2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing
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I didn't see much of a riot. Trump urged them to go and stop Congress from affirming Biden as president./
There is zero chance they would have overthrown or even mildly disturbed the government, this isn't the 1920s, or Rome Total War for that matter. Trumpists especially are 100% bluster and mainly wanted to make an appearance and go home. I'm seeing some of the same hysterical language being used by liberals that was used a few months ago against BLM, acting as if a few thousand insane people are enough to topple the largest concentration of power in human history.
If this was 1923 and we lived in a society where large numbers of people were radically committed to anti establishment political causes then they would have been blown away instantly, but for a postmodern western government a protest of this kind is just something they have to wait out.
It definitely was a lame coup attempt. Can't compare it to BLM where National Guard was predeployed and began cracking heads and making arrests right away. Also the DC Police got involved cause BLM wasn't smart enough to stay on Federal property where the DC Police have no authority. Of course there is a distinct difference between cracking black heads versus white heads.
the individual characteristics of donald trump as a person are almost completely irrelevant. no, trump is not the "sole cause of the problem". no, his ****ty upbringing is not "the heart of the matter". no, the fascism in the states is not just because of him driving the masses on before him.
the upswell of american fascism started long before trump's foray into politics, and would have continued even had he never made the attempt. his time in office has accelerated it, yes, but you literally said that he and his cronies were the "sole source" of the problem and that's just dangerously misguided.
just because he wound up being the catalyst around which this all came to a head doesn't mean he caused it, nor that the underlying problem didn't exist before him. the "source of the problem" is for example (among other things) the enduring and pervasive white supremacy in the country.
Excuse me? I was the first to mention the racism or white supremacy inherent in America. I even got a warning for it as you might recall. This is not news nor does it enlighten anything. Trump discovered it with the Obama presidency and his Birther conspiracy. But no one except someone with the lack of ethics, like Trump, would even have mentioned that Obama was not born in the US. So your argument, such as it is, falls flat and once again it is Trump and his moral ineptitude that becomes the source of the problem.
Mr. Brutus, I'm speaking. When I was a little girl, I marched with my parents to protest irregular elections. At some point, I fell from the stroller (few safety regulations existed for children’s equipment back then), and the adults, caught up in the rapture of protest, just kept on marching. By the time they noticed little me was gone and doubled back, I was understandably upset. My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘To pwotest cewtifiayshun.’”
Stunning and brave.
Sad and amazing. No wonder you were traumatized.
you do know that trump didn't invent the birther ****, right? you bringing that up literally proves my point.
he's not the "source" of that problem either, he just helped spread it because it was expedient for him. the problem itself exists entirely seperately from him, existed before he ever spoke about it, and if he hadn't become its champion, some other ******* would've. because he isn't the source of the problem - the problem is systemic. there were plenty of assholes trying, trump just turned out loudest.
the exact same thing applies to the broader growth of american fascism. the problem exists independently of trump's prominence, saying he is the "sole source" is just a complete misunderstanding of what the problem is.
It's a classic discussion in history and sociology about how much individuals shape history vs. the structures they are shaped by.
There seems to be some focal points in history where an person can emblematically zoom into a zeitgeist with just the right words and actions.
Greta Thunberg came out of nowhere with just the right attitude and a press eager for a symbol. 10 years ago she would have been a blip in local news.
It's interesting that Donald Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009 (and before that Republican and Reform Party), and ran for president in 2012. 2016 was apparently the perfect (****)storm for his candidacy.
It's easy to imagine a contrafactual history where Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and prominent right wing conservatives would not have been given the power and platform that Trump has given them the past 4 years.
Trump didn't make the political landscape that he tapped into, but at the same time, without him many political agendas would never have gained a foothold. He has drawn far right issues towards the centre of politics the way other Republicans would not have.
There seems to be some focal points in history where an person can emblematically zoom into a zeitgeist with just the right words and actions.
Greta Thunberg came out of nowhere with just the right attitude and a press eager for a symbol. 10 years ago she would have been a blip in local news.
It's interesting that Donald Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009 (and before that Republican and Reform Party), and ran for president in 2012. 2016 was apparently the perfect (****)storm for his candidacy.
It's easy to imagine a contrafactual history where Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and prominent right wing conservatives would not have been given the power and platform that Trump has given them the past 4 years.
Trump didn't make the political landscape that he tapped into, but at the same time, without him many political agendas would never have gained a foothold. He has drawn far right issues towards the centre of politics the way other Republicans would not have.
I expected something like "There will be no place for the weak in the future free market economy, baby", not this human stuff.
