For a generation, authenticity and tangible results have been missing ingredients in American politics. “I’m frustrated with electoral politics that are not responsive to the American people,” says Eva Posner, a liberal political strategist. “The Democratic Party should know better and do better. If you talk to most Democratic officials, they care. But the lack of political courage is astounding.”
Certainly, Trump has made strange political hay out of this mistrust. Fewer than a third of Pennsylvania voters deem him a person of “strong moral character”. Yet polls also reveal that a majority of Republicans, like Carlucci, interpret his crassness as “tells-it-like-it-is” honesty. And this has real world consequences both in Erie and across the Commonwealth. Today, Pennsylvania Republicans now trust Trump more than the traditional media.
Beyond poking a pudgy finger into the liberal establishment’s eye, though, people like Carlucci also seem to admire Trump for his economic achievements — or anyway what she perceives as the failings of his successors.
“Beyond poking a pudgy finger into the liberal establishment’s eye, people seem to admire Trump for his economic achievements”
A single mom who works as an administrative assistant at a local university, she plans to vote with her wallet. “I couldn’t rob Peter to pay Paul,” she says, “because Peter is broke too.”
For similar reasons, Carlucci looks back to the Trump years with nostalgia. Spiralling rent and grocery prices means she struggles in a way she didn’t four years ago. This year, a relative paid her 11-year-old son’s Catholic school tuition. “Those four years under Trump my life was better, and I felt safe,” she says. “When you work at a great job you shouldn’t have to have a second or third job. That’s not fair to my kid.”
Her memory isn’t faulty. Before Covid, the Trump economy featured steady 2.5% economic growth, low 1.9% inflation, a robust 2.1% spike in real wages, and the lowest unemployment rate since the mid-Sixties. Bookended by the Great Recession and post-pandemic inflation, the Trump years in hindsight feel remarkably prosperous, especially for the working and lower-middle classes hit hardest by price jumps.
As Posner adds, that explains a key reason for Trump’s enduring popularity. He may lie as easily as most people breathe, but for voters like Carlucci, his presidency improved their lives in tangible ways. “He is pompous and arrogant,” she concedes. “But he accomplished what he set out to accomplish.”
Perhaps. But in a town as divided as Erie, you have to be careful. In Carlucci’s neighbourhood, where Trump signs are common, partisans roll down their windows and hurl abuse from their cars. Carlucci rolls her eyes. “You aren’t changing anyone’s mind acting like that.” Yet out of caution, she’s advised her 74-year-old mother against putting out a political sign herself.
At work, meanwhile, Carlucci keeps her politics quiet. The same cannot be said of others. Professors regularly waltz into her office to cuss and gripe about the former president. Wholly unaware that others may see the world differently, they force her, and a furtive set of MAGA fellow travellers, onto a secret Microsoft Teams chat. At church, my 81-year-old mom has the opposite experience. A Mississippi native and life-long Republican, she nonetheless dismisses Trump as “gross”. Yet she dares not share her true views and upset the congregation.
Not everyone in Erie is quite so diffident. Consider Doug King. A Shakespeare scholar and English professor at Gannon University, a youthful conversion to Catholicism prodded him toward an inchoate conservatism, dovetailed by profound pro-life principles.
These days, King dismisses most Republicans as “idiots.” But he rejects the Democrats too, disgusted by their support for abortion and foreign adventures like the Iraq War. “When we poke our nose into others’ affairs,” he says, “you need a clear mission of when you get in or get out.”
A funky-dressing sometime actor and musician, who works in liberal academia, King freely agrees that he doesn’t fit the MAGA stereotypes. When his fellow professors discover he supports Trump “their jaws drop”.
Like Carlucci, meanwhile, King is far from insensible to Trump’s flaws. “He is not pro-life,” he concedes, but he will “do less harm”. As someone who has always run against the grain — before entering academia, he spent his 20s following the Maharishi Yogi — King is another Erieite drawn to Trump’s counter-cultural status. “I tend,” he says, “to root for the underdog.”
Here, the professor shares much with Tecumseh Brown-Eagle. An Erie native and Trump enthusiast, the 67-year-old accountant was born to a black family but changed his name to reflect his Native American ancestry. “It is definitely the underdog thing,” stresses Brown-Eagle, a former Democrat, of the real estate baron. “He is an underdog for a stupid reason: he is successful.”
Like King, Brown-Eagle is a searcher. A Muslim convert who studied Judaism, he travelled the world as a member of the US karate team. Seeing a kindred spirit in Trump, he calls him a “black sheep” who has the courage to say what everyone else is thinking. “They are on his ass so hard,” he says. “He can’t be a fake dude. We feel that he is being bullied.”
King makes a similar point. “He’s this bull in the China shop. It’s not that Fox News loves him, or Republicans love him. It is that the establishment hates him.”
