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You know every time that I turn on a screen I am confronted with the American desire to apportion blame. YouTube is full of vids raging against the machine. Ever since the late Robert Hughes identified America, as infected with the culture of complaint, this groundwave has continued to swell. Making something that you don’t like into a conspiracy has become a full time business. And yes, there are plenty of examples where this instinctive reaction is justified by the evidence compiled. It can, however, become a habitual response to everything in life that you don’t like.
Trump’s Political Exploitation of American Grievances
Is social media just a giant repository of complaint and conspiracy? We can observe Donald Trump feeding on the politics of grievance via the conduit of these platforms. Cynically championing causes that he has no real belief in or empathy with. Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes against young girls; free speech and the First Amendment; blue collar economic injustices; fixing the higher costs of inflation; taking on the oligarchs; making healthcare more affordable for Americans – these and more he has failed to do and merely paid campaign lip service to them. The American desire to apportion blame for these have fed the grifter from Queens.
The Blame Game American Style
I suppose that America has long been a place where you could post your views about stuff without censorship. This may well be changing under the current Trump regime. Talk was cheap in the USA; and Americans regularly expelled a lot of hot air about all sorts of stuff. The internet quickly filled up with some facts and a shitload of opinion. As the legacy media lost its grip on the collective consciousness of the population the conspiracy theories have grown eight arms and legs in every direction. Science has been bagged and put in the bottom drawer by those on the Right. Inconvenient truths no longer bother MAGA Trumpists when it comes to climate change, public health or anything else, come to think about it. Betting on the blame game has come up Trumps for the Republicans. The Democrats, in contrast, seem hampered by their adherence to outdated stuff like science and the rule of law.
Trump’s First Term Legacy
“But perhaps his term will be mostly remembered for his adoption of “forgotten Americans” in midwestern and southern cities hollowed out by globalized free trade policies. Trump powerfully identified a populace badly neglected by Washington politicians of both parties – as well as an audience for his populist, nationalist politics. But the facts suggest the President’s tax cuts and economic policies in practice did more for corporations and rich cronies that the heartland Americans he championed.”
Trump’s Bet On Breaking America Apart
The American desire to apportion blame to their enemies has created a long list of said enemies. There is and are the Right vs Left, Republican Vs Democrat, Rural vs City, White vs Black, Man vs Woman, Conservative vs Progressive, Old vs Young, Rich vs Poor and so on. These divides are making the whole United States of America a complete misnomer, of course. Donald Trump trash talks down America at every opportunity and pins these disparaging judgments upon his political enemies. The blame game feeds his effective politics of grievance to the detriment of the country as a whole.
Living With Prominent Liars An American Tradition
Why do Americans want to apportion blame for everything that does not go their way? Why do they want to make a song and a dance about it online? Stoicism is definitely not in vogue these days. With all that angst and hot air you would think it could drive a few thousand power stations at the very least. I suppose you are continually being sold something in the USA. The sales culture promises a lot but rarely delivers. Overpromising in bids to make sales. The Trump political circus is the same in many ways. Claiming that he will ‘release the Epstein files!’ Saying that he will lower prices caused by high inflation. Fix the economy for working people. Reduce the cost of healthcare. Be a champion of free speech. The Teflon Don. The grifter from Queens. Promises you the world! They wrote a book about him called The Lucky Loser but Americans are the unluckiest losers in his wake. Dumbest and unluckiest.
Complaining About The Culture Of Complaint
“Well, we never expected middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow white men just to roll over and die, but it appears that the political and psychic tolls of ’68 will bring about some cardiac arrests yet. In a new collection of essays, the art critic for Time puts forth a cranky, uneven, frequently misinformed, ahistorical, contradictory and self-centred polemic against contemporary life in his adopted land, the United States of America. “
Science On The Nose In MAGA Trumpified America
“Imagine if Charles Darwin was still alive today and how his groundbreaking scientific work on evolution would be treated by neocons and MAGA types. Social media would light up like the site of an atomic bomb explosion. Don’t check the facts: Inconvenient scientific truths. We have got to the stage where people are choosing which facts they will acknowledge, as if they are choosing from a range of colours for an item in an online store. Terms like ‘alternative truths’ have been invented to describe the current situation. If we cannot agree on what is fact and what is not we are in big trouble.”
American Trauma Exported Globally
American culture has been exported to the world, especially since the digital revolution. Lots of us are pigging out on the unsatisfying experience of too much screentime. Social media influencers scream, ‘look and listen to me!’ Whitney Webb, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, the late Charlie Kirk, Meidas Touch, Alex Clark, Hasan Piker, Benny Johnson, and a list as long as your street containing folk with the low down on what conspiracy is really driving the bus in the USA. The American desire to apportion blame. There is a vid on YouTube ready to mess with your assumptions in the political sphere instantly. Trump’s crazy shit has rocked the world out of its slumber and people are looking for answers online. Who is to blame for all this f***** up stuff? Who created Trump? How can it be stopped? Can the djinn be put back in the bottle? Please just make it stop! Who do we have to kill? Of course, you can just turn it off. Few do, however, and as Trump reaches into the biosphere near you the bad shit can become all too real. Where do we go to from here?
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of The Stoic Golfer; Money Matters and America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
