- Horizons: Republicans are Stuck in an Argument from the 1990’s
More undocumented Mexican immigrants are returning to Mexico than are coming from Mexico – primarily because the Mexican economy is improving. - Thousands Of Ted Cruz Supporters Play A Game That Might Win Iowa | FiveThirtyEight
If you click through and check out the table, any idea why the Democrats have been putting so much more effort (at least, by the numbers) into Iowa than the Republicans? I find that a bit counter-intuitive, given how much more competitive the GOP race is. - Speaking of Iowa, I think the way the Democrats vote in the Iowa caucuses – basically, they just stand in big groups and then and try to talk people standing in other groups to walk over and stand with their group instead – is really pretty awesome.
- To Win In Iowa Or New Hampshire, It May Be Better To Poll Worse Nationally | FiveThirtyEight
I’m looking forward to the primary voting (or caucusing) actually beginning. The race becomes much more interesting once there are real numbers attached to it. - Lèse humanité: What happened when slaves and free men were shipwrecked together | The Economist
It did not end well for the slaves. But an interesting read. - Why it took so long to charge Bill Cosby: Social media and public opinion had to force hand of justice system – Salon.com
- Discharged Atlanta Fire Chief Strikes Back in Federal Lawsuit.
Grace pointed this case out to me – a Fire Chief wrote and self-published a book of right-wing Christian thought, including a couple of typical anti-gay statements (although it doesn’t appear that was the book’s focus). He gave copies to some employees – he says generally those who asked him for a copy – and the mayor. And he was fired. They’ve investigated and found no evidence of him discriminating against lgbt employees. Grace wanted to know if I think he should have been fired; my feeling is that he shouldn’t have been, but I’m less sure of that than I ordinarily am, because of his status as Fire Chief (i.e., he’s a boss more than an employee, and a public figure). - We’re not here for your inspiration – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
“Inspiration porn shames people with disabilities. It says that if we fail to be happy, to smile and to live lives that make those around us feel good, it’s because we’re not trying hard enough.” - Use of deadly force by police disappears on Richmond streets – ContraCostaTimes.com
This is a very encouraging article about what might be possible. Has this model been successfully used in other cities? - For some reason – well, for the sake of procrastination – I yammer on and on about a Spider-Man page by Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen from 1981.
- Crap apps and female email | language: a feminist guide
There’s no evidence that saying “sorry” and “I just” is harmful to women. - “Christina H Sommers liked one of your tweets” is not a sentence I ever expected to read.1
- TV shows distort which women get abortions — and why they get them – The Washington Post.
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Lying Crazypants Liars Who Lie | Lynch Industries
Scott Lynch evaluates John C Wright’s accusations against Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Spoiler: Wright is wrong. - 4 Things That Were Supposed To Happen By 2016 Because Obama Was Reelected | ThinkProgress
- Undercover Police Have Regularly Spied On Black Lives Matter Activists in New York
- How long has John Travolta been in that car?
- Herd Mentality | Quillette What Social Justice liberals and Libertarians have in common.
- Can Putting Your Baby to Bed Be a Crime? – The Daily Beast
A mother was arrested after her baby, who had been put to sleep belly-down, died. - The Year of the Imaginary College Student – The New Yorker
“The alarm about offense-seeking college students may say more about the critics of political correctness than it does about the actual state of affairs.” - The Value of the Oberlin Food Protests: Dining-hall food might not be the most pressing injustice in the world—but students need space to experiment with activism.
I don’t think that students have changed. I do think that the tendency of silly things students say or do to be magnified all over the world on social media is a change, though. If I were a student editor of a student newspaper, I might take the newspaper offline, or make it accessible only to computers on the campus network. - 25 Graphic Novels Written By Women, A Guide For Beginners | Bustle.
This list includes some comics I love, some that didn’t do much for me, and of course some I haven’t read yet. - Lost Soles – The Awl She stepped on hot coals and didn’t tell anybody.
- Time to Party Like It’s 1998. Republicans are dusting off the “Hillary is married to Bill, therefore she’s no feminist” arguments.
