Whatever he thinks, that’s what he’s going to think, now & in perpetuity, because he’s incapable &/or unwilling to learn that anything he’s believed never was or at least no longer is correct. https://t.co/mSECPR0oix
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 30, 2021
I call bullsh*t. People juggling utility cut-off dates while trying to feed their kids don’t have the time or the energy to get into fanfic about JFK Jr wearing a Trump skin-suit. But the whole QAnon fantasy canon is catnip for middle-class white people who are certain that somehow they’ve been cheated, or else they too would have high-dollar jobs lecturing the public… which is very much in Senator Sanders’ wheelhouse. Can’t argue his personal success with this strategy, after all. And if it worked for him, why not for everyone?
Must be a conspiracy by Dark Forces!
Excellent point. When people push the economic insecurity bullshit I start from the assumption they really just mean white people, but it’s important to explicitly pull out that implication from what they’re saying https://t.co/aQO86D6YWK
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 30, 2021
If being poor makes people racist, why are white people cornering the market on hate crimes? https://t.co/H1rSHH3dms
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) April 30, 2021
He loves mankind! It’s people he can’t stand!
All true, & more profound than what he says. But he has a fairly rigid mind. His policies are rooted in a sincere desire to help the non-wealthy. He has sympathy for others. But I’ve never noticed much empathy, & to understand others in that way you’d need a capacity for empathy
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 30, 2021
rikyrah
That whole class over race bullshyt??
MattF
It’s the RW addiction to resentment, racism, and rage– and it doesn’t help that there are dealers, suppliers, and brokers profiting from that addiction on every media street corner.
Another Scott
Oh boy. Sending up the bat signal?? :-/
Rest easy, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
What a fucking asshole.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hate his guts, and I wish people like Colbert would stop giving him air, but it’s not clear from that clip he’s talking about Magats and Qanon
mrmoshpotato
Of course! Remember all of the non-white Trump trash that attacked the Capitol looking to murder people on January 6th? C’mon! Remember that?!
As with November 2016, this shouty, pouty, Commie-humping asshole still needs to fuck off to the forest and take up knitting!
Major Major Major Major
Yeah I mean this is a pretty natural opinion for someone with his philosophy. He is who he is.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
Posting for cookie, had to clear my cache.
gwangung
Actually, white people don’t corner the market on hate crimes, not when it comes to Anti-Asian Violence. Plenty to go around from all groups.
But the middle class nature of A LOT of Q-nuts really belies that economic anxiety thing……
Major Major Major Major
@gwangung:
I think of it as a revolutionary vanguard (which are often well-off) vs. silent support base sort of thing.
West of the Rockies
Is Bernie genuinely important and relevant still? How many meaningful signature pieces of legislation has he authored and lugged over the finish line? Will he run again in ’24? (I think not.) He’s not the sage mage he’s made out to be.
Major Major Major Major
@West of the Rockies: He’s chair of the budget committee, and the only reason he doesn’t feel relevant right now is because he’s been being a team player, which I for one support.
L85NJGT
I think that quote from Master and Commander is far more accurate in describing the crowd of retired light birds, malcontent ex-cops, and owner operators of the largest RV lot in the tri-counties that showed up on 1/6.
I guess when the only tool in the box is a hammer, everything does look like a nail.
Amir Khalid
Caitlin Jenner: a trans woman who is against trans girls in school sports. It’s disappointing to see her repeat the standard Republican talking points on the topic, but maybe not surprising.
cain
@Amir Khalid:
She will always be an asshole.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
I get embarrassed when I remember all the times I argued class over race, back in the day. Doing a lot of door to door & street level political stuff in white neighborhoods opened my eyes. Almost every conversation, racist shit by the third sentence.
L85NJGT
@West of the Rockies:
He should be, but he’s prickly, not that good at politics, and surrounds himself with blockheads. Bernie is gonna Bernie.
something fabulous
I’ve never understood the sneering about the term “economically anxious,” actually. It explicitly is not equivalent to “poor.” I think this is where people go astray when they become supposedly mystified by people’s motivations and actions around this. If you think of it NOT as a genteel euphemism for “poor” it’s a much more useful frame: regardless of actual money in the bank, they are people who feel anxious about their relative place. Not rational, not quantifiable: anxious.
