by JohnBAlexander
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Saturday, November 16, 2024 (DailyKos.com)
(No, it’s the ignorant voters) There is no Trump Mandate!
Has America become a Kakistocracy? (look it up)
Any politician that states they “believe in the wisdom of the people” is either lying, or too ignorant to hold office.
Who are we? In 2004, Samuel Huntington wrote a book by that title, Who are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, noting the dramatic demographic and ideological shifts that had taken place in the country. The time has come to reexamine our basic principles and values. The mirror will not be kind. As with Huntington, the bottom line is we are not who we were. Many of the issues we thought the country had overcome, have again surfaced. Many people thought that the election of President Obama signaled the official end of racism. Clearly that was not the case. Additionally, antisemitism is on a significant rise in the country.
As Rep Jim Clyburn stated, he fears the election of Trump and the implementation of Project 2025 may herald in the era of Jim Crow 2.0. There is little doubt that racism is reemerging in many areas of the country. Several SCOTUS decisions have made voting for minorities more difficult and supported gerrymandering. In 2023 they eviscerated critical parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Post WWII we developed an economy that fostered the American middle class. Interacting on a global basis, we also created a new world order all while supporting the rebuilding of countries that had been destroyed during that war. That effort included massive support for our major WW II enemies as both Japan and Germany literally rose from ashes and became responsible and respected global participants.
Based both on our unmatched military capability and our emergent economic engine, America became the world leader with the guiding principle of the rule of law. We helped create the United Nations as an organization at which to negotiate global issues. Concurrently we became a founding member of NATO, an alliance that for 75 years has successfully held the Soviet Union, and later Russia at bay.
There is a small group of voters who support Trump for their own best interests. They are called billionaires and other Uber rich. The rest of the MAGA base, wittingly or unwittingly, voted against their own interests in a variety of areas. Consider the plight of Elon Musk who provided Trump at least $132 million dollars for his campaign. On 6 November 2024, the day following the election, Musk personally profited gaining more than $26 BILLION dollars. In purely financial terms, Musk’s ROI for his support for Donald Trump, was over twenty times what he contributed. It is claimed that that the ten wealthiest people in America gained over $64 billion dollars that day alone.
Thanks to SCOTUS and the Citizens United ruling, there is little doubt that political campaigns are totally out of control. Musk bought an election. As a large government contractor, how can this be anything but a conflict of interest? Worth noting is how many major deleterious findings and actions trace back to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He was instrumental in Citizens United (causing money to become speech), packed SCOTUS that handed down Dobbs, (ending abortion rights for women), and failed to support Trump’s impeachment for insurrection (which led to the current situation).
Most distressing is how the former Republican Party allowed an incompetent and totally unqualified person to capture their reins of power and turn their organization into a cult. It is quite clear that the Founding Fathers never envisioned a Trump-like interloper. Their assumption was that sanity would prevail, and such an intruder excised long before they could assume power. They were wrong.
While there are many additional contributing factors, there are four “A’s” that stand out: Amorality, Amnesia, Acceptability and Apathy.
Amorality
There is no doubt that Trump is amoral. That issue is not in question. He is an adjudicated serial sexual offender who owes one of his victims, E. Jean Carroll, over 83 million dollars. That is for defaming her after that actual rape took place. In addition, to Ms. Carroll there are at least 26 women who have raised complaints about his unwanted sexual assaults that took place over decades. Then there is the Stormy Daniels affair that occurred as Melania was birthing Barron. It is well known that he had multiple affairs while married.
Of course, there is Trump’s constant lying about nearly everything. His corrupt business practices are legendary. Cheating contractors has been the basis for his business model all his adult life. There are thousands of lawsuits to prove it. Defrauding investors and stiffing his employees have been common for decades. A terrible businessman, he has personally benefitted from several bankruptcies while leaving others “holding the bag.”
Trump’s propensity for lying is well-established. The Washington Post logged far more than thirty thousand lies or misleading statements during his first term in office. That behavior has not abated and continues to this day. Some of his lies kill. Among the most egregious of his recent lies was that FEMA and the Biden Administration were not responding to the victims of Hurricane Helene.
Trump is like the pirates who move the lighthouse in order to plunder ships that then run aground. Gullible MAGA, and other low information voters, frequently believe his endemic lies and they helped him win the 2024 election. They have forgotten that during the Covid-19 pandemic he told us in early 2020 “it would be gone by Easter,” and it “was just like the flu.” Even though Trump knew Covid could be transmitted in an airborne manner, he downplayed the seriousness of that fact and continually lied to the public. As a direct result of Trump’s incompetence and lying, hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly.
Clearly many Americans do not care about morality – which is a reflection of who we have become as a country.
