One man’s narcissism and divisiveness
Elizabeth Warren on the real estate tycoon and reality tv personality Donald Trump:
Donald Trump is now the leader of the Republican Party. It’s real – he is one step away from the White House. Here’s what else is real:
Trump has built his campaign on racism, sexism, and xenophobia. There’s more enthusiasm for him among leaders of the KKK than leaders of the political party he now controls.
He incites supporters to violence, praises Putin, and, according to a columnist who recently interviewed him, is “cool with being called an authoritarian” and doesn’t mind associations with history’s worst dictators.
He attacks veterans like John McCain who were captured and puts our servicemembers at risk by cheerleading illegal torture. In a world with ISIS militants and leaders like North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Un conducting nuclear tests, he surrounds himself with a foreign policy team that has been called a “collection of charlatans,” and puts out contradictory and nonsensical national security ideas one expert recently called “incoherent” and “truly bizarre.”
What happens next will test the character for all of us – Republican, Democrat, and Independent. It will determine whether we move forward as one nation or splinter at the hands of one man’s narcissism and divisiveness. I know which side I’m on, and I’m going to fight my heart out to make sure Donald Trump’s toxic stew of hatred and insecurity never reaches the White House.
Again, from the outside, I wish Warren was running for President.
More proof that our “intellectual elites” are actually cretins.
https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/729337269929259008
You see, I can kind of see that the xenophobia, racism and misogyny might be actual selling points for some sad white dudes who feel disenfranchised but what I really, really don’t get is the idea that some people -entirely too many! – in the US seem prepared to vote for a guy who has neither political experience, nor a successful career in business behind him.
Exactly how is Drumpf expected to negotiate for and defend American interests – even if that involves defending and promoting xenophobia, racism and misogyny – when he has absolutely no experience? How can he be expected to handle the budget of an entire country when he has proven incapable of handling his own finances (how many times has he declared bankruptcy? Let’s face it, financially he’s been a disaster. He’d actually be wealthier if he’d just let Daddy’s money ride in a bank account rather than attempting to do anything with it.)
Is this to do with the strange US cultural distrust of people who Know Stuff? Europe is scarcely free of xenophobic, racist misogynists who claim to be men of the people while sitting on large piles of personal wealth – I mean, Hello Farage! But Farage, odious as he is, has behind him a successful history as a banker. The same with the other unpleasant politicos we have here. What we don’t have – and I don’t think we ever could have – is someone who has failed in just about everything he’s done quite as utterly as Trump has.
Trump has built his campaign on racism, sexism, and xenophobia. There’s more enthusiasm for him among leaders of the KKK than leaders of the political party he now controls.
The reverend Wright whose sermons Obama attended every Sunday were replete with racist slander and barely concealed anti-Semitism. Obama attended Wright’s church for over 20 years, and that church once featured Louis Farakhan on its cover.
whether we move forward as one nation or splinter at the hands of one man’s narcissism and divisiveness.
That’s already happened. 8 years ago voters were promised a ‘post-racial’ America, and yet here we are in 2016 in an America that has never been so splintered and divided along so many lines. Under Obama American civil society has degenerated and dissolved into a series of *rainbow* tribes.
How can he be expected to handle the budget of an entire country when he has proven incapable of handling his own finances (how many times has he declared bankruptcy? Let’s face it, financially he’s been a disaster.
Newsflash… America already IS bankrupt.
And no, I am NOT endorsing Trump
In a word, yes.
John – Obama has not been the one sowing divisiveness. This has been done by people who have shouted racism and hatred and bile from every station that would give them a platform – which was most of them. He has actually been very much a go along to get along guy, but every time he would give them what they wanted, they moved the goalposts. I don’t think you can blame Obama for that.
As for the Reverend Wright – there might be something there, but he did disavow Wright, and was pilloried for it, because he didn’t stand behind a friend. In short, this is a man that couldn’t get a break. And no, I am not endorsing Obama – he has been a rather weak president who didn’t live up to all the expectations. I’m not sure anyone could, those were so high.
And America is not bankrupt. We are in debt, but that is not the same thing.
@John: How is America (I assume you mean USA) bankrupt? I thought the only thing stopping the USA from honoring its debt would be a whim of congress. If you mean some countries in South America, that could be a different case.
