And now the mindless masses who voted for the vulgar troll are so happy with that extra $200.00 dollars (or less) on their paychecks that they overlook his incompetence, obscenity, the damage he is doing to the country, our government agencies, the environment and the soul of democracy, because everything is OK for a few extra dollars. Trump supporters should be asking the question: Why did Russia (Putin) want trump, so bad, to win the election and not Clinton? Why????
18
You can also add the famous fraudster in the "Wizard of Oz"
2
Yes, but Trump has fooled too many people too long already. The costs are evident in the fraying fabric of American society, the debasement of values, broken families, and refugees' lives sacrificed when they could have been saved by medical procedures in the U.S.
10
Trump supporters? They applaud the slight-of-hand magician as he takes their wallets. They marvel at his skill. They cheer as he waves their jewelry at them as he walks away. They tell each other that they'd all gladly buy another ticket and see the show again......... If only they had their wallets.
11
"you can't fool all the people all the time"
???
Really? 35% of the American voting public will vote for Trump again. Now that's pretty good, we gotta give it to the Donald. But even HE stands a distant second to the Catholic church.
Let us prey.
9
Let's please remember that Trump drew the electoral equivalent of an inside straight by winning the WH with a total margin of about 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin while losing the popular vote by around 3 million people. Small consolation, I know, but this knowledge does show that more of my fellow citizens refused to be hoodwinked by a real-life version of Lonesome Rhodes.
14
The scary part of this is that Trump has already had good hot mike mmoment. He long ago said he would run as a Republican because they were more stupid. And they voted for him anyway.
8
I'm not a trump supporter. And to be honest I only skimmed this article twice; I did not give it a close read. But does it have any purpose other to insult those who did vote for trump?
I've had enough of people on both the left and the right, calling people who do not share their beliefs "dumb" or worse. Name calling only serves to drag our society down. I've had enough of it from our current president. I'd hoped the rest of us, especially those in the media, could do better.
8
I can't remember the exact year anymore, but it was sometime in the early fifties when I was about 15 years old, and I went with a couple of friends to see a Baltimore Colts football game. We had cheap seats behind the end zone and toward the end of the game a missed extra point or field goal kick came heading our way. There was no netting back in those days to prevent the ball from entering the stands and the ball went straight into the hands of a kid who made a clean catch of it and clearly had possession of it. But that was just for a moment because the next thing that happened was half-a-dozen older kids jumped him and started tearing the ball away from him. The kid, of course, lost the ball, but not before taking a terrific beating from his attackers.
I learned an important lesson that day. Stay away from American crowds. A bright new shiny football is a nice thing to have. But there are easier ways to get one than messing with an American crowd.
9
"Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump."
That hot mic has already found him; or he found it in the form of tweets. The mic and the masses were no match for Trump.
2
We are now dumbed down as far as it can go.
4
More and more people are waking up to the fact that we elected a genuine criminal to the white house. This is evidenced in special election after special election where former Trump districts are voting Democratic now versus huge 2016 majorities for Trump. It is also glaringly apparent that Trump is beginning to squirm and frantically send totally imaginative tweets that scream of falsehood and fear. How will we as a country deal with the approaching nervous breakdown by our chief executive? Only time will tell.
7
We’re not dumb; we're psychological, physical, and spiritual manifestations. We evolved to work in certain ways (e.g., movement gets our attention) and not in others (e.g., without stimuli, we fall asleep). No problem until society learned to identify those triggers and exploit them to meet specific targets (e.g., moving pictures to influence us: advertising). What's advertised is usually bad for us (e.g., screens from waking to falling asleep, keeping us distracted to the point of jitteriness) but we ignore it. We compound the issue by pretending we’re not spiritual beings. We have our religions, but they’re materialistic (e.g., rules instead of instructions how to seek stillness and divine wisdom within). Society has become perverted (e.g., wage slavery, making/buying stuff we don't need). We encourage each other to use our "freedom" to do what doesn't serve us (e.g., we're free to buy "anything we want," except, we want it because we’ve been manipulated thus, and we don’t have free access to the funds that will buy it, so we can't). We've become corrupt (power, money, stuff, feel like they matter though they don’t). We took a wrong turn (when we stopped trading and invented money?). Likely, it was many little turns that, over time, have turned into catastrophic outcomes. Or so it would seem. On a more spiritual level, all is well and death, pain, and suffering are illusions we run in the material world. But we could try to create illusions we all can share in and enjoy.
3
And so the infantalization of the vast majority American public is complete.
Fat and happy and only caring about instant gratification with zero patience for the slightest obstacle or inconvenience. We've become a weak, lazy country.
Reporting yesterday stated that 3 out of 4 young people (ages 17-24) are too over weight to meet the standards for enlistment in the US armed forces. Or don't meet the educational requirements.
Complacency. Wasn't this the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire?
5
It's not about being ignorant. It's about principles. I dunno, maybe there never was a time when most people were principled. But as I get older I feel more and more like a sucker because I try to live by the Golden Rule.
4
We are in the midst of a Phenomenon. If Trump were to say the following on a hot Mic, his popularity would not diminish:
“The people who elected me are about as stupid as stupid gets. They can be conned into anything. I was caught talking about “grabbing pussy”; a roomful of women accused me of being a sexual assaulter; my past business deals were made public, including my bankruptcies and my habit of stiffing craftsmen after their work was done. Yet these morons still voted for me.”
The reason it would not change a thing is because his people already know this stuff. They want Trump because he is their bull in a China shop. He is their roller girl in the roller derby where somebody is always going to get hurt. He is their stock car driver who loves to crash into anyone and everyone, frequently causing others to burst into flames.
He has brought the office of the presidency down to unbelievable depths.
11
I think there may be another dynamic at work: people will let themselves be used but they won't let themselves be discarded. Every one of Trump's policies furthers the monied elites, those people far removed from the average Trump voter. Maybe once the Trump voter realizes just how badly Trump has duped them, a measure of sanity will return to the millions that placed their hopes in him. Or they'll be so angry, they will tear apart what's left of the country.
6
Abuse is often reaffirming: It satisfies the abused person's sense of worthlessness. What looks like a slap in the mouth to us, is subconsciously interpreted as, "Just what I deserve." And do keep in mind: To be, "discarded," is to first be possessed—"seen"—if only for now. A rag doll will go anywhere with the child who just threw it across the floor. "But a rag doll has no brain or free will," you say. My point exactly.
4
The way this writer starts out, it almost lines up to become an apology to the American people for the tawdry way vote-buying put Barack Obama and Hillary the Entitled int the positions they despoiled beginning in 2009.
Of course, wanting to remain employed, he turns it into Trump Attack Piece No. 5,922, but at least it started with a little bit of new stuff before the propaganda begins.
Without the tragic Obama years, of course, the Obama voters and other who chose Trump in 2016 would not have been so upset.
OBTW, had the Florida killer used a knife instead of a gun, would he have harvested dozens of people before anyone in the rest of the school even figured out things were going wrong?
Imagine him catching individuals instead of entering classrooms! After all FAR more people are killed each year with blade weapons than guns.
3
Fake news. According to the FBI, in 2016 about 11,000 murders were committed with firearms vs. about 1600 with blade weapons (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-p..., Table 12).
9
I had been reading European summaries lately, where gun control has pushed the violent to got back to knives. In the USA, the gun is still far ahead, but single killers in a corporate setting of people working in rooms would surely kill more people than un-silenced guns - especially AR-15's with the really loud ammo.
And where is fair 'Veona', exactly? Some outer galaxy, apparently.
2
A fair number of commenters believe this piece is condescending. For my part, I think it must smart to learn you've been taken advantage of. I get that. It happens to everybody sometimes. You don't look like wise. At best you look like good people who made a terrible mistake.
Roger is just telling the truth. That isn't the same as condescension, no matter how much it smarts. True condescension is what Mr. Trump did. He played his 60 million voters for rubes. Has anybody seen any of that better cheaper health care for everybody yet? He stole those votes with false promises, including the promise that white nationalism and a punch in the nose would fix everything. He is now well on his way to taking away Social Security and Medicare. He has already signed the law that transfers trillions from the working and middle classes to the filthy rich.
This piece is as well written as those very fine movies were. "This is the basic setup." That wonderful folksy line could come from any number of wonderful books and movies.
12
I agree with Robert - it must really smart to be taken advantage of. When one is an adult, you take your poison deal with your mistakes, and learn from them. What really sets you apart, is what you do to correct or atone for your mistake. I think too many voters would rather sheepishly support Trump rather than admit they were duped.
It's exactly what a con is hoping for. And it is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Sexual predators hope the victim is too embarrassed to respond. Grifters and con men hope the mark is too embarrassed to contact the police. Who wants to admit they screwed up? Nobody, really. But the consequences get more dire the longer it plays out. Admit the mistake, unburden your soul, and pursue justice now that con man/sexual predator no longer has power over you.
We have far more power than we realize. Just like the kids in Florida pushing for responsible gun legislation. There is hope.
4
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
But you can fool all sometimes and some all times.
"Not all" needs just one not fooled. That's the scary part.
The biggest folly equates Good Government with Democracy; and Democracy with Majority Rule (some of the people)--direct or representative. That's practically rule by prejudiced, ill informed, myopic, egomaniacal, phobic, haters of whatever--and thus easy prey. Hardly new--give the masses bread and circuses--Romans said.
Majoritarianism plays a small part at every level of bureaucratic government--with diffused authority (federal, state, county, city; legislative, executive) many levels of research, consultation, debate and appeal--before law is created--and after, discretion by police and judges.
Thus good government is due process at all levels; not tyranny of the majority.
All successful mega corporations are bureaucratic. The USA is just one among many.
And it's going the way of Banana Republics. The traditional body politic (the commonwealth) is a puppet of private corporations--also a polities or a network (cabal) of them--thus oligarchy, the real deep state.
That's fascism--feudalism updated from agricultural capitalism (Nobles, Church, Commoner/Serfs) to industrial capitalism.
Now it's financial capitalism--hedge funds and holding companies bleed productive corporations and governments dry. Thus Trump aims to blood suck the USA--firing all ALL opposed. The Bad news is That's only SOME of the people.
3
In the finest performance of his life, Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes was indeed undone by a "hot mike". I love that movie, and it said to me that the frauds will eventually be undone. We love that types of movies, such as "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and others where the heart swells with the truth of American exceptionalism.
Boy, was i wrong! Trump has had all kinds of "hot mike" moments, and it doesn't mean squat. There is so little hope that our democracy will survive. What will it take to turn the scoundrels out? If the dems don't take the House and come close to the Senate in '18, I fear we have lost any semblance of the idea of America.
3
For media hysteria to have any effect with non-progressive robots, it has to carry some credibility. By the Billy Bush moment, most Americans had already realized that the old media was NEVER going to be truthful about this man.
This reminds me of the day Trump fired the enemy of every progressive, James Comey. An audience was gathered to record a TV show, and when the VERY progressive Trump-hater told them this news from D.C. they all CHEERED for Trump. Only later did the audience learn that they were strongly expected to hate Trump for firing the guy who made Hillary lose.
Comey's best moment was in '04 when he went against Bush admin in renewing domestic surveillance law. He seemed very true to a moral compass.
Very strange behavior on Hillary comments, but other than '04, I was not a fan. I was never an FBI fan, since Hoover was their "Reagan".
1
Hoover never had that kind of solid support, especially after he completely botched the case of Germans deposited on the East Coast during WWII to create havoc - who immediately started looking for law enforcement to surrender to.
Comey was even more liberal than Bush, which places them about where Hillary ended up before her health failed her. The GOP is still our most diverse social group.
1
thanks for mentioning a face in the crowd; i've thought of that any number of times in the past two years. also: elmer gantry.
3
But you can fool 40% of the people all the time.
10
As a wise man once observed, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
But alas, you can fool many of the people often. American history shows that people often mistake confidence games (and con artists) for inspiration. From Russell Conway ("Acres of Diamonds") to Father Coughlin's radio screeds, many American thought these two men "of God" prophets, wanting to believe that their words would lead to a better life. I predict that Trump's will be remembered as one of our worst presidents but a champion confidence man.
2
Trump & Putin proved that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time.
4
Right on the money!!!!!!
Wake up America
3
I keep thinking of Pottersville in "It's Wonderful Life." Amazing how fast things can deteriorate.....
4
Well, it all dates before television, when those images were shadows dancing on the wall of Plato's cave.
1
That wise man you quote at the end also said that you can fool some of the people all of the time. We now know that the "some" amounts to approximately 40% of the populace. Oh, and just about all of the Republicans in Congress.
5
I would highly recommend the German movie 'Er ist Wieder Da' , translated to 'Look Who's Back', for a good laugh (belly).
It's about Adolph Hitler. He says essentially the same thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtW1Lq5c04E
1
wow. I had no idea about this movie !
2018 popular vote results: Trump (46.1%) or 62,985,134 votes . Hillary got 48.2% or 65,853,652 votes. I doubt all of the 46.1% of our fellow Americans who tested fate are as pompous as "The Con Artist" and will refuse to own up to the truth and apologize for a monumental disaster. But, no mass confessional is required to atone for this mistake; just a simple undoing of this nonsense this November by casting a vote for any congressional candidate who will stalemate Trump. Then boot him out in 2020. All's forgiven.
7
" I can't take it anymore". That should be the cry of millions filling Times Sq. New York, the Washington Mall in front of the Capitol, Pittsburgh Riverfront, Chicago Center, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seatle, Houston. It's time to take to the streets. The nations infrastructure is in need of repair while the republic crumbles at it's core.
13
While invoking Howard Beale and Lonesome Rhodes, don't forget Harold Hill, the Music Man, who reminds me a lot of Trump. Obviously a schister to anybody with ethics and business sense (his Birther bit should have disqualified him from any elected office higher than dogcather), he charmed people like The Music Man did - enough they ignored all the warning signs and bought into the fantasies of a boys' band for River City, diverting them from the trouble at the pool halls. Hill was about to be tarred and feathered when they figured out they'd been bamboozled until Marian the Librarian, who'd seen through Hill from the get go, convinced them they had fun (something to do!) and so to be lenient. Seems like the GOP leaders today are playing her role...but will the townspeople actually demand their money back someday since Hill actually didn't "know one note, from another."
1
People “are easily manipulated through their fears.” And Trump supporters have been manipulated by the tax cut which has resulted in his approval ratings holding steady. Trump supporters see the tax cut as something real and tangible; it’s right there on their pay check. The amount of the cut varies of course from individual to individual. But for the excited Trump supporters, the total amount of their cut (which will only last for eight years) is the amount they are willing to sell their values for in exchange for supporting Trump. There is an actual dollar amount on what each of them is willing to sacrifice the bigger picture for. This stark Faustian bargain is an indication of how easily people are willing to be fooled. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool just enough to stay in office. The Republicans will stop at nothing to fool the American people including buying them. Getting people to sell their souls apparently is a piece of cake.
6
Many of the NYT’s opeds could as well be written up by bots-a repetitive whining and moaning about Trump.
5
Hitler and Mao proved you can fool all of the people long enough, however, to destroy a country and slaughter millions.
7
What people have been saying for decades proves itself to be true as often as not: Americans, as a people, are stupid.
6
Roger,
As always, you have a keen eye for the obvious.
3
This is more of the "Its not our fault," mantra the Democrats have been spewing since the election. Yes it is your fault. Think about this, your 'best' candidate lost to Donald Trump. How badly do you have to screw up for the American People to choose someone like Trump over everyone else? How is that even possible? He didn't change, he has been a cheap huckster from his early days, anyone could see that. Yet faced with a continuation of policies that decimated the middle class and given no other alternative, the American people chose a carnival barker like Trump.
Have you learned the lesson yet? Are you willing to promote policies that help the majority of people? Because frankly, I'm not seeing it. Shutting down the government twice is not inspiring confidence in your ability to govern. From my perspective this looks like "same 'o, same 'o."
Perhaps its time for a third party, one comprised of adults who care about people.
11
Nice try but the reason the dems lost was because of the dis-information campaign of Russians and Fox News. Fox News has been involved in the relentless persecution of Hilary since the beginning of Obamas presidency for the express purpose of making her out to be an EVIL MONSTER. Tell me sir, what is the easy path that the Dems could have taken to win an 8 year, hundred million dollar international disinformation campaign? The voters weren't sick of being left behind so much as they HATED the caricature created by FOX. Period.
8
mrs. clinton won the popular vote by a wide margin
3
3.5 million votes
1
People subscribe to be part of a society: the social contract, John Locke called it. When government is exploited by one group against another; when it seems to be out for itself --- who ever thought of the speed trap? Then, we, the people tend to want, at least, to re-write that contract. The ballot and a republic promise this peaceful revolution.
But, here we are. In 2010, a Chris Jankowski, a republican lawyer saw a way to re-write the voting districts using computers. He never asked if he was going too far. He never considered if gerrymandering violated the 1st, 15th, 19th and 24th amendments of the constitution.
Then, Roberts declared that corporations can vote and all hell broke loose.
People are no longer waiting for their voices to be heard. They are contemplating the unthinkable: the violent revolution of the people against its government. Call it madness, if you like from the executive suite. Check your passport.
6
Yeah, I guess Mr. Cohen is only honest man out there.
This is satire, right?
1
Hillary corrupt Clinton LOST the election. You don't get to rewrite the rules after your candidate implodes. The Electoral college will end in your lifetime, thank God.
3
Corrupt? Hillary Clinton is a girl scout compared to Trump. Trump is one of the biggest crooks in the country. Why do you think he won't show his tax returns?
His administration will go down in history as the most corrupt since the days of Boss Tweed. Trump is a bigger crook than even Richard Nixon.
3
Wow. H.L. Mencken has reincarnated, but without Mencken’s gift for pithy phrases. (The “boobocracy”) and his gift for prophesy “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
But I can’t join you in your despair, Mr. Cohen. In my 75 years on this Earth I have seen truly enormous changes for the better. Seen up close without an overall view, events like Trump can seem like giant steps backward. But factor in all the changes that are happening unheralded and on the individual level, and we see a much brighter picture: constant, inexorable improvement of the human condition.
3
Let us not overlook the prescient H L Mencken, who in 1920 wrote, "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." The only thing he didn't see coming was that the "plain folks" would be led to elect that moron by the Russians.
9
Trump didn't manipulate me to vote for him, the NYT did though it non-stop overblown negative UNFAIR coverage of Trump.
3
What, then, are you telling us about your judgment?
11
Well then, Alex, you are 1 of the MINORITY of voters who chose Dirty Donnie. A whole lot more across the country voted for Clinton.
7
The same gang that brought us the Iraq War, financial deregulation that led to the 2008 meltdown, and the most vast inequality we've seen in generations, now has the gall to write a column about stupid we little people are.
Don't you realize that it's the bi-partisan "free market" nonsense, a dogma strictly by and for the elite, that got us to this point? That you ignored us and systemically destroyed any opportunity we had to voice our opinions and interests? That you, and your vaunted "enlightened center", express your hatred for us both in columns this and in policy every day, week, and election cycle?
Trump is an idiot. A fascist moron. But you eclipse him in your contempt for democracy and fundamental mistrust of the "little people".
I'm very poor. It's clear you think very little of us, Mr.Cohen. Just know we think very little of you too.
4
But not New York Times readers, right? We are the good ones, the enlightened - the resistance. We see the world clearly as it really is, needing no filter to accept its harshness. We would never be taken in by such a charlatan, because we are too smart for that. We don't worship authority, we are autonomous individuals collectively acting for the greater good.
This is among the most condescending opinion columns I have ever read. Roger Cohen can continue to fiddle on the deck of our collective Titanic, happy in the knowledge that he has gone out with honor, or he can abandon the condescension and the arrogance and begin to cultivate some empathy for the deplorables. Disdain from our ivory towers is what got us Trump in the first place.
Lastly, the ad hominem is the refuge of the weak mind. I am not sure what the ad hominem is called when it is directed at 63 million people, but its still the refuge of the weak mind. It's something I'd expect from Breitbart, where rabble rousing is the raison d'etre, not from a serious publication like the New York Times.
5
Sounds to me like sour grapes or buyers remorse. Trump's a moron, a charlatan and unfit for office, regardless of how smart, stupid, rich, poor, well or broken you are. Period.
8
William Carlos Williams wrote an amazing poem about a crowd at the ball game. That group, so benign, cheering on their team, morphs into the mobs of the Inquisition, of the Holocaust, turning against people in their midst. It reminds me of scenes of a mob of angry white middle class people attacking a car carrying Pete Seeger and Paul Robesen. The pure hatred on the faces of these average citizens, spurred on by the HUAC into believing that two singers were communists, threatening the mob's very way of life was frightening. Similarly, the conversion of ordinary Germans into loyal subjects of Hitler who ignored the atrocities committed in the name of the Fatherland, as well as the right wing scare mongers in the US of today who have convinced up to 40% of our nation that morality and decency can be set aside, that bigotry, sexism, and loutishness can be tolerated, indeed encouraged, just to keep power, horrifies me. The crowd morphs into the mob and is easily manipulated into something that shows humanity at its worst.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45498/the-crowd-at-the-ball-game
6
Thanks for reminding me that almost a majority of Americans are undereducated, underinformed, racist, and gullible. Scary.
4
They? Are you not human? A thoughtful change in the pronoun would have converted this from a snobby, I'm-better-than-you ineffective opinion piece that immediately distances you from your subject to a more universally relatable observation with which we could all agree. Missed opportunity and very revealing.
1
“Those morons out there? Shheh, I can take chicken fertilizer and sell it to ’em for caviar. I can make them eat dog food and they’ll think it’s steak ... You know what the public’s like? A cage full of guinea pigs."
Trump would say the tape was doctored and Fox News would confirm it.
The only thing that would end him - Like a stake through the heart of Dracula - Would be his (say) using a baby as a shield from an assassination attack as portrayed in Stephen Kings prescient book and movie - "The Dead Zone"
Trump IS Greg Stillson reincarnate!
2
I fear that technology has outstripped the ability of humans to use and control it. People went to Trump rallies arranged by Russian bots. A man drove hours to Comet pizza because he believed Clinton was running a child sex ring there. It's like that man during the 2008 election with the sign, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." What do you do about that?
7
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
5
Roger, thanks for being more forthright than most of the rest of the media. The Thug in Chief still enjoys the respect accorded the office when written about in most of the media.
He doesn’t deserve it. He’s a shameless liar and he has a following of angry losers who will eventually need to fix their own lives. I don’t know a polite way to say this, and considering the stakes being polite probably reflects bad citizenship.
5
Brilliant article...spot on...This is yet another analysis that proves my contention that the tRump lickers are Cain' spawn (yes, the Biblical Cain that slew Abel). They want to drag everybody down with them and destroy everything in sight. They are the economic/social losers that would rather blow everything up than try to change...
4
Sadly, I think Trump's followers know, in their heart of hearts, that he holds all of them in contempt. Certainly the policies he and his entourage have implemented or attempted to implement during his brief presidency should tell them all they need to know. Tax cuts for the rich, deep cuts to the programs many of them rely upon to survive.
I think it's quite likely Trump could have his own Lonesome Rhodes 'hot mic' moment and soldier on unabated. Trump's calling card - his 'charm,' if one can call such loathsomeness 'charm' - is his antic contempt for virtually everyone and everything, except himself.
Sadly, Trump's flock is deeply devoted to him precisely because he mirrors their own fundamentally antisocial, borderline sociopathic view of the world and civilized society. That's his appeal to the ragtag collection of loudmouthed, cellar dwelling losers seen at his 'rallies' and tiki torch parades. And its also his appeal to the many otherwise ordinary, 'good people' who are less demonstrative about their dark side and their deep-seated antipathy for others.
And that's how Adolf Hitler obtained the support or at least the complicity of millions of 'good Germans,' collaborating Frenchmen and others as he slaughtered millions of their neighbors.
Not a pretty picture.
12
The compromised political establishment was the reason Trump became president and this is just the beginning of the changes taking place. Rant and rave all you want it will make no difference, the people who screwed up the last century, won't be given the same opportunity in this one.
