So, Jubilee had another debate, and this one was...well...a crapshow. It was like the Charlie Kirk one I discussed but in reverse. Luke Beasley is a fast talking zoomer who much like Kirk kept talking over his opponents, and his opponents were older Trump voters. It was a mess, and I'm starting to hate these. It had a similar dynamic to Kirk beating up on college kids, except it was this young guy beating up on a bunch of older people.
Claim #1: MAGAnomics is terrible for the economy
So, we see the charlie kirk effect with this Beasley kid right out of the gate. I agree with the premise by the way, MAGAnomics is terrible for the economy. It's adding inflation and driving us into a recession for no fricking reason, but the first guy seemed fairly articulate and this kid just wouldn't let him talk! He was a business owner who seemed to understand international finance and was trying to talk about how China is screwing us and this guy just kept pushing leading questions and not letting the guy get his point in edge wise. And yeah, I actually agree with Beasley on paper here. I mean, I aint a fan of MAGA or their economic policies, but this guy seems like the biggest Biden bro ever where he's just citing economic statistics about jobs with little context. The boomers were old, but they do have economic experience and some seemed like genuinely intelligent people. I just would have liked to have seen some actual discussion that didn't turn into a crapshow here.
Claim #2: Trump is an authoritarian threat to democracy
As we know, I agree with this one too. He is. Between January 6th, the erosion of voting rights, attempts to concentrate power in the executive branch, invading American cities to flex his might, and attempts to run again and possibly overturn the next election, Trump is dangerous. But these guys just didn't see it.
One thing that irked me where the people who bought Trump's line about how "talking like this is why he's acting like that" and stuff like that. Again, my stance, if you dont wanna be treated like a fascist, dont do fascist things. I wasnt out here talking about Bush like this when he was in office. And the dems have been screaming about the radical left and antifa my entire life and have always dialed up the rhetoric. I wouldnt agree with the alarmism if I didnt believe it was legit.
Still, this is where Beasley did get castigated for talking over people and how we need to have a more civil discourse where we talk to each other, not over each other. I kind of agree. I certainly dont like Beasley's style of just talking over his opponents. TO be fair, Charlie Kirk, who is heralded as this standard of civil debate did literally that, and I discussed that just a week ago.
Anyway, on January 6th, I could understand why people wouldnt be on board with acting like that was an insurrection...if they didnt watch the congressional hearings. You can go back to 2021 in this blog and I was very skeptical initially of going after Trump for his speech. But after the prosecution actually made a case and presented it before congress and more facts came out, I warmed up to it. But that's kind of a disconnect. It's kinda like that "if those kids could read they'd be very upset" meme. A lot of trumpers just dont....follow data and facts. And they just dont see the threat. They kept talking about civil discourse and blah blah blah, but they just dont have very informed perspectives. Sorry, not sorry. Beasley was right, even if I didnt agree with his debate style.
Claim #3: Trump supporters are not patriotic
This is a claim I'm leery to back. I believe a lot of right wingers are patriotic in their own heads. And I saw that here. I believe a lot of the trump supporters who talked are very patriotic people in their own minds. And a lot of them tend to buy into the very nationalist idea of patriotism. They asked Beasley why he never joined the military, although when COVID came up, I really think we should've had a discussion about Trumpers refusing to mask up or get vaxxed for the good of the country. And that did come up. On that front, yes, Trump did operation warp speed and the vaccine wouldve released in 2021 regardless. Trump didnt wanna force it like Biden, but given this was a matter of public health, maybe he should have? I mean, I call myself a libertarian myself and my idea of freedom is you can swing your fist but if it ends at someone else's nose that's a problem. Likewise, if you cough on others and spread disease, that's also a problem. Sometimes patriotism is doing the right thing for the country. Right wingers talk a big game about the military, but again, they seem afraid of needles. Even though you get vaccinated in the military too. My dad has an interesting story about how he lost his shot card once and had to get ALL of his vaccines over again, including this massive needle that injected jelly into him and was super painful. But hey, as a civvie? Afraid of getting one tiny needle? Give me a break. And i dont even buy into the aesthetics of patriotism either, but COME ON.
Beyond that, there was discussion of the constitution, and blah blah blah. Beasley talked about how Trump was never in the military and he wasn't. A lot of trumpers had this cult of personality like he got shot for his country. He didnt get shot for his country. Someone took a shot at him while running for office, and yeah he had that bad### moment where he got up and pumped his fist up, but let's not glamorize it. Dude seemed scared crapless after that.
And yeah, IIRC more talk of january 6th, and trumpers believed the protesters to be patriotic. I dont, I see them as criminals and as borderline traitors. They mightve thought they did what was right in their heads, but they were misled, by Trump. Like, sometimes these guys just seem in their own alternative realities and buy into a cult of personality around Trump.
