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Trump Voters May Get More Than They Bargained For

As in the aftermath of the 2016 election, much of the media is subscribing to the red herring that economic concerns were what motivated many voters to vote for Donald Trump.  Never mind that his economic policy proposals - tariffs on almost everything imported, more massive tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporations, and an open assault on the social safety net - will severely harm these same voters perhaps sooner than later once is regime takes office.  I believe the reality is that Trump's promise to support white privilege, promise to grant evangelicals wide power to discriminate against other citizens, and to basically harm those so many of these voters hold in contempt was the true attraction.  The amazing thing is that many blacks and Latinos voted for Trump even though a reading of Project 2025 clearly makes them a target of the white "Christian" nationalism Trump is promising.  When consumer prices soar, the huge increase in the federal debt and slashing of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security hit, many of the Trump voters may belatedly realize they made a huge mistake.  They reveled in Trump's promise of cruelty towards others may quickly come home to roost on them.  Candidly, I hope they suffer immensely.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this likely coming shock:

Democrats and liberal pundits are already trying to figure out how the Trump campaign not only bested Kamala Harris in the “Blue Wall” states of the Midwest and the Rust Belt, but gained on her even in areas that should have been safe for a Democrat. . . . . the old saw about “economic anxiety” is making a comeback.

These explanations all have some merit, but mostly, they miss the point. Yes, some voters still stubbornly believe that presidents magically control the price of basic goods. Others have genuine concerns about immigration and gave in to Trump’s booming call of fascism and nativism. And some of them were just never going to vote for a woman, much less a Black woman.

But in the end, a majority of American voters chose Trump because they wanted what he was selling: a nonstop reality show of rage and resentment. . . . . Trump voters never cared about policies, and he rarely gave them any. . . . . His rallies involved long rants about the way he’s been treated, like a giant therapy session or a huge family gathering around a bellowing, impaired grandpa.

Back in 2021, I wrote a book about the rise of “illiberal populism,” the self-destructive tendency in some nations that leads people to participate in democratic institutions such as voting while being hostile to democracy itself, casting ballots primarily to punish other people and to curtail everyone’s rights—even their own. These movements are sometimes led by fantastically wealthy faux populists who hoodwink gullible voters by promising to solve a litany of problems that always seem to involve money, immigrants, and minorities.

And so it came to pass: Last night, a gaggle of millionaires and billionaires grinned and applauded for Trump. They were part of an alliance with the very people another Trump term would hurt—the young, minorities, and working families among them.

Trump, as he has shown repeatedly over the years, couldn’t care less about any of these groups. He ran for office to seize control of the apparatus of government and to evade judicial accountability for his previous actions as president. Once he is safe, he will embark on the other project he seems to truly care about: the destruction of the rule of law and any other impediments to enlarging his power.

Americans who wish to stop Trump in this assault on the American constitutional order, then, should get it out of their heads that this election could have been won if only a better candidate had made a better pitch . . . . Racial grievances, dissatisfaction with life’s travails (including substance addiction and lack of education), and resentment toward the villainous elites in faraway cities cannot be placated by housing policy or interest-rate cuts.

No candidate can reason about facts and policies with voters who have no real interest in such things. They like the promises of social revenge that flow from Trump, the tough-guy rhetoric, the simplistic “I will fix it” solutions. And he’s interesting to them, because he supports and encourages their conspiracist beliefs.

As Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark, put it in a social-media post last night: The election went the way it did “because America wanted Trump. That’s it. People reaching to construct [policy] alibis for the public because they don’t want to grapple with this are whistling past the graveyard.” . . . . Americans have done this to themselves during a time of peace, prosperity, and astonishingly high living standards. An affluent society that thinks it is living in a hellscape is ripe for gulling by dictators who are willing to play along with such delusions.

This time, Trump will rule with greater power but fewer excuses, and he—and his voters—will have to own the messes and outrages he is already planning to create.

Those voters expect that Trump will hurt others and not them. They will likely be unpleasantly surprised, much as they were in Trump’s first term. (He was, after all, voted out of office for a reason.) For the moment, some number of them have memory-holed that experience and are pretending that his vicious attacks on other Americans are just so much hot air.

Trump, unfortunately, means most of what he says. In this election, he has triggered the unfocused ire and unfounded grievances of millions of voters. Soon we will learn whether he can still trigger their decency—if there is any to be found.

Sadly, I believe there is no decency to be revived in Trump voters.  By their votes, they proved that have no morality and no decency.

