I didn’t get why everybody was so mad in “Network,” either.
Just to examine the other side of the coin…
My last post quoted a Trump supporter on the subject of his detractors, saying “I just don’t get it.”
Well, far be it from me to let on to be wiser than others when I’m not. (As a Twain protagonist said, “I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.”)
The thing is, I don’t get Trump supporters. Oh, I can cite this or that overt reason that they give for holding the views they do. But I don’t have a good grip on what an editor I used to work with called “the emotional center.” And normally, I would.
After past elections, I’ve pretty much understood what happened, on most levels. Not this time. I read about people having (some of) the same reservations about Trump that I did, and voting for him anyway. And with some of those folks, I understand the underlying emotion — they really, really hated Hillary Clinton. I consider it rather intemperate and unwise to hate anybody that much, but I don’t doubt the force of that impulse.
But there’s something bigger than that going on, something at the root of the nihilism I kept writing about during the election (much to the irritation of some of you). Something that caused people to feel they wanted to blow it all up, regardless of the consequences. Something that made them want to give a grossly unqualified, deeply unfit man the most powerful job on the planet. Something they were just fed up about.
At this point, Doug is jumping up and down, saying, “I knew it! I kept saying you didn’t get it!” But I do get that the impulse was out there. What I don’t get — not being a cynic like Doug — is the rational basis for it.
I hear about “economic dislocation.” But that seems inadequate. I’m a white male who is as economically dislocated (the position I worked my whole life for, and performed very well, has ceased to exist) as anyone, and I strongly suspect that a lot of Trump voters, quite likely most of them, have higher current incomes than I have.
I see the anger is there, and I see it as key to what has happened (it certainly didn’t happen for calm, rational reasons). But I can’t connect to it.
And the feeling is familiar. I felt the same way back in the 1970s, when I saw “Network.”
To this day, I have no idea what Peter Finch’s character was on about when he kept babbling, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (In the larger sense, I mean — the immediate cause was that he was getting fired.)
Mad as hell about what?, I kept wondering. It made no sense, yet in the film, he turned out to be perfectly in sync with America. The viewers loved it. And that’s the tough part, see. I understood that Howard Beale was unhinged. But why did it strike such a chord?
I thought people running to their windows and shouting about how mad they were about some nonspecific “this” was absurd. I still think that.
I’ve heard all sorts of explanations as to what the Trump voters were mad about beyond the economic stress thing. And I fully believe in some of them — such as the feeling of being ignored and mocked and insulted by coastal elites. That I can dig; it’s based in something real. I can also understand frustration with the mess the parties have made of our politics — but electing Trump always seemed to me the surest way to make things worse, not better. And even if you take every ostensible cause and double it, and add them all together, and throw in Doug’s powerful disgust at government in general, it just does not add up to a justification for what just happened, and keeps happening every day.
It just doesn’t.
And yeah, it may seem stupid for me to try to explain a visceral phenomenon in rational terms, but I do try. I just don’t arrive…
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Brad, if you “don’t get it” at this juncture stop pretending you care. The obvious fact of the matter has been you discount and dismiss al; opinions contrary to your fundamental beliefs — you just have not tried to listen to prevailing opinions (those who elected Trump). Rarely, in fact, did you ever seriously characterize HRC as a near-total incompetent she is. You chose instead to classify as almost as flawed an unfit for POTUS as Trump! The DNC was rife with incompetence — hacked by Russia, but the RNC was not
though Russia tried? How about Podesta (a lawyer, yes) an incompetent e-mailer, no?
Give us a break — the public who saw through HRC’s deceits, failures to achieve meaningful (to the working class) milestones other than career pinnacles for heself, due care with matters of national security, lack of compassion for the survivors of Benghazi victims, much less for the victims and the military she aspired to “lead” as CinC, the pay to play Clinton Foundation matters, and on and on.
Now, mirabile dictu, Trump has quickly made enviable progress toward his stated (and supported goals), thwarted only temporarily by political fanaticism. RINOs like Graham and McCain have even self-identified as Democrat plants (whom, no doubt, you supported).
The blind will not lead the seeing. And your relentless attempts to trash Trump while making HRC
appear slightly preferable were a travesty you just cannot not admit. We get it. Now stop pretending you still don’t get it.
