This fucking guy:
Black CEO speaks out and w/in an hour Trump mocks him. Still refuses to condemn white supremacists. https://t.co/ZPnw90CJ2P
— Connie Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) August 14, 2017
I suspect Trump’s handlers are trying desperately to convince him to do today what he couldn’t bring himself to do this weekend: unequivocally denounce Nazis, klansmen and white supremacists. I hope he ignores them.
The fact is, we have a white supremacist president. Millions of us figured that shit out long before the election — including the white supremacists. The sooner the rest of America figures that shit out, the better.
brendancalling
Orange Shitstain has an announcement about China and trade at 2:00 EST.
My bet is he’s going to go off the rails, bigly.
gene108
I think a lot of people figured out Trump’s a white supremacist, and they realized they approve of it.
They may not march around with Confederate flags or Nazi flags, but they don’t see anything wrong with a getting a bit more of an edge by being white.
I don’t know, after 8 years of the crap Obama took and Trump’s win, I am a bit cynical.
A Ghost To Most
@gene108:We aren’t cynical enough. They are all either fascists or good germans.
PaulWartenberg
When the CEO of a Pharmaceutical company has more integrity and honor than the entire White House staff…
This is what our nation has come to. Thank you, Republicans!
germy
Last night we were watching some dopey horror film on the comet tv station (sinclare owned). Saw a commercial for trumpy bear. My wife was amazed. She couldn’t believe it wasn’t a joke or an SNL parody.
I’d read about the trumpy bear, so I knew it was real. But it was quite a thing to see.
LAO
Well, this is certainly a surprise to me, it’s not like Trump believes in eugenics . . . oh wait, what?
Whether or not he’s a white nationalist, seems to me to be besides the point. He appeals to them and actively courts them and enables them. He’s a POS.
LAO
Betty Cracker
@brendancalling: Do you think he’ll do another worthless “many sides” statement or read an “I disavow” statement through gritted teeth?
Jeffro
@brendancalling:
Please god, just once, give the reporters in attendance the spines to really NEEDLE THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF HIM.
LAO
@Betty Cracker: My money is on a “many sides” statement — he may plan on disavowing, but Trump appears incapable of actually saying it.
Jeffro
@germy:
I might have to Google that ad. No wait, no I’m not.
Since Trumpov is already running (as of the afternoon of inauguration day 2017, in fact) I think I’m going to file to primary him and see what happens. Hey at least I can articulate actual small-c conservative values and principles, which is more than I can say of the rest of the GOP (sans Rubin, perhaps)
germy
@Betty Cracker: He read the “I disavow” statement in a resentful monotone, like a nine year old being forced to apologize to a neighbor for egging his house.
Jeffro
@LAO:
I think you’re right. He’ll complain about taking incoming from the #FakeNews media and explain that they’re not reporting all the ‘American Carnage’ that ONLY HE can stop.
Major Major Major Major
I set my alarm an hour late because I couldn’t fall asleep last night and, as a programmer, don’t actually have a fixed schedule most days. So I got that extra hour, which is good, but I still feel like hot garbage.
Now I’m on a train 36 minutes later than my normal train–made up lost time, yay!–but the guy next to me is wearing enough cologne to drown a moose, boo!
Just wanted to come here and complain, I guess. Fuck Donald Trump. I bet he gives a statement after they slip him a thorazine and reads it off the prompter like a robot, then forgets to take questions about china and leaves; or else, yeah, he totally goes off the rails and yells at the media for not respecting him.
Phred
DJ Prezzy Prez had his chance to speak out against Nazis and KKK on Saturday. No do-overs for the comb-over!
germy
@Jeffro:
They even found a black guy to appear in the ad. A Herman Cain-type of dude, proudly displaying t-bear in his office. “It’s great for business! And when business is good, I’m good!”
The rest of the folks in the commercial displayed t-bear on their motorcycles, in their trucks, etc.
T-bear comes with a flag you can wrap him in.
I’ve only seen the commercial on that sinclare station.
James Powell
People need to stop asking for, demanding, or expecting some statement from Trump. It will mean nothing and it will be used by his supporters to say, “See, he’s not with those bad people. Let’s move on to tax cuts.” Fuck that.
We need to say that it’s too late for Trump to say anything. That his refusal to say or do the right thing over the weekend is proof that he supports Nazis and white supremacists and he cannot erase this from his record. We need to mention this every time the subject comes up as in “Trump, who has shown support for Nazis and white supremacists in the past, . . . “
dmsilev
I referred to this yesterday: How a real leader (and real President) addressed an attack by a white supremacist.
Sigh.
T S
Specifically, we have a Nazi-sympathizing white supremacist President.
germy
@James Powell:
You’re right.
Let him be himself. Maybe it’ll wake more people up.
dmsilev
@James Powell: Yeah. The pattern of Trump’s life is clear. From the Central Park 5 to birtherism to innumerable episodes during the campaign to now. He is what he is and people should stop denying it; the question now is what we do about it as a country.
Betty Cracker
@Phred: Agreed. Anything he says will be too little, too late. That’s why I’m hoping he doubles down on his “both sides” approach to Nazis terrorizing an American city.
different-church-lady
What makes us think the percentages will break out any differently once they do?
ET
They may be trying to get him to do today what he should have already done, but he has sort of made it impossible with his comments about Frazier.
Not just because of what he said, but that he said something explicit about Frazier which indicates he is paying attention and because in comparison he has been quite on Twitter when he normally isn’t.
different-church-lady
@James Powell: It’s an interesting conundrum for him: continue to say nothing and he is exposed as a white nationalist. But if he says what people are demanding, it would be the worst possible humiliation he could conceive of: he would be capitulating to the demands of others.
I say continue to demand. This is his payback for demanding that Obama release a birth certificate. Help payback be a bitch.
germy
different-church-lady
@dmsilev:
Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: IMHO it’s even stranger that he said MANY sides. Not both sides, many sides, which he repeated, and which seems to me to be the thing he _most_ wanted to say, and which probably wasn’t in the statement as written.
randy khan
@James Powell:
I generally agree except that it isn’t clear to me that he’s capable of saying the magic words. History shows he’s the kind of guy who knows how to throw gasoline on a fire, but not water.
