In the future, the fatuous neocon twits who make a living stoking working class racial resentments and ginning up religious hysteria in the service of lower corporate taxes and industrial deregulation will probably be called “Romney Republicans.” A moniker will be required to divide “respectable” Republicans from the Trumpean rabble, and maybe they’ll settle on that name.
But all post-Eisenhower Republicans consciously exploited dangerous racial and social fault lines so they could loot the national treasury on behalf of the wealthy and connected. There’s nothing respectable about using that cheap bit of misdirection. They couldn’t sell bullshit like “trickle-down economics” on its non-existent merits, so they sold downscale white folks an endless line of ooga-booga instead.
But now Trump is telling the rubes they can have dessert without eating their vegetables, and he’s expanded the menu to include new villains, such as job-offshorers and lying establishment politicians. And why would anyone gnash down “profits for me and parsimony for thee” when they can skip directly to dessert and openly (and literally) bash minorities, gays, uppity women, Muslims, etc., while having their economic pain validated?
Stung by Trump’s success in separating them from their meal tickets, some in the Romney wing are unsparing in their criticism of a once-prized constituent segment. Via valued commenter Arm the Homeless, here’s a sample of the primal scream of one such specimen, The National Review’s Kevin Williamson:
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt [a blue-collar town in New York].
I think “the whelping of human children” is my favorite line. I’m trying (and failing) to recall a time when a prominent conservative writer expressed that level of contempt for fellow white Republicans. It doesn’t seem like a good strategy. Maybe smarter neo-cons will try to co-opt Trump. For all his railing about trade and theatrical rage at companies that offshore jobs, Trump’s tax plan and healthcare schemes are hardly distinguishable from those of, say, Paul Ryan.
I don’t rule out the possibility that a racist demagogue like Trump could win the presidency, but, in the absence of a cataclysmic event like a Paris-style terror attack or sharp economic downturn between now and November, I think it’s unlikely. Still, now that the power of Trumpism has been demonstrated at scale, it won’t go away. Romney Republicans will have to come up with a better answer than “move,” or their wind-up Marcos will keep losing to the Trumps. And that won’t be good for business.
Baud
I blame Obama.
MattF
But… it’s Bill Kristol. How can he be wrogn?
Baud
And this. Trump talks a good game on social security and trade, but he cuts taxes on the wealthy just as much as any Republican.
And does he even mention the banks or Wall Street, other than to say he doesn’t take their money.
hueyplong
The whelping of Kevin Williamson is one of the pure joys we can take from this season of Donner Party Republicans.
Ruckus
It doesn’t seem like a good strategy.
It isn’t a good strategy, it’s self defense. The republican party has been making a mess of itself for 50+ yrs and some of them are just figuring this out. They want no part of it. Now. But they are up to their noses in the shit and having to figure out how to swim. If they were actually smart they would have seen this coming long ago. But they also fail to realize that even if they manage to get out they are still going to smell like shit.
Misterpuff
And that means going to a college or an urban area and then they become Democrats.
Dude is calling poor whites Dead-enders.
Teddy's Person
@Baud: The rubes don’t get (or conveniently overlook) that Trump’s interests are the same as the banks and Wall Street, and if they think Trump won’t govern based on his own personal interests, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell them.
aimai
They’ve been saying this for a while–isn’t this basically the argument of the Bell Curve guy, Charles Murray, in hismost recent book?
Mike in NC
The Trumpean rabble can’t afford to go on a National Review cruise, or attend a $50K luncheon with the 1%ers. But they’ll reliably vote against The Other.
Ruckus
@Teddy’s Person:
Hey, that’s the bridge I’m trying to sell them.
scav
The white American underclass is in thrall? What precisely are they objecting to, the used heroine needles instead of the bespoke paraphernalia? Because the cherished white American upperclass has explicitly taken selfishness as the sole cardinal virtue of the free-market economy. They eat sharks while patting themselves on the back about it.
Ruckus
@aimai:
That idiot is educated? Could have fooled me.
goblue72
@Baud: Except he does take their money. He takes the money of rich Chinese nationals looking to purchase a green card (yes, rich foreigners CAN just go buy a green card) via the Federal EB-5 program, in order to finance his Trump Tower in NJ. And he’s certainly taken “Wall Street money” when it comes to financing his other real estate venture and casinos.
Which half the time he promptly loses because he’s a mediocre real estate developer who long relied on his dad’s money and connections to do anything – http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-27/donald-trump-s-track-record-on-deals
He’s a reality TV carnival barker who has keep himself afloat primarily by selling his name to whomever will buy it.
goblue72
Apparently my PMURT comment triggered the dreaded erectile dysfunction no-no and is stuck.
Teddy's Person
@Ruckus: Okay, okay, I’ll sell them a bridge in San Francisco. If there is anything the right has taught me over the past several decades, there are plenty of rubes and grift to go around; )
Baud
@Mike in NC:
Reagan Democrats sold out their posterity to plutocrats for an extra generation of privilege. The devil always collects his due.
Peale
It was O.K. When we thought they’d just burn down the houses of African Americans and Mexicans, but since we now can’t be sure they aren’t coming for our McMansions, we need to stop them.
Pogonip
The Ghost of Christmas Present allowed as how there was a possibility that in the sight of Heaven the surplus population was more fit to live than was Scrooge. I’ll say that it’a a near certainty that in the sight of Heaven any of those poor whelps is more fit to live than is Williamson, and, in the unlikely event he reads Balloon Juice, I urge him to stop wallowing in pride while there is still time.
His article is a pile of ant frass.
Adam L Silverman
@aimai: The issue with the church going thing, with neither Dr. Murray nor Dr. Putnam get, is that the historical norm was for only about 10% of American Protestants to be churched. As in formally affiliated with a specific church in a specific denomination. This doesn’t mean they didn’t adhere, more or less faithfully, to the tenets of one denomination or another, but it did mean that the institutional association wasn’t there. The interwar period between WW I and II, combined with the Great Depression, the New Deal programs to combat its negative economic effects, and WW II and the post war programs for veterans changed all that. For the first time the norm was not to be born, raised, live, and die within 50 to 100 miles of the place where one was born. This led to a spike in church affiliation and attendance, as well as affiliation with a variety of social groups. The long slow slide back to the historical norm, which Dr. Putnam decries because he doesn’t understand time series or that people lived prior to the high water mark on his histographs, is simply a return to the American norm of low formal social engagement.
danielx
@Teddy’s Person:
@Ruckus:
No, it’s my bridge! However, given the nature of the rubes we’re dealing with, I am tolerably certain we can sell them the same bridge not once, not twice, but thrice. It will be a win/win for everybody except the rubes. Which is, after all, pretty much the same deal the rubes have gotten for the last few decades, so what possible objection could they have?
Johnny Coelacanth
“The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish political party which had no problem keeping them there as long as they voted for the right people.” Fixt.
GregB
They have abandoned their base to the perils is their neo-Ayn Randian world. The same way they abandoned urban America generations ago. They have shuffled all of that money towards their corporate cronies who have parked their trillions offshore or used their wads of cash to continue buying up the politicians with dark money and PAC’s.
Their only hope is that Trump hasn’t blown the whole fucking charade. They certainly don’t mind immigrants and urban dwellers getting the blame and Billy clubs and street justice rides in the back of police vans.
But it has to be sinking in each time some media member gets roughed up that the lynch mobs can be trained on them once the pool of victims dwindles.
Peale
Cruz, the establishment standard bearer to be, was making a similar point calling out Trump’s undereducated base. Had to laugh at the Harvard boy. If he thinks he’s going to attract voters by pointing out a lack of educational attainment in a party that’s spent 50 years mocking those with degrees as pointy headed pencil necked lieberal elitites, he’s got another thing coming.
dmsilev
Jonathan Swift had a Modest Proposal for solving that problem.
azlib
It is interesting that Kevin sees these backwater towns only as an economic liability. I guess these rural white folks are really part of Romney’s 47%.
WarMunchkin
I just watched a video of Rubio denounce Trump coherently, using words that formed listenable sentences. Wonder where that guy was during the debates. He did, of course, stupidly blame Obama for much of the division, proving that he’s still a member of the dumbass party.
Also, can we put out the word for Blue Team to stay away from this guy’s rallies? I get the intent, but you have your families and friends to think about who love you, and we don’t want to see you, as Josh Marshall predicted, die.
Ruckus
@Teddy’s Person:
Been thinking about it. As neither of us has ownership why can’t both of us sell it? As long as we are targeting the same idiots what difference would it make? And there are, as you say, plenty of idiots to go around.
OK now this is getting out of hand. I scrolled up thread to check on something I was going to add and you’ve already written my post. Score!
Eric U.
it appears that Trump has his own flag. Just saw it at one of his rallies. Looks like the u.s. flag, but it has a circle of stars surrounding a circle. Is dressing his followers in militaristic uniforms with gold lamé shirts far behind?
It’s easy to pick on rural low-income white Americans. Anti-government racist republicans that live in towns kept alive by monthly infusions of government money. Best for republicans if they don’t do it. I was recently thinking about how all of the talk of urban democrats being dismissive of the concerns of these people is really just projection, I have heard a lot more of that kind of talk from republicans.
