Don’t Blame it on the Sunshine
Don’t blame it on the moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times, blame it on the transes!
I have no doubt that the American Left and Centre-Left are going to spend the next few months hand-wringing, and then land exactly where they always land. In short: that they don’t need to change anything, they should carry on paying lip-service to liberal causes whilst, in practice, drifting to conservative policies — it’s the only way to snag those whimsical, elusive, moderate Republicans!
I’d like to take a deeper look at some of the arguments floating around for why Bad Orange Man won and the other lot didn’t. I think I might have some answers, for you best beloved and for the American Left.
“Liberal causes are not what people want.”
This is being paroted by a lot of Democrats who think the only way to beat an opponent is to become them… and are thus in desperate need of getting their brains examined for dry-rot.
Why? Well, because it’s just not true, is it? Most people in the USA believe abortions should be available legally. Abortion protection measures passed in 7 states — including ones that voted overwhelmingly for the Trump-Vance ticket. Delaware elected the first trans member of the House. Vitriolic anti-trans ads from conservatives simply didn’t resonate with voters. Even loony-tunes Florida voted nearly 60% to 40% to introduce abortion protection legislation, failing only because the threshold for passing was actually 60%, not 50%. NBC reported this as voters “rejecting” the measure, which they demonstrably did not. Support for same-gender marriage is over 60%. Union membership increased for the first time since 2017, despite enormous efforts to break them and the ongoing effort to demonise them.
Voters, demonstrably, do support Left-Liberal causes… so let’s not play silly-buggers with “oh we were too nice to the transes” and actually use our heads, for a change. “Liberal causes are not what people want” is pigswill and goes straight into the bin.
“We have to meet people in the middle.”
Or, put another way, we need to pander to Conservative-Right voters by being mean to minorities; deregulating billion dollar companies; and going Medieval on crime and foreign policy.
Let me shoot that one down, too: moderate Republicans will vote for Republicans. You’ll never out-them them, because they are them! It’s like trying to win over an ex by showing up at their front door having copied the dress, hair and mannerisms of their current beau. Besides all, why choose the diet version, whose big selling point is “a little more respect for The Machine of Government”, when in the first instance that machine stinks and in the second you can just opt for the full-fat flavour?
All you’ve done is alienate your Liberal-Left voters and let your political opponents set the agenda, tone and meeting place. Hardly a winning proposition, is it? Burr didn’t phone Hamilton in 1804 on his Motorola Razr and say “Hello, I insist we duel! My only condition is that you choose the weapons, the rules, the battlefield and the time!”
When was the last time a hard-Right candidate lost, and was then told to pander to Liberal voters? No, when they lose they refocus on grass-roots; messaging; getting their ideas into the public consciousness; building arguments and that’s why they win. They double-down on the messaging and wait for neo-Liberalism’s natural inequalities to push voters to punish the incumbent.
“We must represent who the country are, not who Liberals think they should be.”
Okay, no they haven’t (see my first point) but secondly “the country” is not a homogenous blob with an outlier of a few lefty-weirdos employed by George Soros to sip expensive coffees and patronise regular-joes from atop Orthanc.
For starters, there is a good 20% of the population who will vote for whoever is the biggest asshole because they are assholes. I don’t have a source for that because, despite my best efforts, no institution would sponsor my “Proportion of the Population Who Are Assholes” study. What I can offer is this anecdote about US Christians rejecting the word of Christ because they think the Big J-Dog was “too woke”. Also just over half of the US population think more guns makes things safer and more than half see gun violence as “not a major problem”. 8% of the population have “some” or “a lot” of confidence in Vladdy Poots to “do the right thing” in world affairs. 4% of Americans do not approve of inter-racial marriage.
So yeah, finger-in-the-air, I’m going to say about 1/5 people you’ll meet in the world are just tossers. Additionally, 4.5% of the population are psychopaths, so they will not be voting based on empathy for others.
