When Donald Trump ran and surprisingly won in 2016, one might have explained that result by saying that he was a novelty candidate and that people who were tired of the usual two-party fare presented to them found him refreshingly different and were willing to give him a chance in the hope that he would shake things up. Sure, he said racist and xenophobic things during the campaign, but people may have given him the benefit of the doubt, that he was just saying these things to get elected and that once he won, the dignity of the office would moderate his rhetoric and he would govern responsibly. The parade of women who came forward to accuse him of grotesque behavior was harder to explain away but clearly many were willing to indulge in a ‘boys will be boys’ tolerant attitude.
That expectation of better behavior was shredded right from the beginning. Trump turned out to be worse, far worse, than anyone could have imagined, ripping up all the norms of governing and treating the government like a private company that he could use for his own benefit and the benefit of his family. The grifting by the entire family was blatant right from the beginning. He placed loyalty to him over competence and got rid of anyone whom he suspected of not being willing to unquestioningly follow his orders or cater too his whims or was nit sufficiently obsequious and flattering, thus depriving the government of the expertise that career professionals bring to their jobs.There was constant churning of people in the White House, the cabinet, and at the higher levels of the government bureaucracy.
His serial lying was completely out of control and his denial of reality was astonishing to behold. There was the growing feeling in some quarters, including me, that surely this would be too much for any reasonable person and that many of the people who had voted for him in 2016 would have buyer’s remorse and vote against him this time around. The first sign that this may have been too naive an expectation was when almost the entire hierarchy of the Republican Party including all its representatives in Congress, people who had been in politics for some time and presumably had their own independent bases of support, abjectly caved to his demands that they do whatever he wanted them to do. They went even further, enthusiastically amplifying his corrosive and divisive rhetoric and supporting his cruel actions. This must have gone a long way towards persuading his supporters that what he was doing was not wrong.
The fact that Trump got more than 70 million votes, more than any Republican candidate in history, clearly shows that what happened in 2016 was not an aberration, that there is a vast number of people willing to eagerly buy the toxic product he and the Republican Party is selling. While the nation’s leaders and many of its people loudly boast that the US is the greatest nation ever because it stands for the highest values, Trump and the Republicans have shown this to be a lie, dragging it to the bottom of the swamp while all the while claiming that the water is fine.
Fortunately, while there were a few more million people who rejected that message than supported it, that is small comfort.
Trump has revealed the id of the nation and it is ugly.
“While the nation’s leaders and many of its people loudly boast that the US is the greatest nation ever because it stands for the highest values, Trump and the Republicans shown this to be a lie…”
Maybe to you and me, Mano, but not to any of the Republican hoi polloi. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
I grew up in a tiny town in southern Arizona in the sixties and seventies, and I am still being surprised at the things I wasn’t told about in school. I was told about how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were Great Men, but I was never told that they each owned hundreds of human beings as property. I was told that the Civil War was a terrible source of death and destruction to both sides, and that its cause was very complex: slavery? umm, OK yes, but also states’ rights, economics, culture clashes, blah, blah, blah. I was told the transcontinental railroad was a marvel of engineering that finally linked the USA from sea to shining sea, but I was never told about the thousands of Chinese immigrants who died building it, or that their white overseers who carefully recorded every rail and every spike used could not be bothered to record the names of those who died. I was told that ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody was an exciting figure of the Old West, but I wasn’t told that he got his name by being part of a conscious effort by whites to drive the North American bison to extinction and thus exterminate the plains indians by starvation. I was in third grade when MLK was assasinated, but I can’t recall even one instance of his name even being mentioned in school, let alone what he fought for.
Yes, I and all the other children in that town, which only had the one school, were VERY carefully taught that the US is the greatest nation ever because it stands for the highest values, and I have no doubt that the kids of today living in rural America are receiving a very similar and VERY careful education.
What we know now is that partisanship is a higher value than almost anything else. And perhaps this is the expected outcome from the way the US political system is structured. Think if you were in the opposite position: How bad must a Democratic nominee be for you to sit out the election (or vote for a minor party), or even vote for the Republican nominee, knowing that such a vote is likely to weaken one or more causes that are important to you? The only way to get legislation and policies that promote one’s key values in US politics is via aligning oneself with the major party that promotes them or something like them, and often that means voting for people one objects to on other grounds.
It is not just that Trump got 7 million or so more votes then in 2016.