- The Key To The GOP Race: The Diploma Divide | FiveThirtyEight
If you’re a Republican, who you say you’ll vote for is strongly associated with if you went to college. The folks without college degrees are supporting Trump.Buuuu-bah… Bu-bu-bu BAAAH bu!
- Hasbro has been bizarrely reluctant to include Rey, the star of the movie, in their Star Wars merchandise.
- The “Star Wars” fandom menace: The glaring emotional blind spots that power “The Force Awakens” – Salon.com
For the record, I really enjoyed TFA, but I also enjoyed this article. - On the Millennium Falcon, and the issue of Parsecs…
“Parsecs” is used correctly, darn it! - Willrow Hood is now my favorite character in the Star Wars universe.
- The 11 Sci-Fi Films That Defined 2015 | Motherboard
“Star Wars” is on the list, but not in the number one slot.
- It was a tweet wishing Cathy Young a Happy New Year. [↩]
Huh. I came over here to leave a link, only to find a brand shiny new open thread! Guess I’m psychic.
Anyway, the iTunes Terms and Conditions, done as a comic with each page in a different style.
Your Star Wars warning appears to come a bullet point too early, unless there’s something I don’t know about the Clintons. Relatedly, yes, there’s a retconned explanation for the parsecs thing, but it’s clearly a retcon for an original mistake. :)
I caucused in Iowa in 2004 (for Howard Dean). The process is just as Amp describes, and pretty cool, though it offers opportunities for gaming the system, as happened at mine.
[Star Wars stuff] On the excuse that Hasbro didn’t want to spoil the plot by having Rey included: they’re selling a Millennium Falcon toy that comes with action figures for several of the new characters. That’s far more of a spoiler than “Rey is a character in this movie.” And, Rey is not one of the characters who comes with the Falcon, even though she’s the one who pilots it.
My favorite SF film of 2015 is not on that list. Not much of a surprise there.
I can’t wait to hear more about the evil, abusive Bill Clinton. That should make my election year much more entertaining…
I just cannot summon up any interest in Star Wars. I saw Episode 1 – The Phantom Clone Siths the Sith and thought that The Wacky Races did it much better. I also said to myself, “Not another cent,” and that’s where I’ve been ever since. I gather from the reviews I’ve seen that it’s not a thing I’d enjoy for much the same reason Episode 1 – The Attack of the Menacing Revenge rubbed me the wrong way.
What did you dislike about Episode 1? The stuff that I hated about it was pretty much absent from Episode 7.
That’s going back a long way, Ruchama, but from what I remember despising about it (even with the best audience I can imagine watching it with):
The blatant ripoff of The Wacky Races still sticks in my craw.
The complete lack of anything compelling, interesting or promising in the story.
Jar Jar (no shit? no shit.)
The seemingly endless pandering to the audience was what really killed it for me, though. Walking out of that theater, I felt like I needed a shower. And you’re speaking to someone who sat all the way through Bolero.
The pandering to the audience, I can see. But episode 1 felt to me like it was pandering to six-year-old boys. This one at least felt like it was pandering to an audience that I was part of.
One thing I’ve seen pointed out in a bunch of discussions of Star Wars, and that I really liked, was that there’s no one in the movie who tells Rey that she can’t do anything because she’s a girl. That’s been a pretty common plot device — that everyone says, “Girls can’t do that,” but then there’s one special girl who can, and her overcoming “Girls can’t do that” is a major part of the story. There were a lot of people in this movie who thought that Rey couldn’t do stuff because she’s just a poor kid from a nowhere planet, but those people would have said the exact same thing about Luke. In a world that includes General Leia, the “girls can’t fight” argument is over and done with.
@Ruchama:
It was. It also wasn’t the shapeless, ill-paced, badly directed mess that the prequel movies were. The characters were appealing. The pace was pretty zippy. The plot mostly worked. It wasn’t perfect, but the original trilogy wasn’t, either, and IMO most of the problems it had were shared with one or more of the original movies.
