.
I believe I may have discovered the platonic ideal of all “Poor Little WWC Voters!” stories. And because it is from the Washington Post, I strongly suspect its bathetic overkill may be entirely intentional. “How nostalgia for white Christian America drove so many Americans to vote for Trump“:
… Residents and tourists from far-flung states mill along the thoroughfare, past the quaint low-slung shops made of Mount Airy’s famous white granite and named, like Floyd’s City Barber Shop, for references in “The Andy Griffith Show,” the folksy comedy set in the idyllic fictional small town of Mayberry that first aired in 1960.
And yet even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains fills its coffers by selling nostalgia, many of its residents would agree with the now-popular saying “We’re not in Mayberry anymore.”
If only the real Mount Airy, which has experienced decades of economic and social decline, were like the Mayberry facade, muses Mayor David Rowe. If only his city and the rest of America could return to the 1950s again.
“Now it’s about secular progressivism, not the values you get out of this book,” such as honesty and hard work, said Rowe, 72, jabbing his finger at the leather Bible on his office desk.
But as Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, Rowe and many of his constituents are hoping for a return to the past…
Seventy-four percent of white evangelicals believe American culture has mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s — more than any other group of Americans — compared with 56 percent of all whites, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. In sharp contrast, 62 percent of African Americans and 57 percent of Hispanic Americans think the culture has changed for the better, the survey said.
“You think back to the 1990s, and conservative Christians could throw around the phrase ‘moral majority,’ and there was a kernel of truth to that,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive at PRRI and author of “The End of White Christian America.” “Even in 2008, they could say the country is on our side on [same-sex marriage], and that’s changed so quickly in this last decade. The election hit on fundamental questions about what America is and should be.”…
Thomas, who blames the loss of his $75,000-a-year factory job on Obama, now makes $18,000 working in his friend’s gun store and pawnshop. He is hopeful Trump will bring jobs back.
His colleague, Dreama Staples, 53, said people are bringing in their prized possessions to sell so they can buy groceries and gas. At 4.8 percent, the unemployment rate in Surry County is similar to the national figure, but Staples said that finding full-time work with benefits is difficult. She said she has grown angry over what she considers government overreach.
“We’re losing control of our freedoms,” Staples said. “The government was taking away our rights. Taxes are higher, our jobs are gone, and it just feels less Christian.”…
Not everyone is nostalgic for the 1950s.
Ron Jessup, 68, who grew up in Mount Airy during that era, found the place generally friendly then, he said — as long as he and other blacks obeyed the racist laws and social mores of the time.
If African Americans went to the theater, they sat upstairs, he said. If they went to the restaurants, they avoided the counter. “We understood what was considered our place,” said Jessup, who is retired from his job as a high school principal in nearby Winston-Salem. Even now, all five Surry County commissioners are white.
White residents tend to view the city’s history through rose-colored glasses, he said. Even Andy Griffith said the show wasn’t based on his home town, Jessup noted. Indeed, in a 1998 television interview, Griffith said the idea of Mayberry came from the producers. “I’ve argued about this too long. I don’t care,” he said of people in Mount Airy. “Let them think what they want to think.” Andy Griffith never returned to live in his home town either, dying in 2012 at his coastal home in Dare County.Ironically, when the show first aired in 1960, the intent was to hark back to an even earlier era — the 1930s, Griffith has said.
As for Trump, Jessup believes his “Make America Great Again” slogan was code for “take America back again,” and a reaction to President Obama’s election.
“Sometimes we use Christianity when it’s convenient for what we want,” Jessup said. “You can’t allow someone to have racist remarks and then go to church and talk about Jesus as the center of your life.”…
When she travels with her pastor husband, Thresa Tucker hands out an evangelistic tract that uses “The Andy Griffith Show” as an entry point for talking about Jesus. When they return home to Mount Airy, she said, she is reminded of how good they have it, pointing out the red barns that dot views of the Blue Ridge… Many of those who have lost jobs seek help at White Plains Baptist Church, where her husband is preacher. But not all who seek help are worthy of it, she said. The church has to be a good steward of its money, so there are criteria for assistance, and she asks whether people attend church regularly. African Americans who have voiced concerns over what Trump will do for the poor would have a different perspective if they tried harder to help themselves, she said.
“I think black people think they’re owed something,” she said. “I think if they acted differently, people would be apt to help them.” She later added that some white people expect handouts, too.
“I believe Trump will get people back to working,” she said.
