It’s statistically provern that one in every 45 Presidents will be a total dud.
Agree with this. Only with the advent of social media are so many lied to in so many ways, so often. Add a river of misinformation in disguise as “news” and you have half of the nation thinking Trump did a swell job last time and he deserves another term in the White House, even after everyone witnessed with their own eyes and ears what happened on J6. Trump may have been the first nutcase to benefit from this, but he certainly wont be the last.
It’s best to think of Trump as an opportunitist virus. It’s not usually dangerous, but because our immune system is compromised it was able to take hold. I hate Trump as much as the next reasonable person, but he’s a symptom not the cause of our current problems.
Given that Trump had four years to try to cement autocratic rule and two months warning that he was going to be turned out, it seems to me that if Trump “tried to take over the government”, he did a remarkably inept job of it. What I recently realized about Jan. 6 2021 was that essentially Trump was hoping that he’d be rescued from being forced to step down. Trump has a narcissist’s essential weakness and fear of inadequacy at his core that means he can never really be a strongman in any sense of the term.
Yeah. He shouldn’t have been so dangerous, and he wouldn’t have been if the Republicans hadn’t spent decades turning themselves into his perfect enablers. Lazy and incompetent as Trump is he’d have never been able to subvert the political order as much as he has without the previous few generations of the Republicans
Like many people I don’t think Trump even intended to win in 2016. It was a publicity stunt/vanity campaign that ran away with itself because the Republican field was so divided and shortsighted, and because as I said they’d carved a Trump-shaped hole in themselves. When he slotted himself into that opening the bulk of the party just latched onto him and the Old Guard leadership was completely unable to do anything about it. Trump barely had to do a thing but exist and be himself to turn the party into his personality cult.
Yes. And as others have mentioned: the way people get their news changed radically by the 2010s. Before, people heard (or read, in the pre-radio age) both sides, at least to some extent. If you subscribed to the pro-right newspaper, your co-worker subscribed to the pro-left one. And none of that media was so all-encompassing as to keep you from ever considering the other side. It was just ‘two sides’—not The Side of Righteousness versus The Evil Ones.
Once media was siloed, Republicans discovered that it didn’t matter if their candidate was indecent, dishonest, and stupid. It didn’t matter at all because their voters would never learn those facts. The media would lie that the candidate was all things wonderful—and the voters would believe.
Media ownership by unprincipled right-wing billionaires who’d say and do anything to make sure they stayed at the top of the hierarchy was all that was needed to install a Trump.
Beau of the fifth column remarked that over turning Wade made the Republicans the dog that caught a car. What will he do with it, chew on the bumper?
Another of Beau’s ideas is that the Republicans don’t want to govern by the voter’s choice, they want to rule over the voters. I can see this as a power thing. By riding Trump’s coat tails, congresspeople can acquire some bit of power for themselves.
IF he truly believed that the election were stolen from him due to election shenanigans, 11,000,000 illegal immigrants all voting against him in swing states, Democrats hacking the electronic voting booths, &c. then I would say he has the right and duty to do what he did.
Only two problems with that scenario
One) None of that happened.
Two) He accidently admitted to Sean Hannity that he lost the 2020 election.
Not only is the way we get news nowadays more instantaneous and comprehensive, but there seems to be a rise in conspiratorial thinking and a reduction in logical thinking. These factors feed each other.
There are two salient facts about the America-hating fuckstick that have yet to be discussed: he hates America, and he’s a fuckstick.
We’ve had fucksticks before, but this may be the first time that political, economic, and societal factors have combined to make it possible to give the presidency to one who hates America.
Norms. Pundits keep being outraged about how Trump has shattered norms, but I don’t feel that most people really understand norms or feel them deeply.
Historically there were expectations for how Presidents behaved: what they did, what they said, who they met with, what they didn’t do. Presidents did not directly attack their enemies and they did not even comment on the policies of previous Presidents. Washington established one major norm by walking away from the Presidency after two terms.
Norms were part of the hagiography of the Founding Fathers. Congress had its norms and so did the Supreme Court. Civics textbooks laid out the expectations for politicians as a whole and for democratic government. Internalizing them was considered part of the assimilationist process for immigrants.
Most of the norms made for a better America. Some didn’t. Support for war, imperialism, a Christian nation, and institutional racism were norms that few violated. The Good Old Days weren’t for many, possibly most, people. Hypocrisy reigned. When Roosevelt violated the third term norm in 1940 many in the country were outraged; if the country was split 50/50 like today he would have lost. Republicans proposed a Constitutional amendment for a two-term limit as soon as they could get it through Congress and got it adopted as a wave of Republicanism swept through the country after the 1950 election. That was probably the first truly partisan Amendment since the Civil War, but as it protected a norm few have objected since.
Norms got us through the 20th Century but notice that list I gave above. Those norms came under fierce attack that hasn’t abated. Many voters want to return to those norms - dare I say when America was great - and didn’t mind when lesser norms were violated to achieve those primary ones. Trump rose that wave.
That explains the past. Can norms - the “right” norms - return if he’s not elected? I’m pessimistic.
Lies and slander are nothing new to the political process, but once upon a time if a publisher didn’t want to be relegated to the hand press ghetto, they needed credibility and a good reputation in order to have the sales to maintain a first-rate newspaper or magazine; we still got “Yellow Journalism” and even the mainstream press was seen as serving the establishment. Now the internet has made spouting bullshit vastly cheaper and easier than it once was; and with AI automating the process it’s gotten to the point where one has to presume that anything you read or see online is a lie, or at least someone’s unfounded opinion, unless you trust the original source.