I disliked The Force Awakens simply because the plot moved too fast overall, and even more so once they left Jakku. The blatent ripping off of the previous movies didn’t help, but didn’t sink it for me either (I know, I know, the previous ones weren’t original either…).
There were some huge events going on in this movie but the keep on moving, moving, moving and never slowing down thing kept their impact from actually being felt. You get a few reaction shots from some characters but that was it. I thought the original Star Wars didn’t do all that well with showing the results of events that should have traumatized the characters, but there are references after the fact to an entire planet being destroyed (After we heard about Alderaan, we feared the worst/It was as if a million voices cried out in terror, etc.) When characters die, we see their bodies. We see the results of Han being tortured in Empire (however briefly and superficially) and Chewie being obviously upset over it. When Obi-Wan dies, Leia is later shown comforting Luke over it on the Falcon.
When a main character dies in The Force Awakens, it’s never referenced again (unless I missed it). There are a few quick reaction shots, but that’s it. When a planet is destroyed, there’s no other reference to it (other than a few characters brief reactions to it. These events do move the plot forward, but they don’t do much beyond that and they’re not really framed in such a way to leave much of an emotional impact. Seriously, the original trilogy set the bar pretty low for this kind of thing. To not even make it to that level… In other words, the Salon article is absolutely right.
The original trilogy and the prequels were in my opinion, much, much better than The Force Awakens. But I seem to be alone in thinking this.
-Jeremy
Here are some illuminating theories on the rise of Donald Trump —
David Frum: The Great Republican Revolt.
Nobody speaks for the needs of white Americans without college degrees – except perhaps Trump. The Republican establishment has long ignored their concerns, and they’re pissed.
Norm Ornstein: Sources of Trumpism.
1. Newt Gingrich – created the model of unifying the party in an effort to delegitimize a president.
2. Government pay raises – galvanized a sense of public grievance, launching Limbaugh
3. Fox News – perfected pursuing ratings through partisanship
4. Other cable news shows – pursued ratings through sensationalism
5. The Internet – permitted paranoid people to find each other and reinforce each other’s views
6. The Wall Street Bailout – fed populist resentment
7. New House Leaders – applied Gingrich strategy to Obama
8. Citizens United – fed populist resentment
9. Racism – fed birthers, complicated immigration, facilitated “othering”
Repeatedly, Republicans whip up populist resentment to reject Democrats – and succeed! – only to learn that they can’t control that resentment they’ve unleashed.
Re: causes of trumpism, I’d add:
10. The Hastert Rule, empowering the fringe elements within the GOP by making pandering to them the only way to move legislation through Congress. That helped to shift the debate from what the country wants to what a couple dozen radicals want.
11. GIS, which gets better and better at making redistricting more effective at its goal of creating safe seats for whomever held power during the most recent census.
12. Obama. Usually, Presidents at least try to be folksy, but the “bitter clingers” line was terrible signaling for them (though great signaling for me). When you get the impression that the guy at the top doesn’t like your kind, there’s little reason to believe that anything he says will benefit you actually will.
Also, in case you didn’t notice, he’s black. To borrow some phrasing, whites like to “center white bodies.” So a bit of #9 in there too.
There are currently 234 Republicans in the house. So to block legislation requires 118 “radicals,” which is more than just a couple of dozen. And I think if you’re going to blame the Hastert Rule, then you also need to blame the Tea Party, for putting so many people in Congress who think that its worse to pass no legislation at all than to pass a compromise.
Obama’s “bitterly clinging” line was indeed tin-eared. It was also said in April 2008, I think? It might be time to stop, forgive me, bitterly clinging to it.
Insert “why can’t we have both?” graphic here.
In another world, there would be room for the least right-wing Republicans to find common cause with Dems on any number of things. Even more so a few years ago before most of them got primaried out..
I mean, I’m not among the ones clinging to it. But it created a frame, early enough in Obama’s time as a national politician, to have a lot of people view everything he says through that lens. When Obama talks about alleviating economic inequality, the unemployed Appalachian miner doesn’t think the President is talking about him and that’s part of the reason why.
