American Politics IV: 1400 Reasons Why(A Stimulus Serial)

[Great Pacific Switzerland]

You mind re-reading what I've said? President Trump doesn't seem to be Donald Trump. Something happened whilst he was in office, maybe something party related is my guess. There was a fair amount that he did contribute to which I support (mainly foreign policy) but there is a lot of other crap that doesn't make sense to someone like Trump or even his beliefs

Maybe you could try making an argument that actually makes coherent sense?

Trying the best I can to explain what I mean. In my mind it sounds great and a sort of neutral discussion on former-president Trump but it seems in practice my wording is off

[Great Pacific Switzerland]

The book gives out a really good outline of who trump is and how he acts. Even looking back at interviews and footage from 1978-2013, Trump was a whole different figure and was what I'd call arrogant but a true American. As a man apart of the STEM field, I have a theory that perhaps trump after winning the election. Party restrictions and difficulties have caused a change. I'd say he went from a true conservative workers man in his campaign to just, "yeah he was a president" e.g like Carter, he just existed.

No, it gives you an outline of how he told his ghostwriter to portray him.

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

[Vassenor]

No, it gives you an outline of how he told his ghostwriter to portray him.

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

[Esalia]

Reading The Art of The Deal has made me wonder. Looking at Trump's book, there is no way President Trump was Donald Trump. Something isn't right, I fully support 2016 and 1987 Trump, a perfect example of Conservative Worker man/Radical Centrist of sorts. Makes me feel like President Trump wasn't Donald Trump at all, something was wrong during his time of 2017-2020 and I'm not sure what.

Inb4 "He was always a bad person, Trump bad because x, Conservative bad"

Trump likes positive attention, being a Republican president meant he could get that attention by being more right wing, especially when the Republican party by and large were unwilling to challenge him.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

I should start reading The Art of War

You mean the book of 4th century BCE memes and truisms?

[Great Pacific Switzerland]

Reading The Art of The Deal has made me wonder. Looking at Trump's book, there is no way President Trump was Donald Trump. Something isn't right, I fully support 2016 and 1987 Trump, a perfect example of Conservative Worker man/Radical Centrist of sorts. Makes me feel like President Trump wasn't Donald Trump at all, something was wrong during his time of 2017-2020 and I'm not sure what.

Inb4 "He was always a bad person, Trump bad because x, Conservative bad"

Trump likes positive attention, being a Republican president meant he could get that attention by being more right wing, especially when the Republican party by and large were unwilling to challenge him.

Yeah Trump believes attention of any sort will be beneficial. He said that multiple times during the 80s

[Great Pacific Switzerland]

I should start reading The Art of War

You mean the book of 4th century BCE memes and truisms?

Well I found On War really good (Written in 1831) but its always good to expand literature

[A-Series-Of-Tubes]

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

Our locationally challenged friend has a point about The Art of War. It's quite short, and even in translation it's rather poetic and enjoyable whether you care about war or not. If you are interested in the motives and method of war, von Clausewitz's On War is quite good. I've never read the Green Book, but Das Kapital is far too long and methodical in being wrong, and Mein Kampf is the diary of a teenager who got half his brain blown out in the Great War.

The Art of War tho, I found quite good. I might even try it again.

[The Alma Mater]

I mean he's been notorious for the racism and stiffing his workers for years.

You mind re-reading what I've said? President Trump doesn't seem to be Donald Trump. Something happened whilst he was in office, maybe something party related is my guess. There was a fair amount that he did contribute to which I support (mainly foreign policy) but there is a lot of other crap that doesn't make sense to someone like Trump or even his beliefs

No, Trump has been more or less the same person for the past 40 years. It is not like his life was shrouded in mystery.

[Kowani]

A while ago, in the CDT, I wrote an effort-post on a bit of the why people voted for Trump. Today, I was reading Theo Horesh's book, The Fascism This Time, and I wanted to revisit that theme-but I wanted to focus more on the why we got the Trump era. As well as drawing a bit on this post in the Rush Limbaugh thread with Saiwania, about how fundamentally broken so much of modern conservatism is.

There are, as I suspect we all know, many different hypotheses about why Trump was so successful electorally in 2016-and why he failed in 2020. Racism, economic anxiety, anti-establishment sentiment, anti-elite sentiment, sexism, leftist extremism, etc. It all depends-on who and what questions you ask. (I differentiate anti-elite and anti-establishment sentiment because I consider the two to refer to different groups with different societal connotations.)

