The reason there’s no overarching logical explanation for the incredible shit-storm of destruction going on is because it’s all over the map – there’s no consistent strategy to any of it. It’s a combination of policies based on outright lies, mistaken beliefs, and an undercurrent of hate and paranoia – about minority groups, about America’s allies, about how trade works, about Trump’s perceived enemies and the justice system, and about government itself and most of its civil service. It’s all being destroyed by an orange wrecking ball and a South African Nazi lunatic. Don’t try to find logic in it. The result will eventually be the mother of all unintended consequences.
The best explanation I can come up with is that Mr. Trump has felt for years that nobody appreciated his great geniusoity and financial acumen. As a result, society has worked at depriving him of his well-deserved wealth and respect such a great man deserves. Instead, society has made fun of his boorishness and excluded him from the upper reaches of society.
As a result, he’s decided that his best course of action is to continue to insist that he is correct in the most glamorous ways of being correct, become a worldwide menace, and severely punish anyone and everyone who has even thought of preventing him from getting his way on anything.
No, wait, that is neither non-insane or non-evil. I apologize.
You won’t find many, if any, of them on this board, but there are apparently a lot of people who support the professed aims of the Trump administration, and who take at face value its claims to, for example, reduce governmental waste and inefficiency.
It’s certainly possible to want to reduce governmental waste without being evil. Whether it’s possible to sincerely believe that that’s what Trump, Musk, et al are doing, in a non-evil, non-corrupt way, is another question. But what is obvious to us is not obvious to people who have been getting their information propaganda exclusively from Trump-friendly sources.
Another explanation:
The First Amendment has finally met its match with the global internet. By giving foreign interests the right to communicate directly to American citizens, these people are using this freedom to twist this country for their own ends. Russia, China, more, all have a vested interest in destroying the social fabric of the United States and our continued adherence to the First Amendment is giving them unfettered access to do this.
Look, any sane country would have NEVER allowed Elon Musk to get a hold of Twitter. Just would have said “lol, no, you’re not one of us”. Hell, not too sure it was sane giving Rupert Murdoch the right to buy television stations, but I wanna keep this current. But us? We’re like “yeah, we know that giving a racist South African the proverbial town hall to sway young people into shattering the American hegemony can be bad bad bad, but what do you want us to do? Tell him he can’t buy it? Tell him that he has to care about accuracy and facts? Shut it down? By what right do we have to shut him down?”
And now we live in a world where bad actors are actively reaching and engaging tens, hundreds of millions of American citizens, turning them against the United States of America, their guy won (again), and who is going to stop them?
Our institutions allowed this.
Yeeh, I know people who seem to only get their news from right-wing sources and they really believe that Democrats are the party of criminals, corruption, and self-dealing while Trump is the shining white knight who’s trying to save America–“A Golden Age is upon us.”
If your understanding is that USAID is spending $50 million on condoms for Hamas, it should be gotten rid of. And some people believe this and really think Trump is genuinely trying to fix America. Trump lives in a narcissistic fantasy world so he may believe it also, as long as the benefits that come along with fixing America are unaccountability, money, and revenge on those who oppose him, and by extension, America. The Democrats are evil and insane, so the country must be saved from everything they support.
I don’t think it’s insane or evil to have misconceptions, so I think that’s the real answer here.
For example: to Trump, and many of his supporters, a trade deficit is a scorecard of how much one nation is beating another. So Trump’s policies are going to bring down the deficits so that America wins. Easy!
(Please don’t take from this that Trump is some kind of innocent idiot. He’s a dreadful person for myriad reasons, as well as having zero intellectual ability. But that’s beside the point for this thread)
Discordian.
Can the OP define “evil”?
While there are some common elements to many, if not most, definitions of evil, it is ultimately a subjective notion, albeit one where sometimes for some particularly heinous events most people know it when they see it.
If you subscribe to the 80s Gordon Gecko-esque “Greed is Good” line of thought and if actors are truly rational (and, yes, I realize these are controversial assumptions) a society of people who each focus on the pursuit of personal benefit will lead to the greater good.
I don’t happen to subscribe to that, but it does provide one measure by which evil is not being done.