Amp:
“… for putting so many people in Congress who think that its worse to pass no legislation at all than to pass a compromise.”
Actually, I think that what you’re seeing is that there are people in Congress who think it’s BETTER to pass no legislation at all than to pass a compromise. And while that may be a bad thing for a given piece of legislation, it doesn’t seem to me to be automatically a bad thing. A compromise may well be worse than no legislation at all.
nobody.really: With reference to Norm Ormstein, I find it interesting that he thinks that only Fox News engages in partisanship, while other cable news operations are engaged in apparently non-partisan sensationalizing. Do you agree that Fox News is partisan but MSNBC, CNN, etc. are non-partisan?
Here’s why I think Donald Trump has been so successful. People who voted for the GOP in the last election expected them to send various kinds of bills to President Obama (e.g., fully funding the objectives of the 2006 Secure Fence Act) – even if he would just veto them – and to block various provisions (such as the quadrupling of H-2B visas in the last spending bill) that they disfavored.
Little of which they see happening. Go on conservative blogs and you’ll find them absolutely pillorying the GOP Congressional leadership. The voters voted for conservative policies. They didn’t get them. So they figure that voting for career politicians, especially those who are viewed as “collegial” by the opposition, as a losing game – they just tell you one thing to get elected and then do something else. The impression of Trump is that he won’t do that – that he means what he says.
Further, the voters figure that the politicians do that because they think they’re smarter than the voters and that they deserve to have their ideas put into policy instead of those of the voters – that once elected they act to rule, not to represent. People find this quite condescending. They resent being treated as if they need someone else to tell them what’s best for them whether they like it or not. This is what Trump is tapping into. And while Trump has one hell of an ego, a) God knows he doesn’t try to hide it, so people don’t think he’s trying to deceive them, and b) he’s made a $h!tload of money and hasn’t gone to jail, so they figure he DOES have some brains. There’s been a lot of negative press about Trump, but “fraud” (from a business viewpoint) is not an accusation that’s much made.
And while I’m on the subject of condescension – being accused of racism because they want the borders secured makes them quite angry. It is pointed out that if a government has any legitimate responsibilities at all, securing the borders is one of them. Citing racism as a criticism of anger at the government’s lack of a strong effort to do so – and a lack of a strong effort to do so is the perception, argue to the contrary as you will – makes people think that the Administration is using that as a smoke screen to hide their REAL reason for failing to do so. That suspicion fuels a lot of anger against the current Administration – it shows up again where Pres. Obama cited Newtown, et. al. to support his executive action to require more background checks in firearm purchases when in fact such a thing would have had no effect on Newtown, et. al.
It’s interesting. I’m not a fan of Donald Trump. I’m definitely hoping that someone else becomes President (although certainly not Sect’y Clinton or Sen. Sanders). But I’ve become very interested in looking at the real reasons why he’s so popular, without resorting to facile and condescending claims such as ignorance and racism that attempt to divert people from looking at the real reasons. Because I’m starting to think that if people don’t take the real reasons into account this guy could become President.
“When Obama talks about alleviating economic inequality, the unemployed Appalachian miner doesn’t think the President is talking about him and that’s part of the reason why.”
When President Obama talks about anything at all, a large part of the population aligns along the thought process of “He’s lying. How do I know? His lips are moving.” A whole lot of people think that Pres. Obama has a massive ego (not surprising in someone who thinks they can be President, mind you), thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, and is perfectly willing to hide both of those and lie through his teeth in order to put into place policies that he knows are the best thing for you but that you’re too stupid/racist/biased/sexist/partisan to understand. Sect’y Clinton is looked at the same way.
A really interesting piece by a military strategist on the Trump campaign.
The GOP Congress was voted in to stop Obama policies that their base hated, such as refusing to enforce immigration laws, suing states that tried to enforce them, giving work permits to people who were not legally entitled to them, (what was perceived as) automatically taking the side of any black person killed by police regardless of the circumstances (e.g. little or no consideration of whether the policeman was acting in legitimate self-defense), working to put Section 8 housing in the suburbs, pushing banks to ease lending standards to allow more minorities to get loans (which was perceived as making another 2007-2009-style housing crisis more likely), and a general trend toward an imperial presidency with executive orders on the environment and potentially on things such as gun control (that he would do executive orders like the one he recently announced was already on the radar as soon as the 2013 gun control bill failed).