So let us begin.
The first key insight here is that a large part of choosing Trump in 2016 was born of a desire to impose authoritarianism on members of the outgroup-those who, demographically, are perceived as undeserving, a theme we shall return to. "In all, eight attitudes predict Trump support: conservative identification; support for domineering leaders; fundamentalism; prejudice against immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, and women; and pessimism about the economy." (Here, by the way, "domineering leaders" means "dominating others, not oneself).
But there is a unique twist in the line "pessimism about the economy." It doesn't reflect their own personal standing. Rather, their view of the national economy was being colored both by natural partisan sentiment (Obama was still in office) and by their racial resentment-a theme we shall return to. But the point established here is clear-Trumpism predates Trump, and a substantial portion (not all, but a good amount) comes from the ugliest American impulse-to put minorities "in their place" (why they moved out of that place will come later).
We know, furthermore, that these viewpoints were not caused by local demographic changes.

So let's turn to the economy now.
Most people have noted that a substantial amount of Obama-Trump voters were the people in the Rust Belt, who've been suffering the results of deindustrialization, the opioid epidemic, low social mobility, communal destruction, etc. Seems like a relatively straightforward explanation, typical "demonization of minorities about jobs by right-wing populist" tactic.
There's just one problem. The data does back that up-at least not on its own. Specifically with white voters, it seems to have had some effect, but is it the only one-or even the most powerful one? No.
And on its face, that makes sense. Candidates are decided by many different factors, in any election.
But Trump's election had some highly salient factors in predicting voter choice that are frankly, worrying for the ability of the United States to function as a country going forward. The fear that nonwhite groups will, in the aggregate, outnumber whites in the future was one of them, the desire to dominate outgroup members, fears about ethnoracial outsiders, etc.


So now, let us turn to the big one. Race, one of the central axes of American politics. Obviously, Trump voters are going to be more conservative on issues of race than other groups, just by demographics alone. (Note that nothing I say here is limited to Republicans or conservatives, white Democrats are vulnerable as well)
So let us turn to another key insight-Trump did not merely promise hostility towards minority groups-he also promised to protect the position of white people in American society-and white voters responded to that. And as pedantic as it may seem, those two things are very different-and very weakly correlated; .r=21 at most. The former is easy to understand and conceptualize, the latter often blends in and goes unnoticed, because the racial identity of whites is one that only activates when the status of white people as the dominant group is perceived to be threatened. To make this easier to comprehend, we'll use an example. Back during the GOP primaries of 2016, Trump promised to protect Medicare and Social Security. (That he later tried to cut both of those things isn't relevant to the analysis here). But those two programs happen to be heavily associated with whiteness. Trump didn't have to attack any groups there-he was reaching out to a group of white people with an in-group bias towards their race.
The next issue was racial resentment-a thing which is not the same as old-fashioned racism. And Trump rode that wave hard. And this, finally, is where I get to start tying those threads together. Racial Resentment, essentially, measures the idea that minorities "do not live up to American values like Protestant morality and a hard work ethic." And often, that ties into ideas that the government is unfairly giving a leg up to those same minorities-to borrow a phrase, helping them "cut in line." It's one of the reasons so many whites oppose most redistributive policies (although that gets mediated when they personally benefit). And because many whites s believe redistributive programs primarily benefit people of color, they become much more likely to oppose it.

So let's focus on the elite/establishment distinction, because I have a hypothesis.
We take it for granted that when people say "the elites", that phrase means more or less the same thing to everyone (with the exception of Neo-Nazis using it as a codeword for the Jews.) But my theory is that the phrase "the elites" or "coastal elites" to conservatives is not an economic identifier so much as it is a cultural one. It's why Tucker Carlson can get away with calling out "the mainstream media" despite being the most watched cable news show in history (and breaking lots of other viewership records in the process), or why people like Dave Rubin or Ben Shapiro can attack elites despite being paid propaganda shills for the oil industry/military-industrial complex/health insurance industry, etc. And typing it back to my CDT post, it feeds back into the Christian idea of persecution, making it more spiritually compelling and emotionally resonant. My theory is that the phrase "elites" as a conservative shorthand refers to a specific subset of journalists, movie directors, actors (the amount of ragging about "Hollywood elites" really should've given that one away), influencers, and politicians (the last of those overlaps with "the establishment")
So what is "the establishment), then?
Both more and less restrictive than "the elites", it includes politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, media executives, and corporations.
And that last one is important, because corporations have hijacked American conservatism and turned it into the Deregulation Tax-Cutting Squad. It's why you get Josh Hawley railing against consolidation (in markets that benefit him politically, obviously), or Trump attacking free trade (and that one also tapped into feelings of xenophobia, though the economics were partly there).
But I mention bureaucrats because, like everything else in America, it turns on the axis of race, negatively-the same feelings about lazy minorities getting a free leg up while good, hardworking, white Americans were left behind.

