Thank you so much for saying this! Votewashing is another form of sanewashing and yet another reason why I, a 30+ year subscriber to legacy media like NYT and NPR, have stopped my support and stopped reading/listening. It's why I follow and support people like you on Substack--it's your commitment to calling it as you see it and not backing down. Thank you again!
It makes my head hurt to type this sentence, but I really don’t think enough people understand why democracy is better than fascism, even just in a material way. Not many people know what it’s like to live in the countries Trump openly and explicitly prefers to this one. So when Trump says “You can have democracy or you can have cheap groceries,” they don’t realize that when they vote for fascism they get neither.
And I know someone in here is going to say “They’ll find out good and hard,” to which I say no they won’t. They will always find someone else to blame. Cf. the Confederacy , as well as the country from about 80-90 years ago it would be horribly uncivil for me to use as a comparison.
You are 100% right on every item on your list. I live in the Bible belt of South Georgia and your list fits Trump voters here to a tee. If Joe and Kamala would have sent every one of them a check for $1000, they would have bitched that it wasn't more and voted for Trump. You can't fix stupid, misogynistic, racist people no matter what. And thanks to right wing media their numbers are increasing.
Perry Bacon of the Washington post made the votewashing argument a couple of days ago, saying that trump voters really weren’t voting for what they were voting for. I posted this in the comment section -
‘At this point it would be moronic to assume that those “who voted for Trump, don’t want to see deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants, super-high tariffs, mass firings of federal employees, the National Guard being called in to stop protests, and other extreme ideas that either Trump or his top allies floated during the campaign.”
These ideas weren’t merely “floated” - they were made explicit and promised and that is exactly what his voters want to see.’
Project 2025 is waiting in the wings. Its authors are going to be placed high in Trump's administration. Many of those who voted for this will be among the most severely affected and harmed. But there will be scapegoats that will be blamed for the damage instead of the politicians who vote for this. In 1930s Germany the scapegoats were political opponents initially, then Jews, gypsies and other minorities.
I don't know. If someone is determined to be angry and want to take out their anger on someone, there really isn't much that a sensible person can do. On one hand you had Harris saying the Democrats are the big tent and we welcome everyone and will listen and will craft policies to be fair and to help the most people. What is wrong with that message?
And then you have the other side amplifying an us vs them mentality, promising to be your retribution, and keeping America for Americans. And folks delude themselves that they will always belong to the us group when them chaos and havoc begin. Saying that Trump and his crew aren't being honest and are only out for themselves have fallen on deaf ears. I truly can't think of anything that would have changed a vote. People will get what they voted for... I hope that the rest of us for the most part can avoid being collateral damage.
Do not care about the constitution or the bill of rights, They don't care about social security or snap for children, Cuts to medical and medicare is it's okay. Surely they don't care a big flying fart about the planet. What they do care about is enrolling back and regulations that protects all of us, They also care about making billionaires and the super-rich more rich. And closing down American institutit's that make life a little easier for all of us?.these fucking moron to knew exactly what they were voting for and they Have buyers remorse.
There's a terrifying moment in THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH when Shirer is compelled, despite the journalistic attitudes of the time, to interject himself into his own story. It's summer, so his family leaves Germany on vacation. And he instantly realizes that all the news he's been reading and hearing in Germany is a lie. The Poles, for instance, are not massing on their borders. The German media is so hermetic, no one can get any different news that what the state inflicts.
And the same situation now affects the US. For instance, the young men who voted for Trump get what news they get from a source such as Joe Rogan, who turned his conspiracy theory character on "News Radio," in a country-killing career; or some algorithmic feed like TikTok, which doesn't show you want you don't want to see. Harris's message, probably her very existence, couldn't penetrate that.
Thus the lies and horseshit and conspiracies about, for instances, Poles of a sort massing inside our borders, in a nation without local news or a trusted national media, however quislingish and complicit, let Trump get elected again. And now America is over.
The textbook publishers will make a fortune rewriting the chapters on what we are.
Paul pretty much nails it here: sadly, we really are a nation of ignorant, self-centered, fear-driven, easily manipulable, racist, misogynistic, homophobic louts.
Perhaps Democrats were listening wrong. Perhaps the people who elected Trump just aren’t doing all that well in spite of the stock market et Al and they just didn’t like what the Dems were telling them….it didn’t reflect their reality.
