There is one of those peculiar social secrets at work here. On the whole ‘the critics’ distrust great wealth, but ‘the public’ does not. On the whole ‘the critics’ subscribe to the romantic view of man’s possibilities, but ‘the public’ does not. In the end the Getty stands above the Pacific Coast Highway as one of those odd monuments, a palpable contract between the very rich and the people who distrust them least.
July 30, 2015
Something Joan Didion wrote in 1977 struck me as explaining the disconnect between elite opinion and the public's acceptance of Donald Trump.
I've been listening to the audiobook of "The White Album" and this passage (from an essay about the Getty Museum) jumped out at me:
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I'm avoiding the Trumproversy, but as a comment about the Getty, it's certainly interesting. That travertine is beautifully luminous at sunset, and the view of LA from the balcony is magnificent. Worth going even if you're blind to the art.
To me Trump certainly has a bit of a Al Czervik vibe about him, and I guess that would make the GOP Judge Smails?
The guard personnel at The Getty are thick and quick to stop visitors from getting closer than five feet to the art. They understand orders to restrain the commoners and despise them as much as Getty did. He did not collect that art for the public to see in the museum. It was all for his super ego.
But Trump is a common man.
Andrew Carnegie worked his people like mules. 364 days a year. 12 hour shifts. Only Christmas off.
And then at the end of his life he became a philanthropist. Nobody was selling indulgences at that time.
I've always he's kind of bullshit. He left his name all over everything like some huge gravestone.
Seems he could have been a bit more philanthropic to the workers who helped make him a great philanthropist.
Trump is vulgar and that's a good enough explanation for my purposes.
Critics have long sneered at new-money wealth and "philistines" who soil their hands with filthy lucre instead of ennobling their minds. This is not one of Joan Didion's profounder insights.
I think that completely misses the point about Trump and his (hopefully temporary) popularity.
Trump says what so many feel, but the politicians are afraid to articulate, such as, illegal immigrants are filling the schools, sucking up welfare, food stamps, free cell phones, ADC, school lunch programs and the like, committing crimes and generally being a drag on society, while taking jobs from American citizens. Whether these feelings are factually true is another issue entirely, and may in fact depend on where you live. But people feel this way, and politicians are afraid to acknowledge that there may be some truth in them, for fear of alienating...who? The media? Hispanics? The educated and liberal elite who send their kids to private schools and shop in neighborhoods where illegals don't frequent?
I have no sense of trusting Donald Trump (or not) because of his ostentatious wealth. But he spouts off about things unsaid in polite Washington society, things quite upsetting to those in flyover country. He's a buffoon who has discovered that saying outrageous crap actually taps into the fears of lots of Americans. Maybe the rest of the buffoonery class should pay better attention.
It is more like watching a movie of the Marx brothers crashing a 400 ball.
What Didion said, plus the fact that Trump (by virtue of his undergrad college?) is free of the internalized shame of wealth that crippled, e.g. Romney, in his response to Democrat/Media attacks. Politics is a lot like my kid games of guns, where you weren't killed, unless you admitted you were ("its just a flesh wound!"). The Harvard/Yale education seems to pretty thoroughly instill wealthy scions with a sense of shame about their wealth, which makes those types vulnerable to critics attacks in a way that voters sense. Trump, on the other hand just shrugs off critics attacks on his wealth in a way that common voters respect.
Trump is a vulgar buffoon. He has reached the Harry Truman level.
Although one always is aware of their presence, I never saw a guard accost or even confront a visitor standing too close to the art. That was over many many hours of studying over several visits. A very "accessible" place.
You know Getty could not afford a Vermeer?
The meme of despising of Donald's common man traits even if they are mixed with a high skill at fighter pilot maneuvers reminds me again of why elite governments eventually lose endurance wars. They run out of elite men with fighter skills but refuse to use commoners out of a useless pride.
So, we're to believe that cons fall for Trump because he's rich. Why did they fall for Palin? Why did they buy gold coins when Beck told them to do so?
Even if you assume that the rich thing is a motivator for Trump love. We should get deeper, we should look at the psychology of these folks. There could be some grand theory that incorporates potty training, parent issues and a fixation with probes.
PBandJ_LeDouanier said...
So, we're to believe that cons fall for Trump because he's rich.
No. The left hates him because he's rich, and the right doesn't.
PBandJ_LeDouanier said...
So, we're to believe that cons fall for Trump because he's rich. Why did they fall for Palin? Why did they buy gold coins when Beck told them to do so?
