What is te word for comparing tay nlk objects or people. Such as apples and hammers or, again totally unlike, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk. One is a bubble gum fad, the other is a fact of genius.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite sayings: "Wisdom comes with good judgment which comes from experience which comes from bad judgment."
As to your comments about the election and the cause of the massive Democratic defeat, they were a mite biased! One of the roles of a counsellor is surely to help clients learn the fundamental source of their issues.
I would respectively suggest that, if the Democratic Party spends its time reflecting on how it could have run a better campaign, selected a better candidate sooner, etc, then they will spend decades in the wilderness! These are surface issues.
The Party will need to dig much deeper, and challenge the viability and acceptability of the principles on which they have come to build their platform.
An example of change would be the principle of respect for and acceptance of fellow Americans, no matter what their beliefs.
It will be very difficult for the current leadership to change so drastically. But there will be a groundswell of longtime Democrats who voted for President-elect Trump and indeed felt, as you quoted above, that the Party has left them.
If the desired changes are not met, may I remind Americans of a Canadian political left-central party called the NDP or New Democratic Party!
Good thoughts here Nick. I think that trying to figure out what when wrong isn't going to be very useful since I don't think that in another 250 years this will ever happen again. I'd rather concentrate on how we can neutralize the upcoming damage, which will surely happen. I also think that those who voted for this party are going to have a very rude awakening when they find out what they've done. Ignorance won this election. It's time to get smart! Dr. Mardy can probably tell me the source of this....'Too soon old, too late smart' (or something close to it!!)
Interesting thoughts, Arlene! I loved the German proverb - the story of my life! As to your comments about the "upcoming damage", I understand the emotions, and hope you are wrong. Is it significant that the 'misogynist' Trump's first appointment to the most critical position in his administration was to a woman - now arguably about to become the most powerful woman in the country? As to "Ignorance won this election", might I suggest that 'Ignorance' lost this election!
Either way...ignorance was a major player. I hope you don't have any females in your acquaintance....if women are denied medical attention, it's not going to be a good thing. I hope it gets resolved before more women die. I'm watching with interest his choice of Chief of Staff.
Good morning. Interesting that I see a comment from 'John' that was deleted. Gee, I wonder what that was...I think I can guess! It's been a 'roller coaster week' and the ride's not over yet. I keep hoping for a miracle from someone who knows how to use the law and neutralize some of the upcoming damage! This week's Mystery Person...at first I was scratching my head totally clueless...UNTIL I saw 'The Alchemist' and I said 'wait a minute... I know this book. It's on my bookshelf! I was introduced to his work about 25 years ago by a good friend from Brazil (we worked together at Bosphorus University here). Perhaps it's time to go back and read it again. As usual, your newsletter is full of thoughts and ideas and I think I need to read it a few times before I get a better picture. There's a lot here that needs digesting. Thank you Mardy. Food for thought - enough to fill a whole lifetime. Stay well. Stay safe. And keep up the great work. This one must have been difficult.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Arlene. I do believe we're in for a bumpy ride! I can't explain that deletion, as I had nothing to do with it. The Coelho Puzzler stumped a lot of people. Yes, this one was difficult to write; it took a lot longer than usual.
These comments have cheered me greatly! I'm 94 and started out as an Eisenhower Republican, re-registering as non-partisan after our two parties got us Into a 20-year war. I was surprised by the election but am not as upset as my daughters. I agree that "What if" is a total waste of time & energy and feel tentatively positive that this is not the end of civilization as we would like to imagine it.
Dems run Mike Dukakis, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris all unlikable physically, intellectually and spiritually; no learning from failure here. Neither has served the working stiff for the past forty years. For a searing lament on failure, listen to "Love Minus Zero/ No Limit", Bob Dylan.
Thanks, Jamie. I agree that the Dems have offered up some less-than-superlative candidates. But they hit a home run with Obama! And it's not only the Dems that have put forward some second-rate candidates.
