November 14, 2020 - 9:00am
One of the most powerful forces in modern politics is LARPing — the political version of dressing up and re-enacting history.
This is not a new development, by any means; in the late 18th century French schoolboys learned up to four hours a day of Roman history, and much of the subsequent revolution, republic and empire was hugely influenced by this obsession with Rome. Later, and more darkly, the Nazi conquest of eastern Europe was a medieval fantasy for some, a potent mixture of the Teutonic Knights and Joachim of Fiore’s Third Age, while more recently ISIS were certainly LARPing at playing warriors from Late Antiquity.
President Trump, who finally might be going — at least he’s kept his dignity right til the end! — was the ultimate LARPers’s foil. Since the start of his presidency the narrative among large sections of the US media has been that the United States is entering its fascist moment, a prophecy first made after the war by west coast psychologists who saw the country turning into the Third Reich (as America famously did in the 1960s with flower power and the Civil Rights movement).
Trump’s opponents referred to themselves as “the Resistance”. HBO gave us a series about America being run by a populist Nazi sympathiser and various journalists made dreadfully weak historical analogies about “Drumpf” being Hitler.
Trump wasn’t Hitler; he was a corrupt, populist demagogue, prone to nepotism and compulsive lying, with a great knack for cruel humour, more closely resembling something from Latin America or central Asia. He may be a nationalist, but that’s not the same as being a racial purist.
Trump was painted as Hitler because this provided a psychological need for many of America’s commentariat, who are personally bored and anxious. The rest of the country clearly didn’t see him that way, and Trump did pretty well among Hispanic and black voters, who had a more realistic view of his racial attitudes than the country’s professional commentators.
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SubscribeThe party that used to represent the interests of the working class have decided that the working class are unreconstructed racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic misogynists. The working class, unable to detect much evidence of this, looked around for someone else to represent their political interests. The only candidate was Trump. Democrats, thwarted, went insane. Then society did.
“Trumpism” – rejection of the claim that ordinary people are “bad”, and acceptance of the agendas of almost anyone who will oppose it – will endure for as long as the claim does.
Until we find a way of expelling from our institutions and political system radical feminism, critical race theory, identity politics, grievance studies, Social Justice, cultural relativism, and all the other pathologies of postmodern victim hood, our societies will continue to be driven insane.
“…the interests of the working class…”
Democrats got the majority of the vote in 2016 and 2020 Election. I don’t see why a construction worker in Montana is more “real working class” than a plumber in Bronx!
Or are we to believe that the majority of voters are ALL bankers, lawyers, coders, actors…and so on.
The plumber in the Bronx is likely union or Mafia, so not quite like a Montana carpenter.
what is wrong with union members?
Isn’t that historically how labor was organized?
Mafia…LOL
What world do you live in?
Are the Teamsters still around?
The issue I believe is not that Democrats secured a majority but why, given the manifest failings of the alternative, that it is so slim as to fall within the error margins of the Electoral College system.
I don’t see why any of those workers are any more real than any other either or, indeed, what point you are seeking to make. Certainly I am not claiming that a property that is true of a class in aggregate is true when applied to each member of that class, as you appear to suggest.
“that it is so slim as to fall within the error margins of the Electoral College system.”
The electoral college (a well known fact) is biased toward rural states that vote Republican/Trump. I don’t see why/how the Electoral college is a more accurate reflection of popular sentiment than the popular vote.
Right now Biden is winning by 5.5M votes (and i think the gap will grow):Biden won the electoral vote 306-232 – so not very close at all.
It could very well bee that c.150K votes (WI, AZ, GE, PE) could have delivered victory to Trump. But he still would have lost the popular vote by almost 5M.
The country is divided (almost 50/50 think of Brexit vote) and the issues are cultural and economic.
c.50% of the people are willing to sacrifice economic gains for cultural gains and the other c.50% is willing the opposite.
There is no national consensus (like we had post WW2).
I have no problem with any of the above, I just find it fascinating how half of the country claims to be “The People” while accusing the other half being “The Elite”.
