They still don’t get it. Eight years after Donald Trump was first elected president of the United States of America, the elites remain mystified that such an anomaly could occur. They still view his voters less as rational beings to be engaged with than as a far-flung tribe to be studied. They still approach this curious horde – if they approach it at all – as a Victorian anthropologist might have approached a pre-modern people in the densest forests of Africa. ‘I went to CPAC as an anthropologist to understand Trump’s base’, wrote a ‘distinguished professor’ earlier this year, breezily unaware of the offence such pseudo-scientific studies might cause to those being studied. That’s another thing they still don’t get: how creepy they seem to ordinary people.
They still don’t get that people might have their reasons to vote for Trump. They still wring their un-toiled hands over ‘the mass psychology of Trumpism’. They still send their psychological experts to study how this most curious of peoples can ‘justify their beliefs in the face of disconfirming information’. Yes, they still swaddle in fancy academic dialect that belief they’re unwilling to state out loud: ‘These people are dumb as sh*t.’ They still view the Trumpist masses as uniquely susceptible to demagogic trickery and manipulation. As tragic inhabitants of a ‘dark fantasy’ who seem to struggle with ‘the difference between fact and fiction’, as a writer for the Atlantic put it this week. They are still that contemptuous.
They still view them as thick f**ks. They still send their reporters to mingle ‘among America’s “low-information” voters’, as the New Yorker did recently. They still love to point out that Trump does best in polls of ‘people who pay little attention to political news’. They still reach for the smelling salts when one of the low-information little people tells them ‘I don’t trust any media… nor Google… nor Facebook’, as a MAGA fella told the New Yorker. As if it isn’t eminently reasonable for these folk to distrust and dodge an MSM that views them as halfwits and lowlifes lost in a fantasy of lies, as easy ‘prey’ for Trumpian scheming. They still don’t get that people don’t take kindly to being told Trump is ‘preying’ on their ‘hazy understanding’ of world affairs, because they know what this means: ‘My God, you’re stupid.’
They still think millions of Americans are under the spell of a ‘MAGA cult’. They still view them as the hick adherents to a neo-religious movement obsessed with guns and God. Sixteen years after Barack Obama pissed off Midwest voters by saying many of them ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them’, and eight years after Hillary Clinton said half of Trump’s voters belong to a ‘basket of deplorables’, they still gnash their teeth over the worldview of ‘God, guns and Trump’ that allegedly motors this odd mass. They still think they’re racist. They still pump out anti-throng propaganda saying Trump voters are beholden to a ‘deep-seated fear of racial otherness’, as Le Monde did this week. They still deplore.
They still make no secret of their rarefied bewilderment that anyone could vote for Trump. Eight years after a New York Times columnist haughtily wondered ‘How Could Anyone Vote for Trump?’ – no doubt to the ferocious nodding of every brunch-eater in the city – professors still ask: ‘Why do people still back Trump, after everything?’ Though at least now they offer ‘five things’ to understand about these people’s ‘thinking’. They’re still trying to crack the masses’ mysterious minds. They still mistake their own geographical and moral aloofness, their gated insouciance for the lower orders, the fact they have never once crossed paths with a Trump voter, for proof that such voters are strange, faraway beasts, an almost dreamlike community. They still, to paraphrase Jonathan Swift, ‘mistake the echo of their coffee houses for the voice of the nation’.
They still blame them for future doom. They still tell them that by dumbly voting Trump, they will condemn the world to End Times. A victory for Trump could ‘reverberate for a million years’ because this ‘oligarch’ might just ‘break the planet’s climate system’, says a fever-headed scribe at the Guardian. A Trump win will mark the ‘return of… chaos’ and an increased ‘risk of cataclysm’, says Vox. Yes, they charge the most powerless people in American society – working-class voters for Trump – with witlessly bringing about mankind’s descent into a convulsing hell of climate doom and war. Eight years ago, they found these rednecks guilty of rehabilitating fascism; now they convict them of being dim aiders and abetters of apocalypse.
