[Update: there are conflicting reports that Musk may or may not have donated to the WFP]
Musk has got that cutting, audacious honesty about him (maybe not in all things), combined with loads of F-you money, that he just doesn't give a flying f**k about the status quo and its delicate balance of corruption.
When he ventures into the swamplands, it's as if the murky waters recede and the miserable creatures hiss and snarl at his presence. He's younger and a bit less prone to making absurd comments, but still has that anti-swamp, screw-the-establishment essence to him like a certain former president.
Disclaimer: I own a tiny sliver of $TSLA stock (less than 1 share), mainly because it was a stupid, but slightly profitable FOMO decision. I'm not a TSLA fanboy and think the cars have serious QA issues, but I do respect Musk and really like where SpaceX is headed (compare SpaceX's goals to any other private space company--it's Star Trek vs the Love Boat in space! All other space companies are a joke).
Since it's a day ending in Y, a bureaucrat decides to shame the world's billionaires for not doing enough. CNN gladly obliged in spreading the word (and unsurprisingly managed to screw it up). As you can see, Musk puts the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) on blast, calls their bluff, and puts his money on the table.
Unfortunately for the WFP, open source accounting is one of Musk's conditions. But corrupt bureaucrats get hungry too!
As in the article, Beasley says that $6B could help save millions this year. But what happened here indeed?
CHILDREN as young as nine traded oral sex for food from UN peacekeepers in warzones while officials looked the other way, a shocking new report has claimed.
Memos about the sexual abuse in the Central African Republic were "passed from desk to desk, inbox to inbox, across multiple UN offices, with no one willing to take responsibility", the report found.
It added: "The welfare of the victims and the accountability of the perpetrators appeared to be an afterthought, if considered at all."
I suppose no international institution is perfect. But still, that's pretty damn bad. I think most reasonable people would like to avoid giving money to the pedophile fund if at all possible.
I guess the money is still on the table. All the WFP has to do is publicly reveal a $6B plan for saving millions with open source accounting. Shouldn't be too hard for an organization whose job is LITERALLY TO DO EXACTLY THAT.
Can't be done. They'll open their books anywhere--Earth or space--as long as they're meeting privately. It's all above board they assure us, but our little minds would explode if plans and numbers were tweeted out. Bless their considerate souls.
I'm not sorry. I am desensitized and my humor so dark and I find this sad state of affairs predictably pathetic--that it has been made so public is damn funny. That's how I read these sorts of things.
The WFP would rather publicly turn down $6 billion (and probably much more from like-minded people if they accepted Musk's reasonable conditions) than be transparent.
The shame game works both ways if your opponent has the balls to punch back. It's refreshing, it's funny, the corrupt are scared to death of it, and it's what made Trump so popular.
"I'm like, 'whatever' on abortion," said North Carolina Governor Roy
Cooper, "but the prospect of being completely cut off from Portland in
every way is seriously tempting."
Veteran-led rescue
groups say the Biden administration’s estimate that no more than 200
U.S. citizens were left behind in Afghanistan is too low and also
overlooks hundreds of other people they consider to be equally American:
permanent legal residents with green cards.
Some
groups say they continue to be contacted by American citizens in
Afghanistan who did not register with the U.S. Embassy before it closed
and by others not included in previous counts because they expressed
misgivings about leaving loved ones behind.
As
for green card holders, they have lived in the U.S. for years, paid
taxes, become part of their communities and often have children who are
U.S. citizens. Yet the administration says it does not have an estimate
on the number of such permanent residents who are in Afghanistan and
desperately trying to escape Taliban rule.
Reports of several charter planes grounded in the northern city of
Mazar-e-Sharif sparked outrage over the weekend when the organizers of
private flights spoke out
against the State Department for inaction. Dozens of Americans and
Afghan citizens are trapped in the city as they await permission from
the Taliban for their flights to take off for Doha, Qatar, while State
Department officials say they have no way of vetting the people waiting
for the planes.
More Americans appear to finally be leaving Afghanistan
Thursday as Qatar works with the Taliban to allow them to exit the
country following the U.S. military's withdrawal and the White House
acknowledges the significant role the Middle Eastern country is playing
in getting Americans out.
Qatari officials told the Associated Press that between 100 and 150 Americans will be leaving on a Qatar Airways flight out of the airport in Kabul.
---
I miss Trump. He just needed to scale back his more absurd/outrageous comments a smidge and get a Twitter editor.
