Thursday 12th of December 2024

trump has many disciples and "jesus saves..."

As the world's most enthralling recruitment process reaches its denouement, maybe it is worth carrying out a thought experiment.

Let's imagine you are running a small business — a fast food franchise, for the sake of topicality — and recruiting a new manager. What would be the red flags in considering applicants for the job?

Maybe the fact the candidate is a convicted felon, with three outstanding criminal cases still awaiting judgement, would be cause for concern. Perhaps a long history of racism would be a deal-breaker — including a recent false claim that members of a local immigrant community were eating cats and dogs.

 

Why do people vote for Donald Trump? For many Americans, he's a bulwark against a future they do not want to live in

BY Nick Bryant

 

GUSNOTE: THIS ARTICLE, BY A SERIOUSLY UN-SATIRICAL SCRIBE, IS BIASED AND NEEDS TO BE READ WITH BBQ TONGS IN HAND....

 

Surely the applicant's misogyny would count against him — especially the video which came to light showing him boasting about sexually molesting women, and the civil litigation which found him liable for sexual abuse. Calling his main rival for the job "shit", a "dummy" and "mentally disabled" speaks of his deficiencies rather than hers.

An applicant with that kind of record and resume would struggle to get offered a day shift overseeing the drive-thru, still less a low-ranking managerial position. Yet with little over a week to go before election day, Donald Trump stands a strong chance of being rehired for the most powerful job on the planet.

His role in the January 6 insurrection has not been disqualifying. His autocratic tendencies — General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called him "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person in the country" — are not disqualifying. His bizarre behaviour — such as dancing for 39 minutes at a recent town hall event in Pennsylvania, or rhapsodising about the dimensions of the golf great Arnold Palmer's genitalia — is not disqualifying.

Trump is seen as a saviour, not a sinner

Once again, we are reminded of that Trumpian truism uttered in 2016 on the eve of that year's Iowa caucus: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

Since then, he has stood in the middle of Washington DC and implored his supporters to march on the US Capitol to block the certification of an election he clearly lost, without relinquishing his status as party lodestar and figurehead. Purged of strident internal critics — such as the former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who is campaigning for Kamala Harris — the Republican party has become even more of a personal movement.

That Trumpian truism from 2016 is often explained by what has become an analytical cliche. The former president's outlandishness is baked in. Voters have come to expect it. But that deflects the question of why Trump's candidacy comes coated in so many layers of teflon rather than answering it.

His political viability is worth re-examining, not least because "the Fifth Avenue phenomenon" is even stronger now than it was in 2016. Millions are ready to accept the terms and conditions of "Trump 2.0".

First, it worth stating the obvious. For MAGA diehards, the very fact that Trump is prepared to say the unsayable, and to act in such a norm-busting manner, is central his appeal. To them, the prosecutions are a politically-motivated witch hunt. The events of January 6 have been blown up out of proportion. Polling at the start of this year showed that seven out of 10 Republicans thought too much was being made of the attack on the US Capitol, and that it was "time to move on".

Likewise, what seem to be paradoxes aren't that paradoxical. Often the question is asked, for example, why Trump, a thrice-married divorcee alleged to have had an extra-marital affair with a porn star, enjoys the support of so many white evangelicals, 80 per cent of whom supported him in 2020.

Yet Trump pulled off what none of his three Republican presidential predecessors succeeded in doing: the holy grail of altering the ideological composition of the Supreme Court so that Roe v Wade could finally be overturned.

America's mega-churches, moreover, have for decades had a MAGA vibe. Anyone shocked that Trump should find a loyal congregation in their pews has not been watching Christian cable channels. Besides, some of America's most popular TV evangelists have been mired in scandal, including Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell Jr, without being permanently dislodged from their thrones of grace.

But again, many white evangelicals do not look upon Trump as a sinner. They see him as a saviour.

