Maybe America Wasn’t Crazy to Elect Donald Trump

Yes, I've already said it doesn't have squat to do with real life economics and is just a fantasy pic.

As for finding some Economist to agree with you and offer up confirmation biases on demand, they're a dime a dozen. It's a field where two economists with opposing 'research' won Nobel Prizes in the same year, and one Nobel Prize winner and a cohort of MIT geniuses went bankrupt running their own investment fund; see Long Term Capital Management and the crash it's collapse caused.

 

Here's more:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/neil-buchanan-think-trump-not-133002662.html

Newsweek
Neil Buchanan: You Think Trump’s Not So Bad? Wrong!
Neil H. Buchanan,Newsweek 3 hours ago
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This article first appeared on the Dorf on Law site.

There is a rather large difference between the two following, very similar-sounding statements:

"Trump is not turning out to be so bad, right?"

Trending: Why United Airlines Would Rather Beat You Than Pamper You

"Trump has not been as bad as he might have been, I guess."

The most important difference between the two is that the former expresses some measure of optimism -- guarded optimism measured against well warranted pessimism, to be sure, but still optimism -- while the latter expresses a sense of relief without imagining that the big picture has improved.

Count me in the second group. The first group is not merely misreading the situation but they are affirmatively worsening it by encouraging everyone to ignore evidence and instead simply to hope for the best. It is OK, they suggest, to let our guards down, because Trump is not the danger we thought he was. As Trump would say: Wrong!

Even worse, people in the first group could try to say that those of us in the second group have admitted that they are right. "You're just saying the same thing we said, which is that we're pleasantly surprised that the world hasn't ended, like we all thought it would by now. So you admit that he hasn't been so bad!" But that would seriously miss the point.

05_06_Trump_Bad_01
Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Washington, DC, on May 3, 2017. Neil Buchanan writes that the 100-day mark of this presidential term has brought forth an almost uniformly negative assessment of Trump and what exists of his administration. The incompetence, the lying, the failure to govern, the horrible executive orders, the bigotry, the disdain for the rule of law. This is easily visible to people who are not willfully blind. NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty

The 100-day mark of this presidential term has brought forth an almost uniformly negative assessment of Trump and what exists of his administration. The incompetence, the lying, the failure to govern, the horrible executive orders, the bigotry, the disdain for the rule of law. This is easily visible to people who are not willfully blind.

The best summary that I have read -- and I am not saying this because it was written by my co-columnist Michael Dorf -- warned us to " beware the coming 'Trump isn't so bad' narrative." It was so good, in fact, that I hereby invoke the editorial equivalent of the legal concept of "incorporating by reference" the content of Professor Dorf's column.

He makes five key points:

(1) The news cycle requires new news, and much of Trump's worst aspects are not news in the journalistic sense;

(2) Trump benefits from low expectations;

(3) That nothing terrible has happened yet to most people is taken as an "all clear" signal;

(4) Journalists are bending over backward to "balance" their reporting about Trump with imagined positives;

Don't miss: France Moves to Keep Macron's Email Hack From Impacting Election

and (5) Trump's gaffes and scandals are somehow mutually canceling rather than cumulative.

Related: Michael Dorf : Beware the "Trump Isn't So Bad" Narrative

Again, I completely endorse that analysis. My goal here is to add some further thoughts about how and why we have already started to see some Trump revisionism, and to push back against it.

One prime example of the kind of op-ed that Professor Dorf predicted was written by -- no surprise here -- David Brooks of The New York Times . Brooks concluded his piece (which managed to be a superficial essay about Trump's supposed mere superficiality) as follows:

Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.
Brooks's piece is an article-length illustration of Dorf's third point, which is that comfortable people who are not directly threatened by the most newsworthy things that Trump has done can be lulled into thinking,

Hey, we had good reason to think that he would have been impeached or a dictator by now, but I haven't had my land confiscated by alt-right brigades, and I haven't been exiled or sent to re-education camps. All in all, I guess I was worried about nothing.
Yes, economically secure older professional white men like Brooks (and Professor Dorf and me) have not seen anything happen thus far that should induce existential terror, at least regarding our immediate personal situations. But we are a distinct and fortunate minority. It is not just Syrian refugees who have seen bad things happen. Most Americans are now worse off than they were on January 19.

The white supremacist basis of Trump's campaign has manifested itself in real-world policy decisions by his administration, even at this early stage. Although we can feel some sense of comfort that the courts have thus far succeeded in stymieing the various attempts to implement Trump's Muslim ban, that does not mean that nothing bad is happening for people of color in this country.

Trump has unleashed federal agents to round up immigrants, in a "gloves are off" approach that has raised terror even among U.S. citizens whose skin happens to be brown or black (or white, depending on how "foreign" one's last name sounds). The "sanctuary cities" fight is an important one that has not (yet) been lost, but that is a matter of whether local law enforcement directly participates in the crackdown that is already happening at the federal level.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/neil-buchanan-think-trump-not-133002662.html

Newsweek
Neil Buchanan: You Think Trump’s Not So Bad? Wrong!
Neil H. Buchanan,Newsweek 3 hours ago

This article first appeared on the Dorf on Law site.

