This Adam Serwer piece on the economic anxiety myth should be a must read for everyone. It’s such a good piece that it is hard to figure out what to quote, so let’s just start from the top:
THIRTY YEARS AGO, nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, and the media struggled to explain why.
It was 1990 and David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, astonished political observers when he came within striking distance of defeating incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, earning 43 percent of the vote. If Johnston’s Republican rival hadn’t dropped out of the race and endorsed him at the last minute, the outcome might have been different.
Was it economic anxiety? The Washington Post reported that the state had “a large working class that has suffered through a long recession.” Was it a blow against the state’s hated political establishment? An editorial from United Press International explained, “Louisianans showed the nation by voting for Duke that they were mad as hell and not going to take it any more.” Was it anti-Washington rage? A Loyola University pollster argued, “There were the voters who liked Duke, those who hated J. Bennett Johnston, and those who just wanted to send a message to Washington.”
What message would those voters have been trying to send by putting a Klansman into office?
“There’s definitely a message bigger than Louisiana here,” Susan Howell, then the director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans, told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a tremendous amount of anger and frustration among working-class whites, particularly where there is an economic downturn. These people feel left out; they feel government is not responsive to them.”
Duke’s strong showing, however, wasn’t powered merely by poor or working-class whites—and the poorest demographic in the state, black voters, backed Johnston. Duke “clobbered Johnston in white working-class districts, ran even with him in predominantly white middle-class suburbs, and lost only because black Louisianans, representing one-quarter of the electorate, voted against him in overwhelming numbers,” The Washington Post reported in 1990. Duke picked up nearly 60 percent of the white vote. Faced with Duke’s popularity among whites of all income levels, the press framed his strong showing largely as the result of the economic suffering of the white working classes. Louisiana had “one of the least-educated electorates in the nation; and a large working class that has suffered through a long recession,” The Post stated.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Elizabelle
Thanks for highlighting. Incredibly honest piece.
Yutsano
Feel dat economic anxiety!!!
Jesu Christe. They wouldn’t even call it blatant racism even back then.
rikyrah
It is a good article.
Cheryl Rofer
Oh man, this year’s required reading.
rikyrah
The Atlantic also has this article:
We have so-called Christians supporting a PEDOPHILE IN ALABAMA.
I’m a Democrat. I am a Christian. And, I’m saying, without hesitation..
HELL MUTHAPHUCKIN’ NO to reaching out to THIS type of religious voter.
Phuck them.
Barbara
I just finished reading Killers of the Flower Moon and I don’t think I can bring myself to read this article yet. The degree to which the country has always operated on the basis of white entitlement is just too depressing.
Major Major Major Major
It’s a great piece, at least the first third or so that I read this morning.
In a bygone era (six months ago) I would have shared it far and wide, but now I know better. My friends and followers (ha) who would like it will see it anyway, those who wouldn’t like it won’t read it.
Mike in NC
What’s surprising is that David Duke didn’t make the short list for VP or a cabinet secretary.
Villago Delenda Est
White evangelicals are overwhelmingly fascist and racist.
They’ve demonstrated that by backing pedophiles and con men who fly racist flags.
They are not moral people. At all. They do not follow Jesus.
Hungry Joe
A key line: “Duke … lost only because black Louisianans, representing one-quarter of the electorate, voted against him in overwhelming numbers.” How much MORE royally screwed would we be if minorities weren’t voting 85, 90, 95 percent for sane candidates? That’s what voter suppression is all about: Knock out a third, or even a quarter of minority voters and the GOP wins damn near everything.
MJS
It’s an exceedingly depressing article. It puts the lie to so much of what we thought was progress. This country was not progressing. It’s just that its worst tendencies were temporarily dormant.
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: “ignoring people of faith”
I seem to remember the DNC featured some hubbub about a couple of Muslims whose son was killed in action. I seem to remember that black churches were instrumental in the southeast, and that Hillary was devoutly religious and that Obama liked to quote scripture and religious philosophers. I seem to remember that Catholics and Jews vote majority for democrats.
Whatever is it they could mean, “people of faith”? Why, the same thing they mean when they use any other euphemism for white republicans.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@rikyrah: Actually mainline Protestants and the Catholic church (all predominately white) need to take back religion from the white fundamentalists.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’d just point out that black people have more reason for economic anxiety than white people, on average, because on average, they are poorer and hence have less of a financial cushion. Funny how nobody ever worries about that though, when it comes to economics only white anxiety counts, and that anxiety always explains why they vote for the guy using white racial resentment. That’s a clue that it’s not really about economic anxiety.
Hungry Joe
@Barbara: Coincidence City: I finished “Killers of the Flower Moon” night before last. By the end I felt kind of gutted.
piratedan
well, its also an issue where the reporting is incredibly inaccurate, not all Christians are evangelicals and the media does a piss poor job of delineating between the fact that not everyone who denotes faith as a motivating factor is a fire and brimstone southern baptist. Which is why I hate the fact that they’ve allowed these prosperity gospel asshats to usurp the idea that they represent all people of faith.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@piratedan: I remind myself that Jimmy Carter is an evangelical.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Wow. There have been a bunch of articles all getting at the same message, but this one lays everything out until there’s no counterargument.
The media (and the Democrats) need to get it into their heads that people use principle to justify their actions, not to decide them. Trump’s base is white evangelicals. That tells you all you need to know about what kind of Christianity they practice.
D58826
OK some what OT but still the all consuming topic of the week or how easy it is to launch a smear
W/o denying the seriousness of the general topic it certainly is a subject open to character assassination thru carefully selected or cropped photos. And I won’t even mention photoshop. And on Twitter there is a lot of criticism directed at the 38 women from SNL who defended Franken, if not the photo.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/arianna-huffington-denies-franken-behaved-inappropriately-in-response-to-new-photos/ar-BBFpwkP?ocid=iehp
JMG
The media cannot report accurately that older white people of some means vote their racial prejudices because said people are the media’s, especially cable news’s, customer base.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T: Robert Mugabe has resigned the presidency of Zimbabwe in the face of almost-certain impeachment, conviction, and forced removal.
Good.
Rosalita
@MJS: This!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Can someone please show this to Wilmer and his cult? Cuz every day on twitter I keep trying to explain that as long as whites are the majority in this country and the Obama coalition remains under assault by white progressives who seem intent on doing the GOPs work for them, we will never get another big government program passed.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
AY. MEN.
Thanks for the original link Elizabelle and thanks to Cole for highlighting it. A truly great, eye-opening read. Takes away all the excuses…if nothing else, every member of the media should be forced to read and internalize that HILLARY WON LOWER MIDDLE CLASS AND POOR FOLKS’ VOTES BY A WIDE MARGIN, and that even education didn’t matter when it came to white folks’ votes, only their level of racial hostility.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@rikyrah: CO SIGN. Thank you.
GregB
In a rare splinter of good news.
Robert Mugabe has resigned the presidency of Zimbabwe.
HinTN
To this Tennessean? Yes!
schrodingers_cat
From the last thread:
I read that article and although it doesn’t make excuses for the Orange one’s voters, do we still need yet another piece about them. I am still waiting for a piece about people who rejected T’s call to bigotry. I don’t recall a single piece in our so called liberal media. Hell they can only write a story about the blessed WWC who rejected who rejected T. They exist in the millions, yet not a single piece about them. I also don’t recall endless ruminations of President Obama’s voters white or otherwise.
ETA: Balloon Juice could do such a FP feature, about why one voted for HRC and rejected T.
Chyron HR
Obviously it was because the Democratic party didn’t give them Medicare-for-All.
[finger waggling intensifies]
sherparick
@rikyrah: Yea, apparently the editors of the Atlantic suffer from cognitive dissonance. They should note that Conservative evangelical Christians and Conservative Catholics vote Republican, because they want a white patriarchy and order, and that they use Christianity like a shield to defend that order, e.g. God made it that way. Black Christians, religious Jews, and liberal Christians, are just a much much “believers” as Evangelicals, except that they don’t use as an excuse to be assholes to people who don’t look like them or poorer then themselves or have find that sexual feelings are directed at same sex.
schrodingers_cat
Another bone of contention that I have with this article is that it doesn’t take care into account the regional variation in voting patterns and doesn’t factor in misogyny.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@D58826: A significant number of people can’t distinguish between an actor and a character the actor plays. Franken is going have trouble with that.
schrodingers_cat
You can be religious, you can be white and you can be working class (holy trifecta of the “real” American according to our media) but if you vote D you are invisible to the them.
