When people say they support a pol bc of promise he made, then still support when he breaks the promise, isn't it possible that's not why they liked him at all? https://t.co/cEQk7XmEM2
— Dara Lind (@DLind) November 8, 2017
the best description i have for this piece is it is a story of people who are addicted to white supremacy https://t.co/P8cb1achx8
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) November 8, 2017
… “Six months to a year,” catering company owner Joey Del Signore told me when we met days after the election. “A couple months,” retired nurse Maggie Frear said, before saying it might take a couple of years. “He’s just got to follow through with what he said he was going to do,” Schilling said last November. Back then, there was an all-but-audible “or else.”
A year later, the local unemployment rate has ticked down, and activity in a few coal mines has ticked up. Beyond that, though, not much has changed—at least not for the better. Johnstown and the surrounding region are struggling in the same ways and for the same reasons. The drug problem is just as bad. “There’s nothing good in the area,” Schilling said the other day in her living room. “I don’t have anything good to say about anything in this area. It’s sad.” Even so, her backing for Trump is utterly undiminished: “I’m a supporter of him, 100 percent.”…
Johnstown voters do not intend to hold the president accountable for the nonnegotiable pledges he made to them. It’s not that the people who made Trump president have generously moved the goalposts for him. It’s that they have eliminated the goalposts altogether…
Michael Kruse’s story is getting a lot of (well-deserved) attention. But the related story that really depressed me was by Matt Viser, for the Boston Globe — “A year after Trump’s election, York, Pa., is forever changed”:
… Barbara Estep kept texting her daughter, Nylaya Way, who was not responding. Donald Trump had stunned the nation by winning the presidency the night before, and now frightening things were happening at Nylaya’s vocational high school, York County School of Technology.
Racial tensions had been building in the school’s corridors, cafeteria, and parking lot throughout the historically divisive campaign. Then, hours after Trump claimed victory in the election, they boiled over as a group of white students held aloft Trump campaign signs and chanted in a hallway, “White power!’’
A brief video clip of the incident shot across the social media feeds of York Tech students and their parents.
“I just thought it was going to be this big race riot,” Barbara Estep said. “The country-fed boys, they’re hunters. I’m sorry, that’s what I thought. These city kids, they have guns. I thought it was going to be a big shootout.”…
Trump’s election a year ago profoundly altered the United States in ways that continue to reverberate, but perhaps most visibly and disturbingly in how we talk to one another, especially about the hardest things, like the nation’s racial divide. The volume is up; the edge is sharp. Old grievances feel new, and civility is being sorely tested.
Certainly, that’s how it went down in York County along the southern border of Pennsylvania. York went big for Trump in the election, with a 63 to 33 percent margin over Hillary Clinton that helped the billionaire reality TV star capture the state and vault into the White House. Yet, the morning after, Trump’s win seemed less like a victory for democracy — the kind celebrated in high school civics classes — than a trigger for tensions felt across York County and the rest of America…
With its small-city core of York, surrounded by fields and hills that rise from the broad Susquehanna River, the county is politically split between urban and rural; between black or brown and white; between older, settled families and newer immigrants; between Democrats and Republicans…It’s the kind of place where a simple Trump sign or cardboard cutout is seen by some as a show of pride in working-class values, but by others as a racist affront. Since Trump’s election, York residents have been un-friending one another on Facebook, avoiding one another at grocery store checkout lines, and leaving churches whose pews now feel uncomfortable.
Over the course of dozens of interviews here in recent weeks, it was not uncommon for lifelong residents to tear up when speaking about their community and the once-close ties that are now growing frayed…
Outwardly, life in York County and its vocational school seems to have returned to something like normal as students settle into a new school year and Trump’s first year winds down. But the class resentments, racism, and xenophobia that became flashpoints during the election have hardened, not healed…
Politico‘s Johnston is a place where aging white retirees complain about a world “out there” whose inhabitants no longer have time for them or their quaint local ways. The Globe‘s York is a place where high school students and their parents look at the people around them and wonder: Should the American equivalent of the Rwanda Radio broadcasts begin, which of these neighbors and classmates would be Hutus, and which Tutsi?
.
The inestimable Charles P. Pierce, in Esquire, “Trumpism Is A Spell”:
… These people are not reachable. I wish they were. There’s no point in getting angry about it anymore. There’s also no point in wondering why they feel the way they do, why they fell for the snake oil, and why they consistently vote against their own interests, or don’t vote at all. Reading what they told Kruse about where they are a year after voting for Trump is like listening to someone in the throes of a hangover talk about a bar fight they were in the night before.
Ms. Frear’s absolutely right about the steel mills. This is also the case with the coal mines, despite what temporary fixes are coming this year. To recognize futility often is to intensify it. The country of futility is a very real place, and the election of Donald Trump was a landslide there, except that, in the country of futility, the only issue is that nothing can get done, and Trump had that issue locked up all year…
DC should annex NOVA and return the governance of VA to Virginians! The founders intended DC to include all fed employees who are conflicted
— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) November 8, 2017
The follow-up tweet about granting remaining black Virginians, hmmm, like, 3/5 of a vote is going to be ?? https://t.co/9SEnmtIy2j
— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) November 8, 2017
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
He’s one of them, a classless, ignorant asshole. That’s all they want. The think spite is a defensible governing philosophy.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Here’s a Tweet thread from a Bernie volunteer. Very interesting.
Link
Amaranthine RBG
People are busy today so I’ll save everyone from having to comment:
Fuck all these people. They should die in a fire. They’re lazy. These aren’t my people. Economic anxiety my ass. I don’t need to know anything about them. Ha ha ha opioid overdoses.
Democrats should spend all their money on getting the votes from black women. Black women are the GREATEST! Except for Donna Brazil
Major Major Major Major
Glad folks are finally noticing we elected an ambulatory race riot.
Does this mean pierce will stop talking about the sainted white working class?
Ajabu
I’ve got nothing. As a bi-racial West Indian (who had to deal with Mom’s family as a child) my default position on white folks has always been “I assume you’re a closet racist until you prove otherwise” so none of this startles me in any way. But, I have no solution.
The older ones dying off won’t do it. They carefully teach their hatred to the young.
As I said, I’ve got nothing…
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: You forgot Nina Turner, who is also a self-aggrandizing ass. ?
rikyrah
No, they are not reachable.
So, stop writing phucking articles about them.
I’ve seen more articles about Dolt45’s base in this one year, than I did about 44’s base in 8 YEARS.
STOP IT.
Don’t give a shyt about them.
They showed their lack of character when they voted for him.
And, No. Democrats shouldn’t even remotely think about trying to go for their vote.
PHUCK THEM.
Applejinx
Do you not think that if people are straight up dying, and one person says ‘I will save you all and give you jobs and fix everything!’ and the other person says ‘You’re going to straight up die’, and then doubles down and says ‘I’m happy you’re dying, you deserve to die’ while the first person doesn’t do shit to help…
that people will be in really hardcore denial and will just absolutely refuse to side with the one who wants ’em to die and hates them?
Do you not think this is enough to make stubborn, poorly educated, prospect-less Americans consider you their deadly enemy?
The last time this article came up, I watched Balloon Juice posters basically goad each other into genocide. You are inches from wanting to send in the Marines, or nuke the towns until nothing is left alive there. Wouldn’t take a nuke, these places are so bad off that apparently most of the houses aren’t safe to go into if you’re a firefighter: and you fucking have the gall to whine when people claim economic anxiety. (looks like ARBG is being snarky: impossible to tell the difference from real BJers)
I don’t know quite what is happening (though I suspect Moscow is at work trying to make you people look even uglier than you are: who is goading BJers into these attitudes? It’s not a new phenomenon). But I do know this is not an effective way to throw the Republicans out, and it wasn’t a way to win a Presidential election (which should have been a lot easier)
Ajabu
@Amaranthine RBG:
Can’t argue an inalienable truth. You got the completely right! And Donna Brazile has essentially torn up her Black woman card. She’s on her own with the rest of the slavecatchers. Obama’s ego??? Cullud person, please…
Betty Cracker
@Ajabu:
Understandable, and many if not most white folks have a corresponding set of assumptions, as I’m sure you’re acutely aware, since the consequences of those assumptions fall more heavily on people of color in this country through sheer numerical force and power disparities.
But it’s a barrier to progress. How we get past it, I do not know.
rikyrah
Humboldtblue
If you use google as a home page take a look below the doodle and you’ll see a link to donate money to the fire victims in the North Bay and Mendocino county. Google will match up to a million in donations. If you don’t want to interact with google go the North Bay Fire Relief fund, it’s raised 20 million so far. That money is being actively distributed.
Think of the high school and middle school kids who lost not only their school (Cardinal Newman, heavily damaged and closed) but all of their belongings and possessions (some students only returned to school last week and have to commute long distances to do so). Students have received gift cards to help replace lost items and donations of much needed supplies including such basics as notebooks and pens. Thousands are homeless including refugees from hurricane Harvey and a few hundred other people who lost their homes in the Lake county fires in 2015 which were massively damaging as well.
So if you can help, there are two easy ways to do so.
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx:
Wow! When did Hillary say that??
These people don’t read the balloon-juice comment section, dear.
Frankensteinbeck
To be fair, Trump has delivered on his most important promise: Sticking it to minorities. They were sure this would improve their lives materially, but you know, priorities.
Doug R
I’m wondering. That lead in the bloodstream. Most of these trump voters are older, could this be the last of the lead fueled crime wave? I mean, it does mess with brain development.
henrythefifth
There was an article yesterday, can’t remember where, that spoke with some Trump voters in WI. They were dairy farmers. They still support him because they want The Wall built. Meanwhile, the grandmother in the family is going to be facing higher medical bills because of Trump yanking the health care subsidies, and they did blame him for that, but they still supported him. So they support him because of a hypothetical wall that, even if built, will have zero impact on their lives. And they are okay that grandma now has higher health care costs, an immediate financial detriment to the family. Racism. Period.
Frankensteinbeck
@henrythefifth:
Hate often trumps greed, just as love does.
sixthdoctor
Saw a Sam Stein tweet about DNC not supporting Doug Jones so I kicked in again. If Repubs are thrashing in the water, let’s throw them bowling balls (figuratively, of course)…
Scott
These lyrics from South Pacific were written in 1949, almost 70 years ago. Things haven’t changed.
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: That is interesting, not least because it addresses the funding of/by the two primary campaigns.
Villago Delenda Est
@Applejinx: You know, you’re a serious asshole. You’re part of the problem, not part of the solution. These people use economic anxiety as an excuse to be racist assholes, and you and every last Berniebro asshole out there are cool with that.
mai naem mobile
@Doug R: I don’t know if you’re being snarky but wouldn’t all races be affected by lead not just white people.
mad citizen
Speaking of 44, how about a modification of his spot on statement: People cling to their guns, religion, and blowhard reality tv celebrity new york city con man.