That seems to be enough for this trio of Erie voters. But politics also has its limits. Whatever the signs she sticks in her front yard, Carlucci equally notes that she and her “very Democratic” mother have decided not to have political discussions at home. “It is stupid,” she laughs, “to not talk to one another over two people we have never met.” It seems Joy Division’s mantra does have limits after all.
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SubscribeBlaming Trump for this is rather….divisive. So tired of the shallow, unintelligent reactionaries pushing the Orange Man Bad button, like some sort of Pavlovian dog seeking a treat.
Especially on UnHerd.
There has been a definite editorial shift to the ‘centre’ which means to the usual garbage and heard everywhere perspectives that dominate MSM
Yeah. It just lost UnHerd my subscription. I have no problem having a discussion about elevated tension in politics. I’m very tired of hearing it’s DJT’s fault. “The Trump phenomenon has always left me gobsmacked, and a second Trump term would ravage both Nato and my sanity.” Go write for Politico then
It is important to hear from the other side from their own mouths to understand them. So, this is a useful article in that it presents their unvarnished hate very clearly.
What is obviously ironic and horrible, is that it is these very people who are blaming Trump who (with the MSM) are at fault for making this an existential divide. And this is not a new phenomenon.
What Republican in the last 40 years has not been compared to Hitler and Nazis? With Trump’s loose tongue and vulgar attitudes they also are in a virtual ‘virtue’ cult, where anyone who says something they don’t like is racist, homophobic, etc.
The villians are NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, WaPo, NPR, and other hate-mongers.
Yep. You just outlined the what is meant by free speech. Well not only Right of Reply but also for both sides to be debated *in the same forum*
You may need to log on and change your credit card data to a fake one… i said my last Unherd subs would be my last only to see them take £50 from my compnay credit card this summer. Hopefully this really will be the last transaction. There is a real dearth of day to day independant press though the likes of Quillette are still there for occasional reads. I just ended up reading the grauniad, the mail and gb news and then seeking an aggregate of their juvenilia which may approximate the facts!
I don’t plan to renew my Quilette subscription. Not even close to enough content and what they have is mostly book reviews.
‘A generation ago, div > p > a”>party affiliation played almost no role in American relationships’ – It’s almost entirely leftists who ghosts anyone who flirts with any kind of conservatism.
Where does this guy get the idea trump would be bad for nato. It’s this sort of crass lie that is the bedrock of not believing the other side.
He tends not to start foreign wars. That’s bad.
Well done!
He tends to pressure NATO members to pay their share. Terrible.
” ….. a second Trump term would ravage both Nato and my sanity.”
Of your sanity, I’m quite sure you’re right. A second dose of derangement would doubtless be ravaging.
But what evidence do you have of Trump “ravaging” NATO ?
Anything that undermines NATO would be Christmas come early for Putin. Far from Trump threatening NATO, I believe his actions and rhetoric may well have strengthened it in the long run, by forcefully making the point that EU nations could no longer just take it for granted that their security was somehow America’s job alone.
Given how the EU has long relied on the US to protect them, it seemed rather self-defeating how often EU leaders denigrated Trump – the grudge-bearer-in-chief, – and also NATO itself (by refusing to pay anything like their fair share).
Did it never occur to the leaders of European NATO member states that if you keep insulting the man under whose umbrella you’re sheltering, you shouldn’t be too surprised if he walks off leaving you at the mercy of the weather?
Trump made some typically inflammatory remarks about NATO – but if it made EU leaders realise they cannot expect a perpetual free-ride then, frankly, I applaud it. The solution to the West’s collective defence strategy is unchanged – as Trump, all his predecessors and anyone with their eyes open, has long recognised. Leaders of European nations need to divvy up and pay their fair share to support NATO.
Instead they seem to prefer the self-aggrandising pomp of forming their own EU army – with of course, British support. If a Euro Army ever came into being, we already know what Brussels’ common defence policy priorities are – we’ve seen the paperwork and budgets. Spending billions to build a shiny new headquarters, to house yet more wretched bureaucrats, and with all the strategic effectiveness of the Maginot line.
I rather suspect an EU army is just another item on the checklist so that Brussels can bolster its imperial pretensions – not as a real, effective fighting force, so much as a vanity project, a decorative show of pomp – decked out in suitably gaudy, faux-Prussian dress uniforms to parade outside the institution’s buildings with as much grandeur and ceremony as possible – to allow the preening panjandrums of the Berlaymont to feel even more self-important (if such a thing were possible).
Contrary to all the bed-wetting fears of the Liberal media, Trump had no intention of abandoning either NATO or Europe, but it would seem that Biden’s regime – given the failure to inform NATO allies of his disastrous exit plans from Afghanistan – did not view any EU nation (individually or as a bloc) as an ally worthy of note.