Instead, after they won a tremendous victory and then Obama declared a sweeping executive order on immigration, the party leadership insisted on passing a long-term budget bill that gave up most of their leverage toward stopping his order. The little bit of leverage they saved they eventually abandoned after the Democrats did not immediately cave.
To add insult to injury, they insisted that they could not put any spanners in the works because the American people had elected them to “show they could govern” (i.e. to avoid upsetting the applecart, by caving to Obama if necessary). This was used as a reason to avoid using the budget process to get any concessions from Obama, and even to avoid doing minor things like refusing to confirm appointments to get him to the table (Lindsey Graham stated that Obama’s executive orders made a mess of things, but he wouldn’t block any nominations because that would make more of a mess). Some Senators would quoted explicitly as saying that they should just accept Obama’s executive orders on immigration and move on to the next issue (which most of the voters heard as “move on to the important business of paying off our donors”).
However, when the Democrats succeeded in blocking trade promotion authority for Obama (something you would think Republicans would oppose, as it gives more power to a President they supposedly do not trust), McConnell and Boehner moved Hell and high water to get it passed, despite the fact that the base absolutely hated TPA, as well as the TPP and other agreements that TPA would allow to get passed. I heard a right-wing radio host specifically say that that day he wished that there were more Democrats in the House. Then they bragged about it and suggested that this was an accomplishment that Congressmen brag about to their constituencies.
Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner (prior to Trump) was on record saying that he thought Americans were inferior to Mexicans. And the guy in second was one of the architects of an immigration bill that, to the base, represented payoffs to every special interest and a big middle finger to the American people.
Since then, Boehner was ousted and Ryan put in – and Ryan immediately takes away any leverage against Obama by passing an omnibus instead of a short-term continuing resolution. This omnibus contains provisions increasing the number of H2B unskilled worker visas – something the Republicans deliberately put in there, not something Obama proposed and they decided not to fight. Ryan’s attitude, as RonF says, seemed to be “we’re doing what you hate for your own good, so you should thank us for it.”
The Republican base is angry, because their concerns are not being acted on. The theory that the problem is too much partisanship against Obama – that if the GOP had responded more moderately to Obama in 2009-2014 that the base would be satisfied with the present situation is condescending in the extreme. Trump is not speaking to made-up fears, but to real issues that neither party seems willing to address.
Another point to note is that however bigoted Trump’s idea of banning Muslim entry into the U.S. is, he at least seems to grasp that the figuring out how to protect the homeland is the priority, rather than being the secondary concern (the primary concerng being conquering the Middle East, which will stop domestic terror – somehow).
Do these people all trust Trump or think that he can do everything he says? Many or most probably do not – but they don’t see any better alternatives.
And besides, if all it accomplishes is giving us the opportunity to watch Karl Rove and John Sununu have a nervous breakdown on TV, the Trump campaign was worth it.
[Star Wars]
Jeremy Redlien:
I share your criticism of The Force Awakens, although I wouldn’t say it’s worse than the prequels. I think it was a fun movie in that it captured the wacky space adventure vibe, but the pacing was certainly weird towards the end. It seemed too quick to leave behind the drama of the just resolved climax and rush into the teaser for the next movie. In fact the whole movie seemed to focus on something that turned out to be a longer running plot, and the main story-arch/climax of this movie seemed to be little more than a fan service after-thought. The whole Rey being better at everything than everyone else didn’t help either.
More specifically, I think it’s problems are almost the opposite of the Phantom Menace. This time I think there was a significant lack of exposition about the factions and why we should care about the rebels/republic/whatever. A New Hope starts with an attack on a senator on an unarmed diplomatic mission which at least gives a basic sense of one side being diplomatic/democratic and the other being militaristic/tyrannical. Yet in The Force Awakens we seem to learn nothing other than they exist and that Leia remains involved. It seems to rely entirely on pre-established lore, yet nothing is explained about why the same fight that was going on 30 years ago is still going on. It was as if the events of the original trilogy meant nothing.
