romney or even G.W.Bush. We’re talking Trump.