Every blog I have written for the past six months has I believe mentioned directly or not, aspects of Covid – either the state we are in or what is looming on the horizon.
I don’t know for sure whether I have lost readers because of my lack of variety – it doesn’t look that way; perhaps there is more traffic – greater numbers of people coming and going.
This week it has been ‘the election’ – I am sure I have not been alone in opening my iPhone app and tapping on news and looking to see if the numbers have changed.
The screenshot below represents what I have been looking-at for what feels like days.
Anyway;
That is not my point.
Well; it is, and it isn’t.
You see, I have been certainly focusing on Biden’s lead, allowing it to fill me with hope (when he wins this will be the first positive (from my narrow, biased view) political outcome in as long as I can remember); I have also looked at the numbers who voted for Trump.
It is this number that has entranced me.
70 million.
That is a lot of people.
It is so many people that I can’t imagine how many people it is.
I don’t intend to focus on the split; the dichotomy of left versus right – that is for another day, an examination of the neuropsychology of human beings;
Whenever we consider aspect of life to be patently right or wrong, most of us, imagine others see the world in a similar fashion.
I look at the kitten and believe that everyone else feels the same.
Some things are black and white.
Up is up and down is, well, down.
You can look at the science of beauty, it is based upon universal standards.
Yet, Trump to me is everything that is bad or ugly in humanity.
I can’t see one redeeming feature.
I look at him and think of Mussolini;
Narcissism incarnate.
And yet, 70 million people don’t necessarily see him that way; sure, many of those 70 million will hate Trump’s guts, but actually hate Biden even more.
OK, that is perhaps one group – let’s arbitrarily allocate 20 million to the ‘hate Biden so much and don’t like Trump that I’ll vote for anyone or anything’
That still leaves an unimaginable number of people who think that Trump is great, is good, that what we (whoever ‘we’ is) perceive to be lies; with any attempt to highlight the lies interpreted as suppression of free speech.
I have talked about cognitive dissonance before – this is the psychological construct that explains the way in which people know or see something to be wrong but because it is so inconsistent with their preconceived or deeply-held beliefs that the wrong becomes right.
It is psychological sleepwalking.
Last night on the Channel 4 news, Matt Frei was interviewing Mary Trump – a psychologist and niece of D Jr. He was trying to understand or reconcile this contradiction – Mary’s response was to essentially frighten everyone by explaining her belief that in the remaining 70 days of Trumps presidency things could get very bad.
I am listening to the Martyr-Made Podcast by Darryl Cooper – I am on part six, having tuned-in for many hours to listen to an unfolding narrative of Jim Jones, leader of the People’s Temple and instigator of the Jonestown Massacre in 1978 where 900 people – men, women, children and babies killed themselves (or were killed) on cyanide spiked ‘Kool-Aid’. You know the one.
What has struck me in recent episodes has been the similarity with the works of Jim Jones – his tone and the content of his ranting and that of Trump.
It isn’t easy to develop a fanatical following; when you have them tuned-in to your frequency it appears easy to keep them listening – you just keep doing or saying what worked at the start.
Mary Trump didn’t say it but her allusion last night was that Trump, if necessary would make things very bad; I don’t want to go there.
Again, what I return to is the 70 million, or maybe 40 or even 30 million if you consider the Biden haters.
These are not stupid people.
I have heard people disregard them as idiots.
No. that’s not true.
There is something underlying this.
Whether it is the people who feel they are in such an awful situation that nothing and no one will make things better I don’t know;
It is easy for me and possibly most readers of this blog or watchers of the C4 news to see the obvious – Biden is offering improved healthcare, he wants to support the environment, to fight for the disadvantaged, etc, etc.
Yet, if you are disadvantaged, particularly in America, or the UK for that matter, it is likely nothing and no one will make things that much better.
Even those calling for revolution or insurrection, when things are said and done allow the status quo to return.
So, perhaps many of those 40 or 50 or 70 million are just fed-up; there will be those who are quite happy to sit on whatever capital they have and fend-off challenges and those, possibly the greater number of what very little who see that one way or another nothing ever gets better and, why not vote for the guy who brings some entertainment into an otherwise dull world.
Maybe what Biden needs it to acquire a more dramatic back-story (more than the tragic series of events that is his life) – he needs some razzamatazz.
Biden, get some Zazz.
Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion) 
Well put Rod. 👍🏾 Ultimately Biden is the establishment figure and many don’t want the natural order that has arisen over the last fifty years to continue. In reality, who can blame them for thinking this way? Clinton and Blair promised a new “third way” optimism but could not really reverse the rapid changes of the late 1970’s and the 1980’s. Most people know this so have rejected a pluralist, libertarian, social market model and have returned to something a little more authoritarian because it sounds more honest. These people are being authentic in their votes even if a majority of them are relatively undereducated. They accept the comedic rantings, they tolerate the crassness and obscenity as it seems to be a genuine “Up yours!” to the political establishment which seems to have failed them over four decades. Even supposedly ‘middle-class’, educated voters are disgruntled as our incomes compared to a few decades ago have dwindled compared to the ever rising cost of living. The cheaper, high value clothes and electrical goods of 20 years ago have been replaced by lower quality, mass produced, disposable ubiquity. These goods mainly churned out from China have not made most of us that happy but they have contributed to the consumer driven, expansionist, endless consumption mindset built on personal and government debt…
It is almost as if the Financial and Subprime Banking Crisis never occurred. The politicians have wanted to carry on as before and continue to seem indifferent to the plight of those on the lowest rungs. There are many on ‘the left’ who also don’t want Biden as he is unlikely to change things radically. What surprised me is that the Biden-Harris ticket actually managed to get so many millions of votes when it is fair to say that they were not offering anything revolutionary. I guess it shows that there are still a lot of Americans left with some common sense! Thank goodness for them.
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Thank you Mark.
It is that sense of righteousness that we the left or the Bidenites or Labour seem to hold that frustrates the Right as well as everyone else – the tiny numbers of people working to level the playing field – to redistribute wealth or put the planet before their own interests are dwarfed by the masses of which I am one…
Biden won’t fix the world – it is unlikely he will destroy it either as Trump has been intent on doing.
Fingers crossed for some sanity in the US!
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