Trump's Death Cult Explained

[Jon Miller]

I've never encountered a conservative who did not view CNN as an enemy, albeit of course a less aggressive enemy than the likes of Vox. Who else is traditional, the Washington "Democracy Dies in Darkness" Post or the New York Times? Both have positioned themselves as aggressively anti-Trump--which at this point is the same as anti-GOP--and the move to squish Bernie seems rooted in the fear that he might not be able to beat Trump.

I have The Washington Post. They regularly have pro-Trump writers. They are legitimately anti-Bernie (because they are centrist) as is much of the traditional media.

But the factual point is that Trump is a danger to democracy and anything pro-democracy, which includes the traditional media, will oppose him. Media requires democracy to thrive.

Traditional media includes the following: ABC, CBS, NBC (note that NBC has become a liberal response to Fox News), Fox News (not the entertainment component), NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NPR, PBS Newshour, CNN, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Economist, The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker. New media I would include Bloomberg and Fivethirtyeight.

Non-traditional media is Hannity, Brietbert, Infowars, Jacobin, Vox etc. I know very few people who are Democrats who regularly consume non-traditional progressive or left media. Almost all of the people who are Republicans seem to consume large amounts of reactionary non-traditional media and the only traditional media they consume is Fox News.

JM

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[Elok]

Fivethirtyeight does a pretty good job of staying neutral--by mostly covering sports and statistical analysis of elections, with an occasional dive into contemporary points of interest like COVID. I've never encountered a conservative who did not view CNN as an enemy, albeit of course a less aggressive enemy than the likes of Vox. Who else is traditional, the Washington "Democracy Dies in Darkness" Post or the New York Times? Both have positioned themselves as aggressively anti-Trump--which at this point is the same as anti-GOP--and the move to squish Bernie seems rooted in the fear that he might not be able to beat Trump.

I grant you that at this stage of the game the polarization has become simply stupid and Trump fans view everyone who is not actively with them as against them. But it's been a long time coming to this point. It wasn't that long ago that everybody was wringing their knickers about George W. Bush, who was a wretchedly inept but basically well-meaning plutocrat spawn. Then McCain, who had inexplicably anchored himself to Palin but had a few tatters of principles left. Then about Romney, who was an actually fairly competent plutocrat with good manners and no personality. Nobody who wanted to be respectable could ever be associated, however faintly, with the Right. Now everybody's jacking it up to eleven for Trump, who yes, is genuinely awful, but the constant yelling that conservatism is the devil has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similar things have happened to the religious right; even Falwell was a far better Christian than Falwell Junior.

That's Scott's point, which I broadly agree with: marginalization observably does not work as a strategy for dealing with cultural enemies. At best--worst--you peel off the moderates, leaving you with a hard and implacable core of everything you hate. Kill them or learn to live with them. Shaming doesn't do ****.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Trump smilie --- >

[Ted Striker]

Your posts are far too eloquent and educated to be written in Florida.(no stereotype lol) :-) :-D

[Ted Striker]

I kept reading the article's "defected from institutions" as "defecating on institutions" which is exactly what's happened the past 4 years.

[Jon Miller]

Despite Vox trying to present itself as a challenger for CNN, I actually include it as part of the Liberal media (with Jacobin et al.).

Fivethirtyeight (ABC) does a much better job.

I used traditional instead of unbiased, liberal, conservative, or so on. For sure the traditional media is not liberal, however. You can see in their response to Bernie et al.

JM

[Ted Striker]

Amateur.

I take my moral leadership compass guidance from Lloyd Blankfein, especially when it comes to separation of duties and conflict of interest resolution.

After that I'll use Jared Kushner for quality of life and landlord/tenant relationship building.

[Elok]

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/

TLDR version: when you kick them out of the party, they make their own party, and once they have their own party it inevitably becomes more extreme over time.

[KrazyHorse]

https://markets.jpmorgan.com/research/email/-9ovokf4/6P7NFgmiolotx-biD-kR1g/GPS-3334428-0

JPMorgan's research note laying out the problem pretty much as I've been describing it.

Time to stop the wishful thinking - driving toward herd immunity, carried mostly by the younger and healthier is the only reasonable solution. Shelter the old. Let. It. Happen.

[Jon Miller]

I understand the media bifurcation (at least in part, it is about money), but that is the source of the problem. And that isn't from the progressive media sources like Jacobin, rather that is from the right considering all of the traditional media as invalid liberal media. And the conservative media (really reactionary media, only Fox News is maybe more conservative than reactionary) has a problem with facts.

JM

[Elok]

I'm not hovering over the COVID coverage nearly as much as I used to; mostly I'm hanging out on the FB RT group and yelling at people who spread the dumb "heme iron" theory. So I won't speculate on where this is going. Regarding the usual bit about Trumpers being horrible, let me reiterate: this is just what happens when right- and left-wingers have completely segregated institutions. Partly this is the fault of modern comm technology (cable and the internet), and partly it's the result of our response to it. Either way, as long as they continue to get their information from completely different sources than you do, they will continue to support people like Trump.

If Trump dies or quits or falls from favor, they will support somebody else toxic, because the alternative is taking sides with you and you hate each other. Then you will talk in your personal spheres about what horrible POS's they are, and they will do the same about you in theirs, and nothing will change. You will never simply impose your will on a country where 40% is opposed to your agenda (and that 40% is heavily armed and strongly associated with the armed forces and military EDIT: meant "police and military" see I'm not that eloquent). You will not convince them when all you do is call them stupid repulsive ****heads. Nor will they convince or impose their will on you. This will continue until either someone figures out how to compromise, or it escalates to violence, or some external force intervenes to render the contest irrelevant. I am not certain how COVID will modify things, but I suspect it will damage institutional education enough to give some boost to their side.

I will probably vaguely hope Biden wins this fall, assuming neither major candidate dies. I might vote for Biden, but it will be mostly symbolic if I do because I live in FL and I don't think it will be close. I do not expect a Biden administration to accomplish much of anything, but he will probably tweet less and be useless in a less inflammatory way.

[KrazyHorse]

EDIT: JUST REALIZED I SAID AESON, MEANT ARRIAN

Aeson, you're not forcing yourself to do even the roughest of math here.

1) Hospital capacity in most of the country is not even CLOSE to being overwhelmed. The lockdowns started far too early in these places to make a "bending the curve" argument be sensible. And in New York City & surrounding environs, close to 30% of the population HAS ALREADY BEEN INFECTED. We did nothing to bend the curve, and are now just delaying illnesses until the second wave in the fall. We should release the lockdown here NOW and get as many people infected as possible b/c hospital capacity utilization will be FAR below peak in 2 weeks when those newly infected might need it
2) without any intervening measures something like 50-60% of people will get it. In a demographically representative group that about 0.3% of those will die. Call it 500k people or so, with a median age of 75
3) you're not at all asking the question of how important to this death toll hospital capacity is - from what I can tell, the bulk of these deaths happen with or without hospitalization. Ventilation fails in 3/4 of cases
4) you're failing to account for the offsetting problem that the longer this is drawn out, the less able we are to attain differential infection rates between the young & old/vulnerable

Onan expected value basis,my guess is that nothing we've done can plausibly claim to have saved more than a few thousand lives (and possibly 0). Given that they were already elderly, that's a few tens of billion dollars' worth. Meanwhile, 22 million people have lost their jobs in 4 weeks and the rest of us have had to endure substantial restrictions on our freedom and our enjoyment of life. The costs outweigh the benefits

Let. It. Happen. Lockdowns are simply an ineffectual expression of people's fear and need to feel somehow in control. And they will end soon enough as the fear of the virus fades and the harsh economic pain sets in.

[Berzerker]

I think its better we take the short term economic hit to suppress the bug until we can at least find a somewhat effective medical treatment. But I'm not hurting so I'd expect people out of work to be more anxious about ending or reducing these lock downs. My state's guv has extended our lock down until May 3rd.

[Arrian]

It's not this simple. Disease doesn't give a **** about your politics. Democrats are concentrated in higher-density areas such that even if we are all awesome about social distancing, mask-wearing and the like, we're going to be hit harder. Yes, some Red areas will be hit hard too (Floriduh!), but the reality is that rural areas have something of an advantage here. Even within states, the areas hit hardest will be cities and guess what, most cities are D. Rural areas R. Even in solid blue states, rural areas tend to be R leaning. Even in solid red states, cities are often blue.

Also, because 'Murica, various underprivileged groups are hit harder. Black Americans are getting hit harder than Whites. Guess who votes D? Yeah. So, as much as you might want to see a Karmic outcome here, I doubt we'll get it.