NotMax
@something fabulous
More like economically precarious, perhaps? Living paycheck to paycheck; scraping by.
something fabulous
@NotMax: Yeah, that could work. Or even I think people who most of us would think of as objectively prosperous, like the ones who flew their charter jets to the uprising (!!) still likely feel anxious, compared to whatever rung above them financially they aspire to, or even if not literally paycheck to paycheck at that level, they see and feel how much it is costing them to keep up those appearances, and how precarious it is. Which now that I think of it, describes TFG pretty well too– a paper billionaire, papered over with bad credit…
JoyceH
@L85NJGT:
Early on in the Obama administration, I had a revelation that I think explains a lot of the resentment toward him. There was a news feature about a photog who’d rediscovered some photos she’d taken of the Obamas back in the 90s. Think it was 1994, and there was a quote from Michelle saying that Barack is thinking about going into politics. And I thought, my god, Joyce, you retired from the Navy in 1994, what have YOU done since then?
And then it hit me. Young people of the era would look at Obama and think, “I could do that.” MIddle-aged people would look at Obama and think, “I could have done that.” That thought actually crossed my mind, before I snapped out of it. No, I realized, I could not have done that. I might (might!) have the brains, but not the people skills or the organizational ability, or the charisma, or the willingness to put in the truly grueling hours it would take to replicate Obama’s success.
But a lot of people (and I suspect especially white men), would be less clear-eyed about their own capabilities and willingness to do the work, so when they thought, “I could have done that,” they couldn’t accept that they could have and just didn’t, or they couldn’t have because of their own shortcomings. Therefore – the pride-saving alternative is, “No, I could NOT have done that — because the system is rigged, RIGGED I tells ya!”
Chetan Murthy
@something fabulous:
This is more-or-less the same as saying they’re a bunch of racist pigs. B/c the *reason* they’re anxious about their relative place, is that they see a buncha dusky-hued characters rising up. Add in the well-supported research that the folks who showed up were mostly from precincts that had seen significant BIPOC in-migration, and the story is complete: these people want the brown and black (and Asian) to stay in their place, and they’re anxious that that’s not happening, literally i their own neighborhoods.
mrmoshpotato
Being anxious about paying the month’s rent isn’t synonymous with being a super rich, super greedy, racist, fascist shitstain who tries to overthrow the government.
something fabulous
@Chetan Murthy: yes, exactly. Not “poor” (though they might be) but anxious relative to where they want to be. Precarious, as NotMax says. The old LBJ (sorry Raven) story about “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you” and all that. Now why so many people can still be triggered and redirected by racism in this way, after all this time, I am the one who doesn’t understand. To quote a different southern president, I’m a rising tides should lift all boats person, myself. Seems rational to me, over and above morally correct: we all do better when we all do better?
Chetan Murthy
@mrmoshpotato: When I was a teenager, I was desperately unhappy, and used to wonder why God put me on this Earth to suffer. Of course, I was an atheist, so I was really whimpering metaphorically. But eventually, grew up, and realized that if there were a God, s/he sure won’t have the time to concern themself with the likes of me — the world wasn’t built to torment me, after all. I simply didn’t matter enough for God to even care to torment me. Life is absurd and meaningless in a deep and intrinsic sense.
What i mean is, these people, they think the world revolves around them, and they’re angry and up-in-arms, upon learning that, bit-by-bit, it’s ceasing to do so. Rather than learning the humbling lesson that, no, we’re insignificant and just like everybody else.
The urge to remake the world, b/c you can’t afford that boat, is a fundamentally selfish and antisocial urge. And nobody should be coddled for it. Because lots of us live within our means — be they money, or looks, or charisma or talent, or whatever, without deciding to burn the world down.