FlipYrWhig
@germy: Oh my God, like Hank Hill said, I don’t know whether to laugh or vomit.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
I clicked on that link, and was again moved to tears by Obama.
FlipYrWhig
@randy khan: The thing he hates most in life is being told there’s something he _ought_ to do. He throws a tantrum every time.
NCSteve
But her emails!
hovercraft
@brendancalling:
“My bet is he’s going to go off the rails, bigly.”
Umm, I have to take issue with “going”.
This moron has never been on the rails, even with his media and GOP fluffers, he’s always been an unabashed racist. Housing, Central Park Five, Birtherism, he’s a racist, period.
What’s happening now is that all of his past as well as the his embrace of Bannon, Gorka and Miller, and even Sessions, who is enough of a politician to couch his racism, the media is being forced to see what’s been right in front of them forever.
I’m sure he is blowing a gasket right about now, and he may come out and show his ass yet again because of all the criticism and accusations of racism. I hope he goes through with the presser and lets his freak flag fly. Bring back Corey, lets Twitler be Twitler!
MCA1
@James Powell: I don’t know. I feel like enough people will interpret any further statements as insincere and forced down his throat that he’s already lost this one and can’t get back to even by making some clarification this afternoon. I think a lot of people have seen through this ruse, and it’s coming home how leaderless we are in America and how at best tone deaf and at worst sympathetic to fascism this guy is over the weekend.
Besides, he will not be giving the sort of fulsome beatdown of the underlying psychosis of the supremacists, who he’s been winking at all this time, that other presidents might. Because (a) he’s intellectually incapable of it, (b) it will feel too much like admitting defeat at this point and as we all know there’s a primal inability to not come out dominant in his mind in every interaction, (c) he’s an unrepentant racist himself, and (d) he knows damn well those people are the hardest core of his base. If he just halfheartedly extends his condemnation a little further they’ll take it as a sop to get the fake media off his back, but if he goes whole hog speechifying about how wrong their bigotry is, they just might think he’s sold them out.
germy
https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/soc_alt-right_campus_guide_2017_web.pdf
zhena gogolia
@dmsilev:
In tears. How have we fallen so far so fast?
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
NorthLeft12
Well, there goes Deadbeat Donald’s African American “friend”.
What a crass, classless, clueless, and completely predictable oaf Trump is.
Elmo
@zhena gogolia: We haven’t. We were never as high up as you (and I, and others) thought we were.
rikyrah
Daily Caller: Ex-Trump adviser Sam Nunberg says he’ll ‘blow’ McMaster, Drudge ‘the f**k out’ if Bannon is ousted. https://t.co/DiHj7Dt6dK
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 14, 2017
rikyrah
Republican Tells Prominent Black Woman ‘Shut Up’ While Defending Trump on White Supremacy https://t.co/Fva1fMFMZx pic.twitter.com/1Vhu3a86Ja
— Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) August 14, 2017
Highway Rob
I want to find a betting book on what Trompe le Monde’s next statement on this issue will be, because I’d put down some real money on some form of “Democrats are the real racists.”
rikyrah
Angela Merkel: “Extreme-right” Charlottesville march was “absolutely repulsive” and “evil”.https://t.co/OtRJCbOIvm
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 14, 2017
rikyrah
It’s all connected & evil. Richard Spencer: “Russia is the sole white power in the world.” David Duke: “Russia is key to white survival.” pic.twitter.com/2FsNFlxzdw
— • Proud Navy Veteran (@naretevduorp) August 13, 2017
rikyrah
Trump got the 3am call.
Slept in.
Then sided with the terrorists.
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) August 13, 2017
rikyrah
Oklahoma Three Percent militia man arrested in 1000-pound bomb plot https://t.co/kZEJu68yPG
— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) August 14, 2017
Frankensteinbeck
I think Trump should always be pushed about things like whether he supports white supremacists. Yes, ask him about it, and keep asking. Every time he answers wrong, he loses some people permanently and motivates liberals more. His walk backs don’t have much effect. I think it’s more likely he will issue a specific walk back than not in this case, for the sole reason that he is scared of Kelly and Kelly will be seriously in his face about this. The walk back will be phrased as if Trump was never wrong, of course. And the white supremacists have already heard what they want to hear. He definitely might keep refusing, both because he really is racist as shit, because he hates to be wrong, and because he’s a screaming god damn two year old about being told what to do.
Villago Delenda Est
@germy: THE JOOOS! THEY CONTROL EVERYTHING! Even the Masons and the Stonecutters!
GregB
Stop second guessing Dear Don. He’s smart. Not dumb like they say.
His uncle went to MIT for God’s sake.
Superior genes, superior leadership.
Kay
I love Connie Schultz. This is a really conservative area and when Sherrod Brown was running the first time she wanted to appear and meet the locals so we set it up at the library, which you would think would be non-controversial but I swear the people who worked there were worried they would be perceived as “liberal” – and they kind of secretly ARE– which just amused me to no end.
It’s all just very difficult. Feelings all over the place. That’s what conservatives don’t realize when they complain about their views being discriminated against. It happens every day to liberals in conservative areas and we just suck it up. They MUST KNOW that there are huge parts of the country where liberals are the political minority and we have to navigate majority conservative views.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: Cucinelli. Utter waste of skin. WHITE skin.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Good grief, like Oklahoma hasn’t already been through this?
germy
@Villago Delenda Est: Except nunberg.
rikyrah
Why Is Racial Hatred in the Process of Exploding?
by Nancy LeTourneau August 14, 2017
As I watched the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, unfold over the weekend and tried to grasp the reality that a President of the United States was unwilling to condemn these homegrown Nazis marching in support of white supremacy, I couldn’t help but think that it was only two years ago that another white supremacist walked into a church and gunned down eight African Americans for no other reason than racial hatred.