Nostalgic for the Trump economy

The backing of prosperous, college-educated Republicans, who often baulk at Trump's vulgar behaviour, is also easily explained. Many have been seduced by the tax cuts he is promising. Many are nostalgic for the Trump economy, when mortgage rates and gas prices were lower. Many have reconciled themselves to the fact, and rationalised it in their minds, that his policies come with his personality.

As for Trump's historically high levels of support among African-Americans and Hispanics, there are multiple rationales. The economy. The fact that many Hispanic and Black voters respond positively to Trump's hardline stance on immigration, despite his demonisation of Latino and Haitian immigrants. The sales pitch from Trump that Democrats have taken for granted the Black vote especially, and not repaid that loyalty by delivering significant gains in living standards.

It is also worth bearing in mind that around 10 million Latinos are evangelicals, many with a devoutly Christian nationalist bent — a reminder that ethnic voting blocs are by no means monolithic.

For historical explanations of Trump's continued political viability, there is a 250-year backstory to mine. Americans have long gone a little weak-kneed at a strongman as president. Figures such as the demagogic ultra-nationalist Andrew Jackson, who Trump came to regard as his presidential kindred spirit. Conspiratorialism, of the kind promulgated by Trump, was present at the creation, when George III was cast as the anti-Christ.

Or we could travel back to the more recent past. President Bill Clinton, during his scandal-prone eight years in office, not only normalised presidential misconduct but produced the playbook on how to survive it.

Clinton cleverly reframed the question at the heart of every scandal, switching it from "who is right or wrong?" to "which side do you want to win?" By doing so, he tapped into the tribalism of politics at a time after the end of the Cold War when Washington was becoming more aggressively partisan.

The rise of negative partisanship

Trump has thrived on, and fuelled, that same tribalism which, since the turn of the century, has become more zealous as elections have come to be fought on questions of culture and identity as well as economics and foreign policy. Indeed, in this era of extreme polarisation, the former president has benefited from one of the most pronounced trends in US politics: the rise of negative partisanship, where political behaviour is determined not so much by affection for your own side as animosity towards your opponent.

In 2016, Donald Trump won partly because he was Donald Trump — an anti-politician who promised to shake up Washington. But much of his appeal stemmed from the fact he wasn't Hillary Clinton. Part of the reason why Joe Biden won in 2020 was because Trump found it harder to portray him as a hate figure. Negative partisanship was not so guttural and impassioned.

Trump is trying to repeat the same trick with Kamala Harris that he pulled off with Hillary Clinton, by attacking her personally and also by assailing what he claims she personifies. A woke America. An elite America. A more multi-cultural America, in which minority groups will by mid-century be in the majority.

For many Americans, Trump is a bulwark against a future they do not want to live in. The phrase "Make America Great Again" recalls a bygone age.

For both sides, negative partisanship could be the key to victory. Harris is trying to draw together an anti-Trump coalition, including Republican defectors who fear the former president poses a clear and present danger to democratic norms.

Trump is trying to assemble an anti-Harris coalition, including Republican waverers who fear the vice-president poses a clear and present danger to what they would regard as cultural normalcy.

It explains the ugly tenor of the 2024 election, a contest driven by fear and mutual loathing.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-26/trump-resume-record-drive-thru-shot-becoming-president/104512040

 

SEE ALSO: 

fighting the mediocre mass media de mierda that supports kamala.....

 

questions were answered with vague rhetorical evasion, pleasing the converted dumbbutt....

 

UNLESS I'M MISTAKEN, NICK BRYANT FORGOT TO MENTION WHY THE "REPUBLICAN DEFECTORS" LIKE THE CHENEYS, THE BOLTONS AND THE KAGANS ARE ANTI-TRUMP... KAMALA HARRIS IS PRO-WARS FOR EVER, LIKE OBAMA AND BIDEN... TRUMP IS NOT...

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

mistakes.....

The Washington Post’s editor-at-large Robert Kagan has resigned in protest after the newspaper, owned by Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos, decided to forego a presidential endorsement for the first time since 1988.

Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, the former senior State Department official who was directly involved in the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine. A self-described neoconservative, Kagan went from being a foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 to joining the Democrats in 2016 and endorsing Hillary Clinton.