It’s not a coincidence that Putin invaded Crimea with Obama in the WH because he knew that Obama wouldn’t react. The media always praised Obama’s rhetoric, but Putin saw his statesman-like inaction for what it really was. Putin saw similar weakness in Biden, whose extraordinary comments that NATO would react differently to a “Minor Incursion” into Ukraine, practicality green-lit the invasion. Imagine the media furore if any other President had signalled such weakness to Russia?
During Trump’s term in office Putin was quiet as a mouse. North Korea backed down as well. Contrast that with Obama’s “wait and see” policy – that did just that, as we waited, and saw N Korea become a Nuclear state.
Obama and Biden both cosied up to Iran, who took full advantage. Since Biden took office and relaxed Trump’s sanctions on Iran, the Mullahs have received $40 billion. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been funded thanks to the Biden regime.
The biggest problems facing the west are all thanks to the Obama and Biden legacy – yet you fear Trump?
The author and people like him don’t need evidence. They have feelings. Never mind that exactly none of the horribles they predicted would happen in Trump’s term occurred. This time will be different. Trust them.
Quite right. The bottom line is D’ms depend on what candidates say and R’s watch what candidates do. This is why D candidates move so far to the right, during campaigns, in order to get elected.
Well said! Obama was arguably the worst and most dangerous president the USA has suffered under in the last century. His overt racism divided Americans, his bee ess ‘hope and change’ rhetoric and apology tour denigrated what had put him into power.
You are right that the problems facing the west were aggravated by Obama and Biden (who probably was the puppet to Obama’s puppet master). For all his flaws and faults, the USA and the West needs Donald Trump now for the next four years, to break this DEI, Climate Hysteria, UN agency corruption, and to set up a longer term Republican tenure in the seats of power; the Democrats have been a disaster.
I rather enjoyed the essay, not for the authors personal preferences, but for the people he portrayed. I have similar situation within my own family. My husband is a Libertarian since he was a teenager and his immediate family, siblings and parents, are dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. So we have “happy” family get togethers, meaning everybody has to zip their lips about politics. But this situation dates long before the current Trump drama, and I was always quite amused how my in-laws tried so very hard to keep it together, often near breaking point, till we departed.
But my view from the other side of the pond is, like you said, that we all desperately need the Elephant in the porcelain shop to thoroughly destroy the woke culture, climate hoax and the rest of the institutional bureaucracies like the UN. Hopefully this will spread to Europe as it will become obvious, that they can’t be left alone to follow up on their Climate Change agenda and drive their entire industries to the wall.
“Obama was arguably the worst and most dangerous president the USA has suffered under in the last century. His overt racism divided Americans …”
Thank you for stating the truth! He is mindlessly lionised by so many and lauded by the media. But he was seriously bad news who left domestic and foreign disasters in his wake and who gave the world the legacy of Woke madness that is destroying our Western culture from within.
The writer is just a brain washed partisan fool pushing his agenda. He still doesn’t realize that the democrat party are now the bad guys.
The party affiliations have no more meaning. The democrats are essentially the neocons who stand for elite rule, war profiteering and people herding in general, while the republicans under trump are basically the ones who reject censorship, who stand for traditional values and individualism.
That means that in reality, about an estimated 80% of democrat voters would find their ideals much more aligned with the maga movement and about 35% of republicans would find their ideals to be more in line with today’s democrats.
Wait a minute. A Trump supporter avoids stickers for fear of her car being vandalized but somehow Trump is tearing the place apart? Then I see the author’s bio. A professor. Of course. But he’s not a cult member, you know.
Ya. It seems to me that all this hate is a bit one sided. I don’t see a lot of republicans giving the finger to democrats.
Speak for yourself. I despise Democrats.
Please don’t despise or hate anyone. Feel sorry for them, pity them. Occasionally, one of them wakes up to reality – see Bari Weiss.
Come November, do you think that Weiss and others like her will abandon the Dems? I am not sure that is a given.
I think she has already abandoned the Dems. Supporting Trump is much less likely.
I agree about not despising or hating Democrats, but we are allowed to be angry with them!
My career was spent in higher education. Administration not faculty. I met far too many groomed to be dumb PhDs. Their arrogance was insufferable. Then there were those who somehow managed to think with humility and wisdom….a breath of fresh air!
Lol Jeff, seriously my friend, you’re never going to make it as a journalist by parroting what every arrogant elitist between NY and DC is saying. Think for yourself buddy. At least come up with some original interpretation or conclusions other than “Orange Man Bad!”
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barak Obama, and Joe Biden have been in charge for 28 of the last 32 years…and now the four of them are telling us that TRUMP is the the cause of our problems?!?!?
How gullible does one have to be?
Can you really not see that there are legitimate reasons why people wouldn’t like Trump? I mean, I am a Right Winger in the old school “Thatcher/Reagan” mould, and I can’t abide the man.
Of course you wouldn’t like him, he detonated Thatcherite and Reaganite policy principles. Today’s politics is all Trump on the left and right.
Yes, but the three Republican Presidents that preceded him were all quite Right Wing, but they were all courteous people with sensible policies. Trump is a 150 kg orange toddler.
