Something Is Rising In Trump’s Wake, But I Don’t Know Exactly What To Call It…
A friend suggested “Nincompopulism”, but I don’t like calling people names…
One of the things that’s really striking to me about stuff that keeps coming up recently, whether it’s in politics, or the economy, or health, or whatever, or wherever, is that people are doing a lot of noisy, boisterous stuff these days, perhaps with some short term objective in mind, but a lot seemingly just to tear things apart and jump around with no thought at all not one bit about what comes after. And what real destruction they may leave behind the havoc they wreak, which they’re doing sometimes just for fun, or so they say.
Like how did we wind up in a world where the main lesson many learned from the GameStop turmoil last week on Wall Street is not that cheating is wrong and needs to be fixed at the highest levels, but instead, everybody should be cheating?
So when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) MA Tweeted:
She got attacked. From the left and right. From a lot of small investors who felt they’d finally found tools allowing them to manipulate markets and she is already trying to take that away from them.
And, yeah, maybe there is some argument to be made — in fact I made it — about whether GameStop is an example of market manipulation, since there’s nothing illegal about lots of people buying a stock or telling you to buy a stock. On the other hand, if the sole reason lots of people are buying or telling people to buy a stock is to expressly manipulate the price, how is that not manipulation? But in the sense that it’s worth examining from all angles, Warren’s completely right.
A side note: Warren’s being added to the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which will be chaired by Oregon’s Ron Wyden, who’s also no slouch. She’s also promoting a “wealth tax” of 2% on people with a net worth of more than $50-million, or 6% for people who’ve got more than $1-billion. That’s less than most people in the U.S. pay in sales tax every day. The most ringing endorsement of Warren’s plan, I think, coming from Trump’s former Chief Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow who says: “It’s going to weaken the economy and…kill jobs, no question about it.” Now that’s funny. Since the trickle-down, cut taxes for the super rich theories he’s fond of have worked so well.
Came across this Instagram post from a comedian:
Not exactly the same as what I’m talking about, but it also is.
It isn’t “Trumpism” or even radicalism, except in the sense that it’s very nihilistic. But also maybe it doesn’t have to be?
It’s some kind of movement that is growing from the fact that — post Trump — people seem to be growing either way further Right or way further Left. If you thought after the divisiveness of the Trump years that couldn’t possibly be possible: yes, it is. Trump’s no longer the lightning rod day in and day out, nor the thing to rally around, depending on where you’re coming from. So everybody’s finding a million other people and little things.
Even to the point where it gets so jumbled they even strangely sometimes converge, though at most times could not be further apart. And behind that is a given that people are a lot more angry and depressed and feeling less in control because a virus isn’t doing what we want.
So everything seems to be more action or reaction focused, without a lot of time or any spent on problem-solving, or any kind of focus on improving anything in the wake of what may or may not be necessary disruption.
In order that if we can get out of this mess, we might have some place to go. But now that: the idea you might actually have to repair the drywall, seems like less than an afterthought.
To me, the only reason to think that way — or really sometimes not think — is if you think we’re never going to get out of this mess, and everything’s already in ashes, so why not hasten it, especially if it means possibly having some fun? And if it’s at someone else’s expense, it’s easy to figure out a reason they “deserve it”.
Most of the time, all this stuff ends up being a lot of noise. But every once in a while by luck, or “chance” connections made possible by platforms that are actively, incessantly, obsessively connecting us every day, or the shrewd machinations of very clever people here and there, it turns into something. Could be uplifting. But so far, usually destructive.
I’ve said that one of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s term in office is you no longer need to feel compelled to even try to act like you “love thy neighbor”. In fact, it became OK to hate them, and say so. As loud as you want. And accuse them of whatever the hell you want, even if it isn’t true.
Now that seems to be broadened to just take random shots at whomever and whatever. And if you hit something, you do a little victory dance and let the flames rise higher.