Couple that with only about ⅔ of the USA voting, with the remaining third either unable, unwilling or forgetting to cast a ballot. Then spoon on top of that the fact that most voters are just not politically engaged, for example one of the most-searched questions online before the USA 2024 election was whether Joe Biden was running.
Weighing all that in our scale… no. No, I don’t think the moral majority have spoken and its now time for the Liberals to give up the charade and relinquish being nice to people. I think The Bad Orange Man got about 60% of the popular vote, representing approximately 36% of the country, of whom about 20% are just bastards. If indifference and ennui had been on the ballot, they would have swept the boards.
“It’s the economy, stupid!”
If I never hear this Clintonism again it’ll be too soon.
Unfortunately… it’s also true.
The economy, in both the USA and Europe, is perking up but not in a way that normal people will notice. Median income has gone up 4%, whilst inflation pushed prices up.
Standard economic measurements, particularly GDP, are just a measure of wealth generation over the whole population. That can be very misleading, especially with the wealth inequality gap.
Let’s pretend I have a country (Kayleetopia) and it has five citizens. Last year, four of them earnt 50 pence and one earnt £40,000,000. This year, four of them earnt 49 pence and one earnt £50,000,000. Hurray! My country’s GDP increased by £10,000,000! Even though 80% of the population now earn less, and it was a pittance to start with!
So yarp, economies go up and down. Markets do stuff. Imaginary numbers stored in bank computers get added and subtracted. Woohoo! Value. It’s possible for those things to all improve, and for normal people who aren’t squillionaires to suffer.
And when people suffer, they get mean. It’s easy to be tolerant and generous when you’re sated and safe… but less so when your energy bill doubles, your grocery bill doubles and your work starts laying people off.
If I may quote the wonderful actor Armin Shimmerman, portraying “Quark” in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
“Let me tell you something about Hew-mons [humans], Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.”
When a man has a lousy day at work, when his boss treats him like garbage and pays him peanuts, when he’s angry that he’s struggling to pay the bills and feed the kids — he can’t take it out on the boss! The boss it too big and too mean! He can’t take it out on neo-Liberalism, because how do you fight a concept?
He can kick the dog, though. The mutt didn’t cause his problems, but it’s sure satisfying to take them out on it. When people suffer, they get mean.
We’ve created a world where billionaires do what they like, and the rest of us toil away without a chance of achieving what was considered a “normal” standard of life 25 years ago.
Now, this isn’t the entire story. It’s a facet of it. We need to remember that, because it’s a key element of what’s going on right now. The economy, and the pain in people’s wallets, is a facet.
You Can’t Draw Factual Conclusions from Erroneous Information
The next hot tamale is the media landscape. Now, I can’t tell you that we erstwhile lived in a haven of enlightened press coverage and factual, unbiased reporting. It’s just not true. Media tycoons like William Randolph Hurst, Ted Turner, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos all have agendas and they all try to influence perception, to greater-or-lesser extents.
To my mind, there are two new factors at play that make the media landscape especially facile and insipid, and thus allow blatantly false information to flow into the public domain and influence opinion. The first is social media and its dreaded algorithm.
I’ve covered this a few times, recently when speaking about the state of trans participation in British Society, again back in January when I said I was done with social platforms, and way back in 2023 when I predicted exactly where the USA is now with “The Triumvirate of Horror”.
Social media actively encourages and rewards shock-jock behaviour by influencers, because it drives engagement. If you can surprise users with something jarring, they’ll likely bite down like a fish on a hook . They’ll reshare it, comment or react in another way. That tells the platform’s algorithm that this content is resonating and so it’ll be surfaced more broadly. Worse, still, it drives otherwise potentially sensible news outlets into chasing click-bait headlines and outrageous subjects.