MCA1
@MJS: That’s sort of my take. I think the “‘Economic anxiety’ is just stupid journalists who refuse to use the right word for the racism in front of them” line of thinking is a bit simplistic. The term is referring to social status and class anxiety, it’s just that it’s only used when that anxiety is felt by poor and middle class whites, who react to economic stress by circling the wagons and reverting to their generally repressed tribalist and racist impulses. There’s no real compulsion to act on those protective impulses when jobs are plentiful and standards of living are improving generation over generation. So it’s tamped down most of the time.
But the working class, and even the professional class, have been trained since the beginning of time to turn their resentment the wrong way when any economic downturn wrought by the (insulated) moneyed class starts bringing them down. Not to go all Marxist or anything, but the only way the oligarchs avoid pitchfork parades at their doorsteps is to keep everyone else from unifying and seeing them as the problem. It’s why we have the deep strain of anti-intellectualism and hatred of “elites” in the United States, which is conveniently focused mostly not on the actual elites but rather the semi-elites. The 2% instead of the .2%.
different-church-lady
[ZOT!] — Jeeze, it’s so simple. Might sound a stupid analogy, but a cocktail is made of many ingredients. The two main ingredients in this one are economic anxiety AND racism. As in, a lot of these people do have genuine economic concerns, but they blame minorities for it because they are ALSO RACISTS. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
This is why “addressing” their economic anxiety will never work to get them to reject racist GOP candidates and vote for democrats. They use the “anxiety” as a cover story for their racism, and they think it’s a genuine excuse for it. In other words, they’re not just lying to us, they’re lying to themselves.
Late addition to above: as schrodingers_cat points out at #31, misogyny is another significant ingredient in the cocktail.
schrodingers_cat
@JMG: They represent the cable news anchors and producers themselves.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I feel like maybe I can take some interest in what the sainted White Working Class™ thinks about shit when the press begins to tell us about what the Black working class, or indeed, any Black people think about anything. This is the same old shit as the shit we heard some years back when people in the press were telling us that, “Yeah, but if it weren’t for Black voters, Democrats would never win another election again!” They seemed obsessed with this, and left unspoken in all that was what they really meant, which was, “Yeah, but Black voters aren’t real voters. They aren’t the voters who count, you know? Democratic wins don’t really count, because they don’t depend on white voters. White voters are the real voters.”
They just can’t get beyond this, even though the wording is a little new. They all obsess about Tяump voters like they’re the only ones worth worrying about. Democrats need to stop worrying about these people. Too many of them are beyond help. They’re never going to pull the lever for Democrats, even though Republicans are fucking them over; shit, they vote for Republicans even when they know Republicans are fucking them over, or molesting 14 year olds or… You finish it.
Democrats are going to keep on trying to help these people because that’s what Democrats do. And it doesn’t hurt to tell the White Working Class™ how we’re trying to help them. But we need to stop fretting about it. We aren’t going to get these people. We never will. And we don’t need them. There are enough people who do care about what Democrats are doing, and will vote for us that we don’t need to obsess about these people. I know that’s going to upset Nicholas Kristoff and E.J. Dionne and the ghost of David Broder, and I know that too many Democratic politicians still care what these zeroes think, but I hope there are enough Democrats who understand what the hell is going on that we can make some headway. For fuck’s sake, we saw two weeks ago today just how fucking little we need the White Working Class™. Ralph Northam didn’t spend his time in Wise County or Patrick County, begging poor white ignoramuses for votes he was never going to get. He went to Norfolk and Richmond and Northern Virginia and told us all what was at stake and what he was going to do for us if we gave him the chance, and, boy, howdy, it worked.
I know, it doesn’t “count” because it was all because of The Blacks and The Hispanics and The Women who put him 10 points over the top, but the thing is, it does count. He doesn’t have to hand the governor’s seat over to Chinless Ed because too few White Working Class™ voters voted for him. He still gets to be governor for four years, and he now may even have the House of Delegates with him, too. I don’t really care what Mark Shields thinks about all of this. All I care about is that Democrats in office and running for office care.
schrodingers_cat
@MCA1: The economy had rebounded when T was elected, when we were in real economic distress the country voted overwhelmingly for a black D. So no economic anxiety explanation is pure bullshit.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: All my Trump voting acquaintances are fairly well off ( both of them).
RepubAnon
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I’d say it’s both: when people feel as though they’re slipping down toward poverty, they look for scapegoats. Racism is a ready-made scapegoat, as is fear of immigrants. Listen to the old Austin Lounge Lizards song “ Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Drugs” for an example from the 1990s.
schrodingers_cat
The economic anxiety bullshit is peddled by rich white Rs that populate our media to make themselves feel good about their own bigotry. The end.
different-church-lady
@RepubAnon: I think it may also be working in the other direction: “What can I blame on minorities?” comes first and “Oh, I know, my shitty finances” comes after.
Also gotta remember that in the minds of a lot of these people, they’re struggling because the system is stacked against them, but minorities are poor because they’re lazy.
ETA: in other words, #14.
different-church-lady
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh they follow him, alright. They follow him around like puppies.
And like puppies, they don’t do anything he tells them to do, and they shit everywhere they’re not supposed to.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
Mine too – very well off. Also early retired, and what I would call lazy.
eclare
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Well said.
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Idle mind is a devil’s workshop.
Brachiator
We are actually deeper into this than the Atlantic piece deals with. Trump is not simply pursuing a race-based agenda. He has unleashed a cruel, vindictive nativist agenda, one which reverses much of what the nation has stood for, and one which actively discourages citizens to despise, reject and mistreat people who otherwise should be warmly welcomed here.
You see it clearly in the recently announced policy with respect to Haitians living here temporarily.
The nativists have a firm, fixed idea of what type of people belong here. And those who simply are not acceptable. It is positively perverse how comprehensively Trump and company go beyond the racists’ hatred of undocumented people and have expanded the category to include almost anyone who is not already a US citizen. No one else is safe, and I can easily imagine that soon even some who are citizens will be declared to be not entirely bona fide.
And so, rather than create opportunities to more fully integrate people who have been here for years and who have contributed to this country, the Trump Administration instead wants to turn them into outlaws and get rid of them.
And instead of
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Trump yearns for the preferably white, credentialed, English speaking immigrant. Strangely enough, I’ve heard Trump supporters whose own parents or grandparents would not be good enough to enter the country declare their support for Trump and happiness with his policies.
It’s also sad to see that this other Duke, Elaine Duke, served at Homeland Security under both Bush and Obama, but seems strangely happy and eager to follow these orders (not aware of any interviews with her, so I allow that she may be reluctantly executing Trump directives).
Patricia Kayden
@Mike in NC: But don’t forget that Trump refused to condemn him during the primary season so there’s that. Duke is a huge Trump supporter.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
You make hatred fun enough, and it will override even family loyalty. And that’s Trump’s one genuine talent: he makes hating fun for these people.
Emma
@rikyrah: Ditto. Ditto. DITTO!!! Thank you!
MCA1
@schrodingers_cat: I disagree. The facts on the ground regarding economic recovery are as you state, but the perception of those facts amongst most voters was completely bassackwards. Most people, who don’t pay attention to macroeconomics or policy at all, were wholly unaware of just how much the economy was on the precipice of disaster during most of the runup to 2008. It wasn’t until September of that year that the shit started to hit the fan, and there wasn’t really enough time for the populace to lay blame at Bush’s or the GOP’s feet. W’s approval ratings had been in garbage bin territory since Katrina and then he compounded it, the Iraq war was a complete loser by then, etc. And then we had a once-in-a-lifetime five tool candidate on the Democratic side. I don’t think the “It’s the economy, stupid” adage was right in that election. I mean, it wasn’t until The Big Short came out in 2015 that a substantial portion of the country absorbed the basics of what the hell had even happened several years earlier.
Last year, I think we still underestimate how much a lot of people (for no particularly good reason other than 25 years of fake scandalmongering and talk radio haterade poisoning conventional wisdow) hated Hillary. The Obama recovery, as good as it was, (a) was concentrated heavily in the stock market, where lower and middle wage workers with their net worths of <$50k felt no boost whatsoever, and (b) for the first several years had been a jobs recovery but not a wages recovery. It was further hampered from the start by Republican obstructionism, which among other things made the 2009 stimulus package much smaller than it might have been. Meanwhile, while things were pretty grim in 2009-2011, Republicans successfully convinced half the country that Obama was exploding the deficit on his own, the ACA was a giveaway to the undeserving, and that all the jobs that had been blown up by the crash had just been bleeding away to China and Mexico for the last 20 years. MAGA didn't come from nowhere – the GOP convinced its base that things sucked. They're just now starting to "feel" the recovery, as the term has been used in the past. So, of course, they'll credit the wrong guy for it due to fundamental ignorance of how economics works.
