"Explaining Stuff."
Joe Biden went to South Carolina to show Americans an alternative world view to the one voiced by Trump.
Donald Trump has a talent Democrats have a hard time crediting. Trump can explain stuff. He communicates a world view. It is persuasive to a near-majority of voters. Trump explains that it is a dog-eat-dog world. Countries scratch, fight, and connive to take advantage of each other. It is nature. The same is true within America. Powerful elites in finance, media, universities, culture, technology, business, and government have rigged the system to their advantage. Bad people are out to get us: Democrats, liberals, woke scolds, trans people, Socialists, Communists, gun confiscators, Muslims, Blacks, China, Mexicans, NATO, the media, election officials, RINOs. Law enforcement and the courts have been infiltrated and corrupted, too, Trump says, so they are a threat to regular Americans and Trump personally. It is us versus them.
In this way of "explaining stuff," the prosecution of Trump is proof of the widespread corruption of the system. Christian voters are mentally prepared for this explanation. Corrupt authorities were desperate to silence Jesus.
A stolen 2020 election fits a larger pattern in Trump's explanation of the world. Of course Democrats and their allies scratch, cheat, connive, lie, and steal. It is the way of the world. Nearly everything is rigged so, of course, are elections.
He plays to win. People who don't use their power to advance the interest of their team are saps. This world view is not just a right wing or Republican idea. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also say the system is rigged by powerful interests working in secret. They point to big businesses and their lobbies, to conservative financial elites, to the Federalist Society, the Koch Brothers, and now Clarence Thomas' benefactor, Harlan Crow.
What reality -- what explanation of stuff -- is the alternative to Trump and Trump-ism? It isn't just choosing different malefactors. In that case the fight is over whether drug companies are bad because, as the left says, they lobby Congress and gouge prices or because, as MAGA says, they lobby the CDC and create vaccines with microchips that track people.
Biden is attempting to sell democratic normalcy, arguing that American democracy is fragile and it requires that people play by the rules. It is the opposite of conspiracy. "We are Americans. We can do anything if we do it together," he says repeatedly in speeches. He says it with a pleading tone. He praises bipartisanship. It presents the president as a head of state, not party leader. It argues for limits and restraints and loyalty to law, not power. It posits that the president and indeed all of American government works on behalf of all the people, not for one's own side in a civil war of red versus blue teams.
Biden was in South Carolina describing major infrastructure projects that were funded by the Infrastructure bill. In South Carolina, which he lost by 12 points. He had the right message.
Look, folks, on a very serious note, when I ran, when I got elected, when I proposed these pieces of legislation, I made a commitment that I would be president for all Americans, whether their elected officials voted for the — the events or not — all Americans, whether you voted for me or not. And I’ve kept my promise.
In fact, some analysts have said that the laws I’ve signed are going to do more to help red America than blue America. Well, that’s okay with me, because we’re all Americans. Because my view is: Wherever the need is most, that’s the place we should be helping. And that’s what we’re doing. Because the way I look at it, the progress we’re making is good for all Americans, all of America.
Biden's message will be a harder one to sell. Confidence in institutions is at a low ebb. Gallup reports that confidence in the presidency and the Supreme Court are at 26-27%, in the criminal justice system at 17%, in newspapers at 18%, in TV news at 14%, and in Congress at 8%.
Biden is urging Americans to trust one another and work together. It is the right message. I hope he can sell it.
Donald Trump communicates a world view? News to me~
What is maddening is that so many support this proven liar & con man while spewing a deformed version of Christianity & using the bible for validation in a country that has been created to separate church & state from the beginning. I question the rhetoric being preached in churches among the evangelicals, as well as the southern baptists, who clearly discriminate against women. Since these "churches", using the term lightly, are such the political forces, why are they not paying taxes???
How does this country even exist with trust of Congress at 8%?