Dems have been doing this since Bill Clinton’s day. He went to Wall Street and got them to inject lots of $$ into the party. Then hey brought in Barack and these people voted for him because they thought as a black man he would change things up….and he was a great speaker ….like Bill. But things didn’t change much. The 1% are still having things way too much their own way.
But maybe they should have been listening to the man/boys in the street and their parents basements…and jobless. Trump was and it got him elected….twice. Essentially the same theme each time. “I’m listening but they’re not!” And he was right.
Trump does t ever really listen. He uses. I. First term he gave 1.5 trillion tax cut to those same rich people. Now the richest is second in command. He will screw all of the man/boys badly. I have no stock but I know a fake grifter when I see one.
Trump is not the working man's friend. He is abusing us while he helps the richest get richer. It's oligarchy he is creating.
I have just about worn my hardcover of Amy Siskind’s The List, about the Hair Füror’s first year in office. I referenced it for his remaining years and hope she does a sequel!
Thank you for offering a blinding glimpse of the obvious. You only vote for Trump if you hate something. Trump voters have nothing to offer the real world. They are garbage people and should be treated as such.
Peter, you are 1000% right! We hate bad policies, anything progressive, identity politics, big government, open borders, college debt giveaways....if that makes me garbage.....I'll take it all day!!!
As someone who spent every weekend doorknocking in PA, you are partly correct. However, the fact is that most ordinary people don’t make an effort to seek out information and are surrounded by Fox/Sinclair/X/Facebook. We are the weird ones in that we seek out information. We can blame ordinary people for being ordinary and keep losing elections. Or we can try to figure out how to break through to the 60% who are not born authoritarians.
You should have saved your weekends for yourself and focused on convincing your candidate to go on Joe Rogan. 47M reasons why that would have been a good idea.
Another way of saying some of these things is that they’re very cynical about politics. And get info only from right wing propaganda and so does everyone they know.
God, so so much to figure out. (Not being facicious)
I start even more basic than political classes or culture or even tribal identity. I start with neurobiology and go from there to explain why people do what they do. Please Google Robert Sapolsky for a very accessible and relevant behavioral biology. Bandy Lee is very good too.
Here's my arm chair framework for understanding. It doesn't offer what to do except that starting with biological reality is required to figure out a path. This may not be it, but we need to try.
First, our brains have 3 parts: autonomic, limbic and cortical. Automic evolved first and is what controls basic life and movement. Its what was needed for simple orgs to move and survive.
Memory and emotion and impulse and joy and fear came next, in the limbic. The limbic "tells" the autonomic things like "That feels like teeth and it did not go well last time. Turn around." Or, "Last time I was here, I got food." Or, "That is a tiger, run."
The limbic sits on top of the automic and adds those smarts to life strategies. But the limbic is still not that smart. It's very immediate and emotional and uncontrolled. So the cortical evolved to add learning and logic and language and context to life strategies.
The cortical smarts attempt to regulate the limbic through the Pre Frontal Cortex, the part just behind your forehead. The job of the PFC is to decide if knowledge and context is relevant and if so to tell the limbic to relax or get excited.
(Hope I haven't lost you.)
There are a few takeaways here. One is if you don't have cortical smarts, the PFC won't have a lot to work with and the limbic will be freer to just react. Two, the PFC can be damaged, underdeveloped or actually blocked from processing if fear is overwhelming. This is called fight or flight. It shuts down PFCs abilities.
But there is a third takeaway that is important here. It's one that has helped me reach maga friends. It's that these systems work not as a result of the existing system evolving new smarts, but by evolving a new system that only can try to change the innate operation of existing systems.
For example, the autonomic did not evolve the smarts of the limbic. As a result, the smarts of the limbic can only try and modify what the autonomic already is designed to do. Likewise the cortical can only pass learning and context on to the limbic in hopes it does not do something rash.
In other words we are all, even when entirely healthy experiencing a conflict of impulses that hopefully are informed by higher level thinking. We call this emotional intelligence and motional discipline.
Way too long, but what does this mean for the violence were are experiencing as well as promoting among ourselves? It means it's not easy to not be extreme. Especially if your regulation is underdeveloped or something or someone has put you into a froth of fear. We are designed this way. It's not a broken neurological system. However foolish or self harmful or other harmful it may be, it is biologically designed to work this way.