Adam L Silverman
The problem is that underneath Williamson’s condescension and derision, and Dr. Murray’s supremacist concern trolling, is that about 3% more Americans live in or in proximity to urban areas and cities than the rest of the population. Its about 52% to 48%. We have a lot of vast empty spaces. Some of them are wilderness of various types. Some are dying small, rural towns. But we also have a Congress where one chamber is purposefully designed through the foundational law of the Constitution to over represent these rural areas where a minority of Americans live. And the other chamber, during the 1930s, purposefully through statutory law made itself over representative of these same rural areas and under representative of where the (bare) majority of Americans live. And despite Williamson’s and Murray’s condescension and derision, that (bare) minority, despite being over represented in both chambers of Congress and many state legislatures as well, rightly feel they have been manipulated and played. They are angry, they are frustrated, and even many that have the means to get out won’t because they prefer where they are to more affluent and functional suburbs and cities. Are they insular? Definitely. Are they angry? Without a doubt. Are they convinced that others – and they define that in a lot of ways and a good chunk of it is ethnicity, religion, and race – both look down on them and take advantage of them? Very much so.
And tapping into that animus is very powerful.
Peale
@Eric U.: so are we going to be jettisoning states or just consolidating the ones we have. I do agree, though. 50 has always made the flag seem to busy.
danielx
@GregB:
Yes, and even some of the cheerleaders are starting to notice:
Gosh, they finally noticed that the translation of “trickle down theory” is “in practice, that means I’m going to piss down your back and tell you it’s raining”.
Joel
This is a particularly chilling quote, because it’s pretty clear that WIlliamson means that the people in these communities deserve this fate. It’s not surprising that an unrepentant racist like Kevin Williamson would take that tact, though.
scav
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve only read the original version of Paul E. Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millennium so I don’t know how its aged, but I was most intrigued by his linking of pushing church attendance as a way of attaining social control and good working behavior out of the hoi. Resonated somehow with the whole effort of getting Christmas under good control (also with “Christian” overtones — The Battle for Christmas.)
Eric U.
@Peale: the trumpster flags were alternating with U.S. flags. I didn’t count the stars on the trump flag, it was 10-ish. Tried to find a picture on the interwebs, but failed
Gimlet
Reminded recently of this quote from Larry Summers
“One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.”
Barbara
After having written this piece, which I assume was intended as a form of catharsis and blunt assessment of the problems in rural America, Williamson might want to ask the politicians in Texas and Kentucky and upstate New York what plan they have to address this baleful state, if any, that does not include providing tax incentives to build casinos.
Iowa Old Lady
I googled “Trump flag” and it sent me to Amazon to look at Trump merchandise. God only knows what ads I’m going to get now.
Ruckus
@WarMunchkin:
Problem is that they will stew in their hate and bile if our side is there or not. This is not a simmering soup, it’s a boiling caldron of hate and racism. Drumpf is the heat, not the cook. Over the course of humanity there has never been a successful dissolution of this type of crap without direct opposition. People will die? How many already have? I can think of dozens of black men who already have in a very short time frame. This isn’t new, it’s been gong on in this country for 400+ yrs, this isn’t even the first time it’s been on TV.
WarMunchkin
@danielx: I read some comments on another place about how a realignment in the Republican Party would mean that the Democratic coalition would have to break, too. This person predicted a pro-Business, socially progressive, secular rationalist party (Dems) and an economic populist t, xenophobic, theologic collectivist party. It makes a lot more sense, from the perspective of realignment, for the Republicans to join the pro-business side with the social left while pushing out the economic left, but I think the synergy is too strong on all issues except taxes, which people won’t go for.
scav
World isn’t having a good day either: Car bomb in Ankara and gunmen in Ivory Coast. Lest we get too involved with our also very real problems.
SiubhanDuinne
@Iowa Old Lady:
I just did the same thing, was sent to the same site, and had the same thought.
Did you notice that there’s no real graphic theme or identity to Trump campaign merchandise? It’s as though he said to half a dozen designers “Make me a logo! A classy, yuuge logo!” and they all submitted their designs and he hired all of them.
CarolDuhart2
When I saw the title, I first thought of the possibility that Trumps’s rhetoric might drive away the Hispanic migrant workers who pick the asparagus, and leave those otherwise dead villages truly dead.
I think this is a real crisis point for the Republican Party. If Trump loses, the most distressed of these people might take things into their own hands, and the upper level Republicans have nothing to offer them.
I read somewhere that the real culprit,-urbanization is a trend that simply won’t reverse anytime soon. Cities offer benefits that no small town can ever-jobs, easier transportation, whatever, and as the population of those places increases (along with the suburbs), the situation will get worse and worse.
Betty Cracker
@WarMunchkin: I seriously thought about driving to a Trump rally this weekend to peacefully protest, but both rallies were a considerable distance, and I had a lot of shit going on this weekend, so it didn’t work out. I’d never attract suspicion (until I unfurl my sign) since I’m a middle-aged white lady. Perhaps foolishly, I’m not afraid.
celticdragonchick
Oh hell…Rod Dreher over at The American Conservative used to do it all the time. He complained non stop about the decay of southern morals and how the po’ whites were acting just like the ghetto blacks with their drugs and federal disability and kids from different fathers. The one difference is that Dreher loves him some small town crazy times as opposed to big city wickedness (Dreher loves the word “wicked” and uses it whenever he can) Then, he would segue into another attack on the the whole individualistic basis of American culture and how everything went down the tubes during the Enlightenment and those wicked nominalists and William of Okham screwed it all up for civilization, and what we really need is a sacramental communitarian Christian culture based on timeless Aristotelian values blah blah blah derp derp derp. The poor would know their place because it would never freaking occur to them to ever question it under the God approved ORDER.
Now, with Trump out there, he has decided that the Black Lives Matters folks, uppity college student and teh gheys/transexual wimminz are the biggest threat evuh to American moral tradition and Trump is the strong man he needs to put down the leftist threat to proper ORDER.
Dreher would have been a perfect fit in Papen’s cabinet back in September, 1932.
kindness
The disdain that writer shows for the base within the Republican tree seems to me at least to point out those very same base voters were Republicans of convenience really to the ‘Betters’. The elders didn’t intend to do what they said they would do. The tiger has turned and caught it’s rider.
Gimlet
@danielx:
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough complained on Tuesday that the Republican Party was fracturing because it had advocated economic policies benefiting the richest Americans for the last 30 years with the promise that the wealth would “trickle down” to others — but it never did.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2009/12/13/obamas-big-sellout-president-has-packed-his-economic-team-wall-street-insiders
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: His design choices show as much thought and care as everything else about his campaign.
Heliopause
OT: My NCAA field prediction, three minutes to go.
1 Kansas
1 Oregon
1 Virginia
1 Oklahoma
2 North Carolina
2 Villanova
2 Miami FL
2 Michigan St
3 Kentucky
3 Texas A&M
3 West Virginia
3 Xavier
4 Utah
4 Cal
4 Duke
4 Seton Hall
5 Purdue
5 Texas
5 Maryland
5 Indiana
6 Iowa St
6 Iowa
6 St Joseph’s
6 Notre Dame
7 Oregon St
7 Wisconsin
7 Colorado
7 Texas Tech
8 Providence
8 Baylor
8 Dayton
8 Arizona
9 St Bonaventure
9 VCU
9 Michigan
9 Tulsa
10 USC
10 Connecticut
10 South Dakota St
10 Northern Iowa
11 Akron
11 St Mary’s
11 Cincinnati
11 Wichita St
11 Pitt
11 Butler
12 Yale
12 Ark Little Rock
12 Gonzaga
12 Chattanooga
13 UNC Wilmignton
13 Stony Brook
13 Fresno St
13 Hawaii
14 Iona
14 Stephen F Austin
14 Buffalo
14 Middle Tennessee
15 Weber St
15 Green Bay
15 CSU Bakersfield
15 UNC Ashville
16 Hampton
16 Southern
16 Austin Peay
16 Fairleigh-Dickinson
16 Florida Gulf Coast
16 Holy Cross
Barbara
@Gimlet: I think that Summers is a little too glib, because inequality is not just a function of “skills” or other attributes that workers bring to the table or not, but I assume that what he was saying is that American workers received a significant peace time premium for their labor, between 1945 and around 1970, and that premium outstripped the skills that they brought to the labor market. Some of that was attributable to organized labor, but it’s also important to realize that organized labor was able to obtain as much benefits for workers as it did because American manufacturing was in such a favorable position relative to the rest of the world, and manufacturers could not, at that time, credibly threaten to move their operations elsewhere. When the rest of the world began catching up, it became much harder to justify high wages to relatively low skilled workers. I grew up in Pittsburgh. My college educated parents made less money than many of our neighbors in manufacturing. Of course that all began to change in the mid-1970s. But how wages are taxed relative to capital, how education is financed, and so on — those are important contributors to inequality that have nothing to do with the value of labor.
Iowa Old Lady
@CarolDuhart2: I thought it might be a Louis Gohmert post.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Booger
@Pogonip: Nice use of frass.
mdblanche
It’s not. It’s the cry of a political coalition tearing itself apart.
@scav:
They’re objecting to the white underclass not voting for the white upperclass approved candidates.
celticdragonchick
@Betty Cracker: At this point, I think it would be foolish to not have pepper spray or some such and if you have to consider having that to protest, are you feeding the flames in a way?
Trump rallies are drawing people who want to fight and particularly right wingers who want to find their scapegoat. I don’t think it wise to provide them with a target so readily.
CarolDuhart2
And the bigotry they espouse mean that those towns will die even quicker than they realize. Their kids are leaving for the city and never coming back except for the funeral and to wrap up affairs. They need new blood to replace the leavers, and the new blood-browner, blacker, more foreign will not go there, even for cheap housing and a chance to own a real plot of land. The Republicans could have had high-speed rail and transportation, which would have made some towns commuter towns at least, but bigotry no doubt killed that too.
