I don’t have it in me to watch news today. It’s not like I don’t know what’s being “reported.” The chattering class is cutting up the corpse of the election talking about this or that thing Kamala Harris and Democrats screwed up. And patting themselves on the back for their insight while the fact is THEY did everything they could to normalize Trump to the point where non-hard-core MAGAs would say “why not?” They wanted their horse race so they’d generate ratings/revenue and made sure they got it. Only too late in the closing days did some realization set in that like in 2016 they sliced the (Trump) baloney too thin and that the unthinkable would happen. Which it has done. So there’s that. But they can and will count the money they made!
Then we have the GOP from Trump on down crowing. NOW, with a gold-plated SCOTUS ruling that President’s can via calling it an “Official Act” do whatever the hell they want. I somehow doubt that if President Biden were to issue a Presidential Directive that Trump’s theft of National Security documents (and refusal to return them) as well as evidence he’s shared national security secrets of the highest level with our enemies and ordered Trump’s arrest and summary execution SCOTUS would agree Presidents have that kind of power. It’s only for Trump or Republicans you see. But Project 2025 folks will be manning the transition office spaces this week and Republicans aren’t hiding that fact. They’re openly admitting it. So there’s that.
Then we have all those regular folk voters out there. People who’ve been bitching about inflation which wouldn’t have gotten as bad as it did had Trump done a decent job managing the COVID outbreak. Our economy, like other countries went through a bad time but President Biden got us out of it. And it’s better than any other country’s in the world including when it comes to inflation lately. American businesses price gouged and started getting nervous about it as more and more that was being reported. So inflation came down. Jobs came back home. People have been earning more money. But it’s not enough for too many.
People, especially in rural/small-town American and in small cities, say 30-50k or so people don’t want to do certain jobs. Picking crops on farms. Working in meat processing plants. Stuff like that even though pay has increased. So business owners in many places, including a certain town in Ohio turned to immigrants to fill those jobs. And white folks, despite their communities being enriched economically by more money flowing through them got all pissy. Trump (and Vance) demonizing of people doing jobs these goobers feel are beneath them gave them someone to BLAME for their not having the creature comforts of life they feel is due them as “real Americans.” So there’s that.
I could keep going but you get the point. What people actually have and the opportunities for those willing to put in the effort are far, far greater than my parent’s generation, the “Greatest Generation” as they are know. The folks who lived through a Depression and then fought and won WWII. If people want to bitch about what they don’t have they should take a look at the history books and the rationing of all manner of items down to and including baby formula back then! But my generation (I’m in my latter sixties now) who heard the stories firsthand and who actually had to learn about it all in history in school has reached the age where WE are dying off.
What we are left with is a country of old folks where too many have an “I got mine so you younguns are on your own” mentality and young people who have no clue how tough of times earlier generations had things. For a demagogue with one talent, that of self-promotion this country was ripe for a fascist takeover and they’ve gone and voted for it. Just like people in Germany in the 1930s did only Germans of that era had endured plenty due to punishment for WWI. Not the elites of course. The regular folks. THEY suffered. Now? We have a spoiled generation of Americans who bought into Trump’s blame game.
I don’t mind them getting what they’ve asked for. I DO mind that the rest of us, and the free world also will pay a huge price as an opinion piece in The Daily Beast the grievance and simple slogans about complex matters pretty much ‘rufeed’ a majority of voters. The linked piece only addresses some of them. Its main point is that while the Seinfeld Show gag about Festivus and “the airing of grievances” was Trump’s campaign schitck. Only now he’s going to have the power to actually settle his grievances AND has every intention of doing so:
And now, his perceived opponents, his perceived enemies—for they are one and the same—will all pay. All the marginalized groups he has fostered hatred towards will have their lives even more brutalized. Women—well, he will protect them whether they like it or not, as he has vowed. After removing access to abortion care, what next?
Trump is back in power—nastier, more ruthless, and better organized with more dedicated, focused lieutenants, than before. America has voted for a lunatic, boundary-breaking authoritarian. Decent Americans, and the rest of the world, can only watch on in unnerved horror.
