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Trump Mythos Renders Biden’s Economic Reality Meaningless
Janet Yellen says Joe Biden saved the world.
"Over the past year, global growth has been resilient and stronger than predicted. America's path to a soft landing has underpinned global growth," Yellen will say Tuesday in Sao Paulo, where she's hanging out with G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs.
There's little doubt that Bidenomics worked. The US has grown at rates which Donald Trump, were he president, would surely tout as evidence of "the greatest economic boom the world's ever see
Facts only serve to confuse the masses who have long made up their minds, or so goes some saying
Facts also get in the way of good storytelling. And with a master bullshitter running for President again, I can’t wait for more “winning”. ….. and his whining.
A lot of families could just look to their savings and the buying power it represents now vs 3 years ago. Many American families had fatter bank accounts at the end of trumps term/start of Biden’s term than they do now, to say nothing of prices now vs then.
To some, myself included, that would obviously not be Joe Biden’s fault. On the other hand, it’s relatively easy napkin math for most people to grasp as they cling to a standard of living.
I’ve recently been binging the works of Yuval Noah Harari on Audible. He’s most famous for his first book entitled “Sapiens” which surmises that the reason Homo Sapiens are the only humans left on earth is because they killed off all other species. His thorough analysis of human history comes to a single conclusion about why weak beings dominate the planet. Humans unique ability to work together through the use of story telling. Put another way, humans ability to tell each other lies so well that millions of us do things in support of those lies. Trump, Trumpism, and whatever is left of the GOP continually demonstrate the power of this unique skill. Biden’s factual accomplishment track record surpasses any president in my lifetime but, none of that matters. The story of Trump the superior president in every way is what people choose to put their belief, money, and opinion behind. And, unfortunately, being that we are all humans; no amount of facts will ever change that.
” Trump cult phenomenon” will eventually run its course, like crypto, but not soon.
Regardless of the macro facts, the left has a messaging and optics problem. Most voting class people are extremely skeptical of a platform that calls for a more equitable redistribution of societal benefits, sprinkled with some righting of historical wrongs, because it is in our nature to want to feel empowered to make our own way, not to be infantilized. Only people who want that are liberal arts students and coastal liberals who are insulated from the effects of bad public policy. And while the victim/oppressor (the system sucks) narrative works for people who glean comfort, empowerment, and perhaps self-righteousness from victimhood, once people start raising families, taking responsibility, maximizing their opportunity for financial security despite the world being deeply unfair, and accomplishing things by what at least feels like of their own effort, the left’s platform becomes more degrading and perverse over time, particularly as the left paints anyone who disagrees with them as immoral, as opposed to just wrong. It gets exposed when it becomes evident to working families that there are no clean centralized solutions to most societal problems, only tradeoffs. When the trusted local news runs a story that a city, which can’t hide pain via deficit spending, is cutting back on municipal sanitation worker hours to make room for funding to mitigate the local migrant crisis, all of a sudden the tradeoff becomes evident. And you have bad actors like Trump who amplify the nativist v. migrant narrative. To which the left (ironically) cries, “fake news”. Your platform can’t just be “We care about people and you don’t, Biden is definitely not trending to be an invalid by 2026, and if you are a good person, you’ll stop the orange lunatic”.
This article nails it on many levels. I personally give a lot of weight to Americans’ amenability to BS in combination with Americans’ lack of basic interest in reading about their own country (or reading in general). If you judge the economy by higher prices and an increasing credit card bill then today’s economy might be worst on a daily basis for most individuals compared to 4 years ago. I am glad you mentioned memes because our moronic society has memefied the flow of information to absurdity, clearly not helping the old man stuttering or falling of a bike or just (god help us) eating ice cream. Anyway, I was sadly not surprised to read that the Teamster union is trying to decide which candidate they will endorse for president, really? Biden picketed with auto unions workers and has overseen arguably the most union friendly administration in ages, yet the Teamsters might endorse Trump, further proof that facts no longer matter in our society.
I feel like this perception divide has been around a while with Republicans generally given credit for a better economy, a stronger stock market and a smaller budget deficit. Yet Reagan, GW Bush and Trump all presided over huge budget deficits, expensive military forays and/or their fair share of economic/geopolitical crises. Clinton, Obama and Biden had their shares of the same, but argulably managed to reverse the prevailing negative trends that were handed to them. None of that seems to matter, however, to these broad perceptions of economic stewardship — mythos, as you put it well — when it comes to the economy, Republicans good, Democrats bad.
But as you’ve recently underscored the folly of trying to measure anything about the economy, whether the empirical such as the number of new or used houses sold, or the less tangible such as the rate of change in prices over time, even if it can be assumed that these things can be measured (let alone predicted), what does it even matter if their already dubious accuracy is constantly subsumed by the prevailing mythos?
While my recollection is hazy, I clearly remember that leading up to the 1988 election, there was a very adverse economic report that was deemed to be harmful to George HW Bush’s reelection. After he lost to Clinton, that economic report was subsequently revised sharply to be much less adverse than it initially seemed. So, back then, we were letting the numbers fool us. But now, I fear, the numbers, however distorted or shallow to begin with, are being disregarded in favor of guts and feelings. So maybe this is progress. We don’t need numbers to fool ourselves anymore — we’ve learned to do it directly.
This short (and likely cherrypicked) segment from Jimmy Kimmel really highlights this point, at least among MAGA nation. https://youtu.be/FAFbOK01uE4?t=515
Don’t forget that a large segment of Trump followers are the ‘christian nation evangelicals’ who don’t care about facts only organized religion fairytales and desire for the apocalypse to happen sooner rather than later. If the world as we know it is going to end, who cares about inflation, bank accounts or food prices. The holy wars trump (pun intended) everything else.
I think Trump supporters among voters is much easier to understand than Trump supporters in the Senate and Congress. If you’ve ever been to or near a Trump rally, you would certainly notice the cult-like aspects of it — I mean I just don’t know that many adults who feel the need to accumulate far more merch than your average Swiftie, particularly when such merch is not only tacky but also includes misogyny/profanity and often comes in the form of 100 square foot flags on 40 foot poles. My garage already has enough junk. But in the end, I don’t feel their support is truly about policy — I feel it is much more about entertainment, having a good time and being involved in “politics.” Hating the Democrats and swallowing the policy is just the price of admission.
But the support in Congress and the Senate is much more mystifying to me, although ultimately I think it’s existential. I’ve shared my tinfoil hat theory here before that a lot of this “professional” support is a product of Trump’s threats (i.e., Kompromat — e.g., Lindsay Graham and TIm Scott for obvious reasons, Elaine Chao for less obvious ones). And I think a lot of the rest of the support is due to the fact that the GOP has cinched its wagon to Trump to the point that in the face of popular vote and demographic headwinds, party over country is the best way to retain power. Which means hating and obstructing the Democrats, and either pledging unwavering loyalty or getting the hell out.
Yes, I am a natural born American citizen, and I am not proud of the fact that Americans, in general, seem to have an stupendous lack of critical thinking skills; hence Trump.
Today I read a summary of a purported newsweek article that purpurted that the location of Wade had been determined from cell tower pings to be in bosses condo. Not only is this technically impossible but said cellphone records can be faked and any real ones must be obtained by subpoena. Implying that the person who is testifying to this bombshell is either lying or a criminal or both.
I am faced with not knowing if Newsweek even ran such an article, whether this charade was aired in court or how/whether the fidelity of the smear was questioned in court. Airing criminal court proceedings in this manner is prejudicial to our system of criminal courts. Therefore I am confused and I will be willing to bet that the counterpoints are lost on the majority of the population. This propaganda if even for a minute has potential to drive our nation crazy and it contributes to the ill feeling people have about the institutions which benefits only one person.
Is this ‘the problem’ which if we solve it will resolve all ‘our problems’. I think not but the net result seems to be that we need to be more diligent than ever and more pro-active than ever just to stay on the treadmill. I would love to see counterpoint to this thoughts somewhere, sometime.
Ironically popular opinion and even the popular vote won’t decide this crucial presidential election. It will literally come down to 10,000 votes in a few swing states to win the electoral math.
Luckily I believe Biden is competent enough (decades in the Senate plus VP for 8 years) to know exactly how to win, whereas Trump’s incompetence means he can’t even lie or cheat (or stage a coup) successfully.