So, we have several conclusions. Though Trump is a unique figure, he was not a unique political happening-the ingredients that created Trumpism existed before him and will exist long after. Furthermore, though the economics were a contributor to Trump's victory, they were not the only component-and an extensive subset of white voters specifically would have gone down the mental path of "Trumpism" even without deindustrialization, whenever they perceived that blacks or Hispanics were challenging their status as the dominant group in American society-and that group is not going to just "fade away." And this is problematic, because we know that ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans' commitment to democracy-not to mention the desire for outgroup dominance among Trump Supporters specifically.
Welcome to the post-Trump era, dooming is encouraged.

[A-Series-Of-Tubes]

I should start reading The Art of War

You mean the book of 4th century BCE memes and truisms?

A good meme never dies, though it may be forgotten. Also, truisms in the Chinese tradition are rather like oxymorons in the English tradition. If it seems too simply true, or too simply false, you are invited to take a second look. Wisdom belongs to the curious.

[The Alma Mater]

The sad thing is that a quick check of right wing social media is that most Texans are utterly unaware of this. They do not know aid was made available a week ago.

A friend of mine’s family lives in Texas and he said his gramps is on a tirade about Biden “deliberately waiting until after the worst was passed to declare state emergency. Why? Payback for the election because the south is Republican.”

Me: Ehm... okay? I’m not really sure what he’s talking about but freedom of opinion...

They genuinely do not know what happened. Gramps in this case probably believes Biden was being "sleepy" and did nothing.
Scariest thing is that showing her the timeline will NOT change her mind. Facts no longer matter, only parties.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

A while ago, in the CDT, I wrote an effort-post on a bit of the why people voted for Trump. Today, I was reading Theo Horesh's book, The Fascism This Time, and I wanted to revisit that theme-but I wanted to focus more on the why we got the Trump era. As well as drawing a bit on this post in the Rush Limbaugh thread with Saiwania, about how fundamentally broken so much of modern conservatism is.

There are, as I suspect we all know, many different hypotheses about why Trump was so successful electorally in 2016-and why he failed in 2020. Racism, economic anxiety, anti-establishment sentiment, anti-elite sentiment, sexism, leftist extremism, etc. It all depends-on who and what questions you ask. (I differentiate anti-elite and anti-establishment sentiment because I consider the two to refer to different groups with different societal connotations.)

So let us begin.
The first key insight here is that a large part of choosing Trump in 2016 was born of a desire to impose authoritarianism on members of the outgroup-those who, demographically, are perceived as undeserving, a theme we shall return to. "In all, eight attitudes predict Trump support: conservative identification; support for domineering leaders; fundamentalism; prejudice against immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, and women; and pessimism about the economy." (Here, by the way, "domineering leaders" means "dominating others, not oneself).
But there is a unique twist in the line "pessimism about the economy." It doesn't reflect their own personal standing. Rather, their view of the national economy was being colored both by natural partisan sentiment (Obama was still in office) and by their racial resentment-a theme we shall return to. But the point established here is clear-Trumpism predates Trump, and a substantial portion (not all, but a good amount) comes from the ugliest American impulse-to put minorities "in their place" (why they moved out of that place will come later).
We know, furthermore, that these viewpoints were not caused by local demographic changes.

So let's turn to the economy now.
Most people have noted that a substantial amount of Obama-Trump voters were the people in the Rust Belt, who've been suffering the results of deindustrialization, the opioid epidemic, low social mobility, communal destruction, etc. Seems like a relatively straightforward explanation, typical "demonization of minorities about jobs by right-wing populist" tactic.
There's just one problem. The data does back that up-at least not on its own. Specifically with white voters, it seems to have had some effect, but is it the only one-or even the most powerful one? No.
And on its face, that makes sense. Candidates are decided by many different factors, in any election.
But Trump's election had some highly salient factors in predicting voter choice that are frankly, worrying for the ability of the United States to function as a country going forward. The fear that nonwhite groups will, in the aggregate, outnumber whites in the future was one of them, the desire to dominate outgroup members, fears about ethnoracial outsiders, etc.


