You can make a point about his populist appeal to the less educated, but it's also obvious that he gets support from the well educated.
The key is this: roughly half of his support is from cultist followers who genuinely think he's smart, moral, shares their fundamentalist Christianity, and a fantastic person. There is, basically, no reasoning with them.
The others are the better educated half who know full well he's dumb, constantly lies and spouts bullshit, is erratic and easily manipulated by appealing to his narcissism. But they don't care, because they believe he will be manipulated by other people towards getting something they want, such as tax reductions, breaks for their business, power (especially in the case of many Republicans in the Senate or House) or even just a general culture more favourable to old school masculinity.
In other words, greed and self interest that having a dumb, easily manipulated President is good for them.
Historians (and economists) don't judge presidencies that way, and hence there is every chance that the second Trump presidency will be ranked by them as at least as bad as the first.
I should add that the second group has helped create the first
group - the prime example being Rupert Murdoch, who does not like Trump
at a personal level, but is happy to make money by maintaining a network
that is pure propaganda during its key broadcast hours towards
supporting the cult of Trump and demonising Democrats. The same can be
said for any Republican who Trump has insulted and attacked, but who
has swung around to support him due to their recognising that there is
no way the cultists can be persuaded to not support Trump.
All true, but I think a lot of people just felt that things were better before COVID and its aftermath and governments had to be punished. Happened everywhere since 2022. A lot of people just don't pay any attention to the daily political show. They will deserve what they get.
ReplyDeleteA valid enough point, and I have wondered why it has proven so hard for governments to message that inflation was not really their fault - the economic disruption of virtually all countries agreeing that lockdowns were a reasonable response to a pandemic of uncertain severity and duration caused it. (Of course, some economists don't help - there were those selling the "it's going to cost the economy too much" from the very start, and now there are still some dubious retrospective studies of lives saved that are readily sold by some as proving that it wasn't worth it. The Right wing conspiracy world - as with climate change - make it impossible to have a good faith argument on that issue.)
ReplyDeleteWhich Jew historian do you have in mind?
ReplyDelete