It's not just a snapshot impression of "how's the economy doing today, Election Day 20___?" that people use as their guide. It's a feeling built up (and nurtured) over years.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Well I have been saying that for well over a year, in the comments here. Its not just revoking TPS and DACA. They are also making getting every visa difficult, adding numerous bureaucratic hurdles to the process, from visitor visa to the green card (permanent residency) and naturalization. We are fighting for the very soul of this country. That’s why I have no patience with JGC when he trains his rhetorical guns on Franken or Conyers.
schrodingers_cat
@MCA1: You cannot wake up people who are just pretending to be asleep. That doesn’t make my factual analysis incorrect.
ETA: Also fuck the sage of Vt for peddling the same tired racist R narrative about President Obama and the myth about the lagging economy..
quakerinabasement
White people can’t stand for any other white people to be called racist.
Ladyraxterinok
@piratedan: After 1980, the only ‘christians’ who were ever on tv were Jerry Falwell and a few others of that type. Non-Falwell people of faith did NOT exist for pundits.
And today…how often is Rev Barber of NC on tv? Ever see John Pavlovitz (NC minister, blog is his name) or Fred Clark (slacktivist at patheos) or William Lindsey (Catholic gay theologian in Arkansas with bilgrimage.com blog). Or even Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine?
It seems to be to some group’s advantage to silence the non religious right.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: T’s father is what many of his fellow travelers now derisively label an anchor baby and his mother was on a visitor visa when she met T’s father.
schrodingers_cat
@Ladyraxterinok: Most of the Hispanic people that T and his base so despise are religious too as are the other hated group, the Muslims.
Cheryl Rofer
Fish trying to look at the water they swim in is a good metaphor for a lot of things that are happening, including the way Serwer describes the racism that propelled Trump to the presidency and the discussions we’re having now about sexual harassment of women.
I blocked two men this morning on Twitter as a result of a discussion that started last night. Both of them wanted to set me straight on How Things Are. Neither was able to read and understand my tweets; both read what was convenient to them. It was all my fault, of course. One held to the “Not All Men” line, the other assured me that he had worked in a business where harassers certainly would have been fired, so I must be wrong. Both held tightly to their positions. Both needed to have the last word.
I’m willing to discuss pretty much everything on Twitter, but this kind of stuck-in-the-mudness tells me that there is no reason to continue a discussion beyond a certain point.
Their viewpoints have been supported for a very long time, though, as well as the idea that their male ideas should prevail over mine. That’s the water they’re swimming in.
Similarly, our society has supported many structural and explicit expressions of racism. The idea of “woke” is a good one, waking from that stupor. But how do we get people woke? Or do we just work continuously toward our goals, stating our positions as needed, and let them wake or leave them behind?
What is happening in the country right now is very interesting. We have at the top those who want to return to the time when we didn’t know the water was there, but, like that guy in the Durer etching who is sticking his head through the sky, there’s no going back, and lots of things are happening at the bottom.
kindness
Republicans suffer from endemic (previously) closeted bigotry and aren’t ashamed of it. Now in the Trump era, they revel in it.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator:
This is a sliver of good news because hopefully Trump and his regime will be kicked out of office before those 18 months expire. If Democrats gain control of Congress next November, they better start serious impeachment proceedings pronto.
Amaranthine RBG
Meh
When you latch on to one idea as the explanation for everything, you just shut yourself off from reality
Mike J
@rikyrah:
Whoever wrote that article doesn’t know jack about Democrats or Christians. The black church is the backbone of the Democratic party. The writer meant, “people who founded an entire church to come up with a religious justification for slavery and racism.”
FlipYrWhig
@MCA1:
I don’t know why we should presume that racism and bigotry are invented, or manipulated, by “oligarchs.” Lots of people are happily racist without learning it from the rich or the media. And lots of people don’t see the rich and powerful as the problem–they admire them. Hence I don’t see why we should presume that the natural state of politics is one where everyone is united by hatred of the rich, such that we have to figure out an explanation for why that isn’t happening. Human beings have been worshiping power and killing Others for thousands of years.
MCA1
@schrodingers_cat: Not sure I follow that. I think what I’m (hopefully politely?) trying to say is that imho that factual analysis doesn’t dig deep enough.
End of the day, all I’m saying is that disentangling “economic anxiety” and “racism” is harder to do than some make it seem. One’s not purely code for the other.
Yes, there are some wealthy whites who voted for Trump, too. So for some of them it is easier to say that their racist impulses have been laid bare. For others, though, there’s a level of passive, privileged cluelessness at play, too. Most of that category of T voters I’ve met are just incredibly sheltered, and don’t see the appeals to racism and base impulses that T engaged in as the problem that it is because they’re so far removed from its impact, and/or they cover their eyes and pretend it’s not there because confronting that might force them to think about voting against their low tax rates. That’s a problem of racism and privileged bias, but it’s not the sort of aggressive “I like Dotard because he gives me license to hate on the people I want to hate on” type.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
The founding principles of this country are bigotry and religious fascism. Against this we have the Enlightenment principles of individual liberty, human dignity and equality, and the charity of the Gospels. These two principle strands of “Americanism” have been at war since before there was a nation to compete for the soul of, and they are with us now. All attempts to frame this as anything else, “economic anxiety” or any other such conveniently facile bullshit, are destined to fail, because they fail to address the evil that resides at the heart of this nation’s history and continued existence. Slavery and the Native genocide can both be described as economic transactions. The very few articles of secession from Confederate states that don’t explicitly cite slavery as their reason for existence refer to the “restriction of trade” as the cause for rebellion. The oppression of women in this country has economic implications. The motherfucking holocaust had economic implications. That doesn’t make any of these issues primarily “economic” in nature or origin, and the relentless attempts to describe them as such by both political and media pundits is another sorry-ass attempt to provide a fig-leaf for the hatred, greed, and self-righteous malice that have been driving engines of our history from the beginning.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike J: “Religious voters” doesn’t mean people who subscribe to some sort of religious tradition and vote. It means “people who think abortion is murder” and “people who want Merry Christmas to mean Fuck You.”
Mike J
@Cheryl Rofer: I’m disappointed you haven’t brought you sexism and foreign relations posts here where you can long form them more easily.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Trying to explain water to fish is the analogy I use all the time. Pointing out to white men the system of unearned privilege they swim in will not earn you any friends. None of them believe they’re privileged, and if they start getting a glimmer of it, go #NOTALLMEN. Smashing the white patriarchy is the goal, but they’ll burn it all down before they’ll willingly share. I don’t even trust the “good ones”. They’re doing nothing about anything, and don’t talk to their fellow white men about their behaviors. No one really believes in change – why would they? They’re the beneficiaries.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Not just blacks, the NOT real Americans who’s votes don’t really count list is long; women, Hispanic, Asians, Californians, collage educated, young, union members, unbelievers, gays, and so on.
Nicole
Holy cow, that’s one of the best things I’ve read all year. Thank you for the link.
Bonus points to it for the thoroughly justified jab at Chris Cilizza midway through.
Ladyraxterinok
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): In other words, work like mad to restore voting rights!!!
How many states have passed laws blocking numbers of POC, college students, old people (barriers to getting ids, difficulty of locating birth certificates, etc) from voting?!?
And then there’s the massive gerrymandering set up by the GOPers elected in 2010.
See also correlation between people not allowed to vote and T’s margin of victory in key states.
schrodingers_cat
Those denying John Kelly’s culpability on the first travel ban.
This is for you.
Kelly
May I add my disgust that the media has allowed right wing racist wannabe slave patrollers to call themselves the patriot movement. Also disgusted they allow fat military cosplayers to call themselves militia.
rikyrah
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
AMEN
AMEN
AMEN
James E. Powell
@rikyrah:
That same article – Democrats must do such and such to get religious voters – has been written over a thousand times. I’m sure there was a time when the argument seemed to make sense, but after Trump it’s just stupid.
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Anyone who doesn’t vote R is invisible.
rikyrah
@Ladyraxterinok:
I will say it again…
The number of voters SUPPRESSED in those key states..
