Here is Donald Trump's apparent governing plan so far:
- Enact 20% tariffs on all imports.¹
- Cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.²
- Let RFK Jr. "go wild" on health, food, and medicine.³
- Mass deportation of illegal immigrants.¹ ²
- Big tax cuts for corporations and the rich.¹
- Abandon Ukraine. Maybe Taiwan too.4
- Use the military to fight "the enemy within."5
- Build a strategic Bitcoin reserve.³
- Fire thousands of nonpartisan civil servants so he can replace them with MAGA drones.6
- Repeal any and all efforts at combating climate change, which is a hoax.³
- Implement "concepts of a plan" to repeal Obamacare, including its provision that protects people with preexisting conditions.7
- Take unspecified revenge against Meta and Google.³
- Blow up the federal deficit.¹
How is it possible that there are lots of people who actually want this? Do even conservatives really want this? Even if Trump loses, it's apparent that we've lost our collective mind.
¹Would wreck the economy and spike inflation.
²Not actually possible, thank God.
³Come on, man.
4Would encourage two-bit dictators worldwide and make it clear that nukes are a country's only real protection.
5Obviously unconstitutional.
6Delusions of grandeur, anyone?
7Would hurt lots of people for no perceptible reason except retribution against Obama.
He was, is and will always be a menace to this country. His stupidity and that of his followers will bring about misery for all. Too bad his cult can't see past the tip of their own nose.
But, Trump hates the black/brown people, immigrants not from northern Europe, aka, white people, the gays and God forbid the trans people, and the evil Dems. What more do they want? Unfortunately, nothing.
"How is it possible that there are lots of people who actually want this?"
They remind me of the children who made a fetish of a rotting, fly-infested, severed human head in "The Lord of the Flies."
It was a pig’s head, but your point still stands.
How is it possible that there are lots of people who actually want this?
(1) Many of them are utterly fucking clueless, and don't have the foggiest understanding of public policy:
https://x.com/TheGoodLiars/status/1850931723183235365
(2) Many of them think he's not really serious about all of it, and support him because they want lower taxes, or they hate trans people, or immigrants, or liberals, or whatever.
(3) Many of them are angry (probably self-hating) nihilists who just want shit blown up. So they're supporting an agent of chaos.
It's a mixture.
They think, “Well, nothing really bad happened from 2017-2019. How bad could he be this time?”
For some they think their situation can't get any worse. I think they're wrong. But convincing them of this is hard, dare I say impossible.
Matt Yglesias remarked in the free version of his substack that most countries saw a post-COVID hornrieness in their electorates with a reflexive rejection of incumbents. For me, next to losing relatives to COVID well before their time, the greatest tragedy for me was my loss of faith in humanity. People are just stupid, craven, mean, and vindictive. Maybe not everyone, but a much larger percentage than I thought possible.
I console my self by reading A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman about "the calamitous 14th Century". Things are not that bad.... yet.
"People are just stupid, craven, mean, and vindictive. Maybe not everyone, but a much larger percentage than I thought possible." I think there will always be a fair number of these people. In good times they lie dormant. All it takes is a little bit of hardship to bring it out of them. Add to this the fact that people just love to place blame. Justifiably or not. They need to find anyone or anything to direct their fear, hate and anger towards.
You think firing and replacing as much of the federal bureaucracy as he can with loyalists is "delusions of grandeur"? It's one of the more realistic and terrifying things he could do, and in short order.
Also, the anti-Kamala ads during the World Series are telling. It's a mad lib of crazy shit like "Kamala supports taxpayer funded transgender prisoner sex change operations and letting men compete against your girls in their sports." Just a little window into what they think their voters want and what they're selling - so think about the kind of people that stuff works on, and how many of them there are.
They're pretty low production quality ads, too. Cheap, just like Trump.
To some of us, this descent into madness these last 15 (or 30? 40?) years has been agonizingly apparent. We're constantly underestimating the power of stupidity and bullshit.
It's all about the bigotry, punishment and revenge. Few people (any?) care about or are even aware of his policies.
Raging about brown people, women, trans, non-christians, etc... has always been the thing that matters. The only thing.
You neglected to mention his promises to stop men competing in women's sporting events and to end the practice some schools have of doing gender reassignment surgery without their parents noticing they've gone missing. Many of his most devout followers seem to regard these as the most important issues facing America.
I just don’t understand his appeal to people he (and his supporters) hate the most.
Many years ago I wondered if any Jews voted for Hitler and the Nazis in Germany in the 30’s and was surprised that indeed there was a group known as The Association of German National Jews who supported and voted for Hitler. We know what happened to them.
There's a historical scene [film] shot at a location in Italy in the early '30's where thousands of Italians cheer Mussolini and his fascist rhetoric. Years later, Mussolini and his wife are hung upside down at [I believe] that same location.
I've always wondered how many of those people were at both gatherings. How and when did the realization of their ignorance come about? Shit is only real when it happens to you. History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
He’s just kidding. Looting and pillaging and grifting is on the agenda. They are too corrupt to do any of those things. Kickbacks will mitigate tariff policies.