Gutfeld asks Trump what he'd say to Gutfeld's wife to try to convince her to get vaccinated (he announces she's unvaccinated). Trump responds by saying he recommends she get vaccinated but if she doesn't want to, that's okay too. pic.twitter.com/rrn010vS4o
We should've left long ago. I'd say after about 6 (probably fewer) or so years of, ahem, occupying--or whatever word you want to use to indicate a sustained military presence in a foreign land--Afghanistan, most Americans wanted our troops to come home.
Let's be honest with ourselves, we go to war with the intelligence services, generals and politicians we have, not the ones we want. Leaving Afghanistan would have always been messy, whether we left in 2001 or a few months ago.
Maybe Biden screwed up, I mean it'd be hard for a man that age to not screw something up. I don't think Trump would've fared better, but I know Trump's response would've differed, for good or ill.
This will probably come back to bite us, someday. "This" being staying way too long and leaving so hastily, with an intelligence service that couldn't see it coming after 20 years there. The whole situation oozes with complacency.
When the right-wing blames Biden, I'm not very swayed (even though the image above is rather cogent). But when they point at military and intelligence engaged in political and social activism while failing terribly in Afghanistan, it's rather persuasive. People need to be fired, and military and intelligence reforms are overdue.
The establishment response to the recent unrest (only right-leaning unrest of course) is to demand justice, make more laws prohibiting and making it more difficult to be in a state of unrest, despite them being largely responsible for the underlying cause of said unrest.
'They were a
riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It's that basic.
It's that simple,' Biden said during an event in Wilmington, Delaware,
to introduce his nominees to lead the Justice Department. 'And I wish we
could say we couldn't see it coming, but that's not true. We could see it coming.'
My pessimism and familiarity with the demagoguery of Democrats leads me to believe Biden meant this as the false narrative-driven stereotypical knee-jerk assumption about right-wing protesters--that they are violent, backwards cavemen. As in caveman hate change, him smash Capitol! Whereas lefty protestors are peaceful by default, even when not.
But we non-idiots could also see it coming. Since the 4 year long hate & smear fest on Orange Man, since the hand-waving away of violent antifa riots, the perpetual lock down and earning a living became evil, since questioning a questionable election became taboo, since "deplorables."
Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism,
and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight
against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing
funding to combat them. (via Instapundit)
I think a bit more sensitivity and understanding, especially in the early aftermath of a pandemic, and psycho political shitstorm of the last 4 years, rather than finger wagging, can go a long way towards "unity" and healing.
But no, the left is set in their ways. "Let them eat cake!" they will shout. And if we complain about the non-existent cake, get deplatformed and maybe go to jail. Hyperbolic? I'm just following their lead, and only barely.
Excuse me, I'm trying to find the video of Trump inciting the riots.
While I don't doubt Trump is capable of such, and wouldn't be surprised if he did in fact start the riot with a poor choice of words, I am having trouble finding the video of him using language slightly more specific than platitudinous schlock, and at least half as damning as what many, many antifa sympathizers (a lot of which hold office) had to say this past summer.
The president should be held to a higher standard. And Trump falls far short daily when it comes to word-choice and rhetoric. No "buts" here, except this one: every citizen deserves the same due process. Incitement is one of few asterisks to the first amendment, and proving it requires (or should require) a lot more than a mob.
All I could find so far was a short CNN clip where the worst thing I found Trump saying was to "show strength and be strong" which was preceded by images of the rioting--labelled an insurrection--and followed by snarky narration of judgment damning Trump--objective reporting there, top marks.
Is it fair to paint with a broad brush? Is it fair to judge the many based on a few bad apples? No. But what is fair and what is real are two different things.
We are often judged by our biggest mistakes, our worst moments, our few shortcomings, our biggest and loudest idiots.
The media, by their nature, broadcasts, criticizes, and judges the loud idiots and all who could conceivably be associated with (fairly or not) said idiot. This process is a very vivid, controversial, and sensational method of catching eyeballs, and thus, ad revenue.
Unfortunately, it is a pretty shit way to foster civil political discourse, let alone political tolerance.
But that's what we are now, and that is especially what the left is now. They couldn't swallow President Trump's bait fast enough. So four of the biggest idiot Democrats now pretty much speak for the left in this country. That's on them.
And if you happen to be a lefty who disagrees with them, you don't count (and they applaud this).
Among the many pernicious aspects of the social media/fake news-related hysteria since Trump started campaigning has been the one-sided censorship/deplatforming of opinions.