Good god.
Voters were promised a ‘post-racial’ America? I don’t remember that. By whom? In what sense? What does that even mean?
And what work is “Under Obama” meant to do there? Are we meant to think it means causation? Do you seriously think a president can shape all of American civil society?
John is making the common error (really, a deliberate attempt at disingenuity) of trying to claim that some of the hyperbolic statements of Obama’s media coverage (not affiliated with the campaign, let alone the administration itself) as promises made by Obama himself. Then he goes the further step and ignores two key facts:
1: Most of the folks talking about post-racial America were, in fact, trying to push an end to discussion about racism in America–claiming that having elected a single person of color to the highest office, we could now just declare the fight won.
2: Virtually all efforts (and all practical efforts) at actually achieving a reduction in the effects of racism in the U.S. was opposed virulently by the GOP and their media flacks.
I have lots of problems with Obama, but none of them have anything to do with the bilge John is pushing here.
America’s racial divide has never been as wide as since the sixties.
Perhaps Obama himself didn’t promise a ‘post racial America’, but the pundits cheering for him elaborated on that theme quite a bit before and immediately after his election.
Race relations have hit rock bottom. There is an increase in self-segregation, for example, in universities that is really unhealthy.
There’s also an explosion in tribalism, be it defined by race, sexual orientation, sex…you name it.
Most of the folks talking about post-racial America were, in fact, trying to push an end to discussion about racism in America–claiming that having elected a single person of color to the highest office, we could now just declare the fight won.
Bull. For many ageing, nostalgic progressives Obama represented the fulfillment, the eschaton, the end-of-days of a movement towards racial harmony that began in the 60s. The ‘I have a dream’ was to become, in Obama, the new racial reality. The dream has now become a bit of a nightmare.
And bilge is never pushed, it’s pumped.
John. You have to do better than just listing things you don’t like and hand-waving some kind of causal connection to Obama. You have to make some kind of sense. Merely juxtaposing some fact claims with mentions of Obama doesn’t do whatever job it is you’re trying to do.
Also all these comparative claims – it’s all worse, we’ve hit rock bottom, explosion, new reality, blah blah – where the hell are you getting all that? At least hint at some kind of argument or stats or something.
Why has the Republican party not split into two: say, Trump wing and Ryan wing?
For that matter, what about a split in Democratic party: Hillary wing and Bernie wing?
A sort of popular nihilism–this ‘everything is broken, so let’s just get it over with and burn it down’ thing–has showed up quite a lot, of late, among those effectively arguing for electing Trump. Been kinda hard to miss. Got one of those in my immediate circle. Quelle surprise.
What’s also kind of hard to miss is:
1) It’s hardly especially dissonant with lines right-wing politicians especially have been selling for decades, now. It’s a pretty standard campaign. Washington is broken. Please elect me to burn it to the ground. A really hardly exotic GOP playbook prepared the ground for Trump, much as some of them insist they’re so appalled. Only thing he did wrong, I expect, was speak a little too carelessly through the code. And not quite kiss the _right_ asses on the way up. So yes, I expect quite a few of those rats _will_ find a way to make up, however, however much they protested what a disaster he was, up until he clinched it. He really is their kind of animal. And let’s face it: they’ _are_ authoritarian followers, after all. All he has to do is speak in confident, brazen tones, and they’ll quietly roll over, then find some excuse to say ‘he’ll do’. And yes, it _will_ be a lot of ‘Hillary is worse’, and never mind you’d probably more need Mussolini to get all the way there.
2) Speaking of that other ugly old disaster, the same line is pretty much SOP for fascist demagogues in general, too. The bankers have bought the system. Elect me to tear all the rot out. I’ll throw ’em all out, maybe fire a buncha lazy civil servants, bust a few unions, y’know. It’ll all be grand. _You’ll_ be all right, you nice, right-thinking voter supporting me. It’s just those dirty leeches gonna get ground under the boot, not to worry.
