The storming and brief occupation of the US Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump has attracted more or less universal condemnation from the media and political establishment (however equivocal, lukewarm, or clearly sympathetic some of it it may be) — unless you count Trump himself (or Miranda Devine). But how is this playing with Trump’s base in the red states?
Certainly, as CNN walked around the riots yesterday, many protesters expressed pride and excitement at what was happening. Bear in mind, this wasn’t the types dressed as Vikings or those wearing clothes branded with “Camp Auschwitz”. CNN’s focus was largely on calm, polite middle-aged folk.
In Alabama — a state which was home to one of the four rioters who died, this person apparently of a heart attack — a group of returning protestors denied that the riots represented an attempted coup, but told the media “this is only the beginning“.
Guy Rundle pointed out yesterday that there was a little-noticed sister protest at the Kansas statehouse in Topeka, Kansas. But militias also surrounded the state capitol buildings in the purple and blue states of Georgia, Oregon and California.
In Mississippi, the divided house was acted out by players on the Mississippi state football team arguing over the media depiction of the riots, whether it was planned, and racial double standards.
Broadly though, Trump’s base has stood by him as it always has, and, we have to conclude, always will. Just as half of the Republicans who were polled by Ipsos/Reuters in mid November believed that Trump had “rightfully won” the election, most Republican voters are fine with what happened yesterday.
According to YouGov polling, 68% of Republicans don’t see the storming of the Capitol building as a threat to democracy (as opposed to 93% of Democrats and 55% of independents who do). Indeed, 45% of the Republicans surveyed actively support it.
In both of the above polls, the overall majority of those questioned condemned the riots and believed Joe Biden won fairly. But yesterday illustrated what the portion who don’t are capable of, and what kind of resistance they are likely to face.
The trouble with all those ‘threat to democracy’ articles I’m reading is the premise: that the USA is a democracy. Start with simple voter suppression and disenfranchisement; move on to the pervasive influence – no, let’s call it control – of the military-industrial-corporate-financial complex, including its corrupt buying off of most US politicians; then look at the MSM propaganda machine and the depredations of benignly misnamed ‘social media’; finishing off with the general ignorance of the poorly educated populace, and what do you have? Democracy?
Precisely. The USA touts itself as the world’s greatest democracy but there is no evidence to support the claim. The world is fatigued with the US writing its own glowing reference.
The Benighted States sold the world a phantasy and China sold it the toys to implement the dead end dream.
In the last two years, China has quietly, and piecemeal, divested itself of almost half the $2Trillion of Treasury bonds accumulated when the Heavenly Kingdom was the only entity able & willing to buy the, well nigh, worthless paper.
If it were to continue doing so or, worse, suddenly decide to dump the remainder the GFC will look like a Bank holiday.
The left is too preoccupied and the right is too stupid to see the writing is on the wall for redneck capitalism, the system has destroyed the middle classes and decimated the working classes world wide, the people are angry and don’t know who or where to aim it and are shooting wildly but all it will take is a Kennedy or Roosevelt type to harness and direct it in the right direction and 50 years of exploitive greed will explode and destroy itself, Sanders is just a bit too old now but a younger version of him can take the U.S and aim it at the real enemies and restore balance and equal distribution of the worlds national wealth to where it once was and should now be.
I have similar hopes Brian, but wonder if such a person could be found in such a fractured media and tech environment, and so polarised a people.
Such a person, able to join opposing sides, tend to have rather short life spans.
And not just the good ones.
Benevolent dictatorship tempered by assassination has its good points.
Strong leaders are, by definition, dangerous – there are any number of shysters offering answers.
What is lacking are intelligent questions.
It should be realised by now that Trump President will just be replaced by Trump TV. The Donald will continue
to promoteTrumpism through a national opinion program
aimed squarely at the millions who voted for him and especially those who invaded Congress.
Trump Promotions , with the support of major business operators, are now never ending.
About 20 years ago I read a book, cannot remember title, but sub title was “the dumbing down of America”. Essays written on their education system. Showed even at that time disquiet on the future of students’ ability to interact/understand society. It’s obvious many don’t trust the govt. (whether Dem or Rep),yet both parties do nothing to change their methods of governing when in power. The stock market rules, the media rules, and corporations rule.
Yes I remember it – it was topical at the time in education circles. The power of corporate vested interests and business groups has prevailed to influence the type pedagogy that suits their needs. Its called Competency Based Training – its been transported to Australia and supported by the same power base.
TAFE swapped over from Curriculum based learning to CBT about 15 years ago and you can track the decline in the quality of training and trained workers on course completion since then.
CBT might be OK for say a Cert III in Widget Making but anything higher its really not effective in producing skilled workers. They took the Education out of TAFE quite a while ago. They’re just a distributer of Certificates these days.
