The press is going to Botha sides this…
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Thing is (and I will keep repeating this, because I’m stubborn) Elon Musk is *not* Afrikaner. He’s a soutpiel — his people are ‘English’/(and Canadian), a group that has always been suspected of having no loyalty to their adopted ‘homeland’. Ask the Afrikaners! Per the Washington Post:
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Groups representing some of South Africa’s white minority responded Saturday to a plan by President Donald Trump to offer them refugee status and resettlement in the United States by saying: thanks, but no thanks.
The plan was detailed in an executive order Trump signed Friday that stopped all aid and financial assistance to South Africa as punishment for what the Trump administration said were “rights violations” by the government against some of its white citizens…
The South African government has denied there are any concerted attacks on white farmers and has said that Trump’s description of the new land law is full of misinformation and distortions.
Afrikaners are descended from mainly Dutch, but also French and German colonial settlers who first arrived in South Africa more than 300 years ago. They speak Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch that developed in South Africa, and are distinct from other white South Africans who come from British or other backgrounds.
Together, whites make up around 7% of South Africa’s population of 62 million…
Whites in South Africa still generally have a much better standard of living than Blacks more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. Despite being a small minority, whites own around 70% of South Africa’s private farmland. A study in 2021 by the South Africa Human Rights Commission said 1% of whites were living in poverty compared to 64% of Blacks…
I mean, my ancestors have only been in America for a century or so, but I’d resent an offer suggesting my American-born self should be ‘resettled’ to Liverpool, or maybe the Falklands, because it would make some anti-Gaelic bigot feel better about themselves!
sidney poitier and arthur ashe protesting apartheid in 1986 and teenage elon musk muttering to himself “i will make ten trillion dollars and fuck these people if it takes me the rest of my life”
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 11:08 PM
nelson mandela being released from robben island and teenage elon musk fucking crying his little eyes out
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) February 7, 2025 at 11:02 PM
How long before they are burning Nelson Mandela in effigy at Trump rallies?
— Kid Phantasm (@kidphantasm.bsky.social) February 8, 2025 at 8:44 AM
So we're revoking Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans escaping horrific repression & economic chaos at the hands of a dictatorship, but encouraging the immigration of specifically white South Africans due to a democratic law governed by independent courts aimed at remediating apartheid. Huh.
— e.w. niedermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) February 7, 2025 at 7:09 PM
different-church-lady
Normalizing full Nazi was not on my 2025 bingo… oh, wait, actually here it is right in the middle of the card.
Melancholy Jaques
I might like to call him a salt-dick, but I’m loath to be on the Afrikaner side of anything.
Baud
I wonder how many Afrikaners will actually leave their land to come here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Oh, they definitely sound oppressed. The US should absolutely offer them asylum and not the Haitians in Ohio /s
Warblewarble
MAGA ,MAKE APARTHEID GREAT AGAIN.
Jay
When I worked in tech, I had a couple of vendors who were soutpiels. I got rid of them as soon as I could, they were racist af, didn’t hide it around me, (printer paper white and of British extract). I just got copies of all the WCB and HRC rulings against them, pointed out they did not meet our inclusive and tolerant conditions in the contracts. We paid a few pennies more for ethical vendors.
Jay
@Baud:
None, Afrikaners consider themselves South Africans. Many soutpiel’s fled South Africa when Apartheid ended, through various Commonwealth loopholes.
Baud
@Jay:
That’s what I figured. He mostly wants white people here to feel persecuted by proxy. It’s what Republicans have been doing for a long while, although not on Trump’s level.
SpaceUnit
@different-church-lady:
Your comment made me laugh out loud.
MagdaInBlack
So he’s upset they are allegedly dismantling their equal opportunity policies, as he dismantles ours here.
Ok then
Youl’d think I’d be used to the incoherence by now.
BellyCat
Reserving my sorrow for those still trying to make a living at The Onion. JFC….
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Maybe South Africa should be offering us asylum.
Mike in Pasadena
If there are protests, will trump order unidentified police and the military to shoot the disorderly mob? And will the military obey trump? Probably not too far off. I suppose red hatters will volunteer to kill protesters. Coming to a street near you. Supreme court castrated itself with the immunity decision. Roger Taney Roberts is responsible for most of trump’s actions. Rule of law against thee and not for me.