Was 2-3 times the margin of ‘ victory’ for Dolt45.
With everything..the Russian interference, the third party ratphucking…
If these voters had not had their votes taken away…
We would be talking about President Clinton.
But her emails!!!
@Amaranthine RBG: I can tell you didn’t read the article.
MCA1
@FlipYrWhig: Fair points. I’m usually in the choir, but find myself the minority position in this thread!
Not sure what’s the chicken and what’s the egg in all this, I guess. You’re right that people “worship” power and money, but how much is that out of true admiration and respect, and how much out of fear? There’s a deep flow of resentment and loathing burbling just underneath our collective celebration of the masters of the universe, whether they be celebrities or industrialists. We’ve all seen how much we collectively delight in tearing them down when the opportunity presents itself.
I don’t know that there’s that much agency needed amongst the truly powerful to perpetuate the other 99% of the people hating on each other, either. Some of it’s human nature, too. I would ask whether you think the general population’s tendency (at least in this country) to equate wealth with virtue is solely a natural human inclination, or whether some of that tendency has been learned through the millenia? Perhaps some of both. Throw in some Calvinism, too.
schrodingers_cat
@MCA1: I am done making excuses for voters who pulled the lever for the most unprepared person to run for the Presidency as a major party candidate. He had nothing to offer except raw hate of the other.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Is it that you can’t read the article from up Bernie’s ass, I guess?
The Moar You Know
Same excuses being made for shitheads since voting became allowed in Western Culture. Really nothing new to be seen here.
The contortions following this question should have gotten the writer a gold medal in gymnastics. CLUE: there was only one message being sent here, and you don’t need a decoder ring or degree in sociology to figure it out.
ruemara
Can I point out two flaws?
He says HRC ignored the Midwest, which is kinda ridiculous & not a bloody word about voter suppression that definitely affected the midwest. Why, in a hot button article, is that being sidestepped?
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: He has to still remain a media personality in good standing, so he has to ration the truth.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike J: I’m glad you liked the tweets. I’m not ready to form them into a post. I suffer from the fish-in-water effect, as everyone does, and it is real work to make the kind of arguments I expect of myself in long-form. In that case, I was using Twitter to get feedback and to help myself to form the ideas. I need to “talk” about my ideas to form them. I’ve said I don’t know what I’m thinking until I say it (or write it down). So that’s a work in progress. I’ll write them up in long form when I think I’m ready.
Also, just a lack of time. I’ve got some other stuff going on that I hope will eventuate in a big post in the next week or so.
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: How is the kittehs walking on the leash program coming along?
Cacti
A significant majority of white Americans are racist as shit.
It’s long past time to stop pretending we can win them over with the soundness of our economic arguments. Protect the votes of those who do support us, and get them to the polls on election day.
Lyrebird
@rikyrah: Hmm, there’s a prominent Christian leader in North Carolina… what was his name, hmm…. Helped start Moral Mondays, helped turn the tide against the trans-hating legislation, yeah, wasn’t he kinda religious?
Hmm, wonder which party affiliation most of his supporters are holding?
Hmm…
different-church-lady
@Amaranthine RBG: Irony is giving you the side-eye, and it ain’t because she’s being flirty.
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: Feels more like he has to peddle a lie. He’s calling out all that other stuff that’s toxic, mentioning voting rights is a bridge too far?
MCA1
@schrodingers_cat: Where have I made excuses for people? Explanations and nuance are not excuses. There were lots of reasons people voted for Drumpf. None of them are satisfactory to me, whatsoever. Each of those 50+ million people exhibited a deep character flaw/deadly sin: malice, avarice, apathy, vanity. It was and is inexcusable.
I’m not sure how we got here when my initial point was basically agreeing with someone saying we haven’t made as much progress on racial matters as we’d led ourselves to believe, and the theory that people can act on other impulses if there are factors that get them to repress their racial and tribal animosities for a period of time.
Stan
@Hungry Joe:
I suggest we make it illegal for white people to vote for, say, 100 years.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@MCA1: There is no need to posit some mysterious historical process. Calvinism is a symptom, culturally conditioned, of the underlying impulse. There’s no aspect of human adoration of power, hatred and distrust of the other, and willingness to engage in sadistic treatment of perceived inferiors, that cannot be witnessed in a couple of hours in any primate hierarchy. Of course, the same is true of loyalty, grief, altruism and courage. The sad truth is that the rationality and consciousness that could be used to liberate us from (or at least, ameliorate the damages of) our worst impulses is more often employed in the service of justifying them.
Cacti
@Amaranthine RBG:
You mean one idea like a $15/hour minimum wage fixes everything?
No, of course you don’t.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: After the coyote incident, I have moved the walking time to around noon. Both kittehs will loudly demand their going-outside but are less cooperative about having their vests put on. I’m also not taking them out every day, hopefully to confuse the coyotes. They’ve been out for three days in a row, so maybe not today, when I am also pressed for time to clean the house and get ready for Thanksgiving. The good effect of mid-day walks is that they are much quieter in the evening. And the weather has been beautiful, so I may give in again today.
Cacti
There wouldn’t be racism if we had single payer.
FlipYrWhig
@MCA1: I’m not sure about wealth connoting _virtue_ per se. I just think that hyper-wealth isn’t inevitably seen as Them and shared struggle isn’t inevitably the makings of a solidaristic sense of Us. And I think big swaths of the left really like the economic argument because they’ve been longing for that solidarity for 150 years; they think of it as so logical and desirable that there must be a reason why it’s being kept from them. The reason they like: too-rich and too-powerful enemies spreading propaganda and corrupting innocents. But I don’t think the people who glom onto that propagandistic message are innocents, or natural allies for the left, and I don’t think they ever have been.
And I further think that a generation of pundits has internalized a narrative about how the WWII generation had broad class-based solidarity and shared prosperity but that the Vietnam generation threw it away on “identity politics,” so there’s an idealization of what was actually happening socially and politically in postwar America, and a corresponding derogation of what’s actually happening socially and politically in the 21st century.
TenguPhule
@Hungry Joe:
That would certainly explain a lot about current actions they’re taking to do just that.
different-church-lady
@Cacti:
For a long time our biggest problem was not the hardcore racists, but the soft racists — the ones who didn’t make a lot of noise about it but always voted for whichever candidate gave them the coded promises that they would create policy that increases systemic racism.
Now we got a huge problem with both kinds, and it’s a horrible feedback loop: pushing back on the hard racists makes the soft racists feel “resentment” instead of disgust; “Hey, I’m not racist! I just think all these minorities are blaming me for their problems!”
Well, guess what kids? If you vote for politicians that support systemic racism, then you are responsible for their problems. You don’t have to use the N-word to be a racist.
TenguPhule
It is long past time that Republican voters were suppressed and oppressed.
TenguPhule
@GregB:
Its a sign of the times that military coups start to look good when the leaders are corrupt as shit and otherwise impossible to get rid of.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
When the first black POTUS came along, the soft racists got substantially less soft.
In an election Obama otherwise won fairly easily, Mitt Romney got the highest share of the white vote in 24 years.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
The fundamentalists once essentially boycotted elections and then were recruited by the Republicans. Dems didn’t ever lose them per se, they weren’t in play and there’s nothing the Dems can do to bring them into the fold without becoming a completely different party.
different-church-lady
@Hungry Joe:
Note the subtle “othering” in that sentence, even in the midst of an article sympathetic to minorities. The “only” in that sentence makes it sound as thought black Louisianans were some kind of unusual event or force external to normal voting. One could write that sentence without the verbal tick of “only” and it would make just as much sense, but without the “othering” tone.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Take that back, puppies can be taught better.
Ruckus
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
One doesn’t really need a clue anymore, does one?
It’s pretty obvious that there is nothing and has never been anything economic about this anxiety, given who sits in our house.
MCA1
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Thanks. I think that actually kind of squares the circle between FlipYrWhig’s and my positions, actually. Maybe substitute “reinforced” for “learned” or “trained” or whatever I said in my first post on the subtopic.
sukabi
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): like every other “denomination” there are vast differences between what Jimmy Carter practices and what self-proclaimed saved again evangelicals practice.
Mnemosyne
Thanks a lot for making me late to work because I had to read the whole thing. ?
different-church-lady
@Cacti:
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Trump is making these fuckers worship him over Jesus Fucking Christ. I think its safe to say something has gone seriously wrong here.
different-church-lady
@TenguPhule: That’s why I believe Trump is genuinely evil, in the literal sense — he’s a force larger than politics at this point.
