{"id":383507,"date":"2018-11-03T15:30:35","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T14:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/if-were-on-the-left-how-come-were-still-here\/"},"modified":"2018-11-03T15:30:35","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T14:30:35","slug":"if-were-on-the-left-how-come-were-still-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/if-were-on-the-left-how-come-were-still-here\/","title":{"rendered":"If We\u2019re on the Left, How Come We\u2019re Still Here?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>The persona Donald Trump is floating these days puts him on the same page as, say, Brazil\u2019s Jair Bolsonaro or Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orban, or their counterparts in Slovakia, Poland, and elsewhere in what Donald Rumsfeld famously called \u201cthe new Europe.\u201d\u00a0 From his \u201cbully pulpit,\u201d the Trump persona is an inspiration for neo-fascists in \u201cthe old Europe\u201d too and indeed throughout the world.<\/p>\n<p>I say \u201cpersona\u201d because I don\u2019t think that temperamentally or ideologically he actually is a fascist.\u00a0I say this not to his credit, but because I think that the Donald is too much the narcissist to be anything that other-regarding. \u00a0He is a conman, and playing the fascist card is part of the con he is working.<\/p>\n<p>This is why his cult-like followers are even more distressing than Trump himself.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, not everyone in the Trump base is a true believer.\u00a0 Many, maybe most of them are just ill informed and gullible, and then there seem to be some who know that they are being taken for a ride, but don\u2019t mind.\u00a0 How pathetic is that!<\/p>\n<p>Republicans in rural areas are especially inclined to want to buy the snake oil Trump is selling; so are white working class men of a certain age and the women who stand by them.\u00a0The status anxieties and social dislocations from which they suffer \u2013 thanks to the vicissitudes of global capitalism, the malign neglect of the Democratic Party, and the decline of the union movement \u2014 have rendered them vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>The MAGA bomber, Cesar&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/11\/02\/if-were-on-the-left-how-come-were-still-here\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The persona Donald Trump is floating these days puts him on the same page as, say, Brazil\u2019s Jair Bolsonaro or Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orban, or their counterparts in Slovakia, Poland, and elsewhere in what Donald Rumsfeld famously called \u201cthe new Europe.\u201d\u00a0 From his \u201cbully pulpit,\u201d the Trump persona is an inspiration for neo-fascists in \u201cthe old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-383507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}