25% of US adults “often” get their news from social media, and over 50% get it “sometimes” or “often”. Social media companies like Meta, TikTok and all the others have absolutely no duty to due-diligence or fact-checking of what people post and share — although, in practice, they do a bit… mostly for public image purposes and to stop regulators like the European Union getting too close.
The result? Everything is an outrage! A scandal! Look at So-and-So DESTROYING this Lib! Look at Thingamybob DESTROYING this Conservative! Drag queens are doing gender surgery on babies at WOKE daycare centres! Fluoride is a plot and makes kids GAY! The bigger and more shocking, the more likely it is to be spread.
Take the moron behind “Libs of TikTok” as a case in point. Libs of TikTok is a social media account with 3,500,000 followers on Twitter that does nothing but post out-of-context videos with homophobic and transphobic commentary. The one time the person running it got interviewed by a relatively normal newscaster, Chaya Raichik was exposed within minutes as the nit-witted cretin she actually is. Her claims have no factual basis, she doesn’t know how anything actually is, she’s fighting an imaginary war that only exists in her head where she is the maligned freedom-fighter… and this needful context is so easy to expose.
In reality, nobody should be getting their news from her. She’s actually quite a sad figure: a not-very-bright crank who’s been given a huge megaphone and told to spout jibberish for her hooting fanbase of alt-Right baboons. The scuttlebutt is she might even show up in the Trump 2.0 administration!
Also, that was an insult to baboons. I apologise.
The second factor is the profoundly chilling effect on actual, fact-based reporting that arose out of the early 21st Century. And no, I don’t mean “chilling” as in “they can’t say what a woman is” — I mean actual distortion of reality for fear of reprisals.
As an example, let’s take the British Broadcasting Corporation. Its remit is to educate, inform and entertain and it is explicitly separate and independent from the UK government. Way back in 2003, a highly suspicious death claimed Dr. David Kelly, a British weapons expert looking into the (ultimately) bogus claims by US and UK governments about WMD in Iraq. The BBC reporting of this was singled out for especial criticism by the Labour government under Tony Blair.
Since them, the Beeb (affectionately called “Auntie” in the UK) have been accused of: having a “liberal culture” because a television program promoted their Make Poverty History campaign; not reflecting enough anti-immigrant and anti-EU sentiment; and for politically correct virtue signalling in support of Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights (BBC guidelines for social media use, Section 3 “Expressions of Opinion on Social Media”).
Now, in 2024, the BBC’s palpable terror at accusations of “Liberal bias” have lead it to leave very Right-Wing broadcasters untouched whilst punishing perceived Left-Wing broadcasters, and announcing it would happily platform a Flat Earth proponent against an actual geological specialist in the name of being unbiased. During the Brexit referendum, the BBC simply failed to challenge the out-and-out lies coming from the leave campaign, believing their duty was just to sit in between two arguing parties and moderate the discussion rather than hold anyone to a basic standard of evidence.
It’s the same all over. Otherwise rational, theoretically sensible news networks like CNN and Auntie run scared of reporting basic facts because (again, thanks to social media) the side that doesn’t want to lose the public image game will shriek like pod-people and demand that something be done about this terrible bias!
Trump isn’t a “controversial” figure: he is a convicted felon, sexual abuser and insurrectionist. These are basic facts that have been recorded. They’re not open to interpretation. Rowling isn’t an “outspoken critic” of trans rights, she is a transphobe by the literal definition of what transphobia is according to people who are transgender. On and on it goes: Stephen Miller is a white supremacist, Boris Johnson is a pathological liar, Nigel Farage is a racist and so on ad nauseum but not a single one of these things can be stated by the news for fear of bias.
It isn’t bias to report facts. Didn’t that reprehensible little goblin Ben Shapiro say something to that effect, in between opposing inter-racial marriage?
This, again, isn’t the sole cause of what’s going on in the USA and elsewhere — it’s a facet. But it is a pretty big facet.
