Trump understands resentment better than any politician since Hitler.
As a wannabe billionaire, he knew the other New York Bluebloods treated him like a joke, His resentment at them is our collective resentment of a system of capitalist promise that has harvested only for the elites.
This is why Trump is winning and Biden is losing…
Poverty and Housing Insecurity
The homelessness and housing crises unfolding today reflect a broader national crisis of economic insecurity. In 2023, after all, approximately 135 million people or more than 40% of the nation, were considered poor or low-income and just one crisis away from becoming homeless. In a dramatic return to pre-pandemic conditions, this included 60% of Latinos (38.9 million), 59% of Native Americans (2.3 million), 55% of Blacks (22.5million), 36% of Asian people (8 million) and 32% of Whites (61.8 million).
Among those tens of millions of Americans, housing insecurity is alarmingly widespread. Before the pandemic, there were approximately 8 to 11 million people who were homeless or on the verge of becoming so, relying on a crumbling shelter system and a growing constellation of informal encampments on America’s streets, or trapped in a rotating series of sleeping places, including cars and couches, or doubled or tripled up in apartments. Worse yet, even those numbers were likely an underestimate: when the pandemic hit in 2020 and millions of people lost their jobs, 30 to 40 million people suddenly found themselves at risk of becoming homeless.
In a nation once known as “the home of the brave” and “the land of the free,” there are untold numbers of brave souls who are without homes or on the verge of homelessness. Today, there is not a single state or county where someone earning the federal minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment.
As reported this May, between 2019 and 2023, rents rose by more than 30% nationally. Despite a number of local and state increases in the minimum wage this year, a living wage adequate to cover housing and other basic needs would often have to be at least twice as high as what those hourly increases add up to. In California, where the minimum wage rose to $16 an hour, single parents would need to earn at least $47 an hour to meet their basic needs, whereas a household with two working adults and two children would need close to $50 an hour. In Alabama, where the minimum wage is just $7.25, a single parent would need an hourly wage more than four times as high to meet basic household needs.
This, of course, means that tens of millions of people of every race, age, and gender identity, in every state and county in the country, are facing multiple forms of deprivation daily and will do so for years to come.
…the neoliberal free market policies that gutted working people’s economic base and replaced it with flipping burgers has borne devastating harvest in American culture.
135 million people or more than 40% of the nation, were considered poor or low-income and just one crisis away from becoming homeless!!!
FFS the American dream is a nightmare for vast swathes of its population!
40% one crisis away from homelessness???
It’s a United States of Poverty, of alienation, of misery of resentment.
It’s a United States of Resentment and Trump harvests that resentment better than any politician since Hitler.
Trump has also mastered utilising culture war ammunition generated by Identity Politics and Identity Politics becomes most dangerous when white people start seeing themselves as the victim.
The Right have co-opted the victimhood mentality of Identity Politics and twisted it so that white people see themselves not as citizens or as a class, but as an identity that is victimised and under attack.
We should be deeply frightened and deeply concerned at what happens in America this November.
Thanks to the Washington Consensus (that none of us consented to), our Government answers to the American Government so what happens in Washington matters to Wellington.
If Trump wins, if this Criminal President steals the election using culture war emotional manipulations, if this orange fascist wins via the ballot box what he couldn’t with violent over throw, if all that happens and Trump wins, then the American Midnight begins and the planet darkens.
The American empire has committed more evil acts in service of its masters than any other in human history. While I feel bad for what those Americans who hate America will have to go through to destroy it, it will be a good and necessary step to free the world from evil.
At the SIS a light is flashing on someone’s desk.
Hilarious. So the SIS, which supposedly is on our side, has to protect American filth from themselves? Wow, it’s almost like we live under occupation.
Ever heard of Genghis Khan?
Or Timur / Tammerlane for that matter as well (who was also Muslim Mo) . .
Who will win the political illusion to be the chief sycophant to the donor class. Why do we continue to put up with this shite!!!
