People are dunking on this but it forthrightly paints a picture not of impoverished white working class…but a middle class spun into debt & tax nightmares chasing status trophies. Lashing out against non-whites for loss of status. The classic story of white grievance politics. https://t.co/5itymAYtqz
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) February 10, 2021
GIMME BIGGER MORE NOW is Trump’s personal motto, and his dedication to it is a real inspiration to the worst of his cultists:
… Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories…
The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.
While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Trump and his brand of grievance politics tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.
“I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a political science professor who helps run the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab at American University, reacting to The Post’s findings. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”…
In the Capitol attack, business owners and white-collar workers made up 40 percent of the people accused of taking part, according to a study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. Only 9 percent appeared to be unemployed…
Ties into modern gun culture too. AR-15s, fancy attachments, Instagrammed trips to the range it's all a pricy hobby meant to project wealth and power like a Corvette. Think how many insurrectionists you see looking like SEALs with knockoff OpsCore helmets. https://t.co/vGYCCVSQJS
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) February 10, 2021
I've been pushing back against the "forgotten man" and "the victims of a changing economy" narrative exactly on these grounds. This is a flight from adulthood and responsibility citizenship and self-discipline, not some reaction to an unfair world. Trump is their patron saint. https://t.co/cKWoZxoWgw
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 10, 2021
It's not about poverty. It's about the blunted expectations of a middle-class that thinks the bills never come due and that bad choices are always the fault of some shadowy cabal somewhere. These are not poor people. https://t.co/9PbFyxhuNM
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 10, 2021
This is a good point. Did they become radicalized because they have money and relationship troubles, or were their money and relationship troubles a red flag for the kind of person who is easy to radicalize? I believe the evidence from terrorism profiles says: the latter. https://t.co/DRd4WKjU38
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 10, 2021
Starboard Tack
“A hand full of gimme and a mouth full of fuck you.”
John Revolta
@Starboard Tack: LOL
Winston
If only we had more socialism.
The Thin Black Duke
@Winston: We do. It’s for rich white people.
CaseyL
I wonder how many of them are adherents of the Prosperity Gospel, where you are encouraged to spend money you don’t have because God will make sure it all comes out OK.
Winston
@The Thin Black Duke: That is called capitalism.
Pete Downunder
I think part of it is the declining real wages. If you have two people, one who had a million dollars and suddenly received 10 million and another who had 20 million and suddenly lost 9. Both would have 11 million but one would feel great and the other terrible even though they were now in the exact same financial condition. Trying to maintain the old standard of living on a lower income can only lead to debt and despair.
craigie
If they don’t buy boats, how can they go to the Trump boat rallies?
DMcK
A close relative of mine lives in the supposedly idyllic suburbs of Suffolk County, Long Island, and while she is one of the most hard working and responsible people I know, she’s surrounded by folks living on the precipice of financial disaster just so they can project a ballin’ lifestyle. Issues with substance abuse and gambling debt are pretty common as well. And, hoo-boy, the racism. Anyhoo, I’m sure the Harley dealership out there makes a mint off of what should be child-support payments.
Winston
I just want to update my recent increase in doctorism. My PCP was concerned about my heart. It has been broken on several occasions, like when my wife died, my brother died and my girlfriend died of covid. So, in the last three weeks I’ve been going to a cardiologist, taking all kinds of tests (EKGs, stress EKGs, ultrasounds, cat scans} and lo and behold, I am okay. If I wasn’t on a socialist medicare, it would have cost me 10s of thousands. But my copays are 40 dollars. All for me saying “I feel good” .
MisterForkbeard
This may have been noted in another thread, but apparently noted Trumper Gina Carano (who played the rebel shocktrooper Cara Dune in the Mandalorian) will no longer be appearing in Star Wars. Evidently Disney was fed up with her tweets after repeated warnings, where she:
Made fun of transfolk, attacked masks and spewed anti-covid propaganda, went after Democrats, and supported the 1/6 insurrection. The final straw was when she yesterday said that being a Republican in Biden’s America was like being a Jew in pre-nazi Germany.
And nothing of value was lost.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I could never understand how people go to a restaurant and take photos of their meal and post it on instagram or facebook. And they don’t do it to show how pretty the meal looks, because the vast majority of the time it doesn’t, they do it to display status in terms of how much money they spent. I know some of these people, they don’t have the disposable income, instead they max out one credit card after another.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
When Al Franken used to have a radio show he would have on one of his roommates from Harvard. Al said the guy was more liberal than him and had been so for decades but he went through a bad divorce and became a reactionary who listened to hate radio every day. Al believed that various people just need to find a scapegoat for their own personal failing.