“What I don’t get … is the rational basis for it.”
Stop trying. Rational explanations won’t get you there. At best only part way. The remaining gap is filled by the irrational or non-rational. Even a Trump supporter like Juan can’t ‘splain it to you. All he can manage
is to offer up the same old stuff about Clinton’s supposed “incompetence,” which is plainly ludicrous in light of what we got, and sputter about how you “just don’t get it” and never will. Which clearly shows just how irrational this whole thing is.
Maybe this book may offers some clues about the broader underlying currents that led to Trump’s election:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/02/16/inside-the-anger-that-came-before-trump-and-that-will-long-outlast-him/?utm_term=.29efc945d803
And what this describes helps foster and feeds into the “counter-cultural” reaction Philip refers to elsewhere.
Brad – have you ever sat down and talked with an actual Trump supporter. I know at one point you wrote that you didn’t even know anyone who supported Trump. Have you found one of those rare unicorns (in a state where 55% of the voters chose him)? Based on the results, it looks like there around 130,000 voters in Richland and Lexington counties who voted for him. So it really shouldn’t be too difficult to find a few of them if you really want to understand their thought process.
The people I know who voted for Trump aren’t anything close to nihilists (no matter that you have your own personal definition for that word). They are all decent middle class hard working people — probably the most common attribute is disgust with the entire political system. They believed the country was on the wrong path and felt that Hillary would continue that slide.
I could probably say the same thing about not getting the reaction of some people to Trump’s victory. The level of hyperbole and obsession is over the top relative to what is actually happening. People are analyzing every word, every gesture, every handshake that Trump makes. It’s birtherism times racism to the power of anti-socialism. I see Facebook posts from a lawyer friend that are borderline psychotc. I read the daily, multiple rants of a school teacher and find myself very happy my kids are no longer in school — how could anyone be THAT obsessive about Trump and not have it seep into the classroom? Meanwhile, you think I’m just ignoring what’s happening, but other than the Facebook and Twitter posts, the people I see everyday appear to be going about their lives.
But fee free to go on a Howard Beale-like crusade. Here’s an excerpt from his rant in Network — this was 40 years ago, mind you. You don’t get what people were mad about in 1976??? Well, part of that is that you are/were on the pro-Vietnam War side. That was a huge issue for most Americans. The sentiment in 1976 in the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, oil crisis, inflation, racial issues era was pretty similar to what we’re seeing today. We survived that… and no it’s not worse now, just a different set of issues.
” I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
Oh, I know quite a few Trump supporters. When I said I didn’t — well, that was long before anyone could even conceive of him winning.
I know Henry McMaster, Ed McMullen, Nancy Mace, Will Folks, and lots of other people I’m pretty sure voted for him but do not talk about it. Some of them quite close to me, I’m sure.
And remember, I was on Cynthia Hardy’s radio show with a guy who was a very voluble Trump supporter.
But they’re mostly pretty quiet about it. The guy I was on the radio with said that since he’s an independent construction contractor, he was afraid to put a Trump sticker on his truck because it could cost him business. (Of course, generally speaking, I think that would be smart regardless of whom you’re supporting, but he was kind of plaintive about it, like he was feeling persecuted.)
I haven’t asked any of them to explain themselves. Not in person. I’ve seen what some of them have said and written publicly. I haven’t put anyone on the spot by having the “WTF” conversation.
But I read, and occasionally watch on video, what Trump supporters have to say, and none of it adds up. It’s like they put two and two together, and it comes out 17.
Probably the most persuasive thing I’ve ever read on the subject was a piece that The Washington Post ran on Election Day, about how disrespected non-elites felt. That resonated a bit, and I was intending to write about it after the election, but ever since, I’ve been thinking more about the horrific mess of what they DID rather than why they did it.
As to that long quote from Howard Beale — you didn’t mean that as a way of explaining something to me, did you? Because that was a rant from a lunatic. Beale was a guy who lost his job and SNAPPED. The mystery isn’t why HE was mad as hell, it’s why it resonated with people.
