Before Trump rode down the escalator in June of 2015, I did not realize how many voters were uninformed, uneducated, and eager to support an ugly, vicious, greedy buffoon to run our once great country into the ground.
Boys throw stones at frogs for sport, but the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.
Yup, SER. Everyone attempts to apply some sort of complex reasoning to it all. Their frame of reference just can't grasp that he is simply--as Tom Nichols put it, a 'disordered child' who's finally gotten his paws on that bag of M-80s and gleefully blowing shit up, wide and sundry.
I have been really tempted to get a bunch of magnetic bumper sticker made that say things like “Yes I voted for this mess” then surreptitiously put them on vehicles in parking lots that have MAGA stickers. I probably wouldn’t get caught. I am an old white woman so no one notices me. ☺️
There are many very selfish people out there. Whining about losing retirement funds while Trump causes endless human suffering shows that there are a lot of humans without empathy. It is very disturbing.
The US is run by a madman, along with other madmen and madwomen. According to Canadian Dean Blundell, Carney started the quietly selling US Bonds plan and shared it with Japan and the EU, who are also doing the same thing.
Living in a country run by a madman and his mad cohorts, is like being in an abusive relationship, be it partner or parent. Best to get away while they are still there, and go back when they are gone. Seriously, the USA is only going to get more dangerous. Trump has been putting his attention on other issues, like making immigration seem like a thing so that his White Supremacist Nazi voters can enjoy their Nazi moment as he puts people into Nazi death camp prison in El Salvador. Next he had to test SCOTUS to see whether they back him in illegal doings. Biden made sure to get a lot of judges in, but his refusal to expand SCOTUS is going to be a piece of what destroys the USA.
Then, we will have Trump turning his attention to the military, testing to see whether they will go along with his demands. If he gets that, and has his Brown-shirt, black-shirted militias out and about, then he is going to ramp up the revenge piece of his promise to us.
As for the assholes in the "business community" not backing Harris, they reap what they sowed. However, we did not sow this and are reaping it too. The whole planet is.
Living in the US right now is like staying in a bad marriage, or with an abusive addict parent. It is better to leave and come back when they are gone. I wrote this in November, but it is still relevant. https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/a-plan-b-for-catastrophe?r=f0qfn
Democracy is never a given; it must be worked at to maintain it. That means we stay here and defend democracy, whether it be with our donations, our words, or our actions, or a combination of all three. We all have our parts to play.
The analogy of staying in a bad marriage is not how I see myself in relation to my country. For me, it is like being in a marriage with a partner who is suffering from a cancer that has metastasized, and who needs support in order to fight the cancer and survive.
I suggest there was a failure in the media here. I don't have the statistics but I think it very likely that large numbers of the 'low information' and 'low sophistication' voters believed tariffs would merely be paid by the foreign exporters and wouldn't come through to the poor old consumer.
I understand igh prices were a major reason the public voted against the Democrats. I find it hard to believe that the average voter voted for higher prices. The near collapse in Trump's approval ratings on how he's handling the economy supports this.
Frankly the media ought to have hammered and hounded the Republicans and Trump that a vote for tariffs is a vote for higher prices....and not just on imported goods too. (Local producers can raise their prices too and still be cheaper than the imported goods). If that had happened my guess is that we wouldn't have Trump Mark 2. He didn't win by that much.
Excellent column that captures my anger perfectly. This week has been an exercise in insanity, as Trump explainers try to justify every action, then, as they change, quickly switch tack and argue an entirely different position. And, as others here have argued, this belated anger at Trump once their personal finances are impacted pisses me off - what about the cruelty that took place over the past several months? The lives destroyed? The people sent to a foreign prison with no due process? The sheer ugliness and wilful destruction or our - yes, our - government? I used to think we'd be lucky to make it out of this only marginally damaged, now I'm not sure we'll make it out of this without being both a global pariah and utterly impoverished. Or in a hot, shooting war with China.
