Leaving aside the messenger and the bullshit “oh, you’re obese? Put down the food and take a walk” fat-shaming message, the correlation between obesity, drug abuse and Trump voting is true.
I think a lot of Trump’s appeal for the MAGAts is aspirational - here he is, this dumb, know-nothing, racist guy who is bad at business, but he’s still rich (granted, because he inherited it, but they somehow manage to ignore that) and living a life of performative opulence, treats women however he wants and gets away with it, but I never really thought about him as being physically aspirational, too. Though that’s maybe not entirely right - I think it’s more part of his “just like me” appeal.
A big part of this phenomenon also involves ignoring the reality of Trump, though. His supporters see themselves in him - an obese, racist, misogynist drug-addict, and then create a new reality to make him the aspirational version of themselves. I’ve seen so many MAGAts claim, absurdly, that Trump was a self-made business man. They overlook his ill-fitting suits and ridiculous homes to claim he’s “classy.” They claim he’s handsome, manly, macho, “tough,” when he’s so clearly the opposite of these things. They use imagery that re-casts Trump as a muscled action hero, semi-ironically, but also sincerely. They erase the clown that he is, in reality, to create the “aspirational Trump.”
Well, I guess with Trump supporters we’re finding out what happens when a high-risk population also rejects masks and vaccines. They’re in denial about a whole lot of things, including their risk category, and that denial is doing them real harm on so many levels.
Yeah, he’s an a-hole with a lot of blood on his hands, but he did at least pass the extremely low bar of being an early critic of the Palin nomination, so this isn’t the first time he’s publicly been against Trumpy folks.
The old line about Trump is that he’s a poor person’s idea of a rich guy. That the obvious boorishness, gold plated everything and over cooked steaks appeal because it is how these people imagine they’d conduct themselves if they had enough funds to live without consequences.
That read however pre-dates him getting involved in politics, an attempt to explain why some jackhole real-estate developer had the visibility he did. And why people were willing to buy Trump brand undershirts and wine.
I don’t think it meshes particularly well with the fact that his voters were generally far wealthier than both the general population, and especially democratic voters.
This sort of paradoxical machismo is pretty default in fascism though. And it’s the same sort of “I am like that so dear lead must be even more like that” projection, but sort of filtered through the fetish for vague traditional values and obsession with physical strength as moral superiority that tends to run through the heart of these things.
As John Holbo pointed out years ago, David Frum’s main reason for opposing Big Government is that it leads to unconventional clothing or hair-styling; and this, apparently, is a blow against Freedom.
He also admired the fortitude and endurance of the Donner Party. Diet is an on-going concern for Frum.
True. Still, I can see why a neoCon would see much of himself in that bunch of screw-ups.
For Frum much of it comes down to a matter of style and pedigree. About the time he was trashing Palin he was also making excuses for noted old-money dimwit Dan Quayle and of course extolled the virtues of Prince Bush. It’s shallow and cynical snobbery of the worst sort.
Yeah, and a class-less person’s idea of “classy,” etc. He manages to be seen as a lot of things that he’s not by people who aren’t those things either - but aspire to be, so his (negative) version probably seems more achievable, or at least more comprehensible. These people wouldn’t recognize the actual qualities because they would be too alien to their experience. However, his upper middle class followers can understand his version of wealth (gold colored interior decor), because it’s closer to their experience than actual, real wealth.
Yeah, that is why he made it in politics to begin with, though his entry into politics caused his (delusional, imaginary) aspirational qualities to multiply in his followers’ eyes, I think.
Really they were doing it to survive their own incompetence. I have more admiration for all the other parties who made the same crossing without cannibalism.
The guides were incompetent. The rest of the people who were along for the trip were probably no more or less competent than countless other would-be migrants who fared far better. There was also an early, heavy snowfall involved and some ill-timed theft of horses and oxen. Assuming everyone in that ordeal was uniquely incompetent is unfair victim-blaming.
Even if he weren’t a conservative piece of shit who propped up some of the most deadly historical mistakes in recent history, this fatphobic, classist fish-eater is a smug piece of shit with nothing useful to contribute.
Mayer was in Vancouver Friday on a break from the election campaign to speak at UBC. She quotes former Bush aide (and Canadian) David Frum, who described the Kochs and their supporters as “the radical rich” who have moved Republican Party policies to the extreme fringe.
The Donner party were basically taken advantage of. You had a couple of guys who stood to benefit if they could re-route migrants to the area. And they were promoting a route they themselves hadn’t used, and didn’t really know.
The leaders of the Donner party were simply drawn from the migrants themselves. And were just as “incompetent” as anyone else in the group, having little experience with that sort of thing.
Hastings, the guy who initially proposed the route wouldn’t ever meet the Donners, he left about a week earlier on his first ever trip by that route. And the other guy pushing it, Bridger, just owned the trading post. And may have actually destroyed a letter warning the Donners not to take the route.
Very few did. It was a bad route that cut through 80 miles of desert, and pushed through narrow rough terrain inappropriate for wagons. IIRC Hastings first trip only barely made it through, and very few even tried after the Donners.
Hastings wanted to be the exclusive guide for a new popular route. Bridger wanted to be the the last supply stop on a major road. Both were willing to send others to die to make their short cut a thing.
