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7. How should we think about instances of Trump doing what many who detest him felt was the right thing? Should it be regarded as simply "wrong person doing the right thing for the wrong reasons" as Milton Friedman put it, or should we look more skeptically at the "right thing"?
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One thing I want to do with this meta thread is not let my unabashed middle-class globalist bougie class snobbery color my cold takes too much. Yep, I’m probably part of the class demonized as “elites,” and do harbor some of the contempt Trumpies sense and react angrily to.
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But I do believe that when I factor all that out, as best I can, we are left with real moral culpability that’s not just a matter of class/culture prejudice. There are crimes against shared humanity here. Remember, plenty of poor working-class whites *didn’t* vote Trump in 2016.
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Final meta point. Trump, despite being a rich, white, native-born, is an outsider lolcow in important circles where I, as foreign-born non-rich brown, am an insider. That this can be true is one of the deep, broad resentments Trump was a messenger for. Just acknowledging that.
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9. To the extent this whole 4-year shitshow was enabled and given its specific 2016-20 shape and form by software eating old institutions, what should we take away in terms of what new software-aware institutions should look like? What’s the message of the medium?
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10. This is basically a cope for poor Ben, but it does suggest a good question: what is the range of GOP presidents Dems would/should see as acceptable in future, even if distasteful? I’d have been 100% fine in 2016 with any of the other candidates, from Cruz to Jeb.
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There’s always wingnut paranoia. But I do think the normie middle would have rolled with it. Would have felt racist/unfair for first black President to have been restricted to a single term but he personally wouldn’t have been seen as a willing and eager agent of such sentiment.