I’m not sure I’m gonna go long on analysis, yet, as to why it appeals to people. But it’s pretty clear it does. The whole idea of some king of heaven returning to cleanse a terribly sullied world of corruption with fire seems to get some pretty good mileage, too; I can’t help but wonder if it’s got something in common with that chestnut, too…
… mind, short of really trying to scope out the psychology (again, probably that Authoritarians guy would be helpful; can’t be arsed to look at this moment, but I guess I probably should), it’s not like it’s anything I find at all mystifying. Watch kids flattening sand castles on the beach. A lot of people do like to smash things. Give them a way, however risibly transparent, to claim it’s some kind of necessary protest, a civil duty they’re fulfilling, a violent ‘renovation’ you _must_ get behind if you are at all aware of what a sewer you’ve actually been living in, and oh, my, but it can be an alarming little freak show. Any idiocy, any atrocity, any destructiveness… but now papered over and then fuelled by a grand, self-righteous fervour.
As to the ‘weary nihilist’ pose, I also figure I’m observing it’s long been pretty fashionable, far more defensible, in some circles, to support burning the world down if you are, see, weary and disgusted. If you _admit_ it’s more you kinda like to see things burn, and kinda hope the people you hate will be trapped in the house, this is a little too brazen. See also ‘don’t speak too clearly past the code’. But weary and disgusted? Ah, you poor thing. Let me light the torches for you, there there.
Here’s the reality, the way I see it: the US _does_ have problems. Big ones, absolutely. Major divisions between rich and poor, black and white, and real social and economic mobility just isn’t what’s advertised in The American Dream.
.. and hucksters promising you salvation by burning the whole thing down thrive in that. Macho poseurs, too. Always have. But Trump is no more going to ‘save’ America, given the chance, than Putin could ever ‘save’ Russia. (And it’s no wonder he speaks well of the man; the dissonance if he did otherwise would be a bit much.) As it’s exactly the same awful formula. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ and Putin’s playing off Soviet nostalgia, same old silly game.
What _isn’t_ fashionable, and never has been, with the same set? Looking at what works, at what _is_ progress, slight and maddeningly insufficient as yet though it may be. Accepting your society has flaws, but staying, and working to fix them. Accepting that government is an imperfect but necessary instrument, and contrary to your romantic notions, burning the whole thing down isn’t going to lead to cleansing fire and a new utopia–it’s going to lead to economic and social dysfunction on a scale you probably have to visit Afghanistan truly to appreciate. And fortunate for you, really, that Trump is unlikely quite to have the reach, nor even the twisted ambition, even _were_ he given the position he seeks, to do that much damage quite so quickly as those oddly dreaming of apocalypse not so secretly wish. More likely it will be more a slow, miserable degradation of the social contract, more division, more poverty, more corruption, more cronyism. Pretty much what you’d expect, in short, when you elect a vapid poseur who’s mantra and MO really have always been: make yourself rich; whoever else gets hurt or helps you to their own injury was too stupid or too weak to stop you, so fuck ’em…
Russia, in short, not so much Afghanistan. And I do dearly hope I never have to say ‘well, I _did_ warn you…’
The same nihilistic pose, of course, hates all ‘establishment’ politicians, and this, too, is terribly fashionable..
But let me tell you about ‘establishment’ politicians: the ones who don’t so much deny it are marginally more honest than the rest, and, generally, it’s about as well as you’re ever going to do. Yes, they owe favours, yes, they have friends with more money than you, and they’re probably going to feel some compulsion to care of them. You will have to work to keep them honest, and eventually, you will have to replace them. But bear in mind: they didn’t _start_ by lying to you, selling you an impossible, nihilistic, apocalyptic dream, or a paradise on earth, or tell you they were your saviour, coming from outside to start fires that somehow, oddly, are going to help you. They said: yes, I’m part of the system, imperfect as the system is, I support it. If you’re really lucky, and if you choose reasonably well, they try to make it work a little better for everyone. They aren’t going to put a chicken in every pot, even if they feel compelled to promise it on prime time, they aren’t going to make everything perfect forever. But if they know how to show up to committee meetings, know how to lobby the house, know how things work, you _may_ be ahead, when they’re actually working for you…
So enough with the juvenile moaning, the oh things are so broken so I must break it more bullshit. I expect you probably can fix a few things, if you don’t mind rolling your sleeves. But the torch probably shouldn’t be the first tool you reach for.
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