Kelly
I’m beginning to suspect the Trumpists and Muskovites believe their hacking apart of our government will help them win the next election. Their base is enjoying the show. I think they believe they’ll pick up a few percent of the poorly informed, unengaged voters who will blindly accept their bullshit. They had enough votes last time. If they can skate by for a few elections the glorious blossoms of prosperity will enviably spring forth from the new growth after this long neglected hard pruning.
Of course it could be nothing more than they just like breaking things.
No idea if they expect unengaged Democrats will arise from their slumbers.
Baud
@Mike in Pasadena:
There have already been protests.
Not saying what your saying won’t happen, but nothing is guaranteed.
Baud
@Kelly:
If they win fairly, then so be it. We’re not entitled to our policy preferences.
Almost Retired
I knew Trump was intent on overturning the result of the Civil War (by restoring legal racism), the First World War (by restoring absolute monarchy) and the Second World War (by making fascism great again). And now he’s coming for the Boer War?
This is beyond horrifying. And it’s week three. Trump is racist to the core (duh). My demographic caused/enabled this and the time for politely avoiding political discussions with our conservative families and acquaintances is over. Make them own and defend this crap.
This one hit me hard. My daughter in law’s parents are South African and Zimbabwean and lived through the end of the Apartheid era and Ian Smith/Mugabe.
A Ghost to Most
Elmo should be repatriated to his Roadster floating out in space.
Chris
The wingnut talking point for all our lives is that Democrats are importing mud people so they’ll vote for them and steal the honest white people’s country away from them. So therefore, they figure, they should do the same.
(Of course, the only place in modern history where immigration actually worked the way Republicans say it did was Cubans under wet-foot-dry-foot policy. And it was Republicans bringing them in for votes).
bbleh
Aw it’s got nothing to do with Melon, and almost nothing to do with South Africa. It’s domestic racism, just like [checks notes] at least half of what he’s done publicly in the last 3 weeks or so.
He doesn’t have much else. “Mah AIG prices!” isn’t going anywhere, his tariffs are such a nothingburger that even some of the rubes are noticing, sending in a bunch of teenage incels to burn down the government is actually generating considerable pushback, and so far he hasn’t launched a crusade to liberate Greenland or the Panama Canal.
So what’s he got? Hate on non-White people. Step up ICE actions (see articles on WH pushing ICE to do more and louder, and ICE flooding Google to boost their online presence), blame pretty much everything — including the worst US aircraft accident in over 15 years ffs! — on “DEI,” order departments to stop observing even Federal holidays (MLK Day), and now throw a party for White South Africaners that they’re not even interested in coming to!
He’s slipping, and Melon is on the cover of Time. Pretty sure he’s gonna escalate.
Chetan Murthy
Haha, I mean, he already tried to get Norwegians and Danes to immigrate, and that went over like a lead balloon! So he figures maybe white South Africans are an easier sell ? *grin
Jackie
@Almost Retired:
Sadly, not quite. FFOTUS will attempt more havoc in the next day and a half.
The only real smile I got today was a CA Rep discussing President Musk and his FLOTUS Trump. Sadly, that smile was fleeting…
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: I have since that comment grokked that it is the same folks there as here that he feels are oppressed. White.
Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake.
Chris
@MagdaInBlack:
I only have scant anecdotal experience here, but the white South Africans I’ve met seemed to be big on being Nixon/Reagan voters. “Yes, apartheid was bad, but since the end of apartheid there’s crime everywhere and the government’s so corrupt and nothing works!”
And those, as near as I can tell, are the moderates in their communities.
tobie
@Chetan Murthy: Yes, but the good people of “Normay” didn’t take up his offer, so he’s been bitter ever since.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: This is true.
However, individual people are entitled to their human rights; and that’s one thing the MAGAts are determined to do: revoke the human and civil rights of the people they hate.
They want segregation. They want Jim Crow. (gift link while my WAPO subscription is still up)
Chetan Murthy
@Chris: I had dinner with a white SA guy, friend of another white SA guy. The guy I had dinner with was visiting SF from SA. We got to talking about emigration from SA and such, and he said (unprompted) that in his opinion, many, many SA emigre’s did it b/c they were racist. Obviously, he wasn’t, since he was still there, and said such a thing.
Baud
@Chris:
May be truer in South Africa than here. SA has its problems. Here most of the complaints are made up or highly exaggerated.
