November 22nd, 2024The people have spoken and said ‘yeah, nah’

From California, Jeff Glorfeld pops his head up above the parapet and  surveys the wreckage.

Blame-storming

Anyone who has worked in a corporate setting has experienced the phenomenon known as blame-storming, the action that always occurs after an organisation has experienced a colossal screw-up.

Under the guise of figuring out what went wrong and why, the most important task is to decide who’s to blame.

The US presidential election is over and the Democratic Party has had its collective ass – or arse, if you prefer – handed to it. Thus far we have seen pundits  blame Kamala Harris for a multitude of mistakes, including not distancing herself sufficiently from Joe Biden.

The Guardian published a story citing a “masculinity researcher” (is that even a real job?) who said Harris lost because she failed to impress young men. Several commentators blamed the outcome on the racism and misogyny inherent in US society.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent darling of the liberal Left, blames the entire Democratic Party, which he says has abandoned the values and needs of working-class people.

These are all fair criticisms. But looking beyond the all-important assigning of blame, the choice of Donald Trump to be the next US president reveals some fundamental facts: most voters in this country have turned their backs on principles such as the rule of law, the separation of church and state (Christian nationalism is now firmly entrenched), the equality of all people (white men to the front) and no longer believe honour and integrity matter.   

The US system is often called an experiment: a democracy. It is weighted down by checks and balances, making it slow to produce action but hopefully allowing it opportunities to be fair and deliberative.   

To all these attributes, US voters have said, yeah, nah, no thanks, not any more.   

Sane-washing   

This campaign cycle saw a couple of new terms emerge in political commentary. One is “sanewashing”. We started seeing it more often in the closing months of the presidential campaign, as the deterioration of Donald Trump’s mental abilities became increasingly obvious.   

Writer Jeff Tiedrich explained it in his Substack column as “the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent”.   

Because of this sanewashing, most voters never saw the 78-year-old Hitler fanboy at his demented worst.   

Wishcasting   

Now that the sanewashing of Trump has had the desired effect, the newest media practice to emerge is called “wishcasting”, sort of magical forecasting.   

How that works is, commentators ignore the Nazi stuff, the criminal convictions, the cognitive decline, the overt sexism and racism, the dictator-on-day-one remarks, the “suckers and losers” sneers, the promise of mass deportations and concentration camps, and the punishing of his rivals and critics.

Instead, they predict – wishcast – that, as opposed to hateful, vengeful candidate Trump, a new Trump will appear and be reasonable, dignified and rational – none of which he has ever been at any time in his life.   

Upfront   

I’m not hiding anything here; my family contributed a couple hundred dollars to the Democratic cause and in return received a Harris-Walz sign, which we put up in our front yard, clearly visible from the street.

Over the next few weeks I joked (?) to friends that, happily, there were still no bullet holes in the sign.

Also, in honour of my dad, who was a proud veteran and rusted-on Democrat, we hung his US flag off the front of the house, which we never do.   

Americans display the flag like a fetish – it’s abso-bloody-lutely everywhere and I think it most often denotes false patriotism and cheap virtue signaling. But I  wanted to send the message, combined with the Harris-Walz sign, that we vote Democrat and respect the country’s core values.

Time to take the tinsel down   

After the election disaster, the next morning I went out and removed the  Harris-Walz sign. Why? Because we lost, the election was over. But, after I  thought about it a bit more, I realised that I felt fear that leaving the sign there might make my home a target for MAGA people, who, emboldened by their victory and, Trump-like, would be seeking to punish those who opposed them.   

I’ve also left my dad’s flag up, as a sign that we’re good Americans too.   

Daring liars   

The distinguished American journalist H.L Mencken, whose career stretched from 1900 into the 1940s, is quoted as saying, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”, which is a paraphrase of the actual quote: “No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”   

He also said: “The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”   

How has Trump managed to prevail? He has demonstrated time and again that he lacks compassion and empathy, that he is wholly motivated by personal gain and greed, and cares nothing for concepts such as the common good.   

He will do and say anything, as long as it benefits him. Powerful forces came together to put him into power. We can only guess at what happens next.