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But his peculiar personality determines the fact that he will try anything to stay in power- how many other presidents of the USA have pulled the sort of crap he has? He single handedly created the idea that fraud would be committed to 'steal' the election, and has persisted with this lie for months on end, and he shamelessly egged on the fools, psycopaths and desperate people who make up the more extreme end of his voting public throughout his presidency and again immediately before they forced their way into the Capitol building. Which other American president or politician has behaved in this way before?
That said, I don't think his rather unique personality was created so much by upbringing as by his genes; his own siblings say that he was always like that, so he must have gotten a particular combination of genes that made him this way.
I don't think any other president would have behaved the way he has done over the past four years or in this latest incident, either. I don't think anyone else would have so shamelessly pandered to the worst aspects of America and the worst side of peoples' character as he has. I'm not saying American politics and campaigning was completely civilised and admirable before Trump, but I think he plunged it off a cliff to depths never seen before. He had crowds at his rallies chanting lock her up (Hillary Clinton), send them back (about a few Democrats who were either born abroad or their parents were) and so on- comic book levels of crudity that nobody else had ever dreamed of sinking to, at least not in my lifetime.
Well they defied the police and forced their way into the building, and they were trying to force open a barricaded door when one of them was shot. Besides, you aren't allowed to just 'go and stop Congress', especially when they are doing something so important as confirming the next president. It's serious stuff! Apparently (I am going by the BBC by the way) a few of them were carrying plastic cuffs to restrain people, raising fears that some of the mob intended to take hostages. I don't doubt that most of the idiots were fairly harmless in their intentions, they seem to genuinely believed their messiah was dishonestly denied the chance to keep on leading them and were caught up in this atmosphere of defying the baddies, walking into the Capitol building- it's the government of the people, right?!?- and disrupting the stealing of the election with nothing more than shouting and grabbing bits of paper that don't belong to them. But that is far from alright and cannot be tolerated, as they are interfering with democracy, besides which some of them were getting out of control because they didn't want to back down no matter how many police and other officials with guns shouted at them and tried to stop them forcing their way in.
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Remember Russiagate?
We live in times where this sort of thing is not only possible but inevitable. You don't see it much on the news or in broadsheets because middle class people never experience this stuff first hand, but American Liberal Democracy (and liberal democracy in general) is going through a period of extreme stress. 9/11 shattered a decades long sense of invincibility and righteous nationalism that helped automatically silence any dissent and create a sense of stability, and the 2008 crash and its aftermath shattered faith in the government to resolve material issues. People who based their sense of self worth in economic power or nationalism are now like terrified orphans with nothing to buttress their fears against. Thus they end up grasping around for anything to replace the sense of security and personal power that American hegemony gave them, resulting in a massive delicious platter of utterly crazy but psychologically congruent cults, movements and ideologies to replace that void. These have been on exponential incline since 2001, and not all of them are republican.
Obviously I'm overgeneralising here, but it's really obvious that the main catalyst for this stuff isn't Trump, and it's a massive red herring to even bother focussing on him as a person when trying to explain the actions of his voterbase. People don't just get elected by accident, or because of random rhetoric. Millions of republican voters flipped to him, and he managed to mobilise millions more who had never voted before. If Donald was in any prior decade he would have been laughed off immediately, but America is a very different country to what it was 20 years ago. Think about how asinine the Watergate scandal would be if it happened today (even before Trump), yet in the 70s it dominated the news for years.
*Event A happens*
Captain Jacob Hindsight: It was historically inevitable that A would happen. *Marx noises*
I would argue that Trump as a person IS important and was the main ingredient in his rise to power. You could see how his presidency (and its terrible effects on the US society and the world) would have been avoided if some things happened a bit differently, presumably by getting sidelined by another Republican nominee.
The rabble he commands could have been mollified by giving it a political organization (like the Tea Party), which would act as a pressure group on any Republican administration and Congress members. Trump would have his right-wing media presence (that he actually planned), a cozy role of an irresponsible rabble-rousing pundit that could make or break Republican politicians and have yuge ratings.
Things went badly this time and he captured the Presidency. There was nothing inevitable about that.
The damage has been done and white fear conspiracies are now part of the mainstream. It didn't need to be that way.
Captain Jacob Hindsight: It was historically inevitable that A would happen. *Marx noises*
I would argue that Trump as a person IS important and was the main ingredient in his rise to power. You could see how his presidency (and its terrible effects on the US society and the world) would have been avoided if some things happened a bit differently, presumably by getting sidelined by another Republican nominee.
The rabble he commands could have been mollified by giving it a political organization (like the Tea Party), which would act as a pressure group on any Republican administration and Congress members. Trump would have his right-wing media presence (that he actually planned), a cozy role of an irresponsible rabble-rousing pundit that could make or break Republican politicians and have yuge ratings.
Things went badly this time and he captured the Presidency. There was nothing inevitable about that.