So now, let us turn to the big one. Race, one of the central axes of American politics. Obviously, Trump voters are going to be more conservative on issues of race than other groups, just by demographics alone. (Note that nothing I say here is limited to Republicans or conservatives, white Democrats are vulnerable as well)
So let us turn to another key insight-Trump did not merely promise hostility towards minority groups-he also promised to protect the position of white people in American society-and white voters responded to that. And as pedantic as it may seem, those two things are very different-and very weakly correlated; .r=21 at most. The former is easy to understand and conceptualize, the latter often blends in and goes unnoticed, because the racial identity of whites is one that only activates when the status of white people as the dominant group is perceived to be threatened. To make this easier to comprehend, we'll use an example. Back during the GOP primaries of 2016, Trump promised to protect Medicare and Social Security. (That he later tried to cut both of those things isn't relevant to the analysis here). But those two programs happen to be heavily associated with whiteness. Trump didn't have to attack any groups there-he was reaching out to a group of white people with an in-group bias towards their race.
The next issue was racial resentment-a thing which is not the same as old-fashioned racism. And Trump rode that wave hard. And this, finally, is where I get to start tying those threads together. Racial Resentment, essentially, measures the idea that minorities "do not live up to American values like Protestant morality and a hard work ethic." And often, that ties into ideas that the government is unfairly giving a leg up to those same minorities-to borrow a phrase, helping them "cut in line." It's one of the reasons so many whites oppose most redistributive policies (although that gets mediated when they personally benefit). And because many whites s believe redistributive programs primarily benefit people of color, they become much more likely to oppose it.

So let's focus on the elite/establishment distinction, because I have a hypothesis.
We take it for granted that when people say "the elites", that phrase means more or less the same thing to everyone (with the exception of Neo-Nazis using it as a codeword for the Jews.) But my theory is that the phrase "the elites" or "coastal elites" to conservatives is not an economic identifier so much as it is a cultural one. It's why Tucker Carlson can get away with calling out "the mainstream media" despite being the most watched cable news show in history (and breaking lots of other viewership records in the process), or why people like Dave Rubin or Ben Shapiro can attack elites despite being paid propaganda shills for the oil industry/military-industrial complex/health insurance industry, etc. And typing it back to my CDT post, it feeds back into the Christian idea of persecution, making it more spiritually compelling and emotionally resonant. My theory is that the phrase "elites" as a conservative shorthand refers to a specific subset of journalists, movie directors, actors (the amount of ragging about "Hollywood elites" really should've given that one away), influencers, and politicians (the last of those overlaps with "the establishment")
So what is "the establishment), then?
Both more and less restrictive than "the elites", it includes politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, media executives, and corporations.
And that last one is important, because corporations have hijacked American conservatism and turned it into the Deregulation Tax-Cutting Squad. It's why you get Josh Hawley railing against consolidation (in markets that benefit him politically, obviously), or Trump attacking free trade (and that one also tapped into feelings of xenophobia, though the economics were partly there).
But I mention bureaucrats because, like everything else in America, it turns on the axis of race, negatively-the same feelings about lazy minorities getting a free leg up while good, hardworking, white Americans were left behind.

So, we have several conclusions. Though Trump is a unique figure, he was not a unique political happening-the ingredients that created Trumpism existed before him and will exist long after. Furthermore, though the economics were a contributor to Trump's victory, they were not the only component-and an extensive subset of white voters specifically would have gone down the mental path of "Trumpism" even without deindustrialization, whenever they perceived that blacks or Hispanics were challenging their status as the dominant group in American society-and that group is not going to just "fade away." And this is problematic, because we know that ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans' commitment to democracy-not to mention the desire for outgroup dominance among Trump Supporters specifically.
Welcome to the post-Trump era, dooming is encouraged.

So basically they like democracy till it benefits someone who isn't from middle America (i.e. white, working class and usually protestant), then they wanna destroy democracy fr.

[Picairn]

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

> The Art of the Deal
> Das Kapital
Lolwut, Das Kapital has had far more historical and scholarly influence on the world than TAOTD.

> Mein Kampf
Why would you read the raging anti-Semitic madness of a Fascist dictator and consider it to be on par with Das Kapital or On War?

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

> The Art of the Deal
> Das Kapital
Lolwut, Das Kapital has had far more historical and scholarly influence on the world than TAOTD.

> Mein Kampf
Why would you read the raging anti-Semitic madness of a Fascist dictator and consider it to be on par with Das Kapital or On War?

Nazbol Alert. Nazbol Alert.

[A-Series-Of-Tubes]

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

> The Art of the Deal
> Das Kapital
Lolwut, Das Kapital has had far more historical and scholarly influence on the world than TAOTD.

> Mein Kampf
Why would you read the raging anti-Semitic madness of a Fascist dictator and consider it to be on par with Das Kapital or On War?

As a self-help book, how to get into Real Estate probably isn't that useful to people who don't have a million in the bank. And even if they did, Trump's advice in how to lose a billion before hitting black ink would probably land them in legal trouble.