Major Major Major Major
@sixthdoctor: OT: did you see the new Doctor’s outfit? Very sixth doctor. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41928500
schrodingers_cat
Isn’t it enough that MSM keeps talking about them all the time? Must we do the same? There is one party that helps the working man and woman and it is not the party the man in the WH is the leader of. One cannot help people who are unwilling to help themselves and who deny the truth.
rikyrah
Lips pursed:
Mayor Keisha? Ethnic Names No Obstacle for Black Candidates
Keisha for Mayor: Ethnic names no obstacle for candidates with 2nd generation of black leaders on the ballot.
Nov. 9, 2017, at 4:13 a.m.
By ERRIN HAINES WHACK, AP National Writer
Atlanta’s next mayor could be a woman named Keisha, and observers are abuzz at the prospect. Atlanta mayoral candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms is the latest in a list of candidates whose ethnic-sounding names aren’t holding them back from seeking office.
Research has shown that black-sounding names could prove an obstacle for candidates applying for jobs or college, but such bias may be less of an issue at the polls. Such names are a striking contrast from those of black political leaders a generation ago, but could carry less of a stigma with black voters with friends and family who are similarly named.
The 1970s era of the “black is beautiful” movement led to a boom in Afrocentric names, and many of those children are now adults working across American society, including politics.
Patricia Kayden
Why are we still worrying about Trump voters? Why is the MSM so obsessed with their every thought and opinion? I don’t give a damn about them. I’m not trying to reach them. They’re racists and I don’t care how racists feel about any dang thing.
Go Mueller!! More indictments, please.
low-tech cyclist
Nitpick: Charles Pierce is estimable, not inestimable.
The former means ‘worthy of esteem’, the latter means ‘too large or numerous to be counted.’
Jeffro
@sixthdoctor: Why only figuratively?
Bouie’s tweet about these folks being addicted to white supremacy is spot-on. That’s all it is, all it ever was. Which is just pathetic…look at the world that awaits them if they give up their hate and move. on.
Yarrow
What I want to see is the series of articles about the black women who voted for Hillary and who were instrumental in Dems winning elections in VA on Tuesday. Get on it, political writers and pundits! Interview those smart women! Let’s find out why they voted so strongly for Hillary and Dems. Let’s find out what their concerns are. Let’s find out what motivates them. Give them the attention they deserve.
randy khan
@Applejinx:
That’s one strange post. (I mean, not even counting the incredible mischaracterization of how the Democrats have approached places facing economic dislocation because of dying industries.)
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Yep.
pat
@henrythefifth:
And I have read of Wisconsin dairy farmers losing reliable, irreplaceable workers because they are afraid of ICE.
sixthdoctor
@Major Major Major Major: Heh, every article I’ve seen includes 50 pics of Robin Williams as Mork…
Citizen Alan
@Applejinx:
They already hate us. They’ve hated us for decades. I suspect every single person interviewed for that article, if forced to tell the truth, would admit that they wouldn’t have the slightest hesitation about sending us to concentration camps. So no, I honestly don’t give a fuck if every single one of them keels over dead of an opioid overdose. And it is telling but one of this blog’s most prominent Bernie Bros would be the first person to act as their apologist.
raven
Read the whole article :
Baud
@low-tech cyclist: But is he flammable or inflammable?
Applejinx
@Villago Delenda Est: We will see whether they are prepared to abandon being racist assholes when given the opportunity to flip and become left-winger socialists in exchange for survival. Nobody, but nobody, is going to help them be racist assholes as rightwingers. Nobody is going to help them that way. You’re not going to help them and the Republicans sure ain’t going to help them and the Nazis ain’t gonna help them. They will have to flip sides (like any good authoritarian or true believer) because the socialists will not put up with their ‘identity’ issues no matter how loudly you claim that socialists love only white male people (a very ridiculous notion)
rikyrah
In Beijing, Trump abandons years of tough talk towards China
11/09/17 08:40 AM—UPDATED 11/09/17 08:52 AM
By Steve Benen
At a bilateral meeting in Beijing this morning, Donald Trump lamented the U.S.-China trade imbalance, but said he blames “past administrations.” In other words, in the American president’s mind, the trade gap is the United States’ fault.
He reiterated the point at a question-free press briefing soon after.
It’s hard to overstate just how dramatic a departure this is from the American president’s previous posturing. ABC News did a nice job rounding up some of Trump’s most notable quotes on China from the campaign, during which he insisted, among other things, that China is “ripping us off,” is an “enemy” of the United States, has perpetrated “the greatest theft in the history of the world,” and prefers to “lie, cheat, and steal in all international dealings.”
At one campaign event in May 2016, Trump went so far as to say, “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing.”
Major Major Major Major
@sixthdoctor: that too, but your username isn’t morkfromork, now is it?
raven
@Applejinx: You are now, and I suspect always have been, a fucking moron.
Big Ole Hound
@henrythefifth: And yet these dairy farmers depend upon immigrant, mostly illegal,help to run the farms. It’s not the actual farm owners who feel like this but the townspeople where the immigrants live.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Villago Delenda Est: Applejinx may or may not be an asshole, but he/she is correct that writing-off nearly half the country as unreachable people who should “die in a fire” (to quote another commenter) isn’t the solution, at least if you’re interested in avoiding an actual civil war.
Many people appear unreachable. I assume that some actually are unreachable. But there are many who aren’t. Look at John Cole – 15 years ago he probably appeared unreachable, but something happened that opened his eyes and ultimately changed his mind. I have my own experience learning that my previous worldview was wrong, and I’ve observed as I’ve tried to persuade others to change their minds. It’s very hard to do so, but it’s not impossible. It just takes a long time, and usually they have to come to the conclusion themselves. It may or may not be with your help, but I haven’t seen anyone change their mind by being told that they’re a racist, ignorant asshole who doesn’t deserve to have his/her vote counted. As much as they may deserve to have that said to them or thought about them, it’s ultimately not a helpful or winning strategy.
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx: this comment makes very little sense semantically, to say nothing of what I’m guessing you actually meant
JR
@Amaranthine RBG: Typically in political coalitions you reward loyalists for their loyalty. That’s how you build a power base.
rikyrah
White House’s Cohn touts ‘trickle-down’ benefits in GOP tax plan
11/09/17 10:12 AM
By Steve Benen
Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council in Donald Trump’s White House, sat down for a very interesting chat with CNBC’s John Harwood this week, and it looks like the president’s top economic adviser ended up saying a few things he probably didn’t intend to say.
As recently as late September, for example, Cohn argued that in the Republican tax plan, which he’s helped write, “Wealthy Americans are not getting a tax cut.” With Harwood, Cohn said something very different.
It’s worth appreciating, just as a matter of political rhetoric, that there are certain phrases that the right has learned to avoid. Advocates of privatizing public education, for example, steer clear of the word “vouchers,” for example, because they’re not popular – so they use pleasant sounding euphemisms such as “school choice” instead.
Similarly, advocates of massive tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations tend to avoid references to “trickle-down” tax policies because most of the public is repulsed by the idea of giving more money to those at the very top and waiting for prosperity to eventually work its way to everyone else.
Yarrow
Open thread? This article caught my eye.
InfoWars is completely happy publishing Russian propaganda. No surprise there. Funny that they just republished it without permission.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Applejinx:
Well, I just give up on those people. The Democrats have spent the last 80 years trying to help those people, and in the last 50, those people have just given up on the Democrats because they (Democrats) have been trying to help minorities and other historically marginalized groups at the same time. These people, as one poster here said a while back, will happily live in a box under a bridge, cooking a sparrow on a stick, as long as those other people don’t have a box, a sparrow or a stick to cook it on. I’d like to help poor, ignorant white people. I’d even like to help poor ignorant racist white people, but, well, if they won’t take that help, I don’t know what else we can do. If they don’t want help, there’s no way to make them take it. They’ve made themselves clear. They’d rather sink in a pool of their own spite than thrive. I don’t know how to reach people like that. I don’t think there is a way to reach them. They’ve written themselves off. Democrats will keep on keeping on trying to help them, but asking for their votes is a waste of time. We’ll do what we can for them in spite of their wishes. But their votes are gone to us. Electorally, they’re irrelevant to Democrats. We can’t waste our time trying to get them to vote for us. They never will.
rikyrah
Paul Ryan makes it plain: ‘We’re with Trump’
11/09/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
…………………………………………….
My concerns about Paul Ryan notwithstanding, he isn’t necessarily wrong.
The “We’re with Trump” line makes for a handy soundbite, but the phrase that stood out for me in the interview was, “We already made that choice.” Whether the Speaker meant it this way or not, Ryan seemed to effectively be conceding, “It’s a little late to change course now.”
And if that is what Ryan meant, he has a credible point. It’s been a year since Trump’s election, and in that time, the Speaker of the House – like the overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans – has gone along with the GOP president’s wishes. Republicans have supported him, defended him, and enabled him at every turn.
The Democratic attack ads, highlighting just how often various GOP members have voted with the Trump White House, are already in the works. Republicans already climbed into the pigpen, and whether they scramble to get out or not, they won’t be able to easily wash off the mud.
schrodingers_cat
@Big Ole Hound: I read somewhere that at least 50% of the agricultural labor is immigrant farm labor. And in some sectors that number can go up to 70%.
Ian G.
Thinking more about that Politico Johnstown piece, it just seems more to me that the whole point of voting Trump for many was to destroy the regions of the country that aren’t anchored to 1950. If New York, San Francisco, etc. are going to be successful in the 21st century and Johnstown isn’t, well, the answer is to destroy New York and San Francisco.
Again, the only word to accurately describe this is fascism, and I’m just glad the people expressing it will be 6 feet under soon enough and that their children have left Johnstown for life in the 21st century.
gene108
@raven:
That’s at the very end of the article. Really puts all the other nonsense in perspective.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never heard Rosalyn Carter’s remark about Reagan, “He made us comfortable with our prejudices”, until long after the Gipper was gone– Rush Limbaugh brought it up in a screaming orgy of defensiveness. But what trump has done is exponentially worse, he’s made people proud of their hatred. It always drove me crazy when his supporters would take about “political correctness” and none of the nice white children from MSNBC would ask what they meant. I thought I knew what they meant, I wanted to see them try to explain it out loud. I underestimated how hateful they were. Also how far and deep it had spread in a younger generation.
also, I didn’t think Applejacks could get dumber and less coherent, but here we are.
Humboldtblue
@Applejinx:
Fuck off. Democratic policies when it comes to education, employment and career training, minimum wage, health care, child care and a thousand other bread and butter issues are very popular and they remain very popular. When the fuck are you going to ask that racist c#nt quoted in the article when the fuck she’s going to do something to make her world and her community a better place?
When the fuck are you going to look at the vile, nasty, proudly open racists in this country like those profiled in the article and ask them to change because they are vile shitty people? When the fuck are you going to hold them accountable for the fact that instead of furthering their education and engaging in civic and local political life to, I don’t know, access state and federal grant funding for housing and education and training and a thousand other fucking areas they could?
I live in an area far more rural and far more distanced from any major metropolis than these wannabe klansmen and I see that shit every day.
Lack of skilled doctors, nurses, and most crucially mental health care experts? Check.
High rates of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse? Check.
