moonshadow wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 1:56 pm
Unfortunately at this juncture, probably the only way to eliminate Trumpism is to let it have full rein. Give it all the power and let it destroy itself from within. It's not sustainable... it's a platform based on lies and circular logic, so it won't last long before it starts to collapse.
Give them enough rope and they'll eventually hang themselves. Sometimes you just gotta let the place burn down.
Couldn't agree more, Andrea.
My understanding is that for many years, the two main parties have oscillated just left or just right of center. Trumpism has moved the needle more to the right than the recent norm and the likes of Saunders, Biden, AOC etc. have moved the needle more to the left of recent norm.
I see Trump round #2 as having parallels with Brexit. Decisive, polarizing and with roughly equal numbers for and against. The difference between Trump and Brexit is that with the latter it was more binary - with Trump there is a larger group of people "in the middle" who could go one way or the other. Pre the shooting, my money was on the independents handing victory (narrowly) to Biden largely on the back of the abortion issue, but I really think that recent events (the shooting plus Biden age and ailments) has probably tipped the balance slightly in Trump's direction as of this time of writing.
Like Brexit, I feel that Trumpism is something that needs to happen (either through Trump, or his anointed successor, JDV) because there are enough determined and influential people behind it who will continue to keep on pushing this agenda until they get what they want. The Tories tried to hold off their anti-Europe wing for many years, but there was a realization that it was pulling the party apart and that eventually they would have to "lance the boil".
If I were to dust off my crystal ball, I could see a situation in which Trump wins and we get to experience the full delivery of his vision, which is then continued by JDV, potentially over a 12-year period. But maybe by this time the parallels with Brexit and 14-years of Tory rule in the UK emerge. Immigration is vastly down in numbers but as a result, produce remains unpicked in the field, medical facilities, care homes and other industries cannot get enough workers. Trickle down economics hasn't made houses any cheaper nor are the number of people in poverty reduced. Economic factors such as fuel prices and inflation still come and go (these are factors that are notoriously outside the bounds of government control). And at some point, people will begin to ask whether the promised Utopia has been delivered? Brexit and MAGA are twins in the sense that they are concepts / visions that people can rally behind but where details of deliverables and methods are quite nebulous outside of the grand reduction in immigration numbers and "taking back control", whatever that means. Hard, cold reality lies between light-on-detail political visions and subsequent delivery and adherents to a cause will eventually want to see *their* vision of what they feel has been promised being delivered.
If the above were to come to fruition, we could again see parallels with the UK and there could be a swing in the opposite direction. Although Labour can claim a strong mandate given the numbers of seats they have from the latest election, I think that it was more of a case that the Tories were voted out than the new incumbents being voted in. I'm sure that if this situation came to pass, the Dems (given a big enough control of both chambers) would look to unambiguously enshrine in law some of the things that are dear to their ideology that have been struck down by the Supreme Court in recent years.
I will add as a footnote - I can see one big difference between Brexit and Trump round #1 compared to Trump round #2. In the case of Brexit and (to a slightly lesser degree) Trump 1, they were like the dog that chased the car and one day they caught it - "crap, now what do we do???" Trump 2 is *much* more organized in terms of what their vision is and how they want to deliver it.