Doug R
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The Wilmer dead enders are the flip side of this toxic racism and sexism. Note the dismissal of Hillary’s votes in the south. Ignoring places like Washington state, when more people voted in the primary, the vote went toward Hillary. The vote in Nevada, the howling when Reid got casino workers out to vote. The howling about emails, when the man before her had done worse.
Even the assumption that their Bern would win even after he lost by about 4,000,000 votes in a sample HALF the size of the actual electorate.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
Speaking of “other-ing”, a certain progressive saint from Vermont had the following to say on Late Night with Seth Meyers, back in October:
Funny how the first group and “ordinary Americans” are separate even in the mind of the great left wing savior.
TenguPhule
And the Tax Abomination gets EVEN worse.
2027, 50% of the country sees tax hikes as a result of the GOP plan.
All of the benefits expire for the lower classes and the new inflation indexes mean more and more lower classes get sucked into higher tax brackets.
And of course, the corporate reductions and estate tax abolishment are permanent.
What next? Mass drownings of Puppies and Kitties to solve the national cruelty deficit?
FlipYrWhig
At any rate, there have been enough quixotic think-pieces on “how can we introduce despondent white bigots to the idea of class struggle and hence recruit them to the left,” which I’m glad this one is working against. But as for the larger conversation about how to win with liberal-left politics, my hobbyhorse lately is that IMHO there are non-voters and a few squishy Republicans out there who are _badly_ demoralized by the idea that politicians are corrupt, and who can be won over with integrity and fundamental goodness, even when those qualities are attached to a fairly boring human being.
Case in point, positive side: Ralph Northam. Dull dude, not fiery. Nice, gentle, good with kids, etc. Won big.
Case in point, negative side: Hillary Clinton. I still think that the ultimate reason why she lost (sort of; let’s say “among the people who voted or were allowed to vote”) was that she was made to seem _shady_ for about 20 consecutive years.
Sometimes we get hung up on “charisma,” but not that many people have charisma, and it’s hard to select for. Integrity is easier to find. Integrity PLUS charisma is pretty damn hard to beat: and that’s the Obama case. There are no Republicans with either. Sometimes they fake one or the other.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: When you put it like that I have to agree. He is also curiously silent about misogyny against HRC by the fucking elite media, including his own Atlantic. But yes let’s lionize him as a unique truth teller.
Gravenstone
Has someone been talking about two wetsuits and a dildo again? Because I just got an add here for a wetsuit underlayer. And I sure as shit am not a diver so don’t blame my browser history.
Chyron HR
@Cacti:
How can non-ordinary Americans be “number one” if “ordinary Americans” are “more important” than them?
TenguPhule
@Cacti: At this point, given that we need every vote in the Senate, I vote that we just ignore what he says and deal with him later.
sukabi
@TenguPhule: those that are diehard Drumpf followers were never really “following Jesus”…they were following “prosperity gospel” which uses Jesus as a prop only. Their true love is $$$.
Greed and hate is what Drumpf is selling, doesn’t surprise me that there are a bunch of folks that find that appealing.
TenguPhule
@Gravenstone: It was mentioned about 7 threads ago.
During one of the arguments about whether or not we should set ourselves on fire as penance for Franken.
D58826
and a few more have chimed in on twitter that a man is guilty if there is a pattern of behavior. Fair enough. But he is also guilty if there is a one-off accusation and no one else has ever noticed a negative pattern of behavior.
This will be the thermonuclear weapon of political dirty tricks and all of the legitimate victims will be buried in the ‘fake news cycle’
eclare
@TenguPhule: It’s a cult, makes you wonder just what his followers are capable of if he orders them to do something ala Manson or Jim Jones.
MCA1
@FlipYrWhig: OK. Maybe I should have left out a particular author’s name. I think it implied more buy-in to some positions than I actually hold. I’m certainly not a revolutionary or part of a traditional “leftist” strain of ideology or a Bernista or something. Not all of life or polity is class struggle. I guess the changing shape of our own wealth bell curve and our exploding Gini coefficient has had me seeing some of American politics through that lens recently, though. And, having always been dispositionally fairly small-c conservative by nature, those things do worry me.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig:
That was the skeleton that all of the other doubts, big and small could be hung on.
. Barak, Michelle, Bill and Elioz. Warren are hard acts to follow.
schrodingers_cat
@MCA1:
If they don’t see it as a problem, it does not mean it doesn’t exist. They voted for a person who laughs at the handicapped, brags about assaulting women. There is no nuance to the man and I am done trying to understand the people who voted for this person, or the ones who sat out the election to save the purity of their souls. You want to understand them, be my guest.
These people hate my very existence and I am supposed to understand them, why?
Doug R
The one place where Bernie and Donald agreed-trade.
Trade is what keeps us from war, any deal is always going to have its downsides, that’s the nature of business.
This f*ck you, I’ve got mine from anti-trade attitude has more than a little racism to it.
Also, why am I in moderation?
Cacti
@eclare:
Don’t wonder. Be prepared to defend yourself.
If Trump asked his followers to do something awful, they’d do so gladly and without hesitation.
These are dark times we find ourselves in.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug R: BS is T-lite. Points of similarilty
Finger wagging shouty demagogue from Brooklyn
Protectionist
Misogyny against HRC
Rigged elections
Ds are worse than Rs
Tissue thin policy proposals
ETA: Russian bot help against HRC.
JR
@D58826: you can see it in the reactions here — muddying the waters works.
schrodingers_cat
@D58826: HRC is a better speaker than preachy teacher, Warren.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly. Both intent on erasing Obama. I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence that Wilmer watched a brilliant black man accomplish more in 8 years than he did in his entire mediocre life, then decided it was time for a “revolution” – and who heeded his call? A bunch of mediocre low info whites who feel like they’re victims, and want the civil rights of non-whites/non-males to take a back seat to their demands for the government goodies they want – free college and free health care, and who hate Hillary and Obama as much as Trumpers.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@D58826:
Liz Warren would lose 45 states.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Absolutely, thanks for the summary.
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: BS is quite the protectionist when it comes to skilled immigration as well. Another point of similarity.
stinger
@Stan: I’ve proposed an all-female Supreme Court for the next 250 years. That would provide equity and restore balance. Then after that we could allow men on it again, in proportionate numbers.
Captain C
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Sure we will, as long as we bend a knee to them and get to the back of the bus with our “identity politics.” /s
schrodingers_cat
@Captain C: Are you sure they will let us sit at the back of the bus, or will we have to walk?
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
Coincidentally, Peanut is working on the citizen part, in her Social Studies book. We had to do a collage on what we thought America was. So, there we were, cutting out pictures of people of different colors and ethnicities. Drawing things to represent the different climates of the regions of the country. Looking at the variety in the collage, and knowing that Dolt45 and his followers think somethings wrong with the America we showed in the collage.
TenguPhule
@stinger:
No it wouldn’t.
Remember, white women tended to SUPPORT Trump.
Timurid
I’ve lived among white people all my life, but it took the last year to make me realize that I don’t know them at all.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodingers_cat: If I can ride my hobbyhorse a bit I think one of the sicker ironies of the 2016 election was that the media let the “integrity” candidate be DONALD FUCKING TRUMP. That’s what all that “drain the swamp” stuff was, and his rants about how he was wealthy enough to know how politicians get bought. Sigh.
ETA: Lost track of my original point, which was that IMHO Bernie Sanders softened her up for it in ways he didn’t have to if he was running a “left alternative” campaign rather than a “Hillary sucks!” campaign. But I’m trying to cut back on venting my irritation at that guy.
TenguPhule
@FlipYrWhig: One of the media’s heavier sins.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re not alone on this. And I have also been talking about it with family, friends and some co-workers.
I find it odd that even some informed liberals are not quite clued in to the awful racism and deep belief in the dangerous inferiority of nonwhite people at the heart of Trump’s nativism. It is also deeply personally tied to his weird belief in the his own greatness and the greatness of his children.
TenguPhule
Ah John Cole, Phrasing!
ruemara
@TenguPhule: Exactly. People keep promoting a gynocracy as if that fixes something.
germy
sharl
It’s great to see the long-suffering Zimbabweans have a reason to celebrate
But from an expert on the region, there is also this
Party on Zimbabweans, and rest up for your uncertain future.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
It has little to do with fun. It is based in part on a pernicious idea that the country is full, that there is barely enough for “real Americans,” that some immigrants take more than they give back. And also that some immigrants just will not assimilate. And of course, the idea that some immigrants are inferior and degrade “white America.” The presence or existence of these people are a danger to everyone else.
schrodingers_cat
@FlipYrWhig: He was a part of the two prong strategy by Comrade P against HRC and our country. Then, all his behavior including the petulant pouty face and the acting out of his supporters at the convention makes total sense.