Lack of affordable housing, serious mental health crisis and loss of key industries that provided career-long well paid and benefited jobs? Check.
You know what the fuck else we have? A Few thousand engaged, industrious and involved people who go out into this county every day to feed, clothe, shelter and educate because they work their asses off to get the funding needed to do a job that small, local governments are just not equipped to do. I didn’t make myself an enemy of that fucking silly bitch quoted in the article, she othered me and a few million other white folks who recognize human dignity in all of our neighbors, not just the white ones who go to a particular church. I didn’t make that bitch a fucking ignorant racist and I sure as shit didn’t support policies or people who would actively make her life worse.
Now take your keen penetrating questions and go ask the fucking dipshits why they are so fucking ignorant, so fucking ill-educated and so fucking stupid that they voted for a con man bought and paid for by the Russians. We’re busy over here making our fucking community a better place.
Applejinx
@Citizen Alan: They will have to change or die. Not so surprising.
And are you really surprised that Politico takes pains to find the most ‘colorful’ opinions to run as an article? And are you really so quick to assume that (a) these are sincere expressions rather than attitude, and (b) that this represents rural America as a whole?
This is what we used to see out of Free Republic. I guess it’s a human condition because Balloon Juice (more often than not) is sure capable of behaving exactly the same way, right down to wanting their undesirables exterminated.
Fuckin’ send in food trucks but they’re all Mexican taco trucks, and architects to rebuild the ruined housing but all the architects are black. See how long those ‘sincere’ racist attitudes hold up. People are malleable and will act any way you want if you promise to bail their asses out of a jam.
Oh, and nobody in Silicon Valley wants old untrained would-be code monkeys. That’s what H1B visas are for.
rikyrah
Folks….
DA PHUQ?
DA EVERLOVING PHUQ?
How to win like (Bill) Clinton
Rahm Emanuel
Bruce Reed
He understood that ideas are the most underrated weapon in politics and the best chance a party has to change minds.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-win-like-bill-clinton/2017/11/08/2da6ca60-c4bc-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html?utm_term=.3411eb992e25&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
Starfish
Recently, someone brought to my attention, this excerpt of a book written by Richard Rorty in 1998.
laura
@Humboldtblue: Thank you HB. We’re driving to Windsor on Saturday to see dad who’s a mile north of the evacuation zone. We’ll stop in at the credit union and make a donation. On my last trip Hwy. 12 was still closed and so I’m bracing for a gut check.
Seaboogie -you’ve been on my mind. I hope that you’re doing well. (((((Hug))))
Major Major Major Major
@Jonny Scrum-half: I don’t have to respond to the arguments of incoherent assholes even if they do “have a point”. Now, I do think that not all of them are unreachable, and I know that elections are won on the margins, and that needlessly alienating people is bad politics not to mention kind of dumb in general even if it feels good. I also know that the voters in question don’t read balloon-juice and that our politicians don’t tell them to die in fires.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@rikyrah:
Yeah, well, the president is a gutless chickenshit. He talks big and tough when he’s on the other side of the world, but as soon as he’s looking these people in the eye, he’s kissing their asses. I only pray he never meets Kim Jong Un face to face. He’d end up handing our whole nuclear arsenal over to him. If Trump had been president in 1972, and he’d been the one to go to China, we’d all be speaking Mandarin right now.
Baud
@pat:
I was randomly researching ICE the other day, and came across this nugget.
rikyrah
THESE DEATHS WERE ABSOLUTELY PREVENTABLE!!!
DON’T FORGET THE 900+ BODIES THAT WERE CREMATED, but somehow DON’T GET PUT IN THE OFFICIAL DEATH TOTAL!
DA PHUQ?
New leptospirosis deaths recorded in Puerto Rico
11/08/17 07:06 PM—UPDATED 11/08/17 07:09 PM
The federal disaster response in Puerto Rico is now in its eighth week, and reporters have continued to question the official count of people who died as a result of Hurricane Maria. The official count has been under intense scrutiny since Buzzfeed reported last month that government officials, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, approved the cremation of 911 bodies, none of which were reflected in the official death toll. Those people were all judged to have died of natural causes having nothing to do with the storm, despite the fact that Puerto Rico’s medical examiner reviewed only medical records, not the bodies themselves.
Now the Associated Press reports that the average number of deaths each day in Puerto Rico rose sharply after the storm. From AP’s report:
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m pretty sure Hillary said something to that effect.
Citizen Alan
@Applejinx:
Oh my fucking Christ, Are you seriously suggesting that people being interviewed for a news article might not genuinely be racist but simply willing to act that way and be quoted that way for “attitude?”
Well, we agree on one thing at least.
Bobby Thomson
@Doug R: did you not read about York High School?
Humboldtblue
@Jonny Scrum-half:
They’re not half of the fucking country. These people are barely a quarter of the country. Stop pretending there is a 50-50 split, there isn’t. There are millions more registered Democrats than Republicans and even then only half the eligible electorate votes consistently so these assholes are about half of a half and the only reason they still matter is because of GOP gerrymandering. How many fucking times must Democrats tell people here are the programs and policies we support and want to enact that will hep the vast majority of Americans only to see these assholes take a shit on the ballot and simply out of spite, vote against their own interests?
When you can get these silly, stupid motherfuckers to actually engage honestly with themselves, then you can come the fuck over here and scold us for being too “mean.”
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/8/17
Democratic wave brings new faces into politics
Rachel Maddow reviews the sweep of Democratic election victories and points out how the diversity of the Democratic candidates in brought significant change to Virginia politics, even as gerrymandering tempered the overall outcome.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): You’re not wrong. The people who voted for Trump are basically the same as those who voted for Wallace in 1968. And you can certainly blame them for their opinions – they don’t have to look for racial or religious scapegoats, but they often do.
However, I’d like to suggest another way to look at this. Many of the Trump voters have been led into that viewpoint by a decades-long propaganda campaign to de-legitimize Democrats. Instead of people trying to find ways to work-through cultural differences, the right has used them as wedge issues to bring the WWC into the Republican fold. It’s fair to say that many of the WWC were more than willing to be led in that way, but it’s also fair I think to say that maybe we should find a way to push back against that propaganda in a manner that changes at least some people’s minds.
Major Major Major Major
@Starfish: that book is super weird and cranky. He slams contemporary sci-fi for not offering puffed-up hope about the future like it did in the 50’s and 60’s, which is not only cherry picking but neglects the fact that sci-fi is a reflection of contemporary attitudes, not a shaper of one. And the whole third about history is just strange.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/8/17
Icahn subpoenaed over market actions while advising Trump
Rachel Maddow reports that federal prosecutors have sent a subpoena to the company of Donald Trump’s former special advisor on regulatory affairs, Carl Icahn, to look at what Icahn was doing in the markets while advising Trump on matters that would affect the market.
Applejinx
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Bullshit. Ever since the first (apparently the only?) Clinton, Democrats have pursued a full-globalization path that has fucked ’em completely. Hillary was on the BOARD of Wal-Mart. All those Wal-Marts are going away now that they have devoured the towns they fed on, and Third Way Dems see only the GDP and the value of their precious stock portfolios and persistently confuse the ‘economy’ of the stock market with conditions on the ground pretty much everywhere in America.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Democrats have done everything they could to try and outflank rightwing criticism by ‘reforming’ what was once the welfare state, beginning when that state too obviously tried to include black Americans. Living Americans do not see Democrats as their allies. If they have any sense at all they see Republicans as their enemies, which is not the same thing.
different-church-lady
@Applejinx:
Cart. Horse. Order of above. All that all that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Somebody made a prediction about the number of announced R retirements from the House post-VA, wish I could remember who, and how many
Starfish
@rikyrah: Rahm wants to get a room with Bill Clinton so they can jam out to this song like it is 1992.
Humboldtblue
@laura:
Have a great trip. Be prepared for some scorched earth, literally.
Amaranthine RBG
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah let’s return to the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s when (with a few exceptions) West Virginia voted reliably democrat
Back then there were no racists or sexists in WV!
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Pro tip: expecting people who say that “NFL” stands for “Niggers For Life” to become socialists is like betting your life savings on a racehorse with three legs.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/8/17
Trump sends CIA director to meet DNC hack conspiracy theorist
Rachel Maddow relays reports that Donald Trump sent CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with William Binney, frequent guest on Russia’s RT network and Alex Jones’ Infowars, and author of a DNC hack conspiracy theory that would appeal to Trump.
Ian G.
@Citizen Alan:
If only Paul Kagame had sent the Tutsi equivalent of taco trucks into Kigali, I’m sure the Rwandan genocide could have been averted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
where she made SPEECHES! no doubt
Jonny Scrum-half
@Major Major Major Major: I guess that’s fair enough. But I’ll tell you that I read conservative blogs and draw conclusions from the comments there. I’m just not sure that I see that anything productive comes from saying that people should die, or fuck them all, or whatever.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Man, you sure are pissed that Black women flipped the election in VA, aren’t you?
A majority of white voters went for Gillespie, and it was only the votes of Democrats of color that saved your ass and made it a landslide. And instead of accepting that and being grateful, you insist on biting the hand that just fed you.
gene108
@rikyrah:
The government’s been rigged, by not increasing the number of Reps in the House, to overly favor these people. You want to control government, you will need them to vote for you.
Plus there’s the whole two Senators for each state, so despite 2/3’s of the country being packed along the costs, we are set-up to give the “heartland” a bigger say in how things are done.
I wish we could ignore them.
Mnemosyne
Can I please be released from moderation for using the bad S word?
GregB
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Never order the Bob Goodlatte at Starbucks. It tastes, like oil, tobacco and white supremacy.
Good riddance.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Excellent news! Goodlatte is one of the most despicable of the bunch.
Chet Murthy
@Villago Delenda Est: Give it up, dawg. Cleek’s filter is your friend. Applejinx aka Boris is just a Russkie tool, and there’s nothing to be done about him.
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker: yeah her and Amarosa Manicotti (whatevs). I’m pulling their black woman card!
Jonny Scrum-half
@Humboldtblue: You may be right that the Trump voters were only a quarter of the population, but they were pretty close to 50% of the voters in 2016, and they’re also close to 50% or more of the voters in most states.
And I’m not scolding anyone for being “too mean.” I’m trying to suggest that there are productive ways to approach issues and non-productive ways. If someone feels the need to vent their frustration by making emotional comments on a blog, I guess that’s not the worst thing in the world. But it’s not particularly productive.
different-church-lady
@Jonny Scrum-half:
I seem to remember a certain presidential candidate saying something very very much like this.
She got thumped around the block for it. Then she didn’t get to be president.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 11/8/17
Pompeo could use CIA against Mueller probe as a favor to Trump
Ned Price, former spokesman for the National Security Council, talks with Rachel Maddow about the dangers inherent in CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s allegiance to Donald Trump and his potential threat to the Mueller investigation.
Yarrow
@Applejinx:
I did not know we were now dividing Americans into Living Americans and…what’s the opposite? Non-Living Americans? Zombie Americans? Are they dependable voters? What are their concerns? I’m thinking healthcare may not be on the top of their list. But I could be wrong!
