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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

People are weird.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Republicans in disarray!

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

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You are here: Home / Economics / Austerity Bombing / Late Night Open Thread: The Common Clay, a/k/a Crab Bucket Politics on A Global Scale

Late Night Open Thread: The Common Clay, a/k/a Crab Bucket Politics on A Global Scale

by Anne Laurie|  March 17, 20173:36 am| 81 Comments

This post is in: Austerity Bombing, Dolt 45, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Assholes, Just Shut the Fuck Up, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

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This literally happened…
Tucker Carlson: "The counties who voted for you will do far worse under your plan"
Donald Trump: "Oh, I know…" pic.twitter.com/tsG96kybxe

— William LeGate (@williamlegate) March 16, 2017

How dumb are your voters, Mr. Trump?… Very fuggin’ dumb indeed, Mr. Carlson!

So, McDonald’s twitter account got hacked…

1. This is just a bad tweet. It is nasty & condescending. It is also terribly uniformed. Go to any minority community. McDonald's are packed pic.twitter.com/mMH198MwVj

— Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade) March 16, 2017

Our Modern Victorians (who, like their forebears, are inherently patriarchal and racist) are busy promoting the myth of the noble-savage Trump voter, straggling survivors of an earlier more primitive culture whose quaint customs and fantastical beliefs must be respected (but never honored). These simple, unlettered tribalists — the last of their kind! an endangered almost-human species! — are to be granted endless lip service for their perceived grievances and genuine sufferings, as long as doing so doesn’t involve one iota of inconvenience or expense for Their Betters. Let them vote, predictably for grifters who lie to them about revenge upon their traditional enemies and the return of the buffalo herds good jobs in their neighborhoods that don’t require education. The results of those votes are only going to impact other members of the lower classes, anyway. (If there were any risk those votes would affect Very Serious People, well, *that* would be quite a different just-so-story.)

3. It is extreme version of a belief many Front-row kids have that they are smarter & hence have correct taste/judgement & deserve power & $ pic.twitter.com/pLqRSL11b4

— Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade) March 16, 2017

As any Irish country-dweller under English occupation, Native American exiled to a reservation, or Appalachian hillbilly during the last century could’ve warned the Trump voters, the people who romanticize your poverty and ignorance are not your friends.

4. Uglier off shoot of this view is those not educated exactly as them are lesser/lacking. Just Back-row kids. Or "Fat slobs with bad taste" pic.twitter.com/bWiReXZd6o

— Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade) March 16, 2017

Mr. Arnade’s Guardian bio:

Chris Arnade received his PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1992. He spent the next 20 years working as a trader on Wall Street. He left trading in 2012 to focus on photography.

You ever heard the expression “poverty tourism”, Mr. Arnade?

People who ‘view their lives as worse than their parents and their children’s lives will be worse than their own’ don’t need to be patted on the head (and written off as irrelevant, except as a stick to beat ‘liberals’). They need access to resources that’ll help them, at the very least, make sure their children’s lives aren’t even worse than their own depleted existences. Telling them that voting for Trump or other Republican freebooters is “a protest” to which they are “entitled” is as much a scam as any Victorian missionary offering the starving foreign heathens rice (or gruel) in return for their ‘souls’ (and their underpaid labor.)

The McDonald’s in poor neighborhoods aren’t packed because the people buying McDonald’s have a plethora of alternatives. As Paul Ryan and his fellow Repubs would put it, those McD’s customers might (in some cases) be said to have access to better, tastier nutritional choices, but they don’t have the actual money for warm, wi-fi’d, public gathering places that serve boutique coffee and organic baked goods. They “want” to go there because it’s the best they can do, not because they’ve researched a vast array of better options and turned up their noses.

Okay, you're right, I was being a jerk. Apologies.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 16, 2017

(Josh Barro did right by apologizing, though.)

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Reader Interactions

81Comments

  1. 1.

    Major Major Major Major

    March 17, 2017 at 3:43 am

    I don’t understand what you’re trying to say about Arnande at all.

  2. 2.

    Mike J

    March 17, 2017 at 3:54 am

    I wish Arnande would give up on fetch.

