Donald Trump - MAGAtwat news and discussion

[danny la rouge]

There was an article on the BBC about Latinx voters going to Trump (not a majority of them, but a sizeable minority. Enough to make a difference). One comment was about being told you are better off under the Democrats but knowing that eggs were $5 a half dozen when four years ago they were 95c (or similar. I don’t have the article in front of me).

Whatever areas Sanders is wrong on - and I’m not a fan - his general point is correct. People feel much worse off - are worse off - and therefore didn’t believe the Democrat line that they were better off.

 

[brogdale]

There was an article on the BBC about Latinx voters going to Trump (not a majority of them, but a sizeable minority. Enough to make a difference). One comment was about being told you are better off under the Democrats but knowing that eggs were $5 a half dozen when four years ago they were 95c (or similar. I don’t have the article in front of me).

Whatever areas Sanders is wrong on - and I’m not a fan - his general point is correct. People feel much worse off - are worse off - and therefore didn’t believe the Democrat line that they were better off.

And we are left with the recurring pattern of alternating phases of neoliberal governance where incumbents can't survive very long in the context of the accelerating immiserisation associated with increasing inequality.

 

[tim]

Why are you posting bollox?

Are you worried about competition encroaching on your turf?

 

[brogdale]

Guardian seem to be waking up to Project 2025:

A new book by the chief architect of Project 2025, a hugely controversial policy plan for a second Trump term, repeatedly employs imagery of fire and burning, including calling for rightwingers to “burn away the rot” of American institutions and organizations deemed opposed to conservative aims.

Mixing classical quotes with cliché (“it is time to fight fire with fire”) and metaphors about forest fires and Smokey Bear, Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, advocates “a long, controlled burn” of targets including the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the New York Times, “every Ivy League college” and even the Boy Scouts of America.

 

[kabbes]

Massive great big 1,000lb gorilla of a context in America though mind.

Well, quite. That’s the point. Essentialising it as a “thing” that people just have, like a disease they’ve picked up, doesn’t deal with that gorilla at all. Like danny just said:

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.

 

[ignatious]

Whatever areas Sanders is wrong on - and I’m not a fan - his general point is correct. People feel much worse off - are worse off - and therefore didn’t believe the Democrat line that they were
better off.

Indeed. Quite a strong correlation between economic hardship and voting for Trump...

 

[tim]

45

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.

Even back in the sixties the Democrats were the party of racism, segregation and lynching: the political representatives of the plantation owners and the KKK.

U.S. Senate: Civil Rights Act of 1964

_Civil Rights Act of 1964

www.senate.gov

 

[Wilf]

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.

Well, literally, he got more votes than Harris, certainly. But, without heading down the 'false consciousness' route, I don't think he offers solutions to what people need. Or, for that matter what people actually want, when they discuss their own lives and their family's, away from the shite of an election campaign. It's a response to what people feel about their lives, but a wholly negative reaction to people feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Racism and Xenophobia come out of those circumstances too, though they have obviously deeper roots in American history. I'm not going to pretend there are good or honest things going on amid this shitshow, there aren't. But I do contest the idea that voting for a thing can be read off as genuine agreement with those trying to lock onto fears and anxieties.

 

[brogdale]

taking back our country and the long, controlled burn....



No doubt this story will be right up there on fox & other rw outlets

 

[two sheds]

A couple of messages since trump. I've spoilered them because they are thoroughly fucking depressing

Spoiler: don't look at these if you're easily enraged :(

and message being spammed to lots of black people:

One thing I've learned over the last couple of days: I'm standarly upset/annoyed when I see injustices not being rectified, I'm going to have to harden myself to it. Trump, Musk and their like won't be punished for anything they do. Racists, sexists and even neo-nazis won't be held to account. I'm just going to have to 'get used to it'.

Say what you like about Starmer (and I do hate him with a passion), if the tories (who I still hate more) were in power I think we'd be having a lot more spillover from Project 2025 and the like into the UK.

 

[chandlerp]

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.

He will platform anyone to be fair, it's just the far right people have agreed to go on there more often. I don't like the cunt but he will talk to anyone.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Indeed. Quite a strong correlation between economic hardship and voting for Trump...

Strictly, the correlation there is between voting Trump and stating that you faced economic hardship due to inflation.

While the point is still clear, we need to be a little cautious. There will also be some correlation between how you report that you're doing and your political viewpoint. These are not independent variables.

