The NYT Revives "Economic Anxiety" Myth To Excuse Asshole Trump Voters

Dragging out the oldies to whitewash the racism and misogyny of Trump voters? Shocking.

Democracy did not die in November of 2024 but the assholes have their knives out and it's up to us to keep them from their bloody work. Despair and surrender are what they want. Resistance is what they’ll get. Stay strong. We beat the fascists once and we’ll fucking do it again.

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After Trump stole the 2016 election with massive assistance from Russia, James Comey, the legacy press, the alt-left, and 20 years of right-wing propaganda against Hillary Clinton, everyone was desperate to come up with a narrative to explain how Hillary “lost” that didn’t indict all of the people complicit in putting Trump in office. The lie they all settled on was “economic anxiety.”

You see, despite Trump running the most nakedly racist campaign in 50 years,¹ that’s not what Trump voters responded to. Nope! And despite the crowds at Trump’s Nazi rallies screaming racial slurs and waving signs chockfull of blatant racism, they weren’t there for the white supremacy and white nationalism. Nope!

They were there because they were “economically anxious.” They were worried about the economy and how those fucking brown people were going to steal all of their jobs and rape their white women how the government needed to boost jobs and wages.

It was all bullshit, of course. MAGAts ran out into the streets the day after the election and started spewing hate at everyone in their path, assured that they would be protected in “Trump’s America.” That went poorly for them as America reminded MAGAland that, sure, they had “won” the election but they were still the minority and, no, they couldn’t fucking scream the N-word with impunity.

They learned a hard lesson back then and they’re going to learn another hard lesson when they try it again now.

Ask Nick Fuentes, the little neo-Nazi shit, how things are going in “Trump’s America.” He thought he was super cool by declaring “Your body, my choice!” What a macho tough guy! But when a woman showed up at his door to ask about that, Mr. Master Race panicked, maced her, and shoved her down the stairs. Then he ran to mommy’s basement to hide. Truly, the Übermensch of the future!

Now he’s going to jail.

Still, we have to protect Trump voters from accountability, especially in the pages of the New York fucking Times. And how do we do that? By erasing the roles racism and misogyny played in the election. Instead, the NYT is pulling out that oldie-but-goodie, “Economic Anxiety”:

The idea resonated in particular with men and younger voters, the poll found — groups that Mr. Trump especially courted in this election and that Mr. Sanders did well with in his Democratic primary campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

“The connective tissue from Trump to Sanders is something akin to populism — the ruling class sucks — and that rhetoric plays well among a certain class of people who don’t feel the government works for them,” said Joshua Dyck, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Right. The “ruling class sucks.” They’re “populists” so they voted for a billionaire backed by the world’s richest man so they could fill the government with other billionaires who openly bragged about how they were going to rig the system in favor of billionaires.

I dunno…maybe “populism” means something else at the New York Times?

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Here’s the thing about the Bernie Bros that the press still refuses to acknowledge: They were racist knuckle-dragging assholes. Hillary supporters literally had to create secret online chatrooms to hide from them because the Bros screamed so much misogyny. Women just didn’t want to deal with that shit.

I’m old enough to remember when Black voters turned their noses up at Bernie in 2016. The Bros exploded, vomiting racism all over social media that was indistinguishable from the right. That was when I started to understand who and what the alt-left was and how they were motivated by the same white boy grievances as the right. When Black voters snubbed Bernie again in 2020, I knew the racism would be just as toxic and, surprise!, it was.

But, you know, “economic anxiety.”

In interviews, young men who once supported Mr. Sanders and voted for Mr. Trump this election said they wanted drastic change. They didn’t necessarily consider themselves to be very conservative — they had voted for Democrats in the past, identified as independents or were liberal on social issues.

But they distrusted politicians and wanted candidates who could relate to ordinary people. They wished the United States spent more money helping working Americans, and less on helping other countries fight wars or supporting immigrants.

In other words, they don’t actually know what the United States government does and they’re mad about…something. But what? Inflation? Maybe!

Gideon Smith, 39, a crane operator outside Tacoma, Wash., is a veteran with a political science degree, but he left the field because he was fed up with government. “I met one too many politicians and despised all of them,” he said. But he likes Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump, and their opposition to war and support of unions.

“I’m a union man, so making things American-made is huge, and this is Bernie and Trump,” he said. “Trump has been the best president for union workers we had in ages.”

Hmmmmm…“Best president for union workers we had in ages?” One suspects that Mr. Smith is either lying about why he supports Trump or perhaps should seek a refund on his political science degree. Trump’s first regime did everything possible to undermine unions. Biden’s administration put them on steroids. Meanwhile, Trump and Elon Musk joked about not paying workers overtime.

But, sure, Donald Trump is all about the common man and the working class. You know, “populism!”