SFAW
@Applejinx:
Your comments never disappoint. I wish I meant that in a good way, but I don’t.
And that’s without even getting into your inability to write in non-gibberish.
MJS
@Jonny Scrum-half: Key phrase- “It takes a long time.” This country doesn’t have “a long time.” Nor are there unlimited resources to devote to educating the stupid on how stupid their positions are. With finite resources, where the choice is between rewarding and motivating the base, and fighting voter suppression, or pointing out to racists the damage their positions do to themselves and others, I’m going to have to go with motivating, rewarding, and fighting.
Applejinx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She wanted to see more women represented in the Wal-Mart leadership, and pushed for more sustainable environmental practices. Their rabid anti-union stance did not seemingly bother her at all, and it didn’t worry her one bit that the whole company devours and destroys small American towns.
Yay her personal issues I guess, but yes, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate spent years serving on the board of the corporation that’s the poster child for destroying American towns and small business, and was proud to do so.
That is not good. That did not help.
Amaranthine RBG
@Applejinx:
Plus which she is a white woman and most of them voted for Trump
White women like Hillary Clinton are why Trump won!
different-church-lady
@Applejinx:
Oh you poor naive dear…
JPL
@raven: What ever happened to he appealed to their economic anxiety. It’s going take a long time for me to see NFL, and not remember his statement.
gene108
@Applejinx:
1. No Democratic candidate has told them to DIAF.
2. Obama put a lot of effort into revitalizing these areas of the country.
3. Obama gave them fucking healthcare access that they wouldn’t have had before.
4. Hillary had actual plans to move them off of coal mining and into businesses that have a future.
5. Republican policies have made and will continue make their lot worse.
Yet they keep voting Republican.
As a supporter of Democrats, why do we bother trying to help these knuckledraggers? They vote Republican because they are racist and Republicans appeal to their sense of white superiority.
At some point, why should I spend my time helping someone, who’d be more than happy to deport my brown butt out of this country? At best.
Where were they 30-40 years ago when metropolitan areas across this country were going to hell due to high crime and heroin/crack epidemics, and flight to the suburbs? They weren’t the compassionate people, who wanted to offer treatment options for non-violent drug offenders. These are the folks, who voted in politicians that promised mandatory sentencing guidelines.
These people do not want to change. They are happy the way they are.
SFAW
@Yarrow:
Beauteous.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: Has Major x4 put together a submission form for Comment of The Year?
Starfish
@Applejinx: And companies like Wal-Mart that paid numerous employees and local sales taxes are being replaced by companies like Amazon that are not held down by physical spaces and do not necessarily pay local sales taxes.
Baud
@Yarrow:
Death tax. Duh.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Also, it mischaracterizes science fiction of the 50s and 60s. At the time, there were a lot of complaints that the genre was too obsessed with nuclear armageddon. It often made excessively rosy predictions about space travel, but it wasn’t rosy in general. Even the movies were full of sinister alien invasions that reflected simmering anxiety about the Cold War, spies and subversives, etc.
I think people confuse what was going on in SF with nonfiction futurism driven by corporate propaganda: the Space-Age Disney Tomorrowland kind of stuff, which really was huge in that era. And there’s an assumption that media stuff like Star Trek or The Jetsons was typical, when the rest of the genre was very different.
JPL
@rikyrah: The current mayor is named Kasim. just sayin
debit
@Applejinx: You are special in the head, aren’t you?
Amaranthine RBG
@gene108: quick question here: back when WV was a reliably democratic state on most elections between 1960-2000, do you think that there were fewer racist, sexist assholes in WV?
Major Major Major Major
Wow, lotta pie now that I added back Applejinx. (I think I had them pied some time ago, or maybe on a different computer.)
Betty Cracker
@Jonny Scrum-half:
I suspect the majority of commenters here also engage in political activism of some type on their own time. I know I do. Voter registration is my thing. Still, it’s nice to have a place to chat with like-minded folks and even vent sometimes — a lot, even! If only Balloon Juice weren’t so often mistaken for the official Democratic Party White Working Class Outreach and Genocide Center.
Amir Khalid
If someone these people knew personally broke all his promises to them, was utterly indifferent to their concerns, and was plainly working against their best interests, they would rightly consider him an enemy. I understand that they cling to Trump anyway because he validates their prejudices, which to them are deeply-held convictions that the liberal elite have disparaged for as long as they can remember. But that is surely not all of it. I would like to ask them a simple question: If you never expected this man to stand up for you like a President should, why the fuck did you vote for him?
Humboldtblue
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Go ahead motherfucker, start a reach out to these people, go right the fuck ahead. Start with that racist c#nt — she’s retired at 60 mind you, meaning she must have had a nice fucking government job — reach out to that c#nt and ask her how fucking far the blacks and Mexicans should bow down when she walks by. She isn’t interested in your fucking social programs and your career tech, she’s a fucking klansmen who wants to see anyone she deems lesser (particularly the niggers and those goddamn illegals) be punished. But go pay her a visit anyway, I’m sure she’s a fucking intellectual giant with plenty of smart and sound ideas on how to get her fucking grandkids off the synthetic heroin they got hooked on when they first stole her prescription pain killers and then needed a stronger fix. I’m sure that nasty bitch has plenty of ideas on how to fix the country’s ills.
You do it.
I have no time for the bitch, she’s an enemy and as far as I am concerned, a fucking traitor.
different-church-lady
@gene108:
Compassion.
We’re conflating two different things here. Democrats are going to continue to try to better the lives of ALL people. What we have to do is drop the idea that they’re ever going to respond to that by voting for Democrats. It just… isn’t… going… to… happen. So reject the demands that they be pandered to and go about your mission without expecting reward for it.
geg6
@Applejinx:
Oh fuck off. These are my people, in that I grew up in and still live very close to and in a similar place as these racist mother fuckers and they sound like almost all of my neighbors. So they are my people. I know them intimately. And I say fuck them, they are not worth our time or effort to cultivate. They are never voting for a Democrat and most of them haven’t for a couple of decades. The only reason Johnstown and Cambria County went over to the dark side later than my own Beaver County is that they had John Murtha propping their ignorant, lazy asses up. Our own “John Murtha,” Gene Atkinson, decided he’d turn from Democrat to Republican back in the Reagan administration because he was an idiot who thought Reagan’s trickle down was the bomb and who was flattered to get a phone call from Reagan from his hospital bed after being shot. This, from a guy who had supported and received support from Carter and Kennedy. And a lot of my father’s fellow steelworkers went along with him, if not immediately, very soon after. Not because they liked the economics, which was actually killing them, but because of the whole welfare queen/Philadelphia, MS garbage. I lived it and I live with these people all around me. They are worthless, disgusting choads. I despise them and have no desire to be on any side with them. Now, do I want to implement policies that will help them? Yes, I do. The fact that they can’t reciprocate is just another sign of what despicable people they are. They actually want me to DIAF when I only feel that way about them metaphorically.
dogwood
@Applejinx:
Small town Americans love Walmart and don’t give a damn about its effect on local small retailers.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: I guarantee your desperately ignorant excuse-making wishful-thinking ass that everyone quoted in all of these articles about despondent white jerkoffs loves Walmart more than anything and spends more time there than anywhere but their couch with the TV on. They don’t want to be socíalists. They don’t hate brands and corporations. They love brands and corporations. What they hate is people like you. But you cling to them anyway. You should be embarrassed by now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Infrequent commenter has Concerns about tone, and opportunistic troll is singing in harmony with earnest (I think) and batshit crazy (I know) crank.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: It’s almost like Trump was a final test to see if the brain-washing really took.
Applejinx
Also: look over the last year of Balloon Juice posts. This in this thread here, is mostly because I already saw one Balloon Juice thread seize on that Politico article as an excuse to wish myriad kinds of death on those miserable, doomed steel-town people. I saw people literally rejoicing to see it, wishing for even more horrible vengeance on those people for being fools enough to support Trump. Chalk it up to bravado? Oh fuck no, those people needed to be KILLED, they were clearly evil to the core. Send more fentanyl.
This in an article that’s obviously trying to lampshade the phenomenon, about a place that is ECONOMICALLY OBLITERATED in a way nobody sane would deny, with copious references to just how destroyed the place is. But OH FUCK NO, their conditions apparently came OUT of them being EEEVIL at heart. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with American economic policy over countless decades. If Democrats are so good at helping Americans, where the fuck were you when all this was setting up?
I’d rather be lurking, but what BJ did with this article in an earlier thread was already upsetting and disgusting. A whole thread dedicated to using this article to say that these horrible, untermenschen sinful people are purely and only racists and their economic position has nothing the fuck to do with it, in spite of what the article itself outlines? Fuck, my OWN town isn’t as bad off as that, with all the ‘X is for let it burn’ signs on blighted buildings.
Don’t run BJ posts specifically for the purpose of getting posters to want to exterminate rural Americans. It’s fucked up.
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
So what was your reaction to the NFL “joke”? A sensible chuckle or hearty guffaws?
sherparick
@Citizen Alan: They certainly hate Black football players. Apparently, this has what gotten them fired up the last year as rural Western Pennsylvania loves (or at least once did) love football. All the Black players kneeling at while the National Anthem is played apparently most of the players in the NFL are Black and that has spoiled their fun.
I drive through this area, Washington and Green Counties driving between Virginia and Ohio to visit family. On the Interstate there is a memorial to Robena mine disaster. http://triblive.com/state/pennsylvania/3026463-74/mine-safety-robena-miners-county-greene-health-steel-scarton-disaster
The area is appears more and more depopulated, an area in decline. We are all human, and humans are tribal, and what is happening in Johnstown and Washington County and Greene County is tribalism. 50 years ago, strong unions like the UMW and USW gave people a sense of identity and sense of solidarity with larger social movements, and working people regardless of race. But those unions are now shadows of their former selves and the people in these nearly all white communities have gravitated to their churches, their local reactionaries in the wealthy gentry, and themselves against an outside world that regards them, like the Black residents in the Baltimore and Pittsburgh, they are in the 21st Century Capitalist System “surplus people” and a “surplus area.” Its both an addiction to “white supremacy” (as well as opioids) and a 40 year process of economic dislocation and decline.
I always think David Simon put best in describing his drama “The Wire.” “What am I doing here?” You know, a guy coming out of addiction at thirty, thirty-five, because it often takes to that age, he often got into addiction with a string of problems, some of which were interpersonal and personal, and some of which were systemic. These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn’t need them—we don’t need 10 or 15 percent of our population….” The tragedy is that these people and their communities are in the same situation as their Black and Brown brothers and sisters, who the despise.
debit
@Humboldtblue: I don’t disagree, and don’t have a problem with your description of that hateful old woman, but Betty has asked us not to use that word. Just FYI.
different-church-lady
@Applejinx:
Well, we have that much in common…
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Is that in the same mall as this?
Applejinx
@Baud: OK, thread won…
Humboldtblue
@Applejinx:
Oh fuck off already you incoherent fuckwhistle.
Seanly
@Amaranthine RBG:
That’s becoming my response to these type of pieces.