Every single one of them was a catastrophe.
Not Reagan… He had his faults, like his administration’s Iran-Contra Affair, but he, together with Thatcher, brought down the whole Evil Empire of the Soviet Union.
I liked Reagan. Initially there was something phoney about him that rang a bell, but as I found out years later, his way of doing strategy was actually very smart. And he could delegate. He wasn’t some cringey micro-manager.
Plus, although he wasn’t particularly smart, he accepted that, and hired smart people. Trump, on the other hand, thinks he’s a genius.
Donald Trump doesn’t think he is a genius.
I distinctly recall him describing himself as “a very stable genius”.
You think Reagan was a catastrophe? Seriously?
And what are you, Martin M? A virtuous paragon? Kindly in manner, always speaking the truth, righteous in all your ways? You must be, to sit in judgement with such ease over your fellow man …..
If only paragons of virtue were allowed to make judgements on politicians, all political debate – necessary for our democracy- would be silenced! Do you, Samuel, refrain from making such judgements? I think not, and quite right, too.
Fair point. What I meant was, to sit in judgement AND condemn. Obviously, to sit in judgement is a grave responsibility, but there are those who wear black robes and cast negative judgement about willy-nilly, which is neither virtuous nor wise.
I actually thought the point of a comments section was for people to be able to give their views.
Isn’t a bit childish to insist that one must be all-in with Trump just because one isn’t perfect oneself?
Do you have any memory of the pre-2016 world ?
Trump was kind of a radical shift you know, bud.
A downwards one, when it came to matters of morals, class and intellect.
It isn’t particularly demanding, to have hoped for something a bit better than DJT.
I hear you, kid.
Wow! It’s like you know me personally! Actually, “righteous” is one of those things that means different things to different people. I am an atheist, so that might influence some people’s views on me.
Martin, you are right, but not in the way you think. The Donkeys hate Trump the man; it’s the logical conclusion of the politics of personal destruction that Clinton moaned about even as he practiced it. They have raised it to the highest level imaginable – 3 assassination attempts. If one ever succeeds I believe we will justifiably have a mini civil war.
Hey, I hate Trump the Man, and probably more so because I supported him in 2016 (I didn’t know then that he would try to destroy democracy). I am by nature Right Wing, and I don’t doubt that if Harris gets in, she will do many things that I will find too “Left”. However, the fact is that I think a second Trump term would be dangerous, not just for the US, but for the World.
By the way I recall that while Reagan was popular (although in the UK the MSM never failed to mention he was a B movie actor), Thatcher was absolutely not popular with the elite class. She too, like Trump, was abrasive but generally always right.
Thatcher was generally always wrong – the longer term effects of so much of what she did are devastating!
That’s the thing about Reagan. If you told him that he was a B-movie actor, he would have happily accepted it, because he wasn’t a narcissist like Trump. I liked Thatcher, and although she was often right, she wasn’t always so (the Poll Tax was an idiotic idea).
It’s fine to hate Trump. It’s not fine to hate other people for liking him. Big, big difference.
Point me to where I said I hated people for liking Trump.
It’s not fine to hate anyone. Hate corrodes one’s soul and destroys one’s sensibilities. It’s fine to disagree with people, though it is best to keep disagreement on a polite and respectful level. That’s a far cry from hatred.
What can you not like about the racist, misogynistic, greedy, lying, deceitful, self absorbed, manipulative , insulting, hypocritical and sociopathic nutbar? You should have a beer with him, but he doesn’t drink , but maybe he should because he is driving alot of people to drink I am sure
The fact is, if he drank, I would have a beer with him. I doubt it would be dull.
Tucker Carlson, who has hosted or attended dinner parties with hundreds of famous people over the years, had this to say about Donald Trump:
Tucker Carlson talked about a dinner he went to at a friend’s house where George W. and Laura Bush show up, and you get a very different reaction.
Yeah, that would be why I would have a beer with him. I wouldn’t do business with him though.
This author has a mild case of TDS, but the prognosis is good ….
‘……It is that the establishment hates him.”
And maybe that encapsulates why they like him, and why he is likely to be the next POTUS.
I hate to be the one to state the obvious but the KKK fliers in PA in 2020 could have been distributed by provocateurs. In fact, that makes a lot more sense.
They could also have been distributed by the KKK.
Yes, Martin. Should we go on? Let’s! They could have also been distributed by Bishop Perisico of the Diocese of Erie, PA with the assistance of Sri Lankan dwarves. Your turn.
Well, if they have some marks identifying them as having been produced by the KKK, it seems likely that they were distributed by the KKK (or do people in the US routinely put “Produced by the KKK” on documents just for a laugh?)