  3. 3.

    Vance Maverick

    March 17, 2017 at 4:00 am

    Arnade is classifying people with a broad brush and a palette of two unmixed colors, alla David Brooks. He’s also a member of the class whose privilege he claims to analyze, which raises unfair but plausible suspicion.

  4. 4.

    M. Bouffant

    March 17, 2017 at 4:01 am

    the return of the buffalo herds

    They really are doing the Ghost Dance.

  5. 5.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 4:08 am

    Per the WAPo Dolt 45 wants to spin Air Traffic Control off to a non-profit private enterprise, you know like the Post Office. Nothing could go wrong with that idea.

  6. 6.

    Mike J

    March 17, 2017 at 4:08 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: All the responsibility and none of the funding.

  7. 7.

    Anne Laurie

    March 17, 2017 at 4:11 am

    @Major Major Major Major: IMO, Arnade wants to be Edward S. Curtis, but he’s actually BarbieSavior’s annoying older grad-student brother.

    (I don’t trust Professional Romantics, especially those seeking celebrity using other people as props.)

  8. 8.

    Mary G

    March 17, 2017 at 4:22 am

    This is a variation on “Democrats keep black people on the inner-city plantation so they should vote Republican.”

  9. 9.

    Bjacques

    March 17, 2017 at 4:22 am

    McDonald’s coffee is pretty good, actually.

    And I’m nicking that Ghost Dance comment above. Those jobs were taken by robots, and not always by American robots.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    March 17, 2017 at 4:26 am

    This must be one of the most deluded things I’ve ever read, even by David Brooks’ standards.
    (Link goes to the NYT, so open in a private window.)

  11. 11.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 4:28 am

    @Mike J: Yup.

  12. 12.

    Major Major Major Major

    March 17, 2017 at 4:30 am

    @Anne Laurie: Ahha, the issue is I’ve never heard of him before, then; if I knew his oeuvre I would have gotten it?

  13. 13.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    March 17, 2017 at 4:30 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Hey, there are market efficiencies to be wrung out once the infrastructure is gifted off to cronies.

    Can you imagine the opportunities for profit from airlines seeking marginal timing advantages at big airports?

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    March 17, 2017 at 4:31 am

    @Major Major Major Major: To my ear he is condescending to the point of making me retch.

  15. 15.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 4:32 am

    @Amir Khalid:

    This must be one of the most deluded things I’ve ever read

    It is, yes it is.

  16. 16.

    BlueDWarrior

    March 17, 2017 at 4:33 am

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m still wondering how much of this free market fetishization is actual faith that the Free Market actually does better than anything else, and how much of it is conservatives trying to dismantle any levers that liberals have to achieve collective benefits for society.

  17. 17.

    jl

    March 17, 2017 at 4:34 am

    I’m also kind of lost in AL’s analogies, metaphors, and sarcasm wrt to Arnade. But, seems like he started with the obscure analogies and metaphors, and his thesis is wrong, so I guess he deserves it, whatever it is.

    I’m not sure what to think about the grimly hilarious and disgusting Trump clip either.
    The guy’s a bigot, ignorant, has the attention span of a flea, so touchy, emotionally unstable and narcissistic that his judgment is routinely impaired, believes a lot of confused and wrong things, arrogant, incurious, callous, and irresponsible. Hard to ID which one of those is responsible for any individual instance of him saying a horrible thing. Hard to figure out if he has any idea what he is doing or not.

    But my firm conclusion is that he is totally unqualified to be president,

    His flunkies are worse in the sense that most of them know damn well what they are doing.

  18. 18.

    Major Major Major Major

    March 17, 2017 at 4:34 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: I just read through the whole Twitter thread and I now see the problem. Also my browser was omitting the pictures in the tweets here in the BJ post.

  19. 19.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 4:34 am

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Exactly; and if a few planes run into each other, it’s a small price to pay. FREEDUMB!

  20. 20.

    jl

    March 17, 2017 at 4:38 am

    What I wonder is, if you have say eleven Trump administration officials (including possibly the Trump Himself) each playing zero dimensional chess, and you combine their efforts, does that make a different kind of eleven dimensional chess?

