President Trump ripped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as “seriously retarded” – and suggested Rep. Ilhan Omar “probably came into the USA illegally” – in a rage-filled Thanksgiving message about immigration.
President Trump ripped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as “seriously retarded” – and suggested Rep. Ilhan Omar “probably came into the USA illegally” – in a rage-filled Thanksgiving message about immigration.
He was elected for being who he is, not despite.
We’ve heard this line before but if you actually read exit polls you get a simultaneously smarter and more depressing view of politics in this country.
Trump was really good at appealing directly to the nation’s strongest political capital force, which is the segment of our population who are armed, scared, dumber than toenails, insanely patriotic and can be made to vote for anything without hesitation or research. These are the kinds of forces that have built and destroyed nations over and over, of COURSE the entire establishment Republican and Democrat parties are going to salivate at the idea of one man able to hold so much power and do everything to keep him in the news cycle.
As for voters, most Americans aren’t on Lemmy or Reddit or listening to political podcasts. They’re listening to music and distraction and anything to get through their mind-numbing days and insecurity about the future. They get 30 minutes of political memes and clips of Joe Rogan on facebook once a week. They had no idea what they were doing at the voting booths, they said as much. The most common responses paint the clear picture that people didn’t remember anything from his first term or were also checked out, and everyone was pissed at the price of groceries and Biden was the president so they drew that association between cost of eggs and Biden’s face, and Harris seemed like more of Biden. These aren’t even unique patterns in politics, there are names for them.
Trump, despite being dour and nasty and never smiled or laughed, that makes him seem more human than the alternatives who make it onto the national stage. He might not be honest, but he’s genuine, and that difference is what made a lot of hopeless, uninformed Americans literally shrug and say “lets see what happens.”
The horror-movie punchline here is that it will happen again. And again. And again.
I have lived a half century watching these cycles. We’ve been here before.
That’s not patriotism. They’re nationalists. That they don’t know the difference makes it even worse.