TenguPhule
@ruemara: I’m worried its going to become part of GOP ratfucking to start manipulating genuine outrage into extremist calls of “replace all the men in power with women” and “its our turn now to hold the whips”. Our Coalition of the Non-Republicans isn’t exactly the most stable thing to begin with and this seems like just the thing to kick off another round of infighting and navel gazing.
TenguPhule
@germy: And Rex Tillerson’s name just went to the head of the Tumbrel list.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: In my own life, I have had women enforcing patriarchal norms more than men have. Not all women are angels.
D58826
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: oh I agree that she would lose big. Good fit for Mass. but not many other states.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
And what happens when you decide that that certain ideas are only a tiny part of the explanation even when those ideas keep showing up over and over and over again? ?
schrodingers_cat
@D58826: I live in Mass and I am not totally in love with her. Truth be told, Sage of Vt is more popular in my neck of the woods, than she is.
Timurid
@TenguPhule:
Not that he isn’t a dick, but that appears to be a parody account.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: She lost some favor with me when she agreed with the “rigged” narrative.
stinger
@TenguPhule: I didn’t say they had to be white women, or all liberal-leaning justices, just that they should be women. The equity and balance I refer to is countering 200 years of an all-male court.
FlipYrWhig
@TenguPhule: Note that that says
Rex Tilllerson
not
Rex Tillerson
3 lower-case l’s, not 2.
TenguPhule
@Timurid: I’d still leave him there for what he’s done to the State Department.
But Scott Pruitt is definitely second on the list.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: No Mnuchin and trophy wife?
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: The patriarchy couldn’t exist without a subservient matriarchy.
TenguPhule
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, just saw that.
I sure walked into that one.
Rebuses Nick
@Doug R: Well. They also agreed that white dudes were being oppressed and that racism and sexism weren’t all that concerning compared to the white dudes’ oppression. They differed greatly on what they wanted to do about it, though.
TenguPhule
@stinger:
You really want a female version of the Dred Scott Decision?
GregB
That isn’t really Tillerson.
rikyrah
REMAINS OF SGT. LA DAVID JOHNSON FOUND IN NIGER WEEKS AFTER HIS FUNERAL
Human remains belonging to slain Army Sgt. La David Johnson were discovered in Niger earlier this month, according to reports. The parts were found about month after the soldier and three of his comrades were killed in an early October ambush, CNN reported, and more than two weeks after his funeral. …
MORE: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/remains-sgt-la-david-johnson-found-weeks-funeral-article-1.3648483?utm_content=buffer0f4c5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw
Timurid
@TenguPhule:
Ajit Pai is another guy who could use a quick trim from the National Razor…
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: True, they are the real enforcers of patriarchy.
GregB
Still.
The memes pushed by the fake Tillerson account is the kind of hysteria inducing propaganda that we saw in the run up to the election.
It is fucking madly dangerous.
No Drought No More
Thank you. That is one of the finest pieces of political writing about the American people I have ever read. I don’t care much about awards, but if it doesn’t win a Pulitzer why bother at all?
I also feel obliged to note one passage: “..in the 2008 Democratic primary, Clinton herself ran as the candidate of “hard-working Americans, white Americans” against Obama, earning her the “exceedingly strange new respect” of conservatives who noted that she was running the “classic Republican race against her opponent.”
There are links attached in that paragraph in the article- I regret I can’t provide a hyper-link here.
Hillary also got the Iraq War wrong. It’s time for the democratic party to thank her, and move on (aggressively) with a new generation of candidates.
stinger
@ruemara:
Ruemara, I guess the “people” in this instance would be me, and I’m only promoting a correction to the pronounced and extended imbalance on the highest court in the land, not a government made up entirely of women.
It’s also largely tongue in cheek — sorry that didn’t come across.
TenguPhule
@stinger:
Poes law in full effect.
germy
different-church-lady
@TenguPhule: But hey, when Twitter sorts out their little checkmark problem then all these assholes-trying-to-trick-you problems just magically vanish, am I right Twitter?
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Double digits. I hate them, but the damage inflicted isn’t even in the same galaxy as the others.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: If this happened under a Democratic administration, impeachment proceedings would already be commencing. -Part MXXXXVVVIII
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I think you’re on to something here. They somehow see the Civil Rights Movement as an aberration from the “unity” of WWII, when in fact the movement was partially spurred by the fact that African-Americans served during the war and then had to return to being second-class citizens at home. You can’t ask a man to risk his life as a Tuskegee Airman and then expect him to be happy going back to work as an elevator operator because that’s the only job his segregated hometown has available for him.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I wonder what that epitome of rectitude and honor, who is now content to play the sidekick to the person in the WH has to say now?
Adria McDowell
@Brachiator: If you don’t listen to The Dollop podcast, they did two really good episodes on Donald Trump. He’s a full blown eugenicist.
stinger
@TenguPhule:
You really want a female version of the Dred Scott Decision?
schrodingers_cat
@Adria McDowell: Of course, he is. His raw xenophobia was in evidence since he announced his run and his racism was evident during the entire birther episode.
TenguPhule
@stinger: A terrible decision was made by an all male court. The worst in the court’s history. Do you really want to see a terrible decision of the same caliber by an all female court?
sharl
@Cheryl Rofer: Your twitter travails inspired me to search for some “killer” mansplaining .jpg image files that might be useful in such situations; there is a lot of good written content on the subject, but I think we know that guys like this either won’t read pieces like that (though they may claim they did), or won’t see how it is applicable to them. So an image attached to a twitter is kind of a one-shot deal which (at best) might make the less thick-headed mansplainers think, but at least will entertain more perceptive lurkers while possibly offering some cathartic value.
I didn’t really find any killer one-jpg-for-all-occasions image in my cursory search – this might come closest (we’ll see if that link actually works) – but there are some pretty funny cartoons out there.
The penned flowchart attached to this tweet might be useful, though it could use some brightness & contrast enhancements –
TenguPhule
And so much for Ireland being a nice place to run to.
TIme of Troubles II seems to be more likely by the day, if this editorial by Sinn Fein is any indicator.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
Again, I was one of the Others until the 1980s because of my German last name. Then the WASPs got to be such a minority they had no choice but to let us “ethnic” Europeans in their whites only club.
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The 1920s are their ideal with respect to immigration.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Ding ding ding. The media constructed a narrative where DONALD FUCKING TRUMP had more integrity than Hillary Clinton because, hey, at least he’s a open racist! And WAY more people on the left fell for that bullshit than should have. Some of them still post here to this day, convinced that Hillary Clinton is irredeemably corrupt and somehow just hasn’t been caught yet.
Ruviana
@sharl: I really liked both of those and the tweets after the flowchart are funny if depressing.
The Ancient Randonneur
It’s a damn shame the Romans didn’t have better and hungrier lions.
Doug R
@No Drought No More: I notice how casually you toss that “Clinton wrong on Iraq war” out there like the disingenuous straw argument it is.
Mnemosyne
@stinger:
Meh. I’d rather see Goodwin Liu on the Supreme Court than Priscilla Owen, even if Liu does have a peni$.
And Merrick Garland would have been a far better justice than any woman the Heritage Foundation decides to promote.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Oh my god. His poor wife. This is horrible.
hueyplong
1. Of course KKK types are “people of (evangelical) faith.” It’s not like they were burning crescents or six-pointed stars.