It mattered more that he was white and he was a man (a “macho” and “christian” man, as well, although that is debatable).
I just went on a youtube tangent looking at other videos posted by the son of the lady who swore spritzing vinegar in her backyard got rid of evil chemtrails (as she watched the condensation trails.. dissipate). One of his videos was an old clip of Harris poorly explaining how things were stored in the “cloud.” I always wondered what evidence all these white men had who vehemently attacked Harris as “an idiot” and so far that video is it. Meanwhile how many obvious examples exist of Trump’s idiocy?
During her time as VP mainstream “liberal” media also treated Harris like an idiot, criticizing style and ignoring substance — if they bothered to cover her at all. Apparently Harris had had an awkward foreign trip early and that got a lot of coverage, but little else she did was of interest. I suspected this was the typical sexist media bias so I started trying to follow what she was doing but with little luck. Later I was surprised to hear David Rothkopf , a man with deep foreign policy/national security experience, praise Harris highly after being in a meeting with her. Rothkopf described her many successful foreign trips — trips I had seen almost not media coverage of.
Oh yeah the MSM was completely complicit. A year or so ago I was subscribing to NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, NyMag, etc for years. I had already unsubscribed from some because of sanewashing Trump and the “bothsides-ing” and then unsubscribed from more because they all became obsessed with the “Old Senile Joe” narrative (ignoring Trump’s behavior). But then pulled away from everything but MotherJones and these Substacks in the early days of Harris. I recently added Wire for good reporting.
I actually went to a non-Ivy but top school for journalism in the late 90s on fire for fighting corporate greed after growing up on Grunge and a few articles in Rolling Stone and SPIN about politics and corruption. But the whole vibe was creepy and the final straw was in the OPTIONAL ethics class where all the students who failed that class were the ones on track to make careers out of journalism. Like one kept arguing the public’s “right to know” or entertainment value superseded privacy in all cases. I get that the corporate, billionaire ownership is part of it but also a generation of journalists forgot the critical importance of being a check and balance on government versus “giving people the entertainment they crave.”
Oh yeah and another example, I went on a NYC trip with a top group of students in the magazine editorial concentration to meet and see a variety of magazine editorial operations and the favorite for most was Greg Gutfield, the editor-in-chief of Stuff Magazine.
Ugh! That is really depressing. Just today I was listening to a podcast about Iran Contra and the CIA knowingly allowing the Contras to support themselves by trafficking drugs like crack into the US. They made a point of describing how the mainstream media — NYT and WaPo for example — attacked Webb and nitpicked his report rather than investigate his accusations which were later proven to be largely correct. I then read a few articles about that story to refresh my memory and learn more about how the MSM reacted. This is a great summary:
“ Although the CIA’s inspector general later corroborated the truth about the Contra-cocaine connection and the Reagan administration’s cover-up, the mainstream media’s counterattack in defense of the CIA in late summer and fall of 1996 proved so effective that the subsequent CIA confession made little dent in the conventional wisdom regarding either the Contra-cocaine scandal or Gary Webb.”
Although most people are aware that the MSM helped the Bush administration sell its WMD lies few people I know realize just how often they have helped politicians — mainly Republicans — sell their lies and coverups and hype their fake scandals or distort facts. One of the most damaging IMO is the easily disproved claim that Republicans are the party that is best for business and are more fiscally responsible than Democrats. I think those beliefs are so ingrained in our MSM that they could not bring themselves to make clear that Biden had the best economy in the world, that our inflation was no worse than other comparable countries and was clearly not caused by supply chain problems not by Biden spending too much (an explanation that fits the “irresponsible tax and spend Democrats” storyline).
Yup I ended up taking a class in the art school since I decided to do dual degrees at UF and it was called Art & Activism. We studied Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent,” Michael Moore’s TV series which had funny and good investigative reports, media literacy, and other things I wish were taught over in the journalism school. Iran Contra, School of the Americas, etc showed us that we had a hand in enabling all these “evildoers.” And this was fall semester of 2001 so was just starting the course when 9/11 happened. I was really grateful I had a way to look at things the George W Bush administration did with more historical understanding… but sad it came from my art school not my journalism school.