Winston
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Credit cards. I use them for everything, pay them off monthly and get cash back. Couple time a year I get $50. Love it and it saves me time going to the bank to get cash.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This sounding more and more like a mass collective mid life crises with these guys. I mean a 50 year old middle manager man dressing up as a SEAL?
Mary G
I’ve got an ex-friend who was always terrible with money. Her mom died and her share of the estate was $40,000, so she bought a $50,000 truck. She was way under water on her mortgage and lost everything after 2008. She changed from a lifelong Democrat to a raging, racist MAGAt. She had a good job with benefits and got fired for screaming at a client. It’s a nightmare.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My nephew does it to be an ironic hipster bastard. Allegedly he wore a tie with “I don’t need this job” written on the back to and interview once.
Winston
I fell asleep watching the “peach” about the time the lady from Virgin Islands was speaking and didn’t wake up till midnight. That’s my life for the last year. No schedule. I get my second vax on 2/23. Looking to get back to normal a couple weeks after that. Wooo Hooo.
Sebastian
@Winston:
I am so sorry, Winston.
df
@Pete Downunder: That’s what’s frustrating to me: the decline in real wages is, well… real, and the precariat gets larger while the middle class gets smaller. Nobody deserves to live on the edge like that, but it apparently never occurs to some of these people that their favorite politicians are the ones who make it possible for the becapitaled class to screw them over, over and over.
Until you think of it in terms of race. The average rightwinger will vote against their own best interest time and time again if it means screwing over minorities too. (I don’t know if they do this intentionally or if it’s all automatic at this point.) I’m on my second Rittenhouse 100, so I forget the specifics, but a friend once shared a review for a book that talked about this in detail. The right wing hates everyone they consider inferior so much that they’re willing to die if it means taking The Other out with them.
Comrade Colette
@Winston: I’m so sorry. What a terrible series of losses. Glad to hear your heart is objectively OK as seen by an outside observer with machines that go “ping,” and hope it starts to feel better from the inside.
Winston
@Mary G: I dated a lady who inherited $150,000 after her husband died. She spent it all within a year. Now she’s broke and wants to borrow money from me.
swbarnes2
In the general population, 50% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debt. Wonder if that’s true of this population.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Winston:
Doesn’t medicare have a yearly deductible separate from the copay? Or do you have a medicare advantage or medigap policy?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
the people who dress up like a Seal look ridiculous (photo)
Martin
Kent
A lot of these people are just shitty people to begin with. Hence they end up divorced. Nothing will blow up your precarious finances like a divorce. It’s all part of the package.
I do remember when we lived in something of a MAGA suburb in TX and I was always just blown away by all the reckless spending by people who I knew were less affluent than us. It is easy enough to figure out when you know what your neighbors do for a living, how much their houses cost, what kind of cars they drive, and they money they blow on shit like plantation shutters or vacations.
Sm*t Cl*de
If I had a dollar for every Q-cumber who blamed the Deep State for denying him access to his children, I’d be drinking a much better class of Akvavit.
Redshift
@Pete Downunder: There’s also the general effect of rising income inequality – no matter where you are on the income scale, you see the people above you pulling away. That by itself doesn’t turn people toward fascist populism, but it makes for fertile ground for grievance-mongering demagogues. (All while benefiting plutocrats directly.)
Winston
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: I have medicare advantage thru CarePlus. Specialist copays are $10/visit. There is a maximum copay like $2300 per year, including drug, dental, eye, ear copays. etc. PCP visits are free (min 4 times/year). This plan pays $125/month part B medicare premiums. It’s not available everywhere but in Florida it’s very popular. They just over doctor in my opinion, but that’s how they make their money. I love my doctor. She is cute, but rejects my marriage proposals.
JCJ
@Martin: It wasn’t long after I started reading balloon-juice that I came across this perfect distillation courtesy of Davis X. Machina. That coupled with Cleek’s Law gives a perfect description of a significant portion of our society.
Kent
@Sm*t Cl*de: But divorce is probably the reason why they are bankrupt.
cmorenc
@Winston:
One of the best decision I ever made in that respect was marrying a woman who has great financial sense and judgment with money, without being killjoy uptight. For example, we don’t live beyond where we can pay off the credit cards in full each month, a corollary of which is we have always lived a bit below our means and invested the difference. We have nice things, such as my Martin D18 guitar but no bling whatsoever.