On Friday, he confirmed to NPR and Fox News that he'd quit the Post because the paper refused to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presidential nominee, in her race against Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump.

According to NPR, the text of the Harris endorsement had been drafted earlier this month, but the paper’s management scrapped it after a review by Bezos, who has owned the Post since 2013. In its response, the editorial board expressed that it was “shocked” and was overwhelmingly negative, the public broadcaster claimed.

While Kagan’s has been the only resignation so far, WaPo came under a torrent of criticism for Bezos’ decision. Susan Rice, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, denounced the move as “the most hypocritical, chicken sh*t move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.” 

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” Marty Baron, the Post’s executive editor during the Trump presidency, told NPR in a statement, calling the non-endorsement of Harris “a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” 

Under Baron, the Post won several Pulitzer prizes for stories about the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory and blaming Trump for the 2021 election-related riot at the US Capitol.

Kagan has argued that Trump would be a dangerous dictator and has advised the current President Joe Biden to respect, love and learn from ‘the Blob’ of the Washington establishment. He is also known for co-authoring the 1996 manifesto ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy’, advocating for the US to become a “benevolent global hegemony.” His co-author, fellow neoconservative Bill Kristol, also joined the Democrats in 2016 and became an outspoken Trump critic.

The Washington Post’s move comes just days after the Los Angeles Times likewise announced it would not endorse Harris, after 16 years of backing Democrats. The head of editorials, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest of the decision she said made the paper “look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” having spent eight years “railing against”Trump.

https://www.rt.com/news/606450-washington-post-harris-endorsement/

 

KAGAN AND HIS WIFE NULAND ARE THE MOST DESPICABLE ON THE PLANET. THEY ARE THE MOST WARMONGERERS AMERICA CAN FIND... THEY NOW SUPPORT KAMALA BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHERE THE BREAD OF WARS IS BUTTERED....

 

MEANWHILE:

 

Trump reveals his ‘biggest mistake’

 

Former US president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has told podcaster Joe Rogan that his “biggest mistake” was making a number of wrong personnel decisions during his time in the White House between 2017 and 2021.

Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Saturday, Trump insisted that his was a “great presidency” but pointed out that it could have been even better if he had surrounded himself with different people.

“The biggest mistake I made, was I picked… a few people that I should not have picked,” he said.

When asked by Rogan if he was talking about the neocons (neoconservatives), the former president said: “Yes, neocons, or bad people, or disloyal people.”

“You are reading about them a little bit today. A guy like Kelly, who is a bully, but a weak person,” he said.

Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly recently gave several interviews in which he claimed that, during his time in office, his 78-year-old commander-in-chief had praised Hitler in private and said “more than once” that the infamous leader of Nazi Germany “did some good things.”

While the Trump team has denied the claims outright, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris took the opportunity to brand her Republican rival a “fascist” and a would-be dictator. 

His other questionable choice, Trump recalled on the podcast, was appointing arch-hawk John Bolton as his National Security Advisor, Trump acknowledged. “Bolton was an idiot, but he was great for me,” he said.

“He is a nutjob, and every time I had to deal with a country - when they saw this whack job standing behind me – they said: ‘Oh man, Trump is going to go to war with him,” the former president said.

Bolton “was with [US president George HW] Bush when they went stupidly into the Middle East [in 1990]. They should have never done it. I used to say it as a civilian,” he added.

Trump fired Bolton in September 2019 after 18 months in the job, saying that he “disagreed strongly with many of [the adviser’s] suggestions.”

READ MORE: Holocaust survivor blasts Harris for Trump-Hitler comment


Speaking about claims by former chief of staff Kelly with CNN earlier this week, Bolton warned that a Trump victory in next month’s election would be “dangerous” for America.

However, he rejected accusations of the former president being a “fascist.” According to the hawk, in order to be one “you have to have a philosophy. Trump’s not capable of that.”

 

https://www.rt.com/news/606523-trump-bolton-kelly-rogan/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.