Maybe you don’t yet see the benefit they’re getting from it. Remember the “dog eating Haitians” story—JD openly admitted they were knowingly misled. But that lie served a purpose: it was the easiest way to shift attention away from a disastrous debate and redirect it toward immigration.
You can choose to be outraged by the lies, or you can recognize that there’s a strategy at play. In politics, it’s rarely about what’s “right” or “wrong”—it’s about whether the message achieves its intended effect. If you think the other side is just being “stupid,” consider this: they want you to think that. Because as long as you’re focused on your outrage, you’re not asking deeper questions. They’re not offended by your reaction—they’re grateful for it.
Disagree. The one clear message they’ve sent is that China is mechanically fastening us. So they use Vance as stooge to make insulting remarks to show how tough of a stance we’re taking.
This is a good negotiating tactic–if you are an imbecile.
Insulting and degrading people has been the playbook for ten years. Anyone who does not bend the knee gets the treatment, because the USian big dogs are so superior to everyone else, according to them.
Watch the body language, and the shove. “I’m the big shot here, get out of my way!”
When my wealthy college friends from New York took me along for a vacation week in 1974 I saw Trump for the first time at a nightclubby hotel lobby show, where he was being pushy and obnoxious. I asked who he was and one of my friends said something like “An idiot wannabe from Queens without manners; my cousin went to school with him. Stay away..”
I don’t know about campaign slogan, but Mom told me something like that (“loudmouthed people who do not know much but insist on having their way” was closer to what she called them).
In defense of reality, paper straws don’t work all that well. The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, in Dearborn, switched from plastic straws to “compostable” straws several years ago. The “compostable” straws looked like plastic, except they were tinted green, and worked fine. Then they switched to paper straws. These paper straws are very different from the thin paper straws of the 60s. They are very thick walled and painted black on the outside. They are also pretty terrible. They don’t collapse under vacuum, like the old paper straws did, but the plastic lids on the beverage cups have two crossing slits in them to admit the straw. It doesn’t take long for the slits in the lid to exert enough pressure on the straw to collapse it. Why, oh why, the Henry Ford does not switch to another sort of lid I have seen, with a circular hole punched in it for the straw, I don’t know.
