When I took over “The Daily Show” from Jon Stewart in 2015, I was surprised to learn that my job as a late-night comedy host was not merely to entertain but to eviscerate — to attack, crush, demolish and destroy the opponents of liberal, progressive America. Very quickly, people from some quarters — mostly those same liberal progressives — criticized me for not maintaining the minimum acceptable levels of daily evisceration that were established by my predecessor.
The truth is that Jon never liked being labeled the Great Eviscerator. He didn’t think it was healthy, and he always tried to think about the details of issues with a healthy dose of skepticism before going on air and putting his ideas out into the world. But through the lens of the internet, that’s not what people saw. In the early days of the blogosphere and YouTube and social media, people took Jon’s most strident commentary and made it go viral with clickbait headlines, blowing those segments way out of proportion, compared with the more thoughtful segments that made up most of the television show. And, unfortunately, when we look back today, the evisceration (and exasperation) is what most people remember.
The experience of stepping into Jon’s shoes brought on enormous culture shock for me. In South Africa, where I come from, we also use comedy to critique and analyze, and while we don’t let our politicians off the hook, we don’t eviscerate one another. If anything, my stand-up shows back home are a place where we can push away the history of apartheid’s color classifications — where black, white, colored and Indian people use laughter to deal with shared trauma and pain. In South Africa, comedy brings us together. In America, it pulls us apart.
—Trevor Noah: Let’s Not Be Divided. Divided People Are Easier to Rule.
Amen to that. Noah’s column is short, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.
I also urge you to try to understand why a lot of people voted for Trump even though they didn’t like him or his tactics. Try to put yourself in their shoes. Tim Duy, in Desperately Searching For A New Strategy points out that economists and pro-globalization politicians can no longer afford to ignore the people who have been left behind and are hurting, and the ones who aren’t too bad off right now but are worried about the future:
The dry statistics on trade aren’t working to counter Trump. They make for good policy at one level and terrible policy (and politics) at another. The aggregate gains are irrelevant to someone suffering a personal loss. Critics need to find an effective response to Trump. I don’t think we have it yet. And here is the hardest part: My sense is that Democrats will respond by offering a bigger safety net. But people don’t want a welfare check. They want a job. And this is what Trump, wrongly or rightly, offers.
Clinton lost the election because too many people said the existing system wasn’t working for them. A lot of them knew electing Trump was risky, but something needed to be done. If we’re not willing to try to listen and understand them, we’re part of the problem.
I can sympathise with this view. It is the marginalised who currently support the party in power in Delhi and that party is rapidly winning state elections too. The so called liberal progressives are almost all Anglophones and urban with no contact with the sweaty masses in urban slums or the rural toilers.
Peggy Noonan, for one, has been warning about this for a long time. She says the protected classes make the rules, the unprotected have to suffer the consequences. Fingers crossed that something good can come out of this.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can provide the jobs and prosperity that he promised during the election campaign and which all those Trump voters are expecting to benefit from. If his promises turn out to be so much hot air, those voters will be apoplectic.
It’s not about what he can accomplish, it’s the perception he sells to his supporters. More about his later. In the meantime there’s the Peggy Noonan quote: “Politicians disappoint. They can’t help it. It’s the way things are.”
I can appreciate Jon Stewart more after reading this.
I voted for Obama once. I couldn’t do it a second time. It bothered me that, all too often, those who opposed Obama or H. Clinton were branded as racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic, no matter what the issue.
I voted for Bill Clinton many times, first for governor and, later, for president. I couldn’t vote for Hillary, for many reasons, and none of them were her sex. A large part of it was that a vote for Hillary was a vote for a continuation of policies and practices that I didn’t agree with.
Since Obama was elected, Democrats have shed 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats, 12 governorships and hundreds of state legislature seats — all told, nearly 1000 Democrat officeholders defeated. Trump managed to ride a huge wave of dissatisfaction into the White House.
The name calling did not help their cause. Clinton regretted the “deplorables” quote. It was a big mistake and she knew it.
I think the people who voted for Trump were actually voting against the status quo. Change, any change, is better in the minds of many since what we’ve been doing obviously isn’t working.
Yes, Trump was campaigning on change. Clinton’s main argument was Trump was too dangerous, but too many people didn’t trust her either.