Soon, a lot of those places will join the ghost towns of the west as wildlife refuges or tourist attractios.
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: That was the reference, tied back to the concept of eating vegetables. I love that line from AG Holder so much.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Speaking as somebody who works in a city that doesn’t see 50 cents on the dollar returned from its tax payment to the state capital, all so that schools, roads, bridges, police, fire departments and an overabundance of petty government officials can be funded in the non-productive ruralities in Eastern Kentucky, he’s not wrong in his statement that the bitter clingers need to move.
We have, in Kentucky, a glut of mountain counties with populations between 4500 and 10000. Consolidation really needs to happen, but there are too many fiefdoms that would be broken up, even with the longstanding gesture of incentives.
Thing is, the extraction economy is mostly moribund, those places are too spread out for even light manufacturing to be viable, and the ground is lousy for agriculture. They really do need to leave, and have some mercy on the rest of us. Instead, they choose to remain and straight pipe their wastewater into their streams, open dump their trash down hillsides, collect public assistance and pat themselves on the back for “not being mooching people of color”.
scav
And, note too, Lady Heil from Chicago’s not from any hard-scabble, dying downscale community so easily sniffed at by those that lunch.
Gimlet
@Barbara:
The money continued to be there, it just went to the 1% and wasn’t shared with labor.
Teddy's Person
@scav: You made my day! Here I am reading one of my go-to political blogs, and someone mentions one of my favorite historians. I think Shopkeepers Millennium has held up well. Grad students still read it as a good example of the bottom-up, social history that was written in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the argument shows up in some college-level textbooks. Since its publication, other historians have made the argument more complicated and nuanced, but it remains a classic text. My adviser in grad school knew of my fondness for Johnson’s histories and related the following story. He was attending a conference where Johnson was giving a paper. Johnson commented that he like to tell the history of people who would have told Harriet Beecher Stowe to go to hell, which gave me great clarity in my own research interests. If you’d like to read a more recent Johnson history, try Sam Patch. Johnson examines Jacksonian democracy through the life a Sam Patch, an early American “jumper.” Patch begins his career jumping the falls in Pawtucket New Jersey as an early form of working-class protest and ends up jumping Niagara Falls. Johnson can tell a great story and the reader learns some great history along the way.
Fair Economist
@WarMunchkin:
I’ve seen that theory, and I don’t think it’s possible with the rise of the Millennial left. Bernie is getting 80%+ of the under thirties, and in ten years a democratic socialist will be able to get 80% of the under 40’s, i.e. there will be no beating the socialists in the Democratic party. I can’t see those Millennials signing up for a xenophobic or theoligic party, never mind both.
I could see a three-party system, with Socialists, villagerish Democrats, and Republicans. I hope not, because that would probably leave the villagerish Democrats in power (as the center party out of 3 in a winner-takes-all district country) and that would suck.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
GOP IN DISARRAY!!!
(photo #1)
(photo #2)
Gimlet
@celticdragonchick:
Who among us can forget that plaintive cry of Baud’s as he stared down the protesters to “Release the hounds!”
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
GOP IN DISARRAY!!!
(photo #3) — Priceless
(photo #4) — NBC allows foto of 3 steaming piles of crap on air — HA!
Mike J
@Teddy’s Person:
It’s funny you say that because the joke about selling the Brooklyn Bridge is that it’s absurd to think about selling off a public good like a bridge. Now it’s the go to plan for Republicans that want to loot the country for private enrichment.
Any Republican currently running for office would sell the Brooklyn Bridge in a heartbeat if they could get away with it.
max
@celticdragonchick: Oh hell…Rod Dreher over at The American Conservative used to do it all the time. He complained non stop about the decay of southern morals and how the po’ whites were acting just like the ghetto blacks with their drugs and federal disability and kids from different fathers.
Yes.
I think “the whelping of human children” is my favorite line.
Williamson has been on about this for awhile … and that’s the thing about the R’s. They beat the shit out of you and beat the shit out of you and beat the shit out of you some more, and then they blame you for getting the shit beat out of you. (Black, brown AND white.)
Can’t remember a time when they weren’t like that, and I surely have never voted for a Republican for President. (I did, however, vote for Perot given the opportunity to screw up GHWB in Texas. Almost worked too.)
max
[‘Big fun.’]
RSA
In the Washington Post and elsewhere, we find demographic information about Trump supporters. For example, that half of Trump’s supporters make less than $50K per year, that almost half are men, that 40% or so lack a college degree.
We’re not talking about the American underclass, really; it’s quite a representative sample of average Americans, in socio-economic terms, I think.
scav
@Teddy’s Person: ooo, does sound fun. thanks! and I’ve just the friend who would be more than willing to discuss ad nauseum all the better details and sidelights that emerge.
Suzanne
I know it’s unpopular among that set, but it really does need to be pointed out that small-town rural life can be just as dysfunctional as urban life, and that it has the added liability of offering fewer opportunities for education and advancement. I mean, shit, I live in the country’s 6th-largest city, and I still don’t think it’s big enough.
My in-laws live in Fayetteville, AR, and both of my BILs are on track to never get a college degree, never have a salaried job, and never get married. My MIL occasionally makes comments about wanting us to move out there, and we aren’t really nice anymore about saying NOT ONLY NO BUT HELL NO. I think it’s borderline abusive to raise kids in places like that.
Barbara
@CarolDuhart2: Carol, this is not necessarily true. In Virginia, many immigrants have migrated to southwestern Virginia where they work on Christmas tree farms, among other things. Most of the new restaurants in the non-college towns in the Shenandoah Valley south of around Charlottesville serve Mexican food. I read an article in which a guy who moved there from D.C. simply could not believe his god fortune, having grown up on a farm, to be able to live in such a peaceful, rural setting. For him, it was a very big step up. Where you started out, your position relative to what you expected, has a lot to do with the level of anger and resentment we are seeing, which of course, has also been exacerbated and directed at others for political gain.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
HA!
Their tears of unfathomable sadness are soo delicious.
What goes around, comes around, ass holes.
TheBuhJaysus
“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.”
A special little piece of social Darwinism is that.
Sorry small town America and economically challenged, but we have no more to offer you.
SiubhanDuinne
@CarolDuhart2:
@Iowa Old Lady:
@Betty Cracker:
I think the thread title should have been This is the Dawning of the Age of Asparagus (Age of Asparagus, Asparagus! Asparagus!)
celticdragonchick
@Gimlet:
I confess the quote you mention eludes me.
In my personal situation (back injury, cannot run effectively from danger)…going to protest a Trump would inevitably put me in a situation where I could well be put into serious danger of physical harm without means of easy escape. We have seen that a number of times on video. If you do not want to accept being beaten by neo Nazi’s, then some form of chemical or pepper spray would seem suitable to allow you time and means to get away from the fists and boots.
However, if you have to plan for that sort of thing going in, are you not effectively feeding the beast as it were? His supporters want us there to sustain their hate! Why keep giving them what they want?
Might it not be better to hold anti Trump rallies a block away or in front of one of his numerous properties?
Kay
The problem with Republicans writing off The Lower Classes is, they’re a huge group:
Barbara
@Gimlet: Right, and Summers’ mistake is believing that the only reason those people got more is because of their superior skills, which is obviously not true, unless you are referring only to their skill in manipulating political outcomes.
Frank Wilhoit
@Adam L Silverman: “It’s about 52% to 49%”
This.
The only cleavage in American society, now or ever, is rural versus urban. It is not rich versus poor, or black versus white, or educated versus uneducated. It is rural versus urban, period, full stop, nothing else whatsoever.
Urban and rural civilizations have nothing in common and cannot coexist under the same umbrella of laws and institutions. This is the time bomb that was set for us by the authors of the 1787 Constitution.
To understand their error, all you have to do is look at a physical map. Look at the coasts and the mountains and the rivers. That, right there, tells you where the cities have to be — and why they have to be locked forever into an existential struggle with the countryside.
It tells you that the territory of the contiguous “United” States is inherently ungovernable…
…unless one constituency (urban or rural) were to be deliberately, structurally, permanently subordinated to the other.
That, the Founders durst not do. They tried to create a sub-rosa, passive-aggressive form of effective civic disability for the urban constituency. This was indefensible. It is not that they took the wrong side; it is that they funked the necessity of taking sides. The consequences of their failure of nerve are now being felt.
Teddy's Person
@Mike J: Well, my little retirement-fund plan just got a little easier. The plums are ripe for the picking: D
CarolDuhart2
@Barbara: But for every town like that, (coastal, with enough connections to urban centers nearby), there are dozens who will never recover from the days of failed manufacturing jobs and who have few assets, social or otherwise, to attract a lot of newcomers. I bet if you put towns on a map and looked at the interstate system, you could pick out which towns have a chance and which ones don’t just by the transportation system available. Your Xmas tree farmer needs good roads and access to the system that’s timely-trees need to delivered quickly because only fresh trees can be sold.
A humane policy would fund education and moves for the most in needs in places where they could have some opportunity. It would shore up other towns with amenities that would allow them to grow into small cities. Others might be encouraged to merge or annex themselves to larger entities for a better tax base.
But as long as the Republicans would rather have the cheap candy of votes due to rage, these things will never happen-and eventually these angry voters will take things into their own hands one way or another.
