It’s the faux image that most people voted for

Today NPR was full of segments on why the election came out the way it did. The first I heard was from retiring Senator Joe Manchin. I quickly turned him off. I do not want to hear him pontificating on what he thought was important after he stymied several democracy protecting bills. I did listen to a few others, though I can’t say any had anything profound to say. So I’m pleased to hear what Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, said. His words were reported to Daily Kos by Walter Einenkel. And Enenkel’s summary is quite short:

Stewart reminded the audience that as bad and dire as things feel at this moment, what we hear from the pundit class about what the future holds is usually wrong.

And directly from Stewart:

We have to continue to fight and continue to work, day in and day out, to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country, that we know is possible.

Hunter of the Kos community did have something profound to say, and he says it well. It follows what I understand. Hunter called his article The Billionaire’s Coup. He is going for the simple explanations. Here are his main ideas. Americans are much more cruel than we want to admit. The nasty guy closed with racism and ethnic cleansing and he was cheered. We don’t want to admit it so we paper over the cruelty with terms like “economic anxiety” that was popular a few elections ago. A result repeated over several elections:

Americans want broadly liberal policies—and they want them to be delivered by pompously religious white men. The simplest explanation for that is the one Trump voters themselves bellow. Voters want broad rights when they think those rights will go to people like them—and absolutely do not want those same protections if they think someone who does not look like them will be in charge of dispensing them.

See the reaction to Obamacare. Democracy depends on factual information, yet many media sources hide it. Add to that the disinformation on social media. The “free press” has been completely captured by corporate entities. There are billionaires with particular interests. Both promote intentional disinformation while hiding the truth.

That's not democracy. You can't have democracy, if that's the playbook to be used; democracy hinges entirely on the ability of a citizenry to guide the direction of their country by examining the true state of the country and casting votes accordingly. If there is no true state to be determined ... all of it is moot. The vote measures nothing. There are no "issues," only dueling slates of propaganda. And that is not where we are heading. That is where we are.

See Fox News. Hunter contends that Republicans have seen no consequences for the Capitol attack four years ago because the billionaire media owners need the extremists.

Democracy cannot exist if facts do not exist, and political journalists, the parties, and the people who have purchased everything from our communications networks to their own Supreme Court justices are insistent, already, that facts do not exist. That is where we are. Getting back will require defeating all of that—and a government soon to be headed by men who have very loudly declared their intent to never, ever give it back.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos discussed the chatter that is encouraging Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74, to retire and do it soon. That way the nasty guy can replace them and extend conservative dominance on the court for a few more decades. Retirement needs to happen soon because a president tends to lose Congressional support in a midterm election and Democrats probably won’t approve the nasty guy’s choices. Should we be glad that Thomas said he will never retire, that he wants to die with his robes on? That’s what Ruth Bader Ginsberg did and we got Amy Coney Barrett. Thomas could assure his legacy by making sure the nasty guy is the one to replace him. Never retiring means he might be replaced with a more progressive justice and his legacy would end with him. The article listed a couple big decisions the court could tackle – what to do with abortion drug mifepristone, whether states have to do emergency abortions to protect a woman’s life or health, whether the DACA program protecting children immigrants legal. And whatever policies the nasty guy attempts, such as bringing back travel bans. Oliver Willis of Kos lists some of the firsts the nasty guy will achieve when he gets back to the Oval Office. The first to be sworn in after being impeached and the first with federal indictments. He’s the first after being convicted of felonies (34 of them) by a jury of peers (sentencing is in a few weeks). He’s been found liable of sexual abuse. He’s been charged with racketeering for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia (prosecutor Fani Willis was just reelected). This has been known for months and years. Republicans nominated him and people voted for him in spite, or because of, these blots. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos are many cartoons related to the election. I’ll describe some of them. Ann Telnaes shows Lady Liberty leaving the country. Dennis Goris shows Lady Liberty lynched. A take on the Lion King: “What’s out there, Dad?” “Ignorance son. Ignorance on a scale I’ve never seen before. A meme: “If you don’t understand why your gay friend is scared right now, then you don’t have a gay friend. You know a gay person.” A cartoon by Daniel Boris showing a doctor telling Uncle Sam, “I’m sorry, Sam. Your cancer has returned.” A cartoon by David Hayward showing Jesus admonishing the church, “Never bless a government!” Uncle Sam in the bathroom looking in the mirror and the mirror saying, “You had ten years to understand the consequences of this choice. You can never wash your hands of it.” A meme of Lady Liberty with her hands over her face with the words:

Seniors voted to gut Social Security. Men voted for their wives and daughters to die from miscarriages. Immigrants voted for deportation raids. Poor people voted for tax cuts for billionaires. Women voted to have fewer rights than men. Police voted for a convicted felon.

John Fugelsang quoted a tweet by Van Lathan, though the actual author isn’t given.

A black Podcaster summed it up, It’s a masterclass in white privilege. He can’t say enough racist things to be a racist. He can’t commit enough crimes to be a criminal. He can’t fail enough times to be a failure. He can’t say enough stupid things to be stupid. The idea of him overshadows any reality ... It’s the promise of the protection of whiteness he represents.

That was followed by a comment from rugbymom.

As Heather Cox Richardson points out, I think quite accurately, most people who voted for Trump don't know any of those facts, because their information sources have instead been filled with (mostly false) screeching about undocumented murderers, sky-rocketing gasoline prices, out-of-control inflation, the economy in shambles, and Biden and Harris personally organizing and paying for millions of undocumented immigrants to fly or be bussed into the country to take everyone's jobs. ... A lot of Latinos, both citizens and undocumented, totally believe that the deportation isn’t aimed at them, only at those (largely mythical) violent insane criminals, murderers and rapists pillaging apartment complexes and eating dogs and cats, never at hard-working settled families like their own. ... So I think it’s a mistake to say the American voters knew who Trump was and chose that. More accurately, Trump, with the help of the right-wing media, podcasters, Russian bots, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. etc. managed to once again manufacture a completely false inside-out backwards image of himself, and successfully sold the image. It’s the faux image that most people voted for. And by the time they realize they got scammed, it will be far too late.