1. 47 desperately needed to evade punishments or even prison over his crimes and the myriad legal actions against him. Reelection was the only way to avoid that since SCOTUS had already ruled on presidential immunity. I deeply resent that Biden didn't use that incredible power against 47 before leaving office. I can't shake the idea that it might have helped us somehow and that he would have had the shield of that ruling. I understand his desire to fade into the shadows and evade 47s evil retribution campaign, though, which we were also warned about. His crusade against law firms serves 2 purposes but we'll save that for another discussion.
2. Can we please talk about Peter Navarro, his *invented* economic "expert" Ron Vara and his passion for tariffs? He is an academically discredited fool. It's being said that Kushner picked him for an advisory position randomly after seeing his book about a trade war with China on Amazon. WTF? Navarro is one of the enablers running offense on this shitty economic "policy," along with enablers like Lutnick and Bessent and their enthusiastic approval. These guys are egging 47 on at every opportunity while he grifts the market like the vile opportunist that he is. It's not hard to see "some" method to the madness with our mad king.
The disruption of the world economy sends tremors to the foundations of economic norms. Where cocoa and palm oil come from won’t change. Let us think about palm oil. So we buy a lot more palm oil, like 4.6 billion pounds from Indonesia in 2023. So Indonesia buys $10 billion from the U.S., but ships us $38 billion in palm oil, footwear, clothes, etc. Trade imbalance? So what? https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/casinos-is-revenue-trump-thunk-then?r=3m1bs
Absolutely they voted for deportations. Absolutely they voted for anything they thought would Make America White Again, which I'm pretty sure includes dismantling the Department of Education -- the hidden "E" in DEI. But they, along with (I'm guessing) most of the country, don't have a clue about how "the economy" works or how economic power overpowers the three branches of government established in the Constitution.
I agree that this descriptiong applies to Trump’s MAGA base but not to those swing voters who had voted for Biden in 2020 but for Trump in 2024. Post-election polls showed a solid majority of them said they voted for Trump because our economy was bad/in a recession.
The mainstream media which had obsessed about the price of eggs while refusing to make it clear that, in fact the US had the strongest post-covid economy of all with solid growth, very low unemployment — a record low for African American men — and wages that were outpacing inflation with the greatest gains for the lowest incomes, insisted those people were voting on their personal experience/ “vibes”. However those same polls showed a solid majority of those swing voters also told pollsters they and their local areas were doing well financially.
I believe media critis Dan Froomkin got it right with this article:
I agree with what you wrote, but you left out the racism and misogyny. These are real, but not easily quantifiable. How could people who are racist and misogynists respect a mixed race woman over a white male. Most people who fall into these categories do not publicly admit that they are in these categories because they aren't proud of their beliefs, no matter how deep they are, or they refuse to think that they belong in these categories. They always have another reason for their hate (trans individuals, immigrants, etc.). There have been "code" words and phrases (dog whistles) forever. Now, it's DEI. It's time to call it out IRL, every time you hear it and read it. Yes, people who are racists and misogynists should be called out and shamed, every single time. You don't have to call them names and yell insults, but you do have to let them know that you don't agree with them and, if possible, you should avoid them. As has been said countless times. It's not about politics, it's about right and wrong.
Mr Robinson, this article is right on the money( sorry), but those who voted for him made a deal with the devil like you said. At this point in time, I cannot forgive them. Maybe someday I will, if we ever get over this.
Before Trump rode down the escalator in June of 2015, I did not realize how many voters were uninformed, uneducated, and eager to support an ugly, vicious, greedy buffoon to run our once great country into the ground.
Boys throw stones at frogs for sport, but the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.
And racist and misogynist, which I think is the main reason they voted for him.
