I'd always assumed that about half of all Americans were what we would now call Trump supporters , but it seems to be somewhat less than that. Yay!
The toilet bowl is always half full.
I haven't done the math or look at the numbers, but I'd guess that Trump+Cruz total support probably is about 15% each of the total electorate, and gets you to about 25-30% of the voters, less of the population. And another 10-15% who might be along for the ride in the general. So, assuming that both guys count as fascist, which seems right, we're one of the most fascist current democracies but not off the charts. India beats us with fascists actually in power. But putting that aside even in terrible regional elections I don't think AfD cleares more than 20% of the total, and the Front National national vote is around 25-27%. UKIP gets about 13%. Golden Dawn's only at anout 8%. Not perfect comparisons but seem about right.
India beats us with fascists actually in power.
Yeah, and the Soviets beat us to space. We'll overtake those Indian amateurs. U.S.A.! Number One!
🎶Some people call me the space fascist
Some people call me the fascist of love🎶
Aren't we all forgetting the 27% crazification factor? This blog post is 10 years old but it's ageing into an enduring classic:
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.co.uk/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?
Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.
John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?
Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?
I don't know what drives a man to say such things. I just know that when they do, men like Ferdinand and me will be forced to shoulder the consequences.
Is it uncharitable of me to point out that the author is not, in fact, the one who was really shouldering the consequences?
Yeah, it's probably too unkind. In the end, when our McNamaras come clean, I suppose the correct response is at least a small measure of gratitude.
I'd always assumed that about half of all Americans were what we would now call Trump supporters
Something like Trump has been in the cards for a long time now. If, indeed, a Trump nomination is a signal that we have hit bottom has a country, that would be better than I was expecting.
But there's no reason to suppose that we can turn it around after a Trump nomination, even if he gets soundly defeated in November. The lunatic logic that led us to Trump may yet lead us to worse places.
... hit bottom as a country ...
...but it seems to be somewhat less than that
...for now.
If he takes the nomination then it will be Trump as Our Guy, and Trump as He's Better Than You Think And Not Hillary, and Suck It Libtards!, and Quickly Support The Eventual Winner Or You'll Be Out In The Cold, and so on. Trump is only getting that level of support when people have other, also crazy options. Once he's The Leader then a lot of people will fall in line and discover things about him that actually they do really like and so on. A majority of people? Probably not. But way more than we're seeing so far.
8: Agree it is complicated. I will say that a significant part of my support for conventions against torture and other ghastly acts is that it significantly lessen the likelihood that I or (more relevantly at this stage of life) any one I care about would ever be party to such practices.
The whole prodigal son thing, again.
11: Well sure--it would be the happy political surprise of my lifetime if Trump got less than, say, 90% of the votes Romney did--but, assuming his general election campaign is less nakedly fascist, I don't think it would be all that significant that millions of lifelong Republicans turned out to vote against Hillary. I mean, voting booths in much of Texas will probably be dripping with the spent seed of men who've been aching to vote against Hitlery for two decades. That it means voting for a fascist is nearly irrelevant.
More important, I don't think American Fascism has a second act, because Trump is unique: decades in the public spotlight, a long-running, incredibly popular TV show on which he does what many people think is basically the President's job, a personal fortune (that appears to be much larger than it is), and a unique personal instinct for eviscerating his (white male) opponents. I'm extremely doubtful that even a perfect chic seeking to replicate his run could do so successfully. I think that, in a few years, this will be (on the right) an embarrassing episode that people try to downplay ("Sure, I went to a couple rallies, just because I was so curious, but I was never a serious supporter"), a bit like joining a commune circa 1970.
Mind you, I'm not saying that the underlying energy/sentiment will vanish. I just think that Trumpism is nontransferable. Saletan argued the other day that it's perfectly likely that the nominee after Trump will be Cruz, and I think he's right, but I don't think Cruz's campaign will look much like Trump's. I think it will be a shoutier (and smarmier) version of a traditional American political campaign, because, for all his sociopathy, that's how Cruz has always worked (and I don't think he has the instinct to go for the visceral the way Trump does; Cruz is a master of pressing the buttons that the conservative movement as a whole has implanted in their voters, but Trump is an improvisor, pressing buttons no one knew were there).
American Fascism is the second act of American Know-Nothingism.
but Trump is an improvisor, pressing buttons no one knew were there
I think he's just mashing emphatically on buttons that everyone knew were there.
Donald Trump: a creative lover or merely an enthusiastic one?
To be honest I still think the thing about Trump that makes him actually different from any number of other crazy right wing pseudo-fascist candidates that we've seen isn't that he's something new in American politics. It's that the press thought he was hilarious and so didn't cover for him when he said something insane like they did for the other candidates. Then when it turned out that his ability to get constant freakouts/mockery from them actually boosted his popularity it was too late and they couldn't find any way to walk it back to the way they were describing the other candidates (and partially just for psychological reasons).
We'll see candidates appealing to those exact people in probably the exact way in the future too - heck, large chunks of the House are exactly that. But for them we'll probably be back to the standard "of course they aren't a bunch of violent screaming lunatics and anyway both parties are the same" coverage.
I mean, maybe a Trump nomination would irrevocably damage that for them and we'd see it starting to die. But "sensible adults rising from the ashes and retaking the Republican party (with the same insane views but shut up it's new faces)" has been an every-couple-years narrative for a good long while now, so I'm not optimistic.
I think he's just mashing emphatically on buttons that everyone knew were there.
Sure, the racist/xenophobic ones, but did anyone anywhere foresee a Republican successfully running against Fox? And I don't think any of the radio talkers ever anticipated the success of Trump's pro-Social Security, anti-Wall Street rhetoric.
Put it this way: insofar as Trump has actual policy positions, few of them are truly novel; even the ones that no one on the right has espoused in recent decades (if ever) are ones that could have been anticipated. But would anyone have written up his platform (or whatever) in advance and claimed it would win the field going away? I don't think so. A lot of it derives simply from him not being part of the GOP Borg, but I think he's a natural demagogue who reads the crowd's responses and feeds off them to an extraordinary degree. It's not that he's uncalculating, it's that he calculates in the moment--and that he's created a schtick that lets him walk anything back if he needs to, without ever looking weak or apologetic. Those just aren't common qualities.
"Thinking outside the Cox" is great.
insofar as Trump has actual policy positions, few of them are truly novel;
Although many are oddly reminiscent of the other truly novel thing discovered on this blog.
I've been pleasantly surprised to find out none of my Republican friends support Trump. I thought at least one of them would.
I have a Republican brother who says he will not only not vote for Trump, but will work for Hillary if it comes to her vs. Trump.