 

[chandlerp]

Indeed. Quite a strong correlation between economic hardship and voting for Trump...

You can't fix stupid

 

[ignatious]

Strictly, the correlation there is between voting Trump and stating that you faced economic hardship due to inflation.

While the point is still clear, we need to be a little cautious. There will also be some correlation between how you report that you're doing and your political viewpoint. These are not independent variables.

Well, yes, there is no definition of 'hardship' either so it could theoretically include people struggling with their $40k a month mortgage because their fleet of Hummers cost so much to run, but I think the jist is clear.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

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

I'm explaining why people have left the medical system and the FDA behind and looked elsewhere for care. I don't believe I suggested that we should deregulate the medical industry or disband the FDA. It does need revamping, along with our entire medical system and how its paid for. With this new Trump administration, we have no hope of getting that. We're likely to get even move profit-taking and consolidation.

 

[ignatious]

You can't fix stupid

Nobody is stupid. Many are ill-informed.

 

[MickiQ]

Well, literally, he got more votes than Harris, certainly. But, without heading down the 'false consciousness' route, I don't think he offers solutions to what people need. Or, for that matter what people actually want, when they discuss their own lives and their family's, away from the shite of an election campaign. It's a response to what people feel about their lives, but a wholly negative reaction to people feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Racism and Xenophobia come out of those circumstances too, though they have obviously deeper roots in American history. I'm not going to pretend there are good or honest things going on amid this shitshow, there aren't. But I do contest the idea that voting for a thing can be read off as genuine agreement with those trying to lock onto fears and anxieties.

I'm sure a lot of people voted for Trump's dark side but I suspect a lot voted for Make America Great Again which is sufficiently vague enough to be open to people to putting their own spin on it. Before the election I watched a video about his 2016 campaign where the documentary visited the poorest county in the USA which has been decimated by the collapse of the coal industry and so many people said they were voting Trump because he was going to re-open the coalmines (he didn't obvs) but I think a lot of people wanted MAGA because they think it means the possibility of a decent job, being able to afford a home, not being bankrupted by medical bills etc.
Trump is a scam artist he promises the moon with neither the ability nor the interest to deliver it but people are desperate for it. So what if the economy has done better under Biden than it did under Trump, if you were on minimum wage and struggling to pay your rent in 2020 chances are you still were come 2024.
OK a lot of people voted for Trump because they really want to throw out the migrants and put the gays in extermination camps but a lot of people may have thought to themselves "OK voting Trump could bring cheaper gas and groceries, OK I don't agree with some of his more extreme views but it probably won't be as bad as the fearmongers say and anyway I'm not a migrant and I'm not gay so it won't affect me anyway"
The amazing thing is of course that people are prepared to fall for his schtick twice, 2016 may be understandable but the thing that gets me shaking my head is that so many people remember what his last term was like and still voted for him.

 

[teuchter]

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".

This is not a channel I know or watch - the youtube algorithm gods just served this video to me - but I thought it's potentially interesting/useful for anyone trying to understand how others get caught up in the alt right stuff. Various familiar characters feature.

 

[breadandcircuse]

Come on Joe, get it done. Popok on how lawsuits will be filed as Project 2025 kicks in, and the judiciary need to be ready.

 

[Maltin]

There was an article on the BBC about Latinx voters going to Trump (not a majority of them, but a sizeable minority. Enough to make a difference). One comment was about being told you are better off under the Democrats but knowing that eggs were $5 a half dozen when four years ago they were 95c (or similar. I don’t have the article in front of me).

Whatever areas Sanders is wrong on - and I’m not a fan - his general point is correct. People feel much worse off - are worse off - and therefore didn’t believe the Democrat line that they were better off.

I read that many Latino/Latina voters were put off by being referred to by the made up word Latinx too.

 

[emanymton]

Well, yes, there is no definition of 'hardship' either so it could theoretically include people struggling with their $40k a month mortgage because their fleet of Hummers cost so much to run, but I think the jist is clear.

When this was posted the other day I said that self reporting was an issue. And the more I look at this graph and the message it is trying to give the less I like it.

It is trying to say that majority of people who voted Trump did so because of economic hardship, but that just doesn't add up. The result was pretty close to 50/50 and that would have been the same whatever the relative level of hardship. Sure if more people felt they were doing better it could have shifted things away from Trump enough that he lost. But that isn't an explanation for why he won as it ignores the vast majority of the vote.

