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OPINION: A white yacht, perhaps 20 feet long, lay on its side in the shallow water, waves crashing against its innards and the mast piercing the spray at 40 degrees. His two sailors sat, still shaking, under a pōhutukawa tree, surrounded by cold containers, ropes, towels, and shoes. The motor had stopped running at 2 am, they said, and she had been thrown so hard into the sand that her beams snapped.
Onetangi Bay is a bite deep in the shape of Waiheke Island and is protected; but at each end are teeth, ragged black rocks.
Then it could have been worse.
The next morning, the ship’s corpse was still there, sadly dividing one of the best beaches on the island.
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A wrecked yacht! What a metaphor, two days after the elections, for the fate of old political certainties: an elite ship, tossed by nature nose first in the sand, with seaweed dangling from its rear.
Alex Brandon / AP
Conservative American commentator David Frum’s latest book looks at how a demagogue like Donald Trump put his thick gloves on the helm of power and how to prevent it from happening again.
American political writer David Frum has a new Trump book published, and the first chapter is titled “The Smash-up.”
Frum is not a liberal politician; from 2001 to 2002 he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Like many old-school American conservatives, Donald Trump has unleashed it. Unlike most of them, he writes magnificently grumpy prose.
Comparatively few of Trump’s voters were intentionally bad actors. Most of them were fallible human beings like everyone else. They were misled by people they trusted. Fox News and Facebook locked them up as farmed salmon within a lagoon of ignorance. Then, irresponsible politicians dragged them into their nets ”.
This raging volume Trumpocalypse ($ 64.99, HarperCollins), is a companion to his latest furious volume, The New York Times best seller Trompocracy, which depicted Trump and his pack busily nibbling at the piles of American government, the very things Americans brag about most, the very things Republicans used to consider important.
Alex Brandon / AP
The 2016 Trump campaign successfully radicalized older Americans. Those 65 and older voted for him over Hillary Clinton by a factor of 58% to 39%.
Having argued that Trump is evil, venal, lazy and dangerously ignorant, in this book Frum offers answers to the question on the world’s lips, excuse me, but real WT F? How did a demagogue put his thick gloves on the helm and how to prevent it from happening again?
If Frum occasionally sounds like Abraham Lincoln on acid, he makes so many good points we could forgive him for it, and for being so virtuous and virulently anti-Twitter, while citing him so generously.
Your data points rain like bullets. “Trumpism got its strength from older Americans, especially the Baby Boomer generation. Until 2000, Americans over 65 did not vote noticeably differently than those younger than themselves. But as the country became more diverse, and with the rise of Fox News after 1996 and Facebook after 2006, older Americans have become radicalized. Those 65 and older voted for Trump over Clinton [by] 58 to 39 in 2016 “.
American boomers, he says, are less able to recognize fake news when they see it, are more likely to be influenced by it, and are more likely to share it on Facebook. This is a generation that is overwhelmingly concerned about immigration, rather than climate change.
Frum is a conservative with a small c, a species that, in polarized times, appears almost on the brink of extinction. But he makes a series of urgent and reasonable-sounding pleas: disarm the American voting system; that a greener planet will create more jobs, not fewer, and, in a chapter titled “Against Revenge,” that Trump’s voters are fellow countrymen and fellow citizens. “His destiny will determine ours.”
Abigail Dougherty / Stuff
Jenny Nicholls: “However, we can be proud of one thing. In New Zealand, Trump’s political style is stuck … “
Although, as he points out, support for Trump keeps falling from peaks that were never particularly impressive anyway. Trump, as is known, never won the popular vote. In 2016, he won 46.09 of the vote – less than Mitt Romney lost in 2012.
“Non-Trump America is more diffuse than pro-Trump America,” writes Frum. “Its political strength is discounted by the bias of a political system that weighs some votes more than others. However, ultimately, it is the strongest part of the country, economically and culturally. “
Although, as you warn, in a golden condo somewhere an even more terrifying shadow stands, waiting and plotting.
“Trump transferred a brutal style of politics from right-wing media culture to electoral politics. Unless decisively repudiated in 2020, that style will outlast Trump. Next time, perhaps, it will be tested by a politician with a stronger work ethic, sharper intellect, and less personality complexes … if Trump could have ruled his mouth and shut down his Twitter account, he could have reasonably achieved a presidency popular, at least for a couple of years. “
A chilling thought.
However, we can be proud of one thing. In New Zealand, the Trumpian political style lies beached, its mast a brief refuge for a gull commentator, its hull empty already half buried in the sand by a fresh new wind.
