Atlas Has Shrugged
ChairmanSanchez
Atlas Superstar
Posts: 38,095
Political Matrix
E: 5.29, S: -5.04
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« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2016, 03:11:19 PM » |
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It is sad that Adam T has ventured into this discussion and keeps getting in the way. He was a lot more tolerable when he just made random lists of NDP parliamentary candidates with one line bio sentences in butchered grammatical form.
As to FuzzyBears post:
This is exactly correct. Every year, people are fed up. People are always pissed. When doesn't Congress have a low approval rating? Every election is "the most important of our lifetime." I heard it in 2008 and shrugged. I heard it in 2012 and I laughed out loud.
This election, to many Americans, and not just Trump supporters, is indeed the most important election. It is their America's last stand.
BRTD and company will of course celebrate this, as most millennials who are overly aware/absorbed with their mere existence as millennials welcome this incoming cultural slaughter. But those people in their fifties or sixties who lost it all in the bust and can't start over again-they fear it. And they are turning to people who they never, ever, ever expected to vote for.
Do you guys think they seriously want to vote for Trump? Do you think they want this orange skinned, loudmouthed, celebrity/publicity obsessed jackass from NBC whose only real experience is serving as the public face and the iron hand of a shadowy real estate conglomerate-do they really want him to be President? Of course not!
But they don't care. It's their last stand. Bush I betrayed them, and they fought back with the Buchanan brigades (the Trump supporters who have always been Republican and always followed politics to some degree or another at least). Dole didn't put up a fight, and neither did the party in 1996. The fix was in. Both parties knew who was going to be the president in January, 1997. In 2000, an election fought tooth and nail (but at least fought!) that literally divided the nation down to the decimal, resulted in the worst American presidency of the last fifty years. Bush II took the folksy rhetoric of compassionate conservatism and gave the people, inside of the Republican Party and out of it, a big cold platter of economic nihilism and international recklessness.
They have nothing left to lose, right? Or do they. I don't know. You don't know. They don't know.
Fourteen years ago, they feared terrorism in the country, and for good reason considering 9/11 had just occurred. Yet fourteen years went by under Bush and later Obama, where terrorism wasn't really a problem. Sure, some punk ass kids pretending to be Muslims blew up the Boston marathon and sure, Fort Hood was attacked. And yes, Americans were somewhat annoyed that these acts of terrorism were not condemned as what they were-acts of Islamic terrorism. But names are just symbols, and symbols, as George Carlin once said, are for the symbol minded. Up until this year, no one outside of the Fox News base really cared. Until now.
When have terrorist attacks increased so rapidly before? When have major cities been plagued by such unrest before? This unrest is something that many of the "silent majority" overall understand as FuzzyBear noted. Many are sympathetic, and many in fact know the grievances to be true. But then they see the rioting, the fire hoses being cut, the snipers shooting cops, the cities being burned down, the CVS being looted, and they lose that sympathy. And that has only furthered this "us verse them" mentality that permeates every aspect of our society. To these people, if things don't change, this will become the new normal.
The highlight of this election is a real, genuine, and universal feeling of fear.
I don't think the Silent Majority is totally behind Trump. They may, might, and most likely will reject him in the end. But that is not a rejection of Trumpism, merely Trump. It is also a rejection of any sense of optimism. I often hear "we're doomed." I heard it when Obama won. I heard it when Bush won a second term. This time, people, at least those over 45 years old, utter those words with a sense of dejection and mournful acceptance. It is not the sarcastic, sneering political platitude of years past (and I'm sure again in years future) has been when side A loses to side B. They mean it, because the America that they once believed still worked for them no longer does. The American Dream is dying in front of their eyes.
But they also, and this is the most critical part of this post, realize that Hillary offers more of the same. The decision is, do these people want the same old same that has led to the industrial holocaust of America, the slow stagnation of the middle class, the unraveling of the Middle East, the increasing unrest at home, and growing racial, generational, class gaps that are causing this chasm in America?
Or do they say "fINKs it, lets burn this place to the ground!" That is the most interesting aspect of this election.
This is all anecdotal of course on the surface, but any number of polls can narrow down each separate paragraph. This is the grim reality that I'm hearing from Hillary supporters, Trump supporters, and in rare cases (I really only know a few Johnson supporters over 30) Johnson supporters. This election matters, and the question isn't Trump or Hillary as much as it is "are we ready to take a chance or can it really get any worse?"
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