That led me to long for the wisdom of our 44th president at moments like this. So I re-watched Obama’s “amazing grace” eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney—and not just the part where he sings. This is how an authentic leader addressed us at a moment when the ugliest parts of our past are shown to be present once again:
That was the most blatantly anti-racist speech of Obama’s presidency. He used the words of the song Amazing Grace to talk about how perhaps we as a country, stained by the original sin of slavery, might resonate with the fact that we were once lost, but now are found…were blind, but now can see. Sadly, those words were more aspirational than factual, as the events of this last weekend demonstrate.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected last November, I’ve struggled with how we as a country could go from a president who could talk so eloquently about “we” when describing the role of the black church in this country to our current occupant in the White House. I simply can’t reconcile it in my head. If feels like there has been some gigantic rupture in the space/time continuum.
With the benefit of hindsight, I’m sure that future historians will be able to explain the connective tissue that ties one event to the other, and there are certainly multiple threads that make up that connection. But I’d like to focus a bit on the question of racism as a way to reach some partial understanding in the moment.
…………………………………………
The rhetoric of normalization eventually began to fail because it was challenged by those who had been despised, but were no longer willing to go along with it. Affirmative action programs instituted decades ago began to produce African American leaders, not just in sports and entertainment, but in commerce, education and politics. Demographers began to talk about the day when white people will no longer make up the majority in this country. The Great Recession terrified white people as they were impacted economically in a way that hadn’t happened since the 1930’s. We elected our first African American president. The shooting of unarmed black people became a national scandal and led to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Tim Wise talked about some of these events forming “the perfect storm for white anxiety.”
Force and hatred were waiting in the wings, ready to explode. That is not a new pattern, as Jonathan Chait described after watching 12 Years a Slave.
Ever since I read that, I’ve thought about the description of “Northup’s calm, dignified competence” as exactly what we witnessed from President Obama. Just as it did during the days of slavery, that was the most unforgivable crime—for an African American to presume himself to be equal to a white person. We should never underestimate how that contributed to the explosion of hatred.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: He was merely defending the white race, by blowing up white, brown, yellow, and black people.
JPL
Haven’t read all the comments but just in case you haven’t seen this column by John Harwood
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/13/charlottesville-gop-disgust-for-trump-more-likely-to-come-out.html
It’s a timeline of the racism that exists in the Trump family.
Geeno
I think we should send a petition to Angela Merkel saying “We helped you guys out with your Nazi infestation; do you think you could return the favor?”
Dave
@Betty Cracker: I figure either way he’s going to be pissed off and he’s going to act out. If he doesn’t read one and petulantly digs in it’s going to piss him off. If he does read one he’s going to resent that and make his staff’s life even more hellish than you know it is and then when he’s critized for waiting so long he will really lash out and use it as an excuse to indulge his impulses since the losers that pushed him to do the obvious thing were wrong again… So massive ugliness no matter what.
Chris
@gene108:
Yup.
To be either more or less charitable, I think there’s a ton of white people for whom white supremacism wouldn’t be the first choice, but if it’s Nazis or those dangerous cop-killing reverse-racist radicals from BLM, and their far-left Marxist-Leninist stooges the Democratic Party, of course the Nazis are the lesser evil. (Anyway, are they really Nazis?… etc).
Fifty years of “both sides do it, but liberals are worse” left a mark.
Dave
@James Powell: You are correct but we should keep demanding it; it drives him nuts. Then again given the nuclear weapons maybe you’re right.
JGabriel
germy:
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross*. I guess all Trumpy Bear needs now is the cross.
( * Usually attributed to Sinclair Lewis or Huey Long, but no one can find the source.)
dmsilev
@GregB:
If it helps, I went to MIT and I think Trump is a racist and an idiot. I could probably arrange for my niece or nephew to echo that assessment of him (but I won’t; that’s not a nice thing to do to kids who haven’t yet turned 6).
Kay
Why don’t Trump and his low quality hires get to work on prescription drug legislation if the President is concerned with drug prices? I hardly think it’s this guy’s job to help the incompetents govern. He’s private sector. They’re public sector.
Democrats would happily go along with a bill to lower prescription drug costs. They could even write it. Trump keeps saying he wants bills on his desk. If he’s such a take-charge bidnessman that should apply to bills drafted by either Party.
LAO
Buckle up — it’s on:
dmsilev
@LAO: Unless those remarks include a resignation statement or on-camera seppuku, I don’t think there’s much he could do to improve things.
Kay
@LAO:
They’ve convinced themselves that Americans want to hear MORE from Donald Trump, although he never shuts up and has been on television constantly for the last 2 years, almost to the exclusion of everyone else.
I don’t think the problem is we “don’t know” Donald Trump. I think we know him. Every day we know him better we like him less.
Hungry Joe
Any thoughts on why there weren’t violent right wing/neo-Nazi/KKK rallies while Obama was president? If anything was going set them off, you’d thing that would. The “Trump has emboldened them” explanation doesn’t quite fly with me, because, what — until now they were too afraid to pull this shit? They actually thought that Obama would send his jackbooted FEMA troops to mow them down and take the survivors to concentration camps? I could be wrong, of course. (And for the last couple of years it seems like I’ve been wrong right around, oh, 80 percent of the time.) But Obama was there for eight years, and mostly they just seethed.
Amir Khalid
@LAO:
If those remarks are unscripted as well as unscheduled, there may well be senior members of the White House staff curled up in the foetal position under their desks even now..
bemused
@Kay:
You rock, Kay! I love Connie too.
They resent anyone who has different views than they do. I doubt they care if we have hurt or angry feelings. In fact, that makes many/most of them giddy with joy.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Isn’t it funny how Bannon is being revealed as the head honcho racist? I used to wonder about what he did all day. He’s the racism czar!
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: It’s not at all strange. During the campaign he took all 17 sides on every issue, so he’s pretty used to thinking in these terms.
mr_gravity
@FlipYrWhig: About those “many sides” – I see fascists and anti-fascists, fascist onlookers and anti-fascist onlookers, fascist media and anti-fascists media, fascists driviing cars into crowds and……Hey. Wait a minute! Is there some sort of false equivalence here?
FlipYrWhig
@GregB: My favorite thing about Trump’s “My impressive uncle” stories is that he talks about how, thanks to clever Unky Trump, he knew about the power of nuclear technology… 35 years ago. In 1982? That’s AFTER Three Mile Island. And Trump was already old enough to be president. The way he tells the story you’re supposed to imagine him as Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate being told about plastics. But Trump isn’t some wide-eyed upstart and the technology is already decades old.
