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Donald Trump - MAGAtwat news and discussion

Nylock said:
...as well as the lack of complexity, the right and nationalist right's messaging has also been very nostalic, hearkening back to an earlier and "better" time (regardles of the lived reality of the time). As unrealistic as nostalgia is, it's a powerful tool to motivate people. Not everyone, granted, but a significant number at least. The most recent example is, of course, Trump's "Make America Great Again!" which he ripped off from Reagan's "Let's make America great again" from the '84 campaign. A lot of americans (esp. the white working class) who remember the Reagan era remember (depite the obvious evils of it) that they had secure jobs, that college and healthcare was affordable, that housing didn't cost up to 10x your salary, that it was still just about possible for a skilled member of the working class to support an entire family on one salary. All of that is gone and a lot of the older voters want it back. Anyone who promises that is going to get their vote and people who have grown up in the current era of scarcity and stress also want a bit of that. It's a powerful argument to make. Similarly over here, a lot of the success behind brexit (aside from giving those smug cunts in the coalition govt a kick in the balls) was a hearkening back to the days before the UK fully joined the EU when a 'job for life' meant just that, when higher education was largely free, when rates were affordable, when the price of a house was not fucking eyewatering and when working overtime was properly rewarded to the point where people would ask to work over hours for the significant pay bump (I remember going for many successive night shifts and working bank holidays as a teenager due to the prospect of unsocial hours double and triple-time pay which allowed me to work less overall hours for the same pay as my day-worker coworkers). None of that existed by the time of the brexit vote. Now, i'm not saying that's the sole reason for those votes but it was a powerful draw to that camp.

Maybe, as well as stripping back the unnecessary complexity of the left's message, there can be a similar appeal to nostalgia? After all, a significant amount of the social niceties that those sorts of voters look back on were as a result of left wing/socialist 'lite'/democratic socialist actions and not conservative ones. Maybe using the same kind of lure that the right does to draw people leftwards could work? After all, unlike those chancers from the right, the left actually does "have the receipts" as the Americans put it...

I'm probably wrong and brainfarting in the face of possible oblivion but it might be a start...🤷‍♂️
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Yes, and a C4 News piece on Trump victory celebration vox pops ended with one MAGA-man saying “we’ve taken our country back”.
 
brogdale said:
Even Trump allies like 'tech-bro' billionaire David Sacks, albeit from their own self-interested perspective, have identified how woefully the Dems ignored any real issues or engaged with meaningful policy debate:

View attachment 450075
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oh christ I know who named the government purge unit DOGE. Elon fucking musk, I can haz jackboot epic bacon cunt
 
tim said:
Tea stiring times.

Least surprising news of the election aftermath.
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sterling tea is about the best thing to do for a bit..

the right just won a major victory by attacking via identity politics and the economy..

and whatever remains of the left in the USA is currently infight and blaming each other

may as well have a cuppa
:thumbs:
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
While I disagree with most of what he's saying here, he's not wrong that the FDA is corrupt. That agency was subject to corporate capture in probably the 80s. There's a lot of permeability between big pharma and the FDA so they tend to go with whatever the pharmaceutical reps want. This has meant that smaller companies get forced out because they can't meet the regulations that have been set for them cost effectively. The bigger businesses can meet them (because they wrote them for that very purpose). This leads to much higher costs for the consumer, with less reliability, while forcing out any competition. For the average person that means that they have no valid source of information or reliable regulatory oversight, so they're left confused. It's no wonder people just reject the system and reach out for weird "solutions" to their health issues. I know I've wandered around a health food store in search of relief more than once, when the medical system failed to help or was too costly. Many people around here even resort to veterinary pharmaceutical supply stores.
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true they are not perfect but I don't think th turning to veterinary pharmacy is going to stop by taking down the FDA ..

more than likely flood the medical market with more quackery via the dietary supplement lobbyist and fuckwits like RFK and Alex Jones..

deregulation of the pharmaceutical market is not for the benefit of patients
 
Apparently RFK is into MIASMA theory ... :eek:

Someone posted this extract from "The Real Anthony Fauci"on a YT comment ...