My own explanation is that he, among a few others in the building, may be sociopathic (in the technical sense, not in a perjorative sense) and incapable of the empathy required to know the difference between conventional notions of good and evil. And also not bright enough to understand or emulate such distinctions, leading to a blind spot where such emulation may actually be to his benefit sometimes.
The great irony of this narrative, which is so common on the right, is that Trump and his whole movement is so atavistic that it’s pre-Christian. We’re back to the days of potentates with harems, concubines, court eunuchs, gladiator games, human sacrifice and the worship of pure avarice, and this is what half of America WANTS. They WANT to hero-worship the potentates, they WANT eunuchs and viziers to make proclamations and proscriptions about what people should and shouldn’t do, and they’re watching this whole spectacle and cheering as people lose their money, their rights, and their lives because they supposedly deserve it.
Moderating:
Let’s try to make posts that are actually responsive to the questions posed in the OP.
Sorry, no. Just not sure how to define it that would not give rise to further requests for definitions.
Essentially all I meant was - “not bad.” Or “free from evil intent.” But, I’m not sure that is possible. At the very least, I think they are trying to villainize some “other” to get support for their agenda/actions.
Similarly, I previously tried to identify “non-stupid/non-evil” reasons to vote for the asshole.
I’m just trying to figure out IF there was a rational mind behind what is happening, and IF they thought they were acting for the country’s (or som specific cohort’s) good, what would that rationale be?
At base, I’m still resisting fully committing to the idea that 1/2 my neighbors are idiots and/or assholes. Not sure it can be done, but trying to see if ANY explanation works.
I’m not sure of that. I think there IS a consistent strategy/ies behind Project 2025. (Not sure they are “non-evil”, tho.) But superimposed over those are Trump’s vengeance and craziness, and Musk’s self interest.
The other approach that my mind always returns to is …
Forget everything that you know.
Now watch – and this is mission critical – nothing but Fox News, Newsmax, and One America Network. Similarly, seek out and gorge yourself on nothing but “alt-right” websites.
It’s not the rational explanation of, for, and to all the positions you seek, but it is the roadmap to follow if you want to get where the MAGAs are.
Try it for a weekend. It starts to become all too clear how it all comes together.
Thing is - a lot of people are good at feeling empathy for individuals but terrible at it for groups.
Show them a picture of one person being affected by some policy (LGBTQ, immigrant, whoever) and share their story. I still think most people would feel sympathy for them.
This happens even for policies people support. Ask for a donation for orphaned victims of war, and you’ll get a little money. Put up a photo of a cute 7 year war orphan and the donations come pouring in for that specific one.
I think an alarming number of people would claim one particular case is either “one of the good ones” or “the exception that proves the rule” and still support some terrible policy on the rest.
It’s hard for most people to rationally judge good/evil on the scale of thousands or millions of people. For individuals, sure. But we’re terrible at scaling up beyond our local Monkeysphere.
mjmartin’s exposition above is very likely reflective of the general Trumpian view of what went wrong and why do we need radical corrective action now – and OldOlds and CoolHandCox point out that from there flows (fed by their limited or twisted sources of information and as wolfpup observes not necessarily sharing a particular consistent directionality) the simplistic answer “tear it all down”. The game IS rigged so why bother playing by the rules, win it and break it and start a new one.
The style and manner aspect of how that is being done is very much a product of Trump and the Right Wing’s complex about not being duly respected and about feeling looked down upon. As excavating_for_a_mind reminds us Trump has always been the butt of the establishment’s lack of awe at him: all his life both the Old Money AND the cultural opinion-makers saw him as a vulgarian. To which his reaction is, you won’t love me? Then fear me.
He and his key followers are obvious believers in the Great Man theory of history and who are all these losers trying to prevent Great Men from doing great things by throwing procedural obstacles in their path. The people voted for this, I’m going to do it.
In another thread, steronz posits what he thinks is Musk’s line of thought (though it may have become addled in the implementation stage, don’t you think?)
And I don’t doubt for one moment that a LOT of the more educated Trump followers have a similar odd version of a technoeconomic rapture that we are being prevented from achieving by institutionalist gradualist lamers who are just too worried about sparing people pain and “playing fair”.