Gimlet
@celticdragonchick:
Trump has a right to hold rallies without interruption. The only protest other than signs, and mild actions like turning your back to him would be to visually and audibly record the event. Then do something with the recording.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Eric U.: I haven’t seen the picture in question. Could it be the Ohio flag? In the rally in Oklahoma, he alternated OK flags with US flags.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who notes the OH flag is the only one that’s a banner rather than a rectangle.)
max
@SiubhanDuinne: Did you notice that there’s no real graphic theme or identity to Trump campaign merchandise? It’s as though he said to half a dozen designers “Make me a logo! A classy, yuuge logo!” and they all submitted their designs and he hired all of them.
I have seen one poorly made clear sticker with white letters on a Prius, and two lawn signs at the polling location and not a lot else. OK, nothing else. Not much in the way of signs at all.
@WarMunchkin: Also, can we put out the word for Blue Team to stay away from this guy’s rallies? I get the intent, but you have your families and friends to think about who love you, and we don’t want to see you, as Josh Marshall predicted, die.
Where are these rallies supposed to BE?
I am really baffled what Trump thinks he’s up to at this point.
max
[‘He wants to fight Sanders supporters but not Clinton supporters? Huh?’]
BBA
@Eric U.: The Ohio state flag maybe?
celticdragonchick
@Frank Wilhoit:
False dichotomy. You can have more than one fault line in a political system (I would be shocked to discover otherwise) and the urban/rural divide does not predict or explain the populist/oligarch phenomenon today. Note that urban African Americans do not exhibit markedly different voting patterns from rural African Americans throughout the country while urban whites in much of Southern California vote like rural whites in East Texas.
Barbara
@celticdragonchick: Indeed, as he pivots to the general election you can count on Trump positively trying to orchestrate situations that give him the opportunity to point to Democratic voters in his audience as reprobates and scoundrels (to use old fashioned words). I am not telling people not to protest, but if I had to provide advice, it would be to protest outside the gates rather than trying actively to protest within the event itself. No, it’s not as psychologically satisfying but it’s a lot safer and it is the kind protest that is widely accepted as normal. It also does not feed the beast, and this beast clearly consumes a lot of calories that are comprised of conflict and mayhem.
WaterGirl
Since one of the tags is Politics, I guess this isn’t too OT.
I used to fast forward through Samantha Bee on The Daily Show because I didn’t think she was very funny, but based on the collective thumbs up for Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, I set up a season pass. Just watched the episode that showed up today and wow, it was really great!
I was very impressed. Does she always wear that black outfit? I think I would if I were her – she looks terrific in it!
beltane
@Kay: It’s the middle class that’s shrinking compared to the rest of the population. The lower/working classes are gaining in people what they are losing in income. This is going to be a major problem for both parties, though we are lucky the problem has afflicted the Republicans first.
Adam L Silverman
@scav: Religion, through ritual, ceremony, theology and dogma, is a very effective form of social control.
As for Christmas, I’m a big fan of the colored lights. The all white ones leave me kind of meh.
celticdragonchick
@Gimlet:
Not sure I buy that. The SCOTUS ruled that the Westboro nuts can be verbally disruptive at funeral processions in public areas. Of course, IANAL and YMMV.
Pogonip
@celticdragonchick: Are you the one who was mad about the incorruptible deceased priest? If so it’s probably not safe to go back to The American Conservative just yet.
Barbara
@CarolDuhart2: Yes, agreed.
celticdragonchick
@Barbara:
This.
beltane
@celticdragonchick: Almost every nation other than the Vatican has an urban/rural divide. This is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon.
Peale
@RSA: yep. Agreed. I think what they are trying to do is shave off Trump’s supporters who have college degrees using shame by association. “Trump’s role are losers!” I don’t think it will work this late in the game. Republicans did win the “some college” and “college graduate” vote last time (by virtue of winning whites overwhelmingly) while losing those with advanced degrees. It might work against trump leaners who don’t want to be seen as toothless hicks in suburbia or the small town professional Kiwanis club types. But last election only 3% of voters totally had less than a high school education. The idea that all these uneducated white voters are filling Trump rallies? I don’t think so.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Betty Cracker: Totally OT, but remember that string of Lady “Man Names” hoops teams from a week ago?
We can add the James Madison U Lady Dukes, who won the Colonial tournament and will be in the NCAAs.
Betty Cracker
@RSA: Trump has the biggest gender gap of all the Republican candidates. I believe the 47% in the WaPo chart is the percentage of all male GOP voters surveyed who are in the Trump camp (as opposed to 28% of Republican women surveyed). Maybe because he’s a sexist pig.
@Gimlet: Yes, and people who are offended by these Brown Shirt festivals taking place in their communities have a right to peacefully protest.
@ThresherK (GPad): No Duchesses then?
Adam L Silverman
@Eric U.: Are you sure it wasn’t an Ohio state flag? It has far fewer stars and if the pic/video is from one of the events in Ohio yesterday it would make sense that they alternated the Ohio flag and the American flag. If you recall, during the 2012 campaign, several people freaked out when President Obama appeared at a campaign event in Ohio. There were Ohio state flags there, which, in the blue triangle is a white O surrounded by white stars. So a number of the usual suspects complained that the President had introduced a new American flag…
Here’s a link to a picture and a description:
http://www.50states.com/flag/ohflag.htm#.VuXi3JMrKRs
aimai
@Teddy’s Person: fascinating!
Gimlet
@celticdragonchick:
And regardless of the SCOTUS, do you want to be lumped together with the Westboro Baptists? I suspect the reasons for supporting the Westboro Baptists were political rather than legal.
celticdragonchick
@Pogonip:
Yeah, I was poking fun at that one.
Dreher has embraced his inner authoritarian self and is advocating a need to put down BLM protests and “SJW” college kids.
We are one Reichstag fire away from nifty brownshirts with a swank armband in Dreherland and he is amping for it.
GregB
@beltane:
I would imagine that Putin and Erdogan’s base voters/supporters are the rural and religious folks in their respective countries too.
They are basically saying make Rusdia and Turkey great again!
celticdragonchick
@Gimlet:
I am suggesting we stay away from the actual venues. I do not, however, agree that Trump has a right to not be subjected to other political speech.
Old Dan and Little Anne
There’s a strip club near Garbutt named Foxy’s. Their tag phrase is,”where girls from your neighborhood strip.” I’ve never been. Honest.
? Martin
@celticdragonchick:
Well, let’s not stoop to the level of Westboro, shall we?
I’m of the opinion that the protests should be respectful within the event, and as loud and disruptive as they want outside. You put 10,000 protesters outside a Trump event I and guarantee you’ll still get media coverage.
Peale
@ThresherK (GPad): missed that string. Does lady (gender neutral) count. Because my high school had the Goslings for the boys teams and Lady Goslings for girls.
Adam L Silverman
@celticdragonchick: Dreher would be a perfect fit for custodial care and pharmacologicals administered under orderly supervision every four hours. There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Dreher that couldn’t be fixed with in patient treatment and therapy.
WarMunchkin
@Betty Cracker: Well, it’s not so much being afraid. I guess the debate I’m trying to win in my social group only exists because people want to Do Something about Trump, but they can’t – not until the elections happen. And I’m trying my best to bend the thought curve and get people into channeling their anger into voter registration and, for long-time legal residents, citizenship – which will produce demonstrable electoral gains in November – rather than physical confrontation.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had ideas of designing totes and bags with “register to vote here” written on them, so that people could serve as mobile voter registration form dispensers, running foreign language advertisements for people in other countries, asking them to call the Americans they know and ask them to vote as a global GOTV force multiplier effect. In short, organization is a far more potent tool against Trump than protest, though it’s not as emotionally satisfying.
For me, though, I know many people in protest and petitioning circuits. I don’t want to see them get hurt at a Trump rally, even if they’re doing what they believe in.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gimlet:
FRASS.
Gimlet
@celticdragonchick:
I do not, however, agree that Trump has a right to not be subjected to other political speech.
?
? Martin
@celticdragonchick:
Correct, he does not have that right.
Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: I prefer the colored lights too! Most of the towns around here have gone to the boring white lights, without the citizenry even being allowed to vote on the issue.
When in the course of human events boring Christmas lights are inflicted upon the citizenry, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind demands that we quietly unscrew THE light in the string, until TPTB get the message and restore festive multicolored lights to a colorless time of year.
And when white Halloween lights are inflicted upon us we should blow the dust off our pitchforks. President-to-be Baud has a statement about the important issue of holiday lights in his platform. All other candidates have been scandalously silent on the matter, even Trump who has never been silent about anything! This is an outrage!
aimai
@Betty Cracker: I get that people are angry and disgusted with these fascist rallies but I don’t think that protests, ordinary protests, are the way to go at all. Trump is much closer to the crazed guy who used to protest funerals (I’m blanking out his name for the moment). His ultimate goal was to create a cause for a law suit against counterprotestors. He made money, literally, off of people protesting and hampering his rallies and his first amendment rights. But he stopped being able to attract followers and to get attention and money when people started making fun of him and parodying him.
I think people should protest Trump but making fun of his voters and their racism and their stupidity. Its something neither Trump nor his voters can stand. They live in mortal dread of being seen as fools and dupes. They love to play the victim and they believe that the world is out to get them. So anything that makes them believe they are in danger is just going to make them cling tighter to Trump–while it has the potential to bring more voters to Trump as they “see for themselves” that everything he is telling them is true. The world really is out to get them.
If you want to bring Trump and his voters down make them embarrassed, make them feel like fools, point out how much money they are giving him, make them see the grift.
Kay
@beltane:
I agree. I don’t think anyone is thinking thru the ripple effects, either. When you lose the middle class you lose all the advantages middle class people pass on to children. When it starts to tip over, it will accelerate.
