We will all be voting soon, and that means we have a decision to make. Will you be joining the young woman pictured above? She is proudly advertising that she will be "voting for the convicted felon."
That convicted felon is pictured, too, just in case you have gotten confused about all the various court proceedings in which Mr. Trump has been involved. He is, indeed, a "convicted felon." Further legal proceedings are pending.
I obtained the above picture from an online article in The Guardian, which is published in Great Britain, but which does an extremely good job of covering U.S. politics. The edition in which the picture appeared was dated, July 26, 2024. The picture accompanied an opinion piece by Stephen Reicher. That opinion piece was titled, "Donald Trump is a misogynistic, billionaire felon. Here’s why Americans can’t stop voting for him."
Well, why is that? Here is what Reicher says:
”Skilled leaders don’t just represent groups. They play a key part in defining the groups they seek to lead and then in representing themselves as being “of” the group, working for the group and delivering to the group. Or rather, as I argue with my co-authors in our book The New Psychology of Leadership, effective leaders have to be skilled “entrepreneurs of identity.” And, love him or loathe him, Donald Trump is on the brink of power (again) because he is one hell of an entrepreneur of identity.
Trump’s view of “us” and “them” is at its clearest in his Argument for America, the ad with which he concluded his successful 2016 presidential campaign. It is quite compelling in the way of something that you know is bad for you but you can’t tear yourself away from. It is entirely repetitive, like a drumbeat, organised around an antagonism between “the establishment” and “the American people” culminating in the assertion: “I am doing this for the people and for the movement, and we will take back this country for you and we will make America great again."
I think Reicher is right to call Trump an "entrepreneur of identity." Donald Trump has been extremely successful in making large numbers of people think that their own government is "against" them, and that Trump is "for" them. If that were true, of course... Well, it is nothing but natural that a government that is "against" its own people would put a totally innocent person on trial and falsely convict him, precisely because that person is "working for the people." And such is Mr. Trump's situation, the way he tells it.
An appeal to a sense of grievance about our own government is what underlies and powers the Trump campaign, but Kamala Harris is singing from some separate sheet music. Harris is appealing to those who believe that "the people have the power," as Patti Smith so wonderfully proclaims in the video I am making available below. Her song is more fully explored in this earlier blog posting about Smith's fantastic, powerful message:
As between Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris, I am in agreement with Harris, not Trump. Big changes need to be made, but we can (and must) make those changes ourselves. Trump's statement that "I, alone, can fix it" is the anthesis of democracy. So is his assertion that he will be "dictator for a day," if he is elected this November.
WE, the people, have the power, and we can exercise our power by voting for Kamala Harris for President in the upcoming election. Thus, I am NOT going to be voting for "the convicted felon."
I hope you're not going to be voting for him, either!
Image Credit:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/26/donald-trump-americans-vote-psychology
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