It seemingly is always some conservative or libertarian voice getting banned, suspended, or silenced in some way when this rarely if ever happens to a lefty with comparable levels of extremism. Sometimes they are downright mainstream and/or milquetoast comments that get right wing voices banned.
In the context of universities consistently banning conservatives from speaking, MAGA hat wearing people getting assaulted, conservative personalities getting harassed at restaurants and their homes, it's pretty easy to think this is just more of that. Leftists high on the smell of their own shit, shutting down dissent, because they're right and you're wrong.
But it's not all just that. I mean, it still might be, but there's at least a little more to it, at least sometimes.
I haven't checked the veracity of the science behind this study, but if true, there's at least a reason (and a convenient fig leaf) for the banning of far more conservatives than liberals/progressives from social media platforms.
We've all heard of Russian bots and their goals to sow discord in the U.S. The conventional wisdom on this is that most of those are all "conservative." I think there's a reason for that. It's far easier to outrage Natasha the feminist life-coach in Seattle than it is to stir up Bob the factory worker in Missouri. Russian trolls go for the low-hanging fruit.
If I wanted to piss a lot of people off the fastest, well, I would target the most sensitive loud-mouths I knew of. It's just easier.
So there you go. "Conservative" bots say a lot of things that eventually end up creating what is probably many social media platforms' red flag list of words and phrases. Naturally, authentic conservative guy will probably say some similar things from time to time. And so Natasha's friends complain about authentic conservative guy, combined with him being already flagged, the banhammer drops.
Sure, there are still probably instances of pure bias and poor judgment resulting in deplatforming, but this helps explain a lot of it.
Lately it seems like my only free time is an hour or two in the wee hours, or an hour or two in the morning when I'd rather be sleeping (and sometimes do). So in order to try not to devolve into a lazy waste of space during my free time, I'm going to attempt to occasionally post something here again.
So, to recap what I've missed and what's in the news today, here are some observations and links.
I don't think Trump or any meaningful part of his campaign colluded with Russia. But there is probably a tantalizing something, maybe small, but something. Otherwise I don't see how the FBI and Democrats--which is seemingly redundant these days--can justify this perpetual investigation with virtually nothing to show for it, and survive with any credibility intact. I think, to a significant degree, they're operating on the sunk cost fallacy.
I am almost in disbelief at the North Korean summit. I don't expect it to produce miracles, or much of anything in the way of denuclearization, but the summit alone is quite remarkable. Trump keeps surprising.
Tariffs. I am a believer in free trade, but I also believe in fairness. And I am not opposed to using tariffs as temporary measures to further encourage freer and fairer trade agreements. Naturally, the recipients of increased costs (whether it's from tariffs or fairer trade agreements) don't like it, and are trying various things to stop it. I think the Trump administration expected some push back, but I kind of doubt they expected so much. But one thing I've learned is that Trump, for better or worse, plays chicken quite well. He may yet surprise us again.
Due to new living conditions, I have cable tv now. There is still nothing on. CNN and MSNBC have lost all credibility with me long ago and generally suck; this is still the case. Fox News is getting worse. They always leaned a bit right on most of their shows, especially relative to other news networks, but now it's more blatant, unapologetic, and sloppy. I miss the kind of shows with the integrity and perspective Meet the Press had under Tim Russert.
Pardons. It's about time a president used the power in the middle of a term, and with such frequency. I'm aware it's a slippery slope, especially when it involves political allies, but I think it's worth freeing a few guilty partisans if the innocent and overcharged also go free.
I'm also trying to be more polite while communicating via text, email, or other online media. It's too easy to read something and post your knee-jerk reaction in the heat of the moment. This is partly because my new job involves a lot of emailing and texting, and I've had to force myself to wait a while before responding. Your tone, perspective, and articulation all improve after waiting, even just a few minutes. This precious time also lets you reconsider and reinterpret the possible tone of the text you just read, which is usually very important.
I guess when you're a prolific social media whore, you tend to say a bunch of things, things which may not always conform to what you said the day before.
You hate libertarians one day, they're your best friends the next.
Whatever gets you to point B right?
So I'll just get straight to the point: on Monday, Kurt wrote an article about how the GOP establishment/NeverTrumpers were spinning Trump's "deal" with Pelosi and Schumer as defection to the Democrats. But Trump is always 10 steps ahead in 3-dimensional chess:
No one outside the Beltway cares if the Smarmy Dope and Elderly Mutant Establishment Turtle got disrespected. We avoided was a fight right now that would have taken up the 12 whole days of legislative work that Ryan and McConnell somehow stuffed into the 30 days of September after taking August off. Now the Congressional GOP is free to focus its entire attention on failing at tax reform.
