Why Donald Trump Got Elected

[Anthony '58]

(03-17-2022, 05:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(03-13-2022, 09:10 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: fwiw, I did not vote for him either time (in 2020 for example, I voted for Edward Snowden), but the vast majority of anyone to the left of Ted Cruise seems completely out of touch with why the American public voted him in. 

The reason is glaringly obvious: we need something to feel good about. It's true that any intellectually honest, independent thinking person should be able to look the problems of their country in the face, it's true that that we have some major issues that we can no longer continue to ignore, and it's true that deriving your entire self-worth from some sort of ethno-collectivist identity is kinda pathetic. Nonetheless, the simple truth is that you need to boost morale in order to get through a crisis, and at the moment we don't have that. Instead, we've been 
- spitting on masculinity for the better part of 30 years
- guilt tripping parents over concerns for overpopulation (actually, even before that. lots of Xers are justifiably salty over a childhood where they were treated like carbon machines of whom less should have been born)
- guilt tripping normal Americans for their "materialistic western lifestyle" for something as innocuous as driving to work. not all of us want cheaper oil so we can afford another voyage around the world in our yacht.
- focusing only on how we enslaved free people rather than how we freed enslaved people. we need to focus on both, not just one or the other.
- telling people they're "racist Nazis" for being nationalistic or patriotic 
- talking about who "greedy and selfish" it is to have any ambition past having enough to be barely comfortable. 

Seriously, everyone talks about all this "compassion" this, "empathy" that, but....no one actually shows any. 90% of the time, when you hear this term being thrown around, it's done in a bitchy, condescending tone and used to browbeat people with legitimate self-interests into shutting up because they aren't the hot cause at the moment (ex: as a gay millennial, it's hilarious to watch people from around my graduating class admonish people over absurd claims of "homophobia", after being a largely homophobic generation themselves until only a decade or so ago).

Does anyone unironically think sanctimonious college students, soccer moms and vegans are going to get us out of a crisis era? Where is the motivation? Where is the vigor, the pride, the confident pursuit of victory? Say what you will about Donald Trump, he was willing to offer these. Sure, he was cocky, braggadocios, crude, etc, but if you pay attention to his more important speeches, most of them were about reminding Americans about what we have done well, what we can continue to achieve (and yes, he includes several example of blacks, hispanics, immigrants, etc. not just WASP from the ol' boy's club). 


I'm not asking for a return to the naïve days where people glorified war and impulsively charged into battle over causes they knew nothing about. That kind of unbridled emotionalism is not what we need right now. What we do need, desperately, is leadership that can boost our morale and restore some feeling of power and vitality. At this point, I don't know who it's going to be, but there is a reason America has never made it through a 4th turning without a Grey Champion, and the longer we put off looking for one who has the necessary constitution, the worse off we will be.

Donald Trump has a horoscope score of 9-4.

https://philosopherswheel.com/presidenti...ScoredWhat

Considering the score of her opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, 7-12 with (I think) Jupiter rising (J) which can confer maybe 5-10 extra points, Hillary was fairly easy to beat, considering our electoral college system which currently provides an advantage for small, rural, conservative states and disenfranchises larger liberal ones. But Joe was equal or superior to him as a candidate.

Your male worship and capitalist/money-making orientation is not likely to lead us to who would be a suitable president in our crisis era. But not everything you mentioned is wrong, in my opinion. We do need a leader who can make us feel good about ourselves, and not always focus on how bad things are or have been, but offers hope and a pathway, and gives the impression of being a strong, confident and capable leader. The college students, soccor moms and vegans can be part of his or her support team, but no-one is expecting one of them to run for president anytime soon. Trump by the way also focused too much on how bad things were, and that made him vulnerable to defeat by a genial guy who touted American greatness and abilities (Joe Biden).

Thes traits do not necessarily mean a macho leader like Reagan, necessarily, or even the Bush's (who were actually better athletes than even lifeguard Reagan), because Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were enormously-talented candidates and good leaders who were not of the macho Republican brand, but were very articulate speakers and had hipness/cool, gentle confidence, great smarts, geniality and likability, and who also had very high horoscope scores--- as did Reagan and the Bush's.

It's gotten to the point where your astrology-based analyses make at least as much sense, if not more sense, than conventional political analysis - because the planets never "switch sides" (Mars always relates to war, Venus always relates to love, and so on).

Our "tradition" of "side-switching" began in 1877, when the Republicans threw African-Americans under the bus in order to get "His Fraudulency," Rutherford B. Hayes, elected President  - making Samuel Tilden the only candidate in U.S. history to receive an outright majority of the popular vote and lose in the Electoral College.  And bad karma wasted no time in hurling barbed arrows at the Republicans: A mere two years later, the first ship carrying immigrants to America docked not at Ellis Island, but at New Orleans (and featured Italian immigrants!), with the immigrants who came here over the next 40+ years, to a man, woman and child, joining the Democratic Party and ousting the Southern segregationists from leadership of the national party (Republican Herbert Hoover carried 13 of the 19 slave states/territories in the 1928 Presidential election).

Fast-forward to the 1920s, when Samuel Gompers, the George Washington of American trade unionism, led the charge to have immigration halted altogether, getting his wish when Congress passed two bills to do just that in 1921 and 1924.  Today, however, the Democrats are the party of open borders.

When the USS Liberty was accidentally sunk in the Mediterranean during the Arab-Israeli "Six Day War," Republicans screamed bloody murder while Democrats rushed to Israel's defense.  Now, the Republicans are Israel's steadfast defenders while Democrats fawn over the "Palestinians."

And when the 1968 Gun Control Act was passed, its most vehement opponents were the Black Panthers.  But now the Left hasn't met a restrictive, confiscatory gun law they don't zealously embrace, despite the fact that approximately 95% of those incarcerated at any one time under such laws that are already on the books in the various states are poor, young men of color.

Give me the stars any day!