Deplorables
Deplorables: Trump, Brexit and the Demonised Masses
Whatever you might think of the weirdos at Spiked, I think this is a pretty good video. It's far from a deep or original analysis, but it makes some points that I mostly agree with and that I think people have to learn from, especially Leftists. And really I just like it because it stands up for people who are being derided in liberal and Left circles. I have a humble desire: that we understand what led people to vote the way they did, rather than dismiss them. Their concerns should be ours.
Whatever you might think of the weirdos at Spiked, I think this is a pretty good video. It's far from a deep or original analysis, but it makes some points that I mostly agree with and that I think people have to learn from, especially Leftists. And really I just like it because it stands up for people who are being derided in liberal and Left circles. I have a humble desire: that we understand what led people to vote the way they did, rather than dismiss them. Their concerns should be ours.
Comments (352)
The left has assumed for its platform a pattern of humanitarian considerations, while the right has assumed for its pattern a pattern of nationalism, religionism, and covert racism.
I deny that the left or the right actively helps the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. That economic transformation is not partisan-directed, or helped. It is a system growing on a natural basis by itself.
I think the system which everyone likes to deplore: the rich who is getting richer, and the poor getting poorer is not part of a Marxian class system, as described by Marx; it is, instead, a phantom oligarchy. Marx's basic tenet in capitalism was, or one of them, that the ruling class exploits the ruled class. But what is there to exploit in people who are not even working? Or in the golden era of middle class (1950-2010) who wanted to fight against oppression and exploitation? There was no oppression, and exploitation was not an issue, because nobody felt exploited: everyone was fat and earned lots of money. If anything, people were happy to work, and to earn money; if someone came up to them and told them they are being exploited as workers (which was true in the Marxian sense), then these people would have grinned and declared, "If this is exploitation, gimme more."
The left has left the working class for these reasons. The working class did not need the help of the left; and the needs have shifted to ease the plight of the poor.
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What I find funny -- and this is not my original idea, or an idea born in me independently of others, but I read it in the New York Times some decades ago -- is that part of the Christian ideal is to help the poor, and heal the sick, and give dignity to all humans. Yet the left assumed it is their responsibility to endeavour these aims, while it is also the Left that harbours most atheists, and it is the right that harbours most extreme fundamentals and practically all strong religionists. (I bow to the exceptions in both cases.)
I find it funny, because my father was a devout Christian, all his life (although he put it in "dormant" status during his career), yet he was the first one or one of the few first who joined the Communist Party of Hungary in 1945 or 46. He was an idealist, he wanted to help the poor, the sick, the downtrodden. That's what he thought the main secular goals of a Christian ought to be, and he saw it clearly that the communist party had the very same ideals in view.
THIS is the main problem. Not seeing the forest from the trees. IF and ONLY IF you are looking for culprits to see what made "these people" miserable, then you have to look not in the direction of right, not in the direction of left, but to the direction of the East.
China. Everything costs ten to hundred times less if you order it from China. It does not matter if you want as simple and low-volume an item as one order of a USB drive, for yourself, or billions of dollars worth of merchandise annually, like WalMart.
There is shit-throwing contests: demonizing the deplorables, criticizing the liberal left, ridiculing or hating Trump, etc etc. These are not tectonic plate movements; these are the effects on the social superstructures of the tectonic movements; the tectonic movement was the discovery of China, along with its economic savings on costs, which the American public as well as the American Ruling Class (whoever they are) have capitalized overnight, and keep on capitalizing.
There is no "bringing jobs back" to America. If you want Americans again to forge steel, to build cars and hydroelectric dams, to build industry and work hard, you have to convince them to do it for seven cents an hour. Their Chinese counterparts think seven cents an hour is a god-given fortune. And what stupid idea is it, to spend $200 for a cubic foot of steel, when you can get the same for $10 on Amazon, including shipping?
So as a leftist, I have a somewhat different story. About 6 mins into the vid, the Trump apologist says that he made a very populist speech similar to one that Bill Clinton made. And that has the ring of truth to it, because back here in Blighty, the Labour party too had been transformed into a populist party (from a party of principle) From Blair onwards, Labour was indeed "the establishment" and all parties were the establishment.
Populism promises people what they want; it is the crack dealer of politics. and a lot of people are going to have to die before folks realise that they better not have what they want.
So why did I vote for Trump? Well, I liked how iconoclastic and unapologetic he was being. I liked that he was promising to shake things up in Washington and trash a lot of the traditional way that politics is done there. And I liked that he was focusing so much on bringing jobs back to Americans. That hit on two of my major agendas: the system needs an overhaul (if it's not simply just trashed and rebuilt), and politicians need to be focusing on things that make a practical difference in their constituency's daily lives. Having a decent job obviously makes a difference in folks' daily lives.
The fact that Trump came from the business world rather than being a career politician--I'm not fond of career politicians and I'd not be opposed to requiring that we don't have any (by say, only allowing someone to occupy a office one time/one term, and not more than two different offices total; I'd also make their income as politicians hinge on their success re accomplishing things that have a practical, positive effect on folks' lives, as well as not increasing--with a bonus for decreasing, total legislation)--gave me hope that he might be able to change things.
Stuff like Trump talking about building a border wall I didn't take at all seriously, because the idea of it is so ridiculous. I took it to be him basically trolling in a positive way--an example of being iconoclastic and f-ing with norms (of campaign rhetoric in this case--I almost saw him as doing some sort of odd performance art rather than just interpreting him to be a moron), because the system needs to be changed.
Of course, Trump turned out to actually be serious about the border wall much to my chagrin (I'm for worldwide open borders--I'd prefer we didn't even have separate countries; I'd only screen for wanted criminals/known terrorists/terrorist associates), and aside from that, he basically did jackshit to change the way politics is normally done in Washington or to make any practical difference in folks' daily lives. Mostly what he seemed to do was get into flame wars with people on twitter (and in the media more generally). Not that any other politicians are helping, of course--focusing on crap like the "collusion" nonense, trying to get Trump impeached, etc. is also doing jackshit to make anyone's lives better in a practical, daily sense. How about we stop worrying about nonsense like that and figure out how to make sure that no American has to go without healthcare/specific health procedures, medicine, etc. they need, just because they can't afford to pay for it?
So would I vote for him again? Not in a million years. But I voted for him in the first place because of misguided optimism (I tend to be an "irrational optimist") that he would actually shake things up and focus on practical things that mattered.
So I'm going back to voting for Libertarian and/or Green candidates mostly. Not that I fully agree with either party--obviously, as they're opposites in many ways, but they're the two parties that can get on major ballots that I actually share some views with.
Oh, and why I voted for Trump may not be why most people who voted for Trump voted for him. I have no idea whether it would be or not. But it's important to keep in mind that people probably voted for him for many different reasons, many of which aren't going to be obvious. The only way to find out is to talk to a bunch of different sorts of people about why they voted for him (and hopefully they'll be honest and can be articular and detailed about it).
Oh my god
I've always said Jesus would've been a long-haired, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, commie-swine hippie (which is why I'm mostly sympathetic to his parts in the Bible).
I think it's obvious to lots of us lefties that the official Left has abandoned class issues in favor of identity issues. But I also think there's a movement obvious through Bernie and Warren looking to refocus on just those causes.
The Right pretends to be for the working class by appealing to their fears of the Other and some mythology about "trickle-down" effects and self-made wealth. These are just distractions to keep the lower classes from demanding a just and equal system.
I think Clinton totally lost it when she spoke of a 'basket of deplorables'.
Her contempt and disdain in this generalisation of voters was clear. It was not clever.
It exacerbates the 2 party divide. But not quite as bad as the Trump strategy and rhetoric which won.
In the video many expressed their views as to why they voted the way they did. So, is anyone wiser after watching this ?
Quoting jamalrob
The what that leads to why.
A common thread which the hard right are relying on.
Self-interest dressed up as national concern.
This is not to be dismissed.
The word 'populism'. That needs to be addressed. What does it mean - is it just another handy tool to bash people with ? The people or mob against the ruling class elite - whatever that means ? More generalisations and black-and-white thinking.
We know how the Tories are going to frame the next general election.
Simple divisive messages.
No Deal Brexit v Corbyn.
Patriotism v Traitors.
Us v Them.
People v Parliament.
Friends v Enemies.
Optimism v Pessimism.
Simple slogans and empty promises.
Sounds like same old, same old but not really.
The language of war fills the air with its stink.
Most people love a message of Hope and Optimism.
Politicians on both sides use this as cover for their real agenda.
You fell for his bullshit. You were not alone.
How easy it is to fool even those with intellect...
Yeah, in this case it was because he was a political outsider and was being so iconoclastic.
"I do hear this argument that this is a proto-Nazi, a kind of fascist development in American society, that one must stand in opposition to it. It's an extreme, almost hysterical reaction, I think. It's an indication of people who have for too long have had their way at the editorial pages and in college classrooms and so on. And they've been accustomed to winning without arguing. The sky is not falling, I want to say to those people. Rather, the tectonic plates of American politics are shifting, they're shifting in ways that people you'd rather not hear from are now having a voice. Some of those people don't agree with your suppositions."
"The notion that we got to get him out at all cost worries me deeply. I worry about this because those people are not going to go away, even if president Trump goes away. If you don't defeat those people at the ballot box, if you usurp their expression of democratic intent through extraordinary means, you invite the reaction. The way to defeat Trump is to get 50.1% of the vote, and vote him and those who support him out of office".
BTW I enjoyed your righteous ranting about impeachment recently in one of the Trump threads.
No truth is ever welcome. Anywhere.
Even on a website for philosophical enquiry.
You guys prefer instead to pontificate over what constitutes populism, leftism, rightism, Trumpism and impeachmentism. But to look at the kernel, the real root of the problem? God forbid!
Sh'ma, o Yisroel!
I don't say that as an emotional voice one way or the other. Just looking at it mechanically. It's not about Nazis. It's about rule of law.
I disagree. The argument that there exists a type of fascism in the form of Trump is not an extreme hysterical reaction. Also, this is dismissive of objective, academic analysis as explained here:
5 min Ch4 interview related to the fragility of democracy. Yale professor Timothy Snyder :
https://www.channel4.com/news/some-of-todays-politicians-have-learned-propaganda-tricks-from-1930s-fascists-says-yale-professor
Quoting StreetlightX
'Those people' are not going to go away. Which people, the hard right extremists ?
Under normal circumstances, it is clear that the ballot box and a majority is the way to defeat a would-be President. The majority are unlikely to be extremists, by definition. Neither are they 'deplorables'.
Impeachment is not carried out lightly. In this case, I think the steady accumulation of Trump's action and behaviour have led to where it must be dealt with.
You give this a thumbs up ? Really ?
Where can we read this righteous ranting ? In that sad, Bigly, rag tag Behemoth of a Trump discussion ?
Is this thread gonna be Trump II ?
Heaven forbid.
I don't disagree. I just think it's the worst possible outcome. Even in getting impeached, Trump will have made things worse for everyone.
Quoting Amity
Synder is not particularly bright when it comes to political analysis. He just happened to write a bestseller that played perfectly into liberal fears and made everyone feel better about themselves. This was written a while back, and the numbers are outdated, but the trends outlined there largely hold true to today:
"If Trump were actually serious about consolidating his power, he might start by, oh, I don’t know, consolidating his power. ... [Instead, Trump] has failed to fill 85% of the positions in the executive branch that he needs to fill in order to run the government to his specifications. It’s a strange kind of authoritarian who fails, as the first order of business, to seize control of the state apparatus: not because there’s been pushback from the Senate but because, in most instances, he hasn’t even tried.
...In March, I was on a panel of liberal scholars and writers where it was the universal consensus that Trump had an almost intuitive grasp of and control over public opinion – as evidenced by his tweets, which were held to be the invisible puppet strings of the American mind. This was not long after Trump’s travel ban had been overturned by the courts and Trump had responded by tweeting his contempt for and hostility toward the judges involved."
I mean the fact is that Trump is horrible at statecraft. I mean possibly the most incompetent organizational head of state that the US has ever seen. To think that he's an authoritarian is an insult to authoritarians everywhere.
There's that word 'hysteria' again. What hysteria ? Who is it that is doing the 'righteous ranting' here ?
Quoting Amity
Quoting StreetlightX
That is your opinion. I can only go by what he said in the Ch4 interview - the points made calmly and not in any way 'hysterical'.
5 min Ch4 interview related to the fragility of democracy. Yale professor Timothy Snyder :
https://www.channel4.com/news/some-of-todays-politicians-have-learned-propaganda-tricks-from-1930s-fascists-says-yale-professor
That much is clear.
It's not going to be carried out period. Especially not in this term. Things wouldn't even really start rolling until the election is already here.
Which underscores that this is probably just a ploy, just an attempt to time what they can hope to turn into a negative-press diversion just in time for the next election.
Meanwhile, there are tons of people with real issues that need to be addressed . . . but that are just being ignored, because politicians are wrapped up in what's essentially flame-war nonsense.
Wow. An attempt to be clever and demeaning ?
That much is clear. I am using a specific example from someone new to me and probably a few other viewers. It is current, it made sense and was not 'hysterical'.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy held Snyder to account with pertinent questions and received clear answers in return.
You have a wider political knowledge - good for you.
It doesn't follow that you are right.
But it just might mean that you are an arrogant asshole.
I agree.
Thanks for the quote. I couldn't watch the whole thing, work gets in the way sometimes.
I'll give you a glimpse into the mind of the right:
The suppression by the left of making the right appear so politically incorrect (racist, neo-Nazi, and whatever else) has led to the right not admitting who they will vote for fear of public reprisal. It's for that reason the polling data is so terribly wrong (Trump was down like 6% in polling in Pennsylvania on election night but won it).
I will vote for Trump, regardless of how these impeachment proceedings work out. That is, if he is on the ballot, but no longer President, and capable of legally running, he has my vote. I don't really like him all that much to be honest, but the joy I would have in seeing him resurrected after a Democratic full on attack, I just can't explain. It would be like the giddiness I felt watching Hillary supporters crying on election night.
That is honest guys, and so now I expect to hear all the scathing criticisms of my admitting my allegiance not so much to Trump, but to my absolute rejection of the sanctimonious and morally bankrupt Democrats who think they're just one more good lecturing away from swaying me to their wisdom. And my position is no different than about 50% of the population's.
When Trump said that he'd still get the Republican vote even if he murdered someone in Times Square, he at least understood that. And yet what have the Democrats done? They've just pointed out how bad a person he is, even after Trump explained to them his supporters just don't care.
The instinct to have as small and loyal a staff as possible is something you might expect from a dictator wannabe though. Who could be more loyal than family, for instance.
Lol. There is something wrong with you. You know that, right?
The mind boggles that three years in, the refrain that "orange man is bad!" is supposed to make any political headway at all.
What would you make of a Bernie or Warren candidacy?
Loyalty is good. Competency is better. And he lacks the latter is spades. And this includes his family. The legislative moves that he has been most successful at making have largely been those of the Republican party at large - McConnell's agenda, and not his.
Unabashed political nihilism
I know the feeling he's talking about. It's a kind of derangement. It's the reason the Penguin laughs before he poisons Gotham's water supply.
It's not true that 50% of the American population feels that and votes for Trump as a result. It's just the occasional Penguin.
As for the reasons the British voted for Brexit: that probably is widespread Penguinism.
With Bernie, I can't imagine that a lot of people wouldn't be leery about a president being only about six months shy of 80 years old before he even enters office.
Maybe I'm overestimating the number of people who'd be cautious due to that, but do the Democrats really want to have potential additional handicaps working against whoever they nominate? I would think they'd want to find someone with the least amount of handicaps possible. Can't the Democrats get someone like Peyton Manning to run?
Whether or not this was on Trump's todo list, I'm sure he's thrilled about it.
From what I understand, the growing disparity between rich and poor is not good for democracy or economic stability. A small coalition of power and a downtrodden populace works well for an autocracy, however.
Great video.
I remember the Trump rally in San Jose, where protesters committed violence and harassment against rally-goers. A seething mob postured towards one woman, mocking her, throwing eggs at her face. A young man, obviously non-confrontational, was chased and beaten, as were many others. The police did nothing.
This is essentially persecution and it has no place in a free society. We should humanize our political opponents instead of the other way about.
Regarding populism, some believe that right-wing populism can carry an element of racism in that those experiencing a fall in status (deplorables) may resent falling to an equal or lower status as minorities. This could be why tactics like the NFL anthem controversy worked so well for Trump.
Bernie is an 800 year old socialist from Timbuktu, yet he's supposed to be the voice of the future, who will just seize the passion of this changing nation. Really? He owes his fame to the debacle of the Democrats in having eliminated all competition in last election's primaries to hand Hillary the unopposed candidacy, minus one irrelevant old man so they could make it look like a contest. Then the guy actually makes a run for it and gives her some heat, proving she was an incredibly weak candidate.
A Trump/Bernie debate would be very entertaining, watching Trump tell him he's impotent or something else totally crazy. Anyway, the left needs to rethink running a socialist and maybe move to the middle. Trump is hardly a right wing firebrand, but more of loony tune right leaning pragmatist, so I don't know the country really is looking for an ideologue.
Warren seems to have a problem with the truth, and that will be exploited. If the Democrats wish to bring dignity back to the office, I'm not sure she'd be the candidate. Having a woman candidate against Trump will only give him the opportunity to be unapologetically sexist, thus gaining him more votes. You really can't underestimate the value of being unapologetic. If openly advocating pussy grabbing doesn't sink someone for being sexist, I don't think anything will.
Opposite the riff raff in Erie, PA and the various deindustrialized areas of the US (and the UK) are the Boston-New York-Washington metroplex (and London) elites who dominate a great deal of what we see, hear, and read in the national media. The New York Times, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and so on speak to and for the elite. Their views are skewed toward the interests of these highly privileged people (numbering in the single-digit millions).
The kind of world that is good for the elite isn't the same kind of world that is good for the riff raff. The riff raff have been impoverished partly by globalization (featuring cheap Asian labor costs), but also by the successful wage-stagnating strategies of business, the steady erosion by inflation, and the gradual thinning of what passes for a social safety net. All this has been a fact of riff-raff life since the 1970s.
There is a large faction of "the left" and the elite that is suffering from what Quillette author Dr. Benedict Beckeld (a philosopher, not an MD) calls "Oikophobia" -- the hatred or dislike of one’s own cultural home. Oikophobia tends to set in when a powerful nation passes its apogee of power. Images of what were celebrated on the way up (rough, tough industrial workers, strong ethnic communities, political solidarity among the majority population, and so forth) becomes a crass embarrassment to those who no longer feel like they are riding an ascendent rocket. After the apogee, the elite begins to loathe the formerly heroic rough tough workers as sexist fat failures who couldn't adapt to the new economic realities (which they themselves rigged against the workers), views strong ethnicity as racist, and reinterprets the old political solidarity as populism tinged with a hint of fascism.
