Via Instapundit: Hugh Hewitt, the venerable conservative radio host (and one of my MSNBC colleagues), got at this possibility in a recent tweetstorm. Essentially, he suggested that contempt for "elite media" is even wider and more intense than generally recognized — so much so that it binds Trump’s voters to him even as they grow frustrated with his presidential style.
It’s an argument I would have discounted in the past. Resentment toward the media has been a staple of populist conservatism for decades. I’m conditioned to treat it as an aspect of any given Republican’s core base of support — not a force that can be harnessed to defy the political laws of gravity as we understand them....
More than we’ve seen in the past, popular culture took sides during the campaign, vehemently pushing back against Trump. It’s hardly new for celebrities to weigh in on behalf of Democrats; but with Trump, the entertainment world was sounding an urgent, existential alarm.
Again, Trump critics will say this was well-deserved; my question here is analytical: Did this kind of reaction from the media and popular culture widen the political divide into a chasm that was not just about Trump and politics but also media and culture?
That would explain how a candidate like Trump could engender such negative feelings from so many voters and yet still rally enough of them behind him to win. It’s not that they like him or even think he’d be a good president. They’re voting against the other side of a vast cultural gap.
It would also cast Trump’s current poll numbers in a different light. After all, the election ended nine months ago, but the campaign atmosphere remains: The frantic news cycles; the mass public engagement; and the bleeding-over of politics into popular culture. Late-night television can feel like an extension of cable news these days.
If his poll numbers ended up being good enough back then, can we be sure they aren’t good enough now?
If it sounds like I have more questions than answers, it’s because I do. There's a risk of over-interpreting any election result, particularly one as surprising as last year's. But Trump’s rise to the Republican nomination and the presidency has challenged me to reconsider what I thought I knew about politics. How many of the supposed rules — as I understood them — don’t apply anymore? Or just don’t apply in the case of Trump? Or never applied at all?
It’s an argument I would have discounted in the past. Resentment toward the media has been a staple of populist conservatism for decades. I’m conditioned to treat it as an aspect of any given Republican’s core base of support — not a force that can be harnessed to defy the political laws of gravity as we understand them....
More than we’ve seen in the past, popular culture took sides during the campaign, vehemently pushing back against Trump. It’s hardly new for celebrities to weigh in on behalf of Democrats; but with Trump, the entertainment world was sounding an urgent, existential alarm.
Again, Trump critics will say this was well-deserved; my question here is analytical: Did this kind of reaction from the media and popular culture widen the political divide into a chasm that was not just about Trump and politics but also media and culture?
That would explain how a candidate like Trump could engender such negative feelings from so many voters and yet still rally enough of them behind him to win. It’s not that they like him or even think he’d be a good president. They’re voting against the other side of a vast cultural gap.
It would also cast Trump’s current poll numbers in a different light. After all, the election ended nine months ago, but the campaign atmosphere remains: The frantic news cycles; the mass public engagement; and the bleeding-over of politics into popular culture. Late-night television can feel like an extension of cable news these days.
If his poll numbers ended up being good enough back then, can we be sure they aren’t good enough now?
If it sounds like I have more questions than answers, it’s because I do. There's a risk of over-interpreting any election result, particularly one as surprising as last year's. But Trump’s rise to the Republican nomination and the presidency has challenged me to reconsider what I thought I knew about politics. How many of the supposed rules — as I understood them — don’t apply anymore? Or just don’t apply in the case of Trump? Or never applied at all?
15 comments:
Disgust with the media was my main motivating factor in staying interested in the 2016 election after the primary. Curiously, it was also the source of a lot of my suspicion about Trump to begin with because he is a creature of the media but, of course, after relentlessly promoting him to be the GOP candidate they then proceeded to turn on him with a righteous smug virtuepreening raging hermaphrodite vengeance. The filthy, double-dealing little skeeves.
I already kind of liked the guy but he really started to grow on me after that.
Like a fungus.
And Gorsuch, etc. etc.
