I’m not asking about his policies. How do you think Donald Trump’s personality has changed American politics, and is it possible for the country to recover from the impact he’s made over the past decade plus?
I’m not asking about his policies. How do you think Donald Trump’s personality has changed American politics, and is it possible for the country to recover from the impact he’s made over the past decade plus?
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I’m not asking about his policies. How do you think Donald Trump’s personality has changed American politics, and is it possible for the country to recover from the impact he’s made over the past decade plus?
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Not for a few generations, if at all. He really exposed the fact that there still exists aggressive racist, egregious hypocrites, manic rage junkies, and bloodthirsty morons, and they are almost entirely all the same people. There is no recovering from this without a reckoning we are not equipped to deliver.
Tim Miller from the Bulwark goes to events like TPUSA and as someone who ones from a background as a former Republican operative what he says is terrifying.
The current generation of people showing up are there for Trump. They worship him in a way the older MAGA cult doesn’t. They grew up only understanding this as what politics looks like.
It’s going to be generational level damage.
A lot less formal in terms of speech and following rules, a lot less qualified, and a lot less bipartisanship.
Recover from political impact? Like I’ve said elsewhere, I view his presidency as an extension of a slow-moving end of the world that started with the pandemic. I find it hard to think too far ahead because I don’t right now feel like a future really exists.
Recover from personality impact? No, not in whatever time we have left, but if we have more time than I think…still no. I already see more and more highly informal people popping up, even among Democrats/the left. Jasmine Crockett is probably our biggest example.
Trump is the result of decades of work by far right groups to make cynicism rampant within political discourse. In order to get a Trump, you need to prime the voters to accept a Trump.
Trump himself will have a lasting impact on society by turning bullying into an acceptable form of politics. A decade ago, the idea of an elected representative publicly outing a LGBTQ teenagerwould have been seen as reprehensible by all but the most reactionary politicians, but not any more. Whether you perceived the politeness of politics past as false or not, it wasn’t the drama we have now; Trump has turned it into a reality show where the washed-out people whose glory days were in high-school run the government.
The longest reaching aspect of Trump’s personality will be the impact on young men (since unlike Trump supporting baby boomers, they will still be here decades from now,) who are skewing much more conservative now, with the alpha male masculine, mens rights activist, MGTOW, Incel, or whatever pro Trump “thought leaders” who have a complete inability to think that they keep watching. Unless this massive economic decline Trump’s tariff disaster turned Gen Z against him, we are gonna deal with a generation of minitrumps ruining things for decades.
I would remind folks to look at their history books.
Who followed Nixon, the most corrupt politician (up to that point) but Carter, a genuinely good dude.
What followed Reagan, but Clinton- who largely pursued many of the same policy goals but in a more friendly way.
I expect that the post war order is over- with a more militarized Europe, where the US is still the largest player on the board but not the sole player.
I imagine that the intellectual complex from universities to government will suffer lasting scars, making government more expensive, less effective and the US less productive.
There might be finally space to solve some of the immigration issues.
I think there is a reasonable chance that Trump paves the way for reactionary movement that expand Medicare or heavily increase taxes to the rich.
I largely expect the Trump presidency to end in a resounding defeat. If you joined the party at the height of GWs approval would you have guessed the next guy would be a black dude whose middle name was Hussein?
I think Trump is one of a kind. A once in a generation type personality. He might be the most malignant narcissistic self serving president the US has ever had. I think MAGA will be looking for the next person to fill his oversized suits and they won’t be able to find it. Because Trumpism is Trump and everyone else is a cheap imitation.
His personality, separate from his policies, didn’t change American politics.
Republicans have been clearly asking for someone like him for a few decades. And Fox News obviously knew enough to make a lot of money, and to understand what was happening with their ratings after their correct reporting on the 2020 election outcome.
For all the people who didn’t know until now, I guess welcome to the past. In more ways than one.
There have always been uncouth, vile assholes in American politics. Hell, george wallace used to be a major player in American politics.
In the past, though, they usually didn’t win nationwide elections.
I am sure people will try to duplicate trump’s path to the presidency.
But he’s really uniquely charismatic. He’s been running a disinformation campaign for 40 years to convince people he’s good at business when he absolutely is not.
I don’t think others will be able to follow in his footsteps but it will harm the level of political discourse for years.
I think his legacy will be in teaching a large swath of Americans to be utterly shameless, that spite, greed and crudeness are virtues
I think the overall lasting effect will be shoeing the world that the US and our goals aren’t stable, therefore there’s no reason to build lasting relationships with us.
Each president can be viewed ad a mercenary now. Decades of friendship can be thrown away because of one narcissist and his goals, and our relationship is only transactional.
Essentially, why be actual allies? Now you think of us as business partners under 4 year contracts at best.