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Originally Posted by Ian
It is tough to imagine someone in the 20s not being at least the same if not more sexist/racist/misogynistic... but it should be noted that using US history as a moral barometer might not be the best tool for the job...
That is a more thoughtful approach for making comparisons. Certainly so in our time when relativity is preferred over absolutes.
I do wonder how Spence’s comment would hold up if he referred to the temperament of the person in office compared to popular culture of that time (think of what everyone is saying about Kavanaugh and the 80s right now.) I’m sure Trump, as a fairly obvious outlier in today’s public society, might win a “most” award there.
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My answer, though, was to Spence's comment as he phrased it. He did frame it as "Never in my life or from what I know of history," and he did say "I was going back a few hundred years." And it seemed that he was passionate about it and that it was a really important thing to consider and comment on.
Your approach is more astute and interesting. And worth a discussion rather than a snide or sarcastic retort.
As for Trump's temperament compared to the popular culture of our time, I'd say that Trump fits the temperament of our popular culture very well. That may be one of the major reasons he got elected. We live in a brash, in your face time. Check out our current popular music compared to that of the 18th and 19th century or even that of the first 60 years of the 20th century.
How about sports. There used to be something called sportsmanship and modesty of one's talent. Athletes up to the mid to latter twentieth century would be astonished to see the self congratulatory hijinks on the field of today's athletes. And how many are guilty of drug abuse and abuse of women.
Our movies and videos are filled with gratuitous violence and casual sex and semi to full nudity, among other things, that pre-1960 movies mostly shunned. Our reality entertainment scene is full of Jerry Springer types. Actually, Trump's reality TV show, The Apprentice (I admit that I found it boring), was a relief from the unstructured and biased hit job shows such as The View.
Our politics is one constant attack on opponents, filled with smears, lies; the mainstream media has gone beyond old-fashioned slanting and become outright advocates and arms of a political party; our divorce rates, unwed births, abortions, destruction of history and its relics, student violence and suppression of speech and diversity on college campuses, etc., etc., etc., etc.
And all that stuff is acceptable to half of the public, or so we are told, by the mainstream media that supports much of it.
If Trump is an outlier of todays contemporary scene, its because he is a reaction against it. "Conservatives" were tired of weak, mealy mouthed Republicans who caved, conceded, and were afraid of negative press. They saw who was winning. They decided to throw a pit bull into the arena. And most are now happy they did.
Trump is certainly no old-fashioned "conservative" model. But I find that most of the claims of him being misogynous, racist, anti-Semitic, stupid, mean, lacking direction, in short--a mess, are either exaggerated or untrue. The left which once loved him as one of their own have turned loose every means at their command to bring him down. Because, in my opinion, he is an existential threat, if he succeeds, to who they are, what they have politically built, and what they are/were on the verge of establishing as their version of, to use one of their favorite phrases, "who we are."
Comparing, say, LBJ relative to his time to Trump relative to our time, I would say that LBJ was far more the outlier of the culture of his time than Trump is. And LBJ was a far more crass, sexist, racist, depraved war monger than Trump ever was, even before Trump became President.
And we could probably go throughout U.S. history using your method of comparison and find many Presidents to be far more outliers of the popular culture of their time regarding corruption, morality or depravity, or coarseness and vulgarity than Trump is. But our current Press is far more interested in exposing every nook and cranny of Trump's life that has a taint of some sort of corruption. Probably because it has far more to lose than the media's hey day of the mid to late twentieth century when it was far more influential and was in bed with the Progressive movement, protecting the privacy of their like minded Presidents, that was again sweeping across this country.
That mainstream, Progressive media, is on the verge of becoming an outlier if Trump and his supporters succeed.