I think the larger reason for the election and Trumps victory is that he appealed strongly to the emotions. He demonstrated that the passions can Trap logic or rational thinking and he could not have done it without the help of the internet, social media, all media which allowed him to get into the heads of millions of people many times a day over many years, all the while repeating the lies. Right out of Hitlers playbook.
Since "emotion" trumps (no pun intended) "logic," there is not much that can be done but to lower yourself down to their level. Do the ends justify the means? H. L. Mencken said, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
Another terrific article! One of the great leaders in one of my former companies would often say "when the ship misses the harbor, it's seldom the harbor's fault". Rather than throwing stones at the victor, though many may be warranted, time would be better spent addressing our own burning platform.
I am a conservative voter and from your reasoning of why the Democrats lost you have called me unintelligent. How very very sad of you and for you. People can have different opinions, viewpoints, ways of living without being classified in derogatory terms. And what you wrote for reasons you lost is exactly why you lost.
If you go back and re-read the post, you will see that I was reporting what some of my Democratic friends said. Believe me, I do not consider you unintelligent at all. The people I do judge harshly are those who don't vote.
Yes, Lbane, people legitimately have different viewpoints, lifestyles, opinions., and let us add --priorities. A presidential election is primarily a hiring decision to fill one of the most important jobs on Earth. Voters evaluate each candidate's many traits -- bearing in mind that no one will be an ideal fit -- and then decide whose qualifications best match the job's requirements. This is where, for example, Candidate A's ability to rouse voter enthusiasm can be overvalued, while wonkier Candidate B's depth of relevant knowledge, attention to detail, and diplomatic skills may seem dull in comparison. A voter can be very smart and yet prioritize a personality that makes him feel alive and appreciated, over someone who drones on about tedious policies likely to produce the country's best long-term outcome.
My only experience of hiring was for babysitters, also (from a parental perspective) the most important job on Earth. Suppose one candidate promptly gets down on the floor, shows my toddler his Elmo tattoo, and demonstrates that he can juggle five tennis balls at once. Pretty kid-friendly, no? But then I notice that after juggling he never puts down his phone nor takes his eyes off it, scrolling and occasionally muttering a profanity at the screen. All these factors are meaningful data -- which do I prioritize as most important in deciding whether to hire him?
Normally, people vote for other people, candidates, who are like them. People are tribal, they like other people with the same characteristics as they have. But in your case, this does not seem to be true? I say this because Trump's MO is to be very derogatory to anyone he does not approve of, or will not bend down to him, you know, kiss his ass. And from your comment, you are against being derogatory to people who think differently than you.
I'm well past stinging from what feels like impending doom and am reeling from its implications. Even Trump's supporters recognize that he lies and says things that are cartoon versions of reality, yet they continue to support him. That is a failure of epic proportions and, if we have the courage to look, rather than blaming those folks who voted for his shtick, we must look in the mirror and ask ourselves what our part is in that. Note that the "we" in that last sentence is intended not just for the Democratic Party, but for each of us individually.
We have a reality to acknowledge, that the Democratic Party isn't as democratic as it purports to be. What's up with blowing off working people for decades? And why did we tolerate that? Why did we support extremist candidates by supplying huge megaphones for them to blast off-putting messages that ignored the day to day needs of actual people?
I am a conservative voter and from your reasoning of why the Democrats lost you have called me unintelligent. How very very sad of you and for you. People can have different opinions, viewpoints, ways of living without being classified in derogatory terms. And what you wrote for reasons you lost is exactly why you lost.
Please see Rebecca Solnit's recent blog entitled "Fuck the mainstream media." (below)
Play the blame game about so-called Democratic political mistakes if you wish. Now the mainstream media are promptly playing the sane-washing game of portraying the pantload as a "normal" person. Few people are looking at the depressing fact that we are a deeply flawed country with a woefully gullible and willfully ignorant herd cheering on tRump. Your therapist might be more helpful by not focusing on his patient's so-called inner defects but by pointing out that our society on Tuesday turned out a frightening majority of vile and cruel racist and misogynistic goose steppers eagerly urging vengeance and violence against any and all who oppose them. So much for "making America great again." I'd be happy with adequate and sane.
