This is also true, though unavoidable.
If someone is a massive ****, and you call him that, then you are “condescending”.
I suppose you can just ignore the fact that someone is a ****, but I’m not about to.
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And to blame foreigners and build a wall.
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I guess that depends on what you mean by “socialism” and “always”.
We’ve had the battle between industrial workers and owners as long as we’ve had industrialism. The workers eventually made life uncertain enough for the owners that the owners decided enlightened self interest required they share some of the profits. We made real progress in the US – minimum wage, social security, union rights.
When I look for key dates, 1917-18 for the Bolshevik revolution and death of Czar Nicholas. I think that made “life uncertain” for the rulers.
Then, 1946 and the nationalization of coal, rail, steel, and trucking industries. Also, anti-colonial movements after WW2 that were often connected to communist rhetoric and land reform. US elites had to show workers that capitalism created the real workers’ paradise.
At the other end, 1980 and Ronald Reagan was a push back on the expansion of workers rights (RR fired the air traffic controllers), but the big thing was the collapse of the Soviet empire. Capitalism won, long live unfettered capitalism.
I think that gave us 40 years of widening income/wealth gaps. Some workers are correct in saying that got the short end, but I also think it takes credible threats of violence against the wealthy to move them, I don’t see that threat.
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I agree with all of this. But I simply can’t relate it to Trumpism.
I suppose you could say his anti-immigrant/anti-trade/anti-muslim rhetoric is indirectly about the global elites. But I feel like that message had more in common with the other culture wars (ie hating liberals) than with economics/globalism/elitism.
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You are of course correct that the US government has been always been by and for elites. However a portion of the working poor did defect from the Democrats because they believed Trump was really going to bring back high paying jobs for low skill workers. It didn’t make any sense. MAGA was always about his personal enrichment, as those jobs aren’t coming back.
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I guess part of my question is why did the working poor believe Trump over anyone else?
All politicians suck up to the working poor. All the time. They all promise jobs and shit. (And some of them even mean it.)
I think they believed that he truly had some magic to bring jobs back based on his success as a business man. I recall even some AO’ers touting that he could negotiate fabulous trade deals that brought jobs here. But like most of his business efforts, his “bringing all the jobs back” was just more puffery.
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I connect the two this way
I recently posted a photo of the nice, blue collar Detroit neighborhood where I grew up. In my imagination, kids who grew up there, and didn’t succeed in college, turned into Trump voters.
Both parties wanted to open China to the Western trading bloc. Neither was terribly concerned about the millions of manufacturing jobs that would cost. The Rs didn’t see a problem at all. The D’s solution was “Make sure everyone can get a college loan”.
There is certainly cultural stuff that supported Trump. The opposition to abortion is a big deal that predates him by a lot, but he gave them a chance to get those SC seats.
But, I don’t agree that it’s all about religion, sex, and race. I think “worse off than 50 years ago” is a lot about economics. Trump’s surprising win in 2016 included smashing the “blue wall”. I think that in three of those states, WI, MI, and PA, (aka "the rustbelt) the loss of manufacturing jobs was a big deal.
But, most of my post wasn’t about Trump. It was just the claim that we live good lives in the US because for some period of years the workers were able to wrest some of the profits from the owners.
I get that some people thought he was somehow going to help them, I just don’t get why people believed he would help them. Besides the culture wars.
I suppose a lot of people confuse crudeness with trustworthyness…
He “talked like they do”.
I wonder if, subconsciously, they just were tired of smart people being in charge.
W was a test run.
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Possibly Trump believed that, but the Democrat defectors certainly didn’t believe that when they were voting for him.
I’m not even sure Trump believed it. He probably thought that he could just follow the strategy he laid out in The Art of The Deal and bring all of those jobs back. I mean, he’s deluded, but I think that he genuinely believed he would be a good president.
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Agree
There is definitely something about his salesman demeanor immediately that sets off alarms in my brain, but puts other people at ease.
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Parts of Ohio too. I think most would call Ohio a rust belt state at any rate. And while Ohio is drifting (has drifted, perhaps) from purple state to red state… post WWII, Joe Biden in 2020 and JFK in 1960 are the only Presidents to lose Ohio. 1960 was a squeaker election too.
Anyway, here’s an example of a town in Ohio that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. My understanding is that Lancaster has always been red, but it’s been getting redder.
I should have checked.
Obama carried Ohio in 2008 and 2012.
Yeah, lots of people know that no Republican has ever won without Ohio. But not very many Democrats have either.
Ohio voted for Obama both times, Bill Clinton both times, Carter the time he won, LBJ, and Truman.
NYT subscribers can ‘gift’ articles, here is a link to the whole article that’s public.
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There are plenty of things in the US that were imposed by one side on another (abolishing slavery) or with little democratic input (Brown vs. Board of Education) when at the time significant parts of the country would be against those things.
I don’t care how others feel about same-sex marriage honestly, they can have their ignorant views. Mixed-sex bathrooms are a tiny fraction of bathrooms in the US - I’ve seen perhaps 5. Pronouns take literally no work, just a basic respect for others.
Beyond that he’s getting generic enough I’d have to make too many assumptions to feel okay addressing. I’m guessing the “rules of romance” refers to Tinder, etc., so that’s everyday pearl-clutching. Presumption of innocence is probably “cancel culture”? Reverence for patriotic symbols - is it referring to tearing down Confederate general statues? I see more forced reverence - Pledge of allegiance in school, please stand for the flag, as as a tangent, “In God We Trust” added to money and the pledge.
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It really shouldn’t be difficult, and it shouldn’t ever need to become an enforceable law. But then you have Republicans like Blackburn and others asking Supreme Court nominees to define a woman to show her supporters she has zero interest in respecting anything outside of her narrow view and those who follow her lead.
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That was such an obvious gotcha question, too. Both sex and gender are a spectrum. I have an intersex cousin who was assigned a sex. It must be acknowledged either that there is a spectrum and it’s functionally impossible to pin down a single definition, or alternatively Republicans can acknowledge that sex can be assigned by surgery as with my cousin. That’s before we get into differences between gender and sex.
But obviously there is no snappy soundbite that won’t be taken out of context. It was honestly dirty grandstanding.
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