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy: Maybe he saw some pictures from Greenland and thought it wasn’t white enough?!
I’m so tired. I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to let myself get wrapped around the axle about anything he does, but that is proving to be difficult.
Chetan Murthy
@tobie: Oh that’s too funny. It completely slipped my mind that they fucked that up!
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Agree. Fundamental human rights aren’t morally subject to the popular will, and they do want to take those away.
But having a government that advances the programs and policies that we want is not a fundamental human right.
tobie
@Chetan Murthy: It’s hard to keep up with the firehose of incompetence from the Trump admin. That what we Jackals are here for. We have long memories.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: I find a good way to avoid getting wrapped-around-the-axle, is to limit news consumption. Between reading posts at LG&M and here, I think I find out about all the atrocities, and probably with a truer “signal” than from the MSM. So I just avoid reading news, and eventually when I wander here, I find out.
Instead, I spend that time reading fiction (or maybe nonfiction, but not news). I find that a Kindle is a great way of avoiding the news. B/c you can’t get to the Web from there. *grin
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: At this point I’d happily accept policies that I hated that weren’t abrogating Americans’ civil rights; but we’re past that point now.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: If we were an actual democracy with informed citizens, and if citizens actually voted, there’d be a better chance of us getting “a government that advances the programs and policies that we want”. Ah well. That’s why they gotta suppress the vote and ensure the populace is stupid as a post.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MagdaInBlack:
I think you were right in your original comment in pointing out the hypocrisy and incoherence, though.
It’s bullshit that Musk, Trump, etc will complain about DEI/”wokeness” and then turn around with this shit
Jay
The “Grave Injustice” that Diaper Don is wanking on about, is South Africa’s attempting to create laws to expropriate or eminent domain “Land Back”, (with compensation), to address the massive disparity in land ownership in South Africa.
It is more an appeal to his fanboys who worship South African soldiers and Rhodesian soldiers , let’s say, conduct, during the Border Wars and the Rhodesian Wars.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: Good plan. Unfortunately my kindle app is on my iPad, so it’s to easy to « just have a look ». So I’ve been favoring paper books and putting the electronics in another room.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Remember what Stephen Colbert said: “I just want to say that I’m not a racist. I don’t even see race. Not even my own. People tell me I’m white and I believe them because I just devoted six minutes to explaining how I’m not a racist!”
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
The bigger problem is that we’re splintered when it comes to the policies that we want.
Harrison Wesley
@Mike in Pasadena: I recall seeing a few articles in the last few years about our military’s efforts to identify and weed out far-right members. I have a feeling any such programs have been eliminated.
Chetan Murthy
@Gretchen: Ahahahaha, yes. I used to read books on my 2-in-1 chromebook. Too easy to tab over and check the blogs. Too easy to tab over and check my RSS reader. Switching to an actual Kindle changed all that.
MagdaInBlack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It really is difficult to wrap ones head around how they think, isnt it. Painful, even. I struggle.
Suzanne
@Jay: Agree.
I remember that Dylann Roof wore a jacket with the flag of Rhodesia on it. FFOTUS is trying to appeal to that guy’s friends.
Chetan Murthy
@MagdaInBlack: Someone once pointed out that the hypocrisy that we see in these white supremacists is in fact a feature. When they act hypocritically, they’re telling their Base that they’ll look out for them, and stomp their Base’s enemies, the law and consistency be damned. It is part and parcel of Wilhoit’s Law, part and parcel of Caste.
The hypocrisy is part of the point.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: Remember those rallies where the MAGAts would wear “Pinochet did nothing wrong!” t-shirts?
Gretchen
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s fascinating that the men who assert that white Christian men need to be in charge are the dim bulbs like Trump, Musk and Hegseth who would never have gotten anywhere without family money, connections and favoritism. They’d be doing bad jobs as night stocker at Walmart and complaining that women are too picky.
Gretchen
@Baud: That’s the long standing strategy of the bad guys: let’s you and him fight!
different-church-lady
@Kelly:
They believe it will prevent the next election.
Jay
@Suzanne:
Oh, they wear way more offensive t-shirts than that in public.
Dates back to them wanking off to Soldier of Fortune Magazine back in the day, now it’s the 121St Keyboard Brigade frantically wanking off with their Hot Dorito fingers in their Mom’s basement.
BC in Illinois
@Professor Bigfoot:
Ah . . . you reminded me. I’m still getting the WAPO online. But only for two more months.
