What if right-wing propaganda has reached the scale that "shapeless disgruntlement" continues and continues to be blamed on Democrats? What if Democrats sitting back and saying/doing nothing contributes to voters no longer even perceiving the reality about the deterioration of the economy and more, and not blaming Republicans in 2026 elections?
I think you're right and it's why I'm so excited by this post. It describes an underlying sentiment that I think has been present for a long time and has just gotten worse. If our enemies have been aware of it (and I think they have), then a lot of what has been going on makes all the more sense to me.
I think it is quite likely and there has been some evidence already reported that Trump will simply declare EVERYTHING is GOOD.....and his followers and the media will blindly agree. Already more Republicans think the economy is better than did two months ago.......Trump has pretended that Mexico is agreeing to his demands, although Scheinbaum clearly said that MExico was already working on the border, would continue doing what it had been, and had no intention of closing the border. Yet Trump declares some sort of victory! So it wouldn't surprise me if objectively conditions get better due to many of Biden's efforts and few (if any) of Trump's, that Trump will say he succeeded. And his followers AND the media will go along...I still don't know how he is going to finagle the price of eggs, though......
I cannot thank you enough for writing this. I feel like you've hit an invisible nail square on the head. I would suggest the source of this disgruntlement goes back much further than COVID, but COVID certainly added to it. I would also suggest that those who wish to weaken America are doing all they can to feed into this disgruntlement. They want us cynical, angry and unhappy, ready to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Perhaps that's why the letdown of kamala's loss is felt even more profoundly - some of us really loved the joy and kindness we sensed and were hoping it could be regained. It was like that hope one gets when a very sick relative starts showing signs of improvement.
Enshittification: very apt term. Like other commenters here, I see the enshittification beginning long before Covid, although the pandemic clearly intensified and accelerated it.
As I struggle to look at what's going on from 20,000 feet, I keep returning to the conclusion that the enshittification has been brought about by the mutually reinforcing conditions of extreme wealth concentration and unconstrained capitalism. The cycle of growing economic power in the hands of a few driving more economic exploitation in general, thus leading to greater economic power by the few, and around and around, has been gathering momentum for some 40 or 50 years. The greed impulse has always existed, of course, but in this country it was more or less sublimated from about the 1930s until 1980, a time when concepts of social responsibility and widespread mutual prosperity prevailed, even as we struggled to acknowledge and rectify gross racial inequality.
One deliberate effect of that cycle has been the erosion and lately, the active destruction, of the education system and the Enlightenment values of knowledge, rationality, and critical thinking. This has increasingly led to a populace that can't think its way out of a paper bag, so to speak, let alone read multiple books and civilly compare and contrast and debate the ideas they contain. While it's deeply frustrating to realize most of our society is like that, it's also not so surprising that people don't care about that and are alienated and enraged when they're getting fucked over harder and harder at every turn and they see that so many people in positions to make things better can't or won't or don't do anything.
So, we have an uncritical, uninformed populace that has been getting economically screwed hard for a long time while watching a small group of unimaginably rich people act like bigger and bigger assholes, breaking laws and flouting norms of decency and civility with impunity. Any wonder that now we're seeing an irrational, uncritical attraction of many to a demagogue who promises pie in the sky for everyone, as long as you're in the same ethnic and cultural group he's in?
As an aside, I take issue with several of Kevin Drum's assertions about the ways in which life is better. It is demonstrably _not_ better in several ways. The war against abortion has largely failed? Driverless cars are good? Acceptance of gay lifestyles is increasing? And others. But this is a discussion for another column.
I do campaigns. Have for over 30 years. That means I talk with voters. And my experience of this past election completely accords with you diagnosis. The voters were pissy. I chalk it up to COVID reminding us of meaningless mortality. Too many Americans find this shocking. The rest is the stories we tell ourselves and, for some, the stories hate mongers tell us.
Probably will take some pol to rediscover the power of inspiration to break out of this. Since material conditions remain good ala Drum, somebody will find that formula. We're fickle.
I must be a huge minority that feels life does not suck, I am not angry or surly, I have hope and optimism; even though an fpotus maga stain is hideous, horrendously sad, and thoroughly dangerous for our democracy.
I believe people's malaise is targeting - on purpose by the oligarch puppets - women, LGBTQ persons, and dark-skinned people; because people have been pummeled with hatred towards those "others" to distract us away from the billionaires' strategy to impose a government, a judiciary, a business climate, and a theocratic plutocracy in the USA. And steer all wealth, resources, and laws favorable to them, up to them, and only them. I did not and am not fooled by the oligarchs' cons.
How to reverse the thinking about the causes of people's miseries is the challenge.