David Tucker said people resent it when the government tries to supplant the role of local ministries in helping those in need. “Don’t try to change us into something like New York,” he said. “All we really want is for the government to leave us alone and to worship the way we want to.”…
All they really want is for their tribe to have all the power, especially the power to determine who gets to prosper and who gets to suffer. They dream of returning to the (imaginary, dream-fueled) days when a white man was the right man, and the rest of us knew our (lower) place. What else, after all, would Prosperity Jesus do?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s getting so you can’t even make other people live by the rules of your religion!
as I pointed out when this article came up earlier in the week, Andy Griffith made an ad for Obama. Which has apparently been removed from the youtube
cmorenc
My wife is from the rural area of Surry County, only ten miles from Mount Airy, NC – “Mount Pilot” (often referred to in the Andy Griffith show) is within sight of her late father’s farmhouse. The white small town/rural southern evangelicals referred to in the article are my collateral kinfolk, and think just like the white folk in the article about Trump, Obama, cultural decline, etc. Fortunately, my wife escaped that mentality when she went off to college and med school, but she’s the exception compared to her brothers and the folks she grew up with who stayed in the area.
The paradox is that face-to-face, these folk are some of the most generous, considerate people you could ever hope to meet and have as neighbors or family. Once you’re accepted by them, you are like family yourself, even though I started out as a mysterious suspiciously hippie-like city boy outsider to them, only reluctantly taken in at first. However, once you begin talking cultural or political issues with them, the sense of foreboding other-ness and alienation and blame for politicians and the federal government takes over. Unfortunately, they live within the epistemologically closed loop of Fox News and like-minded social circles, except for family members (like my wife) who escape to the broader, better-informed wide world.
Cacti
For all of those who voted to slit their own throats with a big smile on their faces…
I’m smiling too.
My sympathy is reserved for those who will suffer through no fault of their own.
hellslittlestangel
“The End of White Christian America.”
Yeah, let’s go back to the good old days when utopian literature was popular.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: Amen
FlipYrWhig
You know how these people think I look down on them? I do.
WestTexan70
@efgoldman: As a white, 55-year-old male, rural, native West Texan, all I can say is, “When you’re right, you’re right …”
hovercraft
Well isn’t it big of her to concede that “some” white people expect handouts too. Fuck her. I’m sick and tired of this trope, the reason we are 8 days away from a narcissistic sociopath taking office is because white people were pissed off that they are losing their privileges. They are being relegated to the back of the bus where the rest of us have been in for the last 200 years, and they don’t like it, they want to get back up front, where they can yell back at us to work harder and improve our own lot. Fuck her, she not owed a leg up over us, she has to fight for it just like the rest of us. Her savior isn’t going to do shit for her no matter what he says, he will screw her like he screws everyone and everything he touches.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
You know how they think that I think I’m better than they are?
I am.
In mother fucking spades.
Mike in NC
The oppression of rural white Christians in America is such an abomination. Too bad Trump won’t give a shit.
Eric U.
I’ve resolved to be more vindictive from here on
fuckwit
They’re just like the Islamists. They’re fighting the Enlightement.
The Islamists want to return to the Dark Ages. The Talibangelicals do too.
Truth be told, it’s very, very easy for us to head there. As Obama said in his farewell speech: pluralistic Democracy is fragile, and takes constant effort to even keep it going. And if climate change accelerates, that’s going to fall apart sooner rather than later.
FlipYrWhig
@hovercraft: Here’s the thing, though. These fuckknuckles have been steeping in these attitudes for decades. Centuries. Thankfully, sort of, they’re still the same. Their consistent fuck-knuckle-ness doesn’t explain *this* election, or Trump.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I wonder if these twits get it was their two faced behavior that resulted in the secularization of America? Mean when they turned Jesus into a rich white guy they killed him as the universal savior.
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig: Me too. I hate them and their shitty towns and I kind of hope they stay in their shitty towns so that I am less likely to have to be near them.
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig:
You are wonderful and I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you that.
schrodingers_cat
Who is going to be the next GOP nominee, a serial killer?
FlipYrWhig
@fuckwit: In a crisis, I’ll take the side of reason and mobility over their side of ignorance and stasis.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@FlipYrWhig: T
actually it does, they are all starting to die so this is their last chance in their view.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: Aw shucks
cmorenc
@hovercraft:
By “savior” I presume in context you mean Donald Trump rather than Jesus (their spiritual “savior”) who stood for values diametrically opposed to those Donald Trump stands for – he’d be a “moneychanger in the temple” Jesus had such scorn for.
