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The Horno's avatar

The question is why do so many people think the rules are unfair, to the point of wanting to abandon all rules, as Trump instructs, when the rules have largely favored Americans, creating a rather safe and productive society (for whites, anyway). And the answer is that the GOP has been cultivating a climate of complaint among whites for 50 years, where every good is ignored and trivialized and every failure - governmental and social - is exaggerated and toxified, to the point now where the mostly white MAGA world intends to tear it all down. The new Trump administration will be a No-Rules administration, a celebration of power unchecked by ethical, or even practical consideration. Every ethical collapse, every grift and every injustice imposed by the new regime will be celebrated as confirmation to those love him, that Trump was right, rules are for suckers (and lib-tards). What could possibly go wrong?

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The Horno's avatar

oops, wrong button….. in our more quotidian behaviors, like abiding the rule of law and defending democracy. Who doesn’t bend around these rules now and again, speed on the highway, include some fake expenses in our tax return? What Trump stands for to his core, and what makes him popular among the reluctant rule-followers among us (pretty much everyone) is his example of no-rules living. He not only refuses to follow rules, he intentionally and publicly broaches them and then manages to evade paying the price for his rule-breaking, not only the social price of disdain and judgement, but even for crimes of which he is obviously guilty. He is a paragon of anti-virtue. Everything he says and does is a pantomime of this message: rules are for suckers, and people who think the rules are unfair gather round him as moths to flame. The infamous “elites” of the coasts, whose supposed intellectual snobbery is a humanitarian crime against the common folk, are really just people standing up for the ethical frameworks (rules) that, until now, governed our lives. The disdain that normal, rational, patriotic Americans express for the people who have abandoned democracy and the ethics upon which it was formed is absolutely justified. Disdain used to be a sufficient social force to keep people in compliance, but Trump and his followers ignore, even celebrate the disdain, they eat it for lunch before tromping off to their next session of vandalism against American values.

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