Trumpocalypse Quotes

“Nor is it a trivial matter that whites and men do so strongly feel themselves beleaguered by cultural change. In January 2019, South Carolina’s Winthrop poll conducted a fascinating experiment. Winthrop polled people of all races across eleven Southern states. One question was phrased in two slightly different ways. Half of the people surveyed were asked whether they agreed that “whites have privileges that non-whites do not have.” The other half were asked whether they agreed that “non-whites face barriers that whites do not face.” Logically, of course the two questions mean exactly the same thing. But they yielded very different answers. When asked whether they enjoyed special “privilege,” only 50 percent of whites agreed. Among the most conservative whites, only 36 percent agreed. But when asked whether nonwhites faced extra “barriers,” 70 percent of all whites and a majority even of the most conservative whites agreed.18 People do not like being negatively judged. When they feel negatively judged, they hunker down. On the other hand, people do have a sense of fairness. When that is appealed to, they respond more generously.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Embedded in Trumpism is the distinction between “people” and “the people.” Not all people belong to “the people.” More and more people emphatically do not belong—which is why Trump’s absurd claims about illegal voting resonated so powerfully.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Even if plague and recession topple Trump from the presidency, that core Trump base will remain, alienated and resentful. An Arkansas pastor told the Washington Post in the first week of March that half his congregants would lick the floor to prove the virus harmless. If they would risk their lives for Trump, they will certainly risk the stability of American democracy. They brought the Trumpocalypse upon the country, and a post-Trumpocalypse country will have to find a way either to reconcile them to democracy—or to protect democracy from them.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“We want things to return to normal, back to a world in which we do not have to waste time rebutting demented conspiracy theories and fact-checking farcical lies every single day. We want a government that operates competently and honestly, headed by a president who behaves with dignity and integrity. If we were at risk of under-appreciating the quiet grace of decency, Trump has cured us of that. But after we evict the squatter, we must repair the house he trashed. Trump became president because millions of Americans felt that a self-satisfied elite had created a pleasant society only for themselves. Millions of other Americans felt disregarded and discarded. They determined to crash their way in, and they wielded Trump as their crowbar to pry open the barriers against them. Trump is a criminal and deserves the penalties of law. Trump's enablers and politics and media are contemptable and deserve the scorn of honest patriots. But Trump's voters are our compatriots. Their fate will determine ours. You do not beat Trump until you have restored an America that has room for all its people. The resentments that produced Trump will not be assuaged by contempt for the resentful. Reverse prejudice, reverse stereotyping, never mind whether they are right or wrong--they are wrong--just be aware that they are acids poored upon the connections that bind a democratic society. [...] Maybe you cannot bring everybody along with you. But you still must try--for your own sake, as well as theirs.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“If Liberals Won't Enforce Borders, Fascists Will”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“How do we arrive at a regime that is more sustainable? How do we avoid protectionism that will impoverish us all, hurting the poorest most? The United States needs to balance its budgets. China needs to open its markets. Everybody needs to emit less. And the lever to do all those things is a carbon tax that will make all fossil fuels—and therefore also all plastics—significantly more expensive than they are today.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“More expensive fuel will rebuild our cities in ways that will make us happier and healthier. After bereavement, divorce, and unemployment, length of commute is the most important predictor of unhappiness in modern life. The most ambitious study—conducted on twenty-six thousand commuters by a British university—found that a twenty-minute increase in automobile commute time produces as much unhappiness as a 19 percent pay cut.40 People who commute more by car not only suffer worse health but also face steeper cognitive declines in old age.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Climate is a summons to human reason and problem solving. The rusted-out Marxism that so miserably failed to solve the twentieth-century challenge of housing, clothing, and feeding human beings will equally miserably fail to solve the twenty-first-century challenge of preserving a livable environment for human beings. If you tell Americans that saving the planet will raise the pay and benefits of each and every one of them, with the entire cost borne exclusively by the executives and shareholders of the fossil fuel companies, well, you are lying to them as shamelessly and dangerously as President Trump. Maybe more dangerously, since Trump’s lie is more easily detected and rejected.