As you suggest, the terms may indeed be misnomers, but there is a ring of truth to those labels. I think your penultimate paragraph sums up the division very well. I voted for the Republican Party, not because I support Donald Trump, but because I support Trump supporters. I’ve been fortunate enough to live and work in both conservative and liberal environments. I left a very ‘liberal’ workplace simply because, well, it wasn’t really liberal. There were speech codes, accusations of micro-aggressions, informer culture, and conformist behavior. No-one was happy with it, but no-one would ever say anything about it openly either. Basically, they were cowards. Even though the people I worked with considered themselves inclusive, they were the most xenophobic people I’ve ever worked with. They were highly educated, but also very contemptuous about those who thought differently to them. I left a well-paid, tenured position because I could no longer stand being in that kind of environment.
For the past five years I’ve been living and working in the rural South, and I can’t adequately express what a breathe of fresh air it is. It is not without it’s problems, but I just enjoy the company of Trump supporters more. I can crack open a beer, sit on a friend’s porch and talk about anything that comes to mind without fear of causing offense. The people here aren’t the most eloquent, but there’s an openness and honesty about them that I’ve come to admire, and never really encountered in more liberal enclaves. A few exceptions aside, most people voted for Trump, not because they believed he would do anything for them, but because he wasn’t part of a political party that has directed nothing but contempt and vitriol against them for the last thirty years. Whatever his faults, Trump understood red-state Americans and tapped into their grievances.
When one of my students was asked angrily in class by another student why he had voted for Trump, he summed it up very well when he answered that he would rather vote for a man everybody hates, than for a party that hates him.
The reason the ‘Elites’ are so called is because they hold almost all institutional power in the US which they wield to impose and enforce yet more rules, laws, and policies on an unreceptive populace. What’s the point of being economically well-off if you can’t be yourself?
Supreme court is conservative, Senate/Congress is almost 50/50, many states are conservative. So how does the Elite holds almost all the institutional power? Because it looks to me like it is 50/50.
No one (certainly not the liberal left) is stopping Mobile Alabama from becoming a cultural center to compete with NYC/LA. No one is stopping Montana from competing with Silicon Valley.
The question you should ask is why the elite is liberal and conservative?
” I voted for the Republican Party, not because I support Donald Trump, but because I support Trump supporters.” – that is the definition of tribalism. The whole point of tribalism (and it applies to both sides – despite your comment) is that the default position is “my tribe no matter what”.
“…they wield to impose and enforce yet more rules, laws, and policies on an unreceptive populace.” – that is why we have elections.
” I voted for the Republican Party, not because I support Donald Trump, but because I support Trump supporters.” – that is the definition of tribalism.”
But Trump supporters think they have been screwed-over. They suspect that the jobs that used to support them have been shipped out so that those who think themselves more deserving than mere Deplorables can have cheap stuff.
And I think that they have a point. There is no moral equivalence between these two tribes as you (I think) suggest. And these “Trumpers” aren’t going away. And they have my sympathy.
But shipping out the jobs was more economically efficient. Doing what’s economically efficient is always what’s best for everyone – or so these Trump-voters have assured me over the years, every time I’ve dared complain about cutthroat capitalism.
I am inclined to be sympathetic to people being screwed over by cold logic of the market, but it would be easier if they hadn’t suddenly started clamouring for market interference the moment unchecked capitalism became inconvenient for them. At the very least, if they want laws to protect them from competition with harder-working people, then I expect they’ll also be willing to support welfare for the sick, the handicapped and other people who can’t work as hard as others, right? You know, since being hard-working is apparently no longer a cardinal virtue now that it’s turned out that Asians work harder than Americans, and all?
I don’t support Trump. I sympathise with those who voted for his message. That is where I came in.
“…from competition with harder-working people.”
that is not what it is about. And don’t try and blame working class people for what I regard as your sins. It is an old trick and it doesn’t work on me.
There is a haunting line from Dylan’s version of North Country Blues:
“They say that your ore ain’t worth digging,
It’s much cheaper down,
In South American mines,
Where the workers work almost for nothing.”
Vulture Capitalism Friends include ”Globalists” like George Soros,late michael strong,richard branson , the Green Party &Chinese Communist Party .race to the bottom
Asians work more cheaply. People who work more cheaply are apt to work ‘harder’. You didn’t know that?
I told people years ago to watch what happens when Chinese wages skyrocket. It’s happening now.
“..Trump supporters think they have been screwed-over.” Yes from people LIKE Trump.
Where did Trump makes his Trump line of clothes?
Ivanka?
Is that it – A line in clothing?
It is the Democrat establishment that trashed countless working class jobs by outsourcing to China, amongst other places – Places where the workers work almost for nothing.
The more I read comments by smug, self-serving “liberals” (you’re far from the worst), the more I support The Deplorables.
Same thing happened in Uk in 1980s China took Northampton,Leicester Boot7shoe manufacture..
Liberals are so high and mighty that they don’t recognise the fact that they are the most tribal group of all and happily exclude and villify those who don’t conform to their woke rules and dictats. They take no account of their privilege and easy and exclusive access to cultural capital.They punch down on those who they see as their ‘inferiors’. When those ‘deplorables’ and ‘fly-over’ country people fight back and flex their muscles they go into apoplexy and become deranged. Their vindictiveness towards Trump supporters is a case in point.
They don’t just suspect that jobs have been shipped out, they know that they have. So do we. And it’s the same on the other side of The Pond. Jobs shipped out, immigrants shipped in, in both cases to the cost of ordinary working class families.
Where things are subject to a public vote, the elite still has to share power. It is everywhere else they dominate: Universities, the media, the banks & tech industry, the public sector.
Yes, this is why they in fact try to circumvent democracy. They hate sharing power with the ‘plebs.’
Jeremy, Brian made an eloquent and convincing case, that chimed with me, even if not you. I have moved away from the Left, basically because so much of it is so intolerant and hectoring, and indeed verging on unhinged irrationality in its dominant ‘woke’ form. This by the way does have a big influence on administrative practice even where there are conservative governments in ‘power’. (… People who menstruate’…. anyone).
You talk about the political power of the Right, but culturally the left is completely dominant.The universities are overwhelminly left liberal in the US and increasingly so in the UK. For example, I can’t think of a single play in recent years that has a right of centre or conservative point of view.
In general despite rightish activism on some some specific issues, perhaps Brexit, there isn’t really a simple symmetry between Left and Right. The latter are simply less obsessed by politicising the whole of life, and indeed on that basis can be better company!
You’re Sanctomonius drivel,isn’t true.. . I seem to remember mainstream Said Nixon had won fairly in 1972 ,no mention of stuffed Ballots or Kennedy in 1960 illegal dumping of thousands of Votes….The idea senile Joe (Ukraine) biden got more ‘Democrat’ Votes than Hilary clinton ,Barack obama doesn’t compute…Truth comes out months or years later…
The significance of the difference you are claiming is about (5.5/233.7) 2%. The accuracy of the measurement of a tiny thing is not salient to the observation that it is tiny.
It take a nation of liars to hold us back.
Hillary Clinton got 48.5% of the vote in the 2016 election by the official count, not even close to a majority. If you remove the illegal votes by non-citizen voters from the tallies of all of the candidates, her percentage of the vote would have been even smaller. Professor Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University estimated it added more than 800 thousand votes to her margin over Trump in the popular vote and it could well have been more. No-one knows if Biden got the majority of the vote in this election as the volume of Democratic voter fraud hasn’t been established yet. There has been no final official tally. Why don’t you take a break, Jeremy? You are commenting non-stop and your don’t even have your facts right.
Do you have any idea how many false votes the Democrats make? Well over 1 million in Los Angeles county alone.
Trump stood up to the truly fascist state – China – that has already bought the Bidens, with 1.5 billion of Chinese money paid to Hunter’s investment vehicle. And he was the first president in living memory to try and bring back jobs for working class Americans, as opposed to sending their jobs to China and Mexico etc. He was the first president since Carter not to start or enlarge a war in his first term. Biden – supported by those who lied us into Iraq – is already banging the war drums.
