h/t rikyrah. If anyone finds this on BlueSky I’ll trade out the screen capture for that.
It’s always about hate, power, and money.
So why are we arguing alternative histories that can never be proven?
No, don’t answer that, I don’t care why, and I’m sick of alternative histories.
This from Baud was brilliant: I can’t believe we’ve replaced “she didn’t go to Wisconsin” with “she didn’t go on Rogan.”
When we point fingers, we’re ignoring the real issues.
So let’s talk about racism, misogyny, transphobia, white nationalism. And hate in general – what we can to do to combat this every single day?
This is not an open thread.
Update: vigilhorn makes an excellent point that it’s also about fear. I would say that the hate and fear go together, but that would be quibbling!
vigilhorn
Fear… you forgot about fear.
rikyrah
It was about clinging to the Whiteness.
He ran the most explicit White Nationalist campaign.
tobie
Thank you for this much needed reminder that we can analyze this or that specific campaign move to kingdom come, but none was dispositive for the race. Harris ran a good campaign on a very compressed schedule. Trump did not. The problem is that the insurrection from Jan 6, 2021 never really ended. Any analysis that doesn’t look at the concerted campaign in the MSM and social media to discourage Democrats, generate malaise, and convince people of untruths is missing the boat entirely. Also…the ginning up of hate against anyone who’s not straight & white.
rikyrah
It’s not hard to reconcile..after all, I am Black in America.
But, it is still a hard pill to swallow.
rikyrah
Social Conserv. 📚 (@bookkeepPLUS) posted at 10:07 AM on Sat, Dec 07, 2024:
I will argue that the racism of today is more sinister than in the past—not because it’s louder, but because it’s quiet enough to hide in plain sight, cloaked in language that sounds virtuous not only to the uninformed but even causing some black people to be led astray.
/1
We see it in the open attacks on diversity and equity programs, branded as unnecessary or even divisive. These attacks ignore the systemic barriers that such programs are meant to address. /2
It’s in the lawsuits against economic programs aimed at helping Black communities, such as policies designed to compensate Black farmers after decades of systemic discrimination. /3
These efforts are undermined under the guise of “equality,” erasing the history of inequity that created the need for them in the first place. They’re sold as noble crusades for “fairness,” when in reality, they’re just new ways to reinforce old hierarchies./4
We hear it in the rhetoric of “victimhood,” as if pointing out injustice somehow makes you weak. And let’s not forget the most glaring examples: the applause that erupts when Black people are killed in public, with offenders hailed as heroes under the guise of “self-defense.”/5
Or the countless innocent Black people killed by law enforcement, only for their deaths to be justified, excused, or ignored. These are grotesque celebrations of lives lost, disguised as justice. /6
As if everything mentioned above weren’t bad enough on its own, when you consider that the church is often on the front lines of perpetuating this modern form of racism, it makes it even worse. /7
This is the racism of today. It’s not the segregation signs or cross burnings of the past. It’s subtler, more insidious, and harder to combat because it hides behind a mask of moral righteousness. /8
And because it looks different, too many people are fooled into thinking it isn’t racism at all. /9
(https://x.com/bookkeepPLUS/status/1865427990894596594?t=xQnrgKI5l6xiFzkcNigOAw&s=03)
Steve LaBonne
We need to gather and organize to represent and promote the opposites of all those sick values. For me that is best done via Unitarian Universalism but there are plenty of secular organizations you can join. We can’t fight this as atomized individuals.
rikyrah
Get real. If Jordan Neely was a middle-class white woman in the throes of a mental health crisis and threatening subway riders, Daniel Penny would’ve been convicted of manslaughter.
It’s. The. Racism.
(https://x.com/CMargaronis/status/1866163213341249723?t=tlq37DnvVJopJpQU9ITvlQ&s=03)
rikyrah
D-LIB (@whittler_e) posted at 6:52 AM on Mon, Dec 09, 2024:
Most black people think that Trump’s popularity stems from racism. I share that view. Trump would be nowhere without it. He is the ugly face of bigotry.
(https://x.com/whittler_e/status/1866103696175530072?t=6wI1MCaAsNibCi4guIQN9Q&s=03)
Motivated Seller
It was about the “burn-it-down” vote.
John S.
@rikyrah:
I feel very similar as a Jew in America, but unlike most POC, I can pass as white which makes things much easier.
Still, I always tell my relatives (who are mostly conservative) that I am far more worried about white people coming for us than the scary Muslims they are always worried about.
eemom
About fucking time, and thank you to rikyrah.
the pollyanna from hell
I live in a landscape of good ol boys in Chattooga. My friends and neighbors gave me careless lies leading into election. Now they laugh about it. What is truth? Said Pontius Pilate.
@mistermix.bsky.social
On the topic of hate, here’s a backgrounder from Erin Reed, trans journalist and partner of Zooey Zephyr, on the total hater Trump wants to appoint as AAG for civil rights. Gift link:
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trump-picks-chloe-coles-anti-trans?r=1v2xgg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Starfish
Indivisible said to encourage representatives to tell Harris to publish the ERA.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rikyrah:
I see this in certain areas on the nominal left, ie., pale-Blue Dems, white, racially tone-deaf, who promote policies using everything described in that twitter post. Black people here, and nationally, see that for what it is: simply perpetuating many of the same social and class structures for a white population.
Much of what we do here in Denver as activists, and nationally, is point that out and push back because it’s insidious.
John S.
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Harmeet Dhillon seems like a real peach.
What is it with Trump digging up all the worst possible SE Asians to be in his maladministration?
Chris
@vigilhorn:
Eh. “Fear” sounds good. It makes you sound like you’re the victim, even if it’s only in your head, and your being an asshole is an understandable response because you’re sincerely afraid of something bad happening to you, and the only reason you’re embracing those shitty policies is because you think it’s self-defense.
Does that actually happen? Yes. But a hell of a lot of the time, it’s just dressing up bigotry to make it sound good.
Remember that video a few years ago of the white woman in Central Park who has a black man ask her to put her dog on a leash, and responds by calling 911 screaming that she’s being threatened even as it’s patently clear that that’s not what’s happening? There’s a lot of that in right-wing “fear.”
rikyrah
I, nor, anyone else who voted for the Vice President, was voting to take away anything from others.
Not basic rights.
They literally voted to take away rights. They voted to erase the 20th Century…
Because, they want to party like it’s 1924.
VFX Lurker
My thanks to rikyrah as well.
I don’t have a good answer to WaterGirl’s question. I’m a GenX white woman, so right now I’m trying to catch up on all the American history my K-12 education left out. So far, I’ve listened to:
Someone also recommended The Delectable Negro, which is now on hold at my library. The more I know about American history, however hideous, the better.
Quiltingfool
@rikyrah:
karen gail
As a woman I always felt it was about hate; when people celebrated the overturning of Roe, women knew beyond a shadow of doubt it was about hate.
When we once again heard people talk about returning to “good old days” many of us knew that those voices were speaking about days when only white males counted. It has never gone away; ask anyone who isn’t a white male, it has always been there since the days when the first white male decided that only votes that should count were those of white protestant land owners. For years it was hidden behind white hoods, in dark smokey back rooms; now it is on full display, shouted by rich white men and displayed by red hats.
Every person who isn’t white and rich knows that nothing has really changed, police are still protectors of rich and bullies to those who aren’t. We read history and have learned nothing except that until human nature changes things will continue to repeat.
Leto
Something I’ve done is started recommending to my younger friend group specific books to read. They know I’m not big on podcasts, but they still ask me for resources. I start off with smaller books, essentially primers, before recommending larger works. I also make recommendations from Avalune’s large library of feminist science fiction/dystopian fiction. They speak about racism, sexism, and all the other fucking -isms that continue to plague us, but centered from a woman’s perspective (and not just white women).
I know it’s more of a limited reach but I recently had one of them thank me for it because it’s opened her world to larger/more complex ideas, but done in a way that’s easier/more accessible. I’m just trying to do what I can with what I have.
Hildebrand
@Motivated Seller: I don’t buy that. If Trump hadn’t already been in office, if he hadn’t been slouching around the political scene for the last 10 years, maybe I could’ve been persuaded it was purely a ‘change’ election.
But he has been – he is a known entity. He is no change agent. They chose his vitriol, cruelty, racism, and sexism. They chose him not despite who he is, but because of who he is. People knew what they were getting – they wanted it.
Those who stayed home made a similar, if even more cynical, calculation – they simply didn’t want a woman of color to be president, so they allowed themselves to be ‘pure’ by opting out. That’s not purity, that’s complicity. People who voted third party are in the exact same camp.
UncleEbeneezer
I’m hesitant to pin any election result one just one thing, but on the list of major factors, yes, Fear (of all the others and change) would be at the top of my list. And yes, Trump absolutely ran on Fear/Hate, more than anything else.