The narrative of the elites tends to place the responsibility for racism, sexism, xenophobia, islamophobia, homophobia, etc. on individuals, meaning "your privately held primitive attitudes are the source of the problem", rather than naming elite-administered national political and economic policies as the major factor. A very significant example of this is that American suburban racial and economic segregation was explicit national policy starting in the 1930s. The policy was "home ownership in segregated suburbs for whites with adequate resources and segregated rental housing in the urban core for blacks". It isn't that there were no racial/income gulf before this policy, but there were some blacks, with as sufficient resources to buy houses in the suburbs as some whites, who ran into the brick wall of FHA policy and financing rules.
The government didn't invent racism, of course. But separating the races in urban environments solidified and aggravated racial bias.
Quoting Amity
It is an interesting attempt to understand Trump’s phenomenon. In Germany, the fascistic body politic had been constituted so that the body, the intellect, the affection, and even the mimics of the fuhrer had embodied the German masses’ desires, aspirations, and hopes. The individuals’ anxieties, emotions, traumatic experiences, and fantasies had been mobilized and transformed. Is that possible to apply this account on one of the main aspects of fascism to the relations between Trump and his supporters? Trump could establish a unique channel of immediate communication with a vast audience, trying to address its concerns and appeal to its interests. Should Trump’s proximity to his voters be categorized as the fascistic or proto-fascistic body politic that threatens to destroy the existing political regime? And, does Trump’s base constitute the hysteric mass, subordinated to the irrational impulses of the maniacal leader?
An important distinction that sometimes gets overlooked between Hitler and Trump is that the former had death camps where millions of people were systematically murdered in an attempt to create a pure race and in the latter the guy would send out a bunch of fucked up tweets that pissed everyone off. Other than that, pretty much the same.
Look up what was happening in Germany in 1934
The video covers the topic of the "deplorables" well even if it's not explaining many of the other factors in the Trump victory. I wonder how many voters of Trump actually support Trump and don't just hate the left and Hillary. I think I can understand where Hanover is coming from, although maybe it's just my imagination, I feel that many would vote for anyone if it meant preventing the likes of Hillary from achieving presidency. The contempt the left has for the "deplorables" is not unmatched by the contempt felt for the left by all kinds of unlikely allies. I feel that Trump is so outdone as a threat by the left, it's just terrible that he can be a better option than his mainstream political rivals.
If you read the actual facts about Trump's character, career, history and politics, there is no way you could support him, but of course, neither he nor his supporters read anything much, let alone anything critical. So we're supposed to recognise that wilful ignorance and mendacity constitute a 'tectonic shift'.
I don't think so.
He's been within the top 3 in polls this entire time and only recently dropped to third what are you talking about
This is exactly the kind of attitude that the video is targeting. They knew all that and still voted for him, and I don't think you care why.
I don't get why centrist liberals always want to make such a display of their outrage, even after three years. It's embarrassing.
If millions of people vote for such an obviously flawed candidate, then the reasons aren't political, but sociological.
Quoting jamalrob
I'm not a 'centrist liberal'. I've always followed US politics, I subscribed to Time Magazine for years. I'm also, unlike many people I know, not anti-American. And I'll stop talking about it when Trump is removed from office, which won't be too far off.
Quoting Maw
He's just had a heart attack, he's 77 and looks every day of it.
Add some bad grammar and profanity and you've got a Trump tweet in the making there.
You're such a basically good person. Trump probably isn't going to be removed from office. He's probably going to be re-elected. It's really not the end of the world, though.
BTW, we need to talk about Australia's coal production and what it would mean for them to slow down or stop exporting it. Maybe we could talk about something important like that after everybody's head is through exploding over bullshit politics.
Biden had two aneurysms in 1988 and can't speak more than a minute without digressing into jabberwocky, but his deteriorating health issues aren't magnified in the way that Bernie's has been. I do think that he will eventually drop out either because of health issues or simply because I think Warren will eventually trail him, but either way he's hardly a distraction when 1) he's still polling well, and well above most other contenders and 2) many key topics that the Democrats are grappling with are directly because of him and their popularity within the Democratic party.
I don't think you have been following the news. I'm certain there is no way Trump will be able to stand as GOP candidate next year. He has just plunged the US into a bona-fide 'constitutional crisis' by claiming that the impeachment inquiry, which is grounded in impeccable testimony, is a 'witch hunt' and a 'hoax'. He has had a shadow secretary of state running around Eastern Europe trying to drum up evidence of a fringe conspiracy theory whilst withholding American military aid to coerce other nations to co-operate.
In other words, he has clearly broken the oath of office. Seriously nobody in this conversation seems to have any idea of how big a crisis this is. The US is about to be shaken to its foundations, but I cling to the hope that in the end - which is maybe weeks, maybe months away - Trump will be removed from office.
I know. The GOP isn't going to budge, though. They aren't going to find him guilty, at least that's what they're signalling right now.
All you can do is get philosophical about it. Could you explain why it's important to you?
Can you clarify what you mean by a system growing, you seem to be saying, sui generis? That's not sounding very Marxian to me.
Quoting god must be atheist
Constituting 13% of the population in the usa, Black folks have never not been exploited and held back. And lots of white folks fought on their behalf, as you know, during the Civil Rights movement.
"What is there to exploit in people who are not working?" Are you kidding? Reagan's vast expansion of the prison system that revved up in the 1980s and has continued ever since, has made billions upon billions for all companies involved in constructing and administrating prison systems. The projects also "make" billions of dollars for other people.
Quoting god must be atheist
I think that's a really good story about your father: he saw the best ideals of Christianity and communism with none of the taint of greed, ambition or hypocrisy.
I believe in America's role in the liberal West. It is a bastion of liberal democracy, and liberal democracy is under threat. A lot of people are cynical about it - remember Agustino? There are others here, 'democracy ain't that great'. 'Compared to what?' I ask. At least you have a chance to change things. Once it's gone, nobody will have a say.
If Trump was found guilty by the House, and then acquitted by the Senate, there would literally be no way to rein him in. Look what he's already done this year - remember the Shutdown? I know someone whose livelihood was destroyed by that, he had an amazingly clever science consultancy working for a Government agency, he was one of thousands of small businesses just obliterated by Trump temper tantrum. Over what? An adolescent fantasy.Then he signed an 'executive order' to rip money out of all these other programs to fund it. He should have been impeached then!
Trump is ignoring the Constitution. This is not 'fake news', it's not 'DNC propoganda', he really is doing that. If he's aided and abetted by the GoP, then we're all going to suffer hugely for it. But I really do believe that the last embers of decency haven't been snuffed out yet -- well, ok, they have in Mitch McConnell, but not in all of them. They are going to turn and when they do, it will be all over.
One cool thing that's going to start happening around 2020 is that millennials are going to start taking the world into their hands. It's really up to them what happens next, not the demented crackheads of Generation X.
Put your money on them.
The Nazi hyperbole goes from mildly annoying to insulting, but to speak literally, as if we are just a few years from actual gas chambers and genocide, is absurd and may evoke a yawn, depending upon how passionate I am at the time
What if Trump wins the next election and declares himself President for Life? If he is allowed to defy Congress on this matter, then what is going to stop him?
And no, Trump is not 'like Hitler'. Not remotely comparable. Evil comes in many hues. You can destroy the constitutional order of the States without raising a weapon; it's being done right in front of your eyes.
Bittercrank and I discussed this recently. We agreed that it would take some sort of profound crisis, a large scale military defeat (so nuclear, I guess), or a pandemic, or a really bad natural disaster like Yellowstone blowing up; that sort of thing would set the stage for a military coup, and it likely would be seamless (like Rome turning from republic to empire).
Trump is not the guy who would head the American Empire. The military would gut him and throw him in a ditch.
Source
Woo hoo!
Highly doubtful “they knew all that.” In any case, mendacity and willful ignorance is the normal state of affairs in the USA. A tectonic shift has occurred in the economic landscape though, and unfortunately the so called “rust belt” remains rusty. Trump still visits these places, even going so far as reciting poetry to inspire goodwill for all.
Since the Trump administration started the child separation less the two years ago, young children who have gone months without seeing their parents go without "showers, toothbrushes, or clean clothes, or beds" and wear dirty clothes covered in "mucous or mud-stained", forced to sleep on the hard floor without mattresses, sometime with lights on and in cold temperatures, making them susceptible to the flu , which they are not given proper treatment for. At least seven children have died.
I mean, go ahead an yawn at this, I don't think of you a morally considerate person by any means, so I wouldn't be surprised, but this is all within just two years under conditions more favorable than Germany faced at the time, yet wind the clock ahead several years and factor in the effects of global warming in third world countries and who fucking knows how things might escalate.
Indeed! If things continue on the current course, the whole of the Third World will likely be thrown under the bus to preserve our precious lifestyles for a few more years. There's a gigantic looming problem, or rather constellation of problems, that apparently very few people are prepared to even contemplate.
Sanders was born September 8, 1941; he's 78. He'll be 79 before the 2020 election, about as old as Reagan when he completed his second term.
The age of presidents has been increasing steadily for a long time. Biden may have had heart problems, and it appeared quit a bit earlier than it has for Sanders.
I would vote for Sanders, but age and heart / brain health are a matter which should be considered long and hard for any over-70 candidate and more so for a 79 year old one. (Reagan had Alzheimers (he was functional, I guess) and his wife Nancy was consulting astrologers!).
I look forward to seeing Trump run out of town, but I don't see him as a little Hitler. He's a little asshole, for sure, and every now and then does something normal and politically acceptable. But not often enough. Before we we impeach him, we should remember his VP, Mike Pence, another prick. Nothing to look forward to.
The Presidency is a tough job (if taken seriously--DONALD) and the demands on one's physical resources are high -- at least that is what I have read. Haven't tried it myself. So, his running mate is more important than usual.
Is this where I draw a distinction between gas chambers for Jews sought out from every corner of Europe and temporary detention centers for those who have sought out residency in the US in open violation of its laws?
It's nothing at all the same, and it's for that reason I yawn, as I've grown tired of hearing the same old nonsense all these years. I honestly don't take these comments seriously regardless of how morally outraged you might be.
I just watched the video and it's laughably awful, unsurprisingly shallow, biased, and filled with discredited presumptions and absurd claims that we're somehow meant to accept at face value. Rather than providing studies or statistics, it treats anecdata as meaningful, substance analysis. It's been nearly three years since Trump won the 2016 election and we have ample evidence to confirm that racism in fact played a key role in mobilizing votes for Trumps. Not "economic anxiety". In fact, I would challenge anyone to find studies that do show economic uncertainty was the key issue for Trump voters. Unfortunately, a random gym owner does not count. Despite the video claiming that a majority of Trump voters were enticed by his message due to economic struggles, more Hillary voters claimed that the economy was a more important issue than Trump voters (52% vs. 41%), while a majority of Trump supporters claimed that immigration was one of their biggest issues (64% vs 33%). The video claims that Trump voters have been struggling financially while Hillary voters mainly comprised of coastal elites, a majority of voters with income <$50K voted for Hillary (53%) over Trump (41%), while voters with an income over $100K were split 47% vs. 47%.
Much of the framing in the documentary is patently absurd. After several British stay voters said that leave voters (at 10:00) based their decisions on racism and xenophobia, a writer retorts "well actually, in many polls, leave voters said they are not hostile to migrants and they don't have racist views". Well of course few would claim otherwise, so that's not a proper way of measuring whether or not they actually were motivated by racism. What did any of you expect? A interviewee looking straight into the camera and saying "yes, I hate blacks and Mexicans and that's why I voted Trump"?
Then they pivot to Obama voters who subsequently voted for Trump, despite not offering any stats on whether or not this is a significant voting segment. In fact, only about 9% to 12% of Obama voters voted for Trump in 2016, and racial resentment nevertheless played a role in that switch. Oh, but I guess we'll never actually know the truth since that one gym owner said he had several biracial grandkids so he couldn't possibly be racist.
While none of this economic anxiety bullshit stands up to scrutiny, I think it's interesting how we're are supposed to be overly sympathetic to ostensibly economically struggling whites, despite other ethnic groups, particularity Black Americans, having also struggled (in more meaningful ways) yet have never resorting to a voting for a overtly racist, fascist-adjacent strong man.
Quoting StreetlightX
But this isn't true!!! And he should know this!!!
That's very sad and deplorable. I outright condemn this. But it's not exploitation of the working classes. I used the word "exploit" in the Marxian sense.
Quoting uncanni
Damn right it's not Marxian.
It's the system of the new aristocrat class in the USA. The fact that your birth and lineage determines your class in society.
Here's the mechanism or how it works:
Persons A, B, C, and D are each the CEOs of multinational big conglomerates. They need people to vote them in. They recommend (where A is the CEO) to elect B, C, D into the board of directors. So A gets a cushy job, no matter how he performs. Because B, C, and D will vote him in. Then A also sits on the board of directors of the companies where B, C and D are respective CEOs. etc. They secured the place of CEO and board members niftily for life. Of course if one blunders, and his position is untenable, he gets transferred to a different company's CEO position, switching with the other guy.
This is now the modus operandi of the oligarchs. The board of directors vote huge salaries to the CEOs, and each CEO votes on different company's boards where they sit.
This is not Marxian. This is brand new.
Again, your ahistorical insistence on narrowly defining Nazism by it's concluding years, rather than taking into account the conditions in which it began to arise, and the conditions which laid the foundations for the acceptance of gas chambers (e.g. constantly referring to an marginalized out-group as subhuman, "rats", "vermin" , while also excluding the conditions that the immigrants are escaping from and what caused them (it was the USA). I've explained all of this multiple times in other threads, to you and to others. Maybe you should get a bunch of tattoos like the main character in Momento so that I don't have to waste my time further repeating myself?
Mark Twain is (apocryphally) have said that "history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes", and I think that's a useful phrase to take into account when calling modern people Nazi's or Fascists, which were essentially political parties that had gained power under specific conditions for a period of time in a particular place. So no, we likely never going to see any exact repetition of these movements and events, but that does not mean that we should discard these otherwise politically salient terms, especially when we seem them echo again so clearly in modernity.
Yes, yes, adjusted for the undemocratic bullshit that is the electoral college and so on. The point I take away is that it's no good to respond to these world events by doubling down on undemocratic measures ('if the people are dumb and ignorant, then we'll do the right thing for them'). The people must be built. They must be constituted. And we do that by engagement.
I do think its naive to say that race was not a factor - perhaps and likely the most important factor - in what's been going on. But even racism is differential - that it mattered here does not mean it has to matter in the future. But the only way to bring out that result is, again, engagement. I qualify this by saying that 'engagement' is not a solution but itself a problem: engage how, where, and in what manner? These are tactical questions. But as far as strategy goes? More democracy, not less.
I mean I certainly agree, but as I've previously pointed out to you, impeachment simply isn't a black and white democratic vs. non-democratic process as you've been making it out to be, given that the Democrats won the House in the biggest wave since the early 70s, and an impeachment inquiry is part of that responsibility as elected officials in the occupations they serve. And while not synonymous with a democratic vote by any means, the desire to at least have an impeachment inquiry is enjoying a majority in the polls. I mean, I'm curious, do you think that Nixon should have been impeached? I would assume no, then?
Ah, but what if people vote for more government power? Should we get rid of the bill of rights?
So my response applies more to this thread, I should add the question, what if 51% of the country want impeachment?
The second one is obviously taken to extremes that do not represent your position. But they all suggest a problem with a simplified statement of "more democracy, not less". I hear, "more of the democracy I want, less of the democracy I don't want." Jim Crow was the direct result of more democracy.
To be clear, I don't think impeachment is inherently anti-democratic or anything. In fact it's obviously an important mechanism for guaranteeing it. I'm just saying that it should be wielded strategically. At a time in which trust in government is at an all time low, and where wide-scale cynicism rules the demos, an impeachment process - one over Ukrainian telephone calls and the Bidens, no less - has the very real chance of deepening the democratic deficit, not shoring it up. I don't at all think the conditions that prevailed during Nixon's impeachment are at work right now. And those conditions matter. Which is again just to say that I'm not speaking at the level of principles (what ought to happen in ideal conditions) but at the level of strategy, given what the US has got right now.
And by way of reply to @ZhouBoTong: I'm not dealing in hypotheticals.
That's fair, I just found the anti-impeachment sentiment expressed near the end of the video puzzling and nonsensical, particularly the statement made by the economist Lowery you quoted earlier for some of the reasons I provided and for additional reasons which maybe I'll delineate on tomorrow.
It's not that complicated. What people want is a sustainable supply of all the stuff/lifestyle they've been used to. They can't have it because it was always a system which borrowed heavily from reserves (ecological, and social). Politicians are never going to get elected by saying people can't have what they want, so they lie. Different lies fit better with the stories different demographics tell themselves. But they don't lie completely, they give a gloss of 'wrestling with the problem' to placate those who recognise that something is amiss.
Trump tried just lying outright (American jobs, low immigration, booming economy...bullshit) whilst simultaneously calling out the other - more compromise-making - politicians as lairs (which they obviously are). It worked.
It worked this time because the population are getting more stupid and malleable. It'll probably work again. We have a cartoon character for a Prime Minister in this country, America has a reality TV star who can't even work an umbrella, Ukraine has a comedian... People are just electing the 'one they know off the telly'.
There little doubt that companies have at least some influence on culture. It's in the best economic interests of companies who which to sell products (which we really don't need) to exert that influence towards a creating a population who don't question much (who in their right mind going to buy some crap they already have a perfectly functioning version of, that will break in the first five minutes of use and then go back to the same company to buy another?).
It's in capitalism's best interests to have a stupid and malleable population, it's in democracy's best interest to have an educated and thoughtful population. The two don't mix well.
Perhaps you should tell Trump?
Quoting Maw
As bad as his reasons for voting for Trump are, his analysis isn't without merit. It's a mistake to think racism or sexism will hurt Trump's chances of re-election.
Quoting Hanover
Hitler had no death camps in 1931, but he was already dangerous. I agree that Trump isn't Hitler. But claiming that no comparison is permissible unless the terrible consequences have already happened is absurd and dangerous. It should be rather obvious that we don't want to "wait and see" until the first death camp actually opens.
Quoting frank
The likely consequence of the breakdown of political institutions is violence. Sometimes, this cannot be avoided, but we should be aware that what keeps a democracy going is mostly psychological barriers based on internalised institutional principles. Like not using the military to take over the country. Or shoot your political opponents.
Quoting Janus
Oh no, these young people will destroy the world! That's totally a new thing. It's not like the ancient Greeks said the same thing about younger generations...
I've been scoffed at for my Trump-Hitler comparisons, but every day the parallels grow stronger. Interestingly, Hitler was a germophobe, as is Trump. Fear of contamination, projections of one's own imagined filth onto the other.
