Trump and Silver Linings

A look at Trump's election with as little bias as possible

Let's get this out of the way right away. I voted for Harris in this election, and I did so not because I'd ever been enthusiastic about the vice president, but because she had another important characteristic: she wasn't Trump. For me, the number one problem of our time is climate change. The issue is very simple: we only have one planet; if we screw it, we're screwed too. Worse still. The ones who will be screwed will be our children and grandchildren. And if the Democrats' plan to address the problem isn't enough, with Trump we'll return to pure denialism and a backtracking on the Paris Agreement. Collective suicide, in short.

This alone would be more than enough to not vote for Trump, but even moving on to the next level eventful, Things aren't looking any better. Trump should have been disqualified four years ago for the J6 incident, but an attempted coup wasn't enough to convince Republicans that he needed to be gotten rid of. Evidently, the GOP slackers thought the Democrats would get them out of trouble without having to take the responsibility of cleaning up their own house. But since the Democrats are inept... I'll get back to that later.

Anyway, now the damage is done and I try to look at the silver lining of the orange victory, or, in Italian, to note that perhaps it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Reading the commentators on both sides of the ocean, there are plenty of stories about what happened. True or not, as usual, all these stories are a bit of a waste of time. An important aspect—and one that, in my opinion, has been underestimated by everyone this time—is that propaganda has made great strides. Already in 2016, Cambridge Analytica had demonstrated how powerful the convergence between social media, machine learning and targeting enabled by adtech is.. Nothing suggests that this system hasn't made enormous progress in recent years and that, consequently, it was used in the elections of last November 5th.

In short: Did you know that Karen in Pennsylvania has a somewhat pronounced neurotic side? Show her a nice video of a Mexican burglar breaking a window and breaking into her house right in the middle of her Facebook feed, or Instagram, or TikTok, and then she'll figure out the reasons why it's better to vote for Trump. The impact of social media can no longer be ignored and far exceeds the reach of the media. mainstream. Is anyone suggesting “regulating” social media despite the First Amendment constraints? Good luck with that.

But the Democrats had much more money than Trump at their disposal for the election campaign., you might say. True, but if you launch missiles into the sea... Any psychologist could have explained to the Democratic Party's top strategists that fear is king, that the economy matters, and that transgender people instinctively annoy even those who call themselves progressives. Talking to people would have convinced them that inflation, whether real or perceived, is a serious problem for many, and that the same goes for the indiscriminate entry of illegal immigrants.

But no. On immigration and the economy, Harris consistently provided vague and evasive answers, while Trump, Musk, and an army of pundits and social media profiles pushed those buttons day in and day out, multiple times a day. And if we look at the stage Harris was on during the campaign, there were very few white people. Evidently, the top Democratic strategists had believed that, with Tim Walz's candidacy, the "white" and "male" boxes were ticked, and that pushing the pedal to the metal would be a waste of time. OF THE to the point of obsession was the winning choice for them. But the human mind doesn't work that way, and many Caucasians (and perhaps even Asians and Latinos) have come to the conclusion that perhaps that wasn't exactly the party that represented them. What I'm saying can be dismissed as anecdotal evidence, but I swear that many of my generally progressive friends have noticed this. And then, if you live in the US, you too have encountered examples of distortions, including a kind of reverse racism against whites that we might rationally try to ignore, but which Trump's propaganda is fueling its social media campaigns. Several of my academic—and therefore progressive—friends have confessed to me that they've long lived in fear: just use the wrong pronoun or express an opinion that doesn't perfectly align with the woke cliché, and you're ostracized, if not worse.

Arm in arm with the DEI, there was Harris and all Democrats' unconditional support for the LGBTQ and transgender cause. It's obvious that the state must protect all citizens from violence and intimidation, but here too the Democrats went too far. What is right to tolerate in a society almost ended up being presented as a model to follow. It was easy for the Trump/Vance team to offer a caricatured view of the Dems who think it's cooler to go to the gay pride than starting a family. The defense of trans men in women's sports ended up being an open goal for Arancio-Malpelo. Ditto with potatoes on the support for sex change for young children! The Democrats found themselves up against even a feminist like J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, with a remarkable fourteen million followers on Twitter. Just a few days before the fateful date, Harris let us know how much she had done for the LGBTQRSPWAV+ communities in San Francisco. But damn, Kamala, did you realize you had to get the votes in PA, MI, SC, NC, GA, AZ, NV, and WI? You got eight million fewer votes than RimbamBiden in 2020, you bastard.

To me, the Democrats' campaign seemed like a bad one, but I assumed that the donkey's fine minds had the big data on their side and knew exactly what they were doing. How could this not be the case?

I have a hypothesis, which is actually more than a hypothesis, having been through it several times firsthand. The Democratic hard core loves to create a cognitive bubble and then move in with family, friends, and pets in tow. I also subscribe to the Washington Post and have commented on articles online in the past. Any divergence from liberal orthodoxy—let me say "woke"—is harshly punished first by other patrons, and then by the post's removal by the diligent WaPo admins. It's not terribly surprising that the Democrats have ended up losing touch with reality: for years, they've been comfortably lodged in a sounding board that plays only music to their ears. How is this different from the exact same sin they accuse Trump supporters of, that of tuning into Fox News even when sitting on the toilet?

The Democratic hard core has ended up feeling morally superior, the bearer of a total and indisputable truth that brooks no deviation. From this perspective, Andrew Cuomo's ouster three years ago is striking. He would have torn Trump to pieces in any debate, but instead he was ostracized by the Democrats for casually touching a secretary's ass or some other bullshit of that sort. Someone with all that testosterone in an inclusive party like ours? Are you kidding?!  There's nothing you can do. The pure are like that. You want everything? Then nothing and go fuck yourselves.

 

All things considered, Trump's election is bad, very bad, but there is a silver lining. In all likelihood, the slap will awaken the Democrats from the cognitive trance (but also a slightly subtly authoritarian drift) into which they had fallen, and they will return to being the party of Americans, and not the party of the extreme fringes.

Now America will have to drink the bitter cup to the dregs. It's possible, and in my opinion probable, that Trump will become too much of a liability even for the Republicans themselves, and that they will detach a group of representatives or senators to vote for his removal alongside the Democrats the day the egomaniac gets too big. In the meantime, Trump will do what he does best: his own interests and those of his loyal friends, cutting taxes primarily for the ultra-rich, in the face of the public debt, which neither party actually cares about. At that point, even those who voted for him for frivolous reasons, or for frivolous reasons didn't vote at all, will wake up to the fact that, in this whole circus, the economy played a preponderant role, and that the defense of pets from the culinary ambitions of immigrants It was just a diversion. At the end of the day, Karl Marx was an asshole, but he wasn't an idiot.