Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

Scotland’s Greens speak against djt

John Swinney blasted over congratulations for ‘misogynist’ Donald Trump

Mr Harvie said: “Yesterday, the First Minister offered his congratulations to the convicted felon Donald Trump on his re-election. 

“Writing officially, on behalf of the Scottish Government, he wrote that he is sure Scotland’s cultural and social ties with the US will flourish during the presidency of a misogynist, a climate denier, a fraudster, a conspiracy monger, a racist, a far-right politician who tried to overturn an election result both covertly and by inciting violence.

 

“Words fail me. What social and cultural ties does the First Minister really think will benefit from a relationship with such a man? And more importantly, what has the First Minister done so far to reach out to the marginalised and vulnerable people whose lives are most directly threatened by a second Trump term?”

Indigenous

While less than half of the voters (far less than half of the nation) expects the End, the Worst, the Darkest Timeline, we should remember how many people among us have survived *our* culture’s efforts to destroy theirs. We invaded one continent and enslaved another. We killed, we “schooled,” we interred, we attempted to destroy languages and histories. And yet, people go on and their languages and practices reemerge after centuries of abuse. It’s a little soon to set fire to our hair.

“No single explanation” (trying to understand)

[snip] It is telling how little “stolen” elections have been mentioned since Trump’s second victory. But it is within these lies that Trump’s chaos calibrates itself, inside a unified and powerful ecosystem of rightwing news, online content and viral disinformation that has grown more powerful throughout this era, spewing the same falsehoods in unison day after day, on repeat, for years. It is the “political technology” by which swathes of the population have voted in effect to anoint a king in the belief it will amount to more freedom. … 

In the immediate aftermath of such a seismic election, there is perhaps a tendency to paste one’s own grievances or ideology on to an explanation for why it unfolded as it did. Having interviewed hundreds of American voters – and non-voters as well – I am confident there is no single explanation or answer.

I’ve been to more than 100 Trump rallies since 2016. This is why I think he won | Oliver Laughland | The Guardian 

Link this to I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost — Oliver Hall | mjh’s blog

 

NOT a mandate — a narrow win.

I take some comfort in knowing that Biden got millions more votes in 2020 than Trump got in 2024. 

November 11, 2024 – by Heather Cox Richardson

All this jockeying comes amid the fact that while Trump is claiming a mandate from his election, in fact the vote was anything but a landslide. While votes are still being counted, Trump seems to have won by fewer than two percentage points in a cycle where incumbents across the globe lost. This appears to be the smallest popular vote margin for a winning candidate since Richard Nixon won in 1968. While voters elected Trump, they also backed Democratic policies.

What the numbers actually say about the 2024 election – The Washington Post

It is likely that, when all of the votes are counted, Trump will have received about half of the votes cast, beating Vice President Kamala Harris by about a percentage point. As a function of the two-party vote, Trump’s popular vote victory — his first — will probably be the smallest since Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush in 2000. …

What we can say, though, is that this was not an electoral landslide, but a narrowly contested race in which Trump is likely to have benefited as much from who didn’t turn out to vote for his candidacy than who did turn out to vote for him.

“trickle-down bigotry” and “servility to power”

The great danger is that this time, Trumpism starts making sense | Randeep Ramesh | The Guardian

Trump aligns directly with billionaires, promoting a culture where justice serves the wealthy, prejudice is trivialised and power diminishes equality. This trickle-down bigotry will ultimately create a system where servility to power and social division become normalised, eroding fairness for everyone. …

Trump’s aim isn’t to lift all boats, but rather to lift enough to convince voters to tolerate the corruption, consumer scams and environmental degradation that enrich a plutocratic class. This strategy, boosted by a pliant mediasphere, enables him to present a party of private power as the voice of the ordinary voter.