Will Bunch is the national political columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He attended a Trump rally recently, where he was more interested in the crowd than in the speaker. Who are the true believers who swear fealty to a man who tried to o return the 2020 election? To the man facing multiple indictments? To a billionaire who sells them sneakers and Bibles?
SCHNECKSVILLE — Even 30-mile-an-hour wind gusts whipping down from the nearby Poconos couldn’t move the bubble of Donald Trump-scented awe and alternative reality that descended on this hilltop village for about eight hours on Saturday.
And the thousands who waited hours on a single-file line that snaked around the fire department and a nearby technical college, like the endless headlights in the climax of Field of Dreams, did not want that bubble pierced by any stray jabs to remind them that Trump, who finally addressed the frigid crowd after sunset, is a criminal defendant or that Joe Biden isn’t actually America’s worst-ever president driving the nation into crime and deprivation.
Ask the one man who dared try.
He was an older gentleman from New Jersey, bespectacled, wearing an “ARMY” sweatshirt and a red Make America Great Again hat to show the multitudes of passersby that he’d once been one of them. He wouldn’t give his name, and his cause — Trump was somehow to blame for the prison time served by the Jan. 6 insurrectionist Jacob Chansley, “the QAnon Shaman” — was inscrutable. But any questioning of Trump was too much for one man in a backward baseball cap brandishing a can of Michelob Ultra, who abruptly hopped out of the line.
“I don’t like that. Get that sign out of here!” he threatened, as several on the line echoed their support. “You need to leave the immediate area.” The New Jersey man eventually slid down the line.
This Schnecksville extravaganza was the fourth Trump rally in the Mid-Atlantic that I’d attended since 2016. I go largely because I think the media still fails to understand America’s most important story of the last 10 years. U.S. democracy is staring out into the abyss not so much because of the narcissistic bluster of one alleged billionaire ex-president, but because of the people with fleece hoodies over their MAGA hats who spent hours in an April windstorm to see him.
These rallygoers are the vanguard of the 74 million who voted for Trump in 2020 and who still have him in a dead heat with Biden, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released hours before the event — despite or maybe because of the two impeachments, the 88 felony charges, or the Project 2025 blueprint for a “Red Caesar” dictatorship. If the American Experiment grinds to a halt after Jan. 20, 2025, it will ultimately be not the fault of Trump but the everyday citizens I met Saturday who are so eager to put him back in the White House.
Things have changed a lot since I talked to folks outside of Trump’s 2016 rally in Chester County, when they were intrigued by Trump’s not-a-politician bluster and his “get-’em-out-of-here” rage at liberal protesters. Eight years later, a Trump rally has become an Orwellian celebration of an upside-down world where the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years is actually the worst U.S. economy ever, the nation’s cities are cesspools of violence despite a plunging crime rate, and the only person wronged on Jan. 6 was not the scores of injured cops but Ashli Babbitt, shot by “a Black police officer.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience. Every word is a preconceived judgement. To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. Your judgement judges you and defines you.
, she said, judgmentally.
“She” posted the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Your judgement judges you and defines you.
Which of those misspelled “judgment”?
Turn the cesspool of Media both print and electronic and you might understand why this is the worst economy ever. You might understand why crime is out of control. From CBS to CNN from the Daily News to the NY Times American opinion is shaped.In spite of the protestations about Trump it is hard to believe the “Liberal Media ” is not trying to get Trump elected . Man bites dog creates increased circulation and advertising. And tax cuts for the owners sure won’t be rejected. For 3.5 years we have been told that unemployment numbers don’t count. That the 10s and 10s of millions who went to work after layoff , the 10s and 10s of millions who told their employers to” take this job and shove it I don’t work here any more” The 10s of millions of workers who went to their employers and said see that door , I want a raise and got one, don’t count. The only thing they care about is inflation. Never mind that the wage hikes of 50 % of the Labor force mostly in the bottom 2/3rds of income brackets were higher than the inflation since 2021. ” Real (inflation adjusted) average wage growth for a typical worker has seen the second-fastest recovery during this recession recovery of all five recession recoveries since 1980. Notably, the current economic recovery is the only one in which robust real wage growth has occurred in tandem with a rapid recovery of the unemployment rate.” https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/Dead men tell no lies. Murders in NYC are heading to be not only over 2000 lower than the peak in the early 90s. They are heading to be at or near the lowest ever recorded. Most other crimes as low as when Bloombucket left office. Never know that from the evening news.
American greed fuels inflation, not Joe Biden. As companies have absorbed one another, America suffers from too few competitors. Instead of competing for consumers’ dollars, companies in a market collude and price fix . Biden is the first president in a long time that has tried to enforce antitrust laws. He could do some good things for consumers in a second term. Trump will do nothing for consumers and working families.
There is nothing new or different about the psychology of a Trump rally. Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance both come into play, along with a hefty dose of tribal Orwellian fervor that grips these people and won’t let go. History is littered with such spectacles surrounding cults and cult-like figures. What’s not normal is seeing ordinary people, swept into the cult, with seemingly nothing to immediately break the spell, actually still want Trump to lead the country. At least that’s what MSM would have us all believe. The media continues to breathlessly elevate and draw attention to this fringe element, leaving the rest of us exhausted and nervous about November. We shouldn’t be. The press refuses to elevate the positives about Biden (boring, not enough clicks and $$$), refuses to elevate the voices of Never Trumpers, women, and independents, and will focus their laser sights onto Trump insanity until he is nothing more than a vestige of his perception of power and might, a weak, demented, old man, which he has already become. MAGA is clinging to a grease stain on the sidewalk. Let them.
Your moment of Zen:
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I saw this. Deeply disturbed that hood fertilizer would be so maligned 🤣
Nothing new here. I have often written that trump is not the problem; the problem is our neighbors and fellow “citizens.” If trump had died of a heart attack 20 years ago, amerakins today would be worshiping some other zombie savior.