Dear Media, Please Cut the Sob Stories About Trump Voters Hurt by Trump Policies

[babylonsister]

Last edited Thu Jan 10, 2019, 11:07 AM - Edit history (1)

Dear Media, Please Cut the Sob Stories About Trump Voters Hurt by Trump Policies
It’s time to focus on the people who’ve been fighting to stop him all along.
By Elie Mystal
January 8, 2019


Your favorite media outlets—you know, the ones that insist that there are “good people on both sides”—have spent the better part of two years trying to understand the Trump voter. We’ve all been subjected to the results: dozens, even hundreds, of articles detailing the lives and thoughts of the poor, aggrieved white people who’ve allegedly been “left behind” by forces such as “globalization” and “Democrats.”

Now that Donald Trump’s policies are starting to ravage the very core of his base, we’re starting to see the follow-up to these experiments in aggrievement normalization. From The New York Times to CNN, we’re being treated to deep dives on the white people who voted for Trump, found it hasn’t paid off, and are now questioning their choices.

I am here for none of it. If it took missing a check due to the government shutdown for you to realize that voting for a bigoted conman was unwise, I have no sympathy. If your business is being hurt by the tariffs ordered by the know-nothing “Tariff Man” you happily voted for, my deepest wish is that your business fails, thereby creating a market opportunity for a hardworking immigrant your president disparages.

The shutdown is going to accelerate the number of Trumper’s-remorse articles we see. Last night, The New York Times unleashed a doozy: the sob story of a Florida town that got battered by Hurricane Michael and is struggling to keep its economy, based on government prison jobs and farm subsidies, afloat. It’s the kind of town Mitt Romney would say was full of “takers” if the town was predominately black. But it’s predominantly white, so, of course, most of the town votes Republican.

The Times wants us to know that Trump’s shutdown is hurting these people and they’re confused as to how their dear leader could be doing this to them:

The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused [Crystal] Minton to rethink a lot of things.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

That’s what Trump voters sound like when they say the quiet part out loud.

All of the “economically aggrieved” Trump voters made the same immoral bargain. They calculated that allowing Trump to harass and terrorize “other” people—nonwhites, women, gays, children, whatever—would result in more money in their pocket. Now they want me to be sad when the racist offset-check they were counting on doesn’t clear? You must not know about me.

Where’s the story about all the people living in Florida who also got battered by hurricanes, and are missing paychecks because of the shutdown, who didn’t vote for Trump? Where are the stories about the innocent victims of Trump’s policies, instead of stories about his enablers? I’ve read a lot of stories about how much Donald Trump and Ann Coulter want the Wall. I’ve heard a lot of commentary about how the “American people” want “compromise.” I think the media is willfully missing the strength and dedication of the opposition to Trump’s policies. Where’s the story about the people who are missing checks and remain uncompromising in their resistance to Trump’s bigoted vanity slats?

more...

https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-voters-shutdown-media-sympathy/

[Girard442]

1. We're all Puerto Rico now.

I've said for many years that the only hope anyone has of a government that treats them well is to work for a government that treats everyone well. Voting for a sadistic bullyboy who promises to beat up on the people you hate never ends well for anybody.

[Raster]

16. Vote for a sadistic bullyboy who promises to beat up on the people you hate...

...pretty much guarantees that sooner or later, you're also going to get your ass kicked.

[watoos]

2. The M$M is not our friend.

Wait for the stories to come about Trumper's tax refunds disappearing. I'm ok, I regulate my deductions to SS and my investment income, but a lot of Trumpers are going to find out that the pay raise they got last year came from their refund. How will Trump blame Democrats for that?

By the way, his tax forms aren't any simpler, everyone has to fill out a 1040. The post card speel was just bs.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. tv is mostly GOPer

There are a few rare gems in the trash pile, but mostly tv is GOPer.

[DetlefK]

3. Predicted that 1 year ago.

After the election the media set out to answer the most important question: What do Trump-voters think?

The Trump-voters were declared to be marginalized and ignored people, despite the fact that literally everyone was interviewing them, asking for their thoughts and writing about them.



About a year ago I predicted that the media will go right back to that: That they would go for stories how those poor, poor Trump-voters have it bad and have been betrayed.