Yup, SER. Everyone attempts to apply some sort of complex reasoning to it all. Their frame of reference just can't grasp that he is simply--as Tom Nichols put it, a 'disordered child' who's finally gotten his paws on that bag of M-80s and gleefully blowing shit up, wide and sundry.
I have been really tempted to get a bunch of magnetic bumper sticker made that say things like “Yes I voted for this mess” then surreptitiously put them on vehicles in parking lots that have MAGA stickers. I probably wouldn’t get caught. I am an old white woman so no one notices me. ☺️
I like this idea!
There are many very selfish people out there. Whining about losing retirement funds while Trump causes endless human suffering shows that there are a lot of humans without empathy. It is very disturbing.
And some people STILL don't see him for the snake he is. It blows my mind.
The US is run by a madman, along with other madmen and madwomen. According to Canadian Dean Blundell, Carney started the quietly selling US Bonds plan and shared it with Japan and the EU, who are also doing the same thing.
https://open.substack.com/pub/deanblundell/p/carneys-checkmate-how-canadas-quiet?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Living in a country run by a madman and his mad cohorts, is like being in an abusive relationship, be it partner or parent. Best to get away while they are still there, and go back when they are gone. Seriously, the USA is only going to get more dangerous. Trump has been putting his attention on other issues, like making immigration seem like a thing so that his White Supremacist Nazi voters can enjoy their Nazi moment as he puts people into Nazi death camp prison in El Salvador. Next he had to test SCOTUS to see whether they back him in illegal doings. Biden made sure to get a lot of judges in, but his refusal to expand SCOTUS is going to be a piece of what destroys the USA.
Then, we will have Trump turning his attention to the military, testing to see whether they will go along with his demands. If he gets that, and has his Brown-shirt, black-shirted militias out and about, then he is going to ramp up the revenge piece of his promise to us.
As for the assholes in the "business community" not backing Harris, they reap what they sowed. However, we did not sow this and are reaping it too. The whole planet is.
Living in the US right now is like staying in a bad marriage, or with an abusive addict parent. It is better to leave and come back when they are gone. I wrote this in November, but it is still relevant. https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/a-plan-b-for-catastrophe?r=f0qfn
Democracy is never a given; it must be worked at to maintain it. That means we stay here and defend democracy, whether it be with our donations, our words, or our actions, or a combination of all three. We all have our parts to play.
The analogy of staying in a bad marriage is not how I see myself in relation to my country. For me, it is like being in a marriage with a partner who is suffering from a cancer that has metastasized, and who needs support in order to fight the cancer and survive.
I suggest there was a failure in the media here. I don't have the statistics but I think it very likely that large numbers of the 'low information' and 'low sophistication' voters believed tariffs would merely be paid by the foreign exporters and wouldn't come through to the poor old consumer.
I understand igh prices were a major reason the public voted against the Democrats. I find it hard to believe that the average voter voted for higher prices. The near collapse in Trump's approval ratings on how he's handling the economy supports this.
Frankly the media ought to have hammered and hounded the Republicans and Trump that a vote for tariffs is a vote for higher prices....and not just on imported goods too. (Local producers can raise their prices too and still be cheaper than the imported goods). If that had happened my guess is that we wouldn't have Trump Mark 2. He didn't win by that much.
This isn't "I told you so." It's HE told you so.
You're welcome. Now, what are WE going to do about it?
Excellent column that captures my anger perfectly. This week has been an exercise in insanity, as Trump explainers try to justify every action, then, as they change, quickly switch tack and argue an entirely different position. And, as others here have argued, this belated anger at Trump once their personal finances are impacted pisses me off - what about the cruelty that took place over the past several months? The lives destroyed? The people sent to a foreign prison with no due process? The sheer ugliness and wilful destruction or our - yes, our - government? I used to think we'd be lucky to make it out of this only marginally damaged, now I'm not sure we'll make it out of this without being both a global pariah and utterly impoverished. Or in a hot, shooting war with China.
It mattered more that he was white and he was a man (a “macho” and “christian” man, as well, although that is debatable).