Nonetheless, I commend GPS's perseverance if they read all of Das Kapital. The translation I attempted was intolerably dense: I think I read the first chapter or so (definitions basically) then a few chapters at random, basically found it unnecessarily arcane and not worth my time.

(btw, I'm going forward with Das Kapital not being in italics. Foreign language and book title cancel out I guess)

[The Alma Mater]

> The Art of the Deal
> Das Kapital
Lolwut, Das Kapital has had far more historical and scholarly influence on the world than TAOTD.

> Mein Kampf
Why would you read the raging anti-Semitic madness of a Fascist dictator and consider it to be on par with Das Kapital or On War?

As a self-help book, how to get into Real Estate probably isn't that useful to people who don't have a million in the bank. And even if they did, Trump's advice in how to lose a billion before hitting black ink would probably land them in legal trouble.

Nonetheless, I commend GPS's perseverance if they read all of Das Kapital. The translation I attempted was intolerably dense: I think I read the first chapter or so (definitions basically) then a few chapters at random, basically found it unnecessarily arcane and not worth my time.

(btw, I'm going forward with Das Kapital not being in italics. Foreign language and book title cancel out I guess)

It is still a better read than Mein Kampf. Hitler could speak, but he could not write - although many of the propaganda ideas are insightful.
Both are better reads than Twilight.

[Shu Chengdu]

A friend of mine’s family lives in Texas and he said his gramps is on a tirade about Biden “deliberately waiting until after the worst was passed to declare state emergency. Why? Payback for the election because the south is Republican.”

Me: Ehm... okay? I’m not really sure what he’s talking about but freedom of opinion...

They genuinely do not know what happened. Gramps in this case probably believes Biden was being "sleepy" and did nothing.
Scariest thing is that showing her the timeline will NOT change her mind. Facts no longer matter, only parties.

“Gramps” means grandad.

But I hear you. Every time a big disaster like this happens be it locally or nationally, the closest democrat is accused of “allowing it to happen” and not taking the proper precautions and preparation. Your average conservative will swear up and down that in some cases it was deliberate to “punish Republicans”.

[Great Pacific Switzerland]

I mean I can tell you in the book 90% of it is how he got to the business of Real Estate and what he does on his day to day life. Most of the portrayal is interviews in the media and such. Book is a pretty good read, up top with Das Kapital, The Green Book, On War and Mein Kampf. I should start reading The Art of War

> Mein Kampf
Why would you read the raging anti-Semitic madness of a Fascist dictator and consider it to be on par with Das Kapital or On War?

Its good literature, good to see what others think. Know your enemy

Nazbol Alert. Nazbol Alert.

No

[Picairn]

Its good literature, good to see what others think. Know your enemy

Know your enemy sure, but why the classification for it to be on par with Das Kapital and On War?

Also, "good literature"?

[Borderlands of Rojava]

The Art of the Deal should be relegated to the fiction section of bookstores, since in real life Donald Trump is actually pretty shit at being a businessman and behind the facade he's a phoney and a failure who's deep in debt.

[National Capitalist United States]

The Art of the Deal should be relegated to the fiction section of bookstores, since in real life Donald Trump is actually pretty shit at being a businessman and behind the facade he's a phoney and a failure who's deep in debt.

Yeah but then the Qanon retards will say that the bookstores are controlled by "satanic globalist marxist liberals" for the next year or so

[Picairn]

The Art of the Deal should be relegated to the fiction section of bookstores, since in real life Donald Trump is actually pretty shit at being a businessman and behind the facade he's a phoney and a failure who's deep in debt.

Even Trump's ghostwriter said this. https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/donal ... 321bdb6983

[Shu Chengdu]

Its good literature, good to see what others think. Know your enemy

Know your enemy sure, but why the classification for it to be on par with Das Kapital and On War?

Also, "good literature"?

I mean I’m a social liberal and my little weekend book club all read it over a period of weeks. And we’re talking the kind of people Nazi’s hate. A lot of academics have read it.

I guess it’s kind of like those people who watch documentaries about serial killers and psychopaths. You find that person unhinged and dangerous (even evil) but there’s something morbidly intriguing about them.

[Senkaku]

The Art of the Deal should be relegated to the fiction section of bookstores, since in real life Donald Trump is actually pretty shit at being a businessman and behind the facade he's a phoney and a failure who's deep in debt.

Yeah but then the Qanon retards will say that the bookstores are controlled by "satanic globalist marxist liberals" for the next year or so

I'm pretty sure they're going to find a reason to say that whether or not The Art of the Deal is in the fiction section lol