Tens of millions of Americans yucking it up today, gleefully celebrating “owning the libs” are in for a harsh dose of reality before long. H.L. Mencken was not a nice or kind man. Some of his views and writings are ugly in fact. However he often had keen insight and that’s why I used a famous quote of his in the title pic. Many of those celebrating today brush off concerns about Trump doing what he says he’ll do, Project 2025 and all that. They think its all, or mostly just talk.
To that I’d say there’s a specific reason why against all odds freaking KENTUCKY has a Democratic Governor. Andy Beshear’s predecessor Matt Bevin vowed to get rid of the immensely popular KYnect. He wasn’t having any “Obamacare” in his state! In actuality KYnect got a waiver from the federal government (the ACA law provided the option) to create its own system and Kentucky devised one that provided the same things the ACA did. When Bevin vowed on the campaign trail to rid his state of the program folks said he’d never actually DO it. They were stunned, and then dismayed and then angry that Bevin went about doing exactly what he said he’d do. How angry? They elected a DEMOCRAT Governor!
Regular Americans will pay huge for what they’ve just done. And whine when the consequences come. Like Trump they will try to blame any and everyone else for their individual predicaments but all they need do is look in the freaking mirror. In the past they’ve been able to count on Democrats to come in and clean up Republican messes. Clinton fixed the Reagan/Bush 41 budget mess. Obama fixed the Bush 43 one. Biden fixed the Trump one. We might not be able to help anymore.
Americans have handed unchecked power to a man who can’t be trusted to wield even a tiny amount of power responsibly. He won’t leave Office until he dies. Even if that’s soon we’ll still have J.D. Vance to contend with and Project 2025 will be well along. Will we even have a free and fair election again? That remains to be seen but I don’t think it’s alarmist to say there are grave doubts. But a majority of Americans wanted to “get” or “hurt” someone because like Trump they blame others for their lot in life. My life sucks in many ways but I freely admit that I found myself forced into early retirement and on a fixed income because of my own choices. If some took advantage of me it’s because I allowed it to happen by ignoring my instincts. The man I see in the mirror is responsible for me having things tough.
If only the majority of my fellow Americans would be as honest about things. But they aren’t and we’ve slid over the edge of the abyss. I fear there’s not anything to grab on to in order to prevent this country and the free world from sliding down into an awful end.
There’s also a lot of Americans who have been struggling for years, maybe decades because the jobs they have don’t pay enough or have benefits. They have been saddled with medical debts they can’t pay. The sad part is, they won’t be any better under tRump. They are about to fool around and find out.
I have lived my life tightening my belt and only buying what I could afford when I had the Cash to do so. I saved as much money as I possibly could and have a very nice nest egg. No health insurance for most of my life. I paid my way. The younger people today have to have all the best Right Now. Then they bitch about costs being high, having no money, and not being able to afford a house. I bought Two and paid them off. But they are not willing to do something that drastic. So they bitch, moan, and complain. I have to hide my nest egg to protect it from what is coming, hope I can hold on to all I have saved/accumulated. But I broke my body doing this and I’m too old to lose it all. I lost half during bush. Built it back. Kids don’t understand it takes Work. They want it all given to them. Wait until the idiot they elected makes life unsufferable. No one to bail any of us out. I’m reading and planning but it probably won’t be enough. I’m also going to buy some American history books. It’s important to leave that knowledge for those who come behind us. We are truly screwed because morons can’t manage their own lives and blame everyone else. Tired of hearing it’s my generations fault and more tired of those idiots blaming President Biden who did so much to help Everyone. God help us all. We are going to need help, which will not be coming.
Well stated Denis.
The people who voted for him are about to get it good and hard.
And eggs won’t get any cheaper.
Not just those who voted for him. ALL of us.
“If people want to bitch about what they don’t have they should take a look at the history books and the rationing of all manner of items down to and including baby formula back then!”