These folk have the misguided notion that Trump is a more conservative second coming of a figure like Teddy Roosevelt, a comfortably wealthy independently-thinking man who challenged and upended the corrupt establishment of his day. Of course, they’ve been sold a completely fraudulent illusion by a man who is far closer to the abusive robber-barons of his age – and it’s going to take their feeling personally shucked and victimized by him to break his spell over them.
Cacti
@Suzanne:
I was born and raised in small town white America.
I couldn’t wait to get the hell out and actually experience life.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
I don’t have the link, but someone linked to a poll a few weeks ago showing that the #1 indicator that someone voted for Trump was saying that they thought Black people were getting more than their fair share of assistance compared to white people.
“Economic insecurity” my white ass.
cmorenc
@Cacti:
Many of the expatriates of the small town in SE North Carolina I grew up in have the following apt expression about our old home town: “It’s such a beautiful place – in the rear view mirror of my car as I’m leaving town“.
Ella in New Mexico
Read this story about a week ago.
All I could say in the comment’s was:
“These people of Mt.Airy who whining and bitching and blaming for their so called misfortunes: Every single person in Mayberry had more self awareness and took more responsibility for their lives than you do. They saw their community as a group of people who were neither better or worse than they were, just accepted as part of the day to day happenings of their town. They were humble, didn’t expect things to be handed to them like jobs or that everyone believed the exact same thing thing that they did. They had more productive and less productive folks living among them, but they still saw them as a part of their “family”, their town, and valuable.
The people of Mayberry deserve better representation than a bunch of self-entitled, fake “Christians” and whiny wankers. Name me one person in Mayberry that had a $75K per year job that supposedly their President “took” from them. Good luck because the people of Mayberry were farmers, self-employed small business owners, modest public servants. You folks in this article, on the other hand, are expecting the world to take care of you and make you rich, and worse yet, you want some kind of ‘eutopia’ wher nothing you say, do or believe is countered with reality. Grow up, go back and read the New Testament and get to work making your community a community.”
Suzanne
@Cacti: The ones who want to leave and have broader horizons are more than welcome. The ones who complain about shit not being Christian enough? Stay over there, away from me.
Mnemosyne
Hm. My comment vanished. Did it go in the trash?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
yes, some as in rural America.
Adam L Silverman
@fuckwit: The good news is we’ll be migrating to Canada. So single payer health care and reasonably priced pharmaceuticals!
NotMax
The first word in “small town” does not necessarily refer to size.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: yes, I’ve freed it
Cacti
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Rural Americans who think Donald Trump and his coterie of Goldman Sachs execs are going to give them back jobs that are now performed by robots.
Timurid
White people are losing their fucking minds – Example #34746345689:
-I’m Facebook friends with one of my former graduate school professors.
-This person is a lifelong Democrat.
-In his teaching he emphasized race, gender, intersectionality and all of that good stuff.
-He was so adamant about these things that he sometimes annoyed other academics.
-He expressed support for Clinton during the campaign.
Then the election happened…
-Right away he started clucking about liberals overreacting, broken windows in Portland…
-“It won’t be that bad.”
-He started weekly discussions on his blog and extended Facebook threads in which he invited pro-Trump friends and relatives to make their case… all in the name of ‘understanding.’
-Today he posted to praise Trump’s performance in the press conference (“I was rooting for him”) and condemn the Pissgate reporting. All of his conservative buddies replied, telling him “how much progress he’s made.”
-Yes, he’s white.
hovercraft
@FlipYrWhig:
fuckknuckles
May I compliment you on your creativity. I may have to borrow that. While as you so eloquently state the have been fuckknucles forever, this individual was so obviously unqualified and unsuited for the job, but they voted for him anyway, that I think that this was a desperate Hail Mary play to try to stuff the Genie back in the bottle.
James Powell
So, is “nostalgic” the new “economically anxious”?
I know that others have said it better and more often, but there is absolutely nothing Christian about these people.
hovercraft
@cmorenc:
These fuckknuckles who voted for the shitgibbon keep repeating his claim that only he can save America, so that makes him their savior, no? Perhaps someone should mention to them that whole bit in the bible about false gods and prophets.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: Today every synagogue in Pinellas County, FL was vandalized. Including the one my Mom attends.
Omnes Omnibus
@Timurid: If we are going with random well-educated white dudes, I will say that I am metaphorically willing to beat someone like that to death with his dissertation. FWIW, I am a white dude with a graduate degree.
rikyrah
I have said for awhile that they long for the days of Mad Men, when they could pretend that they were big fish in a big pond. They were fish in a pond where 90% of the rest of the fish were crammed into sardine cans.
They are the phucking leeches. It’s us City Slickers, in Urban Blue States, that are sending more of tax dollars to these red state leeches.
