President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300080)
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Have you ever dealt with really pushy salespeople? You know, the kind that just will not take No for an answer? A lot of them are trained in this way to never accept a negative response and to keep re-presenting their sales pitch endlessly. American sales people are particularly like this. After all, America has perfected the sales pitch psychology. I mean, all this death of a salesman crap is just that – crap. Buying Trump in the land of the sales pitch. Donald Trump comes from this background. You know, the art of the deal and all that. Trump and the GOP have gone back to the American people and presented their promises and pitch once more. The population is so used to this behaviour, living in this sales orientated land,  that they have bought the same bunch of baloney again.

Voting For The Party That Rips Off The Poor

The incredible thing is that the country has elected the mob that is ripping them off and has been doing so for decades. The Republican party traditionally represent the establishment, the bosses and the wealthy. They have reinvented themselves via MAGA and the politics of grievance as supposed change agents. Trump positions himself as the champion of the disgruntled American voter. The game has become who can get to the head of the victim queue and claim their victimhood status loudest. Middle class white Americans have not been shy in their acceptance of this victim mantle. Pushing aside DEI and branding it prejudicial against their own interests has become a populist theme.

brown haired girl in orange jacket and blue pants sitting on blue and brown concrete post
Buying Trump

Disgruntled Americans Purchasing MAGA Promises

Downward envy is a term used to describe this phenomenon, where the diversity inclusion policies for African and Asian Americans are envied by the whites. The individual ranks his or her personal grievance greater than that of the statistical imbalance indicated by actual facts and figures within the nation. Micro over macro concerns and the GOP strategists champion these for their political gain. The politics of grievance encourages voters to dig deep into their own deposits of resentment. The late Robert Hughes identified America as the culture of complaint and this has grown into the bitter fruit we now see before us. Buying Trump in the land of the sales pitch.

Downward Envy & The Zero Sum Game

It is easier to blame the weak and those lower down the food chain than yourself. Punching down rather than taking the fight to those actually stealing your lunch occurs in bullying cultures. Blaming minorities and refugees falls into this camp. Americans have long embraced white supremacy as a way of keeping African Americans down. The zero sum game is dear to many white Americans. This is why so many Americans continue to vote for people like Trump and what they represent- winners versus losers.

A better vision of human society is to bring everyone up to parity. This is not happening in a country of billionaires and tens of millions of working poor. Of Elon Musk’s’ and the fabulously wealthy, when there is so much poverty.

United States of America flag on window pane

Lowering Taxes For The Rich

The GOP is always lowering taxes for the rich  and denying their responsibility for helping the poor. Americans have bought, hook, line and sinker, the BS about individuals pulling themselves up by their boot straps. Meanwhile, whites have denied economic opportunities for African Americans over decades and centuries. When slavery was abolished there wasn’t a sustained economic rebalancing of wealth to assist ex-slaves. No, rather, white former slave owners were reimbursed for the value of their property – the slaves. Blacks were prevented from being able to buy property in post WW2 housing developments, which blocked them from becoming propertied. This asset is the defining wealth divider between wealthier and poor in America. Whites controlled the banking sector and would not lend money to African Americans, thus denying them investment growth opportunities. These are no accidents of fate, but rather premeditated racial controls designed to diminish them economically. The Democratic party had been the slave owner’s party in the south, historically, until Richard Nixon sold the soul of Abraham Lincoln’s party to win election back in 1968. The two parties, then, swapped hats on the issue of civil rights after this. The GOP now deny history and seek to ban the studying of African American history in their schools and colleges in places like Florida.

“Indeed, in his 1968 campaign and afterward, Nixon used coded language, political symbolism and court interventions as signals to southern white voters. In the aftermath of city riots in 1967 and 1968, as well as Vietnam War protests, Nixon said he was for “law and order.’’ His administration went to court to slow down school desegregation. Nixon tried to install two so-called strict-constructionist conservatives, Clement F. Haynesworth Jr. of South Carolina and G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, on the Supreme Court, but the Senate turned down both nominees.

By his political calculation to capitalize on the racial and cultural divisions of his day, Nixon opened the gate to the political polarization of the United States in 2018. While President Donald Trump hardly emulates the furtive and nuanced Nixon, there is a direct line that runs from the Nixonian “southern strategy’’ to the Trump presidency.”

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Remember The Sales Pitch Culture

Many Americans are not the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to knowing their own history and world history. It is easier to control the ignorant and sell them Trump BS on this basis. They have voted this charlatan back into office after his shameful performance during the pandemic, where nearly a million Americans died in the richest nation on earth. This is a country that does not look after all of its people and allows some to profit from the vulnerable at their expense. Look at their disgusting private health insurance model where companies make hundreds of billions of dollars profit whilst sick people are denied care and die. Buying Trump in the land of the sales pitch is unfathomable for those of us living elsewhere but somehow possible for them. However, if you remember that sales pitch culture and the lies that Trump and his party promulgate it is comprehensible. If you grow up in a culture that worships money and the allure of the fake billionaire is that money will spill from his pockets to the little people below. This is called neoliberalism and the ‘trickledown effect’ was the promise of Reagan and Milton Friedman. The inner circle, the oligarchs will become obscenely rich via the macro corruption of privatisation and the little people were promised the trickledown effect. Unfortunately, for us the economic data tells us that we are not better off than our parent’s generation, indeed, many of us are worse off. The empty promises of Reagan and all those who followed, Bush, Clinton, Bush etc ring loudly like a warning bell. We have been screwed. Despite this the fools voted Trump back in on more promises of retribution and downward envy.

The Popularity Of Victimhood In America

The culture wars rage on in America and globally. ‘Down with the elites,’ is the cry from the stands. ‘Death to woke,’ is another from middle aged whites who look around for something to blame their unrealised dreams upon. Victimhood is more popular now than at any other time in history. These disgruntled folk want to be first in line for the hand-outs if they ever come. If the oligarchs deign to drop a crumb their way. If they can squeeze onto the gravy train, somehow. Buying Trump in the land of the sales pitch will foster grift and corruption for those who can weasel themselves into contention. God bless America!

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.

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