I can’t help feeling the malign influence of Trump himself is responsible for the present situation. I actually wonder what the election would have been like if Trump had (for the purposes of discussion) died of a heart attack eighteen months ago, and thus never have been the Republican nominee. I have always thought Trump doesn’t have a real successor, and that therefore, the Republican nominee might have been somebody honest and sane. There might still have been some heat in the election, but it wouldn’t have been anything like this.
Poor you that your political opponents will whip your ass rather than just conveniently die the way you wish they would.
Some of my political opponents win. Some of them lose. That is politics. Anyway, Trump has won one Presidential election, and lost another, so he’s 50/50 (and I would have supported him in the one he won).
The West has veered of course, since 1992, if not before, and a Trump presidency will, at least, generate the opportunity to change direction.
Devaluing fiat currency, mounting debt, returning to provoking unwinnable wars, and even being completely unprepared for them, escalating woke and the NET Zero farce: yes, I look forward to a change in direction.
Will it be better? It depends whether the voters can recognise there needs to be change: and Trump is showing them.
Certainly the cats and dogs of Springfield are hoping for a Trump win.
In 2006, the Dems would write entire vile-filled books about George W Bush. Every Republican nominee suddenly becomes the 2nd coming of Hitler. They never calm down; it’s their go-to strategy.
Notice that some Democrats, which pitching this election is about the future of Democracy, advocate censorship to control “dis and misinformation,” and changes to (basically packing) this US Supreme Court.
“Packing the US Supreme Court”? That would be terrible! Who would do such a thing?
And now they welcome Bush with open arms – and d**k Cheney of all people.
I always thought Bush Jr was quite a nice guy. Not the sharpest pencil in the pencil case maybe, but pleasant enough.
Now Dubya and Obama and Mike are free to be the best of buddies. It’s a Uniparty. Only the dense don’t realize it.
That’s not a “Uniparty”. It is possible to differ from somebody politically, but still act in a civilised manner towards them. Trump can’t do that, obviously, but other people can.
I can’t help feeling the malign influence of Trump himself is responsible for the present situation.
How so? Keep in mind that this is the same Trump who the media could not interview often enough, and the same politicians who sought his donations, and the same public that turned into his Apprentice tv show by the millions. And by the way, the left did the exact same things with every other GOP nominee; Trump is the only one who doesn’t lie there and take it and that alone got him a huge level of support.
When I was reading your post, I got to the bit that said “Trump is the only one who doesn’t lie….” and started laughing out loud. I acknowledge that I should have read on.
When it looked like DeSantis had a chance of winning the primary, the Dems and its allies in the regime media said he was an ever bigger threat than Trump -because he was just as vile, but smarter. This should give you some clue what the response would be.
Well, DeSantis is a particularly unctuous individual. Trump (the 2016 version anyway) was at least entertaining. My own personal pick of current Republicans was Nikki Haley.
Can you stop making reasonable and sane comments on unherd? It’s not the place for that as you can surely tell
Passing aggressive much?
The funny thing about it all is that anyone who has known me throughout my adult life would describe me as “Right Wing” (although more from an economic rather than a social perspective). However, I’m sure most commenters on UnHerd would describe me as a “Left Wing Firebrand”.
I don’t think anyone has considered describing you.
“But if I can’t control who wins in November, what I can at least do is try and understand that other half of Erie that disagrees with me.”
Oh, what benevolence! Why didn’t you do that back in 2016? I’m willing to argue that it would have been far better for your sanity. Maybe take some time to consider to what extent attitudes like this and avoiding talking to your fellow Erieites about what drew/draws them to Trump have contributed to damaging “the bonds of affection”.
The title says it all: “How Trump is tearing Erie apart”. No! It’s not the guy: it’s the streams of discontent bubbling away below the surface that he identified and knows how to exploit.
That this still has to be pointed out in 2024 is painful. “Owning the libs” is as easy as pie if they’re all as stubbornly blinkered as this.
It’s the same attitude as those media outlets that try and blame Republican rhetoric for the assassination attempts on Trump!
It can get surreal. I watched Martha Raddatz’s interview with JD Vance on ABC last night, talking about the Venezuelan prison gangs in Aurora, Colorado. What a wash, she spent all her time whinging about Trump’s choice of words (“they’ve conquered the town”) rather than the fact that the current government’s policies have led to Venezuelan prison gangs taking over apartment blocks in the US at all.
They’ve made missing the point into an art form.
Vance does well to clap back, but he must spend a large amount of time wondering why he spends his time talking to such fools. His exclamation: “Do you hear yourself?” is going to become a full-on rallying cry for everyone who looks at this caper and thinks: I’ve had it with these twits.
The most dispiriting element is talking to friends (who are perhaps not so nerdily engaged in politics as some of us clearly are) and having to rebut ludicrous claims about Trump, that they’ve heard from a partisan media and taken as gospel truth.
He’s a white-supremacist because of the “fine people on both sides” lie, that is now so engrained it becomes almost impossible to debunk. They “know” he said it, and won’t hear any different. He’s also going to be “a dictator from day one” and has promised a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win.