I am tired of seeing stupid azz articles trying to explain the racism away. They are phucking ignorant racists who want to see folks like me
‘in my place.’
Phuck them. NOBODY is playing with them.
NotMax
Ought to also be mentioned that The Andy Griffith Show was fictional and no more representative of reality than was Dark Shadows.
Aside: Speaking of Andy Griffith, noticed that TCM has scheduled A Face in the Crowd, the story of the rise and fall via the media of a retrograde egotistical blowhard, on inauguration day.
rikyrah
@efgoldman:
Amen
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
With last nights vote bringing us closer to them taking away Obamacare, I eagerly await them waking up to find that in order to take all those things black people get from the government away, they will have to give then up too. America, white people are still the majority, by a lot. Most people getting EVERY government benefit are WHITE, I know FOX and the rest of the right wing tell you it’s us, but they are lying. So now you have cut off your noses to spite your faces, enjoy.
FlyingToaster
@FlipYrWhig: Werd.
I try to explain it to my daughter: “Yes, honey, a data scientist is just as important as a plumber if you want your modern society to actually work. But people who hate us for living in a city and giving a damn about our neighbors are utterly fucking useless.”
Eric U.
@Suzanne:
well, they dont’ stay in their shitty towns. If you look at the main drag into town here on Friday and Saturday night, there is a stream of traffic coming into our town because it’s not shitty. I call it the “crime wave” because when I go to jury duty, it’s these rural Pennsylvanians that have caused some crime or another.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman:
:(
I’m something of a pessimist, but this thing is picking up speed even faster than I’d feared.
As I (and others) noted in the thread above, Trump has already survived a dozen or more scandals and mistakes that would have destroyed Clinton, any Democrat and many Republicans. That can only happen when elites are deeply, deeply invested in someone. Once that’s happened, I’m not sure how effective rules and institutions will be…
biscuits
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s what I’m worried about too! W, then cheeto benito. .a serial killer would not be a surprise at this point.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
How awful. I hope no one was hurt.
I’m sorry that economic anxiety has been brought to your mothers community.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Fuck. I am at a loss. I do not understand why something like that could happen. I know that it does, but I still don’t understand it. I was born without the religion gene, but my mom has it. She is a good liberal and sees every religion as a good way of worshiping the God that we all share: my dad and I doubt the dude exists – my brother is more concerned with Wisconsin sports.
FWIW, some Jewish girls made my life interesting. But that’s not the point.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: When the only thing you have to set you apart, no matter how rough things get, is the bullshit concept of one’s skin color making you better/more important/superior, you will make a lot of really bad decisions. What you’re describing, and what is, unfortunately, likely going to happen is the result.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: @hovercraft: @Omnes Omnibus:
Fortunately, from what I understand, it was graffiti and easily dealt with. But as you can imagine, people are on edge.
ETA: The close circuit caught a good shot of the guy, so the cops have good imagery to work with.
NotMax
@hovercraft
Hawaii being the primary exception, with California moving up on the inside rail.
chopper
@Adam L Silverman:
link? I have family from there and haven’t heard anything.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
They want to go back to the days when the most run-down, broke-ass white sharecropper could force a college-educated black dentist to step off the sidewalk and get out of his way under penalty of death by lynching. Having that implied power of life and death over other people was more important to them than being able to feed their families or send their own kids to college.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I get it. I’m sort of agnostic. As in I’m not sure what exactly the Deity is, but, if the Deity is supposed to be everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing, then the Deity is the universe. Which, I think, technically makes me a panentheist or something. I’ve been educated by rabbis (elementary school), Jesuit priests (high school), and the Methodists (college) and have a masters in comparative religion – including comparative Asian religions. And my understanding of being observant is to do Tikkun Olam/healing the world. I’d rather try to make things a little better a little bit at a time, and I think its a far better use of my time, than sitting in a pew one day a week.
For Mom, though, especially after my Dad died, the synagogue has become a major center of her social life. So as much as she gets out of in terms of worship and ritual, she gets as much or more in social connection.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman:
The rest is commentary.
Juice Box
@FlipYrWhig: They have always thought this way. All that unpleasantness in the 50s and 60s — 1850s and 1860s, that is — was due to their inherent fuckknuckleness and their desire to maintain their special “institution” as good Southern Christians would.
NotMax
Adam, happen to see this about the military?
Yarrow
@NotMax:
Oh, that is such a good film. I might have to record it, but I’m not sure I can stand watching it right now. Andy Griffith is so good in it. Astonishing if you only know him as Sheriff Andy or Matlock.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Is there a point you would like to make?