  21. 21.

    Major Major Major Major

    March 17, 2017 at 4:38 am

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Can you imagine the opportunities for profit from airlines seeking marginal timing advantages at big airports?

    “Fly United: Because They Let Our Planes Land!”

  22. 22.

    jl

    March 17, 2017 at 4:46 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    That is an interesting story. Actually, that kind of air control privatization has been going on in different countries, including Europe and Canada for a while. In most places, it is a way to get more rapid funding for already planned, and currently very slowly implemented, modernization programs. I think that is very second best approach. the government should do it, but wrongheaded policies have left the governments with not enough money for infrastructure and plenty of cash burning holes in the pockets of large corporations, so they can fund a big speed up in implementation.

    And the news blurb I read about said that airlines and some public air transport association (I guess for whoever runs airports around he country) suggested it to Trump.

    So, I have two take aways on it. 1) I guess it is working in a lot of places, and OK if tightly regulated and monitored. 2) Trump administration will mess it up (but that goes without saying). Trump administration shouldn’t be allowed to run the Thanksgiving turkey pardon, so therefore needs to be kept far away from airports.

  23. 23.

    Central Planning

    March 17, 2017 at 4:47 am

    @Amir Khalid: Deluded, at least. However, I think Bobo was accurate with this part:

    The third possibility is that Donald Trump doesn’t really care about domestic policy; he mostly cares about testosterone.

    He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.

    But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.

  24. 24.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 4:47 am

    @jl: x * 0 = 0.

  25. 25.

    jl

    March 17, 2017 at 4:49 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I was going to ad a warning to the smart ass who might type that.

  26. 26.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 4:49 am

    @jl:

    OK if tightly regulated and monitored

    You’re familiar with the US Republican Party?

  27. 27.

    Ian

    March 17, 2017 at 4:53 am

    Is that Arnade guy being serious or sarcastic? I can’t tell, but I do not think the statement ‘fat slobs with poor taste’ is an inaccurate thing to say about any consumer of fast food.

  28. 28.

    jl

    March 17, 2017 at 4:56 am

    @Amir Khalid: Naw, man, that is Brooks typing shit right up to deadline. It’s just too damn stupid to be anything else. Either that or one of his paymasters sent him the outline and told him to write it up. I think those two alternatives explain a lot of Brooks’ columns.

    If anyone knows of any coherent thoughts Bannon ever had on economic or infrastructure policy, let me know.
    Bannon is pissed that there some East and South Asians how are running companies in Silicon Valley, and is fuming and scared shitless about the black, brown and yellow hordes that are descending on White people to kill and enslave them. Why an Irishman cares about white people, I cannot imagine, but here we are.

    Bannon is a vicious racist nutcase. I’ve never seen any sign that he is capable of any train of coherent thought.

    Edit: shorter version is that calling it delusional is giving it far too much credit.

  29. 29.

    jl

    March 17, 2017 at 4:58 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: It will be a mess.

  30. 30.

    Ian

    March 17, 2017 at 5:03 am

    @Ian:
    I will also apologize for being a dick. Food deserts suck. I still 90% stand behind my statement.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    March 17, 2017 at 5:08 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: @jl: First thing I thought of.

  32. 32.

    Bruce K

    March 17, 2017 at 5:12 am

    Here’s a really scary thought that hit me this morning (aka half-past stupid o’clock in the US time zones):

    There appear to be a bunch of GOP congresscritters who seem to be a little worried about what’s going to happen to them in the next election.

    The way the cheeto administration’s acting, you’d almost think they don’t give a damn about the next election.

    Look at that budget proposal. Is that something you’d see out of a Presidential administration that was even the slightest bit worried about how the voters would react?

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    March 17, 2017 at 5:18 am

    It took three dictionaries, two years and the Florida supreme court to determine that ‘sexual intercourse’ can be between two men

    It’s Floriduh. ‘Nuff said.