Winston
@Winston: I might mention, medigap policies might be better for certain conditions. They cover everything medicare doesn’t but they have their own premium in addition to part B. My wife was diagnosed with lung cancer on her 65th birthday. We immediately got her a medigap policy. Between Medicare and Medigap, we did not pay a cent for chemo or any other medical service until the day she died.
the pollyanna from hell
Partisan misanthropy impels a spiral descent of heterodyning feedback loop, where I have to compete for wages with the wage-slaves my party’s platform is designed to punish. But misanthropy is younger by long millennia than its model pattern in misogyny, which leads to overpopulation, which leads to war, which leads to misogyny, and down and down through the chasms of time. I am counting on us breaking both cycles at once, any decade now. Maybe tonight!
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Winston: I know what you mean, my doctor is smoking hawt. I go in twice a year for colonoscopes even though I don’t need them.
Winston
@cmorenc: Good thinking. Managing a budget in retirement can not be emphasized enough. Unfortunately, as we get older and dementia starts taking its toll, it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet. My mother spent her money on lottery tickets. So did my last girlfriend.
Pete Downunder
@Redshift: Agreed. Income inequality is a major problem. I’m old enough to recall my successful father complaining about the 91% marginal tax rate at the time (1960?) He still lived quite well. Many rich people just have too much money.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
I lost everything in the 2008 recession. OK not everything, I ended up with $200 and had to take SS so I could eat. If a friend hadn’t put me up for a year, I would have been living on the street. I didn’t blame the democrats, I blame(d) the party/president that caused, it the party of ignorant fucks and robber barons known as republicans. Their work of turning capital into profit at the destruction of jobs and wages and putting a 2 trillion dollar war off the books so that we wouldn’t notice how much the spent and how much they wasted on their buddies companies to support said war, that they mismanaged so badly that we achieved nothing except a recession and worse world relations from their recklessness.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@MisterForkbeard: Well, something of value was lost: a good character with potential, that had the misfortune to be portrayed by a horrible human being.
I can’t help but compare and contrast Peter Cushing, who by all accounts was an absolute sweetheart and gentleman during the filming of the original Star Wars, while portraying (at the risk of starting a fight in the thread here) one of the vilest characters to grace the silver screen in the last half-century.
opiejeanne
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: They should recast her part, just like Marvel recast The Hulk. Get someone good in the role and people won’t care. Adreienne Palicky could pull it off.
Amir Khalid
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
A 50-year-old guy dressed up like a seal looks silly, but the same guy dressed up like a SEAL looks worse.
J R in WV
@Winston:
I’m old too, and have lost several cousins I was close to, as well as my parents. The only inescapable thing I hate about getting old is that people I’m close to are either dying or becoming increasingly fragile mentally and or physically.
Otherwise I’m doing well but for seeking our vaccinations, which should come around soon.
I’m sorry for your recent losses you tell us about! More can be wrong with your heart than cardiac issues, I’m glad your doc took a close look at things for you! Take care of yourself in these troubled times.
rikyrah
@Winston:
glad about your health.
The losses????
rikyrah
@Winston:
???? for your shot
tokyokie
A new Glock-17 will set you back at least $500, a new AR-15, $1,200. A round of ammunition for an AR-15 is basically $1, so emptying your magazine at the gun range will cost you $30 for a thrill that’s over in seconds. The cost of these oafs’ pretties is not one that somebody can maintain without a high income — and as these guys are oafs, that’s not what they’re pulling down. So yeah, maybe these fellas are suffering from economic anxiety, but the same stupidity that leads them to keep up with their fees at the gun range while shorting the ex on child support is the trait that leads them to espouse racist tropes.
And boy am I going to have some great Google ads from the research I just did about gun and ammo prices.
Jay
@tokyokie:
sorry about that, the ads that is,…
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/02/10/bodycam-footage-shows-far-right-figure-alan-swinney-preparing-for-portland-violence/
Jay
A Schrodingers paradox of the trial:
(1) Trump’s lawyers will argue that Trump’s supporters on Jan 6 were not controlled by Trump.
(2) Republican Senators will vote to acquit because they believe that Trump’s supporters are highly controlled by Trump.
sab
OT: Chrissy Teigan is right. Everyone is from Ohio. Ted Lieu’s family immigrated to Cleveland. He graduated from St. Ignatius High School then went to Stanford.
