National Review: "A Study in Self-Pity"

[brooklynite]

FYI: William F Buckley's National Review was a leading force that stamped out fringe (John Birch Society) conservatism in the 1960s.

Chris Wallace’s interview of President Trump, which aired on Sunday, is well worth watching if you’ve got a strong stomach.

The parts about the pandemic are as terrifying as you’ve heard—a veritable catalog of unfitness, incompetence, and willful ignorance that will leave you grateful for America’s system of federalism.

But I actually thought the most interesting and telling bit of the interview was at the very end, and wasn’t about the virus.

...snip...

Asked to reflect on his term so far as he seeks re-election, the president’s answer is that he was treated unfairly. Even when he is literally invited by his interviewer to say good things about himself, all he can reach for is resentment.

There is more to this than there might seem to be at first. The sense that he was being treated unfairly had a huge amount to do with why Donald Trump ran for president in the first place, and the sense that they were being treated unfairly had a lot to do with why his earliest supporters and voters found him appealing. Channeling resentment is near the source of his political prowess.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-study-in-self-pity/

[marble falls]

1. By voluntarily asserting he's been treated unfairly he shows he knows his record is verkracht.

[Yavin4]

2. His followers identify with him. They believe that they're being persecuted because they're White

and Christian. That the world treats them unfairly. That they don't have the same things that their grandparents' generation had. And they blame Liberals, African Americans, Women (esp. Feminists), the LGBTQ, immigrants, etc.

In a sense, they're right. If they're in the working class, they are being persecuted, preyed upon by the 1%. But that's because they don't vote to protect themselves economically.

So you have this vicious cycle. They get presecuted by the 1%, but they blame everyone else. Then they vote for people like Trump who then passes legislation designed to help the 1%.

[dawg day]

3. The comment section is full of self-pity too

Trumpers are the most embarrassingly puerile sort of people.