Claim #4: Kamala Harris would have been a much better president
She would have. And I'm not saying she'd be great, just adequate, but adequate, as in, 5/10 is better than terrible, or 1/10. And this is where I found the debate between both sides to be cringe. Beasley spoke a lot of numbers and facts like jobs and inflation, and he was right, but that stuff is very underwhelming. I believe we live in a second gilded age. Let;s talk about where the term gilded age comes from. It's like "golden age", ya know, where everything is wonderful, except instead of golden it's gilded. Basically, everything is right on the surface, but it's all rotten on the inside. Like it's actually crap, but it seems nice on the outside. When Beasley cites states, he's talking about the gilded parts, but ignoring the problems underneath. At the same time, the Trumpers are the opposite. They feel something is wrong, but they're feels over reals. They blamed Biden for crime, immigration, inflation, ya know, all the problems that were top voter priorities but honestly, it was feels over reals. Like, they talked about crime on the way to the studio where this was shot in California. Beasley pointed out crime was down statistically, but trumpers dont care about stats, they care about feels. He pointed out how illegal immigration didnt go up and the trumpers were like "but what about the 11 million people already here?" As a UBI supporter who counts illegal immigrants to know how many people to exclude from my UBI numbers, illegal immigrants in the US has remained rather flat for years and those guys were there back during the Obama administration when I first started counting. The numbers havent really changed. We dont have a massive crisis of illegals coming in. And when they do come, they're turned away. Again, feels over reals with these people.
On economics. yes, inflation was up under biden. We recovered from COVID after all, btw, these guys were blaming Biden for shutting down the country when Trump was in office in 2020. Again, feels over reals. And yeah, i would agree that the stats arent convincing since, as weve been talking about on here, we're dealing with a situation where the middle class is in perpetual decline it seems. It's been declining since the 1970s, that's the real problem. We've seen the hollowing out of American living standards through the 80s onward, with 2008 being what I consider the breaking point for a lot of people. And now COVID is causing an inflationary surge and yeah. It sucks. Of course, these people are blaming Biden and acting like Trump brought prices down. He didnt. Biden did at the end of his term and now the tariffs are making things worse again and were seeing both higher prices and increased unemployment again. And yeah, I do admit Beasley's stats arent convincing. And quoting those stats at people didnt win people over in 2024. Because people know something is wrong, they don't know what. Which brings us to the counter claim from the Trumpers
Claim #5: The reason the left lost the election is because they dont understand the American people
And yeah, I would concede this to the Trump voter. I mean, I dont like the left as it exists. I dont believe the left really cares what the American voter thinks. They are in an insular echo chamber and cite statistics and get lecturey and condescending, but they dont actually understand. They dont understand that just because the numbers are good doesnt mean people are doing well. And Beasley just missed that IMO.
At the same time, I cant agree with the Trumper either. Because she's a bit too feels over reals. She was going on about how we need a business person like Trump who understand what it's like to be president and buying into this cult of personality and no...no...
Here's the thing. You dont want a businessman as president. A businessman knows business, yes, but we need class consciousness here. We really do. A business owner's perspective is a bourgeois perspective. It's the perspective that focuses on increasing capital and increasing wealth for themselves. We have this idea in our society that if the wealthy do well, we do well, because the wealthy want to create jobs and the wealth will trickle down. The wealth doesnt trickle down, and it hasnt been trickling down, and I'll go even further, Trumpers might understand something is wrong with the economy, but they dont understand what. They dont understand that maybe a society in which we give all of the wealth to the already wealthy and expect them to "create jobs" and make the wealth "trickle down" is a terrible idea. Because it doesn't. I've been mentioning Fordism a lot, the idea that we need to have employees paid enough to buy the products that they make. We dont have that any more. Most consumption is done by the top 10% of income earners. And that's the common trend that unites the post 2008 recession economy and the post COVID economy. It's the K shaped recoveries. The wealthy come off better than ever, no one else does.