East Asian immigrants’s kids tend to move from Ohio to the west coast as soon as possible, unless Japanese descent.
Jay
Jay
@sab:
?????? Missed that.
she said what about why?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Jay: That story’s a couple of weeks old and it’s still utterly infuriating – that the doctor followed procedures, went through channels, still had doses left over with only a few hours left to administer them before they spoiled, and he got charged and put out of work for using them instead of throwing them away.
Hopefully he’ll get decent job offers now that his story’s hit the FTFNYT, because it sounds like he’d be a significant asset to whoever hires him.
Jay
LMFAO,
Somebody’s got to stick this on a front page,
Jay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Yup. Good people are hard to find.
If I were, in Medical, or MGMT, hire done.
sab
@Jay: Senators are mostly millionaires. They think they are therefore special. They are right. They are insulated.
Capitol police getting battered and bashed and maimed and killed protecting Congress.
Rob Portman fistbumps Officer Goodman to acknowledge what he did, but will still vote against impeachment because… Who knows. (Afraid of Ohio militias? Risk doing your job is only for little people) (Wants to get hired by more lucrative think tanks?) (Doesn’t want to hurt business among the sociopathic jerks that go to his family’s fancy restaurant?)
sab
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: If he was in Ohio, he would have been following the governor’s explicit orders: don’t throw out vaccine. Get it in an arm.
sab
@Jay: She tweeted that a while back. She is not from Ohio, but her husband is. I think she was surprised by how many people are from Ohio. She is west coast born and probably never even thought about us.
She tweeted it Nov. 23, 2020: ” I have come to realize that everyone on earth is from Ohio.”
Jay
@sab:
sorry sab, yeah, so much fuck uppedness.
I thought the absurdity, on one hand, would lighten the other hand,
Then there is the other hand.
Sorry, that I half to laugh, cynically.
A year and a half ago, I figured out a suicide that would get SWMBO the insurance money.
Economic Insecurity my ass.
Amir Khalid
@Jay:
You can’t be sure the insurance investigators/police won’t figure it out. Don’t do it.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
thank you Amir,
it was fool proof,
but, you know, you love, you know.
We sucked it up. Moved. We are surviving .
Brachiator
@Winston:
So sorry for your losses.
Take care of yourself.
Van Buren
@DMcK:
@Martin: I think we are up to 74 million of those folks now.
prostratedragon
From Paul Krugman and commenters, some remarks on acronyms:
Cermet
@Ruckus: First, so sorry for that all happening.
You summed up whats really wrong with this country and why bush (the far lesser) was and is the worst president (not elected) since nearly forever. Now AGW will make those events look like a picnic in the park
Gvg
Maybe this explains to me why some people thought Donald Trump was a successful businessman. Mr. 7 bankruptcies is really one of them.
i remember reading a comparison of the North and South financials years ago which mentioned the South’s culture had a lot more debt and ruination, a lot of buying too much for show and that slavery actually was financially bad for the free lower and middle class. Some of the reason many Northerners were anti slavery was it undercut their ability to get higher wages. Slaves were the ultimate scabs (union busters in wage negotiations) which also led to later unions being kind of racist. Anyway, plantations ran with a lot of debt and many weren’t that profitable. Investing in factories was a far better bet.
Seems like some lessons don’t get learned.
hells littlest angel
@Winston: Me too. Our good fortune is made possible by others who can’t, for whatever reason, manage their money. It’s kind of creepy.
debbie
Can’t get past the paywall, but the statistic I’d like to see is the percentage of terrorists who did not vote in the last election.
trnc
@tokyokie:
You can turn focused ads off in your google settings.
evodevo
@CaseyL: Try – MOST of them. I know several neighbors who are into that kind of religious nuttery, and they are all MAGAts through and through…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@tokyokie: What makes you think these guys go to the range? The hard core wingnut I knew had some expensive gun and the time he went to the range with us we libertards had to show him how to load it and clean it.
evodevo
@Martin:
Yes. I quote this all the time on Facebook when friends ponder why nutjob MAGAts are so racist…
All hail, Davis X Machina for that quotable quote..
Kristine
@Jay: I laughed at one of the comments: “Not even God can stop Anarcho-Bidenism.”
Envisioning Joe the Smiling Malarkey Anarchist and laughing.
Tim C.
The “Trump as Patron Saint of Assholes” is something I’ve noticed since 2015 myself as well.