They asked me to re-subscribe this morning. I just pulled the sales pitch from the gmail “Trash,” where I pitched it.
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy: The other thing about hypocrisy that makes it a totally lame political attack is that our opponents think hypocrisy is totally fine and normal. I have mentioned here about how I lurk at quite a few shitty comment sections. It blows my mind how many social conservatives don’t think hypocrisy is problematic. They think it’s deeply normal and not really anything one should aspire to avoid. So, we behave like it’s going to be some crushing blow when we find evidence of something terrible that they do, and they’re just like….. eh, I want my tax cuts and to harass trans people.
different-church-lady
Today in utter dumbfucks:
They’re “wondering.” They’re FUCKING WONDERING…
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: “for my friends everything; for my enemies the law”
Gretchen
@different-church-lady: I saw a video of Trump saying something like, they think I can’t stay after 4 years or can’t run again, and everybody laughed. He doesn’t plan to leave. Who’s going to primary him? They’re afraid to even publicly disagree with him for insulting their wives.
hells littlest angel
We are ruled by monsters. This won’t end well, one way or another.
Chetan Murthy
(wipes a tear from eye) Oh, oh, oh that’s a funny one!
Patricia Kayden
The South African government should recall its US Ambassador and kick out the American ambassador. Show White racist Americans that you don’t need them. Eff them.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
There’s nothing hypocritical about “I will always support my tribe.”
It’s a consistent principle, just an evil one.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
@Suzanne:
What lessons are to be learned here that can be used to combat these people?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gretchen:
He can say whatever he wants, doesn’t mean it will become reality
Suzanne
@Jay: When I was in high school, the student body was about 45% white, 45% Latino, and 10% Native. There was a cohort of open white supremacists. Among the most repulsive white people you have ever seen.
They’re always dirty and I don’t get it.
Citizen Alan
@different-church-lady: Fucking. Idiots.
MagdaInBlack
@Gretchen: “…. just vote, you only have to vote for me one more time, then you wont have to vote anymore…”
That?
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t know that there are any. I think that our society is pretty culturally splintered, and our coalition is pretty splintered, and we have a hard time talking to one another. Winning depends on keeping the coalition together — which is hard, because some parts hate one another — and then winning just enough of the incoherent middle. And the incoherent middle is swayed by a lot of crap….. the “who would you rather have a beer with?” stuff.
MagdaInBlack
@Chetan Murthy: Baud said what’s been rolling around in my head but hadn’t quite put into words.
They don’t see it as hypocrisy.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Not seeing anything on major U S news sites but magnitude 7.6 earthquake in the Cayman Islands/Caribbean….
Chetan Murthy
I agree with that characterization.
Suzanne
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: And a tsunami warning in USVI.
Jackie
@different-church-lady:
That’s my belief. Everyone talking about retaking the House in two years…
What’s happening to our democracy in the past two weeks, I can’t even imagine what our country will be in two years from now.
NotMax
“40 acres and a covfefe.”
//
Steve LaBonne
This might be the most openly and determinedly white supremacist Administration since Woodrow Wilson. So great to see white America making progress!
Jackie
@different-church-lady: I read that and had the exact same reaction.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s a fact that when Trump isn’t on the ballot, Dems tend to do pretty well and win. We’ve been through some bad inflation the past few years and I think that hurt us politically. Now it’s Trump’s and the GOP’s problem and I don’t think they’re going to solve it to peoples’ satisfaction, which, along with all of the other crap, could provide an opening
Jay
@Suzanne:
When I was in school, it was 95% white, 5% Chinese Canadian, Indian Canadian and Richie, the one African Canadian.
We had a fair number of bullies, a few racists, but no Nazi’s. My lunch group was the Anti-bully Coalition.
Nazi’s of the era tended to go to clubs and concerts and start stuff, didn’t matter the venue or music genre.
So metalheads, hair rock, glam rock, punks, pop rock, mods, even Monty Python fans would beat the crap out of any Nazi’s they found.
The Nazi’s formed their own “clubs” in some of the most reactionary “Community” centers, ( mosty formed by that whole flood of Nazi’s allowed into Canada after WWII because they were allegedly “anticommunist”). We would find them, find their meetings and “burn their playhouse” down.
Scuffletuffle
I will happily be rehomed in Scotland…
Jackie
@Gretchen:
Primarying him suggests running for a third term will be constitutionally legal.