I remain angry and disgusted that 74 million people found tRump to be a better candidate. And I don't blame myself for feeling this way.
Here is part of Solnit's comments today:
Fuck the media explanations that Trump won because he was talking to them about the economy, because he was talking to them primarily about himself in his bizarre monologues that also covered the dick size of a dead golfer whose career peaked sixty years ago, windmills killing birds, kids coming home from school having had their gender changed maybe during recess, and a whole lot of Hannibal Lecter apparently because in the broken jelly of his brain there was some kind of association between insane asylums and refugees seeking asylum, and on top of that a lot of threats against and menace to women and anyone who opposed him, juvenile insults, and a whole thing about sharks and batteries, and a certain amount of slurring words and a whole lot of words in no particular order conveying no particular meaning, along with the promise to put the world's richest man in charge of the economy, who in turn promises to wreck it.
Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do | Rebecca Solnit
Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.
We knew what the problems were, and we wanted to fix them. The principal problems that got us to this bleakest moment in American history are intertwined. They are the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the news media and the rise of Silicon Valley, and in a way they are all the same problem.
The media might be the simplest to describe. A democracy requires an informed citizenry, and the US media over the past eight years in particular created an increasingly misinformed citizenry.
When people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis might profoundly devastate the biosphere and much of life on it, human and otherwise, for the next 10,000 years, the media has failed. When people worry about crime when it is low, an economy when it is thriving and immigrants when they do much of the hard work that sustains that economy and commit fewer crimes than the native-born, the media has failed to reach them.
When it came to Donald Trump, they went easy on him, and they again and again let him and the far right set the agenda. They constantly treated asymmetrical issues as symmetrical ones – if the Democrats resisted Republican outrages, both sides were “polarized”. In the media everything had two sides, even if one side was the truth and the other was the lie, one side was the human rights or the law and the other side was their violation.
They went soft on Trump’s criminality and incompetence, and his sheer volume of scandals meant that the past ones were forgotten as the next one erupted. He would not have won his 2016 minority victory had the US news media adequately conveyed that Trump was not the fun fictional character in the reality TV show The Apprentice; he was a serially bankrupt man repeatedly accused of sexual assault with a lot of criminal ties and a history of not paying his bills, being helped on by the Vladimir Putin regime, which had itself seriously corrupted the information environment of the election.
Of course what the Putin regime did with its hacking and leaking, its troll farms stirring up strife and spreading misinformation, was exploit vulnerabilities that Silicon Valley had created, and that Silicon Valley was not interested in fixing as long as the profits rolled in. Silicon Valley was created by white men and perhaps because the immensely wealthy titans of the industry that arose initially seemed harmlessly nerdy, or perhaps because the US government at the time when the mega-corporations arose was so neoliberal, they were never held in check as their enterprises came to dominate the world in significant ways.
Social media arose like a school of sharks in the information pool and began to devour the economic base of the mainstream media, to undermine the filtration systems that had limited the spread of hate, lies, misinformation and disinformation. But to talk about it as an information pool is to underestimate how much it has changed consciousness itself, how addictive and how distorting it is, how it manipulates values and emotions and beliefs.
Young men seem particularly vulnerable to its offerings, and many dank corners of the internet recruit them into misogyny and white supremacy via influencers and incel subcultures, into antisemitism and conspiracy theories, and more than that into becoming unmoored, destabilized, unwell, isolated.
The Maga right with its indifference to the normal issues of good governance and its preoccupation with clickbait distractions is an online monster and it has succeeded in creating a more angry, aggressive form of masculinity, one more convinced that debasing and dominating women is essential to its identity, whether in porn or in Trump’s fantasizing aloud that Liz Cheney should face a firing squad and Harris face Mike Tyson. The endless memes of Trump as Rambo and rescuers and Jesus show how much the lost boys and Maga women want an authoritarian leader, and the fact they can make one out of the physically and mentally pathetic Trump is a testimony to the power of tech-fueled fantasy.