And, oh miracle, here we are.

[ismnotwasm]

5. Yup.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

6. I Feel The Same Way

By the time November rolled around, you had MORE than enough evidence to know what would happen if you voted for this A-hole. He made it abundantly clear. And the things he lied about, you STILL should have known because the truth was out there and readily available to you. You just chose to clap your hands over your ears, squint your eyes shut, and yell, "LA LA LA!" the whole time.

So I go back to my standard response to these types of stories: "I only voted for the wolf because he promised he'd only eat the OTHER sheep!"

[EffieBlack]

7. They haven't been trying to "understand" them at all

because they have been perfectly understandable from the beginning.

They've been trying to normalize and engender empathy for them. Now they're trying to gin up sympathy for the people whose choices predictably led them to where they - and, unfortunately, we - are now.

[The Genealogist]

8. Amen

The media needs to stop spotlighting the hatemongering authoritarians who put this thing in the White House. Oh, they haz a sad now that they realized they fucked up their own lives in the hopes that Imperial Majesty would fuck up the lives of THOSE PEOPLE? Cry me a fucking river. Weaned on FAUX news and fortified on AM hate radio, these people are getting just what they wanted: a vile monster who is bent on destruction. I guess they were just too fucking stupid to realize that he really doesn't care fuck-all about them, and has no qualms about their being destroyed too as he enriches himself and his cronies at our collective expense.

[PeeJ52]

9. tRump didn't have any problem saying it out loud about who he is hurting...

He said most of the people going without paychecks are Democrats. I guess he figures because he see's a lot of black people with government jobs where he lives (duh, Washington D.C.), then all government workers must be black and democrats.

[GetRidOfThem]

20. DC itself is heavily democratic. Black and White.

Everybody I know in Government who has held and kept a job is basically Democrat.

(I live in D.C., on Capitol Hill, and have a lot of exposure to federal workers)

[tblue37]

23. But there are federal jobs all over the country, not just in DC. nt

[Fuzzpope]

10. Cry me a fucking river.

Sweets to the sweet. Let the suffering they inflicted upon all rain back down on them tenfold.

[world wide wally]

11. It all becomes crystal clear when you accept that the asshole is a Putin puppet determined to

destroy the USA.
He s doing a great job of that.

[BlueJac]

12. What a shame...

elections matter and so does your vote. Vote wrong get fucked and everyone else suffers as well. Poor fools. I could see the con man from day one of his campaign.

[wryter2000]

13. I dunno

Hearing the stories gives me a pleasant jolt of schadenfreude. Maybe I'm a bad person.

[Raster]

14. This speaks a thousand words about the tRump* supporters...

..."He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

Really, and who the fuck might that be?

[pnwmom]

15. I disagree. Its time for them to convince each other -- with their shared sob stories--

that they should stop supporting him and the party he rode in on.

[Raster]

17. The party he rode in on already had one foot in the trash heap.

[DeminPennswoods]

18. Was gobsmacked by the interview with the

married Trumpster couple who were both laid off from their federal civil service jobs. They said they were fine with a gov't shutdown, but since it directly affected them now, they weren't.

[jayschool2013]

19. A commentary magazine

complaining about the news reporting that they rely on to produce their commentary.

Rich.

"Where’s the story about all the people living in Florida who also got battered by hurricanes, and are missing paychecks because of the shutdown, who didn’t vote for Trump? Where are the stories about the innocent victims of Trump’s policies, instead of stories about his enablers?"

Go out and hire some reporters. Or better yet, go to Florida and ask.

[bigbrother05]

21. Those are the same folks that shout "Keep gov't out of my Medicare"

We've all heard them bitch for years about the "welfare Cadillacs" and "food stamp lobsters", but scream to the heavens if their niece has to wait 15 minutes to get her 4th kid added to WIC.

The typical Trumpee (and most hardcore GOPers) have it in their mind that their tax dollars should only be spent on things to help them personally or that they totally approve. The concept of the common good is totally lost on them.

This will be with us as long as there are people only concerned with "me and mine".

[ancianita]

22. Americans need reminding that media's impulse is to privilege one-sided drama. Like tabloids

Thanks for this important article.