In effect, Trump was perhaps our last hope against neo-liberal globalism or the the Great Reset. He was defeated through a combination of voter fraud and ballot harvesting etc, and media lies. It is all very depressing.
Indeed it is and Mr West’s article rather underestimates the dangers of what we now face; for the fantasies to which he refers have lodged themselves deep in the American upper class psyche, taking the place vacated by puritan religion, and as a result believed in with the same grim zeal. It took decades for the icy certitudes of the Reformation to relax into toleration; and we all know that declining societies are especially prone to hysteria. Declining Rome persecuted the Christians; declining China was prey to cultic movements and strange sects. Today’s America, therefore, offers small hope of a return to sanity among its increasingly anti-democratic elite. We must hope that either Trump manages to overturn this squalid, gerrymandered result; or that he exposes sufficient malpractice to hobble Biden from the start; or that the Senate Republicans recover a sufficient smidgen of classical-liberal conviction to oppose the new totalitarians. And all these hopes are slender.
“…squalid, gerrymandered result”
As of today out of 13 legal cases 12 have been thrown out for lack of evidence.
Knowing something is true is one thing. Proving it quickly is something else. Google for the most corrupt cities in the US. Among the top 15 you will find Philly, Detroit and Las Vegas. Each has longstanding Democrat political machines in place. In each, vote counting was delayed for one reason or another(Atlanta also). If you are going to rig an election, you need to have enough votes to swing the election but not so many as to be ridiculous. You can’t have too few for obvious reasons. So you wait; and they did.
“Knowing something is true is one thing.”
You don’t know, you pretend that you know.
based on your line of “thinking” (democrats are corrupt) how is that Arizona and Georgia went Biden. Are you suggesting that Republican party/machine that has ruled those states for a generation or more “gave” the election to Biden?
“Proving it quickly is something else. ” – if you bother to read (Google it – as per your suggestion) the court transcripts in Arizona and Pennsylvania the Trump’s lawyers are asked by the judges if they are claiming fraud? Their answer is always NO!
Mail in voting made this shabby propaganda victory possible. But don’t worry Jeremy, the American people will not be denied. Trump is but a prelude for The One. The Liberal oligarchs behaviour demands it.
“Mail in voting” is widely used in Florida (old people) that voted Trump (Republican in general).
The problem is that mail-in voting was suddenly imposed on states that had never done it before. At least those few states that already have been using mail-in voting for years had procedures and fraud-detection in place. With sudden mass mail-in voting imposed at the last minute during These Troubled Times, we have a situation where in the most contested election in decades, with half the country thinking one candidate is Hitler, the means to engineer significant fraud in key, big-Machine Democrat areas has magically appeared.
> lawyers are asked by the judges if they are claiming fraud? Their answer is always NO!
Following Popehat on Twitter is illuminating for this. Lawyers asked direct questions by judges have things like disbarrement and contempt on their minds when answering, so the margin for lying is smaller.
The lawyers are asking the courts to order more transparency. They can’t prove fraud, mistake, or malfeasance without access to the data. We are looking at VERY suspicious activities and voting counts (i.e. major cities in swing states shutting down the count at the same time on election night, apparent counting of votes after the “shut-down”, the four key cities that had sudden Biden surges in votes in the middle of the night showing vote totals for Biden that far surpass those cast in 2012 for Obama, etc.) and these results along with sworn affidavits from eye-witnesses to suspicious activity provide good reasons to look further into the data.
Well, I’ll grant you that this is true. For instance, we know that Trump is a crook and a rapist, and yet it’s proved annoyingly hard to prove it. Such is the nature of the justice system, alas.
That said, if the most despicable person imaginable can’t win a popularity contest, there is no need to imagine any sort of conspiracy behind it since a far more natural and plausible explanation suggests itself, i.e., that a considerably number of people didn’t want to see his face in the news anymore. That he won the first one is considerably more suspicious… but of course no one could prove any wrong-doings there, either.
You beggar questions with greater ease than a lockdown beggars underpaid menial workers.
