Klaas is again in session

"Do I recognize my own country any longer?"

   

 

From Brian Klaas's Garden of Forking Paths Substack: "The Tattered Republic"

The most salient divides in contemporary American politics are about how we react to one man, not policy disagreement.

First, there are those, like me, who experienced immediate revulsion at the personality traits—the narcissism, the abusive punching down, the gleeful cruelty—unapologetically dripping from every cell in his body. In this group are people who are True Never Trumpers, who would rather chew glass than vote for him.

Second, there is the Hold Your Nose Brigade. These voters may find Trump distasteful and immoral, but they want a tax cut, or a secure border, or they don’t want a woman in charge, or they are just pissed off about the price of milk. For this group, cognitive dissonance exists—they may object to the cruelty and the crimes—but that discomfort is not overpowering enough to sway their vote. (Trump beat Harris because this already substantial group expanded. It’s that simple).

Third, there are the people for whom—in the words of Adam Serwer—“The Cruelty is the Point.” This bloc cloaks itself in welcoming iconography of the flag and charitable symbols of religion while rejoicing at callous jokes about minority groups and fantasizing about treason trials and mass detention camps. For some, Trump’s narrow escape with death in Butler, Pennsylvania was proof that God had sent a fresh messiah, delivered straight to us from those most ascetic of earthly bastions: reality television and a golden penthouse.

It is easier to function as a democracy when the divides are about ideas, not individuals. After all, the sentiment that many Americans are expressing far more often—both on the Trumpian right and the Democratic left—is this: “I truly don’t understand how you could vote for that.”

But today, for those who have little reason to feel personally scared about being targeted or made to feel unwelcome by the resurrection of MAGA might, many are facing a different kind of fear, captured by more abstract uncertainties. What kind of world will my kids grow up in? How do I live in a community where half the people either celebrate cruelty or at least endorse it with their vote? Do I recognize my own country any longer?

Do I recognize my own country any longer?

 

Not so sure this week.

 

Now, I have scant rational reason to feel "personally scared of being targeted" in light of my age (soon to be 79) and ailments (Parkinson's, artificial aortic valve), but I have loved ones, including offspring all the way to my glorious great-grandson Kai...

But, Trump et al and Heritage Foundation, y'all too can kiss my irascible Irish ass. And you poignant Theobros as well.

Do yourselves a favor and read Brian's excellent book.

Notwithstanding that I find Substack to be a relatively shitty authoring platform (right down there with Medium, lol), I subscribe to Brian's stack (as well as several others). His latest post is a gem.

UPDATE

Click

…[A] majority of American voters chose Trump because they wanted what he was selling: a nonstop reality show of rage and resentment. Some Democrats, still gripped by the lure of wonkery, continue to scratch their heads over which policy proposals might have unlocked more votes, but that was always a mug’s game. Trump voters never cared about policies, and he rarely gave them any. (Choosing to be eaten by a shark rather than electrocuted might be a personal preference, but it’s not a policy.) His rallies involved long rants about the way he’s been treated, like a giant therapy session or a huge family gathering around a bellowing, impaired grandpa…

Trump and his coterie must now govern. The last time around, Trump was surrounded by a small group of moderately competent people, and these adults basically put baby bumpers and pool noodles on all the sharp edges of government. This time, Trump will rule with greater power but fewer excuses, and he—and his voters—will have to own the messes and outrages he is already planning to create.

Those voters expect that Trump will hurt others and not them. They will likely be unpleasantly surprised, much as they were in Trump’s first term. (He was, after all, voted out of office for a reason.) For the moment, some number of them have memory-holed that experience and are pretending that his vicious attacks on other Americans are just so much hot air.

Trump, unfortunately, means most of what he says. In this election, he has triggered the unfocused ire and unfounded grievances of millions of voters. Soon we will learn whether he can still trigger their decency—if there is any to be found.

 

NY TIMES' FRANK BRUNI

 

As Election Day neared, Democrats’ hopes soared. I know because I saw it and heard it all around me — the widening smiles, the brightening voices. Vice President Kamala Harris was ascendant. Donald Trump was done. People could just feel it.

They were reacting to polls, though they were picking and choosing: To listen to them, that outlier survey in Iowa, which augured a Harris victory in a red state that she ended up losing by about 13 percentage points, was some amalgam of the burning bush and the Rosetta stone.

They were reacting to momentum, which is a word as squishy as a wet paper towel and a concept beloved by dreamers whose yearning outstrips actual evidence.

But they were reacting above all to Trump. To how epically awful he was being. In his increasingly saturnine and serpentine remarks, he imagined Liz Cheney facing a fusillade of bullets, he called Democrats “demonic,” he said that he should never have left the White House after the 2020 election. All of this was characterized by many observers as the most self-destructive, disastrous conclusion to a presidential campaign that they’d ever beheld. And all of it was identified by the optimistic Democrats around me as the last straw.

Americans—at least the ones whose minds weren’t firmly made up—would surely abandon Trump now. There was a limit to the cruelness and craziness they’d abide.

That judgment, of course, was terribly wrong…

UPDATE

 

Apparently, Heritage Foundation Tough Guy Mike Howell has some post-reelection testosterone competition.

 

 I give you MAGA Mike Davis.

'Think long and hard': MAGA ally issues ominous threat to Dem prosecutors over Trump cases

Attorney Mike Davis, who has long been rumored as a candidate for attorney general under Donald Trump’s new administration, issued an ominous threat to New York Attorney General Letitia James and “Democrat prosecutors” on Thursday: “proceed accordingly.”

The Trump ally made the intimidating remarks two days after Election Day during an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, where James, who oversaw Trump’s New York fraud case, became the center of the attorney’s scorn.

“Let me just say this to Big Tish James: I dare you to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term because, listen here, sweetheart, we're not messing around this time and we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights, I promise you that,” Davis said at the beginning of his dark rant against prosecutors who pursued criminal cases against the now-president-elect… [via Rawstory]

 

Ahhh... The Manly swagger.

 

Surf their website. You easily find links to the "Donate" page, and no contact links going to the preening Principals.

 

More to come...

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