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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNever play the other guy's game --- The other guy's game is designed for the other guy to win.
Intriguing argument from Adam Gopnick, at the New Yorker:
Donald Trump invented a game: of bullying, lying, sociopathic selfishness, treachery, and outright gangsterism, doing and saying things that no democratic politician had ever done or even thought of doing, and he did it all in broad daylight. (A notorious line attributed to NixonWe can do that, but it would be wrongwas about paying hush money. Even Nixon wouldnt pardon his henchmen. Trump did.) It was a game designed for Trump alone to win, but all too many got drawn into it. It was a game that some credit to a Russian model of disinformation but actually seems rooted in old-fashioned American Barnumism, weaponized with John Gotti-style ethics. It was designed, in plain English, to throw out so much crap that no one could ever deal with it all. Trying to bat the crap away, you just got more of it all over you, and meanwhile you were implicitly endorsing its relevance.
Biden, by contrast, insisted that the way to win was not to play. In the face of the new politics of spectacle, he kept true to old-school coalition politics. He understood that the Black Church mattered more in Democratic primaries than any amount of Twitter snark, and, by keeping a low profile on social media, showed that social-media politics was a mirage. Throughout the dark, dystopian post-election months of Trumps tantrumwhich led to the insurrection on January 6thmany Democrats deplored Bidens seeming passivity, his reluctance to call a coup a coup and a would-be dictator a would-be dictator. Instead, he and his team were remarkably (to many, it seemed, exasperatingly) focussed on counting the votes, trusting the process, and staffing the government.
It looked at the time dangerously passive; it turned out to be patiently wise, for Biden and his team, widely attacked as pusillanimous centrists with no particular convictions, are in fact ideologues. Their ideology is largely invisible but no less ideological for refusing to present itself out in the open. It is the belief, animating Bidens whole career, that there is a surprisingly large area of agreement in American life and that, by appealing to that area of agreement, electoral victory and progress can be found. (As a recent Populace survey stated, Biden and Trump voters hold collective illusions about each other, and what is often mistaken for breadth of political disagreement is actually narrow if extremely intense disagreement on a limited number of partisan issues.) Bidens ideology is, in fact, the old ideology of pragmatic progressive pluralismthe ideology of F.D.R. and L.B.J. Beneath the strut and show and hysteria of politics, there is often a remarkably resilient consensus in the country. Outside the white Deep South, there was a broad consensus against segregation in 1964; outside the most paranoid registers of Wall Street, there was a similar consensus for social guarantees in 1934. Right now, post-pandemic, polls show a robust consensus for a public option to the Affordable Care Act, modernized infrastructure, even for tax hikes on the very rich and big corporations. The more you devote yourself to theatrical gestures and public spectacle, the less likely you are to succeed at making these improvementsand turning Trumpism around. Successful pluralist politicians reach out to the other side, not in a meek show of bipartisanship, but in order to steal their voters.
With so many Americans in the grip of a totalized ideology of Trumpismone that surmounts their obvious self-interest or normal calculations of economic utilitythe way to get them out of it is to stop thinking in totalized terms. You get people out of a cult not by offering them a better cult but by helping them see why they dont need a cult. This is a difficult wisdomand one that, perhaps not accidentally, was offered often during the campaign by the man who is now Bidens Transportation Secretary. Pete Buttigieg said at the time that you cant defeat a cartoon villain by being a cartoon hero. You defeat a cartoon villain by helping people remember that life is not a cartoon. He put it simply to the press: Trump appeals to peoples smallness, their fears, whatever part of them wants to look backward. We need to be careful that our necessary rebukes of the President dont corner people into the kind of defensiveness that makes them even more vulnerable to those kinds of appeals. What we really need to do in some ways is talk past Trump and his sins.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/bidens-invisible-ideology?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_071021&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67bd53f92a41245df1ad1&cndid=46207384&hasha=ca4267b462a60f252cf85401b3c734ff&hashb=5332756476ecd7c5f9b2b720ab35d3363bdb0ec7&hashc=4a7a36d6457c7c211bfe331ba51970246bbc906b15de5017113fc13ff1513856&esrc=vendor101&utm_content=B&utm_term=TNY_Daily
Hugin
(33,411 posts)The most insightful I've seen in awhile.
So true,
Docreed2003
(16,953 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,309 posts)quaint
(2,691 posts)Love it.