Of course Silicon Valley, media and the crisis in masculinity converge in Elon Musk, who used his ownership of Twitter and his monstrous wealth to push Trump’s campaign along and who apparently intends to be the power behind the throne. Musk has become increasingly unhinged and far-right himself. Strikingly, two other men close to Trump have also become increasingly delusional – Tucker Carlson with his recent claims about being attacked by demons, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, with his nonsensical rantings about fluoridation and racist claims about Covid-19. JD Vance, formerly a not very successful venture capitalist, was chosen by Silicon Valley oligarchs as Trump’s vice-president and himself seems to have become a far-right extremist with an obsession about obligatory childbearing.
They appear to be deeply damaged people and they have come to damage everything else, including the climate; human rights, especially women’s rights, trans rights and immigrants’ rights; and the US economy. The rest of us and the rest of the world will be the cleanup crew because men like this never clean up after themselves.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and passing along the link, David. In the future, though, I'd appreciate it if you could express your "Comment" a bit more succinctly.
If you cannot appeal to the better angels of the public and win, then you can either appeal to their worse instincts, or hope for an "I told you so" moment that happens before all is lost.
Thank you Mardy. So many incredibly insightful nuggets. I especially like, “don’t let your enemies define you.” What a dialogue starter!! I’m intrigued by that concept and could philosophize on the topic for hours. Thank you for your articulation brilliance!
In this time of great sadness for many of us, the ideas and comments shared here have helped to soothe and assuage my rage and angst. Thank you all. We hurt and we lost. I naively and proudly thought that I was on the side of those who subscribe to rationality, and positive ethics. I'm not a beleiver in "sh*t happens" or "WTF," but still, I'm profoundly befuddled by what caused Mr. Trump's win. I thought that surley his bufoonery would be his downfall. I was wrong, and I ache because of it. The guy in the clown suit won. Mardy, it was both bold and thoughtful of you to take this theme on. As for me, I'm going to "Pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again." (Jerome Kern, 1936)
WE MUST 'soldier on'....if we just lay down, roll over and die..then THEY really have won. I'm not willing to do that. We will survive...we may even learn new ways to over come defeat.
You never know. We in the UK have just had 14 years of right wing government with amongst others, Boris Johnson as prime minister who had to be effectively thrown out by his own party. We now have a more left wing government and it was achieved after much dogged hard work by opposition party members on the ground never giving up on our country. Lick your wounds, see what can be improved in your game and soldier on. If you don't, the others win permanently. Nothing is impossible when you work with like minded people.
Dr M I have deep respect for your intellectual curiosity and discipline. Your advice hear resonates. However, as demonstrated by the three reasons, your friends gave I strongly doubt the appropriate lessons will be learned by the Dems. My guess is they will double down along the lines of the three reasons your friends gave. To do otherwise would require a recognition of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy that has been perpetuated by both parties for my entire lifetime. To my mind, the Dems are winning in that internecine war. You may disagree, that’s not my point. My point is that, at core, the reasons the Dems lost is they won the bankruptcy war in both intellectual and moral terms. They will never digest that. Instead they will argue the point. Except the very small minority that are truly smart intellectually and emotionally.
Thanks for weighing in, Steve. I agree that both parties would benefit from some candid self-examination, and you may be right in suggesting that it's unlikely to happen.
Thanks for weighing in, John.
Oh my gosh. You have summarized this election perfectly. I hope we Democrats can find a way to get the message clear before the midterms.
Thanks for your kind words, Barbara. I'm counting on them to over-reach!
What is te word for comparing tay nlk objects or people. Such as apples and hammers or, again totally unlike, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk. One is a bubble gum fad, the other is a fact of genius.
What is that word?
Thanks, Nick. Could you please clarify the question?
I'm reminded of one of my favorite sayings: "Wisdom comes with good judgment which comes from experience which comes from bad judgment."
As to your comments about the election and the cause of the massive Democratic defeat, they were a mite biased! One of the roles of a counsellor is surely to help clients learn the fundamental source of their issues.
