Today’s New York Times opinion piece by Roxane Gay, titled “Enough”, cuts to the core of what the election revealed.
Here is a gift link, which hopefully works, because the entire piece should be required reading for every Democratic office holder and anyone who thinks a more “centrist” approach is needed to win future elections. Being more “centrist” is not the problem.
www.nytimes.com/...
The basic premise of Ms. Gay’s piece is the following: It’s not us; it’s them.
Here are a few excerpts:
Mr. Trump’s election demonstrates how American tolerance for the unacceptable is nearly infinite.
Clearly, Mr. Trump is successful because of his faults, not despite them, because we do not live in a just world.
And the following are two money paragraphs. It is what every Democrat must come to grips with.
Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.
We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.
And Ms. Gay summarizes the challenge in stark terms:
The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.
My take is that psyops-driven disinformation is the primary culprit, and the Republican-enabled aristocracy of billionaire puppeteers have cornered the market on it.