@sithwolf8017
So I just made a terrifying discovery about RFK jr. You guys remember how I said Chapters 5/6 of "The Real Anthony Fauci" were skirting germ theory denialism with RFK jr's HIV denialism rhetoric? Yeeeaaah turns out he was saving the real deal for later. Chapter 9: The White Man's Burden pgs 529-535 in all his germ theory denialism glory. Pgs 531-532 and I quote:

""Miasma theory" emphasizes preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses. Miasma exponents posit that disease occurs where a weakened immune system provides germs an enfeebled target to exploit. They analogize the human immune system to the skin of an apple; with the skin intact, the fruit will last a week at room temperature and a month if refrigerated. But even a small injury to the skin triggers systemic rot within hours as the billions of opportunistic microbes-thronging on the skin of every living organism- - colonize the injured terrain. Germ theory aficionados, in contrast, blame disease on microscopic pathogens. Their approach to health is to identify the culpable germ and tailor a poison to kill it. Miasmists complain that those patented poisons may themselves further weaken the immune system, or simply open the damaged terrain to a competitive germ or cause chronic disease, They point out that the world is teeming with microbes--many of them beneficial--and nearly all of them harmless to a healthy, well-nourished immune system. Miasmists argue that malnutrition and inadequate access to clean water are the ultimate stressors that make infectious diseases lethal in impoverished locales. When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (a.k.a. virologists) blame the virus. The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune response."

Also on pg 532, RFK jr quotes Virus Mania aka the holy bible of germ theory denialism:

As Dr. Claus Köhnlein and Torsten Engelbrecht observe in Virus Mania, "The idea that certain microbes- above all fungi, bacteria, and viruses- arc our great opponents in battle, causing certain diseases that must be fought with special chemical bombs, has buried itself deep into the collective conscience." Imperialist ideologues find natural affinity with germ theory. A "War on Germs rationalizes a militarized approach to public health and endless intervention in poor nations that bear heavy disease burdens. And just as the military-industrial complex prospers in war, the pharmaceutical cartel profits most from sick and malnourished populations"

On pgs 532-533 RFK jr explicitly mentions and even quotes the fairytale of Pasteur renouncing Germ Theory on his deathbed and saying Antoine Béchamp, who RFK jr references multiple times in Chapter 9, was right about Terrain Theory.
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There are massive contradictions in the Trump coalition:
Big pharma money/capitalist interests v anti vaxxers
Cash-only paranoids & gold standard fetishists v bitcoin “revolutionary” tech bros
Evangelicals v atheist/amoral “libertarians”
Russophobic Birchers v Putin lickers
Anti-semite white-nationalist isolationists v Netanyahu fanboys & Christian Zionists
MAGA proletarians expecting improvements v social Darwinist “entrepreneurs” who see them as under-exploited “losers”
Electric vehicle manufacturers v big oil and gas
Nihilist “state smashers” and asset strippers looking to profit from chaos v cop-loving big-budget security fetishists seeking ironclad “stability”

Whilst some of these people have early common goals, most diverge sooner or later.

At the centre of all these clashing worldviews is the court of King Donald, leaning towards the last person who flattered him on a daily basis.
Interesting times ahead.
 
Wilf said:
I'm 5 pages behind so things have probably moved on, but I don't think people are downplaying racism and a whole section of other views that are there amongst people who turn to populism. But the problem is just leaving them as racists, as something that begins and ends with them personally. People live their lives, they process shit, they interact with the world and with those who hold power over them. Ideas, culture, material things. Not just 'those people', the 'deplorables', that's how we do it as well. And a lot of people have lived their lives through phases of neo-liberalism, generating shit experiences, fear, anxiety and precariousness. And it's that that generates the racism and all the nasty shit. It's also that that leaves people feeling screwed economically and in terms of their future prospects and those of their kids. A perfect mix for filth like Trump to exploit.

I get the anger, the desire to call them stupid fucks. But that doesn't help the Democrats learn the lessons that Bernie Sanders has been telling them. It doesn't help build any kind of resistance centred on working class politics and interests. It doesn't do anything to root out the actual causes of racism for that matter.
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I'm going to leave this argument for now, I'm finding myself arguing with people I like and and a huge amount of respect for and I really don't like doing that.

My last word on it is that I think people are arguing something that made sense 10 or 20 years ago, but I'm not convinced it makes sense in the American context any more.
 
Jeremiah18.17 said:
There are massive contradictions in the Trump coalition:
Big pharma money/capitalist interests v anti vaxxers
Cash-only paranoids & gold standard fetishists v bitcoin “revolutionary” tech bros
Evangelicals v atheist/amoral “libertarians”
Russophobic Birchers v Putin lickers
Anti-semite white-nationalist isolationists v Netanyahu fanboys & Christian Zionists
MAGA proletarians expecting improvements v social Darwinist “entrepreneurs” who see them as under-exploited “losers”
Electric vehicle manufacturers v big oil and gas
Nihilist “state smashers” and asset strippers looking to profit from chaos v cop-loving big-budget security fetishists seeking ironclad “stability”

Whilst some of these people have early common goals, most diverge sooner or later.