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“As American conservatives have felt the ebb of cultural power away from them, they have come to feel watched and judged. They do not like it. “How does it feel to be a problem?” memorably asked W. E. B. Du Bois.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Yet the Woke messaging keeps flying. Speaking in New York’s Washington Square on September 18, 2019, Senator Warren let fire this zinger. “We’re not here today because of famous arches or famous men. In fact, we’re not here because of men at all.”20 But if Warren ever arrives in the White House, it will be because of men—not all of them, obviously, but sufficient numbers of them. And the lesson of the Trump presidency is that insulting voters loses their votes. Those who aspire to conjure up a counter-Trump movement of militant progressive forces imagine that American demographics have tilted to the point that a politics of (in their view) righteous grievance can outvote the (in their view) wrongful grievance that Trump has summoned up. They are kidding themselves about their math, but even if they were correct, what kind of answer would that be? Trump is president not only because many of your fellow citizens are racists, or sexists, or bigots of some other description, although surely some are. Trump is president also because many of your fellow citizens feel that accusations of bigotry are deployed casually and carelessly, even opportunistically. Anti-racism can easily devolve from a call to equal justice for all into a demand for power and privilege. We speak, you listen. We demand, you comply. We win, you lose.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Nor is it a trivial matter that whites and men do so strongly feel themselves beleaguered by cultural change. In January 2019, South Carolina’s Winthrop poll conducted a fascinating experiment. Winthrop polled people of all races across eleven Southern states. One question was phrased in two slightly different ways. Half of the people surveyed were asked whether they agreed that “whites have privileges that non-whites do not have.” The other half were asked whether they agreed that “non-whites face barriers that whites do not face.” Logically, of course the two questions mean exactly the same thing. But they yielded very different answers. When asked whether they enjoyed special “privilege,” only 50 percent of whites agreed. Among the most conservative whites, only 36 percent agreed. But when asked whether nonwhites faced extra “barriers,” 70 percent of all whites and a majority even of the most conservative whites agreed.18 People do not like being negatively judged. When they feel negatively judged, they hunker down. On the other hand, people do have a sense of fairness. When that is appealed to, they respond more generously. The parlor games that permit people in public forums to speak of whites and men in terms they would never use to speak of other groups exact an important real-world price from American society. They provoke a truculent reaction that otherwise would have lain quiet. Progressive politicians may feel that provoking this reaction is worthwhile if it can mobilize a progressive populist surge. This vision of politics bumps into some inhospitable realities. Of those Americans who did not vote in 2016, the majority—52 percent—were white. Among those who did not vote despite being registered (and those are the nonvoters most likely to show up in 2020) the white majority was even bigger. Nate Cohn of the New York Times estimates that in the industrial Midwest, the population that was registered to vote in 2016 but that did not cast a ballot was 68 percent noncollege white.19 In other words, the most accessible pool of nonvoters in the most decisive region of the country are precisely the group least likely to respond to “Woke” messaging on immigration, race, and gender.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” wrote the Czech novelist Milan Kundera.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“For Donald Trump, life is a struggle for dominance. In every encounter, one party must win, the other must lose. The tough will prevail. The weak will be victimized—and they will deserve it. He explained his philosophy in a 2007 speech. It’s called “Get Even.” Get even. This isn’t your typical business speech. Get even. What this is, is a real business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ’em, but they teach you some stuff that’s a lot of bullshit. When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, the reason is, the reason is, not only, not only, because of the person that you’re after, but other people watch what’s happening. Other people see you, and they see how you react.1 He added later: If you’re afraid to fight back people will think of you as a loser, a “schmuck”! They will know they can get away with insulting you, disrespecting you, and taking advantage of you. Don’t let it happen! Always fight back and get even.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Have you ever known anyone swindled by a scam? It’s remarkable how determined they remain, and for how long, to defend the swindler—and to shift blame to those who tried to warn them of the swindle. The pain of being seen as a fool hurts more than the loss of money; it’s more important to protect the ego against indignity than to visit justice upon the perpetrator. We human beings so often prefer a lie that affirms us to a truth that challenges us.