To quote Montgomery Burns: “This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you.”
burnspbesq
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Think of it strictly in ROI terms. We can throw resources at trying to convert people who tell us, over and over, that they are unreachable. Or we can throw resources into voting rights litigation, getting our people registered, and getting them to the polls, with a high degree of confidence that we outnumber them and they only win if we don’t show up.
Seems like a pretty straight-forward call.
JPL
@Applejinx: The only folks who want to exterminate others are rural Americans.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: They’re so economically devastated that it’s making them… complain unprovoked about black football players.
Yarrow
@Applejinx:
Can you point out the exact points in the original post that do this? Please highlight the “specifically for the purpose” sections. I’m unclear on which parts those are.
Amaranthine RBG
@debit:
It’s probably okay when referring to working class whites who voted for Trump just like calling a black woman a “slave catcher” or a “sapphic house negress” is bad, except when referring to Donna Brazil.
geg6
@Humboldtblue:
Yes, this. I sign on to every word.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chyron HR: “WalMart made him do it, so it’s Hillary’s fault”
Humboldtblue
@debit:
Thanks for the tip. I’ll never do so again.
FlipYrWhig
Shorter every Applejinx post: “Do you even Vermont, bro?”
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
I will put this into very simple terms that I know you will understand:
You are an enabler. Your friends and family and mainlining Trump hatred, and you’re making excuses for them and lashing out at anyone who points out their bad behavior.
You need the political equivalent of Al-Anon so you can examine your behavior and see the many ways that your insistence that Republicans and Democrats are exactly the same is enabling them to remain addicted to white supremacy and hatred.
Stop enabling them.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Also, ignore that he actually loves Walmart.”
different-church-lady
I’m sure if we here on this sub-10K blog would just cease our frustrated rhetorical violence the people featured in this article would come around, yes, I’m quite certain of it.
debit
@Amaranthine RBG: Are you implying that someone here used either of those terms?
The Moar You Know
.
@Doug R: There’s nothing physically or mentally wrong with these people. They’re just assholes.
(There’s one and only one specific thing I remember any of my college professors saying, it was from my abnormal psych prof, and it was this: “there is no diagnosis for asshole”. Best advice I was ever given in school.)
burnspbesq
@Applejinx:
AFAIK, no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to come here and be the self-appointed conscience of the blog. Consider your options.
DHD
The thing about this article that really made my jaw drop:
Listen closely and you can hear the sound of literally everybody else in the known universe rolling on the floor laughing (or crying, or both) at the idea that 5.2 percent unemployment is some kind of unimaginable economic catastrophe that merits the election of an incompetent racist.
Oh, and there was this, too:
Economic anxiety my ass. Can you imagine the spin that quote would get if this weren’t about white people?
Amaranthine RBG
@debit:
slave catcher today and sapphic house negress yesterday
Not a fucking peep from anyone about it either
Applejinx
@Chyron HR: Reaction: fuck that, they’re going to have to get over it.
Right wingers are simply not going to help them. They can go with Third Way Democrats who are going to starve them to get them to relocate and will then fling them into the maw of a capitalism blast furnace without regard for color, gender, orientation etc. where they can compete against immigrant gay trans young migrant workers of all colors on an ‘even playing field’ where money is the ONLY advantage, or they can flip political alignment completely and side with democratic socialists who intend to undermine all of free-market capitalism… without regard for color, gender, orientation etc.
There is no place they can possibly get help that will allow them to be racist fucks. What are they going to do, eat memes from 4chan? Are they going to pay their rent with rare Pepes? The racist right are not even pretending to support people’s material conditions, and we should all thank fuck for that. If they got that together they’d be dangerous: centrist Dems have the money but spend it all on consultants, and leftists don’t have nearly as much money. What we don’t need is a well-funded racist populist movement actually trying to help people survive.
debit
@Amaranthine RBG: Can you provide links?
Yarrow
@DHD: Yeah, those bits caught my eye too when I read the article yesterday. I think he says people who are trained leave the area. Why is that? Are wages not high enough?
different-church-lady
@Applejinx: You dumb fuck: they will take any aid they can find from any source and STILL VOTE REPUBLICAN AFTERWARDS. JESUS.
The Moar You Know
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: The batsignal has been sent and they are here! 140+ comments on the thread at this point and over 80% of them are from or replies to the Moscow-based Bernie troll brigade.
Hell of a system you guys have, gotta give you that.
different-church-lady
@Yarrow:
Maybe they don’t want to be around assholes.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Psst. Your misogyny is showing again. I know you’re angry that women think they should be treated as equals when they’re so clearly inferior to you, but you really need to hide that a little better if you’re going to pretend to want to be an ally.
And, seriously, you need to seek professional help for your misogyny. I don’t know if Hillary reminds you of your abusive mother or grandmother or what, but you are projecting a whole lot of shit onto her that just isn’t there.
Betty Cracker
@Humboldtblue: Please, no c-word. I understand what you’re saying, and my own sainted mother used it occasionally to add vehemence to a pronouncement. But I’ve seen it used too often and viciously to silence and bully women online lately, so if you could employ another term in the future, I’d appreciate it. “Ignorant, racist shitpile” might work.
dogwood
@debit:
Those terms have been used here, yes.
Amaranthine RBG
Here’s the slavecatcher one from unthread: @Ajabu:
Humboldtblue
@Betty Cracker: I just asked you in the top thread to remove it for me. Please edit away!
Applejinx
@Mnemosyne: Everyone in my family and pretty much all my friends voted Hillary, including myself. Knowing all that we know, we did it anyway, because the consequences were dire.
I worked in New Hampshire, one of many, many places where the Clinton campaign did not send canvassers to rural towns or make any attempt to even speak to voters who weren’t ‘virtuous aspirational city dwellers’. They did not fucking even send people to places when that was the whole point of campaigning. We had all the data, we had VoteBuilder, and Clinton’s people didn’t even want to ASK rural voters for their vote. Same with Wisconsin and so on.
I’m in a town like that in Vermont, which is not a city center. I and most everybody I know voted for Clinton IN SPITE of them not doing a bloody damn thing to ask for it.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: I always think of the end of the Simpsons episode where Bart gets the elephant. The trainer says that the elephant’s violent and antisocial behavior is because it’s cooped up in a human environment. As they release it into the elephant preserve, he explains that animals act out when they aren’t treated right and don’t have access to the right environment and other animals of their kind. Then the elephant starts running around head butting the other elephants, and the trainer says, “and some animals are just jerks.”
dogwood
@Humboldtblue:
Thanks. I stopped reading the comment at first sight of that word.
The Moar You Know
@Starfish: That’s truly impressive. He had a comprehensive view of the problem(s) and the outcome. My fear is, this isn’t the end of said outcome, but the beginning.
gwangung
I’m all for pursuing policies that help the hard core racists (and let’s not beat around the bush; that’s what they are).
I’m all for leaving the door open.
I sure as hell ain’t gonna bend over backwards and pursue them. That’s a slap in the face to your current core. And frankly, I think current policy trends toward that. Screw that. Center your core supporters: black women. Other POCs. White educated liberals Reward them, and THEN chase after the margins.
debit
@dogwood:
@Amaranthine RBG:
That’s just sickening.
ETA: and I’m ashamed that my eyes just skipped right over it without registering it.
Applejinx
@DHD:
Given that the town is described as a decaying shithole in which many of the buildings have a special sign they came up with, which says ‘if this building is on fire let it burn as it’s too blighted to risk entering’, do you not think this unemployment figure is intentionally misleading?
Property is PROPERTY. In any functioning economic system, people who own land and property will maintain the value of it IF they can. You are totally mad if you think you can ignore a metric like that, cite some kind of ‘unemployment figure’ that most likely intentionally omits large numbers of people, and not be called on it. It’s epistemic closure talking.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Yup, this is exactly what they do. They are the true welfare queens. They lap up SS disability, SS, Medicare and Medicaid. They fight against all taxes they might have to pay but are happy to have everyone else carrying their asses through our taxes. They happily use their EBT cards. They will take every handout they can put their greedy hands on. All the while complaining about the laziness and greed of the blacks and browns. They are horrible people. I used to be able to live here and ignore their shit. I can’t any more. I don’t go out anywhere I might run into them and have to socialize. We quit our club (not that kind of club) and quit going to our neighborhood pub. Because I just can’t stomach them and refuse to not speak up any more. And that causes problems, like the 200 pound pig who wanted to take me outside and give me what my man obviously was too pu$$y whupped to give me. Yeah, these people are the salt of the earth and if we just are nice to them, they’ll love us. Nope. Fuck them. If the policies I support help them, fine. But I wouldn’t piss on any them if they were on fire.
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: Because a black man won the presidency and had the ability to tell them what to do.
Not being snarky. That’s really why.
Jonny Scrum-half
@different-church-lady: You’re right. She got a bad rap for saying the truth. More evidence of how right-wing propaganda drives our discourse. (Similarly, Obama accurately described the issue with his “clinging to guns and religion” remark, but that statement was somehow made out to be an “attack” on the WWC.)
Jonny Scrum-half
@MJS: Sounds productive to me.
gvg
@Jonny Scrum-half: Yes but I don’t think it helps either for them to read or hear about too darn many articles which are too flattering to the “white working class” it makes them feel too validated.
My point is I want pushback on the political meme “real America”. These people need to be told, we are just as American as you are, tolerance is a big part of why this country has been successful, more american’s live in cities than the country and we have needs too. Your self worship is not really fact based as we pay more taxes that go to you than vice versa. Especially push people vote not acres and all those pictures you see showing what areas are red versus blue are fooling you by flattering you. It gets me wound up the way they keep putting ME down and I’m white with ancestors going back to the Mayflower supposedly.
That’s another thing about the anger against the Trump voter. This radical break out is threatening. fear causes anger. That’s why we are talking so vicious about them. They are acting like bullies and thugs, criminals, towards us. We are likely to react by enacting tough on crime legislation with them being the criminals. threaten to kill people and don’t be surprised if you get arrested. Lots of things some of them have done already should have caused arrests.
no comment
@Doug R: Hal Sparks has a theory about gun ranges & lead poisoning. His theory is that using ammo with lead in poorly ventilated gun ranges is causing lead poisoning as they breathe in the lead dust or it seeps into the skin. If they don’t shower or change clothes after shooting, they bring this lead dust home to their families.
Apparently many states have very few regulations on gun ranges. The states that require inspections on gun ranges tend to find a lot of violations, ventilation rules being some of them.
While I see leading poisoning due to guns as something we should work to fix, I think the issues of the people in these articles mostly are not due to lead. They were raised with different values. Racism was okay. Most of these people are isolated in small towns where everyone else was raised the same way. People who didn’t agree with those values moved away as soon as possible. And besides the isolation due to where they live, there is the purposeful isolation where they only watch Fox News & dismiss news from other sources as “fake.”
There are Republicans we can reach, but the ones who hate others for being different from them, the ones who purposefully isolate themselves, those people are unreachable.
Villago Delenda Est
@Applejinx: You and your vile kind emphasize with their racism. Everything they say about ni*CLANGS* is projection. EVERYTHING.