NaijaGal
@rikyrah: Exactly!
Leto
@VFX Lurker: here’s Dr. Tim Snyder’s On Tyranny lessons on YouTube. All 20 lessons, quick 10 minute video for each one. Basically his book in video form.
Also just a general thanks to the commentariat here, past and present, for all the amazing book recommendations over the years. You all have been amazing in providing such a diverse amount of reading selections that I wanted to recognize that.
karen gail
A side note: I am old enough to remember segregation, to remember when women had no rights, I couldn’t get birth control without male permission, I couldn’t hold a job if male in family decided I couldn’t have it, I couldn’t have a bank account or credit card without male permission.
I listened to my grandmothers and great grandmothers talk about what life was like when they were young; I listened to women who lived in generation of my parents, I listened and now I watch as those in power seek to turn back the calendar to those days for my children, my grandchildren.
We are being destroyed from within; Walt Kelly warned us with Pogo “we have met the enemy, it is us.”
sentient ai from the future
i think civic education is a huge part of the issue. and that is transgenerational.
the boomers were raised with the tv as babysitter.
their grandchildren do the same with the phone screens.
because granddad might have said “go to college” and maybe the genx child, now a parent or grandparent themselves, did so, but they never really understood what it meant to be a parent, caring about another human being and trying to instill certain values of care and duty and forthrightness and hard work, because fundamentally we never cared enough about families to make the sacrifices, either personally, or at the institutional level, to ensure children were raised well, that discipline didnt always mean violence, that free time was not always vegging out in front of a screen, that social connections to community were cultivated where they were healthy, and allowed to wither when they were not.
it’s the difference between looking at your own chilhood and saying “well i turned out ok even though those were probably not great practices of my parents, i guess i can get by doing the same thing myself” and “there is no force on earth that would permit me to do that to my kids because i know how damaging it was to me.”
i guess this is a rant, so maybe not technically on-topic.
but i do think that the civic education part is missing, and theres no way to fill that role adequately in the school-to-prison pipeline that public schools often are.
NaijaGal
I remember when AOC was being vilified by the right early in her congressional career and she offered to do a tour of red states when some Republican suggested it and talk directly to regular people who had come to hate the idea of her. That offer was quickly retracted because Republicans understood that people who met her would see that she wasn’t the caricature the right had made her out to be.
What is the best way of getting to know the people who hate/fear you and getting them to see that you have some things in common, the ones who are reachable, that is (I know many are not)? What would that look like? AOC uses Twitch in this way. I may not agree with everything she does but I think there are some interesting things to learn from her, communications-wise.
hueyplong
@rikyrah: (Margaronis quote: Get real. If Jordan Neely was a middle-class white woman in the throes of a mental health crisis and threatening subway riders, Daniel Penny would’ve been convicted of manslaughter.)
Gotta disagree. If Jordan Neely had been a middle-class white woman, Penny wouldn’t have killed her.
Quiltingfool
@rikyrah: Generational Poverty white folks (my community is chock full of them) bristle if you point out they benefit from white privilege. They don’t see it, mostly because we don’t have very many black folks here. They are ground down by the system that favors the well-off. Yet, they do have privileges afforded by their skin color.
My Bil was in prison for manslaughter (drunk driving, wrecked car, passenger died). His daughter told me that during a visit to the prison, her dad pointed to a black woman visiting her husband, and how the guards would watch the couple carefully and pounce on them if they held hands. Meanwhile, he and my Sil would hold hands and the guards ignored it. My Bil told my niece that was just one example of how black men in prison had harsher treatment than white men, and it wasn’t any different outside prison.
My in-laws are products of generational poverty. My Bil knew he was near the bottom of the ladder, but he also knew his whiteness kept him one rung above a black man.
LBJ said it best (sorry, Raven).
RevRick
As the official “Christian “ in these here parts, I will share two thoughts that come to mind with regard to the question, “How do we combat these things?
One of the wisdoms of the Church (when it remembers them) is that true healing/community begins with confession. Beginning with the mindset of asking how we can fix “those” people never works, because then they will dig in their heels.
In that spirit, I come before all of you to acknowledge that I am a racist, a misogynist, an homophobe, and a class snob. I am often unaware of these ugly ideas bubbling in my soul until they manifest themselves in some way and I am brought up short, and I realize that’s a shitty reaction.
I distinctly remember the year I was President of my Junior High church youth group and we were choosing next year’s leaders, and how secretly indignant I was when, horrors, a girl was chosen for the first time ever as my successor. Everybody “knows” only boys can be in charge.
That same year, there was a boy in our gym class who was somewhat effeminate, and I participated in unmercifully teasing/bullying him.
In retrospect, I am horrified, but all that ugliness is fed to all of us from birth. In fact, there’s evidence that children as young as three recognize the caste differences of our society. We teach ‘em young. And none of us is immune. I doubt the results of the experiment that Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clarke conducted in the 1940s with black and white dolls would be all that different today.
The second thought is a piece of advice from the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, chaplain at Yale, on how to deliver a hard message in a sermon: begin by saying, “What I am going to say may be quite painful for some of you to hear. It pains me to say it, because it may cause a breech in our relationship.”
UncleEbeneezer
@VFX Lurker: Here are some others you might want to add to your Racism-101 list:
Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi- shows how racist ideas get perpetuated and re-packaged over and over and successfully sold to White People.
Mothers of Mass Resistance by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae- Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, Mothers of Massive Resistance explores the grassroots workers who maintained the system of racial segregation and Jim Crow. For decades in rural communities, in university towns, and in New South cities, white women performed myriad duties that upheld white over black: censoring textbooks, denying marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of their neighbors, celebrating school choice, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials. They instilled beliefs in racial hierarchies in their children, built national networks, and experimented with a color-blind political discourse. Without these mundane, everyday acts, white supremacist politics could not have shaped local, regional, and national politics the way it did or lasted as long as it has.
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee- This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabelle Wilkerson- about the Great Migration
Out of the House Of Bondage by Thavolia Glymph- about plantation dynamics and the role that women played in the power structure.
Podcasts, Seeing White: Scene On Radio Season Two is really excellent.
TV:
HBO’s documentary series Exterminate All The Brutes (tw: pretty unflinching, brutal)
When They See Us– the story of the Exonerated Five (Central Park 5) and the racist policing/political environment, that put them in prison.
Dahmer– while the story is about the infamous serial killer, it also does a great job of highlighting how race played a role in why he was free to kill for so long.
Them– Fictional horror series about racist violence, but just about every horrific thing that happens was based on stuff that happened in real life.
Snowfall– Fictional series about the rise of the crack epidemic in LA. Like The Wire it shows a lot about the real dynamics of urban poverty, policing etc.
Xavier
It was always about racism and misogyny and transphobia and white nationalism.
It was always about fear.
Insecure frightened people wanted a strong daddy to protect them.
ETtheLibrarian
Republicans have never wanted to admit that the Dixicrats moved over to the GOP and took it over by learning to couch their language better while cowing/using the press to normalize their message. An openly racist president was always going to be where the GOP landed. They just never realized that party apparatchiks weren’t going to be able to control, corral, and aim this one. They didn’t think that he was going to out narcissist them and so they continued to conform and let the sunk cost fallacy lead the way.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah:
I do feel like we are slapping you (and millions more) in the face when we focus on alternate histories and how she could have run a better campaign – if the result had anything to do with the better campaign, this election would have turned out very differently.
Lobo posted an awesome comment a few weeks ago:
I was planning to use that for a post, and I may yet do that, but it also seems to fit here.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: I’m involved in antiracism work via the racial justice ministry in my church, and from that standpoint the $64,000 question is how to encourage white people- definitely including well-intentioned liberals- to undertake the kind of self-reflection exhibited by your comment. All I know is that there are no simple answers to that. But we can keep nudging. Pointing people to the kinds of resources others in this thread have recommended can definitely open some eyes.
Other MJS
@sentient ai from the future:
Not to downplay racism, hate, etc. at all, but some of the focus group voters here displayed astonishing levels of ignorance. I don’t know what to do about it, but civics classes would be a good start.
Ramalama
@Leto: Cool!
First watch is Lesson 1: Do not obey in advance.
Also – just learned On Tyranny
is coming outin graphic format, done by Nora Krug. Nora Krug wrote such a great graphic novel about uncovering her own German family’s role in WWII: in Belonging. I’ve recommended it here before but here’s a link ..The graphic novel is out.
Steve LaBonne
@Other MJS: Much of the ignorance is a willed byproduct of the hate.
JustRuss
@NaijaGal: I think Harris not going on Joe Rogan’s show was a huge mistake, for that reason. It was an opportunity to address his audience without right wing pundits filtering what she said and lying about her.
