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There are a lot of bad tweets making the rounds on this, the day of Donald Trump’s more-or-less-official defeat. But the most infuriating one I’ve run across so far comes from political scientist Ian Bremmer:
Can’t we all just get along, he asks. No, we can’t.
It’s not just that Trump supporters have steadfastly refused to treat their opponents — us — with empathy or respect; indeed, many of them spent the past four years gloating about Trump’s victory in 2016 with a sadistic glee. I can’t count the number of times a MAGA-head has responded to my criticisms of Trump with some variant of “cry more.”
But the problem goes well beyond the fact that the typical Trump supporter can be a bit of a jerk sometimes. The problem is that they’ve devoted themselves to supporting a incompetent, inhumane, and deeply racist tinpot autocrat with a distinctly fascist sheen. They supported him when he tried to ban all Muslim’s from traveling to this country; they supported him when ICE began kidnapping babies en masse; they supported his attempts to destroy the affordable care act and rip insurance coverage from millions of the most vulnerable. They made excuses when Trump expressed sympathy for alt-right Nazis. They’ve defended his assault on democracy itself.
Make no mistake, had Trump won the election it would probably have been the last even somewhat democratic election in the United States for years if not decades to come.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that his fans cheered his absolute non-response to COVID, which has led to countless unnecessary deaths, perhaps as many as several hundred thousand before the pandemic runs its course. He’s encouraged his supporters to not wear masks, making it impossible to control the pandemic and putting each and every one of us at heightened risk of catching and possibly dying of the disease.
And did I mention that a significant portion of Trump’s supporters have their heads full of QAnon and other nonsense conspiracy theories and literally want to see everyone from Hillary Clinton to Chrissy Teigen executed for their imaginary crimes against humanity?
I could go on, and on, and on. But let me just move directly to my final point: We can’t offer our sympathies to Trump voters yet because, to put it bluntly, they’re still out there, and still our enemies. They will be doing everything they can to tear down the Biden administration; some will almost certainly do so with violence — and become MAGA heroes like the multiple murderer Kyle Rittenhouse. This is the reality we face right now. There’s nothing warm and fuzzy about it.
Trump supporters don’t deserve our sympathy, and they’re not going to get it, at least not from me .
Bremmer wasn’t the only one posting nonsense today:
Really? Really? One of my very first political memories is of Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon. I was just a kid, but even then I knew there was something deeply wrong about Ford pardoning the guy who had just elevated him to president. And now some people want Biden to pardon the worst grifter to ever inhabit the White House? Please. If Trump wants a pardon, make him do it himself by working out some deal with Mike Pence. If Trump gets pardoned by Pence, it will leave a stain on the office of the presidency. But at least it won’t leave a stain on Biden as well.
What makes the talk of sympathy especially dangerous is that Biden has been talking the same way. We elected him to end Trump and Trumpism, and already he’s talking as if the deep political animosities we face today can be handwaved away. There are good reasons why we see these opponents as enemies. Winning the election feels good, but let’s not let that deceive us as to the nature of our foes or the enormity of the struggle ahead.
@Dalillama : your complex of superiority that feed into the fact you’re primed to be a future fascist enforcer isn’t my problem.
You alway act all smug and sure of yourself, and my problem with that is that the guys I know with that attitude in the 1980’s are all, at best, ultra neoliberal, and at worse fascists enforcer. If you actually studied the history of left wing movement, you would know that falling into fascism is a recurring problem, especially on the extreme one, because the profile of extremism, especially doubled by too much self confidence, is pretty much idealy suited for fasciosm too.
You can say I am a crypto fasciste all you want. You still would not be able to see all fascist propaganda for what it is, *because* you think it would be self evident. As for I, I hope you will just be a ridiculous self righteous basement warrior, because you also have the potential to be a brownshirt, and I know which possibility I prefer.
It’s almost amusing that you gob off at Dali and ignore the righteous smackdown from Diego, going to pretend it didn’t happen?
And on a different note, a big “Hai!” to anyone who remembers me.
@Cindy
How about you shut the fuck up and take a long walk off a short pier. Preferably in dangerous waters (in Minecraft)
This takes me back to my days as a bullied grade-and-middle-school kid. My parents, much though it pains me to say it now, weren’t really on my side at the time. They kept asking me why I couldn’t get along with the other kids. (A few years ago my mother reluctantly admitted that she no longer thought all of it was my fault. Better late than never, I suppose.) I was too young and too flummoxed at that point to reply that there’s no way to get along with people who’d rather be run over by an eighteen-wheeler than get along with you, but that’s what I was thinking, and that’s what I’m thinking now. The lessons I learned then are with me still. Conservatives aren’t wrong about everything: some things either don’t change or change so slowly that within an individual lifetime the change can’t be seen.
Which is why — though I’m happy Joe Biden was elected — I’m not overjoyed. I’m not inclined to shout hosanna and dance in the streets, because that kind of thing seems like it’s premature under the circumstances. We’ve spent the last four years telling each other that Trump is the symptom and not the disease, and we weren’t wrong. Another thing we’re in the process of finding out is that if you’re going to be sick, you may be better off if you’re asymptomatic, but your neighbors are better off if you’re symptomatic, because that’s when they know that it would be a good idea to avoid you, so as not to pick up the infection themselves. If you look and act perfectly well, neither you nor they are going to know that you’re a danger, so they don’t have the option of keeping out of your way.
We’re in a somewhat, though not exactly, analogous situation. If the reports of the patient’s death have been exaggerated, reports of the patient’s illness have been legit; what’s more and what’s worse, the patient is surrounded by ill-wishers who don’t want him to survive. IOW, we have yet to truly and verifiably pull through. We may have gotten out of the ICU but we’re not yet outside the hospital doors. Plus, we’re sharing space and resources with people don’t like us much and who are itching to hear bad news, if not cause it. Even if we do pull through, we’ll be battling an endangered frame and a weakened constitution for the rest of our days. So, the prognosis is not rosy. We’re not in great shape. The danger isn’t over. We have to get used to the idea that we’re in this for the long haul. (Dammit.)