I see it just in my office. I have two distinct sets of people- secure middle class and insecure middle class. The insecure middle class aren’t building any “assets”- the ability to send kids to college, home equity, retirement. That means they’ll have nothing to give to their children. If you think about just the value of a debt-free college degree or a down payment towards a house and what it will look like without passing on those “assets”, wow, it starts to get scary. Right now we’re still living off the remains of the secure middle class.
This essay actually fits in with a lot of conservative thought. They have whole theories built around “strivers”- the members of the lower classes who have the grit and determination to get up and out. Save the strivers and abandon the rest runs all thru conservative thinking on public education.
celticdragonchick
@beltane:
It is not the only divide, and may well not be the most important one operating right now. Rust belt blue collar whites in Cleveland are experiencing the same economic pressures as rural blue collar whites in Tennessee and they are listening to a racist argument that is welded to a populist economic theme.
raven
Ya’ll ever been in some shit where YOU want to protest peacefully and other people want nothing more to have you get your ass kicked for the cause? Just be aware of that when you decide to go but, whatever you do, don’t take any kids.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Adam L Silverman: You do realize that adds up to 101% of Americans, don’t you?
American exceptionalism? I don’t expect the Greeks or Dutch to have those kind of numbers.
Adam L Silverman
@celticdragonchick: Its Florida, better pack the hand canon:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/24/dd/2e/24dd2eba49e0bf4c6a6f453014d268bd.jpg
Actually, since its only six shots, better pack two!
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Pogonip:
That was me. Dreher offends me on a visceral level.
Barbara
@celticdragonchick: The Westboro decision gave Phelps and company the right to protest in a public park that was across and down the street from the church where the funeral was being held. Such a protest would not ordinarily have been disruptive to any event taking place at the church even if the family found it upsetting to know that it was taking place. Likewise, the court has upheld narrowly targeted legislation that prohibits protesters at abortion clinics from disrupting the operations of the clinic by requiring them to “stand back” a certain amount of feet from the premises, even if that limits their use of otherwise public space, such as sidewalks. Phelps did not have the right to go into the church (a private venue) and stand up and start yelling about queers and fags making the death of the service member totally justified in the eyes of God. In Trump’s case, his events are public or private depending on the venue and a variety of other factors. The Chicago event was public in the sense that anyone could attend (which is often not the case with these kinds of events for obvious reasons), but the space was rented privately and it was being conducted by a private party, who most likely had the right under any applicable law to eject individuals who were protesting. So no, in general, you don’t have a right to protest at a private event such as a Trump rally even if you do not intend to be disruptive. You do generally have a right to stand on the sidewalk or outside the gates and protest.
Anya
This is why I admire this man! Saying Obama is the best president in my life time doesn’t mean much since there’s only been 3 presidents in my life time. But I believe he’ll go down in history as one of the best and most consequential American presidents. I just hope his faith in the American people is spot on and he’s not the last president of pre-shit America.
In the linked youtube video, POTUS explains why he believes Trump will not be president but he also drops other truth bombs on the republicans and their enablers.
celticdragonchick
@Gimlet:
Protests at his rallies are a form of political speech, and Trump has been ejecting silent protesters, people with t-shirts who say nothing etc.
This has been happening in open public venues, including a public park in Florida today I understand.
CarolDuhart2
@beltane: Sure, but if you look at the globe, most countries are smaller and less spread out, there has been better investment in rail and even water transport, and there is a tourism industry that takes up the slack in some places. When the city is only 50 miles away, you can have a 1) suburban populace that likes large lots 2) businesses that like large lots and have a daily commuter population that will at least come into town and spend money on lunch and other things for supplemental income.
The places mentioned that are mostly extractive I feel sorriest for. Between better recycling, alternative fuel economies, and automation, the jobs are going away. At least tourism jobs are likely to last, will hire both sexes, and might attract people who want to move in instead of simply coming in for a while and leaving when the wells, seams, whatever dry up.
celticdragonchick
@Barbara:
AS I mentioned above, silent protesters who were not disruptive have also been ejected, and people in open public venues like a park in Florida today have also been thrown out merely for holding a sign.
Gimlet
@celticdragonchick:
I think we’re on the same page there.
Adam L Silverman
@Frank Wilhoit: You should see the slides, in my intro/base Culture for Strategy and Policy slide deck, dealing with this. I have the light map of the US and several other related ones where I talk about patterns of settlement in regards to natural infrastructure, the need to protect it and make man made infrastructure in addition to it/to connect to it, and how this drives who lives where, why, how they understand politics, society, religion, law and order, etc.
Ruviana
@Mike in NC: I think this touches on the role of authoritarianism and how fear of the other makes it more intense. There was a really interesting article at Vox that explored the interrelationships of fear of the other, authoritarian personality and voting for Trump.
celticdragonchick
@Adam L Silverman:
I will stick with my short pattern Brown Bess, thanks!
http://www.militaryheritage.com/musket7.htm
(annoying note…I was supposed to be with the 2nd NC Continental Regt this weekend at Guilford Courthouse NMP for the re-enactment and public presentation of a new monument to British soldiers killed in the Revolution. Of course, I had to get sick as hell with the flu and a probable lung infection)
Pogonip
@ThresherK (GPad): 101% of statistics are only 50.5% accurate.
Misterpuff
@dmsilev: Rimshot.
celticdragonchick
@Gimlet:
Yeah, I thought so also. Cool.
Adam L Silverman
@Frank Wilhoit: I think that the other point use raise, in regard to the Founders and the Framers, is that there was an inherent division among them. Some recognized the power that was building in the cities and urban areas, while others, such as Jefferson, had this hugely mythologized and romanticized notion of how America was and would always be: full of yeoman farmers toiling diligently. If you ever read the correspondence between Madison in Philadelphia and Jefferson in Virginia when Gilbert’s Rebellion broke out and Madison and several other Founders and Framers were essentially trapped in their townhouses in what we now call the Liberties, they’re hysterically funny in retrospect. At one point Madison basically tells Jefferson that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that the yeoman farmers aren’t diligently and blissfully toiling away, rather they are surrounding and besieging his apartments and he needed to get off his tukhas at Monticello and bring help in the form of the militia.
Pogonip
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Hmmmph. I think if he really tried, as I do, he could offend on many more levels.
celticdragonchick
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
LOL… I was complaining about his “incorruptible” lunacy as well.
celticdragonchick
@Pogonip:
Don’t encourage Dreher to be any more of a ” serious intellectual” than he has already attempted. Please.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK (GPad): good catch, fat fingered typo, I’ll go back and fix it. Its what happens when you’re trying to type a comment and have both dogs nudging you with their snouts to take them for a walk.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gimlet: Bullshit.
celticdragonchick
@Adam L Silverman:
Ignoring the puppies? Serves ya right.
Felonius Monk
@WarMunchkin: You were asking about New York State voter registration dates, etc. in thread below. Here is a Link to Info.
Adam L Silverman
@celticdragonchick: That’ll work too. And they’ll think you’re a Tea Partier, so likely either leave you alone or ask for an autograph.
celticdragonchick
@Omnes Omnibus: Ease back a bit. We settled that amicably.
Adam L Silverman
@celticdragonchick: They got walked and now they’re getting fed. As in right now.
celticdragonchick
@Adam L Silverman:
A Tea Party polyester farb!? God forbid!
With that, I will retreat to work on some Warhammer 40k minis with my kid and continue hacking my lungs out. Good times.
Barbara
@celticdragonchick: Right, the demarcation between public and private can get very dicey. For instance, the NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade is organized by a private group (The Ancient Order of Hibernians or something like that), so that they have the right to determine who can march with them and to prohibit gays and lesbians if they wanted to. They could NOT prevent people on the sidewalks from protesting as the parade passed by. If you rent a pavilion at your local park along with the playing fields in order to host a family reunion, you have the right to use those facilities without disruption, politically motivated or otherwise. It’s almost impossible to speak in generalities. Of course, I think silent protesters should just be ignored but it’s hard for me to know under the circumstances whether they had a right to continue standing where they were.
Adam L Silverman
@celticdragonchick: Feel better.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
He’s rented two private venues (so far, that I’m aware of) in Ohio. He’s telling his fans he’s keeping everyone except supporters out by using private facilities.
Boy, Trump makes friends everywhere he goes, I must say. I was reading an Ohio political reporter who was tersely correcting the Trump campaign- they’re lying about what he wrote. He wrote that they cancelled an event and one or another douchebag on that campaign said the reporter got it wrong. The reporter immediately tweeted the name of the Trump campaign person who told him it was cancelled.
I guess “lying constantly” applies to more than the candidate.
CarolDuhart2
I have an idea. We need a pinned post full of voter info-registration, id requirements,whatever is needed. GOTV information, phone calls. The last time around Obama simply created his own OFA to handle this. I signed up for Hillary’s site because I believe this is one thing that she may have carried with her into her campaign.
And I know that many people want to make a direct protest of Trump’s rallies. Perhaps a counter-rally in the nearby area would work just as well, and allow some people space to vent separately? Or maybe a national counter-Trump march of some kind that’s combined with voter registration.
Barbara
@CarolDuhart2: A series of local marches with voter registration information would work best. I signed up at least six people to vote in 2008 working two different sessions. It’s a great thing to do.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anya:
There have been 13 in my lifetime, although I can’t claim to remember FDR (I do have vague snapshot recollections of my family’s reaction to his death, when I was not quite three years old) — but I’ve been paying some attention since 1952, and a lot of attention since 1964, and have been an active political participant on and off since 1992, and I agree with you: Obama is the best president of my lifetime, and that’s with all the obstruction and hatefulness directed at him. I just can’t even imagine what might have been accomplished had the Congress been just a wee tad more willing to negotiate.
Felonius Monk
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m glad I’m not the only one here who can claim some FDR in my childhood. :-)
Kay
@Barbara:
But what is the specific fear around the protests? What is the anticipated political harm? Trump is on my tv right now. He’s attacking Bernie Sanders. People who were likely to vote for a Democrat in Ohio don’t hate Bernie Sanders. Hell, many of them are supporting Bernie Sanders or are friends or family members of people who are. Is there fear that Trump will convert Democratic voters to Trump voters by yelling at Bernie Sanders?
nutella
@Frank Wilhoit:
Not the only cleavage but a very large and important divide, yes.
Look at the Bundys and their fans, for example. One of the things they complain about is that the refuge occupiers got arrested and charged while the violent protesters rioting in Ferguson didn’t. Their facts are wrong, for one thing, since almost all the Ferguson violence was directed from the police to the protesters, but it’s part of their worldview that rural people always get the short end of the stick and urban people get privileges.
Literally, of course, Ammon Bundy was living in a suburb of Las Vegas and people from Ferguson live in a suburb of St Louis so their geography is off but their group identifies as rural even when they’re not.
Rural folks are way over-represented in congress, especially in the senate, and over-represented in most state legislatures, too, but they’re sure that the game is rigged against them and in favor of those pushy city folk (liberals, banksters, brown people, etc.)
I was thinking that they see themselves as losing because their political representation PER PERSON is much higher than city dwellers but they are outnumbered so much that their TOTAL representation is smaller than urban. I’m not sure now given Adam’s report that
But rural-identified and small town people, however many of them they are, are carrying some huge chips on their shoulders about being left behind economically and politcally.
SiubhanDuinne
@Felonius Monk:
I think there are a few of us here (at least, who will ‘fess up). Lots of Boomers, of course, but it really is a different set of memories even if the age differential is small.
Kay
@Barbara:
Or, is it that it promotes Trump? Because Trump was on TV 24/7 before the protests. MSNBC is basically the Donald Trump Show, and has been for months.
Adam L Silverman
@nutella: It depends on how you slice the data. You can also state that 75% of the population lives within 25 miles of the coast. That number goes up if you include major water ways like the Mississippi River or the Susquehanna River or the Missouri River or the Great Lakes or others.
Regardless, much of the US is a great big empty that is very sparsely populated.
RaflW
“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.”
And yet, conservatives dare to say that liberals look down on the poor & working class with disdain! Kevin Williamson is clearly a snob of the worst possible sort (ie: stupid).
Mike J
@Barbara: :
Registering people to vote is easy in most places too.
For all the people who talk about party building, this is how you do it. Google your state’s rules for voter registration drives, get the forms, get them filled in. You can’t refuse to give them to Republicans, but you can go where you’ve got more likely Democratic voters.
Gimlet
@Adam L Silverman:
Bit of trivia for you.
What is the biggest state east of the Mississippi?
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Soylent Green isn’t just a commenter from Oregon. Just saying…
Felonius Monk
@Gimlet: Area or population?
Gimlet
@Felonius Monk:
Area.
Adam L Silverman
@Gimlet: That’s not trivia, that’s a question. That said its Georgia.
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: no. As we discussed on a thread last week, it’s an actual product now, marketed by vegetarians who obviously didn’t finish the book.
Gimlet
@Adam L Silverman:
Surprised? I was.
Pogonip
@RaflW: Full of frass, for sure.
Liberals in general do look down on working-class whites, but they’re honest about it. Conservatives let the mask slip after 40 years and now Donald Trump’s reaping the whirlwind.
I’ve been preaching for 30 years that the answer for all of us is unions, unions, unions, till our unions are so powerful we own politicians in both parties. Those white guys in the hills who were mentioned above have never learned about the battles their great-grandfathers fought. If we can only find a way to teach them, I believe they’ll turn off Fox and the radio and go organize.
SFAW
Whelping?
Some years ago, there was a Boston-area conservative talk-radio host named David Brudnoy. He was considered something of an intellectual by most, and was certainly well educated, and erudite (if I’m not being redundant). I didn’t particularly care for him, but would sometimes listen on my drive home from work.
That is, until one evening, when he characterized women of a certain socio-economic station — I don’t recall if they were so-called “welfare mothers,” or just poor women with insufficient access to birth control — as “brood sows.” Brood sows? BROOD SOWS?
Fucking asshole. What is it with these conservatard fucks and their need to depict Others as animals?
If Brudnoy weren’t already dead, I’d wish tumbrels on him, Williamson, and the rest of those arrogant, sociopathic, evil fucks.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gimlet:
I know! I know!
Mai.naem.mobile
@Gimlet: Guessing NY ,Second guess would be Floriduh but I’m sure this is a trick question.
Felonius Monk
@Gimlet: Well, I been to Georgia on a fast train, honey.
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: I saw that. Not the thread, but that someone had created a nutritional meal replacement and was calling it soylent green.
Adam L Silverman
@Gimlet: I was when I first learned it, but that was a while back.
Tim C.
@nutella: and that includes many who are getting some enormous help from federal and state governments. Not all mind you, but most of the people who want to destroy the BLM would rapidly discover that without the Feds pay 90% of the bills, they wouldn’t have a ranch anymore. They really will cut off their noses to spite their own faces.
Gimlet
@Adam L Silverman:
Several years back for me too.
Came up during a discussion of football and recruiting areas.
GregB
@Adam L Silverman:
I think the name is just Soylent.
Pogonip
@celticdragonchick: I must have missed his serious intellectual period. Was that before or after the Conversion of Cole?
What happened to Cole, anyway? I hope he’s not hurt again. Also, I hope you feel better. Everyone here, including me, is sick. We have been barking like a kennel full of hound dogs all week, and (to switch animal metaphors) generally feeling like frass.
Pogonip
@Felonius Monk: Was it the midnight train? Did you sit anywhere near Gladys Knight or a Pip?
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: Florida isn’t east of the Mississippi any more?
Gimlet
@Pogonip: A rainy night I’ll bet.
SFAW
@Gimlet:
It’s either Confusion or Stupid. About 45 percent of the population — all Repubs — and spreads over all 42 states east of the Mississippi.
O. Felix Culpa
@Adam L Silverman: OK, here we part ways: I like the white lights, at least on the Christmas tree in my house. However, I will defend your right to prefer colored lights, no matter how vulgar they are. ;)
Peale
@GregB: it’s Soylent 2.0. Apparently there’s fewer finger nails in the sequel.
Pogonip
@O. Felix Culpa: Gee, thanks. We think.
Pogonip
@Gimlet: All over the world.
Elie
I think that what is being ignored by both parties is the reality that we are now chronically not going to have enough jobs — both here in the US and internationally. It is going to be the source of great social and political instability. Solutions are not clear but probably will involve lopping off some group from employment and then making some very tumultuous (to say the least) decisions about who gets what support from the public funding. Right now, we have a lot of olds relative to the young uns supporting and that is everywhere in the west just about. The solutions are not as easy as having more kids, because we may not have jobs for “more kids”. We are bearing witness to the beginning of some very challenging times. I am well into my 60’s and am quite concerned about the young’uns, but also how a whole bunch of my boomer fellows are going to survive the next decade or so economically. Redistribution will not solve the whole tamale in my opinion… its way past that. Good birth control would have delayed it, but not forever. But make no mistake, here we are…
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: It is, but the measurement/determination is made on total area of land mass. Because Florida has two large swamps a couple of mid size ones and a lot of big rivers and waterways it actually has less land than Georgia. That’s what they’re basing Georgia being larger on.
Betty Cracker
@WarMunchkin: I like your idea about mobile registration totes! Governor Scott here in FL put a chill on citizen voter registration activities by passing new requirements that all paperwork be turned in to officials within 48 hours with criminal penalties and hefty fines for violations. Even the League of Women Voters, who’d been holding registration drives for decades, stopped signing people up.
Adam L Silverman
@O. Felix Culpa: I’m just saying what I like, I’m not calling for a campaign to round up those with the white lights for reeducation or anything.
Barbara
@Kay: No, that he will do to Sanders what he has already done to the other Republican candidates, which is to marginalize them by dragging them down to his level, which he always wins, perhaps in the belief that “never Trump” voters will change their mind when they see him beating up Democrats so effectively the same way.
Sloegin
“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.”
NR goon lets a little truth slip. New Orlean, Flint, and others. Is the new R litmus test for office a list of broken cities left in their wake?
Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: Well, I am!
Matt McIrvin
The Sanders fans of my online acquaintance are going so hard negative on the Clintons right now, it’s really hard to imagine them voting for Hillary in the fall even to avoid a genocidal fascist dictatorship. I’m not kidding. There’s a Thomas Frank article making the rounds about how Bill Clinton was pure evil and ruined everything.
I think Jill Stein is going to have her best year ever.
Adam L Silverman
@Pogonip: Given that I don’t celebrate Christmas, its a lot less personal for me.
BruceJ
@Eric U.: Might that be the ‘Ohio’ flag I remember the wing-o-nauts screaming in ’08 about how the Dread Ni-CLANG Obama had fashioned his own flag, complete with ‘O’…
Matt McIrvin
…So I think Trump still has a serious shot at the presidency, and the main reason is that I’m not convinced our party isn’t falling apart as rapidly as theirs is. If we can’t unite, that’ll be it.
Gimlet
@Matt McIrvin:
If it’s a close outcome, I think there could be violent disunity.
Eric U.
@BruceJ: yes, I stand corrected, it’s the Ohio flag. Still standing with my prediction that Trump fans will be in uniforms. both yUUUge and classy
Frank Wilhoit
@Adam L Silverman: If I should see your slides (and I stipulate, as the lawyers say, that I should), then you should post a link to them…?
Thanks in advance,
FW
.
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: yeah. I’ll worry about that starting in May. One of the points of Sanders was to integrate those Jill Stein leaning voters in the Democratic Party to move it to the left. If he can’t do that if he loses, then I do think we’re up shit creek, especially if he ends up leading more voters to Stein than she had last election.
Adam L Silverman
@Frank Wilhoit: I still use them and as far as I know they’ve never been posted on the net.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: Adam!, this was discussed at last month’s meeting, don’t joke about it. Secrecy is key to the war on Christmas.
Frank Wilhoit
@Adam L Silverman: It is as you say, and perhaps a bit unfair to impute the end result to “the Founders” as if they had been a monolith. But 230 years on, the toxicity of the result (i.e., a covert thumb on the scale in favor of ruralia) doesn’t really seem to depend upon the details of how it was arrived at. Was there, at the time, any effective dissent from the outcome?
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: wobbly bothsidesdoit independents will react negatively if the story becomes violent thugs disrupting peaceful rallies. If you don’t think that can happen, you haven’t been paying attention to the last 50 years.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: And a concerted disinformation campaign that renders the enemy unable to determine friend from foe from neutral non-combatant isn’t?
I do this stuff for a living…
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
People who wonder why Dumphf is going after Sanders aren’t thinking this through. Drumphf wants Sanders not Clinton to be his opponent. He fears Clinton for the same reason many have stated, she’s been bullshit tested, and came out way ahead. Sanders does the same as he does, things get under both of their skins. For different reasons but still same result. Drumphf has been a bully for decades and knows how the game works, Sanders not so much. So Drumphf is setting Sanders up for a fall and hopefully getting rid of Clinton as well by getting her side of the aisle to fight with each other. We need to insure that this doesn’t happen because it’s very unhealthy for all of us. But I am sure that a Sanders administration would be far superior to any conservative one. I prefer Clinton but not at the expense of a conservative administration. A lot of Sanders most vocal followers do not seem to have that same concept in mind.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: I’m sure all the boaters in Florida will be happy to hear they don’t have to pay state registration.
In total area, Florida is larger than GA. The question was, what’s the largest state, not what state has the most land.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I accept your criticism, I am mere foot soldier in this war. I’m sorry if I overstepped. ;-)
Adam L Silverman
@Frank Wilhoit: Not really, it was the price that had to be paid to get the Constitution passed and ratified.
Bobby Thomson
@Peale: you can’t spell Sanders without Nader. I have serious doubts he could get his moronic horde back on the ranch even if he tried.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: I didn’t write the question, nor am I responsible to the answer to the question. And I’m not saying I agree with how the answer was arrived at. I’m just the messenger here. I agree with you that this is a stupid way to measure it, but, again, I didn’t do it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mike J: If you count water, then Michigan is bigger. (And yes, it’s east of the Mississippi.)
;-p
USGS.
Georgia has the most counties east of the Mississippi – and only Texas has more in the US.
So there!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
I don’t understand this public vs private venue, Trump has a right to speak without being interrupted crap. Madison Square Garden is a private venue; if I buy a ticket Carmelo Anthony doesn’t have some “right” to play there without me yelling at him that he’s an overrated asshole. If I spit on him or throw a battery at him, I’ll get escorted out, as it should be, but verbal abuse is just part of the territory. Why should any candidate for President have a “right” to give a political speech in any venue without someone in the audience loudly calling him/her an asshole? Sack up, for Christ’s sake.
divF
@Felonius Monk:
Billy Joe Shaver. Commander Cody’s version is the one that sticks in my mind – a good earworm, for a change.
Gimlet
@Mike J:
Michigan is bigger than Florida if you include water.
raven
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: And I live in geographically smallest.
Ruckus
@Frank Wilhoit:
230 yrs ago there was a huge economy outside of farming? Yes people lived and worked in cities but without a robust farming industry there would be no country. And not just here, that was life at the time. Was it a good position to take for the long term? I’d say no but then I wasn’t there to make the argument that 180 yrs later is when the scales would start to tip and many fewer people, by percentage would end up working in the farming industry. Many would still be and are involved in the food industry, processing/shipping/selling the goods that a few percent of the population creates. It isn’t the decisions made at the time, it’s that the decisions haven’t been adjusted with the changes that happened along the way. Should they have set things up to be equal? Sure they should have, in hindsight, but that’s not the reality of the time.
Peale
@Ruckus: yeah. We’ll see if it develops into a suicide cult. I mean, seriously. One of their biggest complaints is about campaign finance and special interests. It is likely that Scalia will still be dead. They aren’t getting any of their finance agenda passed if the court stays 5-4 conservative. Is it ok if I start to doubt their sincerity if they run off? If Sanders can’t lead his supporters where he’s said he wants them to go, can I start to question strength of his leadership qualities?
PurpleGirl
@Betty Cracker: Hoping the thread is still active…
Betty, this morning on NY1 news I heard of video clip by Trump wherein he said that he’ll start prosecuting the protesters as the only way to stop the craziness. Claimed he didn’t want to hurt some good kid’s life but he’d press charges if he had to.
Felonius Monk
@divF:
That would be this?
ETA: Why divF and not gradF or curlF?
WarMunchkin
@Betty Cracker: That is outrageous. But the joke’s on them – we live in the era of distributed activism. The text of that bill appears to apply to third party organizations, not individuals taking it upon themselves to provide voter registration forms to random passersby.
I saw some of these tote bags on CafePress:
I can help you register to vote bag
But I’d want to combine that with a design like this:
Vote tote bag
Also, because they’re totes and I’m a dude, I was also looking for something more masculine. There are messenger bags like these, but I think that’s a big too college student for my tastes.
The other idea I had, being in a deep blue state, is organizing busing to states like PA and NH so that people can help canvass or volunteer in-person for whatever the party orgs there need. I know this is frequently done for college students, but people in their 20s and early 30s would probably do it as well. Though of course phone banking and facebanking can be done from the comfort of your own home state.
Ruckus
@Peale:
In my book you don’t have to wait. Some people have a serious blind spot. We’ve had 7 yrs of the best president of my lifetime and I was born in the first half of the last century. He isn’t perfect, but he’s damn good and has gotten a lot done in the face of huge opposition. How do you follow that? Ever have to walk on after a great speech or other act? I had to do this once. It won’t be easy for anyone but someone has to do it. Right now the best chance we have is Clinton, because she wants to keep up the momentum, not burn it down. We’ve been a nation for what 239 yrs and we’ve had our ups and downs and will continue to do so. We’ve had a few great presidents, quite a few more so-so and a few absolute disasters. Fighting among ourselves and blowing this one will end up with another in that last group, worst of the worst. I’d like it that when my end is near that I did my best not to let that happen. Join me?
divF
@Felonius Monk: Yup. Billy C. Farlow with the genuine red-clay-South-to-Detroit accent.
ETA: divF captures the others. Besides, Conservation Laws are my life.
Ken
@max:
If this is one of those “My aunt likes” games, I’d guess the first and last letters have to be the same.
Felonius Monk
@WarMunchkin: I left you some info on NYS voter registration at #138 above. I don’t know if you saw it.
raven
@divF: Read “Star Making Machinery” if you haven’t.
Felonius Monk
@divF: Commander Cody (last that I knew) lives a few miles north of me. John Tichy (rhythm guitar) is retired Professor of Mech. Engineering across the river at RPI. And Bill Kirchen (lead guitar) comes to Troy about once a year for a gig.
raven
@Felonius Monk: I saw the Commander solo in a little joint between Atlanta and Athens about 15 years ago. I asked him if he still lived in the Bay area and he said “nah, I moved to Saratoga New York, them California smoking laws were killin me!
Kay
@Barbara:
Rank and file Republicans will vote for Trump if he’s the nominee. I think the “never Trump” vote might be a smidge over-represented in conservative punditry, which makes it like .00001 :)
I also don’t think people will connect Hillary Clinton to Sanders supporters protesting Trump rallies, if that’s the concern.
If it hurts anyone (and I don’t know that it does) it hurts Bernie Sanders.
Felonius Monk
@raven: He was still performing as of a couple of years ago. I recently saw some Youtube video of him and Bill Kirchen together. He kind of looks like hell, but still bangs it out.
Peale
@Ruckus: the best I can promise is to be more polite to Sanders supporters, since I really do not think of them as a catastrophic development. I’ll let them call me old, and privileged and whatnot. My soul is compromised and pledged to the devil. I’m out of touch. I have no idea what it is like. I’m living in a seashell 50 feet under the sea and I just couldn’t be reached to bother about changing the corrupt system. I’ll agree with them that Hillary is running a scary and powerful machine and that she’s so unable to make a decision that isn’t marred by corrupt influences and her will to power that she’s really a petty Middle Eastern dictator. I won’t be concerned when Sanders supporters decide that there’s a problem with black voters. I’ll agree that every comment she makes comes from the depths of a soul that’s been captured by greed and political self-preservation and therefore she can’t be trusted.
I’ll try to be more polite about that, in the name of comity. It’s not likely I can keep up that front for 9 more months, though. These are Sanders people, though. It’s up to him talk them off the ledge.
I have to admit, if the whole party collapses three months into a primary election, it was probably nearing its end anyway.
Chris T.
@Adam L Silverman: There are a lot of ways to measure “largest”: land area, total area, population, GDP (well, whatever the state equivalent may be), and so on. When I first read the question I immediately wondered whether it was “area” or “population” (without getting into how to interpret “area”).
Kay
Just a heads up- the multi-millionaire Fox News personalities are allowing Donald Trump to promote lies about his poll numbers.
This is exactly what got them into this mess- they allowed GOP grifters to lie about Romney”s poll numbers.
They’re getting ready to fleece the rubes again,
celticdragonchick
@Pogonip:
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Felonius Monk
@raven: Here’s the link. This is from 2015 over in Shirley, MA.
ETA: Being an Old, I love me some Old Guys rock’n roll.
Kay
Fox is currently running an hour-long Trump ad. I think the GOP will come together around Trump.
Too many careers are riding on it.
Chris T.
Others have already touched on this, but I’ll note that while Williamson has valid points in his diagnosis, his approach appears to consist of treating people as things, which is the beginning of evil. (Hat tip to Pratchett…)
divF
@Felonius Monk:
@raven:
I knew about Tichy – I was a Professor in Mechanical Engineering in the 90’s, and he was a well-known guy in Tribology. His ME web site used to have a link to his Rock and Roll Encyclopedia entry.
I see Kirchen whenever he comes to town to play the Freight and Salvage. They often open up the dance floor for his show. That show also brings out some of the Cody alums who live in the area – Bobby Black, Bruce Barlow, and Kevin Farrell. Bobby Black is a little stiff, but he can still pick it once he sits down at the pedal steel.
In 1980 I went to a show at the UC Berkeley Student Union that was a combination concert and exhibit of George Frayne’s paintings – “The Commander Cody Rock and Roll Art Show”. I interviewed the Commander on KALX, where I was a DJ. He kinda took control of the interview.
Re: Starmaking Machinery. Kirchen’s wedding to Louise is one of the most touching episodes in the book. Louise travels with him now, and comes on stage and sings a few of the songs they wrote together.
Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: Ah-HA! A stealth soldier in the War on Christmas!
Which, I guess, means you report to my father, an unamused agnostic who has been fighting the WoC at least since the original airing of “ACharlie Brown Christmas.”. He has your orders which you can pick up in August when retail Christmasing resumes.
Actually he has nothing against religious holidays, what he objects to is all the commercialized crap subsumed under the title of The Holidays. Which I guess puts him way ahead of his time.
Ruckus
@Peale:
Oh I think we are seeing the self destruction of the republican party. It won’t happen this election cycle and it’s been going on for 15 yrs but it just doesn’t know it yet. They have no one to run in their elections such that an outsider with no political background and the personality of a slime bacteria is winning their support, but just barely. I expect, like Kay that they will hold their noses and vote for Drumphf, or not vote at all, but what do they do next time? Their bought and paid for candidates are horrible, and who is going to come along and rescue this mess? No one without serious issues because that’s all they have left.
I wonder about a large contingent of Sanders voters. I have friends in his camp, people my age. I think they will end up pulling the lever for which ever candidate wins the nomination. It’s the youngsters that seem to be the most vocal. Did they get this way for President Obama or weren’t old enough to vote? And if they stay home will it matter?
Pogonip
@celticdragonchick: I tried to sing “This is the dawning of the Age of Asparagus” and started coughing. Frass.
Felonius Monk
@divF:
Just curious — what’s your specialty and are you still doing it? I ‘m a retired mechanical engineer.
ETA: I put another link up above to a 2015 Cody/Kirchen video. At #232.
Lurking Canadian
Williamson didn’t fall very far short of saying that the rural communities were clinging to guns and religion, did he?
As for this:
@Eric U.:
It’s stuff like this that makes me continue to have a residual belief that Trump is putting it on. Like the bit with the Nazi salute: it’s just too much on the nose, you know? Fascism was supposed to come to America draped in an American flag and carrying a cross, not in the form of new symbology, goosestepping and red armbands.
I don’t *really* think it’s what he’s doing, but if he were trying to lance the boil of racist conservatism by exposing its ugly heart, he’d be doing exactly the same stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@Pogonip: Or he’s a 300 year old Puritan that has been wandering the Continent since the Massachusetts Bay Colony became the state of Massachusetts.
WarMunchkin
@Felonius Monk: I got it, thanks. I’very taken care of most of my own network, just trying to figure out the county and state party.
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I was born in 1951 so I don’t remember Truman or FDR as president. But I do remember Eleanor Roosevelt as an at-large political presence. I know the influence she had in NYC politics. I can remember my grandmother calling her a communist. (I’ve read a number of books about her and I love her.)
Adam L Silverman
@Lurking Canadian: It was the state of Ohio flag.
divF
@Felonius Monk: I’m a computational mathematics gun for hire, and still doing it. Numerical methods for partial differential equations, with applications to fluid dynamics and plasma physics.
ETA: That link at #232 is a keeper.
J R in WV
OK, now. I’ve just opened up this thread, and haven’t read any comments yet, at all.
But this guy, Kevin Williamson, is a repugnant, violent, hateful person, who needs to be committed to a mental health facility and helped with a serious intervention, until he realizes that believing that “these dysfunctional, downscale communities … deserve to die” is a criminal intention.
That believing that “welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog” is evil, immoral, and unAmerican in every way. To hold these beliefs is despicable, and Williamson, currently hired by some immoral publication that has worked tirelessly for decades to put these “hardscrabble” people exactly where they are today.
And because of where these “hardscrabble” people are today, where Williamson’s organization has worked hard for decades to put them today, they deserve to die, today. This is a long plot to commit genocide, is what this is. Republican genocide.
Put people who worked hard with their bodies in a position of poverty, deliberately, make them poor, give them no hope, and then tell the nation that these people deserve to die, because of what your organization has done to them. It’s very like giving a subset of people – like Democrats, or Republicans, or any subset of people – tattoos with indicators, and then saying, “these people have the mark of politics on them, and must be killed and buried in trenches where they can no longer interfere with our political plans!”
I know who I think should be put away from interfering with society, where they can no longer hurt society and political intentions. Mr Kevin Williamson is at the head of that list today. With Mr Trump and Mr Romney right behind him.
alan
@Kay: “Right now we’re still living off the remains of the secure middle class.”. Wow did you nail it, Bam! Bam! All is see from my family and friends and coworkers is that it depends on your Boomer parents if you get paid college and a house down payment or are in the precariat at best.
john w casey
@Anya: He’s the best president in my lifetime, and I was born during the Truman administration.
Among his other virtues, he’s demonstrated that you don’t need to be borderline psychotic to do the job.
JC
Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: He DOES prefer vampire levels of lighting. Hmmmm…
I don’t think the Puritans were big on agnosticism, though.
We have a deal, whichever of us dies first will try to report back to the other. After all, even St.Paul wasn’t sure.
jonas
I can guarantee you that if you’re unemployable in upstate New York or West Virginia or wherever, you’re probably also unemployable in Cupertino, CA, Portland, OR, or Houston, TX.
Of course what Williamson and his ilk used to tell people was that they needed to just pull up stakes on a whim and move to some prosperous utopia like the Bakken fields of North Dakota where a never-ending gravy train of petroleum jobs awaited and….oh, wait.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: The Sanders fans I know who are going the hardest Hillary=Satan negative are actually all over 40. Some are Boomers, old Sixties leftists like Bernie himself, basically. Not kids.
I don’t know, it’s hard to gauge. My wife is a Sanders supporter and is perfectly realistic about his chances and fully willing to support Hillary Clinton. I suspect the majority of them are actually like that.
But I just heard of some poll claiming that 33% of Sanders supporters say they won’t vote for Clinton in the fall. I know that for many people that’s like “I’m moving to Canada”, they’re not serious. But I don’t have enough sense of whether that’s typical for March of a primary season.
Matt McIrvin
@Lurking Canadian: That description of the “new flag” at the Trump rally just sounded like the Ohio state flag to me (as a couple people said further up). It looks kind of like that.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Can’t remember the exact percentage, but I think something like half of 2008 Clinton supporters iinitially said they wouldn’t vote for Obama, but almost all of them came around eventually. I also suspect many of the Bernie or Bust peeps are Green Party folks anyway.
Luthe
@Adam L Silverman: As an urban planner and complete nerd, I’d love to see your slides/read your lecture notes on settlement patterns. *might be drooling a little at the prospect*
SFAW
@Felonius Monk:
The Bull Run! Is that local to you?
WarMunchkin
@Matt McIrvin: It is absolutely typical. This mirrors ’08 very well. Nearly half of Clinton supporters said they would not vote for Obama. And he’s the two-time reigning champ of American Election Entertainment.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: yeah, I know some of these guys were 2012 Jill Stein voters, over drones and the NSA.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Barbara: I don’t know. Germany and Japan both have high wages and strong manufacturing sectors. Those countries chose to develop policies that strengthened their manufacturing competitiveness. I’m not sure why the U.S. failed to do the same but we did fail to do the same.
someofparts
Well, I’m sure it’s already been said somewhere in over 250 comments, but, to repeat. That blowhard making vile remarks about poor people “whelping” children, while he and his kind facilitate and smirk over the assaults on Planned Parenthood …
yeah… how uncool of me to be so angry at that effrontery that I want to personally choke the weasel