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The amount of energy being expended over Trump's recent visit to a McDonald's is kind of interesting to me. It seems to have generated an extraordinary amount of media and online attention. On the supporter side, they are hailing it as a brilliant and deeply meaningful activity, simultaneously trolling Harris and celebrating the dignity of unskilled labor, and generating deeply Americana visuals. On the detractor side, they decry it an illogical and bizarre stunt, that it was fake because the store was not actually open, and compared it to Dukakis in the tank. Some have even doxxed the owner who wrote to the state to complain about labor regulations.
Meanwhile, McDonald's corporate HQ sent what I think is a very good memo to franchisees explaining the value of their goal of political inclusivity and how that manifests as allowing visits from anyone who asks and being proud of being important to American culture.
I think this is interesting because symbolically, it's something that cleaves much more at the red tribe/blue tribe dichotomy than the Democrat/Republican one. I think a lot of blue-tribers disdain McDonalds and consider it trashy, but can't really say so too loudly because the poorer members of their political coalition enjoy it. Trump has been mocked in the past for having the poor taste of actually liking McDonald's food as well as catering a White House dinner with it, widely seen as trashy and disrespectful. The imagery of Trump looking for all the world like a store manager from 3 decades ago I think also triggered some nostalgia - or perhaps post-traumatic stress - about the current state of customer service.
I don't have too much more to say and offer no predictions. It just seemed interesting as one of those things that seemed to trigger something unexpected in people for reasons that go way beyond the substance of the actual event, and figuring out what's resonating with people in either a positive or negative way, and possibly why, seems like a good path towards predicting future trends.
This was a brilliant publicity stunt by the Trump team, and the unhinged reaction from Redditors proves why.
As I mentioned last week, Republican candidates need to "hack the media" in order to get coverage. This is a great example. Trump comes across really well in this appearance and amplifying it can only help his campaign. If, instead, he gave a speech to talk about entitlement reform or some other boring shit, he would have gotten almost no coverage (and the coverage he did get would be purely negative).
Most elections really do come down to who is the more likeable person. Trump is in his element here and seems like a genuinely nice guy as he hands out bags of greasy food.
The people who are seething that this stunt is fake, on the other hand, come off as really dumb. Trump has been the victim of two assassination attempts. Do you think the Secret Service is going to let randoms through the drive through? Next, they'll tell us that pro wresting is also fake.
And finally there's also the added benefit that Kamala Harris claims to have worked at McDonald's but is probably lying about it.
Of course, most people have already made up their minds. But when the sole plank of the Harris campaign is that Trump is a monster, these humanizing events really undermine the narrative. Trump is now up to 62.5% on Polymarket, the highest since Biden left the race.
The status dynamics are interesting. Having worked at McDonald's sometime in the past clearly isn't something that Democrats feel there should be shame over--regardless of the veracity of Kamala's work history, it's still something she thinks gives a boost to her resume. But the response is nevertheless unhinged.
Is it some kind of stolen valor? I'm imagining Trump stocking shelves at CostCo in a photo-op, and I doubt he'd even get any media attention. Or even doing the same exact thing at Burger King: despite being identical slop, the response wouldn't be nearly so vituperative.
It has to do with what McDonald's represents. Kamala worked at McDonald's, but it was something horrific she was forced to do, serving the lowest of the low so she could better herself. If her life is ever dramatized by Netflix, her last day there will depict her departure as she gives a soliloquy about the depravities of mass consumerist slop, corporate wage slavery, car-centric culture, and factory farming. Trump, by contrast, is not only going there voluntarily, but going there as if there were nothing wrong or shameful about going there. Anyone with his privileges doing something so declasse is breaking a code.
Yeah, this seems to capture a lot of the feels.
Tucker Carlson has characterized this election as the people who talk down to others vs. those who are sick of being talked down to. And while that's obviously reductive, there's a strong element of truth there.
The Democrat says "Come with me and you won't have to go to NASCAR races and eat McDonald's any more. You can be just like me! Wouldn't that be great?". It shows a real lack of understanding about the working class and what they value. They don't do these things because they have to. They like McDonald's!
Trump, despite being raised rich, seems to get it. It's weird. I feel my own common touch fading away with every passing year.
This reminds me of the narrative I bought into about 20 years ago, when the left was pushing the idea that everyone, including those in the Middle East, just wanted liberal democracy (even if they weren't aware of it). So once freed from the religious oppressive forces keeping them down, they'd gravitate towards such a system like in America. Same for immigrants from such cultures, whose kids would see how awesome liberal democracy is and thus adopt its values. I particularly recall a (more recent, but still like a decade old, I think?) 5-hour long conversation between Cenk Uygher and Sam Harris about this kind of stuff, where Cenk was smugly telling Sam about how suicide bombers and other similar Muslim terrorists could just be won over with the benefits of Western liberal values.
I think the amount of epicycles that have been required to explain the various failures and speedbumps that such a narrative has encountered in the past 2 decades shows that, no, it was rather that the people who pushed such a narrative largely just lacked the ability or willingness to appreciate the true diversity of thought there exists in humans. I don't put much weight to any sort of sociological study anymore, but I suspect that the findings that liberals in America have a hard time modeling how conservatives think in a way that doesn't exist in reverse might be pointing at something that's true. Likewise for the cliche that "liberals think conservatives are evil; conservatives think liberals are stupid."
I honestly think most people simply are not good at understanding the Zeitgeist of cultures outside of their own and perhaps nearby cultures that are fairly similar. We don’t really get the MENA region because most of us are generations removed from a culture that took religion seriously. To most WEIRD people, religion is just a personal preference, probably not much more important than other lifestyle choices. We don’t think of God in universal terms and not really as a thing to order society by. We would never ever suggest a state religion except in a nominalistic way— yes we’re Anglican, but it’s not like we take it seriously enough to seriously teach it or publicly acknowledge it or encourage its practice.
Comparing that to MENA, they’d be convinced that most of the West are atheists. They don’t allow the public display of religion outside of the state sect of Islam. They not only live by those rules themselves, and publicly so, but enforce those rules on everyone whether Muslims or not. The Quran bans homosexual behavior and they will teach gays to fly off skyscrapers. The mindset is that Allah is watching and allah is going to not only keep score but intervene in history and in personal life to enforce his will.
Now on the liberal conservative version, I think it’s the same thing. Liberals are farther along the path to practical atheism. Most have at best found churches that are liberal first and Christian second, if they bother to go. They’re much more down the path of chewing almost everything through the Post-Modern Neo-Marxist lens of oppression and global culture norms of not judging anything except traditional Western values. As such they simply cannot fathom that someone might take such things seriously.
MENA was a seriously different place from the west even when the west took religion seriously; endemic cousin marriage and segmentary lineage will do that
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