4
Trump got away with the hot mic when he was on the bus with Billy Bush, bragging about how he could get away with putting his yards all over the private parts of women he just met.
Disgusting. And disgusting that people voted for him.
6
"They were ready to roll the dice, even on nuclear war, if the alternative was to be bored."
Columnists like Roger Cohen are the ones who like to play with the nuclear war scenarios. Trump and the American Crowds has nothing to do with it. No garbage makes it into our minds that hasn't been written by some "philosopher" before and, as this article proves, Roger Cohen is just one more of them. He would server humanity better by just being quiet and picking up golf balls for Trump.
1
Trump never did fool all of the people. He never even had half of the voters supporting him. He may be right that his supporters are every bit as gullible as the folks Rhodes mocked, but Trump has already mocked them and they did not care that he held them in such low regard.
5
Great! Penetrating analysis. Wow!
Nothing more to say so I’ll keep my big mouth shut. Perhaps I can be a role model for Donald.
1
Disagree, Trump voters knew exactly who he was, voted for him in full understanding, and still support their man/infant. Case in point, his Chief of Staff. Educated man. Distinguished soldier. Full of hate for those not white Americans, preferably Norwrgians I suppose.
4
What was Huey Long's famous quote?
"The only way I can lose is if they catch me in bed with a dead girl or a live boy."
3
The Fake President's biggest con will be his last con, undone by Mr. Mueller et al. Those sounds you are starting to hear? Rats scurrying on the deck of the sinking U.S.S. Trump, an old, retrofitted, bucket of bolts unworthy for any actual voyage.
3
"Somewhere a hot mic is waiting for Trump."
Are you kidding? From the Hollywood Access tape to a few hundred campaign speeches, this man has spent much of the past couple years spewing into various hot mics. It hasn't seemed to matter.
4
To make matters worse, many people want to believe they’ve been victimized, that every mistake they ever made, or whatever poor situation they’re in, it’s someone else’s fault, whether it’s “the man” or some immigrant they never met.
Add to that the fact that many people find it impossible to admit when they’re wrong, even in the face of overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence. Especially if they’ve been played for the fool.
There you have the Trump voter, waiting for the charlatan to take them, and they go joyously to be fleeced.
5
I think the hot mic idea is a false hope. People elected Trump because not because they were bored, but because they wanted to strike back at the liberals who, in their minds, had destroyed their lives. As long as Trump angers liberals, they're perfectly happy to see him where he is.
2
"Liberals" are a soft target and an easy scapegoat for whatever went wrong in peoples' lives. They should follow the Republican mantra that they love so much and "take responsibility" for their own actions or lack of action.
Blaming "liberals" or "coastal elites" is lazy.
2
The paragraph of how Rhodes is undone by dissecting the idiocy of Americans rang true. And the kicker headline in a restaurant story in the same issue of the Times:"Masayoshi Takayama’s new Japanese restaurant in TriBeCa, Tetsu, shows he can still dazzle while charging less tan $595 for dinner."
You wonder why the "people who are dumb" hate the "Elites"?
2
So, Roger,
this is America as it's always been, say you.
And it's not good, you say.
Well, for better or worse,
America attracts people,
from all over the world,
in literally overwhelming numbers.
After all,
even Mexicans and other Latin Americans,
not to mention Asians and Africans and Middle Easterners, of all kinds,
swarm to get in here,
with all our supposedly bad, bad people.
Maybe they know something you don't.
After all,
they are not swarming to get into most other places in the world,
especially not places in Africa,
nor Latin America,
nor even most places in Asia.
No,
they swarm to get in here,
don't they?
People vote with their feet.
BTW,
If the NYT were serious about trying to offer serious commentary
about the state of the USA or anywhere else in the world,
they need to stop cold the utter nonsense
of trotting out Hollywood films as some kind of proof of their point.
1
Despite nonstop revelations that would sink normal politicians, Trump has increased his approval among Republicans all across the board.
Don't hope for the hot mic - vote. And make sure everyone you know votes.
Trump has exposed a vein of American stupidity that makes the grand canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk.
4
"People are dumb, but they know when their president is compromised."
Actually, I don't think people are nearly as dumb as you think. What they are is scared, desperate, angry, and ignorant. Scared, because they know that the good paying manual labor jobs are gone forever and that most of the lousy paying ones are poised to be eliminated. Desperate, as they have neither the education nor the skills to compete in this society. Angry, as they watch through their tiny screens the daily circus of liars, cheaters, charlatans, and often outright crooks who beat the system, beat their wives, get rich, and even get elected President. They have finally realized that in our great nation, working hard and playing fair has become a manipulative punch line that generally qualifies you as a chump that finishes last. Ignorant, because they consistently blame the wrong policies and people for their predicament.
Their is no hot mic waiting for Trump. His mic has been on all along, and they still voted for him.
6
"People are dumb, but they know when their president is compromised." Mr. Cohen, I think you overestimate Trump supporters.
4
It can't possibly be that a huge swath of America believed the system to be broken and tried something radical and crazy to jolt the political class into listening. It must be that they're all idiots manipulated by social media.
2
Nihilism and anarchy never built or sustained a decent nation. Those two things, however, are really effective in tearing one apart, or tearing it down.
2
You just described the absurdity of humanity when taking itself too seriously, and thinking we were created for a reason instead of just sheer luck; this, especially in an age of massive ignorance and it's prejudices, an arrogant stance of thinking we know it all because we know so little...compared to what is to be known. What is out there, and we imprisoned by it, is a crazy profusion of information via a marvel called Internet and digital technology, the antithesis of knowledge, let alone understanding and wisdom of what hit us. We have become, Middle Age style, credulous of the constant lies out there, easy prey of despicable demagogues 'a la Trump', ever ready to give up culture as we knew it (thrashing real values in literature, the arts and music, and social science, and philosophy), and embracing the immediate satisfaction of spectacle, of entertainment devoid of any thoughts thereafter, always ready for the next show, 'circus and bread' for the mob. As long as we refuse to think for ourselves, and act accordingly (responsibly), we may continue to be fooled by a mafia in government, currently duly represented by the republican party and it's most vulgar bully at the helm. Are we really that dumb? Or just that stupid? You judge.
3
Mr. Cohen, there have been hot mic's all along Donald the Magnificent's rise to power, aided and abetted, it must be said, by the arcane and frankly bewildering institution that is the Electoral College. From "I could shoot..." to "Grab'em by the ..." who and what Trump is, has been on display for all to see.
What has changed since the movies you refer to is that reality has caught up with fiction, but also that the layer at the top of American society has taken off its coat of civic responsibility. Where it could be said in the 50's, and even the 70's, that some glue of belonging to a shared project kept the plutocracy interested in the quality of governance, this is no longer the case. Their sense of being entitled to an exponentially growing slice of unearned wealth, at the expense of the needs of the majority, has won out.
The rich have been reduced to their lust for plunder. And in this environment, a Trump-like creature was bound to emerge, as a necessary tool to facilitate the concentration of lucre into the hands of the few.
What has been found out, I imagine to the surprise of its perpetrators, is that, actually, you CAN fool a sufficiently large number of people all of the time. In the end, in a democracy only raw numbers count, and if enough idiots can be parlayed into consistently voting against their own interests, the vile and the conscience-less will win, time and again. That, I'm afraid, is where you find yourselves, and so do all of us.
3
If Americans refuse to come to grips with the fact that our country was built on slavery and genocide, how will we accept the fact that we were conned into putting a mean and vulgar con man in the White House?
3
Perpetuation of this madness is quietly engineered in GOP statehouses across the country, where public education funding is being cut, cut and cut some more. They want our kids to be more stupid and more ignorant. We must ask, for what purpose?
2
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
====================================
The Right fools all of its constituents all the time.
You can't fool discerning, intelligent, humane people. At least not enough that is at all significant.
3
This piece is bad-tempered ranting, not a thoughtful New York Times op-ed of the traditional type. The author needs to calm down, and return to rational arguments.
3
Great article. When Republicans win it’s because the public is stupid. When Democrats win, it’s a beautiful expression of the will of the people.
1
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.” I beg to differ. A majority of Germans were fooled by a combination of propaganda, fanatical worship of a charismatic and criminal charlatan, and their own stupidity, into believing that some wonderful new weapon would turn the tide of WWII. They kept on believing this up until the Soviets showed up in Berlin. Propaganda, fanatical worship of a charismatic and criminal charlatan, and mass stupidity happen to describe the present situation in this country as well.
4
To quote the mad emperor Commodus of "Gladiator": "Are you not entertained?"
1
I work with juvenile offenders caught up in substance abuse and addiction. It's difficult to break the news to them that, to be a real, successful adult, the trick is to learn to expect and tolerate tedium, boredom, repetitiveness, and monotony. It's a tough sell.
4
Well maybe some Trump supporters are not fooled, but they like him and they don't like women or people who wear glasses. They need a rush, and Trump provides it. so simple..
1
Roger, you miss the point by a mile.
Folks voted for Trump because he was the best of two horrible choices.
The Democrats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by nominating another in a long list of corporate owned shills who have nothing but disdain for those she wishes to lead.
A majority of voters would have voted for a bowling ball to be president as opposed to Ms. Walmart/Wall Street shill.
I’m convinced the real power players in the Democratic Party knew their corporate pawn would likely fail, but what the heck, Trump would cut taxes and regulations on corporations and the rich, and spend vast sums on the War Department, just like Clinton, so what did it matter.
In the end, the Demos lost as planned - just like the Washington Generals Lise to the Globetrotters- and so the game was a huge success.
3
And Trump isn't a corporate shill? His administration is full of Wall Street retirees, and crony millionaires.
Hillary Clinton on her very worst day would have been 1,000% better as President than Trump on his very best day.
3
"Americans voted him into office after he said that."
I reject that statement. It seems to assert that Donald Trump was 'the people's choice'. It' true that some Americans voted him into office. But only thanks to the electoral college and gerrymandering is he the president. The electoral college makes a mockery of democracy the choice of the majority of American voters voted for Hillary.
That electoral college is a mechanism put in place by men fearful of the power of majorities and an artifact of the early Republic's bid to get slave-holding states to sign on to the new Democratic Republic.
Whatever wisdom there is in allowing a minority of voters impose their choice on the majority of voters is beyond me. Twice in my lifetime, the electoral college has handed us a disaster. The first was when the Supreme Court awarded the electoral vote to George W. Bush on party lines 5-4. That disaster spawned an ill advised tax cut, two major wars, massive debt on borrowed Chinese money and an epic meltdown of the capitalist system. But now we're saddled with far worse...however feckless George W. was, he wasn't the dangerously incompetent sociopath Donald Trump and a party further captive to a white nationalist agenda of tax cuts for the rich and debt far into the future. Because of the Bush tax cuts, we know how the story will end. It won't be pretty and there's the question if democracy will survive Trump and his party.
5
I HAVE recently rewatched NETWORK and this William Holden quote stood out as being apropos of Drumpf: “I'm not sure she's (he’s) capable of any real feelings. She's (He’s) television generation. She (He) learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality she (he) knows comes to her (him) through the television set.”
6
Nothing new here, though Cohen could have deleted "American" from the title with equally valid accuracy. Selling snake oil is a tried and true, ancient profession. As long as people continue to buy it, people will continue to sell it.
4
Of course we've already had glimpses of Trump behind the curtain, like the leaked transcript of Trump's call to Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, when he called the wall "the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important." Trump also told the NY Times, on the record, that whenever his crowds get restless he pivots to talking about the wall, thus getting them worked up again. And when the editor of the New York Observer complained to Jared Kushner, the paper's owner, about Trump's birther lie (see link below), Kushner told her, "He doesn't really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they'll buy it."
Indeed. And incredibly gullible. The important question is: What will it take to get them to see the light?
https://www.gq.com/story/jared-kushner-trump-base-ny-observer
3
it's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled
5
"if the alternative was to be bored."
Time to reread Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.
4
My earlier comment about the primary purpose and function of any organised society, in which I tried to remain detached and disinterested (not uninterested), while explaining in some detail the goals and organisation of a human society, went down like a lead balloon. So let me try again.
Almost all animals organise into societies. The species that doesn't is vulnerable to predators, and has low reproduction rates. So it tends to become extinct, thus to disappear.
Human societies exist, not for mutual protection, except from other competing human and nonhuman societies, but rather to maximise profit for the few at the expense of the many.
Modern America's primary reason for existence is to allow psychopaths, malignant narcissists, and other ruthless men, to self aggrandise. If these great men's lackies also enrich themselves along the way, then it's by chance rather than by design. If hoi polloi in the USA are able to acquire land, bibles and guns, and money, then again it's only by accident.
Trump is in the game for the riches, for the power that money brings, for the money that power brings. Trump lives the American dream – or the American nightmare, depending on where you are in the hierarchy where rich white men rule.
Trump's followers follow him because they want to emulate him or because they loathe those who oppose him. Greed, envy and resentment drive Trump, the GOP and their supporters.
3
And one point...
I would very strongly suggest that HISTORIANS --not lawyers run for office.
After 2000 years - the crowds acting alike.... Now it is not the "circus" - it is reality TV. Or whatever show Trump was doing. I do not watch TV of which I am very proud to proclaim
In my golden years... my memory of the Roman Empire is scant -- I studied and read about since it was a topic of interest to me -I do believe the US is the Rome of this time (like some scholars say). Readers- just take a good Roman History Book and 20th C European history ...and
you will understand what is happening and what will happen--for those of you who haven't had it as a subject.
3
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.” You don't have to. A minority of them are enough.
2
Trump hasn’t fooled anyone. I read a very good piece from an Arizona paper which explained, more concisely and accurately, that Trump being elected to office is white people rioting. The writer of that piece likened Trump being elected to the young girl in “True Grit” hiring the odious Rooster Cogburn to exact revenge/rough justice on those who murdered her father. The girl, quite intelligent, picks Cogburn for his jagged edges and willingness to forgo due process. She didn’t want a rules-following lawman; rather, a killer.
People knew exactly what Trump was. A guy carrying fused dynamite in one hand and a lit cigar in the other. And crazy (not in the legally insane sense) enough to light the fuse and toss the dynamite into the middle of D.C. just to see what happens.
Trump didn’t pick his base, his base picked him. And while Trump lies all the time, he is never false. He showed us who he is—and he hasn’t changed a whit. Mueller is the straight man who Trump plays off of. Were it not for Mueller’s investigation—which is a sideshow—Trump might well be boring.
But the press is making too much money to ignore Trump. That would be like not reporting on the next school shooter. Probably the right thing to do—starve the story of attention. But Trump is news, right? He sells electronic newspaper subscriptions and is click bait and eyes on the tube in an ever shrinking media market. God bless the combination of free speech and capitalism.
6
Quoting Lincoln's 'better angels' overcome by our 'demons' may be the opinion of this journalist but not so with many of us who trust in goodness triumphing over evil.
Trump represented evil. But Hillary Clinton stood for nothing at all. Tough choice for anyone.
2
Aside from Trump and the GOP, both masters of treachery, is the basic unaddressed issue: How did Trump become a candidate for the Presidency? How did his puerile opposition in the primary, Cruz, Carson, etc get in there?
These candidates were all terrible choices and Trump disposed of all of them simply by sneering at them.
The selection of candidates was made by the backing of a few deranged billionaires. Who also back their puppets in the GOP Congress. It is the power of bonkers billionaires that has to be fixed, not just Trump.
4
A lot of knowledgeable people have warned us about the economic perils that likely lie ahead, and a lot of them are Republicans. Trump is a real estate developer, and he’ll buy plenty of real estate when that market hits rock bottom, as weak hands whimper and scatter. It is possible that the real beneficiaries of the tax cuts, are the billionaires trillions of dollars brought back on shore, not used to shore up the economy, but parked in accounts, waiting for the bottom to fall out and in a tax protected environment, to buy up businesses and real estate when Trump does, so the top crust wins by design, as underlings have "God given freedom" to run for cover. Remember it is a free country with lots of flags waving. His supporters may even have a bone crunchiness as they get gobbled up by these cannibals. Who knows, maybe someone could pen a 20 minute radio drama, “Eaten Alive.” Until that shoe drops, the band will play on, and “normal citizens” may lose sleep at night and spend way too much time thinking about the Trump administration. Only at the bottom, some sort of opposition party could get elected.
1
Brought back onshore? What are you dreaming on? When I worked for a surgical blade manufacturer they "offshored" their stuff to the south of the USofA. A year later they brought all this stuff back but the damage had been done. Good people lost their jobs in the "move" and the associated factory shutdown. You have to go to Wharton or Chicago or Harvard to figure this out? Next thing's gonna be robots to do your work. Unemployment will REALLY happen then!
1
Statistically there are about 36 million American adults with an IQ of 85 or below. Of course there is no IQ test for voting. We are a democracy and everyone's vote is equal. You may bemoan the fact that the opposition is stupid and evil, or that the election rules need to be changed, but the winner of an election following the pre-established rules is the winner, period.
As H. L. Mencken put it: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want; and deserve to get it - good and hard."
1
"Every now and again, along comes somebody, or some new technology, or both, capable of taking this raw human material and shaping it into a crazed, baying, hypnotized mob that is convinced the Great Leader has come."
We tend to forget about some inventions. E.g., asbestos, leaded gasoline, X-ray machines in shoe stores, DDT. When it comes to the internet or even, for that matter, TV, what kinds of inventions are they? 100 years from now, what will folks think? After all, asbestos was not without its advantages. It was extraordinarily fireproof and very cheap. For all the good that TV (e.g., Sesame Street) and the internet have done, the good cannot seem to get ahead of the bad (e.g., universal surveillance in Xinjiang, or the irreparable damage that bad actors are doing to our democracy via social media).
2
"They were ready to roll the dice, even on nuclear war, if the alternative was to be bored." This is the crux.
1
I predict the wisdom of the "crowd" in Washington for the "March for Our Lives" on March 24 will leave the GOP quaking in its boots.
3
Geez Roger! What side of the bed did you roll out of this morning? My one criticism of your wonderfully cynical treatise would be the assumption that DJ is even conscious of his own views about his (baying for blood with pitchforks and torches) current base of marks and fools? But otherwise, you've sadly hit the nail on its head regarding our lowering of expectations. We seem to have none, or none worth tipping us into the much needed collective critical mass of contemptuous rejection that will be necessary to reject this slide into the gutter we've let ourselves in for.
1
This is not so perplexing a situation as you make it out to be if you concider the madness of the American crowds is in large part due to the information we never hear or read about.
1
Most individuals’ view of long-run is mostly colored by current events. When the economy is bad, no one seems to see it ever getting better. When an odious character or incompetent administration occupies political office, no one can see a path to their removal. But the world does turn and change does occur.
Unfortunately, it takes time to reverse these mistakes. It took a disastrous war, nasty hurricane and a near economic collapse to rid the country of Bush II. But they were removed from office with a very loud voter backlash.
So too for Trump and his true believers. Facts are stubborn things and eventually catch up to the best of liars. And just like a reality TV show, his popularity, already at very low levels, will evaporate into the ether. And just as it is nearly impossible to find anyone who voted for Nixon, you won’t find a single person who voted for Trump.
He has done much damage but much of it can be healed. But the curse of Trump will be removed. May it happen sooner than anyone expects.
3
Here's another quote to add to the list: "To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images." -Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" (380-360 B.C.)
1
Cohen you don't want to win the fight fairly and in a democratic fashion. You hope for a hot mic and some other dirty trick while you dismiss the democratic process.
1
We mustn't overlook the primary driver behind the rise of these angry voters: The Great Recession was the most severe recession since the 1930s, and it hit the working class the hardest. The subsequent recovery was very slow. The angry Tea Party movement emerged about 10 years ago, just as the Great Recession hit bottom. These working class whites experienced immense economic dislocation; they despaired as their communities were ravaged by unemployment, drug addiction, and shattered families. It is not surprising that these angry folks embraced a populist demagogue who blamed the "elites" (as well as immigrants, minorities, etc) for all of their problems.
25
You may not be able to fool all the people all the time but, in the case of Trump voters , you can count on enough people to support you ,regardless of what you say or do. They have made it clear from the get go that they don’t care if he lies or even if they don’t agree with his policies.
What they like about him is what they like about themselves — they ignore facts, attack those they hate, and pursue “winning “ at all cost. Maybe the inability to sustain that twisted state of mind forever is where some hope can be found.Maybe.
26
To all the folks here and elsewhere bleating and lamenting about the "other" who is dragging this country down, get over it. The really bad folks are less than 10% of the population, and the Republican side is less than 50% of the population. We are in this predicament because we all think someone else is going to take care of it for us, eventually. Robert Mueller is the current "someone else" most are counting on.
Your country is only as good as you are willing to work for it to be. This is why great civilizations fall - people become too comfortable and indolent and too lost in past glories. They stop dreaming and actually try to stifle those who show imagination and enterprise. Enough of the lamenting and moaning like a bunch of arthritic old fools and take action. Step 1, demand less from our media - less noise, less rhetoric and fantasies about Trump, less analogies about him, less general nonsense pretending to be statistically backed analysis; and more steady reportage - stay with a story until all the details have been clarified and set in stone, analyzing every Trumpian bowel movement on Twitter is not necessary, but every Executive Order, every step taking by his Cabinet Secretaries, every step taken by Congress, those need calm, rational and thorough analysis.
Once you cut down the noise and increase the information quality, we will go from this GIGO state to a better place. Reliable, Truthful information for the people ... the rest will take care of itself.
46
Thank you. You may not get a lot of people in this forum who agree with but please don't let that stop you. There are some of us here who welcome insights like yours. More importantly these are the kind of insights which will eventually move people to right action. While the perpetual outrage expressed in these pages are an understandable reaction to what is considered extreme provocation, there's no agency in it. Madness upon madness begets more madness. They don't cancel each other out. They feed on each other and become bigger.
2
right on the nose!
I guess there is some relevance here to the very popular and still in print “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay published in 1841. Crowds can converge around an idea and not deviate from it no matter how off.
2
I prefer the song from "Barnum" that states at the very beginning that there is a sucker born every minute and then, in an answer to an invisible doubter says this, "but ma'am you might've been the minute in between." Trump and the GOP have been able to get away with this sham of a government because Americans don't engage in critical thinking when it comes to promises that are too good to be true or campaigns that say what they want to hear. Trump did both and enough Americans bought into it that he got the Electoral College votes needed to win.
The other lyric that comes to mind is this: When will they ever learn, oh when will they ever learn.
4
I watched "A Face in the Crowd" for the first time a few months ago. It occurred to me then that, like "It's a Wonderful Life" at Christmas time, it should become an election cycle ritual. We should all watch it at the start of campaign season, or the day before Election Day, or better yet, the morning after.
2
Thank you, Roger Cohen, for telling it like it is. Excellent work. Fine insight.
Pres. Trump tells it like it isn't, tells it as he wishes it to be.
The truth will out. The truth always does.
The sooner, the better.
6
Thank you Mr. Cohen for writing this article. I am delighted that t I am part of a group that shares so many of my thoughts.
One of the main problems is the education here puts so little emphasis in the study of history. I believe you have a British background---so it is a total different story.
I live in an area in Northern California which until recently was considered a California "ruralMidwest" in terms of social attitudes, in fact, market studies representative of the US at large were conducted here.
So may be I am far away from the intellectual elites. Also in my 40year college students were very "vocational>"
I do have an understanding of what the Midwest rural America believes--I predicted tht Trump would win "I told friends and they remember it." Right at the very beginning of the campaign.
As long as people in the secondary are not taught History and philosophy and the classics - the perceptions and beliefs of the masses will not change.
Fox, CNN, and the like cannot impart the depth of understanding tht is necessary.
As we know "history repeats itself." I always thought the US was different, but alas once it started problems that European Nations have had long ago--unemployment, class divisions....fascism is here.
11
I absolutely agree. One can arguably trace the aegis of the "dumbing down" of America with the decline of the classic Liberal Arts and Sciences education. An entire generation has come of age lacking the ability to think critically. Professional education is be best left to post graduation, or at least until the final two years of a Bachelor degree. Critical and empirical thinking should be stressed in an undergraduate (and high school) course of study. Of course, saying so would only lead to charges of elitism, but I'm quite okay with that!
