Tag: news

How so many Americans could vote for Donald Trump

Over 76.5-million Americans voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election two weeks ago. It has left the rest of us contemplating how so many Americans could vote for a man who has done countless things, any one of which, even MAGAmericans would say should disqualify any other candidate from the office of the President. I have heard many explanations but no one else has expressed the reason that I think Trump was elected.

I have listened closely to MAGAmericans express the reasons why they support Trump and why they opposed Kamala Harris (and before her, Joe Biden). I have also noted their responses to me and others who have expressed why Trump is disqualified for the White House. I have seen a dynamic that has been consistent in all of these observations. When it comes to MAGAmericans’ perceptions of both candidates, they have been untethered from objective reality.

MAGAmericans have created a persona of Trump in their minds that does not reflect the person that he actually is. It’s a caricature of him that has only positive characteristics MAGAmericans want to see.

Donald Trump

For example, they think he is a successful business man when the truth is that six of his businesses—including casinos, the hardest business to fail at—have gone bankrupt and his developer business probably has more debt than it has assets. They say that he “tells it like it is” yet Trump publicly told over 30,000 documented lies during just the four years he previously was President, not to mention the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election, which he maintains to this day.

MAGAmericans have also created a persona of Harris that does not reflect the person that she actually is. It’s a caricature of her that has only characteristics they consider negative. For example, they say that she’s Communist when they obviously don’t even know what communism means.

And the only criticism that they can level against her is that she “cackles.” Granted, there are short video clips of Harris laughing in a strange manner but, if MAGAmericans were to watch extended videos of her, they’d see that most of her laughing is very normal. She laughs no more frequently than the typical person with a positive demeanor does, not to mention that it’s irrelevant to her qualifications to be President anyway.

I have also seen that MAGAmericans’ alternative reality is not limited to the candidates’ personae. It extends to the issues surrounding the campaigns. For example, they think that President Biden has made the United States more reliant on foreign sources of petroleum. The truth is that the United states is a net exporter of oil (i.e. it produces more than it consumes), a level of production that is greater than at any time Trump was President and America is now the largest crude oil producer in the world.

They think that crime is increasing when, in fact, violent crime is declining in America. I even know a Trump supporter who regularly blamed President Biden for the conditions in the United States in 2020. When I reminded him that Trump was President then, he simply denied it, insisting that Biden was President in 2020. He had literally convinced himself that President Biden had mismanaged the year of the pandemic because it fit his MAGA narrative.

These are just a handful of the countless examples of MAGAmericans’ alternative reality that I could cite. When they don’t have a grasp on reality and they think these caricatures are representative of the real candidates, it makes sense for Trump’s supporters to make the choice that they did two weeks ago. They don’t have to be racist or fascist or stupid to have a reason to decide to cast their ballot for Donald Trump.

Even a dog has the sense to get out of the rain

I’m watching NBC News report on Hurricane Irma making landfall near Naples with a life-threatening storm surge on TV and I’m getting irritated. In all fairness, the hypocrisy of the reporting is not limited to NBC.  Just about every major news broadcast is guilty of what I’m watching. Nonetheless, it’s folly and it’s unfair to first responders.

NBC’s Kerry Sanders is reporting from the exposed top deck of a parking structure where the eye of the hurricane is about to make landfall. The wind is blowing so hard that he can barely stay on his feet. Rain is falling almost horizontally and I can see debris flying through the camera shot.

Sanders can barely hear the anchor through his ear monitor and the roar of the storm is almost drowning out Sanders’ voice in the broadcast. But I can hear he’s reporting that the wind is blowing very hard and the rain is falling in a deluge. He’s telling us that the ocean is beginning to rapidly rise onto land and it’s going to be a record storm surge.  It’s very dangerous to be outside, so everyone should have evacuated the area, he says.

Meanwhile, who are the only people cavalier enough to be out in Naples? That’s right—the NBC news crew (and I’m sure other networks’ crews). But we don’t need to see Sanders standing outside in a Category 2 hurricane to realize that the wind is blowing very hard and the rain is falling in a deluge. It’s a hurricane and that’s what they do. NBC has been telling us for days that the storm surge could be twenty feet high when Irma makes landfall in Florida.

The local authorities have already told everyone to evacuate because of the extreme danger in riding out the storm. The authorities warned that anyone who chooses to shelter in place should not expect any response to emergency calls that come in while the winds are high and the waters rising. They have been warning residents that there will be no rescues during the brunt of the storm because doing so risks the life and safety of the first responders. Police officers, firemen, and other emergency workers will need to be healthy to move into the devastation as soon the winds die down.

However, you can bet that Sanders and other news crews would expect immediate treatment in the overburdened hospital if one of them got struck in the head by the debris we can see flying by at over 100 miles per hour. Even though these reporters willfully and knowingly put themselves into this danger just to make a report that is no more informative than it would be from a hardened shelter, they would call 911 if they suddenly found themselves in an emergency situation. And they would want a Coast Guard rescue helicopter to be there if the storm surge took them by surprise and swept them away.

If they were acting responsibly, news agencies would mount unmanned camera feeds out in the storm and have their reporters report the latest news from a safe and secure location. Nowadays, the most up-to-date information comes through telecommunications that would be most reliable indoors out of the storm, so their best reporting would come from such a location anyway. There’s even a possibility that reporters already on location during the storm could obstruct or distract the rescuers’ ingress. Hurricane reporting would actually be more valuable to viewers if the reporters moved in just after the first responders than it is when they are on site before the storm.