Chetan Murthy
@something fabulous:
In economics, there is a term “positional good”. It describes goods that are by their very nature limited, b/c they embody positions in a hierarchy. Places at some posh school, posh club, push company. Houses in a posh neighborhood. Etc. For me to have one, you must go without. Servants is another example, as is the servility of “the lower classes”, esp “the dusky-hued classes”. When BIPOC are well-off enough, they will not tug the forelock. I remember reading a Black woman who wrote that in some fundamental sense, white people are threatened by Black men as *men* but they’re threatened by Black women’s *insolence*. Because they expect Black women to bow and accede to white people’s demands. B/c they see Black women as maids and nannies, and … etc.
You cannot have a world where people of color rise up, without white people losing that hierarchy over people of color. And for some, that is an intolerable loss. That is what LBJ meant in that quote.
Positional goods. Positional goods.
Chetan Murthy
@something fabulous: For another example of the same thing: why do so many people fight against abolishing the tipped minimum wage? I remember during the pandemic, diners in restos (invariably men) would demand that waitresses would remove their masks, so they could judge their attractiveness in calculating the tip. This is a power trip on these men’s part, yes? And they’re forcing these women to comply, using the tip as a threat and an incentive. The inability to order these women around, to *demand* that these women be “nice” to them, is a real loss. And that loss occurs the minute you get rid of tipping.
“Uppity women” are as much of a threat, as uppity people of color, to these men.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy:
@something fabulous: It’s pretty simple these folk believe the economy(and life in general) is zero sum. If you gain something someone(probably me) MUST lose something. TFG firmly believed that, that’s why they love him.
Chetan Murthy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: This. Precisely. And succinctly put. As you say, they *believe* it. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. I would only add that, for many of the things they desire and believe they possess, it’s actually *true*.
Kayla Rudbek
@JoyceH: so f you had the chance to go back to the early 1990s with your memory of history from then to the current day, but only your memoirs, no physical evidencem, what would you do over?
TS (the original)
Just saw this – and was so pleased to see it
Don’t think it was economic insecurity that led him to open the doors into the Oregan Capitol. Couldn’t believe he wasn’t arrested when the video was first released.
Brachiator
@something fabulous:
Sorry, this does not make sense. I have never heard anyone who is not a pundit talk about “economic anxiety.” But I have heard people outright declare that they believe that nonwhite people are unworthy and that Democrats want to take away white people’s stuff, which they have worked hard for, and give it to unworthy nonwhite people. A couple of days ago, while discussing California tax credits, a co-worker declared that California Democrats were giving everything to illegal immigrants.
This kind of stupid racist resentment has nothing to do with any sentiment that life may be precarious or that a person might be a paycheck away from falling into poverty.
NotMax
@Brachiator
It’s not a narrow Manichaean duality, it’s a spectrum encompassing a reverse Pushmi-Pullyu, with assholes at each end.
something fabulous
@Chetan Murthy: @?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes to all of this! I hope I didn’t appear to be arguing the opposite. Of course status ends up conflated with race and as you note, gender too, like they are accomplishments rather than accidents of birth. That THAT is zero-sum is what is so weird. My not having to smile for tips (resonant example for me!) should not actually serve to remove anyone’s penis, but apparently it does.
Morzer
The MAGA creeps tend to be fairly comfortably off, despite their endless whining about how other people might somehow get something like a fair share of the pie. The notion that they are driven by poverty rather than resentful greed and slobbering bigotry is simply asinine, although I suppose we were overdue for Wilmer O’The Many Glass Houses having an eruption of simplemindedness on TV. Mind you, I am still recovering from Briahna Joy Gray wondering on Twitter why people were so unkind to each other and said so many harsh things.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
I’m not picking on you or your comment, just taking it as a starting point.
