Slate - "Trump Sold America a Miracle Cure" - a very important, insightful article

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/01/trump_sold_america_a_miracle_cure_it_will_fail_he_ll_get_off_for_free.html

But when miracle cures fail, the patients don’t blame the salesman.

By Alan Levinovitz

“Lock her up!” they had chanted at his rallies. True believers put it on shirts and hats and the coffee mugs that would be filled with liberal tears. “Lock her up!” It wasn’t just a demand. It was a mantra.

But no attempt will be made to lock up Hillary Clinton.

“That plays great before the election,” smirked Donald Trump at the Michigan stop of his self-congratulatory “Thank You” tour, hushing the crowd with a series of Trumpian hand gestures as if he were casting a spell. “Now we don’t care.”

And just like that, they didn’t. Supporters smiled, silenced.

“Drain the swamp!” they had chanted, another mantra that evoked a nostalgic fantasy of America, great again, purified of rot and darkness.

But the swamp will not be drained. Instead, it has been stocked with billionaire donors, hand-picked for our billionaire president by longtime Washington insiders. These people live in a bubble so isolating that some required briefing on the price of milk.

snip

this is long, but well worth the read for anyone trying to figure out just a bit what the hell is happening (in my opinion, anyway)

[Solly Mack]

1. He's a bottle of miracle spring water.

[KittyWampus]

9. He's a real "Piece of Shit Used Car Salesman"

[underpants]

2. Fantastic article. No they won't turn on him. And the bottles triggered something in me

Maybe that's WOW hen he thinks America was great. The rail barrons (ahem) were the kings and everyone else fought for scraps.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Slate is doing a great job so far with some important reporting

But will it matter? Not feeling very optimistic about things today.

[Me.]

4. Essentially

People believe what they want to believe

[Jacob Boehme]

5. Yep, the "True Believers" just soak his ass up.

[dalton99a]

6. Which is why Democrats should forget about deplorables. Fuck them. Concentrate on turnout.

Excellent article.

[bettyellen]

7. Interesting take on how the anti-intellectualism has taken over - these people make up their own

"Facts" so it doesn't bother them when Trump does

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. pretty horrifying, isn't it?

[bettyellen]

15. You know, I've run across this in corporate America where people just CYA with bullshit

all day long but as much as I hate it I get why they do it. Because they want promotions and shit. But yeah, this I don't really see any payoff. So alien to me.

[Solly Mack]

10. True

[flying rabbit]

11. K&R

[ismnotwasm]

12. A very good read

And it would make an excellent discussion piece

[Turn CO Blue]

13. I suggest "basket of gullibles" is fitting for most Trump voters.

The Trump voters are the SAME people who repost that debunked Facebook privacy (hoax) statement every time it comes around or who believe that the American Cancer Society will donate a dollar for every share on Facebook. In other words, they are really gullible and really superstitious.

I'm overgeneralizing, but my husband has several loud and belligerent pro-Trumpers in his FB feed who also believe some really wild conspiracy stuff.

Just anecdotal, but three of these men post about three things only - Trump is emperor-god, Hillary is evil/Liberals are mental, and their favorite CT. NO pics of family, no meal pics, no BBQ, no fishing/vacation, no sports -- just politics and conspiracies.

Ugh. Where is the skepticism? Trump is a con man. How can they be so deeply under the propaganda spell?

[mopinko]

14. i think they whole tin-foil hat crowd has been overlooked, but

it seems important to the story to me. i have a trumpkin in my life, and the whole ct stuff is sorta the bottom line. alex jones, lew rockwell, all the hits.
seems intrinsic to a lot of these broken brains.

thinks obama was a cia plant. likes to call him "silky"

[uponit7771]

17. +1

[andym]

16. For the desperate and the rest of us too: "There is no back to get to"

"Ultimately, Trump is a symptom of a deep problem, deeper than institutional failures and poor education, deeper even than racism or sexism. Humans need myths to make manageable life’s overwhelming complexity and evident injustice. Time and time again, we fall for self-serving saviors spinning tales about Eden and the evil forces that drove us out, who promise that faith in their solutions will get us back. Of course, it never has and never will. In reality, there is no “back” to get to."

[uponit7771]

18. NONE of his supporters are going to admit they've been took