I can sympathise with your views here but I’m oddly angered by it. Why the hell should i be bothered about what happens across the other side of the world in a country i’ve never visted?
Thinking about it, in my little head space i’m becoming increasingly pissed off about misinformation and let’s be honest downright lies that has basically been the foundation of recent politics in the uk and now the US. It angers me that truth and reality are drowned out so easily and so effectively with very little effort.
In my mind it means we’re going backwards. My personal interests in STEM topics are being swamped by crap to the point where someone would rather believe the word of a billionaire buying seafront property over the quiet scientist sat in the corner. Trump’s election win will amplify that.
So, I’ve decided to continue to watch this unfold as some kind of morbid fascination quietly sat in the corner with a wry grin when it starts to fall apart. And it will.
That aside something needs to change within our political systems. Dont know the roadway to that.
And that’s just the economy. We know that the right wing groups engage with each other, and that Bannion has spent time with UK parties, so it’s probable there will be something more to come politically as well.
Indeed. It was a kind of flippant / theoretical and poorly spelt question to ask when condidering distancing yourself from US politics.
Answer is you really cant. You could bury uour head in the sand, read the Daily Mail and blame the uk government for it, but i honestly suspect some of it will be out of our hands.
I will read your linked article shortly thanks while i also try to resolve my incredibly clumsy typing and verifying skills on this phone of mine
His handling of covid should have been that moment, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Humanity is slowly lumbering off a cliff and they can’t see 10 inches in front of them.
As I posted yesterday, the racial realignment story is not really there. If you take Obama out of the picture, someone who secured an unusually high black and hispanic share of the vote, we see the black vote this time being completely consistent with every other republican candidate this century who did not face Obama, and a Hispanic share that slightly ticked up from the average but still below Bush in 04. There were lots of stories written ahead of time about the coming realignment due to some of the polling, but it didn’t really materialize. Now trump has won people are just leaning on their preconceived notions of what would likely need to have happened if he were going to win without concern for whether it matches what actually happened.
Keep this in mind as you read/hear any post mortems over the next few days and months. This will be the driving factor for almost all of them.
I do think there is an interesting story about race from this election, but it isnt about a new alignment. It is about why we didn’t see an realignment away from Trump towards an Obama style vote share in the face of such belligerent, consistent racism. That fact we ended up with totally normal voting patterns despite that is the story.
Except it doesn’t. They SHOULD know. But objectively we know a significant portion of the Trump vote just doesnt know. This is precisely why the whole thing has been so enraging.
Them: Trump will do x
Me: He literally said the opposite, and that is consistent with what he did the last time he was on office
Them: That is just a lie. You have Trump Derangement Syndrome and will say anything to make him look bad
Me: Shows them news
Them: Yeah, fake news
Me: Shows them a video of Trump actually saying it
Them: ok, he didnt mean that
Me: Why do you not believe him when he is literally saying it?
Them: Because that would an absurd thing to do, so he surely has to believe something else.
For a good 50% of Trump voters they voted for a guy they completely made up in their head, that he was telling them on a daily basis was a fantasy, and they just refused to listen to even him. These people have been a weird fugue like state for the past 4 years, just completely impenetrable with reality
He might take it to a whole new level, but I feel as though this really isn’t anything new and is just a different experience of a cult of personality. It’s similar to what some Johnson and Corbyn supporters have as well, but obviously for those it’s on a much smaller scale.
Yeah, the thing that I think is most frustrating me with this outcome is we are now in yet another cycle of up their own arsehole journalists and media people telling us again “we must come to learn what motivates Trump voters”. Stop! WE FUCKING KNOW. It is you people in your DC and NYC bubbles who don’t get it. This is not about normal political distinction. This is not right vs left, globalism vs protectionism, government vs anti government. It is almost entirely an issue of informed vs uninformed (or misinformed). The level of disconnect of what is happening in the country from these professional smart people is astonishing and until they comfortable breaking the taboo that just because a lot of people claim to think something we have to treat that position seriously, we will not get out of this mire.
Coming from the country of License Raj. I can really say how fucked that decision really is. Especially with the situation being what it is.
Trump will need exports and imports to/from other countries. That goes without saying.
One thing I’d say about the license Raj in India though , it played the role in making India relatively self sufficient. Not that I’d be in favour of bringing it back now.
Example
Real wages (inflation adjusted) are above where they were prepandemic, and this is true across a broad range of workers with benefots concentrated in the lower 50% (populism)
The story is that we had global inflation and in the US there was a short period where that outpaced wage growth, but that caught up pretty quickly without us having to suffer the sort of major economic hits (unemployment) we usually see when trying to get inflation under control. Notably this was happening during a period where the press were insistent that the economy was going to go into recession (not that things are bad now, but they cant stay good). The doom and gloom was everywhere, was constant. There was no piece of neutral to positive economic news that could not be spun into it being bad news for the economy and for Biden. And the result is people who have done ok through unprecedented challenges refuse to acknowledge it in light of being beaten over the head for years with economic pessimism, and voted for a guy they actively didnt like because of promises about an economy that will actually make it worse.
And what are the lessons that the press will take from this? Based on this piece from CNN’s media analyst, they seem to be giving entirely the wrong lessons serious considerations
The press has lost credibility not because 50% of the electorate voted for a guy they told was bad. It is because the occasional isolated story about Trump being bad mixed in with a bunch of 50-50 coverage is so insufficient a way to express what this election was about, what this entire 4 year period was, that it enabled such a big portion of the electorate to not view him as disqualified. They will instead decide that we have give more weight to the objectively wrong ideas that people voted for Trump claim to believe.
This is essentially saying “The stories we collectively covered pathetically substandardly didnt break through. That means we must change what we covered instead of considering if the way we covered those stories was too ambiguous.”
This is the equivalent of people complaining about the food pyramid promoting ill health by pointing to our collective ill health and ignoring that only a tiny fraction of the population (largely healthy people) actually follow the guidance.
No shit. Most of “Trump brand” products are made in China.
The average American has no idea about this, tariffs, world economy, or geopolitical events, because we live in a country that is mainly isolated, and every person here has a mini computer they walk around with everywhere, and watch things from their own little bubble, where algorithms push them to right talking points, or play games all day. Schools are pushing out more ill-educated students, without critical thinking skills, because good teachers are quitting, and the ones staying must teach what the government mandates. We are becoming a country of idiot zombies.
That South American demo is growing rapidly, increased by about 2 million between 20 and 24, with most of that recent growth from Colombians and Venezuelans. This is a demo who come here with similar anti-communist sentiment to the Cubans and so fall straight into GOP programming.
