Category: Trump and Trump-hatred

… by a member of the coastal elite.

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., we had lunch with a highly educated highly paid person who expressed hatred of Donald Trump and the kind of people who would vote for him. She has a law degree and works for a government agency managing a team of attorneys who process “civil rights complaints” against the agency. What constitutes a civil rights complaint? “It is almost always an employee suing the agency for race, sex, or some other kind of discrimination,” she explained. “I don’t do any of the litigation myself, but only manage the attorneys who do. It isn’t fulfilling or meaningful, but it lets me attend all of my kids’ school events.”

One thing that she hated about Trump was his withdrawal from the Paris agreement (the same Wikipedia article notes that none of the big countries that have agreed to the agreement have actually delivered on their pledges). She described her own practice of trying to reuse plastic wrap and belief that if everyone did that it would result in a significant reduction in fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions. (She lives in the suburbs and drives everywhere in a private gasoline-powered vehicle, consistent with “study finds climate change skeptics are more likely to behave in eco-friendly ways than those who are highly concerned about the issue”.)

She was yet more passionate on the subject of immigration. Trump was obstructing her ability to hire immigrants, e.g., to maintain her suburban yard. “They’re doing jobs that Americans won’t do,” she pointed out.

Her lobbyist husband had dangerous libertarian tendencies that she had tolerated thus far. However, she believed that he would vote for Donald Trump if Elizabeth Warren were to be nominated by the Democrats. “I would have to divorce him,” she noted seriously and without mentioning that the well-being of her two young children was being factored into her decision.

(As the lower earning spouse, she would likely come out as the winner of the winner-take-all contest set up by Maryland family law, so divorce for her would mean little change in spending power and she’d have significant blocks of time completely free for Tindering among the righteous while the Warren-resisting father cared for the children.)

I tried to gently point out that a lot of the people who voted for Democrats happened to be those who benefited from a larger government. Thus, they might be said to be voting their pocketbook just as they accused Trump voters of doing. She replied that, when voting, she thought only of her children and the future of the planet rather than herself.

After the lunch party broke up, a fellow attendee (also a senior government worker and a voter for Democrats) and I discussed this woman’s perspective. We agreed that she simply did not like having to share the U.S. with the kind of fellow citizen who would vote for Donald Trump. Her beef was not actually with Trump, whom she agreed is merely doing what he promised to do, but rather with her fellow citizens who were and are Trump supporters.

In my review of the Trump Hotel, D.C.:

Given that the intensity of Trump hatred among Democrats is much stronger than the intensity of Trump love among Republicans, I wonder if the narrative that Trump hotels are getting a boost in business from his presidency is false. Maybe there are some folks who think it is fun to be a Trump customer and perhaps there are some foreigners who think that Trump will do their bidding if they are regular guests. But these have to be outweighed by those who want to demonstrate their virtue by never setting foot in a Trump-named enterprise again.

The same journalists who previously attacked Trump for getting rich off the Presidency are now gleefully reporting that his hotels are suffering losses are a result of his political prominence, e.g., “Trump Tower Chicago Hotel is Losing Money Hand Over Fist” (Vanity Fair):

In addition to the Chicago property, business at Trump Doral in Miami is also reportedly in “steep decline,” which a tax consultant hired by the Trump Organization attributed to the “negative connotation…associated with the brand.” The company has also lost contracts with hotels in Manhattan and Toronto. And in a sign that even people inside the family business know the name is dragging down profits, virtually every mention of “Trump” has been stripped from two Central Park ice rinks. Earlier this year, the Trump Organization, which declined to comment on its financial woes, attempted to blame the money situation in the Windy City on “the perceived threat of gun violence,” despite the fact that no other competitors have suffered a similar decline. “Among the hotel community in Chicago, everyone is aware of the relative underperformance of the Trump hotel over the last two to three years,” analyst Michael Bellisario told the Post at the time.

Will it turn out that the Trump family was actually the most altruistic ever to go into American politics?

“1, 2, 3, 4, Trump Can’t Rule Us Anymore: With impeachment looming, it’s time to take to the streets again.” (NYT, October 21, 2019):

All over the world right now, outraged citizens are taking to the streets. Mass protests in Hong Kong have been going on for months, at one point drawing about a quarter of the territory’s population.

So as Donald Trump’s sneering lawlessness and stupefying corruption continue to escalate, it’s confounding, at least to me, that Americans aren’t taking to the streets en masse.

“Want Trump to Go? Take to the Streets: Another moment for public protest has arrived.” (NYT, a day earlier), by David Leonhardt, “a former Washington bureau chief for the Times”:

Fortunately, some progressives understood that politics isn’t only an inside game. The outside game — of public protest and grass-roots lobbying — matters, too. … On the day after Trump’s inauguration, some four million Americans took to the streets for Women’s Marches …

Do you remember the images showing throngs of people taking to the streets for the Women’s March? The size of the crowds, especially compared with Trump’s inauguration, reinforced the fact that most Americans rejected Trumpism.

The comments to these articles are packed with complaints that 48 percent of Americans elected the object of the proposed protests and sometimes express contempt for these 48 percent, e.g., as believing Christians, racists, etc.

Since the people who voted for Trump still support him, isn’t the proposed protest best understood as by coastal elites against the non-elites whose right to vote they forgot to take away? (and the protest is against the non-elites being able to vote in what they perceive to be their own interests)

Why use Trump as a scapegoat? If people who live in New York City feel oppressed by those who live and vote in Georgia, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc., shouldn’t they be able to name their true oppressors and protest against them? Maybe demand that voting be restricted to those with a liberal arts degree! Why should people without college-level training in the humanities be choosing a government?

Related:

• “As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash” (NYT): the righteous will have to step over a lot of their neighbors sleeping on the sidewalk to get to the “anti-Trump” protest

A Facebook friend’s post:

The upcoming US election is unlike any other. … This is not a normal election. This is a national emergency. It cancels the usual rules. … [some ideas for what Democrats should do] … Then, once the gross course correction is attained, away from the Trump course of authoritarian, corrupt, nationalistic, lie/propaganda/fear/polarization based government, we can go back to deciding how liberal or conservative our policies on 100 matters should be.

Right away from this coastal elite Democrat, scornful of religious Americans who accept dogma uncritically, we can see Millenarianism:

the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which “all things will be changed”

Of course, I couldn’t resist a simple question:

How has the stock market done during this 2.5-year “national emergency”?

I.e., why wouldn’t investors take 60 seconds to sell U.S. stocks and buy non-U.S. stocks, rather than stick around for the “national emergency” and see whether Dictator Trump would confiscate their assets, just as other dictators have done in the past? Why would foreigners continue to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. (some stats)?

The answer turned out to be, ultimately, that any question regarding whether Trump being in the White House constituted a “national emergency” was “off topic”.

If we regard Trump hatred as a religion, ideas that cannot be questioned or examined rationally would be part of the dogma.

Separately, the other day I photographed stickers on an aircraft mechanic’s toolbox:

I posted them on Facebook, noting that they had come from a mechanic’s toolbox, and a guy who lives in Manhattan and draws his paycheck from the refugee industry responded with “Who gives a fuck” (a good summary of Democrats with regard to native-born guys who work hard at skilled blue collar jobs?). I think this is evidence for my Dutch friend’s observation regarding American elites, blue collar whites, and Trump’s election: “They forgot to take away their right to vote.”