It's not about Jews, gas chambers and the conquest of Europe vs. Trump's agenda, as some folks would like to reduce the issues to; I'm certainly not wiping away historical differences between Nazi Germany and contemporary usa, but Trump's fascist, totalitarian mentality and his utter disregard for the lives of people considered inferior gives me goosebumps--as do his views on women (and Melania does remind me of some of those nude paintings Hitler loved so much; she's a thing, not a person).
Trump pushes his scarey stereotypes of Mexicans and Central Americans as Hitler did with the Jews. So there may not be gas chambers, but there are certainly places with uncanny similarities to concentration camps, as you pointed out. Trump may be a bit more old-fashioned than Hitler with his ideas of crocodile-filled moats, but it smacks of final solution type-thinking to me...
What voters know (facts) and what they feel (emotions ).
Voters tend not to know all the facts; some even deride those that produce them.
They might vote for someone like Trump because 'He is just like us' - no time for inconvenient truths.
Plain speaking and puts America, especially white, aspirational males first and foremost.
People tend to only know what they see or read everyday and that is within their own zone, with media which speaks to baseline survival. Us against the Other. Fear and Prejudice.
It takes an openness of mind to look at another perspective, to travel outwith your own socio-cultural sphere. And even then, it don't matter much until the shit starts happening to you.
I think most here take a clear interest in what happens in America. It is highly influential in all ways.
But do we really know what is going on ? I think we might have a more objective and critical view.
How many people don't get to vote. How many are too ill, poor or downtrodden even to think about it ?
I watched episode 1 of a Simon Reeve's the Americas documentary the other day. It was an eye-opener.
Beautiful and shocking. Educational, fascinating travelogue but not to everyone's taste.
The parts that stayed with me related to the social aspects. The oil producers laying waste to country and communities. The ongoing murders of indigenous women, with no police even interested in interviewing a missing woman's son.
Who cares out there in the wilds ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00095nt/the-americas-with-simon-reeve-series-1-episode-1
What the hell is a 'centrist liberal' in America or UK, and why would you want to generalise about them ?
What is wrong with a display of outrage ?
Certain behaviours and actions from those in power are outrageous.
If people voice concern, this is not 'hysteria' and should not be portrayed as such. Why would you find such 'embarrassing' ?
I return to the cool, objective facts as presented by the academic in Ch4 interview.
And compare this with the more subjective, emotive aspects of the 'Deplorables' video. And Trump rallies which stir up hatred and mass hysteria.
People only see what they want to see and disregard the rest.
As @Maw says:
... it's interesting how we're are supposed to be overly sympathetic to ostensibly economically struggling whites, despite other ethnic groups, particularity Black Americans, having also struggled (in more meaningful ways) yet have never resorting to a voting for a overtly racist, fascist-adjacent strong man.
Some useful and informative analyses. Just a few snippets:
Quoting praxis
Quoting praxis
Quoting Maw
Quoting Isaac
I think that is what is happening here in the UK.
People will vote for what seems to be the least bad option, on looks alone. It's all about the personality.
Who can better persuade...
Corbyn is portrayed as the worst thing that can happen to the country.
Johnson, our mini Trump, is apparently FOR the people. Against the establishment and the law.
Thanks for the information. While I think that the data tells us a more complex story than you're suggesting, it does look like I was wrong about Trump voters. I didn't know the issues had been so racialized. But I'm still going to defend my basic points--later some time.
Yes. All good questions.
People can claim whatever they want, but it would be settled in the courts. It wouldn't be Trump's decision.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, I didn't read anything about him. All I knew about him when I voted for him was gained from TV and radio during the campaign, and then prior to that, most of my info about him came from his appearances on Howard Stern.
And yet she is clever. Maybe she thought that she had it in the bag so why not have some fun. The audience laughed. Pure hubris.
Yes. It totally backfired on her. She has to live with that line; that act of stupidity which turned the undecideds towards Trump. The utter disdain shown by that phrase, was used to great effect by Trump who boxes clever.
Quoting Wiki
Following questions by Krishnan Guru-Murthy on how people feeling helpless about Brexit can engage,Timothy Snyder made a few practical suggestions as to a 'kit of tools'.
Bsically, decide what you care about, small actions on a daily basis, eye contact, avoid inflammatory language...
It is all about attitude of citizens towards authoritarianism. To move beyond the apathy on which it depends. And not to be willing to adjust to a new 'normal' as in the boiled frog scenario.
From 7mins in...
https://www.channel4.com/news/some-of-todays-politicians-have-learned-propaganda-tricks-from-1930s-fascists-says-yale-professor
I think it interesting Snyder mentions face to face "look them in the eye".
This means that there would be no anonymity as per online forums. Perhaps more care in use of language. Even Parliament is now having to tone it down a bit. I can't remember him mentioning social media...
That might be so. It still wasn't clever...
Watch this cringe-worthy MSNBC video trying to paint Trump and his supporters as racists. This sort of propaganda lasted the entirety of his campaign.
I think what a lot of people are suggesting is that this continued branding is self-defeating. Moving forward, a narrative that extends some dignity across the aisle may be a better plan.
Sure, we can exclude the fact that Hitler was a genocidal manic, but he did have two legs, so he was in fact like Trump in a really important way.
Like I said, I don't take your comments seriously. You can keep trying to draw these parallels all you want, but it only better makes the point of the OP, which is that the scorn the left heaps upon the right by calling them Nazi-like does nothing but strengthen their resolve and increase their loyalty to their political leaders.
That is to say, how might you get Trump re-elected? Keep doing what you're doing.
Quoting StreetlightX
I'm tempted to start a new thread - "What is democracy?" (apart from distilled political niceness and legitimacy that is). But in the meantime, what is it you want more of and what would that look like? It's not the Dictatorship of the Deploriat, I assume?
I have a hard time understanding this. Obama was apparently the reincarnation of Chairman Mao and the Antichrist, all at the same time. I never thought to say to a conservative: "Keep it up and we'll re-elect him!"
I kind of do want to know where this is coming from on your side. Who is it specifically that makes you feel like you're under attack? Friends? Family? Surely not CNN? The New England Elite? Real question.
Or does it have to do with Trump in particular? Your party was hi-jacked and now that's supposed to reflect on all conservatives?
I'm trying to imagine that. A complete wacko takes over the Democratic party and we have a clown-slug for president, who has the NRA backing him. And David Duke.
Wait. What is the democratic version of the NRA? I don't think there is one. It's much more than the Republican party that was hi-jacked. I just realized that.
Like the video said, really, only leftists equate wanting border control with racism, the argument is absolutely ridiculous. Maw has already equated Trump to Hitler and this next argument of his is equally stupid.
One side believes that neonazis will take over (or are now in power) and the other side that Cultural-Marxists will take over (or are now in power...not perhaps in the White House, but still).
I equate what might be described as ‘excessive or inefficient’ border control with an effort to mobilize political support by exploiting a natural conservative tendency. The racism adds fuel to the fire, so to speak, and is expressed in imbuing the target of racism with inherent negative qualities. Observe the video that I posted earlier:
The snake can’t help itself, it’s its nature to bite. Maybe poetic license excuses blatant racism.
I haven't read any of this thread and only looked at this one post. I happen to have an interest in the US/Mexico border, being a Californian who's made many trips to Mexico and followed border politics for decades. The excessive and inefficient border control you speak of is the result of decades of bipartisan hypocrisy. Indeed, Obama built the cages that he kept kids in as he separated them from families or turned them over to traffickers. It's all a matter of public record.
What the left does that's very disingenuous is to call Trump a bad person for enforcing the laws that Democrats have made. Look up the actual immigration policies of Hillary and DiFi and all the Clinton and Obama era Dem legislators and administrations. The Dems passed the Secure Fence act of 2006 giving Trump the legal authority to build his wall (which for the record I strongly oppose). Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were the ones who militarized the border and took a bad situation and made it worse.
If the Dems want open borders, let them pass a bill op;ening the borders. Or abolishing ICE (which they all voted for at the time). Or abolishing detaining kids in cages. And where would you keep them while their relationship to the adults who CLAIM to be their parents is sorted out? The cages are to keep violent sexual predators out. Separating the kids from their ALLEGED parents is how you prevent turning kids over to traffickers. What do you propose instead? What solutions have the Dem politicians proposed? NONE. Just insults that Trump's a bad person.
To be clear about where I'm coming from: In general I'm more of an open borders type. I favor good relations between the US and our friend, neighbor, and third largest trading partner Mexico. I think funds spent on the wall would be better spent staffing up the official border stations so that legitimate crossers can pass more quickly.
But I abhor the awful hypocrisy of the left when they say that Trump is a bad person for enforcing the laws that they passed and for doing exactly the same things on the border that Obama did when he had a massive refugee crisis in 2014. I've watched the Dems steadily make the border crisis worse decade by decade from Clinton onward and now trying to blame the whole mess on Trump. That's hypocritical and totally counterproductive. The Dems have no interest in solutions on the border. They never have. Neither have the GOP of course. The ongoing hypocrisy and humanitarian disaster on the southern border serves both their interests.
Just evergreen commentary from you
Quoting fishfry
Politifact [gotta love politifact!] claims:
Can you point out public records that help to substantiate your version? Most curiously, the part about Obama turning kids over to human traffickers.
I think that racism has lost all meaning to some people, I wonder what people would think a world where only a single race existed. There'd be no borders, nobody would be worried about illegal immigration, nobody would discriminate against other cultures, nobody would discriminate against poorer and less educated nations.
Forgetting that, what I said still stands true, a desire for strict border control is not indicative of a racist mentality. Why would voting transcend what people care about - that's exactly what it should be about.I don't think that what you've posted actually demonstrates racism. It certainly demonstrates an extremely prejudiced view towards illegal immigrants but is it race, is it because Mexico is a poor country, is it because the media misconstrues the reality of the situation and people do not know the facts?
Do people like Trump because he's a "racist" or because they care about border control and they're willing to overlook that he's a 'racist"? There are repercussions economically, culturally, politically, societally and on many different scales and areas to the topic of border control. There's the truth of the matter and the fearmongering and misinformation that people will react to if they don't can't discern fiction from fact.
I'm not really making any claims about what percentage of people favour Trump for what reason but leftists certainly can't help themselves. Trump supporters are racist, the desire to control borders is indicative of racism, a simplistic analysis that is convienient for them.
No, you're just unable to separate fact from interpretation and the role of your insidious views from your interpretations. Every post you've made in this thread stems from your ignorance about these two things.
Your conclusions to the statistics you're providing require a particular bias, you sacrificed nuance for stronger condemnation. Of all the fallen democracies, Nazi Germany and Hitler are the worst to draw parralels to, because it's overused as a method to do the most damage to your "political opponents". Caring about immigration ? racism either, pretending to be orientated around facts while utilising these overdone interpretations which clearly only seek to maximise impact, it's been done too much to have even the slightest chance of people failing to recognising what you're doing.
Did I say it's a "totally new thing"? Of course it's never been a good idea. But then being ruled by crusty old farts isn't a good idea either; seems there is nothing much about politics which is a good idea.
Whether he's racist or not, what we've observed is that he seems to court racists. Have you not seen that at all?
Yes, when I see families separated and placed in camps that historians, including historians of concentration camps call them concentration camps, in sinister and inhumane conditions that I've outlined here and elsewhere, approved by a president who calls immigrants "vermin", who "infest our countries", which, uh yeah, very much has Nazi precedence, or spreading conspiracy theories that lead the the worst massacre of Jews in America (and continues to do so), then yes, I will continue to draw parallels between Nazism and Trumpism, and give fuck-all to how my political opponents feel about this when they shrug it off, enable it, or outright support it. Conservatives are the biggest fucking crybabies I swear.
Literally the only thing that would convince some of you that drawing an analogy between Nazi Germany is when the US Government starts shoving people into gas chambers, and the point is to ensure that it doesn't get to that point.
Quoting Judaka
Except I didn't say that concern with immigration is tantamount to being racist. What I actually wrote was that the documentary's main focus was that the primary concern and motivation of Trump voters was the economy. It offered no stats to bulwark that. Just some talking heads and some Trump voters they interviewed. The stats pulled from the exit poll show otherwise. The thesis of the video is incorrect.
Once again, some of you don't read, and it really shows.
Q: Did you think Clinton referred to you as deplorable?"
A: What did she say?
Q: Um. Why did you vote for trump? Was it an economic thing? Or what?
A: There weren't any good choices. I thought maybe Trump would shake things up.
Q: Are you going to vote for him again?
A: Probably.
Good, I have no idea what your point is there. Bigotry would be alive and well in a world with only one race, given sufficient ignorance. You just couldn't call it racism.
Quoting Judaka
100% agree. Did I indicate otherwise?
Quoting Judaka
Did you watch the video of Trump poetically suggesting to his devout followers that people crossing the border from Mexico are inherently evil? He got a fucking standing ovation for that.
Quoting Judaka
What does your intuition honestly tell you?
Quoting Judaka
My personal belief is that there can be an element of racism in right-wing populism because the group experiencing a loss of status can resent their status dropping below that of minorities or the perceived underclass, and this anxiety can be harnessed by an unscrupulous leader. Trump and his followers are notoriously against affirmative action, for instance. I don’t think this would be so concerning unless you were anxious about your own status.
The bigoty he tries to inspire around the border issue is more incidental, in my opinion.
Won't waste my time. Go look it up. Jeh Johnson, Obama's immigration guy, admitted a few months ago to reporters that Obama built the cages. This is exactly the kind of denial I mean.
But you're picking at the margins, the fine points of who caged kids and why. On the larger point of Dem complicity in the ongoing 30-year program of militarizing the border and creating the current humanitarian disaster, you're conspicuously silent.
Oh no! Thank you for asking. I agree with Hillary that HALF of Trump's supporters are a basket of deplorables. She's entirely right. I'm in the half that aren't. If the Dems would ever stop to ask who these people are, they'd understand the country better. I'm sick of the hypocrisy and corruption, sick of the endless wars (Hillary's vote for the Iraq war was the moment I finally left the Dem plantation), sick of the neocon/neoliberal consensus that's wrecking the country.
Trump ain't no great savior in this regard but he was the alternative to what Hillary represented, which is business as usual. The candidate I actually liked in 2016 was Jim Webb. He didn't last long in the Dem primaries. This time around I like Tulsi. You see what kind of disaffected Democrat I am. I like the candidates who make sense but who have no chance in the Dem primaries.
Who are they?
Quoting fishfry
Like which kind of policies? Ones that lead to greater wealth disparity?
That’s not disputed.
Separating thousands of children from their parents is not a fine point, my unsympathetic friend.
I explicitly stated that I wanted to clarify one point. This larger point is far beyond the specific issue we’ve addressed. Without being sufficiently informed on such matters I can easily acknowledge ‘Dem’ involvement in South
American affairs spanning decades, if that makes you feel better for some reason.
I dunno if you edited your post or if I misread it but I remember distinctly a setence from you using concerns about immigration racism. I can't find it now, I'll assume that I misread and drop that point.
As for Nazi Germany, I don't feel like taking this seriously, many things happened between Hitler debasing the Jews and killing them, I don't need to address that comment.
My point is pretty redundant if you think racism and biogtry are insignificantly different. Racism is indefensible, there's no racist beliefs that are reasonable, it's fair to say it's ignorant to be racist. Biogtry is a term which makes a whole lot of sense from the perspective of a leftist but it's usually a matter of perspective. I think most leftists are bigots, they have a "with me or against me" attitude, they describe those they disagree with in the most vile terms they can find and they refuse to compromise. Leftists aren't going to call themselves bigots though, they're going to call all the people who refuse to embrace their ideas bigots. They'll call it "to stand firm on important issues" and that's how they'll brand it.
I am not complimenting Trump's voters, I am not willing to condemn them either. They're a large number of people, with different circumstances and ideas and any simplistic, overarching characterisations will draw my criticism. An incomprehensible number of people voted for Trump, I can't even imagine a million people, let alone 63 million. What voting for Trump says about someone is complicated and we cannot even begin to approach this issue objectively. It's also a separate issue from any appraisal of Trump, voters on Trump don't only interpret things differently, but they also aren't experts on Trump, they may be willing to overlook what they know is bad because they care so much about the other issues - or one single other issue.
So people say why they vote for Trump, they say why they care about border control and they don't cite racism or sexism but that's what Hillary says it is anyway. Illegal immigrants get demonized by Trump, people don't like illegal immigrants - oh they're Mexican - we must be racists. Trump is basically calling Mexicans deplorables right? What's the difference between him and Hillary? You just assume it's race because there's a race difference, even if no actual racial differences are talked about. You may be convinced it's racism but I'm convinced that if Mexicans were white, this would still be a huge issue that people were angry about and Mexico isn't just a country of people of a different race, people know about the crime rates, the poverty and the political situation. It's no different than a bunch of poor people from a bad neighbourhood and different entire being discriminated in an affluent neighbourhood even when the race is the same. I think the level of precision necessary to avoid simplifying the issue according to one's biases is incompatible with what can be done while talking about a group of 63 million voters.
I don’t think bigotry and racism are synonymous. The latter is a specific form of bigotry. If I’m missing some subtly or entire concept here I hope someone will point it out.
Quoting Judaka
I just had to say how charming this is in relation to the paragraph that preceded it.
I guess we have to keep trying to communicate though, just set boundaries and rules beyond which you’re simply not going to engage rather than giving the nutcases fuel for their flames ;)
Racism is clearled defined as discrimination based on the belief of the superiority of one race over another. It is unscientific, impractical, prejudicial and unfair. Biogtry is characterised by intolerance but to tolerate the intolerable is equally immoral as being intolerant towards that which should be accepted. So it becomes a matter of perspective over whether tolerance is good or not in that context. That's why calling leftists bigots isn't even necessarily an insult, because they are proud to be intolerant of what and who they find intolerable, change must be demanded. It's just that the word bigot has negative associations and will only be used to insult.
Also, when I said that I'm against simplistic, overarching characterisations, I am but if I described the same thing as I do with biogtry but with nicer words, it would just describe the views of leftists. If being on a political extreme wasn't like that, it wouldn't be called a political extreme. You did ignore most of my post just to sneer at a percieved contradiction, whatever the reason is, I'll end this conversation with you here.
The reason is, like this post of yours that I respond to now, I found it largely incoherent. Let’s say that’s my failing and end as friends.
The women...
The Jews...
The Dems...
The Republicans...
The left...
The right...
Americans...
Trump voters...
All those share the same problem.
Didn't really want to go into the past thirty years of border policy. You lost me on the wealth disparity question. What I'm talking about is that the Dems talk compassion, support sanctuary cities and drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. But they don't want to be called soft on immigration so they vote to militarize the border. They don't get out in front of these efforts, but they vote for the harsh measures the GOPs propose. Likewise the GOP, they talk tough on immigration but love the cheap labor. So you get decades of hypocritical policy. We let people die of thirst in the desert but if they make it we give them a job. It's a cruel, sick system. And it's bipartisan.
