It's remarkable how many of Donald Trump's policy positions are driven by personal pique:
- He opposes aid to Ukraine because they resisted his extortion attempts in 2019 and got him impeached.
- He hates wind turbines because they ruined the view from one of his Scottish golf courses.
- He wants to repeal Obamacare because President Obama made fun of him in 2011.
- He detests electric cars because GM once closed some plants in order to free up money for EV development. The plant closures infuriated Trump, who had promised to revive manufacturing jobs.
- He opposes the FISA anti-terrorism surveillance program because he's convinced the intelligence community has spied on him.
- He opposes shutting down TikTok because it would help Facebook, which took down some of his ads during the 2020 campaign and then suspended his account after the January 6 insurrection.
- He favors cuts to the FBI budget because they investigated his Russia ties and raided his Mar-a-Lago home.
I could go on and on. We all know about Trump's endless litany of grievances, which constitute most of his stump speeches, but not enough attention is paid to the way they affect concrete policy.
And Republicans are ON BOARD with every bit of it. After all, grievance is pretty much the sum and substance of their politics right now. Even the usual "lower taxes" is grievance-driven, since after all it's their Hard-Earned Tax Dollars that are spent on all that Welfare for all those lazy inner-city types and job-stealing illegals and kids-who-never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives, etc., etc. And that's before you get to all their other -- many, many, often utterly imaginary -- grievances.
He really is the perfect avatar for modern Republicanism. This is why it will persist even when he has departed this plane.
It really does suck that the US is comprised mainly of people who actively chose to be here. At some point, most people descend from someone who looked around wherever they lived and said "fuck this, I deserve better" and immigrated to America. It's true that a lot of other places were personally worse for them, and they have more freedom here to be themselves, often freedom that their home country never would've given them if they had stayed put. But it also means that America has more than its fair share of assholes, as people who just don't want to deal with even minor restrictions on their freedom say "fuck this, I deserve better" too and move here instead of even making the smallest effort to try to get along with their fellow humans in whatever country they lived in. Then they go ahead and raise their kids to also believe "fuck this, I deserve better" as adults, even though they already are in the freest country on earth that isn't (yet) falling apart from all the freedom making holding a country together impossible.
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I have thought of this in similar terms, that when most of the European immigration occurred, crossing the Atlantic was relatively costly and took many days. It was unlikely that the vast majority of immigrants would ever be able to visit their homeland, their community, their family left behind. So European-Americans are self-selected to be less socially connected, more individualistic, valuing their own better prospects in a new land over working for the betterment of their community in the 'old country', the community in which they grew up. Granted, some had experienced hardships in their country of origin and had no choice but to leave (Irish famine, or pogroms, for example). I wonder if there are any studies of the descendants of immigrants who differed on their motivation to come to the U.S.?
Something is known about one very surprising aspect of immigration in the steamship era, say 1870s-1880s onward, which is that there was a lot of return traffic, ie people going back. It's hard to pin down because the evidence is fragmentary, but my best recollection, having looked into the scholarship a few years ago, is that a good estimate would be that about a third of Polish immigrants in that period went back, and about that proportion or more among Italians. Some went back and forth more than once (especially between the US and Italy); some came here to make enough money to settle down back home, and there were probably as many reasons as people involved.
The two groups you mention specifically, immigrants from Ireland and from the East European shtetls, were the two least likely to go back. Emigrants of almost all periods from Ireland, as I recall, tended overwhelmingly not to return even when it wouldn't have been that hard logistically (maybe the custom of holding emigrant wakes had something to do with that). Jewish emigrants had very little reason to want to go back, though some did anyway.
The evidence on this is necessarily suggestive more than conclusive, and it's been a few years since I've had a good look, but that was the tenor of things that I remember. This picture can be hard to accept given how we tend (and maybe want) to think of immigration as a one-way street.
Interesting, though I'd like to see the evidence on the one-third estimate, that is surprisingly high.
Not quite right. The people who chose to come here had one thing their neighbors who stayed in the old country didn’t have: gumption.
Most people in a bad situation swallow hard and make do. It takes courage and self-confidence to leave everything and everyone you know and strike out for a place where you don’t even speak the language, often knowing there is no going back. Those are the people who make this country what it is. I’ll even use the word “exceptional”.
You assume they are assholes and some of them probably are, but mostly we’ve skimmed off the ones with gumption.
The tell here is that Trump supporters aren’t usually named Como, Huang, Gottschalk, Cohen, Kowalski, Singh, or Ortega. They’re not newcomers; they’re Smiths and Joneses, whose families have been here for centuries.
If they’re assholes they didn’t bring it with them. They got it here.
do you think the average magahead cares one way or another about wind turbines or electric cars or fisa or ukraine or most of this stuff sans trump? his words are gospel to them. religious connotation intended. if he had decreed that his true followers should stare at the eclipse earlier this month, hospitals would have been deluged with 40 million cases of serious eye damage. (in a figurative sense they are already blind.)
Yeah I think it's more the emotional tenor than the specifics. "Facts" don't seem to matter as much to those folks as attitude, specifically one of angry victimhood. He's upset about windmills, they're upset about egg prices or ticket resellers or who knows what, and they both hate brown people, so they're both happy. TIFG doesn't hold rallies; he holds grievance festivals, where instead of music they listen to trigger words.
The true MAGA heads love one thing about Trump, is that his whole persona is "no one tells me what to do, or what to say!" Which is absolutely correct, its not an act, its how he rolls. And, if they had money, that is how they would roll. They would tell all the off color jokes they want at work and if they got fired they would open their own company based on off color jokes.
I believe that is separate, though, from the Trump voters who pray every night at dinner for the deaths of the unborn. Or, for example, Steven Miller. Miller does not care about someone telling him what to do. He just wants to shoot immigrants at the border.
💯
And who's the real snowflake?
Yes, but that's what his core base wants. They also are motivated by personal pique, which is largely shaped by silly stories on Fox News about Biden coming after your gas stoves or whatever.
Matt Taibbi (before he went off the rails) wrote a pretty good piece about Sarah Palin back in the day, and he highlighted the fact that she operates in terms of personal feuds:
"She is building a political career around the little interpersonal wars in the immediate airspace surrounding her sawdust-filled head. And in the process she connects with pissed-off, frightened, put-upon America on a plane that’s far more elemental than the mega-ditto schtick."
That's exactly what Trump taps into, and his fans love to cheer him on in these fights. He becomes a proxy for their own personal embitterment. It's just amazing he's made it so far on so little.
Assholes are gonna asshole. And narcissists are going to narcissist. Not really sure why Kevin keeps getting shocked by any of this - he must literally and luckily not have met any assholes or narcissists in his entire life. But they never stop their antisocial behavior until they are forced to stop.
This could be right, but I think it's actually a little more complicated.
First, I think Trump does, indeed, exhibit signs of a personality disorder, one that armchair psychoanalysts routinely diagnose as "narcissism." Whatever the correct diagnosis is, I suspect that his disorder leads him to evaluate the world around him--along with all the people in it--according to whether it seves him or doesn't.
I think this is an intermediate step in the dynamic Kevin proposes. A personality like Trump's considers a novel situation, and like any of us, makes a judgment about it. A great many of us can look at, say, wind turbines and come up with a mixed bag of conclusions.
Trump, I'm guessing, can't do this. He regards the turbines off the coast near his golf course and sees them as deleterious to his interests: they detract from the pristine vista and the 14th tee, or whatever. His specific emotional makeup then relegates wind turbines into the category of Bad Things.
From that point, the same biases that affect us all kick in, like confirmation bias. Wind turbines are bad. Therefore their effect on birds is disastrous. Their noises cause cancer. They don't work when the wind doesn't blow.
So I think Kevin's basic model is correct. Anything that presents a problem for Trump becomes an unalloyed threat to his world. I'm just saying that I believe his specific mental makeup doesn't directly make that link: Wind turbine conflict -> I Hate Turbines. I suspect there's a step in between: Wind turbine conflict -> turbines get classified as Bad Thing -> New question about turbines -> recall that turbines are Bad.
So, what does he have against dogs?
I would bet they all hate him. Every dog he's ever met has started growling at him.
And don't even get started on how cats react to him.
You're probably being generous there re Obama, oh what would Trump do about redlining?
Trump is a really good example of a really bad human being.
Even my narcissist mother, who never voted for a Democrat in her life, hated him.
Narcissistic sociopaths have great difficulty looking at the world from any perspective other than their own.
I suspect most people's political opinions are motivated by personal pique at some level. Here in my rich-y neighborhood in Pasadena, people are talking about the recent thefts of copper wire from old streetlamps. The general response seems to be -- don't they (the thieves, that is) know this stuff is historic? To me, I can't believe my neighbors don't seem to realize if you make the average apartment rent like $2700/month, then of course people are going to grab easily-sellable (to recycling centers in this case) stuff that you leave around. But I think my neighbors' attitude is: I moved here for the historic vibe, can't you leave it alone? They simply can't see past their own anger at the damage to their dream.