I would respectively suggest that, if the Democratic Party spends its time reflecting on how it could have run a better campaign, selected a better candidate sooner, etc, then they will spend decades in the wilderness! These are surface issues.
The Party will need to dig much deeper, and challenge the viability and acceptability of the principles on which they have come to build their platform.
An example of change would be the principle of respect for and acceptance of fellow Americans, no matter what their beliefs.
It will be very difficult for the current leadership to change so drastically. But there will be a groundswell of longtime Democrats who voted for President-elect Trump and indeed felt, as you quoted above, that the Party has left them.
If the desired changes are not met, may I remind Americans of a Canadian political left-central party called the NDP or New Democratic Party!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Nick,].
Good thoughts here Nick. I think that trying to figure out what when wrong isn't going to be very useful since I don't think that in another 250 years this will ever happen again. I'd rather concentrate on how we can neutralize the upcoming damage, which will surely happen. I also think that those who voted for this party are going to have a very rude awakening when they find out what they've done. Ignorance won this election. It's time to get smart! Dr. Mardy can probably tell me the source of this....'Too soon old, too late smart' (or something close to it!!)
That is a German proverb, I believe.
Interesting thoughts, Arlene! I loved the German proverb - the story of my life! As to your comments about the "upcoming damage", I understand the emotions, and hope you are wrong. Is it significant that the 'misogynist' Trump's first appointment to the most critical position in his administration was to a woman - now arguably about to become the most powerful woman in the country? As to "Ignorance won this election", might I suggest that 'Ignorance' lost this election!
Either way...ignorance was a major player. I hope you don't have any females in your acquaintance....if women are denied medical attention, it's not going to be a good thing. I hope it gets resolved before more women die. I'm watching with interest his choice of Chief of Staff.
Good morning. Interesting that I see a comment from 'John' that was deleted. Gee, I wonder what that was...I think I can guess! It's been a 'roller coaster week' and the ride's not over yet. I keep hoping for a miracle from someone who knows how to use the law and neutralize some of the upcoming damage! This week's Mystery Person...at first I was scratching my head totally clueless...UNTIL I saw 'The Alchemist' and I said 'wait a minute... I know this book. It's on my bookshelf! I was introduced to his work about 25 years ago by a good friend from Brazil (we worked together at Bosphorus University here). Perhaps it's time to go back and read it again. As usual, your newsletter is full of thoughts and ideas and I think I need to read it a few times before I get a better picture. There's a lot here that needs digesting. Thank you Mardy. Food for thought - enough to fill a whole lifetime. Stay well. Stay safe. And keep up the great work. This one must have been difficult.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Arlene. I do believe we're in for a bumpy ride! I can't explain that deletion, as I had nothing to do with it. The Coelho Puzzler stumped a lot of people. Yes, this one was difficult to write; it took a lot longer than usual.
These comments have cheered me greatly! I'm 94 and started out as an Eisenhower Republican, re-registering as non-partisan after our two parties got us Into a 20-year war. I was surprised by the election but am not as upset as my daughters. I agree that "What if" is a total waste of time & energy and feel tentatively positive that this is not the end of civilization as we would like to imagine it.
Dr Mardy,
Dems run Mike Dukakis, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris all unlikable physically, intellectually and spiritually; no learning from failure here. Neither has served the working stiff for the past forty years. For a searing lament on failure, listen to "Love Minus Zero/ No Limit", Bob Dylan.
Jamie
neither party
Thanks, Jamie. I agree that the Dems have offered up some less-than-superlative candidates. But they hit a home run with Obama! And it's not only the Dems that have put forward some second-rate candidates.
Thanks, Elizabeth. And we are cheered by your comments as well.
Could I please sign up for some more counseling sessions? You've only scratched the surface for me. Thanks for the good start. . .
Yes, I'll pencil you in for a session later this week!
I think the larger reason for the election and Trumps victory is that he appealed strongly to the emotions. He demonstrated that the passions can Trap logic or rational thinking and he could not have done it without the help of the internet, social media, all media which allowed him to get into the heads of millions of people many times a day over many years, all the while repeating the lies. Right out of Hitlers playbook.