Interaction is the Downfall of Bigotry
The last aspect I want to talk about is human interaction — how we mix with other people. It shouldn’t surprise you, best beloved, that the places with the highest resistance to immigration also have the lowest rates of immigration. The more exposed people are to people from elsewhere, the less they fret about them.
Back in The Old World — back in the early 2000s — it was easier for people to mix. See, before Social Media, we had bulletin boards and those places were usually around a theme. It might have been comics, anime, sports or whatever but everyone there was into that thing; and it meant that we would digitally meet people different to us… with the safety of our shared interest to give us common ground. It was a lot easier to live and let-live when other people’s views were tempered by actual interaction with groups that they might otherwise fear or misunderstand.
Similarly, there was a lot more human interaction in the world. For clarity, I’m not laying the blame for anything on people who are introverts or for whom social interaction is difficult, troubling or stressful. I’m laying blame on a Capitalist system that dehumanises people by isolating us.
Self-service checkouts should totally be available, but they were very much part of a (failed) effort to replace staff and cut costs. Working from home is valid and good, provided we have a diverse team with whom we can mix. Left to their own devices, companies have no interest in diversity initiatives or staff wellbeing: and a lack of social interaction between different people is the result.
It’s easy to get worked up over policies and laws that affect people we know and like, but much greater effort is required if those being affected are just abstract notions. If we don’t mingle with others, either online or in person, then those running for office will be able to play on fears of The Other to win votes.
This is the last facet I want you to consider.
So, why did the Democrats lose?
I’m tempted to be cheeky and say “because they suck”. It wouldn’t be untrue: some individual Democrats really are trying to help people, but the party machine as a whole stands for Big Business and running the USA “as usual”. ‘As-usual’ means nibbling around the corners of actual problems, whilst making sure nothing gets in the way of multinational corporations making money — since those organisations fund the Democrat party.
I’ve mentioned before how, when they are in power, the Dems always seem to be on a knife-edge: “oh, we’d love to talk universal health care, UBI and Federal abortion legislation… but we just don’t have a big enough majority!” That — the Democrat inability to actually do anything — is by design.
Genuinely Left-leaning candidates are sabotaged and replaced by business-friendly options who — if they ran in Europe — would be considered Centre-Right. Every year or two, a new Designated Bad Guy is chosen to vote against popular (but business unfriendly) motions: Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin being notorious examples. That way the US government is kept just where the Democrat party likes it: on its side, but not by much and with plenty of scope to scupper anything Business won’t like.
I’m tempted to say all that… but it’s not really the point. The alternative is going to do all of those bad things and then some. Similarly, many in the US were angry with the Democrats’ refusal to speak out against the war crimes going on in Palestine… but the Republicans are even more hawkish on the subject.
People voted, by a majority, against their own best interests and for a candidate who is — without shadow of a doubt — one of the single most vile politicians to walk the Earth. Why?
Well, I have to hand it to the Conservative American Right-wing. I really do. Their strategy is quite brilliant, and the only moving part they were erstwhile waiting on was Donald Trump himself. They planned this all, with panache and a skill equal to the best ad executives in the best agencies in any city in the world.
Let me bring everything together and see if I can explain the hard-Right Republican victory in the American Elections — and the elevation of a convicted felon, sexual abuser, liar, cheat and grifter to the highest office in the land for the second time.
Over the course of many years, the American Right have built a very powerful campaign, whose strength is in the sheer number of fronts upon which it struts; and if one of those fronts doesn’t convince Mr. or Mrs. Average Voter… then one of the others probably will.
Let’s start with news coverage. It is now, at best, considered gauche to refer to people as what they are (eg liars, cheats, scoundrels and criminals). Such adjectives, however supported by facts and evidence as they may be, must be referenced only circuitously. Trump is “turbulent”, “divisive” and “controversial” at best. At worst, bad actors like Fox News, OAN and the various other extreme-Right TV news stations exalt everything he says and pillory anything to the Left/Liberal side of him.