The NYT waits until the end of the article, the part most people don’t get to, to mention what’s actually happening here:

Still, he and other analysts said, the young men who have supported both candidates may have been motivated less by specific policies and more by a feeling of being left behind. Economic changes, like the falling relative income of men without college degrees, and cultural forces, like cancel culture, have made it seem harder to be a man. They might also have been motivated by sexism, said Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, given that both candidates ran against women.

These voters may not be aligned with a party as much as an anti-establishment ethos — one that is fostered online, sometimes in a conspiratorial vein, on social media, gaming platforms and podcasts.

“Right now I don’t even think young men are clamoring for policy,” Mr. Chapman said. “Young men feel the world closing in. They’re looking for recognition. And they get recognition from the Joe Rogans of the world, they get recognition from Trump, they get recognition from Bernie Sanders.”

Weird how closely “populism” resembles white male grievance, isn’t it? Oh, they left out the “white” part but when you delve into the Manosphere, it’s impossible to avoid the cesspool of racism.

OK, here’s the thing the NYT is trying to gloss over: Donald Trump ran a campaign of open racism and misogyny. He targeted young men who are being radicalized by the far right into an ideology of victimhood. Nothing is ever their fault. Everyone and everything is against them. This is not exclusively a white boy thing but it’s all part of the same lie.

Once upon a time, being a white man meant you could succeed with minimum effort. No one had any expectations of you. You could be a complete fuck up and still get ahead in the world just because you weren’t a woman or Black or Latino. Chances are you would find a wife because women had no choice but to marry in order to experience anything like economic security. You were the center of society, the main character in advertising, books, movies, music, and politics. Everything was geared towards catering to you and your whims.

Black and Latino men didn’t have it nearly as good but, shit, it was still way better to be a man than a woman! We didn’t even believe women when they said they were sexually assaulted! It was literally legal to rape your wife because something something “the sanctity of marriage.”² Men could open a business, get a credit card, buy condoms, not be stuck raising a kid they didn’t want. Women had limited options. They were little more than property.

This was back in the 1960s and 70s, in case you’re wondering. We’ve had color TV longer than women have had the right to control their reproductive cycle or own a credit card under their own name.

And then that changed. Women demanded a seat at the table. So did minority communities. So did the LGBTQ community. Suddenly, men, especially white men, weren’t the only voices being heard. They were still the loudest voice but lots of commercials had Those People in it. They kept making shows and movies that catered to women instead of just to men. And then they elected a fucking Black guy as president?!

What the actual fuck?! Is this really America?!

And it got worse. Women, tired of settling for partners who didn’t put in any effort, started to demand more of men. Men had to actually earn companionship and sex. Wait, what? How was THAT fair?! All the guys online say that men are owed sex! Now women want us to earn it?! Those fucking whores! They’re ruining everything!

And on and on it went. Women wanted parity. Men were told women were taking everything away from them.

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” - Franklin Leonard

THAT’S what Donald Trump tapped into. Not populism. Not economic anxiety. Not anti-establishment sentiment. But a rage among men, particularly younger men, that women and Those People are no longer willing to be subordinate. That men are falling behind in school and college and the workplace because they’ve never had to play on a level playing field before. They still aren’t but the closer we come to one, the worse they do. Are they inferior? Obviously not. But no one has ever told them they have to work twice as hard to get half the recognition, so they don’t. Whose fault is that?

That’s a conversation the NYT will never have. A conversation we as a society do not want to have. Such a conversation would hold men accountable for their actions. Especially white men and that is something we have never done in the United States. Accountability is for everyone else but not for the golden child and look where that lead us.

I’m not saying things aren’t tough for boys and young men right now. But you know what? It’s been tough for everyone else the entire time. You can’t fix things by putting billionaires in charge whose explicit goal is to collapse the economy and turn women into breeding slaves. But you can certainly convince angry men to let the billionaires loot the country by promising to put women and Those People back in their place. This is a concept the right has understood for generations.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson

Today, Johnson would include women in that quote and he would be describing the modern Republican voter.

The question is: What are these “populist” Trump voters going to do over the next four years as their grand hero sells them out at every turn? What will they do as they watch their jobs disappear and their schools crumble and the price of food skyrocket? What will they do when they lose their healthcare and their red state governments sneer at them when they ask for help?

Will they still blame women and immigrants and the couple of dozen trans girls playing high school sports across the country? Will they still spit on “the elites” in the Democratic Party who are begging them to stop voting their future away because Donald Trump mocks the people who make them feel small? How much pain will Republicans have to inflict on them before they stop believing the lies? Before they look in the mirror and take even the tiniest shred of responsibility for what their lives have become? Before they tune out millionaires and billionaires like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk pretending to be one of them but who despise everything about them?

And if they won’t man up, how much longer are we going to put up with their bullshit and allow the legacy press to coddle them? Enough of this shit already. The New York Times can lie to its audience all day every day but we are under no obligation to play along.

There are 328 days until the first Blue Wave and it starts in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

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1. You know, before he topped it in 2024.

2. Republicans REALLY want to bring THAT back along with making it almost impossible for women to divorce their abusive husbands. Surely these two things are unrelated.