The damage has been done and white fear conspiracies are now part of the mainstream. It didn't need to be that way.
Nega-Brutus
It's most likely a social phenomenon, but if you don't want it to happen, you have to hold people accountable. People like Trump. + you research the phenomenon and address it to your best ability, of course.
It's not advised to see populists do better all across your world, throw your hands up in the air and be like ''lmao ****'s anecdotal nothing we can do about it''
It's not advised to see populists do better all across your world, throw your hands up in the air and be like ''lmao ****'s anecdotal nothing we can do about it''
Where were you in the Obama era when this kind of thing was slowly normalising? Remember the birther movement? The Tea Party? Sarah Palin? Even back in 2010 when I barely knew anything about American politics, there were tonnes of articles about how the Republican party was becoming more and more insane, and how the boundaries of acceptable speech were being eroded. Trump wasn't even the first one to try and appeal to them broadly, he was just the most successful. It would be weirder and more surreal if a trump like scenario didn't happen. He just accelerated it.
I'm not saying Trump has no role, but I'm always annoyed whenever people focus on him as a person because it just becomes a meaningless morality contest about an individual. As funny as it would be to see Trump go to the electric chair, the real problem is the partially genuine and partially egoistic demands of Trumpists which are only going to grow as the conditions causing them get worse. The Democrats have to address these conditions directly otherwise there will be another trump, and another, and another until they take over the country.
Hi Rams
Nega-Brutus
Ezra Klein talks a lot about how the Republicans are losing more and more on the ideological, democratic, and the financial front, which is why they become increasingly more nervous and more capable of doing undemocratic, irrational, dumb stuff to hold onto whatever is left. I'd extend that argument to right-wing conservatives in general. They're just looking for ways to legitimize their movements and ideas despite losing ground everywhere. More intelligent right-leaning conservatives in liberal democracies instead just embrace gay rights, that racism is real, and social-democratic understandings. The US would just be so much better if the norm was a Christian, social democrat waving an LGTBQ flag and attending his commune on Sunday. On the other end is that, imo, progressives need to **** off with their constant fetishization of needing to be smarter and making fun of people that work full time and that can't afford to do science and philosophy, and instead just opt for communal, religious stuff for their peace of mind.
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Trump is impossible in a stable and cohesive society. He tapped into sentiment and political currents that already existed in American politics on the so-called "right". The collapse of the last vestiges of American Exceptionalism as a sentiment, increasing disillusionment with the political establishment on both the so-called "left" and so-called "right", the stagnation and now decline of 'middle America' and 'Small town America', and the collapse in social capital, lead to the creation of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Even 15 years ago, neither of them could've succeeded, and the only reason Trump succeeded and Bernie didn't is because the Republican party didn't have inbuilt mechanisms to prevent the internal rise of a 'problematic' politician like the Democrats did with their unaccountable apparatchiks. And even then the Democrats had to pull out the dementia patient to stop Bernie in this primaries fight because not one of their other crappy primaries candidates had enough public support or even public awareness to stop him.
Politicians like Trump don't drive events or sentiments, they follow sentiments opportunistically through pandering, and make promises to the people they need to win elections. He wasn't re-elected because the disaffected voters in places like the Rust Belt(and rural/small town american in general) who got him elected by swinging a few key states in 2016, didn't vote for him in 2020 because despite the rhetoric, Trump didn't accomplish almost anything he said he would do.
Trump is a symptom, not the root cause. Anyone who thinks that things are going to get better from here is deluded, things are only going to spiral downwards. Biden/Harris offer zero solutions to the pervasive problems that drive people towards populists. It wouldn't surprise me if Trump ran again in 4 years and won. Assuming America doesn't collapse in on itself in that time.
And no, using the legal system as a bludgeon against politicians like Trump will merely make those who back such politicians more likely to use violence and degenerate things further, out of desperation.
Politicians like Trump don't drive events or sentiments, they follow sentiments opportunistically through pandering, and make promises to the people they need to win elections. He wasn't re-elected because the disaffected voters in places like the Rust Belt(and rural/small town american in general) who got him elected by swinging a few key states in 2016, didn't vote for him in 2020 because despite the rhetoric, Trump didn't accomplish almost anything he said he would do.
Trump is a symptom, not the root cause. Anyone who thinks that things are going to get better from here is deluded, things are only going to spiral downwards. Biden/Harris offer zero solutions to the pervasive problems that drive people towards populists. It wouldn't surprise me if Trump ran again in 4 years and won. Assuming America doesn't collapse in on itself in that time.
And no, using the legal system as a bludgeon against politicians like Trump will merely make those who back such politicians more likely to use violence and degenerate things further, out of desperation.