And we can see how psychopaths can come along who inherently know how to manipulate this. Psychopath by the way, psycho "to think", pathos "harm". It means someone who thinks harmful thoughts. To themselves, to others, their family, their businesses, their country. They can't under normal life activities think non harm or pro social thoughts. It simply does not happen.
It may be that they have damage to PFC, or underdeveloped cortical or are in a constant state of fight or flight. You may not recognize psychopathic thinking at first because other parts of the brain naturally compensate so that they can be functional, survive in society. Sometimes thrive.
There is more to the story like how men think versus women. And how we all live in a spectrum. But sorry this is so long. I just wish that this kind of biological understanding could be promoted more. I believe it will make all of us a little more circumspect about our abilities. It's at a biological level and so does not follow an us versus them approach. A me versus you. Those approaches are absolutely true as well, but man, we really do all work the same. And living it is hard.
Hoo boy, that is a big question, but for starters I think Democrats need to forget about whether they're being "respectful" enough to working class voters and start talking to them more about who is *really* screwing them over. Too often Democrats tell stories that have no villains. On almost any issue, they could have started their argument with "Donald Trump thinks you're stupid, and so does every other Republican."
Yes, but they wouldn't have believed you. As Le Bon wrote in The Mob, he embodies all their hopes and fears. To deny him would be to deny themselves. All that can be done to disintegrate the mob is to crush him, and we failed.
Thank you so very much for putting these words down. Last night my ex husband was going on and on to me that THE PROBLEM with the democrats is that the are “too liberal” while an dear friend was simultaneously texting to say how angry she was and how “if only” we had nominated Bernie in 2020 we wouldn’t be in this situation. I ate a hand full of gummies and went to bed but was so glad to find your words which express what I’ve been thinking when I woke up this morning.
Paul....I really hope and pray that the left continues to dedicate all their time to identity politics and they will never win another election again. Keep it up Paul!! You're doing a great job. :=)
Thank you so much for saying this! Votewashing is another form of sanewashing and yet another reason why I, a 30+ year subscriber to legacy media like NYT and NPR, have stopped my support and stopped reading/listening. It's why I follow and support people like you on Substack--it's your commitment to calling it as you see it and not backing down. Thank you again!
Blue Loon you wrote my thoughts completely.
It makes my head hurt to type this sentence, but I really don’t think enough people understand why democracy is better than fascism, even just in a material way. Not many people know what it’s like to live in the countries Trump openly and explicitly prefers to this one. So when Trump says “You can have democracy or you can have cheap groceries,” they don’t realize that when they vote for fascism they get neither.
And I know someone in here is going to say “They’ll find out good and hard,” to which I say no they won’t. They will always find someone else to blame. Cf. the Confederacy , as well as the country from about 80-90 years ago it would be horribly uncivil for me to use as a comparison.
You are 100% right on every item on your list. I live in the Bible belt of South Georgia and your list fits Trump voters here to a tee. If Joe and Kamala would have sent every one of them a check for $1000, they would have bitched that it wasn't more and voted for Trump. You can't fix stupid, misogynistic, racist people no matter what. And thanks to right wing media their numbers are increasing.
Haha. I live in GA too. I guess all the blacks and Hispanics that voted for Trump are racist too. Too funny!
Yes, yes and more yes.
Perry Bacon of the Washington post made the votewashing argument a couple of days ago, saying that trump voters really weren’t voting for what they were voting for. I posted this in the comment section -
‘At this point it would be moronic to assume that those “who voted for Trump, don’t want to see deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants, super-high tariffs, mass firings of federal employees, the National Guard being called in to stop protests, and other extreme ideas that either Trump or his top allies floated during the campaign.”
These ideas weren’t merely “floated” - they were made explicit and promised and that is exactly what his voters want to see.’
Project 2025 is waiting in the wings. Its authors are going to be placed high in Trump's administration. Many of those who voted for this will be among the most severely affected and harmed. But there will be scapegoats that will be blamed for the damage instead of the politicians who vote for this. In 1930s Germany the scapegoats were political opponents initially, then Jews, gypsies and other minorities.
I don't know. If someone is determined to be angry and want to take out their anger on someone, there really isn't much that a sensible person can do. On one hand you had Harris saying the Democrats are the big tent and we welcome everyone and will listen and will craft policies to be fair and to help the most people. What is wrong with that message?
