I’ve been watching Show Me a Hero on HBO the past few weeks, and you should too. They are showing two episodes a week, and the final episodes will be aired this upcoming Sunday, so if you want to watch them live you have ample time to catch up on the last four. The true story focuses on young mayor in Yonkers attempting to put public housing in predominately white neighborhoods. Here’s the official trailer:
It’s all the old racial ugliness brought up again, and man is it timely. Or timeless (and yes, I am aware that this is the third post to link this- it’s just so terrifying):
The group said Trump has their best interests in mind, while other Republicans are looking out for themselves. “We’ve got to show the Republicans that we’ve had it with them, that we will not be there every single time. They treat us like crap and they lie to us and promise us things and then they expect us to vote again,” said a Republican woman. “That’s why we want Trump.”
The crowd in the room was angriest about national security. Nearly all of them, it appeared, had an unshakeable feeling that U.S. border was porous as a sieve and that the very things that once defined the nation: army, border and national pride—were fading. They complained of America’s reduced standing in the world, and Obama’s apparent ineptitude in challenging Russia, Syria and ISIS.
When the group listened to a clip of Trump claiming that as president “the military is going to be so strong” that “nobody is going to mess around with the United States,” nearly everyone registered approval on their dial meters of 100—a seldom occurrence among focus groups.
“We love our country and we love what our country stands for,” said a woman who added she comes from a military family. “I look at where we are now as a country where entitlements are just totally out of control. Our borders have completely dissolved. We’re not what we used to be. I want to people to represent my interest.”
Trump’s unapologetic focus on strengthening the border—he wants to build a wall and deport all 11 million immigrants before letting many back into the country—excites many conservatives, as well as some who don’t traditionally vote Republican. Though he has announced scant specific plans, Trump has said he will expand the military, commit to veterans, and take a tough line on dealing with China and Iran.
“He’s not afraid,” said a woman who voted twice for Obama. “He keeps prodding on even if people give him negative press. He doesn’t change and apologize.”
A couple years back, I thought the Republican base would be clamoring for a bully-boy asshole like Christie. I just didn’t realize they wanted a xenophobic fascist, but I probably should have.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m still reeling from Jorge Ramos being tossed from the Trump presser. It’s number one in trending on twitter. Over 58K tweets. Trump may claim he didn’t know Ramos, but a lot of people do.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: The entire GOP is xenophobic, Trump only says it out loud.
Joshua James
Yeah, I’m loving SHOW ME A HERO, it’s vintage David Simon and I can’t imagine how it could be at all better. It’s blowing me away, and I’m pretty damn jaded when it comes to film / TV.
And every role is perfectly cast.
Joel
This American Life ran a good two-parter on integration, too. Show me a Hero is very compelling. Two episodes in so far.
lamh36
OT, but…OMG guys!
Guys…I think POTUS may be coming if not to my job, then very near!
They sent out an email telling us that the employee street parking entrance was gonna be closed and we’d have to park in the ER garage.
First off, ugh ER garage is crap. I’ll have to get to work early just to find a spot.
2nd, the hospital where I work is a BIG deal and made national news. If you’ve paid attention in the past 3 weeks you’ll be able to fifire out where I’m talking about. If POTUS does come there, it would make sense.
Thirdly…no thirdly. I just hate listing things like I did with just 2 bullet points…lol.
Ooh…they now they are telling us the employee parking will be closed due to a “special event”!!!!
OMG!!!
Emma
And the sad thing is that they will never change their minds. The more you try to show them the facts, the more they will double-down on their ignorance.
Hunter Gathers
These numbnut dipshits can bitch, whine, and moan all they like. There aren’t enough of them to matter anymore. The White vote is irrelevant.
Thank Glob.
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: Yes, but JORGE RAMOS! It would be as if Nixon had Walter Cronkite tossed out.
JPL
@lamh36: I feel so bad for your inconvenience…….. If by chance you happen to be close to the person causing such inconvenience, smile and take a picture. We will all drool
Iowa Old Lady
@lamh36: Also, a visit from POTUS sounds very exciting. Have a good time.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
ah, the irony.
Anyway, the trouble with the military is the GoP controlled congress won’t pay it’s bills on the grounds of SOCIALISM! So Trump going to go after his own party and the pesky separation of powers.
some guy
ein volk, ein reich
letting Trump disregard the dog whistles and go straight for the white supremacist vote is a brilliant strategy.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: The days of Nixon are long over. Cronkite would be tossed out and no one would care.
beltane
Chris Christie never had a chance. He might be a loudmouthed bully, but the only group of people he actively hates are schoolteachers. That is not enough.
beltane
@efgoldman: June? May? Of which year. The GOP base has been showing their true colors ever since the moment La Palin stepped out onto the stage at the 2008 Republican convention.
NotMax
HBO beyond the budget, but thanks.
MattF
Still, no brownshirts. Yet. Because how else will all those sincerely ‘passionate’ Trump supporters get social validation and protect each other?
And remember, boys and girls, no violence!
raven
Ha, Katy Tur talking to Rachel about Ramos and Trump just said “Ramos has been trying to get an interview with Trump ever since his racist, uh not racist, comments on immigration”!
Cain
@lamh36:
Enjoy! I was pretty excited too.. Obama visited my work, and he was two buildings over. It was pretty rad.
lamh36
It’ll be very interesting…he may not come anywhere near the hospital, but it’s very interesting the areas the hospital are closing especially since we are very close to City Hall (bout 15 min or less) and we aren’t even close to the lower 9th ward.
So it may be all for nothing, but I’m still hoping!
MattF
@efgoldman: The Bush posture: head up ass and foot in mouth.
Mike in NC
I live in a large development where virtually every day I see idiots blowing through stop signs at 30 mph, yet the imbeciles fawning over Trump are convinced he’ll build a big wall to keep out ISIS and Ebola, which are the real dangers we face.
Cacti
The Tea Party movement was a proto-fascist racist backlash to the election of the first non-white POTUS.
After he was re-elected handily 4-years later, they’ve dispensed with the proto part and have moved on to an American Mussolini as their preferred candidate.
oldster
Man, you want to know why this country ain’t what it used to be?
Because Time magazine doesn’t even know how to use the word “seldom” correctly:
“a seldom occurrence among focus groups.”
So ugly. So inept.
But I’m not convinced that Trump will make the English language strong again.
beltane
@efgoldman: I recall John McCain once saying something decent about candidate Obama at one of his hate-rallies. It is not something we’re ever likely to see again from a Republican politician in our lifetimes.
Another Holocene Human
@lamh36: Show us your selfie!!!!
Calouste
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: IIRC that woman also said something about porous borders, where I bet you dollars to donuts that the last time she was out of the country was when her parents were stationed overseas.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Notable how the same ones who gleefully salivated over “Tear down this wall!” are now vociferously backing “Put up this wall!”
Calouste
@MattF: I think that picture can’t be drawn unless we resurrect M.C. Escher.
Tom Q
I wish that Time article had given a bit more on that two-time Obama voter — like, asking her why she ever voted for him, and what’s changed so drastically.
This idea that the country is somehow careening toward disaster is just bizarre — it seems like some combination of the pure falsehoods Fox purveys, and the conviction of super-lefties that all politicians are 100% corporate-owned, has created an insanely warped view of reality for a not insignificant portion of our citizens. In 2008, this view would have been understandable. In a time of 5.8% unemployment and (relative) world stability, it’s borderline hysteria.
MattF
@Calouste: Jeb!, the human Klein bottle.
JPL
@beltane: Lindsay tried to say that Trump appealed to those who thought Obama a Muslim. I don’t remember Lindsay defending Obama before.
Another Holocene Human
@Hunter Gathers: Pray they remain keyboard warriors and hoverround ridin’ vigilantes.
The way they think they don’t need to control themselves in public scares me.
lamh36
I’m looking at the press release and it says he’ll be here on Thursday. My job has this “special event” parking bidness tomorrow though…it’s weird.
I wonder why they wouldn’t tell us what this “special event” is though…the parking they are closing is utilized by over 200 employees!
Still, Google Charity Hospital and Katrina, and you’ll see articles about the significance of Charity post Katrina and how the new hospital is being touted as a “shining” example of NOLA getting back on track post-Katrina.
So it is still a possbility
NotMax
@JPL
IIRC, he voiced support in opposing torture as a tool of the state.
Another Holocene Human
@Tom Q:
I feel like times are improving for Dem voters–employment, overtime, tiny cracks in the whole “hey ho we won’t go up on your pay”.
But for paranoid righties, times have never been worse. Obama is Still President, the darkies have yet to resume their place, something something red China, something something finance. (Something changed, change is bad. Yesterday an indicator went up: that was bad. Today the same one went down. That is again bad.) They’re going to lose another presidential election and for those righties working for government, right to work, funding cuts, and pension cuts haven’t delivered on destroying that coworker they hate or making their monthly budget work better. And their boss is still a Latina. Damnit, that’s not how this is supposed to work!
Is Fox keeping up their numbers with all of this disaster pr0n in the face of an improving economy, and if so, how and why?
FlyingToaster
Okay, this Trump nonsense is getting old.
Who cleans the hotel rooms at his properties? The swimming pools? The casino floors?
Who maintains the landscaping? Cuts the grass, replaces the flowers, yadda, yadda, yadda?
Who works craft services for his tv programs? Pageants?
If I were one of Charlie Pierce’s proverbial rtfckers, I’d be doing everything in my power to get this guy, and his white xenophobic cheering squad, the GOP nomination. Because this shoe is so waiting to drop.
ET
The GOP of the last 50 years has shown a preferance for blowhards in their politicians, TV and radio personalities, and talking heads, Trump is perfect for them. They all bow down or duck under the table because despite all their tough talk, they are as a group a weak bunch who needs the strong (or seems to be syrong) personality to empower them and give them meaning.
robert
Come on…why doesn’t this have an electrolytes or idiocracy tag? That’s a gimme.
Librarian
@raven: I noticed that, too. Sorry, dear, you were right the first time, why did you correct yourself?
wasabi gasp
Xenophobe! Fascist! Nickelbacker! Waaaaah!
dww44
@Tom Q But… in 2008 there was still a WASP GOP’er in the White House, even though the signs for the end times were a lot stronger then than now! Seriously, that’s what I hate about the GOP, their unalloyed purveying of fear and how horrible everything is when it clearly is not. Thanks, Fox News.
patroclus
Well. I’m interested in who the “great legal scholars” are that think the 14th Amendment can be eviscerated by the will of Trump. And my question to Trump would be how much exactly he thinks it will cost to round up, litigate with and deport 11 million people (and all of their citizen children) and who’s gonna pay for it?
goblue72
@Tom Q: If you are a well-educated professional, the last 8 years have been a doozy, but survivable – and if you are in tech (or finance), the last 8 years have been pretty good.
On the other hand, if you are in the pinched & downwardly mobile white middle/lower-middle class, and voted for Obama under the belief he would “fix” things – you are probably pretty bitter at this point. Wages at that strata haven’t really recovered and job market at that strata is pretty meh. Your home value may have recovered (barely) but 8 years to get back to break-even seems kinda like the short stick. And then you look around to see what the President has done, and it seems like a bunch of bankster bailouts, a health benefit welfare program (Obamacare) that doesn’t really help you that much (because you make too much to qualify for Medicaid or much subsidy) and some cultural stuff (gay marriage) that’s nice enough as far as it goes, but doesn’t really help you that much.
Various good public policy stuff, and some quite progressive, but politics is transactional and at some point you need rain some goodies on each of your potential voting blocs.
I’m in real estate development, and Obama really screwed the pooched as far as his housing policies go. His team did a great job with the bank (and auto company) bailouts. But they did pretty much squat for the housing sector. Most of their initiatives were far too small in scale and in many way, incompetently managed. They got the FHA off its duff and provided credit access in the home sale market when it was sorely needed, but not much more.
The HAMP and HARP programs were pretty much total failures – and the technocrats in the administration seemed more concerned about “moral hazard” risks and not “rewarding” bad actors, than just doing what they did with TARP and auto bailouts – which was throw a lot of money at the problem because putting out the fire was more important than assigning blame. They still have no idea what they want to do with Fannie & Freddie. They keep solving their budget arguments with the GOP by cutting HUD’s budget.
And we’re 8 years later with a combination of the lowest homeownership rate in decades, a rental affordability crisis in most major real estate markets (AKA where all the jobs are located), and a still relatively stagnant new home construction/sales market (creating a similar home purchase affordability crisis in those same major markets). And given that housing is biggest single household budget item – as well as the single largest asset for the average middle class household – you get the struggling middle feeling REALLY pinched. And wondering why Obama didn’t do anything about it.
Peale
@patroclus: you skip the litigate.
Myiq2xu
This story took place in 1988. The desegregation was ordered by the USDOJ. Who was POTUS back then?
Hint: Ed Meese was the AG
Myiq2xu
The Mayor, OTOH, was a Democrat:
Sherparick
@efgoldman: Forever. Its the Neo-Confederate Party and I am afraid it has a solid 35% locked and another 10% to 15% lean that way. Also, they believe this crap because they get their news from Fox, right-wing radio, and right wing web sites and media which constantly propagandize “Obama is weak/tyrant,” the border is being over run by Mexicans and Muslims (Muslim Mexicans? Who knew until one watches Gutfeld, Erickson, and Fox in the Morning.)
Just as point of fact, if you are into the imperial thing, President Obama has returned the United States to a position of paramount influence and power in world. Our alliances with Europe and Japan are much stronger than they were in 2009, and those countries more dependent. China is going into an economic crisis and the U.S. is throwing it a rope. Relations with India have never been better (although that improvement has been going on for 20 some years). The U.S. economy is the only one growing in the world right now.
Sherparick
@goblue72: There are some good points here, although a lot of the housing mess was mess was baked in the cake by the bubble. huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-simple-reason-for-the_b_3938762.html
Based on median income to median house value ration, one could say we are back into “bubble” prices, except what I think has corrected is “supply.” The price to rent ratio certainly indicates that is so. calculatedriskblog.com/2015/08/real-prices-and-price-to-rent-ratio-in.html
Frankly, not to many of these people voted for Obama in 2008. They either stayed home or voted for McCain (who got close to 47% of the vote when the economy was tanking under a Republican President and who was advocating for more war in Iraq and with Iran with a population that was sick of it after 5 1/2 years of intractable war in Iraq.) In 2012 with an improving economy and disengagement from said unpopular wars, Obama won reelection with about 52% of the vote while the other 48% voted Republican. Yes, if Obama had let Dean Baker and Paul Krugman guide his economic policies (and if the Blue Dogs in Congress would have gone along with it) that back in 2009-10, median incomes and the Democrats would be a little better off. But we should not kid ourselves that there is a pretty high floor for Republican support as they have transformed themselves into the NeoConfederate (e.g. White Nationalist) Party these last 50 years.
These people voted for Republicans and plutocrats to run their states since 2010 and then are surprised that there local government is miserable and corrupt. But they will keep voting Republican because “Democrats are the part of Hippies and “Special Interests,” who get all those “special favors.” They vote Republican because they are promised by the Republicans that they will screw the Blacks, Browns, Chinese, and hippies more than they will screw them. They are Paul LePage’s and Scott Walker’s base, and are constantly surprised when LePage and Walker remind them that “there is a club, a big wonderful club, but you people are not in it. But I will do my best to make sure the Black people get screwed worse.” Hence, “Show Me a Hero” and the one guy who tries to do right ends up blowing his brains out.
someguy
So racial integration per se is a good thing, but I’m wondering what benefits are going to accrue from putting mostly minority Section 8 housing, in mostly white upper middle class suburbs. Is asshole whiteness going to rub off on poor mostly black and hispanic folks? Is racial enlightenment going to suddenly hit the modern equivalent of the Klan, these suburb dwellers who choose to self-segregate and live away from the “coloreds” in gated or economically excluding communities? I don’t see the benefit from it.
Paul in KY
@FlyingToaster: Evidently very classy illegals.