Trump isn’t “betraying” the base. He’s treating the Congressional GOP like the hacks they are. They have done nearly nothing except posture, pose and issue passive aggressive proclamations about how Trump offends their tender sensibilities. Trump doesn’t respect them because they haven’t earned any respect; this week, he saved them from making fools of themselves once again, at least until the holidays.
The rest of the article reads much the same. Some great points. I sure don't give a flying rat's ass about the GOPe, and it's always good to see them get mud on their face.
So, though the haters like to personalize it, it's not so much that Trump is changing his position, because he’s always telegraphed that this was his position, but that he's being so stupid as to let Chuck Schumer make a fool out of him. He and Nancy Pelosi have dinner with him, then walk out and basically disrespected him in public in a way sure to turn his base against him. It was actually a brilliant move on the Dems’ part, in a volcano-lair supervillain kind of way.
So first Trump saved the GOP by making a deal with the Dems, but now it was all an epic supervillain play by Schumer and Pelosi.
The pseudo-right component of the bipartisan cartel will be only too happy to deliver, using Democrat votes, while actual conservatives are left cut out and fuming. It's the same sucker play George H.W. Bush fell for when he went back on his "Read my lips" pledge. Democrats offer a gullible Republican some magic beans and get him to split his base apart.
Lefty bubbles. Insulated warm, fuzzy cocoons. Walled gardens. Epistemic closure beguiled by positive feedback loops. The pleasant echos lulled half a country and its "elite" into a false sense of authority.
And then it all came tumbling down. Crashing. I think it was a surprise for nearly everyone. Good for some, bad for others.
I'm not sure I have much to say given what's already been said. So what follows is a roundup of reactions to the election, a bit of the more poignant commentary, and my thoughts on each. Some of which I don't quite understand, but am trying to. Some of it I agree with wholeheartedly and think needs a bit more sunlight, and then some I disagree with.
When bubbles burst, it's usually a shock to those inside. Their thoughts and behavior during the aftermath can be illuminating.
The Left
I'll start with J. D. Vance at the NYT, who like so many others after the election, acknowledge the bubbles they've been living in:
Failed political prognostication is hardly a grievous sin, but it raises difficult questions about the other bubbles I live in. Few would accuse me of lacking compassion for the Trump voter, but the same can hardly be said for many other coastal
elites.
Meanwhile, our country has other groups deserving of compassion. Shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory became clear, a black friend told me that his kid brother had been subjected to racial taunts at school. I wonder now whether I’m empathetic enough to my friend and his family, and I worry whether those who cast their ballots for Mr. Trump have much understanding for why so many fear a
Trump presidency. The benefits and prejudices of a life lived within a bubble are hardly limited to urban progressive professionals.
You will see this narrative over and over. "Out of touch," "living in a bubble," "we have some reflecting to do," but also the usually subtle implication that the racists have taken over, and super-racist Nazi America is but a shoe drop away.
How do they know? Because Trump once said he wants to ban Muslim immigration. Trump then walked back that stance. Also something about building a wall. I'll admit Trump is brash and far from eloquent, but wanting tighter, more secure immigration and the occasional verbalization of stereotypes does not a Hitler make. And of course, the only kind of person willing to vote for that kind of a man, is a racist.
But people are scared now apparently. I get that for some, relatively very few, discrimination is a real and ugly thing they have to deal with and I want to help them. But for most in modern America? Call me skeptical, but I'm going to have to ask for proof.
Still, for a lot of people, this election is proof enough for them. From Reddit:
click image to enlarge
"I'm a Muslim living in the States. Trump doesn't scare me as much as his supporters do."
"I'm Jewish and I'm right there with you in fearing his supporters..."
Am I in my own bubble? I've never personally witnessed racial or political violence, or threats thereof. Such reports I see are from the same news sources (mostly) "coastal elites" use. I don't see large-scale racial violence or discrimination happening, or even medium-scale. It's generally the occasional something-bad-happened-to-one-person story. Like police going too far, but even then it's not always so clear.
Are they afraid, like we're living in Europe, or the third world hellholes many leftists fetishize?