Another aspect is monetary aid. A lot of US aid to Mexico is conditioned on Mexico fighting a bloody war on drugs. Americans don't want to admit that we're the users and without a demand there wouldn't be a supply. Instead we pretend Mexico is "pushing" drugs on us. Hillary and DiFi in particular are two prominent Dem pols sometimes called "liberals" when they're anything but.
Like I say I don't want to go research chapter and verse on every bad law that militarized the border, added surveillance, and so forth. You can Google around and find Hillary and Obama and Bill Clinton speaking out strongly against illegal immigration. And suddenly the Dems want to blame it all on Trump. It bothers me.
Your argument, as I understand it, is that when Obama separated and caged kids, he was doing it for Just and Wise reasons; whereas when Trump does it, he's Adolf Hitler running concentration camps. That is an ignorant and disingenuous position.
I read and follow a lot of sources on both the left and right. That's why in the summer of 2014 I read dozens of articles and as many cable news reports of the awful humanitarian crisis Obama had on the southern border that overwhelmed our immigration system. But very little of it was reported in the MSM or liberal-leaning cable networks. The result is that many liberals honestly don't know about the summer of 2014. In fact many times liberals have tweeted out photos of "Trump's kids in cages" that turned out to be photos from Obama's cages in 2014.
Now it is true that Obama caged fewer kids. There's a reason for that. When you separate a kid from his ALLEGED parent long enough to determine whether it's an actual parent or a trafficker, you then have to keep the kid safe from violent sexual predators, so you put them in an caged enclosure. The cages are to PROTECT the kids. But the optics are terrible.
It's much better politically to just turn the kids over to the alleged parents. In the end you cage fewer kids but turn more kids over to sex traffickers. That's the route Obama chose.
But why are we talking about who put more kids in cages? Many liberals actually disbelieve that Obama put ANY kids in cages. It was a big shock a few of months ago when Jeh Johnson, Obama's director of Homeland security, admitted that Obama built the cages. Most liberals simply had no idea. Myself, I despaired at the deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance embodied by those liberals.
You dare call me unsympathetic to the plight of Mexican and central American refugees? I am far more sympathetic to them, having followed this ongoing tragedy for decades, than the many ignorant liberals who think history started when Trump got elected. They don't take any responsibility for the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Bill and Hill and Obama. They don't know about the foreign aid conditioned on perpetuating the drug war, leading to the human misery that underlies the upwelling of desperate migrants from central America and Mexico. They don't have any idea how the border has been militarized over the last 25 years. All they know is Orange Man Bad. That's not compassion. It's preening ignorance.
They’re burning hard and bright for all to see ... sadly maybe it is the ones burning that cannot see the effect? Guess time will tell.
Just goes to show that attempts to offer nuanced, and alternative, perspectives in order to build bridges can have the opposite effect - it’s the reason I don’t bother posting much on forums anymore, and if I do, I look for a mutual position to build a discussion from. Sadly many people are not interested in discussions, in opening up to different ideas and perspectives (irrespective of how their moral disposition aligns itself).
I wish we could all accept that we’re mostly dumb and biased creatures that spend far more fooling ourselves than we do trying to fool others. If you cannot offer up a reason counter argument to your position, whatever it may be, then start to doubt your certain (I fail at this, and so will everyone else. To me it seems like the most reasonable and logic course to try and stay on though)
Anyway, back to the flames ... :D
Most of the disagreement stems from different interpretations of fact.
Hanover and Judaka don't take Maw's comparison of Trump with Hitler seriously, because they don't share the same interpretation. So people are now arguing about the interpretation while the subject really should be the behaviour of Trump that gave rise to such worry that Maw makes the comparison.
I personally think Trump is clearly racist and that it doesn't matter that he is at the same time. As long as he pursues policies the GOP agrees with he will get away with this whole unitary executive nonsense and that basically smells of authoritarianism. But that power is useful if it's exercised on favour of your own agenda. So his border policies were probably informed by his racism/xenophobia but nobody who wants stricter border control really cares that it was.
Can you trust the GOP not to support "worse" policies?
And some of us seem to enjoy being arrogant and condescending.
Quoting I like sushi
Thanks for another example of misrepresentation. To be fair you may have some previous beef with me and so you could’ve misread. It happens, we all do it from time to time. That was the general impression I got from the OP. We all err and we disagree at some time or another, but that shouldn’t mean we have to go to war with each other.
I had an exchange on another thread similar to some of the exchanges here. It can be hard to offer charity and harder still to just walk away when the charity is refused/unseen - I try to leave the door open though and see if anything can be gained by attempting to reengage in discussions with people who previously seemed shutdown and/or venting their anger. I hope others regard me in the same light, but I don’t demand it.
Note: typo amended ‘certain’ to ‘certainty’
Countries typically have policies and procedures that transcend party lines. It's simply a myth that in a democracy government day-to-day operations would differ so much depending on what party is in power. Even if political leadership does matter. And naturally political parties do have an incentive to portray themselves to act totally differently than the other party.
I understand what you're saying. Trump played his part by not filling vacancies for judges at the border, and then Honduras went into crisis.
And then with the ling history of the US absorbing Latin America into itself. Not much of this is about racism.
And the venomous snake bit the woman in more ways than one with the final line:
''Oh be quiet you silly woman ! You knew I was a snake before you took me in."
So, this was a clever use of a poem. It framed a caring woman as stupid and will have chimed well with the patriarchal religious. The Garden of Eden - Adam, Eve and the Snake. Where woman is blamed for tempting Adam to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Again, the message we really should not seek knowledge - have faith in the Bible.
Just like the snake, Trump can't help being who he is. His nature to bite.
A great defence against anyone critical of his actions - 'you knew what I was like before you let me in.'
Some had hoped they might act as a balance and check...silly billies.
The video is quite mild compared to some rallies.
The latest at Minneapolis:
Quoting David Smith
The trouble comes when a policy is then doubled down into a stronger, nastier tasting concentrate.
Then, each party can blame the other for starting it.
And so it goes...
Exactly this.
Now as soon as you begin to equivocate about that, or say 'it doesn't matter' or 'what about the Democrats' - then it's already game over. Then you have accepted the fact that it's basically OK that the President lies every time he opens his mouth.
The Bible says that 'the devil is the father of lies'. Well - stand aside, devil.
Deplorable or not deplorable?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/inside-the-christian-legal-army-weakening-the-church-state-divide?fbclid=IwAR1LIERSfxJJ-pz-FxHDT3Qmc8ffYzPi_kJ-dAWkFYgPrgl5tmeRLI8r3Og
I don't know how reputable this source, but my recollections that religious courts were not that great an idea and apart from the Church-state separation thing, they don't do free speech very well either, which is ironic.
Anyone who has been keeping up with post-2016 political discourse and election analysis should have found it fairly easy to point out the bullshit discussed in that documentary, as I did. I've spend the last few years making the effort to keep myself informed, and I'm not going to take kindly to people who continually think they can get away with not doing their homework, yet act as if their thoughts and speculation on the matter are more valid than mine.
Quoting David Smith
This account of Trump’s rally confirms that his base is indeed comprised of deplorable and “unspeakable” people. “Trump mesmerised his fans for 102 minutes with a verbal cannon of conspiracy theories, blatant falsehoods, profane insults, and anti-refugee bigotry” - Trump speaks what his rally wants to hear, and he speaks on behalf of it. Farther, he could expand his discourse far beyond this particular rally. Probably, so far, this change has been the central part of the so-called “tectonic shift” of Trump’s presidency. All allegations of fascistic transformations, and of destroying democratic institutions have not been verified yet.
The outrage does seem to be expressed in different ways by the different parties. The left seems to get very lecture driven, condescending, and emotional. I'm not saying the right has no emotional investment, but it's typically an argumentative anger, as opposed to crying at a loss, and the violence in the streets is rarely from the right.
But there is something openly consequence driven from the right, as when Trump said he'd increase the height of the wall if people kept complaining about. It was a totally ridiculous, of course, but that paternalistic "I'm going to turn this car around and no one is getting any ice cream" response does resonate with the right. Or, maybe it's a fuck with me, I'll fuck with you response, which, again sounds like a right driven refusal to be a victim sort of approach.
Obviously all of this is loose group psychoanalysis, which I'm sure varies considerably among its members, but there's no doubt that the reactions of the respective sides are notably different.
As for me. I just gotta be me.
Rather than saying, ‘yeah, some guys on the left are going a tad too far’ there is a tendency for some people here to double-down and ride the ‘they’re all racists and stupid’ ... which ironically was precisely the point of the OP.
I wouldn’t call it ‘stupid’ per se, that some believe such a response is more constructive than simply saying, ‘yeah, it’s an issue, but there are serious concerns here.’ It happens across many, if not all, forums. Calling people stupid doesn’t really help, yet ... why do I need to point out that it’s rather, shall we say ‘strange’, to call millions who voted for Trump or Brexit stupid (not that I believe YOU did) and then thinking they won’t react as you have to my joke - which was also framed in a manner where I said everyone is prone to stupidity.
The fire is burning. I don’t really care for it and I think the OP was overly optimistic in the responses that would come out. At least people generally avoided engaging with Maw for a while (progress there I guess).
It'd be ya'll're (you all are) stupid, not y'all stupid, unless you were going for the African American dialect that truncates the final consonant, but I doubt you're that hip.
Leave southern talk to the southerners.
True.
Yeah thank Christ on that one
No, and I haven’t made an argument. I will simply repost what I posted before:
Politifact [gotta love politifact!] claims:
Can you see the part I underlined, fishfry? You can’t separate a child from their parent if no parent is present. I don’t know if any of this is true but politifact is pretty reliable from what I understand. Again, if you can show public records that help to substantiate your version of these events please do so.
Hip? 2 unlimited - get ready for this
1991. Dutch.
I'm pretty sure when discussing this with @ArguingWAristotleTiff last year that Obama separated kids from the people they were travelling with because they couldn't establish whether they were their parents or not. Mostly done to avoid human trafficking.
If you decided to immigrate to Germany and you knew their laws strictly forbade it, and you knew there was increased enforcement of its immigration laws currently in effect, do you not think it criminally negligent for you to bring your kids directly into your criminal enterprise and subject them to law enforcement measures?
1. Many of the immigrants separated are seeking and announcing asylum, which is legal.
2. Many of the immigrants are from countries that were destabilized by the US Government through coups and supplying militia with weapons and training.
3. Even granting that USA has sovereignty over it's borders, this doesn't justify family separation as an acceptable policy. This is sheer victim blaming 'look at what you made me do' thinking.
I've made and flushed out these points to you several times, but you simply ignore them.
That rather depends on the alternative, don't you think?
Let’s assume that I’m a complete asshole and in fact welcome the excuse to rid myself of the sniveling rug rats. Is it just about my morality?
It’s funny that the party known for championing children, when they’re on the right side of a vagina, can be so willing to defend the abandonment of that concern after they’ve crossed that barrier. Separating a child from their parents in this manner is undoubtedly traumatic and has caused incalculable mental anguish. But I get it, ideology/morality can be expressed in many counterintuitive ways. The important thing is that the mistake was identified and corrected.
How does this differ from the Trump administration policy? I can see how kids would arrive with adults, but I don't see how it would have been any more difficult to establish actual families then than it is now.
Even funnier is how the party known for killing babies is so worried about whether a child is separated from her mother for a short while.
Funnier still is that I'm pro-choice, but that hardly matters, since we're just spinning this in the way that makes the other look as absurd as possible, which I think was the lament of the OP.Quoting praxisYeah, I doubt it. I'm not discounting that the separation isn't a happy time for the child, but life is difficult for all sort of kids, not only those with parents who knowingly and recklessly subject them to foreign authorities.
Sometimes (as in always), when a parent commits a crime and gets incarcerated, his kids don't get to join him in the cell. One of the problems with being a criminal is the wide reaching range of victims who you never even considered, like all those you let down from your bad decisions.
The point of this OP I don't think is to get you to agree with me, but maybe just to realize that different worldviews yield different results, and that perhaps the diversity of opinion championed by the left ought be permitted to apply to the opinions of the right, instead of labeling them evil in the limited good/evil dichotomy.
I fully realized that while choosing how to approach your question. I chose the approach that I felt like taking. I have confidence in your rationality, also.
Quoting Hanover
Rationalizing.
Let me ask you, was it right to stop this policy or should it be continued?
Political decisions are pragmatic and it seemed an unsustainable policy based upon democratic sentiment. Maintaining it would only lead to greater polarization with minimal effect on the underlying problem of illegal immigration. So, it should be stopped.
The best argument against the morality of the policy (after subtracting out the pragmatics) is that the consequence of separation was draconian, being unjust not because a negative consequence was undeserving, but because it was cruel and unusual. That is to say, I don't think it reasonable to assume you can illegally cross a border without repercussion and I think you are particularly reckless if you bring your children along and place them in peril, but I'm willing to consider other responses to the problem other than separating the children from the parents that are less harsh. I do believe that justice without mercy is not justice at all, but is simply revenge.
My openness to other responses to the moral violation of the parents and my reference to the lofty proposition of justice is based upon my infinite rationality and inherent gentle disposition.
Lovely.
Quoting Hanover
The aspect that I'm trying to introduce you to is that the children are innocent. The children are undeserving, are they not?
Quoting Hanover
Conservative sentiments don't extend to innocent children?
You can't win when I have the moral high ground. Just admit it was a mistake and let's leave it at that.
What if the peril of staying where you are--i.e., Guatemala, Honduras--is far worse than the peril of trying to enter the usa illegally? What if the threats at home put your childrens' lives in worse peril?
I’m trying not to butt in, but ethically it’s double edged sword. Some believe throwing children in jail with their parents or potential human traffickers is obscene, while others believe it is awful to separate them. Both are valid.
But deterrence is necessary to quell illegal immigration. One of the many risks of committing crimes is that you are separated from your family.
According to ICE, their new DNA testing program has given us frightening results:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/politics/ice-deploys-dna-testing-at-border/index.html
Personally I think providing care for the children while their “families” are processed and prosecuted is far more humane than tossing those children in jail with potential human traffickers.
Of course, there are legal and secure ways to enter the country.
The question is why you are looking at this from the perspective of justice first, and not, say, from the perspective of a problem to be solved. Sure entering the country illegally is a crime, but just calling it a crime solves nothing. It's an administrative crime, too, so there is no victim looking for justice.
So why bring up it's criminality, stopping at a label, rather than looking at pragmatic solutions?
Quoting NOS4A2
Is that so? How do you know?
Yes, so let's collect up the world's children and nuture and care for them all, and let's collect up all the kitties and puppies too that have lesser homes than my spoiled floppy eared Fred and give them better homes.
I'm trying to point out that if irresponsible parents place their children in jeopardy, let's place the blame on the parents and not allow them to use their children to mitigate the parents' problems.
Quoting praxis
This is the very problem pointed out by the OP. It's this lecturing, self certainty that makes you think you can end the conversation by just announcing yourself right.
What to do with terrorists who hide in grammar schools? What sort of force can you use? It's the same sort of question. That the nuance evades you because you want to keep assuring yourself and telling me that you love children more than me doesn't sway me in your direction.
For the same reason I don’t speed around police. If an action is likely to lead to negative consequences we are less likely to do it. If the penalty for illegal entry is jail and deportation, one is less likely to do it.
If they're both valid then you can explain how the former is not preferable.
Quoting NOS4A2
That 15% fail a test with dubious credibility is concerning but not "frightening."
For the same reason we do not throw children in jail with their parents. It is unjust.
15% of “families” engage in child trafficking is only concerning? Do your sentiments not extend to innocent children?
These are serious issues and I shouldn't fool around as I have.
I get the sarcasm, but I'm not chastising you. I'm just saying I know you and I don't agree and doubtfully ever will, so if that's all you're letting me know, we probably could have figured that out before we started talking. I think the point of the OP was just to point out the problem associated with vilifying the other side of we are to ever neutralize the discord. If you don't see harmony as a goal, then we can keep up doing what we're doing.
In the situation we're discussing the choice is between the two. As far as I know, there's no option to not hold the child.
Quoting NOS4A2
I am honestly not frightened by the information. I'm a bad Libtard. :sad:
Why do you think the parents were irresponsible as opposed to desperately trying to keep their children alive by removing them from a scene of social disintegration?
We know that a fair amount of recent illegal immigration was and is exactly that. Ok, so they screwed up and didn't wait in line for two years (or however long) waiting to be seen by a judge. Let's all remember that the next time we're fleeing organized crime through the middle of nowhere.
I liked the comment about mercy though. That was awesome.
Much respect. Apologies.
You're the one who started this. If your intention for doing so had to do with the "problem pointed out by the OP," I fail to see it. Despite my responses, which were intentionally confrontational, you could've tried to find common ground, appealed to liberal values, or whatever. You did not.
The object isn't to appease, but to not be confrontational in the first place.
That's what I was pointing out. I have though, despite your efforts at confrontation, not cared. That's mostly because I'm too cool for school.
Ha. My point is, both sides have legitimate concerns that are not necessarily about hatred or malice. It’s best if we at least hear them out, and then “steel-man” their arguments before straw manning them.
Alright, then let me put it a different way, why weren’t you non-confrontational? And who said anything about appeasement?
I’m not saying it’s easy to ‘reach across the aisle’, far from it. I will say that actually trying to do it is far more productive than crying foul when others don’t try.
Anyway, was fun to pop by. See ya’ll ;)
And then you go 'Listen you RACIST IDIOT, if you had HALF A BRAIN, you'd realize that I'M RIGHT and you are BAD. I've ADMIRABLY studied this shit and am SMART while you were doing STUPID BAD things so you should listen to me right now and stop being BAD and DUMB.
Now let's say there is tons of political nuance that's being missed, institutional racism, etc. (In fact, I would agree that this is the case.) By collapsing an entire spectrum of problematic views w/r/t race, into Racist (bad) versus woke (good) and placing everyone you disagree with all the way on the end, you guarantee that they will never listen to you. In fact, they'll, slowly, begin to doubt other, more nuanced, more apt, accusations of racism. The significance of 'racist' will begin to be devalued. Accusations of racism they would have agreed with you on before, now seem to become suspect. Eventually they'll stop listening to you altogether. They won't become literal nazis - as in your cartoon - just as Hanover didn't say he was going to become a literal nazi. They'll see enough cartoons like yours to realize there is no chance in any conversation but for themselves to be caricatured and they'll just stop listening to you.
And after a while, there'll be nothing left to do but to angrily rant to a few people who agree with you at a bar, totally unheard except by those who already agree, left alone with a simmering cioran rage, left outletless.(I've been there, and often dip back. it's an unpleasant place to be)
Not sure what conversation you'd like me to have with Hanover and others, when the points I'm making are constantly ignored.