LAO
I’ll “believe” when I hear it.*
And by believe, I mean, I will never accept that Trump’s condemnation is sincere.
liberal
@dmsilev: Smart people tend not to be racists, but then, you’ve got the example of William Shockley.
JPL
@LAO: He’ll likely mention the arrest made in Oklahoma City, too. (just kidding)
LAO
FlipYrWhig
@LAO:
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: That’s a perfect example of George Will’s (ugh) point that it’s not what he doesn’t know, or that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, but rather that he doesn’t understand what it means to know something.
A Ghost to Not
@Jeffro:
I’ve seen the ad. It talks about “enemies of the president”. Disgusting fascist propaganda.
rikyrah
@Kay:
That’s who he is…
Chris
@rikyrah:
We put a black man in the White House, and roughly half of the electorate irretrievably lost its shit.
The French did this eighty years ago when they had the appalling poor taste to elect a government that was not only left-wing, but headed by a Jew (Léon Blum). The right went ballistic. Fascists marched in the streets, far right leagues staged terrorist bombings, people who up until then had been generic nationalists mostly concerned with a rematch against Germany became obsessed with domestic Bolshevik subversion and argued that Hitler might not be a wonderful guy but he was at most a distraction from the real threat, and opponents were screaming “better Hitler than Blum.”
Less than a decade leader, there was Vichy, the loonies were in power, and Blum ended up spending most of the war in a concentration camp in Germany. (For those who like “both sides do it” analogies, a popular refrain on the right was that whatever Pétain had surrendered to Hitler, it was no worse than what Blum had surrendered to Stalin first).
This analogy occurred to me more than once during the Obama years, but Trump has really gone all-out on making it appropriate. No, I doubt if there’s a literal Vichy in our future WRT Putin. But it sure as hell won’t be for lack of his trying.
Humdog
@Hungry Joe: President Obama had a justice department that tracked white supremacists and their violent threats. Shitstain’s Justice dept disbanded the Group tracking right/white wing terrorism, to much fanfare. The skinheads and khaki pants dudes took note and feel free to freak away.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: I hadn’t heard that Will said that, but I will grudgingly admit it sounds insightful.
NorthLeft12
@dmsilev: Your problem as a country is that too many of your fellow Americans are perfectly okay with their/your President being a white supremacist. They are also okay with all the things that go along with that.
If you are looking for some kind of consensus, you will never get it. The question really is what the good and decent people of the US can do to correct this situation?
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@hovercraft: I agree, he’s going to keep showing his ass, because it’s his ass, and the only one he has, and he feels no shame in showing it, and never has. What I’m wondering about, and perhaps what brendancalling was anticipating, is the sort of episode of decompensation one sometimes sees in people with people with very limited mental and/or emotional resources who have been placed under what is, for them, intolerable pressure. He’s come very close a time or two previously in the last six months or so, but has never publicly fallen over that edge. You’ll sometimes see it in people with dementia, but it’s not limited to them.
Timurid
@LAO:
This actually worries me.
If Trump manages to force out “Nazis are, uh, bad” then the Village and the MSM will be back in PIVOT! FUCK YEAH! mode.
Brachiator
I don’t care what Trump does now. Just. Don’t. Care.
Trump is not capable of a pivot toward decency or compassion. And the people he has surrounded himself with are equally empty, or craven or afraid.
And it’s weird when the only person who called for Trump to clearly speak out against the alt-right was recently kicked to the curb former White House spokes weasel Scaramucci.
JPL
Will today be the day that Trump becomes presidential?
dmsilev
@liberal: There are, alas, plenty of smart people who are racist: it’s just that they tend to be smart enough to express their views using colloquialisms and subtexts rather than klaxon horns.
LAO
@Timurid: He can’t help but ad-lib. I expect he’ll take back the words, just as he utters them. Remember the “many sides” BS was clearly ad-libbed.
NorthLeft12
@Hungry Joe:
Besides being awful people, they are stupid and cowardly too. I am willing to bet that those RWNJs actually believe most of the shit that they peddle.
lollipopguild
@randy khan: Not only does trump throw gasoline on a fire he LOVES throwing lots of gasoline to make the fire bigger. He is Captain Chaos.
JPL
@Timurid: lol Kelly O’Donnell is playing that role on TV now.
Betty Cracker
CNN is saying Trump will come out and specifically denounce Nazis momentarily. I’m not putting up a feed. Maybe someone else will. Trump doesn’t get a goddamned mulligan on denouncing Nazis.
FlipYrWhig
@Timurid: I’m not so worried about that TBH. I think the story then becomes “why did it take him so long?” and “what happened to the tighter ship John Kelly was supposed to run?” The exception would be if Trump said something like “I regret that it took me longer to speak against this horror than it should, and for that I can only plead that I was hoping to keep focus on the work my administration continues to do for the American people.” I think he won’t get off the hook with “Nazis are bad,” he’ll only get off the hook with “I should have said ‘Nazis are bad’ sooner.” But I’d be _stunned_ if he could manage that. When it comes to admitting he’s wrong he’s like Fonzie.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
You know what the symbol animal is of Russia like the eagle is the symbol animal of the US?
Not a joke.
LAO
@Betty Cracker: nicely played.
GregB
@dmsilev:
For the record, I was mocking him.
JPL
Trump… everything is beautiful
Kay
@bemused:
I didn’t have hurt or angry feelings. I just think conservatives who feel outnumbered in liberal areas should recognize that the other side of that exists in conservative areas, and liberals deal with it without constructing whole theories about how conservatives want to shut down debate or “everyone” is mean to liberals.
Zach
What about everyone who acted criminally in the last 7 months of racist violence, Donald? How many civil rights investigations have been opened? This isn’t the first time.
LAO
@JPL:
zzyzx
I’ve been making jokes about the whole “Jews will not replace us!” chants, asking what exactly they’re doing that is so irreplaceable; if anything I’m overqualified for the job. However, now I’m seeing it for what it is. It is the economic anxiety that we’re hearing about, but expressed as demanding that jobs belong solely to white male Christians. It’s a fringe and it’s nut picking, but still, this is so depressing.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
There will never be a day when Trump becomes presidential. He just doesn’t have it in him; you can’t not know that.