Evidence that China has bought Biden. Not Q Anon conspiracy theories.
As of today out of 13 legal cases brought by Trump lawyers 12 have been thrown out for lack of evidence. So if you are right about massive scale fraud it should be easily proven in court – not in twitter.
The greaT BANKERS COLLAPSE of 2008-2009, THE RECESSION WHICH WAS HARVESTING TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS BY global MONEY ENTITIES, RESULTED IN EVERY PERSON LOSING MONEY, AND THE GREATLY WEALTHY HARVESTING IT. TRILLIONS INTENTIONALLY STOLEN! not one was prosecuted! The courts high enough seemly do as they are told to do.
Courts (juries?) don’t prosecute – they pass judgement on the evidence presented by prosecution and defense.
Nit-picking, Mr Smith. Obviously I mean the entire Justice system and the Politicians who oversee it. The Global Billionaires got Trillions, and got away with it. Your position seems to be that the election must be fair as the Democrats are getting away with it.
It is your accusation that the elections are not fair. Provide evidence, and as of now Team Trump has failed. If fraud is as massive as you claim it is it should be easily proven. The default position of the justice system is innocent until proven guilty.
Are we to believe that Republican states (Georgia, Arizona) are in the fraud?
Perception matters. I have always taken it for granted that American elections are as bent as a three pound note: The Presidency is something you buy. I don’t worry about it. Why should I, it ain’t my country and they can pick their President by inspecting chicken giblets for all the difference it makes to me? The only thing that sticks in my throat a bit, is the image that has been created of Biden as some kind of great guy come to save his country. Gimme a break on that one!
For what my opinion is worth, I think that Trump is setting things up for the next round rather than fighting this one, so don’t ball-watch.
“The Presidency is something you buy”
Clinton outspend Trump and he won.
Bloomberg spend almost 1 billion and won absolutely nothing.
You can b*gger your campaign I accept that.
Out of 46, you name 2 who did
You need millions to win the White House. Either your own millions, or from your backers.
Iceland Prosecuted 27 Bankers in 2010, for Corrupt practises insider Knowledge etc….just because Something is Corrupt doesn’t mean,the establishment will Want to uncover it….Climate change, SARS2 panic etc…all beloved by Anti-libertarians Who Demand your Taxes, You have to comply to latest Orwellian measures at work ”Unconscious bias” …Dont you ”love” Sanctmonius liberals?..not
Who needs voter fraud and ballot harvesting when you’ve got a histrionic media mob on your side?
That CNN reporter, Christian Armanpour just compared Trump’s Administration to Kristalnacht & the Holocaust showing the vivd destruction of the Nazis while she ranted on and on – is exhibit A. Armanpour used to be worth listening to, but she’s clearly gone down the TDS hole.
Wasn’t Wolf hopelessly and embarrassingly wrong about sodomy executions?
Comprehensively.
Yes, and if memory serves me, she publicly acknowledged her error. So one has to wonder why she’s repeating it.
And why hasn’t she given us the benefit of her thoughts on the execution of sodomites in Muslim countries today?
I fail to understand the basis of comparison between a mass-murdering compulsive invader of other countries and a non-mass-murdering isolationist.
I know you know but…
Hitler is the goto most evil person ever. Anyone right of Tony Benn is basically Hitler to save time.
The comparison is at best tired, at worst playing cry wolf.
More interesting to me is compare and contrast genocidal far’left’ national Communist Stalin and genocidal far ‘right’ national socialist Hitler. Maybe one day we’ll learn that authoritarians are bad news as a better short cut.
Trump appears more of a Berlusconi than a Mussolini, let alone a Hitler.
Very well said, although I’d substitute Mao in place of Stalin because of the body count.
Agree, Mao is strong in our old pack of Dictator Top Trumps, only vulnerable to Pol Pot on % of populace killed and Hitler on number of documentaries starred in. Now there are many such games on offer i’d love to see the standings in a meta-analysis
Lots of room for both of them.