Bernie. The NRA’s best friend in Vermont. Allied with the merchants of death.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No, Mr Neo-Liberal, property is THEFT!
Jonny Scrum-half
@Betty Cracker: I get it, and I don’t want to be accused of being a “concern troll.” Maybe I’m unfairly interpreting venting as emotions that are carried-over into real life.
different-church-lady
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Doesn’t seem unfair — it’s a very thin line for some people, as we’ve seen all too clearly all too recently, all too frequently.
Applejinx
@geg6: And they don’t count as unemployed while they’re doing that, DO they?
What is the real unemployment numbers for these places if those people are counted as being unemployed?
And yeah, they sound pretty shitty, I won’t lie. I’m not sure I’m ready to send in the Marines, but people do need to shape the fuck up. It gives some much-needed context to know that you have to put up with that sort of crap. I don’t, not nearly so much. In my circles of very poor people I can’t think of any situation where anybody racist, sexist, antigay or any of that, felt emboldened to mouth off about it. I might know people like that, but it seems in Southern Vermont one doesn’t say such things in public.
I hope eventually where you live, you can say the same.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Humboldtblue: I actually have relatives and friends who are in some ways similar to the “racist cunt.” They are racist, for sure. But they’re also intelligent, thoughtful, generous people. Some can be reached (one recently has changed her mind and says that she’s embarrassed to be a Republican); some probably not. People are complicated.
DHD
@Applejinx: What’s the unemployment rate in, say, Wilkinsburg, or Alequippa, or Braddock? How about North Philadelphia?
I’m going to guess it’s a lot higher than 5.2 percent.
But really, if you don’t believe in objective assessments of economic reality, there’s no sense in arguing.
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: I’m sure he is paying at a scale commensurate with what your average pilled-up high school dropout earns and not one dime more.
But I’ll pretend for a second that’s not the case. If you were young, not addicted to heroin, educated decently, why the hell would you stay in a shithole like that? There is NOTHING there for you. Hell, my eight-year old nephew in Ohio (and not a shitty part of Ohio, either) calls the state “dum-dum Ohio” and told both my wife and I he could wait to turn 18 “so I can leave this place forever”. His parents were not pleased. They should turn off the TV if they want him to stop aspiring to something decent.
msdc
@Applejinx:
Yeah, why DIDN’T Clinton expend any of her precious campaign resources on voters in Vermont?!?!?
Major Major Major Major
@Jonny Scrum-half: it’s just that we get a lot of concern trolls here, especially in the form of names we don’t recognize.
Jonny Scrum-half
@gvg: I absolutely agree that the concept of rural, flag-waving, white people as the only “real Americans” needs to be ended.
Adria McDowell
@Amir Khalid: Excellent point, Brad Paisley. Excellent point.
LBJ had these people pegged back in the ‘60s. (Obligatory “fuck LBJ” for raven).
This whole notion that all these people have to do is hear the wonderful and glorious ideas of socialism and they’ll somehow stop being racist and will totally be Brocialists is straight out of a Bernie penned rape essay. Eastern Europe had plenty of socialism/communism, and those countries are some of the most racist places on the planet.
BRB, putting some dumbasses into the pie filter.
Applejinx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I stand corrected ;)
Still: that’s more of an indicator. It pretty much guarantees that whatever ‘unemployment’ figures you have, if they’re not catastrophic, they’re bullshit. Same with guys going ‘Why I would hire hundreds of people right now!’ Okay, smartass, fucking do it. Train them. Anyone who understands the history of labor understands that ’employer’ is really saying ‘They’re not qualified in that they’re not already expert trained professionals prepared to work for slave labor compensation, send more H1Bs’. If that guy really wanted to employ people he would be. He wants to arbitrage the labor pool.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Major Major Major Major: I get it. I don’t comment often because I generally don’t see the need to simply agree with what many others have already said.
FlipYrWhig
@msdc: I JUST DONT UNDERSTAND WHY THE MODEL OF POLITICS THAT TOTALLY WORKS IN THE ONE STATE WHERE HIPPIES AND FARMERS GET ALONG ISNT BEING USED EVERYWHERE ELSE PROBABLY ITS ACAUSE OF CAPITALISM AND HILLARY CLINTON
Applejinx
@Jonny Scrum-half: Yup, absolutely. I don’t see anybody on the Left who’ll give an inch on identity issues. People make that shit up to avoid confronting (or even acknowledging) economic issues. I think that came from Russia, initially, and centrists are desperate to believe it.
There will be no ‘white only’ or ‘male only’ or ‘cis only’, ever again. It’s backwards, it’s bullshit, it’s over. Anybody thinking they can find refuge for their racism in the hard Left are sorely mistaken.
Adria McDowell
Halp! Stuck in moderation- probably for calling Amir “Brad Paisley.”
Adria McDowell
@FlipYrWhig: lol DED.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Applejinx: I honestly don’t know what you’re saying.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Gosh, I don’t understand why the campaign didn’t canvass in New Hampshire outside ‘cities’ when it was a SWING STATE. I get that Vermont was and is a given. You know, in those silly ‘not scaled for population’ maps that look all red everywhere, Vermont is a little oasis of blue. I like it :) more like that please!
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: You spectacular dumbfuck, you JUST SAID that Johnstown’s white racists are longing for socíalism. That’s SPECIFICALLY “finding refuge for their racism” in the left. Or maybe you think that becoming wicked socíalist ends racism spontaneously? For fuck’s sake. You don’t even keep track of your own dumbass claims from one moment to the next.
Yarrow
@The Moar You Know: I understand. I am reminded of what Kay posted awhile back about how employers in her area were complaining there were no trained people to hire. They increased what they were offering and wow, suddenly they had applicants and could hire trained people. Imagine that!
If this guy increased what he was offering prospective employees, he might find some people would decide it’s worth staying. Town may be crappy, but real estate would be cheap. There are always trade offs. Increase wages enough, hire enough good people, and suddenly the town has more good people in it. It’s not like these things are static. Big cities can fade away. Small towns can grow. Things don’t stay the same.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
So, just to be clear, you, a white dude, will decide what Black commenters are and are not allowed to call Black public figures?
Humboldtblue
@Jonny Scrum-half:
You know what’s not complicated, not being a racist shitbag. It’s easy to do. So now, go ahead and explain to me again why the fuck I have to take time from my complicated life to hold the hand of proud shitty people who wear their racism like a merit badge. Fuck those people.
Applejinx
@Jonny Scrum-half: That’s weird. This blog has been incorrectly insisting the Bernie Sanders campaign was all about dedicated sexism and racism and being the enemy of Hillary Clinton, this whole time. All just to refuse to admit things like economic issues can even exist.
So, there have been people here making that shit up and claiming that Bernie had NO PURPOSE ever, other than to be a cult of personality and carry the ball for racists. And they’ve claimed that he did not have an economic angle because there was no economic angle because Clinton so completely covered that base (and was the standard bearer for record-low unemployment and a vibrant, thriving economy) that it was literally impossible for anyone to be against her on economic grounds.
This, while American towns disintegrate visibly.
Are you new here?
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Bernie Sanders did make that very coherent point about how millionaires, billionaires, and banks are bad, and should stop being bad or else some people might hold signs in front of a building somewhere.
Applejinx
@Yarrow: Yes. See Detroit. Blighted through racism, white flight, and the systemic obliteration of their industrial economic base through shipping it all overseas.
Cities absolutely can shrink, and small towns can be a LOT more affordable to live in.
Mnemosyne
@debit:
Ajabu is Black. So is rikyrah, who uses the term “slave catcher.”
White dude ARBG is telling Black people what words they can and cannot use to refer to other Black people.
debit
@Mnemosyne: I hate getting into stuff like this as I feel totally unqualified to offer my opinions on the use of certain words that may be okay when said by one person and totally offensive when said by another. But isn’t it better to call it out than ignore it?
msdc
@FlipYrWhig: I mean, he also thinks that the race and gender problem on the far left is the invention of Russian trolls – and that it was the centrists who got trolled.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his beautiful and perfect ideology depends upon his not understanding it.
FlipYrWhig
@msdc: Living in rural Vermont can give a person tremendous insight into the political views of African American populations.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: I think you mean ‘should be fucking destroyed, because they are not capable of being good while in a capitalist system that rewards them for being evil’.
Heh. Even when trolling, you take this centrist (or Soviet?) view, thinking Bernie believes the billionaires should ‘stop being bad’.
Fat chance. They will NEVER stop being evil. That’s why marginal taxation is such a nice thing. Taxes means you can TAKE their absurdly excessive money, and use it to run a whole government. Maybe try that sometime: we got a whole highway system that way, once upon a time. Still use it, too.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Wisconsin went on a campaign of minority voter suppression so huge that it tilted the election to Trump, just as Karl Rove designed it to do.
But you think the problem was that Hillary didn’t beg racist white people for their votes. Rrrriiiigggghhhtttt.
ruemara
@Amaranthine RBG: We are the greatest, because our labor, money and votes allow fuckheads like you to deride us freely and pretend you’re a fucking progressive, you mainline shitpot of arrogance.
@Applejinx: Go proselytize to your people then. But leave us the fuck out of it.
debit
@Mnemosyne: Right, but what if you didn’t know? I don’t know Ajabu and had no context other than the term used.
gene108
@Amaranthine RBG:
Nope.
But Democrats had not so openly identified with promoting social justice issues, such as police brutality targeted at minorities, gay rights, etc., as they did by the end of the Obama Administration. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA) opposed President William J. Clinton’s (D) attempt to allow gays to serve in the military. They reached a compromise that became DADT.
The FDR coalition did not totally fall apart, until the 21st century. Alabama had a Democratic governor, at the start of the 21st century. Georgia still had a Democratic Senator.
And the coalition could’ve been stitched back together a bit, in the early 1990’s, if the media did not obsess about Whitewater, Bill’s healthcare bill did not die, etc. and a Democratic President could prove government is not the problem, but the solution.
People still believed government should provide services to people to make their lives better, rather than just cutting taxes for the super rich, which is why Bush, Jr. had to run as a “compassionate conservative” and try to align faith-based, market friendly ways to deal with social problems.
Basically, the Democrats could run a middle-ground through the 1980’s and the 1990’s, where they were very circumspect on social issues, while walking a line on economic issues. But that balancing act couldn’t be carried out in the early parts of the 21st century, when Democrats kept increasingly identifying as proponents of gay marriage, and other social justice issues, which is why W.Va. has become very pro-Republican.
Adria McDowell
@FlipYrWhig: “Look out the window, Mitch!”
That NYDN interview revealed him to be all ideas, no action.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Yep, that’s why it was vitally important for Bernie’s merry band of idiots to protest outside of George Clooney’s house — Clooney is now a millionaire, so clearly he’s just as evil as the Koch brothers and no politician should accept his dirty money.