JanieM
@Mnemosyne: Indeed. But surely it’s also a play on the fact that the teddy bear was named for another president.
JPL
Mark Warner, the president actually sounded presidential, but………………………..!
aimai
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): This. He is going to decompensate big time and I don’t think his handlers will be able to hide it–or hide him–from the spotlight. The question is: will he start gibbering and flailing in front of someone with enough institutional clout to get Pence and the Republicans to Article 25 him, or will he do it as he pulls the nuclear trigger and kills a million people. After which, I can assure you, the Republicans will be too shit scared to can him.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I wouldn’t hold my breath on 40% of voters figuring out that Trump is a racist; it would require said voters to admit to their own misogyny, homophobia, racism.
Humans are deeply flawed animals. We hack to bits our brothers and sisters if they believe something different from us, if they look different, eat different foods.
Thankfully, enough humans listen to their “better angels” for us to not have yet destroyed our species and only habitat.
rikyrah
@Timurid:
Unless it comes with Bannon, Miller and Gorka being gone…it means jackshyt.
Dave
@FlipYrWhig: Very much agree with this. And while there will always be someone waiting for the pivot or presidential hot take the media as a whole has finally moved to the point where a single semi acceptable moment won’t be enough for them. Besides that he’s going to resent the hell out of having to do this and that means he will lash out sooner than later and disrupt any nascent “he’s pivoting” rhetoric.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Yes I do, and believe me, so do the majority of our citizens.
JanieM
@Amir Khalid: Surely JPL was making a joke……?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@NorthLeft12:
Nah, he still has Ben, Omarosa and Katrina.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think he should worry about how Nazi’s have adopted his outfits. I have never seen that happen with a US President in my life.
It’s just so crazy that the Nazi Youth wear old man golfing attire! The fake soldier garb I’m accustomed to. I didn’t see the golfing uniform coming.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@rikyrah:
The 3% Militia… does that refer to how much of their brains they use?
Chris
@Hungry Joe:
I’m not sure there’s that big a difference.
In terms of political rallies, we saw the rise of the teabaggers, who were fueled to a stupendous amount by 1) racist conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate and black people causing the financial crisis and 2) bigotry towards immigrants, especially Muslims and Mexicans. One of the biggest news items of 2010, the summer before the loonies took over Congress and at the height of the movement, was the “Ground Zero Mosque” freakout, for which large numbers of people were similarly bussed into Lower Manhattan to scream nonsense at members of a targeted minority.
In terms of actual violence, we had, of course, the spike in right-wing militia recruitment and in actual right-wing militia terrorist activities, as people like Neiwert chronicled in real time. DHS issued a report warning about this in early 2009, only to have it quashed lest it hurt the delicate little fee-fees of the militias’ supporters in the government and media.
The only real difference is that they weren’t literally the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan, for the most part – most of the work was done by the Oath Keepers and that crowd. And that difference, I would wager, is in fact entirely down to Trump. Even on the far right, it had been fashionable in the last few decades to join groups with more bland and patriotic names and associations, i.e. the militia movements, rather than these old-fashioned groups which had been pop culture punching bags for so long. But then Trump was seen buddying around with actual unreprentant Nazis, and Trump was heard refusing to disavow David Duke, and then he actually won the election… I would say that almost certainly did a hell of a lot to give the Nazis and Klansmen more respectability, both emboldening them and swelling their ranks with recruits who, in the past, might’ve become “Oath Keepers” or whatever instead.
Dave
@Kay: American Facism always was going to be unbearably tacky. Not even achieving the melodramatic pomp that most facism manages. Honestly that’s way down the list of it’s flaws but it is there
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I watched. The instant he spoke the word “condemn,” he flashed the white supremacy gang sign with his right hand. It was just for a second, and I wouldn’t have noticed except I was looking for it. Signal to the (storm)troops.
A couple of minutes later he made it repeatedly with his left hand. I haven’t delved deeply enough into the semiotics of this gesture to know what may be signified by hand choice. But the first one, on “condemn,” was quite striking now that I know what it communicates to the alt_right.
Zach
To be fair, this has been the college Republican uniform since well before Trump.
Amir Khalid
@JanieM:
I, um, knew that (he mumbled).
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
It would be pretty anodyne, actually, except for the red MAGA cap.
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: What is that sign?
JPL
@JanieM: I was repeating certain reporters.
Trump will always be asshole to me.
Mnemosyne
@Hungry Joe:
I would also say that it’s due to the truism that the best way to counter these assholes is by holding a massive counter protest that drowns them out. They really do hide when they feel like they don’t have wide support, like the cockroaches they are. Trump’s victory was their victory, and that’s why they’re holding triumphal marches.
Kay
The CEO should come out and say “I’m glad I succeeded in persuading the President of the United States to renounce his racist ways”
Then stand back and watch the big toddler pitch another fit.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Kay: I know. Who could have seen golf clothes as a Nazi uniform? It’s really insidious because it looks so unthreatening. Not that I think the unmenacing part was deliberate – they’re not nearly that clever and just want to dress like Hair Furor.
JPL
@Kay: lol
I’m disappointed that several other members of the council didn’t resign this morning.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Timurid:
True. I can already hear a concerned NPR voice saying, “Well, Trump did denounce racism.”. Grotesque Mike Pence will furrow his brow and with a pained and fatherly shake of his head, explain that, of course, the president is against racism.
pamelabrown53
@zzyzx: @105.
Are you saying that “economic anxiety” is at the root of racism,or are you snarking?
Sorry but I don’t know who you are and so I thought it important to ask.
Ruckus
@Hungry Joe:
You seem to be forgetting that most of the white rights racist scum are pussies. That’s why they rambo up to go out in public. They are afraid of, well everything. Their strength is in the external reinforcement they get by having guns/knives/bats. Internally they got nothing. Except fear of some dark hued guy walking by them and saying hello. They aren’t strong unless they are in an armed gang. They are the guys that bullies surround themselves with in school. Their bully got elected, it’s now at least somewhat safe for them to make noise.