I want to say I did some looking around for this fear, but no. Just skimming the various newzy and social sites it became abundantly clear. Trump really is the next Hitler to them. The following images are screenshots I took in the hours following the election results:
There was even a "homophobia" in there! Despite Trump being the first Republican presidential nominee to embrace marriage equality, and prominently supported by Peter Thiel. Fucking come on, the Republicans are, and will continue to get, on board the LGBTQ train--so long as it's compatible with individual and religious liberty.
No matter, frequently fallible Paul Krugman will set things straight:
What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous. ...
There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy.
He says he truly didn't understand the country, then in the very next paragraph, half a day after the election, he now claims to know: and its name is backwardness. Jesus Christ; and they wonder why half of America collectively gave them the fucking finger. Arrogant condescending pricks, the whole lot of them.
Might as well get it all out. What insulting buzzwords are America you say?
Way to be civil. Want some grace from the winners? Maybe try not spitting on them.
Trump wasn't my preferred candidate, but the racist labeling only made me want to support him more. Why? It was unfair. If he said the N-word in the last several years, and/or displayed any other overtly racist behavior I would be calling him that myself. But now, in many circles, merely opposing lax immigration is 100% straight-up racist.
But it doesn't even matter. If he's a scumbag then he's a scumbag. What matters is what he'll do as president. What policies he'll bring. What judges he'll appoint. Scumbagerry doesn't translate well into policy, although there are exceptions.
Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and a Republican congress didn't overturn Roe v. Wade. There was some pushback on gay marriage, but look where we are now. We're even legalizing drugs!
After all the hysterics, I feel it's time to Voxplain a thing or two.
Oh my. Vox can't even keep a cool head. People sure aren't taking this well:
So there's the reactions. Fear, sadness, anger, resentment, disgust, combinations of denial and acceptance. But what does it all mean? What brought about this Trump victory?
The Democrats
To paraphrase President Obama, we need to spread the blame around. Hillary's campaign miscalculated. Badly:
“They are saying they did nothing wrong, which is ridiculous,” said
one Clinton surrogate. “She was the wrong messenger and everyone
misjudged how pissed working class people were.” ...
In interviews with close to a dozen top Clinton allies and
former operatives, who did not want to publicly criticize the losing
campaign or candidate, many expressed a deep frustration that the party
had pinned its hopes on a divisive establishment candidate. ...
The issues were crystal clear as early as January 2015, but the campaign thought it could overcome it.
“Make a virtue of her longevity,” Palmieri advised in an email that
month to Podesta, released by WikiLeaks. “Embrace all the Clinton-ness —
the forty years in politics, the decades on the national stage...”
A lot of commentators are saying Trump won because Hillary and the
Democrats colossally fucked up. All that nastiness you see above, well Trump supporters were experiencing that every time they opened their mouths prior to the election. Not the best persuasive technique. The left in general and Democrats in particular really didn't do much to dissuade that strategy. There's more to it
than that--which I'll get to later--but Jonathan Pie nails it:
The Media
Lets not forget the media. For a long time the left and the media would mock the right for complaining about bias. What a time we live in when they openly admit it, and try to justify it. Of course, it was the wrong thing to do. Not because it was unethical, you see, but because it backfired:
John King of CNN proclaimed to his huge election night audience that
during the previous couple of weeks, “We were not having a reality-based
conversation” given the map he had before him, showing Mr. Trump with a
clear opportunity to reach the White House.
That was an extraordinary admission; if the news media failed to present
a reality-based political scenario, then it failed in performing its
most fundamental function. ...
They
think something is so wrong that all the fact-checking of Mr. Trump
this year, the countless reports of his lies — which he uttered more
than Mrs. Clinton did — and the vigorous investigation of his business
and personal transgressions, bothered them far less than the perceived
national ills Mr. Trump was pointing to and promising to fix.
In
their view the government was broken, the economic system was broken,
and, we heard so often, the news media was broken, too. Well, something
surely is broken.
Ya think? That's the end of the article. The time for coyness has long passed. Why don't you grow a pair and just say what you think is broke. It hit you square in the nose and you still don't say it. Ah but then you might have to risk appearing to agree with those racist cavemen.
If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially
dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move
closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable
and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist
I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.
Whoops! I don't want to say I accidentally helped elect Trump, but I accidentally helped elect Trump.
Any objective observer of the news media’s treatment of Trump can
certainly conclude that reporters are taking a side in this election
— and they don’t have to be wearing a button that says “I’m with her”
for this to be readily apparent. The irony is that the media’s Trump
bashing may wind up having the exact opposite of its intended effect.
Polls
shows that journalism is one of the least respected professions in the
country, and with Trump calling out media organizations for their bias,
widespread slanted reporting is bound to reinforce this point — and to
backfire. Trump’s campaign is throwing down the gauntlet to the
political class. If journalists are seen as the mouthpiece of that
class, they may soon find themselves covering Trump’s inauguration.
The schadenfreude never ends. I hope Trump's presidency brings about positive change, and is otherwise uneventful, but the dark twisted part of me is cheering on for more entertainment.
The
triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality
television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection
of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the
world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on
everything from trade to immigration.
The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.
Ah
yes, the establishment. The establishment Republicans didn't want him,
nor the Democrats, nor Wall Street. I couldn't think of a better
endorsement.
5. Listen when they say the jobs have left their areas. That they
can’t afford their health insurance premiums or the penalties for not
having it. They can’t afford their tax rates. They can’t afford to take
their kids to see the doctor, can’t afford to take vacations with their
families, live in fear one-paycheck-to-the-next of missing their
mortgage payment. Listen when they say they are afraid of losing jobs to
overseas and to immigration. Listen when they say they are afraid of
terrorism inside the U.S. Listen, and don’t reflexively dismiss their
concerns as closet racism.
6. Listen when they say how seriously they take their right to own
and bear arms. Don’t reflexively dismiss them as redneck fetishists.
Don’t sneer on social media about how they must have some anatomical
shortcoming for which to compensate. Listen when they say they will die
on the hill of the Second Amendment because they are afraid of an
authoritarian leader taking control of the country.
That burning?
That’s irony.
7. Listen, as well, to why they didn’t like the other candidate. How
they feel about entrenched political dynasties who sell access to make
millions, who conspire to rig the economy for their friends in the 1%,
and do nothing while the poor and middle class fall further behind.
Is Trump authoritarian? I don't know. I hope not, but he's displayed a mildly alarming tendency to favor an authoritarian style. Will that, if it's his thing, translate into authoritarian policies? Maybe, thankfully he's not a religious zealot, nor a drug warrior, nor a hawkish warmonger. At least he wasn't more often than he was, while campaigning.
He's not a very consistent politician. He's just not a politician. He's a blank slate with a few stains.
Trump might be easily compared to a comic book villain, but that doesn't make his supporters one-dimensional minions. Ken White (Popehat), bless his heart, insultingly explains that Trump supporters aren't racist, they just have a little attention deficit problem:
... attributing a Trump victory to racism and misogyny is a quick, cheap,
easy way out. People aren't that simple. Americans didn't
conclusively reject racism by electing President Obama, and didn't
conclusively embrace it by electing President Trump. Trial lawyers know
this: people don't make decisions like computers. People don't tend
to weigh all the evidence or consider all the factors or evaluate every
counter-argument to every argument. People tend, in small decisions and
big ones, to latch on to a few main ideas, come to a conclusion, and
then stop considering contrary evidence. A man sees what he wants to
see, and disregards the rest. Obama's election didn't mean Americans
were free of racism; it meant that Obama effectively communicated big
ideas that connected and shut down the other voices whispering in our
ears. Certainly some Trump supporters are avowedly racist, but some of
them latched on to big ideas and stopped listening to the rest — like
his troubling flirtation with evil.
I get what Ken is saying; it's a lot like confirmation bias, and perhaps a little laziness. But for an eloquent lawyer, that paragraph is damning with faint psychological process explanation.
And the "Troubling flirtation with evil!" Did I miss some evil Trump speech or something? Did he say he likes to kill puppies?
I have some disagreements with protectionism, nationalism, strict immigration, and "locker-room talk," but I wouldn't go so far to call them flirtations with evil.
I honestly don't get this Trump-is-evil stuff. Everybody says it, but damn if I can find direct evidence of it. I guess I'm supposed to "latch on to [those] ideas, come to a conclusion, and then stop considering contrary evidence" regarding Trump's evilness.
A loudmouth politically incorrect dirty old man, sure. An evil man, I don't see it. Popehat continues:
Hillary Clinton won an epic, historic struggle to be the worst
Presidential candidate ever. Ultimately she won that struggle — and
thus lost the Presidency — because she did not persuade. She did not
articulate her core ideas effectively enough, and so not enough people
latched onto them and disregarded the bad things about her. Trump
dallied with racism — hell, Trump nailed racism in the coat closet and
walked out smirking — but Clinton still did worse with Latinos,
African-Americans, and Asians than Obama did. It may be that she was
doomed from the start — too much baggage, too many vulnerabilities. Or
it could be that she lacked Obama's power to persuade. She couldn't get
them to accept her simple pitch and shut everything else out. Trump
could.