MCA1
@Jonny Scrum-half: You’re looking at this the wrong way, despite laying out the exact right way of approaching these people in your post. Republicans haven’t succeeded in getting any of these people to actually believe in GOP policy as better for them. All they’ve done is stroke their revanchist fears and prejudices and planted a cult-like loyalty completely untethered from any actual policies or theories of government whatsoever. These people in Johnstown PA don’t know issues, don’t do policy. They absolutely will not respond to well-meaning Democrats telling them about policy prescriptions for what ails their communities, if that’s what you mean by “pushing back on the propaganda” that’s gotten them to their current state of agitas.
You said it yourself: they’ve been successfully propagandized. That took 40 years. I’m fine going out to combat the stranglehold Republicans have on these unreachable people, but the focus of that combat should be propagandist undermining of the GOP, to break the spell and make them hate Republicans as much as they hate Democrats. For every unicorn out there in real ‘Murka open to coming to terms with their bigotry and changing, or even just hearing and thinking about how Democrats care about them more and maybe they should stop voting against their own self-interest, there are a thousand willing to extend the limitless reach of their incoherent rage to the Republican Party. We need to tamp down the pride they take in their GOP armbands, to get them out of the voting booths and back where they belong: on their couches, watching 6 hours of TV every day while chainsmoking and NOT PARTICIPATING. Democrats don’t have to tell them to go the fuck away and die already – they’ll do it of their own spiteful accord if they’re just pointed in the right direction.
Mnemosyne
@debit:
Ajabu’s first comment in this thread starts with this:
ARGB is trying to make lurkers think that we let racists wreak havoc in the comments, but he’s lying to you when he does that. He is not trustworthy.
Adria McDowell
@FlipYrWhig: But but but but MLK marched with Bernie!
Shorter John Lewis in the 60s: “Bernie who?”
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
TELL IT!!!!
gene108
@Applejinx:
What killed a lot of the industrial Northeast and Upper Midwest was first losing jobs to the non-unionized, low wage, South. Textile mills, for example, moved from New England to North Carolina.
Also, too, specific to Detroit, is that American manufacturers made crappy cars, compared to imports, so their sales kept dropping, which is one reason so many factory jobs were lost. Another reason is automation.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
Yes…articles on them.
glory b
@raven: I have a coworker who is African American and from Johnstown. She goes back at least once evry other month. She’s talked about how hurt she is about her white friends’ parents who were previously Dem voting blue collar workers but are now hard core Trumpists. She’s bewildered by this change.
She talks about hanging out at heir houses, going to football games and cheerleader practices, parties, etc., and that the change in them is chilling.
I think the Hutu-Tutsi example might be closer than we think.
msdc
In reference to Applejinx:
In the past I’ve been content to write off this particular commenter as a nutjob – somebody who is deeply but sincerely invested in his fantasies. But this attempt at delegitimizing another commenter strikes me as something far more sinister in a way that’s not really lessened by its obvious detachment from reality. I’m also beginning to wonder if it’s more revealing than intended.
I mean, it really is always about projection with these assholes.
debit
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I am obviously not capable of reading or comprehending today, but I should have known better. My apologies for rushing to judgement and being an asshole.
Applejinx
@gene108: Yes. The automation issue is only becoming exponentially worse.
Within our lifetimes, human work will become valueless. There will be no place you can possibly migrate to where you can ‘aspirationally earn a living’, and there will be no retraining or learning you can possibly do that’s faster than expert systems and computers can do. And these things are owned by wealthy corporations (and, sometimes, individuals).
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Dude, YOU YOURSELF just pooh-poohed Hillary’s saying that she joined the board of Wal-Mart to advance the cause of women’s rights. You LITERALLY JUST SAID that women’s rights are less important than worker’s rights.
Do you pay the slightest attention to what YOU YOURSELF are typing, or do you just think that women’s rights don’t count?
Applejinx
@msdc: Have you SEEN the way that particular dude pops up to ad hominem all over me? It’s been going on for years. Whig has a real tendency to change every subject to ‘Applejinx is a madman nobody must ever listen to’, and seems to appear just to fling shit in certain very specific ways. I don’t like it, never have liked it, and like it less when it resonates with others. I think that’s a pretty reasonable reaction to being shat on continually for a year or more.
FlipYrWhig
@msdc: Who knows what he’s talking about. I think he lives in a hermit shack working on his manifesto.
Mnemosyne
@debit:
ARGB has an agenda. He should be ignored and/or mocked when he brings it up.
Applejinx
@Mnemosyne: ‘yay personal issues I guess’ suggests that I think making Wal-Mart MORE effective is, shall we say, not a great thing to do. If I’d meant to say ‘Wal-Mart should be sexist’ I’d have said it.
I would say, why are you helping them? Yay women’s rights, environmental things, these are unambiguously good but why are you HELPING them? Why join them? Why validate them?
I think with Hillary the answer is, ‘because that’s how she thinks things should be’; and this is something I can’t tolerate.
Well, that’s not true, I voted for her so she made me tolerate it because the alternative was so bad. And then she didn’t even beat Trump, so I am not exactly more enamored of what Wal-Mart is and does, on the back of that. More like I compromised very fundamental principles for her, and got NOTHING out of it.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Perhaps the way people react to you might have a little something to do with your years-long record of self-righteousness, long-windedness, bad judgment, and paranoia. You could, you know, work on those.
Mnemosyne
@debit:
I’m just saying, consider the source. We know there are trolls here who try to act human once in a while, but the cloven hoof inevitably pops out again after a few days. They just can’t help themselves.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne: There’s a certain similarity in some elements on the left that mirrors the dominant thought patterns on the right. The ideology isn’t much deeper than surface; it takes elements that look good and is lumped together without integrating the inherent assumptions (that’s just being human, after all). They’ll unthinkingly put civil rights on the second tier, below economic issues.
And, too, I do see some progressives who decry civil rights/identity politics altogether.
dogwood
@FlipYrWhig:
White hippies and white farmers getting along in Vermont is a testament to the power of Bernie’s socialist utopian agenda. They’re all “good guys” with guns.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: Didn’t he say that he purposely acted like an asshole for several months at one point? (Which leads to thoughts of actors taking on their role too much….).
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Why vote for immunity for gun manufacturers and to dump radioactive waste in a Latino town in Texas? Why join them? Why validate them?
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
No, it suggests that you think that your economic views are more important than women’s rights or environmentalism. In fact, you just repeated again that you think Wal-Mart should be shunned and left to be as sexist and wasteful as they want to be. Because your economic views are more important to you than women’s rights or environmentalism.
In fact, your views are so much more important to you than either women’s rights or environmentalism that you are willing to punish people who are trying to reform Wal-Mart’s business practices on those issues.
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: I think that was someone else, who said he had decided to play a character to spite the people who had caricatured him. I’m not remembering the name, though.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Are you a script? Do you understand that I’m accusing you of doing exactly this, and saying it’s annoying (which it is)?
I would think you’d at least want some protective coloration, rather than literally going all in on the same behavior. Do you understand that you’re not furnishing argument of any sort?
different-church-lady
@Applejinx: I’m sure the country will be a much better place once you’ve won this blog.
different-church-lady
@Applejinx:
Dafuk?
Heywood J.
@Humboldtblue: Awesome. Great stuff. It’s bad enough to have to deal with a petulant man-child and his dogsbodies in a “post-fact” timeline. But putative liberals concern-trolling their own rather than say the bare decent minimum to unapologetic racist morons, well, that’s just insult to injury.
The only comfort one can take from the Johnstown Politico article is there’s a good chance that half or more of the mutants interviewed will be gone by 2020. That’s not hate, because you have to care about something or someone to hate. That’s just the way it is. I don’t care about these people because they clearly don’t care about anything at all, even themselves. They’ve given up, and they want to stamp their wittle feet and have a temper tantrum on their way out.
They can either go to the free liberry and start getting their heads out of their asses, or they can keep chugging the kool-aid until they o.d. on it. The choice is theirs, not ours. Nobody should ever invest precious time or effort in trying to convince morons to remember to breathe.
Applejinx
@Mnemosyne: Wal-Mart should be STOPPED. Not reformed. Not ‘shunned’, that doesn’t work. Stopped.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: Ah. Well. Being an old man, then. Apologies for the aspersions.
Though it is still true that letting your asshole elements of your personality become too dominant will affect how people treat you and your arguments. I always have to remind myself about that.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Again, this is so much more revealing than you seem to realize. Hillary thinks that Wal-Mart should be improved and made less sexist, and you can’t tolerate the very idea that women who work at Wal-Mart deserve a better, less sexist workplace.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: I understand perfectly well. Nobody wants to read me mocking you or vice versa. But also, particularly, nobody wants to read you, because you’re an irritant.
different-church-lady
@msdc:
gwangung
@Applejinx: Generally, that becomes easier with inside help.
msdc
@FlipYrWhig: Maybe. I guess I used to think something like that as well, but the bizarre accusation of people who disagree with him being centrist Russian trolls (as if that was a thing) has me wondering.
The charitable interpretation is that he’s noticed a lot of talk about Russian trolls and has glommed onto it, like a jellyfish who accidentally drifts into a shrimp and then starts ingesting it. Maybe he thinks this one is the finishing move that will silence all critics and convert the masses to glorious white rural social democracy. I guess that’s possible (perhaps even plausible given the commenter). But it’s starting to take on more than a whiff of projection. The ever-changing arguments and the refusal to own his own comments are also suggestive in this regard.
But even if I’m wrong about that (and I could well be), I’m beginning to wonder what exact value this blog gets from letting idiots derail every conversation, whether they are sincere in their idiocy or not.
ETA: And now I’m thinking that I extended this particular commenter too much benefit of the doubt, given their subsequent whining about “scripts” and “protective coloration.” The more they whine about you being a troll, the more certain I am that they are one.
glory b
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): As far as this sentiment is concerned, it’s been longer than 80 years. I saw an editorial cartoon from (I think ) the Reconstruction era showing a white man choosing to drown in a river rather than accept the help of two men, black and white, who were trying to save him. My google skills aren’t good enough to find it again.
Also, the statement of a Union general imploring white southerners to work with black people, saying that his experience with them showed them to be such good, forgiving Christians that they could prosper together if they would reach out to them.
Barbara
The Politico article was about Johnstown, which is basically about 90 minutes or so from Pittsburgh, maybe a little further. I don’t personally know these people but I “know” them in spirit because a lot of people who lived in my suburb when I was growing up had roots in places like Johnstown. After reading this article, my thought was, Trump is for the LFLs (if you read the article you will get this reference), or “Losers for Life.” That is, he is the loser’s revenge on people who have managed or just want to try to manage to navigate the modern world outside of Johnstown. The local business owner and union boss were the most reasonable people, and the owner’s admission that he would hire lots more people, except that anyone not currently employed who actually had skills left a long time ago, and the remainder are not interested in acquiring the skills he needs or can’t pass a drug test, or both. I don’t want to leave anyone behind, but these people are adults, and if their best and highest aspirations are basically to hurt other people without even nominally improving their own lives, that’s not something I am going to pander to. Johnstown has been a desperate place for a long time.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Wal-Mart employs 1.4 million people in the United States. What jobs do you have waiting for those 1.4 million workers when your socialist paradise comes about and all Wal-Marts are shut down, throwing 1.4 million people out of work?