They still slight them, they still demean them. ‘Welcome to your Nazi rally’, I saw well-to-do Kamala campaigners holler at the good people who attended the Trump rally in NYC last weekend. They still don’t understand how awful the optics are when the credentialed elites sneer at working men and women who just have a different political view. You are voting for a ‘rapist’, a ‘psychopath’ and a ‘fraud’, Kamala’s New York posse shouted at the mostly out-of-town Trumpists who’d come to see the man they plan to vote for. Seeing bourgeois New Yorkers who’d gallantly foresworn their usual Sunday brunch to bark insults at women in sensible zip-up tops and men in checked shirts brought home to me like nothing else the class animus that fuels establishment Trump-phobia. They still don’t get that there is indeed a class war, and they’re on the wrong side of it.
They still don’t get that many working-class Americans vote Trump because they think he has a better economic plan. And because they are sick and tired of the luxury apocalypticism of a bored bourgeoisie that obsesses over ‘the end of the world’ while they worry about ‘the end of the week’. And because they are tired of being the butt of jokes on SNL and the target of invective in the NYT. And because they are bewildered by Kamala’s surreal promise of ‘joy’ and ‘vibes’ when there’s inflation to deal with. And because they are fed up with seeing everything from their religious beliefs to their cultural pastimes being trounced by a godless establishment that believes in little more than retweets. And because they don’t want boys on their daughters’ sports teams, or America-bashing in their kids’ schools, or crime on their streets. And because they have decided that they prefer the blunt cudgel of Trump’s anti-establishment politics to the Ivy League paternalism of the other side.
Trump’s team actually came up with one of the great electoral slogans of our time. ‘Kamala is for they / them – President Trump is for you’, it said. For this really is an election of ‘They / them vs us’. It really is a clash between an elite beholden to an eccentric politics of identity and voters who would rather focus on class. It genuinely represents a battle of ideas – yes, snobs: ideas – between the Kamala classes who declare their pronouns and ordinary people who are declaring their anger. It really is a stand-off between an elite luxuriously obsessing over the ‘death of the planet’ and working people worried about the death of industry. Only a fool would try to predict the outcome of today’s election, but we know one thing for certain: millions of people will vote for Trump. And they will not have made this choice rashly or mindlessly. That’s what the elites still don’t get. I’m starting to think they never will.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
They still view them as thick f**ks. They still send their reporters to mingle ‘among America’s “low-information” voters’, as the New Yorker did recently. They still love to point out that Trump does best in polls of ‘people who pay little attention to political news’. They still reach for the smelling salts when one of the low-information little people tells them ‘I don’t trust any media… nor Google… nor Facebook’, as a MAGA fella told the New Yorker. As if it isn’t eminently reasonable for these folk to distrust and dodge an MSM that views them as halfwits and lowlifes lost in a fantasy of lies, as easy ‘prey’ for Trumpian scheming. They still don’t get that people don’t take kindly to being told Trump is ‘preying’ on their ‘hazy understanding’ of world affairs, because they know what this means: ‘My God, you’re stupid.’
They still think millions of Americans are under the spell of a ‘MAGA cult’. They still view them as the hick adherents to a neo-religious movement obsessed with guns and God. Sixteen years after Barack Obama pissed off Midwest voters by saying many of them ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them’, and eight years after Hillary Clinton said half of Trump’s voters belong to a ‘basket of deplorables’, they still gnash their teeth over the worldview of ‘God, guns and Trump’ that allegedly motors this odd mass. They still think they’re racist. They still pump out anti-throng propaganda saying Trump voters are beholden to a ‘deep-seated fear of racial otherness’, as Le Monde did this week. They still deplore.
They still make no secret of their rarefied bewilderment that anyone could vote for Trump. Eight years after a New York Times columnist haughtily wondered ‘How Could Anyone Vote for Trump?’ – no doubt to the ferocious nodding of every brunch-eater in the city – professors still ask: ‘Why do people still back Trump, after everything?’ Though at least now they offer ‘five things’ to understand about these people’s ‘thinking’. They’re still trying to crack the masses’ mysterious minds. They still mistake their own geographical and moral aloofness, their gated insouciance for the lower orders, the fact they have never once crossed paths with a Trump voter, for proof that such voters are strange, faraway beasts, an almost dreamlike community. They still, to paraphrase Jonathan Swift, ‘mistake the echo of their coffee houses for the voice of the nation’.