Maybe it will be.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
I’m of the belief that the I/P war was just an excuse for many conservative-leaning Arab-Americans to vote for Trumpism. They liked the anti-“wokeness” stuff. There were signs the last few years the anti-CRT stuff was attracting them.
I’ve posted this article before, this was pre-I/P war, back in June, 2023.
NotMax
The Dolt also claimed recently the S in BRICS stood for Spain, not South Africa.
Trivia:
South African word of the night; sjambok.
Possibly valid in Scrabble?
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You might be right. But I think our governmental system is weak in general, not really great at advancing positive change even when we are in power, and so Democratic administrations basically have to act as janitors for their Republican predecessors. That is, of course, necessary work…. but it also isn’t sufficient to meet the future.
I am not feeling all too optimistic right now and I should probably should STFU or talk about comedy specials or something.
different-church-lady
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, he’s their monster now.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Lots of people, of every race, are socially conservative. Often, but not always, corresponds with religiosity. There’s still a fair number of social conservatives in the Democratic Party, who are pretty uncomfortable with LGBTQ+ rights. That’s part of what makes keeping the coalition together pretty difficult.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Message to Susan Collins. “Hold my
beerhummus.”//
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: I remember reading once that Black people are pretty socially conservative too. Esp. Black Christians. But somehow, it didn’t prevent them from seeing where they needed to vote.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chetan Murthy: Even the most conservative Black American saw the outright anti-Blackness inherent in the almost all-white conservative movement.
prostratedragon
@different-church-lady:
The synapse begins to close …
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy: There’s a long history of alignment between Black people and the Democratic Party. Much less so between, say, Catholic Mexican-Americans and the Dems.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: All the way back to… [checks notes] …the LBJ administration.
Ben Cisco
Been catching up and just saw where Villago Delenda Est passed.
DAMMIT.
For him (and Steeplejack) in lieu of a Saturday night music thread…
Pieces of a Dream – For Ramsey
Fair winds and following seas…
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: The LBJ Administration is pretty far back. Not a lot of Americans alive today who were able to vote for LBJ.
ETA: Would be more accurate to say “a fairly small percentage of Americans alive today were able to vote for LBJ”. It’s a big country and even a small percentage is a lot of people.
Chetan Murthy
@Professor Bigfoot: I take your point, but even so, the idea that (for example)
somehow Indian-Americans thought they didn’t need to worry about that racism? I mean, surely they talked to their kids about what some white kids called them in school? Surely some of them were themselves called various epithets by the local white supremacists?
And the same for Arab-Americans
Maybe I should just chalk it up to the stupidity of the typical American. And hey, Indian-Americans are typical Americans. Doesn’t matter that they’re better-educated on average, really doesn’t matter.
ETA: what I mean is, sure/sure my mom convinced me to be a Dem, b/c Dems were decent human beings (which RaYgUn could not achieve). But even if she hadn’t, eventually I’d have gotten there, b/c the day came when I realized that I wasn’t White, and I never would be. It is shocking to me that so many nonwhite people can’t manage that simple deduction.
But whatevs. I get it: they aren’t making the deduction, and they’ll only find out when and if they and theirs end up on the business end of white supremacism.
Jackie
@MagdaInBlack:
Exactly that. The GQP poopooed that away as meaning the evangelists would have done their job re-electing him. Most of us speculated FFOTUS meant after Nov 5, there wouldn’t be another presidential election if he was re-elected.
Chris
@Suzanne:
The whole point of going all in on a worldview based on tribal superiority is that it tells you “the innate things about you that you have absolutely no control over are the source of your worth. Nothing else matters.”
Basic hygiene is just another thing that they resent being expected to demonstrate, the same way they resent bring expected to demonstrate intelligence, aptitude, trustworthiness, respect, or any of another million things we expect from people going out and functioning in society and being rewarded with jobs or sex or whatever. Their race, the one thing that doesn’t require any effort at all, should be the only credential they need.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Inner Sanctum, anyone?
//
NotMax
@Suzanne
The youngest who could vote for LBJ (counts on fingers) turn 82 this year
Suzanne
@Chris: One of the white supremacist assholes who was in a couple of my classes wore the same shirt, and I do not exaggerate, every day of the semester. I think he literally never washed it.
NotMax
@Suzanne
White Castle haberdashery?