That’s why they didn’t do this for 8 yrs, when you would have suspected them to. You are logical, they are pussies. Big difference.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
Yep.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thumb and index finger make a circle and the other three fingers are separated from each other and held straight up.
He circles his thumb and forefinger a lot when he speaks. It’s that in combination with the middle, ring, and pinky fingers held straight that makes it an “I’m with you” to the deplorables. Or so I understand.
Timurid
@rikyrah:
Bannon, Miller and Gorka are scum, but I want them to stay right where they are… as a ball and chain that holds this Presidency back.
I don’t want Trump to make smart choices. I want him to fail.
This is not a guy who’s going to grow and learn from his mistakes. If this was somebody like George W Bush I’d feel differently. He showed some ability to learn and understand, even if it came slowly and at great cost. But Trump will always be the same person, and his goals are all negative… to enrich himself, crush his enemies and set things on fire for the fun of it. Any choice he makes that strengthens his position is bad news and will have serious long term consequences, even if it seems to be beneficial in the moment.
Sab
@Mnemosyne: I’m thinking that Russian bears don’t have bushy orange eyebrows and orange combovers. That bear is pure longisland.
Skerry
@West of the Rockies (been a while): “Thankfully, enough humans listen to their “better angels” for us to not have yet destroyed our species and only habitat.”
Yet
Mike in NC
I cannot bear to watch Fat Bastard on TV or listen to the sound of his pathetic sing-song voice, but I do have every expectation he will triple down on the “many sides” bullshit if he makes a press statement, with a few bellicose threats to China for not reining in North Korea as he has demanded.
Hopefully this past Saturday marked the beginning of the end of this disgraceful regime of traitors and criminals.
Kay
Yeah, I’m sorry, I know we lowered standards to fit the Trump Presidency but starting with self-praise is not just rude- it’s wrong.
He lowers the bar. Every day. He seems incapable of generosity. Just one time don’t promote yourself. Go second. Let the victims go first.
He talks all the fucking time and always, always about himself. He has endless opportunities for self-promotion. But he can’t let someone else be the focus.
zhena gogolia
@Hungry Joe:
You don’t buy that they’re emboldened? They think they’re mainstream because one of them is in the White House (lots of them, actually, but one is the POTUS). Doesn’t seem that complicated to me.
different-church-lady
@Hungry Joe: It’s clear that Trump has emboldened them. They’re only going to pull this shit in a social situation where they think they can get away with it.
It was pretty damn obvious long before election day that this is how it was going to go if he won. Anyone who didn’t see it was stupid. Anyone who saw it and looked the other way is complicit.
zhena gogolia
@LAO:
Misuse of “fulsome.”
Everything Trump says is “fulsome,” which means sick-making.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Bannon is the only guy who’s better at this sick game than Trump is.
Timurid
Well there it is. Fuck.
It can be Pivot time now.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
drumpf is not a strong, strategic thinker. Not on any planet or scale. He doesn’t have the chops. Or anything else except hate. He’s a fucking moron, elected by morons, in a system that was designed to more often than not reward morons for following other morons to protect the wealthy. At some point we will have to change the system or it will continue to fail us.
NorthLeft12
@Mnemosyne: Speaking of counter protests, the guy on the Tuba/Sousaphone that was trailing the racists was priceless. I have heard of that before, and it is so effective.
Would like to hear a few guys on trombones giving them the sad trombone treatment over and over too.
The racists are dangerous, but they need to be mocked and laughed at more than out shouted IMO.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@rikyrah: We know that, but it’s pretty obvious that for most of the MSM, pretending that everything is just fine and that nothing bad is happening is Job #1.
They are so desperate for a pretense of normalcy and the opportunity to maintain their denial of any responsibility for failing to vet this giant pilonidal cyst that they’ll cover for him until we all go down in flames.
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: Interesting. During that five-minute speech, he does that little mudra with his thumb and forefinger maybe 50 times, opening it up rapdily along with the other fingers, as if he is spraying something at the audience. Feels like a gesture of disdain. I’ve always found the mudra weird and would extinguish it if it were my mannerism.
But you are right – he holds the other three fingers up seemingly only at the word “condemn.” I haven’t looked at the whole video with that in mind, but I sampled pieces of it.
But I’m not an expert in gang signs, so I won’t run with this yet.
different-church-lady
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I’d say at the very least least 30% already know it and approve.
condorcet runner-up
Unfortunately, the beltway villagers seem to be in a competition to see who can be the last person to figure it out.
Mnemosyne
@pamelabrown53:
I think what s/he is saying is that their economic anxiety is based in racism — they really think that non-whites having economic opportunities is holding them back from doing well, and everything would be fine and dandy for them if employers and schools could discriminate on the basis of race again.
Basically, they’re mad that they no longer get an automatic leg up because of their skin color, and the media calls that “economic anxiety.”
different-church-lady
@Cheryl Rofer: True or not, I’m looking forward to the memes.
Timurid
Every fucking time.
There’s a stretch of horrible news about the Russia scandal, North Korea, terrorism, etc. and the media stumble through their Trump coverage in a shocked monotone, as if they’re about to vomit or burst into tears at any moment. Then Trump does something marginally competent, he reads from a teleprompter for half an hour without pissing himself or speaking in tongues… and the horrors of the preceding days and weeks are magically erased as the media pops open the champagne.
Admittedly it will be a big reach, but if Trump can fake competence for as long as a month, the media will be his forever. They, or rather the people who employ them, want their King that badly.
Aleta
via David Beard @dabeard:
JPL
https://twitter.com/tgagemurphy/status/897140507612205056
Mnemosyne
@NorthLeft12:
Mocking them is part of outshouting them. They’re little crybabies who can’t stand not to be taken seriously, so mocking them is very, very effective.
Mnemosyne
Speaking of mocking them, I have secret footage of today’s press conference! ?
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
There is some disagreement among experts as to whether it’s a genuine “white supremacy” signal or merely a kind of ironic inside joke. I first became aware of it in the early days of the (mal)administration, when Jim Hoft and that “Twinks 4 Trump” kid got WH press credentials and posed at the podium flashing the sign. Since then have seen, though not bookmarked, other photos of other alt_right types making the same gesture, and the captions almost always identify it as a secret signal to fellow believers.
