Pun Salad

I happened to notice the NYT headline from this tweet:

“Letting go of the male breadwinner norm is not an instant fix for our culture, but we can’t move forward without that step,” Sarah Bernstein writes.

Read: https://t.co/SETBj7v0ZM

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) November 30, 2024

To repeat: "Our Messed-Up Dating Culture Gave Us Donald Trump".

I have no idea whether, or to what extent, that is true. It seems implausible, but I didn't read Ms. Bernstein's essay.

I couldn't help but try this out on the Google. There are some interesting theories out there on how we got Trumped:

• At the Hot Springs Sentinel Record, Bradley Gitz says: The Democratic Party gave us Donald Trump.

• An alternate explanation from Tim Alberta, as reviewed by the WaPo: How the Republican Party’s capitulation gave us Donald Trump.

• At Politico, Tom McGrath explains How 1980s Yuppies Gave Us Donald Trump.

• But the Some More News YouTubed podcast explains How Ronald Reagan Gave Us Donald Trump.

• James R. Rogers set the causality slightly different at Law & Liberty: How George H.W. Bush Gave Us Donald Trump.

• Back in 2019, Vox's Peter Kafka interviewed the NYT TV critic James Poniewozik who provided a cinematic explanation: How Rodney Dangerfield and “Caddyshack” gave us Donald Trump.

• Another leftie take at In These Times: The War on Terror Gave Us Donald Trump.

• Or, for a different take, there's Robert Scheer, pointing his shaky finger at The American Villain Who Gave Us Donald Trump. (Spoiler: 'twas Roy Cohn, who died 38 years ago.)

• Steven Klein ("Senior Lecturer in Political Theory @Kingspol_econ") tweeted a geographic explanation:

  Jackson Hole gave us Donald Trump

  — Steven Klein (@stevenmklein) November 6, 2024

• CNN gave credence to Timothy Stanley's J'Accuse: The guy who really gave us Donald Trump. (Spoiler: Roger Ailes.)

• A 2017 LTE from one Kathryn Krumsee, in the Chicago Tribune: Greed, ignorance, intolerance and indifference gave us Donald Trump.

• Back in 2016, Robert Maranto supplied the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with a twofer: How public schools gave us Donald Trump and the 1619 Project.

• Jamelle Bouie, calling them "Brothers in White Resentment", explained it quite simply: What gave us Donald Trump is what gave us Dylann Roof.

• Another progressive explanation emanated from Thomas Frank whose 2016 book Listen, Liberal was reviewed at Dissent: Zombie Neoliberalism! (Aiee!) The subhed on the article is "How 'There Is No Alternative' gave us Donald Trump."

  You are supposed to know what that means. I had to Wikipedia it: There is no alternative.

Well, I could go on. Everyone, seemingly, has a theory on who or what gave us Donald Trump. Fortunately, nobody's blaming Pun Salad.