3
I had a rather foolish neighbor growing up who often said," I'll believe what I want to believe." Needless to say, some of what he said numbed the imagination on many occasion. This attitude, moreover, can be attributed to many, if not most, Trump supporters circa 2018. As others here have further noted in comment, there exists many media avenues disseminating misinformation at present. By virtue of this, one could ask whether a " hot mic " moment is of any relevance anymore. Certainly, there are many who can't recognize that the internet is merely a medium through which information is obtained, rather than a primary source itself.
Further to any talk about Trump supporters, one could also argue that said people are reacting to traditional politics, as much as embracing Trump's simplistic ideology. They were, foremost of all, fatigued with a status-quo that was increasingly consigning them to the margins. If Trump is a media created demagogue, people should further realize that politicians such as Hillary Clinton also enabled Trump's rise by being out of touch with so many voters circa 2016.
6
Hillary has been accused time and again of being “out of touch” with voters, but this editorial points to another factor. Can Hillary be blamed for being out of touch with voters who were out of touch with reality? For example, when Hillary said (paraphrased) that coal is on the way out and we’ve should enact policies and programs to help the economically displaced, Trump and Fox said “See? War on coal!” and promised to bring coal jobs back. And the people believed the latter, even though Hillary was much more in touch with what those communities need, not to mention reality. The right-wing media created a meme that disdaining and even hating Hillary were smart, and allowing people to think themselves smart for disdaining or hating her too. And it continues today.
2
Excellent comment. Most Independents who choseTrump voters chose door number 2 because Clinton was such a dishonest politician that they couldn’t stomach.
2
How arrogant your comment. When you fail to see the real concerns among your fellow neighbors who have different thoughts from your own and yes, shock, voted for Trump, but are still your neighbors...well, then we really are in trouble.
2
Why did Rome, and Greece before it fall? Once great civilizations that had no peer eventually fell, but not to being conquered from a more dominate force. We, like Rome and Greece, are victims of peace. Once a people no longer has a boogeyman abroad to point at...we find a local boogeyman. With our technological advantage, not to mention two enormous moats (the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans) offering a nice buffer zone...well Roosevelt was kind of right, “the only thing to fear isn’t fear -it’s ourselves”. Some of us, the more selfish of our species, aligns with the Republican Party. Three generations without a serious war to frighten us out of our wits has allowed the Republicans to contort another famous quote, this one by Kennedy: “Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you!!!” The Republican Party, due to generations of peace and prosperity, have reduced the greedy and easily duped susceptible into nothing more than a selfish mob. The Republican Party will be the cause of our ultimate end as a democracy.
8
Rome? Climate and disease. Terrible epidemics. "The Fate of Rome" https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11079.html
Trump voters were and are a distinct minority of the American electorate. In any true democracy, the majority rules . If America was a true democracy the Electoral College wouldn't exist, and Hillary Clinton would be President. She did not lose the election; a great majority of us voted for her. That will be her place in the history textbooks forever. She won. We lost. The current President's term will be judged by history an aberration: a result of America's other undemocratic 'peculiar institution'- the Electoral College. He will be an infamous footnote and nothing more.
14
" In any true democracy, the majority rules." If I may inquire, where does such polity exist?; how is the will of the majority represented in European nations where governments are elected on proportional voting?; how is it that one witnesses majority governments within the Westminster Parliamentary tradition when ruling party looses the popular vote in an election due to a First Past the Post voting system?
By no means am I a Trump supporter, and I concur that the electoral college is an anachronism; however, I'd like to kindly point out that the majority will is seldom, if ever, represented in any political system. As for Trump representing an aberration in American history and his presidency of insignificance, it's far too early to determine that.
2
We are not a true democracy. We are a Republic with a democratically elected government. It's a slight, but important distinction.
4
Hillary Clinton did not win a majority of the votes in the 2016 election, no matter how many times that fabrication is repeated. Trump may indeed be judged by history as an infamous aberration, but it is Hillary who will end up as a footnote, along with such notables as Samuel J. Tilden.
1
Tough to consider "law and convention" the tools of almost any society as being useful beyond a tool for the justification of oppression.
Without observable truth as a guide, the use of spiritual belief as soil for a society's healthy growth is at the very least questionable.
They can't be fooled all of the time?
How about if the dice are loaded?
2
Trump ushers in an era of "idiocracy" and I pray, moving forward, that this is not the "new norm"
7
the place I'm beginning to feel sorry for is Florida which (as I recall) seemed to live or die on tourism - imagine trying to sell the Trump/Pence ticket to them ??
but good always comes of such things and good always will, its just that the good will be landing somewheres else.
2
If a hot mic could have brought down Trump, it would have happened long ago. Just as George W. Bush was not brought down by his tasteless joke about looking under the desk for WMDs even as men who didn't dodge the draft paid for his smug hubris with their maimed bodies in Iraq. Just as Ronald Reagan made gaffe after gaffe, including the hot-mic moment 'we start bombing in five minutes', with nary a blip in his popularity. I don't know if it's our steadily diminishing attention span or our increasing cynicism, but it's been a long time since a politician paid the price of his arrogance. We really are as dumb as Lonesome Rhodes figured we were. Recall that at the end of the movie Walter Matthau, playing the guy who saw through Rhodes all along, predicts that his fall from grace is only temporary, and after a short time in the wilderness some TV programmer will give him another show. Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives; no, there are endless encores, sequels, spin-offs, but no endings.
4
You do know you are describing marketing 101, right? Why do you think the RNC, the DNC, and the campaigns spend billions of dollars on advertising?
1
There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in this country, which people find elitist and off-putting, and at times, it is. But what about thinking critically about issues and not accepting things and personalities at face value? Is it that too much to ask Americans when they head for the voting booth?
11
Got the first two and guessed Marshall McLuhan for the third.
To be perfectly fair, the meddling probably didn't sway millions of votes. Running an elderly Tracy Flick as the opposition made it closer than it should have been.
1
Hate radio and TV grew out of Reagan's veto of the "fairness doctrine" for the PUBLIC airwaves. But it had a precursor in the same market, the religious literalist southern radio preachers who wrapped its listeners in sin and guilt and then took poor peoples donations to build the Ferrari of churches and private residences. It was not much of a leap from the their fire and brimstone lectures to Fox television news. And it explains why such a diehard part of Trumps support comes from the evangelicals.
10
No. No they don't know when their president is compromised. "Compromise" doesn't mean to Trumpers what you think it means. It means, to them, that they can cheat and steal and punish and insult and even violently attack the people they hate and get away with it -- something they've never been able to do until now without social and legal disapproval, because they don't have Trump's illusory wealth.
He's dangling an empty promise of "payback." Here, screaming names at your neighbors and pummeling your wife becomes psychologically equivalent to living in Trump Tower with a nudie model and golfing every three days. Being "compromised" like Trump is now a goal to a huge portion of Americans.
12
Neither party really stands up for the American people. Pelosi and Schumer are as bought and paid for by Corporate America as Trump's predecessor was, they are just a little less obvious about it. Need Proof? The ACA, a plan in which Health Insurers got a seat at the table, thus immediately eliminating the possibility that Americans would get some form of Universal coverage as those who put Dems in power wanted. Instead we got a flawed plan with enormous out of pocket costs which most middle class especially upper middle class Americans couldn't afford. Don't get me wrong the sins of the GOP are great and there will surely be a reckoning some day but I am skeptical it will happen anytime soon. The Dems are running 2018 and 2020 as "We aren't Trump" and they will lose with that message.
2
Your final quote includes "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time..." The problem is, in our Electoral College and legislative systems, that is all that people like Trump and the Republicans need to get elected and enact their agenda: some of the people. And they know this. In fact, they count on it. So, how about we start actually look at established parts of our system which no longer work (Electoral College, Second Amendment, Police Culture, The Courts, Civics Education, Higher Education Financing, Health Care) and work to change them rather than going on self-loathing campaigns like this article does. There are concrete steps we can take to fix these problems - they are not so existential.
7
"As a wise man once observed, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
But you only need to fool some of the people some of the time to become President and wreak damage to a democracy that may last for decades, perhaps never to be repaired entirely.
6
" As a wise man once observed, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
The wise man had obviously never been to the United States.
3
You can fool most of the people most of the time ,eg. Vietnam and Iraq wars. Cadet
Bone Spurs is just the latest iteration.
1
There's a double standard. Shutting down unwelcome speech--as in shouting over, or chasing speakers off campus grounds -such speakers include the ACLU and Condoleeza Rice; the mob or herd mentality exhibited during "Me too" excesses come to mind. The writer sees the other side's crowd mentality, and is blind to his own.
1
No scandal of sexual behavior can touch Trump. No intemperate language. Not even being found to be using the presidency to further enrich himself. I believe the only thing that can bring him down (beside the vote) would be proof of treason. If he can be proven to be taking orders from Putin that might be enough. It would have to be a huge gun billowing clouds of smoke though, to overcome the inevitable claims of "Fake News".
6
". . . and relied on the cruelty of whimsical humiliation for its frisson."
That phrase nails it, and frighteningly so. There are millions of people who thrive on watching others be humiliated. I believe that is the essence of Trump's appeal. His supporters are living vicariously through him, cheering on the bully they only wish they could be.
17
‘This is the basic setup. Society is an exercise in trying to offset horrors through law and convention.’
An organised society is primarily a means to increase economic production to the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. In any society, there will be one or more local markets in which producers and consumers trade or barter goods, services, and money, or payments in kind.
In any society, one or more producers will try to maximise their profits by employing one or more workers to produce goods and services. The employee may be a freeman, free woman or free child. Or they may be a slave. Or they may be something in between the state of outright slavery and complete freedom, such as a serf, bonded labourer, apprentice etc.
The producer may use nonhuman animals such as horses, oxen, dogs to produce goods and services. The producer may own or lease real property in the form of fields, forests, seas, rivers, streams, mines, factories, mills and workshops. The producer may lease real property to tenants. The producer may house his or her workers in real property owned or leased by the producer.
If I produce goods or services then I am a producer. If I employ one or more workers, then I am an employer. If I contract with a firm or a person, then I am a contractor.
As a producer, I aim to increase my wealth. What do I care about anything else, so long as I achieve this? Only if my safety is threatened, only if I feel pity, shame or guilt, may I temper my quest.
1
Bravo.
BTW, I guessed Huey Long for the second quote. Darn.
Brilliant, succinct analysis to which the lowest rungs of humanity are vulnerable.
No, you cannot fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of the people enough of the time. History suggests that every society, going back thousands of years, has had their "good talkers;" persuasive con artists who because of vanity, greed, or bigotry have taken their people into a variety of meat grinders ... in many cases, just because they could.
1
Unfortunately, Trump's supporters have already heard the hot mic, and they don't care. I can't imagine what he could say that would offend them; he's directly insulted them repeatedly, and they applaud him for it.
2
Has he? Really? If so, I haven't heard it. Trump has utter scorn for the ill-educated yobs he claims to champion. You know it. I know it. The hot mic is waiting for Trump to say what he REALLY thinks of the rank and file Trumpists (think back to Romney and his fatal "47 percent").
Cohen is wrong. Many Trump supporters voted for him NOT because they are bored, but because they have seen their communities and lives deteriorate while people like Clinton told them things were getting better. Things WERE getting better - just not for them.
During the campaign Trump told audiences in the Midwest that Clinton was responsible for the derelict factories in their communities. In broad outlines he was right. It was under Bill Clinton that Democrats opted to support the winners in the process of globalization and turn their backs on the losers. During the 2008 campaign both Obama and Clinton said that NAFTA must be renegotiated because it was causing US factories to close or move. One became president and the other became Secretary of State, but neither did anything to keep that promise.
Cohen should wake up and realize that those who switched from Obama to Trump in 2016 did so because they have real grievances, not because they wanted a more entertaining leader.
1
Why does it shock us so much that we are hive creatures? Our mentality resembles hive structure far more than we are prepared to realize. Heck, Democracy is supposed to work because of that. But oh no, we’re stuck on what we deem a higher ideal: individualism. It wasn’t the individual who fulfilled our Manifest Destiny — conquering the continent. It was the US Army and the iron horse. The greatest inventors did not invent in a vacuum. Why don’t we see ourselves as the hive we are, and thereby understand how easily we can go wrong.
1
NETWORK is the greatest film ever made about America.
Forget Citizen Caine, Godfather etc...
So here's a shout out to Peter Finch, William Holden, Paddy Chayesfsky, Sidney Lumet, those who are gone and some who are still with us who made that masterpiece.
Essential viewing for every American who wants to live with eyes open.
1
"As a wise man once observed, "You can't fool all the people all the time.'"
But as another wise man, James Thurber, noted in his fable for our times, "The Owl Who Was God," you can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
1
Unfortunately, some people can be fooled all of the time.
1
It won't take a hot mic to get Trump to confess his sins or his intent to fire Mueller. It will just happen in a tweet...
1
Trump is fooling very few people. About 60% of the country disapproves of him, most of them disapprove of him strongly. The 35-40% who approve of him are under no delusions about who he is. They know he lies, they know he is self-centered, yet they support him anyway. The Republicans in Congress are not fooled by him, either, they knowingly support him in exchange for tax cuts for the richest of the rich and business friendly federal court and executive branch appointments. One of Trump's catch-phrases in the election, "the system is rigged," was both ingenious and disingenuous. Yes, the system is rigged against the interests of the working and middle class, but it is rigged that way by Trump and his cronies. There is nothing Trump could say into a "hot mic" that would be more revealing, shameful, or damaging than his daily twitter rants.
19
Two things to add: the crowd here is clearly a minority. The crime here belongs to the silent majority of Republicans! What will it take to get them to confront and undo their leader?
13
All Trump and is fellow Republicans need to do is to fool SOME of the people ALL of the time. (And Abe conceded that that happens, in the rest of that quote.) That's all they ever need to do, because MOST of the people NEVER SHOW UP TO VOTE. "Democracy is not a spectator sport."
Until the Fairness Doctrine is brought back and the air can be cleansed of Limbo and Fox Noise, SOME of us will ALWAYS become addicted to the drug they're peddling. Rightwing media dependence really is an addiction and a public health crisis, even if it's not a physical malady.
33
yes!! to bringing back the Fairness Doctrine - thanks for mentioning
1
Thank you for finally stating the obvious: Trump is our reflection. This is something the Republicans have been working toward for forty years, when they realized they were the permanent minority and set the strategy to use "stealth" candidates at the most basic level(school board etc.) to build radical candidates in races where party is not a consideration. Then move them up to become the lunatic fringe we, the sleepy electorate, put it office, often as a result of apathy but also gerrymandering. The Emperor has no cloths, and it is up to us to point it out. Stop showing Trump respect due the office because he does not honor the office. IGNORE TRUMP!
10
The wheels of justice move exceedingly slow but grind exceedingly fine. Here's hoping that saying has some truth given our current situation. It took 3 years to get Nixon, it may take that long for our so-called president and his cronies/family but it will come... One thing we have determined is that the republicans have no shame....
10
The first three paragraphs of Mr. Cohen's article restate the fundamental truth of life: life is an eternal struggle between the Good and Evil, a belief that goes back at least to the medieval Manicheans and Cathars. The Evil gains the upper hand, sometimes for long periods, but eventually, by the law of return to the mean, the Good triumphs. All the political history, from the Founding Fathers to Trump and beyond, is a struggle of Good and Evil.
Grumble, grin, and bear it, as best as you can.
4
As a general rule, things must coexist with their opposites to exist at all. This traces all the way down to the basic conservation laws of physics.
Rarely do you see a Times columnist come right out and say that "people are dumb." When I read that, my heart began glowing. There is a strange overlap between the Far Left and intellectual conservatives, in that both types are quick to rush to the defense of the People, though their explanations for why the People have gone astray invariably differ.
Enough experience with the Common Man will rapidly disillusion you. Utopian political beliefs are the possessions of those who know very little about and have even less contact with the People. Sure, I want a better-educated, more-cultured society, and a democracy that actually represents the interests of the many rather than those of the few.
But I'm very afraid of striving to fully empower the everyday people on the mistaken belief that, given the "correct" socioeconomic arrangement, we will all become capable of making good decisions. While we're going about trying to make the world better, let's not forget that the human is as much animal as angel. The oppressed are often as worthy of contempt as the oppressors.
Near the beginning of "Secondhand Time," Svetlana Alexievich quotes someone as saying that people were ready to fight for freedom but unready to live with it. Another says "I'm afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn down my dacha at any moment." Only a certain few are ready to live autonomously; most seek order, direction, purpose, and a leader who offers it.
5
Let's be clear: "the American people" did not elect Donald Trump any more than "the American people" decided whom their choices for the election would be. The biggest vote-getter by far was "No Thanks", at around 95 million.
"Network" is perhaps my favorite film of all time. It is curious that you see Donald Trump in it, Roger. But then that's because you were focused on Howard Beale, and must've missed the Ned Beatty "the world is a business" scene. Perhaps you thought you "got" that film's message -- that we're all just dumb lemmings who deserve our fate -- when, in fact, you were simply demonstrating what it's actually telling you. We're all being manipulated and exploited via our basest instincts, and Howard Beale, just like Donald Trump, was a pawn in that endeavor.
Perhaps you also missed that he was assassinated by his own employer because it was impossible for him to sell that depressing message and his ratings went down.
10
How we became so dysfunctional society? It did not happen or start since Trump's presidency. After 1990, half of us have become hyper partisan and other half become uninterested in politics. Then came toxic right wing talk radio which really destroyed our American social fabric. It divided America sharply and we started hating each other and complaining against each other. Unfortunately, the FOX TV came which made us tribal. The talk radio and FOX TV could not tolerate a black president, Their campaign, social media and finally brought Trump in the white house. Now we are loosing and Russia is winning. Another topic I must mention that campaign against education by right wing politicians. Now most of us are politically naïve and ignorant and Putin is using it and he is the happiest man at our cost.
14
I am waiting -- but not holding my breath -- for Trump followers to grow weary of his bottomless need for attention, his obsession with making everything that happens to be about him, and his refusal to accept responsibility for anything objectionable he does.
6
Unfortunately, a perceptive comment on our society.
2
I am more certain than ever that writers who amplify the fear and loathing I've felt over the past 15 months are no longer helping me or anyone else. I already know where we are and how we got here. 'Wake up and smell the brimstone' does not cause my eyes to open any wider than they are now. So please, channel your desperation into the task of finding a path out of this, one that will look appealing enough to rural America that 5 or 10 percent of them might be willing get on it.
You could start by calling our attention to individuals who actually demonstrate common decency and integrity while acting in the public interest. Large chunks of America have apparently forgotten what that looks like.
10
I can think of no more than two or three politicians who fit your last paragraph.
In my entire life of 74 years.
I know a lot of people I used to think were level-headed, who not only voted for Trump, but will tell you today he is a great President, who is getting a lot done. Ask them about the tapes, the affairs, etc., they say nobody's perfect. Ask them what they would change in Trump, if they could, they say they would vote for him again.
I believe there is no "hot mic." Trump has dragged our Presidency into a puddle of lies, sexual misconduct, perversity, deliberate ignorance and careless incompetence, and 40% of us can't get enough.
My particular complaint is Scott Pruitt at EPA. Our world was in trouble on 1/20/17, and Pruitt is single-handedly razing his agency. We don't have years to sit on our hands on this issue, yet because of Trump and his cabinet, our institutions are wobbling. And at State, with Tillerson? Don't get me started.
By the time Trump is gone, America will be second-rate. I do not know how long it will take to return to what we were in the world. Worse, I honestly do not know if we can.
315
"By the time Trump is gone, America will be second-rate. I do not know how long it will take to return to what we were in the world. Worse, I honestly do not know if we can."
Given how badly we can hurt the world, perhaps it should be asked if we *should*.
I am distressed to say that if you've done much traveling, you might well realize that in comparison to other wealthy democracies around the world, the US is already "second-rate." (Health care, gun violence, education, distribution of wealth...) If it were not for the lion's share of total resources dedicated to building and maintaining a war machine that outstrips and intimidates all others by a huge margin, the US would already be third-rate.
12
You are right. There is no "hot mic" because for a certain percentage of the country there is nothing he can do or say that will change their support - look at all he has already said and done but they still support him. Some of that percentage would still not believe something on tape if he insists it is "fake news".
4
There is no hot mic that can harm the Donald. People long ago accepted that he is a serial sexual assaulter who lies and cheats people for fun and profit.
Even if he is found to be money-laundering for the Russians, which I suspect he has been for years, he will likely be forgiven. The Republicans have long sided with party and power over country. Sean Hannity will talk about Hillary's e-mails and 40% of the country will be convinced Trump is no worse.
Our only hope is that Mueller finds something so egregious and appalling, (Trump with underage prostitutes?) that will so shame the Republicans they will have no choice but to impeach him. We all know it's there. We pray.
84
I totally agree. I remain dumbfounded by his support. It shows we have a very, very ignorant, malleable chunk of people out there. Nazi Germany could easily happen here.
1
On June 21, 1987 President Reagan vetoed the law which would have codified the “fairness doctrine”. the FCC policy requiring fairness and balance in TV and radio broadcasting, in place since 1949. The policy stemmed from the thinking that Airwaves, like public parks, were a limited resource there for the benefit of all, not capitalist free market exploitation, and very different than print media which ran from highly respected old line papers and magazines to tabloid trash, but which the consumer makes a choice to buy, and are truly in the private domaine. The result was that Rush Limbaugh, Murdoch, hate radio and all the other creeps who realized they now had unlimited access to anyone with a radio or TV crawled out of their slimy holes and went right into the cess pool news production business. They understood they could both make gobs of money, and that the type of person who wants to live in an angry, ignorant, populist echo chamber lay mostly among those with the least education and the most anxiety and resentment of minorities. They had a great model in the Archie Bunker stereotype from “All in the Family”, which by the way, did adhere to the fairness doctrine. Anyway, my point here is, and as Mr. Cohen makes clear, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Watch as NPR and PBS are defunded.
72
Absolutely correct. Add all the other dissembling (Citizen's United, etc. etc.) and it's complete.
When you combine the disorienting preoccupations of social media, we have effectively put and end to our 'civilized society'. It's right in front of us..... literally.
2
and we are told reagan is the greatest!
1
We've never quite grasped the idea that television is not something that entertains us while selling us products, that it is, in fact, a vehicle for selling us to advertisers. We are the product, which dovetails nicely with the old gambling adage that if you don't know who the pigeon at the table is, it's you.
This makes us particularly vulnerable to the kind of carnival barker and con artist personified by Donald Trump. We think we're being entertained, we think he's courting us, working for us, lookey here at how easy it is to knock over them milk bottles and win your girl a big stuffed animal. Fifty dollars later, you've got it won, and you feel like a winner.
Mr Cohen could have added the following passage, written over 2000 years ago, and it would have been of a part:
"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses." --- Juvenal c.100 AD
24
You’d better watch YOUR blood pressure. Life is short and there are changes in store for all of us with the ups and downs politically. But this constant frothing at the mouth against Trump ad nauseum just does the opposite. It validates the animus that was against him at the start of the election with most media. Your relentless anger is a recruitment tactic for the other side.
11
"Your relentless anger is a recruitment tactic for the other side."
Is there really anyone *left* to be recruited? Are there still people who are both (1) susceptible to the siren call of the Awful People and (2) *still* undecided?
Nothing -- NOTHING -- is going to change the minds of all but an infinitesimal fraction of those people, so we may as well speak truth to them.
1
Anger will always have that effect, but not only is it unavoidable — it is desirable.
Polarization is a necessary goal.
Only then will enough people be enraged enough to throw out the GOP.
3
Gee, Marti, I guess we should all lay down and let Trump have his way. Not. Taking your reasoning one step further, we should have let the Japanese and Hitler defeat us, since our relentless anger is a recruitment tactic for the other side.
