Donald Trump gives me hope
Just FYI (click to expand)
Election night is a weird sort of strangled Super Bowl. Only instead of a trophy the winner gets to influence the country for four years, but as spectators we just watch to see if Our Team wins.
Terrible, terrible mindset.
This team mentality, “My party right or wrong” is a fundamental part of how our political process got so off track. By any objective assessment, Trump is at best uninformed, but far more likely a narcissistic danger to the wellbeing of this country, economy, and safety throughout the world. Voting for him because he’s your team is just irresponsible.
He wants to give nuclear weapons to more countries, including multiple involved in the volatile South China Sea conflict, and Saudi Arabia, apparently unaware that if it’s okay to give nukes to one’s allies, then everyone will have them, because everyone is allies with someone. That’s just ignorant, dangerous, and in the fundamental lack of awareness of what a nuclear weapon really means, it’s sociopathic.
I find GIFs annoying, but this is how I feel when Trump talks about NATO
Trump invited the most dangerous country on Earth to engage in cyber espionage against the sitting US Secretary of State because she’s his political opponent. That’s both immoral and treasonous. And again, shows a complete lack of understanding of the things he’s playing with plus a sociopathic willingness to cause immense harm for his own short-term gain.
Using misdirected fear and hatred to blame entirely the wrong people because racism is easy. Not my America.
Opposing our fundamental right to free speech, both in the courts and at demonstrations, even inciting violence to stop it, that’s just un-American. No, that’s fundamentally uncivilized. Punch someone if they disagree with you? I thought we left that attitude in the caves.
Suggesting/joking about assassinating his political rival. Again, fundamentally against our shared values. It’s not that I just disagree with his policies, I disagree with Trump’s very notion of humanity. And what’s so scary is that I could continue this list all day. It’s like John Oliver said, any one of these incidents would be like stepping on a nail, but he has so many repetitions of insanity, immorality, and downright idiocy that we just sort of cruise across the top of a bed of nails without any managing to really penetrate.
But that’s all pretty dreary. So where’s the hopeful part?
Or just the primaries
Trump is spectacularly unqualified and inadequate to the job of president. And in the bizarre world of PR campaigns and willfully misinformed voters, that alone might not be enough to stop him. But he’s also fundamentally un-American. That might matter.
Hating Hillary is a like a religion for many, while she just leaves others uninspired. I get why people don’t love her. But here’s the thing: After decades of rampant gerrymandering and $billions of Koch brothers money, the Republicans have congress pretty well locked up. Republicans in congress aren’t going to let Hillary get anything done.
So unfortunately, a vote for Hillary is a vote for the status quo. Our congressional system of gridlock means she won’t be able to build any new structures. But while it takes a lot of people working together to build a house, it only takes one cheeto-colored madman to burn it down.
A vote for Trump is a vote for incomprehension, intolerance, volatility (we don’t want to see how that reflects in the markets), and immoral narcissism.
Personally, I have more faith in America than that. And that’s where the hope gets in.
Because imagine election night…and we all watch…as the entire map…turns blue.
The entire country, rejecting Trump’s brand of hatred and ignorance, uniting to vote for sanity, even if you don’t like the policies.
What would that do for America? After years of demonizing each other, Karl Rove’s divisive politics, partisan vitriol and childish grandstanding, to be united, as a country, for sanity.
That idea. That idea gives me hope. So thank you, Mr Trump, for being so spectacularly unqualified and unstable that you might just push us into realizing how much our shared humanity matters.
Quite a headline for this post 🙂 Wish you a joyous weekend!!!
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I just hope people know me well enough or took a moment to read the first paragraph, and didn’t get the wrong idea!!!
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Hope you’re right come November …
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I am extremely curious to see how it all turns out. I can’t imagine the brains of Americans would let hem elect Trump, but I also didn’t think the brains of England would approve Brexit, so clearly the heart can win that contest (and make us all lose the election).
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I’m glad he’s waking up the GOP to think about a constituency they’ve ignored — poorer Americans. Just hope we never see him as President.
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Do you think he’s doing that? Interesting. That would indeed be a good thing.
I kinda think he feels the same way they have for a few decades now, that the non-wealthy are a class of people to be manipulated into voting against their own wellbeing, through divisive issues and pretty-sounding (but utterly empty) rhetoric and the safety of knowing no one’s actually going to pay attention to what they really do. As long as the masses stay angry and afraid, and blame the wrong people, the Republicans are pretty safe.
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In terms of hope (never thought I’d see that word and “Trump” in the same sentence), here’s how I see it (though I’m no Republican):
The Republican Party has basically been a completely dysfunctional, ungovernable mess for four congressional terms now. A minority of the party’s House caucus has effectively held the rest of the party’s members hostage. Those members don’t get a free pass, however, as they’ve been unwilling to identify the emperor’s new clothes for what they really are. This internecine cafeteria fight has directly impacted all of us, as the inability or unwillingness to engage in the necessary GOP civil war has led to such marvelous developments as repeated threats (and in some cases, more than threats) to shut down the federal government and bring on debt ceiling crises.
I think the Trump candidacy has finally–FINALLY–ripped the scab off this republic-destroying pseudo-stasis of a wound. The “GOP establishment” now has to come to terms with the makeup of the grass roots basis of their own party and decide if they’re going to succumb to Trumpism or recreate the center-right party that a two-party political system (like the one in the U.S.) needs to actually, you know, function.
A Trump Party can exist in a parliamentary system–one where the executive stems from the legislature–particularly one with proportional representation. It can’t be sustained in the American political system without destroying the Republic in the process.
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Fantastically well said. I think you should blog that.
Any predictions on how they’re going to handle the choice?
I fear they’ve convinced themselves of their own extremism. And their electorate, or at least the vocal part of it, may have seized the bit in its mouth.
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It’s too soon to know, IMO. The bigger the GOP loss–and I don’t just mean the size of the margin in the presidential race, I’m talking about the magnitude of lost Senate and House seats (possibly state legislature seats as well)–the easier I think it will be for the old guard Republicans to credibly stand up to the upstarts. But it’s going to be a battle, regardless. The Trumpistas now represent the largest single block of the Republican Party. We could have an ongoing battle, with a rump group laying claim to the GOP mantle. And what happens if there really is a point-of-no-return war? Will the marginalization of a group or groups, plural, push the party into an enduring minority?
It’s really too soon for me to say, with any confidence, how this is likely to play out.
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I have been rather baffled by the continued existence of the Republican Party. They seem to so transparently represent only the top 1%, I’ve never understood how they get more than that percent of the vote. Or at least, whatever percent of the electorate is old white males, and that can’t be 50% +1. Granted, the wealthy class has been selling Americans things they don’t need for a long time, but eventually The Masses have to notice, right? Maybe not. Maybe so.
I just yearn for the day when I can respect the Republican Party as a different philosophy from mine, but one which seems to have more than greed at its heart.
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This “how did they keep that bizarre GOP coalition together?” line of questioning has been a matter of dispute for some time. A dozen years ago, a book with the title “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” was published. It posited that the populist, anti-elitist streak (sound familiar?) that was somehow, counter intuitively married with a supply side economic policy benefiting the wealthy.
I’m oversimplifying in the interest of brevity, but Frank’s thesis is essentially that GOP elites are cynically playing to the worst social and cultural impulses of the party base–which, demographically at least, looks a whole lot like the Trump coalition. The notion is that this entire strategy is a ploy to back door economic policies that these folks ordinarily would never support (since they’re plainly against their direct interest). Keep your eye on this while I quietly jam through that.
It’s impossible to know how accurate this is, but it’s broadly consistent with actual real world occurrences. My addendum is that it’s a big help that the average person is utterly ignorant of macroeconomics (one reason why drawing analogies to household microeconomic commonalities go so far, despite being completely inappropriate). The confusion of “economics” with “finance” makes it comparatively easy to peddle all sorts of policies that plainly work to the advantage of the few over the many.
Sorry to ramble on…
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On the contrary, please always feel free to “ramble” like this. It just does a mind/soul/body good to read this kind of thing. (Until someday it’s over?) It is nice not to feel like the only one seeing it this way. Which of course is an entirely human desire, and is reflected on the other side too, as alarmed and concerned people want to read “Grrar! Muslims are… Immigrants are…”
Except we’re…y’know…right. And ethical. (Relatively speaking.)
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“A vote for Trump is a vote for incomprehension, intolerance, volatility (we don’t want to see how that reflects in the markets), and immoral narcissism” such a perfect description. Sigh…
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I’m afraid the state map won’t be blue. There are trump signs in waaaayyyy too many of my neighbors’ yards. Scares the crap out of me!
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I can only imagine. I feel lucky to live in a sanity bubble where it’s pretty safe to assume everyone around you knows Trump’s a dangerous nutjob. Feel free to come visit if you need a break. 😉
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