I don’t think anything is universal in the concept of who believes in conservatism. There are black conservatives. There are poor conservatives. There are wealthy and white liberals. There are some things that are relatively constant of course. In this country conservatism is a greater percentage of the rural populations but there are many liberals in rural areas and conservatives in larger cities. I may be simplifying a bit, but nothing dealing with humanity is 100% certain other than death. Many wealthy people are conservative because they have money, they like having money and they don’t want to give away any of it that won’t directly benefit them even if they don’t see that actually doing that actually makes things better. Conservatives in this country have embraced racism and low taxes and think the two are directly linked. Conservatism isn’t a rational concept, in, at the very least the way it is currently practiced. (I believe that it never really has been rational.) Conservatism isn’t sold as something equal, it’s sold as a betterment for some, the in group. In some ways it is a big con and always has been. Part of the problem is that it’s easier now to sell conservatism to some because of the racism and the theft of the overall economy and that is exactly the sales pitch of everything Murdoch, that conservatism will make everything better, when it only does for the very few, while making everything worse for the many.
Conservatism is the big con.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Eighteen years ago, I took a trip to New Zealand. One of the profound differences is that there is generally no tipping in service industries. Because the workers get paid well by national mandate/minimum wage, tipping isn’t necessary. The economy works without the misogyny and often racism that occurs here. It is far more fair and people can reasonably earn a living.
rikyrah
Anna Maltese ? ? ? (@MalteseAnna) tweeted at 10:21 PM on Sat, May 01, 2021:
Yep. And I get that a few classes of freshmen Republicans have come and gone in the intervening years, but if I was McCarthy, I wouldn’t be betting that Bush/Cheney was long enough ago for it not to matter.
(https://twitter.com/MalteseAnna/status/1388694995842965504?s=03)
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
the fight for voting rights is existential (@ellceeare) tweeted at 10:24 PM on Sat, May 01, 2021:
Not with her dad still beating somebody else’s heart.
The newbies cannot fathom the kind of power the Bush/Cheney machine built and wields.
(https://twitter.com/ellceeare/status/1388695822695636995?s=03)
rikyrah
@rikyrah: .
the fight for voting rights is existential (@ellceeare) tweeted at 10:29 PM on Sat, May 01, 2021:
For real. His evil is older than they are. This is not a political dynasty to trifle with.
(https://twitter.com/ellceeare/status/1388697055271530497?s=03)
rikyrah
Matt Murchison ?? (@MattMurchison) tweeted at 5:50 PM on Sat, May 01, 2021:
Wait, Caitlin Jenner, a trans woman, referred to trans girls as “biological boys who are trans” and said they shouldn’t play sports with other girls?
I can’t.
(https://twitter.com/MattMurchison/status/1388626911283318788?s=03)
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
It is difficult for many to see their limitations. Re the line from Magnum Force. “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
That of course doesn’t mean you don’t try to find them but many can not admit that their particular limitations limit things for them. We all have limitations, we all need to press/push or limitations but we all have to recognize that we have them. They won’t be the same for every person for sure, there are 6 yr old musical virtuosos, there are some extremely good at mathematics, just as there are people who struggle with 2+2 or can’t put 2 reasonable notes together. We don’t all find what we are good at, few find something they are great at. And most of us can improve whatever our skills actually are with practice and effort.
Chetan Murthy
@something fabulous:
I’m no anthropologist, but IIUC, humans have an innate drive to define in-groups and out-groups. It’s the basis of religion, and the basis of all clan/tribe loyalty. [Going further out on a limb] Human males are taught (and have a somewhat inner drive) to treat women as womb-maintenance units. The miracle is that some humans can transcend these innate and taught-from-the-cradle drives to become decent. *That* is the shocking thing.
Morzer
@Ruckus: Some years ago, there was a series of articles exploring what happened when US restaurants stopped tipping and simply charged a bit more for the food. The staff were much better treated and happier overall, but there were *some* people who were absolutely furious that they couldn’t show their superiority by making their waiters “earn” it.
Ruckus
@Morzer:
And people like shitforbrains think that they are so superior because they have money, because they get to effectively buy and sell people, even when he never actually earned a damn dime.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Not all humans are taught that, even sub consciously.
Revrick
@rikyrah:
I have a Facebook friend, a retired economics professor, who subscribes to the same Marxist analysis as Bernie’s. Yesterday, he posted a picture of Henry Kissinger conversing with India’s PM, Modi, and he described Modi as “the capitalist, neoliberal PM of India.” Hello! Modi is first and foremost a Hindu nationalist.
