Agent 00Soul

I went down the rabbit hole a bit. Some stuff from US socials: "Many people support Trump as a wrecking ball. They view society itself is irredeemably corrupted (some for religious reasons, some for anti-capitalist reasons) and desire it to be fully destroyed. Because they think they will get to decide what takes his place." Here's an amalgamation of Trump voters the person above made: "Yeah man, I didn't vote for Trump, I didn't vote at all, but I wanted Trump to win. I just think we need a new paradigm. Sure a lot of people will get hurt in the process, and maybe it's a little privileged of me, but I think it would be better if things collapsed, then people could just live, like, a more day-to-day existence and I think that would be good. Death is nothing to be afraid of."

This will work as well as Labour trying to embrace Reform policies https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-unveil-new-plan-to-beat-maga-more-gun-shows-and-less-aoc/

Absolutely. And it’s really got me confused. What should the US be doing about all these issues and is it what his voters want?

One thing has got me shaking my head a bit. During the first Gulf War, to get Saddam out of Kuwait, the feeling in the UK, at least among my 20-something cohort, was that this was the US getting involved where it shouldn’t trying to assist a small country invaded by its bigger, dictatorial neighbour. (And a chance to get first dibs on Kuwait and Saudi’ resources.) The feeling now is the opposite. What’s the difference? Is it because it’s now Europe not the Middle East? White people instead of brown? Not Muslim? I’m genuinely curious. Not sure there is a definitive answer.

That's true actually. Cold War/post-Cold War US was Batman. Trump is definitely the Joker - disruption and chaos for are his jam.

It's like the interrogator of Al Queda members at Guantanamo said 20 years ago: everyone thinks they are being Luke and Han. For example, the EU also talks about itself and it's mission as if it were Star Trek's Federation. But it's just as legit to see it as the world's biggest, richest white privilege club founded by the world's most brutal one-time colonial powers. And no greater authority than Michael Caine himself once described the US as thinking of itself as Superman, but it's really Batman.

Tegs, with all due respect, I think you are thinking about this too rationally. Lots and lots of people are past the point of politics from the head. We are in the realm of politics from the gut. And also for all the links between Andrew Tate and the far-right, the politics from the groin.

OMG yes! People don't realise that even employed people are more like the working poor in the US these days. And there is no savings. The Fed sent out a survey and one of the questions was how would people pay for a $400 emergency (about 310 pounds sterling) and an astonishing 47% said they couldn't. They didn't have enough! 310 pounds! Credit card debt and eBay have seemingly become the answer to everything in the US. The US has gone from a high-standard of living for white people in the 1950s to a low standard for almost all of the former middle class. Those people are ripe for radical solutions. That's the opening of an eye-opening article in The Atlantic about this. It's a pay site but I have a free link if anyone wants to take a gander. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/?gift=rC9jnbvALCE5JiLdXLUu6gw6eoxL5cfqdnCwXhUX4ZI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

I get it, but I'm also 56 and comfortably middle class with all the trappings that used to entail for a much larger part of the population. What you describe doesn't excite young voters (it didn't for me when I was 23 either - although my "solution" was to be far-left not far-right). It didn't in the 1920s and 30s either. Democracy was seen as boring and unispiring and ultimatly unable to prevent or stop the Great Depression. And, as I wrote, a critical mass of older voters feel they have been consistently lied to and that nothing has changed/will change without blowing the whole thing up. Both groups have big streaks of nihilism in them too. I think this also explains in the modern trend of huge groups of people of all stripes taking refuge in identity politics. Any port in a storm and all that. To understand this better check out this visionary book. It's short and a quick read and was written about radical Islam, but has turned out to exactly describe the quandary the West is facing now. Occidentalism by Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit

Easier said than done. Mainstream parties around the western world have left a huge mass of the public feeling that they've done nothing for them and aren't about to believe they will now. At least that's how I understand it.

Surely we are doing the exact same thing to Russia and China. I hope so anyway.

I think the majority of average MAGA people would agree with you. The problem with this idealism on their part is that a) it's not really possible in the modern world (and wasn't in 1939 or 1914 either) as much as they wish it could be, and b) Trump and the other people in charge of this don’t really want it no matter what they might say. They want to dominate on their terms. They want to have their cake and eat it. They are Cakeists, to paraphrase their erstwhile friend.

I thought that was a much-needed editorial, thanks for sharing. I know you were referring to the 7th paragraph in particular, but the authors didn’t go deeper into the bifurcation of the West. The struggle between rule-of-law vs populism isn’t in and of itself international. Governments change all the time. That’s just the result of internal splits on worldview: Democrats vs Republicans, Reform vs Labour, LePen vs Macron, AfD vs everyone else etc. Until those national conflicts are settled, the international world will remain unsettled.

For whatever reason, the UK press isn’t covering this as much as the Zelensky/tariff/foreign policy stuff but most of Trump’s energies have been actually spent altering the US internally. Almost all my friends and family are convinced this is the end of the US as we have known it. But the progressives see it as the coming of a theocratic kleptocracy and the conservatives see it as the end of government waste/regulation and the end of foreign wars used to prop up useless regimes that are always lost and ultimately meaningless for the US outside of wasted money and a massive body count on all sides (Vietnam/Afghanistan/both Gulf Wars). I know more progressives than conservatives and they are in full panic mode. They have no idea what they are going to do in a new MAGA world or what their place will be in the future. Nothing ever prepared them for this. Obviously my conservative relatives and contacts are more serene and have adopted a “once all this shakes out, things will be better for all of us you’ll see,” attitude.