Beale was living in the best, safest (except for the constant possibility of nuclear annihilation, which he doesn’t mention aside from a vague reference to “the Russians”), most free place and time in human history. And it’s the same now, if not better. Or it was until Trump was elected, which introduced a wild card to international relations and therefore moved the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
The end of the Cold War made it a little less likely that the end of the world could come in a few seconds, but that binary world conflict turned into multidirectional, multilayered international challenges that call for very deft handling, not for having a lunatic at the helm.
To the extent that there are problems in this world, Trump is the opposite of a solution…
Dang. I tried to go get a link to when I was on the radio with the contractor who was a Trump supporter, and can’t find it.
I KNOW I wrote something about it. Maybe it was just on Twitter…
OK, I found a passing reference to the guy — his name’s Allen Olson — in a comment. But the comment seems to be alluding to an earlier reference somewhere, and I can’t find THAT…
Dang again.
Anyway, Allen was a nice guy, although an apparently permanently disaffected one. He used to be a HUGE Tea Party guy and didn’t like Trump, but he switched over. And yeah, those are different things, for those not keeping score…
“Allen was a nice guy, although an apparently permanently disaffected one. ”
One might use the same description for you since Trump won.
I love it! I almost wrote in that comment, “Allen was a nice guy, although an apparently permanently disaffected one, like Doug…”
Anyway, the permanently disaffected ones are happy at the moment. They elected a guy who embodied a complete rejection and negation of our nation’s core institutions and principles.
I, unlike you, am quite happy with those institutions and principles. What I’m unhappy about is that all these people just gave those institutions and principles the finger, and elected a profoundly unhinged individual who will undermine it all…
I’m fine with the institutions. I am unhappy with the execution and performance of the people in them.
It’s like a hospital full of incompetent doctors. Good intentions, bad results.
I don’t think my attitude would have changed had Hillary won. I’m not happy or unhappy that Trump won. Life is going on. As I’ve said all along, I’ll wait for something important to happen before I get worked up. If Trump does something I find offensive, I’ll say so.
Don’t worry, Doug. If that hasn’t happened yet — if Trump has said nothing that you find offensive — it ain’t gonna happen. You’re immune…
But you’re reminding me of another topic I need to address… I don’t think any of us would be HAPPY right now had Hillary been elected. After all, by now we’d be halfway through the impeachment proceedings that the GOP majority in Congress would be using as an excuse for not bothering to consider a single one of her nominees. (“Golly, we’d LIKE to consider ’em, but today we’ve got to hold further hearings on Vince Foster’s murder before we hang her for it. You wouldn’t want us to hang her without DUE PROCESS, would you?”)
As I said over and over before the election, it was going to be pretty miserable…
Had Hillary won, would an independent contractor put a Hillary bumper sticker on his vehicle? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a commercial vehicle with a political bumper sticker on it.
I’ve seen more Trump bumper stickers than Hillary bumper stickers on vehicles.
I don’t remember seeing either, before the election. I’ve seen a few Trump ones AFTER.
I can’t decide whether it’s other people, or it’s just me noticing. But it seems to me that happens after every election, and I have this feeling that there are people out there who get a bumper sticker and wait to see if that person wins before putting it on their bumpers. Probably not — that would be truly NUTS, right? — but it SEEMS that way.
Bumper stickers aside, I saw exactly ONE Trump yard sign in my precinct before the election, and no Hillary signs. Which was neither here nor there, since I live in a Republican precinct, and presidential yard signs are far more common in South Carolina ahead of the PRIMARY, not the general.
As usual, most of the signs I saw were about local races.
Bottom line, there were millions of people out there who voted for Trump but didn’t want to advertise the fact. Which is one reason I have to wonder at their motives…
We were in the upsate (Walhalla) this weekend. Trump stickers everywhere, including a couple of pickups used as commercial vehicles.
Aha! I knew we Midlanders weren’t to blame!
You’re seeing political bumper stickers on commercial vehicles???
Bottom line, there were millions of people out there who voted for Hillary but didn’t want to advertise the fact. Which is one reason I have to wonder at their motives…
I think most Americans were pretty unhappy at the choice they were given between those two candidates…
“The people I know who voted for Trump aren’t anything close to nihilists (no matter that you have your own personal definition for that word). They are all decent middle class hard working people — probably the most common attribute is disgust with the entire political system. They believed the country was on the wrong path and felt that Hillary would continue that slide”.