Wire from streetlights in much, much more affordable neighborhoods is being stolen where I live. It's more than just aesthetics: people (especially women) are afraid to go out when it's dark, and the cost to repair is astronomical. It also makes it harder to see the many deer that live within the city, creating higher risks for drivers. Plenty of city services are going to take a hit to get back the street lighting.
"He opposes aid to Ukraine because they resisted his extortion attempts in 2019 and got him impeached."
Maybe a quibble, but it wasn't Ukraine who got Trump impeached, but Trump's attempt to extort them wot dun it.
This is Trump's viewpoint we're talking about. Before Trump could admit that your quibble has even the slightest validity, he would have to admit that trying to extort Ukraine was wrong. Trump cannot ever admit that he was even slightly at fault (he's remarkably similar to the average three year old in that respect) so he would more than likely regard your perfectly correct quibble with bafflement.
"perfect phone call"
I.e. he made clear exactly what he was asking for and the threat that backed it up without ever actually saying it.
The injustice of being impeached when you commited your crime so well!
Stump speeches?! You mean Stump Slurrings?
Some of these points are plain false.
1) He doesn't give a hoot about Electrical cars. He thinks it is a good issue to campaign on.
2) Both the FISA and the FBI issues are part of his efforts to convinces doubters that his legal troubles are a result of witch-hunt, rather than his own crimes.
3) He supported TikTok because Jeff Yass, an investor in TikToK, either gave him money or promised to.
Also the Ukraine issue is only partly because of personal pique, it is also because he is an accomplice and an admirer of Putin and wants him to succeed.
Yass's investment firm, Susquehanna Partners, is the largest single shareholder in Trump Media and Technology Group.
Makes it even weirded that Kevin seems to believe that Trump supports TikTok because he has something against facebook.
The main thing the list shows is that he doesn't care about public policy at all, and the items on the list only make it to the level of "policy" becuase its personal to him.
He's like a car salesman selling GM who drives a BMW and has never owned a GM car himself. Of course he does not care what color or type of car his customer buys, whatever the customer wants the salesman will act like its a great decision.
That was Trumps true skill. There are a bunch of pro gun nuts out there? Check. A bunch of anti abortion eveangelicals? Check. Anti immigration (even though he himself employs immigrants)? Check. Anti liberals? Check (boy talk about the easiest one on the list, a if its any work for Trump to act like he hates somebody).
About the only issue he actually might care about is anti regulation, but frankly he probably only cares about anti regulation as to himself. He's all for regulation if the regulation in question would be protecting, say, the "Trump" trademark.
At first we just (a) could not believe someone was actually that shallow, and (b) could not believe what 70 million of our fellow Americans are in favor of, but now its clear.
I do worry about too many libs not really grasping point (b). Every time I hear about somebody who "can't vote for Biden" because of XXXXX. I mean the alternative is not only Trump, but Trump supporters. Sheesh.
Ignorance, paranoia, and revenge. t-Rump and the repulsives.
For reasons I’m not sure I understand one of Trump’s grievances is Jimmy Kimmel. For godsakes he rage tweeted against Kimmel this morning! You’d think Kimmel would be the last thing on his mind, wouldn’t you? If I were Mr. Kimmel I’d be terrified if Trump gets the presidency again. I have no doubt Trump would use the government to take retribution in some way.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/04/17/somebody-had-a-very-addled-morning/
What's weird about Trump's memory of the Oscars is that Kimmel roasted him good that night. "Isn't it past your jail time?" Trump can't take a joke and you know it got under his skin. That's why he should remember what happened. But now he can't tell Kimmel from Al Pacino. He's losing it, and fast.
Kimmel has fun with that tonight.
Nothing is real for most republicans that doesn't directly affect them in some way; that's been a good rule of thumb for a long time and these examples illustrate it.
I think TFG's vindictiveness and willingness to expand on the inconveniences that make things like windmills and Energy Star ratings "bad" set him apart, but the principle is the same. And the shared expression of grievance is what matters for most of these Rs, so they're just as happy to be peeved about trump's list of grievances as any they might have.
OTH things might get fun if what trump implements out of aggrieved peevishness gets under his followers' skin. One can only hope.
What Altoid said ("Nothing is real for most republicans that doesn't directly affect them in some way; that's been a good rule of thumb for a long time and these examples illustrate it.").
Best example is the Republicans that became advocates of gay rights only because someone in their family came out (or they themselves did).
Democrats need to do a better job of illustrating how the Republican party has made their lives demonstrably worse for the last several decades.