Yes, a trenchant analysis, my friend.
Since "emotion" trumps (no pun intended) "logic," there is not much that can be done but to lower yourself down to their level. Do the ends justify the means? H. L. Mencken said, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
Another terrific article! One of the great leaders in one of my former companies would often say "when the ship misses the harbor, it's seldom the harbor's fault". Rather than throwing stones at the victor, though many may be warranted, time would be better spent addressing our own burning platform.
Thanks for the kind words, Ken. I hadn't heard that saying before. A lovely thought.
I am a conservative voter and from your reasoning of why the Democrats lost you have called me unintelligent. How very very sad of you and for you. People can have different opinions, viewpoints, ways of living without being classified in derogatory terms. And what you wrote for reasons you lost is exactly why you lost.
If you go back and re-read the post, you will see that I was reporting what some of my Democratic friends said. Believe me, I do not consider you unintelligent at all. The people I do judge harshly are those who don't vote.
Indeed. Dr. Mardy beat me to making his point.
Yes, Lbane, people legitimately have different viewpoints, lifestyles, opinions., and let us add --priorities. A presidential election is primarily a hiring decision to fill one of the most important jobs on Earth. Voters evaluate each candidate's many traits -- bearing in mind that no one will be an ideal fit -- and then decide whose qualifications best match the job's requirements. This is where, for example, Candidate A's ability to rouse voter enthusiasm can be overvalued, while wonkier Candidate B's depth of relevant knowledge, attention to detail, and diplomatic skills may seem dull in comparison. A voter can be very smart and yet prioritize a personality that makes him feel alive and appreciated, over someone who drones on about tedious policies likely to produce the country's best long-term outcome.
My only experience of hiring was for babysitters, also (from a parental perspective) the most important job on Earth. Suppose one candidate promptly gets down on the floor, shows my toddler his Elmo tattoo, and demonstrates that he can juggle five tennis balls at once. Pretty kid-friendly, no? But then I notice that after juggling he never puts down his phone nor takes his eyes off it, scrolling and occasionally muttering a profanity at the screen. All these factors are meaningful data -- which do I prioritize as most important in deciding whether to hire him?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Nancy. I loved the baby sitter analogy.
Normally, people vote for other people, candidates, who are like them. People are tribal, they like other people with the same characteristics as they have. But in your case, this does not seem to be true? I say this because Trump's MO is to be very derogatory to anyone he does not approve of, or will not bend down to him, you know, kiss his ass. And from your comment, you are against being derogatory to people who think differently than you.
I'm well past stinging from what feels like impending doom and am reeling from its implications. Even Trump's supporters recognize that he lies and says things that are cartoon versions of reality, yet they continue to support him. That is a failure of epic proportions and, if we have the courage to look, rather than blaming those folks who voted for his shtick, we must look in the mirror and ask ourselves what our part is in that. Note that the "we" in that last sentence is intended not just for the Democratic Party, but for each of us individually.
We have a reality to acknowledge, that the Democratic Party isn't as democratic as it purports to be. What's up with blowing off working people for decades? And why did we tolerate that? Why did we support extremist candidates by supplying huge megaphones for them to blast off-putting messages that ignored the day to day needs of actual people?
Further, we've tolerated astonishingly terrible communication.
My point is not about the organizational gun fired at its own foot. It's about our tolerating that. What have we been thinking?
Thanks for weighing in, Jack. A thoughtful analysis.
I am a conservative voter and from your reasoning of why the Democrats lost you have called me unintelligent. How very very sad of you and for you. People can have different opinions, viewpoints, ways of living without being classified in derogatory terms. And what you wrote for reasons you lost is exactly why you lost.
