01-10-2021, 12:15 PM
I look at the Capitol putsch, and I recognize how different the perceptions are in America. There really are people who believe that President Trump was cheated out of not only a victory -- but also a landslide victory. Having driven through rural northwest Ohio, where seemingly everyone had a Trump yard sign and banner, on the way to Dayton I can imagine that people who live in rural northwestern Ohio could believe that Trump would win a monumental landslide, perhaps a 48- or 49-state landslide in which the Democrats win the District of Columbia and.. what -- Maryland? Hawaii and Vermont? -- while Trump wins everything else because nobody else is so obviously the Best Thing to Ever Happen to American politics. After all that went on on January 6, Trump could still say that he had won in a landslide but that people like his supporters had been cheated. After all, they hardly knew anyone who would vote against their idol.
Counties through which I traveled included
Defiance 67.3 - 30.9
Paulding 74.7 - 23.3
Van Wert 77.7- 20.3
Allen 68.8 - 29.4
Mercer 81.8 - 16.9
Auglaize 80.5 - 18.8
Allen County includes the small, but economically-troubled city Lima, which used to be a prosperous hub of manufacturing.
...It is easy to develop a personality cult in a community that dreads the Sodom and Gomorrah that is Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, or Detroit. People secure about being white, most likely born-again Christian, and not having had a mind polluted by crazy ideas at the "People's Democratic Republic of Columbus"... maybe their kids spent a semester there before flunking out and decided that it was more promising to be a barber, garage mechanic, or nurse's aide than be infected with 'that PC stuff' and end up with a huge amount of college debt. Trump appeals to such people.
I suggested that it resembled the Bolshevik coup in 1917 in Russia, and someone suggested that the Beer Hall Putsch of 1922 better fit the takeover of the Capitol.
About four years I saw an SNL sketch about a part of America in which Donald Trump was irrelevant. Brooklyn, in a hermetic bubble, where nobody knows anyone who voted for Trump, where educational levels are high, in which many people read the website of the Huffington Post for news and analysis, and where houses go for over a million dollars each. But people there could know well that with a few oases of urban civility (Boston, Philadelphia, and some West Coast Cities... maybe Chicago and Denver... the rest of America was where the buffalo roam, the deer and the antelope play. That is where the Gulags are for people who deal or use drugs. People in Brooklyn would likely feel more at home in Berlin or Barcelona than in Buffalo or Binghamton. But that was satire, and the SNL viewers (who despise Trump, as a demographic) know this. Figure that if you can afford to live in Brooklyn you were either born there or you are highly-educated. You could not otherwise live there. You
OK, OK, OK. Trump flooded rural America with farm subsidies as compensation for the effects of his trade war Know well: many of the people who do the actual farm work as employees are non-citizens who toil in factory-like conditions and form an honest-to-Marxist-dogma proletariat. Non-citizens almost exclusively, they do not vote. People such as schoolteachers and medical personnel who might find Trump offensive know enough to zip their lips on politics. Rational discussion of politics is tricky in rural areas. It is far easier to get right-wing political results in places in which those who do the real work do not vote.
Will support of Donald Trump or of anyone who adopts his style become discreditable? We shall soon see. Things go fast toward the end of a Crisis Era
Counties through which I traveled included
Defiance 67.3 - 30.9
Paulding 74.7 - 23.3
Van Wert 77.7- 20.3
Allen 68.8 - 29.4
Mercer 81.8 - 16.9
Auglaize 80.5 - 18.8
Allen County includes the small, but economically-troubled city Lima, which used to be a prosperous hub of manufacturing.
...It is easy to develop a personality cult in a community that dreads the Sodom and Gomorrah that is Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, or Detroit. People secure about being white, most likely born-again Christian, and not having had a mind polluted by crazy ideas at the "People's Democratic Republic of Columbus"... maybe their kids spent a semester there before flunking out and decided that it was more promising to be a barber, garage mechanic, or nurse's aide than be infected with 'that PC stuff' and end up with a huge amount of college debt. Trump appeals to such people.
I suggested that it resembled the Bolshevik coup in 1917 in Russia, and someone suggested that the Beer Hall Putsch of 1922 better fit the takeover of the Capitol.
About four years I saw an SNL sketch about a part of America in which Donald Trump was irrelevant. Brooklyn, in a hermetic bubble, where nobody knows anyone who voted for Trump, where educational levels are high, in which many people read the website of the Huffington Post for news and analysis, and where houses go for over a million dollars each. But people there could know well that with a few oases of urban civility (Boston, Philadelphia, and some West Coast Cities... maybe Chicago and Denver... the rest of America was where the buffalo roam, the deer and the antelope play. That is where the Gulags are for people who deal or use drugs. People in Brooklyn would likely feel more at home in Berlin or Barcelona than in Buffalo or Binghamton. But that was satire, and the SNL viewers (who despise Trump, as a demographic) know this. Figure that if you can afford to live in Brooklyn you were either born there or you are highly-educated. You could not otherwise live there. You
OK, OK, OK. Trump flooded rural America with farm subsidies as compensation for the effects of his trade war Know well: many of the people who do the actual farm work as employees are non-citizens who toil in factory-like conditions and form an honest-to-Marxist-dogma proletariat. Non-citizens almost exclusively, they do not vote. People such as schoolteachers and medical personnel who might find Trump offensive know enough to zip their lips on politics. Rational discussion of politics is tricky in rural areas. It is far easier to get right-wing political results in places in which those who do the real work do not vote.
Will support of Donald Trump or of anyone who adopts his style become discreditable? We shall soon see. Things go fast toward the end of a Crisis Era
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.