Transgression delight.
Trump fundraising email: "Make Straws Great Again."
Trump mocks what his base resents. He revels in being the bad boy. The rule breaker.
They love it.
This week's big news was Trump mocking and denouncing the four congresswomen. Trump doesn't just disagree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, he says they "hate America." He attributes false quotations to them, and then condemns them.
They are a perfect target for him. Polls of Republicans show that AOC is the single most disliked Democrat, and Omar is number two. Evaluations of Fox News coverage shows that AOC is the overwhelmingly most frequent subject, with ten times the coverage of House Democrats in actual leadership. Omar is number two in coverage.
In the current polarized political environment Republicans are less unified in what they like than in what they don't like. They don't like the caricatured version of AOC, Omar, the Squad, and the Green New Deal. So when Trump makes up quotations and Lindsay Graham calls them "communists" it is understood to be exaggerated, unfair teasing and bullying, and that is the point. You don't have to be fair. Or nice.
It is actually better that Ivanka is rumored to have told Trump to tone it down. It is acknowledging that Trump was being nasty.
Trump is showing gleeful showing of contempt for polite norms because this is a signifier of status, position, and entitlement. It is our country and we can do what we want in our own home. You can't tell us what to do, and if you don't like it pound sand. Or go back to wherever.
It is actually better that Ivanka is rumored to have told Trump to tone it down. It is acknowledging that Trump was being nasty.
Trump is showing gleeful showing of contempt for polite norms because this is a signifier of status, position, and entitlement. It is our country and we can do what we want in our own home. You can't tell us what to do, and if you don't like it pound sand. Or go back to wherever.
It is trolling, provoking, bullying. It is being naughty.
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| Official Trump Collectables Store |
There is a market for products that demonstrate open, joyful flouting of rules to encourage socially responsible behavior. Republican voters don't need actually to favor plastic buildup in the Pacific Ocean. They don't hate the environment. Still, plastic straws--a plastic straw that they themselves might have used at a Dairy Queen--seems like a vanishingly trivial contributor to it.
So who are Democrats to tell people to use a paper straw?!!
So who are Democrats to tell people to use a paper straw?!!
People in Trump's data base get an email every single day. This week one arrived promoting plastic straws marked "Trump" and carrying the official Trump logo. They are 100% made in America.
"Friend, I'm so over paper straws, and I'm sure you are too. Much like most liberal ideas, paper straws don't work and they fall apart instantly. That's why we just launched our latest product - Official Trump Straws."
The text: "failed liberal overregulation."
The subtext: The libs can't make me play by their fussy rules. I'll show them!
The straw issue is an inexpensive way to rebel, although sellers on E-bay will re-sell the same packet and send it to buyers for $40, plus shipping, for the ten straws in "like new" condition. There is a market for this rebellion.
Some truck owners make a bigger statement: "Rolling Coal."
Prius Repellant. Rolling Coal is the term for trucks whose exhausts have been modified to allow them to emit giant plumes of black smoke on demand. This is a form of protest against pollution regulations. They call it "Prius Repellant." The game is to release the giant plume of smoke in the presence of walkers, joggers, bicyclists, and small Asian cars.
A New York Times reporter quoted a diesel truck owner who had modified his vehicle saying "Why don't you go live in Sweden and get the heck out of our country. I will continue to roll coal anytime I feel like and fog your stupid eco-cars."
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| Done on purpose. Take that, environmentalists!! |
Again, this is a form of naughty rebellion, a push back against the implied bullying of pollution rules made by the kinds of people who jog and ride bicycles and drive fuel efficient cars--those overbearing liberals.
Again, the subtext, I'll show them!!
Again, the subtext, I'll show them!!
Trump, in his rallies, mostly adopts a face of cruelty. He communicates disdain and contempt for the people he opposes. But there is an element of humor in Trump, seen and appreciated by his audiences. Trump knows he is being startling and outré' which is what makes Trump fascinating to watch. Watch me provoke those ninnies! I'll say they hate America!
When the North Carolina crowd shouted "Send them back" they understood that they were being naughty, too, that they were transgressing American norms, that in fact Omar and the others would not actually be exiled.
When the North Carolina crowd shouted "Send them back" they understood that they were being naughty, too, that they were transgressing American norms, that in fact Omar and the others would not actually be exiled.
They were a pep rally, not a lynch mob. They were happy bullies, celebrating their unity and power, not murderers.
They were having fun, just picking on an outsider, a nobody.
8 comments:
If you can get someone to be a little bit naughty and feel comfortable doing that behavior, you can take some of them to the next step from norm breaking, to rule breaking, to law breaking. Collectively uniting the tribe to follow your lead (Trump’s and Trumpers) to do even more antisocial acting out against your “enemy” the free press, the courts, environmentalists, liberals, Left Coasters, and Democrats or whomever you wish to attack.
It's juvenile, particularly the smoking trucks.
