Recession hangover and the rise of Trump: His rise is fueled by an anger based on fiction
by Heather Digby Parton at Salon
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/recession-hangover-and-the-rise-of-trump-his-rise-is-fueled-by-an-anger-based-on-fiction/
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And communities hit hard by the loss of manufacturing over the past 30 years are still hurting. That is a perennial problem for which there seems to be no easy answer. Better trade policies will surely help but the globalization genie isn’t going back in the bottle.
Still, the larger economy is improving rather smartly at long last and yet we have Donald Trump, the author of a book called “Crippled America,” saying daily that the country is going to hell and tens of millions of people agree with him. Obviously, one big reason for this is the right-wing media from which many of these Trump supporters get their information. If you watch Fox News, you are told on a daily basis that we are living in a dystopian hell-scape on the verge of economic collapse and imminent imposition of sharia law by illegal immigrants. His followers who are employed undoubtedly believe they are among a very lucky few.
But I also think that people suffer from an emotional hangover after these economic upheavals. You feel paralyzed when they’re happening, afraid to make a move or take a chance. And that makes sense. It’s a perilous time. Once things finally improve in a substantial way, it’s as if you are coming back to life and there’s an understandable feeling of pent-up anger and resentment about what you have gone through. It’s not about what’s happening now; it’s about what happened before.
Of course. that’s not a conscious thought. People just feel what they feel in the moment and when their anger is answered in some way, it begins to dissipate. I don’t know if that will happen this time. A lot depends on how well people do economically, if they feel secure and are hopeful about the future. But it could happen. And if it does, the next few years may look very different than the ones we have just experienced.
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