Trump-Kennedy 2024 and a nightmare victory was not on yet on my list of things that keep me up at night. Thanks for making sure that no anxiety provoking scenario goes unexamined 😳
I have no doubt the RFK Jr would find some way to run with the person who gave us Operation Warp Speed. Or voters where cognitive dissonance is not a problem.
I'm not sure that Trump's ego would allow him to choose a running mate who might, at some point, upstage him. Kennedy's family background alone offers that possibility. I do, however, think that you're on to something as to where right and left conspiracy theories collide and the growing appeal of those theories in an increasingly complex world flooded with both information and misinformation, all of which the individual is left to sort out.
At the risk of being reductive......most voters are NOT smart, most voters are NOT rational, most voters are NOT logical. Some percentage of the population is capable of looking at a "bigger picture", I would argue that percentage is very limited. We are tribal, selfish, illogical beings that look for certainty in a world that offers NONE.(Conspiracy theories offer so much comfort to the folks that aren't good at critical thinking) Trump/Kennedy is the perfect distillation of popularity married to ignorance. (How may f'ing times does the vaccine shit have to be debunked?)
Religion and Politics have been getting chummier and chummier for decades. They have almost reached singularity in this country. IMO The sooner we acknowledge there is no magic man in the sky, the better we will be at sustaining governments.
Damon, check out the Rogan interview with RFK from yesterday, I think your misunderstanding the appeal, his support is coming from much of the tech world, so highly educated, but maybe to much time online, I’ll give you that, but his appeal is not so much about “conspiracy”, it’s something much simpler, it’s about companies, especially those with government contracts, that’s grift off the system, which has been around since the beginning of time, War Inc is something the left understood my entire life, how they trust those forces now is beyond my ability to understand, and big pharna was another grifter that everyone understood through the opioid crisis, this one I do understand, because I used to be a full blown believer in big pharna, that doesn’t make you a conspiracist, it’s seeing something obvious that you have private companies with a profit motive, period
From Mark Zuckerberg on being asked to lie for the government just this week,
“Just take some of the stuff around Covid earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions. . . Unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true. That stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust.” Why should anyone be suspicious?
It's an interesting thought, and if I could run a simulation to see how well the Populist-Conspiracy Party would perform I would be interested in the results. But I don't think Trump/Kennedy would be successful and certainly not 57% of the electorate successful. For one, everything we know indicates the VP choices have basically no effect. For two, if the GOP continued to trend towards conspiracy-populism, they would continue to bleed voters from their normal flank, which I think cancels out any gains from the left end of the horseshoe.
Given that the most exceptional thing about the United States is the exceptional moron stupidity of the average America, your nightmare scenario does have "legs."
What this essay is really about--and something I've been worried about since Trump and Bernie ignited the populist forces on both spectrums--is how easy or difficult it is to fuse of the Paranoid Style of Politics that can be found on both the left and the right. Yes, while Hofstadter suggests most of the Paranoid Style came from the Right, he conceded the Left had a (lesser) tendency as well. If Bernie was as amoral as Trump, he'd have sucked millions on the left into the dark corners of our political ethos. But Bernie has integrity, so it was up to 2nd tier lefties like RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard to lead the vulnerable Left into madness.
I agree that many "followers" are looking for easy answers to complex problems, where what seems to be random outcomes MUST have a cause and effect that is simple to understand. The long term question is what can "we" do to assuage the fears and mysteries in life, so that people can live in at least a semi-reality that gets most of us through the day?
This is a great idea! I certainly hope Trump takes you up on it. But he's probably not going to, because being upstaged by Kennedy is too real of a possibility for his ego to tolerate. He'll be looking for a Pence 2.0, someone who will fall in line with a glassy-eyed stare. Chris Christie maybe, he did that so well in 2016 and will happily do it again if there's enough in it for him, and VP should be more than enough.
EDIT: I see that Michelle B Togut had already made the point about Trump's fear of being upstaged.
Thank you for the lucid explication of a serious problem in our country. What do the non-institutionalists think will happen after they destroy all the institutions--many of which come to us through the US Constitution.
I am concerned, however, about your dismissive attitude toward Russia-gate. I have studied Russia for many decades, and I read the Mueller report. At the very least, the connections between Trump and his team and Russia constitute a bad look. Trump’s attitude toward Putin is truly frightening. And consider how hard Russia will have worked to gather “kompromat” on Trump every time he was there. The Russians are awfully good at that.
Trump-Kennedy 2024 and a nightmare victory was not on yet on my list of things that keep me up at night. Thanks for making sure that no anxiety provoking scenario goes unexamined 😳
I have no doubt the RFK Jr would find some way to run with the person who gave us Operation Warp Speed. Or voters where cognitive dissonance is not a problem.