1
Sorry, Roger. Trump's all ready had his "hot mic" moment. Many of them. The denouement of "A Face in the Crowd" hinges on people caring that they've been had. What if they simply don't care? What then?
48
How dare you accuse the citizens of this great country of group think. Or is it mainly Trump followers. Yeah, let's trash Trump and his followers in this N.Y. Times article that decries groupthink.
If what you say were true (irony begins here) we would not have had the spate of articles that defied the universal condemnation of Larry Nassar, the "monster" whom the judge implied should be raped in prison along with his life sentence.
We wouldn't have had those articles that described physician contact with a woman's v---na had been accepted less than a century ago, and by his specific variation osteopathy even later.
We wouldn't have had the OpEds that pointed out that the rage of the gymnasts was displaced anger at parents who watched what was happening covered by a towel. But worse, they promoted their children's participation in this sport so competitive that growth is stunted along with self confidence.
None of this rational viewpoint would have been printed if your thesis on "The madness of American Crowds" were true.
Hmmm, come to think of it, such broader viewpoints were never expressed, but then again, you didn't choose to use this example either.
4
And, sometimes the bad guys really are the bad guys.
12
Readers of this newspaper know Triump, are already angry as possible. Yet, the example I used which was the acceding to the draconian punishment Nassar negated the broader analysis that I alluded to.
It is telling that this format is the only place that "Madness" was even hinted at, Original comment follows:
--
How dare you accuse the citizens of this great country of group think. Or is it mainly Trump followers. Yeah, let's trash Trump and his followers in this N.Y. Times article that decries groupthink.
If what you say were true (irony begins here) we would not have had the spate of articles that defied the universal condemnation of Larry Nassar, the "monster" whom the judge implied should be raped in prison along with his life sentence.
We wouldn't have had those articles that described physician contact with a woman's v---na had been accepted less than a century ago, and by his specific variation osteopathy even later.
We wouldn't have had the OpEds that pointed out that the rage of the gymnasts was displaced anger at parents who watched what was happening covered by a towel. But worse, they promoted their children's participation in this sport so competitive that growth is stunted along with self confidence.
None of this rational viewpoint would have been printed if your thesis on "The madness of American Crowds" were true.
Hmmm, come to think of it, such broader viewpoints were never expressed, but then again, you didn't choose to use this example either.
But there is another leg to that quote: "You can fool some of the people all of the time." And if that "some" is enough to win your election, that's all you need. The one glaring weakness of Democracy that even James Madison saw through way back when.
15
Steady on there, Mr. Cohen. Sit down & take a few deep breaths. The Founders institutional checks are working as we speak. The name Trump screams one-term (or half-term) president.
5
It is really astounding that the “Greatest Country in the World” could have such a low level of intelligence. I hope for one term so we get rid of pence at the same time, but am saddened by the thought of Trump Clubs i read about in todays local (Florida) paper.
Think Nazi Germany couldn’t happen here? Sheep WANTING to be shorn. Just wait until the GOP SCOTUS gets rolling.
1
A large number of Americans have terminal moral apathy. Character doesn't matter. Lying is accepted. Facts are fake news.
29
Apparently, in the US electoral system, you only need to fool about 46% of 'em all the time.
20
Actually, that's 25%.
The hands down winner in 2016 got 46% - the 46% of eligible voters who chose not participate in our democracy by casting their ballots.
5
Ah, if only it were just Trump. Look at all his fellow travelers in Congress. Look at all of the Koch’s, Mercer’s and Adelson’s. They have been laughing for years.
18
Good literary quotes, Roger Cohen, thank you for this column. 45 is a hot mic and it looks like that's what his base base wants. A column on actual quotes made by GOPers would be interesting too. I'll start:
“The problem isn’t too little money in political campaigns, but not enough.”
~Newt Gingrich on campaign finance reform.
The most tv I watch is while on the stationary bike at the gym, the bike has a screen with the bike. Flipping through the channels, these are some of the 'shows' I've caught bits of (no insult intended to anyone): morbidly obese people preparing for gastric bypass; hoarders living in their hoard; little people living an ordinary life; insulting and humiliating cooking shows; sensational 'breaking news' headlines; ads, ads, ads; shopping network; graphic crime, real or otherwise. I usually end up on a regular cooking show or C-SPAN.
Thankfully there are still actual newspapers willing to uphold a free press. Thank you and the NYT, I'm grateful.
17
62% of the population is not fooled.
We know what we have here. The problem is that the Republicans are now only concerned with the 38% that they keep riled up.
By the way, do you think the Republicans are concerned about the mid-terms? They support Trump because he is giving them now rather than later.
It is about money.
Disastrous tax cuts, a war on healthcare, a war on the environment and, when 80% of the Americans support background checks, a total pass on gun control.
Trump does not fool a majority of the people. He just fools the fools.
These
15
I wish you were right about the 62%, but, if that were true, we wouldn't have wide-spread malicious gerrymandering over three decades that clearly took advantage of an apathetic electorate.
Americans consistently turn out in higher numbers for a Presidential candidate than their closer, more directly influential, local and state representatives.
The scales are so tipped to the GOP advantage that they now challenge the courts to defy them.
1
"Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump."
The somewhere was a bus and its name was Access Hollywood. Trump's flim flam has been on display for thirty years. Voting him out doesn't take more grotesqueries. It takes people going to the polls.
13
You don't have to fool all the people all the time. Just 40% in the right gerrymandered districts will do.
22
The only problem greater than Trump is the gerrymandering that gave craven Republicans the control to abide the president.
2
Don't blame the people, blame the elites, all of them. The hatemongers, the robber barons, and those who didn't leave their ivory tower and take the streets to funnel the desperation and wrath into something good.
6
A much more practical man noticed one need not fool all the people all the time. The lunatic, not so fringe, will do nicely.
5
Most people would be shocked to know that our beloved Andy Griffith was the anti-hero in ‘A Face in the Crowd.’
It took the female lead, the late great Patricia Neal, to expose the charlatan for what he was.
Where is that brave woman now? Hope Hicks? Ivanka Trump? Kellyanne Conway? Don’t bet on it.
5
Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Kirsten Gillibrand, Claire McCaskill, Kamala Harris, Diane Feinstein...
You already saw her, but like Cassandra, she was not believed, and was then eliminated.
Hillary Clinton, on her very worst day, would have been 1,000% better as President than Trump on his very best day.
You're preaching to the choir, Mr. Cohen. The people who should read this just watch Fox and read Breitbart.
But reading this wouldn't help because their critical abilities were willingly discarded long ago and their worst selves rule their natures now--they are unreachable.
When they finally realize they have been betrayed and abandoned by their idols, those die-hard trump voters still won't understand what happened.
13
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
But you can fool some of the people all the time, and that's enough for a political base.
5
Human beings also get desensitized with frequent
exposures. Sexual escapades, financial scandals,
lies, disinformation have confused the people
about rights and wrongs. Trump's sex scandals,
assault on 20 women who have come forward
with the allegations, his bankruptcies, non-payment
of taxes, dodging military draft during Vietnam
war and warning from Michael Bloomberg that
he is a con man didn't seem to bother people.
He intelligently manipulated their fear of Mexicans,
jobs moving to China and other countries taking
advantage of America. Trump didn't instill these
fears. Policies by successive administrations and
constant vocalization of the problems by Republicans convinced Americans that the country is the wrong
track.Trump came along, a billionaire and a successful
businessman( never mind his frauds) who promised
to make America great again. People who thought
the country is on the wrong track: lost jobs,
stagnant wages, some getting super rich, measly
health care, violence, got manipulated easily. He
has done nothing to ameliorate their condition.
Even the tax cut, touted as his great achievement.
is done with the debt.
2
How is it that, "the people," are confused but you are not? Why are you able to think independently but, "the people," are not? If you can "see," others can "see." If you "see" and others "see" but the result is still confusion, what does that tell you about, "the people"? You must be special, like a seeing-eye frog leaping to our defense.
1
The now famous Trump line:
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, O.K.?” (You best be thankful for the EC.)
Roy Moore (alleged sexual predator/molester) is proof that despite overwhelming evidence he stalked/molested/assaulted underage girls and women his base stuck by him. Problem is: not enough base. What good did that to him?
The madness of the crowd with common sense, reason and knowledge usually wins out over the madness of the unreasonable. You take abortion and gun control off the table and your ilk loses by a landslide.
Your base is myopic, willing to sacrifice moral turpitude for ideological gain, or just plain ignorant and uninformed. Is that something to boast about?
Nothing trumps survival. The madness of the good crowd will be in full bloom.
This is where we are and why we're there. This has been lurking in the upside down for years. The tea party "revolution" enticed IT out of the ground, republicans welcomed IT and gave IT legitimacy. My truth is just as valid as your truth! Myth, ignorance and superstition have almost completely overrun reason, logic and intelligence! The loudest 35% of the inmates now run the asylum. I continue to believe that under the surface, quiet anger is building and that the disease the country is suffering from will be driven back under a rock. If we blow this on November 6, assuming anything's left by then, we're toast!
7
Unfortunately trump has and can continue to do a lot of damage in the interim. And then what, we have Pence, an empty suit and Ryan and McConnell. This is like the perfect storm for grifters, liars and thieves.
6
Unfortunately, Pence appears to be much worse than an empty suit. It looks like he's been dishonest and complicit in the Flynn/Trump/Russia matters, and he's clearly off the charts in pushing his religious agenda, ignoring the Constitutional separation of Church and State.
1
Perhaps you can’t fool all of the people all the time.
But enough of the people enough the time is where we are.
And will be, until enough people stop voting for republicans.
3
Allot of anger and trump played right into this anger and keeps it stirred up with his neurotic tweeting and lying.
1
You can’t fool all the people all the time but evidently you can fool 82% of Republicans all the time.
20
But you can fool some of the people all of the time- especially with Russian help...
13
'Elections are when people find out what politicians stand for, and politicians find out what people will fall for'... Alfred E. Neuman
13
Thank you, Roger. FINALLY!!! A critic looks at the audience and their reactions and motivations instead of the idiot strutting his stuff upon the stage. Let us all redirect our attention toward the country and the people who cast this charlatan as the lead and then applaud him.
5
As Chris Rock says in his new concert video, (paraphrasing) "You think, well some day he'll get his. But some people never get theirs. You say 'what goes round comes round,' but it doesn't always -- sometimes it comes round and keeps on going round." Trump seems like the kind of guy who's never going to pay the price for having been who he is. Other people will pay that price for him.
11
To Mr Cohen
One shouldn't neglect the amplified echo chamber effect of Internet which augments mindless groupthink to degrees hitherto unknown. Rather than focusing on the crowds, perhaps it would be more pertinent to view Americans as an atomised cloud of solitary individuals, increasingly incapable of indulging in civil discourse and tolerant thought.
8
I consider myself a relatively intelligent person who stays relatively updated with current events. I still do not have any idea, that makes sense to me, why Donald Trump is my president. The idea that Americans actually voted for this person for president is beyond lunacy to me; and it's so unfathomable that it is like trying to comprehend the idea of infinity. Over a year later, I am still in shock. It doesn't make sense to me in considering what Americans stand for; what makes us good; what has propelled us to a position of leadership in the world. I am so shocked and demoralized by Mr. Trump's election that I am nearly immobilized.
But not completely. When I remember how this great experiment of a nation came into being, through debate, activism and demonstration, I see that for those of us who are reeling from the likes and effects of Mr. Trump and his pack of cronies, the only way out is to engage in what built the revolt that became our blessed country in the first place. We must make our opinions known, we must be activists, demonstrate and vote our way back to sanity and morality, and social and environmental reason. There are plenty of countries in the world that demonstrate today what our USA might be if we do not.
21
Our worse enemy: intractable arrogance.
We are animals with a limited computer made in part of 60% water within a super fragile gelly type mass. Life subjects it to several types of emotional stresses ranging from a potential difficult start to a series of frustrations and deceit.
And there we go: trust a biped unit to fly a commercial jet with 400 other trusting units under his command. Not to mention another one in the Oval Office piloting not just the Nation but a substantial portion of the planet as well.
3
I'm not sure if intractable arrogance by itself is our worst enemy; I think its combination with intractable ignorance wins the gold. Dunning-Kruger at its best.
1
Expanding.
What differentiates us from biped of other eras is the toys. There were stones, arrows, pens, wheel horse carts, typewriters; then cars, computers, fire arms, some more automatic than others; and now nuclear ICBMs, drones and social media.
While busy with the toys, we didn't concentrate in polishing the biped water computer behavior. BIpeds operate under two basic objectives: securing substinence and safe shelter and in order to achieve it excert control over other bipeds.
It did not change in thousands of years and it is doubtful it will anytime soon, specially with a looming extintion due to either global warming or a nuclear holocaust. It appears that they are competing to see who des it first
Hobbes may have famously describe life for other people as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," but his personal life as a public philosopher, tutor to the wealthy and someone who lived to age 91 was communal, well-off, gentle, moderate and long.
The world is what we make of it Mr. Cohen. If you see dogs fighting over the spoils of a carcass, then we are ravenous animals. If we are spirit beings containing multitudes, then we are human beings with religious, spiritual and luminous connectivity.
The reason that the light has come into the world is so that we may make some sense of our ravenous passions and not be completely ruled by them. America is currently at a low ebb in this regard. Perhaps -- like the Europeans Christians from whom we evolved -- we will need to have a thousand years of bloody civil wars until we decide that we've had enough. Every dog has his day.
Certainly any nation whose main cultural product is a miasma of public violence and foreign wars cannot, over the short run of history, hold the center, but the inability of the nation to cohere to its historic, exceptional inheritance is no surprise.
A man wins the lottery and blows a million bucks in Vegas over the weekend. His insatiable appetite, like the current occupant, is for sex, wine, women and adulation.
We are more than our genome. Life is an open door for the unfrozen.
Peace.
4
It's all about learning, which always provides stimulation, at first. The second time, still stimulating, but not quite the same, since the element of surprise is gone. After a time, there's nothing new, and you have to have more and more, and more frequently, to get any stimulation at all.
Just like drugs.
Now, after years of Trump tweets, he's pretty much lost the ability to shock, and his last weekend's tweetstorm shows that he's aware of that, and is approaching panic state.
It seems now that we're getting stimulated by other events, such as Mueller's indictments, Wray's testimony, etc.
And we are anticipating the next really dramatic event. Will it be Trump's indictment, or impeachment, or resignation, or what?
Get ready, 'cause the circus is coming to town!
5
It's sad, but true, that people will readily believe something that they want to hear, and dismiss something they don't want to hear. That is Trump's genius. He understands how to discern a weakness in an audience, and has no compunction about lying through his teeth to gain their approval. Veracity is not a requirement; mendacity is the necessary mechanism. Augment his lies with a steady diet of Fox propaganda masquerading as news, and the circle is complete. The only remedy is critical thinking, and we know how well many people do that.
13
45 is a good salesman. He sold himself as "the only one who can fix our problems."
If the only lesson you can get out of Network (I have not seen the other film), is a criticism of Trump, you aren't watching the movie correctly. It's an indictment of the whole culture, and while Trump may be emblematic of that culture, he is not constitutive of it. If the "hot mic" of the Mueller investigation nabs Trump, our problems do not go away, and Network remains disturbingly prescient.
6
Trump's hot mic moment will never be heard by the people who love and support him. The media universe they inhabit will make sure of that. Or if the word dribbles out, it will be dismissed as fake news. The one hope I have is that when their taxes go up in a few years, or their water and air become polluted or when their sons and daughters go off to fight another war in the middle east or asia they will get an uneasy feeling that maybe something is amiss. Perhaps, As your colleague David Brooks said today, we must wait for them to come to their senses. Or...we can work to GOTV in the next two elections!
3
If our democracy is to be preserved, the importance of education - and specifically the development of critical thinking skills to avoid being conned by the likes of Trump - cannot be overstated. Yet the Republican agenda is to cut funding for public education and advance the dumbing down of America.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. Throw the Republican bums out of Congress in November!
7
We do well to listen to the wisdom of John Perry Barlow when addressing the real opium of the mind epidemic, one to many corporate media. Exciting our limbic brain to sell, it has sold most successfully demand for "shorter chains and smaller cages." What is good to remember is that most Americans DO NOT watch Faux News for daily brainwashing sessions. Many more Americans still DO NOT get their news from a Fakebook feed. And still more Americans still think of tweets as what a bird does when singing. The problem is there is a tribe of about 60 million out there that vote with absolute certainty that the chain and cage are for another when in fact it is their squalid home. Just vote y'all. Do the right thing. No republicans in any position of responsibility for human beings. We can sort out priorities, policies and reestablish societal norms that we trust to "filter" the sociopaths from civil society after the electoral fix. Or not, we can choose with certainty to gamble not the roll of the dice,but the spin of the revolver chamber, fully loaded, in Russian roulette.
3
What is really sad and surprising is the number of people who actually feel sorry for Donald Trump and think that he is a victim of the liberal press. This includes people in my family, so it is particularly troubling to me.. These people also identify with Donald Trump as a victim. Truly, an attack on him is seen as an attack on them, perhaps because they are conflicted about electing him or simply rightly perceive that we disapprove of their choice and to a significant extent them. We must avoid as far as possible creating sympathy for this demagogue, even if this sympathy is totally irrational.
3
I'm sorry, but I can't work up much sympathy for people who saw and heard the same things I did in 2016, and yet voted for this terrible man. At some point people have to take personal responsibility for themselves and the consequences of their actions. I do disapprove of their choice, but I doubt that my disapproval
creates any more sympathy for this man than his adoring minions already have.
A lot of the problem can be traced to the decline in newspaper readership. We always wondered how that would affect society, now we know.
The vacuum left by newspapers was filled by television and now the internet. It is pretty clear that these mediums require far less critical thought on the part of the consumer. Television news is controlled largely by conservatives like FOX's Rupert Murdoch. There are also propaganda networks like those run by the Koch brothers. The internet has become an information free zone and normal "mainstream" media has been squeezed out of the equation by the rich pursuing a right-wing agenda through propaganda.
It is a new age of illiteracy run for the benefit of the wealthy by the likes of Lonesome Roads, Howard Beal and Donald Trump.
5
This is a excellent read, and a reasonable explanation of the calamity playing out in the White House every single day of Trump's presidency. I take some small delight that a day of reckoning is coming, as we watch the rats leaving the ship (of state) one by one at a record setting pace. To quote Dr. Cornel West, whom I greatly admire, "Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public". I sincerly hope that a 'lovefest' is on the horizon.
3
Mr. Cohen is on point about who Trump is and the nature of people. But, I think he is far off on what motivates his supporters. It is not their boredom. It is their meager share and eroding quality of life in this, the "wealthiest society on earth." We trivialize their lives, when we explain their motive as boredom.
1
So let me get this straight: democracy "works" (i.e. produces desired or at least sensible results) only when people are fed the right information? Or, given how irrational we might be, only when the democratic process is carefully managed or, better yet, scripted?
Say what you want about Trump, but he did anything but hide his true nature before and during the campaign. But apparently, even bad publicity is helpful, given that people (voters) can be irrationally influenced by things like name recognition, as well as trivia like height and haircuts.
Given our failings, we don't need to blame nefarious actors for mediocre (or worse) for the results of elections. Either we embrace democracy, warts and all, or look for some more authoritarian regime. Monarchy, anybody?
2
To someone who pays attention, he may not have hidden his true nature very well, but a lot of his supporters didn't pay much attention to the facts. They saw him as honest, when he lies all the time. And they believed him when he bloviated and lied about all the great things he was going to do, solve all the problems, and it would be easy.
The antidote to such dishonesty is truth - a knowledgable, educated electorate is a prerequisite for democracy. The shift from the professional, dedicated, responsible journalists at newspapers and traditional news networks to propaganda-pushing businesses like Fox News and Breitbart has resulted in a severely misinformed large segment of the electorate.
2
"“The stresses set up by the social changes wrought by the advent of technology are straining the structure of civilization beyond the limits of tolerance." This statement, from Mr. Cohen's father's 1938 high school magazine, may seem astonishingly predictive of where our dependence on technologies has brought us today, and it is, but it's far from unusual. Writers have been raising the alarm about the price we pay for our devotion to our machines for centuries, especially since the Industrial Revolution. In 1897 the sociologist Emile Durkheim published a study in which he blamed an alarming increase in suicides across Europe on the "morbid disturbance" caused by "the brilliant development of sciences, the arts and industry of which we are the witnesses." The work of centuries, he said, "cannot be remade in a few years.” I cite many other examples in my book ("Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology"). Unfortunately, despite these warnings, our obeisance to our machines has only increased, and despite our concerns today about social media, artificial intelligence, etc., that obeisance can be counted on to increase. As Thomas Carlyle put it in 1829, "The shadow we have wantonly evoked stands terrible before us, and will not depart at our bidding."
2
Brilliant, Roger! I'd only add that so much human vulnerability to manipulation by demagogue is in our genes. It is a dangerous leftover from evolution. During a long period of our transition from pre-human to modern human, "tribalism" and all it implies was 'survival positive.' Now it is a security hole in our brains' software. Civilization, rational thought, and suppression of our primitive instincts are still a thin veneer over the mammals we all are.
3
The crowds who came out with enthusiasm and hope for Bernie Sanders in 2016 were far from mad - except at being dismissed by the likes of the DNC and this newspaper. Bernie was far from perfect, but on domestic matters he was right on the money. Many polls show he would have beaten. Trump
4
Many polls said Hillary would “trump” Trump as well.
Roger, you give Trump too much credit for the success of "The Apprentice". It was the producers who made it what it was. Watch the Netflix series Dirty Money, episode called Confidence Man, for the truth about it/him.
3
. . . And "Elmer Gantry" (Sinclair Lewis in 1926) and "It Can't Happen Here" (1935). When I read these novels as callow youth, I laughed and thought . . well, I thought "It can't happen here." No longer. I'm terrified at how it all works exactly like Lewis said it could. I think we are headed for a new dark ages at the hands of the American social media mob.
19
A local theater in my area recently did it’s own adaptation of Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here”. When my wife and I went to see it one night early in the run, people in the audience were watching the presidential debate with Hillary and Trump on their iPhones while waiting for the curtain to rise. Few of us understood that what was depicted on that stage that night could indeed happen here.
2
'As a wise man once observed, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.”'
Or, as a wiser man, the late Spike Milligan of Goon Show fame prophetically wrote:
".....you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, which is just long enough to be President of the United States."
21
Mr Cohen, every human being on our planet has a lower and a higher nature. You described the lower nature so well, I certainly don't need to repeat it. And always, these two natures are in conflict within each of us to a greater or lesser degree. But consider humanities gifts to the world, the great art, music, literal, architecture, advances in technology and medicine. We have gone to the moon, looked into the deepest past of our universe, and many dream of a better peaceful world.
And if you believe in God, no matter what religion you are, you may believe in a spiritual world beyond this one, and all the tribulations we go through here may just be preparation for a birth into a higher existence.
3
Clever piece! I was thinking that the first passage came from Marshall McLuhan, the second from Robert Penn Warren's 'All The Kings Men', and the third maybe from George Orwell. But I suppose Chayefsky, Kazan may well have been influenced by McLuhan and Warren. As for the third, it echoes the explosive anxieties that were growing in Europe, especially in Germany, after World War I and which were exacerbated by the Great Depression.
13
And I thought Elmer Gantry was in there somewhere.
2
A major part of the "madness" is that words seem to matter much more than actions to too many people. Ask a Trump supporter what their president and the GOP has actually done to improve their lives and with few exceptions the answers are essentially parroted slogans and right wing propaganda that really has nothing to do with the bread and butter issues impacting their families. Many of us are in similarly precarious financial situations regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation. But we end up being distracted and divided by meaningless words, while truly heinous actions go unnoticed to the greater detriment of our society.
Perhaps we would all benefit from ignoring the words for a while and focusing on the actions, or lack thereof. Where are the great paying jobs, infrastructure, and cheaper, better healthcare we were promised? Coal is still on the decline. Companies enjoying tax breaks are still laying off workers and moving production to lower cost countries. One time bonuses do not make up for decades of stagnant wages. And more and more working people are pushed into homelessness every day.