The trumpist maggots hate you. They just hate you. They want you to be afraid and suffer. They are the Israelis and you are the Palestinians (or vice versa depending on where your sympathies lie). It's just that simple. You dared to beat him and then dared to prosecute him. This is intolerable. So they are ready to fight. The last many years have seen a continuous rise in right wing hatred for left wing and centrist people. We elect Clinton, they go after him. (Well, he was a creep.) We elect Bush, they still go after democrats. We elect Obama, they go after him. Then they elect trump. And now the escalations just keep on coming. Where does it end? When does it stop? It doesn't.
This is what the coming oppression will be modeled after. It's such a simple thing. Very effective, though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/world/asia/china-police-halloween-celebration.html
"The police escorted the Buddha down the street, one officer steering him with both hands. They hurried a giant poop emoji out of a cheering dance circle in a public park. They also pounced on Donald J. Trump with a bandaged ear, and pushed a Kim Kardashian look-alike, in a tight black dress and pearls, into a police van, while she turned and waved to a crowd of onlookers. The authorities in Shanghai were on high alert this past weekend, against a pressing threat: Halloween."
You are a hopelesss optimist.
Trump wants actual shooting (aka 'vicious response').
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/01/trump-suggests-kind-vicious-response-protesters-he-once-hailed-china/
He doesn't give a shit about policy. All this election is to him is getting revenge for being turned into a loser and against the people who opposed him. His freakout that Biden quit the race was because he couldn't get revenge on Biden for beating him.
The policy shit is a marriage of an idiot's thoughts mixed with a racist, misogynistic, psychotic man full of hate, looking to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the fascist (conservative populist) base he's cultivated.
That freakout was IMO also simply because after he ran circles around Biden with his Gish Gallops he was confident that he had winning in the bag, and what he cares about is winning or just convincincing people he is winning which is just about as good in other circumstances.
He knew that with Harris he had a much less certainty of dong that. Being a winner or appearing to be is the thing and the only thing.
One of the things I'm dreading, and I don't think gets enough attention, is the almost certain shuttering of NOAA, including the National Hurricane Center and Storm Prediction Center. These are world-leading experts in their fields, and almost everyone (including and perhaps especially gulf coast and great plains red staters) depend on for timely weather hazard forecasts, watches, and warnings. But NOAA occasionally mentions the words Climate Change, and AccuWeather and its related right-wing megadonor would love you make you pay a monthly subscription for this kind of critical information, so here we are.
Just throw it on the immense pile of awful that will come after the MAGA sweep in and teach all those pronouns a lesson in greatness.
"Fire thousands of nonpartisan civil servants"
How is this possible? Civil servants were protected with the enactment of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 (!). And there have been subsequent strengthening of the provisions.
"Enact 20% tariffs on all imports."
"all"? Would be at the president's discretion and hence, an opportunity to favor segments of the economy in exchange for enriching Trump. A pure corruption move.
Yes on the second thing, but autocrats do manage to pull off the first. Only a compliant Congress and Supreme Court are necessary in this case. He mostly has the Court. Maybe a remaining liberal will die or become incapacitated. Or he will arrange something Putin style. Sounds crazy until it happens.
He will just sign an executive order to fire all GS 12s or 14s and above and dare any of those guys to do something about it at the 100% risk of retribution of who knows what kind. And tell new Minister of Cutting Shit Elon to can whatever thousands of the rest he wants to. Then hire from the Federalist Society list.
VOTE. (Yes I know everyone here is.)
"Only a compliant Congress and Supreme Court .."
Doesn't need compliant court, because he can make it compliant by threats and violence, and the Court doesn't have a way to respond.
The Congress can impeach, so he does need a compliant Congress. He will have that, in the sense that there are enough Republican worms in the senate to block impeachment. That is the crtitical difference between his previous term and if he wins the next term.
“How is this possible?”
Allegedly, the Constitution also makes it impossible for the police to arrest or shoot you for exercising freedoms of speech or assembly, and yet people do get arrested or shot when doing nothing more than exercising freedoms of speech or assembly. Sure, a court somewhere might release you from jail or award your surviving relatives damages, although the courts themselves are becoming more lawless too. But that doesn’t help you if you’ve already lost your job/house/family/life from being arrested or shot.
All of that is to say: it’s easy to fire people. You order their emails and IDs deactivated and you order other people to stop paying them. If someone in HR refuses, you fire them too until you get to someone who will do it. It’s a lot harder for those people to fight to get their jobs back: most lawyers don’t work for free, and you’ve got household bills to pay while the case works its slow way through the increasingly corrupt courts. Even if you win, and the federal employees very well might, you’ve lost a year or more of steady income… and possibly your home, car, family, etc. Someone in power dedicated to making lives miserable can do so for remarkably long periods of time before the courts will stop them.
All those plans should come with an extra asterisk: *unless you sufficiently bribe Trump to exempt your company/institution/organization.
+1
On the upside, all these policies would completely crater the US and global economy, sowing chaos and causing immiseration on scale unseen since the Great Depression, which would definitely bring down the price of food and gas. And that's why we're here, amirite?
Bitcoin reserve? But it's strategic, man!
The actual deciding issues are:
1. Dominance of the "white race". This has always been a major issue in the US, but these days few people will admit to racism .
2. Dominance of the "Christian" religion. This is framed as "religious freedom". Religion is the excuse for many things that really involve persecution of minorities who don't conform to tribal mores.
3. Male supremacy. This is getting more open, but has always been a barrier for female candidates who do not adopt the other points.
4. Regional grievance. The South will rise again. The less citified parts of the West have attached themselves to this feeling.
These are the main things for about 30% of the population, that is MAGAs, and possibly influential in many "swing" voters. These are all instinctive motivations, and tribal instincts can obviously dominate over other motivations. People will sacrifice their lives for the tribe in armed conflicts. The things that Kevin lists are just not as important.
People motivated by these things who ignore real issues are not necessarily stupid - reason just takes a back seat when culture and politics bring the instinctive motivations to the fore. The people so motivated are not individually more cruel than others but tribal feelings and action are inherently cruel. It's us against them to the death.
Of course the traditional leaders of the Republicans are devoted to the power and enrichment of themselves and backers, and have deliberately exploited the tribal feelings to get votes for their economic measures.
The media insist on ignoring or minimizing the racial part especially, so they very frequently falsely ascribe economic motivations to lower-income Trump voters. I don't have a killer strategy for defeating tribalism, but consistently ascribing wrong motivations can't help.
There is no collective loss of mind, just a lot of people succumbing as amoral politicians exploit tribalism to attain power. It has always happened through history.
Kevin's list is too much based on what a liberal Democrat would think. It gives me a good opportunity to point out what IMO Repubs actually vote on:
1. Mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Yes, this also includes a hard "no" on affirmative action and DEI which should be, IMO, in the same category.
2. Big tax cuts for corporations and the rich. For sure, although its really more like "tax cuts, which happen to benefit the rich more than you."
3. Against climate change regulations? Yes, but that's a stand in for "any" regulations and there is a not insignificant portion of the Repub base that basically thinks all regulation is bad.
4. You didn't mention criminalizing abortion -- come on, even though he's attempting to keep quiet on that now? The life begins at conception crowd know their guy.
5. I'm surprised you didn't mention Trump's concept of "free speech" - which includes no penalty for racial "jokes" including calling Puerto Rico a pile of garbage. Come on, that's like 20% of his base.
Similarly, you did not mention the all guns all the time crowd. They also know their guy.
The people in favor of the above don't care, or don't know about any of the other stuff on the list.
I always hoped that the number of 1-5 plus guns was more like 30% of the population but sadly its like 46%. I mean, you could add "6. Have never voted for a Democrat" but whoever is in that category is exactly balanced out by never vote for a Republican so I don't think its relevant.
Trump's real skill is getting his supporters to believe that he is serious about whatever they think is important but just kidding about all that garbage he spouts to bring in the rubes. Of course "the rubes" think that first person is the rube and Trump is serious about their issue and not the others.
This comes out at its oddest when he gives contradictory explanations for things and is able to count on his supporters ignoring the ones that don't work for them. I mean arguments like "I didn't take top secret documents and the reason that it is OK that I took top secret documents is that I can make them not top secret, and it doesn't matter because I kept them secure." The idea seems to be to just let his supporters decide which one they think is credible.
Of course like a conman he mostly just lets his supporters fill things in however they think is most credible. That is why he will never be specific about how the election was stolen from him. His answer to how the election was stolen is always "What answer would you believe? That's the one.
Here's another "promise" that would be devastating.
Trump has said he would defund any school that requires vaccinations.
His dangerous idiocy has no limits.
Modern media of all kinds have probably made it possible for people like Trump to attain high office. Formerly a Presidential candidates had to be approved by party leaders, who were less gullible than the public. They generally knew who had some actual capabilities. As the nomination process was made more democratic, TV also became more important. Trump was originally puffed up by the media as a real estate mogul, but after his bankruptcies his reputation was rescued by being the principal character on a "reality" TV show. Facts do not support the idea that he is a great businessman, but that show did. When Republicans gained ascendancy, primarily by attracting the racist vote, they opened the way for highly partisan TV (Fox) as well as radio. There were always partisan newpapers, but the partisanship of TV and radio had been limited until then.
Social media have not been a critical step, but they made it easier for people to get more partisan and conspiratorial "news". Fox News may feel it necessary to compete with social media in getting less factual and more conspiratorial.
The basic motivations of Trump voters have existed for a long time and won't be going away if he loses, although there is an ebb and flow in these things. The non-print media are not going to go back to being nonpartisan even if there are limits on social media.
You forgot "Put Robert Kennedy Jr. in charge of health care."
Because that is not included in the third bullet point.