Please see Rebecca Solnit's recent blog entitled "Fuck the mainstream media." (below)
Play the blame game about so-called Democratic political mistakes if you wish. Now the mainstream media are promptly playing the sane-washing game of portraying the pantload as a "normal" person. Few people are looking at the depressing fact that we are a deeply flawed country with a woefully gullible and willfully ignorant herd cheering on tRump. Your therapist might be more helpful by not focusing on his patient's so-called inner defects but by pointing out that our society on Tuesday turned out a frightening majority of vile and cruel racist and misogynistic goose steppers eagerly urging vengeance and violence against any and all who oppose them. So much for "making America great again." I'd be happy with adequate and sane.
I remain angry and disgusted that 74 million people found tRump to be a better candidate. And I don't blame myself for feeling this way.
Here is part of Solnit's comments today:
Fuck the media explanations that Trump won because he was talking to them about the economy, because he was talking to them primarily about himself in his bizarre monologues that also covered the dick size of a dead golfer whose career peaked sixty years ago, windmills killing birds, kids coming home from school having had their gender changed maybe during recess, and a whole lot of Hannibal Lecter apparently because in the broken jelly of his brain there was some kind of association between insane asylums and refugees seeking asylum, and on top of that a lot of threats against and menace to women and anyone who opposed him, juvenile insults, and a whole thing about sharks and batteries, and a certain amount of slurring words and a whole lot of words in no particular order conveying no particular meaning, along with the promise to put the world's richest man in charge of the economy, who in turn promises to wreck it.
And here is her Guardian article from Wednesday.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga
Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do | Rebecca Solnit
Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.
We knew what the problems were, and we wanted to fix them. The principal problems that got us to this bleakest moment in American history are intertwined. They are the crisis of masculinity, the failure of the news media and the rise of Silicon Valley, and in a way they are all the same problem.
The media might be the simplest to describe. A democracy requires an informed citizenry, and the US media over the past eight years in particular created an increasingly misinformed citizenry.
When people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis might profoundly devastate the biosphere and much of life on it, human and otherwise, for the next 10,000 years, the media has failed. When people worry about crime when it is low, an economy when it is thriving and immigrants when they do much of the hard work that sustains that economy and commit fewer crimes than the native-born, the media has failed to reach them.
When it came to Donald Trump, they went easy on him, and they again and again let him and the far right set the agenda. They constantly treated asymmetrical issues as symmetrical ones – if the Democrats resisted Republican outrages, both sides were “polarized”. In the media everything had two sides, even if one side was the truth and the other was the lie, one side was the human rights or the law and the other side was their violation.
They went soft on Trump’s criminality and incompetence, and his sheer volume of scandals meant that the past ones were forgotten as the next one erupted. He would not have won his 2016 minority victory had the US news media adequately conveyed that Trump was not the fun fictional character in the reality TV show The Apprentice; he was a serially bankrupt man repeatedly accused of sexual assault with a lot of criminal ties and a history of not paying his bills, being helped on by the Vladimir Putin regime, which had itself seriously corrupted the information environment of the election.
Of course what the Putin regime did with its hacking and leaking, its troll farms stirring up strife and spreading misinformation, was exploit vulnerabilities that Silicon Valley had created, and that Silicon Valley was not interested in fixing as long as the profits rolled in. Silicon Valley was created by white men and perhaps because the immensely wealthy titans of the industry that arose initially seemed harmlessly nerdy, or perhaps because the US government at the time when the mega-corporations arose was so neoliberal, they were never held in check as their enterprises came to dominate the world in significant ways.
Social media arose like a school of sharks in the information pool and began to devour the economic base of the mainstream media, to undermine the filtration systems that had limited the spread of hate, lies, misinformation and disinformation. But to talk about it as an information pool is to underestimate how much it has changed consciousness itself, how addictive and how distorting it is, how it manipulates values and emotions and beliefs.
Young men seem particularly vulnerable to its offerings, and many dank corners of the internet recruit them into misogyny and white supremacy via influencers and incel subcultures, into antisemitism and conspiracy theories, and more than that into becoming unmoored, destabilized, unwell, isolated.
