- David French: There will always be a Trump;
- David Frum: No one has an alibi;
- Facts, if anyone cares, about the economy under Biden and Trump (On 17 points: Biden advantage 11, Trump advantage 5, and 1 unclear);
- How Musk’s mother claims she can vote multiple times; How a Project 2025 leader suggests Christians will be forbidden to worship; How maps show that Trump and his fans actually despise most Americans; Zach Beauchamp compares Trump to Orbán; Gingrich is infuriated over the idea that wives might vote differently than their husbands; Vance suggests testosterone aligns with conservative politics; and how Trump has lured evangelicals to follow Satan.
NY Times, David French, 3 Nov 2024: There Will Always Be a Trump. That’s Only Part of the Problem.
This echoes a key theme of my blog; as I said in my summary of the Prothero book yesterday, “there will always be gays and bigots.” Base human nature will never go away. But it’s despite that that humanity has made progress.
Because we forget history, we forget that the American experiment cannot succeed without constant, courageous leadership. Our nation is not inherently good, and our high ideals are often eclipsed by our baser nature. This has been true since our founding, and it is true now.
And
We also know that if American ideals depend on a single party for their protection, then that effort is doomed to fail. It’s not that America is one election from extinction. Our nation is not that fragile. But it can regress. It can forsake its ideals. And millions of people can suffer as a result.
I’m writing those words in the context of a presidential contest that already represents a national failure. Even if Kamala Harris wins on Tuesday, there should be relief, not lasting joy. The United States will have come within an eyelash of electing a man who tried to overturn an election to cling to power.
While Donald Trump’s individual actions were unprecedented, the idea that a critical mass of Americans would embrace a demagogue should not be a surprise.
Long piece, which I will get back to… when I need to.
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The Atlantic, David Frum, 3 Nov 2024: No One Has an Alibi, subtitled “Trump has told us his plans, so vote as if the country depends on you. It does.”
Donald Trump’s presidency was mitigated by his ignorance, idleness, and vanity. Trump did not know how the office worked. He did not invest any effort to learn. He wasted much of his time watching daytime television.
Defeat in 2020—and Trump’s plot to overturn that defeat—gave him a purpose: vengeance on those who bested him.
A second Trump presidency will have a much clearer agenda than the first. No more James Mattis to restrain him, no more John Kelly to chide him, no more Rex Tillerson to call him a “fucking moron.” He will have only sycophants.
Trump has told the world his second-term plans.
Details follow, which we’ve heard about many times before.
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More facts, for those who care about them.
Washington Post, Heather Long and Aden Barton, 3 Nov 2024: Opinion | Trump’s economy vs. Biden’s — in 17 charts, subtitled “Biden has delivered an impressive recovery, but many voters remember lower prices under Trump.”
Updated from July 18. Seventeen charts that represent the economy during the Trump and Biden eras. After each, an “advantage” judgment. Score:
Advantage: Trump: ||||
Advantage: Biden: |||||||
Advantage: Biden, slightly: ||||
Advantage: Trump, slightly: |
Unclear (about Inequality): |
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- JMG from Daily Beast, 2 Nov 2024: Musk’s Mother: Maybe I’ll Vote Multiple Times In NY
- She claims polling stations in New York don’t require an ID, so you can go to multiple polling stations and vote again and again. Basically she’s advocating cheating, i.e. voter fraud, without realizing what she’s suggesting is illegal.
- (Where, again, is all the evidence of voting fraud by Democrats?)
- Comment: Well, in California, each polling station has a big legal binder of pages listing everyone registered to vote in that area, and you have to sign in. I don’t think anyone walking in off the street could vote.
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- Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 3 Nov 2024: Project 2025 leader falsely claims Harris would end Christians’ “ability to worship”, subtitled “Kevin Roberts is desperate, so he’s lying in the name of Jesus”
- This is nonsense, and paranoia. (How could anyone prohibit anyone else’s “ability to worship”. Maybe worship in public — which Jesus said not to do — but neither Harris nor anyone else is planning any such thing.)
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How Trump and conservatives actually despise most Americans.
NY Times, 1 Nov 2024: ‘Cesspools,’ ‘Hellholes’ and ‘Beautiful Places’: How Trump Describes the U.S., subtitled “Donald J. Trump’s penchant for criticism extends to a topic that’s usually sacrosanct for candidates — the cities and states in the nation he aims to lead.”
This is a graphic article that shows, as you scroll down, which parts of the US have been denigrated by Trump, and which admired. The former are typically cities. The latter are red states (that support him). When you consider that most of the population lives in blue cities, it seems that what Trump (and his fans) like are landscapes and people in those states (who are like his fans). The vast majority of the nation, MAGA despises.
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Vox, Zach Beauchamp, 2 Nov 2024: It’s not alarmist: A second Trump term really is an extinction-level threat to democracy, subtitled “Why a second Trump term is a mortal threat to democracy — though perhaps not the way you think.”
Comparing Trump to Viktor Orbán, who destroyed Hungarian democracy.
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- Salon, Nicholas Liu, 1 Nov 2024: “That is sick!”: Newt Gingrich loses it over ad informing women they can secretly vote for Harris, subtitled “The ad depicts women secretly voting differently from their husbands, a choice Gingrich said was immoral”
- Comment: So conservatives really think wives are to obey their husbands even at the ballot box? They probably do. Actually, I suspect, especially these days, couples probably marry within political tribes. (Personal angle: my parents came from different backgrounds, and while they seldom talked politics, I gathered that my mother was a Democrat, my father a Republican. They occasionally made comments about cancelling out each other’s votes.)
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- Slate, Molly Olmstead, 1 Nov 2024: The One Clarifying Moment From J.D. Vance’s Outrageous Joe Rogan Interview
“Have you seen all these studies that basically connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics?” —J.D. Vance, in his three-hour interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, published Thursday
This is completely understandable, actually, given basic (tribal) morality with its emphasis on traditional gender roles. Yet: high levels of testosterone lead to higher levels of violence. Is JD Vance OK with that?
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- Salon, Nathaniel Manderson, 3 Nov 2024: The last temptation of Donald Trump: How he lured evangelicals to follow Satan, subtitled “Donald Trump has tempted evangelical Christians just as Satan tempted Jesus — except this time it worked”
As I consider the temptations in my own life, I realize that the current leadership of the evangelical church in America — which is my own religious background — has fallen prey to the temptations offered by Donald Trump. These temptations are eerily similar to the temptations the devil offered Jesus in the desert, before Jesus began his ministry.
I don’t quite follow this (or care enough to follow this). Does this make sense to evangelicals?