Socolofi
Honestly, one of the best things to combat this kind of bigotry is… Walker, Texas Ranger.
I know it’s now on re-runs, but conservatives still LOVE Walker. And we’ll just ignore that failed reboot.
Chuck Norris, karate-using white guy, as lead.
Black sidekick, also throws down, but can use these newfangled computers and cell phones (hey, it was the 90s).
Pretty woman DA, who cleans up, er, puts ’em away, when Chuck is done. Or is a scold if the episode drags and Chuck needs the full hour for a 15-minute job.
Native adoptive father
Older white guy career advisor
Bad guys are rich white guys, or very brown drug lords. Victims are always poor and vulnerable, often non-white or non-male, and are always saved at the end.
It’s still overtly white patriarchy / supremacy. But unlike the Gunsmokes of the world from the 50s-70s, suddenly not everyone was white, and people could see Black people and Women as competent parts of the team.
Most bigots don’t believe they are bigots. Therefore, you can’t combat it by calling them bigots. The only way to combat it is to make them accept other ideas on their own in non-threatening ways.
This said… it feels like it takes years. And it does. But when you consider people on this thread still remember in their lifetimes the legalized oppression, and how fast we’ve moved over the past 30 years not just with gender and race but with things like sexual orientation, it’s amazingly fast. There’s still a LOOOONNNGGGG way to go, and I’m not trying to say in the slightest that we’re done, and I’m not trying to say that a lot of bigots are trying to move things back. There always will be those that think like that. But for the majority, invariably the best tactics are more cultural in nature that combine their existing values in ways that highlight diversity.
Omnes Omnibus
Of course it was hate. Solving it is going to be a bitch, but going on Rogan isn’t going to get us there.
Steve LaBonne
I would like to add Michele Norris’s Our Hidden Conversations to the reading recommendations. It’s a remarkable snapshot of where our society is today with respect to race and how the lives of individual people have been shaped by it.
David Hunt
@vigilhorn:
I think you’ve got a point. I may have blinders on because of emotional closeness, but my dad’s been in the Fox News bubble for decades. I’d say that fear is his main political motivator. I’d say that Fear is the main thing that they’ve instilled in him. The Liberals are an ongoing evil conspiracy to trap him us all in a tyranny of dependence where all that he has will be taken to support others. He’s so convinced that the Dems are an existential threat to liberty that he’s perfectly wiling to overlook the minor defects (which is the most that will get reported on Fox) of GOP candidates.
I can understand this view, because I share it, but pointed in the opposite political direction. I know that the GOP is out to take my freedom away. I’m certain I come to those conclusions rationally. Through Evidence. But my dad is certain of the same thing. He’s just been lied to for decades.
PJ
Well, duh. (Not meant to be condescending, I know most people here know this.) Harris ran a great campaign. She raised and spent a ton of money, and there was huge turnout in volunteers. I don’t think she was crippled by not having much more than three months to campaign, because any advantage in just being in the media more would be be countered by Republicans and the media figuring out new and better ways to attack her.
Prior to this election, everybody knew how Trump was and what he did and what he stood for. And even if people had paid no attention to the previous four years and didn’t know who Harris was, they knew what she stood for. And the majority of voters chose Trump because they liked what he stood for, which is racism, misogyny, and hate. He is a terrible person and was a terrible President, and promised to do terrible things if elected again. But too many voters just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a black woman. Those 7-8 million Biden voters who didn’t vote for Harris? It’s because they would vote for an old white man, but not a black woman. This is the bottom line.
Melancholy Jaques
I’ve been saying this for years. Trump is most brazen & unmitigated version of what Republicans have been for decades.
I don’t know what to do about it, but I know that candy coating it with euphemisms like values voters, heartland, and economic anxiety are not effective.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: Podcasts are never the right answer.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@rikyrah: Something something Lee Atwater something forced busing something fiscal responsibility something family values something.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Melancholy Jaques: Felonious Thunk proved that Atwater’s codespeak is entirely unnecessary nowadays.
Kayla Rudbek
@RevRick: the Zeroth law of Holes: acknowledge you are in one. The First Law of Holes: stop digging. I’m not sure what the Second and Third Laws of Holes would be.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
I wonder how much of the
incoming appointeesNew Court of Donald the First Second is Felonious Thunk giving the Auld Establishment the finger, like he wanted to do to Manhattan society because they snubbed him.Hildebrand
@PJ: Because even the ostensibly ‘Democratic’ podcasts, like the Obama bros, refuse to consider that race and gender were actually salient issues in the election.
Gretchen
Talia Lavin’s book Wild Faith is timely: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/talia-lavin/wild-faith/9780306829192/
She interviews more than 100 people who were raised in Christian evangelicalism who have left. A through-line of the interviews is the idea that everyone must submit to authority: children to parents, wives to husbands, adults to their pastors. Unquestioning obedience is demanded, because authority comes from God, and how dare you question God’s will? Children are expected to instantly, cheerfully obey, enforced by physical abuse. Even a sour expression is enough to earn a beating.
Information sources are strictly controlled -homeschooling with religious textbooks, their own books, radio stations, conferences. I’ve also been listening to the podcast https://kitchentablecult.com/blog/ by two « exvangelicals ». They interviewed a quiverful escapee who is now a librarian. He was able to walk to the library and read forbidden things like Carl Sagan. He knew that he’d get a beating if he brought that home (his parents were creationists) so he sat in the library reading it. All three on the podcast remembered ways they’d sneak forbidden, worldly books past their parents. Many of the interviewees said that they started to question when, by chance, they got conflicting information from outside sources.
Evangelicals and Catholic bishops were all in on Trump, telling their flocks that it was a sin to vote for Harris. They’re terrified of losing the white, male authority. Mike Johnson, Pete Hegseth, and the rest are doing their best to assert that white male authority.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Chris: “Your mere existence threatens my fragile universe.”
Elizabelle
@Ramalama: Ordered two copies, and they just arrived today. I love Nora Krug.
Are you the jackal who told me about Belonging? If so, many thanks.
PS: Used Thriftbooks. Trying to stay Amazon-free.
CaseyL
Trump got no more votes than he did in 2020, so for me the question is why did so many Democrats stay home?
I don’t give a damn about the GOP’s base. We can’t reach them, we never will, I hope the next epidemic kills them all.
I want to know why our own goddamn voters didn’t turn out. THAT, to me, is the question we need to dive deep into. Was it racism/sexism/etc. for them as well?
Kayla Rudbek
@Socolofi: I would add Star Trek and maybe the A-Team to that
RevRick
@Steve LaBonne: If it helps in your efforts, quote me. Pointing to a third party May offer enough distance to open a space for the conversation.
Socolofi
@Quiltingfool: 100%.
Something that the left excels at is the Worst Marketing Slogans possible. White Privilege just pisses off white people – poor white people because they work hard and don’t feel they had any privilege, and rich white people who worked hard for success and think it was a lot more about hard work than being white. Black Lives Matter is another one. And then we get a lot of the more technical terms like intersectionality and systemic racism, which to lots of people who aren’t in the know sounds like they’re being insulted with fancy words.
I think we need to get back to much more direct slogans more people can get behind. It isn’t White Privilege it’s Stop Screwing the Poor (or Blacks, People of Color, Women, they all work). It’s not Black Lives Matter, although minor tweaking would help like Black Lives Also Matter or Black Lives Matter Too, but Fire Bad Cops.
Splitting Image
@Omnes Omnibus:
The trouble is that Rogan is a simplifier. He simplifies things for his audience. And the problem is that hate makes things really simple to understand.
It is a lot easier to simplify things into being “Somebody Else’s Fault” than it is to simplify things into “Each one of us has a share of the blame and each one of us has some responsibility for fixing things”.
Even “You are being screwed by the people you are voting for” is too complex an idea, unless you can work in that somebody else to blame for them voting for the people who are screwing them.
The Democrats cannot win by dumbing down their message or by trying to match the demogogues. They will always lose to someone who provides an easy scapegoat.
RevRick
@Kayla Rudbek: To move from holeness to wholeness requires a certain amount of grace.
Professor Bigfoot
It’s white people defending whiteness; and I will not believe it’s unintentional.
I’m confident William of Ockham would agree with me.
The entire conservative movement is about one thing and one thing only– maintaining straight, white, male, Christian domination of all aspects of American life and culture.
That’s it, that’s the whole thing, and every other single thing they talk about is meant to avoid that one, central fact.
Professor Bigfoot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It’s whiteness.
“There is no horseshoe. There is only white people who are at best uncomfortable with any power being held in Black hands. Those white people are at all points of the ‘left-right’ spectrum.”