But I think we should keep this between us because I agree with this analysis that the media is doing a fine job of keeping Trump popular.
The only thing Amartel left out of "righteous smug virtuepreening raging hermaphrodite vengeance" was hemorrhoidal. Which could be inserted anywhere, though my preference would be to place hemorrhoidal in front of hermaphrodite. Which I would modify to hermaphroditic.
Glad to be of assistance.
But seriesly folks, Trump's instincts remain good. What are we supposed to do, vote Bolshevik? No, we'll stick with Trump.
Remember Basket of Deplorables?
PS Forget where I saw it, but there's a piece saying polls are showing Trump's still tight with his base, despite the alt-right tantrum.
YMMV
Nice alliteration!
Hysterical hemorrhoidal hermaphrodites is the new nattering nabobs of negativity.*
(Wouldn't want anyone to feel excluded, not in this day and age.)
*TM William Safire.
PS or FWIW or something.
Know your Commie thugs or the true origins of Antifa.
ed, Third Communist International!
der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen!
Like when BLM and antsinpants have a rumble and exchange sissypunches and bodily fluids.
What a ridiculous pinched analysis. That was actually hard to read for its convolution and weirdly constricted observations. The outside world as viewed through a leveler slot. He'll never comprehend what is happening by tea reading his own navel from inside his own precious bubble floating around his gated community.
Interchanging the term popular with populist style of politics and it voters, and then with popular culture such as Hollywood doesn't help.
Why doesn't he just fucking listen to Tea Party type voters for once?
HIs tweet storm sound like, "Why hasn't all our efforts prevailed?"
MSNBC colleagues Is the key.
At the very beginning immediately following Rick Santelli's rant I saw a steady stream of very strange people walking past my front door by just stepping outside. Very strange. So I followed them with my camera backpack. (I didn't even know how to use the thing.) I didn't even know where they were going. Had I not stepped outside to explore then I would not have noticed the very beginning of the Tea Party movement. I saw regular Walmart shoppers, standard in every way. I listed to their speeches. Mostly about who they are, where they come from, not wanting to be politically involved, preferring their own middle class life. They're rather just trust their elected officials. But being so shocked and truly dismayed so thoroughly they were activated to learn how to become involved. They were bumbling. They were trying to begin to organize.
I did not sign their contact paper to be kept informed. But everyone else there did.
Much later the same thing. Except this time much larger, I saw all the city vans available crawling all over town. With their broad sides plastered with disturbing pictures of abortions. I saw row upon row of school buses at the capitol. I saw all the conservative groups that glom onto everything else that is happening. And I saw all the political-minded crackpots that show up to these things. I saw the incipient resistance. I saw and heard them drown out the incredibly simple message of the original T.P. types. Their success in harnessing the rising energy based on disgust led to the contemptible mischaracterization of them, that we all saw and heard with our own eyes and ears, to the point they abandoned their own name for themselves.
But they didn't go anywhere. We all saw them throughout upturn the whole nation from bottom to top.
And it's awesome.
We even saw that mischaracterized as astroturfing.
Against massive resistance that persists.
What is so hard for Hugh Hewitt's comprehension? The wiggly contours of his navel not telling him anything useful? His leveler slots show only his neighbor?
Oh for Christ's sake that 4,096 characters thing again.
No mention of our two parties unifying into one party just like old Russia and China and that not being okay with American voters.
No mention of denying representation to vast swaths of American voters as if that's too incidental to notice.
No mention of public debt climbing so massively so alarmingly fast and with no end in sight such that our great grandchildren are born into ridiculous slavishly binding debt they can never pay down and having us for the blame. No, that's not part of Hugh Hewitt's tweet storm.
No mention of an entire middle class shrinking to irrelevancy.
No mention of government growing beyond the size of the population growth.
No mention of a completely separate elitist ruling class developing, not just media that Hugh Hewitt notices, cloud people, with no connection with earthbound delivering government "of, by, and for" that the people flatly do not want. Not of them, not by them and not for them.
No menton of entire government departments ruling our lives and with no responsibility themselves.