Adam L Silverman
@chopper: Don’t think there is one. I was notified about it because I’ve done security consulting for them.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Yes, that it is a book review worth taking the time to read.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: And the occasional hymn.
leeleeFl
@efgoldman: I honestly was saying this through the entire read! FUCK every single one of them with any rusty farm implement that’s handy. I am so fucking ashamed of my fellow white people I could vomit.
NotMax
@NotMax
Neglected to include the following:
From a source with the background to be well versed in the topic.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Many things are worth reading; why is this material to this conversation?
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: I’ve seen similar reporting. I have a 30 or 40 page addendum in my med file because of stuff like this. We had one of these on our FOB. We also were directly down wind by 12 KM of the Nahrwan Brick Factory complex that used heavy fuel oil, so we would wake up to a wall of slate colored smog to the north of the base. And some idiot decided to build the damn thing on top of the old impact area of the Iraqi Army Bessmayah artillery range. So we were living on top of bits of depleted uranium and other stuff from whatever was shot onto the site. And since we were in the middle of dried out farmland, we had terrible dust storms that stirred it all up. So they’d occasionally come around and spray water to keep the dirt roads on post from becoming airborne dust. Of course this was non potable water, so when it dried it just added to whatever it was we were living on top of. And did I mention that someone got sign off for them to use grey water – its not potable, but its not non potable either (da fuq?) – in the showers, sinks in the shower and latrine trailers, and for the laundry? And it turns out the DFAC (dining facility) they installed had been previously decommissioned as a health hazard and sent to Kuwait for destruction. Instead it was shipped back and set back up! If I ever get my hands on the idiots that authorized this stuff, you’ll see it on all the news networks…
I’m amazed I don’t glow in the dark and don’t have extra limbs at this point. What minor, chronic issues I have have indeterminate origin, but are likely linked back to my deployment. Of course I don’t count as a veteran, that’s just the way things are, so even if DOD and VA get their act together, whatever I might or might not develop will be my problem.
Lizzy L
OT, but I think it’s noteworthy that T’s choice to head the VA is David Shulkin, an extremely qualified Obama appointee who currently works for the VA. Evidently T doesn’t want to destroy the VA.
Timurid
@NotMax:
So people were basically poisoned over ashtray money?
With all of the millions of dollars it took to build, staff and maintain a FOB, the cost of an incinerator should not be a big deal.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Open thread tag is there.
leeleeFl
@Timurid:Being white is only part of that guy’s psychosis. The progress he’s made is all to the rear. What on earth is he drinking? Even Kool-aid shouldn’t be that toxic.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: It could have been a lot worse. It’ll be interesting as he’ll be the first non Veteran to ever head the VA.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Have a nice time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: See my comment 67. I know a whole bunch of either retired or coming up on retirement colonels that had cancers that were unexpected who had been deployed one or more times during OIF and OEF. Both because of age and family history. My understanding is that there are a lot of endocrine issues as well.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I read stories like that, and I can’t help asking myself whether all white Americans are unredeemable shitstains, or whether only some of us are. I try to be better than that, I really do. But sometimes I feel like people like that somehow taint me as well. I swear, the day when people like me are well in the minority in this country can’t come soon enough. I’m not scared. I trust the people white Americans have fucked over for 400 years are better than we are, and they’ll treat us better than we’d ever have any right to ask to be treated.
Timurid
Another gem:
I just found out that one of my cousins (mother’s side of the family, so white) who is married to a Jew and has converted to Judaism… voted for Trump.
Good fucking luck with that.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: Your cousin is named Ivanka, isn’t she?
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: Kind of like this:
https://twitter.com/BecketAdams/status/819645613759492098
When even the guy from the Washington (DC) Examiner is doing eyerolls on twitter…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A Springsteen Tribute act.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Seriously? Holy crap.
Philip Kerr’s “Berlin Noir” trilogy is starting to feel almost cozy by comparison with what I see starting to happen in this country…
@NotMax: I watched both “Dark Shadows” and “The Andy Griffith Show” when I was a kid in Detroit, and “Dark Shadows” always felt more real to me.
Bobby D
@NotMax: Whites are already a minority in CA (I’m white, CA resident). Hispanics are the largest group here, and no ethnic group has >50%.
Bobby D
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Fake Springsteen for the Fake “billionaire”, seems legit.
khead
@rikyrah:
Mad Men is a bit too far back. Many of them are looking for “Morning in America” circa 1982-1984. Back when you could leave the mines in WV and find a manufacturing job in NC – without having to go to college or get too close to the cities.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
@Adam L Silverman: Dang, you’re beating the news.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Unless there’s one I don’t know about. I don’t know if its coordinated. All I got was a heads up because of the security consulting I’ve done for one congregation, though I suppose its likely that the same idiot did all three in the wee hours.