-Doug
That pretty much sums up what Brad and I find so very, very, very irrational. People that are middle class hard working people have it pretty damn good. Therefore, it makes no sense to conclude that “the country was on the wrong path”. That’s just illogical. Practically everyone I know, regardless of who they voted for, is better off than they were 8 years ago. Sure people complain about this or that affront but things are much better than they were in early 2009. Crime is down, unemployment is down. Inflation is tame. Far fewer troops are deployed in counterproductive wars. So by your own metric Doug you’re violating your own rules here. If things are going well then by definition that is the metric to judge not whether someone tweets something factually incorrect or acts like a pompous ass or lies. So retroactively if things got better for people, which they most assuredly did, then this whole “wrong direction of the country” screed is just nonsense and you should be the first to reject those comments.
As to nihilism, once again, I do not have my “own personal definition for that word.”
As I explained at the end of October in response to your protests, I use the word in an accepted manner within the context of politics. I use it the way it was used when I studied political science and history in college.
Here’s how Wikipedia defines political nihilism:
And that’s how I’m using it. I’m referring to people lashing out destructively as a result of their, as you put it, “disgust with the entire political system.”
Or as I put it back in October just before I went and looked it up:
… such as, you know, “the entire political system…”
I think the problem goes deeper and has been growing. It’s not rational; it’s felt as an existential assault on one’s accepted culture/one’s self. Back in the early 50’s we had just won a major traditional war. Everyone knew who was on the other side (Nazi’s, Japs) and who was on the right side (us and those western european countries/colonies that we rescued). We knew who had God on their side, and you could tell it by counting the number of churches in town. We were unsophisticated when it came to religion–there were Christians like us (WASPs), Christians not like us (black churches, Catholics and such), Jews, and others. Those folks who went to war were rewarded with financing for college educations, assistance with housing, and job preference. They became parents determined to make things different and to keep this country great. Then came mass media and increased immigration.
TV re-enforced and magnified our culture. The usual John Wayne character became a major icon for this culture. He was always right, and he always won, again and again, protecting his “family” (women,children, those weaker than him) and he always was rewarded with love and respect. His language was masculine. It wasn’t only not ‘the king’s english, that stilted, rule-bedecked speech they tried to make you speak in elementary school. It was what everyone like you spoke, and when those that counted (ie. white men) were alone it might be quite vulger and filled with tough words that told the world you were a man’s man. You used words that made it clear who you were. You weren’t a nigger, a kike, a furriner, a piece of tail, or a queer.
And then came the immigrants, many as wives brought home by returning GI’s. Many from exotic countries (ie. non western european), and all hoping to become part of this country. At first they were very helpful, helping our country grow and recover from the war. They fit in in a lot of ways. But they didn’t have “John Wayne” in their bones. They didn’t have the local culture or the local religion, and they had different ideas. They did not look or talk like John Wayne. They weren’t us. Many ended up banding together to form other culture neighborhoods. Some of us made sure they did.
Add to all this the problem with the women/wives. A bunch of these women went to war too. They were on the same ships subject to attack as the men were. While they didn’t serve directly on the line, they were the nurses, clerks, and other support personnel. The women who stayed home did double duty. Not only did they keep home and family together they stepped into the jobs their husbands left, and other jobs that wartime footing demanded. They performed them well, despite heavy lifting, and rationing. When the guys came home, they expected these women to return to their previous positions as mothers and housekeepers always subservient, obedient and adoring. Unfortunately these women were now used to more responsibility, and wider horizons.
In the beginning everyone who was anyone tried to maintain that culture. TV helped with “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father knows Best.” One of everyone’s favorites, “I love Lucy” broke new ground. A woman had the major role. She was married to a Latino. She had a name, money, and clout. She was even able to be pregnant and still maintain her very public career.
In addition, the army had been integrated. These GI’s came home, tried to go to work or shool and raise their families and found themselves expected to return to their subservient roles as “the help.” Immigrants who came found the ladder hard to climb too, because they weren’t the John Wayne” guys, and had a hard time getting into the right clubs, the right sports, and so on.
Those that were able to integrate enough (change your name to an american sounding one, pick the right church, blend in with the right neighborhood, work their way up, or be smart enough to be successful entrereneurs or professionals did well. Others did less well, and couldn’t seem to find a way to fit. They were still kikes, chinks, mohammadans, hindoos, niggers, girls.
These varioius groups started talking: first to themselves, then to each other, and then to everyone. They got media attention. They got mad. They demonstrated. They were civilly, and sometimes very uncivilly disobedient. They started saying that they didn’t like to be called those words, and they didn’t like not being able to play on the golf courses, or join the poker games, or being exclusion from power. The dominant culture fought back. The media caught a lot of this on tape. It showed the ‘good guys’ fighting hard, turning police, fire hoses, and dogs on men and women. They were still fighters, but now they weren’t looking so good.
Over time, the courts came to realize that these were people too, people with rights, and the courts made sure that these people could legally enforce their rights. People voted. They got jobs and homes in larger, more prosperous communities. They started insisting on good schooling.
And so the split began. The traditional culture was told that using “those” words was not a case of asserting power or preferment; it was wrong. It was no longer possible to exclude others; it was downright illegal. The very folks who were the good guys, the victors. the heroes, beloved and admired by all, saw their culture crumbling. They were told that others were as good as they were, and were told to stop using language that asserted they were better. They had to accept the others as bosses at times. Even the superiority of their religion was denied. Then there was one of THEM in the WHITE HOUSE. And it looked like another version of THEM was about to replace that one. Their very identity was disappearing.
Then came someone who is one of us. He’s male. He’s white. He’s rich. He’s powerful. He’s kicks ass and takes names. He’s going to make America great again. We’ll be in charge again. We’ll be the good again. We’ll be warriors again. We’ll have all the answers and we won’t have to explain ourselves because we know we’re right!
I’ve told this overlong story from the my perspective–privileged, and well taught, and reasonably financially comfortable. In short, except for exclusion as a woman, I should be one of that culture, and I am, even as I find most of it archaic at best and appalling at its worst. Arguably I’m a traitor. Those who still consciously or unconciously identify with that culture would not write this story that way. They perceive themselves as betrayed, and see all that is good in society slipping away. In many ways Trump is stepping into the “john wayne” icon’s shoes. I find it grotesque, a fun house mirror image of what many of my age perceive that icon to be. And it’s so sad. John Wayne remains one of my heroes.
I
My thoughts, exactly.
Karen – while I can appreciate the thought you put into your narrative, I think it leans a little too much to the left and tries to paint Trump as a a product of older male angst and retribution against all the other races, sexes, etc. The voting breakdown by age and sex show that despite all of Trump’s negatives, 40% of women and more than 40% of adults who weren’t even alive when John Wayne made his last movie (1976) voted for Trump. John Wayne may be an icon of those of us born in 1960 or before, but his image hasn’t resonated in the culture for at least four decades. We’ve had 16 years of Democrat Presidents in that time — and it was only four+ years ago that Obama won reelection. So it seems like the better narrative to pursue would be “What happened in those four years that flipped the country?” or could it be simply that the Democrats put up a candidate that didn’t resonate as well as the last guy did? Could Bernie have beaten Trump? I think so. And before Democrats start measuring the drapes i the White House for 2020, they better find a candidate who can compete across the country with Trump. The bottom line is that if the economy is in good shape in 2020, Trump will be re-elected.
“We’ve had 16 years of Democrat Presidents in that time.” No, we haven’t. We’ve had 16 years of DemocratIC presidents in that time.
Sorry. Pet peeve. 🙂
I enjoyed Karen’s monologue — she was really on a roll there — although I can’t quite subscribe to its general thrust. The way I see it, those guys who came back from the war weren’t a bunch of foul-mouthed bigots trying to keep their “privilege.” On the contrary, they were the people in charge of this society in the 1960s, and they gave us the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and the War on Poverty and integrated schools. I think the war broadened their worldview and made them more determined to have their nation live up to the ideals they had fought for.
But Doug, I think there IS a good bit of longing for the Duke in the Trump phenomenon, even among those too young to remember him. They wouldn’t call what they wanted “John Wayne,” but they were looking for some swagger.
Anyway, with the Web and universal availability of practically everything that has ever been recorded, no one has any excuse for not knowing who John Wayne was. Why, just the other night, I watched part of his “Winds Of The Wasteland” from 1936, long before I was born. After awhile, though, my wife asked whether we might watch something else, so I didn’t see how it came out.
But I’ll bet he prevailed over hardship…
You miss the point, and unfortunately jumped on exactly what I was afraid of. It isn’t “those guys” it was/is the whole mindset of that time. It was passed on to their sons and families, and passed many people still believe in it as their base culture. Of course they weren’t foul mouthed. In case you can’t remember, politeness was key in front of women and children. And I was thinking not so much of profane, as the occasional references to others (remember, these weren’t bad; they were the accepted terms of that day and time). Of course, all Trump supporters aren’t old white males. That culture has been passed down; its expression has been much suppressed these days. The easiest examples of things you’d never, ever call a woman or a black man in polite society, were often used in public then. Women were more nearly relegated to an assumed subservient role than actually called names in public. I still wince when I’m called “little lady” by guys I really like…guys that would be upset if I pointed it out to them, and would not understand why. They are very polite and simply want to “do” things to please us, not to give us a seat at the table. The very reason that Trump supporters are so adamant is that it isn’t a “head thing.” It’s a “gut thing.” John Wayne was beloved by women as well. It is precisely because they “see” ‘John Wayne’ in Donald Trump is why they like him. You or I can try to explain to them, intellectually why it won’t work, but those arguments don’t work on the level they are coming from. They’ve been battered by “reasonable” too much. They feel very much under attack. And they have a hero. I just wish it wasn’t one from the fun house.
The people I know who are Trump voters are nothing close to profane. Certainly not as profane as the Trump haters who frequent my Facebook page. Go find one and talk to him or her.
And again if you weren’t coming from an ultra left wing background, your views might carry more weight. You come into this with a high bias level. That’s fine. But I would imagine your circle of acquaintances probably doesn’t offer much opportunity to test your theory.
Sorry Doug but huge numbers of Trump voters really are just alt-right bigots. You can deny that till the cows come home but it’s true.
And once again Doug your anecdotal stories about who you talk to are utterly meaningless. If you want to make a coherent argument stop with the meaningless anecdotal stories. THEY MESN NOTHING.
They represent a sampling of people who are outside my normal circles — I talk to all sorts of people with varying opinions. I didn’t vote for Trump and don’t support him. But it is helpful to get a broader picture of who the Trump supporter is — as opposed to your predictable regurgitation of the talking points of the left that are baseless in fact. Just the fact that you have adopted the alt-right epithet demonstrates just how willfully compliant you are to whatever the left wants to spoonfeed to you.
I’m not willfully in denial of anything. I talk to people also. But the people you or I talk to are not randomly representative of the population at large. If they were, especially in virtually any city, you’d end up with more Hillary voters than Trumps. Therefore I must conclude that your sampling is flawed and therefore meaningless and I give it zero value for persuasion.
When did I say I haven’t spoken to Hillary supporters? I have. In most cases they have been women and in many cases they were stuck on the “first female President” objective. It was also difficult to pin them down on what specifically they liked about her — everything was about not liking Trump. Which is an indicator of why she lost – she couldn’t run on a platform of her own so she tried to win by being not-Trump. That was another foolish strategic mistake. She kept the narcissist in the limelight at all times. For Trump, there is no bad publicity.
People like that drive me nuts, too. I couldn’t care less if she was the first woman or the last one.
I will defend them to the extent that NOT BEING TRUMP was a very, very important consideration. I’d just about pick anybody off the street instead of him, which should please you because they wouldn’t be qualified, either. But the average person on the street doesn’t have his gross character flaws.
Hillary, on the other hand, WAS qualified — more so than anyone since, I suppose, George H. W. Bush. And THAT is how they should have answered you.
I don’t know if you’ve done a lot of hiring, but it’s like this: She’s somebody who has a tremendous resume and references and (in the case of the kind of hiring I’ve mostly done) clips, but she doesn’t bowl you over in interview. There’s no great personal connection there.
BUT, she doesn’t HORRIFY you in the interview the way Trump does.