Online, the most extreme news stories are those that get the biggest algorithmic push — and that is before we add-in Twitter, which is now nothing more than a personal soap-box for Elon Musk. Musk, himself, has fallen whole-heartedly into the MAGA void, cheerleading and cheerled by alt-Righters, Nazis, White Nationalists, Christian Nationalists and more.
Even if A. Voater does not believe these things, they are there constantly in the background — shifting the Overton Window ever more to the Right, and convincing a few friends and family members… which A. Voater then has to argue with over the supper table.
Those friends and family don’t need to be White Nationalists, because of the rhetorical skills of Donald Trump himself. As an intellectual speaker, he is a joke. But, as a ringmaster, he is undeniably very talented, indeed.
Trump’s talent is of two forms, the first of which is his word-salad, firehose delivery. That’s a strategy used by various other strong-men leaders in the world, including Victor Orban in Hungary and Vladimir Putin. It works because it drowns your opponent in nonsense: it’s almost impossible to refute a point because the speaker has already sunk it under fifteen fathoms more nonsense. Trump uses it because it makes him hard to fight.
But, more importantly, it’s also part of the reason so many people were convinced to vote for him — because if you go through everything he’s said, you’ll probably find some stuff you like. It’s then easy to write-off the rest as hyperbole, as showmanship, as just being outrageous. Sure, Family-Member might not like Trump’s attitude to women, but Trump probably doesn’t mean it… but he probably does mean that bit about jobs! They closed the steel mill ten years ago, and Family-Member has been out of work since then, and they’d really like their job back, yanno?
This ability to let the listener read what they want into his burbling, rambling speeches is something Trump had in common with the late Queen Liz II in the UK. Her strategy was to say nothing, to express no public opinions on anything, and thus allow her subjects to see in her whatever they wanted to see. Some saw a champion of Christian Conservative values. Others saw an enlightened, live-and-let-live cool-grandmother. It worked very well for her: everyone thought she was on their side.
Trump does the same, but does it the opposite way round: he says so much, with so many contradictions and nonsensical asides, that it becomes easy for anyone wanting to believe in him to write-off statements they don’t like and focus on the ones that they do like.
That’s his first talent. His second is as a showman. Trump approaches politics like a celebrity wrestler. His rallies aren’t political conventions, they’re like monster truck festivals. He’ll sweep on to the stage and tell the assembled crowd that he’s there for them, he’ll talk about the problems the crowd face in witty, derogatory ways — like he really gets it and is just ready to curb-stomp every stupid thing they don’t like. Trump makes the people feel like they’re on his team, and his team is going to win, and he makes it fun. Most voters, rightly, find politics boring; bureaucratic; dry and unrelatable — but not when Trump says it, because he approaches it like he’s warming the crowd up for tonight’s Big Fight! Donald The Destroyer versus The Greedy Fatcat! Versus The Foreigner! Versus the Gender-Bender!
It’s costumes, it’s rock music, it’s dramatic lights and it’s theatre and the voters, many of whom feel ignored and unrepresented, feel like they’ve got someone listening to them… and who makes them feel smart because now they are the ones engaged in politics! Who knew it could be this much fun?
It works beautifully, in fact it’d be wonderful… if it weren’t for the fact that nobody in his audiences is going to be helped by Trump or his party.