Adam L Silverman
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones): Not so loud, Villagio will think I’m working his schtick.//
J R in WV
When I was in the USN, I once got sent to be a “firewatch” – a guy with an extinguisher set to keep a welder or pipe-fitter from setting himself and the ship on fire – in the boiler room. When I got down there, the yard bird boilermakers had evidently just finished packing a rebuilt boiler with asbestos, and were dropping big sheets of steel on top of the asbestos loose packed on top of the firebox.
They dropped a sheet of steel, and a cloud of dust – asbestos powder – stormed across the boiler room towards me. I turned and ran up the ladder, clear to the boat deck where I was a lowly bosun’s mate. To their credit, they didn’t make me go back down there – there were a hundred other welders who needed a fire watch that day.
But when I think of those boiler makers working down there all day breathing that crap, not a respirator to be seen. It makes me feel different about the lawyers’ ads about mesotheliomia victims, I can say that.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Ayep.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
Every one?
Da phuq?????
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Its not like they’re Publix grocery stores, where there is one every 3 miles. So a limited number of targets. I’d be interested in seeing if the Islamic centers/mosques were also vandalized.
Seth Owen
@Adam L Silverman: Tell me more. I had a burn barrel right next to my tent in Irbil. I am now battling pancreatic cancer that occurred more than a decade earlier than it typically does. Got any links?
Adam L Silverman
@Seth Owen: No specific links. I saw an article on this same topic several months ago, but don’t remember specifically where. I’ve been told that DOD and VA are finally beginning to recognize that they’re going to have to do something (the right thing?), but since I don’t count as a veteran I really have no idea what is going on. Shout me a direct message and I’ll check with a friend who may no more and get back to you.
And I’m sorry to hear about the cancer. I hope they caught it early and I’ll keep good thoughts.
cthulhu
@Ella in New Mexico: I will give you props for that comment.
Mike G
That’s basically the foundation of right-wing Xtianity in this country — they get a sanctimonious facade of public piety for conforming to the culture, with the tacit agreement that no-one looks too closely at the dirt as long as it’s kept behind the scenes.
Interesting how they go straight to gay marriage as their primary beef with today’s culture. Maybe they wouldn’t be so bitter if they spent less time getting upset about what strangers are doing with their peepees.
NotoriousJRT
@Seth Owen:
Sorry to hear. Sending positive energy your way.
NotoriousJRT
@Adam L Silverman:
I am so sorry and sad to hear this. I hope they find the perps quickly. Some hateful, cowardly punk(s) with sick idea about what makes America great.
ETA:I hope your mom keeps her courage.
Manyakitty
@Timurid: Wow. Fortunately, my professors from grad school have the good sense to be horrified by what’s going on, and if anything, have amplified their protests on Facebook. At least the ones I’m friends with on there.
Manyakitty
@Adam L Silverman: What?! Where’s the reporting on that? My dad says that Purim is often the time for things to turn back our way. I really hope he’s right about it this year.
Manyakitty
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, exactly, but I’m also kosher, possibly by habit, but I value the mindfulness it demands.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
??? I thought “J.D.” meant something else. That’s the Noo Yawkuh in me, I guess.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
That was fast.
I thought they would have stuck with (only) “Muslime ‘raus!” or maybe “Schwarzen ‘raus!” for at least another six to 12 months, but I guess if you’re economically anxious, you default to the tried-and-true hate ASAP.
Fuck.
sunny raines
@cmorenc:
let me guess: you’re white. You miss the whole part of the article about the WWC being nice to “those people” as long as they “know their place”. non-whites are never accepted as equal to white, women are never accepted as equal to men- period.
These people are NOT nice – they’re racist, sexist, ignorant bigots. I don’t give a damn how much blueberry pie they may offer strangers.
laura
@efgoldman: Wow, that’s exactly what I was thinking too.
I like the way you think efg!
sherparick
@Ella in New Mexico: In the article Mr. Thomas was an engineer in company that made turbines and the company moved to Mexico. He blames “Government” and “Obama.” It has been a neat trick of Art Pope and the Right Wing Information Industrial Complex to make the decisions of CEOs’ and Private Equity Managers fall on Obama, and not themselves and the Globalization Project they supported. For a quick summary see this excellent post by Eric Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/01/globalization-a-political-project-to-concentrate-wealth-at-the-top
Also, I would say we whites do owe Blacks and American Indians big time. We have inherited the capital and wealth produced by 400 years of conquest of land in North America and over 300 years (Slavery and Jim Crow combined) theft of labor.