  34. 34.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    March 17, 2017 at 5:21 am

    It is extreme version of a belief many Front-row kids have that they are smarter & hence have correct taste/judgement & deserve power

    I have never seen this. What I have seen is legacy kids (Dubya, ¡Jeb! ) who believe they deserve power without having to work for it.

    Moreover, the “back-street boys” are a bunch of self pitying snowflakes who believe they deserve to control power because they view themselves as “real americans” based on nativism and superiority over “the other”. They’re not going to work in agricultural fields or clean restrooms because they see themselves as entitled.

    What I imagine is this guy had a crush on a smart girl/guy in new york who hurt his feelings and now he hates everyone who owns a book or watches kubrick.

    Sad!

  35. 35.

    sukabi

    March 17, 2017 at 5:23 am

    @jl: math isn’t my thing, but pretty sure they’d be playing chess 2 levels below Dante’s 9th.

  36. 36.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    March 17, 2017 at 5:28 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: but it only took two adult videos for them to determine that ‘sexual intercourse’ can be between two hot blondes.

  37. 37.

    sukabi

    March 17, 2017 at 5:28 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: kinda makes you wonder how long it would take them to figure out bestiality

  38. 38.

    Central Planning

    March 17, 2017 at 5:37 am

    @sukabi: They can’t define it, but they know it when they see it. I’m sure they would have to watch many videos “just to be sure”

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    March 17, 2017 at 5:41 am

    Ireland’s prime minister, Enda Kenny, has urged Donald Trump to help Irish people living in the US illegally, saying they just want to “make America great”.

    Kenny spoke at a luncheon at the US Capitol on Thursday as part of a series of events celebrating St Patrick’s Day, including a one-on-one meeting with Trump at the White House, where the two discussed immigration, trade and the Irish economy.

    About 50,000 Irish citizens are believed to be living illegally in the US, and Kenny and other Irish leaders have previously called for a way to allow them to stay in the country legally. Kenny said: “We would like this to be sorted. It would remove a burden of so many people that they can stand out in the light and say, now I am free to contribute to America as I know I can. And that’s what people want.”

    Kenny also urged Trump to consider providing more work visas “for young people who want to come to America and to work here”.

    I can see Trump doing this, I really can.

  40. 40.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    March 17, 2017 at 5:57 am

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:

    With lots of pausing and review of previously watched sections.

  41. 41.

    jacy

    March 17, 2017 at 6:01 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    My best friend’s husband is an air traffic controller, and his shop steward. He retired yesterday (one year early) because none of them want to be there when it all falls apart. Never has a man been so happy to get out.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    March 17, 2017 at 6:43 am

    I had never read Chris Arnade before and I just spent 10 minutes reading his Tweets, so maybe I’m not getting his whole front row kids/back row kids theory right, but I feel like he has it wrong and the wrongness matters. It’s too broad and he’s missing a whole group of people.

    Just as an example, he says “back row kids” go to community college and smaller campuses of state schools and “front row kids” go to elite colleges but in a place like Portsmouth almost no one goes to “elite colleges”. The whole ranking system is different. Front row kids go to community college and state schools and back row kids don’t go to college at all. Back row kids really COULD go to community college. In fact, the “front row kids” who push them to go to community colleges are often teachers or coaches or “youth leaders” of one kind or another, many of whom themselves went to community colleges.

    You can be “successful” in places like this by just entering the middle class. You don’t have to jump 5 places in one generation. It isn’t “move to silicon valley or live in grinding poverty”- these places have class divisions of their own, within the ranks. In some ways it’s much easier to move up because there is affordable but decent housing.

    I feel as if he’s taking a national frame and laying it over particular places and it doesn’t quite fit because he sees this national “upper class” or “elite” that doesn’t really exist in these places. Poor people aren’t as low as he sees them because the upper bracket isn’t as high.

    Class is relative. If only 20% of your town or county has a college degree of any kind then a community college degree isn’t a badge of shame- it means you’re in the top 20%. It’s a goal that’s achievable and that is the goal, that is success, because “success” is relative. An example of a “back row kid” moving to the front row in these places would be a kid whose parents either didn’t finish high school or didn’t go to college getting a two year technical degree, getting a job that pays 35k and buying a 70,000 dollar house.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    March 17, 2017 at 6:44 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Exactly; and if a few planes run into each other, it’s a small price to pay. FREEDUMB!