Marxism, like QAnon and most woo-woo health claims, is just another offshoot of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, the belief that their is one master key to truth, and its adherents possess it. And as a result, their adherents inhabit a closed belief system, where evidence to the contrary is explained away or dismissed.
Revrick
cmorenc
@something fabulous:
The “economic anxiety” among T’s base isn’t about fear of poverty so much as it is resentful anxiety over the realization they will never be able to securely achieve wealth, that they’re held back on an economic treadmill by impediments unfairly or insensibly designed to help undeserving others. Their resentment and blame is easily deflected to “others” such as racial minorities than the oligarchical control of commerce controlled by those who actually have the kind of wealth they wish they could have, and so they more positively identify with the forces actually most responsible for impeding them in often-amorphous ways.
Princess
Sanders read one book while he was in college, and never learned anything new after that. Could be worse — some people’s one book was Ayn Rand.
Qanon is dominated by people who were either victims or perpetrators (or both) of child abuse themselves, and who live in social/religious systems in which there is no way of processing that other than by projecting it outwards. I’ll die on the cross (heh, see what I did there), especially after the Duggar arrest and the Gaetz sleeze and criminality.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
No one gives a shit about minority on minority violence – see the never ended race war between Hispanics and Blacks in the inner cities.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Occam’s razor, someone who is dinning indoors right now is by definition a toxic asshole and an idiot.
Revrick
Dr. Stephen Patterson, in his book “TheForgotten Creed”, cites a passage in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, “There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female,” to illustrate the revolutionary thinking that was part of the early church. Paul wrote the letter around 55 C.E., and his words reference an already existing baptismal creed. What this creed asserts is that these distinctions are social constructs with no basis in ultimate reality.
Patterson points out this creed stands against what he calls “the oldest cliche.”
The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales expressed his gratitude to Fortune as follows: “First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes(slaves); next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”
Rabbi Judah, a Jewish contemporary, asserted: There are three blessings one must pray daily:
“Blessed art thou who did not make me a Gentile; blessed art thou who did not make me a woman; blessed art thou who did not make me uneducated.”
Race, class and gender are the three social constructs, inextricably intertwined, which we have struggled with since God only knows.
Marxists believe that if you solve class, the other two will magically disappear.
As if….
Joey Maloney
The fuck? My youngest waited tables for years (on her way to completing culinary school, then a Bachelors, Masters, and now a Ph.D. in anthropology). Anybody said that in my hearing would be having bloody Chiclets for dessert.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe I was inappropriately leaping to conclusions, but I decided Bruce Jenner was a self-important, self-absorbed asshole when he decided that he needed to trade up from Chrystie (his first wife) after her (financial) support allowed him to train for the Olympics full-time.
Being Caitlyn has probably not changed that part of her.
SFAW
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
After having dinner last night, inside, with my wife and 26-year-old daughter, in a place with three tables (but normally has 15-20), I would respectfully suggest that you FOAD.
