Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

I'm Sorry, What?

 Among Americans who disapprove of Biden's handling of the Gaza war you have the following numbers...again, these are Americans who disapprove:

19% think he's too supportive of Israel
16% think he's too supportive of Palestinians
22% think he's "about right"

So the plurality of Americans who disapprove of Biden's handling of the Gaza War think he's properly balanced between the two sides. Perhaps this is simply a case of "This is a bad thing and Biden is president so I'm unhappy, even though I know he's not really to blame." We tend to ascribe all bad news to the president, and this - I fear - is a fundamental flaw in our political system. We elect a single person to be a wizard or even a living god to make us feel good all the time about everything and if he doesn't, screw him. The virtue of a parliamentary system is that the prime minister is mostly understood to be a public servant who can be fired if they do a shit job. 

It's also illuminative of how little Americans really understand about issues, especially foreign policy. So you get "vibes" results like this rather than formulating an actual alternative.

Trump clearly benefits from an unearned nostalgia for the economy of 2017-2021. While he inherited the Obama Recovery and pumped more stimulus into the economy with tax cuts, he also oversaw the compete cratering of the US economy during Covid, an event that would've been immeasurably worse if a Democratic House hadn't pushed massive stimulus onto the country. The economy is miles better today than it was on January 20th, 2021.  Yet somehow Trump benefits from the question "Would be better on the economy."

Shit is fucked up and broken.

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