2. Re Duke: an “extended recession” could not possibly have existed a mere year after Saint Raygun left office. Unpossible. He brought Real Murkins the bestest times in the history of good times.
ruemara
@stinger: actually, not you. You’re joking but I’m currently being berated by a noted black feminist for rightly pointing out that media are doing ridiculous things like labeling pictures of Al Franken taking publicity shots with Arianna Huffington as him “groping” her and it is degrading the real reports of sexual harassment plus it’s making them a political tool. I hear too many women and men say turn it over to women or women would be better. En masse, perhaps. Or perhaps not having quite the same levels of control and power mean women just haven’t had a chance to be as abusive. How about we just get better people with better character? I get a lot of shit because I don’t consider women some higher version of the human species. I’m a fucking feminist. I know women are just as human as men and treat them accordingly.
mike in dc
There’s a reason why Democratic presidential candidates seem to face a hard cap of 45% on white voter support. Racism is a large part–probably the largest part of it. Lots of other -isms and -phobias too, including tribalism. The media reporting won’t get a lot better until the editorial staffing of media becomes more diverse–not just the field reporting but the people behind the camera and supervising the newspaper reporters. I honestly think we should run someone like Kamala Harris, but delivering the inclusive, unifying language of Obama. I think pandering to white racial resentment is a dead-end, we’re not going to out-Trump Trump, so we might as well lean into it and maximize base turnout while pulling voters who went for Stein or Johnson or only voted Trump due to dislike of Clinton(we won’t get many of these, honestly) or who stayed home.
Doug R
@Brachiator:
Do you think a German pimp who got kicked out of his own country for dodging military service would qualify? Like grandpa Drumpf?
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: YES. Word on that.
Mary G
I follow Serwer on Twitter and for further Balloon Juice approval can report that he has two orange cats named Butters and Burns and a pug named Sparkle.
stinger
@TenguPhule: Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education were decided by all-male courts. An all-female court would make good and bad decisions. That’s not my point, and I’m giving up on trying to make it here.
Agorabum
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: yes, economically anxious minorities don’t get a license to be terrible.
stinger
@Mnemosyne: No argument from me on either of those. My proposal was tongue in cheek!
Heck, I’m currently represented by Plastic Bags Ernst, and a female Terry Branstad-style governor who only got that position when Terry Branstad went to China. I know women aren’t necessarily better than men.
schrodingers_cat
@Agorabum: The media denizens are making excuses for their own R (Republican and racist) bias with this excessive coverage WWC “economic anxiety” meme.
rikyrah
Not only was he banned from the Mall, they had someone watching him at the local high school football games.
…………………..
Alabama ex-cop says she was tasked with keeping Roy Moore away from cheerleaders at high school games
A retired Alabama police officer told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday that she had to keep an eye on Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore in the 1980s at local high school football games because he would regularly harass the team’s teenage cheerleaders.
Faye Gary, who for 37 years was an officer at the Gadsden Police Department, explained to Mitchell that Moore’s reputation for pursuing underage girls was widely known throughout the community.
“We were also told to watch him at the ballgames, and make sure that he didn’t, you know, hang around with the cheerleaders,” said Gary.
Gary also said she learned that Moore had been barred from entering the local shopping mall because he had been “harassing” young women who worked there.
Moore faces multiple allegations that he inappropriately pursued teenage girls when he was in his 30s, including allegations from two women that Moore tried to force them to have sexual contact with him when they were both under the age of consent
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/alabama-ex-cop-says-she-was-tasked-with-keeping-roy-moore-away-from-cheerleaders-at-high-school-games/
schrodingers_cat
@Doug R: You mean Tom Cotton’s scheme of “merit” based immigration? Then the answer would be no.
jl
” Does any of this sound familiar? ”
Yes the reductionist line about white racism driving everything people here don’t like in US politics does sound familiar. About as familiar as the Benribro reductionist line that everything can be reduced to class politics. This debate between two increasing tribal and reductionist camps is tiresome.
stinger
@ruemara: Thanks, I agree with this 100%.
Calouste
@The Ancient Randonneur: The Romans realized it was animal cruelty to throw the lions to the Christians.
mike in dc
@jl: @jl: Was there anything particularly nuanced or subtle about the Trump campaign?
Gelfling 545
@schrodingers_cat: Same here. They just feel that somehow they should have MORE.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Didn’t read the article, did we?
You may want to look at Serwer’s statistics and then try to explain why he’s wrong.
Gelfling 545
@quakerinabasement: Oh, I don’t know about that. Call the a**holes whatever you want as far as I’m concerned.
Kirk
@Timurid: I AM a white person, and I don’t think I know us at all either.
ruemara
@rikyrah: So he was a known pedo, a pervert and neighborhood sex predator AND A JUDGE, ICON, NOW NOMINEE FOR SENATE? Jesus Christ almighty, come and get your people in line or smite the folks sullying your name.
Mnemosyne
@Gelfling 545:
And usually they don’t want more money, per se. They want more power and social prestige, and they’re pissed that they get less of it by virtue of being white than they used to.
Chad
@MCA1: Under this logic how can someone explain for the continued power of racism during the post-WW2 boom or the roaring 20s? The 90s saw a supercharged economy sitting alongside predatory subprime lending.
No, pointing out that racism swamps economics when looking at the motivations of Trump voters isn’t “simplistic.” I think to dismiss the power of racism as “simplistic” does what Serwer speaks to in the peace, throw up any and every distraction from discussing the racism staring up plainly in the face.
TenguPhule
@Calouste:
Well played.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
That Donald Trump is sitting in the White House and Dick Cheney remains free and unpunished are the best proof that there truly is no kind and loving God.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: So they lied to her – and didn’t even have his remains when they told her they did?
Shana
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I read Franken’s book where he talks extensively about that during his first Senate campaign.
Xenos
Repeat after me, class,
These whites are not Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and Falwell groupies in spite of being racist authoritarians.
They are in these sects BECAUSE they are racist authoritarians.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I hate to even say this because of the horrifying images it brings up, but it sounds like maybe there were a few pieces that had gotten scattered away from the main part of his remains. Scavengers are going to scavenge when there’s a corpse in their territory. ?
StringOnAStick
@MCA1:
This has been the core belief of my oldest sister the Southern Baptist for decades. Her religion allows her to hate the people she would be hating anyway, with that nice big side dish of authoritarianism she’s been pigged out on since forever. When she says “all gay people should be shot”, it’s not a joke: she means it. This is one of many reasons why we don’t spend the holidays or any other days with my family because seriously, screw those people.
Tim C.
@different-church-lady: Agreed. Part of the way we teach about racism to children from a young age focuses on the most dramatic and horrible things. Everyone knows about the Klan, but very few know about the far more common and powerful Citizens’ Councils. When your average Trumper says “I’m not racist!” They mean “I don’t spend my free time committing acts of direct violence!” But yes, racist as hell.
Captain C
@schrodingers_cat: The hardcore will insist we walk right in the middle of the bus’ exhaust plume, and be thankful for our heavy dose of carbon monoxide.
sharl
Interesting response (IMO) to Adam Serwer’s piece in a twitter thread that starts here:
I’m leaving this next tweet in as an act of honest transcription, despite the hostile reception it may get.
So many pundits have stove-piped the economic and identity issues into two completely separate things, and – so it often seems to me – so many readers have bought into that. It’s so refreshing to see young Briahna Gray address this head-on.
schrodingers_cat
@sharl:
She did offer an alternative, and her policy proposals were solid not slogans, unlike the sage of Vt. If people didn’t hear them its because all the media wanted to cover was emailz.
Brachiator
@Adria McDowell:
I will check this out. Yeah, I can believe this about Trump. It is also clear that he loves running with the racists and alt-right lunatic friend who are big on pseudo-scientific rationalizations for their fear and loathing of nonwhite people.
Vhh
@RepubAnon: Or Hitler’s speeches
Cacti
@sharl:
So racism isn’t really an issue because Danica Roem?
What race is Danica Roem again?
FlipYrWhig
@sharl: I agree with the part about Sanders and “the swamp,” as I was trying to discuss above — Sanders ran very hard on his honesty vs. Clinton’s corruption — but I think this WILDLY oversells the degree to which Sanders’s campaign rhetoric had much to do with “bread and butter issues.” His biggest promises were free college (either bread and/or butter for the white and educated but not particularly crucial to the less-educated) and something something banks, maybe that they give too much money to politicians? There was little in the Sanders campaign to parallel to the Roem bit about the need to fix a local highway. Clinton, by contrast, had ALL MANNER OF highway-fixing proposals she could talk about ad nauseam. It didn’t galvanize skeptics at all.
sharl
@schrodingers_cat: I’ll agree with that. There are a host of problems with that election that @briebriejoy’s narrowly focused twitter thread didn’t address, including our pathetic media and the vulnerabilities in our election systems. The interference by Russia (and jeebus knows who else) is serious and needs to be addressed, but I’m afraid that NYT/Politico/Facebook/Google/etc. will use Russia as an excuse to be let off the hook for their role in our current shit-awful predicament.