The Maga right with its indifference to the normal issues of good governance and its preoccupation with clickbait distractions is an online monster and it has succeeded in creating a more angry, aggressive form of masculinity, one more convinced that debasing and dominating women is essential to its identity, whether in porn or in Trump’s fantasizing aloud that Liz Cheney should face a firing squad and Harris face Mike Tyson. The endless memes of Trump as Rambo and rescuers and Jesus show how much the lost boys and Maga women want an authoritarian leader, and the fact they can make one out of the physically and mentally pathetic Trump is a testimony to the power of tech-fueled fantasy.
Of course Silicon Valley, media and the crisis in masculinity converge in Elon Musk, who used his ownership of Twitter and his monstrous wealth to push Trump’s campaign along and who apparently intends to be the power behind the throne. Musk has become increasingly unhinged and far-right himself. Strikingly, two other men close to Trump have also become increasingly delusional – Tucker Carlson with his recent claims about being attacked by demons, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, with his nonsensical rantings about fluoridation and racist claims about Covid-19. JD Vance, formerly a not very successful venture capitalist, was chosen by Silicon Valley oligarchs as Trump’s vice-president and himself seems to have become a far-right extremist with an obsession about obligatory childbearing.
They appear to be deeply damaged people and they have come to damage everything else, including the climate; human rights, especially women’s rights, trans rights and immigrants’ rights; and the US economy. The rest of us and the rest of the world will be the cleanup crew because men like this never clean up after themselves.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and passing along the link, David. In the future, though, I'd appreciate it if you could express your "Comment" a bit more succinctly.
If you cannot appeal to the better angels of the public and win, then you can either appeal to their worse instincts, or hope for an "I told you so" moment that happens before all is lost.
Thank you Mardy. So many incredibly insightful nuggets. I especially like, “don’t let your enemies define you.” What a dialogue starter!! I’m intrigued by that concept and could philosophize on the topic for hours. Thank you for your articulation brilliance!
Thanks, Manisha, I appreciate your kind words. Lets keep the conversation going!
In this time of great sadness for many of us, the ideas and comments shared here have helped to soothe and assuage my rage and angst. Thank you all. We hurt and we lost. I naively and proudly thought that I was on the side of those who subscribe to rationality, and positive ethics. I'm not a beleiver in "sh*t happens" or "WTF," but still, I'm profoundly befuddled by what caused Mr. Trump's win. I thought that surley his bufoonery would be his downfall. I was wrong, and I ache because of it. The guy in the clown suit won. Mardy, it was both bold and thoughtful of you to take this theme on. As for me, I'm going to "Pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again." (Jerome Kern, 1936)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Mike. This has been a confusing and unsettling time for all of us, but, as you suggest, we must soldier on.
WE MUST 'soldier on'....if we just lay down, roll over and die..then THEY really have won. I'm not willing to do that. We will survive...we may even learn new ways to over come defeat.
Well said.
You never know. We in the UK have just had 14 years of right wing government with amongst others, Boris Johnson as prime minister who had to be effectively thrown out by his own party. We now have a more left wing government and it was achieved after much dogged hard work by opposition party members on the ground never giving up on our country. Lick your wounds, see what can be improved in your game and soldier on. If you don't, the others win permanently. Nothing is impossible when you work with like minded people.
Thanks, Christine. A very thoughtful reply.
Dr M I have deep respect for your intellectual curiosity and discipline. Your advice hear resonates. However, as demonstrated by the three reasons, your friends gave I strongly doubt the appropriate lessons will be learned by the Dems. My guess is they will double down along the lines of the three reasons your friends gave. To do otherwise would require a recognition of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy that has been perpetuated by both parties for my entire lifetime. To my mind, the Dems are winning in that internecine war. You may disagree, that’s not my point. My point is that, at core, the reasons the Dems lost is they won the bankruptcy war in both intellectual and moral terms. They will never digest that. Instead they will argue the point. Except the very small minority that are truly smart intellectually and emotionally.
Thanks for weighing in, Steve. I agree that both parties would benefit from some candid self-examination, and you may be right in suggesting that it's unlikely to happen.