The end results of the 2024 general election have now been released and they ought to strike a note of alarm in the sentient population. First, Trump can claim no majority, given more voters chose someone else. Specifically, Trump grabbed 48.8 % and Kamala got 48.3 % of the votes.
Meanwhile, the third party candidates nabbed 1.7%. For a non-Trump total: 48.3% + 1.7% = 50% and 50% > 48.8%. In other words, had these Boffkins grasped that their 3rd party fantasy was an egregious exercise in futility and voted for Harris, we wouldn't be saddled with a traitorous convicted felon now.
Even worse, as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out, polling of over 13,000 voters over a month revealed that those who invested the most time in serious news gathering - from reputable sources- went for Kamala Harris by 6 points. Those who ignored legitimate sources and avoided political news altogether went for Trump by 19 points. In other words, our nation - namely the critical swing state voters - has been rendered hostage to ignoramuses.
In Book 8 of his Republic, Plato described in detail how and why a democracy is unlikely to remain stable over time. The chief reason is the offer of freedom without concomitant responsibility. This was echoed in what one young Michigan primary voter voiced 7 months ago:
“I acknowledge the American right to vote, but we also have the right to not do so, especially if you don’t agree with any of the candidates,”
An opinion from the mouth of an entitled, spoiled brat. And that includes wasting a vote by allowing one's ego to trump common sense and voting 3rd party. When even a non-Mensan, average IQ person knows damned well it could let in an unfit candidate. Again, claiming "freedom" and "the right" to do so but with zero sense of responsibility.
Plato then recognized that even in that ancient era weaker minds could be triggered by false promises and false attacks on opponents. This then led to the citizens making false choices. This was particularly if they were unread, a view reinforced by Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia, i.e.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED"
Jefferson understood it was up to citizens to become the "safe depositories" of democracy by the improvement of their minds to enhance the judiciousness of their (electoral) choices. Failure to do that meant ignorance opening the door to tyranny - as Plato himself worried. In this sense, the recent news that Trump won because of the 19 point advantage conferred by 'low information' voters runs exactly counter to Jefferson's words. Those voters then opted to allow their minds to degenerate in a morass of lies and propaganda rather than enhance and improve them by access to serious news sources. (See Amanda Marcotte's blog post at the end.)
The fact so many of these numskulls actually believed Trump was better for the economy, e.g.
Brane Space: Donald Trump & GOP "Better For Economy" ? This Delusion Is Belied By The Facts
Was a case in point. To be specific, according to an Ipsos poll cited in The Wall Street Journal (12/20, p/ A8): "Almost half of Americans who mainly watched cable news and read national newspapers said in October they saw the cost of gas or groceries drop in the previous three months."
The proportion was almost exactly reversed for those who watched no cable news at all or read any national newspapers. Which proves my point on the nature of derelict, uninformed voters unfit to make sound electoral judgments. Or in Jefferson's parlance, "minds not improved".
Classic example of boneheaded denial of reality, is the following quote from a struggling older person appearing in today's WaPo:
"We are old and tired and just want to be taken care of, and Trump has too much common sense, so I don’t think he is going to do anything to hurt us.”
And this apt reply:
I cannot stand to read one more word about how these ignorant people think drumpf has common sense and cares about them. Incidentally, a carton of cigarettes has gotten outrageously expensive. Someone “subsisting” on roughly $1000/month still chooses to buy expensive cigarettes and hopes that a con artist will “take care of them”…You just can’t fix stupid.
This failure of knowledge and reason exemplified can then can set the stage for an ancillary outcome based on passions rather than wisdom of choice. This was best articulated by James Madison in his Federalist #10 :
"citizens - whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole - are united and actuated by a common impulse of passion (to cast their votes) adverse to the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".
This is exactly what Trump voters ('the minority') did in 2016, motivated by passion and recklessness fueled by Trump's violent rhetoric and rallies - embodied in this image:
Thereby militating against the majority's interests and welfare by inserting a low class grifter into office. And repeated in this election cycle by ignoring all serious news sources to allow themselves to be misled by Musk's lies and misinformation and Trump's repetition and reinforcement of them. Given so many were misled by lies and propaganda - especially issuing from Musk's white supremacist sewer X- I totally concur with the lawyers who've argued in The Hill that Trump's certification cannot go forward:
Congress does not have to accept Trump's electoral votes
And that the 'dicta' emanating from the earlier Supreme Court ruling to negate disqualification amounts to non-binding babble. Yeah, if pursued all hell will break loose from the Rightists, Repukes and Foxites, but better to save the majority than be sunk and skewered by the few. As one latter day patriot said: "Let Justice be done or the heavens fall."
See Also:
by Frances Moore Lappé | December 24, 2024 - 6:14am | permalink
It’s a crisis. America is now among 11 nations deemed most threatened by both mis-and disinformation.
Little wonder that almost 90% of us fear our country is on the “wrong track.” And, President-elect Trump has led the way with 492 suspect claims in just the first hundred days of his first presidency. Then, before the 2020 vote, in a single day he made 503 false or misleading claims. By term’s end he’d uttered 30,573 lies, reports The Washington Post.
Now, he is joined by his promoter Elon Musk who is flooding his own platform X with disinformation—for example, about the bipartisan end-of-year funding deal.
Some play down our current “mis-and-disinformation” crisis as nothing new. Referring to the Vietnam War era, the Heritage Foundation says “Trump is not guilty of any lie, falsehood, fabrication, false claim, or toxic exaggeration that equals the lies of one past president [Lyndon Johnson] whose Alamo-sized ego caused the deaths of thousands of Americans.” In 2018, Heritage dismissed Trump’s lies as insignificant embellishment about “his wealth, his girlfriends of decades ago, or the size of his inaugural crowd.”
And:
by Amanda Marcotte | December 27, 2024 - 6:37am | permalink
In the face of Vice President Kamala Harris losing the presidential election to Donald Trump, the punditry's focus has been almost exclusively on asking how the Democrats couldn't beat a relentless liar with 34 felony convictions and a previous attempted coup under his belt. Everyone has a different theory about Harris' "messaging," with every critic inevitably arguing that if she had just talked more about their pet issue, she would have won.
Another option, however, is to listen to what swing voters who backed Trump said about their decision. That would seem the wisest choice, but to be fair to people who don't want to go there, hearing these people out is a truly miserable experience.
What quickly becomes evident about the median voters in an American focus group is how profoundly opposed they are to even the most basic factual information. On the contrary, it's a community with a pathological aversion to reality, where people compulsively react to anything truth-shaped with hostility, running as hard as they can toward disinformation. They are addicted to BS. Of course they voted for Trump, the country's most reliable dealer of their favorite drug.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | December 27, 2024 - 6:17am | permalink
A fascinating article in The New York Times this week by Kurt Gray, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gives us the beginnings of an understanding of how and why social media is so destructive to society.
Gray points out that most people assume humans have historically been predators, the metaphorical big cats of the jungle. In fact, Gray says, we’ve historically been prey, the victims of predators:
“This picture of fearfulness is consistent with our understanding of human psychology. We’re hard-wired to detect threats quickly and to stay fixated on places where threats once appeared, even after they have vanished. We fear that ‘child predators’ will abduct our kids even when they are safer than ever.
And:
Voters' Ignorance and Denial Means U.S. Is Not Really A "Protector" Of Democracy
And:
Opinion | Consumers finally realize that Trump could worsen inflation - The Washington Post
And:
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