"Madness" is continuing to vote for people who have demonstrated they don't have the ability and/or desire to solve the most serious problems facing our country, regardless of what they allegedly believe.
39
15 years ago I was a psychological consultant for an agency that had two main programs: Foster care and group homes.
There were three buildings: One for each program and one for administration.
They needed to close one building. The director, sensibly, wanted to move foster care into the administration building because there was room for them there, but not room in the group home building.
However, the foster care professionals and group home professionals, all good and competent people, did not get along well with each other. They squabbled, felt like the other was getting more, etc.
So I suggested to the director that he move the foster care program into the group home building. He did. The people were practically stacked on top of each other after this change.
But the rivalry disappeared within weeks. They used the same microwave, the same bathrooms, the same photocopying machine, the same parking lot. They greeted each other first thing in the morning and went out for happy hour after work.
We can try to understand our differences as due to someone obscene like Trump, or we can look at what keeps us all from being in the "same building." People in rural areas live hundreds of miles from cities. People in cities are isolated, visiting rural areas only to fly over them.
We live in both worlds--half of the year in a liberal "stronghold" and half of the year in Trump country.
Our conclusion: Everybody is after the same thing---a good life for their children.
30
True, you can't fool all the people all the time. But to convince a "true believer" of the error of his or her words sometimes takes something extreme.
How extreme? Well, in 1945 it took Russian soldiers raising the hammer and sickle flag over the Reichstag, and American planes obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We can only hope it doesn't have to come to that.
25
Dear Mr . Graubard:
I find your comment terrifyingly astute.
Indeed, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Early signs, however, are not encouraging.
Godspeed.
3
With our undemocratic Electoral College system you don't need to fool all the people all the time; just some of them, some of the time.
158
The irony is that the Electoral College was instituted to avoid a foreign country from having one of their creatures elected President. The electors could have withheld their votes if they suspected Trump would be influenced by Russia in the way he has shown to us but the system failed. Time the Electoral College was abandoned.
5
America's selective-ignorance and gullibility will be it's downfall as many would rather continue a misguided life mired in hate rather than learn the truth about anything. Ignorance reinforced by selective-ignorance equals Trump and the end of society especially with Mother Nature preparing to Bat Last after decades of environmental selective-ignorance. Man has done it; destroyed the planet that is. In 40 years we will all be gone thanks to man's selective-ignorance and greed.
18
People get the leader and, therefore, the laws they deserve. If we are all gone in 40 years, good riddance. Maybe the next form of life will have higher intelligence and better luck and someday will be looking back at us in history like we look at the dinosaurs.
2
"Let’s hand it to Trump: he was right. Americans voted him into office after he said that. They were ready to roll the dice, even on nuclear war, if the alternative was to be bored."
No. They were rolling the dice because they were convinced "the alternative" was far worse despite her actual record of decades of public service.
It is no coincidence that Hillary Clinton's favorability rating, which had enjoyed a long period above 50-60%, started dropping like a rock in November of 2012, the same month that President Obama was reelected and Trump applied to trademark "Make America Great Again."
Trump now tries to lie that he didn't know he was running until 2015, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
But the mission to destroy Hillary's image has been ongoing for decades.
It took the internet and a lot of help from Russia to finally carry it out to perfection.
Every Trump voter I know, after finally conceding how bad Trump is, would revert to how evil they were convinced the Clintons were. And there was no dissuading them -- the avalanche of "unsubstantiated allegations" (as admitted even by Chris Ruddy of right-wing NewsMax in an open letter) against her had claimed them.
So I would say the mob mentality that clung to Trump's demagoguery is equally deplorable in its abject dismissal of Hillary's actual record and character.
Hillary's lost votes translated to Trump's win.
(side note: why was Jill Stein at a table with Mike Flynn and Putin in 2015?)
103
Regarding Stein at Putin's table: I hope, when the true story of 2016 is written, we get the answer to that question.
Without the votes for her, Trump is (only) a failed business cheat, serial misogynist/sexual abuser/predator, and professional malignant narcissist under the thumb of the Russian Mob. With them, he may be the last US president.
5
Yes, where is Ms. Stein these days and what does she have to say? And what happened to the money she collected for the recounts? Perhaps a NY Times reporter can give her a ring? It would be very interesting to hear what she has to say...
1
When I saw a photo of Jill Stein seated with Flynn and Putin, I wondered why no one in the media was raising - shouting-- questions about her. It's high time that an NYT or WaPo reporter delved into this. Thank you for bringing it up.
1
All very true and all very sad. It seems incomplete, however, that so much analysis of the last election minimizes or completely ignores the fact that a vast majority of American voters were (and remain) convinced that neither major party is working on their behalf. Trump would have been nothing more than a grotesque passing sideshow if either party actually demonstrated any serious, honest, thoughtful concern for addressing the needs and problems of working American men and women.
219
Worse, by making excuses and denying the problem, they are setting up to do it again.
21
Giving up on both parties is exactly what the Russians want us to do.
7
The Democrats may have been foolish in offering up a candidate sorely compromised by the right-wing media and Republican kangaroo courts but to say that Hillary is equal to Trump is like saying a breeze is equivalent to a runaway freight train.
Trump has never been and will never be a viable presidency. Do the democrats need to package their message in hollow symbolic gestures and culturally tainted messaging?
When voting Democrat I know what I am voting for: environment, healthcare, education, gun control.
What, in God's name do Republicans offer?
Save the babies (but let them die when they breach the womb and enter a Darwinian lack-of-healthcare system), war on the middle class and the poor, a bloated military budget, perks for their rich buddies and the idiocy of failed trickle-down-economics.
17
"Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump?" I think we've already seen and heard this movie, "Bigly Bigot on the Billy Bus." Aside from the fantasized Fifth Avenue shooting spree, could any hot microphone have been more disqualifying than that? Certainly not in the darkest corners of my imagination.
Yet we put our vulgar Tangerine King in the Oval Office anyway, either sold on his blustering flim-flam or too apathetic to bother protecting the core constitutional principles upon which our nation's democratic survival depends. Either way, shame on us.
32
Too many people are uninformed, ignorant and lazy. They hear soundbites and take it as fact.
Then we have the Trump supporters from 60 minutes this past weekend who take denial to new levels
There is no awakening coming
Our only hope is increased participation from those that didn’t bother to vote
45
I agree that a large enough number of Americans were manipulated into voting for Trump that he actually won. But don't dismiss the fact that many people voted for Trump because they believed he was listening to them and Congress was not paying any attention at all. People have real problems - lack of health insurance, lack of money for training for more skilled jobs, low and/or stagnant wages, opiods,etc. They are tired of being talked down to and dismissed. And along came Trump. He was a "billionaire" with a "hit" show, and they bought into the fantasies he sold them: he cared, he was incredibly competent and could do ANYTHING because he was a billionaire.
He was a big bully, yes, but a bully was exactly what they thought they needed. Someone who could make fun of the elite candidates and knock them all over like duckpins with his lies and insults. It never occurred to them that there was a difference between someone who had legitimately built and operated a highly successful, complex business - say Bill Gates - and a real estate developer whose credit rating was based on his name and his television show. A real estate developer who could no longer get loans in the United States. And then there's loyalty, something that Trump talks up constantly but is almost incapable of himself. All of his rallies were about loyalty and "love." And his supporters believed him.
294
Perhaps Congress wasn't paying attention to them, but nevertheless they voted for them. It's hard to believe that the Russians didn't affect the outcome, given that it turned on about 70,000 votes across three states. Mr. Comey's hand on the scale didn't help either.
5
He got the country to cosign the loan.
Guess who gets stuck with the bill?
5
Bill Gates? Really. You use the poster boy for economic inequality as your rebuttal to Trump?
1
Unfortunately you don't have to fool all the people to win elections, only enough of them in swing states.
24
70,000 in 3 swing states to be exact.
here’s the recipe:
take 20 years of hate radio bashing Hillary, add one notice from Comey just before the election that he is re-opening the e-mail investigation,
Throw in a couple million co-ordinated Russian texts, tweets, face book postings, etc. posing as African Americans encouraging blacks not to vote for Hillary... voila
1
What the write is complaining about is Democracy. Ain't Democracy wonderful?
1
Whoever said "You can't fool all of the people all of the time," was wrong. But obviously you can fool enough of the people at sometime to become president.
3
No, you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you only have to fool enough to win the Electoral College, which is less than a majority. And you don’t need to fool all of that group. Quite a few are enthusiastic about the underlying message—hate, bitterness, paranoia, anger, xenophobia, bullying and naked aggression as public policy.
18
The madness of crowds in America?
Probably the madness of crowds in America will turn eventually into female hysteria, this will be the improvement of the crowd. I base this on the state of politics since WW2 and emergence of WMD. Ever since WW2 obviously advanced societies have been determined to prevent far right leanings, essentially masculine tendencies, war, violence. The emphasis has been on left wings in society. But of course not so far left that we have a Stalinesque carting of people to Gulag.
Essentially we have crowd control, tamping down of emotion, taming of people--especially men. Gradual taming of music, sport, literature, not to mention religion and the military. Right wings have felt this pressure the most. Left wings feel they are acquiring liberty by this, gaining power, but in the long run I do not see how this can benefit the men of the left wing, minority or not, because the situation seems to favor only women. Women are less likely to be violent than men, less likely to be mentally ill, less likely to demonstrate towering genius--the world increasingly favors them today.
Therefore the crowd turning from a masculine madness slowly to feminine hysteria. Cynics in power who are deeply invested in controlling the masses will know they are succeeding when crowd behavior begins to match female emoting, lots of talk, hand wringing, but not as much violence or clear and dangerous thinking. I guess the plan of power is get people to just vent and go home.
1
Someone far wiser than I once quipped "My mind is made up. Don't confuse with me with the facts." For the masses too lazy to search for the facts, is it any wonder that they are devoted to a president who finishes every other paragraph with "Believe Me"..... and in some cases, every other sentence?
23
People believe any number of things against their own senses and despite a litany of evidence to the contrary. People believe dumb things not just because they are credulous or dumb but because belief is a means and a reason to connect with others. To fully participate in society, in fact, we must profess any number of silly beliefs and suppress our skepticism. It is the Kool-Aid or ostracism.
2
Cold comfort that history is replete with absurdities while we're stuck with President Train Wreck.
We have a chance to affect the horrors in Nov. Only our children's future is at stake. Family values, indeed.
8
Mueller's investigation will bring all of us back to earth, if the Congress and Trump will stop their mindless accusations against the FBI and this investigation.
Where there is smoke there is fire. And the smoke is getting thicker by the day. Even the staunchest supporters of Trump and his Administration will have to open their eyes and declare defeat.
Remember it was the Electoral College that elected Trump not the majority of voters.
15
>
"Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another from of madness”.
Pascal
4
I'm mad as heck and I'm not gonna take it any more is the cry of the banshee. The death they herald is that of the democratic process, more specifically, the Republican party. We have but two major political parties and one of them has gone completely off the rails, no doubt due partly to our poor infrastructure. We have a party whose figurehead president makes daily pronouncements of demented demagogy. The madness of Trump has infected the GOP to such an extent his own party is incapable of reining him in. Trump is a loose cannon personified, yet Republicans who control both Houses ignore him, make excuses for him, apologize for him. Since they are impotent it is incumbent upon the electorate that they get to the polls in droves even in this off-year election and put Democrats back into the majority. Failure to do so will result in continued madness.
DD
Manhattan
11
2016 voters who voted for our mad president were angry. Those of us who resonated to "Network" (1976) are still resonating against the Trump world of America today. And if we are not on the cusp of WWII, then it's Armageddon in view. All of us who understood the global run-up to World War II and lived through those years, know in our bones what is coming round again. The madness of American crowds. the fire this time.
We Americans are quaking in our boots, waiting to witness our revolt against Trump and guns all over this blessed country in the coming weeks. Lawfully- acquired military AR-15 rifles will go the way of Slavery and Alcohol, both of which were amended out of America's Bill of Rights. We don't doubt the day is coming when Trump and his malign evil-doers in our government and the N.R.A. will be hoist higher than Haman by their Republican petards. But first, we need to pray for a "hot mic" to catch our wicked President during the American nightmare this time.
2
The HOT MIC
Who has it? Perhaps the RUSSIANS
Where is it? Perhaps in Trump's TAX RETURN
SILENCED MIC
Women who have been groped by TRUMP
STORMY and the pay off
The Democratic House Intelligence Committee RESPONSE
DROWNED BY DAILY DISTRACTING TWEETS FROM A DISTURBED DUDE
ACCOMPLICES
US CONGRESS -- Perhaps, the Republicans who are fearfully yielding to the devil sitting on their seats, buying their souls
4
Stormy will get $10M from Larry Flint if she's the reason for Trump's impeachment.
But, perhaps the Republican Party will step up, impeach Trump, and take Flynt's offer. That would be an interesting outcome. '
2
Trump was caught on a hot mic and it didn't mean a thing, even to evangelical cultural warriors.
17
We had our "hot mic" moment. Remember? trump bragged about accosting women and grabbing their private parts. He said you can do anything when you're famous. He was still elected President.
6
There's a lot of truth in what Cohen writes and it is certainly scary. Yet, he cites powerful passages from drama, meant to over-emphasize what is actually there. Fully accepting his thesis, would mean (a) the writings of those who have carefully dissected Trump's policies and actions are having no effect; (b) every single Trump voter is an idiot or racist and/or had absolutely no good or understandable reasons to support him; (c) Republicans won't eventually start to emerge in greater numbers who are seeing where the country is now going, have had enough, and willing to pay political consequences; and (d) the human capacity to remain a sucker and misread a charlatan is endless. I can't accept of any that. It also implies that the other side is not just right, but 100% right, about everything it believes, even though that is almost never true either. While "madness" might be a little strong, maybe we all have some "illusions" and crowd tendencies. All of us can be more open-minded, less certain, and searching about why the crowd is the "crowd," and where our country and society need to go. Our better natures are in there somewhere, and we're going to have to find it to get out of the many messes we are in. America is in serious trouble, and disparaging one another isn't helping. Maybe one day we'll thank Trump and the Russians for forcing us to see that, face our denial, and, ironically, helping us to "Make America Great Again" in actually desirable ways he never intended.
2
Please let me remind you; we must never forget, that the American people did not vote him into office. A minority that given the power of the majority by the Electoral College put him to office, with the aid (as it is increasingly clear) of a hostile foreign country. Donald Trump is a fake and fraud and is not the soul of America.
8
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
Unfortunately, you can often fool enough people enough of the time to wreak havoc. Just scan twitter for a few minutes to see who gets the most views.
1
The problem is that he doesn't have to fool all the people all the time. His bar is lower than that.
1
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.” But you can hang on to power while fooling some of the people, and while a party full of fools thinks you are advancing their agenda and the payment won't ever come due.
Trump is standing in the middle of Fifth Ave., openly shredding the constitution; receiving the praise of Evangelicals who insist he resembles Jesus while evidence of his fornication on a Biblical scale mounts up; shooting off his tweets rather than shooting off a gun. And as of now, he seems to have lost no voters over it. So what will it take? A man (and I do mean man) in this country can destroy our institutions fooling some of the people.
5
Robert Penn Warren said it better in All The King's Men.
2
We have a hot mic. It's called Twitter. And yet no matter how appalling and deplorable and clarifying those tweets are, his supporters seem incapable of distancing themselves from this clown. Instead they draw closer and circle the wagons. Double down as it were. When the Hollywood Access tapes came out, wasn't that just another hot mic? Just a few short weeks later he was elected president. He announced that he loved the poorly educated, on a hot mic. Was that supposed to be a compliment? No matter what he does or says, Trump seems to have his worshipers firmly in hand, and I don't see them turning on him. Forget the rubes. It's up to the rest of us to put a stop to this madness.
7
The country itself doesn't have the maturity and intelligence to recognize its inner failures. Blaming the Russians or Trump when things don't work out rather than looking in the mirror shows a "mental sickness" never experienced before. Is only getting worse. The lethal drug overdose started by medical doctors to solve little problems is just a quick example. America as a whole is one sick puppy.
124
Agreed, you can't fool all the people all the time. Unfortunately, because so few Americans see a need to vote you don't have to fool all the people; just the fringe. Fringe rules!
11
"Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump. . ."
Aren't you forgetting about that Access Hollywood tape?
6
Maybe you can't fool all of the people all the time. But in a democracy, you only need to fool some of the people all the time.
1
Most people would rather live with a cruel master than have to live with the results of their own decisions. It is easier for them to blame someone else than to face the fact that they are largely responsible for their own problems. They don't want to be responsible. Trump not only fits the bill for the cruel leader that they can blame, he will spread the pain to many who were smug and did not suffer from their own lack of judgement. That is another goal of the Trump voter, to cause suffering for others to prove that they are not superior to them.
The typical Trump voter sees themselves as no less intelligent as anyone else, and perhaps more intelligent than most. This is a great delusion. Perhaps too much TV and media and politicians. When does the media, politicians and TV tell people they are not that bright? Never, because to manipulate people you must tell them they are smart.
"Americans are hardworking and smart" says the politician. "The reason they are not successful is the others or the corporations or someone, but it is not their fault" You can't sell anything by starting the conversation with "you are stupid". But the fact is that all these consumer babies are really pretty stupid. Unfortunately many vote.
3
We can only hope that the hot mic is waiting. Maybe Pence could turn his career around and get Trump on tape.
"Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump." Mr. Cohen, Donald Trump's entire life has been a hot mic. He is the president of the United States because of--not in spite of--his undeniable lunacy and unfitness for any public office. If he wasn't sunk by his candidly frank admissions on the Hollywood Access tape, then what other degradation lies in wait?
What would never have been acceptable under Barack Obama is now praised mightily by the Right. When the Senate Majority Leader threw sand into the executive's prerogative for selecting a Supreme Court vacancy, no one on the Right blinked. When 63-million Americans approve--daily--of the current president of the United States, we are truly witness to the "madness of American crowds." The paper-thin justifications of the past--honor, duty, service, patriotism, the flag, hard work, sacrifice, humility before the Almighty--just a few of the Code Reds that the Republican Party has strewn along the American road these past sixty years (1968--Nixon is Ground Zero for today's GOP) were always the attractions at the state fair that Americans attend every year. These seductions seem almost wholesome in their innate goodness and purity, the soulless acquiescence to "something better" that Providence promised America.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Donald Trump is walking in Adolf Hitler's shoe-steps. The adoring masses (63-millions, please recall) do him homage. A military parade awaits.
10
I'm all for news, but these Trump bashing opinion pieces are beyond tiresome. We all know that Trump and his party are frauds. Unless there's something new to say, why keep publishing these opinion pieces several times a day ? Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump (Insert disgust onomatopoeia here).
1
Your best column in memory, Mr. Cohen.
3
"People are weak. They are susceptible."
That perfectly describes "progressives".
1
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.”"
Unfortunately, history shows that you just need to fool enough of them for long enough.
3
"Somewhere, a hot mic is waiting for Trump."
Don't hold your breath because there actually was one, as you may recall, where he talks about his glee at groping women. You may also recall that it had no effect. So really, why bother investing your hope in the man being brought low by any kind of shame or embarrassment?
4
From your lips, to God’s ears.
1
But you can fool most of the people most of the time.
1
A bedtime reading.
1
You don't have to fool all of the people all of the time. You only have to fool enough. Trump has fooled a small number - 30% maybe? - and is convenient to enough more that he is now the President.
You can go back to Shakespeare with Marc Antony's speech if you want to see the same self-interest and appeal to populist emotion to get a crowd to follow. Rhetoric is a powerful device. In school we were taught to dissect speech and look for the bias, the untruths and half truths, the emotional hook. That's a skill that few of us use much anymore, unless it is to craft an argument, not listen to one.
The danger of course is that we end up with Trump in power. That in the 30's we ended up with Mussolini and Hitler. Few of the people who use speech to manipulate, to call to action, to drive change have the soul of Martin Luther King.
So ultimately the responsibility lies on each of us. No matter how well educated we are, whether we are East Coast Elites or Salt of the earth Heartlanders, we have the responsibility to sift thought the giant pile bull and see if there really is a pony in there. And here is a hint: there's never a pony.
4
Sorry Mr. Cohen. We've already heard many "Hot Mic" comments. For some reason - in this day & age, they are no longer enough.
“You can’t fool all the people all the time.” - well, nowadays it seems you can. Or enough of them it doesn't matter.
3
Trump has blown through a dozen "hot mic" moments already. His followers - resentful, ignorant, destructive and bloody-minded, cheer all the harder since nothing will feed their resentment more than punishing everyone and everything that they hold responsible for their own fear.
Trump is a symptom, not a disease. He is the spectacle of resentment made flesh. We have him because we deserve him.
5
"People are dumb,..."
I agree. Americans re-elected the person who mumbled this into an open mic:
President Obama: "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."
President Medvedev: "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you."
1
It seems that Roger Ailes saw "Network" as a business model instead of satire and found his "Lonesome Rhodes" in O'Reilly and Hannity
2
We will not be rid of Trumpism any time soon; our democracy protects the rights of minorities to speak, vote and hold office. So a 25-30% minority of “sheep” who support their demagogue is nothing more than the loyal opposition at best and an obstructionist crypto-fascist mob at worst.
Used to be, if a party lost its Congressional majority and a Presidential election, it recognized the mandate given to the winner. And where a victorious party lost the popular vote, or even if they didn’t—they’d seek to build a consensus through governing in a way that didn’t seek to bully the opposition in a continual triumphalist end-zone celebration. They’d implement their policies and programs and count on the strength of their ideas and convictions to improve the lives of all citizens.
But W changed all that, shoving through tax cuts no one wanted, and practicing a winner-take-all triumphalist governing style. After a decisive defeat eight years later, McConnellist obstructionism, casting aside the traditional gentlemen’s agreement-style of parliamentary comity exploited every obscure rule and procedure to prevent and obstruct everything the electoral victory of Obama mandated.
McConnell and Ryan should be sitting pretty but they’re stuck with a President harder to work with than Hillary Clinton . And the Trump minority abides.
Only a Democratic landslide can restore traditional governance, and consign this minority of “morons” to railing at their screens in “Network” rage.
4
One has to appreciate the irony of people who used to contemptuously call Obama “The One” now treating Trump like “The Dear Leader.”
1
Political philosophers going back to the Greeks have long observed that a Democracy needs an educated population to succeed. We in the United States are now reaping the results of our failed public education system. Not only due we have a stupid, narcissistic, constantly lying, lacking in any integrity president along with his administration and his repugnant party, he is being proven to be a Russian Manchurian traitor who appeases Putin at every turn of events, including recently failing to renew expired sanctions. The majority of voters are not that dumb, and they will have their say in November 2018, and 2020 (if he lasts that long).
2
LWK, I sincerely hope you are right about the elections coming up, but what concerns me about the 30% that support Trump, is it they really promise to become a raging mob, grabbing their prescious guns and shooting any opposition that they regard as their enemy. That does not mean other people don't have guns. However, it is Trump supporters that I frequently see threatening on Facebook, and sometimes in various newspaper columns, to shoot anyone that stands up to them. Trump may not be the cause of this long-term march toward insanity, but he is promises to be the match that sets off an indiscriminate conflagration that will be hard to stop, and may indeed be the end of what's left of this republic.
Roger, he's been talking into that hot mike his whole life . . . and the guinea pigs are still buying the dog food and thinking it's steak.
2
Hot mic will make no difference.
(It MADE no difference...grab em by the what?? ...)
What we need now is a sequel to this work entitled "Guidance on how to protect yourself and your children from charismatic frauds"
1
As someone else commented to another op-ed about two weeks ago - we need a deep throat in the IRS. Maybe that will be the 'hot mic' that tips humpty-trumpty over the wall. Please - as a national service. I beg you.