It falls to realistic Trump opponents not to crush the people who
voted for him, but to persuade them. In this election the GOP showed
that it could fight back against demographic change — not just by
marshaling high percentages of white voters, but by persuading
higher-than-expected percentages of minorities. The Democrats can't
respond to that by writing 40% of the country off as irredeemable.
Hubris and Entitlement: The catastrophic polling failures of 2016 reflect the fatal pride of Clinton's team and what I'll call "the establishment."
Americans are stubborn and proud. They'll be persuaded, but they
won't be told who to vote for like you'd tell a recalcitrant child to
eat his vegetables. The media, childishly obsessed with Donald Trump
(and frankly unenthused with Hillary Clinton) promoted a us-versus-them
mentality. It was far more class-based than race-based — it was the
message "isn't it unbelievable and hilarious that those people support
Trump." The message was "of COURSE vote Clinton, you idiot" or "you're
pretty dim but at least you can see how to vote on THIS one." Generally
people can't be expected to embrace stories that demean them.
There was another way, but hardly anybody took it. There was the way
of "let me earn your vote by persuading you why these policies are
right," conveyed as part of an effective set of ideas. There were far
too few forceful and effective advocates of how free trade makes us
richer and freer. There were too few people willing to risk a genuine
discussion of the costs of frequent military intervention. Everyone was
too busy arguing what immigration policies they didn't support to debate specific policies that they did support.
The anti-Trump message was based too strongly on entitlement — based on who you are, we are entitled to your vote, by right.
You can see that in the frothing rage at third-party voters after
Clinton's defeat. You'll see it in the ugly backlashes coming at the
minority voters who didn't vote "correctly." But voting isn't a matter
of entitlement. "Vote for me because the other guy's horrific" is not
an effective method to persuade or get out the vote. It's an idea that
focuses on the other guy, not you. You've got to deserve victory.
Clinton didn't. Clinton stank of entitlement to rule, the
media conveyed that message, and that message fatally amplified
Clinton's scandals, conveying that Clinton was entitled to follow the
rules differently, to act differently, to be treated preferentially.
This is what a lot of Hillary voters don't get. Just because Trump was a terrible candidate, doesn't automatically translate to the alternative being a saint. Especially when accompanied by name-calling, silencing, and plain old bullying. I was an undecided voter right up until the last day. I didn't want to vote for Trump, nor Clinton. But everyday on my GAMING twitter feed, there was some insult lobbed toward Trump supporters, liked and retweeted several times. If they weren't racist, misogynist, homophobic, or xenophobic, then they were called idiots. Who wants to join a bunch of assholes? Keep your circlejerk of political hate.
I wanted to vote for Trump just to stick it to those guys. I ended up voting for Johnson, but it was a difficult decision. Even in a safe state where my vote didn't matter.
Before I ramble further, I really want to quote at length from John Michael Greer at Archdruid Report, hardly a Trump supporter, who wrote this a week before the election:
The talking heads insisted that handing over tax dollars to various corporate welfare queens would bring jobs back to American communities; the corporations in question pocketed the tax dollars and walked away. The talking heads insisted that if working class people went to college at their own expense and got retrained in new skills, that would bring jobs back to American communities; the academic industry profited mightily but the jobs never showed up, leaving tens of millions of people buried so deeply under student loan debt that most of them will never recover financially. The talking heads insisted that this or that or the other political candidate would bring jobs back to American communities by pursuing exactly the same policies that got rid of the jobs in the first place—essentially the same claim that the Clinton campaign is making now—and we know how that turned out. ...
We’ve got the news
articles insisting, in tones by turns glowing and shrill, that things have
never been better in the United States and anyone who says otherwise is just
plain wrong; we’ve got the economic pronouncements predicated on continuing
growth at a time when the only things growing in the US economy are its total
debt load and the number of people who are permanently unemployed; we’ve got
the overblown displays of military might and technological prowess, reminiscent
of nothing so much as the macho posturing of balding middle-aged former
athletes who are trying to pretend that they haven’t lost it; we’ve got the
tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent suburban districts
around Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco, looking forward to
their next vacation in whatever the currently fashionable spot might happen to
be, babbling on the internet about the good life under predatory
cybercapitalism.