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America Did This to Itself and Most Will Suffer

I continue to struggle trying to wrap my head around how a majority voting of Americans voted to put Trump back in the White House.  So far, it looks like the media again will promote the myth that the election results were due to economic concerns and upset over higher prices.  Never mind that the majority of economist panned Trumps proposals and preferred Harris' or that Trump's promised tariff will increase prices, perhaps significantly.  The working class that voted for Trump could see Walmart prices skyrocket if Der Trumpenfuhrer hits China with very high tariffs as threatened.  Add to that Trump and the GOP's animus towards labor unions, and wages could actually fall and working conditions worsen.  As in 2016, alleged economic concerns are a smoke screen for something far uglier: racism, homophobia, religious extremism aided by the ignorance of too many voters who foolishly believe anything Trump says.  I worry about the future not so much for myself - at my age, I likely have another 10-15 years ahead of me - but rather for my children and five grandchildren who will have to live with the wreckage Trump and his  morally bankrupt sycophants will unleash on the country.  My first ancestor born in America was born in Massachusetts in 1638 while others arrived in Charleston, South Carolina in the early to mid-1700's, all the result of fleeing monarchical regimes.  Now, America is headed towards a cruel regime akin to what those ancestors fled.  George Conway looks at what the nation has done to itself in a piece in The Atlantic:

This time, the nation was on notice. Back in 2016, those of us who supported Donald Trump at least had the excuse of not knowing how sociopathy can present itself, and we at least had the conceit of believing that the presidency was not just a man, but an institution greater than the man, with legal and traditional mechanisms to make sure he’d never go off the rails.

By 2020, after the chaos, the derangement, and the incompetence, we knew a lot better. And most other Americans did too, voting him out of office that fall. And when his criminal attempt to steal the election culminated in the violence of January 6, their judgment was vindicated.

So there was no excuse this year. We knew all we needed to know, even without the mendacious raging about Ohioans eating pets, the fantasizing about shooting journalists and arresting political opponents as “enemies of the people,” even apart from the evidence presented in courts and the convictions in one that demonstrated his abject criminality.

We knew, and have known, for years. Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse.

He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much as harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.

I say all of this not in anger, but in deep and profound sorrow. For centuries, the United States has been a beacon of democracy and reasoned self-government, in part because the Framers understood the dangers of demagogues and saw fit to construct a system with safeguards to keep such men from undermining it . . . . The system was never perfect, but it inched toward its own betterment, albeit in fits and starts. But in the end, the system the Framers set up—and indeed, all constitutional regimes, however well designed—cannot protect a free people from themselves.

My own hope and belief about what would transpire last night was sadly and profoundly wrong—like many, I have the emotional and intellectual flaw, if that’s what it is, of assuming that people are wiser and more decent than they actually turn out to be. I feel chastened—distraught—about my apparently naive view of human nature.

I dare not predict the future again, particularly as it comes to elections and other forms of mass behavior. But I daresay I fear we shall see a profound degradation in the ability of this nation to govern itself rationally and fairly, with freedom and political equality under the rule of law. Because that is not actually a prediction. It’s a logical deduction based on the words and deeds of the president-elect, his enablers, and his supporters—and a long and often sorry record of human history. Let us brace ourselves.

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Mourning for America's Lost Soul

While the election results are not final, it is looking as if Donald Trump, a man who in my view is a cruel and dangerous sociopath will be returned to the White House.  Many in America  - the LGBTQ community, people of color, Muslims, immigrants, the sick, the poor, the elderly - and the world at large with suffer this disastrous decision by American voters.  I take pride that my home state of Virginia rejected Trump, but I shake my head at the millions who voted for this horrible man.  I had perhaps deluded myself into believing that America was better than this, that deep down the vast majority of Americans are good people.   The vote tally so far tells me that the truth is something very different from what I wanted to believe. Clearly, America continues to cling to its racist and misogynistic past and maintaining perceived white privilege outweighs everything else for a majority of Americans. The irony is that if rump does what he has and Project 2025 promise, many Trump voters will suffer greatly financially and many elderly will never be able to retire as Social Security and Medicare face the chopping block so that billionaires can have more tax cuts.  America is now the Germany of 1933.  A post by John Pavlovitz sums up my sadness:

Kamala Harris didn't lose, America did.

As a nation, we collectively failed her—and in doing so we failed girls and women, the LGBTQ community, people of color, Muslims, Jewish people, immigrants, the sick, the poor, the elderly, the people of Ukraine, and Gaza, and the planet.

It's unthinkable, that instead of being able to celebrate a beautiful, hopeful new chapter in the story of this nation with a leader who appealed to the best of our natures—we will instead be holding a postmortem for democracy as we enter our 250th year, stewarded by a malevolent sociopath who despises empathy and shuns the law.

 I truly thought we were better than this, that our shared humanity would show up. I thought we would reject this hatred and ugliness once and for all. I hate being wrong about the majority of the people of this nation.

I don't know what's ahead. All I know is that good-hearted human beings are more necessary now than ever. We did all that we could to avoid this moment, but now that it's here we'll just have to decide who we will be.

There is no way to comprehend or measure how grievous an error this is, but the only thing the decent people of this nation can do is wake up tomorrow and fight like hell for what we still believe is worth the fight, and we will.

I'll be doing that with whoever has the strength to join me. I'm mourning the country we could have been and the one we apparently are—but I refuse to give up believing that compassion is the right path, that diversity makes us better, and that love is greater than fear.

Trump's likely reelection reveals that love is not greater than fear and hatred.  Pavlovitz had two other post that sums up my sentiments:

I will never forgive my family members and former friends for voting for him.

We now know that 2016 wasn't a fluke or an aberration, that this is what the majority wants: whiteness, patriarchy, nationalism, hatred, nihilism. . . . I just know that I'm seeing the nation with my eyes fully open and there is no mistaking what so many people I Ioved and once respected, actually value. 

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty