A laborer from Shamokin
Wait what?
Robert A. Bridy, 64, a laborer from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, traveled on Saturday to the rally to show support for Trump. He said the election feels tight in this state and added that his union and a close friend are trying to convince him to vote for Harris and other Democrats, but he has voted for Trump since 2016.
Bridy called Trump a “working class guy like us.” Trump is a billionaire who built his fortune in real estate.
How do people manage to think that?
The only explanation I can think of is insulting to the people in question.
Trump has never been in any sense working class. He was landlord class from the beginning.
What he can claim, I suppose, is that he lacks class in the cultural sense. He’s from Queens, and he remains all Queens despite the very tall property on 5th Avenue. You can buy the brownstone, you can build the tower, but you’ll still never be what old money is willing to sit down to dinner with. The tall garish tower will never be 47 and 49 E. 65th Street.
A different person could make that transition, but for Trump it’s completely out of the question. He’s determinedly sleazy and vulgar and trashy – he wants to be that, he enjoys it, he loves rubbing people’s noses in it.
Also a different person could remain loyal to his Queens roots but also be a decent human being, but again for Trump that’s just not a goal.
So really what the laborer from Shamokin, Pennsylvania is saying is that Trump is a bad cruel vulgar ignorant person “like us”…which is just too sad and horrific to believe.
I wonder if anyone thought to ask Bridy why he thinks that.
Well I assumed ‘Bridy called Trump a “working class guy like us.”’ was in response to questions.
Built his fortune? How about managed to hang to an enormous inheritance in spite of his many failures (both business and of character).
Of course he’d probably put it in slightly different terms, like “unvarnished, unscripted, straight-shooting,” etc. But then those terms can be translated as crude, unreflective, unfiltered, shallow, thoughtless, etc. His base doesn’t care so long as he rains scorn and destruction on the people they hate. They’ll let him burn everything down so long as their enemies suffer. That anyone could still be “undecided” about Trump is incomprehensible, as is the fact that he ever got as far as he has. He has no hidden charm, depth or subtlety, but likely still a huge reserve of unplumbed depravity and ignorance. The thing is, it’s no longer surpising. It’s just more of the same moral vacuum.
It’s no longer surprising, and yet it goes on surprising me.
I suppose I could stop being surprised if I really tried. I think maybe I don’t want to, because I don’t want to get used to it, because I refuse to accept it.
I get that. He’s a one man Overton window of malignancy and boorishness, dragging the body politic along behind him, redefining what passes for “acceptable” behaviour by normalizing the horrible.
There are so few negative adjectives and descriptors that do not apply to Trump it’s astounding. There’s so little need for restraint and nuance in describing his character, since he has neither restraint nor nuance. As a fictional character, he would be completely unbelievable, called out by any editor or agent who found him in a submitted manuscript. He would have been blue-pencilled out of existence. He would have been off-the-charts implausible in Dr. Strangelove, outstripping Ripper, Turgidson, and Guano for scenary-chewing unlikelihood. We can only hope he’s a one off, and that we will never see the like of him again. But imagine how much more damage the Republicans could have done had they had candidates who, though equally destructive, had been better at camouflaging it, more disciplined, and less prone to digressions of self-serving narcissism.
“How do people manage to think that?”
They only watch Faux News?
…With repeated financial assistance and bailouts for his failing businesses totalling at least $200,000,000. ‘Born with a silver spoon in his mouth’ barely suffices for this pampered softy.