The endless repetition of these lies has effectively made them manifestly true to a large number of people. The fact that so many refuse to hear the truth of it shows how effective the propagandised news agenda can be. There seem to be plenty of people willing – indeed eager – to be outraged, wanting to be herded into fits of choreographed indignation, or distracted to the point that they refuse to see things that are happening in plain sight right in front of them.
The most dispiriting element of this to me is the inability of so many people to grasp even the simplest rules of logic and opportunity cost.
In my effort to listen to a range of views in this election (about which I have become a little obsessed, I admit), I’ve been checking out Jillian Michaels’ podcast.
While it’s nice to get a disillusioned lib’s point of view on things, I had to really resist turning off the episode where she talks to Dave Rubin.
On abortion, she did not seem to grasp that placing a general time limit on abortions (which she was in favour of) necessarily meant accepting other people having a certain degree of control over your decision and therefore your own body.
You want complete freedom and bodily autonomy? Well, that’s not compatible with the imposition of a time limit. You want a time limit? Well, you have to cede some control over your body and the decisions you make about it.
I mean, is this really so hard to understand? No wonder discussions are so hard when the basic mental tools for argument and reasoning are absent.
I admire the passion in your words. It’s difficult to maintain that passion whilst ‘living in a world of stupids’ but maintained it must be – and i don’t give a damn how arrogant that might sound. I too, am sick of it though.
I was so passionate just then, my other half told me off for hammering the keyboard too hard!
This is not new. Dems from 2004 would state things about Bush, Palin, McCain, Romney, etc., that were manifestly untrue (i.e. false). Things they had not actually said, repeated ad-nausatum. Falsehood is their stock-in-trade. Understand this, and you know how to deal with the Dems and their lies.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Attributed to Joseph Goebbels, but likely apocryphal.
It certainly reflects the current American situation.
But what is so peculiar about this particular go round is that we already have the evidence.
Fearmongering about the pantomime villain Trump was easy when he was a cartoonish unknown. But we’ve had a 4 year term on which to judge him.
What is most strange is that pretty much every one of the Democrat’s fearmongering accusations of what a Trump presidency would bring about, have actually been made manifest by the Biden presidency, most notably the politicisation and weaponisation of the Justice system. ‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘if Trump is President he’ll go after his political opponents and hound them through the law courts’. Even more terrifying was the claim that the application and severity of the law would be different based on nothing but which party you support.
If Dem’s childish threats were in any way true, it would have already happened. Never in the history of the world has a leader had a better opportunity to take total control – with the entire country under a lockdown – yet nothing of the sort happened. In fact it was the Liberals who were demanding that the country remain under curfew, when they felt the Trump administration wasn’t being authoritarian enough!
Couldn’t agree with you more.
Trump looked quite plausible in 2016. Even I would have supported him (I say “would have” because I am not American). Admittedly, a lot of that was due to my dislike of Hillary.
I often find myself wondering why I’m getting so into an election where I don’t have a dog in the race – especially after I’ve been off on one of my “why are kids in the West so bothered about Gaza?” rants. I guess I can justify it by saying that a) I’m going to the US soon so I’m swotting up on what’s going down there, and b) who is in the White House does have a sizeable impact on Europe and the world we live in at large.
But to answer you: I think I would have gone for Hillary in 2016 and abstained or tried to find an independent to vote for in 2020. This time, I’d be very tempted to vote Republican.
I do admit that my support for Trump in 2016 would not have been without trepidation. I do remember thinking “If he loses an election, his ego won’t be able to cope with it”.
I heard Tony Blair on TV saying he defines populism as “ politically exploiting grievances.” He may be right but the analysis fails to explain why so much of the western electorate is aggrieved.
Trump is entirely a product of the liberal left consensus. He couldn’t exist in an environment where the other side weren’t so awful.
Liberals should stop trying to establish why these strange ‘others’ could want to vote for him and try better to understand how badly ‘their’ side has let them down.
Blair goes onto to say populists exploit to grievances without having an answer. He may be right. Populists generally focus on symptoms such as immigration.
The wholesale denigration of the western value system is now so well entrenched it will take a much deeper analysis, and several generations to change.
I think the move back to normality will start with the passing of Trump. He has no heirs.
Sure he does. Ever hear of J.D.Vance? That’s his job description. And what you imagine to be “normality” is the sick problem, and good riddance to that.
Vance isn’t Trump. He has a certain “slickness”, but none of Trump’s charisma. Plus, there are indications that Vance used to be a normal human being once, and if he succeeds to the Presidency on the death of Trump, that Presidency might not look that “Trumpist”.
Trump also has two heirs in his older sons. One or the other of them, or perhaps both of them, might one day enter politics and do well. They are both bright, articulate, and solidly conservative. Two men to watch.