Spot on. Voters are grumpy, no doubt. In the last three presidential elections (2016, 2020, and 2024) they’ve thrown out the party in power. Both Houses of Congress have also changed hands multiple times over that period. Without question, 30% to 40% of the voting public are devoted Trumpers, but to secure his victory, Trump also needed to get a lot of grumpy voters who were just dissatisfied with the status quo, but nonetheless motivated enough to vote. Many more didn’t bother to vote at all, believing nothing would change for the better either way. Dems need a more ambitious populist agenda that will start making things better in a way that materially changes people’s lives. More unions. Stronger and more expansive Social Security and Medicare, taxing the wealthy their fair share to pay for it. These things are popular, efficient, and effective.
Conclusion is too optimistic. Dems have to come to the conclusion that things DO SUCK and that it is not the hapless “Trump voter” who made this so, not is it a new condition. Neoliberalism (aka trickle down economics and deference to “job creators”) is the underlying lie that Trump was able to exploit as being the common commitment of all of “the swamp” and its creatures (as if her were not the grinning crocodile himself). The US economy is “consumer driven” but the wage structure is sapping the ability of consumers from the 90% to take part in it as the ongoing sales pitches still urge. The pharma ads insult our intelligence on a daily basis while being factored in as “the cost of doing business” for drug companies. Dems should get up on their hind legs and at least demand that they either be banned or be utterly nondeductible. If Dems are not baying for the blood of the venture capitalists that have bought up homes and hospitals all over the country, they deserve to be seen as wholly owned subsidiaries of the billionaire and aspiring billionaire class.
If Dems are not offering an alternative, even crashing and burning the system as Reps are threatening now to do won’t actually help Dems win in 2, 4, or more years. Biden tried to build a center left coalition but was not willing to tap anyone’s ANGER to do it. Harris followed suit. Anger won. And we see it in the post pandemic profusion of signs on pharmacy counters, in busses, in city offices saying “don’t abuse the person serving you. They are nice people with families too, and we will punish you if you hurt them.” The ANGER is more than surly rudeness. The front-line service people are the only ones most people see as representing the bloodsuckers they know are up there directing the whole game.
if anything makes me feel shittified it's that "thought leaders" like Drum feed us shit like that.
just hang on; the hellscape is about to get worse. brought to you by the moron who won the election by appealing to morons. apparently including some highly educated and no doubt intelligent Democrats.
What if right-wing propaganda has reached the scale that "shapeless disgruntlement" continues and continues to be blamed on Democrats? What if Democrats sitting back and saying/doing nothing contributes to voters no longer even perceiving the reality about the deterioration of the economy and more, and not blaming Republicans in 2026 elections?
I think you're right and it's why I'm so excited by this post. It describes an underlying sentiment that I think has been present for a long time and has just gotten worse. If our enemies have been aware of it (and I think they have), then a lot of what has been going on makes all the more sense to me.
Underneath all of this has to be the pervasive and growing problem of inequality.
Gilded age, but with internet.
Misogny. Racism. The 40 year destruction of education by the GOP. Period
I think it is quite likely and there has been some evidence already reported that Trump will simply declare EVERYTHING is GOOD.....and his followers and the media will blindly agree. Already more Republicans think the economy is better than did two months ago.......Trump has pretended that Mexico is agreeing to his demands, although Scheinbaum clearly said that MExico was already working on the border, would continue doing what it had been, and had no intention of closing the border. Yet Trump declares some sort of victory! So it wouldn't surprise me if objectively conditions get better due to many of Biden's efforts and few (if any) of Trump's, that Trump will say he succeeded. And his followers AND the media will go along...I still don't know how he is going to finagle the price of eggs, though......
Trump's appeal is the illusion that he's going to make someone pay. First for the great recession and now for the pandemic.
I cannot thank you enough for writing this. I feel like you've hit an invisible nail square on the head. I would suggest the source of this disgruntlement goes back much further than COVID, but COVID certainly added to it. I would also suggest that those who wish to weaken America are doing all they can to feed into this disgruntlement. They want us cynical, angry and unhappy, ready to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Perhaps that's why the letdown of kamala's loss is felt even more profoundly - some of us really loved the joy and kindness we sensed and were hoping it could be regained. It was like that hope one gets when a very sick relative starts showing signs of improvement.
Enshittification: very apt term. Like other commenters here, I see the enshittification beginning long before Covid, although the pandemic clearly intensified and accelerated it.
As I struggle to look at what's going on from 20,000 feet, I keep returning to the conclusion that the enshittification has been brought about by the mutually reinforcing conditions of extreme wealth concentration and unconstrained capitalism. The cycle of growing economic power in the hands of a few driving more economic exploitation in general, thus leading to greater economic power by the few, and around and around, has been gathering momentum for some 40 or 50 years. The greed impulse has always existed, of course, but in this country it was more or less sublimated from about the 1930s until 1980, a time when concepts of social responsibility and widespread mutual prosperity prevailed, even as we struggled to acknowledge and rectify gross racial inequality.
