Paul Krugman just made perfect sense of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and angry white Republican voters

[applegrove]

Paul Krugman just made perfect sense of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and angry white Republican voters

Salon Staff

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/09/paul_krugman_just_made_perfect_sense_of_donald_trump_ben_carson_and_angry_white_republican_voters/

"SNIP...........


I know I’m not the only observer who sees a link between the despair reflected in those mortality numbers and the volatility of right-wing politics. Some people who feel left behind by the American story turn self-destructive; others turn on the elites they feel have betrayed them. No, deporting immigrants and wearing baseball caps bearing slogans won’t solve their problems, but neither will cutting taxes on capital gains. So you can understand why some voters have rallied around politicians who at least seem to feel their pain.


.............SNIP"

[eridani]

1. With a nice takedown of RW arguments

If you believe the usual suspects on the right, it’s all the fault of liberals. Generous social programs, they insist, have created a culture of dependency and despair, while secular humanists have undermined traditional values. But (surprise!) this view is very much at odds with the evidence.For one thing, rising mortality is a uniquely American phenomenon – yet America has both a much weaker welfare state and a much stronger role for traditional religion and values than any other advanced country. Sweden gives its poor far more aid than we do, and a majority of Swedish children are now born out of wedlock, yet Sweden’s middle-aged mortality rate is only half of white America’s.

You see a somewhat similar pattern across regions within the United States. Life expectancy is high and rising in the Northeast and California, where social benefits are highest and traditional values weakest. Meanwhile, low and stagnant or declining life expectancy is concentrated in the Bible Belt.

[applegrove]

2. +100 It is like the GOP predicted that there would be

Last edited Tue Nov 10, 2015, 06:07 PM - Edit history (2)

despair and tried to create the narrative of its cause to protect their sick anti middle class policies. Hitler used the narrative of antisemitism to scapegoat the negative feelings the Germans were feeling as he consolidated power. If they direct negative feelings, feelings that are a result of their leadership, towards an 'other', then the public never gets wise to the actual cause and throws them out of power.

And psychopaths have to have a scapegoat for their followers negative feelings, negative feelings caused intrinsically by the people themselves or extrinsically by their 'dear leader's' actions: their relationship with the psychopath has to be all aspirational and rainbows and false self actualization and being a part of something much much greater than themselves. Any negativity might lead to reality sinking in. .