And then you have the other side amplifying an us vs them mentality, promising to be your retribution, and keeping America for Americans. And folks delude themselves that they will always belong to the us group when them chaos and havoc begin. Saying that Trump and his crew aren't being honest and are only out for themselves have fallen on deaf ears. I truly can't think of anything that would have changed a vote. People will get what they voted for... I hope that the rest of us for the most part can avoid being collateral damage.
They also.
Do not care about the constitution or the bill of rights, They don't care about social security or snap for children, Cuts to medical and medicare is it's okay. Surely they don't care a big flying fart about the planet. What they do care about is enrolling back and regulations that protects all of us, They also care about making billionaires and the super-rich more rich. And closing down American institutit's that make life a little easier for all of us?.these fucking moron to knew exactly what they were voting for and they Have buyers remorse.
There's a terrifying moment in THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH when Shirer is compelled, despite the journalistic attitudes of the time, to interject himself into his own story. It's summer, so his family leaves Germany on vacation. And he instantly realizes that all the news he's been reading and hearing in Germany is a lie. The Poles, for instance, are not massing on their borders. The German media is so hermetic, no one can get any different news that what the state inflicts.
And the same situation now affects the US. For instance, the young men who voted for Trump get what news they get from a source such as Joe Rogan, who turned his conspiracy theory character on "News Radio," in a country-killing career; or some algorithmic feed like TikTok, which doesn't show you want you don't want to see. Harris's message, probably her very existence, couldn't penetrate that.
Thus the lies and horseshit and conspiracies about, for instances, Poles of a sort massing inside our borders, in a nation without local news or a trusted national media, however quislingish and complicit, let Trump get elected again. And now America is over.
The textbook publishers will make a fortune rewriting the chapters on what we are.
Good point-they voted for lies!!
Paul pretty much nails it here: sadly, we really are a nation of ignorant, self-centered, fear-driven, easily manipulable, racist, misogynistic, homophobic louts.
Also see this Rebecca Solnit piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga . "Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. ... Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are... . ...We knew what the problems were, and we wanted to fix them. "
Perhaps Democrats were listening wrong. Perhaps the people who elected Trump just aren’t doing all that well in spite of the stock market et Al and they just didn’t like what the Dems were telling them….it didn’t reflect their reality.
Dems have been doing this since Bill Clinton’s day. He went to Wall Street and got them to inject lots of $$ into the party. Then hey brought in Barack and these people voted for him because they thought as a black man he would change things up….and he was a great speaker ….like Bill. But things didn’t change much. The 1% are still having things way too much their own way.
But maybe they should have been listening to the man/boys in the street and their parents basements…and jobless. Trump was and it got him elected….twice. Essentially the same theme each time. “I’m listening but they’re not!” And he was right.
Not true! If you are pro-Trump go join your group!! Trump cares only for Trump, and you know it if you are not a bot!!
Yeah, you convinced me.
You were there already!!
Trump does t ever really listen. He uses. I. First term he gave 1.5 trillion tax cut to those same rich people. Now the richest is second in command. He will screw all of the man/boys badly. I have no stock but I know a fake grifter when I see one.
Trump is not the working man's friend. He is abusing us while he helps the richest get richer. It's oligarchy he is creating.
I never said Trump was anyone's friend. But if he can make you think he is then it works for him.
I have just about worn my hardcover of Amy Siskind’s The List, about the Hair Füror’s first year in office. I referenced it for his remaining years and hope she does a sequel!
Thank you for offering a blinding glimpse of the obvious. You only vote for Trump if you hate something. Trump voters have nothing to offer the real world. They are garbage people and should be treated as such.
Peter, you are 1000% right! We hate bad policies, anything progressive, identity politics, big government, open borders, college debt giveaways....if that makes me garbage.....I'll take it all day!!!
As someone who spent every weekend doorknocking in PA, you are partly correct. However, the fact is that most ordinary people don’t make an effort to seek out information and are surrounded by Fox/Sinclair/X/Facebook. We are the weird ones in that we seek out information. We can blame ordinary people for being ordinary and keep losing elections. Or we can try to figure out how to break through to the 60% who are not born authoritarians.
You should have saved your weekends for yourself and focused on convincing your candidate to go on Joe Rogan. 47M reasons why that would have been a good idea.
Another way of saying some of these things is that they’re very cynical about politics. And get info only from right wing propaganda and so does everyone they know.
