Deep Hate For The Cheap Thug Trump Is The Ground Of This Election, Ladies And Gentlemen
The pundits of our commentariat miss this, because their attitude towards politics is fundamentally frivolous. They view it as a species of pennant race, and themselves as either prognosticators or cheerleaders. Never as participants, never as people affected by the outcome.
Therefore they are blind to the deep emotions and passions which do move the people who turn out to vote. Especially when these emotions have no place in a civics textbook, and are things people are expected to rise above in performing a civic duty.
But is precisely these base feelings which move people most strongly. Racism, detestation of women and worship of the manly are standard features directing actual voters' behavior. Even more important is tribalism, the simple cultivation and satisfaction of group identity, of being joined with together people, with folks like you and me. There is love of a charismatic figure, identifying with this magical person and feeling the better for it. And there is hatred, hatred for a devil in human form, hatred for a devil who seeks destruction of the country and the things you love. Hatred for a devil who has got a good way towards success in wreaking the evil ends he desires.
Decent, patriotic citizens are today moved in overwhelming numbers by hatred for such a devil in human form, and make fewer and fewer bones daily about openly expressing their hatred, and mean to give it its fullest possible effect at the polls. There is nothing whatever wrong with this feeling, and people who have hearts too gentle for it would do well to get out of its way, for those moved by it do not want to hear about how 'this makes you just like them' or 'that's just going to hurt you worse'. People who know this devil must be destroyed do not care what success may cost themselves, and do not care what people may think of what they do. They are cheered by realizing there are many, many people who feel as they do, and know they constitute a tribe, a large and vigorous fighting tribe. That will destroy the devil or die trying.
This is the sort of thing people trying to show their understanding of 'the process' by successfully guessing what will happen next week, people who stand on the sidelines waving pom-poms and chanting ludicrous rhymes of encouragement or horror, simply cannot see, no matter how plainly they are spread before their eyes.
But it is there.
Heaven knows it is there.
"Defeat of a hated enemy is something to be for."
= new reply since forum marked as read
Folks,
I do not see Trump as 'manly' at all. He is some kind of male bitch, and I say this with an apology to all bitches.
He has a pettiness and small minded vindictiveness which seems to transcend human classification.
D.
In our system, in theory, every parliamentary vote on a bill can turn into a confidence vote, which could result in the immediate dissolution of the government. This necessitates that coalitions be formed by minority governments, but essentially allows majority governments a rubber stamp for any legislation they propose, assuming their majority is sufficient to buffer against member absences. In analogy to your system, ours behaves as though there were no presidential elections, but rather, as though Congressional elections were held for the whole House every four years, and the leader of the majority party automatically became President. By the rules of our system, Nancy Pelosi would be President of the United States
. I am not going to get into whether it's a feature or a bug, but this means that our MPs (congresspeople by anaolgy) are most often elected as avatars of the Party Leader. This make sense because generally MPs are expected to fall in line with their party when voting (the confidence vote rule makes it clear why). Interestingly, it's our Conservative Party that has historically been less authoritarian about "whipping" votes.
About coalitions: in practice, we have 3 parties that vie for control of the parliament, the Liberals (centrist corporatists, socially leftish), The Conservatives (generally center-right, but whose tent houses the more socially/fiscally extreme rightwing voters) and the NDP (nominally to the left of the Liberals, but AOC, for example, would be more to the left than the rank and file in this party, but not radically so). I exclude the Greens because they have never elected more than a couple of MPs and the Bloc Quebecois because they are a regional party whose ideology is difficult to situate between the Big Three for a very specific set of historical and cultural reasons to do with the role of Quebec in Confederation. Only the Liberals and Conservatives have held power federally. Where the NDP have held power provincially, they move to the centre and become indistinguishable from Liberals in governing.
I have seen it said on this forum, that the Democratic Party would rather see Trump re-elected than have Bernie as a Democratic President. I am not going to comment on that, but looking at Canadian politics through an ideological lens, it is true that, despite their left-leaning rhetoric, the Liberals always enact policies that cleave closer to Conservative rhetoric, and will always form coalitions with Conservatives (mostly informal, as Liberals tend to be tribally hostile to Conservatives and contemptuous of the NDP, broadly speaking) as opposed to the NDP. This is due to lobbyists, quid pro quo deals and somewhat less importantly, donors (we have no Citizens' United ruling, thank God!).
For leftists in Canada, then, we are stuck with the NDP, who tend to compromise their progressive tone whenever they feel it might reduce their electoral chances, and in any case, govern from the centre when in provincial power, and the Liberals, who campaign from the left and govern from the centre-right. The saving grace of our system, in general, is that our Conservatives are not crazy. Fundamentalist religion, while accommodated by the Cons, does not in general drive policy and although the oil and gas lobbyists are powerful, every party at least pays lip service to fighting climate change. Bay Street (our Wall Street) drives a lot of Liberal policy (e.g. NAFTA, USMCA or CAMUS, as we call it here).
All this to say, the general social, economic and environmental currents that colour your politics are present here and because we are in America's pocket economically and in many ways culturally, we watch your politics closely.
In 2016, I said I never voted so emphatically in my life.
I think I understand why some groups of people support Trump.
I don't frequent their web sites.
What I will never understand is why a Bernie supporter would vote for any Republican, let alone for Trump or even abstain, for that matter. I suppose the tribalism that motivates a good chunk of Trump's base, is found everywhere.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion, The Magistrate. See you in another thread! Be well and stay safe.
Your posts are always well thought out and thought provoking. As for hating the malignant shit funnel and all who aid and abet him, I have no problem with that and reached beyond Earth velocity long ago! Vote Blue, no matter who. Flush the Turd on November 3rd, and vote every Repuke out of office. 