I admired Some of Tony Benn , he was right About Some Industries, ie Postal,water should stay in Public sector,and NOT be sold to chums of boris,Vic Cabal,or David Cameron…he Was always opposed to European Common Market..
Now the Dems own every dead american soldier killed overseas, every job shipped to China and every late term abortion
But they’ll still blame everything on The Donald.
5 American soldiers died today in Egypt. Is DJT responsible?
Both Trump and Brexit represented the high point of a peasants democratically valid revulsion at the Corporate cartels that had destroyed and hollowed out any means of restoring the sovereign nation states that the majority of voters had inherited at great cost.
The last four/ five years have revealed the extent of the malice and evil that had yet to be rooted out, and the insurgents that rightfully took the reins and offices of power were naive and unable to stay united and as malevolent and vindictive as those they indulged ,tried to reason with .
Trump getting fiddled out of the election is the final call, the disgusting efforts to overturn Brexit was an opening act.
Your failure to see what kind of progressive , One Love kinda coup has been enacted means that you see Trump as the problem.
He’s not. He has exposed the pinchpoints of the Davoisie as structured, and those who will take this forward won’t be one man caricatures like Farage and Trump.
They are learning now what being reasoned, nice and ” democratic” gets you. The gulag and a beating from Antifa as the state militias look on and the cameras point to a faux pas in Melanias choice of footwear
The Twitter comments to Naomi Wolf’s self congratulatory nonsense are pure gold.
Yes, fool’s gold.
Trump Derangement Syndrome? Is this the deranged people who support Trump or the deranged people that oppose him? There seem to be roughly equal numbers of each, with just a few million more of the latter.
Trump is not the saviour, he did certainly lose the election, but did far better than might have been expected, especially with minority groups who aren’t all convinced he is a fascist. Serious people on the Left would be well advised to think about all this, though they probably won’t.
Remember that Biden was only installed by the Democrats at a late stage as a centrist candidate. Despite all his obvious personal deficiencies and those of the ‘system’ Trump was a reaction to, he was still considered more electable, probably rightly than a more left wing or socialist let alone ‘woke’ candidate.
“Serious people on the Left”? Can you name some?
Ed writes: “Now that Trump is gone…” No, he’s not. Barring assassination or whatever, he will be president at least until inauguration day in 2021, perhaps until inauguration day in 2025. Instead of writing a sneering putdown of Trump, Ed might have spent some time analyzing the truly disturbing evidence that the Democrats stole the election from Trump. This is, if the Dems really believe that Trump is Hitler, as many of them, afflicted with sever TDS, seem to do, this is arguably not an illogical thing for them to do. Maybe Ed should have pushed his rant in that direction. The trouble is, the more Eds there are writing as if this election has already been decided and there is nothing for the legislatures to do about it, or the courts to rule on, the less likely legislatures or courts will do their duty. So the contention that this election has been decided in Creepy Joe Biden’s favour may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The far more interesting question for me is, will Trumpism without Trump still be as powerful and potent? So far I have heard convincing arguments on both sides of this question. I feel I’m an agnostic myself.
Nope.
There is no REAL policy about Trumpism. People support him because they have a visceral connection.
Backwards there Mr Smith. Trumpism is ALL policy, it is Jobs and Patriotism and Justice through 1000 policies. It is the Democrats who have no actual policy at all, except for ending systemic racism and such silliness. In the Deep South, in the old days, A democrat Politician was ‘For Motherhood, and against the Bole Weevil.’ That was it. Same today but the bole weevil is now ok.
insane
I’d say you’re no longer trying, but you are. Very trying.
Not sure about the Democrats and Motherhood – what has Planned Parenthood told them to say ? They don’t seem to be for it any more !
I think there is something to that. Trump’s reality TV show host’s persona was indispensable to his rise to power. He was a very televised individual providing a screen on which very different constituents could project their political fantasies. He could appear as what Steven Bannon once called a “blunt instrument” to business interests no less than earnest theorists of a conservative working-class movement. In that sense I’m skeptical a Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley or even Tucker Carlson could replicate this.