I'm not sure that Trump's ego would allow him to choose a running mate who might, at some point, upstage him. Kennedy's family background alone offers that possibility. I do, however, think that you're on to something as to where right and left conspiracy theories collide and the growing appeal of those theories in an increasingly complex world flooded with both information and misinformation, all of which the individual is left to sort out.
At the risk of being reductive......most voters are NOT smart, most voters are NOT rational, most voters are NOT logical. Some percentage of the population is capable of looking at a "bigger picture", I would argue that percentage is very limited. We are tribal, selfish, illogical beings that look for certainty in a world that offers NONE.(Conspiracy theories offer so much comfort to the folks that aren't good at critical thinking) Trump/Kennedy is the perfect distillation of popularity married to ignorance. (How may f'ing times does the vaccine shit have to be debunked?)
Religion and Politics have been getting chummier and chummier for decades. They have almost reached singularity in this country. IMO The sooner we acknowledge there is no magic man in the sky, the better we will be at sustaining governments.
Damon, check out the Rogan interview with RFK from yesterday, I think your misunderstanding the appeal, his support is coming from much of the tech world, so highly educated, but maybe to much time online, I’ll give you that, but his appeal is not so much about “conspiracy”, it’s something much simpler, it’s about companies, especially those with government contracts, that’s grift off the system, which has been around since the beginning of time, War Inc is something the left understood my entire life, how they trust those forces now is beyond my ability to understand, and big pharna was another grifter that everyone understood through the opioid crisis, this one I do understand, because I used to be a full blown believer in big pharna, that doesn’t make you a conspiracist, it’s seeing something obvious that you have private companies with a profit motive, period
From Mark Zuckerberg on being asked to lie for the government just this week,
“Just take some of the stuff around Covid earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions. . . Unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true. That stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust.” Why should anyone be suspicious?
It's an interesting thought, and if I could run a simulation to see how well the Populist-Conspiracy Party would perform I would be interested in the results. But I don't think Trump/Kennedy would be successful and certainly not 57% of the electorate successful. For one, everything we know indicates the VP choices have basically no effect. For two, if the GOP continued to trend towards conspiracy-populism, they would continue to bleed voters from their normal flank, which I think cancels out any gains from the left end of the horseshoe.
Dear lord Damon. Are you trying to get me to put some whiskey in my morning coffee? I am going to have nightmares.
One of the sadder things, and it is hard to feel true sadness for many of the Kennedys, is to hear them talk about their sibling/cousin/uncle RFKJr.
Given that the most exceptional thing about the United States is the exceptional moron stupidity of the average America, your nightmare scenario does have "legs."
If he runs at all, RFK will be uniting himself to Trump because he will benefit Trump’s re-election.
What this essay is really about--and something I've been worried about since Trump and Bernie ignited the populist forces on both spectrums--is how easy or difficult it is to fuse of the Paranoid Style of Politics that can be found on both the left and the right. Yes, while Hofstadter suggests most of the Paranoid Style came from the Right, he conceded the Left had a (lesser) tendency as well. If Bernie was as amoral as Trump, he'd have sucked millions on the left into the dark corners of our political ethos. But Bernie has integrity, so it was up to 2nd tier lefties like RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard to lead the vulnerable Left into madness.
I agree that many "followers" are looking for easy answers to complex problems, where what seems to be random outcomes MUST have a cause and effect that is simple to understand. The long term question is what can "we" do to assuage the fears and mysteries in life, so that people can live in at least a semi-reality that gets most of us through the day?
Naomi Klein is an intelligent and engaging writer.
This is a great idea! I certainly hope Trump takes you up on it. But he's probably not going to, because being upstaged by Kennedy is too real of a possibility for his ego to tolerate. He'll be looking for a Pence 2.0, someone who will fall in line with a glassy-eyed stare. Chris Christie maybe, he did that so well in 2016 and will happily do it again if there's enough in it for him, and VP should be more than enough.
EDIT: I see that Michelle B Togut had already made the point about Trump's fear of being upstaged.
Thank you for the lucid explication of a serious problem in our country. What do the non-institutionalists think will happen after they destroy all the institutions--many of which come to us through the US Constitution.
I am concerned, however, about your dismissive attitude toward Russia-gate. I have studied Russia for many decades, and I read the Mueller report. At the very least, the connections between Trump and his team and Russia constitute a bad look. Trump’s attitude toward Putin is truly frightening. And consider how hard Russia will have worked to gather “kompromat” on Trump every time he was there. The Russians are awfully good at that.