This America, Man

 

The opening scene of the five seasons of the TV show, "The Wire"  is a Baltimore street, a teenager lying in a pool of blood, a bullet in his head, and Detective Jimmy McNulty sitting on a stone stoop with a local Black teenager, contemplating the body--and there are exchanges about all the injustices in the world, but, the scene ends with the teenager telling McNulty, to explain the way things have played out: "This America, man."

And this is what happened November 5, 2024. After all the talking heads, the experts, the pundits with their predictions and polls, it was always going to come down to whether there are more of them, the Trump voters, or more of us, the anti-Trump voters.

Clearly, right now at least, there are more of them. 

This America, man.

The Daily Show, in one of its segments without Jon Stewart, did a wonderful montage of pundits explaining why Harris lost: One pundit says she was done in by her failure to win over the Palestinian sympathizing voters in Michigan, while another says she was done in by alienating Jewish voters by sympathizing too much with Palestinians, and it continues on with each analyst bringing up his or her pet cause which, if only Kamala had embraced would have spelled victory, and then another pundit saying just the opposite in the next clip.

As the vast sea of readers of this blog knows, Mad Dog's premonition was a Trump victory, and not a close one, based on his looking around and seeing so many Trump fans over the course of his own week, and as he did canvassing for Harris on the weekends.  Each of us is always looking through a key hole, so Mad Dog was careful not to claim he knew enough from what he could see locally. The soldier on the front line knows only what is happening in front of him, not across the whole front.

But Mad Dog was not surprised on November 5th.

Mad Dog makes no claim to be able to explain it, apart from saying that White people feel aggrieved, and think too much has been given to anyone who is not White;  and Hispanic males love a macho man; and Black men--well, who knows what's going on in the heads of Black men? But clearly they feel aggrieved and maybe there's a certain Stockholm Syndrome operating--if I just embrace this guy who holds power over me, maybe he'll not hurt me and make me one of his boys. 

One of the most common reactions of white patients when they find they are charged $600 for their insulin is to remark that their neighbor, who is Hispanic, not working and on Mass Health gets his insulin for free. (And none of these white voters thanked Biden for eventually getting insulin down to $35.) They had no idea Biden had anything to do with that. They were just angry about their neighbor's free ride. Mad Dog asked once, "Did you ever think to ask why you don't get your insulin for free? I mean, why be angry at the guy who gets it for free, rather than the company that makes it so expensive for you?" 

That was met with uncomprehending stares.

On Trial in Mississippi for Murder of a Black Man

Heather Cox Richardson is correct in making the obvious point Trump has managed to sell a false bill of goods--the economy we have by every measure we have of economy (unemployment rates, effective wages, inflation) hasn't been this good since the 1960's and yet Trump sold the idea it has crashed and burned, not been rescued by Joe Biden with his government sponsored bail outs during the pandemic so business did not collapse and workers got paid.

But even in a good economy, apparently, there are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck who are uneasy, angry and want a strongman to help them out.

Mad Dog met a man a few days before the election who worked for an HVAC supply company which laid him off, along with all the other 20 employees, early in the COVID pandemic as their revenues tanked, but the company paid him his full salary and his health insurance for 2020-2021. And he told his wife, "Hey, I'm going to take the year off! This is great!"

So Mad Dog said, "Well, then, you really did benefit from a government program!" 

And he looked back at Mad Dog, uncomprehendingly: "No, that was the company that did that."

And Mad Dog said, "And who do you think gave that company the money to do that when the company had no income?"

This citizen Trump voter had no idea what the answer to that question might be.

This America, man.