“Buy ’em by the bagful.”
:)
Chris
@Suzanne:
… wow.
Truthfully, I was not the most hygienic person in the world in my high school years either, but compared to that, I was a Queer Eye For The Straight Guy success story. Thanks, now I don’t feel so bad!
Starfish (she/her)
@Chetan Murthy: Oh, both Indian Americans and Arab Americans will do some “pick me” nonsense not realizing that they will never get beyond middle management. The way Vivek Ramaswamy was sitting next to these dudes until he defended immigrants, and they told him to go home!
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ly dawning realization …
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: how much of white male supremacy is “I don’t want to do anything that Mommy tells me to”?
Suzanne
@Starfish (she/her): I’m still deeply amused by Vivek’s attempt to nerd-shame MAGA. Just ruined his career.
I love watching terrible people step on their own dicks.
Suzanne
@Kayla Rudbek: Oh, a lot. Remember how one of Jordan Peterson’s “Rules for Life” was “make your own bed every day”?
I bet their moms told them to do that and it was annoying. Jordan Peterson says it, and it’s revolutionary masculine discipline.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chetan Murthy: Alas, this– unless, of course, they are able to “become” white as the Irish and Italians did in their immigrant waves.
But I suspect Indian-Americans will never get the “model minority” offer of whiteness, because they’re simply too brown.
Chetan Murthy
Some from North India might manage it, but us South Indians, yeah, we’re brown forever.
Chris
@Suzanne:
It still boggles my mind that a guy with that name and that skin color thought he could just say out loud that he has to hire foreigners because white Americans are just culturally too low-quality for the jobs… and that MAGA would somehow have his back.
As if, to tie this back in to the hygiene thing, the entire point of MAGA wasn’t that white Americans shouldn’t have to demonstrate any quality at anything in order to be given something they want.
Really sums up how completely high on their own farts the people at the top of techbro culture are, doesn’t it?
Peale
@Chris: all he had to say was something to the effect that liberal progressives have ruined the education system with their woke curriculums and that we need to destroys the schools and let parents beat their kids again like his parents did to him and he’d have been fine.
Suzanne
@Chris: If there is anything that MAGA dudes want, it is to be dumb slackers and still be successful. Vivek’s exhortation to grind hard and spend the weekends at physics camp?! FFS. They want to go to Camp Holdmybeer.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: Some of my Indian American relatives felt that they came here « the right way » so didn’t have a problem with threats to deport undocumented people. I’m not sure why they didn’t worry about being accidentally swept up in that effort. I worry about that.
My son in law was opposed to Biden because when he looked at the suffering kids in Gaza, he saw kids who looked like his babies. That’s what I saw too, and it hurt my heart, but I also felt that Biden was trying his best and that he was certainly better than Trump. Pretty sure SIL concluded that too before the election, but since he lives in a blue state I didn’t push him. And since I live in a red state, my vote doesn’t matter either.
LeftCoastYankee
The entire Afrikaner identity is built on grievances against the English who pushed them inland (because you know, the empire and gold).
They built a whole ridiculous mythology that on their inland flight that the Voortrekkers arrived in the Veld at the same time the blacks did. It is the cornerstone/backbone/lynchpin/whatever of that society’s “grievance racism” which was codified as Apartheid.
The fact that Neon and those brought by the English drank the racist cool-aid is a bonus to them.
Leave to come to the US? Nope. These folks are in the top 5 of “People whose identity is based on a land they don’t belong in”. They’re not leaving willingly.
Chris
@LeftCoastYankee:
There’s probably an analogy to be made between English colonists’ descendants embracing Afrikaner identity in South Africa, and all the Yankees who’ve embraced Confederate identity in America.
Jay
@LeftCoastYankee:
Most of the Afrikaner’s I have met, are no where near as racist as the soutpiels.
Paul in KY
Sometimes I feel that if I wrote this up as a screenplay (say in 2012 or so), I’d get laughed out of the office for it being too crazy/campy.
Paul in KY
@Chris: Every white South African I’ve met (and in fairness, I haven’t met many) has been a jerk of some kind.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: I’ve never met Dave Matthews, but he seems to have turned out ok. Matthews moved to Virginia in order to avoid being drafted into South Africa’s army. I guess there are always exceptions to a general rule
There is a White South African who comments here sometimes who seems pretty level-headed and liberal.