    Or into things more stationary.

  44. 44.

    SomeDude

    March 17, 2017 at 6:45 am

    @jacy: Long time ago, I was studying at the same school as the ATC kids. The stress they were under made me glad I wasn’t one of them. Then came St. Ronnie, and his whack at the union. Doubly glad I wasn’t in their shoes. At this point, I don’t know why any who can bail would stay – the writing on the wall is a giant neon sign.

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    March 17, 2017 at 7:01 am

    @Bruce K: I think there are 4 things going on with the budget.

    1) Donnie doesn’t care about policy. He’s letting his minions come up with the numbers. All he cares about is that the final thing can be sold as a “yoouuuge win”.

    2) Donnie thinks he has a huge mandate and that the President is just short of a King and that he should get to do whatever he wants. Therefore, writing it down and announcing it is the same as getting it done. He doesn’t understand anything about the actual processes used by the federal government. “Separation of Powers? What’s that??”

    3) Donnie is the bestest negotiator in the history of the world. You’ve heard of his book, right?? This is how you negotiate – you put out the most horrible proposal and browbeat your counterpart into accepting it. “No I won’t pay you, you will pay me $200M or I’ll sue you and see you and your family rotting in the gutter. Have a nice day!” He’s so smart and strong and has the “best people” so he always wins.

    4) He’s brain damaged. He says contradictory things but understands none of it. He has no underlying philosophy except that he’s the bestest human that ever was and has “great genes” and deserves to win. He doesn’t care about voters or people who love him – he naturally deserves everything he gets, so it doesn’t matter who makes it possible. Of course they support him no matter what he does. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters!” – Remember he actually said that. Who cares that the AMT is needed for fairness and it raises a lot of money from people who can actually afford to pay it. Donnie is “smart” to evade taxes, so he’s going to do away with it and “be the first president to make a profit in office”.

    He really is a horrible human being and he’s going to do incalculable damage unless he and his minions are fought every single day…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    March 17, 2017 at 7:11 am

    Opioid addiction is complicated too. Most of them (here, anyway) didn’t fall into it “from the middle class”. They were never middle class. It didn’t just fall from the sky onto bustling middle class communities and collapse them. Maybe the Trump voters want to see it like that for reasons of their own but they didn’t have very stable homes at the outset, when this particular drug arrived. I know this because before this drug arrived there was a different drug- meth- and the narrative around meth was very different. I am extremely sympathetic to these people and I see them every day but romanticizing this and making them into victims who were laid low by “front row kids” isn’t the whole story and won’t be helpful to them, IMO.

  47. 47.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 17, 2017 at 7:17 am

    @SFAW:

    Or into things more stationary.

    I had a friend who was a pilot that did that.

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    March 17, 2017 at 7:28 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Sorry. (Both for your friend, and the choice of “joke.”)

    Seems like I’m batting 1.000 lately.

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    March 17, 2017 at 7:36 am

    I am frequently amused (where “amused” = “annoyed”) by the RWNJ projection of the “elitist” tag, whether they use that actual word, or come up with some bullshit “Front Row”/”Back Row” pseudo-analytical binary classification. At least Asshole Arnade had enough sense to use “elitists” — instead of “elites,” which all/most of the RWNJ assholes use. (Because being “elite” is bad, apparently.) But they all say, in effect, “Look at how superior WE are to those Lie-beral elites who think THEY are better’n’us.” And since RWNJs have not exhibited a capacity for intentional irony, I have to assume it’s because they’re stupid assholes.

  50. 50.

    rikyrah

    March 17, 2017 at 7:41 am

    @Amir Khalid:
    You read Brooks so I don’t have to ?

  51. 51.

    different-church-lady

    March 17, 2017 at 7:50 am

    OK, I’m lost here: white people don’t go to McDonald’s?

  52. 52.

