BONNIE GREER: Is Trump driving US mad? (from a British columnist)

[DonViejo]

PUBLISHED: 12:00 17 November 2018

Is the president unleashing a fierce anger within us all? Bonnie Greer investigates

A thought experiment: imagine a day without Donald Trump. Imagine a day without his face, his name, his shenanigans constantly in the news.

An acquaintance of mine suggested this course of action after declaring that Donald Trump had driven him to seek psychiatric help. It has led me to wonder whether the president is literally making us sick. With the curve in mass shootings rising during his administration – including the biggest in US history – is Trump unleashing anger? Could the 45th president of the United States be stirring up something primal, threatening and deep?

There is a persistent urban myth that no one saw Trump coming, that Hillary Clinton could not lose. But the truth is that Trump always lurked in the margins of error, always there if we had bothered to look.

We tend to see what we want to see and most pundits, for example, would not see Trump. The former beauty queen boss, failed casino owner, real estate magnate and host of The Apprentice was improbable, impossible, they thought. Next to the most qualified candidate for president in US history and the possible first woman in the White House, Trump seemed to be a joke. The fact that he won by fewer than 100,000 votes in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana – Democrat heartland – is still a reality that many cannot assimilate. Part of the feeling of deep malaise, of even illness, many feel in the States stems from the peculiar nature of his win, which left him three million popular votes behind his opponent. Unprecedented.

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https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/bonnie-greer-is-trump-driving-us-mad-1-5781260

[Ilsa]

1. Mad? Maybe. Insane? No. Stressed?

Hell yeah. Like sometimes with indigestion, fear for my loved ones, etc.

[justhanginon]

2. Yeah, I'm stressed. I'm living in a country with at least

62,984,828 people that are absolutely clueless and incredibly stupid. I do not care for nor do I hold out much hope for most of them.

[BigmanPigman]

3. Thank You for saying that.

I stopped about a year ago since whenever I said "Americans are stupid and that is why I knew the fucking moron would win" I got replies saying that I was wrong and we are not stupid. I stand by my assessment of the average American and how they vote and what they believe as well as how much they know and care about history, politics, the economy, science, etc.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. You're talking about people who are too lazy to think for themselves.

They WANT someone else to do their thinking for them, so that all they have to do is watch (FOX) and feel satisfied that they have done their bit to be "informed." They lack any curiosity about the world around them and are too intellectually-challenged to engage in any real examination of events. They are ignorant of history and then fall prey to the revisionism that the repubs are so good at putting out there. [Remember the Bowling Green Massacre ? Well, of course you don't, because it never happened. Imagine how the good folks of Bowling Green must have felt hearing Kellyanne Conjob talking about it.]

These are the same people who complain incessantly about things, yet never get involved to make real changes.

[mart48]

6. A reality?

"The fact that he won by fewer than 100,000 votes in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana – Democrat heartland – is still a reality that many cannot assimilate."

Maybe it is a reality.

On the other hand, maybe voting machines aren't as secure as they should be and some foreign power (or the Repubs) did some dirty tricks.

Check out:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016220276

[lagomorph777]

7. +1. Amazing coincidence he got exactly enough votes in exactly the right states, despite losing the

popular vote by a pretty strong margin. A bit too much of a coincidence to be credible, especially when we know that election boards all over the country were hacked by Putin.