President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Nobody gives a fuck what Hollywood has to say. Meryl may as well have been speaking into a vacuum.

 

Well, we did elect a game show host. Around 60 million voters must, therefore, give a fuck.

 

I'm talking more in the sense that every celebrity worth a damn came out vociferously against Trump during the election. And middle America stuck up its middle finger and elected the asshole anyway.

 

"We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated. Now it’s like a banana cream pie three feet in diameter dropped from a stepladder four feet high." - Kurt Vonnegut

 

"The other guys did it!" isn't good enough any more, YF. It hasn't been since the election. Do better.

 

You know, I've chewed a lot on that, and I don't think it is, primarily, a gay marriage issue for the working class. It might be a "Kim Davis" issue - as in, she should be able to say no and keep her job, which I find ludicrous but many in my family do not.

I think it's guns, which drives me nuts, because I hate guns and the NRA.

I think it's the President's stance on domestic terrorism, in which he chose - and I agree with his choice -- to separate the act from the faith of the person committing it.

I think it's xenophobia/racism. Trump tapped into something there. My faith compels me to have a different view of the undocumented immigrant/refugee conversation but, were it not for that, I can't say that I'd be terribly sympathetic to an American business economy that spent 20 years sending jobs outside of American and gladly exploiting the cheap labor of illegals. The resentment there is pretty real. The Democrats' "well, they're really just refugees" approach to illegal immigration irks a lot of folks.

Most of all, I think it's this vague feeling that, over the last several decades, most voting blocs got to have a grievance but the working class -- mostly white, but some black Americans - did not. It's not any one thing on the Democrats' social agenda so much as it's the social agenda being in front of the economic agenda. Even if I think the stimulus and health care initiatives were helpful to the working class, I'm not sure the working class acknowledged that like it should have.

It's hard to unpack the whole shift, other than to say it's a felt thing among people I grew up with.

I kid you not with the high school sports stuff. It's a microcosm. You're either a "professional youth and club league athlete" by the time you're 10, or you're not seeing the field or court much in several high school sports. (Football is a key exception.)

 

As somebody who lives in flyover country (and spends a lot of time out in the sticks) where Trump is hailed as the Second Coming of Reagan the idea that this is the real bubble and not those in urban centers as proposed by the Patrick Nathans isn't incorrect.

People here see damn near every change in society as a personal attack on them. Everything from same-sex marriage to the launching of a Hispanic radio station to building walking/cycling trails to Starbucks holiday cups to trying to reduce concussions in football are seen as an overreaching conspiracy against their precious "way of life." It doesn't matter when you point out their way of life is greatly different than it was for the person living in their house in the 1990s or 1970s or even somebody living in their county in the 1950s.

 

Opposition to bike trails is particularly head-scratching. I've seen it, too. I think they believe it will give the no-goods from the other side of the track a stealth entry path for their plunder and rape raids.

 

In many cases it seems to be purely about not wanting to share asphalt with bikes. Even in affluent suburbs where a brown guy on a bike would get hassled for riding people get road rageish about it.

 

Plus, it's hard to get fracking permits when there are nearby trails.

 

I really believe the evangelical movement's obsession with Armageddon and the "end times" starting in the mid-1990s and from there onward started framing world events in that light. Everything from societal trends to the weather to terrorism to our relationship with Israel is seen with an eye towards the end of the world. It releases them from needing to think about the future, because there won't be a future. Now, I don't think the politicians themselves believe this, but it's easier to sell your agenda if you speak the doomsdayer language. Trump is as far from an evangelical as one can get, but when he walks out onto the stage to R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)," it tipped me off that he and his team know exactly how to play into those fears.

 

Please, don't take what Trump says literally. Or figuratively. Instead, look inside his heart to know what he really means.