Toby Buckle offers (to my way of thinking) stellar analysis of what's going on politically as large numbers of Americans, our media, and corporate leaders jump with alacrity on the Trump bandwagon: it's not the old "economic anxiety" canard.

William Lindsey :toad:

Rather,

"Our country has been captured by a force that has its own ideas about our future. One that is ancient, compelling, and evil."

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/1

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-disease-of-affluence/

William Lindsey :toad:

To be specific:

"Americans are prosperous, but without any deep sense of obligations to others. We are a highly commercial, individualist people, and when we let go of even a thin liberal conception of the public good, we become nasty, petty, small, vindictive and irrational."

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/2

William Lindsey :toad:

As Buckle says, following the 2024 election, the media and lots of other commentators defaulted to the easy, lazy, false narrative that "economic anxiety" drives Trump voters:

"Far-left radicals, socialists, liberals, centrists, old-fashioned conservatives, academics, mainstream journalists, and everyone else who simply cannot imagine voting for the man themselves, all tend to default to one narrative:"

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/3

William Lindsey :toad:

"Many Americans are struggling economically, left behind, urgently wanting a more egalitarian society, and turned to a fascist movement in desperation.

But:

Study after study [after the 2016 election] found ‘racial resentment’ a far bigger driver of support for Trump than ‘economic anxiety’. Neither Trump’s core support, nor the drift of formerly Democratic voters to him are well explained by economic desperation."

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/4

William Lindsey :toad:

"The core of the MAGA base isn’t people who can’t afford enough $2 packs of pasta and $3 jars of tomato sauce to feed their children. I’m not saying that person doesn’t exist, but statistically they’re not representative. MAGA is someone who earns $70,000 a year and is angry that their overpriced Whole Foods costs a bit more."

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/5

William Lindsey :toad:

"MAGA is someone who is angry that they might have to shift from buying their goods at a middle-class-coded supermarket to the cheaper, working-class-coded supermarket.

The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for."

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/6

William Lindsey :toad:

"Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others."

That "ancient, compelling, and evil" force to which Buckle refers: it's the ravenous need many of us have to hurt someone else, to blame someone else, to eschew responsibility to anyone but ourselves.

#Trump #economy #race #gender #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/7

ikanreed

@wdlindsy Yep and what you're missing is what changed isn't MORE people voting for trump, but LESS people voting. The metrics are unambiguous, there's a shit ton of committed racists and psychopaths, a fair number of committed democrats, and a lot of people who don't care unless something will change for them.

And you can't keep screwing them to appeal to a non-existent center.

Paxil

@wdlindsy #MAGA are 6 unemployed weeks from being homeless but think they'll be #ElonMusk by next December.

William Lindsey :toad:

Trump has given us — and by us, I mean largely the people at the top of the economic ladder, corporate leaders, their media lapdogs — permission to indulge that urge to cruelty while pretending we're "rebuilding" a "great" America and a "great" American economy. We're now going to see media and other leaders kowtow to Trump big-time, and as that happens, we'll see a lot of cover-up of the real price we're all paying for indulging ourr cruelty..

#Trump #cruelty #solidarity #CommonGood
/8

peachfront

@wdlindsy

this

1000 times this

Todd Millecam

@wdlindsy https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/price-food-us-inflation-data-groceries Actually, we're at a 30-year high right now at 11%, but go on and post to social media without data so people who already know you can blindly agree with you and vilify people like me who read something and say, "Oh, that's interesting. I wonder where I can find source data to support that?" and then go looking only to find this is utter nonsense.

Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@wdlindsy this is one of the few articles I've seen that actually *gets* what's happened

Greengordon

@wdlindsy

In short, many average Americans adopt or display the same values as the oligarchs looting the country and destroying democracy.

"Americans are prosperous, but without any deep sense of obligations to others. We are a highly commercial, individualist people, and when we let go of even a thin liberal conception of the public good, we become nasty, petty, small, vindictive and irrational."

#uspol #capitalism

Pat

@wdlindsy thank you for posting this article, which I would not have encountered otherwise. So many keen observations, carefully analyzed and explained. Big thoughts for me to ponder.

Rachel Greenham

@wdlindsy @Lazarou well, they have lives that they *are* killing for

Matthias Krämer

@wdlindsy In Germany in 1933 biggest support for NSDAP came from the "petite bourgeoisie" that was threatened by economic crisis to sink down into proletariat. That seems the analogon to this MAGA core.

lupus_blackfur

@wdlindsy

Absolutely.

Buckle has it nailed.

Aligns directly with my phrasing:
There exist *many* entitled 🫏's that have always been assholes in private & yearned to be assholes in public for lo some 70+yrs.
Their parents taught it to them & they in turn taught the same to their children.
Along comes Chump giving them all permission & encouragement to be those public assholes.
They will always revere him for giving them that permission regardless what else he may do.

That's MAGAt core.

officerripley

@wdlindsy

So true; there were a lot of big fancy homes in the fanciest neighborhoods in my town with Trump signs in their yards.

eberhofer

@wdlindsy people voted for Trump for a number of reasons, many of which are evil. Totally agree on that. Same for Maga. Mostly evil.

The issue is a different one: these evil votes aren't sufficient to win an election by themselves. To win an election, they had to win other votes and suppress turnout for Harris.

The real question is: how did they win/suppress those votes?

Economic anxiety is driven less by "objective" wealth but by wealth difference and by outlook.

For wealth difference: the income and wealth gap have grown further even through the Biden years. That may not be his fault, but neither did he or Kamala Harris address it, or at least not forcefully enough in the campaign.

For the outlook: health care and housing are huge issues (United Healthcare illustrates this) and polls showed people trusted Trump more on the economy than Harris. Sad, because Harris had better policies but didn't get through with her message.