No mention of government departments used by Party for purposes contrary to their creation. See NASA.
No mention of identity politics destroying our social fabric. Just ask anyone why they vote Democrat.
No mention at all of unacceptable immigration policy rejected by voters but delivered fait accompli.
No menton of government busting its moves on our Constitutionally protected rights repeatedly. Whether or not we choose to use them.
No mention of his own media so corrupted for Party to the extent that it's perfectly useless to everyone else, and as we see, perfectly continuously dangerous. And every day, all day, and all night supremely stupid. Because it's made up of idiots like Hugh Hewitt with his ridiculously mis-framed observations and questions that miss his mark by ten million miles. There is simply no point in even listening to him. Far less reading his massive confusion.
[Were this Regis University, run by Jesuit hard noses, and were this a class, and were this a paper I turned in, my professor would go "Holy shit!" And I'd get another A. They appreciated being challenged.]
Give the poor silly journalist a break. He bumbled across a truth. Singular.
It's unfamiliar territory.
Also, it's dark 'cuz that's where democracy dies and he stepped on some icky truth.
Articulation problems are totally understandable, given the circumstances.
I saw some video of these anti people the other day and they are just the worst. Yes, I already knew that but they got me all peeved all over again watching them riot.
1. Why are they all covering their faces? This is never addressed in pop media. Ever. The nazis were all walking around with their faces out. Trump supporters walk around with MAGA hats and American flag t-shirts (oh, the horror). Why do the antis cover their faces? Aren't they fighting for something righteous? Isn't that what we keep hearing? Isn't that what's implied when they're not being expressly described (lately) as "peace activists." Why would a peace activist in the freest land ever cover his face? Yay, peace! Are they returning to their regular jobs as responsible businesspeople and are afraid of being outed for their humanitarian anti activities? Now, everyone knows they are apt to commit crimes in the name of peace (or, ya know, whatever) and the cops haul them in anyway, take off their face-coverings and mug shot them. Maybe they think they'll commit a crime, punch some uppity Trump supporter say, and then scarper without being caught. Someone just tried that and got caught anyway. Dumbass. There's no practical reason for the face coverings. So why?
2. I've noticed that it's a tactic to have some anti chick run into a melee and start screeching that she's been touched. The ones I've seen are all so freaking fugly that I originally thought they were celebrating (in their own special way). But no. It's intended to put the other side on the defensive, like, oh no we're bein' accused of rape. Which is so disgusting on so many levels. First, fake rape accusation. Second, using the women as fake rape bait. Third, women not up to actual fighting (not equal to the girly men in the masks) so used as sex objects. This is all just doubling down on stereotypes about womyn that I have been led to believe are antithetical to a civilized society. The rules apply to me and thee but not to anti, I guess. Also, the women don't wear masks.
3. While the leftists are up in arms about fake nazis whining about some statue nobody cares about actual modern day brownshirts are rioting in the streets and hurting people on the regular. Where's the outrage? Or at least some objective reporting of the facts?
I can't really add to what Amartel has already espoused. The light of truth destroys the darkness of the left.
New theory: They have face coverings because they fight by throwing sucker punches and piss and shit and they don't want nail any of their own by mistake so they need some sort of herd marker to avoid friendly erm "fire."
Also, I think it's the same group of people over and over and over. It's their job. And they don't want that discovered via crowd photo investigation.
This is a group that needs, badly, to be infiltrated and busted. Like the mafia.
Amartel said...
Why are they all covering their faces?
It was a big thong with the terror movements in the 70s, especially, the IRA. I'm sure it's got some kind of Zorro (and Bizarro) vibe for them (y'know, daring night raiders, etc).
They have face coverings because they fight by throwing sucker punches and piss and shit and they don't want nail any of their own by mistake so they need some sort of herd marker to avoid friendly erm "fire."
Everybody else wears a uniform.
Evi L. Bloggerlady said...
ed, Third Communist International!
Good one, E. Just in time to go nose to nose with the SA
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