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: You do realize that the politician who killed Walmart would immediately be public enemy number one among exactly the people you think the Democratic Party should be appealing to, right? Didja notice those lines at Chick Fil A?
Ajabu
@Amaranthine RBG: @Amaranthine RBG:
Just want to take a bow and give a hat tip to rikyrah for the term.
And, incidentally, I’ll call traitorous Black folks anything I want to call them.
My wife has some even more “endearing” terms but this is a family blog.
different-church-lady
THERE’S A MAGIC WAND THAT WILL MAKE WALMART GO AWAY AND HILLARY REFUSES TO USE IT!!!!!
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: I think that was supposed to be “like a chameleon who blends in.”
msdc
@different-church-lady: Ah! Le mot juste. (finger kiss)
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: Was the word ‘camouflage’ removed from the language, or is there something more… Freudian at work here?
different-church-lady
@msdc: My favorite minimalist composer!
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: It’s only one thread specifically highlighting a Politico article that totally outlines how economically catastrophic some small towns are. I was already upset with how some people were acting in a previous thread, which I hadn’t said anything in. Given a thread specifically dedicated to the article, I knew it was going to be filled with posters really getting into their (more or less justified) hate, and working each other up to frenzies of wanting to murder all those eeeevil EVIL people who would never change, for whom the only solution would be a Final One. Praise God and pass the Fentanyl and nuke the towns from orbit.
And you know this attitude is part of what keeps these assholes clinging to Trump: they can’t even pretend to have a change of heart and change their voting patterns to serve their interests better, if they are rightly persuaded that Democrats want them all fucking dead.
So this particular thread turned out to be one where I was like, you’re getting an earful about this, and I don’t give a shit how disingenuous people are: I’m bitching up a storm, because I’m pretty sure the thread would be incredibly vile otherwise. I get that these people have horrible attitudes. But so does Balloon Juice, by design, at times. Because it’s a place to vent. And apparently it’s a place to really get into your fantasies of watching American small towns die because they are filled with evildoers.
Fine, do that, but now and then I’ll ruin your fun, because I think it’s despicable.
Barbara
@Applejinx: Here’s a thought: raise the minimum wage, enact other protections like “schedule” protections or make them pay a percentage of wages for forcing someone to be “on call” to come in with little notice. If WalMart decides to leave rather than pay higher wages, then that’s on them. But what is so wrong about just trying to protect their workers, which will help them, rather than being forced to shun or boycott the store, which likely won’t help them?
TenguPhule
@Applejinx:
You did read the part where they fully backed Trump even after the reporter pointed out he’d broken every promise he’d made to them, right?
At that point, Fuck them. Lost causes one and all.
Let them die and may it be soon.
TenguPhule
@Patricia Kayden:
Because we need to suppress their votes.
TenguPhule
@Applejinx:
Obviously you didn’t read the articles in question.
They’ve decided to die as proud racist assholes.
TenguPhule
@Jonny Scrum-half: Or we can do to them what they’ve done to us, make it hard to impossible for them to vote.
geg6
@Applejinx:
They aren’t unemployed. They are retired, for the most part. The unemployment rate here is even lower than in Johnstown. For those who are still working age, there are loads of jobs available. Employers are putting up billboards begging for workers, offering starting salaries that aren’t bad. A local glass factory is currently paying for a billboard, offering entry-level jobs requiring no education beyond high school starting at $13.50 an hour. Not a ton of money, but hardly minimum wage. The new cracker plant that isn’t even built yet is trying to fund training in welding and can’t get enough takers. The starting wage there will probably be over $20 an hour. They don’t want to train for the jobs. They want something handed to them, everything they say about people of color is projection.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: and then we can all walk down to Mr Hoover’s grocery store, and he’ll have Billy Wilson deliver the groceries on his bike– door’s unlocked, Billy, put the milk in the fridge, would ya?– and while we mosey on home will stop and say how do ye with Floyd outside the barber shop and maybe walk by the flilin’ station get a bottle of pop
Personally, I’d love to be able to run errands and shop without a car, and do business with locally owned small merchants, but that ship sailed as I recall back in the early eighties
TenguPhule
@Applejinx:
You’re intentionally ignoring the obvious. They’re never gonna change their minds. So we need to assist their suicide while keeping the rest of the population free from their taint.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
That was Kropadope, who eventually poisoned the well so much that he changed his nym.
geg6
@DHD:
Yup. Aliquippa is right next door to me (in fact, my zip is the same). People there would kill for the employment opportunities the sad sack white people in the communities around them have. And I don’t see a whole of Aliquippa residents turning their noses up at training or job opportunities.
Barbara
@Applejinx: I don’t hate anyone but I doubt if what I think about the people portrayed in that article makes one iota of difference in how they feel about me or anyone else. This sense of grievance is what you are left with when you don’t have anywhere else to turn once you have ruled out every other alternative (or it has been ruled out for you). Don’t want to learn how to weld. Would rather mine coal. Don’t think steel mills are coming back. Don’t want to move. Don’t want other people to get ahead and do things I can’t. Just want the world to acknowledge the righteousness of my grievance no matter how much I have contributed to the state of things. These. People. Are. Adults. The world doesn’t revolve around any of us.
D58826
Just a couple of thoughts on the article.
In terms of Trump they may well be unreachable but they still are our neighbors. They should not be disposed of like last weeks newspaper.
On the other hand they have to met the rest of the country half way. There was an article the other day about all of the coal miners in WVA NOT taking advantage of vocational retraining because Trump was going to make coal KING again.
There is a larger issue at work here in my opinion. Times and the economy change and these towns have been passed by. It isn’t a plot or someone coastal elite trying to screw them. My wife’s family comes from a small town in NW ILL. (trivia note – her aunt taught St Ronulus the unready when he was in high school). along ILL 20 towns are about 20 miles apart. So taking from the midpoint a farm family would need to travel about 10 miles by horse and wagon for market day. Not only has the distance limit been removed but many of those family farms are now part of larger corporate farming. The only thing left about ‘little house on the prairie’ is the prairie.
The town where her aunt and uncle lived had a stoplight, a post office a grain elevator and a train station. Again at just the distance a farm family could travel by horse and wagon. Trucks carry more grain faster and longer distances. The train station – long gone. There was a time when a steam powered freight train had to stop every 100 or so miles to refill the water tank but not any longer. So all of those small town RR jobs are gone.
And that doesn’t begin to cover the blacksmith, the local factory or mine that is no longer economical to operate.
I realize that the form of vulture capitalism practiced in this country has accelerated this trend but it is not 100 % responsible for it. Times change and the things that made these towns and villages viable communities have disappeared.
So yes as a nation we should be helping them adjust to the new economy because it is the right thing to do. What we can’t do is bring back Mayberry or the world of Judge Hardy and Andy Hardy, as nostalgic as that may be.
.
D58826
@Barbara:
Hmmm you mean things that a union contract used to guarantee?
TenguPhule
@D58826:
You’re right, they’re non-recyclable waste.
D58826
@TenguPhule: sorry I disagree. I’m not much of a Christian but i did learn that ‘what you do to the least of my brethren you do to me and what you do for my brethren you do for me.’ Two wrongs do not make a right hard s that is to put in practice on a day to day basis. We should no more write these folks off than we would someone with an opoid addiction. And it wasn’t that long ago that as a country we wrote off the gay community and POC.
And on a totally different topic and the subject of a thread down a bit, it seems that Judge Moore in addition to have some odd ideas about evolution has ore had some how shall I say it ‘interesting hobbies’ – Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32
Annie
@Applejinx:
OK, so what’s your plan to stop Wal-Mart?
That ‘s actually a serious question. How do we get there from where we are now? And do you mean stopped from further expansion, or simply stopped from existing?
laura
@Humboldtblue: on the last trip you could still smell smoke from Sears Point to Lakeville highway, but oddly, not along 101. Glenn Ellen to the Flamingo is what I’m bracing for.
Again, thank you for the heads up on the redwood credit union.
TenguPhule
@D58826:
Sorry, no. Completely different.
These people can’t be saved. Their insanity is terminal.
SFAW
@Applejinx:
As Olsen Johnson says: “Now who can argue with that?”
Either grow the fuck up, or grow a thicker skin, or have someone explain to you that if a bunch of people are telling you that your comments are, to put it mildly, not nearly as well-thought-out or “progressive” as you seem to think they are, then maybe there’s something there for you to consider. You’re like a poster child for Dunning-Kruger. I keep expecting you to tell us you have one of the all-time-great memories, brains, etc.
At least with Argle Bargle, he knows he’s just being a troll, and doesn’t pretend otherwise.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
To what?
SFAW
@geg6:
Will Betty be at the grand opening?
“Cracker” as in Keebler, or as in catalytic cracking? [Serious question, I really have no idea which it would be.]
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
I can’t remember, and he’s been mostly behaving himself. He’s one of the guys who fights with Omnes every time they’re on the same thread.
Barbara
@D58826: Yes and no. Unions guaranteed wages but they didn’t guarantee non-discrimination. There is a case to be made that for some issues people should be able to rely on the government and not private action of any kind. A higher minimum wage will help all workers not just those that unionize.
Fee314
@Applejinx, I live in the York area and guess what, the article about York pretty much hits the nail on the head in terms of the attitudes around here. I have had parents not allow their kids to be friends with my kids because *gasp*, our family is “liberal”. Trust me, they aren’t cherrypicking the “most colorful” attitudes.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: The Democratic Party has never not helped them. Meanwhile the Republican Party has never not harmed them. They vote for Republicans anyway. At a certain point it gets to be time to stop pouring political capital down a hole in the ground. My objection is this notion that will. not. die. that there’s some super clever way to make up new policy and package it just right that the scales fall from their eyes and they vote for Democrats. The overwhelming majority are not going to vote for Democrats. They have a favorite team already and it ain’t us.
Barbara
@D58826: Do you know what would cause them to reconsider voting for Democrats? Here’s what: A Republican Party that actually started valuing non-white, non-religious majority members. Their views on race may not be set in stone, at some point they might have been malleable, but for more than 30 years they’ve been told that “others” are being “given” things without earning them. This, of course, is what they want to hear when they feel like perhaps they have not achieved what they could or should have. It’s other people’s fault. That’s what they share with Trump. It is always someone else’s fault, and if it’s a black person, so much the better, because that gives them the right to flaunt their preexisting prejudice without shame. I have told people like this not to use prejudicial terms around me because I don’t agree with them. I don’t care if they hate me for it, but most don’t.
ETA: In other words, their lazy thinking about themselves and others has been indulged by others who benefit from their prejudice.
NorthLeft12
@rikyrah: I think it is pretty simple, and supported by a lot of recent history, that Deadbeat Donald is a complete craven coward. He will say one thing on twitter or to a different audience, than he will say directly to that person. Remember his simpering “compliments” about president Obama after meeting with him, and his farcical press conference with the Mexican President.
The only people he speaks tough to directly are people who are well below him on the power scale, and even then he needs a supportive audience to do that.
Trump is a gutless and ignorant bully. Period. Full stop.