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A talent for manipulation such as Trump has now shown is far from trivial. He's managed to steal the party from its own machine, create and control a whole new political movement, and now he's managing his enemies rather well. The way he provoked the recent riots was a (horrible, evil) masterstroke.
I don't think he has much control over it. Either his mob, or the party. With the peasantry riled up, my take is that except for Ryan, Kirk and a few others who have a present challenge from the other side, there is a lot of damning by faint praise. If Trump loses, the peasants get back in line, if he wins, he'll fail, and the peasants will be disenchanted. The GOP Oberkommando sure as hell doesn't see Trump as the way to the future.
The GOP was in kind of sad shape to begin with. When your last serious alternative to Trump is Ted Cruz, you know you've got problems. Lightweights like Rubio (Look, we gots our own Messican!), Jindal, (he's brown, that qualifies him, right?), loons like Cruz and Uncle Ben, clowns like Christie? They're like the Iraqi army of candidates. Trump was luckier than good. The problem now is he has to sell his carny side show shtick to people who have 3 digits of IQ, and before they buy tickets to the sideshow, they'll want to know what kind of freaks he has in his little tent.
"I'm not Hillary" will get him a few more votes over his slavering masses, but a lot of the general electorate will be a tougher sell. It's going to be a fun few months.
When all else fails, blame brown people. | Hire a teen, while they still know it all. | Trump-Palin 2016. "You're fired." "I quit."
You are evincing precisely the attitude that got us Trump in the first place. The white working class is in miserable shape; middle-aged white guys have something like the highest suicide rate of any demographic. The jobs they used to depend on are gone, and nobody much seemed to give a damn about it. Now they've flexed enough muscle to upend the GOP, and they know they're not completely helpless. If they lose, they won't simply go "aw, shucks" and resume blowing themselves up in DIY meth labs while the nation returns to business as usual. The very fact that they've turned to someone as blatantly dishonest and absurd as The Donald (most of whose supporters readily admit he's scuzzy, conceited, corrupt, shallow, etc., but he gets their love anyway b/c Dammit He's On My Side) shows that they're desperate. At a minimum, they'll find someone else to channel their rage in much the same way for the next election cycle. At worst, well, a lot of them have guns, and you'd likely find that a lot of the cops are on their side . . .
Nobody is more oppressed than middle-aged white guys
Oppressed... NAHHHHHHHH! Ignored... Maybe.
The Repubs have been bending over for the religious right (and see what that got them)
(As MTG stated, if Cruz is the alternative, even Trump can look good)
Bernie is going after the young and poor. (the poor part didn't work out to well for him)
Hillary is business as usual and women that don't vote for her are traitors.
The expected candidates were all ignoring the middle age/older white males.
At least Trump saw the folly of that and came up with a wacko but seemingly effective game plan.
Trump vs Hillary... Yeah, it will be fun and depressing all at the same time.
They're not oppressed. They're just used to being so far on top of the heap that as the difference narrows they're feeling threatened.
It's almost as if all his overconfident, absolutist assertions were spoonfed to him by a trusted website or subreddit. Sheeple
RIP Tony Bogey & Baron O
I don't see how a higher suicide rates correlates to them being oppressed. The articles you posted seem to infer it due to failure at a higher rate than in the past.
It's almost as if all his overconfident, absolutist assertions were spoonfed to him by a trusted website or subreddit. Sheeple
RIP Tony Bogey & Baron O
I don't see how a higher suicide rates correlates to them being oppressed. The articles you posted seem to infer it due to failure at a higher rate than in the past.
They cite a variety of factors, prescription painkillers being just one of them. As for "oppressed," I suppose that depends on how you define it. Put yourself in the place of a 43-year-old factory worker. You've spent the last twenty years of your life making, say, outboard motors, or refrigerators, or some other big mechanical widget. It's not exciting work, but it's steady, and it's paid the bills. You're the primary breadwinner for your family (though your wife also does some hours as a waitress to buttress your income, while her mother watches the kids). Suddenly, the factory closes down, because the company has decided to cut costs by moving operations to China. You, and about five hundred other people, are all dumped onto the local labor force with no relevant job skills.
What exactly are you supposed to do with yourself? You don't have the resources to learn a whole new trade, even at the local community college. You're too busy working two service-sector jobs at minimum wage, which together can't match the income you had before. You certainly don't have the cash for tuition and books, even if you had the energy and ability to switch careers at your stage in life. Meanwhile you're competing for a limited pool of low-prospect jobs with the other five hundred laid-off guys from your plant. And also with the detritus of any previous factory closings, and with the local high schoolers, and possibly with some Guatemalan migrants. The latter are very eager beavers who expect little in the way of wages, which is no doubt great for them, less good for anyone with a mortgage, two kids and outstanding credit card debt who suddenly finds himself forced to compete with them. You don't have the resources to move, either, even assuming there's a place looking to hire an outboard-motor-assembly grunt.
So you go down to the welfare office. The line is enormous--you recognize a lot of buddies from the plant there too--and the application process draconian and humiliating. They ask for all sorts of documentation, and you have to get appointments which cut into your working time, and at the end of it all you have maybe $300 per month for groceries and some subpar health insurance. You're looking at another twenty years of service labor with no prospects of advancement, and even then you'll likely have to cut back on your lifestyle significantly--you certainly can't afford continued payments on the truck you bought after your last promotion at the plant. About the only consolation is that the local pain clinic, hearing word that you're on Medicaid, gives you a call to ask if maybe you *cough* injured yourself on the job lately?
In short, you've had your livelihood wrecked through no fault of your own, and if you try to complain, a very nice college-educated man will tell you that:
A. You are white, and therefore by definition privileged, and have no right to complain
B. You just don't understand economics.
C. What about (some dude in China who is now doing your old job)? Why should we favor you over him?
D. Not to mention the Guatemalans. What are you, some kind of racist?
E. Besides, you're Republican.
I don't know if this is oppression, but it's certainly something I can see a man getting angry about.
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