General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: America's current situation is just chickens from the '80s coming home to roost [View all]BainsBane
(53,001 posts)and politics becoming entertainment fodder.
Your point about Trump as a production of the financial excess of the 80s is an interesting one.
Still, there are certain characteristics of the population today which led to the population today which led to Trump's election. I don't think it's simply a matter of a shift to the right. It goes far beyond that. Plenty of people who call themselves progressive or leftist either voted for Trump or otherwise contributed to his victory by refusing to vote for Clinton, not because of disagreements about policy--because to the person they remain willfully uninformed about what she proposed--but because of their egos. The result is a narcissist in office that came to power because a considerable portion of the public refuses to care about the well-being of its fellow citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable who are suffering most under this administration.
I see troubling characteristics in our political culture today that won't go away when Trump leaves office. I see an effort to replace the rule of law with the rule of men. Favored politicians are held above citizens and above the law. Any information that doesn't prop up that man's is dismissed as "fake news" and investigations as political witch hunts. Truth is defined as that which is convenient rather than evidence-based. News, science, and information is either denounced, ignored, or marshaled to promote an existing narrative. Truth is what people "feel," not what they come to learn through evidence. While journalists and academics engaged in the production of news and knowledge are treated as the enemy, targeted for retribution. Note the enemies lists of journalists and Twitter users circulating on the web.
None of these characteristics are unique to the right. They have suddenly come to the fore in this particular point in time, and I fear they will be the undoing of American democracy.