At the centre of all these clashing worldviews is the court of King Donald, leaning towards the last person who flattered him on a daily basis.
Interesting times ahead.
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I wonder if Trump is too senile at this point to remember which groups he's trying to play off against the others
 
I agree with Sanders' criticisms of the Democratic Party and I think Harrison is wrong to reject them, though I don't think the 48-year-old was incorrect in saying Biden "was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime – saved union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line” - were any of Biden's predecessors in the last 48 years more pro-worker?
 
emanymton said:
I'm going to leave this argument for now, I'm finding myself arguing with people I like and and a huge amount of respect for and I really don't like doing that.

My last word on it is that I think people are arguing something that made sense 10 or 20 years ago, but I'm not convinced it makes sense in the American context any more.
Click to expand...
I think we’re all closer to each other than exchanges are giving the impression. Everyone here is depressed, alarmed, horrified.

History is repeating itself as farce. Hitler isn’t going to rehappen. That was Germany in the 1920s and 30s. For the US in the 21st Century, we’re getting something familiar but with important differences.

But there are still parallels to observe and learn from.

I’d encourage people to watch if they haven’t seen it and rewatch if they have, the Sorrow and the Pity.

It’s a documentary about Vichy France which interviews people from both sides of the fascist divide. It was made in the 60s, so really not long at all after the events.

I’ve long had an interest, some think an unhealthy one, in the rise of fascism in Germany in particular, and how something like that could happen. The more I read the more I realise that collaboration, turning a blind eye, core fanaticism, all the different shades and stages of support or non opposition, these are not “other people”. They’re people.

People in circumstances. Conditions. And were I in their conditions, I could easily be them. Why am I not? I’m not special. I just have had different conditions.

brogdale and stethoscope make the very important point about the media people are consuming. We see clips of Trump being bizarre and weird on the podium. What do they see?

We’re in an environment where people aren’t even consuming “legacy news” anymore - news we already knew went through the filters Chomsky and Herman described in the 80s. How much more filtered is “news” in the 2020s?

I got my hair cut at a barber shop the other day. The two barbers - young Glaswegian men in their 30s - were discussing something they’d seen on Joe Rogan. One was reading a book that had been recommended. I was alarmed at the reach of this stuff. They were ordinary young men just as you’d expect. Nothing remarkable about them. No aura of menace. Just nice guys having a chat.

If they were American what would their terms of reference be?

To ask again a question I posed myself on one of these threads, where is the dividing line between a Nazi on the streets that antifascists should punch, and everyone else? Where is the margin where punching turns to arguing, reasoning? Are we, the Antifascist few, to punch everyone? I don’t think so. I don’t have the energy.

So what are our options? I think hitmouse described it well:

"I think focusing on this reason opens up the possibility that people might be persuaded to think differently, and I can't see how focusing on that [other] reason does".
 
Sanders is wrong to sat the Democrats 'abandoned' the working-class, they were never its supporters or advocates. Not even to the shitty extent that Labour once were. They were just the slightly nicer wing of capital, who recognised that capital requires well trained and healthy workers. Clinton made it clear thirty plus years ago that whatever tiny remnants of left activism remaining from the late sixties and seventies were cleared out when he got the nomination - "this is Bad Godesberg, not Brighton"

Of course Sanders has to pretend (maybe even actually believe) that they were pro-worker in order to rally the troops, but its bollocks.
 
Wilf said:
If I actually believed that, I really would give up. :(
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I think a lot of what he is offering is what ordinary Americans want. He's lying of course and has no interest in ever delivering it but plenty of people desperate enough to swallow his guff.
 
I think in the analysis you also have to consider there’s two perspectives - the campaign the Dems ran, and the one the Trump team loudly told people they were running. So while I agree with a lot of the article above, there’s no denying Republicans were pushing the idea Dems were « far left » etc.
When you have candidates who will lie, surrounded by a “media” that will merrily share that lie, it is a tricky old fight.
 
belboid said:
Sanders is wrong to sat the Democrats 'abandoned' the working-class, they were never its supporters or advocates. Not even to the shitty extent that Labour once were. They were just the slightly nicer wing of capital, who recognised that capital requires well trained and healthy workers. Clinton made it clear thirty plus years ago that whatever tiny remnants of left activism remaining from the late sixties and seventies were cleared out when he got the nomination - "this is Bad Godesberg, not Brighton"

Of course Sanders has to pretend (maybe even actually believe) that they were pro-worker in order to rally the troops, but its bollocks.
Click to expand...
Went to a discussion last night on the election, was with Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynsky and Sanders comment s came up.
I was interested that the response last night was that Sanders wasn’t right on the facts, that the lowest earning 10% had significantly benefited from democrat policies and Biden had been consistently pro labour, infrastructure bill etc.
But the panel emphasised inflation as being v significant and undermining the generally booming economy, and social media creating issues out of immigration, the economy, crime, which weren’t necessarily borne out of by the data.
 
danny la rouge said:
I think we’re all closer to each other than exchanges are giving the impression. Everyone here is depressed, alarmed, horrified.