Finally, to the minister’s wife who likes to puff herself up as the arbiter of who is worthy and who is not, I refer her to what she can expect if there is a Final Judgement:
Luke 18:9-14 – The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
low-tech cyclist
Yeah, because that’s exactly what Jesus said. Don’t lend a helping hand except to people who’ve proven to you that they deserve it. Must be in the Gospel According To Falwell.
Fuck you and your stinkin’ Pharisee church, lady. Hell, you’re even a pretty sorry Pharisee, now that you’ve voted for someone like Trump who’s an abomination even by your now-abandoned evangelical values.
kindness
Why is it that the statistic that most ‘welfare’ is taken by white people in red states never brought to these people’s attention? I suspect they may have heard but chose not to believe.
AxelFoley
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. But they’re gonna find out the hard way that those day ain’t coming back. Ever.
bluefoot
@Adam L Silverman: Years ago I worked in an analytical chem lab analyzing water and soil samples from places that included things like burn pits. I ended up with some interesting acute health issues – and that’s while wearing protective equipment while handling samples. The cause was indeterminant for a couple of months until I saw a doctor who was a Vietnam vet. He said he saw the exact same spectrum of lesions and other symptoms while treating soldiers in Vietnam. I quit that job and the symptoms mostly resolved.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: There was a wave of bomb threats at Jewish day schools/synagogues across the US on Tuesday. At least seven. At the same time there were three in the UK against similar institutions and several at non-Jewish (Christian and Muslim ones).
Adam L Silverman
@bluefoot: I think a lot of folks, me most likely included, are in for a rough ride health wise as the years go by.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Marie Le Pen was at Trump Tower, this week. I think seeing their champions taking a bigger, more high profile role in the world, is emboldening them.
Ithink
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
A-men and god on you for concluding that notion as an anti-whote nationalist goal to achieve in these turbulent years of Trump & Trumpism. And know that POC will not & cannot collective retribute their historical malignment for the last 400+ years. We know better and want the world to be better off then that anyways, w/ equality for one and one for all!
P.S.- seriously fuck these rural troglodytes that think, acy & sadly VOTE this way too. I know some wonderful, Godly & caring whote people I this demographic who I’m pretty positive did NOT support Manhattan Mussolini but I’m beyond done trying to make in-roads and sympathize w/ people who’d rather have me dead and in debt eternally to health insurance or student loan providers than make political alliances with. Just seriously f*** these knuckle draggers!
HeidiMom
@Bobby D: The same with New Mexico — roughly 45% “Anglo,” 45% Hispanic, 10% American Indian.
Just One More Canuck
@Cacti: A few years ago, my wife and daughter and I went to visit Mt. St. Helens before carrying on to see family and friends in Victoria and then to Tofino. We stopped for lunch in some little town in rural Washington and it was the most depressing place I have ever been in. It was as if everyone there was just waiting to die while longing for a glorious past that never existed
Ithink
@hovercraft:
Isn’t that SERIOUSLY horrifying about neo fascist Marine Le Pen visiting Trump Tower though? She could actually become France’s next prime minister come this March according to recent polling and if so, we’re beyond fucked two times over as that is our oldest & greatest ally outside of Mother England; so it’ll be the folks who just committed Brexit that’ll be the premier leader of the free world then, and under a Conservative firebrand! Unless you count that handsome liberal Trudeau fella Canada just installed last year.
Jado
@kindness:
There’s a difference between “assistance” (Oh, yeah. Poor Buford. He had to go on assistance. But it’s a blessing that its there for him in his time of need. And i’m sure he’ll get back on his feet soon) and “welfare” (Those damn lazy n****rs always with their hands out! And they take MY tax money for their bastard kids, with no thought of bettering their situation, just suck off the public teat. I HATE them!!)
It’s a very subtle difference, but you can always tell who’s who by using a plain sheet of note paper, or a brown paper bag, and checking the relative skin tone compared to these control colors.
If the person is lighter than the paper bag, or resembles the note paper, they are on “assistance”
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@NotMax: My local Alamo Drafthouse has scheduled a showing on Inauguration Eve (19th). Thinking of going.
kd bart
I hope that this election has finally left it for all to see, the vast hypocrisy of Right Wing Evangelical Christians.
mr_gravity
There is a Honda commercial that runs in my market (Tennessee FWIW). It’s a highly stylized view of a factory floor as a Honda is assembled entirely by robotic automation. In the final wide shot we see two humans holding a clipboard.