RevRick
@CaseyL: He actually got 3 million more votes, and Harris’ total exceeded what he got in 2020.
As to why the Democrats stayed home, my guess is that the ravages of inflation demoralized them and left them indifferent to the outcome.
Professor Bigfoot
@John S.: Indeed; except that Jews know damned well that they’re NOT “white,” and that these “Christians” will get around to them eventually.
Pastor Niemöller’s wisdom remains wisdom.
tobie
Anyone have any data on who votes in terms of employment? I’d love to know how many Joe, the Plumbers and Tito, the builders there are out there. They are in my opinion an unreachable lot.
PJ
@Hildebrand:
The media hates to talk about racism and sexism because they don’t want to challenge the implicit beliefs of a significant part of their audience.
cmorenc
The end goal of the RW /Trump / GOP leadership is not racism or hate – rather they are using racism and hate as tools to achieve their main goals of destroying aspects of government and regulation they resent as impediments and diversions (eg tax money for stuff benefitting others than themselves). To accomplish this, they are willing to make alliance with fundamentalist evangelicals over issues like abortion, schools, and sexual orientation etc which wealthier people can de facto exempt themselves from being personally impeded by implementation of the evangelical agenda.
That is also why RW leaders will admit some blacks and non-white ethnics into their circle despite cynically using racist appeals to the masses, particularly blue-collar.
Gretchen
@rikyrah: I agree with all of this. And we have to remember that those « Christian schools » and the homeschooling movement started to avoid integration. It was only when people started hearing « forced bussing » and « neighborhood schools » as the racism they represented, that they switched to abortion « to save the babies ». And when Roe fell and there was a backlash, that they switched to trans hate, often using the same bathroom tropes they used against integration.
They’re nothing if not agile in their arguments. The through line is always maintaining white, male, Christian power and authority over everyone else, and meek obedience from everyone else.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: White people stayed home.
White people couldn’t handle the idea of another Black person– especially a Black woman— being “over” them.
Once again, I’m certain William of Ockham would agree with me; but part of American whiteness as an identity is this tendency to dismiss the power of whiteness in their own lives and in their individual choices.
PJ
@CaseyL: Well, Democrats are not immune to sexism and racism. But I think there were a lot of Independents and Never Trumpers who could bring themselves to vote for an old white man, but not a black woman.
The Audacity of Krope
Democrats gave into their own bigotries too many times this year. Small wonder they lost ground.
Kayla Rudbek
@Gretchen: yeah, my parents sent me to Catholic grade school and let me read Robert Heinlein’s Revolt in 2100 at the exact same time (although I didn’t start going to Catholic school until I was in the middle of third grade, so they may have been a bit too late to really get the Church hooks into me). Galileo’s “Eppur si muove” was always one of my favorite stories as a kid, as it showed that the Church was wrong and it didn’t have all the answers.
Also reading the Belgariad series and having the Crowning Moment of Awesome being when the Champion of the Light tells off the Dark with realizing that the Dark wants to stay stuck in perceived perfection and motionless, and the Light wants to keep on in motion, saying “If I can change just one thing, you’ve lost. Go stop the tide if you can, and leave me alone to do my work.” And that weakened the crazy evil God long enough that the Champion of the Light could kill him.
Professor Bigfoot
@Socolofi:
That’s a task for white people to take up.
They’re fucking bigots, and I’ll happily raise my middle finger to them to their faces, because “fuck em,’ that’s why.”
Best of luck with ’em, though.
Belafon
Maybe we really need to start with “You know that everything you actually know you personally struggle with – getting food, healthcare, and paying for your home – was actually caused by white men, right?”
Hildebrand
@cmorenc: It’s pretty clear that Trump hates women. It’s likewise clear that he hates Black people.
Yes, he, and the other billionaires with which he is filling his cabinet, want to tear down the ‘regulatory state’, but I think they can walk and chew gum at the same time – they can be greedy and hate-filled at the same time.
Professor Bigfoot
@CaseyL: Other than racism– which is truly endemic to white America– what else COULD IT POSSIBLY BE?
It’s difficult, I understand, but applying Occam’s Razor to the question would be illuminating, methinks.
Bupalos
Online communities cling to the core algorithmic answers that bind them. The Republican Party is getting marginally poorer, less white, and less educated. The Democratic Party is getting wealthier, better educated, and whiter. And the plea here is “let’s make sure we don’t get distracted from our priors just because reality isn’t lining up with them.”
Your average Republican voter is more racist than your average Democratic voter. A fact that remains true but was more true in 1970 than it is today. It’s a truth that explains almost nothing about the more recent trajectory of U.S. politics and offers nothing in the way of addressing our political predicament where democracy itself is at significant risk.
we’d do a lot better to think about how the internet or global warming or increasing inequality is changing politics than yet more spendthrift sighs about eternal realities.
Steve LaBonne
@Gretchen: One of the asshole lawyers defending Tennessee’s odious anti-trans law before the Supreme Court actually stated badly that “people don’t have the right to not conform”. FREEDUMB!!1!11!
Melancholy Jaques
@CaseyL:
I truly think it was “I do not want to vote for a woman for president.”
Trollhattan
If all politics is local, here’s the election roundup for our metroplex. Shorter them: Dems slipped a lot more than Trump slipped.
“Summarily dismissed” doing some heavy lifting here, but it’s also from a Republican strategist so who knows? Regardless, there’s a puzzle for Dems to unlock and they have less than two years to do so.
Gretchen
@rikyrah: Yes! It’s not about their own rights. They want control over the rights of others. People are suing schools for giving transgender protection, clinics for birth control, abortion, and transgender care, schools for books they don’t want their kids to read. None of these folks have any proof that their own kids are accessing these things; they want to make sure that nobody’s kids can. They want authority and control over everyone’s kids, not just their own.
Nancy
I agree with most of what has been said above so I’m trying not to repeat what someone else said better.
On Civic Education: Public schools have offered a sanitized version of American history. For very young children perhaps that is appropriate but when kids are able to think and reason, they are ready to hear about injustice perpetuated by Americans, who like many of us today, are capable of kindness and moral action and also capable of great cruelty. Kids should learn in age appropriate ways that the incoming settlers–the early undocumented migrants–brought weaponry that the indigenous inhabitants did not have. Germ warfare and guns. Even very young kids can get the idea that might does not make right.
The massacre in Oklahoma was never part of the curriculum even in my American history high school and college classes. Somehow I learned about Emmett Till by reading old magazines as a teenager. The photograph of his face still haunts me. The fact that Black GIs didn’t get the same benefits of the GI Bill that my father and uncles got and thus could not buy homes with low mortgages was not something I ever heard or read until recently. The whole concept of generational wealth and how it becomes attached to a sense of innate virtue is part of the quiet racism others have mentioned here. A middle class person in the ’60s could decide that they had worked hard and earned everything they had without considering the house and its’ contribution to accruing wealth.
It is a scandal that schools aren’t teaching this history but I’m hopeful about the books you are listing.
I mentioned my students in a recent Watergirl thread. Most of the cases of inequity they found in their internship sites had to do with children of color missing out on opportunity to learn and excel. I am glad that the students can see more clearly than I can the racism that is hiding in plain sight.
Leto
@Ramalama: we bought it and it’s an amazing piece of art. Highly recommended.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t think we know that was the case yet:
Of course, if that is true Fear/Hate/Whitelash could still be the culprit; driving white turnout for Trump and depressing Black/Latinx turnout. But I don’t think we can really know the breakdown until the Pew Validated Voter report comes out in six months or so.
Rusty
@rikyrah: Amazing how all these efforts to fight “racism” (killing DEI, killing programs to remedy past racism in the farm programs), end up helping white people and huring minorities. Racism helped white people, and now getting rid of “racism” helps white people. Another recent example was killing the provision, when determining where to site polluting industries in the gulf, to consider where they placed in the past because they always ended up in minority communities. It would be “racist” to consider when we were racist in the past, so now you can go back to placing polluting industries in the minority communities. It’s the pretzel logic of the reactionaries on our Supreme Court whereby Brown v. Board of Education has been turned into a weapon to advance white people.
Gretchen
@Xavier: Yes, the strong daddy idea is part of it – although why anyone picks Trump as their strong daddy I don’t know.
That’s another theme that runs through people who have escaped evangelicalism: that they are trained to instant obedience to authority, and when they become adults, they don’t have any practice in thinking things through and deciding what to do themselves. It’s scary for them, and easier to find another authority figure to tell them what to do, than learn to think for themselves. And if you can tell yourself you’re doing what God wants, not just taking the easy way, all the better. So when pastors told them God wants Trump, no thinking required.
Chris
@Kayla Rudbek:
Star Trek is the one that got the ball rolling, or at least the one that’s best remembered for doing that. In terms of normalizing having a diverse cast, even if the focus is still on the white man.