Meanwhile millions of Americans trudge through a bleak round
of layoffs, wage cuts, part-time jobs at minimal pay, and system-wide
dysfunction. The crisis hasn’t hit yet, but those members of the political
class who think that the people who used to be rock-solid American patriots
will turn out en masse to keep today’s apparatchiks secure in their comfortable
lifestyles have, as the saying goes, another think coming. ...
Thus the grassroots movement that propelled Trump ... might best be understood as the last gasp of the American dream.
Maybe it's true people are voting for memberberries. Things were nice for them back in the day. Now everything seems to be going to shit. And it is for them. It is for me. Health insurance prices go way up every year. Roads and bridges are falling apart, jobs haven't really come back, there doesn't appear to be an end to terrorism or the war against it. And now the American dream that nearly every adult prior to 2008 could reasonably expect, is absurdly out of reach for millions. Even if you're college educated. Stick to a tiny apartment, ramen noodles, and in 40 years you too could own your own small house! Or retire. Pick one.
So some guy comes up to you and says, "I feel you. I will bring the jobs back. I will make America great again." And then this lady you know, but aren't so sure about says, "What's he talking about, America is already great. Don't be a racist."
The election was in the bag. Only fringe racists supported Trump. Who cares about some email thing, you racist!
The Future
I have to admit, I am a little bit glad to see the hubris
explode in their faces. And now I feel icky. That's another
thing. The level of vitriol and hate toward the opposition is
worse than during the Bush years, worse than either Obama election.
I’d like to suggest, furthermore, that the fixation on
personalities—or, again, malicious parodies of personalities—has played a huge
role in making politics in the United States so savage, so divisive, and so
intractably deadlocked on so many of the things that matter just now. The
issues I mentioned a few paragraphs back—US foreign policy toward a resurgent
Russia, on the one hand, and US economic policy regarding the offshoring of
jobs and the importation of foreign workers—are not only important, they’re
issues about which reasonable disagreement is possible. What’s more, they’re
issues on which negotiation, compromise, and the working out of a mutually
satisfactory modus vivendi between competing interests are also possible, at
least in theory.
In practice? Not while each side is insisting at the top of
its lungs that the other side is led by a monster of depravity and supported
only by people who hate everything good in the world. I’d like to suggest that
it’s exactly this replacement of reasoned politics with a pretty close
equivalent of the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell’s 1984 that’s among the
most important forces keeping this country from solving any of its problems or
doing anything to brace itself for the looming crises ahead. ...
I’m not sure how many people have noticed, though, that the election of
Donald Trump was not merely a rebuke to the liberal left; it was also a defeat
for the religious right. It’s worth recalling that the evangelical wing of the
Republican Party had its own favorites in the race for the GOP nomination, and
Trump was emphatically not one of them. It has not been a propitious autumn for
the movements of left and right whose stock in trade is trying to force their
own notion of virtue down the throats of the American people—and maybe, just
maybe, that points to the way ahead.
It’s time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the
traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the
overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the
people. It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never
going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of
moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about
the people of Massachusetts; furthermore, it’s time for government at all
levels to give up trying to impose cultural uniformity on the lively diversity
of our republic’s many nations, and settle for their proper role of ensuring
equal protection under the laws, and those other benefits that governments, by
their nature, are best suited to provide for their citizens.
It's hard for me to disagree with Greer. The "coastal elite," the liberal bubbles, all the people who don't understand flyover country--you've seen them, you know many of them have difficulty accepting political loss. When you've sufficiently defined your opponents as bigoted, then summarily dismiss them (as civility demands), your brain interprets losing to such people as totally unacceptable, virtually unconscionable, as if the Joker killed Batman, as if the world is suddenly just wrong. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"
There's a good chance they won't understand. A good chance they won't listen. A good chance they will crawl back into their bubbles and ignore and/or dismiss us. Decentralizing the federal government might well be a good idea for both sides, but power is addicting. And I doubt the "coastal elite" will willingly trade in their heroin for some weed.
Besides, it's back to business as usual, according to Kos:
If Trump wants to pass a new Voting Rights Act, or renominate Merrick
Garland, then we can work with him. Anything else, he can go fuck
himself. Infrastructure spending? Let him get the votes from his own
caucus. Anything else he might propose, even if we might agree with it?
Let him get the votes from his own caucus while we hurl metaphorical
molotov cocktails from the sideline.
They broke it, they own it.
Soon
the president will no longer be black; it'll be okay to oppose him
guys. Remember when we used the nuclear option to overcome vote hurdles
and filibusters? Remember when we used executive orders to bypass congress? Well, times change and it's not cool anymore.