Even if you assume that the rich thing is a motivator for Trump love. We should get deeper, we should look at the psychology of these folks. There could be some grand theory that incorporates potty training, parent issues and a fixation with probes.
7/30/15, 11:24 AM
For all of that, it's infinitely less of an issue than what motivates leftists. Cons are harmless, leftists are cancer.
@Rick said No. The left hates him because he's rich, and the right doesn't.
It's more nuanced than that. The left loves the rich so long as they donate and embrace left-wing causes. The source of the money is secondary.
The right - correctly in my view - distinguishes between someone that has earned their wealth by running a business and who isn't ashamed of that, Trump for example, but doesn't care so much for someone that has acquired wealth through political connections (either Clinton).
"The public" doesn't accept Trump.
Didion's generalization doesn't explain the disconnect: critics only gesture at "distrusting" great wealth, "the public" easily turns on economic royalists who have been sufficiently vilified.
But he spouts off about things unsaid in polite Washington society, things quite upsetting to those in flyover country.
A small edit:
But he spouts off about things unsaid in polite Washington society, things quite upsetting to those on the coasts and in DC. Flyover country loves Trump.
Just viewed Morning Joe this morning. They are all astounded at Trump’s latest poll numbers in which he beats Rubio and Bush in their home state, Florida. The show concentrated its first segment on Trump and a focus group of Trump supporters who were also mainstream GOP voters in the last presidential.
The focus group organizer was corrected by one of the focus group when he referred to Trump’s main attraction to her as Trump being “rich.” She quickly retorted that she was impressed by Trump’s “success.”
To the progressives, beholden to the politics of third-generation watered-down Marxism as they are, being “rich,” unless you are a Democrat like Soros, is a moral indictment.
Trump, you see, is not “presidential,” according to the Morning Joe’s staff’s definition of the term. They are very sad that the establishment GOP hopefuls are being beaten handily by Trump. It just doesn’t make sense to them and they have been counting on themselves and the rest of the MSM being able to billy-club any GOP frontrunner, just as they did with Romney. But it looks like fate has dealt them a bullet-proof GOP candidate. Their political world is being shifted on its axis and they are very, very uncomfortable.
The rest of the GOP field, with a couple of exceptions, are stuck on the toilet of political correctness straining to deposit something, anything, to garner attention before the big debate next month. But none of them can ever be a Trump. They just do not possess the right Ex-Lax.
I'm just back from a visit to the Ford Museum in Dearborn, and in particular from a visit to his "Greenfield Village". Ford had his odious parts---he was a raging anti-Semite; he turned his anti union thugs on demonstrating auto workers at the "Battle of The Bridge" and they shot Walter Reuther (okay--maybe Ford gets bonus points for that).
That said, museum collections by fabulously wealthy men are interesting in their own way, in that they reveal what was important to the collector. Ford wanted to "tell" or "show" a history lesson to the rubes. So he transported the Wright Brothers Cycle Shop from Dayton Ohio to Greenfield Village; he had Steinmetz's cabin, Noah Webster's House, Edison's Menlo Park laboratory, the slave cabin where George Washington Carver was born etc. all moved to Greenfield Village. Looking at his choices, you could get a glimpse of what Ford thought was important in American history. I suspect he would have moved Mt. Vernon and Monticello to Greenfield Village if he could have gotten his hands on them.
I've also enjoyed the Wallace Collection in London. Wallace was the Bill Gates of Victorian England--wealthwise at least. He amassed a fabulous collection of paintings, statutes, arms and armor--and donated it to England on his death, with the proviso that nothing could be bought or sold or added to it. It's in a nice townhouse off Oxford Street and is open to the public, free of charge. Like the Getty, it's a reflection of a very wealthy man's taste. As a Southern Californian I often find London's grey, overcast and rainy weather oppressive. On those days I can slip into the Wallace Collection, go to the room with the Canalettos and feel like I'm back in San Diego--or Nice--or Venice.
But were we talking about Trump the buffoon with a dead raccoon on his head? I'd say he is a populist demagogue who doesn't really believe a word he's saying--in that regard he's in the mold of Huey P. Long. Long could, and did, sell "low cockahirum" in a speech at one end of Louisiana and turn around and sell "high cockalorum" in a speech at the other end of the state--on the same day.
But the difference between Trump and Huey P. Long is that Long actually did some good for Louisiana-and wanted to do so. Trump simply wants ego gratification and will deliver nothing of value to our governance.