You are right, Trump makes the circle mudra a lot when he speaks. I think that’s just an almost unconscious gesture he uses for rhetorical emphasis. But it takes a bit of deliberate intent to make the circle-plus-three-straights. That’s why I think it’s meaningful, whether or not it’s an actual racist sign.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Nobody said that you had to be an expert at it…
but, it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
That 3% refers to how much of it they wish they could find. Because right now they are at 0% if you take out autonomic functions.
Villago Delenda Est
@Timurid: My nym. Again and again.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Chris
@Dave:
It always was.
Look at the uniforms the Nazis wore. There’s a reason every movie villain since 1945 has copied their aesthetic.
Now look at the uniforms the Ku Klux Klan wore. Bedsheets and fucking bags over their heads. KKK uniforms are what the most unimaginative kids on the block wear for Halloween when they’re five years old. (And of course, they’re white bedsheets, the color that does the least to hide stains and the like, which means in practice they probably looked fucking filthy 95% of the time).
JMG
@Mnemosyne: This is exactly right, except include women as those unfairly holding back worthy white men. Lots of those guys have never seen a minority at work, but they’ve had women as workplace equals and even, horrors, as bosses.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I sort of see what you’re saying—I went back on the DVR and looked at Trump saying “condemn”—but, seriously, Trump makes that “okay” hand signal four or five times a minute in every fucking speech he makes. So is he flashing white supremacist signs the whole time, or is it just a physical tic?
(For readers, here’s an example of the gesture we’re talking about.)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@different-church-lady:
Well, about 50% of voters
Voted for Hillary, so, yes, a lot of us did recognize Trump for what he is. How many of the fools/bigots who voted for Trump now regret their votes, I don’t know.
Villago Delenda Est
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Their real, true job is to generate revenue via ratings for their corporate masters.
Reporting honestly gets in the way of that revenue.
TenguPhule
It seems my plans to be out of my country for most of October could not be better timed.
I can simply go from vacationing in Japan to requesting asylum.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
And to make it even more confusing, are white supremacists adopting his gesture as their own rather than the other way around?
ETA: We already know that white supremacists prefer to copy other people’s symbols than to come up with their own. Ur example: the swastika.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: This information may be inaccurate, discredited, but during the campaign, I read that it may mean W (three fingers) and P (the circle w/ or w/o a straight line added). For w– p- er.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
they long for the days when all you had to be was WHITE in order to get a job.
Not educated and White..JUST WHITE. – see Civil Service Jobs
pamelabrown53
@rikyrah: #!!!.
Certainly, there will be some villagers with a “PIVOT. FUCK YES” mode. but I still see signs of attrition. Which, IMHO, is a win in a country who hasn’t dealt headlong with it’s Original Sin.
I guess what I’m saying is a country that could elect Barack Obama as a 2 term president might yet find redemption?
Seth Owen
@Timurid: Don’t worry. He can’t manage 24 hours of looking competent, let alone a month.
Shalimar
@mr_gravity: Since I don’t believe Trump cares about the differences between neo-nazis, KKK, alt-right, neo-confederates, etc., i’m guessing the many sides who are at fault are Trump supporters, black people, white knights defending black people, antifa, local police, state police, and any other group he can think of.
See? It isn’t the racists who are mainly at fault, since they were outnumbered by all these other sides.
Chris
@Steeplejack:
If I had to guess, I would say he had no idea it was the white supremacist sign, but ever since he’s found out, he keeps doing it just to piss off liberals.
prostratedragon
Oh thanks to those pointing out Toothpick’s mudras. In addition to the circle, there’s the little pointing into the air. Those have been annoying me no end, precisely because I parse them as mudras of a didactic sort. Who is he to instruct?!
It was precisely T– who years ago caused me to see that a modest level of esthetics or grace in doing things partly reflects caring about other people.
TenguPhule
@zhena gogolia:
The forces of evil rallied against a good black president.
And while good has to win every battle, evil just has to win once.
Boatboy_srq
@gene108: Less than 100 miles from Charlottesville there is a nice, pretty, well planned subdivision of new housing. I looked at it once. The salesperson (a bitter, angry individual), when she learned where I was living, said “Oh, you’re in [modern name for reasonably integrated community]? I grew up there. When it was called [name of community when it was chartered as an explicitly whites-only segregated community]. When it was a NICE place to live.” It was all I could do not to respond, “Don’t you mean when it was a WHITE place to live?”
Needlss today I no know a community where I’ll NEVER buy a house.
MomSense
@Kay:
INORITE. The new uniform is a polo shirt with khaki pants? I did Nazi that coming.
jl
@Aleta: I’d like to see a compilation of pix of the Trumpsters in the administration flashing these signs, whatever they are. I don’t understand much about this white power code-word stuff. But seems like a lot of them flash this weird three fingers thing with thumb and finger circle thing below. I don’t understand it well, but it can’t be a coincidence. Saw a pic of Miller flashing it while he was at a recent presser.
SatanicPanic
I think Josh Marshall was correct- Trump was always going to get around to saying something, so the focus on when he would was kind of dumb.
TenguPhule
@Hungry Joe:
Feds would have come down on them like a Hammer of Dog.
They only come out once the lights were turned off.
Ruckus
@Chris:
I once saw a real KKK robe and hat hanging in a bathroom of a small business in South Carolina. It was old and yellowed from age but it was revered by the owner, a fellow of about 40 yrs old. This was in 1990. Now I was stationed in Charleston in the early 70s so I was no stranger to the idea of the klan and saw plenty of
racismsouthern hospitality then but this was different. The owner as I said was proud of that bit of history. It looked old enough that it could have been his dads and he may have worn it a time or whatever himself. My buddy and I hightailed it out of there as soon as we could.That pride of being an open racist, that’s what we are seeing now.
Shalimar
@SiubhanDuinne: Just wait. Whether Trump meant it as a signal or not, we will be able to tell pretty quickly whether the racists took it as one because they cannot shut up bragging about that sort of thing when it happens.
