A Case Of Collective Amnesia

Posted on by under Election 2024, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I was in the mood to post some snarky snippets today, but I got a late start and ran out of time, so I turn instead to a column by Frank Bruni writing for the New York Times about voters collective amnesia.  I suppose it’s like anything else … a few years after a traumatic event, the memory dims and it seems somehow less traumatic.  Maybe.  For some.  A recent survey shows that a large portion of voters have forgotten the trauma and chaos that defined Donald Trump’s four years in the Oval Office.  Here’s how Mr. Bruni explains it …

Have Voters Really Forgotten Trump’s Presidency?

By Frank Bruni

15 April 2024

Memory plays tricks on us. It’s famously unreliable. That’s the bane of estranged lovers weighing the wisdom of reconciliation. Of jurors determining the credibility of a witness.

And of Americans deciding how to vote in a presidential election? The latest poll by The New York Times and Siena College makes me wonder.

The poll, published Saturday, shows Donald Trump holding on to a slight edge of 46 percent to 45 percent over President Biden. And it includes this detail: When survey respondents were asked whether they remember the years of Trump’s presidency as “mostly good,” “mostly bad” or “not really good or bad,” 42 percent said “mostly good,” while just 33 percent said “mostly bad.”

Mostly good? Which part? His first impeachment? His second? All the drama at the border (because, yes, there was drama at the border then, too)? All the drama in the West Wing? The revolving door of senior administration officials, his good-people-on-both-sides response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., his wishful musings about violent attacks on journalists and Democrats, his nutty soliloquies at news conferences early in the coronavirus pandemic, his recklessly cavalier handling of his own Covid infection, his incitement of the Jan. 6 rioting, the rioting itself?

Those were the days.

I realize that the “mostly good” camp comprises many MAGA loyalists who will simply answer any Trump-related question in a Trump-adoring way. Tribalism triumphs. I realize, too, that Americans tend to prioritize economic realities in assessments of this kind, and that much of what they’re remembering and referring to are the lower prices of housing, food and other essentials during Trump’s presidency.

But I fear that they’re forgetting too much else in a wash of voter nostalgia. A fresh presidential bid by someone who was in and then away from the White House isn’t just highly unusual. It’s a memory test — and, in the case of a politician as potentially destructive as Trump, a profoundly important one.

Americans unhappy with Biden’s presidency need no reminders about why. They’re living it every day. But their present discontent may be claiming the space on their mental hard drives where their past discontent was stored, purging all the discord and disgrace that created Biden’s opening.

Absence makes the Trump grow stronger.

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12 thoughts on “A Case Of Collective Amnesia”

    • I’ve noticed that, too. I think there is a combination of factors at work, but largely I blame the internet and the ease with which people can spread falsehoods. The more people hear a lie, the more they begin to believe it.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Jill, good piece, but sad one. It just shows you how little Americans pay attention. As an independent voter for fifteen plus years and former member of both parties, primarily the GOP, I agree with the assessment of 152 historians who ranked Donald Trump as the worst president in American history. They cite two primary reasons – he divided his country because he cannot accept he lost an election and instigated seditious actions to stay in office. And, he botched the pandemic response which led to the deaths of a few more hundreds of thousands of Americans.

    I would cite other reasons as well, but let me just state what they said.

    Keith

    Liked by 2 people

    • Thanks, Keith. Yes, I thought Frank Bruni was spot on with this one. Donald Trump was, in my book, the single worst president this nation has ever had, and it took them a while, but the historians finally agreed with me. And yet, some people look back on his time in office as a positive thing. What is wrong with people??? The ‘man’ did NOTHING right in four years! And since leaving office, all he has done is divide this nation and incite violence. NOT what we need in a leadership role!

      Liked by 1 person

  4. With the Supreme Court now looking at the laws that were used against the Jan 6th Rioters and suggesting they may have been wrong they could be intending to pardon them all and writing off any charges against Trump.Now is the time for Joe Biden to either dismiss the whole of the current Supreme Court or extend it with new judges to make it more even, and Democratic leaning.

    If something isn’t done soon the whole Supreme Court thing becomes nothing more than a farce and an extension of Trump and his threats to get even with his enemies.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Sigh. I hope they don’t determine that the law cannot apply to the rioters or the inciters, but … given the structure of the Supreme Court today, it won’t surprise me. And what does that do to Trump’s J6 charges? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

      I think the Supreme Court is already pretty much a farce … last i saw, their approval rating was somewhere around 20%, I think. Just as some have collective amnesia about Trump’s time in the Oval Office, they also seem to have forgotten what Adolf Hitler did to Germany nearly 100 years ago. There used to be an advertisement on television for colleges that concluded with the announcer saying, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I think that applies to today’s Republicans, too.

      Cwtch

      Liked by 1 person

  5. There was an article I read about this I think on Sunday and they argue that when your presidents leave office even with a low rating, their polls get better with time, except for Richard Nixon which time didn’t help.
    Trump’s case is even more interesting because he is trying to reclaim the seat. So people are mostly concerned with their immediate problems and how they are being handled and are likely to forget what happened 4 years ago.

    Liked by 2 people

    • That does seem to be the case! I don’t understand it, but I guess people have short memories. No, not much could help Nixon at that point! But I would have thought, four years ago, that Trump’s legacy would always be about how he trashed our relationship with our allies, how he crashed our economy, and how he caused us to have the highest death toll from Covid in the world, even though we are only 5% of the world’s population. I guess people really do rather ‘clean out’ their minds after a time and conveniently forget the bad. Some people, anyway.

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