They still blame them for future doom. They still tell them that by dumbly voting Trump, they will condemn the world to End Times. A victory for Trump could ‘reverberate for a million years’ because this ‘oligarch’ might just ‘break the planet’s climate system’, says a fever-headed scribe at the Guardian. A Trump win will mark the ‘return of… chaos’ and an increased ‘risk of cataclysm’, says Vox. Yes, they charge the most powerless people in American society – working-class voters for Trump – with witlessly bringing about mankind’s descent into a convulsing hell of climate doom and war. Eight years ago, they found these rednecks guilty of rehabilitating fascism; now they convict them of being dim aiders and abetters of apocalypse.
They still slight them, they still demean them. ‘Welcome to your Nazi rally’, I saw well-to-do Kamala campaigners holler at the good people who attended the Trump rally in NYC last weekend. They still don’t understand how awful the optics are when the credentialed elites sneer at working men and women who just have a different political view. You are voting for a ‘rapist’, a ‘psychopath’ and a ‘fraud’, Kamala’s New York posse shouted at the mostly out-of-town Trumpists who’d come to see the man they plan to vote for. Seeing bourgeois New Yorkers who’d gallantly foresworn their usual Sunday brunch to bark insults at women in sensible zip-up tops and men in checked shirts brought home to me like nothing else the class animus that fuels establishment Trump-phobia. They still don’t get that there is indeed a class war, and they’re on the wrong side of it.
They still don’t get that many working-class Americans vote Trump because they think he has a better economic plan. And because they are sick and tired of the luxury apocalypticism of a bored bourgeoisie that obsesses over ‘the end of the world’ while they worry about ‘the end of the week’. And because they are tired of being the butt of jokes on SNL and the target of invective in the NYT. And because they are bewildered by Kamala’s surreal promise of ‘joy’ and ‘vibes’ when there’s inflation to deal with. And because they are fed up with seeing everything from their religious beliefs to their cultural pastimes being trounced by a godless establishment that believes in little more than retweets. And because they don’t want boys on their daughters’ sports teams, or America-bashing in their kids’ schools, or crime on their streets. And because they have decided that they prefer the blunt cudgel of Trump’s anti-establishment politics to the Ivy League paternalism of the other side.
Trump’s team actually came up with one of the great electoral slogans of our time. ‘Kamala is for they / them – President Trump is for you’, it said. For this really is an election of ‘They / them vs us’. It really is a clash between an elite beholden to an eccentric politics of identity and voters who would rather focus on class. It genuinely represents a battle of ideas – yes, snobs: ideas – between the Kamala classes who declare their pronouns and ordinary people who are declaring their anger. It really is a stand-off between an elite luxuriously obsessing over the ‘death of the planet’ and working people worried about the death of industry. Only a fool would try to predict the outcome of today’s election, but we know one thing for certain: millions of people will vote for Trump. And they will not have made this choice rashly or mindlessly. That’s what the elites still don’t get. I’m starting to think they never will.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
Choosing between Trump and Harris is like choosing between Ardern and Waititi. The only win here is hopefully our appreciating NZD.
A Pennsylvania judge has extended voting hours in Cambria County until 10 p.m. ET following a software malfunction in the county’s electronic voting system?
The issue, which arose early on Election Day, prevented voters from scanning their ballots at precincts.
A woman named Emily goes to vote, waits in line, and then is told by the poll worker, “Oh, you’ve already voted.”
The poll worker turns the tablet to show that a mail-in ballot was recorded in her name.
When she asks who the ballot was cast for, she’s told she’s not allowed to know.
In another case a man described how he was also told he had voted, despite scanning in his driver’s licence.
The rigging was only discovered because they both turned up in person.
How many won’t?
O'Neill clearly hasn't heard of a Tui billboard. "I'm only in it for the American worker" says Donald Trump. Yeah right!
I know why people vote for him. But someone who tried to overturn the 2020 result by violence should be doing time, not standing for President.
Dig a bit deeper JW.
The self described Demo 'elites'. Generally a vile lot. Hollywood endorsement, just trying to cover their tracks and doing what they are told. Watch that space.
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