Some idle thoughts today, as I survey the wreckage that is Trump’s career and our futures.
1) What I find most interesting is that Trump has morphed into the exact person that he himself thought would be the worst possible President. Everything he does now is what he explicitly campaigned against, down to the details. See Syria, obviously. The catalog of tweets he made about how dumb it would be to attack Syria are a testament to that. And the Goldman-Sachs thing, as well. He staffed his cabinet with literally the same people, down to the person, that he criticized throughout his campaign, and then proceeded to put them into the most influential spots. And then there were his many overtures to white nationalists and even nazis, despite having so many jews in his family- jews that he immediately put into the white house with him, despite them having no qualifications of any kind in politics.
And the Putin thing, and the wall, and healthcare, and everything else.
It’s amazing, when you think about it. I mean… down to the details.
2) A lot of people are wondering why Trump flipped and became opposite-Trump overnight. There’s a lot of theories being bandied about, from blackmail to general stupidity to being too influenced by his younger, dumber relatives. I think it’s more simple than that. I think Trump’s a coward.
Basically, he pussed out. He was given enormous advantages by his landslide victory, but ran from them into the motherly arms of Goldman-Sachs and the media at the first sign of trouble. Rather than trying to use his advantages to fight, and win- something which could have been easy to do- at the first sign of criticism he just pussed out, dropped his weapons, and ran away, screaming for his life.
I think it’s important to remember that Trump isn’t and has never been a fighter. He is at heart a pampered, spoiled businessman, born into a wealthy family. His plush life and easy surroundings did not prepare him well for serious criticism. He’s spent his entire life up until this point surrounded by yes-men and career brown-nosers. So serious criticism must be alien to him, and I think he just didn’t know how to take it when it came.
So, he fled, instead of fighting, even though the odds were in his favor. He’s just a coward.
3) I wonder what the long-term consequences of Trump’s, um, “changes” will be. His base has checked out, as I’ve already said. His very, very sizable base. As I pointed out, his party controls both houses and more than 2 times the governorships of the other party. His base is truly huge. By far the biggest in politics, in this country.
What’ll they do, now? Who knows. I’m one of them, and TBH, I’m not sure, either.
What a weird situation.
I think it might help to explicate things. Trump’s base- English speaking working class white Americans- is probably the largest single demographic on Earth. Countries like India and China have more people than the US, but the have lots more ethnic tribes, cultures, and languages, too. To quote Wikipedia:
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According to Census of India of 2001, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages… The 2001 Census recorded 30 languages which were spoken by more than a million native speakers and 122 which were spoken by more than 10,000 people.
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Trump’s (former) base isn’t like that- they’re a unified body, and they’ve rejected the government in their hearts, if not in deed by now.
Where, now, will they go? What will they do? In American politics, that might be the only question that matters.
I suppose that they could just leave the country emotionally. You know, check out and go about their day to day existence without voting or caring at all about the country. That would be easy.
But… that’s A LOT of people. A LOT.
They could, if they wanted, revolt, crush the government and kill everyone associated with it, and take whatever they wanted of the spoils. That would also be easy.
You know, while we’ve got China on the mind, I’m remembering a quote from some Chinese revolutionary. I forget who, but it was someone associated with Mao’s Cultural Revolution, I think. My memory is hazy on this, though.
But I remember what was said. Paraphrasing, it was something like this: “To stage a successful revolution, two things are necessary: 1) The support of the foreign government, and 2) the support of 10% of the native population.”
I’m not sure if that’s true, but it’s an interesting thought. If a revolution was to come, here, would the revolutionaries have 10% of populace behind them? I wonder…
4) I wonder why I like this stuff so much. I find all of this to be just so damn interesting. It’s weird.
IDK. I’ve always been attracted to the morbid, and the death of this country is pretty much the most morbid thing there is, IMO.
So, IDK. Is that why?
IDK.