Fake news, a fake president and a fake country: Welcome to America, land of no context

[applegrove]

by Andrew O'hehir at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/03/fake-news-a-fake-president-and-a-fake-country-welcome-to-america-land-of-no-context/

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


Furthermore, Trump’s supporters may be delusional and misguided, but they aren’t half as dumb as they often look to “coastal elites.” Many of them understood, consciously or otherwise, that his incoherent promises could not be taken literally and that his outrageous personality did not reflect the realm of reality. They were sick of reality, and you can’t entirely blame them. For lots of people in “middle America” (the term is patronizing, but let’s move on) reality has been so debased, or so much replaced, as to seem valueless.

If reality means lives of pointless service-sector drudgery, downward mobility or stagnation, fast-food dinners, opioid addiction and traffic jams, then escape into fantasy seems forgivable. Donald Trump is a creature of the nurturing electronic cocoon that disrupts or replaces reality, an overlord of consumerism. (He is not in any meaningful sense a “capitalist.” Capitalists produce things, in the real world.) To paraphrase Michael Moore, Trump represented a historic opportunity to extend a giant middle finger to reality itself, and to the forces that have rendered it so dismal.

When I suggested a few weeks ago that Trump’s worldview resembled the narcissistic simulated universe of “The Matrix,” I had no idea how far the analogy would go. His election represents the moment when roughly half our voting population — slightly less than that, to be fair — spoke out clearly: Give us the blue pill! That’s the one where you wake up in your beds and believe whatever you want to believe, leaving reality behind. If onetime movie star Ronald Reagan was the first postmodern president (the word still meant something back then), Trump will be the first post-reality president.

That more or less explains my problem with the Jill Stein recounts and the faithless-elector dreamers and the people who write to me saying that Salon should not use the term “president-elect” to describe Trump because it isn’t accurate until the Electoral College convenes on Dec. 19 and for the love of God, he can still be stopped. Such people are clinging to the norms and standards of an outdated reality; they are almost as deluded as the Trump voters, and more overtly pathetic.


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

[shenmue]

1. How true

[Maeve]

2. A 'post truth' society

Why I no longer fear death...

[Cha]

3. Damn Straight.

[applegrove]

4. In actual fact Trump is pulling down the human created systems

or 'fictions' in the USA. What he puts in their place may be phonier still. Depends who influences him because we know he does not read the great books out there.

[TwilightZone]

5. Coming from the website that gave Ben Norton a frequent forum...

that article is just a tad ironic.

[Douglas Kawasaki]

6. Economic anxiety my ass

It's racism.

[calimary]

8. Welcome to DU, Douglas Kawasaki!

Yeah, I have to agree. Every time I hear someone whining about how we have to "understand" the trump voters, SHEESH! I want to throw up. I "understand" them perfectly clearly. It's THEY who don't understand themselves. I find myself saying "BULLSHIT 'it's about jobs!' That's total bullshit!" Explain to me how the violence and racism, the swastikas painted on the sides of buildings and churches, the Nazi shit spray-painted on people's cars, the open verbal abuse and hostility and menacing and threats and bullying of people of color and Latino kids in schools, and attacks on peace-loving, hard-working Muslim Americans who were born here, AND MORE - how all that disgraceful and anti-American pissant tantrum-throwing is about "jobs." Somebody has to help me understand that. Because I can't figure it out, for the life of me!

It's ABSOLUTELY and UNDENIABLY about racism. And bigotry. And misogyny. And xenophobia.

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. Yes it is.

[kebob]

7. O'Hehir Rocks

Read the article earlier. K.And.R!

[flying rabbit]

10. k&r

[BlueStater]

11. I watch movies to escape reality.

I don't fuck up the entire country by putting a deranged sexual predator with no political experience in the Oval Office. Once again, screw these people. I couldn't give a shit less what aspect of their lives that they were unhappy with. There is absolutely nothing in the universe that could justify voting for a revolting piece of shit like Trump.

[applegrove]

12. TUHYRF!