4
I appreciate the cinematic references. I was actually going to guess "Videodrome" for the first quote. However, I realized Trump was already a fully formed adult by the time that film was released. Rather than formative, the film is actually something of a commentary on the Trumps of the world. I'll add a disclaimer though. "Videodrome" is not a film for the faint of heart. I've only seen the film twice and once was definitely enough.
For the sake of argument though, here are some of the more polite passages that came to mind from Cohen's opinion. Keep in mind these two quotes come from separate scenes.
Brian O'Blivion: The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.
Harlan: North America's getting soft, patrón, and the rest of the world is getting tough. Very, very tough. We're entering savage new times, and we're going to have to be pure and direct and strong, if we're going to survive them. Now, you and this cesspool you call a television station and your people who wallow around in it, your viewers who watch you do it, they're rotting us away from the inside. We intend to stop that rot.
The other revelatory screed in Network was the tirade by Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) confronting Howard Beale:
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today."
QED
1
Wow.....nailed it. But Trump doesn’t even need a “hot mic”....or a “hot mike” as he prefers to call it....for people to see what a charlatan he is. His cruel, petty, misogynistic, narcissistic and mendacious self has been on open display for decades. People just need to wake up and see what has always been right in front of their eyes.
1
You can't fool all of the people all of the time. But our problem is that you can fool 46.1% of the people all of the time.
1
You write like you know something. You don't because I read your stuff in 2015 when Trump just got started. So stop pontificating. You were the rube, the bumpkin, the sheep, "even more stupid" than Trump. Most of us dispaired that you and others like Brooks constantly said,"give Trump a chance. Let's see what happens?" Now you see. Thanks for nothing, rube. Just go away.
3
John,you are so right...longevity with remembrance is indeed a blessing...l would add to your list of revisionists Ms.Dowd.
3
There comes a time when even the dream selling leaders like Trump get disillusioned once the sheep flock they are herding moves to the lure of a new sheferd.
"People are dumb, but they know when their president is compromised."
I wish you were right, Mr. Cohen, but I disagree. Despite the despicable brutality of Nixon's Christmas bombing of North Vietnam--done not for strategic reasons but to appease South Vietnamese despots angry at the Paris Peace Talks--the American public didn't get particularly upset. It took a Democratic-controlled congress to get him on lying about a "third-rate burglary." As long as Trump sticks to his own personal script--being honest while lying, his popularity will rise. I'm no Trump supporter, but I think he's going to win again.
69
" but I think he's going to win again. "
While that's possible, I think he will make the same mistakes that he made which led to his multiple bankruptcies . . .he'll overplay his hand. His support is a mile wide and an inch deep.
4
I think you're looking at things in an extremely superficial way. I'm tempted to agree with you about the conscience or moral compass of the American public, but when you bring up Nixon and the Democratic Congress, I won't half-step. You're wrong. The opposition to the Vietnam War grew and grew to massive proportions. If millions didn't take to the streets over the Christmas bombings, they certain did when Cambodia was invaded. Further, Nixon was driven from office. The Democratic controlled-Congress pushed Nixon only because the public was losing faith in the system. A lot of people don't know or have forgotten this, but to be called a liberal back in the 60s-70s was essentially to be called an accomodationist, one without the "spine" we hear so much moaning about nowadays. I feel that was an accurate description of liberals, then and now.
1
We can explain this by two contemporaries, FDR and the Nazis. They both said a lot about leadership, and they each had about a dozen years to demonstrate it. FDR thought well of people, and the Nazis thought people were sheep.
Their messages were dramatically different. The choice is ours on which to believe about human nature. Cohen here in his despair is uncharacteristically thinking like those we know he despises.
Another great leader thought much better of Americans en mass, and Cohen ends by quoting him -- Lincoln.
Lincoln also said, “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
And, “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”
20
The most prescient thought of the brilliant "Network" is not the rise of demagogues, but rather the supplanting of democracy by a corporate oligarchy. The process began in earnest in the '70s and has accelerated greatly in the last several years. All that is required is a distracted public (500 channels of TV, legalized weed, social media and its requisite gadgets), an ignorant and complicit scoundrel in the White House, and a Congress beholden to its corporate sponsors. Check, check, check.
33
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for providing a better explanation than I could have of one of the most significant reasons the founding fathers established the Electoral College (EC) - they feared mob rule.
If my 50 year old high school “isms” course (comparative governments) class was correct (or I remember it correctly), then: Yes, the constitution was a compromise, and they didn’t get everything right (and some of what they got right was likely for the wrong reason). Nevertheless, they did a damn fine job of understanding and anticipating human nature.
So, to all of those wishing to see the Electoral College eliminated, (or worse, try to make it happen), imagine that Hillary had lost the popular vote by 3 million votes, but won the EC. You’d be defending the EC as having “saved” the country from a mad and immoral maniac.
The sad thing is, the EC didn’t do one of the primary things it was created to do- to assure that the person elected president was qualified to serve in that office.
I’m not sure I have the answer for how to “fix” the EC, but it needs fixed more than it needs eliminated. Tempering some of its political underpinnings would seem to be a good place to start. And start soon.
The mob is growing, and I fear that the quip a friend has used for over forty years may, in fact be true: “Intelligence is a constant. The population increases.”
3
Fine, don't get rid of th Electoral College completely then. But stop it with th winner-takes-all-ism regarding each state! Ex: Hillary only received 32% of th vote in Nebraska; but all five of th Cornhusker States's electoral votes went to Trump. Shouldn't 32% get one 20%? I thought Nebraska had something like that already, along with Maine. And not to forget, these Electoral College representatives are supposed to ACT in accordance with certain responsibilities when casting their votes for the Presidency. Some of these reps should resign for not taking their respective responsibilities serious enough after this past election.
2
Yes, you can fool all the people all the time, if those people are from Texas. There's a reason the Russians turned to Texas to promote their phony political events and groups--Texans love Trump, distrust the FBI, think the Russia thing is all phony, etc. The Republicans down here still give Trump high marks for "temperament", among other accolades. They will follow him down any drain, no matter what. This is a state that's at the bottom when it comes to public education, maternal mortality, number of people uninsured, etc. In other words, this is Trump's America.
20
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, O.K.?” he declared during the campaign. Let’s hand it to Trump: he was right. Americans voted him into office after he said that. They were ready to roll the dice, even on nuclear war, if the alternative was to be bored. . ."
So true.
11
The most enduring strength of the conservative movement is the oft spoken belief of liberals that conservatives are stupid, crazy, or misled, and that they will at some point in the future come to their senses and follow the lead of the liberal elite. The arrogance of that attitude keeps people voting against that elite in election after election. In fact, many people reject the liberal elite's advice for the quite sensible reason that it is a system designed to keep the elite in place. Those who are not part of that elite have much less to lose in rejecting it. Many non-elite Americans vote against their short term economic interests because they, while uncertain of the best alternative approach, are certain that they do not wish to vote for the status quo, as stated by some privileged advanced degree graduate of an elite school. They're not crazy or misled. They're simply willing to continue gambling, no matter how hard it may be to beat the house.
5
Even if Trump were to literally be caught on a hot mic throwing shade at his supporters (and didn’t he already do that publicly when he told a rally crowd that he loved the uneducated?), they would say it was either Obama’s fault, a hoax, or fake news (or all of the above).
11
If you want to understand Donald Trump's success, you need look no further than iconic gurus of capitalist culture like Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman or Edward Bernays or P.T. Barnum. Or the apocryphal quote attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes, "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” Unbridled greed, narcissism, self-promotion, predatory behavior, sociopathy -- these are all traits that U.S. capitalism celebrates and rewards handsomely. Donald Trump is as American as apple pie.
29
Those optimistic about a coming reduction in Trump's power underestimate him and give the American people too much credit. First, Trump realizes he doesn't have to fool all the people all the time. He skated into office after losing the popular vote. Second, he realizes who really runs the country, and it's not the people. As long as he placates the oligarchs, the Republican Congress will fall into line. And third, the mike is always hot for Donald Trump; the greater his transgressions, the more he's liked.
Trump is the wrestling villain people love to hate. For his base, he's the guy who shows the pinheads and intellectuals who's boss. The more crude, vulgar, deceitful, and mendacious he is, the more popular he is with his base. And when people get tired of his act, the oligarchs will replace it with a "kinder, gentler" conservative like Mike Pence, who will elevate meanness and mendacity to new levels, all while cloaked in a shining mantle of Christian humility. The show goes on.
28
Network is a brilliant 1970's film....it seems that after it was released the GOP saw it as a plan rather then the scathing social commentary it is...so much for their non existent understanding of art...since the 70's they have embraced this model as their strategy, combined w/ Citizens United unlimited campaign contributions from various unknown sources, including foreign powers & international corporations and you can see where we are today. When a GOP leader, Paul Ryan, is a fan of Ayn Rand that tells you just how intellectually unsophisticated the GOP is. No thinking adult should ever publicly admit to liking the ridiculously poor writings of the Russian immigrant Ayn Rand.
6
I can't think of anything to add to this excellent thesis.
3
Oh well, I comfort myself in the realization that soon America will be in a massive shooting war, maybe with Iran, maybe Korea...just someone, anyone, so the military machine and the factories can produce exciting war for the masses. That distraction will keep me occupied in attending futile demonstrations as I demand rationality of my government, and they spend the treasury on themselves and their big missiles. But it will replace Trump discussions on the TV, and like warring ant tribes, peace is just not in the genes.
George Carlin had it right in his talks just prior to his death. The game is rigged for the in crowd, and that ain't me, or us. I do hope that at least a tiny bit of our military might is destined to prove to Putin that making us the laughing stock of the world with his stooge, well, that comes at a cost. We lost the war because we thought we could trust our government. The Republicans would mate with the devil if she would promise more wealth for them, and poverty for the poor.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
22
A more light-hearted movie that presciently depicts a Trump-ish (though less successful) character in corrupt Washington is "Born Yesterday" from 1950. Broderick Crawford, Judy Holliday and William Holden are all great.
Bernie Sanders was Howard Beale.
1
I take exception to the statement, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.” We have proof of its falsity: 2016 and 2017. Additional proof: there are still Republicans holding political office.
8
Great essay; thank you for writing it. I'm convinced that a "hot mic" will not do anything except elevate the monster. I work in an office environment, with a lot of his base - yes, here in a so-called liberal east coast Westchester county suburb - and I assure you that they have stars in their eyes & ice in their hearts. Nothing will sway them from cheering the grotesque mouthpiece that puts voice to the hate & resentment(s) that consume their very being. Please, be sure your children who are old enough, get registered to vote. THEY are a big part of the answer/solution. DO IT.
19
"... stars in their eyes & ice in their hearts."
Great. That says it all!
"You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."
~Donald Trump - The Art of the Deal~
He is 70+ with nothing to lose. He is running The Con as long as he can at the end of his time here on Earth....and he does not care.
3
As Mr. Cohen's editorial illustrates there is certainly correlation between the crowd's behavior and the demagogue of the moment, but I would have to question cause and effect. Is the crowd out there so embittered by their miserable status, both economically and socially, that they would relish eating dog food in order to support the rabble rouser ? Is the crowd more impassioned by its desire to punish another group (racial, immigrational, religious, whatever) than it is in fostering its own best interests ? Does the rabble rouser sway the crowd or is the crowd milling about just waiting for the most obnoxious rabble rouser to stir up the conventional ?
1
I respect and would love to believe Mr. Cohen's prediction that sooner or later our aptly-described "mean and vulgar charlatan" will be done in, either by a hot mic or by the realization he's compromised. However, I see little cause for optimism at the moment. Trump has already HAD a "hot mic" moment (with Billy Bush) and was elected anyway. His failure to do anything about now-confirmed Russian meddling in our 2016 election except whine about the investigation and claim "SEE? NO COLLUSION!" fairly screams, "Compromised!!" and yet his base remains steadfast. I wonder, "What's it going to take??" and then I wonder, "Maybe this time around, now that we've all been led by the nose into the gutter, we've decided it's easier to ignore the facts and continue to lie there than admit we've made a dreadful mistake, climb out, and deal with all the messes we've let this monster create."
3
I always picture Roger Cohen in a white linen suit lounging at a sidewalk cafe in Tangier or Shanghai, the tramp steamer he came in on moored in the harbour, awaiting his next peregrination. The most interesting people around him soon become his acquaintances, ranging from the kindly to the, possibly, mildly criminal in intent.
In some ways we're all somewhat like Diogenes, treading the streets, lantern in hand, looking for an honest man. Huzzah to the individual with the guts to inform Alexander to stop blocking the sun.
3
Our grand experiment is self-government sets the bar high. It requires 'Citizens' who are so much more than voters.
Citizens seek and respect 'Truth'. They pursue the Common Good. They are women and men of Integrity.
But a consumer-based society promotes different characteristics; Instant Gratification, Malleability, Material over Morality.
Our Founders "pledged....(their) Sacred Honor"...
Honor!! How quaint it now seems from here....
2
I really wish people would stop saying Trump won the election... An arcane systemput Trump into office. And I lived in Appalachia.. where Trump was more popular than Hillary whom I couldn't stand either... but I did not vote for Trump except that my every so importan and well informed friends assure me that I did.
Trump won because the rest of the Republan candidates were worse... and he campaigned.. which Mrs. Clinton did not deem necessary.. She thought it was more impt. to have impt. people go out and campaign for her. NO. (Too much Hollywood -- it was not about the e-mails, but it was about the sense of privilege -- encouraged by the Times -- "I am going to be the first woman president (and Bill and 'Barrack both support me!) -- and the endless fundraisers. ) BTW had Oprah run, I believe she would have won. (she would have campaigned>) Clinton had everything she needed but she did not use it... and frankly, I am concerned about her health (remember that issue?).
I'm not sur Trump fooled anyone. What we have learned it seems is that too many people think more or less exactly as he does (or are equally paranoid and narcisistic -- finally in my mind I have identified the condition which explains at least some of what is going on.) Paranoia and narcissisim. and throw in greed for good measure.
2
Don’t know why youthink Hillary Clinton didn’t campaign. She’s been criticized for making a bad decision not to campaign in Wisconsin, for example, but she campaigned hard elsewhere. I remember reading reports during 2016 that her campaign schedule was much heavier than Trump’s.
A hot mic recorded plenty before the election but he won. I think his base is still strong with him. Florida will be key for the next election.
Andy Griffith was phenomenal and scary in "A Face in the Crowd." See it, if you haven't, then for comic relief after you're utterly depressed that today's truth is even stranger than that fiction, watch Griffith in "No Time for Sargeants" and/or "Daddy and Them."
Then to be gobsmacked once more about the likelihood that Trump will continue to fool way too many people all the time, listen to Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" podcast episode 10 entitled, "The Satire Paradox."
Good column, Mr. Cohen!
1
So, that's the American excuse for its failures? That "people are fragile"?
I didn't hear this excuse when you were going to bomb Iraq to oblivion in 2003. The Iraqi didn't have the benefit of the doubt.
4
I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr. Cohen. I, too, have always seen Trump as a kind of malevolent Howard Beale, with a poisonous dash of Jerzy Kozinski’s Chauncey Gardener, as portrayed by Peter Sellers, thrown in. As an analyst opined recently, I also detect a massive inferiority complex in Trump’s constant childish need to defend himself, as well as the indefensible, when no one else will.
Add to the above a public that is strung out on opioids, guns, unreality television, brain-killing football and commodity fetishism, and you have just what Putin and the doctored election ordered.
2
Some quite brilliant analogies here.One must also keep in mind that before his television shows, DJT was the prince of the tabloids.He truly believed that all publicity was good.The feuds,the bankruptcies, the marital woes spread across the front pages of supermarket rags and the like. Back then he was mostly considered a loud mouthed, self-aggrandizing buffoon, little has changed in that quarter.
The real danger that came to pass is that he parlayed those characteristics into convincing voters that he was a man of the people,a crusader who vowed to upend the Washington Establishment. In reality what he pulled off is probably the biggest political scam in history. He promised to have advisers and a cabinet of the best. What a sad joke. Advisers and close associates who couldn't get security clearance for a job in the Bronx Zoo! A cabinet of inept, pampered individuals who think that their accustomed lifestyles should be extended by the taxpayers.
What is most disturbing is the manipulation of facts and ideologies. We are a nation strongly divided and the tensions are bellowed by outlets such as Fox News. There could very likely be violence here soon.Since we have devolved into a third rate banana republic, the bullets and street riots might not be far off.
1
The now-how man grabbed many by their desire for gratification in the now. Buying a stake in the plan for the bridge to tomorrow was for many too far of a reach to make. The no-plan man was the Lotto.
1
In the US, Trump doesn't have to fool all of the people or even some of the people.
Thanks to the electoral college, he only needs to fool enough people in key districts in the rust belt.
It is time to go to a popular vote approach in Presidential elections.
Low population states already have outsized influence in the Senate.
2
Isn't it fantastic how crowds can be manipulated by madmen. If you look into history there's a continuous stream of bad fellows pressing their devious ideas into the brains of the masses and those believe it. It's a procedure you normally argue that can't be true but it happens, over and over again.
With an advancing civilization you hope there will come better times, but nada the next madcap is on the scene.
2
As usual, the most dangerous enemy is apathy. Scoundrels will ply their trade; crude and demented types like Trump will flagrantly flare up and then out, while more crafty ones, like McConnell and Ryan, will last longer. Will we care sufficiently to figure out their motives and devices, and then actively resist?
In his great novel, The Plague, Camus advocates the humanist response to the absurdity and the cruelties of life. But he notes that "the habit of despair is worse than despair itself." We can become inured to the avarice, stupidity, and evil we see around us. It can be hard to watch, and daunting to perceive its advances. Ultimately, progress is inexorable, but it can often be subjected to painful and egregiously-long interruptions.
It takes stamina and determination to continue along the arc described by Dr. King. Let's not let Trump and his cohorts beat that resolve out of us. There is too much at stake.
2
To understand Donald Trump as a Mobbist (he is no Populist), one need only look at professional wrestling. Not for nothing is he in their Hall of Fame.
1
I fail understand the point of this article other than the author's desire to slip in a plug for his books. America spoke. We were not duped. We chose.
1
Mr. Cohen. The media goes full circle and comes back on itself! Hollywood is duplicitous in the creation of Trump types. If the Media is the message think of P T Barnum "there's a sucker born everyday!" When one thinks of Paddy Chayefsky a prominent Liberal from the 1950's -who should be respected- I remeber how the real anti-establishment thinkers were trying to alert us: Kerouac , Ginsburg ,the music of Charlie Parker and others. Chayefsky's effort was, it is correct, an attempt to say 'something, he probably was influenced by Liberal failures of his own and others to influence the populace.of his time? If you need a Hollywood reference here is one{ a rare instance of authenticity} that illuminates the Political realities of populism : All The Kings Men 1949 a take on Huey Long's run in Louisiana,
Having said all this the Intellectuals of the 1950's look like minor deities compared to todays "thinkers".
2
Perhaps "you can't fool all the people all of the time".
But, as Mencken opined "You can fool too many people too much of the time."
And that's all it takes to send things down the tubes.
3
Trump was enabled not just by the masses but by media across the political spectrum in search of profits. The television networks embraced reality shows. Cable news gave Trump disproportionate coverage during the primary season. Elites with Ivy League and Wall Street backgrounds have facilitated Trumo in the administration and Congress. For starters, Harvard's Rob Porter in the White House and Princeton's crow-eating Ted Cruz in Congress.
2
This is just about the best essay I've read on Mr. Trump & his appeal. But especially after the last 2 administrations, where the distance between reality and public perception reached absurd proportions, I've begun to wonder: can you fool all the people all the time? I don't think that the question of whether or not the scales will fall from Trumps' followers eyes will depend on anything he's caught doing; it will depend on some conflict arising between his greed and the greed of Fox & the right wing media.
2
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want,
and deserve to get it good and hard." H. L. Mencken
2
Wrong and deeply unfortunate. I agree about Trump, but the millions who voted for him are not all, or even mostly, stupid or ignorant or under the sway of a new messiah. They are people who feel disconnected from the nation's government and its priorities, who want the focus to be on their jobs, their families, their communities. I deeply support LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage; immigrant rights and dreamers; free trade; the right to abortion; and universal health care. But we New York Times readers (stereotype: upper middle class, college-educated, blue-state coastal-dwellers; anyone you know?) need to realize that those "others", those who deeply disagree with us, are also reasonable people of good will. We need to put our hearts into reestablishing a true dialogue, rather than into the kind of nasty school-yard name-calling exemplified in this article.
2
There once was a whole population
The citizens of our great nation
Who were duped by a man
And by some in his clan
Who leveraged our polarization
1
The upside of democracy is that the people rule. The downside of democracy is that the people rule. The notion that anyone was "fooled" by Trump, Russian hacking, big media, et. al. is comforting only if you believe in the tooth fairy. As soon as these scoundrels are rounded up and given a lashing, America will be alright again. If you are waiting for that to happen, don't hold your breath. The current political arrangements of money totally corrupting politics is only accelerating the brutish behavior of the governed as they exercise their will.
2
Pity the poor "Edgar Bergens" who, so far have kept him from getting us blown up. Edgar, However, actually did control Charlie McCarthy, while sometimes it seems Trump has reversed the roles and is pulling all our strings. I often feel sorry for Sarah Sanders who has to know The terrible truth she daily destroys.
1
Roger, another man wisely observed that you can easily fool enough of the people long enough to utterly destroy a country. Trump will eventually face some form of justice, but how will that help the rest of us in the end?
2
I purposely re-watched "A Face in the Crowd," during the final days of the 2016 campaign. Russia and GOP messaging is indeed a danger to democracy....but only because of the ignorance, gullibility, desperation, and hate sensors, of the masses. For decades the Republican have run effective ad campaigns setting the stage for the grand manipulator to rise to power.
2
Donald J. Trump is the demon child of Madison Avenue, better known as the Advertising Industry. Howard Beale is the zombie who suddenly comes alive and realizes his bewichment.
You may not agree that the awfully successfully rich advertising industry -since it signs your own paycheck - is the demon behind the crushing blow to education and the reason for its demon child capturing the White House.
We are educated by media advertising, we live in tv commercials which dominate irresistible programming. Candidates for political office need the means to pay for mind-snaring commercials, and these requirements form the foundation for corruption. Note that Trump needed very little funds to run for office; he had tv and the media at absolutely no cost. More so, the media begged to cover him, paid to cover him, every minute of every sad day ... sad for America ... “sad”, the demon’s favorite word.
Hopefully, wishfully, Howard Beale will emerge in the American crowd, yelling that we won’t take it any more, i.e., once the day arrives when a democracy begins to realize that the advertising industry requires strong, meaningful government regulation. Tragically for us it continues nurturing a society educated on lies and deception — the “hustle” — and one malignantly deprived of academics, when the concept of free speech is not so comfortably granted to destroyers of freedom of speech.
2
Alas, Roger Cohen misses the point. Hobbes wasn't describing his own daily life (it was life in the wild, bare and unaccommodated, he was referring to) and "Network" isn't a study of a mad charismatic newsman, but a look at corporate-produced news itself. Purveyed by sensible people like, well, Roger Cohen. For profit.
It's the mainstream which should have to answer for Trump. You can't lie selectively and self-interestedly about the big stuff, for years on end, and not expect to poison the well, for everything.
13
Nor offer up someone widely disliked, urging us to hold our noses because they say the alternative is worse.
3
I regret that you may be too optimistic about the chances of a downfall. As in the last election, a polled 37 percent approval rating, now in the face of Russia investigations, corruption, prostitutes, self-dealing, misgovernment and all the rest translates into a much higher number inside the voting booth.
Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel secured the unquestioning votes of 50 million-plus Christian Evangelicals in the coming mid-terms. A flag-filled, gilt-covered opening of a new (i.e. slapped together) U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on or about October 1, 2020, Trump presiding in all his glory, will ensure those votes and many others for a second Trump term.
And that's all if Trump doesn't force a violent, perhaps devastating war in order to draw attention away from the investigations. Even the press declared him (temporarily) Presidential last year for the mere act of resorting to yet additional military action. Hoi polloi love nothing better than a great, patriotic war, at least at the beginning.