Amnesia
Millions of Americans have severe amnesia about what Trump’s first administration was like. Bolstered by unsupported campaign promises, they seem to remember a time in which everything was running smoothly, and prices were lower. Yes, the prices were lower, but what the public seems to hate is capitalism. It is the American economic system in which prices always rise, the trick being to manage the rate of increase. Generally ignorant, most Americans have no concept of how our economic system works and the forces that impact the price of everything. It is generally far more complex than most imagine. Most Americans have no idea what any POTUS can and cannot do.
At the top of the list of people’s complaints seems to be the price of gasoline. What they fail to understand is that petroleum products are global commodities. Further, the U.S., not Saudi Arabia or Russia, is the biggest producer of oil in the world. The oil companies sell their products on the open market and to those willing to pay the going price. Most Trump supporters are willing to trade planet inhabitability for future generations, for their current personal convenience. Trump is a leading climate change denier, and his minions follow with his antiscientific postures and policies.
A related issue comes from the question are you better off now than you were four years ago? The answer is a resounding yes (and on steroids). Four years ago, Covid 19 was a global epidemic. Around the world travel was greatly restricted and the price of gasoline fell, in some cases below where it was profitable to drill. That was supply and demand. Voter amnesia seems to have eliminated just how bad things were under Trump’s incompetent handling of the pandemic. We ended up with over a million fatalities that spanned two administrations. But it was the MAGA anti-vax movement that continued the fatal consequences far longer than was necessary. Trump’s policies led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary American deaths.
Also forgotten was the constant chaos that ran throughout his term. He promised to hire “only the best people,” to work for him, yet the turnover in key positions was very high. Trump embarked on what became known as “governance by Tweet.” Repeatedly he would make major policy announcements in his nightly Tweet sessions. Some key employees learned they had been fired via his Tweets or from news programs that constantly monitored his postings. That is how then FBI director, James Comey, learned about his dismissal when attending a speaking engagement in Los Angeles. They even attempted to leave him stranded, indicating as he was no longer a U.S. Government employee, he was not authorized to fly on the aircraft that had flown him to LA. That, even though it was Comey’s untimely announcement immediately before the election was one of three deciding factors that resulted in Trump’s election. (Despite the later protests, Russia, Russia, Russia, was real and did impact the outcome of the 2016 election).
It has been reported that some prospective candidates for the next Trump administration have declined to be considered. Aware of Trump’s amoral pension for humiliating people, they do not wish to replicate the personal embarrassment of being publicly disgraced. The public has also forgotten how many of Trump’s close associates ended up in jail. Included was one of his “best” hires and loyal supporter, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s National Security Advisor. That was before he pleaded guilty to lying about Russian contacts. Later Trump pardoned him as he did with several other close associates who went to prison. Now Flynn wants to abolish the FBI. That is not as unlikely as you might think. There are already reports that Trump might fire FBI director, Christopher Wray, and install a sycophant, Kash Patel, with the mission to clean out the senior leadership of that agency.
The aftermath of Trump’s insurrection attempt and election interference in multiple states resulted in his criminal indictment in Georgia. Many of Trump’s associates either have pleaded guilty or are awaiting trial on a range of criminal and civil trials. High on that list is former Mayor Rudy Guliani. Now disgraced and disbarred, he owes two Georgia campaign workers $148M for defamation. He is also awaiting trial for criminal misconduct in multiple jurisdictions. Despite the fact that his criminal efforts were in support of Trump’s 2024 unfounded fraudulent election claims, there has been no support from Trump to pay fines or the hundreds of thousands Rudy owes in legal expenses.
Even before taking office, people already should have noticed that the Trump chaos Sh*t Show has begun. The proposed nominees for his Cabinet clearly indicate that Project 2025 was just the beginning of the catastrophe ahead. The nominations of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, Pete Hegseth as SECDEF, Kirsti Noem for Homeland Security, Tulsi Gabbard as DNI, and others indicate they have something in common; they are all spectacularly unqualified for their nominated positions.
Acceptability
The MAGA cult, supported by a majority of GOP legislators, are willing to approve of Trump’s most bizarre, even illegal, behavior as normal and acceptable. They now agree that the insurrection/coup attempt of 6 January 2021 (J6) was somehow normal or acceptable. While many of those Members of Congress initially condemned the illegal activities, in short order many of them were traveling to Mar-A-Lago to beg forgiveness. Under Trump most of the J6 criminals became considered “hostages” and “political prisoners.” During his campaign he stated that if elected he would issue pardons for many of them.
