Well, after win #2 (this time with the popular vote) here we are again:
> Friedrich Nietzsche created a concept that can help us understand this political moment. He imported a word from French to describe a kind of deep-seated anger that goes beyond transitory gripes: ressentiment, a feeling that comes from a combination of insecurity, an amorphous envy, and a generalized sense of resentment.
The majority is such a bizarre outlier that you need 19th century German philosophy to really understand what's going on.
Yes, the people aren't listened to. But a big, chunky part of what they are saying is being heard, and is just not solvable because it's based on simple hatred of other people (not an insignificant part of every election - but the core of this one). That grievance doesn't somehow legitimize the vote for him. It only explains it.
In 2016, Trump first had to defeat the Republican establishment. Then he won the election.
In 2020, he nearly won again. In 2024, he won the election again.
He is like no politician before him. He is boorish, childish, uncouth, and boastful.
But it’s the fact that he opposes the sneering, snotty media/political establishment that gets him votes. People are tired of lies being constantly pushed upon them by condescending pretty people. Another snarky article from The Atlantic only feeds the monster.
And it seems all they always wanted were lies being constantly pushed upon them by despicable petty authoritarians.
If I characterised your voting behaviour being due to "Trump derangement syndrome", would that be a "lie"?
If a Democrat (or Republican) did the things Trump does, I would expect and understand for people to accuse that Democrat (or Republican) of acting like a toddler, or whatever. That doesn't mean you should or that it's a good thing, but it's understandable and not hypocritical.
Bill Clinton being defended by Gloria Steinem and the National Organization of Women.
Dan Rather trying to take down GW Bush with forged documents.
Anderson Cooper standing in a hole while bemoaning a flood that really wasn’t that bad.
Katie Couric and the deceptively edited gun owner interview.
The deafening silence about George Floyd’s criminal record.
The whole media attack on the Covington High kids. ( With Hollywood social media assist. )
Jussie Smulletts attempted Trump smear.
All the participants outraged at Justice Kavanaugh ( who are oddly silent about Bill Clinton’s much worse transgressions ). Such outrage for a very thin allegation.
The complete media silence during the surprise Hunter Biden laptop discovery. ( Add to that dozens of ‘expert’ testimonials that called it ‘Russian disinformation’. ) Of course by now it is proved genuine. The damage in this big lie was the proximity to Election Day. That’s why the denials and silence are so very important.
There are many more, but you should see the point. If you think there’s nothing to all of this, then I’m afraid we’re just on opposite sides of a strange wall that distorts what seems truthful.
But you're right in that if the perception of how badly one "side" behaves vs the other is almost perfectly opposite between two people (sounds like "party A is shitty but human, party B is evil"), they might as well be aliens to each other. You can't resolve differences in reality.
Calling people "Crooked Hillary", "Sleepy Joe", and Gavin "Newscum" isn't sneering and snotty?
Obviously there is some gap between perception and reality - but those same groups reacted so strongly to him that they became a caricature of themselves.
He’s popular on the right because he’s so unpopular on the left.
It's hard to believe anybody believes this. I understand both sides always feel like the other side is always "worse" by essentially any metric, but first? The first Republican candidate to mock democrats or be shitty? You mean the most extreme, surely.
Also, "shot back" implies something comparable. Again - I don't really believe anybody thinks what Trump culture does is comparable to what either Republicans or Democrats have done to each other for decades.
If you mean it asymmetrically - as in the president "shooting back" not at the other presidents, but at the media and constituency of the opposite party, then in that context it makes even less sense. It was always the case that the media and online shitposters waged petty war against each other, while the presidents made rare jokes that were more diplomatic (on average...). It was always a gradient going up the chain - the people at the bottom saying the worst things, then the media in second place, then elected officials, then the president. But Republicans were always varyingly more extreme at all levels of that hierarchy. There was never a layer where the Democrats were shit-talking the Republicans in a way that the Republicans didn't match or exceed. So it doesn't make semantic sense to say that Trump "shot back" - what Trump did was pull the worst of those bottom bits straight up into the presidency, and all layers in between. The Democrats are "shooting back" by reactively getting more shit-talky at higher levels. Of course, that's not the right thing to do, but it's understandable, and they still don't come anywhere near Trumpism, qualitatively or quantitatively.
Now they have way more lies pushed upon them by condescending ugly people
That's BS. Clinton spent time in West Virginia despite it being a no hope state. Clinton spent lots of time talking to union reps who the rank and file voted to represent them. She developed a realistic plan to provide them education, retraining and money to develop other industries in their dying community.
OTOH, Trump just straight up lied to them. He said he'd protect their jobs, but coal jobs in his first term continued to decline at the same rate they did during Obama's. He did nothing for them.
Nobody tells you "I want you to lie to me and tell me what I want to hear" when you talk to them. Nobody says "I want you to give me an enemy to hate".
Clinton listened to what people actually said, and she lost.
Trump didn't listen to people's words, he listened to their actions. If something got a reaction, he doubled down on it.
Populism in a nutshell. Those coal miners didn't want to hear about how they could learn something new and do something new, even if it was better. All of that takes effort and work.
One person tried realism, the other told them what they wanted to hear and gave them someone else to blame for why they weren't as rich as they thought they should be. And then the rest of us get harangued with "why won't you listen to all of these people" when we have, extensively, and what they're literally saying is antithetical to everything this country stands for (to say nothing of what their 'heartfelt' religious/moral beliefs supposedly stand for).
Trump term 2 is more like populism. This term, it's solar that's killing coal. And solar is woke, so Trump is actually doing something for coal this term. It's the diffuse vote effect. Trump might save a couple thousand coal jobs, which is a really big deal for those couple thousand people and swings their vote. Meanwhile, it increases the cost of energy for 350 million Americans but that's a very marginal effect. And it increases climate change for 8.2 billion people, but those 7.9 billion of those don't vote in American elections.
ZeroGravitas•3mo ago
Just the latest in a series of moments that make me think "people even just a year ago would not believe you if you told them that was going to happen" as things accelerate.
Regarding one of the threads in the article, the physics and books YouTuber Angela Collier recently proposed the name Mephistos for these failures that boost themselves via connections to fascism, based on the book "Mephisto: a novel of a career" and the real life story it draws on.
It's one of several Faust books she covers in "Faust and the Furious":
https://youtu.be/CnsDc9GDn1Y