artem1s
It isn’t the focus on class that is the problem. It’s the assumption that money is the solution to classism. Bernie is a living, breathing example of just how wrong his ideas are and that the means you use to reach an end are everything. He can claim ignorance about the role he played in splitting the vote in 2016 but can’t for 2020. The tactics used in 2016 came straight out the Ron Paul play book for splitting off those ‘economically anxious’ white voters away from the GOP and getting them to ID as Independent or Libertarian. It worked with Dixiecrat voters too. Paul cared less about winning the WH than he did raking in huge campaign hauls. But his campaign people and followers were zealots. They believed their own BS. And when they lost Paul as a conduit for disrupting the GOP system, they started over with the Democratic party. 2016 was a perfect storm for them. More money, racism, misogyny and Obama’s failure to fix everything that the WWC lost under Bush gave them a leg up in completing the job Rove started in finally painting the Dems as no different from the GOP. And thus the term NeoLiberal was born. Bernie and his followers are using John Birch, anti-semitic, and racists dogwhistles to vilify anyone who is successful as a Corporate Shill and in league with Big Business. If you think that’s hype, think about how Warren suddenly was painted as a NeoLiberal only after she became a threat to Bernie’s fundraising. A political idea based on the notion that success in any system automatically makes you the enemy, is just another version of classism. Only worse, it’s Soviet style feudalism. The Anti-NeoLiberals’ dogwhistles sound an awful lot like the folks who follow Ayn Rand, and the Bush/Cheney GOP, IMO. Bent on attacking and making up an enemy to look down upon so everyone forgets that you are one paycheck away from living under a bridge too. I don’t hear Win/Win when OAC or Bernie talks. I do hear Win/Win when Biden and Hillary talks. But somehow they are the NeoLiberals? I hear Biden thanking a lot of people for the success of the last 100 days. I hear the young ‘progressives’ taking credit for other people’s work and ideas. And I hear them making Liberal a dirty word again, just like Rove and the Bushes have for the last 40 years.
SFAW
@something fabulous:
The “sneering,” as you call it, is because it’s a pundit-generated term to explain away the racism of Trump voters. No one on the left (or Left) — well, no one that I know of, but I’ve been worng before — used that term before the pundits.
Kathleen
different-church-lady
@something fabulous:
“Economically neurotic”
different-church-lady
@something fabulous: a rising tide lifts all boats… if you have a boat.
If you don’t have boat, a rising tide is just a flood.
bbleh
Oh enough dunking on Bernie. There are many fatter and much more deserving targets.
And yes of course bigotry is bigotry, and there are many degrees of it, and there’s simply no question that ECONOMIC stress — and the status anxiety that comes with it — brings out otherwise latent bigotry in some people, while many other people — notably the well-off Poujadists who are the backbone of Republicanism/Trumpism — are just bigots from the get-go.
It’s not either / or. It’s both.
West of the Cascades
Great point by Dana Houle at the end about the importance of empathy. And, in this particular moment in history, I’m grateful our president is Joe Biden, who has more of this than all the presidents since Reagan combined.
Ella in New Mexico
I would think a simple poll/study which compares race with income should solve this conundrum for the Bern Guy.
Also, too, I know it’s always fun around here to dunk on Bernie Sanders, but seriously, if you can name a policy he promotes that would not be NOT beneficial for the entire country, yes, even the White Working Class ,then, whatever. I can’t with y’all.
I don’t think people understand that he often talks like this because if you don’t offer some kind of carrot to those folks you’ll never pull them over to the Democratic side and never keep your majority and therefore will NEVER PASS THE DAMN LEGISLATION WE ALL WANT.
And by the way since I live in a part of the US that is NOT dominated by a white majority I can say there are plenty of people of color in our world who also believe the bullshit, but from what I’ve seen they are ALL Republicans or Libertarians, not Democrats.
dlwchico
My sister is in her early 50’s. She’s been sort of middle of the road politically for most of her life. I remember before the pandemic she was visiting and one of the early Democrat debates was on tv and she was talking about how much she liked Mayor Pete. I remember during in the first year of Trump’s presidency she commented about how terrible Trump sounded compared to Obama.
She is pretty well off financially. Owns a fairly large hobby farm where she has built her dream home recently. She also owns a few rentals.
This pandemic broke her brain somehow. She listens to Tucker now. She sends me and my mom links to right wing websites like the epoch times with articles about how Covid is a fake. I don’t really talk to her anymore but I ran into somebody that she does still talk to and they said she had told him that she voted for Trump this last election.
I don’t know if she’s into the Qanon stuff but if she isn’t, she is right on the border looking over at it and it’s got nothing to do with her being poor.
Sister Golden Bear
@Amir Khalid: Unfortunately not surprising at all. Caitlyn is gonna hurt a lot trans people in her vanity bid to get back in the media.
RepubAnon
@Chetan Murthy: I think it’s the fear of slipping down the ladder a few rungs. Retaining some feeling of power, such as the ability to reduce/increase a tip, or buying a gun, helps reassure them of their current status.