Ok so America is a mess. You can extend that assessment to the collective west, including New Zealand. That much is easy. But then you need to start looking at the causes before you can start looking for solutions. Those causes are a corrupt political system, an exploitative economic system, and a debased culture. Joe Biden, Keir Starmer and Chris Hipkins and their respective parties are part and parcel of that system. They are not the solution, and Donald Trump, Rishi Sunak and Christopher Luxon are only symptomatic of the crisis of western civilization. They are not the cause.
Anyone who talks about a candidate “stealing” an election by using “emotional manipulations” is laying the basis for a seizure of power by those who consider that they have an inherent right to rule. As always the real answer lies with the people, who must provide their own defence against the excesses and iniquities of corrupt state systems.
The answer is simpler than this. There are two third rate runners who are third rate for different reasons. One of them also seems to have dementia.
Immigration, lack of border control, the mishandling of the Afghan withdrawal, woke madness, Bidens cognitive decline.
Not hard to see why Trump is surprisingly popular for such an unpleasant individual.
Exactly. He’s not “stealing” anything. It’s been wrapped up in a nice shiny bow and handed to him.
Rape, sexual abuse, cheating on his wife whilst pregnant, causing and insurrection resulting in 6 deaths, corruption, yeah Keepcalmcarryon we see why you love him.
Yes, because conservatives are retarded and will happily ignore that Trump would have brought in more immigrants than Biden if not for COVID.
Would you rather have dementia Joe than orange man bad?
The urgent need is for the Democrats to replace Biden. He’s a decent chap, but has “made his contribution”. He needs, in an act resembling Andrew Little’s vis a vis Jacinda Ardern, to anoint a replacement. My bet is on Gavin Newsom, Californian Governor; Kamala doesn’t cut the mustard. (Actually, my real preference would be Elizabeth Warren, but she might be to leftish to dump Trump.)
Joe must go. As an old union mate of mine used to say before MMP in this country…“the lesser of two evils or the evil of two lessers…” The Dems DNC and Republicans are staunch defenders of US Imperialism, capital and finance capital which ever way you slice it. They have a huge alienated non vote in yankee land, voter suppression, gerrymandering and a bent Electoral Collage–so who expects a good outcome here?
There is a massive realignment of imperialist powers taking place, commonly referred to as ‘North & South’ and including BRICS etc. but it is not on strictly geographic terms, so the world is in for a shake up like it or not. Give Bernie a last run I say–he still has his marbles at least.
Biden and Trump are not causes, but at best effects.
So, what would be the causes?
If we try to decipher this step by step and as rationally as possible, we will come across the relationship between man and nature, the way humans live in the environment and the abuse of it.
We come to the economic relations and means of production and the social conditions of living and reproduction of the many.
Since the social relations created by class power and rank civilization hardly allow us to correctly interpret the writings on the wall that have been growing for decades (the term ‘growth’ is really appropriate here), and to adapt or change to them, this will result in a situation due to its own dynamic, implosion or explosion or erosion that ‘solves’ itself.
Controlled barbarism on an adapting and re-aligning planet under changing climatic conditions.
In such a situation, access to land, water, resources, weapons and ‘finance’ will inevitably develop to the advantage of privileged classes and estates, but not indefinitely.
A social left/progressive, however culturally motivated, has the role of early warning, enlightenment and emancipation of the underprivileged in the world, beyond ethnic and geographical differentiation.
There is nothing fundamentally new about this, it just has been somewhat forgotten.
Biden and Trump are messengers of controlled barbarism, both of them.
Everyone can find such messengers just around the corner, too …
Ah yes the graciousness Ottoman Empire. Ever heard of Saladin his conquests by the sword, or the 80 million Indians killed by Muslim invaders or the Barbary coast or Spain or….
Anyway, Trump is as much a product of the Lefts lunacy as he is the dreams of the right. Biden is a metaphor for the failing west. If you think the “Christian” right is appalling wait till you see what succeeds them.
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