The A-Team is an odd duck in that what was on the screen was at odds with what the stars (or at least the three white ones) wanted. The leads really wanted it to just be a guy show and really resented the presence of Melinda Culea (and her successor later on) as part of the main cast. But it didn’t change the fact that she was, in fact, part of the main cast, and often ended up playing a significant role.
Leto
@Ramalama: also another graphic novel recommendation: Thomas Picketty’s Capital & Ideology: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Citizen Alan
@rikyrah: The saddest, most depressing thing to me about Trump as President is that I am now quite certain that Obama only beat McCain and later Romney because they were unwilling to openly embrace racism to win. They flirted with it, of course. McCain’s contemptuous “that one!” Romney’s “no one ever needed to see my birth certificate.” But they were not willing to be vicious, in-your-face racists the way Trump was.
At the time, I had naively hoped that Obama might represent a turning point in this country. Now, I honestly think both McCain and Romney could have beaten him if they’d been the type of men to call him a “Muslim Kenyan Terrorist” on national TV.
Citizen Alan
@hueyplong: A better hypo, IMO, would be: What would the outcome have been if you switched the races of Neely and Penny?
O. Felix Culpa
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes to all of that. Includes “liberal” folks on this here blog who are legitimately upset about the election outcome and illegitimately attach blame to the woman who must have done (fill in the blank) [_____] wrong to have lost. Projecting one’s dismay outward to the easiest target, because for whatever reason examining our culturally and personally embedded misogyny and racism is hard.
Besides, blaming the woman is an old, old story. See: Eve, etc.
Other MJS
@Socolofi:
I’d always thought that it took intentional and malicious misunderstanding to think “Black Lives Matter” meant “Only Black Lives Matter” until I ran into a fellow white Dem (not stupid but perhaps a white bubble resident) who thought exactly that. But I support that slogan because you can’t freakin’ dumb everything down. “Defund the Police”, OTOH …
Citizen Alan
@JustRuss: Was it a mistake? Or was it unavoidable? My understanding is that Rogan did not ask her to come on until so late in the campaign that it would have been logistically impossible. Which I kinda think was Rogan’s plan.
eemom
@Citizen Alan:
One of the three good things McCain ever did was (politely) tell a horrible old racist bitch at one of his rallies who called Obama an “Ayrab” to STFU.
(The others were his gracious concession speech and ACA vote.)
WTFGhost
Love is how you defeat those things, but, the problem is, you see an enemy, and want to fight, directly, force against force, and you *can’t* win that way.
Look: if there was a way to hurt someone, badly enough that they’d stop being hurtful, someone would have discovered it by now, and no one has. Well – they have, but it leaves a large wake of dead bodies, on both sides.
Now, if you want to ask me, someone who pops in and out of ordinary reality, how you, right now, in this moment, can take up arms against the forces of hatred, I’ll start laughing. That’s a double entendre, because, first, it’s a ridiculous question. Also: laughter helps. Not jeering, hateful, angry laughter, but the good, honest, laugh that the incoming VP knows what women *REALLY* want: TO SUBMIT TO HIS VISION OF THE WILL OF GOD, proving he hasn’t actually talked to… you know… women?
Walz was told to stop saying weird, but if liberals point out the ridiculousness of the Trump administration for the next four years, in addition to the evil, it will do more to damage the Republican brand than calling them evil. Repubs say “they say evil but they mean effective!” and we need to show that, if you remove the podium, they’re not just pantsed, they really are an empty suit, like a Ken doll with less pecker – and, also, evil.
Finally, stop being polite. Someone says “open borders” say “you just hate Mexicans.” Someone says “good economy under Trump,” you say nothing, laugh, and say “keep drinking the Kool-Aid!” Someone says “Did you hear about his latest escapade?” “Which egregiously nasty turd that dropped out of that ugly trolls ass that you want to gobble down now?”
That’s how Republicans win:
ONE they have CROWING points – they try to make their accomplishments seem indescribably good. Trump is better at this than anyone, giving himself an 11 out of 10 for everything he does.
SECOND thing they have is EATING CROW points. They want to make you feel sick for defending a few minutes on a tarmac with a powerless man, and the current AG. They will try to shower shame on that, until you don’t have the same heart to defend a meeting between two old friends, neither of whom could have communicated the beginnings of a conspiracy, without having had ample opportunity to do so in the past, OVER ENCRYPTED COMMS. Ahem.
I picked an old example, in hopes that everyone will have the detachment to realize that EVERYONE GAVE UP ON THE TARMAC MEETING, because they knew Repubs would win. No one would do so much as say “oh, BS, If anyone could promise the current AG anything, it would be the CANDIDATE you moron! Why do Republicans hate the Clintons so much, they’ll make anything they do into some vast criminal conspiracy?”
I speculate that people were too busy eating crow on the tarmac meeting, and e-mails, and blah, blah, blah, that they just didn’t have the enthusiasm to defend against Yet Another BS Attack. Well – you can’t eat crow, you have to try to eat Republican triumphalism and leave them crying and begging for mama, in a way they care about. Don’t say they’re lawless assholes – that makes them proud. Tell them they’re following Bozo the Clown and they all look like idiots, and hey, did you know China has a new term for Village Idiot, “Donald”?
I hope I hit inside the open thread, or, at least on the *boundary* of the open thread, completing the sphere.
You non-mathematicians can consult with advanced calculus, or topology, to get the joke.
Citizen Alan
I still say it’s because of “I’m happy to vote for a woman as President, just not that woman.” Grotesque misogyny is not as bad among Dems as it is Republicans, but it’s enough to suppress Dem votes with a female candidate.
Socolofi
@Chris:
I picked Walker intentionally as it spoke a lot more to traditional conservatives. There’s a ton of justice shows, where the good guys are vigilantes (A-Team), superheroes, actual law enforcement, private eyes, etc. And to Kayla’s point, Star Trek did kinda get the ball rolling with a diverse cast, although for many shows, it’s the token Black guy (A-Team, Magnum P-I, etc.).
What’s different about Walker is that it’s set in Texas, and tends to focus on the kinds of crimes that people in Texas can relate to. Sure, the A-Team and Walker both saved somebody’s ranch from evil developers, but I know a lot more Dems of a certain age remember the A-Team and a lot more GOPs of a certain age remember Walker.
Tulsa King is actually a pretty good show that plays to the same audience… yup the anti-hero is Stallone who is a transplanted Italian mobster, but you see him lift up the poor black guy, handle clearly racist locals (almost all rich, such as the car dealers), and get along well with the locals (such as the bar scenes).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Trollhattan:
That got me thinking about CO’s Latino vote:
https://coloradolatinopolicyagenda.org/colorado-latino-exit-poll-2024/
Differing outcome that what happened in the Big Sac; Harris in fact did around 7 pts better than Biden. Well, one commonality were the ole proverbial ‘bread and butter’ issues predominating in both cases.
Chris
@Other MJS:
Yeah, I agree. “Defund the police?” Fine, I can see how that would go over badly. “White privilege?” Fine, I can see how that would go over badly. But “Black Lives Matter” is literally the most mild and innocuous statement that it’s possible to make. As a bunch of people have pointed out in the decade since it popped up, this is not the kind of statement that causes confusion in any other context – nobody hears someone say “save the Amazonian rainforest” and thinks that it means “and only the Amazonian rainforest, all other rainforests should be cut down and chopped into matches!” Nobody who tells you they heard “Black Lives Matter” and thought it meant “Only Black Lives Matter” is arguing in good faith.
Which makes me pretty skeptical of the entire “messaging” argument, and the idea that there’s a way to couch white privilege or reducing police funding that would somehow make a meaningful number of people suddenly open to the idea.
Gretchen
@Other MJS: Only one elected official ran on Defund the Police: the rep from Ferguson, MO, in response to the police murder there, and she won. No Democrat was running on critical race theory, no grade school was teaching it. That didn’t stop Republicans saying that all Democrats want to defund the police and impose critical race theory in schools and have litter boxes for children who identify as cats. It doesn’t help to water down our language in hopes that Rs won’t lie and sensationalize what they say we stand for. There was an ad running in Texas of a mom saying she didn’t want her boy to get sex change hormones in school, and people believed that was actually happening. It’s hard to counter lies, but watering down your language isn’t the way.
emjayay
@Hildebrand: This blog format could use a thumbs up function. Thumbs up.
And replies showing up a hundred comments below the one being replied to is really, really stupid.
Why?
Lobo
@WaterGirl: &I believe the campaigns did not have any effect except around the edges. Harris ran a good campaign and boosted her chances in blue wall states. Trump ran a train wreck of a campaign. Someone did an analysis to that effect. I wish I could find that link. I am of the opinion that there were a series of structural penalties Harris faced. A significant one was race and misogyny.
