“Sweet Seduction” 4
Der Spiegel attempts to figure out Donald Trump’s appeal and leans towards the idea that he fills a vacuum created by the refusal to the powers that be (when I was a young ‘un, it was called “The Establishment”) to deal with very real social and economic problems. Here’s a bit (emphasis added):
There is no lack of proposals for combatting social inequality. What is missing is the will of the elite. But for as long as those who profit from the division of society are not prepared to relinquish at least a modicum of their power, privilege and affluence, Trump’s sweet seduction will not diminish.
Keith Zakheim seems to have reached a have reached a somewhat similar conclusion. Here’s a bit from his piece at NorthJersey.com:
They will no longer be fooled by the smooth-talking pol who harangues against Wall Street on the stump but uses its lucre to pay for campaign advertisements. . . .
Trump is a foul-mouthed bigot who lacks the intelligence, grace and humility to lead the greatest nation on earth. But he does have one redeeming quality — he is not a member of the political class — and a vote for him is not an irrational choice. In fact, if it is true that “insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different result,” then Trump voters today are acting perfectly rationally in not pulling the lever for career politicians.
Click the links. Read the rest.
Again along the same lines, Chauncey Devega and Tim Wise recently discussed, among other things, the question that lefties and economists often ask:
- Why do poor and middle class white voters so often vote against their economic best interest?
Wise theorizes that, in a racist and sexist society, whiteness and, to a lesser extent, maleness are themselves almost tangible property; if the folks who overtly incorporate them into their self-identities see them threatened, they will fight to defend and retain them, as they might chase an armed burglar without a thought to their own safety (the interview with Wise starts about 20 minutes into the podcast).
In other words, if you don’t got much, you hang on to what you got, however ephemeral and fantastickal it may may be.
Or, as Lyndon Johnson once put it:
March 10, 2016 at 3:59 pm
I enjoy reading your tips to the Spiegel. But like the top American journalists, they don’t really get all of it. They can’t because of who they are. Things are fine for them at the top of the heap. They haven’t experienced the never-ending slump, or been unable to escape it.
I’m going to double up here with something I posted on FB:
Trump is going for the Rust Belt and he’ll get it.
If you spent your years there, even if you don’t identify anymore, you know why. Revenge is in the air for the decades of ruin and being told to suck it up for the modern world and the platitudes and promises don’t cut it.
So the desire for a strong nihilist, one who says he’ll make -them- all pay is strong, and human. Everywhere.
Even my cat knows when he’s been rooked and is not above biting hard to let you know.
As examples, feel free to add your favorite stories/quotes from the last couple decades about having to learn new skills for the global workforce, how you’ll have to go back to school 3 or 4, maybe even 5 times to have a “career” and a “job”, how you lack the training, how you are not commensurate with the needs of the job market, how more STEM workers are needed (at half-time wages in the fine print), how technology, innovation, creative destruction and Silicon Valley billionaires will drink your milkshake all up and you’ll have to take it.
You’ve seen it all. Years and years and years of. And sometimes. often, people believed it and took the advice and when they came out of it having dumped even more money, still nothing. Part-time work, no work, more recommendations for retraining.
Which you still see. It’s Obama’s big thing — go to community college. It’s the Democratic Party hack who’s abandoned populism for Wall Street and the global economy line. Expand training, always more training, which actually means giving money to corporate entities to do the “training” except the result is always the same. Free money for business. Nothing at the end, no matter how highly trained. Maybe you got to work as an intern for free. Maybe you got to work a year as a sub, then dropped. You couldn’t find work for another year and then got hired as a stand-in or something again, for six months. Etc ad nauseam, a slog with the US economy for you as a game of musical chairs for millions and millions of people..
Everyone’s wise to it. Wanting to see it destroyed, to punch someone’s face over it is human. I want to see it destroyed, honestly, although there are probably better ways to try going about it than electing Trump.
Now here, from the NYT today, a rare concession, a statement of truth as the abyss beckons:
Pietra Rivoli, a finance professor at Georgetown University who explored the impact of increased globalization in her 2005 book, “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy,” said Mr. Trump may be finding a receptive audience in part because the United States has provided relatively little help to workers harmed by trade.
“You have much more negative sentiment about trade in the U.S. than you do in pretty much any other wealthy country, and they’ve lost their T-shirt jobs, too,” Ms. Rivoli said. “What’s going on there is that in those countries — which are even more exposed to trade than we are — those countries have a bigger safety net.”
https://youtu.be/sYtJIWSqNbc
There is truth to the doggerel.
March 10, 2016 at 11:00 pm
As long as they fall for the misdirection play of directing the rage at black folks and Muslims and whoever today’s “the other” might be, the rage will feed the status quo. This may sound harsh–well, it is harsh, but they are being played for suckers.
I used to have in-law family in New Castle, Pa., and I know Youngstown, Ohio, fairly well. I understand the sense of betrayal. Nevertheless, I have no sympathy for those who turn to hate to assuage their sense of betrayal.
The rage is real, no doubt, but those feeling it are still playing the sucker–they played the sucker when they were Southern
peasantssmall farmers who fought for the planters, they played the sucker when they were the “hard hats” for Nixon, they played the sucker when they voted for Reagan, and they continue to play the sucker.If they don’t smarten up, they will always be suckers. The Republican Party is playing them for rubes, and they are quite happily playing along.
March 11, 2016 at 7:21 pm
Yeah, totally agree they’re being played. Trump is the most expert and accomplished at it. Beating people of color up at his rallies has become part of this theatre of hate. It’s a poor thing when I think I can say most of us weren’t surprised by it at all.
March 12, 2016 at 1:06 am
They are not just passively being played.
They are joining the game willingly. That’s even more disheartening, even as it is unsurprising.