I just went on a youtube tangent looking at other videos posted by the son of the lady who swore spritzing vinegar in her backyard got rid of evil chemtrails (as she watched the condensation trails.. dissipate). One of his videos was an old clip of Harris poorly explaining how things were stored in the “cloud.” I always wondered what evidence all these white men had who vehemently attacked Harris as “an idiot” and so far that video is it. Meanwhile how many obvious examples exist of Trump’s idiocy?
During her time as VP mainstream “liberal” media also treated Harris like an idiot, criticizing style and ignoring substance — if they bothered to cover her at all. Apparently Harris had had an awkward foreign trip early and that got a lot of coverage, but little else she did was of interest. I suspected this was the typical sexist media bias so I started trying to follow what she was doing but with little luck. Later I was surprised to hear David Rothkopf , a man with deep foreign policy/national security experience, praise Harris highly after being in a meeting with her. Rothkopf described her many successful foreign trips — trips I had seen almost not media coverage of.
Oh yeah the MSM was completely complicit. A year or so ago I was subscribing to NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, NyMag, etc for years. I had already unsubscribed from some because of sanewashing Trump and the “bothsides-ing” and then unsubscribed from more because they all became obsessed with the “Old Senile Joe” narrative (ignoring Trump’s behavior). But then pulled away from everything but MotherJones and these Substacks in the early days of Harris. I recently added Wire for good reporting.
I actually went to a non-Ivy but top school for journalism in the late 90s on fire for fighting corporate greed after growing up on Grunge and a few articles in Rolling Stone and SPIN about politics and corruption. But the whole vibe was creepy and the final straw was in the OPTIONAL ethics class where all the students who failed that class were the ones on track to make careers out of journalism. Like one kept arguing the public’s “right to know” or entertainment value superseded privacy in all cases. I get that the corporate, billionaire ownership is part of it but also a generation of journalists forgot the critical importance of being a check and balance on government versus “giving people the entertainment they crave.”
Oh yeah and another example, I went on a NYC trip with a top group of students in the magazine editorial concentration to meet and see a variety of magazine editorial operations and the favorite for most was Greg Gutfield, the editor-in-chief of Stuff Magazine.
Ugh! That is really depressing. Just today I was listening to a podcast about Iran Contra and the CIA knowingly allowing the Contras to support themselves by trafficking drugs like crack into the US. They made a point of describing how the mainstream media — NYT and WaPo for example — attacked Webb and nitpicked his report rather than investigate his accusations which were later proven to be largely correct. I then read a few articles about that story to refresh my memory and learn more about how the MSM reacted. This is a great summary:
“ Although the CIA’s inspector general later corroborated the truth about the Contra-cocaine connection and the Reagan administration’s cover-up, the mainstream media’s counterattack in defense of the CIA in late summer and fall of 1996 proved so effective that the subsequent CIA confession made little dent in the conventional wisdom regarding either the Contra-cocaine scandal or Gary Webb.”
https://truthout.org/articles/the-cia-msm-contra-cocaine-cover-up/
Although most people are aware that the MSM helped the Bush administration sell its WMD lies few people I know realize just how often they have helped politicians — mainly Republicans — sell their lies and coverups and hype their fake scandals or distort facts. One of the most damaging IMO is the easily disproved claim that Republicans are the party that is best for business and are more fiscally responsible than Democrats. I think those beliefs are so ingrained in our MSM that they could not bring themselves to make clear that Biden had the best economy in the world, that our inflation was no worse than other comparable countries and was clearly not caused by supply chain problems not by Biden spending too much (an explanation that fits the “irresponsible tax and spend Democrats” storyline).
Yup I ended up taking a class in the art school since I decided to do dual degrees at UF and it was called Art & Activism. We studied Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent,” Michael Moore’s TV series which had funny and good investigative reports, media literacy, and other things I wish were taught over in the journalism school. Iran Contra, School of the Americas, etc showed us that we had a hand in enabling all these “evildoers.” And this was fall semester of 2001 so was just starting the course when 9/11 happened. I was really grateful I had a way to look at things the George W Bush administration did with more historical understanding… but sad it came from my art school not my journalism school.
