We need to treat these racist myths as what they are: weapons in the culture war, intended to coerce, mislead and intimidate. They are not good-faith policy arguments or suggestions. But that doesn't mean we should take up arms against them. I argue for a ceasefire in the culture wars, which means that we need to tell different stories — stories about Black history, Black excellence and competence.
But it also means coming up with effective ways of dealing with misinformation and propaganda in the public sphere. ... There is no way to engage productively with psyops — you can't have a reasonable conversation with someone who is telling you that you are stupid or morally defective. I've been intrigued by the Harris campaign's shift away from trying to debate the neocons with logic about democracy — instead, they are telling a new story, about a Black and South Asian woman who represents justice and thoughtful engagement with real political policies. Instead of engaging with Trump's weaponized rhetoric, they are basically shrugging it off as "weird" and moving on. That's a great response to a psyop — decline to engage with it and change the subject to something real.
What lies ahead? Walsh said he has no idea: “If Trump wins, all bets are off,” but if the Democrats triumph, the future remains murky in a different way. “Ordinarily you’d expect an American political party to go through a profound leadership crisis if it loses multiple consecutive presidential elections," he said. "But considering how the GOP is effectively an apparatus of the Trump personality cult at this point, I think he remains the paramount figure until he dies ... There’s no universally popular successor.”
I think when Trump loses this election he is done as a shaker but will spend the rest of life as a GOP gadfly, interfering with any direction the party tries to move towards. For historical context, in Rosenberg's article replace conservatism with late 19th century populism and you see Trump as the GOP's William Jennings Bryan, who's constant desire for nominations pushed the Democratic party to a string of Presidential defeats in the early 20th century (only Wilson until FDR).
= new reply since forum marked as read