    Bruce K

    March 17, 2017 at 8:07 am

    @Another Scott: I totally get that the cheeto is suffering a serious disconnect from reality, but he’s not the only one in the White House. There have got to be power brokers in the administration that understand that this budget proposal is going to be poison at the ballot box – heck, prior to last November, I would have argued that it’d be tantamount to a political suicide note.

    The scary part for me – still – is that they went ahead with it anyway, either in utter ignorance of the electoral consequences, or because they think there won’t be electoral consequences…

  53. 53.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    March 17, 2017 at 8:50 am

    This may come as a surprise to many but if you are working a physical job, which most poor people do, McDonalds is a cheep source of a lot of calories.

    But Arnade is wrong too – McDonald’s is a serious and well paying employer off in Blue Haired land, going by my relatives.

  54. 54.

    Life in Queens

    March 17, 2017 at 8:52 am

    I do love that “fat slob with bad taste” means “white person”.

  55. 55.

    clay

    March 17, 2017 at 8:53 am

    @Another Scott:

    2) Donnie thinks he has a huge mandate and that the President is just short of a King and that he should get to do whatever he wants. Therefore, writing it down and announcing it is the same as getting it done. He doesn’t understand anything about the actual processes used by the federal government. “Separation of Powers? What’s that??”

    As evidenced by the lady who thinks that Trumpcare is responsible for her lower insurance rates… he’s not the only one with this delusion.

  56. 56.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    March 17, 2017 at 8:58 am

    @Kay:

    Just as an example, he says “back row kids” go to community college and smaller campuses of state schools and “front row kids” go to elite colleges but in a place like Portsmouth almost no one goes to “elite colleges”. The whole ranking system is different. Front row kids go to community college and state schools and back row kids don’t go to college at all. Back row kids really COULD go to community college.

    Maybe things changed from my day but “back row kids” means stoner to me and they thought they were far to good for school because dad was getting them a job on the line at the factory so they didn’t need all this waste of time education. Then I would meet them years later working as a gas station attendant.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    March 17, 2017 at 9:01 am

    @SFAW:

    I think it’s wrong because they’re superimposing their own measure over places where there’s a different measure. People in lower income or depressed areas don’t compare 20 year olds to Bill Gates. They compare 20 year olds to the 20 year old across the street who went to the same schools and went on to college- any college.

    It’s an outsiders view to think the’re automatically disrespected and have no chance of moving up. It isn’t that difficult to be “respected” or considered a “success” because the definition is local. They basically have to work consistently (somewhere, at something), stay out of jail or prison and not have children they can’t care for or care adequately for the children they do have. No one will think less of them if they do those things because that’s the measure. Presto! The just moved up to the top 50%. It’s not top 50% nationally if we’re comparing to all people in the United States but no one who lives there does that. They’re in a community. They are measured by local norms, not “I worked on Wall Street for 20 years” norms.

  58. 58.

    Barbara

    March 17, 2017 at 9:03 am

    In making those lists of characteristics of the two classes that exist in his binary world, Arnade is not enlightening us about anybody but himself. I don’t think there is much else to say.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    March 17, 2017 at 9:17 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Well, sometimes it’s because they admire their dads. I go into the school (4th grade) every year and we spend a period for a week talking about work. A lot of them want to do what their parents do because they are familiar with it and that’s what “work” is to them. It’s really interesting because it happens over and over. Their mom is a nurse so they want to be a nurse. If it’s really specific, the job or occupation they choose, I can predict someone in their family does it. So I’ll get a really specific response- “I want to work at this factory” – it’s not that they’re dreaming of making Honda door panels. It’s that their parents work there and they admire and respect them.

    But again I think it’s important to use the local measure. I have kids who are really proud their mom manages a McDonalds. As they should be! Hard job! They’ll tell me all about it. I don’t disrespect that work and neither does anyone else, here locally.

  60. 60.

    danielx

    March 17, 2017 at 9:22 am

    @Amir Khalid:

    Could it be that Brooks is as deluded as the Grifter-in-Chief?

  61. 61.

    msdc

    March 17, 2017 at 9:30 am

    Looks like Arnade is seizing on Barro’s obnoxious comment to promote his own, equally obnoxious David Brooksian pseudo-theory of the social divide in which (as usual) all morality lies on one side and all responsibility on the other. He seems to be hawking it in every forum that will have him, presumably to gin up interest in a book deal.