Whether Trumpism was a coherent set of policies is again open for debate. Some have argued that its a mixture of isolationism, cronyism, nativism, somewhat performative authoritarianism, corporate tax cuts and a personality cult. Others would argue that since the Republicans adopted no platform other than supporting him, Trumpism is simply what the president says it is.
I can see how you could make a case for either points of view.
Quite the opposite. All the problems that made Trump electable remain – mass immigration, China, Tech censorship, degeneracy, Marxism, etc….
degeneracy, = Trump
You have made dozens of comments on this thread, and every one is about as intelligent as a Donald Trump Tweet.
They don’t know what they’ve done to themselves these past four years. They bear much more resemblance to thick Bavarians of the 1930s and 40s than Trump does to the idol of those sausage-eaters.
Yes, and they refute the reality of anti-Trump derangement syndrome whilst being perfect exemplars of it.
Mainstream Media like Journalism in general, has descended into Opinions &factions not FACT…as David Brent would say..
It is rather amazing to me that so many of MY tribe – ie left leaning – seem to have their fingers on the reason people voted for Trump…as mentioned, they are all racists, stupid, homophobic, , etc.
I expect that most of the opinions come from the MSM rather than actually talking to people who did vote for him. Of course, those people are hard to find since they are scared to death to admit it.
I live in a very upscale neighborhood with every house costing well over one million (not mine I hurry to say – I live in an apartment). On each lawn are signs indicating how inclusive the residents are – BLM – Say his name =kind of thing. The only problem is until very recently there was an unspoken red-lining of the neigborhood which kept the deplorables far away.
the official red lining has ended but the prices will still keep them out.
I am totally appalled at the hatred of all things Trump . Remember that old song, let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. If only.
Red-lining was official? And now it’s officially ended? The things you learn in Comments!
Reminds me of walking around Leafy Hampstead in North London, England during the last General Election and seeing lots of Vote Jeremy Corbyn posters in the windows of multi-million pound houses.
Not nearly as visceral as the hatred those who oppose him have, as evidenced by the vitriol and vindictiveness that typifies their reactions since he became POTUS.
I certainly hope that his success (and failure) may lead to a politician not steeped in artfully poll-tested speech. It was refreshing to have a politician who revealed their thoughts and feelings. Trump wasn’t a fluke, he was quite popular with some 40%+ of the population by being personable. The majority voted for a shop worn figure with no discernible principles or thoughts but is personable. What’s on offer gave little choice.
I agree that a large part of Trump’s appeal was he did not appear to be like a ‘typical politician’, he appeared ‘authentic’ to his supporters. I’m not so sure they liked him because he was ‘personable’, maybe some do. I suspect less obvious aspects of Trump being all things to all kinds of people is that in contrast to politicians like Cotton, Hawley, or Paul Ryan, he gave conservatives permission to transgress.
Trump’s appeal is that he targets groups disliked by his supporters. They don’t so much love Trump as hate Democrats. They like Trump not because he sells them on the Republican party, but because they believe he will attack the Democrats harder than anyone else. Trump likes to make his voters angry, he centres that rage on hated targets, and that makes them want to take his side.
The Trump era was an unprecedented, unique and interesting period of our history.
True, some of the most entertaining parts of this era were when you read certain New York Times writers who seemingly became so worked up about a trivial Trump comment that you could imagine them foaming at the mouth and risking a severe brain aneurysm while forcefully and dramatically carving their spewage onto paper.
Over the top? No wonder main stream journalism was perceived to have lost its way.
But thankfully it is now over, and my hope is that these types will religiously take their blood pressure pills and enjoy improved health.
I would rather they enjoyed improved personality. They already have every expectation of the good health and long life expectancy naturally accruing to the deeply privileged (unlike the ordinary people they hate and who sustain them with their toil).
Unlikely. Not unless they get their full pound of flesh and their daily five minutes of hate as in ‘1984’. Trump’s impeachment (on wholly spurious grounds as per the first time they tried it, thus rendering the whole process meaningless.) Then his disbarment from Office and imprisonment for a long period of time. Then the witch hunt and punishment of those who voted for and supported Trump and their cancellation from public life and cultural and political discourse. (Opening up the financial corruption can of worms is the stone throwing game that democrats who live in glass-houses would be ill-advised to play.) If they don’t get their way with all this as is probable then their Trump Derangement psychiatric disorder is likely to fester and get worse.