History is repeating itself as farce. Hitler isn’t going to rehappen. That was Germany in the 1920s and 30s. For the US in the 21st Century, we’re getting something familiar but with important differences.

But there are still parallels to observe and learn from.

I’d encourage people to watch if they haven’t seen it and rewatch if they have, the Sorrow and the Pity.

It’s a documentary about Vichy France which interviews people from both sides of the fascist divide. It was made in the 60s, so really not long at all after the events.

I’ve long had an interest, some think an unhealthy one, in the rise of fascism in Germany in particular, and how something like that could happen. The more I read the more I realise that collaboration, turning a blind eye, core fanaticism, all the different shades and stages of support or non opposition, these are not “other people”. They’re people.

People in circumstances. Conditions. And were I in their conditions, I could easily be them. Why am I not? I’m not special. I just have had different conditions.

brogdale and stethoscope make the very important point about the media people are consuming. We see clips of Trump being bizarre and weird on the podium. What do they see?

We’re in an environment where people aren’t even consuming “legacy news” anymore - news we already knew went through the filters Chomsky and Herman described in the 80s. How much more filtered is “news” in the 2020s?

I got my hair cut at a barber shop the other day. The two barbers - young Glaswegian men in their 30s - were discussing something they’d seen on Joe Rogan. One was reading a book that had been recommended. I was alarmed at the reach of this stuff. They were ordinary young men just as you’d expect. Nothing remarkable about them. No aura of menace. Just nice guys having a chat.

If they were American what would their terms of reference be?

To ask again a question I posed myself on one of these threads, where is the dividing line between a Nazi on the streets that antifascists should punch, and everyone else? Where is the margin where punching turns to arguing, reasoning? Are we, the Antifascist few, to punch everyone? I don’t think so. I don’t have the energy.

So what are our options? I think hitmouse described it well:

"I think focusing on this reason opens up the possibility that people might be persuaded to think differently, and I can't see how focusing on that [other] reason does".
Click to expand...
These are the top podcasts in the US

podcastcharts.byspotify.com

Podcast Charts

The most popular podcasts, updated daily.
podcastcharts.byspotify.com podcastcharts.byspotify.com

The top 3 are all far right, I'm not sure past that, until 11 and 12 which are also far right.

And the this isn't just right wing, it's mostly full on far right conspiracy theory bullshit.

Edit - to be clear that is Spotify only, the list for all platforms would be different, but for some reason apart from that all the results I got where for the UK even though I put US.
 
7 is right-leaning, 8 & 9 are firmly right-wing/far right. Rogan's a bit of a weird one as he gets all sorts on there -including leftists. He famously endorsed Sander's candidacy for president and had a lengthy, well-considered interview with the guy. He's also had podcasters from the american left on his show. I'm not a Rogan watcher btw but when he does get people on that I'm interested in, I'll give it a watch. He's not a bad interviewer tbf (when not interviewing outright nutballs and fascists ofc).
 
stockwelljonny said:
Went to a discussion last night on the election, was with Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynsky and Sanders comment s came up.
I was interested that the response last night was that Sanders wasn’t right on the facts, that the lowest earning 10% had significantly benefited from democrat policies and Biden had been consistently pro labour, infrastructure bill etc.
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Those weren't the facts Sanders was talking about tho. It is undoubtedly true that there were more auto jobs created under Biden than Trump, for instance, and various other pro-labour actions. But they weren't what the election ended up being about, Trumps (idiotic) economic plans weren't talked about (enough), Harris kept defending everything Biden did, even the shit stuff. And for many people the wins under Biden were wiped out by inflation, as you note.
stockwelljonny said:
But the panel emphasised inflation as being v significant and undermining the generally booming economy, and social media creating issues out of immigration, the economy, crime, which weren’t necessarily borne out of by the data.
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If the economy isn't booming for most actual people, then thats meaningless. And if someone is telling them 'you're better off with us' when they haven't become any better off with them, then they're fucked, aren't they?
 
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Nylock said:
7 is right-leaning, 8 & 9 are firmly right-wing/far right. Rogan's a bit of a weird one as he gets all sorts on there -including leftists. He famously endorsed Sander's candidacy for president and had a lengthy, well-considered interview with the guy. He's also had podcasters from the american left on his show. I'm not a Rogan watcher btw but when he does get people on that I'm interested in, I'll give it a watch. He's not a bad interviewer tbf (when not interviewing outright nutballs and fascists ofc).
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Yes Rogan is a bit odd, but that sort of confusion is not uncommon on the right. And I don't listen to him but my understanding is that him and his show have gone more explicitly far right. But that's 2nd hand so I could not swear on that. In any clase he platforms far right conspiracy shit on his program.
 
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