Y'all are underestimating Trump. I feel like he might just be in it to win it, and if he does, I think he could do great things.
Trump's poll numbers say more about the rest of the Republican field than they do about Trump.
"It's more nuanced than that. The left loves the rich so long as they donate and embrace left-wing causes. The source of the money is secondary.
The right - correctly in my view - distinguishes between someone that has earned their wealth by running a business and who isn't ashamed of that, Trump for example, but doesn't care so much for someone that has acquired wealth through political connections (either Clinton)."
I disagree--I don't think Left or Right care about whether someone is rich or how they got their money, UNLESS that person is on the "other side". Leftists don't care about how Kerry married into money or Clinton used influence-pedding to get rich, because they're on Team Blue. Of course they savaged Bush for being born into wealth, because he was on Team Red. Rightists of course did the exact opposite.
I don't think Trump's fans care at all about his wealth--they like him for the same reason they like Palin--he pisses off the right people and is unapologetic about it. To critics like me, that's not enough--I'm not about to like something just because my political opponents dislike it (and I'm not so sure leftists are so much worried but gleefully mocking when it comes to Trump) and being unapologetic only deserves points when you're also right about what you're saying. But I suspect many on the right are so itching for a fight--and see anything less than a "no quarter" attitude as inexcusable weakness--that this tops all else.
Trump doesn't seem to worry about hurting overly fragile feelings.
That's why he's doing well.
The educated and liberal elite who send their kids to private schools and shop in neighborhoods where illegals don't frequent?
That's a big problem for me with Progressives. They promote fucking horrible policies and protect themselves from its impact.
"Let's have police stop being so mean...oh, by the way, I live with virtually no minorities in a gated community that the common rabble cannot get in"
"Let's make sure all kids, even illegals, get a good education...oh, by the way, my kids aren't going to public schools. And, no, you shouldn't be able to use your tax money to send your kids to a private school, racist!"
"Let's kill off Uber...my driver tells me they're bad"
"We pollute too much...oh, sorry, I can't hear you over the roar of my jet engines. I'm flying back home now."
But I suspect many on the right are so itching for a fight--and see anything less than a "no quarter" attitude as inexcusable weakness--that this tops all else.
But don't they have a reason to be sick of "compromising" Republicans?
What has the Party done to make anybody trust that they will fight for core beliefs?
The biggest thing the House has done this year --- is pass a bad trade bill. The Senate is working so hard to insure that Obama policies are enacted it is sickening.
So, no, I don't think compromise is good. It's time to stomp on people because we've gone down the wrong path for way too long now.
"But don't they have a reason to be sick of "compromising" Republicans?"
Sure they do--I'm as depressed by it as anyone--but this label has been used so widely as to encompass anyone not on the Trump (previously Palin) bandwagon.
Part of the problem is that once any party gains a majority, it has done so by expanding its constituency to include more disparate groups--the Dems had the same problem when they took over Congress (which is why their biggest hurdle in passing Obamacare wasn't getting GOPers on board but getting more moderate Dems on board; many of those moderate Dems lost their seats since then). You can have an ideologically uniform party or a majority party, but I have yet to see a case where you can have both.
That's no excuse for the do nothingness of the GOP leaders in Washington, but I don't see Trump as a solution to that so much as a symptom of it. If the GOP is going to get anything done it's going to need someone who can pull the disparate ends of the party together and sell their ideology to the people.
Trump says what so many feel, but the politicians are afraid to articulate, such as, illegal immigrants are filling the schools, sucking up welfare, food stamps, free cell phones, ADC, school lunch programs and the like, committing crimes and generally being a drag on society, while taking jobs from American citizens.
JCC nails it, I think. If it were all low-skilled workers under threat, it would be one thing. We could rationalize it all and say we need better education, like we did in the 90s.
But now we're getting it at both ends. So many tech workers laid off, replaced with Chindians either here or offshore. Forced to train their successors or forfeit severance. This is just too much..meanwhile we simply must get more women and minorities into STEM careers! It's insanity.
If Trump can't get the other candidates to talk about this stuff that by God I will vote for him.
JCC: I think that completely misses the point about Trump and his (hopefully temporary) popularity.
Exactly. There's no mystery to Trump's appeal; the reasons for it could not be more obvious. It's not even as if a lot of the people who approve of his antics aren't aware that he's full of it - no more sincere or consistent than the next pol.
