How did a demagogue like Trump wind up in power?
Inspired by a post in News & Current Events from VegetableMan. viewtopic.php?f=21&t=370687&p=8082977#p8082977
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DystopianShadows
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envirozentinel
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Actually a higher percentage of the popular vote went to Clinton. But Trump got more electoral votes.
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26% of the electorate voted for him; 3 million less than those who voted for Hillary Clinton.
The same way Senate Democrats got 12 million more votes than Senate Republicans, but still lost two seats.
"How did a demagogue like Trump wind up in power?"
46.9% of the electorate simply couldn't be bothered to vote.
Because people were fed up with politicians from both of our corporate owned parties, for starters. Michael Moore called it when he predicted that Trump would win and it would ne the "biggest f**k you to the establishment, ever."
The establishment backed one of the most unlikeable, corrupt politicians in history: Hillary Clinton. The Hillary campaign and the Democrats elevated Trump in the media, a move that was referred to as the "pied piper' strategy. Yep, that worked out well, didn't it? And not forget how the Dems sabotaged Bernie Sanders campaign by spreading a lot of lies about Sanders being an atheist, among other misinformation.
The whole Russia narrative was concocted as a smoke screen to deflect attention away from the shenanigans of the DNC. Hell, they would have been happy to take us to WW111 to cover us their corruption.
During the Clinton administration, both parties moved further to the right. Now the Dems are moderate Republicans at best; at worst, they are neoconservatives like Hillary and Obama. If the Democratic Party doesn't reform, which I don't see happening, and start representing the working class again, we will see another term for Trump. And we'll probably get someone even worse down the road.
Here's an article worth reading to further understand how we got to where we are today:
Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump
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The establishment backed one of the most unlikeable, corrupt politicians in history: Hillary Clinton. The Hillary campaign and the Democrats elevated Trump in the media, a move that was referred to as the "pied piper' strategy. Yep, that worked out well, didn't it? And not forget how the Dems sabotaged Bernie Sanders campaign by spreading a lot of lies about Sanders being an atheist, among other misinformation.
The whole Russia narrative was concocted as a smoke screen to deflect attention away from the shenanigans of the DNC. Hell, they would have been happy to take us to WW111 to cover us their corruption.
During the Clinton administration, both parties moved further to the right. Now the Dems are moderate Republicans at best; at worst, they are neoconservatives like Hillary and Obama. If the Democratic Party doesn't reform, which I don't see happening, and start representing the working class again, we will see another term for Trump. And we'll probably get someone even worse down the road.
Here's an article worth reading to further understand how we got to where we are today:
Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump
The changing demographics of the US are largely involved.
When I was young, maybe 20% of the US was nonwhite.
Now it's projected that by 2040 that nonwhites all by themselves will constitute an actual numerical majority of the US population.
But even before that, nonwhites working with progressive whites will be a majority in US elections, just as they were in 2016 when Trump was defeated in the popular vote 65 million to 62 million (with about 8 million more votes for 3rd party candidates).
Trump is the last dying gasp of a proportionately shrinking white population that like one set of predecessors will be swept away, gone with the wind - unless he is successful in setting himself up as a tyrant. And it is precisely that which must be stopped.
"The risks are very serious. If the comments of the Republican leaders vying for the presidency correspond to the reality of the future White House, we should expect a real disaster, and that is: We ignore global warming, we tear up the nuclear agreements with Iran, we increase our military power, we act with greater aggressiveness and determination in the rest of the world despite the risks of unleashing a world war. If a country with the power of the United States endorses these policy strategies, the chances of survival of the human species are minimized."
- Noam Chomsky, 2016, 'Republicans Are a Danger to the Human Species' - The author and philosopher discusses global warming, war with Russia, the U.S. presidential election and the survival of human civilization.
The study you cite assumes 1) all Hispanics like Ted Cruz are non-white, 2) all mixed race people, like Elizabeth Warren are non-white.
In truth, about half of Hispanics identify as "white".
Thus, it seems like "white people" will be ~70% of population in 2040.
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After a failure, the easiest thing to do is to blame someone else.
The establishment backed one of the most unlikeable, corrupt politicians in history: Hillary Clinton. The Hillary campaign and the Democrats elevated Trump in the media, a move that was referred to as the "pied piper' strategy. Yep, that worked out well, didn't it? And not forget how the Dems sabotaged Bernie Sanders campaign by spreading a lot of lies about Sanders being an atheist, among other misinformation.
The whole Russia narrative was concocted as a smoke screen to deflect attention away from the shenanigans of the DNC. Hell, they would have been happy to take us to WW111 to cover us their corruption.
During the Clinton administration, both parties moved further to the right. Now the Dems are moderate Republicans at best; at worst, they are neoconservatives like Hillary and Obama. If the Democratic Party doesn't reform, which I don't see happening, and start representing the working class again, we will see another term for Trump. And we'll probably get someone even worse down the road.
Here's an article worth reading to further understand how we got to where we are today:
Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump
The changing demographics of the US are largely involved.
When I was young, maybe 20% of the US was nonwhite.
Now it's projected that by 2040 that nonwhites all by themselves will constitute an actual numerical majority of the US population.
But even before that, nonwhites working with progressive whites will be a majority in US elections, just as they were in 2016 when Trump was defeated in the popular vote 65 million to 62 million (with about 8 million more votes for 3rd party candidates).
Trump is the last dying gasp of a proportionately shrinking white population that like one set of predecessors will be swept away, gone with the wind - unless he is successful in setting himself up as a tyrant. And it is precisely that which must be stopped.
"The risks are very serious. If the comments of the Republican leaders vying for the presidency correspond to the reality of the future White House, we should expect a real disaster, and that is: We ignore global warming, we tear up the nuclear agreements with Iran, we increase our military power, we act with greater aggressiveness and determination in the rest of the world despite the risks of unleashing a world war. If a country with the power of the United States endorses these policy strategies, the chances of survival of the human species are minimized."
- Noam Chomsky, 2016, 'Republicans Are a Danger to the Human Species' - The author and philosopher discusses global warming, war with Russia, the U.S. presidential election and the survival of human civilization.
You could be right. Perhaps Trump is the "last dying gasp" of white supremacy. He certainly has brought the racists and white supremacists out into the light for all to see and condemn. That's one positive in this mess. We can hopefully evolve and move forward.
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So far, I agree with most of the other posters on this thread. But might I add, in recent years we've seen globally the growth of the cult of the totalitarian strongman, which has been fed by xenophobia stemming from a backlash against liberal tolerance of a multi-ethnic society.
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Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump
Some saw the trend even earlier than that. This from 1994:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v16/n07/edward-lu ... the-future
In this situation, what does the moderate Right – mainstream US Republicans, British Tories and all their counterparts elsewhere – have to offer? Only more free trade and globalisation, more deregulation and structural change, thus more dislocation of lives and social relations. It is only mildly amusing that nowadays the standard Republican/Tory after-dinner speech is a two-part affair, in which part one celebrates the virtues of unimpeded competition and dynamic structural change, while part two mourns the decline of the family and community ‘values’ that were eroded precisely by the forces commended in part one. Thus at the present time the core of Republican/Tory beliefs is a perfect non-sequitur. And what does the moderate Left have to offer? Only more redistribution, more public assistance, and particularist concern for particular groups that can claim victim status, from the sublime peak of elderly, handicapped, black lesbians down to the merely poor.
Thus neither the moderate Right nor the moderate Left even recognises, let alone offers any solution for, the central problem of our days: the completely unprecedented personal economic insecurity of working people, from industrial workers and white-collar clerks to medium-high managers. None of them are poor and they therefore cannot benefit from the more generous welfare payments that the moderate Left is inclined to offer. Nor are they particularly envious of the rich, and they therefore tend to be uninterested in redistribution. Few of them are actually unemployed, and they are therefore unmoved by Republican/Tory promises of more growth and more jobs through the magic of the unfettered market: what they want is security in the jobs they already have – i.e. precisely what unfettered markets threaten.
A vast political space is thus left vacant by the Republican/Tory non-sequitur, on the one hand, and moderate Left particularism and assistentialism, on the other. That was the space briefly occupied in the USA by the 1992 election-year caprices of Ross Perot, and which Zhirinovsky’s bizarre excesses are now occupying in the peculiar conditions of Russia, where personal economic insecurity is the only problem that counts for most people (former professors of Marxism-Leninism residing in Latvia who have simultaneously lost their jobs, professions and nationalities may be rare, but most Russians still working now face at least the imminent loss of their jobs). And that is the space that remains wide open for a product-improved Fascist party, dedicated to the enhancement of the personal economic security of the broad masses of (mainly) white-collar working people. Such a party could even be as free of racism as Mussolini’s original was until the alliance with Hitler, because its real stock in trade would be corporativist restraints on corporate Darwinism, and delaying if not blocking barriers against globalisation. It is not necessary to know how to spell Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to recognise the Fascist predisposition engendered by today’s turbocharged capitalism.
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