I think he has an heir in JDVance, who you might approve of. He is killing all the lefty journalists with his quiet, intelligent responses. I find him also highly charismatic, when he is addressing crowds at his rallies. Sadly Ron DeSantis, although he is one of the best governors in the US, was missing the X factor.
I agree about DeSantis. No only doesn’t he have any “X-factor”, he has a sack-load of “Z-factor” (not to mention lifts in his boots). Vance is a bit of an enigma. He has done his best to parrot all the garbage Trump parrots recently, but he might end up being his own man once Trump is gone.
We have to see how Vance proves as VP and will develop in his position. I don’t see him being a passive lazy VP like Kamala. We might even witness a big clash between all the big egos of Kennedy. Gabbart, Musk and Trump. Hope not…
I don’t see what relevance Kennedy has to anything. He has only one thing of any value – a famous surname.
There are plenty of little Trumps out there waiting in the wings and looking for attention when he’s gone
What does this tell you DC? Why are there so many little Trumps running around? Are they all just seeking attention? Are millions of voters just waiting for the next attention seeker, or could they possibly have a reason for supporting Trump?
Yes, but none of them are Trump. The thing Trump has that separates him from every other entitled rich guy is charisma (and I say this as someone who would have supported him in 2016).
Americans don’t get it. There are literally a dozen Trumps across the globe. And the response is the same everywhere – we must stop the rac!st, fac!st threat to democracy.
Oh, we get it alright, although we don’t hear as much about foreign populists. But none is as widely known or as deeply despised as Trump. And there is this little election thingy.
You are right that they are all working from the same playbook that the Democrats have been writing for decades.
I don’t think there are any other Trump’s anywhere. There are plenty of Trump wannabes though.
This is silly. In Germany, they are seriously talking about banning the AFD. Wilders in the Netherlands has been around a lot longer than Trump and is just as goofy.
Yeah, but Wilders is just a guy with a stupid hairdo who is never going to be Prime Minister. I don’t even know who the leader of AfD is, and I have family links to Germany. Sarah Wagenknecht has more profile than the AfD leader (whoever they are).
I heard Tony Blair on TV saying he defines populism as “ politically exploiting grievances.” He may be right but the analysis fails to explain why so much of the western electorate is aggrieved.
No one on the left is willing to engage in sober, introspective analysis. That would mean taking some responsibility for a shift that is hardly confined to the US. Instead, the left responds by characterizing any opposition as far right or extreme right, and motivated by all the isms and phobias of the day.
Bleary eyed in the morning I read ‘How Trump is tearing ERIC apart’
Eric deserves it….
Oh dear Jeff, I feel sure you didn’t intend this, but your article demonstrates to me why people should vote for Trump on 5 November. The Liberal Elite deserves everything that the
“deplorables” are going to give them on that day. However, fear not, I also feel quite sure that you will not become insane as a result .
Ravage NATO? Couldn’t happen to a better … ! She/he puts out to the highest paying oligarchs willing to launder tax dollars in their direction.
Better be quick, before NATO does it to itself.
Lets give thanks to our magnificent gender critical feminists. Kicking the wokes from a rational basis.
The incoherent rage leading to Trump support is going to wreck the USA.
‘Fewer than a third of Pennsylvania voters deem him a person of “strong moral character”. ‘
Trump may not be Mr. Clean but he runs rings around Kamala when it comes to family values and patriotism. She is as amoral as anyone can be and I can’t understand why any woman would have any respect for her.
PA voted for Bill Clinton, a serial rapist, twice. I’m thinking “moral character” isn’t a deal-breaker.
Trump is the only presidential candidate this year that has been confirmed as a sexual assaulter by the courts.
A Democrat judge declared a Republican defendant to be guilty. And I should care about this why …. ?
Our mistake. We should have realised that only Republican judges make decisions worth respecting.
Reasonable point. But if you’re not skeptical of the judgments against Trump then one might safely bet the farm that you’re a Democrat.
Let me say this: If I was American, I would have been a Republican from 1980 (the year I turned 18) to (at least) 2016. The only thing that surprises me about judgements against Trump are that there aren’t hundreds of them. Everything I have seen and heard suggests that Trump has done lots of illegal things right through his adult life (including dealing with the Mob whilst doing developments in Manhattan). This doesn’t surprise me, as I doubt Trump would ever ask the question “Is this legal?” His only question would be “Is this good for me?’
He has? Please cite the case, giving dates and names. I would love to see your proof.
Unlike some of the other commenters below the line, I found this article quite refreshing: the author nailed his biases to the mast early on in the article and then shut up and got out of the way while spotlighting the opinions of the Erie locals.
Also, it has to be said, he allowed those opinions to stand without condescension — contrast Jeff with the comically patronising Tanya Gold, whose liberally-applied vox-pops serve only to throw her own elitist prejudices into the spotlight (and provide opportunities to insert more pretentiously inappropriate colons – seriously, they’re all over the place). “The hustings drag on: one man has a long question about septic tanks, and a sheaf of notes, should he forget what he is so angry about.”, etc etc.