Trump says what so many feel, but the politicians are afraid to articulate...
No, they're not afraid to articulate support for popular views. They are absolutely hostile to these popular views and want ordinary people to just STFU about them and go back to meekly eating the shit sandwich they're offering. (Just as much shit as the other guys' but with different wrappings.)
But people feel this way, and politicians are afraid to acknowledge that there may be some truth in them, for fear of alienating...who? The media? Hispanics? The educated and liberal elite who send their kids to private schools and shop in neighborhoods where illegals don't frequent?
The people who finance their campaigns and who will give them lucrative sinecures once they're out of office.
I have no sense of trusting Donald Trump (or not) because of his ostentatious wealth. But he spouts off about things unsaid in polite Washington society, things quite upsetting to those in flyover country. He's a buffoon who has discovered that saying outrageous crap actually taps into the fears of lots of Americans. Maybe the rest of the buffoonery class should pay better attention.
Lord no, anything but that. The rest of the buffoonery class are pretending to be terribly perplexed about Trump's popularity because they absolutely don't want to address the real concerns of middle and working class Americans. They want to go right on ignoring them as they always have.
Brando: If the GOP is going to get anything done it's going to need someone who can pull the disparate ends of the party together and sell their ideology to the people.
How is that any different from the compromising, wishy washy Republicans we've been nominating?
What the GOP needs is someone with guts. Romney was a great man, and I think he would've been a fantastic president - Reaganesque even, though his demeanor was nothing comparable. But he didn't have the guts. McCain had the guts, but he was also a goddamn loon. Trump has guts, is not afraid, and even if he is a secret Democrat-lite, do you think he'd be a WORSE choice than Hillary?
@ Angelyne
I like you lots. In a "wow, what a kindred spirit" kinda way.
I think Trump enjoys his money more than Mayor Bloomberg. But that might just be an illusion because he spends his money on the crass things that I would like to spend money on. Trump comes from inherited wealth, and Bloomberg was a self made billionaire. Nonetheless, Trump is the one who appears nouveau riche. Trump is a self made vulgarian who managed to overcome inherited wealth and good schools to become crass and self indulgent.
"How is that any different from the compromising, wishy washy Republicans we've been nominating?
What the GOP needs is someone with guts. Romney was a great man, and I think he would've been a fantastic president - Reaganesque even, though his demeanor was nothing comparable. But he didn't have the guts. McCain had the guts, but he was also a goddamn loon. Trump has guts, is not afraid, and even if he is a secret Democrat-lite, do you think he'd be a WORSE choice than Hillary?"
I think it's exactly different from compromising wishy washers--being able to lead means convincing those on the fence that they should land on your side, and leading those already there. I liked Romney, and thought McCain had good qualities but both had the problem of trying to overcome their moderate image by clumsily and unconvincingly passing off as right wingers, which lost many moderates and conservatives alike and enabled the Dems to paint them as tools of the right to fire up their own base. That same formula would fail again.
As for Hillary, I can't think of any likely candidates who would be worse than her, and I include Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden in that mix.
I dunno Brando. I understand the suspicion of Trump. I'm somewhat skeptical too. But I'm also seeing how he's firing people up, and it goes way beyond poll numbers. If he's not serious about this campaign, my hope is that he's trying to remove the stigma from some of the common sense truths he's been raising so that the next Republican in line can be bold enough to continue his line of attack. Maybe he's a kamikaze. But I think he's serious.
"I don't think Trump's fans care at all about his wealth--they like him for the same reason they like Palin--he pisses off the right people and is unapologetic about it"
This. The left has Jon Stewart. Conservatives have Trump.
And success in politics is a lot like success in war; you have to keep moving forward until the enemy stops you, not your allies or the belief that you "have" to stop.
Grant understood this; so did Patton. So did Reagan and so did GWB.
Wonderful audio book.
The quote comes from an essay that says regular people respond well to elite works. Classical art, literature, and architecture are appreciated without any impulse toward deconstruction.
I don't believe Trump is "elite" as Didion used the term. He's merely rich and powerful. Trump Tower will never be mistaken for the Getty.
I wonder how much cash the Bush/Trump gang is offering Marla Maples for a slander piece on Donald right now?
She was a Scots-Irish piece from the North Georgia mountains that the Donald nailed. He got around when he was a young buck.
J Paul Getty was a wealthy scion.
