Are Liberals Helping Trump?

M

Max E.

Are Liberals Helping Trump?

Jeffrey Medford, a small-business owner in South Carolina, voted reluctantly for Donald Trump. As a conservative, he felt the need to choose the Republican. But some things are making him feel uncomfortable — parts of Mr. Trump’s travel ban, for example, and the recurring theme of his apparent affinity for Russia.

Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.

“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”

He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”

Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right. In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one. Disagreeing meant being publicly shamed.

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Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.

“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay. “They are complaining that Trump calls people names, but they turned into some mean people.”

Mr. Youngquist stayed in the closet for months about his support for Mr. Trump. He did not put a bumper sticker on his car, for fear it would be keyed. The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.

He came out a few days before the election. On election night, a friend posted on Facebook, “You are a disgusting human being.”

“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.

Conservatives have gotten vicious, too, sometimes with Mr. Trump’s encouragement. But if political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.

“We are in a trust spiral,” said Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University. “My fear is that we have reached escape velocity where the actions of each side can produce such strong reactions on the other that things will continue to escalate.”

It is tempting to blame Mr. Trump for America’s toxic political state of mind. He has wreaked havoc on political civility and is putting American democratic institutions through the most robust stress test in decades. But many experts argue that he is a symptom, not a cause, and that the roots go deeper.

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Many experts compare today with the 1960s and the Vietnam War protests. That period was far more violent but culminated in a landslide victory for Richard Nixon in 1972, after he famously appealed to the “silent majority,” who he believed resented what they saw as disrespect for American institutions. Others say that democracy was far healthier then and that you have to go farther back to find a historical parallel.

“There is really only one period that was analogous, and that is the Civil War and its immediate aftermath,” said Doug McAdam, a Stanford sociology professor. “I’m not suggesting we are there, but we are straining our institutions more than we really ever have before.”

One facet of recent political life has been large-scale protests against Mr. Trump. They have been largely peaceful, but when there is violence, even on the fringes, it tends to reduce popular support for them, Professor Haidt said, citing recent research. And for many Trump voters, even peaceful protests are unsettling.

“I don’t have a problem with protesting as long as it’s peaceful, but this is destroying the country,” said Ann O’Connell, 72, a retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump. “I feel like we are in some kind of civil war right now. I know people don’t like to use those terms. But I think it’s scary.”

Mrs. O’Connell is a registered Democrat. She voted for Bill Clinton twice. But she has drifted away from the party over what she said was a move from its middle-class economic roots toward identity politics. She remembers Mr. Clinton giving a speech about the dangers of illegal immigration. Mr. Trump was lambasted for offering some of the same ideas, she said.

“The Democratic Party has changed so much that I don’t even recognize it anymore,” she said. “These people are destroying our democracy. They are scarier to me than these Islamic terrorists. I feel absolutely disgusted with them and their antics. It strengthens people’s resolve in wanting to support President Trump. It really does.”

Polling data suggest many center-right voters feel the same way. The first poll by the Pew Research Center on presidential job performance since Mr. Trump took office showed last week that while he has almost no support from Democrats, he has high marks among moderates who lean Republican: 70 percent approve, while 20 percent disapprove.

Mr. Medford compares Mr. Trump to a jalopy.

“It’s like I need to get from Charleston to Atlanta, and suddenly the most beat-up car on earth shows up and says, ‘Do you need a ride?’ I think, wow, if I had any other way to get there, I’d choose it. But there’s only this terrible car. And it might not even make it.”

But he doesn’t want to get out, at least not yet, and the resignation of Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, hasn’t changed that. Late last year, he hit it off with a woman in New York he met online. They spent hours on the phone. They made plans for him to visit. But when he mentioned he had voted for Mr. Trump, she said she was embarrassed and didn’t know if she wanted him to come. (He eventually did, but she lied to her friends about his visiting.)

“It invalidated anything that’s good about me, just because of how I voted. Poof, it’s gone.”

Mrs. O’Connell feels hopeless. She has deleted all her news feeds on Facebook and she tries to watch less TV. But politics keeps seeping in.

