Comments | devifemme: Two birds with one stone -- Brexit and Trump as disrupters

devifemme

Two birds with one stone -- Brexit and Trump as disrupters

Jul 21, 2016 13:26

I just read a terrific analysis of the Brexit fiasco. It comes from the well regarded Anglo-American author Zadie Smith, in the current New York Review of Books ( Read more... )

phooey, change, damned, hmmm

Comments 4

ggary July 23 2016, 11:37:48 UTC

Well, I know that I keep banging on about this, but the US and British situations are only superficially similar. Trump is a rabble-rouser who has garnered a cult of popularity around himself because he dares to be unpopular with Liberals by saying the stuff that they are too polite to talk about. His solutions so all society's ills are either stupid or nen-existent, but at least he is offering solutions. It's all very well to say that, if you're living in the Rust Belt, you're going to have to get used to watching your city fall apart. Watching concerned Liberals taking pity doesn't put food on the table. If the Democrats want to win votes off Trump then they have to do more than just say 'Oh, he's an idiot!'. They need to offer answers, or at least show that they are going to do SOMETHING about the situation in the Mid-West. There seems to be some underlying contempt in the media for people who have been taken in by the Trump machine, but the reason that they're following him is because the establishment on both sides of the ( ... )

devifemme July 23 2016, 17:38:11 UTC

Another very thoughtful response, Gary, and I delight in your friendship and forthrightness. I think your most relevant comment was "Brexiteers and the Trump voters are not similar, but their opponents are ( ... )

ggary July 24 2016, 17:33:19 UTC

I have to say that I wavered for a long time in sending that particular response, as I also treasure your friendship, and it could seem as though I was just being bloody rude ( ... )

devifemme July 25 2016, 13:30:01 UTC

Hey, no problem! Politics is not only "the art of the possible" bur also infuriating in what it reveals about human nature. The "paralysis of analysis" also fits in there someplace.

It's been instructive to watch Hillary trying to cope with the Trump phenomenon. (Not that she's NOT part of the problem!) She and Kaine were on "Sixty Minutes," one of our big talk-shows (the media, likewise, being part of the problem!), last night.

They performed brilliantly -- giving one the impression that the cursed elites are rallying effectively. (The Washington Post -- both media AND elites -- yesterday carried a MASSIVE lead editorial, scorching the proverbial earth in refuting Trump's every wretched characteristic.

And Philadelphia no doubt will continue the Dems' vivid counterattack, turning it into a holy crusade. Sustaining the fever pitch for three months will be a challenge...