(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Missing the point of Ezra Klein's Podcast [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-10-26 This is a follow up to a 10/22 podcast by Ezra Klein presented in the NY Times opinion section. There was lots of vitriol on DK about him saying that things weren’t so bad during the Rump’s term. I won’t address that except to say that I don’t think people really got his point. Yeah, it could have been worse, but it was really bad enough. The Rump had clear sailing on the wings of Obama’s economy. His disregard for the welfare of our people’s lives during COVID was blatant and disastrous. No one really had much experience with pandemics though shutting down all public health planning (incl for pandemics), clearly made things much worse. His refusal to have his minions in congress even consider a tough fought bipartisan proposal to improve immigration and the southern border was criminal. His utter disregard for the environment considering what we can all see happening with our own eyes, has been depressing as well as dangerous. I don’t believe Ezra Klein was saying that any of that was ok. But, rather, the essay was an effort to explain why people still want to follow him. The essay described some personality traits that are each measured on a scale. If you are high on one then you therefore be low on its opposite. Think like introverted vs extroverted. The whole thing was pretty detailed and technical but offered valuable guidance to understand how the rt wingnuts can feel the way they do. per Ezra Klein, the traits are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum of each of them. The one that stood out was the trait that can be referred to as conscientiousness. This traces back to the concept of having inhibition about saying or doing whatever you want. Continual references to the Rump acting like a child point to this. 7yr olds have very little inhibition. As I have multiple 90+ yr olds in my immediate family, I’ve seen that disinhibition also increases with age. And the Rump is aging quickly. To be very low on conscientiousness is to be very high on disinhibition. And that is Donald Trump. Many people love the Rump for exactly this reason. He’ll do or say anything that comes to him. This is seen as total liberation for some people. This essay was the best explanation I’ve heard for ‘how they can support him’. But, for me, it also begs the question of what else has caused this appreciation for disinhibition among his followers. This is the much more serious question and is not really addressed in EK’s podcast. -— At the time, I had a gut reaction to the ‘this election is rigged’ rhetoric of 2016. At that time, I felt that it wasn’t the election that was rigged, it was that the lives of most americans are rigged. What I referred to is the baked-in challenges that we face in daily life. Here’s a short list just for reminder: - labor taxes plus income taxes where there is minimal taxation of capital and financial profits if you can afford a good enough CPA/JD team. - Regulations that protect corporations rather than the people of the country. Corporations hire lawyers to deal with it but normal people have to jump through endless hoops and administrivia in their daily lives. And, I mean endless - . . . - The pretense of having a healthcare system for everyone. No, it’s not. But for managers, investors, and financiers on the inside, it’s a fabulous system where people will simply put up with anything at double the expense of anywhere else in the civilized world for mediocre quality and results. Don’t even mention the million or so bankruptcies we see each year while executives and investors rake in billions. - Much of our economy has become a grift of one sort or another. And, people from both parties participate. Education might be an example of that as schools tax us to death to build more buildings whether we need them or not. And colleges and universities build incredibly sumptuous ‘student centers’ to attract enrollment. All the while, there has been a hollowing out of tenured professorships for adjunct versions leaving us with teachers that can’t afford to keep their job and students that can’t afford to get educated. Curricula have been twisted to support religious preferences. Where is the student’s interest in this? Where is society’s interest in this? This enumeration could go on for a long time. But, in conclusion of this rant, it’s no longer hard for me to see why some people support a completely disinhibited moron as their leader. It has nothing to do with his policies, nor with abilities nor his corrupt and grimy personality. He speaks out the way they wish they could themselves about the rigged society they live in every day. Perhaps EK will correct me if I got it wrong, but this is what I learned from his 10/22 essay. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/26/2279192/-Missing-the-point-of-Ezra-Klein-s-Podcast?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/