Amen!...The coming politics was populist. Its harbinger wasn’t Barack Obama but Sarah Palin, the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trump’s John the Baptist.
If someone had told me 4 years ago about Trump becoming president then his inability to deal with this virus I would have told them they were full of shit.
Was the problem in 2016 that too many Americans took the red pill or the blue pill. George Packer, your author, about said it all, just that thought came to mind. Then, as usual with so many of my thoughts, conflict immediately lifted it's positive head .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill . As y'all would know
"The red pill and blue pill is a popular meme representing a choice between taking either a "red pill" that reveals an unpleasant truth, or taking a "blue pill" to remain in blissful ignorance. The terms are directly derived from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix."
My pill conflict? Well in voting for Trump events since have certainly revealed, what every informed voter should have known before the vote, "an unpleasant truth" about the man. And also in the vote for Trump many American voters seemed to choose "to remain in blissful ignorance", for the time, of the man.
So much for pills.
All we can do is trust that in November 2020 more than some 6 million Americans will decide to change their vote. In settling on 6 i just decided to double the number of votes Clinton and Kaine WON by, about 2.87 million .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election .. those 4 years ago.
George Packer did about say it all so will just attach a few reminders. All are multiples so there is considerable overlap.
Trump’s entire reelection message amounts to an admission of failure
"We Are Living in a Failed State The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken. "
(Leah Millis)
Greg Sargent Opinion writer May 22, 2020 at 12:35 a.m. GMT+10
Given his monstrous narcissism and megalomania, it was only a matter of time until President Trump began campaigning for reelection on the notion that his own government has failed him.
Trump’s political advisers have hit on a new strategy to cope with the challenge of running for a second term amid the most severe public health and economic crises in modern times, the Associated Press reports .. https://apnews.com/aaa334dbbe61570f1ff514c175b51c38 .
The interesting revelation reported on by the AP is that this campaign imperative — which was thrust on Trump and his advisers by his spectacular mismanagement of the pandemic — requires him to tacitly (and sometimes openly) attack his own government’s ongoing characterization of it.
---------- Gary Abernathy: What’s really behind Republicans wanting a swift reopening? Evangelicals. ... [out excerpts here] ... Americans describing themselves as evangelical Christians totaled 25.4 percent, the largest of all Christian subsections. Fifty-six percent of evangelicals self-identified as Republican, just 28 percent as Democrats. Unaffiliated — atheists, agnostics and “nothing in particular” — totaled 22.8 percent of all Americans. According to Pew, 69 percent of atheists and 64 percent of agnostics identify as Democrats, with just 15 percent of atheists and 21 percent of agnostics claiming the GOP. P - What was somewhat surprising is how the beliefs of evangelicals compare to Catholics, another group that might be considered biblical literalists. According to Pew, 84 percent of evangelicals believe the Bible is the word of God, compared with 62 percent of Catholics. Fifty-five percent of evangelicals agree that the Bible should be interpreted literally — twice the percentage of Catholics. [...] "The coronavirus? Christian fundamentalism is often fatalistic. As far as many evangelicals are concerned, life passes quickly, suffering is temporary and worrying solves nothing. That’s not a view that comports well with long stretches of earthly time spent waiting out business closures or stay-at-home orders. It should be no surprise that a person’s deepest beliefs about the world influence how they measure the risks they’re willing to take. P - Former six-term Ohio Rep. Bob McEwen (R) is a longtime evangelical leader who serves as an advisory member of James Dobson’s Family Talk board of directors. McEwen told me this week that evangelicals aren’t rattled by covid-19, either the disease or the government’s response to the pandemic, because the Bible instructs them not to let earthly fears overwhelm them. “They steal your life, your liberty and your freedom by using fear,” said McEwen. “Man, on his own without God, will always be fearful,” he added. “But the Bible says, ‘Fear not.’”" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/20/whats-really-behind-republicans-wanting-swift-reopening-evangelicals/ ----------
INSERT: I think it should be talked about more. [...] Anyway if more could discuss religion comfortably more could concentrate on making the world better rather than just being good in hope of reward in some silly notion as afterlife. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153136450
That’s not mere disagreement with Fauci. It’s a claim that Fauci is not representing his own views candidly and is placing his own media image before his mission to faithfully serve in Trump’s government. It’s an accusation of betrayal — at bottom, of him.
VIDEO Don't let mail-in voting be thwarted by badly designed ballots Democratic Party strategist and lawyer Marc Elias says that flaws in ballot design are often overlooked but have huge repercussions on elections. (Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)
- The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. … Mr. Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. -
What’s more, at that time, multiple officials throughout the government were, in fact, shrieking warnings about the coronavirus. And Trump continued dithering and failing to take the coronavirus seriously for weeks and weeks after that, so this defense isn’t exonerating in the least.
But again, Trump’s basic claim here is that his government failed him.
That’s galling on its own. But note what Trump is not saying here. He is not pointing to ways in which his own government, under his leadership, actually did scale up an early and robust federal response that actually did succeed in taming the virus.
The second major component of Trump’s reelection message is that, having built the greatest economy in the known history of the universe, he will do so again. This messaging is directly linked to Trump’s insistence on reopening, regardless of the risks, as the AP demonstrates .. https://apnews.com/aaa334dbbe61570f1ff514c175b51c38 :
- “The first step in getting our economy booming again is to begin to reopen,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Sarah Matthews. “Americans know the economy reached unprecedented heights under President Trump’s leadership before it was artificially interrupted by the coronavirus, and he will build it back up a second time.” -
But regardless, the very use of this talking point is itself an admission of failure. Trump would never concede that he bears any blame for that failure. But we are under zero obligation to go along with that.
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