    Personally, I like how he capitalizes “Church” to make it Extra Important but politely places “traditional” in… I can’t even call them sneer quotes. More like “we all know it’s racist and sexist but I don’t want to have to admit it” quotes.

  62. 62.

    schrodingers_cat

    March 17, 2017 at 9:35 am

    I have no idea who this Arnade person is or why I should pay him any attention. I heard of him only yesterday when someone here posted a link to his tweet. I am thoroughly tired of this elites/elitists vs salt of the earth people propagated by Republicans and media like the NYT and Atlantic. It is stale and not particularly illuminating.

  63. 63.

    Nethead Jay

    March 17, 2017 at 9:45 am

    @Central Planning: Yeah, that part rings true amid all de delusion around it.

  64. 64.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    March 17, 2017 at 10:22 am

    I personally don’t believe Trump understands a tenth of what he’s ‘proposing’ as POTUS… the nearest he’s ever been to governmentin’ before this con job was when he got divorced or someone sued him or he sued them… and now, after less than two months in office, he’s putting out a trillion dollar plus budget proposal like he actually understands what’s in it?

    No. Fucking. Way.

  65. 65.

    Olivia

    March 17, 2017 at 10:31 am

    @Another Scott: I am so afraid that the next step from “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters!” is “I could totally destroy everything that is valued in this nation, including, the ability to have a home, have a job, have food to eat, or get medical care and I wouldn’t lose voters!”

  66. 66.

    The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    March 17, 2017 at 10:42 am

    @M. Bouffant: No disrespect to anybody on this thread, but all y’all need to step the fuck off the Ghost Dance metaphors. The Ghost Dance is a living religious institution in a number of living cultures, which no casual reader of American history knows enough about to use as a rhetorical device, the utilization of which is an example of the kind of racist, know-nothing arrogance of a dominant culture that perfectly illustrates the point of the entire damned post. I’ve been to the Ghost Dance. It is not your negro.

  67. 67.

    J R in WV

    March 17, 2017 at 10:57 am

    @jl:

    What I wonder is, if you have say eleven Trump administration officials (including possibly the Trump Himself) each playing zero dimensional chess, and you combine their efforts, does that make a different kind of eleven dimensional chess?

    NOPE!

    A Big number multiplied by zero, (as I’m sure you know) is still zero, no matter how big the BIG number gets to be!

    So all the White House elves together trying to play chess are still playing zero dimensional chess!!

  68. 68.

    Adam C

    March 17, 2017 at 11:10 am

    They’re both wrong.
    Trump didn’t win the working class vote. He won the upper class vote. More importantly, he won the white vote. Unless McDonalds is the restaurant for white people, Barro was off the mark. But Arnade’s noble-savage romanticism is no better.

  69. 69.

    J R in WV

    March 17, 2017 at 11:24 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I sat in the front row in HS Latin classes to keep from falling asleep, teacher thought I was cheating when the vocab started to remain in memory and grades went from straight Cs to Bs and then As. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I’m going to catch you, and then you will be EXPELLED!” Nope, as if I cared enough to cheat. Can’t catch someone cheating who ain’t!!

    In reality we had started reading real Roman classics, in Latin, and it became fun, until teacher exploded on me. She was crazed. My cousin sat in back, same class, she was cheating all along, but I was on the front row and actually started doing better… so I was the cheater. I wasn’t the most respectful, I will admit.

  70. 70.

    J R in WV

    March 17, 2017 at 11:31 am

    .
    .
    .

    THE END

  71. 71.

    sharl

    March 17, 2017 at 11:49 am

    @Adam C:

    Trump didn’t win the working class vote. He won the upper class vote.

    I think that’s pretty much the case. Arnade did report on a few poor/working class whites, and even a couple older black folk, who said they voted Trump. I doubt that their numbers amounted to anything significant, and in any case the kind of pop sociological “reporting” Arnade does on individuals, couples and very small groups doesn’t allow any kind of statistically valid extrapolations. Besides, Arnade said he fled the lucrative but cold data-only world, so he wouldn’t want to do polling and analysis even if he could.