That’s a lot of the problem right there. Very few of the people who voted for Trump have ever opened a history book in their lives. That statement may be slightly hyperbolical, but I’m trying to make a very serious point here. A low-information voter not only knows very little, but is super vulnerable to disinformation and every other kind of psychological warfare targeted at them, and they have been getting an increasing diet of it for decades (RW talk radio, internet, etc.)
And that’s why the descendants of the fascists who supported Hitler waited so long. I’m old enough that even in small towns parents made sure the public schools provided their kids with a pretty good public education. And pushed them to do well in school. Still, some kids paid more attention in class and to their textbooks than others. That’s where all the firsthand accounts on living through the Depression and/or WII come in. Even after those who literally lived it died off there were those of us who heard about it over and over again from them.
But now WE are the ones dying off. I suspect the loose organization that so carefully planned their disappearance when Germany fell would have preferred to wait a while longer until even tail end baby boomers like me (having been born in the latter 1950s technically I’m a boomer though I’ve never felt like it) were mostly dead and buried. Say another ten years. But I was talking to others today that are my age and older and yes, we have all reached and age where we’ve seen a lot of our friends/classmates from back in school die off already! COVID didn’t help but that hadn’t happened yet when Trump came along and ran in 2016. However his candidacy got traction and it was too good a chance for those shadowy people to pass up.
It has paid off as they had hoped. Hell, the Madison Square Garden rally was a Trump/modern version of that infamous 1939 Nazi rally by design! It was I think history will show a “coming out” for the Fourth Reich. In what was once the United States of America.
As you say. People who don’t read and too few people left with if not firsthand knowledge than knowledge from those who lived it and can convey that period of history with conviction. I wish I’d realized this a year ago because I’d have been talking about it regularly. It’s a bitter failure on my part that will haunt me until the day I die because maybe, just maybe I could have gotten others to take up the call and motivate all those of us who are left to push this. To make these intellectually lazy people understand.
There’s more than one reason I feel like a failure tonight.
Failure? No. Any decision we’ve made or will make was or will be based on what we knew or will know at that time, and the only way we know the results is by living through the situation. We have no control over time’s passage, but having lived through the results of our decisions should give us insight to make better decisions going forward – IF we’re smart. That we can’t control time means we can’t undo decisions that don’t work out.
Einstein’s definition of insanity (repeating the same actions, hoping for a different result) may also/instead be considered as the definition of stupidity. Many, maybe most, have made decisions that turned out badly, but only the insane/stupid repeat an action that didn’t work before.
Who of us expected to be dealing with someone as soulless and corrupt as the Bronze Boob who’s once again president-elect? I thought he was ready for the trash can of history. VP Harris said in her concession speech that the fight is not over, and I expect that she and her team will figure out what went wrong, beginning with assumptions they made about non-MAGA voting blocs.
I agree with you, but there’s something else. The quality of education has gone way down in most public school districts. And nowadays everybody’s got their eyes glued on the phone all day long. The humanities are disappearing even from the colleges and universities. All people are talking about is how to make a buck. People don’t know how to think about non-technical issues.
But apart from that, is Bernie Sanders right, that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class? To some extent yes; but let’s not forget, when Biden tried to get his Build Back Better program passed, it was stymied by Joe Manchin and Kirstin Cinema. That’s all it took. Our system of government is not working. But how anyone with a brain can think it’s going to be better with MAGA in charge is beyond me. And our press and media are not working either. Essentially, Trump is not running things. Billionaires are running Trump.
You could not have changed any of it so don’t feel that way. The maga bs propaganda machine is bigger than all of us. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You have done a great service to all of us and so any more!
I’m gonna be 73 in a few weeks, grew up in the St. Louis suburbs. We learned critical thinking as a required course in high school- I remember “Question Authority” bumper stickers.
Them days is gone, we all better be good little Trumpies from here on out! After they get rid of the immigrants, who’s next? Gonna be somebody.
“I don’t have it in me to watch news today. It’s not like I don’t know what’s being “reported.””
I hear you., This is my fourth day in a row of that.