Dumb Americans & Trump
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If you talk to most Australians about America and Trump the general consensus is that America’s love affair with Donald Trump puts them in the ‘too stupid to believe’ category. Dumb Americans and Trump. Are they really believing the non-stop lies coming out of Trump’s mouth? This has most of us rolling our eyes in disbelief. Dysfunctional relationships are often like this – you know when a close friend falls for a complete arsehole and cannot see him or her for what they truly are. It happens and the destructive consequences of such hook ups may go on for some time. In this instance, with a fantasy creation like Trump ascending to the highest office in the world, the impact is felt far and wide.
America Lost In Reality TV
Donald Trump is a fictional character, a reality TV concoction, the bluster and the schtick are fabricated for the mass media. Americans engage way more with what they see on screens than with anything remotely real. We all do these days to varying degrees, as most of us are removed from the realities of public office. We live in big cities and are part of populations boasting millions of members. The great majority of us don’t know stuff about many of the crucial roles within our communities. We only vicariously engage with police and paramedics through TV shows in the main. A lot of us have no real idea about what it is like to be a soldier, a social worker, a government administrator, and such like. We are all cut off from the worlds outside of our own vocations to a large degree. This makes it easy for us to be manipulated by those wishing to paint pictures of certain realms we know nothing concrete about.
Enraging America MAGA Style
The media wants your eyeballs on their screen offerings. ‘Click bait’ is the term used to describe sensationalist headings and images designed to grab your attention. Social media is all about winding us up via stuff that gets us riled and our blood up. Algorithms keep feeding us with the provocative content to enrage and despair at. Middle ground is anathema to these platforms. Crime is a favourite of the media and has been for the longest time, indeed, way before the internet was invented. Shocking superficial statements and images are the porn of the news stations. Youth crimes committed upon the elderly are gold for the networks on this score. Law and order has been the meat and potatoes of the conservative aligned media for eons. It plays really well with ‘so called’ ordinary working people, as it shocks them out of their apathy. Injustice is easy to present when not all the facts are presented. The media is the Greek chorus of our times, endlessly amplifying stories via repetition. The upshot is that viewers tend to perceive a crime wave rather than isolated episodes. We live in populations in the millions; therefore some statistical balance is required but the media is not interested in such wet blankets. Everything is a crisis and an emergency in this digital world. If you talk to many older folk they are concerned about the likelihood of being attacked at home or on the streets. Many express vehemently the need to punish perpetrators more forcibly on this basis. Conservative commentators on radio and TV selectively choose stories designed to enrage their audience – it is all part of the business model. You may have noticed the reduction in investigative reporting and its replacement by opinion editorials – op eds. Gossip and outrage is much cheaper to publish and produce – it also gets more engagement within a quicker time frame. However, the truth suffers in this trade off promoted by publishers and network owners like Rupert Murdoch.
Fake news is much easier to promulgate and falsely claim in this op ed media environment. The media creation known as Donald Trump thrives in such a world.
A Crooked Man Walking A Crooked Mile
Americans, it seems, would rather a crooked President than a feeble one – if the polls are to be believed. I find it fascinating that President Joe Biden, an octogenarian, is the champion of democracy up against the openly appalling Donald Trump. Short term memory loss is affecting many Americans, as well as the candidates, apparently. I mean who can forget the rambling President Trump during the pandemic promoting the consumption of bleach and actively undermining his own public health officials. Nearly a million Americans died from Covid-19 in supposedly the richest nation on earth during Trump’s presidency. Australians looked on in horror at what was happening over there in the United States (disunity was as apparent as the virus). Mask wearing became a political thing rather than a public health strategy. When stupid people are in charge and leading an anti-science campaign you can see how once great civilisations can fall. Trump just flat out lies about everything non-stop and many Americans are happy to drink the kool aid on his say so. If 40% of the American population are in the Trump cult then we can say goodbye to what we once knew as the shining light of democracy. They called it the American experiment, democracy on this scale, and the scales of justice have tipped over into a state of lawlessness via the capture of SCOTUS by radical right wing agencies. A con man and convicted felon has been given carte blanch by a bunch of bent and bought justices. Trump, like a mob boss, pre-arranged the judges prior to committing his crimes via appointments and favours. The rule of law no longer applies to American presidents, according to this latest SCOTUS ruling. Billionaires have funded the lifestyle of Clarence Thomas to the tune of $4 million. Justice Alito flies flags supporting the big lie about the stolen election in 2020 – I mean in Australia it would be impossible to imagine a High Court judge openly flying a national flag upside down in an act of dissent – he or she would be immediately removed from office. These are the signs of a collapsing civilisation, when the highest court in the land is in active defiance of the people and the elected government.
The January 6th insurrection has still not been dealt with nearly 4 years later, in terms of prosecuting the actual leadership of it. Likewise the voter fraud and election interfering crimes committed by Donald Trump remain like a weeping sore on the body of America.
“President Biden managed to gain ground on former President Donald Trump in key battleground states and trails by only two per cent — even after his disastrous debate performance last week, a new poll shows.” (news corp)
Will America awaken from its bad dream or will it collapse under the weight of extreme divisiveness? Will the third of voters who do not really engage in the process have some sort of epiphany? In a dog eat dog consumeristic society can these Survivor contestants recognise the value of democracy? Apathy hangs over the United States like a veil hiding the very real danger that dictatorship represents. Dumb Americans and Trump is this a match made in heaven?
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