6
I wish I could share the optimism near the end of your column, Mr. Cohen, about Mr. Tump waiting for his hot mic moment. Surely that moment has come already, in so many forms and examples that they are hardly worth enumerating here. What worries me in this cycle is that the alt-right is more angry, more mean, more credulous, and far more petty than ever before. They only know two things: tweaking liberals, and willfully ignoring the amoral behaviour of their leader.
I no longer believe Trump supporters were conned; it is clear to me they are knowing participants in the magic trick, and know that they are being tricked. How messed up is that?
24
I watched the movie Network when it first came out in theaters. I thought it was heavy handed and a bit absurdist. As time past and I watched it over the years, more and more of the absurdist aspects seemed to change. In my mind what was changing was the world around me.
I have it on my list to watch it again and see how I view the movie characters against what is happening in America. I think the ideas and plot of the movie may ring more true today than ever before. The current person in the White House and many of the republicans in Congress can been seen in the background plot and the dialogue in the movie.
I hope Americans can see through what these people are really like and vote them out of office in 2018 and 2020.
4
You see just Republicans? I see the entire 2016 race, and a threat to do it again.
3
So you think an open mic catching Trump saying what he really thinks about his supporters would sink him? Did you forget that during the presidential campaign Trump, speaking at a podium, openly told a crowd of his supporters that he loves the poorly educated?
2
When he announced his candidacy, I immediately thought of "A Face in the Crowd," and hoped trump's downfall would be just as swift and brutal as that of Lonesome Rhodes. I'm still waiting.
3
So far, it is mostly a peculiarity of the right wing to accept a messiah or a fuhrer, or in our current case, a snake-oil salesman. "True Believers", as defined by Eric Hoffer in his trenchant little book, usually are full of the insecurities, resentment, and just-below-the-surface rage that characterizes today's right.
We on the left were, however, fooled by the soaring, seemingly progressive, rhetoric of one Barack Obama, who ran as a progressive change agent but who governed like the moderate Republican guardian of the status quo ante that he turned out to be. Millions of us were so negatively affected by Obama that we didn't vote for Hillary, and now we have Trump.
If the country can survive him - and McConnell - and Ryan - and the rest of the GOP wrecking crew, look for a liberal resurgence. In the meantime, down we go to second-, or even third-rate status.
3
What are your solutions?
And this is all fine if you view the world in one dimension, from a silo.
But the problem is systemic.
"Look around". It's happening all across the West. There appear to be a lot of weak, susceptible, easily manipulated people in the world searching for Messiahs, according to your theory. In Poland. Hungary. Austria. Germany. France. Great Britain.
You need to address the root cause of why so many people across the developed world are "ready to roll the dice". Perhaps it’s because the system you espoused and represented for the past 25 years has failed them spectacularly?
The passage about technology is also part of the answer, and the stresses it is causing are just beginning, because it's going to fundamentally re-architect civilization in the next 20 years.
But the other part is that globalization has decimated the middle classes of the developed world and raised inequality to society-destabilizing levels. And now technology is about to compound the problem by an order of magnitude, if changes aren't made.
Unfortunately, we're now entering the most challenging era in history in a position of profound weakness, because of the catastrophic legacy of neoliberal globalization.
You may soon find yourself nostalgic for the days of Trump, because the next President may be much, much worse.
He is not an aberration. This is the new normal.
We are Rome. I thought you had that figured out by now.
And your beloved Europe is even worse.
3
Since Roger Cohen is no cynic, I have to assume this column reflects the natural frustration that arises from observing the first year in office of the most bizarre, unfit man ever to occupy the Oval Office. But like all analyses that focus on only one facet of a complex issue, Cohen's essay distorts reality.
Writing like a latter day H. L. Mencken (but without the dark humor), Cohen easily identifies the wide streak of insanity that has always distinguished our political culture from that of most other stable democracies. Other countries (Germany, for example) have experienced nervous breakdowns that facilitated the rise of demagogues, but even in quiet periods American politics accommodates peculiar, often autocratic, personalities and fringe movements. Until now, though, we never elevated such strange creatures to the presidency.
If American weakness for vicious and unqualified candidates defined our political culture, however, the republic could not have survived for more than two centuries. Even now, battered by this administration's assaults on our institutions, millions of Americans have organized a vigorous resistance. Investigative journalism has enjoyed a renaissance; citizen groups have applied unprecedented pressure on elected officials to reject Trump initiatives; and the government itself has launched an investigation into the administration.
Crowds can be mad, but they can also act with a controlled fury inspired by devotion to democratic values.
5
a more accurate and meaningful title is "the desperation of crowds." All these demagogues-- going back to Caesar, if you read Shakespeare, climbed upon the downtrodden and hopeless. Meanwhile the chattering classes continue to deal in scorn
4
Trump is seriously flawed and possessed of openly displayed messianic qualities. But he portrays himself as Everyman. He resonates with many who are themselves flawed, who believe that through no fault of their own they are without options or hope, and who believe that they need do nothing to improve their situations other than to show loyalty to a strong leader who gives them legitimacy and agency, perhaps the only time in their lives they've shared this experience. These people care little if at all about politics, about social norms, and about the dynamics of the larger world. That's not to say there aren't legitimate grievances and issues; it is to say that they need someone, even figureheads if not leaders, to tell them what they want to hear, to reaffirm their own sense of worth and place. Trump is no leader; he is himself more a figurehead than he may be able to acknowledge. As he manipulates his followers, he is also being manipulated. He also needs reaffirmation and approval. Despite his bluster, he is influenced by and takes direction from others. He may only want to be a figurehead; a titular head of state. This dynamic, that both Trump and his "constituents" are followers, is at the root of our current problem that must be addressed.
3
No, I think the real problem consumer options and choices.
===============================================
We are under the illusion that because we have so many choices, today, we can tune Trump off, in our lives, and simply wait for him to leave office.
Trump is everywhere. He is on every TV channel, whether we like it our not. There is no escape. He is not going away. We can't just wait until he is gone.
We have become too passive, as consumers. Now, we must act politically. We must get involved in political change, at the grassroots level. No time to wait!
We can mobilized resistance. We can develop creative media messages.
======================================================
The question is... will we rise up, now, or must we keep "waiting for Godot"?
2
For another sobering view of where we stand today, take a look at the following TED presentation by the former finance minister of Greece:
https://www.ted.com/talks/yanis_varoufakis_capitalism_will_eat_democracy...
• Liberal democracy only surfaced when it was possible to separate fully the political sphere from the economic sphere, so as to confine the democratic process fully in the political sphere, leaving the economic sphere -- the corporate world, if you want -- as a democracy-free zone.
• In our democracies today, this separation of the economic from the political sphere gave rise to an epic struggle between the two, with the economic sphere colonizing the political sphere, eating into its power.
• One can be in government today and not in power, because power has migrated from the political to the economic sphere, which is separate.
3
Bolsheviks were actually mensheviks and Tories probably outnumbered Patriots.
It only takes some of the people--maybe a bit more than 30%.
The movie Madness of the Crowd was produced in 1957 starring Andy Griffith. It was Andy's first role in the movies preceding TV's lovable sheriff of "Mayberry" years earlier. I remember watching it a few years back and thinking it could have been the life story of Rush Limbaugh minus the "hot mic" episode but including the bombast and the ability to sell it to the masses via radio. Limbaugh is from southeast Missouri, just a few short miles from Arkansas where Griffith's character was said to be from even though it was set 25 years earlier than Limbaugh's rise to fame. It's as if Limbaugh patterned his career after this fictional character. Later Russian trolls have undoubtedly been inspired by this story.
2
Indeed. I didn't recognize any of the quotes but I did first think that one might be from Limbaugh.
I think what you're talking about is the movie "A Face in the Crowd" that the author mentioned....
1
This may all be true but the US has a long history of being "Fantasyland",the title of a new book by Kurt Andersen which helps put the current state into context. Additionally, the parochialism and disdain for education in the broadest sense makes us particularly susceptible to Heel Spur's nature and message.The jury is out (no pun) on whether Americans recognize Trump for what he is or see output from Mueller etc as more evidence of Fake News from the Deep State.
1
My siblings and I were raised to be skeptical and to vote progressively. I can still hear my mother saying that Americans are like sheep. I don't know why some people see the truth and others do not; I think about it every day and am amazed and saddened by my friends who watch Fox and cannot be disabused of what they believe. To me, Fox News, the NRA, and dark money are anti-democratic elements in our country and Trump and the GOP are in with it all. I hope young people rebel, register to vote, and refuse to follow along-they may be our only hope.
5
It's no wonder, Mr. Cohen, but Mr. Trump has gotten to you. I have several remedies for relief:
1) Take a longer view of history, and put more emphasis on structures and forces than individuals.
2) Take up an avocation like playing stride piano, read whimsical poetry by Edward Lear, or ride a bike along country roads.
3) If those suggestions fail, take Richard Luettgen's advice and try prozac or some other happy pill.
1
Here is American hucksterism gone totally berserk. Yes, there's a long heritage of it here, as in other forms elsewhere. Yes, you can fool some of the people all of the time. It's hoped that those "some" in parts of the Electoral College territory will come to their senses. I'm from a county in PA that hadn't gone Republican in recent memory (voted Obama twice) and went for Trump in 2016. From this course of history, it seems that most people here might be able to return to reality, not just reality TV.
1
Without doubt, many if not most of the Republican side of Congress and the Senate agree with everything said in this column yet they affirmatively support Trump. They even obediently swoon over him as in their disgusting display after passage of the Tax Cuts for Rich Folks Bill was enacted.
The simplest reason must be that they have made the calculation that doing so better enhances reelection than would disagreeing with him. After all, for Trump and his minions, disagreement with him is criticism, and criticism is an attack.
They must be voted out in November because it is highly probable that eventually Mueller will have enough evidence to indict Trump on one or all of conspiracy to commit election fraud, money laundering, or obstruction of justice.
Yet, there is no reason to believe that a Republican controlled House will impeach Trump for those reasons or even if he "shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue."
Flipping the House and Senate may be America's last best hope. Two more years of this guy and what we formerly thought was America will be found only in an ancient history text.
2
If only it were true. But I don't believe that there will be a hot mic moment for Trump. The voters that support him do so because he is despised by people that they hate. Nothing will change that dynamic.
4
I didn’t vote for him, nor did my husband or our friends. We saw a number of flaws in Clinton –too quick to turn to military options, too much of a bureaucrat and incrementalist –but these were minor, when compared to the consequences of electing any Republican, let alone Trump. We care about the environment, Social Security and Medicare, the infrastructure – all issues upon which we felt safe with Clinton. Under no circumstances would we have supported a charlatan,incompetent, narcissist like Trump.
It is true that there is a mob –people you can fool all of the time. There are also those whom you can fool some of the time; but frankly, I do not think that the latter are Trumpers. Mainstream Republicans who voted for Trump voted a straight ticket, and most assumed Trump would lose. One Republican friend, who broke ranks to vote for Clinton at the top of the ticket, told me that although he had never before voted for a Democrat, he felt safe with her because she was intelligent and tough.
There are also those who you can fool none of the time –the ones who, painful as it may be, reverse course and walk the other way when the crowd, including perhaps their employers or teachers, heads in a direction thst they view as dangerous or wrong, With the 2018 midterms months away and the Mueller investigation proceeding, these are the people who may lead us out of this nightmare.
There will always be a mob. But the mob need not always rule. We have 8 1/2 months to find our way out.
3
The invention of the printing press and later the radio and after it the television led to similar social disruptions until societies adjusted to the enhancements in information exchange, the power of manipulators of public opinion diminished, and the processes of social change adapted to the new technologies. We will survive the disruptions brought on by the technology of social media. That is, if someone does not launch a nuclear missile first. There is a crisis bearing down upon us that will reunite the US and all of humanity - climate change.
145
Are you kidding. When the real effects of climate change hit hard the disruptions in societies will be enormous. Every man for himself will be more prevalent than usual.
1
"...societies adjusted to the enhancements in information exchange, the power of manipulators of public opinion diminished . . ."
Alan Wright: I would assert that this has never happened, not remotely. What has happened, by degrees, is that information has replaced knowledge and become synonymous with manipulation. We increasingly are given not knowledge on which to form an opinion, but opinions to choose from, provided by interested parties. We chase ever more simplistic & polarized versions of "our" opinions, as the alternatives become more threatening. I don't mean to suggest that the past was some Athenian utopia of knowledge & rational debate, but knowledge & rational debate did have a place in the relations between the powerful and the rest of us. Now they do not.
2
"We will survive the disruptions brought on by the technology of social media." - The historical analysis that says "we survived" the printing press, and electronic media means that we will survive social media leaves out the fact that the historical rise of the printing press and the historical rise of electronic media were quickly followed by significant carnage. In Europe, the Reformation/Counter-Reformation was triggered by the printing press, and the rise of "cheap print" and pamphleteering resulted in the overlapping civil wars in England, Scotland, and Ireland and related atrocities and carnage that still impact relations on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland today. Hitler's propaganda machine likewise harness the new technology. So, the statement "we will survive" social media really depends on who you mean by "we." If "we" = the human race, I agree with you. But the fact that millions died in the downstream history of the earlier rise of new media technologies like pamphleteering and moving images should not make us so sanguine today about our personal and families' prospects.
2
Recently spotted bumper sticker:
"Elect a clown, expect a circus"
According to Gallup's Feb 18 weekly Trump approval poll average, 37% of America are still buying tickets to the circus, now aptly renamed the Moscow Cat Circus.
Another 59% are boosting mainstream media ratings, hoping to learn when the circus is leaving town and who is going to clean up the mess this time.
Historians of all political orientations, some 91 of them, have ranked Trump dead last among American Presidents. Considering the competition around the bottom, that is impressive.
171
Look Ahead--"Got Mind?" "Question Authority." "No, I won't accept that. I have basic morals." "Think Twice Before You Act." "I Will Fight for Democracy." "Don't Necessarily Believe What You Already Think." "Gather Information."
1
That gives cat circuses a bad name.
The survey that ranked the American presidents was incredibly biased and unrepresentative of the American people. I know for a fact that all 91 surveyed historians were literate.
2
Trump's been doing hot tweets constantly. All they've done is ensure that further tweets are taken to be mere entertainment, except that foreign leaders have to be told that's what they are by Administration officials.
27
David--He's a cowardly, guilty criminal who imagines himself in prison. I hope his worst fears come true.
3
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
― George Carlin
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein
“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”
― Napoléon Bonaparte
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
“We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”
― Christopher Hitchens
Regressive, reactionary, religious, Republican America keeps rolling right along, surfing massive waves of American stupidity and heartfelt conviction that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
The Party of Stupid proudly supports their Moron-In-Chief and American 'free-dumb !'
"I'm With Stupid !" TRUMP 2018
Register and vote November 6 2018
Help cure American stupidity in your lifetime.
477
"Nobody ever got rich overestimating the intelligence (or wisdom,) of the American People."
3
Or at least put it in remission.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups...George Carlin
"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper; half have never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half...Gore Vidal
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies...Groucho Marx
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro...Hunter S. Thompson
It's easier to fool someone than convince them they were fooled...Mark Twain
2
I remember going to see a play in London in the late 60's I think the central premise of which was that the great lumpen mass of society would be controlled by watching members of the elite ruling class having sex on TV. I'm often reminded of this play by today's often coarse and sex obsessed media.
28
However, unlike the characters that Peter Finch and Andy Griffith embodied, Trump is real. We don't have a screenwriter willing to end this disaster with a classic "fall from grace" in the third act. The GOP Congress could help write the end, but as of now, their pens have been silent...
191
Perhaps the people, with mere pencils, can eventually write that downfall third act.
1
No, we don't have a screenwriter to come to the rescue, but we still have the intelligent American people left.
2
We see variations of this throughout our history while technology accelerates the pace of fake news in a way that was unimaginable even for the prescient film Network.
But while we have had demigods like like Huey Long, Joe McCarthy, George Lincoln Rockwell, David Duke and others, Trump has managed to command attention in a manner only dreamed above by other charlatans. It reminds me of the phrase, “We don’t want to look but we can’t look away either.”
He craves attention and he gets it. At any moment of the day whether it’s Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and others, it’s Trump all the time. Sure, there is heavy criticism but that doesn’t matter because it’s all about him and for Trump, publicity is what counts.
43
Exactly. The media plays right into his hands, despite that fact that he's damaging their credibility, because they can't help themselves. It's about rating and money. This is what Stalin meant when he allegedly said that "capitalism will sell the rope by which to hang itself."
3
"They lie, they exploit, they seek distraction at any price from the monotony of existence. "
That, as much as any other reason, explains Trump's election.
He was elected specifically to distract and entertain, not to actually do any "governing".
At this point, there are many more cynics in terms what people believe are the abilities of government to improve our lot. Politics and politicians are viewed as commodities by these people much more so than humans that have real abilities to shape our world for the better.
That's what results in a Trump. People, given the choice, want to be entertained, all other things being equal. Even I would admit that Trump, in a grotesque and increasingly macabre fashion, is a lot more fascinating than Hillary Clinton in a "I can't believe what he's doing now" kind of way.
Before the election, as it became clear that he had a real chance to pull off this inside straight, I feared that the practical joke of his election would be too irresistible for most people to not indulge in.
Unfortunately, my instinct was right. They wanted this circus to come to town.
Hope they're enjoying the show so far.
40
Interesting, we were in Italy in 2012 and stayed long enough to delve into Italian life behind the picture postcard facade. When we asked several Italians how Berlusconi got elected and stayed in office for so long, they said that, while Italians didn't take politics very seriously, they found Berlusconi's antics entertaining and good for a laugh. Of course he owns TV networks, Trump was the real deal, an actual cable TV entertainer. Americans, like the Italians before them, whether they love or hate DJT, are hooked on the unfolding Soap Opera in the Whitehouse.
This is the reason why we need a truly progressive agenda.
Things fall apart; including human society. It's a natural part of life on Earth; a fundamental Law.
In order to avoid being swept away by the madness, the destruction, we need to be moving forward. Always.
I grew up near the water. We had a boat. And we also had a plan for securing the boat when the weather turned ugly. We didn't wait til the hurricane flags went up. We had a plan;we had the extra ropes etc that we needed. And, though we lost some bits and pieces and took on more water than we wanted to, we never lost the boat.
32
Discouragingly, the "hot mike" moment already occurred with Trump with the Access Hollywood tape, and it did nothing to dent his popularity. It did destroy Billy Bush's career, however, perhaps making him a better person. Nothing will ever make The Donald a better person but perhaps Robert Mueller will make him an ex-president sooner rather than later.
353
The spirit of the times in America does not reflect honor or high purpose: it reflects a love of the dollar. Trump was promoted for decades because he had a TV persona and a reputation as a successful businessman. On Presidents’ Day, yesterday, the cohosts of the ABC show, The View, told us that Trump had been a guest on the show a staggering 18 times, going back through the years. Thanks ladies! Many of those who voted for Trump are not devoted followers of his but of some brand of Christianity. They rejected abortion and anything tainted by socialism. Or they followed established leaders (with old names like Graham and Falwell). In the end, the majority of Trump voters were traditional, reliable GOP voters, and were never going to vote for Clinton. Yes, America seems to be in a mess. There is little nobility of character and no sense of obligation among the profiteers of today.
75
One moment, please. I applaud the general line of this piece. I have a high regard for your thinking and writing. However, I must object to the following sentence:
"Americans voted him [Trump, that is] into office after he said that."
The English language is rich in modifiers and determiners. Properly represented, your "Americans" would clearly show themselves to be decidedly less than "the Americans" or "a majority of Americans" or even "a plurality of those Americans who voted". What you mean is that some Americans (a shamefully large number, yes) voted for Trump; those votes were cast in crucial districts; and Trump became president *without* being the People's choice.
I understand what happened here. That oddly indeterminate "Americans" shows that the sentence in question is simply one of those weak links that force themselves into the pivotal paragraphs of excellent but imperfect discourses.
It's true enough that American society, in thrall as it is to a charlatan and his admirers, exhibits dystopian madness. Many Americans have been swept up by the forces you cite, and not only since the advent of Donald Trump. If only one could refer to them as "the Americans", life would be a bit easier for essayists. The fact that one cannot do so is at least a source of hope for the country and the world.
http://thefamilyproperty.blogspot.jp/2018/01/the-voyage-to-restoration.html
12
spot on. such word carelessness is atypical of roger. "those who voted for him" is more accurate. as an upper middle class, California liberal, I do not have a fig of responsibility for this mess. sadly, I am stuck with the outcome which I really do dread.
Trump will be undone. However, he is just a symptom.
If we do not figure out how to resolve the major structural problems within this world, there will soon be another Beale or Rhodes or Trump.
61
Nothing wrong with another Beale. We could use a lot more of them.
All so true. There is biological root to this behavior. We are a tribal species. Tribes are run by authoritarian figures. We call them tribal chiefs. This forms the most elementary system of governance when societies began to organize in groups larger than hunter gatherer clans, which is about 25 people.
You do what the chief says or get tossed out and if you get tossed out, you get picked off by predators or other competing tribes. This creates reproductive selection to breed following into our behaviors. In fact, some anthropologists have written that society is comprised of about 10% leaders and 90% followers. Nature has achieved this balance so that there are enough followers to have cohesive society which improves reproductive fitness and the 10% provide social and technological advance which does so also.
Religion is also structured around central, authoritarian figures. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, were all authoritarian figures.
Basically, I'm arguing that nature has created us to all act like a bunch of sheep. The 10% reads this paper. Many, many more worship at the feet of Hannity and Limbaugh who tell them what to do. They are the chiefs to the followers.
What Trump and the GOP have done is exploit this inherent weakness in humanity for profit and power. Those that follow have no idea that they are being led. They think they are independent agents. They are not. They are sheep. Their flock is pushing all of us over a cliff.
155
"Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, were all authoritarian figures."
I can't speak for all of them, but neither Jesus nor Buddha was authoritarian. They may have been regarded as authorities, but that's very different from being authoritarian.
Read what they wrote, then read up on authoritarianism. You can start with Bob Altemeyer's research. For one thing, there's a very strong insider/outsider element to authoritarianism that is completely absent in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha. See the parable of the Good Samaritan (which deliberately portrays as hero a despised outsider) and the Buddhist saying, "If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha" and its insistence that you take nothing on faith. (Sorry, I'm not too up on Buddhist teachings.)
Both are far from authoritarian, whatever conservative Christians of today would have you believe.
2
But I thought humans were the most intelligent form of life.
I would hardly call the Buddha an authoritarian figure.
1
Let's blame the victims here. The real fact here is that almost all media outlets are corporately owned and their message is tailored to keep the oligarchy I power by distraction and misinformation. Although inartfully stated, Trump is right about the concept of "fake news" being applicable to mass media. The response has been what it always is; the commandeering of language to make his accusation of fake news into something else in the minds of the public. Ordinarily, corporate media loves the election of conservative, corporate supporting candidates, but Trump committed a cardinal sin to cause the oligarchy to turn against him, he used a "populist" message to get elected(albeit he had no intention of being a populist after election). But if the readers of the NYTs need any proof that the media commandeers language, research the meaning of the word populist. It was previously not a perjorative term in that it implies support for the working class over the interests of corporate and wealthy interests.
9
Also to be included, Roger, I'm thinking of the GW Bush III administrative operative who told a reporter, "We create our own reality every day." And then we have Trump, who is the apotheosis of this. What is so tragic and frightening to me is that Trump's followers will NOT know when he is compromised. They will refuse to know. He's their religion; he's all they have left; they're betting the house on him. "Apres lui, L' enfer!"
53
The madness of American crowds, today, in 2018, with respect to politics?
Probably since the birth of WMD, and following both World Wars in the 20th century, the advanced societies have been in an ironic situation. On one hand the masses must be stabilized, controlled, are considered dangerous, must be managed, must not swing too far to the left or the right politically, but on the other hand the narrative that the highest quality people in all spheres of life are in the public sphere must be maintained, that in controlling the masses we are not cutting into possibility of towering genius, when of course we are cutting into exactly that and lowering the standard of excellence.
Prior to the two great wars, WMD, and for all suspicion concerning the masses, the masses could neither be controlled enough nor were considered dangerous enough to cut into production of great military leaders, great artists, great scientists, triumphs in virtually all fields. But now the masses must be controlled, must be managed as sheep, and all fields have seen a sharp decline in the towering genius. Instead we have public figures who seem not much better than the average person in crowd, and this sets up a tremendous hostility. Why should such and such a person be considered the best in his or her field when obviously history shows there were better in the past and that there must be any number of actual contenders today? It's a contemptible life, sheep led by not much more than sheep.
5
May I name an example of the madness of crowds where madness takes on its other possible meaning, justifiably angry.
Listen to Emma Gonzalez - video and transcribed text readily available - and to the crowd call and response. A voice whose sanity is an infinite distance from that of the Senator from Florida, and a crowd supporting her sanity.
Yes, I know that perhaps the sanity of some in that crowd is already weakening. I read that some teachers want to become armed and that in Alabama a law has been proposed to arm them. Individual insanity on display.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
31
This semester I showed my Media Programming & Ratings class "Network." I have been doing this for more than a dozen years. The primary reason is that Paddy Chayefsky so perfectly uses the terms and concepts of the television business, but it is also to remind my college students that:
"You're beginning to believe this illusion we're spinning here...."
33
Your contention that people voted for Donald Trump because they were "bored" (paragraph 6) is severely incorrect. 60% of the country has less than $500 in savings, we also have declining life expectancy among demographics that are key to Trump's support. So maybe the people that voted for Trump got "bored" with lives of financial insecurity and declining health?
16
Well good luck with Trump and his acolytes fixing that. The ACA and many Obama initiatives were a path to helping more citizens get a leg up, maybe clean the air and water and hold the financial hegemony in check. Instead of incremental improvements on these issues we get Trump and the GOP taking us back 50 years right before our eyes.
These policies being enacted are not going to end well. It may take awhile but it will not be pretty.
3
D Cassidy, your theory has been proven wrong. The average trump voter did better financially than average American. The poorest Americans, who work for minimum wage and struggle with their bills, voted for Clinton.
3
ah...here is the conundrum, are these followers bored because they lack the education to achieve more or the capacity to improve their lives, or simply sheep following the carnival barker to escape the dismal realization of their situation? What about the rest of us, who are being unwittingly caught in the whirlpool.
1
And thus explains the right-wing embrace of Charter Schools while attacking higher education. Make generations of intellectually challenged and indoctrinated citizens who are easily motivated by reinforcing the falsity of thought, replaced by anger, frustration and miscalculations.
45
Cohen column today is more observation than insight.
We all know Trump is a charlatan - yet we duly elected him. The greater shame is that he is just so much worse than the other "leaders" here in America that have been selling us all easy answers to complex problems. And this goes not just for our Presidents - the hyper focus of our 24/7 media - but also for our Congress, Judiciary and state and local elected officials.
We as Americans have tuned out from being an engaged electorate and, more importantly, citizens since we are no longer involved in resolving anything. If your school is being poorly run you can't change it without going to your local leaders, then to your State court, then to your state leaders, then to a higher State or a Federal court, then to Congress, then to a higher Federal court and then finally to the Supreme Court. And so it goes for health care, environmental issues, etc.
Our Republic has lost any level of commonality and common sense with the people. Think about it - when a rogue county clerk contravenes a law regarding gay marriage licenses isn't this better resolved locally than turning this in to a Federal case and media spectacle that then gets played out needlessly for months on end?
Our Republic is in crisis and its more than just Trump or the madness of crowds.
14
One of the best pieces written by Roger Cohen. America has lost its social cohesion.
Russians are only exploiting America's moment of political weakness and vulnerability.
The 21st-century war is being played via the Internet and social media. The national security damage being done by Donald Trump will be costly.
29
Your superb piece also reminds me that Reinhold Niebuhr, an inspiration for James Comey and Dr. Martin Luther King, believed that groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. And, no, I don’t think Trump is an individual in the sense any of them intended.
12
Mueller can only take us so far. My great fear ( and prediction) is that Trump will stand for high crimes and misdemeanors and NOT be impeached. The next "movie" to be written about will be the horror show we all will be living for the balance of the Trump administration when he remains in office and the country descends further.
63
As I approach my 59th year on earth, I admit to having been part of the “maddening crowd” at one point or another. Everyone has been influenced by social, economic, techno, and media, to varying degrees. What differentiates people is their ability and/or wanting to search out reputable sources of information and filter that info through an open lens. What we have today are lazy thinkers who are easily attracted to like-minded sources, being individuals, crowds, or media. These same people are the perfect targets of those who wish to manipulate the conversation. There is power in wisdom. Unfortunately, the inverse does not always follow suite.
13
For what it's worth, Mr. Trump has never fooled all of the people all of the time. He has not fooled Mr. Cohen, most readers of this newspaper or virtually anyone else whose living depends on getting their facts straight -- journalists, college professors, scientists, and most of important of all, the courts, the FBI and his own Department of Justice.
He isn't the first to stain our democracy (Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Nixon) and probably won't be the last.
Trump succeeds because his narcissistic personality regularly spawns fantastic claims about what he does and what is capable of (e.g reforming health care, but also how much money his casinos would make before they didn't and went bankrupt) and he is wealthy enough to surround himself with the cache of success. And he has mastered the art, for better or worse, of branding himself and his political opposition in ways that create neat, tidy packages that make him popular among people whose natural tendency is to assume that important people are important for a reason and are generally reliable without dwelling too much on substance. He gets votes for the same reason that it is easier to fill a football stadium than a concert hall and for the same reason that people flock to super hero movies more than "art" films.
On an optimistic note, Mr. Cohen writes without the fear that people speaking up under past demagogues have had to live with. There is plenty better than Trump, but there have been worse, too.
13
Last night I heard an interview on the radio with one of the Trump supporters who had been targeted by the Russian spies. He sounded pleased that the Russians "chose" his anti-Hillary campaign to use in their ads. He saw manipulation by Russians as a feather in his cap. He definitely sounded closer to the Russians with whom he agreed than with Americans who supported Hillary. How "off" is that? How do you fix that? Are we too far gone?
93
Thank you, Roger, this is brilliant. Lonesome Rhodes pegged us exactly right. Nothing speaks more to the depravity of our current situation than the spectacle of those who cherish and revere 23 ambiguous words written on a piece of parchment 240 some years ago over the lives of innocent school children slaughtered on a regular basis in this country.
22
Lonesome Rhodes is not representative of a lower class, but of the failure of parental support. As I recall the movie, his mother had a lot of uncles who she slept with, (but then so did John Vann in the movie "Bright Shining Lie" where he tried hard to live up to the ideals because his mother was a victim of the system -- which he tried to change. Both are the consequence of a social system and cultural influence. A break-down in community standards at every level (but not in every community).
Hitler's father was so brutal to his sons that his stepbrother left home as soon as he was able, to avoid further beatings, leaving Adolph to deal with the brutal beatings of his father.
Then there is an opposite extreme in "Glass Castle" where the parents, although highly dysfunctional, loved each other and did everything they could to keep their family intact. They continually supported their kids who relied on each other and all ended up with contented lives in NY except for one who unknowingly traded food & clothes for family connection.
The child is the father of the man; In Trump's case, he never left being a child and is probably the most confused individual on Earth. Consider the legacy of his grandfather who made a fortune exploiting women, gold miners, etc. and for all his gold grasping, was not allowed to return to Germany, so he came to the only place that would accept him. His grandson must be one very confused individual.
Too much contradiction in character -- if any.
2
Republican and Trumpian strategy have coalesced around a simple principle: give people more money and they will give you their allegiance, even if they don't like you.
Tax cuts, spending cuts, deficit spending, stripping out regulations that protect people, environment and the economy will put another thousand or so dollars into many annual incomes, at least until these short term measures expire.
It's classic bait and switch, but it will buy Trump and his enablers their eight years...and then who cares? Eventually Democrats get reelected and spend their eight years trying to clean up the mess (Obama's task) while Republicans obstruct their efforts and blame Democrats for the mess left by the previous administration.
We've seen this all before, but public memory is short, and that extra 30 bucks a week is hard to fault, even when accelerating monetary inflation eats up wage increases and leaves all but the affluent running in place.
21
Well done Mr. Cohen, well done.
I am not sure why the obvious Trump card is not discussed more. In the very near future he will pardon all those around him and himself for their treasonous acts. This legal inoculation will hold because Mitch and Paul won't act to impeach, and that's the only legal recourse.
So it falls to political recourse to remedy this situation. Voters will have one last opportunity to right these wrongs in the fall.
If we fail, we have no one else to blame.
11
“'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, O.K.?' he declared during the campaign."
Trump loves the uneducated, remember? So during the election, he didn't waste their time, or anyone else's time, with boring policy details. Even today, he keeps his desk empty, just like his mind -- of any substance, that is. He doesn't need to know anything -- that's what the little people around him are for -- he just needs to keep playing The Great Communicator Part II, and all will be well. After all, Trump spent most of his life learning how to manipulate and con people: in real-estate deals, with contractors, with beauty pageants, in casino gambling, in the NFL. "The beat goes on," he relays in "The Art of the Deal."
So far it has worked out for him. His ego would not allow him to reject the presidency once he won it, even though he apparently did not expect to, according to "Fire and Fury." Now he has a front row seat watching as it could all go down in flames, taking the family empire with it.
Indeed, there is a madness to crowds. But also a wisdom. It looks like it is the latter that Trump never really thought through.
5
This is a myopic view.
100 years ago, most people lived in the country, and corporations were less than 5% of the country. Your neighbors and the family you saw often all lived within 30 miles of you. Today, cultural wars online look at things phenomenologically, and without accepted norms of our neighbors and community, nothing stands as a given.
Hobbes had a schizoid character flaw, one which does not allow for friends or family, or appeals to humanity. We are isolated. We are atomized.
To stay scared is to be controlled by the powerful.
2
'You can't fool all the people all the time.' - but a power wielder can fool subjects by holding position, power, influence and fear over those somewhat less powerful and equally influential but within lesser spheres of influence. Example: The Republican Congress, who surely and collectively understand Trump's short comings but who also fully understand their own vulnerabilities. Trump can brazenly threaten to shoot someone on 5th Avenue, Congressional leadership will not object to ugly rhetoric so long as their own (and spouse and family and friends) office, lobbying future and reputation might be compromised if they did, if they do.
'The little' people rely on local leaders to set them straight, especially on policy and that trust can be easily compromised from those who wield the levers of information.
2
Pretty sobering. We were born to die and Life is a distraction from the Ultimate Event.
2
Not to quibble, well, ok, to quibble - you state that "Americans voted [dt] into office," but we didn't; the electoral college put him there.
21
So...it’s not as bad as all that, after all?
Well, that all sounds pretty gloomy. Just wait until the masters of the universe replace us all with robots that don't need to be paid. How will we distract ourselves 'from the monotony of existence' then? Enlightenment through lowered expectations? Expectations of what?
It is said that when the ships of Christopher Columbus sailed over the horizon towards the eastern shores of our continent, they could not be seen by anyone except the chief of a tribe, an enlightened being who was able to see what others had never seen before. The others had no frame of reference until he gave it to them. Then, they too, could see.
We are those people on the shore who do not see. Until we do, there's no saving us from what we have wrought. Lowered expectations are not going to save us. Removing them might be a start. At least it opens the door to unconsidered possibilities. A hot mic is not one I personally have considered, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
4
Not to ever suggest that Trump supporters likely favor country music over all other forms, but there is a similar device used in both pop country songs and the messaging of Donald Trump: the concept of hook; that line or series of lines which, like a drug make the listener addicted to what they are hearing. Country songs, especially the bad ones, are all about the hook, a key phrase such as, for example, "Make America Great Again" or "we're going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it," and it makes no difference if the rest of the words within the mix of the lyrics support or defeat its meaning, the hook is most of what the listener hears, remembers and is addicted to. So each time President Trump shouts from the rafters about whatever nonsense strikes his fancy, whatever chicken fertilizer is currently posing as caviar, his supporters only hear his ugly red baseball cap shouting "Make America Great Again."
6
Hooks in a song can be quite satisfying. It made the Beatles' music great. What is dangerous is the musical ear worm as in the Maccarena song. The worm is a slimy, brainless, ugly creature. It reminds me of our dear leaders.
3
I am surprised that Mr.Cohen left out
Robert Penn Warren's "All The King's Men."
it is the greatest political novel written in
the English language,in my judgement.
his portrayal of the Huey Long character,
Willie Stark,is a study in the very nature
of mob manipulation. I recommend it
to everyone who cares what Mr. Trump is
doing to America.
13
Frank forgets that this is a novel. Those who make movies seem to live in terror of genuine Populists, like William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long. I suggest Frank and others who lump Huey Long with fascists actually read some history, like T. Harry Williams's biography of Long and/or Alan Brinkley's Voices of Protest. The Stark character is a wrong-headed parody of a man who, whatever his personal flaws, led a "Share Our Wealth" movement that pulled FDR to the left, got him to back Social Security, a new labor law, and higher income taxes. It's a shame our cultural elites put so much faith in movies and so little in historical facts.
For one, Trumps latest approval poll puts him at a 42% (an average across all the major polls). Thus, the comment "...but they know when their president is compromised" is nonsense. Second, the quote implies that Trump is compromised. By what? The fact that the Russians spent $1.25 million dollars in the last election, some of it on anti-Trump ads promoted by CNN? Last time I checked, Obama was the President when this occurred and it has also been verified that Obama was informed of the problem by the FBI - and did nothing to stop it.
4
99.9 % of what Roger said is true, except for 65,844,954 million people who did not succumb to the madness- deciding to believe in those Better Angles (for themselves, their families and the nation).
7
Mr.Cohen,America has madness not only in the uneducated classes there is madness among the educated class as in the NYT and its readers,blaming the Russians for electing Donald.The russians have only done on a small scale what america has done big time for a long time which is interfering in other countries politics,elections,coups and the USA is proud of its interference.Its called American Exceptionism,
12
Yes! Of course, we should find it concerning that any other country should “interfere” in our elections but I can’t believe a few million dollars in ads influenced very many voters to change their minds. What about the many more millions spent on ads by our candidates and their PACs that were as toxic and ugly as anything the Russians could come up with?
America has, by far, been the worst interfering country in recent history: installing dictators of our choosing, assationations of leaders we don’t find to our liking, regime changes and the endless wars in the Middle East and Asia that have killed so many.
We are not only sheep but also hypocrites.
4
The problem with an article like this and the viewpoint it comes from is that it believes the people are fooled. They are not. Those republicans all knew Obama was born in Hawaii. They know climate change is real. They know Trump is in bed with the Russians. We know this because when these people take surveys for free, they give all these side-protecting answers. But if you say you will pay them, they can tell you all of the counter arguments that show they are wrong.
They aren't fooled, they are just going along for the ride. Liberals like to tell themselves this lie about being fooled and trying to educate the masses because it makes them feel like there is something they can do. Anything to feel not powerless.
There's a lessons that we need to learn. You can't "fix" someone that doesn't want your help. It's the family of addicts problem: you want so desperately to change their behavior, to help end their own suffering, but at the end of the day they have to work on themselves and if they don't want your help you can't make it better. The End. Feel powerless.
Now, instead of focusing on their deflections and manipulations, focus on the justifications they tell themselves to defend their own behavior: fear of their own community, using flaws of the other side to justify their own bad behavior, relabeling their actions to obscure their content. For example, stop reporting what they "say" they support and instead report what they do to support or oppose only.
72
Brilliant comment. Far too much bandwidth is wasted, all day evety day, discussing what anti-everything-good Trump and his craven mob of emotional cretins and power-lusting politicians SAY and not enough revealing what they DO.
This country is teetering on the edge of a very dark abyss and dithering, tut-tut conversations will do nothing about that.
The streets of DC should be full and business-as-usual should be frozen until the cabal of evil is removed from government.
2
"Every now and again, along comes somebody, or some new technology, or both, capable of taking this raw human material and shaping it into a crazed, baying, hypnotized mob that is convinced the Great Leader has come."
Your film examples, and the passage written by your father (I actually thought it was from some English political scientist during the industrial revolution!) are great.
As for the Trump phenomenon, I've also thought it resembles Jim Jones. And we know what happened to him and his followers.
We are so divided, it's a cliche. Right can't accept left, left thinks right has lost its collective minds.
I like your hot mic reference--remember the "true" Romney when you watch him run in Nevada--but please, Mr. Cohen, Trump has hot mics every day that have never cost him support.
I don't think you're thinking through the full ramifications of Trump's perverse psyche that can twist a mass shooting into a political rant about how the FBI spends its time.
Also the films you cite--Jim Jones too--represent discrete movements, which are contained. Contrast that to our "Messiah" whose power over the entire country is existential.
Do you really think his supporters would wake up if he declared martial law, nuked North Korea, or cancelled the midterm elections?
I sure don't.
Where it all ends up is anyone's guess. I just hope this administration isn't the one that proves Abe Lincoln wrong.
230
I don't like correcting you, but Mr. Romney is running in Utah, not Nevada. Otherwise, I always enjoy reading your comments.
@wolf201: Wow, my bad. Slip of the brain, thanks for correcting this and your general comment.
2
Do you really think his supporters would wake up if he declared martial law, nuked North Korea, or cancelled the midterm elections?
The tragedy is that what you say is absolutely true. Hannity and Limbaugh would tell their disciples it is to save America and they would believe.
2
REAL lesson? Don’t bore Americans. We could elect Howard Beale. And 1976 was just before they started widely prescribing lithium for acute mania. Worse, we might bring back “Celebrity Apprentice”.
On a brief aside, I’ve never been partial to chopped liver.
The “hot mic” may have been what undid John Kerry in 2004, but it’s unlikely ever to undo Donald Trump. Over a long lifetime during which EVERYONE knows he’s probably said a TON of politically incorrect and at times truly awful things, he’s been caught only once – that Billy Bush ambush. Trump understands mics, although once in a great while he grants the wrong individual his personal trust. Besides, we know that he reads the Times, so, with Roger’s column, he’s forewarned.
Roger, oddly for his years (he’s three months younger than I) and for the breadth of his travels, apparently has never learned that ALL people and peoples are meshuganah. If you take them too seriously, your children will find you at 5:00 AM hanging from a chandelier above an overturned chair. And all for insistence by authorities that liquor stores and bars close so early.
And then there’s Prozac.
13
I prefer 'delusions' of grandeur myself. They're cheap, effective, and impervious to corruption by lesser mortals no number of which have been able to disabuse me of them. I understand their logic, just have never seen the advantage it affords them.
I loved the place I came from. Miss it terribly sometimes. The endorphins I release when I dream my way back there are real and a far better place than the one Cohen describes. No hangover either.
3
Memi:
Somehow ... I don't feature you suffering from a hangover even the morning after you've downed an entire bottle of Canadian Club.
1
I hear you, Mr. Cohen, but then I read an article in the Times and elsewhere this morning that indicates that Americans are feeling more positive about the GOP's massive tax cut because they are seeing a few extra bucks in their paycheck. And as a result, Trump's abysmal ratings are beginning to inch up, as they are for the Republican-led Congress, a fact which has political pundits now predicting that the party of the rich can hold on to its Congressional majority in the fall, and that Trump may very well win-re-election in 2020.
And all I can do is echo the fictional Mr. Beale's rage, rage, at the dying of the light settling over our land.
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The Chamber of Commerce is spending millions to convince people that the tax cuts are great for them. They have been joined by corporations doing the same and even making one time bonuses in order to keep the employee voters from demanding repeal. Young republican college students are funded to do canvassing that emphasizes the tax cuts for people.
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Latest Gallup poll 59% disapprove 37% approve...anything over 35% is soft support.
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I'm seeing these polls about the tax cuts and Trump's approval ratings and feel sick to my stomach. I myself am getting an extra 20 bucks in my paychecks. So what? That 20 bucks is nothing compared to the long-term damage this president and these tax cuts are doing to this country. I was hoping other Americans would feel the same way, but no. They are apparently okay with seeing their own country burn just for the temporary satisfaction of a few extra dollars that will be rendered useless by inflation anyways. The glimpse of hope I was feeling for 2018 is now being replaced by foreboding.
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Thank you Mr. Cohen for another spot-on column. As Fintan O'Toole describes in his review in the current NYRB of the current London stage production of "Network", Chayefsky struggled in his movie to describe exactly what the people were "mad as hell about". Today, I think much of what our current political primal scream is about is captured in the paragraph from your father's high school magazine - "the stresses set up by the social changes wrought by the advent of technology are straining the structure of civilization beyond the limits of tolerance". And the question is, what can be done about that? So far at least, we haven't a good answer. Neither party has it at this point, although the Democrats are closer with their recognition of the need for a strong(er) social safety net. If the wealthy are incapable, out of some combination of ignorance or arrogance, of recognizing that their fate is also tied to the answer we are in for a tough go. Lacking an answer, there will be an endless stream of Trumps, each likely worse than the last.
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The problem of modern society is not that technology is straining the structures of civilization, it is that a set of people have decided that this is a zero-sum game, and the more they make other people lose, the more they gain for themselves.
If you could, resurrect Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House for 10 years from 1977 to 1987, and have him join Congress to observe for a few weeks. In the end, he'll tell you he doesn't recognize anyone, not even the people that he actually worked with in the 80s, because they have been transformed into animals.
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I doubt that even a hot mic will undo Trump. Most of Donald's followers take the man seriously, but not literally.
Either Mueller will produce a smoking gun, or the voters will have the chance to retire Donald in 2020.
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Or the voters will reelect Trump in 2020. He is at 40% on CNN, 46% on Rasmussen, and an average of 42%. This with one bad story following another.
Democrats need to stop deluding themselves. The possibility of a Trump reelection looms larger everyday. The Orange Menace must be stopped. Democracy will not survive a second Trump term.
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Our Orange Jabberwock, His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness, was 'compromised' from the day he was sworn in.
But he arrived where he is due to the enabling of the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions at the Roberts SCOTUS, and the sedition of GOP'ers who threw the Constitution aside, pretending a 2-term Dem POTUS could not nominate a SCOTUS Justice past the 85th month of his 96 months in office.
The same GOP'ers who allowed onto their primary ballots a serial bankruptee fraudster, who would not produce his tax returns, and has packed the White House with people who cannot pass their FBI back-ground checks, who are busily stuffing the Federal Judiciary with lifetime appointees - repeating - people who shouldn't even be in their positions, are skewing the Federal Judiciary, and even when this administration is gone, the judiciary legacy will persist.
And these are the same GOP'ers who refused to sign on to a letter telling Americans in 2016 what our Intel agencies had discovered regarding Russia's cyber-attacks on our approaching election:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-leaders-russia-hacking_us_58513...
All the while, Russian oligarchs were contributing millions to GOP'er campaigns across-the-board:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/4/1687031/-Dallas-Morning-News-R...
America's 2-party political system isn't equipped for the sedition of one of the parties.
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Hillary Clinton supporters just do not get it. Both candidates had negative polls. Hillary was so disliked that at the Democratic Convention the boos from the Bernie Sanders crowd were hard to miss. Polls showed earlier in the Spring of 2016 that Sanders had the larger lead against Trump than Hillary. But he was running as a Democrat and the party's establishment, which included Congresswoman Deborah Wasserman Shultz, were working against Sanders.
I read recently where the Obamas will received $70 million plus for their autobiographies. This is very Clintonian, which is why we need to support Sanders in 2020, not to bring the country to the political left, but to bring it back to the center.
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Vote Republicans out in 2018 and 2020. Then lock them up. Orange is, after all, Dumpy Don's color.
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@Mark - Let's worry about 2018 before talking about 2020; it's important Dems don't lose focus, since rabid ferret GOP'ers (hat tip Gail Collins) must be thrown out in 2018, before even more irreparable damage can be done:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/opinion/destructive-political-tribali...®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront
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