MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Trump's denialism worked
Mr. Trump abdicated responsibility, shifting the burden onto states and municipalities with busted budgets. He then waged a war of words against governors and mayors — especially Democrats — who refused to risk their citizens’ lives by allowing economic and social activity to resume.
He spurred his supporters to make light of the danger of infection, made the churlish refusal to wear masks into an emblem of emancipation from the despotism of experts and turned public health restrictions on businesses, schools and social gatherings into a tyrannical conspiracy to steal power by damaging the economy and his re-election prospects.
He succeeded in putting Democrats on the defensive about economic restrictions and school closures. As months passed and with no new relief coming from Washington, financially straitened Democratic states and cities had little choice but to ease restrictions on businesses just to keep the lights on. That seemed to concede the economic wisdom of the more permissive approach in majority-Republican states and fed into Mr. Trump’s false narrative of victory over the virus and a triumphant return to normalcy.
But Democrats weren’t destined to get quite as tangled in Mr. Trump’s trap as they did. They had no way to avoid it, but they could have been hurt less by it. They allowed Republicans to define the contrast between the parties’ approaches to the pandemic in terms of freedom versus exhausting, indefinite shutdowns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/opinion/trump-democrats-coronavirus.html
Comments
Along similar lines, David Brooks writes about the rotting of the Republican mind
How do you communicate with someone who believes alternative facts?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/republican-disinformation.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
by rmrd0000 on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 12:49pm
RMRD... Posted for...
The visual memory on the way out...
~OGD~
by oldenGoldenDecoy on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 1:13pm
some more along those lines here, it's related to the #DiaperDon meme started by Meidas Touch after yesterday's press conference; it's been a huge viral hit. Edit to add that #DiaperDon is still trending on Twitter. I know, you said you don't use Twitter, but that's where all of this kind of attack humor is started these days and is sustained and disseminated, no longer comes from "the blogosphere"
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 1:46pm
Thanks
Hope that you had a great Thanksgiving
Haven't watch much news today but Trump telling the reporter not to talk to him "that way" reinforced the image Trump projects.
by rmrd0000 on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 5:55pm
RMRD...
Flyin' 'round the cuckoo's next . . .
Where's nurse Ratched when ya' need her?
~OGD~
by oldenGoldenDecoy on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 10:54pm
Driftglass Americas leading Brooks critic, on this essay:
"....The alert reader will also notice that words like "race" or "racism" or "white supremacy" are not to be found anywhere within the scope of Mr. Brooks' "analysis". Instead he wears the edges off of his thesaurus trying to bring the bullshit "economic anxiety" alibi back from the dead. ....
Then, having dispensed with the entire history of the modern Republican Party from Nixon's Southern Strategy through Birtherism, Mr. Brooks is free to blame it all on Trump and his "media allies":
And to whom does Mr. Brooks once again delegate the dirty, thankless task of trying to repair all that his Republican Party has destroyed?
You and me kid. You and me."
https://driftglass.blogspot.com/?m=1
by NCD on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 2:08pm
This is the problem. Republicans are operating in a different universe.
by rmrd0000 on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 6:19pm
I like this paragraph by Wilkinson
Of course it's his opinion and not backed up here with any stats. But it summarizes well a lot of things I have read elsewhere, like about how the Democratic party is becoming more and more the party of the educated elite, how more working class Hispanics went for Trump this time, how many others voted GOP downticket even if they voted for Biden for president, etc., and even how elite educated kiddies took over BLM protests that ended up with lots of damage to small business when they were already so downed by the pandemic measures.
For me one bid irony of the election is turning out to be that many in the Democratic party for decades would suggest that if they could just increase turnout, they would win the whole shebang every time. Well we got record turnout and surprise surprise surprise! Ain't as easy as they thought.
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 1:33pm
She got tired of waiting for him to show up, decided to dance with another...
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 11/27/2020 - 2:17pm
Charlie Cook on Trump's Repeat Performance With Late-Deciding Voters, Nov. 17
by artappraiser on Mon, 11/30/2020 - 5:14pm