JMO. (Sorry for doldrums.)
@Jesalin
Hey Jesalin! How’ve you been? Plenty of regulars seem to have disappeared over time. Hopefully they are all alive and well, and just trying to cope with life. I took a break myself, but things seem to be looking up on this end.
What about you? Came back to join the festivities?
@Jesalin
Welcome back! How are you these days?
@Ohlmann
This is extremely insightful, thank you. It’s one of those obvious connections… there’s a reason 90% of conspiracies have anti-semitism at the root… but the idea it’s baked into racism needs to be highlighted more.
The type of person you are describing….along with a lack of self reflection…is the root of why too many radical leftists fall for this Horseshoe Effect, where they end up siding with historical enemies just because they are anti government.
Someone I know in the Antifa community was involved with a radical left bookstore whose FOUNDER was outed by Antifa after peddling softcore anti-semitism in the left radical community FOR 25 YEARS.
The community is still crippled by this event. People who believe they can’t be fooled or manipulated are naive at best, dangerously arrogant at worst.
There is an excellent pdf about how to spot and refute/deal with anti-semitism in left spaces. It was out of print but if I can find a link I’ll post it.
@nobody
As a Jew in leftist spaces, I do notice that there certainly is antisemitism. Not as much as on the right, mind you, but it definitely exists. Leftists can and do fall into antisemitic beliefs and stereotyping, because antisemitism is ingrained into our culture like other bigotries are. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to call out progressives for inadvertently pushing the idea of Jews as greedy or controlling the money.
For me, it’s a huge red flag whenever any person or system presents themself/is presented as infallible. I always think of the “unsinkable” Titanic.
The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere
https://www.aprilrosenblum.com/thepast
Excellent deconstruction and information on spotting anti-semitism in all its forms, especially in left spaces.
Naglfar – Unfortunately, I don’t think I could watch that show unless they blurred his face. I think I’m genuinely permanently scarred from looking at his hateful face for four years. Fortunately, someone, somewhere would certainly start a recap podcast so I wouldn’t have to miss out completely.
@Nagflar
Hands down the most common path to sucking someone on the left down an anti-Semitic rabbit hole is through critism of the wealthy. Many anti-Semitic dogwhistles play to this ( I’m not sure if it’s design or dumb luck):
“Bankers”
“New World Order”
“Elites”(without qualification)
If one finds themselves with people who once talked about tangible fact based concerns about corporate power or military actions, and it has morphed from “wealthy”>”bankers”, someone is heading down a rabbit hole that ends in blaming Jews.
If objections are met with complaints about “political correctness” or “free speech”, you might have to cut your losses.
@Diego, Naglfar
Hai! I’ve been trying to keep up on the site, I just haven’t had the spoons to participate.
I was supposed to have a follow-up surgery this summer but…Covid, ugh.
So that’s kinda stressful, also my partner is high-risk, so that’s pretty stressful too, I worry every time I have to go out for groceries.
I’ll probably comment on occasion as energy levels permit.
Hear that. Waiting on mine, too, and it’s getting wearing on the nerves.
Good to see you again!
@Jesalin
It’s good to see you back. Take care of yourself and stay safe.
@Ohlmann
Classic centrist bullshit, equating hating people who routinely try to kill me and the people I love to to hating people for having the wrong skin tone, gender, etc. ad nauseam.
Also, knowing I’m better than you is an acknowledgment of obvious reality; a superiority complex would imply that I consider myself better than others generally, rather than being better than disingenuous quislings such as yourself. The latter is quite a low bar to clear, really.
While it is ridiculous to try to defend Trumpists character and Ian Bremmer is obviously naive it is also true that eventually we will have to figure out some way to slow the growth of this semi-fascist, post-truth, overtly racist movement and ideally find a way to de-program alt-right members. I say that with the same certainty I would say that we need to cut carbon emissions and ideally find a way to capture carbon. In both cases it seems obvious what will happen if current trends continue and we do nothing. Demanding that the other side to fix the problem they caused won’t work. There are a handful of good explanations for how the pipeline into the alt-right works, but what about a pipeline out? Obviously there are a lot of individuals that you simply can’t reach; but what is the point of the feminist movement if we believe that people can’t become less sexist and less misogynistic?
Unfortunately while I want to call on everyone to engage more that kinda makes me a hypocrite. Anxiety issues prevented me from engaging online let alone hitting the pavement regularly. (I mean I did go door to door for Bernie once, and went to a George Floyd protest for about an hour.) Trumpism scares me. I know I shouldn’t but often I blame myself and I blame other progressives for not doing more. Meanwhile the Trumpists themselves have gone beyond blame, I don’t really assign them that level of agency anymore, I can only pathologize them.
The problem in a nutshell is that a few people here are to fascism what Joseph McCarthy was to communism.
Yes, we want to eliminate fascism, on account of, as I believe has been mentioned, the fucking genocides that fascists continually drool over.
Dalillama, what I mean is that a few (very few, but still) are willing to, either by ignorance or malice, obfuscate what makes a fascist in order to get rid of anyone they don’t like, even non-fascists. “Hey, that neighbour who plays the music too loud? Fascist, kill them!”
@Reaktor
I have not heard anything of the sort. This feels like a straw man.
@Threp
Most definitely. Fingers crossed you can get yours soon!
@Reaktor
Are you serious?
Agreed, I smell bullshit.
Many parties could stand to slow their roll and review fallacies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_spite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking
Among others.