There is a rather large difference between the two following, very similar-sounding statements:

"Trump is not turning out to be so bad, right?"

Trending: Why United Airlines Would Rather Beat You Than Pamper You

"Trump has not been as bad as he might have been, I guess."

The most important difference between the two is that the former expresses some measure of optimism -- guarded optimism measured against well warranted pessimism, to be sure, but still optimism -- while the latter expresses a sense of relief without imagining that the big picture has improved.

Count me in the second group. The first group is not merely misreading the situation but they are affirmatively worsening it by encouraging everyone to ignore evidence and instead simply to hope for the best. It is OK, they suggest, to let our guards down, because Trump is not the danger we thought he was. As Trump would say: Wrong!

Even worse, people in the first group could try to say that those of us in the second group have admitted that they are right. "You're just saying the same thing we said, which is that we're pleasantly surprised that the world hasn't ended, like we all thought it would by now. So you admit that he hasn't been so bad!" But that would seriously miss the point.

05_06_Trump_Bad_01
Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Washington, DC, on May 3, 2017. Neil Buchanan writes that the 100-day mark of this presidential term has brought forth an almost uniformly negative assessment of Trump and what exists of his administration. The incompetence, the lying, the failure to govern, the horrible executive orders, the bigotry, the disdain for the rule of law. This is easily visible to people who are not willfully blind. NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty

The 100-day mark of this presidential term has brought forth an almost uniformly negative assessment of Trump and what exists of his administration. The incompetence, the lying, the failure to govern, the horrible executive orders, the bigotry, the disdain for the rule of law. This is easily visible to people who are not willfully blind.

The best summary that I have read -- and I am not saying this because it was written by my co-columnist Michael Dorf -- warned us to " beware the coming 'Trump isn't so bad' narrative." It was so good, in fact, that I hereby invoke the editorial equivalent of the legal concept of "incorporating by reference" the content of Professor Dorf's column.

He makes five key points:

(1) The news cycle requires new news, and much of Trump's worst aspects are not news in the journalistic sense;

(2) Trump benefits from low expectations;

(3) That nothing terrible has happened yet to most people is taken as an "all clear" signal;

(4) Journalists are bending over backward to "balance" their reporting about Trump with imagined positives;

Don't miss: France Moves to Keep Macron's Email Hack From Impacting Election

and (5) Trump's gaffes and scandals are somehow mutually canceling rather than cumulative.

Related: Michael Dorf : Beware the "Trump Isn't So Bad" Narrative

Again, I completely endorse that analysis. My goal here is to add some further thoughts about how and why we have already started to see some Trump revisionism, and to push back against it.

One prime example of the kind of op-ed that Professor Dorf predicted was written by -- no surprise here -- David Brooks of The New York Times . Brooks concluded his piece (which managed to be a superficial essay about Trump's supposed mere superficiality) as follows:

Don’t get me wrong. I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But it’s hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater — one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.
Brooks's piece is an article-length illustration of Dorf's third point, which is that comfortable people who are not directly threatened by the most newsworthy things that Trump has done can be lulled into thinking,

Hey, we had good reason to think that he would have been impeached or a dictator by now, but I haven't had my land confiscated by alt-right brigades, and I haven't been exiled or sent to re-education camps. All in all, I guess I was worried about nothing.
Yes, economically secure older professional white men like Brooks (and Professor Dorf and me) have not seen anything happen thus far that should induce existential terror, at least regarding our immediate personal situations. But we are a distinct and fortunate minority. It is not just Syrian refugees who have seen bad things happen. Most Americans are now worse off than they were on January 19.

The white supremacist basis of Trump's campaign has manifested itself in real-world policy decisions by his administration, even at this early stage. Although we can feel some sense of comfort that the courts have thus far succeeded in stymieing the various attempts to implement Trump's Muslim ban, that does not mean that nothing bad is happening for people of color in this country.

Trump has unleashed federal agents to round up immigrants, in a "gloves are off" approach that has raised terror even among U.S. citizens whose skin happens to be brown or black (or white, depending on how "foreign" one's last name sounds). The "sanctuary cities" fight is an important one that has not (yet) been lost, but that is a matter of whether local law enforcement directly participates in the crackdown that is already happening at the federal level.

 

Agreed.
And a so-called president that actually quotes the National Inquirer as if it were real.
Science pooh-poohed and ignored.
A large minority wallowing in ignorance.

 

But there is still hope for the younger people. I've met over 100 women wi

And it is horrifying to watch - like some freaking Orwell plot.

But we have known for a long time that the US was in a downward spiral. There are people graduating from hs who can barely read. I know! I've tutored them.

 

I taught a college course in Basic computing - many didn't understand the concept of a variable!!

 

For one, the Laffer Curve is real.

There's no point in reading anything you post after that nonsense

 

I'll wager you didn't major in economics.

 

You're offering a false equivalence of Fox/InfoWars/Limbaugh..vs science, and clucking about intelligence while doing so?

You sir, are the weakest link. Goodbye.