Amazing NYT Opinion Piece

Uh, this is the Ezra Klein show. It's more a podcast episode than a written opinion piece. I will listen to it though OP!

Trump also always said nutso things that would cancel any one else's chances to become president. the reason he remains attractive is his white supremacy angle.

Unnecessarily long-winded rehash of an old topic saying nothing new.

R3, I have to agree. We've all lived inside the Trump Experience for years. Many DL posters can imitate him so well it's hard to believe that things they post are not actual Trump quotes from X. We know this guy. Excessive "authenticity" and "disinhibition" has nothing to do with who he is. He's a fraud; he's insincere; he loves manipulating people and lying to them. And, having been traumatized by him for all this time, we can tell that he disintegrating.

The top comment nails it: the real question isn't what's wrong with Trump, but what's wrong with the American society that half of the electorate is voting for him. This is a sickness that won't go away with Trump. It's not economic anxiety and it's not a "crisis of confidence" (thanks, Carter) either. It's something much more pernicious.

"It's something much more pernicious."

Could it be that 1/2 of Americans are ignorant, stupid, xenophobic, homophobic, racist and misogynistic, and damn proud of it?

Looks that way to me.

That stunt Trump did the other day at McDonalds. The owner of that franchise is a particularly virulent anti-minimum wage fanatic. He and Trump are close friends. Yet Trump wants to pretend he's all in for the working man, and the Trumpster MAGAts eat it up.

I genuinely like Ezra klein and his writing but sorry, Charlie. “He’s distilled” and “we don’t have a good way of talking about trump”

These stupid talking points are WHY we hate the fucking legacy media that he now is a part of. FUCK the NYT and FUCK Klein. We DO have a way to talk about trump, he’s a sick narcissist and “distilled” is a twee way to say he’s fucked up.

Fuck all of these assholes

Capitalism just isn't working for the middle class--they are jumping to autocrats (Orban, Modi, Putin, etc) because they keep promising the people a better life by blaming the "others" for their problems.

The irony of course is that capitalists moved people's jobs away and gave the wealthy huge tax cuts. Trump represents all those who benefited most from crony capitalism pretending care about regular people.

We have a way of talking to them - and that's to not sanewash crazy people and allow Republicans to lie and distort issues on media over and over and over again.

The whole 'well, half the people can't be wrong' position is infuriating.

Republicans use the media to spread lies and hate and disinformation - while all they get in response is some Wolf Blitzer 'well, we'll have to leave it there'.

Then they're more than ready to jump over any Democrat or run with a lie in order to show fairness - see we look into these false accusations about Dems!

It's clear to everyone. But yet, it's Dem's problems for not being able to reach them. FUCK YOU Media! A small part of me actually wants Trump to win and arrest some of these media assholes and fence-sitters who allowed it to fucking happen.

[quote]The top comment nails it: the real question isn't what's wrong with Trump, but what's wrong with the American society that half of the electorate is voting for him.

Yup, plus Dump didn't somehow "invent" the modern GOP. He's a symbol of its abject rot, but the rot was what got him elected in the first place, and he proceeded to remold it in his own "vision." Much like Southern conservatives had a full-on meltdown – including myriad confrontations with the police – in the late '60s after the Supreme Court overturned Jim Crow laws and Congress passed multiple civil rights acts, they're doing so again, and for the same basic reason: they can't "accept" that America isn't a country intended solely for white, straight Christians.

That said, they failed the last time, and will fail again – even if they manage to reelect their enabler in chief.

[quote]Could it be that 1/2 of Americans are ignorant, stupid, xenophobic, homophobic, racist and misogynistic, and damn proud of it? Looks that way to me.

Look harder. You definitely described MAGAts, but they're less than 25% of the voting-age population (plus you didn't account for the fact that they've been entirely conned by propaganda). We also elected a Black president 16 years ago now, so no, I actually would not describe half of Americans as all of the above (or even *any* of the above).

The media has enabled a terrible destructive person on the basis of his being entertaining. It is necessary for the media to continue to elevate him because he represents a mirror version of themselves and they tie their own existential right to exist on the basis of continually being entertaining.

Did the movie Network not mean anything?

You get up on your little 21 inch screen and howl about America and Democracy

There is no America

There is no democracy

There is only Disney and WBD and News Corp. And Comcast and X and Amazon. Those are the nations of the world today.

NOW a warning??? 2 weeks before the election? Media should have been constantly talking about the clown show that is Trump since he rode down the escalator in 2015. But he's been good for propping up their dying industry.

indeed, typical NYT, too little, too late

R8, Capitalism, emphasis on "capital," was never meant to improve the lives of workers. It was and is for the Ownership Class. Hence, the rise of guilds, unions, riots, revolutions, depressions, and wars.

Of New World slavery.

Of environmental destruction, pollution, and degradation.

Of First World impoverishment of the Third World.

Of the struggles for Rousseau's Social Contract in the form of Democratic-led Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Compensation, 40-hour week, Child Labor laws, health-insurance affordability, Minimum Wage, mandatory public education, etc.

Of the Capital Class pushback to produce billionaires and the self-interested corruption of Democratic institutions inherent thereto. To a person, "charitable endeavors" notwithstanding.

Capitalism and its concomitant Industrial Revolution have paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.

We are reaping the whirlwind.

[quote] Trump also always said nutso things that would cancel any one else's chances to become president. the reason he remains attractive is his white supremacy angle.

r2 nails it.

I also agree with everything else posted here.

But take away Trump's White, Male, Wealthy thing and he wouldn't have gone as far as he has. He wouldn't be allowed.

But I'll give him this.

It's a tell of his Con Man skills and of the ingrained bigotry of his moronic followers that he's persuaded them he's "persecuted" when, in reality, he's the most privileged, luckiest SOB ever.

R14 - but you can put some guard rails on capitalism and make it more socialist (not in a communist way).

But we've gotten to the point where wealth is worshiped and given a moral superiority - they must have worked really hard and done something right! Well - in a small few cases, yes - but usually it's through something corrupt or warping the system.

We're still running on fumes of social mobility - which was available for a few decades - but the ladder has been completely taken up behind those who made it to the top.

The ridiculous amount of wealth at the top is unsustainable.

R11, that's one of the most cynical remarks I can recall seeing, and while I get your point, your hyperbole is off the fucking charts. If this wasn't "America" or a "democracy," how did Trump lose in 2020?

[quote]Did the movie Network not mean anything?

Maybe when it came out 50 YEARS AGO, but today? Bitch, please. (Also, I'm one of the few people under 50 who've seen it at all.) We barely even *have* network TV at this point, But sure, if a network anchor is literally assassinated in the middle of the evening news, only to be replaced with Maoist television, I'll definitely believe you! 🙄