I think we are in a period where climate change denial, and the resultant anti-social behavior, is still tolerated. Despite the evidence a few still smoke cigarettes, but they are now prohibited from doing so in public. It's taken 40 years to get to this point with a completely accepted health risk. We'll get there with plastic, too, eventually.
These "rebels" aren't Republicans, at least in the traditional sense. They seem to lean Libertarian in their disdain for Progressives. For example, littering. It's a bipartisan value that trash on the highway is unacceptable, with laws in place, yet there it is. Libertarians. In fact, speeding on the highway is so accepted that it's hardly enforced, a testament to how Libertarian values intrude into otherwise law abiding behavior.
This leads me to believe that Trump's polling reflects a Libertarian element in the Republican base that helps to keep the number solid in the face of mounting scandals. The administration's deregulation stampede also appeals to this crowd whose delusional love affair with "small government" flirts with anarchy.
Human behavior often is not rational, as we should all know by now. The comment about cigarette smoking is a good example. The people who continue to smoke,"despite the evidence," are addicted, they are addicts. I have read that about 25% of Americans still smoke cigarettes. I do not smoke, thankfully. But I have been around quite a few who do, and I knew someone who worked at a factory where many (or most) co-workers smoked. As far as I can tell, poor and lower income Americans are more likely to smoke. Cigarettes appear to be a coping mechanism for people struggling with anxiety and/or depression. It is as also more or less socially and culturally acceptable depending on where you live... I am focusing on this because I have noticed several comments in which the person makes certain assumptions about people in other social groups that appear stereotypical and/or uninformed.
It sometimes allow comments by anonymous posters to stay up, comments that include broad negative assumptions about others. Don’t be alarmed or discouraged by them, please.
Peter Sage
It seems the ever-deepening tribal lines have been drawn with Trump followers maintaining not only a seemingly irreversible cult-like loyalty; but as you note here, an increasingly acrimonious militancy against any opponent. I keep reading “a good many people” say that he’d likely win the electoral vote if the election was held today whether the democrats were united around one candidate of not, regardless of which front-runner you choose. And given the gerrymandering ruling, the Senate is also unlikely to flip. So apart from watching what seems like an inevitable train wreck of an election (from my perspective) and increasingly divided country; what’s a concerned citizen to do - apart from writing a blog like this (which informs but likely doesn’t change minds), giving to the causes and campaigns we care about and participate in the political process? Open to suggestions.
Suggestion: write the blog. It informs you, it informs others. It leaves a record. Our great grandchildren will have a sense of this era, and it will be looked back at with new understanding.
Is this the pre-war era? (As we understand 1859 or 1940.)
Is this a brief ugly moment of crazy? (As we understand the Joe McCarthy period.)
Is this the opening period of a great revolutionary era? (As we understand France in 1789 or Russia in 1917.)
Is this the spiral from democracy into authoritarian tyranny? (As we understand Germany in 1933.)
Is this the happy debt fueled boom era before another economic collapse? (As we understand 1928 and 2007.)
Is this the moment before a great apocalypse of nuclear war. (As we observe in the false peace in Hollywood movies.)
Is this the period we understand as the pre-warming period while we ignored a growing crisis? (As in the Biblical pre-flood.)
Write it up. Possibly a great grandchild will find your observations extraordinarily poignant, as we now read Anne Frank’s diary. I don’t know. But I am quite sure we will not be called The Greatest Generation.
Peter Sage
I have 5 friends that are loyal Trumpers. We don't talk about it. We stick to points of agreement, like motorcycles,tractors and guy stuff, which I'm quite good at despite my liberal snowflakey sensibilities. I'll list their defining attributes, with the hope of gaining some clarity,if only for my own understanding by writing stuff down:
1) They all five carry guns, ostensibly to kill bad guys or government thugs. They all present boundless self-confidence when they discuss guns.
2) They don't talk to or trust strangers, generally, but become animated and friendly once the ice has broken. There is a normal,thinking person under their veneer.
3) They all have different fundamental concerns. They have this in common; uncommon concerns. I'll explain: One is an atheist and closet anarchist. He just wants to see things get crazy, mostly out of apathy or boredom it seems, with no real convictions or policy understanding. One is an evangelical Christian who thinks Hillary is a murderer, for real. One is a bible loving conservative who doesn't want the government telling him things that his Christianity shuns. One actually understands and approves of the nuances of Trump's policy choices. And finally, one voted for Trump because Melania is hot.
4) When liberals condescendingly call out Trump as a bully, ironically,they love it.
5) They are all fairly insecure and have a suppressed and negative self image that they present to strangers, unless their talking about their guns.
6) They talk mean initially but act with compassion under stress.
7) They are all hard working, law-abiding, self supporting citizens with good cars, clean houses, good personal hygiene.
8) They don't really follow politics much and react from their gut.
Interesting thought Peter. Imagine how the folks our friend Anonymous refers to above, might think differently if they considered themselves stewards of a future world for their grandchildren instead of picking leaders who want to revert to a mythical and unsustainable past
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