so, * brought the con they wanted to buy.

I have to thank NBC for putting this boorish clown on network TV every week for how many, 8 seasons?

Or, ... Hillary just ran a bad campaign.

@2: that's an oversimplification. this shit isn't binary.

@3: So is the article. We're all sautéing generalizations and extrapolations to our taste. Not to say that it isn't worthwhile or interesting.

I think this has significant merit, ⊥rump definitely is a symbol of white prosperity... a golden idol to be revered... albeit a hollow, golden idol, filled with vitriol and spite and stupidity.

⊥rump also represents --embodies-- people's desire to feel powerful, in control of their lives. American's feel beset by these changes (roboticization, inchoate financial markets, etc.) and feel threatened.

One critical way to feel powerful again is to attack other people or groups, ⊥rump specifically encouraged that. When you feel weak, violence makes you feel strong, in control. ⊥rump's authoritarianism openly proposed that violence, and the white middle class allied with him to assuage their own feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy.

I'm getting weary ... and this isn't just The Stranger... headlines that are written to get us to click and read but that have little or nothing to do with the content in the article. So where is the "Trump and the Politics of I Live the Life you wish you had?" This is thumbnail summary (And just an OK summary) of 20th economic factors.

@6, read the article. You read the supporting arguments and skipped the conclusion.

/worth reading/

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo of the Stanford Prison Experiment: Donald Trump is an “unconstrained, unbridled present hedonist”

In the almost five decades since Zimbardo conducted what is now known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, there has been an increase in the coarseness and meanness of America’s popular culture. What has been described as a “culture of cruelty” is the new normal and surveillance is omnipresent. Political polarization and dysfunction have broken the standing norms and rules of good governance in Washington, trust in political and social institutions such as the news media has declined, authoritarianism has increased among conservatives, the social safety net has been torn apart and the nation’s police continue to abuse and kill black and brown Americans with near impunity.

This is “social dominance behavior” filtered through racism and the neoliberal economic order. The sum total of these (and other) factors has resulted in the election of the neofascist Donald Trump as president of the United States. In many ways, Trump’s election was a decision by millions of American voters to punish their fellow citizens. These people were encouraged and enabled in this desire to do harm by their leaders in the right-wing media and by Trump himself.

@08
Well said! I moved from the state that has always had a white MINORITY-Hawai’i. I’m white. I never thought of my colleagues and neighbors as Japanese or Chinese or... We were all Hawai’ians! I recently moved to the Deep South- Georgia/Alabama line- when my husband was killed and was hit square on with the ugliest racism! Being from Hawai’i I had Obama stickers on my car--on an “elitist” 2006 Prius. New widow, moved to be by my late spouse’s family. I was diagnosed with cancer and needed daily radiation. I came out one day from the oncology center to see two guys racing away from my car. These two white kids had bashed up my car with baseball bats! It was horrible.
I called the police. And the police chief said “What did you expect putting that “N*****’s” stickers on your car?” He refused to write a report.

Every time I was with a group of white people, the talk immediately was about that Kenyan Muslim Socialist and how he was ruining the country..?? They used the N word so casually. If white people paid for electricity ahead of time, $20 at a time..it was called N***** paying. I said that it would be great if we had public transportation--there was nothing--no buses, no taxis--everyone had to depend on cars which is expensive and many had DUIs and no license. I said MARTA should come out further from Atlanta! I was met with shock. “They do that? N****** will move out here!” All together! They all had pickup trucks with confederate flags. They all bitched about “the N******” getting food stamps, being on welfare, free school lunches--but THESE WHITE PEOPLE WERE ALL ON DISABILITY, FOOD STAMPS,WIC!! They couldn’t see it. They thought they were REALLY different from “those” people. They hated immigrants and NONE of them knew anyone who was an immigrant. I tried to challenge them on their “beliefs” but they hated me for it. So I gave up. I go to work at the free clinic (where all the white patients bitch about “those” N****** getting free medical care) as the white people were getting free care. Totally unable to see the irony of what they were saying.

So when some op editor says to reach out to “Trump supporters” I say NO WAY! THEY’RE IDIOTS!
Do I feel badly about them--yeah a part of me. I just wish I were well enough to go home to Hawai’i.

Charles, US homeownership declined in the '80s, the decade in which you attribute the rise of the GOP to housebuying.

But I suppose you've never been one to look at a chart before spinning up an elaborate economic argument, have you?

10) I meant. Or was pointing to the financialization or homeownership.

@11

Smaller hits, Charles, and don't hold them in so long.

That is simply not an adequate response, even after we've made allowances for punctuation and spelling.

@11

The past 9 years, the years leading up to the Trump Moment, have seen one of the sharpest de-financializations of US homeownership in history.

In that run-up to Trump's coronation, an ever-larger percentage homes were being bought for cash, or on ten-year mortgages with large down payments (i.e., with less financing, or none at all). The practice of remortgaging or borrowing on equity has plummeted. And the rate of homeownership itself has dropped to a 30-year low.

These facts just do not fit into the argument you are trying to coax into being.

https://youtu.be/EwoJw440fK8
Written by Prince