The cartoon lampoons this argument by representing the person making it as a foaming, irrational figure. The person who accuses them of racism, of course, isn't even accusing anyone. She's just looking at her phone, and having a calm thought to herself, a 'huh'. The foaming, irrational figure immediately decides to shave his head and become a nazi. Which....isn't what Hanover was planning to do at all, unless I misread him. The cartoon is making the exact same bad political/rhetorical move he was decrying. While taking, as its subject matter, the thing that it is.
Most of your points are less points, than jabs, expulsions of anger, sharp needles looking for soft bellies. The points nestled among the jabs are lost because the people responding, correctly, read these points as merely the means to an end of Expressed Contempt.
As I said, the cartoon is a response to a specific form of argumentation that Hanover had made.
Quoting csalisbury
Yeah I do often have contempt for some people here if they say stupid shit. Hanover decides to define Nazism as genocide despite the Final Solution being put in place in 1941. When I point out that Nazism existed and was in power prior to this he ignores it. When I point out that immigrants are being called infestation and vermin, and point out the state of children in concentration camps, he ignores this and just states that we're not putting people in gas chambers, which started in 1939. When I criticize his reliance on defining Nazism by its concluding years, ignoring the conditions which lead to genocide, he ignores it and goes back to talking about genocide. I find this frustrating and contemptible.
I do recognize that. I tried to show in my post that I understand the point of the cartoon, and I also understand Hanover's argument, and I tried to show the disconnect between the cartoon and what it's cartooning. I think I did a good job of that and whether you agree or disagree with my points, I wish you had engaged with it.
You didn't, and I suspect that that's because it was a speedbump in the way of composing the hyperlinked second post. which I will go through now and respond to, shortly, in a subsequent post.
I didn't, because you are over-analyzing a cartoon in a digression that I'm not following whatsoever.
If the close-reading of the cartoon is confusing, bracket the second paragraph and focus on the first . In the meantime, I'll take the time to read all of your links and respond.
oh here's the problem
Second link: same response.
Third link does show that conditions are horrible for immigrant children and families. I agree, fully, wholeheartedly, and reject everything Hanover has said about families bringing this on themselves. This is an outrage and I won't defend it.
But, fourth link, I don't accept the analogy between these camps and holocaust concentration camps. (this leaves me open - link me to the concentration camp specialists.)
fifth link. I'm no specialist on genocide but I have taken a class devoted to the sociology of genocide. There have been genocides for a long time, and they have similar structural features, but, luckily we don't seem to be in one today.
sixth link: It make sense to focus on genocide when the rhetorical oomph of the comparison involves genocide. If you don't want to focus on genocide, but rather what led up to it (and again I understand your point that we want to anticipate and stop, rather than react and mitigate) you might rest easier. I had a similar alarmist reaction when Trump won. I was sincerely scared.Me and my friends put together a reading group to study fascism. We did. We concluded, despite the horrible things going on, that we're not in danger of a fascist takeover.
Literally, who are you talking to? I'm serious man, I would appreciate if you responded to my engaged response. I am responding to yours. I discussed the cartoon. You're...I don't know what you're doing? We're not on twitter, no one's going to like and retweet the snarky one-liners. Who are you talking to? Can we talk freely, or do we have to eyeroll to a nonexistent person who already agrees with us?
You can read an article from the NY Review of Books by historian Andrea Pitzer, who recently wrote a book about the history of concentration camps.
But I'm not going to defend any of it, it's horrible, it's full-stop bad. I'm not going to weigh things one way or the other. I'm not going to disrespect either the suffering of holocaust victims or contemporary victims by fitting it into a false historical narrative, for political fuel.
Do I think these concentration camps are likely to lead to holocaust-type gas-chambers? No, but I think that's irrelevant to the people caught up in them. Stop that shit. They're not there to score points for disinterested observers. They're in a bad place - don't make that about fascism. Make it about what it is, which is what it is. You don't need Hitler. If you make it about hitler, which it isn't, people will dismiss you on immigration, when they shouldn't. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot, at the expense of real people, in order to beautifully release our (privileged European- Cioran) anger in accordance with suitably grand narratives. If you care as much as you say you do, figure out how concretely to help. Don't use it to be right for the sake of slamdowns. That's gross.
“Concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war. They are also to be distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centres for the temporary accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp
Are you familiar with any actual research on deterrence or is this folk psychology? You said deterrence was necessary. To justify that claim, you'd first need to establish it's effective (a tall order, given that illegal immigrants regularly risk death), but you then also need to explain why it's necessary in the strict sense - that it's a proportionate response with no alternatives.
Please I beg you all, left and right - if you are human - you and your beneficent leader are capable of entering this event in the Depravity Olympics. Not having reached the finish line is not something to be proud of. Do not forbid the question that every regime must be asked on a regular basis - are you going a bit Nazi? Ask yourself every now and then. Learn to recognise the symptoms before the slaughter begins: polarisation of society, economic decline, dehumanising propaganda and the undermining of honest reporting, populism, the invention of crisis, immanent invasion, economic exploitation, above all the enemy within. Be especially wary of any attempted takeover of one arm of government by another and especially especially, of the judiciary. A government not subject to the law becomes tyrannical every time.
It is not foolish or unfair to make such comparisons and ask such questions; it is the utmost folly not to. Every leader should have to defend himself and his every policy decision against the charge of being tyrannosaurus-ish, of being cruel and inhuman, because every human is capable of inhumanity.
This article which includes links is worthy of a read.
However, it's not just a written account, there is an embedded video ( 2.48 mins ) of the 'highlights'.
As @Benkei noted earlier, it is important that we look at Trump's behaviour.
This rally is only a small part of his overall style. He is a hate preacher. Here he stirs up the already converted. His core.
The warm-up includes a return to the 'Lock her up !' mob chant. Only this time it is 'Lock him up!'.
He includes his core in his global game of warfare monopoly in a 3 part multiple choice question.
Whimsical foreign policy. He lies again; using the rhetoric of ending wars when he is actually doing the very opposite.
He singles out a female, Muslim opponent.
His depiction of the Democrats as...well...watch the video...
Or if there is a longer version out there, please share.
What is deplorable is that this kind of political campaigning is seen as normal.
Hate preachers and followers riled to violent emotions; armed with guns.
From the OP. How many posters actually watched the 'Deplorables' ?
@Maw certainly did and gave a substantial analysis. As did @praxis.
Others also kept clear heads. While some just nip in and out to amuse themselves.
We are looking at why people voted for, and will vote again for Trump.
Edit : Also, Brexit.
Quoting jamalrob
What 'leads' voters...
Reason or Emotion.
Facts v Fiction.
Patriotism v Treason
And who best persuades who is what and the dangers they represent.
It is a fearful, hate-filled wargame...
How can it be turned around ?
Exactly. Well said.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2928/donald-trump-all-general-trump-conversations-here/p206
This from @StreetlightX :
The question is: does it even matter to his core voters ? Do they even see that they are being played ? Even if they did, they would make excuses for their Saviour. How much knowledge do they have of global events or politics?
Does even Trump know or care about the consequences of a single phone call or tweet...
Here is just one example:
https://www.channel4.com/news/inside-northern-syria-five-islamic-state-militants-break-out-of-prison-after-shelling
A bit of background:
https://www.channel4.com/news/people-see-this-as-an-open-invitation-to-commit-genocide-and-ethnic-cleansing-dr-janroj-yilmaz-keles-on-usas-withdrawal-of-troops-from-syria
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/11/trump-deal-erdogan-lethal-consequences-ukraine-syria
And that's not taking into account civilians being attacked and having to flee from the continual bombardment. Chaos unleashed.
So much for the War against Terror...
I see your point, but on the other hand, a certain amount of categorization is important for social, political action. If we look at everyone's exact position and exact reasons for that position, there is no way to effect social change. Winning an election, changing a society's general outlook, are social problems. You cannot solve them without some categorization into people who are on the right side and people who are not.
Accounting for every nuance will bog you down, and allow less scrupulous people to take the initiative.
I appreciate the concern here. But when a society becomes that sick, history tells us that it comes like a violent storm. If you're there when it starts, you shouldn't hang around wagging your finger. You should run, like to Asia.
Large scale forces are at work when that happens. The problem isn't a lack of vigilance.
I think you need to interrogate history more closely.
I meant to address this part earlier but ran out of steam :smile:
I like the 'yet'.
I think the point is that there are fascist elements and trends.
Democratic institutions are at risk. I am thinking of recent events in the UK.
Following the court decisions on the prorogation of Parliament, there were hostile accusations against both Parliament and the judiciary.
There are extreme right wing forces gathering, using similar tactics and chipping away...
The main point of the video is against efforts to represent Trump’s voters and brexiters as deplorable, unspeakable, racist, xenophobic, etc. Also, according to the video, the political establishment has lost its touch with the vast masses of ordinary people in the US and the UK. So, elites have stopped to express the masses’ concerns. Bat mass does not speak itself; it speaks through its representatives. Does Trump speak on behalf of its base? Does he speak what it wants to hear? If it is correct, there is an apparent controversy between what we see in the video and the numerous accounts of Trump. Because if they are correct, we should agree that Trump’s base is comprised of the deplorable and unspeakable.
Yes. But who are the 'elites' ? Parliamentarians, the representatives, are supposed to speak for the electorate.They are being attacked by another kind of 'elite' within; the lying, extremist Tory who pretend to speak for the people. They express outrage that the 'will of the people' is being denied. There will be an election soon and I fear their rhetoric will win.
The embedded video shows the apparent moral outrage. Quite the performance by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox. I watched Parliament Live that day. Never to be forgotten.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49826524
But back to Brexiteers being decried as deplorables or ignorant or racists - clearly not all who voted for this are any of those things. Some are, just as in their opposites. The Trump core can be seen as following Trump because they like what they hear. They appear to thrive in the mass hysteria.
Does that make them deplorable, despicable individuals ?
I think it is a big mistake to use such terminology. Who is demonising who ?
Not all Trump voters were 'core'. Not all Brexìteers are hard right extremists.
I think that ignorance does play a huge part in all of this. Lack of real knowledge and experience.
I include myself - am I deplorable?
I gave a list of several factors that are to my mind and to many others, common precursors of fascism, the collapse of democracy, and the beginning of catastrophic state violence. You dismiss them without argument. I don't think you "think the same of me" by a long shot.
Both Trump supporters and protesters have engaged in violent acts.
On too many occasions over the last several weeks I’ve found myself waiting to hear out an argument from you that never materializes.
Anyway, if you’re game I’m curious about your views on immigration. Do you just go along with the Trump party line or do you have any independent views that may at all diverge?
Yep. Right now the majority supports impeachment and removal.
If his base erodes enough to allow free action among republican senators, who knows?
The cases I know of were preceded by military defeat followed by a depression (inflationary in the case of Germany). I don't know of any cases where fascism creeped silently in.
This is why I advocated for an impeachment process in the Donald Trump thread. I sincerely doubt the GOP controlled senate will remove him, which will impact their own re-election if impeachment still enjoys majority approval.
Probably, it is difficult to single out a group that has a monopoly on
a prevailing agenda. (That is why the appearence of Trump, or "the lying, extremist Tory" looks like the "tectonic shift"). A conglomerate of leading parliamentarians, journalists, and intellectuals speaks a dominating discourse through the medium and censorship of the contemporary mass media. This situation has cardinally transformed the fundamental relations between the field of a public political discourse and so-called “real facts.” It is worth to come back to Timothy Snyder’s claim that differently from the rest of politicians,
Trump never refers to “real facts".
Quoting Amity
It looks like Snyder mistakenly substitutes the status of a “fact” in scientific research for the use of a “fact” in contemporary politics. Any fact, spoken by a politician and taken by mass media, loses its character of an index of the apparent and transparent truth. It can be immediately challenged by a counter fact, replaced by an adjacent fact, distorted by a fact from a different area, shifted to a conflicting context, and/or confronted by a hostile, affectively charged commentary.
Quoting Amity
Anyway, Trump still can say that he ordered to withdraw troops from an immediate
warfare area in Syria while sending them to relatively calm Saudi Arabia. Further, Trump could claim that his administration has initiated a process of withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. So, a Trump supporter could agree with his claim: “We are slowly going away from the Middle East,” while a Trump hater could rightly accuse him of lying.
That would give us a Democratic president, house, senate, and replacement for RBG. McConnell would hang himself.
I am game. My views of immigration are my own.
How do they diverge? assuming that you are game.
I’m not sure. I don’t have the time or energy to compare them. We can discuss immigration.
If you’re not sure how your views on immigration may diverge from the rest of Trumps followers, or his authority, then maybe they don’t. I could bring up specific issues surrounding immigration if that saves you time and effort. We’ve already touched on the Trump administration zero tolerance policy, for instance.
Maybe they don’t. But like I said, my immigration views are my own.
My only worry about the impeachment thing is that if Trump sees himself driven into a corner, he'll just resign (a la "I've got better things to do, great things, stable genius things") and Pence will be Potus and will then pardon Trump of all charges.
Trump knows that without reelection and/or a presidential pardon, it's "go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200."
His mental deficiencies may save American democracy. PAUL KRUGMAN
Imagine I responded to your post like this: 'Oh here's another person who thinks every one who voted for Trump should be treated as a literal nazi. Big surprise.'
That's not what you were saying, but it does certainly make categorization easier. And it prevents me from getting bogged down in nuance.
I pose this challenge to you. Reject my hypothetical response to you, while defending the substance of your post, and all without using undue nuance. (As an added challenge explain how your rejection and defense is different than what I was saying when responding to Maw.)
One side begins to see Hitler purging the clearly marked Other, & the other side begins to see Stalin or Mao purging those suspected of having the wrong ideas in their hearts. Neither approach is good, and both, while being good occasional gut-check ways of appraising the situation, quickly fester if treated as anything more than that - if they begin to dictate our entire way of engaging. (As I said in an earlier post, I was shocked and scared enough to study fascism seriously with my other liberal friends. I did the check you mention, the check which I support, as check. We're not in a near-fascist situation.)
There's a common phenomenon where Trump + immigration camps gets smeared together as part of the same thing - an irruption of proto-fascism. But the US tradition of camping, caging and expelling immigrants was alive and well with Obama. I don't say this as a kind of 'what about' political scoring, I loathe trump and am temperamentally inclined to like Obama, who I voted for and, if I could go back, would vote for again. I say it because we become politically impotent when we can't address immigration camps unless the issue is tied to a wrong party and personality. If you can't address inhumane conditions without couching them in fascist analogies, you won't be able to address them. You'll be titling at windmills, while the real conditions/policies/laws that lead to these camps remain untouched, ultimately helping no one.
You & I are both susceptible to the allure of composing a well-written, koan-y, paradox-spiced, passion-posts in favor of a clear moral cause. But -as I often tell myself next-day lying in bed, ignoring the alarm - sometimes the rush of making the Good Post bulldozes over important details.
Italian Fascism took root in the Po Valley. It made use of a political/economic space outside real state control to build a parallel de facto state. It leveraged this control, in connection with currents of dissatisfaction with Italy's post-WW1 lot, to go national. I can't stress enough how our incapability as 21st century americans to understand the what it means to have major territories outside state control leaves us handicapped in understanding Fascism. You have to try to imagine say West Virginia developing their own extra-national system of governance that rivals the power of the federal government, and using that to gain seats in the senate, and coming to be seen as a viable alternative to the entire US government.
Think about the scope required for something like that and then think about stuff like the unite the right rally. You can - and should- hate unite the right ralliers without giving them the absurd credit of being as politically powerful as Italian Fascists.
Of course. One has to add up the inches. Of course one will be more inclined to make excuses for someone whose views one shares. Here in the UK, I see the best, the most honourable of the opposition (to my views), resigning or being ejected. I see the executive attacking the judiciary I see outright lying pass as good tactics and so on. I see a pattern.
And I see the same pattern elsewhere. As I have mentioned here already, it's not just the lies, it's the fomenting of hatred, the focus on borders and us them, the inhumane internment, the packing of the judiciary. It's not just Trump any more than it was ever just Hitler. It's a pattern, a heap of things inching in the direction of arbitrary, divisive and unaccountable rule. It's above all the loss of balance, the loss of basic common sense protections of the environment and public health in the name of a fantasy of freedom.
And of course it is cyclic; the last of those who experienced the war are dying and the rhetoric of war replayed as nostalgia returns. The good old days when the US and Britain saved the world return in irony as we lead the world to the fascism from which we then saved it.
So, I haven't returned to the Ch4 interview to check that out, yet.
However, I have looked more into what Snyder has to say, and his background.
Here is an interview and a transcript which I have just skimmed over.
It covers points about facts, media, agenda, German history, and issues warnings and practical advice in a potential slide towards tyranny.
Quoting Timothy Snyder interview
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/30/on_tyranny_yale_historian_timothy_snyder
Truth and countertruth. Facts and counterfacts. 'Affectively charged commentary'.
Yes. All the the spin can make us dizzy, confused, crazy. And that is the idea.
To ramp up the divisions. Create conditions for civil unrest and then...
Politicians using the rhetoric of war is worse than calling people 'deplorable' but that is where it starts.
We need to watch our language.
Challenge and call out the lies. And that is what good journalism and interviewers do.
And just possibly philosophers...
As do I and many others.
Quoting unenlightened
So, what can be done ? I've been reading Snyder. Amongst other things, he advises 1:1 conversation.
I have tended not to engage politically with relatives who have voted for Brexit. Many families have been spilt in both UK and America.
How can we persuade if people won't listen...
How can we make people see the similarities between us...the humanity.
When politicians attempt to dehumanise by language...
Address each concern by providing facts ?
Your body is presently colonized by organisms that are potentially lethal to you. Your immune system will be activated if they try to take over.
Stage 1: You're speaking in behalf of your community's immune system and announcing that the threat is present, and possibly about to arise. Cool. Although that's always true, it's good to remember what's possible.
Stage 2: You're sounding the alarm and saying its time to mobilize the defense, okay. Although it's usually triggered naturally by the invading organism. Your voice is part of the mobilization.
Stage 3: You're saying that the organism is invading and the immune system isn't doing anything about it. Let me explain what that would imply. It means we're doomed. It means something catastrophic has happened so that the immune system is ineffective. At this point our only hope is that another part of the world will provide intensive care for us in the form if an antibiotic army to kill our Nazis. Otherwise, we will die as the Nazis ravage our souls.
Which stage do you identify with? (If you choose to ignore my question, that's cool. We all have busy Sundays I imagine.)
The problem is that this is a typically fascist analogy from the start; the body politic under threat from foreign bodies and so on. I reject the framing of the crisis in terms of us and them, and so I reject the notion of 'deplorables'. Actions, policies, speeches can be deplorable, and i think I have specified what I deplore in broad terms already. I think is the business of philosophers to critique this kind of framing analogy, and not to indulge in it so casually. People are suffering, people are being misled, and manipulated, and it is being done by people. And people are objecting to it. There are no aliens - no pathogens.