During the past four years, Trump was criminally indicted several times. A career con man, Trump portrayed himself as a victim. His supporters complained the charges were political “lawfare” specifically targeting him. The reality is Trump is a longtime criminal who has merely avoided prosecution. Examples include the previously mentioned numerous sex charges. Certainly, the current federal charges are valid. His actions on 6 January 2021 were televised and seen by nearly everyone. The same is true for the Mar-A-Lago documents case. There is no doubt that he illegally retained the classified documents. The actions of sycophantic Judge Aileen Cannon, claiming that Jack Smith was not properly appointed is simply specious and should further degrade confidence in the openly corrupt U.S. Judicial system. None of her actions change the fact that Trump is a criminal. Yet, knowing this and accepting crime as a virtue, the GOP decided to have Trump as the leader of their Party. With typical hypocritical aplomb, Republicans decry crime in Democratically run cities while openly supporting a criminal to run the country.
Coming from experience in the intelligence field, I know anyone with his background would never clear a NAC (national agency check) for a Secret clearance let alone Top Secret or SCI clearances. There are nearly three million people holding security clearances. If the system were properly run, Donald Trump would not be one of them. Besides the illegal documents at Mar-A-Lago, Trump frequently violated multiple security regulations that would have landed any other U.S. Government person in prison. The senior members of the Republican Party knew he was a threat to national security and yet accepted his irresponsible and sometimes illegal behavior. Tens of millions of American voters knew he was (and is) a security risk as well and still voted for him.
It is claimed that people “knew who Trump was.” If so, the 2024 election proved that the majority of those voting for him found it acceptable to support a mentally unstable, amoral, narcissist who is a known racist, adjudicated serial sex offender, convicted criminal with authoritarian tendencies. What could go wrong? But what does that say to the world about who Americans are and what we value?
Apathy
In addition to the warnings from those with firsthand experience working with Trump, there have been ample statements from psychiatric experts that he is literally crazy. But even for the regular, non-medical person, his rapid mental deterioration has been self-evident and visible at his rallies. When confronted by the obvious incoherence of his ever-lengthening rants, he deflected and tried to convince his supporters it was an intentional strategy he called “the weave.”
It is false to claim that a majority of American voters cast ballots for Trump. The fact is that nearly a hundred million eligible voters abstained. That is more than voted for either candidate. Of those potential voters about twenty million were registered to vote but didn’t. This is a major demonstration of apathy in the American system. Both the GOP and the media repeatedly claim Trump was given “a mandate” by the American people to change the country. That is not true. Note that those voting for Trump are only 30 percent of the eligible voters, and 45 percent of the registered voters. That is far from “The people have spoken.” There is no mandate as the GOP claims.
One common myth that was dispelled by the 2024 election was that Americans respond better to positive, uplifting messages. Trump’s message of hate and fear clearly dominated the discussion and the outcome. Lying generated fear and hate won. In true MAGA style, they targeted the weak, especially in the transgender community. Despite serious issues, like ongoing wars, Trump’s campaign decided to make gender identity in sports an emotional national problem. They spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-trans ads that played tens of thousands of times. With Trump, cruelty is the point. Americans really don’t care about how we treat others or if pain and suffering happens because of our actions and policies. You cannot reasonably argue otherwise as we did allow Trump to be reelected. What increases the significance of his election is that the voters knew about his previous actions. They were repeatedly warned by officials who had worked closely with him and ignored.
Americans without values don’t know much about Governance
Many, if not most, Trump supporters come from “low information” and lower education backgrounds. College-educated voters supported Harris by a substantial margin. The GOP and MAGA openly express disdain for the “elites,” meaning they don’t like people who are educated and know stuff. Only a few are college professors. Most are just smart people who know what they are doing and understand the implications of voting against their best interests. The American electoral system is strongly biased towards dumbing down the country. Surveys repeatedly have demonstrated these points. Less than 50 percent of the people can name the three branches of government. The declining understanding of how the U.S. Government works is directly associated with the failure to teach civics courses in schools across the country.
In America, crime does pay. And, it does not disqualify you from running the country. In fact, being a criminal may endear you to the MAGA base. Many of them were seen wearing “I’m voting for the felon” shirts. That tells the world a lot about American values — or lack thereof.
Traditionally, leadership in America has embraced such values as honesty, integrity, fairness, equality, tolerance, compassion, and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution. Trump has none of those attributes. His wake is littered with a multitude of bodies whom he has thrown under the proverbial bus. Many were well qualified and did their best to keep America on course and safe. Trump only values fealty to him, but only as long as it benefits him. Everyone is seen as subservient. If this was new information, one might excuse the 5 November 2024 vote as aberrant. But Trump was known. The majority of the 2024 voters chose chaos, criminality, and amorality. Yes, it’s the ignorant voters, stupid.
So, who are we? Like with Huntington, we are not who we were. Sadly, the picture isn’t pretty. To Echo GEN John Kelley, “God help us.”