IMHO, there are two non-insane and non-evil explanations for Trump’s behavior and MAGA in general:
-
There is a semi-legit argument to be made that America has indeed been taken unfairly for a ride. On the issue of Ukraine, for instance - the USA is the geographically furthest nation from Ukraine, and the one that suffers the least from anything Russia may do to Ukraine. Yet NATO-European nations expected the USA to shoulder the majority of the burden in helping Ukraine against Russia. Sure, Europe chipped in with aid of its own - especially Poland and the Baltics - but one can make a very reasonable argument that the European contribution was only 1/2 or 1/3 of what it should have been, considering that Ukraine is in NATO-Europe’s backyard, not America’s. And this isn’t a Trump talking point alone - prior Democrats, like Biden and Obama, had too cajoled Europe about not taking its own defense seriously enough. While Trump’s demand that NATO-Europe spend 5% of GDP on defense was utter nonsense, expecting all NATO-Europe partners to spend 2-3% when it’s Europe itself that faces the threat of Russia most directly, is totally reasonable.
-
The belief of Trump that Christians face “anti-Christian discrimination” has some merit to it. On the issue of “phobias,” for instance - people who bash Islam are labeled “Islamophobic” or bigoted, but nobody gets labeled “Christianophobic” or a bigot for bashing Christianity, even though Islam is arguably even more extreme than Christianity for everything Christianity is criticized for - sexism, racism, scientific inaccuracy, homophobia, violence, intolerance, theocracy, etc. There is definitely the notion that anything said or done against Christians is “punching up” while anything to any other religion is “punching down.”
I don’t think your response is quite in the spirit of the OP. If it were the case of saying: “Can we find any policy, or any aspect of any policy, that we agree with?”, then sure.
I’ve heard, for example, that getting rid of the penny makes sense.
But that’s not a rationalization of what’s happening here overall, with Trump’s international actions, DOGE, deportations etc. For example, on Ukraine, saying European allies should contribute more is not a justification for pulling all support and explicitly saying Putin should get all his war aims and negotiating only with Putin.
More specifically on your examples, I’ll put them in reverse order:
I’ve seen this talking point a lot recently online.
The fact is that in countries like the US, Christianity remains the dominant religion in a country that is majority religious and enjoys all kinds of special privileges and status. We don’t coin a new word just because some guy’s a jerk about something; it needs to be a common pattern.
Or, put it this way: I’ve personally seen a lot more attacks on Catholicism by other Christians than attacks on Christians by non-Christians. So shall we start with Catholophobia?
Firstly, yes, Europe should be contributing more to defence and more to Ukraine, I agree with the headline point.
However, as mentioned, I don’t agree with Trump’s actions, and I think there’s also nuance on some of the points you raise.
Russia has been a geopolitical foe of the US; it’s of course the biggest nuclear power, works against US interests around the world and has meddled with US elections twice now. The fact that it is not that close to the US (or rather, it technically is, but the most populated areas are not) is pretty much by-the-by.
Aid from the US and aid from Europe, when including non-lethal aid, has been about the same (different counting methods give different answers). Is that the right proportion? I don’t know, but I think “taken for a ride” is a strong way of characterizing it.
On lethal aid, it’s not simply a case of the US giving away stuff. Deploying US armaments in Ukraine reminds Russia and other potential adversaries the US’ teeth, boosts american manufacturing, and is a nice advert to potential buyers around the world.
Putting aside whether the war is just (which the defence of Ukraine is in my view) it makes a lot more sense to use military assets than let them rot away in a warehouse.
Trump is not smart enough to plan anything that would work. He is strictly operating by his hunches and the bullying technique he uses.
It would be a long explanation to calculate what the costs and so on would be to transfer all the functions of the federal government to the states. Possibly there would be less corruption in running say a “medicare for all” state by state.
But I cannot see Trump or the GOP doing that. Their aim is strictly for corporations to run our lives. We are no use to them past age 60.
That is an interesting thought … just think of trainloads of civilians in europea in the early 1940ies direction poland.
… and oppose that with the emblemátic photo of the poor refuge kid washed up on the beach in turkey/greece in 2015