SFAW
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Better a seal than a sea lion.
cope
@cmorenc: I was lucky enough to find myself married to a similarly smart woman. She always paid the bills, managed our spending and kept us above water. When we had carpets, before I tiled every fucking square inch of our house, we had a carpet guy come clean them every few months (kids, dogs, rabbits, iguana, etc.). He told us that he did a lot of carpets in a toney development nearby. Lots of those houses had hardly any furniture in them as the owners shot their wad buying the house behind the electronic gates.
We own our house and two cars and pay off all debt every month. Our income is fixed and we have a few diverse investment funds. I owe it all to my wife’s vision.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@opiejeanne: Dot-Marie Jones would be great in that role.
SFAW
@Sm*t Cl*de:
That’s like saying you’d be drinking a much better class of Mad Dog.
SFAW
@opiejeanne:
I can’t see Ruffalo in the role.
Slappy Kincaid
Tom Nichols has it right, I think. Just as an anecdotal correlation: I have a case where the opposing party is a MAGA, Proud Boy, fanatic. He was at the Capital on Jan 6. Prior to any of that, however, he had a long history of antisocial behavior, financial irresponsibility, divorce, domestic violence. He buys one expensive toy after another (camper, boat, $70k truck, and on and on), but won’t pay his child support. He plays the victim and is responsible for nothing. He is a racist and a homophobe. He owns a successful business and makes good money.
I think most of the people jumping on the insurrection bandwagon look just like this guy. And there are alot of people just like him out there.
StringOnAStick
@cope: We’re in pretty much the exact same position, and I notice that the people we know who are also are folks who don’t buy anything unless it’s with cash, so no debt. Sadly, I notice too that anyone younger than we are have been so hit by the high cost of housing that several have just given up on ever retiring and are doing what they call “retirement around the edges”, which looks an awful lot like “play now, save little, work forever.”
My 88 yo wing nut rage addict father is refinancing the house they bought in 1968 for $28k; we paid our 2006 purchase of 15x that off 3 years later thanks to good previous real estate decisions, all of which fell under the rubric of buy only what you can afford. My folks lived high on the hog via debt, and we did the opposite. If it wasn’t for SS and a lifetime pension, he’d be living with my older sister the fellow wingnut. He absolutely hated the fact that we retired a little before age 65 because not working until you drop is a moral failing in his eyes; we think of it as giving job openings to younger people who need it.
VOR
@Tim C.: Yep. Trump is an asshole, some of his voters think he is personally vulgar and crude, but he is THEIR asshole. He hates the people they hate and isn’t shy about saying so. They love it when he insults people.
DCA
There may be another kind of correlations here: poor impulse control (aka failing the marshmallow test), leading to too much buying of stuff, and easily becoming crazy while part of a mob. Admittedly, doesn’t explain the “become a MAGA” part unless it is admiring someone whose life has been defined by poor impulse control–and yet is rich and President.
Nutmeg again
@Winston: My experience has been that regular docs aren’t great with actual heartbreak. Heart malfunction, ok then, but heartbreak, or life implosion, not so much.
And yet it has such a dire effect on life as we experience it. Strange. (My sympathies for your losses.)
Nutmeg again
@Kent: um. Some of us “end up divorced” because we married creeps. Of course we did not know they were creeps when we married them (d’uh!); some creeps are very, very good liars. It’s far better to be divorced from a Cluster B creep than still married to one. And there is no shame in the divorce.
Oh, and our finances get blown all to hell–through no fault of our own–by the process.
Yutsano
I’m coming to this late but…
I have to deal with people like this at work ALL THE TIME. Most are independent contractors who figure they can skate by without paying in their tax share because it expires in 10 years after they get assessed so it’s just another debt they try to skate. Then they can’t use their bank account, they call us claiming poverty, we try to get them into compliance, then after the phone call virtually nothing changes. So it doesn’t surprise me that these people have anti-government leanings.
Dopey-o
Don’t forget those all-important prostate exams, which are best when frequently administered by my petite blonde Irish Primary Care Physician.
Martin
@JCJ: I think Cole’s tire rims and anthrax is comparably insightful:
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@StringOnAStick: No. He hates the fact that you COULD retire before 65. He knows he isn’t good with money. He knows that is a moral failing. He is angry with you for being better with money than he is, so that he feels bad by comparison.
Sancho Panza
@DMcK:
Don’t forget driving the 60K SUV instead of the 18k Hyundai compact sedan…
90% of the time they do the exact same thing: get you from point a to point b in reasonable comfort & safety, and the three times a year you need to haul stuff rent a van.