All it really shows is that people who vote Trump are more likely to say they feel more hardship. Thing is I would bet money that many of those people will get worse off over the next 4 years, but still say they feel better off. As LBJ says you can't separate this from their politics.

 

[Nylock]

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.

Yes, he does. I've not watched his output in a while so I'm in the same boat as you with regards to the veracity of a significant far right shift on his part. I'm also not a reliable witness as to his general output as I'm very selective in what I will watch on his YouTube channel (it's leftists and those adjacent to the left just to be explicit). All I can say about his interviews of left wingers that I've seen is that he tends to give them a fair hearing and any cross examination I've seen him undertake tends towards the respectful rather than the confrontational. One thing of note from his trump* interview was that when trump went off on one about something or other (can't remember if it was immigration or healthcare) he was the only interviewer I saw in that election cycle actually ask the questions of "where is this evidence?" and "when will you produce it?" and then saying something along the lines of "you've had years to produce this and we've still yet to see it". That's not praise for Rogan btw, it's more a damning indictment on the absolute state of american broadcast journalism in general...


*I did not watch the trump interview btw, i saw that segment shown on an american American leftists youtube video.

 

[brogdale]

More Dem post-mortem 'analysis' that reveals exactly where the problem lies; imagine committing in print the aspiration to be "a party interested in competent technocracy."

 

[Yossarian]

I don't think there's any question that inflation, interest rate rises etc. have left a lot of people in hardship, which was always going to make the election an uphill climb for the incumbent party - but according to Ipsos, people who were misinformed about the economy, immigration, and crime were a lot likelier to vote for Trump

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/link-between-media-consumption-and-public-opinion

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Yeah. It's interesting, I'd agree it's correct, and it's necessary at this stage.

But it's chin stroking circle jerk pontificating. It's parsing and précis.

Where's the policy? Where's the representation? There have now been multiple generations of people who have zero connection and representation.

Trump - not the GOP - Trump, and hence MAGA are the nearest thing to what's necessary. Really. But it's ventriloquism. And it's venal manipulative exploitative harvesting.

I can't envision or even imagine an American political system that genuinely and honestly redresses this void.

I agree with all of this. Add to all of this plus multiple generations of right-wing propaganda machines blaring at them 24x7 and you can understand why they don't have the facts. I still have to ask, at what point do we hold them accountable for their choices? I've seen some of the most awful preening from people I personally know who are quite happy they're getting to see other people get hurt. They're cheering it. This is the second time, as well. I won't call it "stupidity", but it does seem to be a character issue when you deliberately vote to hurt people, not once, but twice.

 

[ignatious]

More Dem post-mortem 'analysis' that reveals exactly where the problem lies; imagine committing in print the aspiration to be "a party interested in competent technocracy."

View attachment 450187

Isn't that just twat-speak for good governance (as in, being a govt of the people for the people as opposed to the self-enriching swamp that people are angry about)?

The rest of it seems quite accurate tbf.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

You don't actually live in the US? (or maybe you do)

His last term was economically and politically a bit of a disaster and that didn't put anyone off.

Yeah, that cognitive dissonance between one of his campaign messages being about how Harris was VP so if she wanted to do xyz policies or initiatives or laws, she could've done so and why didn't she? Versus him having actually been President for four years, so why didn't he Make America Great Again? I mean, he had four years to do it...?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's a tricky one for the Dems to defend. It wasn't just the US with a cost of living crisis, of course. And it wasn't the US that had the worst of it. This hit across the world post-pandemic, and many incumbents have been punished in elections as a result.

I think the case can be made that the US would be even worse off now if Trump had got back in in 2020 because there wouldn't have been anything like the 'Inflation reduction act', which was actually the opposite of that but was aimed at mitigating the effects of the crisis.

"Things may be fucked, but they'd have been even more fucked with the other lot" is a hard sell, but in this case it is probably true.

 

[ignatious]

It is trying to say that majority of people who voted Trump did so because of economic hardship

It's not. It doesn't compare 'hardship' with any other reason that people may have had for voting as they did. You have made that assumption yourself.

Thing is I would bet money that many of those people will get worse off over the next 4 years, but still say they feel better off. As LBJ says you can't separate this from their politics.

Good point.

 

[brogdale]

Isn't that just twat-speak for good governance (as in, being a govt of the people for the people as opposed to the self-enriching swamp that people are angry about)?

The rest of it seems quite accurate tbf.

No, technocracy means governance undertaken by technical experts rather than representatives legislating in the interests of the people.

This Dem doesn't even pretend.