It is that the democrats managed to almost flub this election against him (and by extension failed in the most important down ballot votes).
The democrats went we’ll get an 8 (out of 10) on this exam, got an exam of 20 binary questions, each good answer 0.5 points and 10 answers already filled in to get a 5.5 score.
And like in 2016 where they used Russia to deflect any blame to themselves or suggestions to do some introspection they will use the fact that Biden got the presidency to deflect any attempts at introspection. And due to that I’m seriously worried that Biden will be an one term president (if he doesn’t stop due to age) with either Trump of a republican that has the same message but not as narcissistic winning against him.
My knee-jerk reaction is to be appalled and terrified that almost half the country sees no problem with Republican behavior. (Like many others before me, I see Trump as the symptom, not the disease.)
But moarscienceplz @1 makes a good point: maybe half the country is unaware of what seems like it should be plainly visible. That might make it less appalling but even more terrifying.
On a side note, I keep hearing, not only from Biden himself, but also from a variety of TV pundits (most recently Bob Schieffer on today’s Face the Nation) that Democrats need to reach out to Republicans to “bring us together”; and I’m wondering why that’s a requirement only for Democrats. Can anybody give me an example of a pundit suggesting that Republicans need to reach out to Democrats? Maybe I missed it.
Also, as a purely practical matter, it seems to me that a tactic that has failed in the recent past is likely to fail in the near future.
To lighten the mood a bit, a friend just had to butt in with a joke:
Me: “Trump and Co. are claiming that the dead are voting for Biden.”
Friend: “You mean not even the zombies want Trump as president?”
@2 Anat: “The only way to get legislation and policies that promote one’s key values in US politics is via aligning oneself with the major party that promotes them or something like them ….”
Fortunately I’m not an American citizen, because there is no major party that promote any of my key values. There is one party that has some prominents who but the 46th president is far from one of them.
Also I don’t give a d**n about patriottism.
mnb0 @6:
Neither do I. I care about people, and I choose what is most likely to improve their lives, to the best of my understanding.
Trump turned out to be worse, far worse, than anyone could have imagined…
To give the devil his due, he wasn’t nearly so bad as I imagined, because I expected him to expand the existing wars and start new ones. Hugely! Skimming a few million from the Secret Service budget to rent golf carts just doesn’t compare.
For years, I’ve found it convenient to measure the badness of presidents by their respective body counts -- by which metric Trump may rank as the most innocuous since Gerald Ford or JFK. Which mostly proves I need a different yardstick, but still ought to count for something.
Many people will gloss over it but 70 million voting for the malignant tumour will make it very hard for me to trust America ever again.
@8:
In hindsight it might be just as well that Trump is so incompetent.
Someone as malicious but actually competent could have done ten times the damage.
@ 8 Pierce R. Butler
To give the devil his due, he wasn’t nearly so bad as I imagined, because I expected him to expand the existing wars and start new ones.
Not great praise but IIRC he is the only president not to start a war in 40 years.
Pierce R. Butler @8:
Are you counting excessive deaths from COVID19?
billseymour @4:
This is an instance of what on the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money ( https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/ ) is known as Murc’s law: Only Democrats have agency. Apparently Republicans can’t help being their nasty selves and can never be held responsible for anything, but Democrats get criticized for lesser instances of lack of virtue.
jrkrideau @ # 10: … IIRC he is the only president not to start a war in 40 years.
You give Jimmy “Jihad” Carter too much credit -- that’s why I cited G. Ford, 44 years ago.
anat @ # 11: Are you counting excessive deaths from COVID19?
I was thinking in terms of deaths from warfare (& related nastiness such as sanctions), but your point does raise interesting questions. I dunno how we might sort out Trumpogenic c-virus deaths from those inevitable from natural causes, particularly while the pandemic still surges around us: the only modern parallel that comes to mind is Reagan/AIDS, where the malevolent neglect seems hideously similar but the casualties already look minuscule in proportion.
THIS! THIS! F**king THIS!!!!
I’ll be surprised if he makes it to the next election. That’s my prediction -- we’ll have President Harris before 2024. Wanna bet against it?
That was one clear area where, even before he was elected, he was clearly and unarguably a superior candidate to Clinton. And so he proved.