But back to your point – many US schools use the CBT pedagogy and I think the authors of that book have been correct – it is dumbing them down.
It is also most annoying when your hear the Trumpists bagging the elite and its mainly the educated elite they’re moaning about. Now that says either they are just envious of people who have put the time and hard work into educating themselves through higher education or that the US education system is seriously inaccessible and unaffordable to many people. I’ve always though any form of higher education is transformative and valuable to the community at large.
Dawkins wanted the TAFEs converted to glorified babysitters for the unemployable if only to reduce the dole queues. Any TAFE director who resisted the changes did NOT last long. I saw a good deal of it. TAFE had a useful product to about 1990-ish and then the standards went the only way possible on account of the new clientele.
The irony is that the universities are wafting in the same direction. About 50% of essays would have been failed out-right 50 years ago had they been submitted then.
A note on CBT. This kind of training was developed by the multinationals half a century ago for the purpose to teach specific jobs under equally specific conditions in third world countries to a very basic workforce; monkey see : monkey do – if one prefers.
Long story but one will look in vain for a paper from a creditable journal advocating advocating CBT – which, except for the very short term, is fundamentally (educationally) unsound.
The ‘dumbing down’ theory works nicely, except for the fact that generations not far removed from today were very lightly educated. The masses haven’t been dumbed down at all, they are just as dumb as they always were, but today they have access to news outlets and media that reinforce their ignorant prejudices and conspiracies.
We, and they, are no dumber than some mythical past, the masses have always been dumb, and unfortunately education has no impact on it, never did actually.
The shibboleth that education will free the world is only true for primary education levels, and to some degree junior secondary. Tertiary education has never enlightened the masses, and even highly educated people have no idea how the world works. They’re all specialists in their field, and dumb as snot outside of it.
I might go so far to the contrarian and state that the burgeoning 19thC workers movements in Britain & Europe, especially Germany, with the workers education institutes and similar was in danger of building an alternative version of the state.
As late as the 60sSydney still have two WEAs and a Mechanics Institute where workers could read something other than trash.
Possibly – “The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down Of America’s Kids In The Name Of Self-esteem” 2007 by Maureen STOUT?
It’s the sense of entitlement played out in the sense of participation ribbons and all must have prizes.
You might take into account my reference to Mill and his optimism for the future as the science continued to displace dogma. Yet even by 1900 the increase in scientific knowledge more than proportionally increased the community ignorance.
Steven J Gould had a good deal to say on this matter and even came out to Oz to address this very topic in the early 80s. While one has to offer a ‘nod’ to DB’s POV the view confuses absolute conditions with relative conditions.
I suspect that you will find that the presumptions that (1) facts need not be taught and that (2) knowledge can be acquired by looking stuff up has been a great educational blunder of the English-speaking world at least.
The ignorance is greater because the fellow in the street has next to know index of comparison by which to evaluate conflicting propositions BECAUSE he was never taught miles of fact in the first place. Indeed, anyone under 40 was encouraged to blurt whatever they “thought” at primary school with, equally, no care as to grammar and hence precision.
Take a peek a the No Child Left Behind initiative of some years ago. I have not encountered an American teacher who has not described it as a disaster. Thus inferior teaching practices in Oz and NZ (which the teachers had no control other than a botched half day seminar as an afterthought) has created the current pickle. Some conspiracy “theorists” regard the situation as intentional.
Try to find a matriculation examination paper for each decade from 1950 to 1900. You WILL be astonished at the very high standard which has become one of farce nowadays. The best book on introductory algebra for schools was written by A.S. Hall in (can’t recall) 1883 or 1887 with any number of editions to about the end of WW2. In the 60s it could serve as a refresher text for university. ho hum.
As an inveterate habitue of op-shop bookshelves it is always obvious when some elderly local has died and the loving rels. dump the collection of those strange paper things with all the words.
Quite often there will be textbooks, from prehistory, – the decline of civilisation so clearly evidenced that
I doubt that any current HSC student could cope with the maths, English or history books intended for pre high schoolers back then, ca. early 20thC.
I could not agree more. The exam of matriculation in England is referred to as A-Level and I taught the maths, physics, some chemistry, biology, along with economics and history for a decade in Asia.
The decline in the A-levels is noticeable even by the dumbing down of the text books and certainly since the 70s. But, on the bright side it remains well ahead of the the VCE (utter joke) by a country mile.
At last the Americans are ‘doing it’ to themselves. A variation of the ‘Jakarta Method’ seems to be in play here. It’s not a coup by sections of a right wing military establishment, but the initial action by a section of the population ‘enabled’ by Trump acting as the front man for ‘who knows’.