Two things:
1. 47 desperately needed to evade punishments or even prison over his crimes and the myriad legal actions against him. Reelection was the only way to avoid that since SCOTUS had already ruled on presidential immunity. I deeply resent that Biden didn't use that incredible power against 47 before leaving office. I can't shake the idea that it might have helped us somehow and that he would have had the shield of that ruling. I understand his desire to fade into the shadows and evade 47s evil retribution campaign, though, which we were also warned about. His crusade against law firms serves 2 purposes but we'll save that for another discussion.
2. Can we please talk about Peter Navarro, his *invented* economic "expert" Ron Vara and his passion for tariffs? He is an academically discredited fool. It's being said that Kushner picked him for an advisory position randomly after seeing his book about a trade war with China on Amazon. WTF? Navarro is one of the enablers running offense on this shitty economic "policy," along with enablers like Lutnick and Bessent and their enthusiastic approval. These guys are egging 47 on at every opportunity while he grifts the market like the vile opportunist that he is. It's not hard to see "some" method to the madness with our mad king.
The disruption of the world economy sends tremors to the foundations of economic norms. Where cocoa and palm oil come from won’t change. Let us think about palm oil. So we buy a lot more palm oil, like 4.6 billion pounds from Indonesia in 2023. So Indonesia buys $10 billion from the U.S., but ships us $38 billion in palm oil, footwear, clothes, etc. Trade imbalance? So what? https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/casinos-is-revenue-trump-thunk-then?r=3m1bs
Pretty soon, the non-rich people will be like snakes without a pit to hiss in. :/
Absolutely they voted for deportations. Absolutely they voted for anything they thought would Make America White Again, which I'm pretty sure includes dismantling the Department of Education -- the hidden "E" in DEI. But they, along with (I'm guessing) most of the country, don't have a clue about how "the economy" works or how economic power overpowers the three branches of government established in the Constitution.
I agree that this descriptiong applies to Trump’s MAGA base but not to those swing voters who had voted for Biden in 2020 but for Trump in 2024. Post-election polls showed a solid majority of them said they voted for Trump because our economy was bad/in a recession.
The mainstream media which had obsessed about the price of eggs while refusing to make it clear that, in fact the US had the strongest post-covid economy of all with solid growth, very low unemployment — a record low for African American men — and wages that were outpacing inflation with the greatest gains for the lowest incomes, insisted those people were voting on their personal experience/ “vibes”. However those same polls showed a solid majority of those swing voters also told pollsters they and their local areas were doing well financially.
I believe media critis Dan Froomkin got it right with this article:
“I Blame the Media”
https://presswatchers.org/2024/11/i-blame-the-media/
Economist Dean Baker listed some of the lies the media told about the economy:
“Yes, the Media Lied About the Pre-Election Economy”
https://cepr.net/publications/media-lied-about-pre-election-economy/
I agree with what you wrote, but you left out the racism and misogyny. These are real, but not easily quantifiable. How could people who are racist and misogynists respect a mixed race woman over a white male. Most people who fall into these categories do not publicly admit that they are in these categories because they aren't proud of their beliefs, no matter how deep they are, or they refuse to think that they belong in these categories. They always have another reason for their hate (trans individuals, immigrants, etc.). There have been "code" words and phrases (dog whistles) forever. Now, it's DEI. It's time to call it out IRL, every time you hear it and read it. Yes, people who are racists and misogynists should be called out and shamed, every single time. You don't have to call them names and yell insults, but you do have to let them know that you don't agree with them and, if possible, you should avoid them. As has been said countless times. It's not about politics, it's about right and wrong.
Mr Robinson, this article is right on the money( sorry), but those who voted for him made a deal with the devil like you said. At this point in time, I cannot forgive them. Maybe someday I will, if we ever get over this.