One deliberate effect of that cycle has been the erosion and lately, the active destruction, of the education system and the Enlightenment values of knowledge, rationality, and critical thinking. This has increasingly led to a populace that can't think its way out of a paper bag, so to speak, let alone read multiple books and civilly compare and contrast and debate the ideas they contain. While it's deeply frustrating to realize most of our society is like that, it's also not so surprising that people don't care about that and are alienated and enraged when they're getting fucked over harder and harder at every turn and they see that so many people in positions to make things better can't or won't or don't do anything.
So, we have an uncritical, uninformed populace that has been getting economically screwed hard for a long time while watching a small group of unimaginably rich people act like bigger and bigger assholes, breaking laws and flouting norms of decency and civility with impunity. Any wonder that now we're seeing an irrational, uncritical attraction of many to a demagogue who promises pie in the sky for everyone, as long as you're in the same ethnic and cultural group he's in?
As an aside, I take issue with several of Kevin Drum's assertions about the ways in which life is better. It is demonstrably _not_ better in several ways. The war against abortion has largely failed? Driverless cars are good? Acceptance of gay lifestyles is increasing? And others. But this is a discussion for another column.
I do campaigns. Have for over 30 years. That means I talk with voters. And my experience of this past election completely accords with you diagnosis. The voters were pissy. I chalk it up to COVID reminding us of meaningless mortality. Too many Americans find this shocking. The rest is the stories we tell ourselves and, for some, the stories hate mongers tell us.
Probably will take some pol to rediscover the power of inspiration to break out of this. Since material conditions remain good ala Drum, somebody will find that formula. We're fickle.
I must be a huge minority that feels life does not suck, I am not angry or surly, I have hope and optimism; even though an fpotus maga stain is hideous, horrendously sad, and thoroughly dangerous for our democracy.
I believe people's malaise is targeting - on purpose by the oligarch puppets - women, LGBTQ persons, and dark-skinned people; because people have been pummeled with hatred towards those "others" to distract us away from the billionaires' strategy to impose a government, a judiciary, a business climate, and a theocratic plutocracy in the USA. And steer all wealth, resources, and laws favorable to them, up to them, and only them. I did not and am not fooled by the oligarchs' cons.
How to reverse the thinking about the causes of people's miseries is the challenge.
Spot on. Voters are grumpy, no doubt. In the last three presidential elections (2016, 2020, and 2024) they’ve thrown out the party in power. Both Houses of Congress have also changed hands multiple times over that period. Without question, 30% to 40% of the voting public are devoted Trumpers, but to secure his victory, Trump also needed to get a lot of grumpy voters who were just dissatisfied with the status quo, but nonetheless motivated enough to vote. Many more didn’t bother to vote at all, believing nothing would change for the better either way. Dems need a more ambitious populist agenda that will start making things better in a way that materially changes people’s lives. More unions. Stronger and more expansive Social Security and Medicare, taxing the wealthy their fair share to pay for it. These things are popular, efficient, and effective.
Are pedestrian deaths per capita or per mile driven? Probably more people out and about in their cars.
Conclusion is too optimistic. Dems have to come to the conclusion that things DO SUCK and that it is not the hapless “Trump voter” who made this so, not is it a new condition. Neoliberalism (aka trickle down economics and deference to “job creators”) is the underlying lie that Trump was able to exploit as being the common commitment of all of “the swamp” and its creatures (as if her were not the grinning crocodile himself). The US economy is “consumer driven” but the wage structure is sapping the ability of consumers from the 90% to take part in it as the ongoing sales pitches still urge. The pharma ads insult our intelligence on a daily basis while being factored in as “the cost of doing business” for drug companies. Dems should get up on their hind legs and at least demand that they either be banned or be utterly nondeductible. If Dems are not baying for the blood of the venture capitalists that have bought up homes and hospitals all over the country, they deserve to be seen as wholly owned subsidiaries of the billionaire and aspiring billionaire class.
If Dems are not offering an alternative, even crashing and burning the system as Reps are threatening now to do won’t actually help Dems win in 2, 4, or more years. Biden tried to build a center left coalition but was not willing to tap anyone’s ANGER to do it. Harris followed suit. Anger won. And we see it in the post pandemic profusion of signs on pharmacy counters, in busses, in city offices saying “don’t abuse the person serving you. They are nice people with families too, and we will punish you if you hurt them.” The ANGER is more than surly rudeness. The front-line service people are the only ones most people see as representing the bloodsuckers they know are up there directing the whole game.
Great piece - thank you.
Kevin Drum? driverless cars are a good thing?
if anything makes me feel shittified it's that "thought leaders" like Drum feed us shit like that.
just hang on; the hellscape is about to get worse. brought to you by the moron who won the election by appealing to morons. apparently including some highly educated and no doubt intelligent Democrats.