cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37233475
To win again, Democrats must stop warning voters against the kind of people movies taught us to love.
from Politico
By Dan Brooks
09/07/2025 10:00 AM EDTThat Trump was a boarding school graduate who inherited over $400 million did not seem to affect voters’ calculus, in the same way Danny the caddy doesn’t ask why he should risk his college scholarship to help a millionaire win a bet. In the narrative of the 2016 election, Trump was the slob, even though he was a textbook snob in both background and agenda. From cutting taxes for the wealthy to slashing regulations for corporate America, his policies reinforced the positions of those already in power, i.e. the snobs. But his rhetoric, demeanor and attitude toward the mythic Washington establishment has been pure slob.
I have a better plan:
The way out of our present age of political violence is not scolding “we have to live here with one another,” at those who are not threatening anyone’s life, at those whose very existence supremacists refuse to accept. Rather the way out is standing between supremacists and their targets and telling them “no, you have to live with them, just like we live with you, and if you can’t do that, then you have a problem with us, too.” It’s turning to those who just aren’t comfortable with trans people and saying “we don’t negotiate about people’s rights over here, and if you want to see how hard we’ll fight for you against the billionaires and bosses who are robbing you blind, watch how hard we fight for them. If hating trans people is so important to you that you’re willing to get robbed to death to secure it, we aren’t the party for you.”
You know what? I think that message might just build a coalition.
https://www.the-reframe.com/eventually-youre-going-to-have-to-stand-for-something-2/
Fascinating article. One that seemingly raises some salient points, but eventually collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.
If this “slobs vs. snobs” allegory is true, what would stop US oligarchs from buying paying some demagogues to do something to stupid before running the pro-oligarch propaganda copytext?
Say Joe Rogan could stick a hot dog up his ass and eat it and then run a pitch for position A [oligarch copytext] and bitch about position B [the alternative] being woke and that the snobs want to limit American freedom and you won’t be able to stick a hot dog up your ass.
And that’s just the tip of iceberg, the article is littered with unconvincing American cultural axioms about “Americans fighting the system” and “the slobs always win”.
If you want to buy into Brooks’ movie derived allegory (and I don’t agree with this), the place to look for is Idiocracy where Luke Wilson’s character explains why you need to use water for plants and not soda:
After several hours, Joe finally gave up on logic and reason, and simply told the cabinet that he could talk to plants and that they wanted water.
Isn’t this conclusion consistent with Brooks’ “slobs vs. snobs” allegory?