What struck me most was towards then end, after a loss was suffered, two of the characters from the originals walk straight past each other, while one of those characters then goes on to give an emotional embrace to one of the new characters they’d never met. I still can’t make sense of that one.
That seems like a fairly common trope in action movies, though. Indiana Jones is better than everyone at everything; so is James Bond; so is Tony Stark; so is Axel Foley; so is Neo; so is Lara Croft; so is John McClane. In the Star Wars movies particularly, Luke is a farmboy who flies fighter spaceships better than everyone from the first moment he sits in one. In Episode 1 Annikan builds robots and flies better than everyone, and that was annoying, because he was a child – but it shows a pattern in this universe that people strong in the Force are incredibly gifted at doing such things.
Fairly early in TFA, we see one side have an entire village executed, which I think gives a good sense of which side is the bad guys. There are stories where I enjoy having a lot of detailed backstory, but I don’t think that’s a strength for Star Wars movies.
I didn’t think TFA was the Greatest Movie Ever Made, but I enjoyed it. On that most basic level – was it fun to watch? – it was enormously better than any of the prequels. It didn’t have any sequences shot like they were designed to be a future video game; and they didn’t have any characters who looked like they were primarily designed for the little kid toy market (except for the rolling android, I guess, but that design actually worked well).
Another thing I enjoyed was the (relative to the other SW films) humanization of the storm troopers.
And, SJ liberal that I am, I enjoyed seeing a SW movie with a female protagonist and a black co-protagonist and a latino who is clearly being set up to be a major character. Also, I know a bunch of people whose young daughters left the movie talking nonstop about how amazing Rae was.
OTOH, I wish the movie hadn’t been so free with NPC deaths – planets being wiped out should be a bigger deal. (A New Hope had this problem too). And I agree, that moment at the end where the characters who have known each other for decades walk past without interacting was weird.
@14:
I don’t read Ornstein to say that only Fox was partisan. I read him to say that Fox perfected the strategy of building ratings through a partisan appeal. Other media now attempt to emulate this strategy of turning pandering into ratings, but with less success.
Here’s the thing about the media and political folks who are continuously trying to capitalize on outrageous things that Donald Trump says:
Who’s outraged?
Lots of people are NOT outraged. And they see the commentary coming from the MSM and think “That’s not outrageous. These people are just taking a partisan position trying to blow up something he said into a big deal to try to discredit him.” Which explains why Trump keeps surprising the pundits, media folk and politicians and political consultants who expected his various faux pas to scuttle his campaign. For a lot of people, the attacks on what he says don’t discredit him. They discredit his attackers, who are increasingly seen as a self-nominated elite that are trying to tell the rest of the country how it should live.
Again – who’s outraged? For example – what percentage of the American population would be outraged if whoever becomes President in January of 2017 signed an executive order blocking immigration from every ME country except Israel as soon as he or she was sworn in?
RonF: Overall, most Americans (61%) say Muslims should not be subject to additional scrutiny solely because of their religion.
There is no silent majority. Y’all are very, very loud, and not a majority.
Anyone who looks back on our refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, and our own Japanese internment camps with shame.
Yes, that’s the problem.
For me, “outrage” evokes images of villagers with pitchforks. That is, I associate it with populism, not elitism. The elite don’t feel outrage; they feel “righteous indignation.”
Trump says, “The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” This filled many elites with righteous indignation. I suspect it also outraged many people of Mexican dissent. But the statement did not target most of the masses with pitchforks.
So if you use “outrage” to refer to the reactions of white men without college educations, then no, perhaps the remarks did not provoke outrage. If you broaden the application of the term, I expect you’d find outrage.
If it makes me judgmental and elitist to say that falsely accusing people of being terrorists and/or traitors (e.g., the completely fictitious celebrations in New Jersey of 9/11), is wrong, and to point out that it’s resulted in a massive uptick of arsons, death threats, and harassment, then I will wear that badge proudly.