    What Arnade has observed is that people often gave up on the expectation that politicians would do anything for them. There is some confirmation of that from what looks like pretty decent reporting from major media (e.g., this NYT report from Milwaukee).

    What I’d like to know is how many otherwise likely Dem voters just decided to stay home (after accounting for various voter suppression schemes hatched at state and local level), especially in key Electoral College states.

    In the meantime Arnade is getting increasing attention, and I think it’s going to his head at this point; one manifestation is that he name searches himself like a beast looking for prominent critics. I like following him – so far – but we’ll see if he lets this path he’s chosen ruin him.

  72. 72.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    March 17, 2017 at 12:11 pm

    Arnade is yet another incarnation of the Camille Paglia convenient dichotomy nonsense that Molly Ivins (peace be upon her) skewered years ago.

  73. 73.

    Uncle Cosmo

    March 17, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    @sukabi:

    “I was majoring in animal husbandry,” Tom said sheepishly.* “Until they caught me at it.”

    (h/t Tom Lehrer)

    * The bewildered are cordially invited to google “Tom Swifty”.

  74. 74.

    Uncle Cosmo

    March 17, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    @The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: What those mostly-well-meaning folks are trying to reference isn’t the Ghost Dance, it’s the denatured, mass-mediated, trivialized pseudo-analogue best characterized as the Zombie Mambo.

  75. 75.

    TriassicSands

    March 17, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    50,000 Irish people living in the US illegally. All that red hair! I say throw ’em on a bus and ship ’em back to Ireland!

    @Bruce K:

    There have got to be power brokers in the administration that understand that this budget proposal is going to be poison at the ballot box – heck, prior to last November, I would have argued that it’d be tantamount to a political suicide note.

    Trump’s budget proposal isn’t even on most Americans’ list of things to pay attention to next week. Since the Congress writes the budget, this document is little more than a macho statement of America’s iron-fisted president and a warning that Generalissimo Trump is on duty. This is more for non-Americans than for local consumption.

    The Americans most likely to be paying attention to this aren’t out of work coal miners, but people who vehemently oppose Trump anyway. This is just reaffirmation of what an ass Trump is, but it’s not likely to cost any votes. We have to wait and see what the Congress does with the budget. And as bad as their budget is likely to be, it probably won’t look much like this sorry bit of chest-beating. Trump is four years from the next election — the House has to worry about 2018. (Ordinarily, you might say, well the president has to care about his party’s fortunes in the midterms. Trump doesn’t care about anyone but himself.)

  76. 76.

    sukabi

    March 17, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: ok, that was baaaaaaad!

    ?

  77. 77.

    TriassicSands

    March 17, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    I agree.

    When Tucker Carlson pointed out that Trump’s supporters were going to be disproportionately harmed by the AHCA (while the rich would once again make out like bandits) Trump said, “I know. I know.”

    Well, I don’t even know if he was paying attention to what Carlson was saying. Trump may well have been daydreaming about being at one of his golf courses or assaulting some young woman. Or maybe, because he’s so used to yes men and sycophancy he thought Carlson was telling him what an astounding president he is. “I know, I know.”

    He knows, indeed.

    Trump sounds like an idiot in interviews for the very simple reason he is an idiot. His mind is a mess — a twisted, damaged mess.

  78. 78.

    TriassicSands

    March 17, 2017 at 2:41 pm

    @Olivia:

    Maybe Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump aren’t planning on needing voters by the time 2020 rolls around.

  79. 79.

    cokane

    March 17, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    love this evisceration of Arande, Anne! His insufferable moral preening and many others like it, has just gotten to be too much for me.

  80. 80.

    M. Bouffant

    March 17, 2017 at 4:33 pm

    @The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: O.K.

  81. 81.

    Barry

    March 17, 2017 at 6:06 pm

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: “but it only took two adult videos for them to determine that ‘sexual intercourse’ can be between two hot blondes.”

    More like dozens of videos, watched again and again and again…. :)

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