Don’t know what the marketing equivalent is, but i think it should get an Oscar.
MCA1
@kd bart: And, as discussed various ways upthread, the vast idiocy of much of rural America, to allow itself to be conned into believing the person on this planet who most embodies all of the things they most proclaim to hate is the only one willing to “speak for them.”
I’m with FlipYrWhig – there’s not enough condescension in the world for these people. The jobs started leaving 40 years ago, coal’s not coming back, the world has become interconnected and international, and lack of a higher education is a death sentence for upward mobility. But you sit out there in the sticks with your fingers in your ears the whole time, shunning the unions, spending decades complaining that anyone trying to help you adjust to the realities of the new century is dissing your “way of life” and your culture and thinks they’re better than you, and then you go and elect the most urban, tackiest, showiest, most egotistical richity rich jackass from New York goddamned City, that den of all iniquity, who fucking LOATHES you and thinks you’re the ultimate sad-sack loser, and believes that nothing on this planet is of any value if it’s not monetarily exploitable to him personally, and scoffs at (and would love to prey upon) your silly notions of honor and fair-dealing and charitability and community and humility, and would rather die than spend 48 hours in your little shithole of a town or 5 minutes conversing with you little people personally, and then you get right on talking about how Democrats and the elite talk down to you. That level of cognitive dissonance is deserving of nothing but scorn.
As much schadenfreude as I’d like to take in these people symbolically getting a baseball bat jammed up their rear ends for the next four years, it would only be valuable if it brought about any change. But our culture and media and educational system is so broken that rural America will not, ever, connect the dots. For fully a third of the country, any trouble that befalls them is, and always will be, the fault of Democrats, and anything about Trump reported in any traditional media context is and always will be a fake, vindictive witch hunt out of jealousy and impotent liberal rage.
NCSteve
I’ve always referred to Mt. Airy as “just like Mayberry except without all the nice people.” Andy lavished money on the town, but he never moved back. He lived on the coast. When Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee) was looking for the North Carolina town most like her idea of Mayberry to live out her last years in, she landed in Siler City, not Mt. Airy.
SWMBO
@<a hre@FlipYrWhig: f=”#comment-6195513″>efgoldman: Thank you for this. Fuckknuckles. So poetic in its simplicity.
And to the rest who have commented or expanded on this today: I love you all. If the meteor hits and I’m at ground zero, I just want you to know this.
The Truffle
@MCA1: I’d be all in favor of just forgetting about these demographic dead enders. The only good thing to come out of the election is the backlash against them. I have to say that the comment section is a beautiful thing. Those dead-enders are getting dragged. Hee!
On the plus side, that demographic is shrinking.
On the double-plus side, tax cuts mean that they could be kicked off the blue-state gravy train. In other words, tax cuts mean that blue states can keep their money and use it to take care of themselves. It would not be used to prop up the red states anymore. See this editorial for more.
Meanwhile, the Democratic party should focus only on the people who are open to change. The ones who sat out the 2016 election or voted third party.
Citizen Alan
@Mike G:
I would go further than that. All of the major conservative Protestant denominations in this country (Southern Baptists, Southern Methodists, etc.) have their origins in the antebellum era. They split off from larger more liberal groups over the slavery issue. Today, the dominant voices in “Christian politics” all originated as ways to preserve white supremacy.
Calouste
@Ithink: 1) The elections for the Assemblée nationale (lower house of the French parliament) aren’t until June, not March.
2) The elections have two rounds, similar to run-off voting in Louisiana. If no candidate gets 50% in the first round, the top two go through to the run-off. And the left in France has been very consistent over the years in throwing its weight behind any candidate that is not the National Front in the second round. Last election the FN got 13.6% of the vote in the first round and ended up with 2 out of 577 seats. They might get a few dozen this time around, but nowhere close to a majority.
Plantsmantx
@Mnemosyne:
Still is.
Tehanu
@James Powell:
So right. Haven’t read the whole thread yet; am I the only person who noticed the pastor’s wife’s remark,
I don’t recall Jesus telling anybody they weren’t worthy of his help, with the single exception of the Canaanite woman who rebuked him when he refused to heal her daughter — and then he admitted that he was wrong and she was right, and healed the child immediately (Matthew 15:26-28). This woman is just like so many other so-called Christians: “Sure, I’ll help you if you’re already doing everything I want you to do and keep on doing it forever — and reward me by showing everyone else how good I am — otherwise, fuck off and die.”
Tehanu
@MCA1:
Everything you said. Wish we had Like buttons here.