I assume that in the US, there is the process quite similar to what is going on in the UK. Recently, the GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has accused Nancy Pelosi that she started impeachment against Trump in an unconstitutional manner. Should we consider it as a fascistic or proto-fascistic attack against a democratic institution?
You're right.
Otherizing people is the wrong approach entirely.
I don't know. What do you think ?
Does the label matter ?
Arguably, the contempt for and attacks on democratic institutions, the rule of law; incitements to mob violence; attacks on the press, etc. are similar enough to warrant concern.
Either way, I'm done here. I've enjoyed the discussion. I think @unenlightened hits the nail on the head.
It is the behaviour of individuals, political policies that can be described as 'deplorable', at the very least.
It is how we deal with this, that is the question.
Quoting Amity
Quoting unenlightened
Nevertheless,, this is precisely our situation: it is the formation of different "foreign bodies" within our societies through various gradations of hatred: dehumanization, labeling, delegitimization, and intolerance. Essentially, the true borders are not the outer ones, but the invisible internal barriers, so that the extreme partisanship has been advancing.
Again you show your arrogance quite well.
People that give protest votes think far more just about protesting than anything else.
Feel free to refute the counterpoints I provided! The irony is the circle jerk that devolved in this thread over the arguments made in the video, despite no substantive research to support them (including a women presented as an expert who was caught lying and fabricating interviews)
Ok,
So you refute the video by saying that it is "laughably awful, unsurprisingly shallow, biased, and filled with discredited presumptions and absurd claims that we're somehow meant to accept at face value". And then you give examples why this would be so by then stating for example:
Quoting Maw
Well, places where Trump was very popular were places in the rust-belt and not the most well off prosperous places. (And white, of course) From this chart you can see that typically the more well off households did vote for Clinton than Trump. All I've read about the differences in Trump and Clinton voters support this view.
Now, we can argue about the statistics and have a discussion about them, but what I'm just saying is that dismissing totally the video with such ferocity and hurling so many accusations of being biased and absurd etc. come off to me as quite arrogant.
And saying that "Most of you clearly don't read any relevant political material, and it shows in your comments" I do find a bit condescending.
As the Washington Post article from which you ostensibly pulled this from notes, Trump won in poorer counties, but did better with wealthier voters over Hillary Clinton (and of course not everyone within a given county voted at all!). Even the percentage difference between the median HHI of counties that voted Trump vs. voted Hillary is quite low: just 8.5%. But regardless of the precise statistics or the framing between counties vs. individual voters, the thesis of the video was that there was a potent dyad between how the working class voted and how the wealthy elite voted, and with economic anxiety being the prime motivator for Trump voters. This is at best vastly overstated, and at worst simply incorrect.
Yes, labels matter, fuck wit. I seem to have labeled one of you 'fuck wit'. In this case it is unimportant because I am unimportant. but if I were your defence lawyer in court, it matters a great deal.
And whenever someone uses 'true' as an adjective like that, one can be sure that they are bullshitting. The classic case of the bullshitter is Simon Cowell, the world famous transformer of original musical creative talent into bland mediocrity, "...and I genuinely mean that."
No, the true borders are the one people die trying to cross.
Will you vote for Trump again? What policy has decided you for or against that decision?
I don't advocate treating Trump supporters as literal Nazis. I advocate treating them as literal Trump supporters. That is, treat them as if they knowingly support all the things Trump is doing, insofar as they are a matter of public record or otherwise obvious. This, of course, only applies to current Trump supporters. But it applies regardless for their stated reasons for intending to vote for Trump again.
Voting for Trump is voting for Trump to continue what he has been doing. Trump's policies and behaviour are bad. To argue whether it's fair to claim Trump supporters are racist is, IMHO a distraction from the actual issue - that Trump is a bad president that supports bad policies. If all you worry about is whether or not your support for Trump is wrongly interpreted as evidence for racism, you're already part of the problem.
So, I don't think it matters whether or not it is entirely fair to every Trump supporter to call them racist. Because if you support Trump, you're so obviously supporting "bad things" that it's not a debate worth having. The only debate worth having is how to get enough people to vote for someone who will do less harmful stuff.
:smile: That would be me. And yes, it is unimportant not because you are unimportant but because I am not affected by it. When a child is labelled as being 'slow' or a 'half wit' then there can be long term consequences. Whole lives can be ruined by labelling. So, of course, the use of labels matters.
My question was related to the adjectives 'fascistic' v 'protofascistic' and how significant were the actual differences between them.
Here is original exchange:
Quoting Amity
Sorry, I did not understand your question.Probably, so far, there is no
workable model, based on a research of the real historical fascistic regimes. Are you interested in my view of fascistic vs. proto-fascistic tendencies?
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting Amity
The answer entirely depends on the context of the labeling. When GOP Minority Leader starts accusing Nancy Pelosi of abusing her power, and when he says that leading democrats in congress manipulate and distort the formal procedures of impeachment, it is not labeling. Yet, he supports Trump’s labeling allegations, including "which hunt" and "coup". As a result, the trust in democratic institutions has been damaged. When Clinton labeled Trump’s supporters deplorable, she meant to disqualify their right to decide who will be the next president. If deplorable voters elected Trump, he is not the legitimate president himself. All these examples of labeling can lead to a growth of violence and civil disobedience. The question about fascistic vs. proto-fascistic tendencies requires much more serious effort. Yet, when somebody labels some aspects of Trump’s presidency as proto-fascistic, the real intention is once again to question his legitimacy.
When you write :
Quoting Amity
you are not labeling, but you tacitly assume that one side is more responsible for
the current crises than the other. Similarly, when Timothy Snyder in his interview tries to lay out his vision of Trump’s phenomenon - in addition to his academic qualities and analytic resources applied, he involves some rhetorical arguments and personal judgments. So, his attempt should be reduced to a level of another partisan intellectual project. In the current hysteric atmosphere, taking a partisan position prevents a deeper understanding and blocks the conditions of a dialogue.
In what sense are they your own? Like all of us your knowledge, views and opinions, ideology, morality, values, and even emotions are dependent on others. Did you spontaneously pop into existence? No, you developed within a human culture. The most relevant question is the degree to which you've developed independent agency. That you can't see a difference between your views and your fellow Trump followers views, while simultaneously claiming that your views are your own, and being so apparently comfortable with this juxtaposition, indicates a doublethink that is indicative of group conformity and not a sign of independents. Nothing wrong with group conformity in itself, of course, but in some instances submitting to group pressure isn’t always in the best interest of the group.
A recent example of conflicting interests, and apparent comfort with the resulting inner contention, involves how Trump's followers process the two main approaches the Trump administration has taken on the Southern border crisis. In the last government shutdown, Trump claimed that the only solution to the crisis was his wall and circumvented Congress by declaring a national emergency. This was unprecedented in that none of the 58 previous emergency declarations made by U.S. presidents involved circumventing Congress to spend money it had expressly refused to authorize or allocate.
A Trump follower like yourself must realize this precedent could have serious consequences, such as a future Democratic administration circumventing Congress in this fashion to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on what they may generally regard as *socialistic* solutions to national "emergencies."
The other approach the Trump administration has taken on the border crisis is to negotiate with Mexico and other Latin American countries. According to the acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, more than 52,000 migrants were taken into custody in the month of September, an 18% decline from August. It represents a 65% decline from the peak in May when more than 144,000 migrants were detained at ports of entry or in between.
"This administration's strategies have brought about results, the Commissioner told reporters in a White House briefing. "Dramatic results."
"Dramatic results" without a border wall. But a border wall was supposed to be the only solution. The wall funding is not only costly in taxpayer dollars, it's also costly in the manner of its seizure, essentially giving more power to the executive branch and less liberty to citizens. How does a Trump follower like yourself feel about this?
I am an immigrant to my current country, and most of what I know about immigration is related to my own experiences of it. It’s a long and difficult process. It makes it all the more difficult knowing that others want the same citizenship and benefits without doing it legally. Illegal immigration is anti-immigrant for this reason: it devalues and makes a mockery of those who put in the time and work to become legal citizens.
The reason I am not willing to say where my views diverge is for the simple reason that I do not know all the views.
So please, where did you get your views on immigration? From others? Who exactly?
As for apprehensions at the border, it is those who were never apprehended I worry about. What are the figures on those people?
I believe in walls and fences for the same reason we have walls and fences around our houses. This is something I agree with Trump on. Walls work. Are there better solutions? Sure. But these solutions, such as removing incentives to illegal immigration such as welfare programs, have far worse negative effects than a wall.
White picket fences primarily function to demark property lines. They can also be decorative. If someone wants to cross them they can easily do that. If a neighborhood is concerned with burglaries, for example, a far more effective and practical solution would be a neighborhood watch program. It would also be far far less expensive than everyone in the neighborhood building a mote, complete with snakes and crocodiles :razz: , around their homes.
I kid with the last part, but seriously, if a con artist prayed on homeowners' insecurities and managed to sell an entire neighborhood on expensive security systems that were less effective than managing the problem through other means, and the homeowners denied their gullibility with the evidence staring them in the face, what does that say about these homeowners? It says they lack independent agency.
Barriers of all sorts have been used to great effect since time immemorial right until today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_barrier#List_of_current_barriers
This is exactly what I’m talking about. No mention of efficacy in the link you provide because, for a follower like yourself, that’s not the important part. Solidarity and fitting in is primary. That’s how you’ve been conditioned to be.
What is easier to cross, a border with a wall or a border without a wall? I’m not sure why I have to argue the efficacy what seems blatantly obvious.
You’re deliberately avoiding the overriding point, and thereby inadvertently indicating it’s validity, which is that Trump followers such as yourself have been conditioned in such a way that they comfortably hold multiple contradictory beliefs. For instance, you know that if someone wants to cross a border, a fence will be a minor obstacle, and you just acknowledged that there are better solutions. Negotiations resulted in a 65% decrease within only a handful of months, for instance. It’s not so much that you favor the irrational choice, it’s that you’ve been conditioned to do it with such ease.
A 30ft metal wall is a minor obstacle? What a dangerous lie. Tell that to the woman who impaled herself n the same wall. Tell that to the man who broke both legs climbing the 30 ft fence in California, or the severed limbs in Arizona. Those kinds of lies will get people hurt, or worse.
Why do you believe a 30ft metal fence is a “minor obstacle”? Not because I said it, but because you’ve been trained to say it.
In terms of tactics, I think one puzzle piece is to not alienate roughly half of the US population( of voters.) If you begin with an attack, the person will get defensive. This is the same reason leftist attacks on moderate liberals, like Obama, tend to fail. If voting for Obama means knowingly supporting everything he did, then you're in trouble. There are, I'm sure, many people who voted for Trump who are queasy on certain policies. That's the populace you need to sway. If you write off the entirety of active voters who votes for trump, you automatically hand him the win.
[the cheeky meta stuff: your post is too bogged down in justificatory nuance. You make these conceptual distinctions between how you actually see things and how you need to argue things from a tactical standpoint. For me, its handier to categorize you as what I, hypothetical responder, already did from the get-go, namely : [Someone who acts as though he thinks all trump voters are actual nazis] ]
I didn't do that, and that's the only way I was able to respond.
There are about 250M Americans who are of voting age. Of that, only ~138M voted in the 2016 election, (or 55% of the total voting population). Of those who voted, ~63M voted for Trump, (or 46% of those who voted). So those who voted for Trump only account for ~25% of the general voting population, which isn't "roughly half". And what percentage of this 25% would never ever vote for a Democrat? Despite this, it's curious that it's demanded of democrats/liberals/leftists to seek the favor of Trump/conservative voters by moderating their otherwise left-leaning policies, rather than the Trump/conservative voters being asked to moderate their extreme positions so that they are more palatable to moderate/left of center voters. Seems like this demand is simply subterfuge in an attempt to temper the growing popularity of leftist policy by advocating for fallacious "electability" arguments.
Frankly I don’t think there is much hope for US politics due to a culture of ‘how do we win?’ rather than simply offering the public well constructed plans with actual thought put into them - not chants and dreams.
The US, for as long as I’ve been alive, has voted based on personal popularity not policy. Once someone actual comes along with real plans for policies that can be implemented then things might start to shift - this didn’t happen with Sanders because everyone backed who they thought was more popular not who had an actual planned policy.
Even so, I think Sanders made enough of an impact. It reminds me of Paddy Ashdown in the UK. His party set out plans that the public didn’t like, and so didn’t vote for them, then the winning party would effectively raise taxes - as planned by the Lib Dems.
I’m fairly convinced Trump will win a second term because the opposition don’t seem to realise they’ve been perpetuating the system because it favoured them rather than trying to improve the system. Now someone’s come along and stepped it up a level and they’re at a loss.
Long term it may be better if Trump wins again. Maybe it will force people away from directionless outrage and toward practical solutions? Or maybe it will just enflame the opposition into more silly sensationalist posturing and deepen the the lack of trust the public have for the administrative powers?
At least people seem more concerned with political issues today than in the past - or rather people are able yo more readily engage with each other now. Maybe this has always been there, but ignored. Now we’ve got the internet people cannot hide so easily from what they don’t wish to know.
As I said, only about 25% of the voting population voted for Trump. Layer on the fact that a certain percentage of people within this segment will not vote for any Democrat whatsoever, and you start to get a fairly slim voting block, relative to the general voting population. Why then focus on or appease this voting block that is simultaneously become more irrelevant with time (given age and demographic shifts)? As you yourself point out, we should "get real and precise about what policies help people", which, as we both agree, are leftist policies, in order to organize and stimulate a voting block that is not only above Trump's voting block, but beyond Hillary's as well (which had about 4 million fewer voters than Obama did in 2008). There is simply no need to appease Trump supporters or moderate our condemnation of the policies they advocate, thereby normalizing them.
EDIT: And again, Trump supporters belittle and shame liberals in their own ways as well, and yet....crickets. Why isn't this a "bad approach"?
Quoting csalisbury
Not sure what you mean here.
Quoting I like sushi
Sure, which is why no one is saying this, other than perhaps "Never Trumpers". Certainly democrats/liberals/leftists aren't suggesting that Trump moderate his tone and policy because they know he won't so why bother, and his supporters aren't about to encourage it either because it's precisely why they support him.
Most likely the latter.
I do not know if Donald Trump has an actual [I]strategy.[/I] Maybe He is merely acting out his personal kinks. The effect however -- planned or not -- is to derail rational discussion. Why derail rational discussion? Because people won't buy a straightforward, honest presentation of Trumps intentions. Much better for someone who has unspeakable plans is to play games of uproar; to lie, speak nonsense; pursue policies which have no rational basis but which may serve some interest.
Better to make idiotic non sequitur statements, like "The Kurds didn't help us in Normandy" to justify pulling out US troops from a relationship that had (apparently) restrained Turkey. The Turks have invaded northern Syria, and the Isis prisoners held by the Kurds are likely to get loose. Isis emerged from hiding almost immediately, upon the commencement of the Turkish invasion.
Better to fill one's allies with the same kind of extreme nonsense of the sort I heard from some moron at the Texas State Fair on NPR: "There's no point in working with the center, because the only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill." Never mind whether that is the case or not; the point is that compromisers get run over.
Better to make a boogeyman out of Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden: Or... Joe Blow. Anybody.
Lower the level of discourse long enough (it wasn't stratospheric before Trump decided to run in 2015) and the people will be left dazed.
Or he’s simply insane - honestly, I don’t think so (no more than most of us anyway).
Either way I’ve been saying the same thing for a while now in terms of global politics. We’re going through a revolution at we’re only at the start of it. The internet had changed everything - my generation, and those after will begin to show the fuller effect it’s had on politics. At the moment older generations are still able remember days without TV’s. Once I’m an older man I don’t expect the political landscape will look anything like it does now - for better? I believe so because I think kids having direct experience of ‘click-bait’ will be better able to discern bullshit, posturing and sensationalism than previous generations.
It seems to me the current generations are basically caught in the no man’s land between and that this is being expressed with fear and hope in many ways.
This is a true distraction, but perhaps the worse outcome isn't that the politicians themselves are accused in this way (to be racist etc.), it is that those who voted for him are all tagged as a group represented by the worst, the most eccentric and ludicrous fringe there is. As if all Trump supporters are racist whites fearing losing their 'white priviledge' and as if all Democrat voters are all AOC fanboys and fangirls craving for social democracy, sorry, democratic socialism. And do notice that this is exactly the strategy of Trump too and this isn't anything new. What is new is how headlong Americans fell for this and how the "silly-season" of the election 2016 never went away. This creates the toxic and vitriolic political environment where the US is now in. This is the way you erode social cohesion and divide the people into separate camps, which then you legitimize by saying that they belong to separate 'tribes' and explain that people are tribal.
Hillary Clinton's gaffe of speaking about the deplorables was one of the contributing events that helped Trump (apart from the FBI's October suprise). Making accusations about the voters of your competitors is basically a taboo in a democracy. Yet it can be very, very successful strategy and can get divisive politicians elected who have absolutely no desire to keep the country together.
I wouldn't be so worried if this was only an American phenomenon. Unfortunately this is mimicked in Europe and a similar process is happening here too.
There is always SOMETHING bright and shiny to dangle in front of the masses that the masses will decide they really, really want. AND NEED! RIGHT NOW!
See, all the wizardry of mass merchandizers works on the wizards of mass merchandizing just as well as it works on everybody else. One may be in charge of manipulating the masses for United Consolidated & Amalgamated Retailers of The World and be really good at it, but then, you know, you're walking down the street (or the mega mall) and you happen to look into the window and there it is: the perfectly displayed object, designed to reach into your brain and grab your amygdala by the balls and cause you to reach for your wallet and BUY something you definitely do not need.
That's with the people that cannot rise above the level of seeing a philosophical discussion mainly as a competition between individual people and focus on how they themselves come out to other people.
For me it's the forum is a window where you can share your ideas and see if they make sense to other people. The best thing that can happen is that someone takes their time, reads and understands your idea and shows that you have an error somewhere in your reasoning in such way that you yourself get the point. Or gives more insight to the topic. That improves your thinking and your argumentation. Then you are not making that mistake in real life.
If we agree that this is about tactics, then not alienating Trump supporters is a contingent goal, right? Something we do in order to change the outcome of the next election. The question then is what the correct tactics are.
Quoting csalisbury
I see your point. But, like @Maw, I don't agree with your tactical assessment. I don't think swaying Trump supporters is the goal. I think the goal is mobilizing the already existing majority for a better candidate with better policies. Of course, locally, in swing states, swaying Trump voters may well be important. But as far as the overarching narrative goes, I think you can leverage the "we are the resistance" sentiment.