If it makes me judgmental and elitist to point out that a religious test for refugees fleeing a war zone is heartless, particularly when we have homegrown Christianist terrorism at abortion providers, so it’s not as if Christianity and terrorism are two separate circles on the Venn diagram, then I’m okay with that.
Exactly.
It doesn’t make you elitist. It puts you squarely in the majority.
There’s this weird idea in US politics that there’s a vast, silent mass of right-wing, bigoted, lower class white people just waiting in the wings, and that people who are not that are “elitist” or whatever. It’s a holdover from the 1980 election and the Reagan Democrats. But that hasn’t been true in the US for over 20 years.
The silent majority of the US — the bulk of the people whose voices aren’t heard in our politics — are by and large poor and discouraged leftists, and have been for years. When you think about it, this makes sense: the Democrats are the party that has a huge edge in registration but needs to run up voter participation in order to win. Obviously, the party who needs to push participation is, in fact, the silent majority.
Now, there is definitely a group of Republicans — not fiscally conservative, but aggrieved racist bigots — who are wildly underrepresented in national politics. I don’t think that they’re a majority of Republicans but there’s apparently a lot of them. Trump speaks directly to these people, which is part of why he’s so confounding to the party. They can crow about how “he’s not a real conservative” all they want — that’s a selling point for his audience. They’ve never been interested in right-wing politics for the tax cuts and unfettered corporate malfeasance. They’re there for the racism, which these other things are so often a dog whistle for. Since Trump is openly racist, he doesn’t need to dog whistle, so he can talk about taxing the rich or protecting social security and that helps him in the polls. It’s really extraordinary.
Also scary. Welfare state + racism is a potent political combination.
Thanks for the Herd Mentality link. I’m working on assimilating the idea that I’m close to being a minority of one– I’m ambivalent about Social Justice because I agree with some of their points about prejudice while seeing it as basically a system of emotional abuse while at the same time detesting most conservatives because they’re so blatant about loving to punish people– and this doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.
@14
I subscribe to the view that racism is the norm, not the exception – kinda like eating junk food. If you raise my consciousness without provoking my defenses, I can better control my behavior. But when I’m stressed or distracted, I’ll default to my latent tendencies.
White American males without a college education used to enjoy more status than they do now. After all, they defeated Hitler, built the highways and skyscrapers, organized the mighty unions, and starred in The Honeymooners. (That would be The Flintstones to you Babyboomers.) And given that most of the industrialized nations of the world lay in rubble, why shouldn’t the US workforce enjoy its day in the sun?
But Honeymooners went off the air in 1956 (and the original Flintstones followed a decade later). The industrialized nations of the world re-industrialized, creating competition for US firms. And automation, globalization, and women’s liberation created competition for those white male workers. Unions crumbled. And thanks to the GI Bill and other innovations, growing percentages of people got college degrees – but this only added competitive stress for those who did not.
This is the context from which the white male without a college degree sees the world. Try as he may, he finds he cannot replicate the social status that his father had. So his dad looks down on him. His buddy who went to college on the GI Bill looks down on him. The girls he went to high school with now have careers of their own. He puts on weight; he suffers from stress-related illness. He withdraws from church and other social groups; he still bowls, but now he’s bowling alone. He may take comfort in newly-plentiful addictive drugs – especially meth – and newly plentiful handguns.
I don’t know that this individual is any more likely to be racist/sexist than anyone else, but he finds himself more stressed than many other segments of society. I also subscribe to the view that when I regard myself as a victim, I grow less concerned with other people’s victimization. Given this context, what behavior should we expect?
Context drives attitudes/behavior. Where you sit determines where you stand.
@27:
Recall the dynamics of the last economic collapse – in 1930. The US population was desperate. Into that context rose a man who told us that the only thing we had to fear was … fear itself. Roosevelt floundered and did a lot of counterproductive stuff, but he kept the nation from turning on itself (mostly).