This multi-pronged genius ad campaign is the vote-winner. Maybe your Family-Member is a racist, or a White Supremacist, or a Christian Nationalist. Then they’ll vote for Trump. Or, if not…
Maybe they can’t see past Harris’ gender and believe a woman just can’t be a leader. They’ll vote for Trump. Or, if not…
Maybe they’re a religious conservative, taking umbrage at marriage equality and transgender rights because they’re a bigot and have had no contact with LGBTQ people? Well that’s fine, they can look the other way on Trump’s sexual history and contradictory statements and just believe the bits they want to believe. “He’ll hurt the queers, and we’re all for that — it’s not like we know any!” Or, if not…
Family-Member might just remember when they had a decent job. It paid the mortgage, put food on the table and made them feel like they were responsible and self-supportive. They were proud of that. Then 2008 hit. Then Silicon Valley crowd-sourced their industry. Then the pandemic. Now they have no health insurance, work odd-jobs and worry about paying the electricity company. The Democrats won’t help — all they care about are minorities and/or big business! But Trump… he seems to get it. Maybe Family-Member actually hates everything else about him, but they’d just really like to not feel like an inadequate failure any more…
Or, if not… Perhaps they’ve just fallen into the Right Wing media-sphere. Its regular shots of outrage are addictive, and the anchors and personalities do seem to find lots of examples of things that Have Gone Too Far! Maybe Family-Member isn’t a bigot (their nephew is trans and they love them dearly!), nor are they racist (their best friend, Miguel, is a migrant from Colombia). It’s just the bad ones, the ones who go too far, that’s who Family-Member wants to be stopped! Maybe not even stopped… just, yanno, reined-in a bit? It’s not Miguel, not Stevie… it’s those other ones!
That’s one heck of an advertising strategy.
And you know what else…? A. Voater might just find, chatting with Family-Member, that they agree on some of this stuff. Politics is boring, and Trump makes it fun and engaging. Sure, he says a lot of stuff — and some of it is nasty — but… maybe that’s just him exaggerating? He has a big personality, after all, he is a showman, so it’s probably just that… right? A. Voater knows Fox is biased, but CNN aren’t and if Trump really were X/Y/Z then they’d name-check that, right? Like, every time he’s mentioned, it’d be “Sexual Assaulter Trump”, or “Insurrectionist Trump”, or “Convicted Felon Trump”… so maybe, like, not everything but maybe Fox isn’t so far off the mark…? I mean, that guy who runs Twitter seems pretty smart and he likes Donald. Besides, you know, our grocery bill has been getting pretty heavy. And the bills keep going up. They can’t remember the last salary rise they had.
It becomes easy to say things like “I mean, he’s an asshole, but he’s not really going to be another Hitler, is he? I’m pretty sure I remember things being better back in 2016 when he ran the show… and I’m just so sick of tomorrow being worse than today. Maybe Trump should have another crack at it?”
And so, A. Voater walked into their polling station and voted for the rapist. The convict. The insurrectionist. It wasn’t those things that drew them to Trump, it was the comprehensive ad package that persuaded them to overlook his awful views; his vile personality; his reprehensible personal conduct; his greed and the truly despicable, terrifying schematics that his paymasters have in-mind for “improving” the USA.
If one thread didn’t snare them, another did. Trump’s charisma, showmanship and mercurial opinions allowed anyone, who wanted to, the option of just… choosing to believe he didn’t mean that bit. He’d just gotten carried away.
It’s not like the news was there to inform them. They didn’t call things by their proper names. They didn’t paint, front-and-centre, what Project 2025 meant for the Miguels and Stevies of the community. All the news wanted to talk about was crime. It’s not like anyone else had a plan to share around the wealth — “business as usual” means billionaires make billions, and everyone else marvels at the conceit of a little yellow cartoon man, inside the TV, running two cars on his one salary. It’s not like The Facebook, Twitter or the TiksToks had any facts to add. They just showed drag queens hanging around kids with scary music playing, enabled with the help of the media and its salacious linking of queerness with sex.
That’s how A. Voater cast their vote, where it joined the votes of the racists; homophobes; misogynists; Christian Nationalists; Nazis; alt-Righters; disaffected edgelords and ultra-wealthy. They all tallied up just the same, one vote indistinguishable from another.
Like I said, it’s clever. Well executed, well planned, well run. I tip my hat to them. And nobody on the Liberal Left has a clue how to counter it… they don’t even seem to see it. They just want to blame the transes.