TDS is a business model. Should Biden win, CNN faces an existential threat. What will its talking heads talk about all day?
Trump Looks set to Found A Rival TV channel to ‘bloomberg” globalists pro-Eu rubbish
Take a look at the line-up of opinion pieces in today’s NYT. Nearly wall-to-wall anti-Trump revanchism. Don’t worry about them, they know exactly how keep lead balloons aloft indefinitely.
I believe the Left radicals would be equally deranged whether it was Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens or any other outspoken supporter of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. Anyone who will speak up and speak against the degradation of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to purchase/own arms is a threat to their agenda.
And why is everyone always trashing Q? For top level LARPing how about Critical Race Theory?
“And why is everyone always trashing Q?”
Are you a believer?
Because it’s a piece of self-evident nonsense that only a complete idiot could believe?
Well, you asked.
Oh, no, no, no, it’s not nearly entertaining enough for that. Critical Race Theory has no interesting conspiracies to defeat, no secretive figures giving out cryptic hints to hidden truths. It’s just an endless parade of hopeless, joyless self-flagellation.
As you may guess, I am not a fan, but let’s be accurate in how we insult things. QAnon is binging on junk food until you have a heart attack, Critical Race Theory is starving yourself to death. Neither is healthy, but they’re unhealthy for the complete opposite reasons.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is the equivalent of Islamaphobia, a way of shutting down criticism.
Are you saying that Mr West is shutting down criticism of President Trump?
If “he was a corrupt, populist demagogue, prone to nepotism and compulsive lying, with a great knack for cruel humour, more closely resembling something from Latin America or central Asia” isn’t criticism, I’m a banana.
My point is that people who do criticise him are targeted as having a syndroe
The party that used to represent the interests of the working class now denounces them as unreconstructed sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic misogynists. The working class, unable to find any evidence of this, politely disagreed, and looked around for someone to represent that disagreement. The only one they could find was Trump.
“Trump derangement” – which is to say, revulsion of wokism – will persist for as long as wokism does. The way to end “Trump derangement” is to end wokism. Until we do, our societies will continue to be driven insane.
Isn’t this a straw man example? Article states ‘large sections of the US media has been that the United States is entering its fascist moment’. Really? The evidence provided is one vaguely related tweet. I think most left/liberal and many conservative thinkers would agree with ‘corrupt, populist demagogue, prone to nepotism and compulsive lying’ but I don’t see large sections of media comparing him to Hitler.
Might I suggest you enter “Trump+Hitler” into a search engine of your choice? (I’m not going to enter a link here as every time I try, my comment awaits moderation, which never seems to happen.) I agree that citing Naomi Wolf (who is still wrong about the sodomy thing) is punching down; Andrew Sullivan may have been a better choice. He has it bad.
I wonder how soon detention in a re-education camp might be euphemized as “awaiting moderation”.
(I probably shouldn’t be giving the indefatigable Jeremy Smith, possibly the future Secretary of Wokeness, any big ideas.)
“[…] something from Latin America or central Asia.” Oh, come on. He’s pure Queens, with significant traces of two European villages.
I am a very strong supporter of Freedom of Speech (including burning the Stars & Stripes). But I would make any reference to WW2 illegal.
No more books, movies, TV Docs, essays, etc. about WW2.
And that should apply to UK (including Tudor Era History and new productions based on Jane Austin’s works).
Agreed, it’s so passé.
We should instead, be planning the next one.
We already are.
Jolly good.
From what I hear the schools have outlawed teaching actual WWII history and only pick and choose bits and pieces to use as a Liberal/Lefti morality play.
“From what I hear …”
You hear wrong.
If I had to build a boy that represents all the sneering condescension that the name ‘Jeremy’ conjures up in my mind, you would supply the script.