And as we judge our position in society largely by our economic status – the “economic anxiety” motivation really does exist for well-to-do people. This is especially true of folks seeing their industry under threat by “those others.” When electric cars become popular, what happens to car dealerships whose big profit center is their mechanics and parts departments – things internal combustion vehicles rely upon, but electric cars rarely need?
Remember, most of these people have bills to pay, and may not have big retirement accounts. For them, change means doom. So, anyone promising things won’t change sounds like a savior.
planetjanet
@Chetan Murthy: This, this and this. So very true.
eddie blake
@Ella in New Mexico:
dude indisputably helped derp furor become president. how many americans not named tang the conqueror did THAT help?
Kent
Such bullshit from Sanders.
In my own very white extended family, the two most insane MAGA relatives that I have are both wealthy white men in their late 50s. The first is a successful chiropractor who I’m sure makes well over $100k per year and has gone deep into the anti-vax and naturopathic medicine rabbit holes. When he isn’t dispensing quackery to his eager followers, he drives very expensive touring motorcycles. He also self-publishes quackery books.
The second is a tech project manager who has bounced around various tech employers in the greater Seattle area and own a chain of dry cleaners and laundromats. No idea what his income is, but also likely well north of $100K per year as he recently bought a new house in the Seattle suburbs after a divorce, sends his daughter to private school, and owns a beach cabin on Hat Island in Puget Sound off Seattle. He is the kind of guy who would set up a Trump for President booth right outside Century Link field (Seahawks Stadium) during Seattle Sounders games to heckle the probably 90% Biden supporters walking into the stadium before the game.
Kent
Agreed. I went out for dinner with my wife to our favorite local brewery last night. We are both 100% vaccinated with Pfizer as is everyone else in our family. Tables were spread at least 10 ft. apart indoors and outdoors in a big airy space. We tipped very well and I enjoyed a good porter with my meal. Staff and customers were 100% masked except when eating. We are not the reason this pandemic keeps lingering.
Urban Suburbanite
@Revrick:
The Q cultists loooooove thinking that they’re on to some secret knowledge and are therefore superior to you unenlightened sheeple. It’s not all that different from seeing that incurious dumbass you knew back in high school who rarely cracked a book open in his life, then got onto Facebook and became a fervent worshipper of Team Sniffles.
I think there’s also some addictive (as well as cultish) behavior at play here. If you look at how people describe family getting into the cult of Q, they spend hours and hours on this shit every day. It seems to hit that button in their brain the same way that casinos do or when you spend most of the day playing a new video game.
LongHairedWeirdo
One thing to be aware of, when hearing talk about “economic anxiety” and bigotry, and it’s something people with critical thinking abilities will miss.
The idea that Republican-leading (sic) media has pushed for many years now is, affirmative action and government programs makes life *easy* for minorities, poor people, and undocumented immigrants. A common refrain is “the government wants to get everyone a job except for white men.”
Now, consider this: Republican wet dreams (they call them “policies” but we know the truth) will lead to fewer, lower paying, jobs, with fewer benefits; they’ll lead to offshoring, tax evasion, greater amounts of pollution, and greater amount of harm to poor people.
I believe the majority of those poor people are still white, though I haven’t reviewed demographics recently. But the point isn’t so much the raw numbers – there are a lot of people who’ve seen life going downhill for a long time, seeing their children having worse lives than their parents, who had it worse than their grandparents. And the reason that’s not merely whispered into their ears, but shouted from the rooftops is “it’s because the government cares more about minorities and (undocumented immigrants) than they care about you!”
I read an article discussing some poor sorry bastard who owned a trucking company (which might be roughly equivalent to “owns a truck” for all I know) babbling about how Trump has cut regulations on the big companies, and he wants him to hurry up and cut them for small operations like his, as if there were good times around the corner now that Trump was in town. He had no idea that Trump never cared about him, except when receiving said poor sorry bastard’s worship.
Of course, he didn’t realize Trump didn’t care because the right wing leading media was probably saying he cared, day after day after day.