Bokonon
The American media relentlessly flatters its readers, and tells them how great they are, and ratifies their views as legitimate. Because hey … you don’t want to antagonize any paying customers in a time of ruthless competition and dropping subscription rates for print publications, do you? It is the reason for both-siderism, and warm-feeling euphamisms, and the practice of stepping on the story when the real issue is raw, active rascism.
But the flattering mirror the media holds up is false. And “economic insecurity” has become a classic half-truth version of what’s really going on with white voters … more and more intensely, over the last 14 years or so.
The most prominent and blatant example I can think of is the Wal-Mart shootings in Colorado, where the shooter was a angry racist and religious nut case that actively went out to murder Hispanics. What the media gave us instead was puzzlement over the shooter’s motives, or “investigations are pending”. And the media then dropped it. That story and narrative was too hot to handle.
One other thing the media doesn’t want to say is that the culture war recriminations and anger we have going on are typical of a country that has just suffered the humiliations of losing a war. Because we won’t own up to our recent failures, and call things what they are. Consider Obama is being treated as someone who lost a war – or two wars, even – not as someone who inherited a mess given to him by George W. Bush.
FlipYrWhig
@sharl: Furthermore, another successful politician whose comfort zone is the _opposite_ of “bread and butter issues” is Barack Obama.
sharl
@FlipYrWhig: One huge and often-overlooked disadvantage HRC had relative to BHO is that she wasn’t running to follow George W. Bush. So headlines like the following were not in the cards for her:
From the 538 piece it links – just an anecdote, but a telling one IMO:
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I likey.
Ruckus
@quakerinabasement:
Those of us white people who hate racism don’t mind white racist assholes being called out for being white asshole racists.
Brachiator
@Doug R:
When he came to the US, Frederick Trump listed his occupation as “none” and I don’t think he spoke English. Oddly, enough, he had a relative already in the US, a sister, so a connection. Trump policies would undo the benefit of being able to bring relatives or having a local family connection. I don’t think Fred did any pimping until he had lived here, and maybe gone to Alaska.
But based on the hard standards that the neo-nativists want to impose on immigrants, he would not be allowed in. That would make a hell of a time travel story. Trump’s own policies prevent the Great Orange Goofball from being born.
sharl
@FlipYrWhig: As far as Bernie is concerned, I agree with Barney Frank’s criticism of the blowhard, which was formed by Frank’s observation of Sander’s performance during his brief time in the early 90s as a Congressman, before moving on to the Senate.
By her own admission, Hillary was not the “natural” politician that her husband was, which is a problem regardless of how good one is on policy (and her domestic policy proposals were pretty damn good). So the populist (for young folks) Grandstander lost to the Wonk (certainly fine by me), but she couldn’t overcome Twitler and his media enablers (with help from Putin + ???). Meh…
To this day I remain stunned by her Electoral College loss to Trump, as do so many, even among the Berners I follow on Twitter. NYC media – especially the NYT, which the rest of US media follows way too slavishly for a number of reasons – had followed the con artist for so long, they seemed to just assume that the rest of the country would know what the NYT already knew about the guy. I still think this kind of hubris made the NYT too cocky, so they felt they could go back to the Clinton-trashing they’ve loved since the 90s, under the assumption that they’d have her to kick around for another four or eight years. Easy-peasy click bait.
One thing young people – left, right, and politically disengaged – seem to generally agree on is that there really is a “Swamp” in DC. The politically engaged Berners I follow knew that Trump was full of shit in promising to properly deal with it, and while most of them believed that Hillary was better, they felt that she was a swamp creature herself, so to speak, so with a great lack of enthusiasm they called for their chums in likely battleground states to hold their noses and vote for her. Not enough of them in that group, unfortunately (or not enough heeded the call).
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
QFT
The reality is that it’s only in the last few decades that more that a small percentage of the worlds population has decided that this isn’t necessary.
sharl
@briebriejoy’s argument there is specifically addressing economic/infrastructure issues, not the racial identity issue. Danica Roem and the other major newsworthy Virginia Delegate winner – Lee Carter – are both white, and I think both will now represent majority white state legislative districts. I’m pretty sure the point she is making in her tweet thread is that non-wealthy whites shouldn’t automatically be assumed to be knuckle-dragging racist – and in that case of Roem, transphobic/homophobic – drooling idiots. They both knew their districts, and related to them on – yes – economic anxiety issues, not fear of The Other. That latter shit only worked for Gillespie in the west/southwest part of the state in the governor’s race, but Gillespie got clobbered elsewhere.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: wow, so interesting to see how HRC is really still THE enemy, isn’t she? Fuck what she actually proposed, fuck what Bernie Sanders was actually capable of delivering. ]
Just…fuck.
Chyron HR
@sharl:
Spoiler alert: When the junior senator from Vermont rails against “identity politics” and insists that the most important people in America are the “white working class”, he does not count Danica Roem in the latter group.
Captain C
@Ruckus:
This white person has no problem with that.
mike in dc
I think it’s a mistake to hold up a single politician as the standard-bearer for a movement. Progressivism, liberalism and democratic socialism are broader than one person. Better to hedge by supporting a diverse group of standard-bearers.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I hated to ask, but I noted the use of “parts” in that story, multiple times. She said she wanted to see his body and pretty much because she didn’t trust what they were telling her. (And not telling her.)
Shame on them. And shame on everyone for the clusterfuck that had contractors who didn’t even know to do a head count before they flew away. ;; rage ::
different-church-lady
@Chyron HR: It’s really easy to say people should drop “identity politics” when you’re part of the group who has the luxury of believing their identity consists of nothing other than “normal”.
Citizen Alan
@trollhattan:
One of the best kept secrets in American politics is the fact that evangelicals really didn’t give a shit about abortion until the IRS went after Bob Jones U’s tax exempt status for refusing to admit blacks. Then, almost as one, they had an “unscheduled dogma change” as Tasha Lem would have put it and decided to join the Catholics in being rabidly anti-abortion if the Catholics would join them in pushing back on civil rights by blindly supporting the GOP.
Citizen Alan
@sukabi:
It is astonishing to me how incredibly ignorant prosperity gospel “Christians” are of their own Bible. I mean, it’s in there. It is right there in the red letter passages attributed to Jesus himself. He flat-out said that “you cannot serve God and Mammon ‘and implied that the people who chose the latter were going to hell no matter how much they pretended to choose the former. I really want someone to do a rewrite of Left Behind in which the vast majority of Christians follow the Antichrist after millions of people disappear but 80% of Christians get left behind while vast numbers of atheists who devote themselves to charitable works get Raptured.
sharl
Some younger Black folk continuing the discussion started by Adam Serwer’s piece (and responded to by @briebriejoy (see comment #228 above); this tweet is – I think – taking some issue with bbj’s tweet thread, although more with regard to how much she emphasizes economics over race. This tweet also includes a pretty informative video (2m16s) that goes over the history of how white conservative political leaders play the race card (some Lee Atwater stuff included):
Citizen Alan
@stinger:
Um, speaking as an attorney, I’ve spent much of the last 17 years loudly thanking God that Edith Jones from the 5th Circuit was deemed to old for the Supreme Court. She was the one who authored the opinion that your right to counsel is not violated by your attorney sleeping through your death penalty trial unless you can somehow show that you could have been acquitted if only he’d been awake at some specific and important point. IIRC, she may have also authored (or maybe just joined) the opinion that a dead prisoner’s 8th amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment is not violated just because the guards left an inmate unable to get up do to illness to literally rot to death from bed sores.
You seriously underestimate the extent to which the cruelty and malfeasance of conservative women can match or exceed that of male conservatives if you think the solution for everything is as simple as “only vote for women,” let alone, only put women on the Supreme Court.
NMgal
@Timurid: I’ve been a white person all my life, but it took the last year to make me realize that I don’t know them at all. My privilege is that I can blend in if I want to.
J R in WV
@Captain C:
Me neither. My dad was a Rockefeller Republican in the long ago. Dad believed in integration, and thought a lot of Martin Luther King Jr. He would put on a suit and tie (which he hated wearing, tho he was something of a clothes horse later on) and march with the local NAACP. This was in a southern West Virginia coal town in the late 1950s and ’60s.
As a result, I got called names in elementary school, you can guess the most popular one” “Ni**er Lover!” I embrace that today, although I will admit it wasn’t as natural a posture in the 5th grade. And at least I never got beat up severely from it. Maybe because my dad was a well regarded person in town. Even tho he was a Republican in Democratic country.
As a kid, most of my friends had pictures on the living room walls: FDR, Christ, and later on JFK.