“I love Meryl Streep, but you know, she robbed me of that wonderful feeling when I go to the movies to be entertained,” she said. “I told my husband, I said, ‘Ed, we have to be a little more flexible, or we’re going to run out of movies!’ ”

As for the country, she is worried.

“Change doesn’t occur until you hit rock bottom, like an alcoholic, on his knees, begging for help,” she said. “I think we still have farther to go.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/are-liberals-helping-trump.html


 

“I don’t have a problem with protesting as long as it’s peaceful, but this is destroying the country,” said Ann O’Connell, 72, a retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump. “I feel like we are in some kind of civil war right now. I know people don’t like to use those terms. But I think it’s scary.”

In testing, it was found that Ann has an IQ of 72 and is unemployed, which is typical of those that voted for Trump.
 
Beaton: Thelma and Louise and the Democrats

In the movie “Thelma and Louise,” a bullied Arkansas housewife and a harried waitress ditch their mundane lives for a road trip in their 1966 Thunderbird convertible. It doesn’t end well.

In fact, it doesn’t even start well. Thelma, played by Gina Davis, gets drunk and is sexually assaulted. Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, rescues her. But then the assaulter insults them, so Louise shoots and kills him.

Their road trip turns into a getaway. They figure they’ll escape to Mexico, but Louise won’t travel through Texas because she’d once been raped there. They loop north to Arizona by way of the Grand Canyon.

Along the way, they meet a thief, played by Brad Pitt, who teaches them his trade. They blow up a fuel tanker, knock over a convenience store, outrun the FBI and steal a hat.

But the cops eventually catch up, and they’re cornered in front of the Grand Canyon where they’re forced to surrender.

Except they don’t. Instead, they hop in the old Thunderbird, kiss one another goodbye and floor it. They and the Thunderbird fly over the cliff and into the Grand Canyon.

That’s the end of the movie, and the end of them.

In another story — call it “The Dems” — the junior political party in America launches an extended road trip for their soon-to-be-elected president. But as in “Thelma and Louise”, things go south quickly.

Their candidate gets insulted by a provocateur and five-time bankrupt real estate developer with orange hair who fails to grab her and so she fails to shoot him. But she does have fainting fits, gets drunk and (allegedly) goes on a crime spree that draws the attention of the FBI.

The candidate stays one step ahead of the cops, who aren’t actually chasing very hard, but eventually the voters catch up with her. She and the other Dems lose the election.

Along the way, they also lose most of the governorships, lose the state legislatures, lose Congress, lose the Supreme Court, lose 30,000 emails, lose influence and lose a bunch of influence-peddling speaking engagements.

Then they lose their cool. They take time out from their nonstop moral preening in the rearview mirror for a temper tantrum.

For years, these losers have been proclaiming that their opponents are on the “wrong side of history” in politics, which is like being on the wrong side of the road on a road trip. But now they’ve learned that both in history and on road trips, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the part in front of you. And that makes them so mad.

That, and losing.

They demand a recount. They ask the Electoral College to go rogue. They blame it all on the Russians — after giving them a pass on their Crimean conquest and Syrian slaughter.

Some refuse to attend the inauguration. Some call on the newly elected president to resign and, if he doesn’t, imply that he should be impeached or worse.

Their ideas are like Thelma’s 1966 Thunderbird convertible: fun and eye-catching, but unsafe at any speed.

And they can’t find anyone to drive. They can’t find someone to chair the Democratic National Committee after the past two were caught cheating. The recent possibilities include a Louis Farrakhan follower whom even fellow Dems have labelled anti-Semitic, a Socialist from the last administration (and the last century) and the head of the biggest abortion operation in the country.

While Middle America celebrates their soaring 401(k) plans, the Dems boycott hearings to confirm the new president’s cabinet. They protest in the streets. They name-call everyone who disagrees with them.

They hang and burn the new president in effigy, call his immigrant wife a prostitute and mock their young son as autistic.

And they make good on their threats to leave the country. Oops, I got that part wrong. But one Dem state does fantasize about resurrecting the Confederacy by seceding from the Union.

They threaten to filibuster the new president’s nominee for the Supreme Court, thereby egging the Republicans into abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (as the Dems themselves abolished it for district court and appellate court nominees) so that they forfeit the leverage they would have down the road in the next nomination.