God, so so much to figure out. (Not being facicious)
I start even more basic than political classes or culture or even tribal identity. I start with neurobiology and go from there to explain why people do what they do. Please Google Robert Sapolsky for a very accessible and relevant behavioral biology. Bandy Lee is very good too.
Here's my arm chair framework for understanding. It doesn't offer what to do except that starting with biological reality is required to figure out a path. This may not be it, but we need to try.
First, our brains have 3 parts: autonomic, limbic and cortical. Automic evolved first and is what controls basic life and movement. Its what was needed for simple orgs to move and survive.
Memory and emotion and impulse and joy and fear came next, in the limbic. The limbic "tells" the autonomic things like "That feels like teeth and it did not go well last time. Turn around." Or, "Last time I was here, I got food." Or, "That is a tiger, run."
The limbic sits on top of the automic and adds those smarts to life strategies. But the limbic is still not that smart. It's very immediate and emotional and uncontrolled. So the cortical evolved to add learning and logic and language and context to life strategies.
The cortical smarts attempt to regulate the limbic through the Pre Frontal Cortex, the part just behind your forehead. The job of the PFC is to decide if knowledge and context is relevant and if so to tell the limbic to relax or get excited.
(Hope I haven't lost you.)
There are a few takeaways here. One is if you don't have cortical smarts, the PFC won't have a lot to work with and the limbic will be freer to just react. Two, the PFC can be damaged, underdeveloped or actually blocked from processing if fear is overwhelming. This is called fight or flight. It shuts down PFCs abilities.
But there is a third takeaway that is important here. It's one that has helped me reach maga friends. It's that these systems work not as a result of the existing system evolving new smarts, but by evolving a new system that only can try to change the innate operation of existing systems.
For example, the autonomic did not evolve the smarts of the limbic. As a result, the smarts of the limbic can only try and modify what the autonomic already is designed to do. Likewise the cortical can only pass learning and context on to the limbic in hopes it does not do something rash.
In other words we are all, even when entirely healthy experiencing a conflict of impulses that hopefully are informed by higher level thinking. We call this emotional intelligence and motional discipline.
Way too long, but what does this mean for the violence were are experiencing as well as promoting among ourselves? It means it's not easy to not be extreme. Especially if your regulation is underdeveloped or something or someone has put you into a froth of fear. We are designed this way. It's not a broken neurological system. However foolish or self harmful or other harmful it may be, it is biologically designed to work this way.
And we can see how psychopaths can come along who inherently know how to manipulate this. Psychopath by the way, psycho "to think", pathos "harm". It means someone who thinks harmful thoughts. To themselves, to others, their family, their businesses, their country. They can't under normal life activities think non harm or pro social thoughts. It simply does not happen.
It may be that they have damage to PFC, or underdeveloped cortical or are in a constant state of fight or flight. You may not recognize psychopathic thinking at first because other parts of the brain naturally compensate so that they can be functional, survive in society. Sometimes thrive.
There is more to the story like how men think versus women. And how we all live in a spectrum. But sorry this is so long. I just wish that this kind of biological understanding could be promoted more. I believe it will make all of us a little more circumspect about our abilities. It's at a biological level and so does not follow an us versus them approach. A me versus you. Those approaches are absolutely true as well, but man, we really do all work the same. And living it is hard.
Given all this, though, would you do if you *were* a politician, or recommend if you were a Dem campaign strategist?
Believe goo wins out over evil!!
*what
Hoo boy, that is a big question, but for starters I think Democrats need to forget about whether they're being "respectful" enough to working class voters and start talking to them more about who is *really* screwing them over. Too often Democrats tell stories that have no villains. On almost any issue, they could have started their argument with "Donald Trump thinks you're stupid, and so does every other Republican."
Yes, but they wouldn't have believed you. As Le Bon wrote in The Mob, he embodies all their hopes and fears. To deny him would be to deny themselves. All that can be done to disintegrate the mob is to crush him, and we failed.
Thank you so very much for putting these words down. Last night my ex husband was going on and on to me that THE PROBLEM with the democrats is that the are “too liberal” while an dear friend was simultaneously texting to say how angry she was and how “if only” we had nominated Bernie in 2020 we wouldn’t be in this situation. I ate a hand full of gummies and went to bed but was so glad to find your words which express what I’ve been thinking when I woke up this morning.
Paul....I really hope and pray that the left continues to dedicate all their time to identity politics and they will never win another election again. Keep it up Paul!! You're doing a great job. :=)