Despite accusations of TDS, I know which I prefer.
Totally agree. I thought the essay was fine. My only concern is suggesting the hatred of the other side is reciprocal, when it resides almost exclusively on the left.
True. I’ve seen many, many examples of this online. I suspect if the author had solicited comments from Democrat voters, their answers would have been very different!
Never underestimate an UnHerder’s ability to take the one anti-Trump line out of an entire article and blather on endlessly about it. I enjoyed the article too, even if I don’t wholly agree with it.
“Legacy journalists regularly don Safari hats and venture into Red America to categorise “The Five Types of Trump Voters”. But in Erie, I found that the 74 million Americans who last voted for Trump can’t be characterised, and instead run the gamut of class and education and race.”
Ah, well. Such diversity indicates some measure of health and vigor in our politics, a welcome shift out of the sclerosis of the last 30 years.
I think that the author is actually pretty fair-minded, and doesn’t deserve the hate he’s receiving and the threatened subscription cancellations. He admits that he loathes Trump, which is fair enough: cards on the table and all that. But then he spends the rest of the time interviewing Trump supporters, going out of his way to avoid the normal TDS tactic of assuming that they’re all ignorant rednecks, and pointing out the reasons why reasonable people might want Trump as a second-term president.
and he listened so attentively that he remains concerned about his sanity despite admitting that life during the first Trump term was markedly better than today. The author cannot articulate why he hates Trump. One gets the feeling it’s because his preferred media outlets tell him to.
Trump was markedly saner during his first term than he is today, and nowhere near as aggrieved.
What is surprising is that even after learning that most Trump supporters have very legitimate, rational reasons for supporting Trump, the author does not bring himself to say “Maybe they have a point.” And, of course, the headline is still “How Trump is tearing Erie apart” rather than “How the Media are Tearing Erie apart”
btw I live 75 mi from Erie. In my neighborhood Kamala signs outnumber Trump signs about 20:1. In the last two cycles the ratio was about 2:1 and numerous Trump signs were vandalized.
And Trump is to blame???
And Trump is to blame??? Not for the vandalism. Even Trump is unlikely to vandalise his own signs.
In 2020, the Ku Klux Klan left flyers on the lawns of Erieites with Biden signs…
If true, you believe this was Trump voters?
I have sat at Manhattan dinner parties where people said the Fentanyl was good because it killed Trump voters. I think the tearing apart is very much the left…and their media who pour fuel on the fire. Even UWS people are noticing the problems caused by immigration and the ‘open borders’ though they underestimate the numbers of undocumented 10-fold as their media never tells them.
Of course, the cities will burn if Trump wins, so it is perilous to vote for him.
Could the KKK flyers have been put there by the KKK? It seems the most likely scenario. Still, I suppose members of the KKK aren’t going to vote for Harris….
Did the KKK take credit for distributing the flyers? Serious question. Is there an Erie chapter of the KKK organized enough to issue a denial? Another serious question.
One half of the town could just call itself Lackawanna ?
The more they attack him with lies and schemes the stronger he gets. For me his opposition has no usable brain capacity with which to understand the dangerous world. A world which includes the Europe she’s proud to not have visited. That the Democrat Party, clearly infested with the Left, seeks to promote and elevate her reeks of ulterior motives. Biden has signed many documents, the contents of which he, in his condition, has no clue. She is an accessory. I’m not even sure she realises it.
Or the brain capacity is there, doing execreble things to destroy life in America. Biden and Harris total puppets. Obama and Clinton work for China and cartels. They pull the strings.
I appreciate you are a Trump supporter, but I am sure that one thing Trump is NOT doing is “getting stronger”. He had a real vigour in 2016, but if you look at his recent rallies, his personal decline is obvious. My guess is that even if he wins, he will not live to see out his term, or if he does, he will be so mentally compromised, he will have to be removed (I can’t imagine he would step down willingly). It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
“Professors regularly waltz into her office to cuss and gripe about the former president.”
This is common on any kind of campus, my wife experiences this all the time at a university, but it also is true with family members and even in the general community. It is without exception politically incorrect to criticize liberal ideas, but conservative ones are best kept hidden.
Obama willed USA to politicize American life. RINOS aided and abetted. Now we are like France and the rest of Europe. There is no god. Life sucks. Then you die. What a hopeless way to live.
When a friend of half a century told me she prayed I wouldn’t vote for Trump, I cut her out of my life. I haven’t been told, but I assume she has done likewise.
Odd thing to pray for. Much as I hate Trump, your vote is your own.
This right here is why Trump will outperform the polls again this year. People are still afraid to show their support out of fear of retaliation. It’s sad, but I guess what matters is that people go to the polls and vote, which all of these “hidden” Republicans will do.
I tend not to show my support of a particular candidate in my front yard, because I think its tacky and I tend to keep personal things personal, but I will definitely be voting Blue this time around.