I had a guy like that I interviewed out in Kansas once who Trump makes me think of. I had him in testing (everything from word skills to psychological profile) all morning, and when I took him to lunch and spent a bit of time with him, I was like WHOA! This guy’s got problems.
Our HR people didn’t know what to do with his test results. They sent them down to corporate in Miami. The word came back: This guy will come into the newsroom one day with an automatic weapon and kill everybody.
I didn’t hire him. I’m savvy that way…
Doug, I have lots of friends with whom I often disagree. Many of them are to the left of me, and most of those would ROFL if they heard me called “ultra-left.” Of course, I have right leaning friends; some are on this blog. Why do you keep returning to “foul-mouthed?” I mentioned the more profane language as being behind closed doors, b/c that was where it was. Today it’s more commonly used in public. Then it was more nearly SNAFU than WTF. What you’ll hear today is “those people,” or “them.” And “they,” of course are clogging the welfare system. There’s never any mention of the taxes they do pay or the work they do. Many of the ones who are in Trump’s camp will deny that anyone of “them” pay taxes, or work, despite the laws that disqualify them from SNAP, and the fact that whoever is hiring all those “illegal aliens” is behaving illegally also. Nevertheless, while not all Trump supporters are 70+ year old whiteys, a much larger portion of them, both men and women are racist, misogynist, people who would be much more upset about someone who addressed God as Allah
than someone who called another a wetback.
“Nevertheless, while not all Trump supporters are 70+ year old whiteys, ”
I already mentioned that 40% of women and 40+% of people aged 18-44 voted for Trump. You’re painting with too broad a brush. Is it any different than the 90-95% of blacks who voted for Obama? They also had blinders on. Unfortunately (for some), Hillary didn’t have the correct skin color to get those same people to vote for her — otherwise she would be President now.
Because we know black people only vote for black people.
But I know what you mean — Obama is someone black voters got excited about. However, I don’t believe you’d find that same level of enthusiasm about some other candidate just because he was black.
It gets complicated. I don’t know if you recall, but in 2007 Hillary pretty much had the black vote tied up. She was the wife of the “first black president,” and there was a lot of loyalty toward the Clintons among black Democrats. Then along came Obama, and he was fresh and new and charismatic and exciting to listen to, and black voters liked him… but they still stuck with Hillary. Why? Because black voters — who believe white people are more racist than white voters think they are — just wouldn’t believe Obama could win.
So you had this weird situation in which a lot of white voters and some younger black voters were lining up behind Obama, but generally black voters were sticking with Hillary, who they thought could win.
Then Obama won in Iowa, which everyone knows is chock full o’ white people. And suddenly, black voters in South Carolina shifted to Obama before our primary, so he won here, too (even after losing in New Hampshire).
Which really ticked off Bill Clinton.
Anyway, my point is yeah, black voters tend to get pretty excited about a charismatic candidate such as Obama, and the fact that he’d be the first black president is a factor in that. But other factors play into it, too…
I didn’t say all black people only vote for black people. But when a black candidate gets 95% of the black vote, it is certainly fair to suggest that some portion of the 95% only voted for him because he was black. That’s the way I look at the supposed “typical” racist, homophobic, sexist old white Trump supporter… it;s a segment of a much broader population. A small segment. The numbers bear me out – if 40% of women, 40% of younger people voted for Trump, then you’re just cherry picking a segment to further your own biases.
Mmmmm, yes and no.
If 60 percent of women voted against Trump, then it’s fair, using the conventions that are commonly understood, to say that men gave him the victory. Sure, he wouldn’t have won if fewer women had backed him, but that’s a conventional way to speak of it, and it’s generally understood.
But I wholeheartedly agree with you that we take those conventions too far, and make overly broad generalizations.
For instance, the pro-choice people like to say “women” support their position, because it’s THEIR issue, and they get highly indignant at pro-lifers for failing to respect women (as though they were speaking for all women), and speak of how pro-life candidates are throwing away the votes of “women.”
And yet polling shows there’s not a big difference in how men and women view abortion as an issue. For instance, 57 percent of both men and women say abortion “should be legal in all or most cases.” Of course, that means 43 percent of men — AND women — do not.
So I get what you’re saying…