His dad, like Andrew Carnegie, was the founder of the fortune, born in humble circumstances and who achieved wealth through his own efforts. Neither George Getty nor Carnegie were snooty.
Carnegie worked his employees as hard as he worked himself, fairly by his personal standards, and without a doubt fairly by the standards of the Scottish weaving towns Carnegie came from. The starving weavers of Dumferline, in 1848, would have killed for the terms of employment offered by Carnegie in 1892.
Carnegie's autobiography is very interesting.
"But I think he's serious."
If enough people think that way, America will deserve Hillary, good and hard.
""But I think he's serious."
If enough people think that way, America will deserve Hillary, good and hard."
Yeah--I just have a hard time accepting Trump is serious considering his entire adult history has been that of attention-seeking showman, and political stances that would normally make his current supporters incredibly uncomfortable, including long ties to the Clintons. I suppose it's conceivable that he had a last minute change of beliefs and now wants to actually be president and advance conservative goals, but it runs against everything we know about him.
Only the GOP can save Hillary's candidacy.
What JCC said, and its pretty obvious too.
I suspect that politicians don't "understand" Trump's popularity because if they admitted to doing so they would have to address the issues he raises.
Trump is challenging the elite consensus, on the right and left, that massive immigration benefits the "ruling classes" and is going to continue, and to hell with the proles.
Well - in real life, we are all just stuck dragging the Christmas trees off for mulch. There is not space for too much theorizing. If you want the smell of pine, you then must deal with the arboreal carcasses. It is the media which deals in black and white - the average person lives a life filled with shades of grey.
I don't think the public wants Trump as a president, but they do want certain issues discussed. And Trump is forcing others to discuss the reality that we have a de facto open immigration system that is causing social havoc. So the public is going to support Trump until other candidates will deal.
Trump is the hammer the public is using to break through the media wall. When the hammer has done its work, the public will quietly drop it.
That's one explanation. Another is an observation Mark Steyn originally made about the European far-right parties, to the effect that whenever there are issues important to the masses that all reputable politicians agree ought not to be talked about, there will always be disreputable politicians ready to take up the slack.
If the GOP is going to get anything done it's going to need someone who can pull the disparate ends of the party together and sell their ideology to the people.
Can Trump “sell” his “ideology?” What, exactly is Trump’s “ideology?” An unproven assumption underlies the question. It assumes Trump must sometime in the future revert to the ‘normal,’ constipated, campaign mode where Trump must respond in an orderly fashion to an item by item list of ‘issues’ created and defined by the GOP establishment and the MSM expressly to derail Trump.
Maybe it’ll work – maybe it won’t.
But I feel that Trump transcends many of these requirements. He doesn’t need to speak knowledgeably about his ideology. Trump IS his ideology – which is Success with a capital S. And he has ten billion success stories to offer.
And I have a theory:
That sometimes the voters want someone who is the opposite of whatever President holds office at the time.
Think Nixon after LBJ, Carter after Nixon, Reagan after Carter, Clinton after Bush and Obama after Bush, jr. All sort of opposites to the other.
Trump after Obama?
For one thing, the very rich very rarely try to tell people how to live.
And PB&J, a lot of people did very well buying gold coins at that time. You might want to get new talking points.
Trump, like Ross Perot, doesn't come off as elitist. So he's likeable and funny and hard to take seriously since he's always been a reality TV star type of guy since the 80s.
I think it's funny that the people who take Bruce Jenner seriously now are the same ones who scoff at Trump as a buffoon. Both Jenner and Trump are infomercial/reality TV personas who like the attention.
Traditionalguy,
Is it possible for you to:
-Talk sense
-Stop fetishizing the Scots-Irish identity, and whatever religion is under your eye at any given moment
-Respond to people who are talking to you, instead of talking as if no one else was in the room?
You are being a jerk.
Stop fetishizing the Scots-Irish identity,
Yeah!
Only minorities are allowed to do that.
Stupid white person.
Bill P.,
"Grant understood this; so did Patton. So did Reagan and so did GWB. "
Oh, crap; not another one of these "which one is not like the others" tests!!!
Vicki from Pasadena: Try this link regarding "bint".
Gahrie, fair enough, nothing against either the Scots or the Irish, but there is such a thing as measure. This guy has diarrhea of the keyboard and it's always the same thing. Am I wrong? This guy doesn't really need to post because we already know what he's going to say. If Hitler was McHitler and a confirmed Presbyterian Lutheran Calvinist Baptist whateverist, then tradguy would be a Nazi.
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