But to solve this, we need PROGRESSIVE economics. I dont mean bidenomics. Bidenomics, obamanomics, clintonomics, those are all modified trickle down. Trickle down with a moderate keynesian bend. They too relied on the wealthy to "create jobs" and while liberal politics are arguably a bit better, the whole paradigm is fricking broken. Because instead of trickle down, we need trickle up. We need to give money to those at the bottom, the consumption creates the demand, the demand creates jobs, and then the jobs make the stuff. That's what we need. We need businesses to respond to consumer demand, not a top down trickle down system. But for a left wing system to work, we need to go MUCH FURTHER LEFT than we've been doing. We either need a Bernie Sanders approach, which goes back to FDR and his New Deal, with higher minimum wages, and universal healthcare, and free college/student debt forgiveness, and jobs guarantees, OR, we need a UBI and some of those things. Traditional liberals/leftists are more in the Bernie vein, my own politics are closer to yang and a bit newer, but I still believe that it's a viable model that has some advantages (and possibly some disadvantages) over the bernie approach. The bernie approach is more growth and jobs oriented, but my approach would solve poverty and put value in things other than work and the economy. They have tradeoffs, my own philosophy and the new deal liberal types can debate all day which is better, BUT, we need ONE OF THOSE TWO APPROACHES to the economy in order to make it work.
The problem with modern politics is BOTH SIDES are broken. The republicans have this populist thing going on where they act like Trump cares about them and he's a patriot and he sacrifices for his country, and beasley as this cool and calm headed "quant head" thing going on where you got some intelligent guy who cites random statistics, but those statistics dont necessarily tell the full story.
Again, the entire paradigm of modern politics is broken, both sides talk around each other, and both just dont get it. They miss the point. I will agree Beasley's side is more right on facts, but that side also does miss that a lot of the people are suffering, and democrats dont seem to care. And that's why they keep losing to Donald Trump.
Conclusion
Honestly, this debate had potential. I actually think at least some trumpers were quite intelligent, and quite human, and i think that this is where the population is. If you wonder where the median voter is with things, I think these guys did give some insight into the sauce that got Trump elected, while Beasley kinda did come off as out of touch. Now, to be fair, Beasley was right on most stuff. And the trump voters were more feels over reals and I really dont think they understand that yeah, trump's economics are actually terrible, and yeah, he is a danger to society, all that stuff is true and these guys dont see it. But at the same time, beasley just didnt see that maybe there's more to life than citing random stats at people and that being convincing.
Part of the problem with america is we have an education problem and voters arent well informed. We see that here. Part of the problem is the democrats are just out of touch. We see that here too. And part of the problem is debates like this just lead to people trying to talk over each other, yeah, that's a problem too. But at the same time, part of the problem isnt just talking over each other and refusing to have civil discourse. We do have fascists within the trump movement. We saw them in the medhi hassan debate, which is why i started watching these. And those guys scare the crap out of me. These guys, far more normie vibe, not as scary, but they really just dont see how danferous and terrible trump is. I can admit, my own side sucks, harris and biden were out of line with the american people and their priorities. Sometimes those priorities were bunk. Like crime and immigration, lots of fear mongering whipped up by trump, not a lot of reality there. On the economy though, I do think there's far more wrong with the economy than the mainstream center left would admit, and the trumpers kinda are tapping into that. But at the same time, I think the trumpers are kinda stupid and arent articulating their concerns super well because well, they are kinda stupid.
And people dont like being called stupid, which is why the left has a problem reaching out to people, but idk how else to put it. They dont understand things properly. They lack education. They have dunning kruger syndrome. They're just flat out WRONG on stuff. And I get that maybe not everything to life boils down to stats, but stats are still better than just anecdotes. Still, you admittedly should have both. And that's what i try to offer here. I kinda try to bridge that gap. Ya know? Sometimes those feelings are legit. I live in a city with a lot of crime and i dont feel safe after all. I understand why some are worried about crime. Of course, the criminologist in me also understands such crime is also linked to poverty and that people just complain about crime endlessly even when stats change. The mind is a powerful thing though and people will sometimes believe the feels over reals though.
Same with stats. Yeah, if you actually buy into the paradigm of economic growth and job creation and inflation and blah blah blah, yeah, Biden was the best conventional president you could have on the economy If you love trickle down economics, ie, economics where we give the money to the wealthy and expect it to trickle down, yeah, biden was solid in conventional terms. And much better than Trump, whose tariffs are screwing things up. But, and here's where those feels are valuable, the american people are struggling with the way the economy is, and there's good reasons for it. Stuff is getting more expensive, people feel like their living standards are declining...again....and they kind of are, but again, to fix it, you need a paradigm shift. Heck, even to RECOGNIZE THE PROBLEM and bring it into focus, you need a paradigm shift. And the trumpers...they operate in this conventional paradigm, but understand something isnt working, so they just go feels over reals. In reality, you need to reject the paradigm, and that involves moving LEFT. And not just to where the dems are, but TWICE as left as that. Because mainstream dems are just republican lites on economics. You need to get on board with the likes of bernie sanders, or andrew yang, and ya know, those kinds of ideas. You need big ideas to fix the economy, paradigm changing ideas. You aint gonna get that for trump. With trump, you get trickle down with tariffs, which is worse than Biden. And yeah, that's where I'm at with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment