Wednesday, November 09, 2016

If You Want To Know Why Trump Won...

Again, I didn't think he'd pull it out, but I'm glad that even a pseudo-Republican will be in the White House again.

There are plenty of people, though, who aren't glad about that.  And I get that, given that my side has been on the losing end of the last two presidential elections in a row.

But if you want to know why Trump won, if you want to understand the zeitgeist that propelled his movement, you need look no farther than on the other side of that movement, to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  If you want to read bigotry, elitism, and condescension, you need look no farther than Paul Krugman.  If you want to understand why the same country that reelected Barack Obama four years ago could now replace him with a Donald Trump instead of a Hillary Clinton, you need look no farther than Paul Krugman.  The disdain, the contempt he has for those who don't think like he does--I admit it, I'm going to experience some schadenfreude over this:

We still don’t know who will win the electoral college, although as I write this it looks — incredibly, horribly — as if the odds now favor Donald J. Trump. What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.

We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time.

We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.

It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many other people who might not share those anti-democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.
He really believes that crap about Republicans. Read it again, and tell me who the real bigot is.

6 comments:

Philip said...

That's pretty much right. This was a vote for a return to racial diivisions and white supremecy. What's more boggling, why was Trump chosen? Simply as the bomb at the party? Well what happens when he can't run the Presidency? Do these 'good folk' care more about race and the 1800's than nuclear codes?

Philip said...

You don't get ANYTHING. Trump's not a Republican, or a conservative. He a vile thug.

Congratulations on voting for someone who flits with ten year olds, makes fun of people,, incites violence, gropes women, hates immigrants, and KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT POLITICS or FOREIGN POLICY.

Thanks for voting to ruin this nation.

Darren said...

I don't know who you are, Philip, but I'm glad you're this upset. It's people like *you* who, through your condescension and arrogance, made this upcoming presidency possible.

Pseudotsuga said...

Wow, Darren, you even make people who don't know you upset!

Installing troll ...
Troll installation fail; retry (Y/N)?
u mad bro?

Anonymous said...

There has been intolerance, bigotry and violence in the campaign; all instigated by the left. See the Project Veritas videos, see last night's rioting on Oakland and elsewhere and see the BLM rioting. Any deviation from approved ideology is swiftly punished.

I will happily choose President Trump over the stupid, arrogant, entitled, sick, criminal mass of corruption that is Hillary Clinton. Among other crimes, she refused to provide appropriate security to our ambassador and three other Americans in our diplomatic compound in Libya, approved the sale of 20% of our uranium supply to Russia and chose as her closest aide a woman with such close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that she should have never been allowed within miles of a security clearance. Her judgment is appalling bad.

Donald Trump has built and run a multinational business, where mistakes and bad judgment are swiftly punished. The "temperament" argument reflects that he is unwilling to live and work within the parameters of leftist ideology. Thank heaven, because leftist ideas have never played out well in the real world.

Niels Henrik Abel said...

"We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous."

Which is why people did not vote for HilLIARy Clinton. She is unsuited for higher office, her chief "qualification" was being married to BJC. Senator and Secretary of State? Give me a break. Those illustrate her incompetence. Temperamentally unsound? Ask her SS detail about that, or anyone who's had the displeasure of dealing with her, especially away from the klieg lights. Scary and ludicrous? The woman will probably never admit it publicly, but there is overwhelming evidence that she's afflicted with Parkinson's Disease. And lest you think that's merely a physical debilitation, the dementia arising from Parkinson's does indeed affect one mentally, impairing judgment (for example). Even those in her inner circle admitted in the emails that her judgment on a number of issues was unsound, and certainly the entire world could corroborate that with respect to the debacle in Benghazi.

"We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law."

Yup, that's why the great majority of Americans did indeed vote for DJT: they value democratic norms (they HATE having Zerocare and perverted bathroom regulations shoved down their throats, for example) and the rule of law (they didn't want a vile and corrupt grifter like Clinton anywhere near the Oval Office - following the rule of law would mean that she would go to live in the Big House, not the White House).

As for the rest: spare me the blather about racial this and that and misogyny and whatever. Eight years of that kind of claptrap has been more than enough.