Quoting csalisbury
Perhaps. I admit it is difficult to order my thoughts on this issue. On the one hand, I agree with treating people fairly and focusing on the actual details of their positions. On the other hand, I have the feeling people hide their racist, sexist, nationalist etc. views behind a pretended nuance. The whole, "I don't have anything against X, but..." method. I think there is a lot more outright "us vs them" thinking guiding people's decisions than most people like to admit.
Quoting I like sushi
That isn't really unique to the US though. I also think it isn't necessarily a problem. After all, I am not an expert on every policy question, so focusing on policy doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes.
Quoting ssu
The problem I see, from a pragmatic perspective, is that you cannot avoid this unless both sides are playing "by the rules". Trump's divisive rhetoric should already have disqualified him for a second term. The fact that it hasn't indicates there is already a lot of division. You cannot easily overcome that, and you cannot sway the core base anyway. Hoping that positive messages on the campaign trail will somehow bridge the gap strikes me as naïve.
Quoting ssu
True, but then the damage has been done. What the opposition needs to do now is figure out how to deal with a divided country.
Quoting ssu
Difficult times, indeed.
As you are probably aware (and unaffected by due to your conditioning) illegal immigration across the Southern border has been steadily declining for decades, and has been comprised mainly of single men looking for work. This is not the border “crisis.” The crisis is due to central American asylum-seeking, which has increased approximately 900% since 2012. It's fair to say that these asylum-seekers have a lot invested in their journey and they're not going to arrive at an 18' fence (Trump can only take credit for 11 miles of actual new fence currently being constructed and it's 18 feet tall) and say "Ay caramba!" and then turn around and hightail it back to where they came from. The rest of the fence varies in height from 18 to 26 feet, by the way.
Good instinct to hit on liberal sensibilities but lousy execution. Scaling a fence must be a relatively minor potential pitfall that asylum-seekers face on their journey. At least it shows that you know how to play the game.
Compared to other western countries I’d say it is, and has been, far more extreme than anything you’d see elsewhere. I’m from the UK where we aren’t exactly prone to putting people on a pedestal - all politicians are generally ridiculed and mocked (there is little to no hero worship). In the US the story is very different and the amount of money pumped into rallies and campaigning in the US is nothing like the scale you’d see in the UK.
Seriously, it looks like some horrendous sham fro across the Atlantic. I think the problem is that the US doesn’t have a royal family to fawn over - directly - and given the religious attitudes of some of the population that excess energy is dumped on political leaders (I doubt it’d be too big an issue if the US was more secular-minded).
As an example when people heard that Tony Blair prayed with the president huge numbers of people openly mocked him for his beliefs. In the US not praying and mentioning god is a standard, not something openly met with ridicule.
If you don’t think it’s a problem I’m guessing you’re American. It’s hard to see something from within. Trust me it looks ridiculous to the point where Trump becoming president wasn’t really much of a shock - I’m just shocked someone of his ilk hadn’t come along earlier.
I am not sure that issues such as labelling and intolerance are particularly 'foreign'. They are part of human nature. However, when they are increasingly manipulated to extremes where individuals are dehumanised by generic labelling this needs to be challenged. Politics is being dominated by negative influences and barriers.
In the UK, we have Johnson who acted unlawfully in the prorogation of parliament. The extreme Tory contingent show no signs of remorse, indeed they doubled down. More to follow, given the Queen's Speech. And that's another story of elite pomp and ceremony increasingly being shown to be irrelevant.
Parliamentary procedures are shown to be tedious, lengthy, ridiculous affairs. This is what should be addressed. However, it will be used in the forthcoming election as a People v Parliament issue. The Tories speaking for the so-called 'will of the people' against an undemocratic parliament.
The 'invisible internal barriers' might just relate to our manipulated mindset. Lack of knowledge amidst the wall of lies creates increasing division. Black and white gut reactions, rather than an objective look at policies and implications. Nothing new here - just a deepening darkness...where the inflated egos of political 'strongmen' are joining up across the world to play wargames with no concern for the human consequences. Case in point - Trump's casual transactional phone call which allowed a war to re-erupt in the Middle East.
Quoting Number2018
I don't assume anything. There is more going on that I am ignorant of. However, I do see what has been happening with regard to Brexit. It is clear that this is primarily a Tory agenda and they are responsible for pushing it to extremes.
As to Snyder, his project might well be seen as a partisan intellectual project. There will always be an element of subjectivity in any analysis. I don't accept the conclusion that it blocks the conditions of dialogue. Analysis and writing can be reductive in the sense of giving focus to a particular perspective.
Dialogue is blocked when people carelessly dismiss other points of view. Or have had enough of the conversation, for whatever reason...
Useful dialogue can start when we look at particular real life concerns.
I have been watching Simon Reeve's 'the Americas' where I was struck by this segment:
" In a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, Simon’s final destination on this leg of the journey is a Colorado town that depends almost entirely on eleven different prisons. Simon witnesses how inmates are put to work for the state, and how virtual reality is being used to prepare long-term prisoners for life on the outside."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0009dj7/the-americas-with-simon-reeve-series-1-episode-2
It's Big Business.
The Tories seek to emulate this in the UK. It is draconian. And yes, the justiciary can be part of the problem which people can relate to. The injustices of the elite. The system is not perfect but leaders actively ignoring and attacking the law whenever it goes against them is not a good sign. Not recognising the legitimacy of the court when e.g. one is impeached, where does that lead ? To prison ?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/14/lynch-mob-politics-experts-denounce-plans-for-longer-jail-terms
This is rather important, but also rather delicate. One says to a supporter, Stop voting for Trump, he's a misogynist; to vote for Trump is to vote for misogyny, and voting for misogyny is mysogynist. But you are not a mysognist, you have been misled into supporting mysogyny.
Perhaps one can emphasise that it is not 63 million mainly poor voters that are deplorable, any more than it was or is smokers or drug addicts that are deplorable. The deplorables are the rich people and their propagandists lawyers, and other apologists who knowingly persuade people to act against their interests. Like these:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/?fbclid=IwAR2er6o1UcgEO2EIcEKply6PJvu1QmjhgbhP3QbGV23U0ETlDhhd1xLgThc#yhiBukAYcJPDfIUC.01
Yeah, delicateness. Yet it typically comes down to a Democrat voter deciding who he or she thinks to be a Trump supporter (if it isn't obvious from the MAGA-hat) and saying: "You're a fucking misogynist if you vote for Trump!"
Brilliant. The landslide victory to the non-Trump democratic candidate is inevitable. :up:
Quoting unenlightened
No, the deplorables are the ones seeking deplorables. What is deplorable is thinking that if a bad president is voted to office, there has to be then deplorable people. These are the ones creating the wedge. And btw it's really working well and these deplorables are very effective in turning citizens against each other.
In fact looking at how this forum has turned out on these issues has changed my view on all of the political parties that I oppose and have never voted. I've started to respect those people, my countrymen, more. They may not think similarly as I and their ideas don't work, but they typically want to improve things...in their own twisted way. Above all, they don't want to kill me, like some predecessors wanted to kill two of my great-grandfathers to make the World a better place. Hence I'm OK with them.
I disagree. Generally, I blame the people with power and money and influence more than the ordinary Joes. But social ills that are not natural disasters are deplorable. When there are mass killings and widespread torture and all sorts of avoidable suffering, one cannot say 'oh no one is to blame.'
As to the mob baying for blood, 'Forgive them for they know not what they do.' But there are those who do know what they do, and for them 'it were better they were cast into the sea with a millstone round their neck.' One needs to be very cautious with one's righteous anger, but even the Nazis wanted to improve things.
Asylum seekers can enter legally through secure points of entry, like everyone else. Either way, only 53% of those who state they have a “credible fear” claim file an asylum application. Out of those asylum applications, more claims are denied than are approved. So most of your asylum seekers are in fact not asylum seekers. The system is being gamed for the purpose of entering the country illegally.
Of course people will go around, over, and under a wall (especially the old dilapidated ones you pretend are Trump’s). This is especially the case when it comes to human smugglers, who will come up with more sophisticated techniques to smuggle more humans. But it will no less make the job more difficult for them, and the job easier for border patrol.
Speaking of conditioning, before Trump came along a majority of Americans, including Democrats, wanted some sort of barrier along the border, even if it was vastly more expensive than Trump’s proposals. This was the case right up until Trump started running, and anti-Trumpism became the governing ideology. So much for liberal sensibilities.
Perhaps my opinion is a bit of an unusual one, but I don't think Trump's election is a result of a cult of personality, because, to wit, his personality is shit. He is neither a charismatic leader nor a strongman. Sure he might have a reputation as a businessman and dealmaker, but that's not usually the kind of personal reputation that vaults you into the presidency.
Trump wasn't elected for what he is, but for what he has claimed not to be - a politician. In a way, Trump's campaign was focused on policy - albeit a populist version of policy. "Drain the Swamp", "lock her up", "Mexiko will pay for the wall". It wasn't really about using a strong personality, which Trump lacks, or a strong oration, which Trump definetly lacks, to pull people in. It was sending a very simple policy message. The personality cult thing, especially on the religious right, is a later phenomenon, I think.
It called politicizing an issue. Educate yourself and google it or something.
Quoting NOS4A2
I can see now that I gave you too much credit for understanding liberal sensibilities. A theory offered in the article you linked to suggests that Trump’s push for a wall (not a fence which feels more neighborly) sensitized Americans to the plight of immigrants. A wall feels harsh compared to a fence, etc.
If Trump actually cared about a wall, actually believed in it, he would have proposed it differently. It seems clear that he could careless and merely politicized the issue to help capture the support of a particular segment of the population.
All his rallies? They love it. It’s unfathomable to me also but a particular American democratic loves his orations.
A wall feels harsh. Well that about explains it. He should have proposed it differently. Let’s quibble about how it was proposed, and not what was proposed.
Your assumptions into Trump’s wants and cares are are just that: assumptions, and poor ones at that. His actions, ie. federal emergency, government shutdown, give evidence to the contrary.
The alternative is that he fumbled it, due to incompetence, bad council, or whatever.
He fumbled that as well. Had to bypass congress by declaring an national emergency.
Another alternative might be that folks are angry that Trump is doing what they could only ever promise for decades.
?? Around 500 miles of fence was built before Trump entered the picture.
Over decades!!
I don’t get what you’re saying. What has Trump delivered that Democrats (I assume) haven’t been able to for decades? A good economy? For one thing, we’re talking about the politicizing of the wall issue, which started before Trump was elected. For another thing, Obama took the nation out of a deep recession less than a decade ago. Just looking at the unemployment rate...
We’ve talked about this in the Trump thread and we should keep it there.
Quoting Maw
So if there's nothing else I'm going to just continue to be arrogant on this subject.
So you were talking about the economy? Weird.
Matthew 5:37 - " 'Let your word be "Yes, yes' or 'No, no': anything more that this comes from the evil one.'"
This is orthogonal to the main flow of the conversation, but I've seen you make this point before and it's one I agree with.. Multiplying qualifiers like 'genuine' and 'sincerely' is the equivalent of printing reams of hundred dollar bills in order to deal with inflation. Or creating an auxillary currency during a counterfeiting crisis, whose purpose to is to guarantee the authenticity of the primary currency, but which is just as easy to counterfeit. So then you need a tertiary currency, and so forth.
This is basically what happens with racism and misogyny by the way. Racists and Misogynists, in a world where racism and misogyny earn severe social penalties, rapidly learn to fake being non-racist and non-misogynist. But, being misogynists and racists, they eventually do misogynist and racist things, and we collectively realize how easily the old social currency is faked. For example : Even if we value nice guys who are feminist allies, we learn very rapidly not to trust people who identify as 'nice guys who are feminist allies'.
And now the same misogynists who were able to fake the first currency, just as easily learn to fake the second. They, too, are disturbed by these 'nice guys' who, they'll say, almost always conceal bad intentions behind a good facade. (imagine a parallel example with racism.) And this works for a while but, being racists and misogynists, they eventually do racist and misogynist things, which means ---
But how far can you progress in this direction? How many turns of the screw? "' Great job, and I genuinely mean that. And I know a lot of times people say they genuinely mean something, when they don't, but I -- I just don't know how else to say it. It sucks. We've become so cynical about direct appreciation, that I *would* just say it directly, only I knew you wouldn't believe me, and rightfully so.'
Anyway, that's a character I've been working on - I mean it's just how I feel like everyone talks these days, you know? It's insane. By the way, you did great tonight ' "
It is, of course, a bad approach. But if we're on more or less the same side, I can think of nothing less productive than devoting a huge portion of our intellectual effort to denunciating our political opponents, and then agreeing with one another about it, with congratulatory emojis.
Isn't that what it boils down to? Well maybe not, because you're arguing against trump supporters here as well. But why is that? You've just explained why you believe there's no reason to try to sway that population. So. If we're not performatively demonstrating our opposition for each other, and we're not trying to sway trump voters - what are these intense denunciatory posts about? My theory is that they're just an expulsion of anger and contempt. & sometimes, they're just a rush of bolstering our identity, through unloading on an Other. I think that expressions of solidarity are a good means but too quickly become an end. All that angry energy thrown into a void is pure creative capability, thwarted, and wasted.
I agree, ideally. And I also find that, more often or not, I'm competing or preening. Not only not living up to the ideal, but roundly ignoring it. I often have trouble figuring out how to get out of this way of acting - it feels like an addiction or compulsion. The quickest and easiest way to dispel guilt and cognitive dissonance is to call out others for doing what you suspect yourself of doing. I find myself doing that again and again. The post you were responding to, which I edited out, was essentially that sort of thing.
Quoting Echarmion
Reflecting, I think you guys are largely correct in terms of tactics for getting a democrat elected, and I was incorrect to argue in those terms. That said, this whole divide is a really profound divide. Even if a democrat carves out a narrow victory, it'll hardly be a return to normalcy. If a democrat's elected, and a triumphal technocracy retakes the reins, the passionate discontent of trump-voters is not going to go away. It will probably get worse. I think Streetlight has drawn this out very well in his posts around impeachment.
I was going to post that the act of condemning ‘otherness’ is meaningful because it helps to define us, in a form larger than our individual selves, and enhances group solidarity, but your edit covers it. Maybe the polarizing downside can be minimized by trying to be mindful while in the activity.
Yeah, I realized after the post I'd left something important out and tried to sneak a patch in. I do think that stuff is important, in moderation.Somewhere on the spectrum between addiction to clap emojis on one end and angelic dedication to neutrality on the other.
This is why basically the US is going on path of divisive political discourse like in Venezuela. And Venezuela, even if under totally different path and different conditions, shows how divisive political discourse can be effective and result with willing supporters clinging on even when disaster turns into a catastrophy.
What ought to be noted is that both Hugo Chávez and Donald Trump share the same strategy of divisive rhetoric and getting the support from their followers by making a divide in the people. There is absolutely no effort in "reaching over the isle" or consensus in any way. Chávez not only took disasterous socialism from Cuba, but from the start promoted traditional class warfare painting him as the only defender and only hope for the poor against the evil rich, the evil imperialists. And the supporters of Chávez were indeed first ecstatic and afterwards lukewarm, but they wouldn't let their hero down later when the economy was collapsing. (Under Maduro things are of course worse)
With Trump the same strategy is used. And the first target is political consensus, or as Americans call it, bipartisanship: it is portrayed to be dead, something only naive idiots and suckers would try. Something that would only play into the hands of the sinister adversary.
Well, one way to think about philosophical debate is the way some people, especially men, approach these issues: it's just about the matter in hand in the discussion, the issue at stake, nothing else. One doesn't approach the discussion as social interaction between other people at all. After all, extremely few people here actually know the people here (apart from the mods and admins) and even fewer have met each other, at large we are anonymous to each other. Thus if you upset someone or look foolish in some discussion, it doesn't matter. In fact there are so few of us that if one would by accident stumble to another that participates here in the discussion, the meeting would be very likely a happy event (what would be the odds) even if in the forum the persons are bitter rivals. The cordiality is only defined by the rules of the forum, which are simple. The worst thing what can happen is that the Forum NKVD can take you to the virtual forest and use the ban gun on your head. Afterwards, no more PF for you. Some haven't cared much about that either.
Interesting point. In recent years Congress has become weaker and the presidency more autocratic. You may recall a certain recent Democratic president who boasted that he'd govern with a "pen and a phone." Remember when Obama said that? It's the same deal. I for one would love to see Congress step up to its responsibilities. You know if the Dems really wanted to abolish ICE or open the borders they'd pass a law to do so. Far easier to criticize Trump for enforcing the very laws Dems implemented, and putting kids in the very same cages Obama built.
Please don't misunderstand me. I don't support Trump's border policies. I didn't support Obama's. Obama deported far more people than Trump. I'm simply appalled at the massive hypocrisy of the left. Is Trump an autocrat? Yes. Was Obama? Yes. Do Congresspersons like to give speeches but are often nowhere to be found when it comes to passing bills? Yes. Imperial presidency, weak Congress. The historians are already writing about it, it's been decades in the making.
Am I taking your point correctly? I agree that the US should be governed by laws, not autocrats. Congress should step up. We're constantly at war but haven't declared war since the day after Pearl Harbor. That's where it starts. Congress won't do its job so presidents rule by fiat. Signing statements, executive orders and the like.
Well it's definitely about the racism of the US against our neighbors to the south. Very long history. Wars fought. Not the thread to get into it. I think there's always been racism involved in US policy towards Mexico and central America.
So you're saying Trump is racist. And you voted for him.
To notice here the similarities is very helpful. Just as was with the War on Terror lead by Bush and then continued by Obama...with increasing the drones all around the Muslim countries with even underaged American citizens killed in the process. The fact that somehow the criticism died totally down after Obama was elected even if the actual WoT strategy of Bush was continued and GITMO stayed open was for me a moment of awakening on how deep the partisanship goes and how irrelevant the reality is to the supporters of either party.
Of course there is political leadership and then the vast bureaucracy and organization carrying on with it's own weight. But in the US, the situation is even more special. Both parties have to desparately show just how different they are from the other. In the end you are talking about a centrist party and a right-wing party.
You see, there is a symbiotic relationship with the Democratic and the Republic party have. They have absolutely no competition for power in the US. They dominate totally the political scene and share power with 4 or 8 year intervals. Even to talk about primary elections anywhere else would be totally strange. Only policy wanks follow how political parties choose their candidates. It ought to be a side event. Not so in the US. And in order to eradicate any chance of a third party surfacing, which could happen, the two parties sharing the spoils are as vitriolic and hostile to each other as they can be. And voters fall for it. Hence the toxic discord in the political discourse.
True, but one thing that women understand very well [traditional gender roles disclaimer] is that men often play out the social aspects of debate, without realizing it.