UpInArms
(51,313 posts)And told of meeting the father of a friend
.
The father has been a trump supporter
but was no longer
.
the conversion was recent
marble falls
(58,677 posts)... paraphrasing: an unexamined life is a tragedy; an over examined one, a disaster.
Jail him for his crimes, but does he need to be the nexus of everything we're trying to do?
Finally, someone gets it. Nobody wins a game playing the other sides rules. Waste of time.
Now, what are those rules?
Also, using reasonable rules (logical debate) is inferior to hardwired, instinctual rules (peer pressure).
On Edit: Worth repeating Pete Buttigieg said at the time that you cant defeat a cartoon villain by being a cartoon hero. You defeat a cartoon villain by helping people remember that life is not a cartoon. He put it simply to the press: Trump appeals to peoples smallness, their fears, whatever part of them wants to look backward. We need to be careful that our necessary rebukes of the President dont corner people into the kind of defensiveness that makes them even more vulnerable to those kinds of appeals. What we really need to do in some ways is talk past Trump and his sins.
Pinback
(12,197 posts)Very perceptive analysis and wise guidance for dealing with any bully.
bucolic_frolic
(44,024 posts)That is traditionally, for many decades, how parties appeal to the broadest swath of American voters. Package your policies for the middle. In 2016 there was little political middle remaining. 2020 the middle reasserted itself - that part not already hijacked into radicalism by TFG.
Biden's team played the pandemic and the ideology game brilliantly, smooth around all the edges, packaged as perfectly normal - which it was and is today. TFG never played this game because he couldn't. He could not and cannot appear as normal. He must play that angry, radical outsider oppressed by common sense because he doesn't know anything else. It takes a real wacko to run against the Deep State, if it exists, and the Rule of Law because they are unfair to you, which they aren't. Batsh*t cray.
Wounded Bear
(59,038 posts)I've been noting some exasperation from trumpers when I don't fall into their trap of trading insults and competitive trolling.
sarchasm
(1,030 posts)
concerning TFGs lawsuits of social platforms
"I will say that as it relates to these lawsuits, it's certainly a decision for the platforms to make," Psaki continued. "I think it's safe to say that the president spends a lot less time obsessing over social media than the former president."
jmbar2
(5,028 posts)Joinfortmill
(14,786 posts)MadLinguist
(801 posts)This is such a great way to put it "you cant defeat a cartoon villain by being a cartoon hero. You defeat a cartoon villain by helping people remember that life is not a cartoon"
TygrBright
(20,811 posts)Jon King
(1,910 posts)Govern well concerning real issues that effect people and their kids.......health care, fair pay, civil rights, child care, family leave, climate change, educating kids for the future technologies. Leave the petty name calling tribal silliness for the hopelessly Repugs.
All the while fight like heck for voting rights and organize in PA, MI, WI, GA, AZ to get everyone to the polls in 2022 and 2024.
malaise
(270,638 posts)Rec
modrepub
(3,522 posts)Love it
paleotn
(18,144 posts)Rebuking his followers with the roughest rhetoric possible. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. It's easy and certainly makes us feel good, but maybe not the best strategy? It's certainly not accomplished much to date other than causing trumpers to retrench even deeper into crazy. As for Trump's sins, I don't think Biden's thinking is whether or not to hold him accountable, but rather when. The last thing we need is to make Donnie Covid into some kind of half ass martyr. A rallying point for the cult. Maybe it's better to let justice take it's course, as painfully slow as that might seem, and, in the mean time, quietly do the job of governing. Doing the things necessary to make the country better than Biden found it. Time and improvements in the lives of average Americans might be the only viable cure to trumpism. Something to ponder.
bringthePaine
(1,788 posts)Rabrrrrrr
(58,362 posts)Don't play the game.
Satyagraha - non-cooperation.
To quote Spock in that two-parter in the next generation speaking to the Romulan commander: "Since you will likely kill me anyway, I choose not to cooperate."
Dems need to learn to say "Since you will excoriate me whether I negotiate with you or not, I won't negotiate and will force through my agenda anyway." The GOP is great at non-cooperation, because they don't give a shit what the dems think about them.
maxsolomon
(33,620 posts)LOL.
Faux pas
(14,785 posts)Response to kpete (Original post)
ExTex This message was self-deleted by its author.
GoneOffShore
(17,356 posts)And I appreciate that view.