To genuinely wonder what is going to happen to the US?

[AlternativePerspective]

Weirdly the story has now disappeared from the BBC since I saw it this morning, but basically. Donald Trump is suggesting UV treatment and injecting disinfectant as a means to kill COVID.

Obviously most know he’s a lunatic, but enough support him to keep him in power, and people will take this advice seriously and will surely inevitably die as a result.

Thing is, there seems no way to stop him. if he gets back into power, which he undoubtedly will, then they have another four years of this, in which case the stability of the country is in serious danger.

But if he doesn’t get in I predict serious unrest and even wonder whether the states could end up in civil war.

Either way it’s not a place I would want to be going right now.

It’s obviously easy to laugh at trump from the sidelines, but people are having to live under this....

A poor man's idea of a rich man.
A weak man's idea of a strong man.
A failure's idea of a success.

The bailing out of Wall Street at the expense of ordinary people, the fact that not one person was held accountable for the crash that devastated the lives of millions of Americans - that is on Obama and it is unforgivable.

This is the trouble basically. We have the same problem in the UK. Our economies have crashed, and have changed out of all recognition, and the ability of ordinary people to make a real living has all but disappeared. It's all very well for richer groups bleating about 'creating divisions', but the fact is they have always existed. It's all very well those same groups complaining that he is legitimising anger, the anger and resentment is legitimate. We don't all have independent means of living, we don't all have family wealth to fall back on. Wealth and resources have rarely been shared out to those whose labour produces them. The extent of redistribution was being restricted more and more over the last 40 years and the economy crashing completely was the last straw. It is pushing people to questions of survival; there is no point trying to deny or evade that.

What some don't see or choose to ignore for some reason - probably sheer desperation - is that Trump and his ilk in the UK are from the extremely privileged groups themselves and are using the anger and resentment to divide and conquer.

Just how did Trump get so far?

American here. I have an idea of how, based on my dad, who is and always has been a staunch Republican. Never before have I seen anyone who adheres so rigidly to party lines.

What do the Republicans think? That’s what my dad thinks. If it’s a left wing / Democratic idea, he’ll rail against it all day. He hates anything even remotely liberal. Whatever the Republicans do is right, and whatever the Democrats do is wrong.

Now, I tend to agree with a previous poster though who said that Trump getting into office is a response to Obama’s eight-year presidency. Some people figured Clinton would be more of the same. Not all people who voted for Trump are like my dad. Some truly just wanted a change.

And quite frankly, I don’t trust either the Republicans or the Democrats. I think both parties come with their own brand of idiots, and they each have their own agendas.

In a nutshell, perhaps it’s not so much Trump his supporters are supporting but rather what he represents – the Republican Party. If you took Trump as he is but made him a Democrat, those who so rigidly follow GOP lines would be calling him an idiot, a danger, and so on.

In short, they back Trump because of what he’s not . . . a Democrat.

Perhaps you get some of this mindset in Britain? You get people who are staunchly Conservative or staunchly Labour and follow the rhetoric of their own party to a fault, yes?

What's going to happen is that there's going to be 250,000 deaths in the US

Perhaps you get some of this mindset in Britain? You get people who are staunchly Conservative or staunchly Labour and follow the rhetoric of their own party to a fault, yes?
We absolutely do but our media isn't as staunchly partisan as in the US (particularly televised media) and I think the UK having a wider range of viable political parties also means less polarization.

Party loyalty is dying off a bit, or it was. The classes are more varied and complex than they used to be. Europe has, in general, a much wider range of parties again and is less class-based. What they are based on varies from country to country. The US is one hell of a large country to be only bipolar.

I'd also wager that the UK not having a partisan judicial system helps. Some Republicans last time out didn't like Trump but supported him because they wanted a Republican supreme court.

Yes, definitely. Johnson's suggestion that judicial appointments be replaced by political appointees was dangerous. I think he back-tracked on it. Law is the bedrock of democratic institutions.

Has he back-tracked on it? I am relieved if that is true.

The US is one hell of a large country to be only bipolar.

This is so true. You'll get the Green Party and the Libertarians on the ballot, but their followings are so small that they don't even register. It's all about the Dems and the Republicans.

Some responsible adults in the country had to rush out warnings against ingesting bleach: 🤦🏻‍♀️

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/24/trump-disinfectant-bleach-coronavirus-claims-reaction

Harvard’s toxicology Twitter account felt the need to issue medical advice online following Trump’s statement, giving a scientific reason for why you shouldn’t swallow bleach (you know, for when common sense won’t suffice
.....
Celeste Ng@pronounced_ing^
^
I have a lot of sympathy for every PR people at every single disinfectant company who was told yesterday,
“Look, we need to you write a serious non-profane press statement telling people not to inject bleach - in the next 10 min, please.”

https://www.ft.com/content/e6f53b73-2fd4-486d-a24b-fa4e050ddc39

Reckitt Benckiser, the UK maker of household cleaning products like Lysol, issued a statement on Friday saying
“under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)”.