But let me disentangle this difference from both sex and gender, because I do think carving it along traditional lines is often inapt. (If you think I'm just virtue signalling, keep Nietzsche in mind)
& to do that, let me, further, set up a dichotomy that has traditionally been broken along gender lines. Content vs form, argument versus delivery. It's easier to imagine outside of a pure-language venue like the forums. So : people arguing in a bar. You can imagine an argument at a bar -for sake of argument, let's imagine these are savvy arguers, making good points and counterpoints - being recorded and transcribed. The transcription would look like two people focused on a central idea and arguing around it. What would be left out is the body language, the exchange of glances, the reflexive raising of hands, the modulations in tone. Why someone chooses to take a bathroom break here, and the other person makes a joke there.
Anyone can, theoretically, take either perspective on the conversation - transcript vs social-physical drama -this is why it's not simply a gender thing. But the interesting aspect, to my mind, is that someone within the conversation, can be in a 'transcript' state of mind, while nevertheless participating in the physical aspect. (on a forum, the 'physical' aspect cashes out more as tone, posture, choice of references, intellectual positioning, moral maneuvering)
It never hurts to imagine a conversation you're in as being depicted as a dispute between characters in a novel. You don't want to err too much on that side, because argumentation does have an independent logic of its own, but you never want to forget that you're never in pure argumentation. Especially when it comes to politics.
In terms of the worst thing that can happen on the forums: My dream is to be ban-gunned on a mild winter day, in a picturesque copse, with snow softly falling, dogs barking in the distance.
And let's start with things like how we react to people's age and appearance, when we approach each other before anything is discussed. If you have 20 something students and then people of the age of their parents, it changes how the people behave. Just as if the people are all male, all female or mixed. In the case of this Forum, if people here would physically meet to discuss philosophy, those who are professional academics would instantly be usually given more time and they likely wouldn't be as casual about the debate. The amateurs curious about Philosophy likely wouldn't start insisting that the assistant professor of mathematical logic is totally wrong about his or her field...and they are right. But here with anonymity, that can easily happen.
An anonymous discussion site is totally different.
I'll give a short anecdote about this, I remember once talking on this Forum (or likely it was the predecessor of this) about John Horgan's book the End of Science when the author, John Horgan, actually joined the discussion. As I had read the book, I did notice that new site member knew the book (naturally). I knew that Horgan was a science journalist, so the idea of a science journalist first googling what is talked about his books and then participating in a discussion about one of his book wasn't at all far fetched to me. Unfortunately the other PF member debating me didn't think that an author would drop in a conversation of his book in a measly site like PF and accused him to be a phony and 'sent him to hell', which naturally ended the discussion.
Taking this discussion back to the topic of the thread, similar divide is happening with political debate. You have the social media, the internet, where people behave one way and then there is the actual physical World where they interact quite differently. In fact I guess this question of being either a Trump supporter or not (or Trump supporters being deplorables) are those questions that Americans likely don't start a casual conversation.
Or just think yourself walking in Maine to a total stranger and asking out of the blue: "What do you think about Donald Trump?". The body language, the exchange of glances, the reflexive raising of hands, the modulations in tone…all that would be quite interesting.
Playing the old "so you're saying that ..." game. A low form of argument practiced by people who think "gotcha" is clever.
Trump often says things I wish he wouldn't say. But in fact he got rid of NAFTA and implemented USMCA (still awaiting Congressional approval) which keeps the good parts of NAFTA and fixes the bad parts. So I would say that Trump has a nuanced and productive understanding of US-Mexican trade issues.
I will add that I vote in California, so that I could vote for Hillary or for Trump or for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or Bozo the Clown and my vote would not matter. That gives me the liberty of casting protest votes in presidential elections with no downside. California goes for the Dem regardless of who I vote for.
Until it doesn't.
You see, the two ruling parties that are in symbiosis can rule only so long that people think they "waste their votes if they don't vote for one or the other".
If California were in play in a presidential election I wouldn't cast a protest vote. And I would burn in the fiery pits of hell before I'd ever vote for Hillary Clinton. It was the DNC that rigged their own process to nominate a corrupt warmonger so incompetent at politics that she managed to lose to Trump by failing to lock down the rust belt states.
I guess then people think you wear a MAGA hat. :wink:
If I didnt have a low form of argument I wouldn't have any argument at all.
But I'm the opposite of you. I've ended up liking some of the Trump-effect, but the fact that he won't take a clear stand against racism means I can't vote for him. That shit matters.
Never did, never would.
I have this explanation for my politics:
Hillary was 100% correct when she said that half of Trump's supporters are a basket of deplorables. Racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamaphobic, xenophobic. It's a fact, I totally agree. About 30% of the American electorate falls into that category.
Now what the Dems and the left have NEVER been willing to ask themselves is: Who are the half of Trump supporters who are NOT in that basket of deplorables? Who are the lifelong social liberals, lifelong registered Democrats, who can no longer support what the Democratic party and the left have become?
I put myself firmly in that category. I stand for peace. The left now supports war. I stand for free speech. The left now stands for no-platforming and spitting in the face (literally, if you caught that news last week) of anyone who dares to disagree with them. I stand opposed to the illiberal, corrupt, warmongering left and the Democratic party they've taken over.
Ask yourself: If half of Trump's supporters are deplorable, who are the other half? The Dems won't ask themselves that question because to ask the question requires looking in the mirror at what they've become.
I could go on. Just to take one demographic example, millions of African-Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 didn't bother to turn out for Hillary? Why is that? Did they suddenly turn racist? Or could it be that they know that Hillary and Bill (and Biden) were behind the punitive crime bill of the 90's that destroyed the black community? And that Hillary and Bill (and Biden) were behind the punitive bankruptcy bill of the same era? Or that Hillary called young black men "super predators who should be brought to heel."
Brought to heel. Like dogs. Hillary said that. Do you need me to provide the clip? Ok.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/08/22/trump_tweets_video_of_hillary_clinton_referring_to_blacks_as_super-predators.html
You think black people don't know those things? The votes show otherwise. Blacks who supported Obama didn't turn out for Hillary. One of the factors that cost her the election. Even law-abiding blacks who hate gangbangers will have a negative reaction to that kind of rhetoric from a privileged white woman.
So is the country really racist for electing Trump? Or did a lot of blacks reject Hillary's implicit racism? Another question the Dems won't ask themselves.
Who are all the people who would never dream of wearing a MAGA hat yet can no longer support what's become of the Democrats? That's the question to ask if you seek to lead and unify the country.
I don't agree with that claim. During the 2016 campaign he went to the NAACP meeting and asked for their votes. "What have you got to lose?" he asked. He has a way of getting at the heart of the matter. Millions of blacks and Hispanics are doing much better in Trump's economy than they did in Obama's. You think they don't know that? He doesn't have to win all the ethnic minorities. He just has to peel enough of them away from the Dems. He did that in 2916 and he'll do that again in 2020. The Dems are no longer connected to reality.
I'm cool with that.
Didn't think so at all, but looking at the present level of American politics, I guess many will put the MAGA hat on you. And soon silly season is here again!
(Well, I have to be happy that once in my life the presidential candidate I voted for got elected... and enjoys now in his second term a lot of support across the political isle.)
Quoting fishfry
It's a tragic error that the democrat party didn't do some soul searching after their ruinous election. I've always wondered who were the idiots that thought it was "now Hillary's time". The popularity of Bernie Sanders (and Trump, actually) ought to have told something was up. But old people seldom see when changes happen.
Quoting fishfry
Nobody's thinking of unifying the country. And if the two parties alienate people from the whole process, then their core supporters just become even more important.
I love how none of this explains your politics. Most teenagers today are more politically comprehensive than simply being anti-war and pro-free speech (although this would certainly explain many of your posts). You are just stomping on mud and pretending this forms a clearer image of what you stand for.
Thank you. I'm grateful for any understanding and agreement. About anything. But I have the title now. "Confessions of a non-deplorable Trump supporter." There's an essay in there around these ideas. Flesh out my idiosyncratic point of view. Get branded a racist for my troubles. Such is the state of public dialog in 2019. Not exactly what Plato had in mind.
Changing the subject, how about old She Who Must Not Be Indicted, or "She Who Etc" for short? She's running sure as the planets follow their spacetime geodesics around the sun. What do y'all liberals think about that? You cool with She Who Etc wrecking yet another election for you?
And now that you mention it: Go Tulsi!!!!!
I know the feeling. :blush:
Not sure that minorities helped him that much in 2016. I recall that only 1% of black women voted for him.
Speaking of a reality disconnect, Trump hasn’t been able to bring American manufacturing out of its recession, but this doesn’t seem to be a dealbreaker for his loyal supporters in the rust-belt. It should be.
Alot of the problems with the poor can be solved with sub blue laws and drastically reduced zoning laws. Sub blue laws through slightly complex paperwork allow the guy or girl who works 2 or 3 jobs to coordinate that she gets every 14th (or 21st and so on day off). The system isn't entirely simple but most laws aren't simple. I've met people who work 300 days in a row. To say having a 7th day off is too religious is acceptable but the whole point of the sabbath is based on the practical need for a person to have a consistent and set day off every x days off. 14 days is drastically different from 300 days. This would not impose on the tax payer. Drastically reduced zoning laws would be in accordance with a free market which is what the Libertarians (conservatives) want. Many Republicans are just globalists in disguise.
I asked her if she could attend a church to find a community to network with. She said she didnt have the extra time for that (she was working two jobs.)
Jeese. A day off would at least allow her to find a community.
Absolutely. God bless you sir! If it does any good i'll pray for that lady too.
I'm sure she would appreciate the sentiment. Her situation reveals the flaw in the Right's insistance that aid should be private.
based on what i currently know about the nature of money and currency, i'm not sure its wrong for the government to some how financially help the poor. The problem is those in society who are willing to get most violent due to the notion that the government is stealing from the tax payer, there might be other options. When i was in high school economics was taught that the more money changes hands the more money and products is produced over the long run. So basically if the government printed a little more money to provide slightly more government jobs, that would also have a slightly synergistic effect on the economy in terms of the amount goods, services and even money that is produced. Actually in my local area most people who actually have any real income are employed by the government. For the rest of us we mostly work in retail and food service.
Black an Hispanic employment under Trump is way up. I'm not providing a link because I don't think a philosophy forum should be a link/counterlink battle as if we were on Craigslist or Reddit. Google around.
Trump doesn't have to get the entire minority vote. He only has to peel off a few votes form the traditional Dem majority among Blacks and Hispanics. And please remember a point I find myself repeating, that millions of black Obama voters in 2008 and 2012 didn't bother to go to the polls for Hillary. You could look that up too.
I do object to your statement that I'm making things up. That's a negative personal characterization and it's quite false. If there's one thing I do it's read and research obsessively across a wide spectrum of news and opinion. I never knowingly post anything that's untrue, if it's a matter of fact; or at least arguable, if it's opinion.
@Maw I've never personally attacked your integrity and I'd like the same respect from you.
The bottom line is whether this is to be a political conversation on a (relatively) high toned philosophy discussion forum; or whether it's just Craigslist or Twitter with pretensions.
That's still perfectly consistent with my point. In every situation there is the seen and the unseen. We can SEE the percentage of blacks who came out to vote against him. We can NOT see the millions who simply stayed home because they couldn't pull the lever for Ms. Superpredators.
Political scientists did sift through the numbers, and it's clear that Obama's black turnout in his two elections was far higher than Hillary's in 2016.
Quoting praxis
The heartland's hurting for sure. Would not be surprised if Liz peels off some of Trump's support with her talk of economic unfairness. Even if Trump's right to squeeze China on trade (I happen to agree) there's no question that the soybean farmers are unhappy.
The truth is that the manufacturing jobs are gone for good and they're not coming back. Obama was right about that. Trump's economic populism sounds good but the tide of history's going the other way.
You stated that, "millions of blacks and Hispanics are doing much better in Trump's economy than they did in Obama's. You think they don't know that?" (my emphasis). Yet a dismal 4% of Black Americans and 19% of Hispanic Americans believe that Trump has been good for their respective communities (particularly given that Black unemployment rate was halved under Obama). So please explain to me where this substantive block of ethnic minorities are that believe Trump has been good for them. Because it seems impossible for anyone who "reads and does research obsessively", as you claim, to suggest as much, when it seems transparent to anyone keeping just a finger on political discourse that Trump has considerable issues with racial minorities (given, you know, all the racism).
Like I say I find argumentum at linkum, or argument by flinging links at each other, tedious.There are sources out there to support pretty much everything. I have in fact read several credible articles supporting the idea that Trump has African-American and Hispanic support. I'd ask you to stipulate that I'm making that statement in good faith and good will. I don't feel like going out on Google and curating the links for you, which you could just dismiss anyway as being not from approved sources, or outright lies or whatever. I'm just choosing to not even start that game.
Oh and also, you know who are the most anti-illegal-immigrant people around? The Mexican-American citizens who came here legally and established themselves. The Hispanic middle class doesn't buy the immigration crap from white liberals.
Perhaps you could be a bit more specific. What immigration crap from white liberals? Do you mean things like Daca, for instance?
On the topic of illegal immigration, Trump’s opponents often conflated illegal immigration in particular with immigration in general, and using this as a basis to accuse him (and by extension, his followers) of being anti-immigrant. This was contrary to Trump’s own statements and even his life—Trump was so anti-immigrant he married and had children with two immigrants.
But this conflation is itself anti-immigrant, because it refused to recognize the difference between those who subvert the laws of the country with those who spend the time and effort to become American. I suspect this conflation will lead to a growing resentment among immigrants.
That's a weird juxtaposition. Legal immigration to the US is not based on the comparative "time and effort" put in.
That’s a weird red herring. It takes much more time and effort to go through the legal process of immigration than to refuse to do so.
But the time and effort spend going through the process isn't the reason one is allowed to immigrate.
And, on the flipside, the reason people enter the US illegally is not to avoid paperwork.
I never said the time and effort spent going through the process is the reason one is allowed to immigrate. I was merely differentiating between those who break into the country and those who do so legally. The larger point was that to conflate legal and illegal immigration is anti-immigrant.
My original response to this was deleted, but I do want you to know this is exceptionally pitiful.
And I was merely pointing out that making this about "hard working legal immigrants" Vs "illegal immigrants" is misleading, because hard work is not what differentiates the two.
No one was making it about “hard working legal immigrants" Vs "illegal immigrants". But someone may find point relevant. Who knows?
It's tragic that I'm your only source of information about the world. I regret that I haven't the time to take on such a responsibility.
Yes and no, mostly no. The problem is that the US demand for illegal labor far (far!) exceeds the supply of legal slots available by law.
One might think ok, pass a law raising the legal immigration quotas to accommodate all the demand for farm laborers and chicken pluckers and suburban lawn cutters, nannies, and housekeepers.
But that would defeat the purpose. The entire purpose of keeping immigration illegal is so that the workers can't organize, can't complain, can't report being underpaid or abused, can't ask for any of the normal labor protections that American workers take for granted. This is the entire point of the sick, depraved, immoral system.
The fruits and veggies need to be picked now, and the laborers need the work now. Nobody can wait for the legal queue. The incentives force economically desperate migrants to sneak across the desert to work to feed their families. And the employers are only too happy to have such a supply of below-market labor that can't complain no matter what.
That is the system that's evolved over the decades. Sure, in a rational world we'd balance immigration quotas with labor demand. But then the workers wouldn't be so cheap anymore.
The hypocrisy is the entire point of the system. It's a lie to say that illegal crossers are bad people subverting the system. They're responding responding rationally to the incentives presented by a hypocritical and immoral system.
The people who came in legally and worked to establish themselves resent those who jump the line and are rewarded for it. Isn't that perfectly sensible?
I understand your belief about the Hispanic middle class, such as it is. The neighborhood I live in is middle class and predominantly Hispanic. I was just curious about the white liberal crap they’re supposedly not buying.
What does this even mean?
It means that if you get your news from MSM sources you're missing a lot.
Here's a story from yesterday that caught my eye. A UN report came out on Monday saying that the US has more children in detention than any other country. Multiple news outlets reported this along with criticism of Trump's immigration policy.
Then the UN issued a correction pointing out that the numbers were from 2015, when Barack Obama's administration had more children in detention than any other country in the world.
Did these news outlets issue a correction and then mention that oh by the way, Obama had a hellacious humanitarian crisis on the border in 2014-2015 and separated families and put kids in cages?
Of course not. These media outlets all simply retracted and memory-holed the story. [Some did make the correction but others did not].
This is a problem. The MSM is committed to a particular political point of view; and if you don't read alternative sources, you become an ignorant pawn in a larger political game.
This article's from the National Review, conservative but anti-Trump. I'd love to find a more mainstream link but there isn't one. The public must not know of Obama's caged kids lest they see the cynical hypocrisy of the Dems' immigration rhetoric.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/multiple-outlets-retract-stories-on-trump-admin-child-deportations-that-relied-on-obama-era-data/
I get my news from a wide number of sources, but thanks for your concern. I've already pointed out in this very thread that mainstream sources such as the New York Times, CNN, WaPo, etc. ran stories about Obama's immigration policies, as well as the criticisms of it that came from immigration advocacy groups. You're like a broken record on this subject, it's the only thing you've talked about in the last year.
Too bad you still haven't heard it. A while back someone screeched, "Trump put kids in cages!" as evidence that Trump is uniquely bad. It's a very common refrain from the left. They're willfully ignorant on the subject but love to morally preen. I'll keep mentioning it till they get it. I have hopes the present insanity of the left is only a temporary phase.
Today AOC voted to renew the PATRIOT act. [It was cynically buried in a larger appropriations bill]. So goes what passes for the left in this country. Didn't make the MSM, or if it did the links are hard to find. Some lefty sites with their integrity and human decency still intact reported on the matter.
https://newrepublic.com/article/155793/hell-democrats-just-extend-patriot-act
My remarks are general, not specifically aimed at you. I quoted your post because it provided a convenient hook for a post I wanted to make anyway. If anything it's aimed at whoever originally made that inane "Trump caged kids!" remark as a substitute for actual critical thought about US policy at the Mexican border.
ps -- AOC reportedly tweeted against the bill. I had read that she voted for the bill. I could not find a definitive account of her vote just now. The larger point stands regarding the state of the Democratic party.
I literally commented about it over a year ago here. And 6 months ago we had this exact same conversation here, where even then I told you we had had this conversation before and that you routinely forget and bring it up, honestly are you OK? Do you have memory problems?
Quoting fishfry
God damn, AOC, Ilhan and Tlaib voted against the bill, you are an embarrassment. Just log off and go away, please.
If you have a reference to the roll call for the Continuing Resolution I'd appreciate it. I had read that AOC voted for the bill and then that she tweeted against it. I can't find the actual roll call. I read that 10 Dems voted against it but can't find the actual vote. But as I say the larger point stands. Those who rail only against Trump are missing the larger picture of how our government actually works. The Dems supported the Patriot act since day one and never stopped.