This Is The Problem -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/03/11/this-is-the-problem/

Trump’s Grand Narrative that rationalizes all the chaos and extreme policies is that Biden left him the worst economy since the Great Depression, maybe even worse than that. They are all saying that it was in a massive crisis requiring emergency measures to keep the country from collapsing.

The media is not correcting them and people are all too eager to believe that the price of eggs is a catastrophe and that we must to anything and everything including decimating the federal government in order to bring it down. We are a very stupid country and our mainstream press is not helping.

Trump believes, and not without reason, that he can convince most Americans that up is down and black is white and he may just do it. It’s Bizarro World.

Reality just last fall:













I don’t want to hear anyone agreeing that the economy was in crisis when Trump took over. It is now and it’s all on him, every single bit of it. If he had any faculties left he would have played it cool and had Elon do some “studies” and hold off on the tariffs and he could have ridden the Biden recovery to success the way he rode Obama’s. Instead he’s acting like the demented old man he is and here we are.

[NNadir]

1. Correct absolutely!!! The problem is the thing in the White House lies and gaslights without correction

As was the case in Germany from 1933-1945, bald faced lies - aka propaganda - is adopted by the media as truth.

One sees this historically in accounts of Germans and Japanese who still thought, as late as 1945, "victory" in the 2nd World War even as their cities were being blown to pieces in front of their eyes. One hopes that doesn't happen here, but it no longer seems impossible that it will.

Anyone who confuses the bulk of the population with rational beings will be unpleasantly surprised.

[erronis]

2. This is probably also why Japanese airmen/soldiers went into kamikaze missions.

And the true believers who lived in caves in the Philippines believing that the war was still raging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda

I'll bet that the magats will hold onto their cultish beliefs till their bitter end.

[NNadir]

5. Because of my interest in the only nuclear war that ever occurred...

...I have over the years made readings in the Japanese decision to surrender an extensive focus of my efforts to comprehend the morality of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaski. At different times I've come down on both sides of the still unsettled sides of the debate.

Even after the atomic bombings there were still elements of the Japanese government that wanted to fight on. There were efforts to have a coup and destroy the recording of the Emporer's speech announcing the surrender. Note that in terms of deaths and magnitude of destruction the damage done by the nuclear weapons, while qualitatively different, were not quantitatively worse than conventional weapons in terms of loss of life and destroyed infrastructure.

This was a sterling example of cult thinking. The orange mold in the White House is a cult object.

[IronLionZion]

9. I would love to send MAGAts to go serve in Russia

they can camp out in Siberia holding out to the bitter end for their beliefs

[oldmanlynn]

3. Thanks for this. I saved those so i can push them out

Going to push them out to Facebook Instagram, Elon Musk’s Twitter thread wherever I can

[NNadir]

4. This one needs a kick.

[jgmiller]

6. Agree entirely

The other problem is we sit here and talk about GDP and unemployment rate , CPI etc and that's what Biden did but average people don't understand any of that or care about it. They think it's all double speak because they don't understand.

120 years ago most people had a lot less formal education that people do today but I think because of that those people tried to understand things more, they paid more attention and they were more engaged in the world around them because they depended on that for their survial.

[malaise]

7. Great OP

Rec

[Martin Eden]

8. Ari Melber had a Repuke guest who asserted inflation was escalating over the last two years of Biden's term

I was pretty pissed when Ari didn't even try to shoot down.

[RVN VET71]

10. There is no denying Americans' stupidity

77,000,000 people voted for a man who hurt the economy the first time around, and pushed a wedge between white and non-white, between Fundamentalist Christians and reasonable people, between sexual and religious bigots and, again, reasonable people. In addition, he also began working on destroying NATO and the Ukraine. 77,000,000 people said they were OK with that.

(I could list all of the wretched, hateful and incompetent things Trump "accomplished", but it would take up more than a page just listing the headlines.)

Biden was trying to stitch the divided country back together, but the marching morons of MAGA voted his successor out of office and reinstated the dismal failure that the cowering and traitorous GOP nominated to run again.

49.6% of the vote is a lot of morons.
Hitler only got around 36% in Germany.

With 36% of the vote, Hitler managed to kill 100,000,000 people.
Imagine what the failed real-estate mogul, convicted felon, rapist, liar, psychopath can accomplish.

77,000,000 feckin' Idjits, as the Irish would say.

[erronis]

11. Agree - but I'll lay a ton of blame on the bought-paid-for media (BTW - ain't liberal)

The russki's and others knew that the general populace was hooked on T.V. (or later incarnations) with titillation and fear stroking their amygdalas. The waves of propaganda came flooding in after cable and the demise of the fairness doctrine.

What's not to like about this picture? Sell licenses to watch your smut laden with subliminal messaging and push a political platform that will destroy what's left of governmental regulation.