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Across the Atlantic, there beckons a third ideal, bigger than either: “Europe.” For reasons of history, geography, and culture, no plausible supranationalism exists on this side of the ocean. If Americans do not identify as Americans, they will identify more narrowly and acrimoniously, not more universally and humanely.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“The disease will strike harder in the Blue-voting cities than the Red-voting empty spaces, and many in the Blue zone may blame the Red for the miseries ahead. In the next political chapter, there will be little patience for those earnest anthropological expeditions into MAGA-land that once engaged so much media energy. How do you listen to people if you blame their votes for killing your mother before her time?”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“I don’t take responsibility at all.” Those words of Donald Trump at a March 13, 2020, press conference are likely to be history’s epitaph on his presidency.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Political power converts into economic benefit. That problem has only worsened in the Trump years, with the Trump tax cut and the Trump tariffs the leading culprits. In December 2019, the Federal Reserve released the first close study of the impact of Trump’s economic policies on consumer welfare. The language of the study was delicate, but the conclusions were damning. “We find that tariff increases enacted in 2018 are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices.” And while some might argue that hurting consumers is an acceptable price to pay to revive US manufacturing, “our results suggest that the tariffs have not boosted manufacturing employment or output, even as they increased producer prices.”27”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“Pulse shooter Omar Mateen does not seem to have received any direction or support from ISIS or any other international terrorist organization. ISIS inspired Mateen, but Mateen did not report to ISIS, even to the extent that there was any ISIS to report to. Mateen exemplified a new kind of international terrorist movement: a virtual movement that shared ideas and rhetoric rather than money and weapons. Just such a movement of international terror would kill hundreds of people worldwide in the Trump years, a movement of white racial resentment that often looked to Donald Trump as its inspiration and voice. The year 2019 suffered a peak in mass shootings in the United States, forty-nine shootings in total according to computations by the Associated Press, USA Today, and criminologists at Northeastern University. (The researchers defined a “mass killing” as taking four or more lives apart from the perpetrator’s.) The majority of those killed died at the hands of a stranger—typically a white male loner impelled by grievances against society.3 The deadliest mass shooting in US history (as of the end of 2019) occurred in October 2017. Stephen Paddock, a sixty-four-year-old white man, opened fire at a music festival in Las Vegas from a thirty-second-floor hotel room. Paddock killed 58 people and wounded 413. More than 400 other people were injured in the rush to escape the attack. After firing thousands of rounds in only ten minutes, Paddock killed himself by a gunshot in his mouth.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“In one of the last speeches of his presidency Ronald Reagan urged Americans always to trade in freedom. “In war, for one side to win, the other must lose. But commerce is not warfare. Trade is an economic alliance that benefits both countries. There are no losers, only winners.”45 Under Trump, Reagan’s party has left behind Reagan’s wisdom, making losers of us all.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy

“In the throes of World War II, the great free-trading Secretary of State Cordell Hull reviewed the misery that America First nationalism had wrought on his world. After the last war, too many nations, including our own, tolerated, or participated in, attempts to advance their own interests at the expense of any system of collective security and of opportunity for all. Too many of us were blind to the evils which, thus loosed, created growing cancers within and among nations; political suspicions and hatreds; the race of armaments, first stealthy and then the subject of flagrant boasts; economic nationalism and its train of depression and misery; and finally, the emergence from their dark places of the looters and thugs who found their opportunity in disorder and disaster.34 Chastened by that memory, the Americans of the postwar era committed themselves to a new kind of world. It’s not a defect of the system that Germany no longer fields a giant Wehrmacht, that Japanese merchant shipping is guarded by American warships and aircraft rather than Japan’s own. It’s not a rip-off that South Korea pays for beef and fruit by selling electronic goods, or that the United States pays for electronic goods by selling beef and fruit. That was the plan all along. Trump talks of “great deals,” but he can feel certain that he has scored a great deal for himself only if he has imposed misery and ruin on his counterparty.”
― David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy