“As you can see, I’m African American.”
So said a kindly gentlemen sitting next to me at the endearing farm-to-table restaurant where I have dinner every Friday. He was visiting from California, where he’s an athletic director at a private school. He wanted to know if it was safe for a Black man to eat somewhere other than upscale restaurants over the course of his visit, which was apparently set to span nearly a week.
The next Friday, in the very same seat, sat a Scotsman in town from Texas, where he immigrated some years ago. We talked for a while and when I got up to leave, he said he was surprised to find someone who shared his values and perspectives “in a place like this.” He didn’t mean the restaurant. He didn’t so much mean the city either, necessarily. He meant the state, which he likened to Texas where lots of people “believe the moon’s made of blue cheese,” as he put it.
In both cases, the discussion began (and ended) with a lament for America. More to the point, with a lament for the half of America spiraling headlong into a demagogic nightmare courtesy of one man’s alarmingly successful efforts to exploit multicausal public disaffection, deep-seated biases and societal rifts for personal and political gain. That’s what all politicians do, of course. That’s almost a politician’s job description. But as Donald Trump will tell you himself, he’s avowedly not a politician. And that’s where the concern comes in. If not a politician, then what?
Over and over again for the past 12 or so months, analysts, strategists, pollsters and economists puzzled over the disconnect between, on one hand, the US economy and, on the other, measures of consumer sentiment and Joe Biden’s approval ratings. I’ve entertained every conceivable explanation for that well-documented disparity including the obvious two: Inflation and partisanship. For a longer discussion, readers can peruse “Trump Mythos Renders Biden’s Economic Reality Meaningless.”
Plainly, it’s not all down to inflation. And the bottom line, I fear, is far more disconcerting than any partisan skew, no matter how pronounced. That bottom line: What counts for around a third of the populace is the culture wars, broadly construed. No matter what voters say when queried by pollsters, what matters is grievance politics. For those voters, there’s no economic reality that’d change their minds about Biden. Indeed, “reality” isn’t a fixed concept for that cohort. Facts are malleable to the extent they’re recognized at all.
It’s time we came to terms with that. We don’t have to puzzle over the ostensibly strange discrepancy between Biden’s approval rating and economic outcomes, any more than we have to wonder how tens of millions of Americans were convinced that a long-dead Hugo Chávez tampered with the 2020 presidential election.
The scatterplot below is a cliché by now. I see it (or some version of it) every week. And it’s always accompanied by the same incredulity, some of which I have to believe is feigned. If it’s not (feigned, I mean) then we’re all still in a state of denial.
Yes, inflation’s in part to blame, and sure, there are myriad other factors at work, but hard as this (still) is to admit for a lot of pundits, analysts, economists and pollsters, a third of Americans are in thrall to a would-be dictator such that they’d choose abject poverty in a Trump presidency over a comfortable life under Biden.
That’s not a comment on the merits of either president’s economic policies. It’s just to say that cults are one of the few phenomena capable of overriding not just otherwise implacable human traits, but the survival instinct itself. I’d tell you to ask anyone who died for their religion but… well, they’re tough to get ahold of.
Trump’s a cult leader. Maybe people who joined up in 2015 did so because they were jobless. Now that they’re in, they’re not going to leave just because they found gainful employment under Biden. That’s not how cults work.
It should thus come as no surprise (no surprise at all) that Biden can claim for himself the lowest unemployment rate in modern US history and the lowest presidential approval rating. Simultaneously. It’d be funny if the circumstances weren’t so unfortunate.
Sorry, James Carville. It’s not “the economy, stupid.” Not this time.
Republicans ask “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
There are numerous websites one can access, searching for the question “What happened in 2020 on this day” and the like.
I’m thinking they should not be asking that question.
I agree wholeheartedly with the diagnosis of grievance politics, especially when it’s topped with a delicious layer of inverse meritocracy (your struggles are not your fault). And I’ve said it before so wont say it again beyond repeating it one last time here, I honestly think there is a significant measure of entertainment and socializing involved in this cult. Politics is hard to understand and boring. But dressing up in merch and making signs is fun — ask any Swiftie — just substitute hit songs for lame roasts, disparaging nicknames and fantasy tales.
I have to think the key to breaking the cult is to divine who most suffers from the cult. I will suggest it is the powerful, working or not. CEO’s, business owners, journalists, judges, law enforcement and oppositional politicians.
I will suggest any powerful person who is uppity enough to not kiss the ring in a timely fashion when called is at risk of government overreach like we have never known. What is interesting is that this cohort is most able to do something about the political situation developing this year. There is still time I suggest to turn the ship around. If these powerful people do not endeavor to turn it around I can see much self kicking going on in late 2024.
I see some indicators of hope. It is growing consensus that Donnie is suffering from multiple mental diseases. His mendacity is an unmitigated disease that underlies his psychology. Layer dementia, which is accelerated by stress, on top of that and soon we might think his Obama confusion moment is positively pedestrian even if it reportedly silenced a room full of ardent supporters.
Immigration. The “Crisis on the Border”. Unfair trade.
Not much different than the early 1930s when imports and immigrants were blamed for the Great Depression.
The GENIUS of Karl Rove winning over hearts and minds in “the heartland.”
= “IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!”
Sort of, there’s also the enthno-supremacist dynamic: “you’re white, so it’s not your fault.” I feel like the white supremacist dynamic gets missed a lot in these conversations. I believe it’s because people mostly don’t want to believe it’s true. It is. They are no different than rank and file Nazi’s from 1930’s Germany.
As someone who grew up in the 70s, dodging cultists in air ports, Bill Jones, etc., and recently with the flood of cult documentaries, this cult mechanism was clear to me years ago. What’s fascinating about cults is how they work to disconnect reasoning from believe. “Fake News” and FUD is the primary tool of cults. That a cultists life only gets worse but they persist in the fantasy due to isolation. Branding, sexual and economic abuse, even suicide are never enough to break the spell. If science says evolution is fact, then science itself is evil.
That these extremist populist movements don’t implode until the leader themselves are exposed does not make me feel hopeful. Sadly, all the efforts, in good faith, to expose the fraud of right wing populism has only increased the faith of the gullible. When those right wing policies inevitably fail, the scapegoating, other-blaming and murder may begin in earnest as well as the wholesale mafia-like corruption, which is really the goal of the billionaires support.