With that as the lead in to the topic at hand. I don’t try anymore for empathy, sympathy or understanding. I simply ask if they acknowledge that people have different experiences than them. Yes or no. If yes, than a discussion can be had. If no, I move on.
O. Felix Culpa
@Citizen Alan: Agree. Add a touch of color to reinforce “but not THAT woman,” and your argument is complete.
schrodingers_cat
Confront the white privilege on this blog first before the country at large. Its not just MAGAs, many liberals are blind to their privilege as well.
schrodingers_cat
Deleted double comment.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: No lie told. Twice. ;)
ETA: Make that once, since double post was deleted. But I doubly endorse your comment.
Quinerly
@RevRick:
Agree
WTFGhost
@Citizen Alan: You can’t assume good faith on anyone’s part, so, I agree with you: Rogan may have made the visit logistically impossible, to help Trump.
By the way, don’t forget to follow the case of the guy who was caught with a gun and clammed up on one of Trump’s golf courses. Again, don’t assume good faith: he might have been *fine* drawing a weapons charge. (ETA: to spread rumors of another assassination attempt, I mean.)
Yeah – when you stop assuming good faith, you gotta go *way* down the rabbit hole sometimes, and sometimes you’ll end up looking like you opened Capone’s vault, (Lesson: so don’t overdramatize!), but, sometimes, you’ll realize the conspiracy goes really deep.
Trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Overall a more positive outcome than the current CA takes.
Will be interested to see the deeper dives published next year; meanwhile a simple look at our county vote maps shows swathes of Biden counties flipping to Trump, notably east-central and east-southern California–big ag areas that nevertheless went Dem in ’20.
’24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election_in_California#/media/File:California_Presidential_Election_Results_2024.svg
’20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_California#/media/File:California_Presidential_Election_Results_2020.svg
Socolofi
@Other MJS: OMG yes, Defund the Police. And here I live in Seattle where they did with some pretty disastrous results (granted, the SPU and the City have been at odds for quite some time and it’s one of the few areas I’d support some aggressive union busting, but for a different thread).
The GOP is really good at slogans that nearly everyone can get behind and don’t lend themselves easily to lazy abuse. MAGA is a great example – yes, we can all pick at, “what do you mean, again?” but people in this country – Democrats and Republicans alike – do want to feel pride in this country and Make America Great goes right to that.
Slogans like, “Fire Bad Cops” would be great. Nobody wants Bad Cops, and by calling it out, you could also point to the GOP as saying they’re in favor of keeping Bad Cops on the payroll. And it’s also a way to sugar-coat a racial issue, as lots of cops aren’t bad towards white people, but are towards black people. Or spitballing, “No Guns for Crazies.” The GOP loves saying school shootings are because of mental health, so fine. Lean in, and when they push back, accuse them of being FOR guns for crazy school shooters.
Chris
@Socolofi:
Ah yes, I see what you mean that makes Walker specifically unique.
Only seen the first episode of Tulsa King, I may keep watching. Stallone can be surprisingly good in those “white guy who peaked in the eighties being a fish out of water in another world” roles. A friend finally showed me Demolition Man a few months back, which I’d never seen partly because the premise of “eighties action hero in a limp-dicked politically correct future world” seemed like it was ripe for all kinds of crap. As it turns out, it’s surprisingly well executed.
Miss Bianca
@CaseyL:
Um…I’d say, “yeah.” A substantial part of it, anyway.
WTFGhost
@Professor Bigfoot: William of Ockham would spear you.
White people stayed home is *good*.
“White people couldn’t handle…” is exactly the nonsense Ockham’s razor is supposed to cut out. You know they STAYED HOME, but you are SPECULATING about WHY.
You know they stayed home – STOP.
You think you know why, but the razor says “fuck you, you don’t yet know *that*. I’m not saying you’re WRONG” (says the razor), “but don’t blame ME when you add MORE THAN THE EVIDENCE.”
Go where the evidence takes you – then stop. That’s Ockham’s razor.
RevRick
@UncleEbeneezer: Three million more white voters means Harris got 1.2 million more white votes! There were huge shifts rightward in predominantly Hispanic counties like Hudson in NJ and in the poorest neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Inflation hit them especially hard with groceries and rents.
Miss Bianca
@Professor Bigfoot: Which is why I always say there is no “right wing” or “left wing” in American politics…there’s the “white wing” and everything else. If I want to be harsh, I’ll add the “wannabe white wing” to the the white wing.
N
Haters don’t recognize that they are haters, maybe because fear has more to do with their responses. And lack of empathy. Republicans appeal to selfishness and selfishness needs to be justified. The best way to justify it is to “other” other people–that’s how you get voters who want big government and socialism for themselves but not for other people. That’s how you get voters who see life as a zero sum game and those other people are taking their pie. Republicans are very good at divide and conquer and I think we help them when we talk about their voters as bigots (even though many are.)
So I don’t think it helps to call them haters. They just don’t recognize that. Fence-sitters don’t recognize that. People who aren’t particularly into the othering of others don’t see haters as haters. People believe that you have to wear a bedsheet and use the n word to be a bigot.
It might help to demonize billionaires with a “We are ALL being screwed by the party of the rich” message. That’s my suggestion: use ALL a lot. Make the Republican party the “other” that we ALL must fight to defend ourselves.
Soprano2
@VFX Lurker: I recommend “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” That’s where I first learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Other MJS
@Gretchen:
Agreed; that’s exactly the problem. I don’t advocate watering anything down, but major campaigns in particular need to be mindful of “how might the goopers use this against us?”
RevRick
@Citizen Alan: That’s a simplistic, comfortable answer for BJers, but the fact is the greatest rightward shifts were in areas where Hispanic people predominanted, like the Rio Grande Valley and Miami Dade, and immigration was a big part of it. Immigration added huge stress to these communities, not the least was coping with the flood tide and job competition.
catclub
Trump did NOT get a majority of the votes. Plurality.
Chris
@Socolofi:
Also,
No idea if anything ever comes of this later in the story, but that meshes pretty well with the setup of is “I’ve spent the last quarter-century locked up in prison with nothing to do but read a bunch of literature and philosophy; I haven’t kept up with all the cultural trends that’ve been happening.”
Which, for a white guy his age, translates to “I missed the rite of passage where we all spend twenty-five years glued to Fox News and talk radio until our brains finish leaking out of our ears.”
Socolofi
@Chris: So, I know lots of people, including my mom who isn’t what I’d call a raving bigot, thought Black Lives Matter was more about saying Black Lives Matter More vs Black Lives Matter Too. We can say those people are idiots, fine, but the people who do marketing for a living will just tell you it’s better to change your slogan than change people, no matter how awesome you thing your slogan is.
A finer point – BLM was a rallying cry against police abuses, and in particular police killings, of black people. However most white people don’t live in a world where they fear the police and view the police as good guys. So, slogans like Black Lives Matter end up being really bad to get police reform because people don’t inherently connect the dots. Defund the Police is more on point but also stupid. So we’re 5 years later and as far as I can see, not much has changed.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Nailed it. Wannabe white wing is pathetic in addition to being despicable. I am looking at you Vivek.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Nancy: There’s a thing about the US’ founding mythology that is crazy-making if you think about it.
Following the Civil War, US education had a major problem with defining the nation’s founding myths. The first English colony, Virginia, was also a rebellious Confederate state. It was impolitic to continue to name it prominently as the first of The Original Thirteen. So a new myth was needed to replace the mercantilist tale. Plymouth bubbled up as an attractive alternate: freedom (especially religious freedom) was more compelling than national greed, and Massachusetts was a staunch Union state in the just-ended conflict.
So, the US got a Xtianist twist on the founding legends thanks to the first English colony going Confederate.
The problem that has arisen from this is the fixation Xtianists have with the idea that the US is thereby a Xtian nation.
And the problem is exacerbated by how the various religious haven colonies were formed.
Ignoring the one penal colony (Georgia), half the colonies were founded as religious havens. But of those six, one was Quaker (Pennsylvania), one was Catholic (Maryland) and four were Puritan. And of the four Puritan ones, three were founded by settlers wishing to escape the control of Massachusetts.
People forget that the Puritans of Plymouth and Mass Bay were not merely fleeing persecution as religious “free-thinkers”, they were serially evicted from everywhere that tried to accommodate them and were thrown out because they tried to impose their form of Xtianism on their hosts wherever they went. Spain, France, Austria, the various Italian states, all being Catholic, would have exterminated them for heresy; had they gone further East it’s likely the Orthodox would have done the same. But they made themselves unwelcome among the Dutch, Scots, north Germans, Danes and the other Protestant communities. The English Puritans themselves evicted them – and the English Puritans were a pretty severe sect themselves, so being too severe and domineering for that group says a lot.
So, to deprioritize a rebel state, the US elevated not merely a minor Protestant sect, but an extremist, repressive, severely conservative cult to prominence in US History. And this situation has been leveraged by the FundiEvangelical Xtianist community for the last five decades to misrepresent the origin of the US and to push for a move toward a Puritanism reinvented for the information age.
WTFGhost
Thank you – that’s a message I’ve tried to get out, but you’ve put it *really* well and *really* succinctly.
No one thinks they *hate*. But they might think you can’t trust a Black person, a woman, or a Hispanic, because of “affirmative action” or “dei”. That’s really close to hate – trust me I know my hates, that’s really close. It’s a way of saying you *know* those people are inferior, and therefore, you can’t trust any of them.
Well, that’s hate. It’s the mild form, the deniable form, the form you don’t realize you have until you see one of “them” beat down and feel a bit of contempt, rather than fury at the assailant.
gvg
@Citizen Alan: No, I mean yes but, apparently Biden was polling worse than she ended up doing. Democrats were in trouble anyway for reasons that defy logic. So we have to figure out multiple factors. There were multiple causes IMO. That makes all of them hard to be certain of which means we and the experts keep arguing around in circles and not settling anything.
I think though that we could agree to keep a list of probable causes and work on the roots of them?
karen gail
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
One of the things I have noticed about the telling and retelling of story about Puritans is the whitewashing of how they treated anyone who wasn’t part of their cult but also their treatment of women. Most have no clue what a Scold is or how it was used, we hear about drunks being put in stocks in public square for humiliation but rarely can one find how often those stocks contained women and how often it was an open invitation to physically punish women who were restrained by stocks.
I found an old history book where someone had collected the stories of women’s treatment in original colonies; untold numbers of women fled abusive males and fled to the wilderness to live among “savages.”
O. Felix Culpa
@RevRick: Alan’s comment is neither simplistic nor comfortable. Hispanic-Americans who have been here more than one generation didn’t move to Trump because of the price of eggs, but because he fits macho wannabe white aspirations. Immigrants aren’t taking away their jobs. Many of these folks own small- to medium-sized businesses and hire immigrants to work for them on the cheap. They’re tradesmen, landscapers, new and used car lot owners. Trump’s natural constituency. I live in the Southwest and am up close and personal with the dynamics. [Add obligatory not all Hispanic people.]
ETA: I agree (from personal experience) that many multi-generational Hispanics dislike more recent immigrants, but not necessarily because they’re direct competition.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen gail: I am, of course, still waiting to see any European religious group that treated women better than the Puritans did. Obvious exception being the Quakers.
LAC
Thank you for this post. I had to wade through a lot of hot takes from our…ummm…allies who worked tirelessly to gloss over this as less racism and more “economic anxiety/democratic messaging gone wrong/she went on this show-talked to this person-didn’t talk to this person”. Anything but that reality, as horrible and depressing as it is. The 92%, of whom I am part of, are still dealing with the visceral pain of this election, and a lot of us are taking a serious time out. A competent, bright black woman losing out to a barely sentient orange in a suit even after all that he said and did is what this country is about.
My magical negro show was cancelled in 2016 and I am not doing a reunion or a reboot for now, so outreach is not in my toolbox. But I hope that there is some genuine self reflection and real education going on out there. We are woven into the fabric of this country, our blood and tears are a part of the story of this country. We are as American as some white guy in a diner in the middle of the country. That has to be the starting point for any conversation to move forward.
O. Felix Culpa
@LAC: Amen.
gvg
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): The reason so many of the colonies were originally founded as religious havens (by different kinds of Christians) is that Europe was having an endless series of religious Civil Wars and persecutions like the 30 years war. This involved Christians killing each other and also the official changing of the religion of an area according to the views of the ruler which could change due to conversion or marriage. Can you imagine being told how to worship by someone else because he was the boss? But what if not changing would get you and your family killed plus lose all your accumulated property (which was the only social security, much more important than we understand)? And what if you changed but a few years later, the official religion changed again and now your former neighbors who had to flee or their relatives of the ones killed hated you, so you did not dare change again? And this went on and on…..
Our founders were the descendants of people who left but remembered. They did try setting up their own colonies and started down the same path, but evidently realized it, because that is where separation of church and state came from. The current generation does not remember.
pluky
@Kayla Rudbek:
2. Accept that you need help to get out of the hole.
3. When the help drops a ladder, start climbing!
Chris Johnson
@Socolofi: This is good. I know my own ace in the hole is that I’m a musician and a jazz guy. So all I have to do when I think ‘black person’ is think ‘Coltrane, Miles… for that matter Herbie Hancock. Lenny White! Billy Cobham!’ I’ll literally never run out, and I’m forever awed at what Coltrane did with Giant Steps. It ain’t about vibing, or grooving: the more advanced Coltrane is a form of musical intelligence that I am simply not worthy of, and I can only aspire to be anywhere near that good in my own dumber way.
That’s me. If wingnuts get a similar thing off Walker, Texas Ranger, then good for them. I have my go-tos and they can have theirs.
Ramalama
@Elizabelle: Yep, I am said Jackal. I just loved Belonging. I bought up a bunch of copies and gave them as gifts. Also, I have a German friend living in the village next to me (Quebec) and while I haven’t talked to her about it, the book made me understand her more.
Ramalama
@Leto: Dang, that looks good too.
zhena gogolia
This is a good thread — sorry I missed it.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@karen gail: They were white-centric, male-centric, patriarchal, authoritarian, and repressive. And because they got sent to the New World they got to perpetuate those “values”, AND they got to miss the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia, which got European Xtians to at least pretend to agree not to exterminate each other.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@gvg: Not disputing that, but your comment doesn’t invalidate the founding of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire by settlers that couldn’t abide Puritan Massachusetts.
RevRick
@LAC: I for one, would not gloss over racism. It no doubt tickled the ugly hearts of his white supremacist base. But how does that explain his huge improvement in Hispanic and black communities? Did they not get his racist appeals?
I’m sure they heard them loud and clear, but they dismissed them, not because they didn’t believe them, but because he responded to their plea: Make. It. Stop.
I suspect most minority communities begin with the assumption that all white people have shitty motives, including erstwhile allies. And who can blame them? Our history is replete with shitty behavior.
I think we need to consider the three ITS that Trump promised to stop.
1). Crime, especially violent crime. There was a huge upsurge during his last year in office and it has since declined significantly. But the thing is, trauma is cumulative. That there’s fewer gang shootings and murders doesn’t comfort traumatized communities dealing with more grieving families.
2). Inflation. We mock the whole price of eggs thing, but inflation squeezed every family, and for those on the thin edge, rents and groceries are a huge chunk of family spending. And as inflation was squeezing them, the relief checks that propped them up with the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan stopped. And one thing Trump brilliantly did was insist on having his name plastered on the CARES Act checks.
3). Immigration. I’m not a mind-reader, but I have a hunch that frontline Hispanic communities were feeling overwhelmed and overburdened by the flood tide of refugees.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@gvg: Also, separation of church and state are in Locke and Rousseau as well, so it’s not entirely a New World creation.
zhena gogolia
The comments in this thread are well worth reading.
gvg
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): We need to teach what those things mean. Just a little more detail. Until about 3rd grade my schooling was pretty glossed over the hard parts but by 4th grade in public schools in the late 60’s and 70’s they were mentioning things that weren’t perfect including how rigid and intolerant the puritans were. The Salem Witch trials and the Scarlet Letter are what most people remember. I would say they mentioned enough that you could dig for more if you were interested without covering every aspect that you can’t without several college degrees. I don’t know what they cover now, but I have noticed people forget or ignore what they don’t want.
KSinMA
@RevRick: Mister, we could use a guy like Reverend Coffin again!
A Ghost to Most
Nice blinders.
LAC
@RevRick: This is all I am doing on this topic. I am truly spent with the deflection. The movement to TFG was not HUGE and it does not take away from where Trump got his majority votes from. As far as considering other factors – there is nothing that Trump or the GOP are going to do about those issues except demonize and inflate as needed. You want to consider those factors, go ahead. I am sure that it is better than actually sitting down with what I said.
rikyrah
@LAC:
CLAP CLAP CLAP
Geminid
@Gretchen: Rep. Cori Bush was not the only Democratic Representative voicing the “Defund the Police” slogan. If you were to look up “Ocasio-Cortez Defund the Police” you would see that the NY14 Democrat adopted the slogan in Spring of 2020 and kept repeating it. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was still sparring with Barack Obama over the merits of the slogan after the election.
Of course that only makes two; but for better and for worse, Ocasio-Cortez has a strong media presence and her messaging has wide reach.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: Kamala Harris won the Hispanic and the Black vote handily. While Trump won the white vote, yes even the women. So I am in agreement with your points.
Geminid
@RevRick: The steep jump in interest rates that the Federal Reserve engineered starting in the latter half of 2022 had a big impact too, I think. For a while, American voters were hit with a double whammy: high inflation and higher interests rates. This likely hit small businesses extra hard
davek319
@Hildebrand: Only took a two-term Black American being President of These United States to blowback into white supremacist dictatorship. The whole creaking edifice was built on kebab sticks, Scotch tape, and baby shit, as it turns out.
The common clay being intransigent hopeless fuckwits soused in teevee-induced total disconnection from reality thinking they’re the audience in the Colisseum when they’re actually going to be the sweet gooey filling in the pits of hell equals the very definition of irony.
Us, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters, we need to be Ukrainians now. They are showing us how to fight and suffer and win.
“That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Glory b
@UncleEbeneezer: Its not history but I’ll add one I’ve mentioned here before, “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland” by a medical doctor, Jonathan Metzl.
eemom
@LAC:
Amazing how some white men here continue to bend over backwards to apologize for trump voters, isn’t it? Even on a post where they were expressly asked not to.
frosty
Well, WG, we got 40 comments in before somebody started discussing what went wrong in the campaign. In direct violation of your guidance that this is not an open thread. Sigh. Thanks for trying, yet again.
I’m tired of the whole thing. Guess I’ll go make dinner. And maybe light a fire (in the fireplace!) because it’s been so gray and damp and gloomy all day.
Hildebrand
@RevRick: The anecdata I’m hearing from my congregation is that younger black men voted for Trump because they ‘didn’t want their mother or Auntie’ as President. It’s the misogyny.
Having lived in Deep South Texas, and hearing plenty of Hispanic women (of all ages) over the years we lived there, that’s true of too many Hispanic men, as well.
Edit – and they still don’t hold a candle to white men’s misogyny and racism.
zhena gogolia
@LAC: This whole thread has been refreshing for me. I hate dancing around the topic.
Glory b
@Gretchen: Honeself, I think that was a one_off, based on the fact that she was in the district where Micheal Brown lived.
Polling shows that most black voters are against defund the police, just like mist favored the Crime Bill, even after its implementation.
We call on the police more than any other group. We also know who, in our neighborhoods, should be in prison.
zhena gogolia
@frosty: Still, the proportion of those comments in this thread is minimal, at least it seems to me.
davek319
@Socolofi: The other day I noticed a sticker in the back window of my neighbor’s brodozer that read, Clean Pussy Matters.
Not sure the BLM slogan was the issue here so much as the fallow junkyard of assholery it rained down upon.
LAC
@zhena gogolia: Me too. It was needed.
@eemom: Yep! I just have to go to my happy instagram place of cute toddlers dancing, cooking, and funny content to keep it calm. But I would like it if some folks would do a little research into the history of the police in this country and the legitimate concerns about the militarization of the police force as a whole.
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: Glad to see you back. We need your voice. And if you feel I need a verbal whomp upside my head, please whack me.
zhena gogolia
@RevRick: Never!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Do it! He won’t smite.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: UCC ministers never smite.
dnfree
@sentient ai from the future: I’m going to weigh in on your comment about “the school to prison pipeline that public schools often are”.
I was on the school board of our local small-town public school system 1991-2003, a long time ago, and I know how hard and conscientiously our board, our superintendent, our staff, worked to see that all our students were educated, with particular emphasis on our minority students.
I’ve visited the suburban, diverse public schools our grandchildren attended and seen hard-working teachers and staff, and students learning at a level I never did in my younger years in the 1950s.
I’m sure there are schools that are pipelines to prison, but I don’t think that term describes the majority of public school systems in this country. There are curriculum changes that need to be made to do a better job of civic education, but blaming the public schools for problems that too often originate elsewhere in society doesn’t help solve the problems. Certainly there are excellent private schools, but there are also for-profit private schools that take public money and don’t get good results.
RevRick
@Hildebrand: Then how do you explain the fact that Hillary got a greater % of the Hispanic vote than Biden? This shrinking of the Democratic margin has been occurring through several election cycles.
RevRick
@Baud: Lol
@zhena gogolia: lol
Now where did I put my smite button?
WTFGhost
@gvg: I’d ask you to consider the model I proposed. I’m not joking.
What accomplishments of Biden’s did we crow about, and rub in Republican’s faces?
How often did we (generally, not any one of us) feel we had to eat crow, over Biden’s age and “lack of energy”?
How *decisive* was the first debate, given that Biden had a cold, and would look low energy? We were always one “don’t you think he looks… tired?” away from losing with Biden (I claim) because everyone was so afraid of confronting the Republicans on “low energy” to avoid giving it oxygen. Well… that let it smolder.
Once it *got* oxygen, everyone was all “oh, we can’t win now, they’ve been saying this SHIT for THREE FULL YEARS.”
No – the problem was, we had been eating crow for three full years over his age, over the economy, over Afghanistan.
From there – remember, a lot of folks *in here* felt lost and completely adrift in July, so Harris ran a fine campaign, but, with Republicans refusing to admit to Trump’s crimes, and pretending it was not a Republican who tried to kill Trump, she couldn’t break free. She was still trying to pick up from where the losers lost, which was the night of the debate. Tribal identity, and wanting to be on the powerful side, won.
Or, you can believe that everyone in this nation is hateful. If so, those who *are* hateful will seize power, just like in Germany, and by the time you realize you need to connect with the non-hateful, you realize you’ve been Niemöllered.
My humble opinion, worth at least twice what you paid for it.
(Assuming you didn’t actually *pay* for it, I mean.)
WTFGhost
@O. Felix Culpa: You’re running into the “good Black” issue. Malcolm X mentioned how, you learned to be one of the good Black people if you were in NYC, and you’d be taught the “conk” to straighten your hair, but, Malcolm noted, no black man’s hair was ever the subject of a white man’s compliment. They just straightened their hair anyway.
Well, Black people in his day were still n-words, but he was one of the *good* ones, see, and felt a bit better than just n-words, I imagine.
Same kind of thing with multi-generational immigrants: they can *vote*. The kids and grandkids are all FULL CITIZENS. So there are subtle ways and less subtle ways to make a certain group feel less *unwelcome*.
Remember: Republicans will always pretend to have an outstretched hand, like every scorpion. *We* need to point out the sting.
bluefoot
@LAC: Late to the thread but I want to say i cosign everything you said.
Brant Lamb
@JustRuss: Except for Joe Rogan, a right wing-ish pundit.
WTFGhost
See, right there, you’re assuming good faith. “I have a hunch Republicans were telling part of the truth,” is not something I’d ever do.
If there was a flood tide of refugees – I never heard of it, but if there *was* – the question would be whether it actually affected the Hispanic community, or, if ads targeting the Hispanic community convinced them that there was a problem they should be interested in.
The worst thing liberals in America could do is grant credence to anything a Republican says.
Hildebrand
@RevRick: That’s why I called it anecdata, I’m just listening to the folks I know and sharing it with everyone here.
I will say this, though, bigotry aimed at African Americans from some Hispanics is definitely there – and from some of my former students they said there were ads that played to those stereotypes.
Again – I still think the bigger problem is white bigotry.
VeniceRiley
Can men be fixed? I’m skeptical, given thousands of years it history proving men cannot be fixed. With media and social media reinforcement from everywhere, I think we are done.
eemom
@VeniceRiley:
It’s not just men, though. White women have been frontline warriors for white supremacy since at least the 1950s, and were again in this election. (Much as it disgusts me to share a demographic with same.)
eemom
@WTFGhost:
And yet, that is what the commenter you’re responding to, and certain others here, insist on doing. Over and over and over again.
Based on a “hunch” of something there’s no evidence of, as you point out.
The question is, why?
Gretchen
@Glory b: Yes , Dying of Whiteness is also a must-read. Dr. Metzl’s dad was my children’s pediatrician when they were little. His dad’s family fled Austria when Metzl père was 2 and spent the war in Switzerland.
The most amazing anecdote was the uninsured guy with kidney cancer who wouldn’t sign up for Obamacare because that’s welfare and he was white. He died.
The book covers healthcare in Tennessee compared to Kentucky, which expanded Medicaid, guns in Missouri and education in Kansas. All illustrate white people who’d prefer not getting benefits themselves if they have to share with minorities.
Elizabelle
This was a really good thread, and I thank LAC and all of you for your comments. Going to read them more closely now.
Yes to the misogyny and racism and othering. Obama described Trump as a “bullshitter” after their first extended meeting. That’s not so much a slur as descriptive. And white and aspiring-white America went for it again. For shame.