Cheryl Rofer
@Steeplejack: Look carefully. He does the thumb-and-forefinger mannerism probably 50 times through the speech, but with the other three fingers extended only once that I found.
Zach
@Hungry Joe:
It was a thing throughout the last couple years of the Obama presidency. He caved a bit on bringing the hammer down since there was, you know, a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of Richard Spencer and Donald Trump supporters and everyone hoped it’d go away when Trump lost. Wups. Hillary called it out in an excellent speech on August 25th last year – http://time.com/4466706/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-radical-fringe-hate-transcript/ – that was quickly memory holed when Trump did something or other idiotic to move to the next news cycle.
Steeplejack
I guess I am going to have to overhaul my wardrobe choices. All too often, when I venture out from my modest rooms in Threadkill Lane, my default garb is khaki pants and polo shirts. Now I find that I am at the intersection of “old man golfing attire” and “Nazi youth.” No wonder the ladies are not stepping to me! I guess the trifecta would be if the tatted-up checkout grrl [sic] at Safeway tells me my fly is open.
So somebody bring me up to date. I assume parachute pants and a Members Only jacket are right out?
hovercraft
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Katrina
What ever happened to her? I haven’t seen her spewing bile in forever, thank God. Since KAC has been reduced to being a pinch hitter, maybe they could put Katrina back in the starting lineup.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
I’ve heard the same.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
You have been hiding in the closet for while.
Welcome to the sunshine!
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Although do notice that near the end of his remarks he does it repeatedly with his left hand. With the right (his dominant) hand, just that one time, on “condemn.”
TriassicSands
In the Gallup Daily poll, Trump has finally hit an all-time low of 34%. That is still remarkably high, but with all the horrendous stuff he has done — and not done — the fact that it finally dropped below 35% might be good news.
Now, how about 27%?
Betsy
@Kay: No need for theories, when there are the facts: gerrymandering, voter suppression, and dark money to terminate liberals’ influence
J R in WV
@Hungry Joe:
It’s because mostly these Nazis and fascists are cowards, afraid of their own shadows. That’s why they group together into groups of Nazis and fascists, they feel less afraid in groups.
Interestingly, in the past 18 months or so I have learned to spell fascist correctly first time every time. I used to have trouble with the ‘sc’ and wanted to put a vowel, any vowel, in between the ‘s’ and the ‘c’, and other mis-spellings like that. But I use it every day now, and can’t take the trouble to go look it up every time, so I’ve learned it again, after needing it for history classes years ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Timurid: His public support level doesn’t really go back up when they do that, though. There are little fluctuations, but the trend is a gradual drip, drip, drip.
There is never going to be any one thing that causes most of Trump’s voters to decide that they were wrong. There wasn’t with Bush, either. It was a cumulative process. You don’t even see a sudden break at Katrina.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Seth Owen:
When he does have a rare good day, leaks tend to refocus attention on his corruption and incompetence within a day.
Steeplejack
@Cheryl Rofer, @SiubhanDuinne:
I’m not saying there’s nothing there. I do wonder whether Trump has the discipline to hit a mark with a double-secret sign that is very close to a gesture that he uses habitually.
And, in the larger sense, this feels like some sort of weird Kremlinology thing, like who’s standing next to whom on the reviewing stand and “OMG! Marshal Zhukov touched his nose!”
Isn’t this one of the things that Russian writer said we will start to experience as we slide into an authoritarian state—looking for meaning and import in the slightest details? I don’t think I need the “white power mudra” proof to convince me that Trump is a racist and a white supremacist at heart.
But I have no doubt that the usual suspects on the right will seize on this as proof as well.
Interrobang
@Steeplejack: Get yourself a nice pair of jeans and some 100% cotton button-downs. The khakis-and-polos thing looks awful, like you’re an IT guy with zero dress sense, polyester is the Fabric of the Beast, and once that outfit gets broken in a bit, it’s as comfortable as it gets. It also never dates.
schrodingers_cat
@Interrobang: The tucked in polo with khakis is a total dad look (I have given up), the female equivalent is capris with a T and flip flops with hair in shoulder length bob.
ETA: That was before T made it the latest in hate couture
Mel
Just wondering if anybody had heard any news about Smiling Mortician’s surgery which was scheduled for today. Just checking and hoping all went well.
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: Both Spencer and Duke are free to emigrate to Mother Russia at their absolute earliest convenience. Otherwise, they can either shut the fuck up or not complain when normal people break their jaws.
Ruckus
@Mel:
We probably won’t know for a least a day or two. From the limited description maybe few days.
And yes, hoping for the best.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mel:
Thanks. Also wondering and hoping for the best.
Mel
@Ruckus: Thank you for the info. She’s in my thoughts today. Sent you a response in the Monday Open thread. Right now, Bru’s daughter is sitting next to me, purring in her sleep. (We adopted both to avoid them being separated, since they were so deeply bonded.)
@SiubhanDuinne: Drove past my childhood library this week. It had been empty for a long, long time, since the library closed it down a few decades ago and built several modern facilities to accomodate a big boom in population as lots of farms got sold and turned into subdivisions.
It appears that someone has finally bought the building and is restoring / repairing it. A small, much needed moment of beauty in the midst of all the surreal horror of the events of the past several days.
Hugs to both of you.
J R in WV
@Interrobang:
At work, back before I retired, many folks wore neckties every day, I guess they thought it made them look managerial and professional. Others were more inclined to a nice shirt and jeans. Eventually a dress code was imposed, which ruled out “blue jeans” – so I started wearing brown denim, khaki denim, etc and polo shirts with the agency logo on the breast.
I only wore neck ties for “events” when outside folks or management people state-wide were invited, or when we hosted a meet with industry folks invited. Hated them then, now only wear them to funerals. They sold the polo shirts (and tee shirts) with the logo as some sort of fund-raiser, and so were unlikely to make them verboten.
I only have a few left in good shape… it was a state agency where I worked. Joe Manchin was head dick in charge as governor, he made it impossible to be a good manager. Ask potential employees the minimum wage they would accept, then state personnel would authorize an offer thousands of dollars less than that. Such good management skills he had!