The Trump Administration is bullying its way into big wins. Pundits warn about the cost to civic society, but why should the Trumpies care about that? They’re getting what they want and that’s what really matters.
Trump is Winning. Sure, the Country is Screwed But Who Cares?
10 Comments. Leave new
May I point out, Ted, that all of the elements mentioned above were present in US politics (and those of other countries as well) long before the election of Mr Trump ? I’m aware of the risk of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning, but doesn’t the causal arrow rather point in the other direction….
Henri
Perhaps that’s the point of the exercise? When you’re in power, you work toward those things that are beneficial to everyone? So that demagoguery and party sneakery have less of a chance of tainting the process of what government is supposed to be there for?
Example: In 2000, when Al Gore “won” and Dubya asterisked, a lot of people on the Democrat side pissed and moaned about the Electoral College and how it had to be reformed. And nothing got fixed. Why? Because it was un-possible. The Republicans didn’t want to make nice. Those meanies! So wildly popular (TM) Barack Obama couldn’t do it. He also couldn’t close Gitmo (Hey, we elected a president, not a king), and he absolutely couldn’t jail any bankers (how would he get a foursome for golf when he retired?).
Then, in 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, again due to the Electoral College and completely not because she was a deeply flawed candidate who energized the Republican base which absolutely loathed her. And, again, quite a few Democrats kept going on about how Hillary got more actual votes and how the whole thing is just, totes, super-double-wicked unfair and needs to be reformed.
(An aside. In the World Series, they don’t play seven games, total up all the runs, and give the trophy to the team that had the most runs. They go game by game. Whoever gets to four games won is the winner of the whole damned thing. We don’t go through a fit-pitching every year because the Boston Bruins had one game where they scored 14 runs against 1 run by the LA Lakers but lost every remaining game 1-0.)
When Sanders wins in 2020, I strongly doubt the Electoral College will matter to his victory because he’ll actually beat Trump decisively. And what will the solons in the Democratic Party do? Why, bless my soul, they’ll completely stop bothering about the Electoral College reforms they’ve wanted for a couple of weeks after each election they lost due to the Electoral College.
The only reason Trump will get re-elected (I assume that the DNC won’t rig the primaries against Sanders so that Elizabeth Warren, who is now about as toxic as a bushel basket of plutonium, can have her shot at being the inevitable first female president) is because the Republicans consistently come through (at least in the public’s perception) on their promises. I honest-to-God can’t think of a single promise a Democrat has made that he or she has actually come through on. Healthcare? Nope. Increased minimum wage? Kind of, but not really. Bankers in prison? Nope-a-dope-dope. Infrastructure repair? Well, gee, it’s complicated …
R’s also delivering huge military budgets and wars and drones galore.
Except Trump would never laugh at himself. That would require some humility.
The problem for Trump’s success, which as noted is destroying a lot of the moral structure of the country is how the inevitable reaction to it, the backlash, will run when it comes — and it will come. If a lot of the old stuff is still around, the people who are attached to it slow down and mitigate the reaction. If you’ve cleared the field, the reaction runs unhindered. No one knows for sure what that reaction will be, but it probably won’t be nice, and it certainly is not likely to be ‘liberal’ or ‘leftist’ except possibly in name only. Of course outside forces may remove the whole game from the board: economic collapse, early climate catastrophe, war, plague, famine, and so on. But otherwise I think the Republican choice to destroy the country is ill-advised.
Rancorous partisanship, corrosion of civil culture, distrust of government, contempt for electoral democracy…
… well, yeah, but methinks that’s a cause rather than an effect.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H. L. Mencken
Mencken was a bitingly funny man, but his antipathy for Roosevelt was not shared with the people who elected him (FDR) four times.
I read a book of Mencken’s, for the humor, and because I like to understand more about things and people I disagree with.
Mentally pushing back against the opposition is like gaining strength though resistance training. I’ve even made some progress through Mein Kampf.
“During the Great Depression, Mencken did not support the New Deal. This cost him popularity, as did his strong reservations regarding US participation in World War II, and his overt contempt for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken
Oh, all true – but I do love many of his quotes. The satirical cynicism just resonates with me. Well, that and he’s occasionally spot one:
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
“spot on“
“Pundits warn about the cost to civic society, but why should the Trumpies care about that? They’re getting what they want and that’s what really matters.”
From Trumps position, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
Like 10 of the first 12 presidents who lived high on the wealth created by their slaves, none could have their wealth without consuming the lives of their slaves.
How to consume without destroying is beyond the ken of one, like Trump, who buys and owns that which pays him.
The Oligarchic owners of government, and in government, live high on the taxes, dividends, and interest paid to them by those who earn by producing wealth for owning Oligarchs to consume.
“In Inequality for All—a 2013 documentary with Robert Reich in which he argued that income inequality is the defining issue for the United States—Reich states that 95% of economic gains went to the top 1% net worth (HNWI) since 2009 when the recovery allegedly started.[9] More recently, in 2017, an Oxfam study found that eight rich people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States