As part of the wider dawning that even if Trump were to lose, some 60m Americans will have voted for him, Obama has just spoken of the GOP's 'swamp of crazy' and its responsibility for the rise of the demagogue; the suggestion being that this all politicians' doing, a dial that can be turned back.
Yet surely it was inevitable that in a society that has so unashamedly celebrated winning, and in a manner divorced from ethical concerns, that the losers would eventually congeal into a fairly serious cultural problem. That it took so long is actually remarkable.
Perhaps the losers had been assuaged by the perception that other ‘communities’, were losing more bigly, or that loserdom was always just a temporary state of affairs in the greatest nation on earth. Neither of these propositions have quite the firmness of yesteryear now.
And so they have adopted Trump, the self-conscious winner who appears more than able to think and talk like a loser.
1 comment:
It is a matter of perception. People in general are doing better today than they were 40 years ago. My children all own better homes than I did at their age and at a dam sight lower interest rate. My first home buy was at 14.5 %. The standard of living is just better today. The nut jobs that want to "go back" can't seem to remember just how hard making a living used to be. I worked a year of 7/12s in 1985. I got two weeks of vacation in that year but that was it, 12 hour days, 7 days a week. Work it or kick stones on your way out and that was in a union shop. In the early 80s, I was laid off from three jobs at once and they had a rule, if you signed up for college, you lost your unemployment benefit. I worked an oil field job where many weeks, I was on the clock for over a hundred hours-again do it or kick stones.
I just can't see the left behind mindset, anyone who is willing to work is going to do well. It is not an overnight, doing well kind of thing, it takes time. Stuff costs money and it takes a decade or two to pile up your stuff .
I see a lot of rundown places that have Trump signs in their yards but the vast majority are in places that cost 2or3 hundred , thousand dollar payments. They are doing pretty damn well.
I would lay a good bit of the crazy Trump, right at Rupert Murdoch's feet. He has screamed at the American public for years. I see his propaganda in Doctor's waiting rooms, bars, even the checkouts in stores with a steady stream of right wing hooy and outright lies. You tell a lie long enough and it seems true. A lot of good people have bought into the lie.
It's funny, Rupert is having buyers remorse. He is afraid he has spawned a dictator, his little empire will be the first thing nationalized under a Trump dictatorship. In the national interest, of course.
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