Hang on… W got it strongly in the neck because it was alleged he was responsible for the deaths of something like a hundred thousand Iraqis. Even if you only lay half the Covid deaths at Trump’s door, he’s responsible for more dead Americans than that. Not in war, true enough -- but you said “body count”, and people dead from Covid are bodies that count. Trump has been a disaster, and almost the only positive thing you can say is that the immediate casualties of his misrule have mostly been confined to the US. (His vandalism of the climate and foreign policy will pay off much later, and be worse).
(One other positive about his rule: we can now definitively lay to rest any possible doubt about the existence of alien tech in Area 51, or really any other conspiracy theories along similar lines. You know Trump will have asked, and you know if he was told the truth he’d have blabbed it by now. The only possible explanations are the apparatus of that conspiracy lied to their commander-in-chief (possible, but not likely), or that there’s no such stuff going on. I’m comfortable with the latter interpretation.)
sonofrojblake @ # 14: That was one clear area where, even before he was elected, he was clearly and unarguably a superior candidate…
That was Trump’s promise; I remain astonished that he (sort of, and just barely) kept it. Nixon was a “peace candidate” too.
W got it strongly in the neck because it was alleged he was responsible for the deaths of something like a hundred thousand Iraqis.
W’s neck never even felt the rub of a rope; nor did his daddy’s, nor the guy in between (whose Iraqi death toll may have matched or exceeded that of both Bushes).
… but you said “body count”…
I admit to not having phrased my comment as if subject to courtroom dissection, having naively thought my opening sentence @ # 8 established my context.
… the immediate casualties of his misrule have mostly been confined to the US. (His vandalism of the climate and foreign policy will pay off much later, and be worse…
Here, we grimly agree.
The only possible explanations are the apparatus of that conspiracy lied to their commander-in-chief (possible, but not likely), or …
Why not? Even the president in Independence Day had no clue until he dug into Area 51 personally. And Trump™ did, recently, rant vaguely about US superweapons… 😉
Pierce R. Butler(#15) wrote:
It was a bit more then that initially. From the people he gathered the ones for military and foreign affairs were moderates to doves. I still remember the neocons freaking out and attempting to defect to Hillary because of that. Trump as far as military and diplomacy went was only interested in gutting the JCPOA since it was a treaty that was attributed to effort by Obama and shiny new toys (read: really big/complex weapon systems).
Got me to compare Hillary and Trump to my friends like this:
Hillary, good for the USA, bad for the rest of the world
Trump, bad for the USA, good for the rest of the world.
Then he started firing those people. Within three months none of them were left. And the reasons started to surface through the grapevine: Tried to force Trump to read their reports, refusal to condense complex issues into bullet points, refusing to let go of nuance, demanding Trump behave like the chief diplomat of the US, not putting Trump on a pedestal, not being yes men, etc.,etc.,etc.
And within a year the hawks came in, only the “Oooh SQUIRREL.” attention span was basically that stopped Trump from expanding things. So the Hawks lasted about a year against that and then the neocons thought they could use Trump but ran into the same brick wall that was Trumps disinterest (since it would not directly translate into adulation of him) and short attention span.
Also, I would add to Trump’s body count all those who will die as a result of environmental deregulation. It is one thing when there are no regulations in the first place and one has to fight with industries to accept them. But that work was already done, and there comes Don and undoes them.
Who Cares @16:
Only if you ignore the climate crisis.
Who Cares @ # 16: From the people he gathered the ones for military and foreign affairs were moderates to doves.
Trump’s first National Security Advisor was Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who in this spacetime continuum was/is a raving paranoiac.
Welcome to our universe; be careful where you drink the water, and don’t play cards for money with anyone called “Doc”.
Democrats tried reaching across the aisle during Obama’s first term and got their hands chopped off by Mitch and the GOP. Once bitten, twice shy.
@Pierce R. Butler(#19):
Pipe it down homeopath. One swallow doesn’t make it spring.
@anat(#17):
Gosh almost like my assessment at the ass end of 2015 of his interest in international politics was wrong (to my detriment it took to 2018 to notice that Trump was just as dangerous to the rest of the world as to the US), especially if whatever he did would make him look good for his cult.
Who Cares @ # 21 -- Huh?
If you’re trying to say something about only one exception to the pattern you claim, I guess I have to mention that Trump™ apparently picked Gen. James Mattis as Defense Sec because of his nickname “Mad Dog” -- then drove him out when he wasn’t reckless enough, calling him “Moderate Dog”.
Or maybe you’re trying to give us a weather report, or begging for help with your health problems. Try another trip through your Chronosynclastic Infundibulator.