Because their much-ballyhooed “arc of history” took an unexpected detour, they shout, cry and riot. And with a comic touch, they do so in the name of tolerance, maturity and intellectualism.

But as it sometimes does in the movies, and always does in the real world, reality eventually catches up to them.

Now the Dems are cornered at the edge of the cliff. They’re nearly out of gas — their ideas, power and lives are almost exhausted — but they still have just enough left to write an end to this story.

Depending on the ending they choose, they may also end themselves.


 
futurecurrents said:
“I don’t have a problem with protesting as long as it’s peaceful, but this is destroying the country,” said Ann O’Connell, 72, a retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump. “I feel like we are in some kind of civil war right now. I know people don’t like to use those terms. But I think it’s scary.”

In testing, it was found that Ann has an IQ of 72 and is unemployed, which is typical of those that voted for Trump.
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Al Gore: Still Demented After All These Years

"Every night on the television news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation," lamented Al Gore in his opening remarks for the Climate & Health Meeting. After all these years, he still has a demented penchant for apocalyptic exaggeration. Though it can occasionally rain frogs and fish (and even golf balls), the oceans have not yet turned to blood and and no one needs to remove any wax seals from that scroll just yet.

Studies have shown that temperatures have increased slightly and conclude mankind deserves much of the blame. A fairly simple and economically sensible energy policy (like using natural gas as a bridge fuel to a nuclear powered future) would not only address any climate concerns but would advance American interests as well.

But alarmism and hyperbole undermine Mr. Gore's cause. Substantial damage has been done to the science of climate change by the theatrics of Mr. Gore and his acolytes. Indeed, a cursory examination of the state of the world in 2017 shows that the Four Horsemen have yet to even saddle up.

Most likely, a warmer planet may slightly exacerbate some pre-existing issues. For instance, mosquitoes, and the diseases they carry, may be able to spread to new habitats. But a direct line of causation, as depicted by the CDC, in which climate change leads to more extreme weather events which in turn increases human disease, is hardly proven. In fact, a forum hosted by Yale demonstrates that experts still disagree on whether climate change will cause more severe weather.

Worst Case Scenario

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the alarmists are correct: Climate change will make all infectious disease worse. Since the climate has been warming, we would expect to see a disease like malaria killing more and more people. But that's not happening.

globalmalariadeaths.png


The Lancet reports that, after a spike in malaria deaths (entirely in Africa), the number of global malaria deaths has fallen by 32% from 2004 to 2010. Outside of Africa, the number of malaria deaths has fallen nearly 80% since 1980. So even if it is true that climate change could make malaria worse, actual data does not support that assertion because it appears as if the sustained global health campaign against malaria is working.

Cholera is another disease that some scientists believe will get worse as the planet warms. Mr. Gore warned, "Cholera likes warmer water." True. But cholera wouldn't be a problem at all if people didn't defecate in their drinking water. Regardless of the temperature outside, the real cause of cholera is poor sanitation and inadequate infrastructure, such as water treatment facilities. That's why public health officials worry about cholera outbreaks following natural disasters, which can contaminate the water supply.

Similarly, any potential link between climate change and allergies, respiratory disease, and cancer is mostly theoretical. Even if the absolute worst is true -- that a warmer Earth will exacerbate all of these problems -- the underlying causes still exist. The increase in allergies and childhood asthma, for example, is likely due to excessive cleanliness (known as the "hygiene hypothesis").

An Inconvenient Truth

The real cause of so much suffering in the world is not climate change but poverty. In a more prosperous world, diseases like malaria and cholera largely will go away. And deaths from preterm birth complications and birth asphyxia/birth trauma -- both of which are in the top 10 causes of death in poor countries -- will also vanish.

When it comes to human disease, climate change is mostly a distraction. Eliminating poverty will do far more to save people's lives than lowering the temperature a notch
 
Tom B said:
Obama was reelected because he pandered to the low information voter.
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Perhaps Tom but even in this election cycle 6 million more people voted Democratic than Republican. America for the longest time has been center right,but now drifting center left,just saying.
 
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