Many of the same dynamics existed in Germany, too. Along came a man who told the desperate people that the only thing they had to fear was … THOSE DAMN JEWS! As a national socialist, Hitler offered a mix of welfare and racism. And the desperate German people – rejected him. Repeatedly. If the Germans had any special inclination to discrimination, it took them a while to find it. But over time, as circumstances grew more desperate, they did. And you know the rest.
In sum, I don’t see any advantage in blaming people for circumstances they did little to create. But for the grace of God, I might be cheering for Trump’s demagoguery, too. But we don’t have to blame people to recognize the dangerous dynamics we face.
I don’t mean to suggest that white males without college degrees face worse circumstances than all other groups. I mean that a) they face a large disparity between their circumstances and their expectations and b) they’re relatively numerous.
I advocate compassion for this demographic. And I advocate building public policy based in part on compassion. But compassion alone would not likely drive me to prioritize the concerns of white males without college degrees over all other concerns.
Rather, I advocate pandering to this demographic due to my SHEER TERROR about the consequences of not doing so.
I don’t think most Americans are so desperate as to buy what Trump is selling at present. And if not, then perhaps the best option is steady as she goes: Let the aging white working class stew in their frustrations as they die out. Yeah, we’ll have occasional bouts of shooters venting their rage, but this can hardly be avoided at this point.
But are we cutting things too close? If Hillary runs against Trump just as the economy tanks, or a terrorist attack occurs, or a new epidemic appears – or some combination – what then? If a little more pandering would buy a little more security, maybe it’s worth it.
That said, I honestly don’t know what pandering will help. I like to think that social welfare programs will help – and I expect that they help some – but they don’t restore people’s lost status. So should we distract people with Bread & Circuses? Morality plays (a/k/a wars)? Reality TV shows that give each individual 15 minutes of fame? What?
Let’s not forget about Roosevelt’s ethnic cleansing policies, please. Or his internment camps.
It’s not all “Trump supporters are racist because they want to build a wall on the border!” I’m a little surprised that more people aren’t outraged when Trump attacks fellow Republicans. Especially when he disparaged John McCain for having been captured. I think it’s pretty sad that Trump supporters didn’t seem to care about that. Or the fact that he thinks Vladimir Putin is a great guy and killing journalists isn’t really a big deal because, hey, the US has killed a lot of people, too, and Vladimir Putin said I was brilliant so obviously he’s a good guy, but that Megyn Kelly, she didn’t just ask me softball questions so she’s terrible. I wonder what those people would think if journalists/show hosts who criticized Obama started disappearing.
Accepting Jewish refugees is applying a religious test, those who opposed religious tests were the ones who refused to accept them. Similarly, those persecuted for being Copts, Yazidis, Druze, etc should get preference to Muslims who are not being persecuted for their religion.
More examples of Trump’s character flaws, from an appearance in Bernie Sanders’ home state:
Everything is about Trump and people disrespecting him (it couldn’t be that the Flynn didn’t want them issuing bulky campaign stuff that half the people would leave behind and they’d have to pick up and dispose of later) and also the rules don’t apply to him:
Extreme pettiness (and also gross exaggeration of how cold it is):
Ampersand:
Yeah, but both Luke and Anikan had significant mentoring relationships (Obi-wan/Yoda & Qui-Gon/Obi-wan) that helped them grow and develop as characters. They start out as young/impetuous/ignorant/arrogant/etc. Rey, despite being young and alone, seems to be a very mature, knowledgeable and self-sufficient character right from the get go (there is one moment of ‘weakness’, but that experience would likely freak out most people).
The ‘bad’ guys are well defined, but the ‘good’ guys aren’t. Leia was from Alderaan which helped make that loss significant to the story and characters, however we learn nothing about the new republic other than it existed, and then it didn’t. The loss seemed more like a statistic than a tragedy.
Sure it was fun. I’m not sure I enjoyed it as much as the prequels though. That’s more because I don’t dislike the prequels as much as other people seem to do, than because I thought the new movie was bad. It could also be because I’m older, more cynical and more aware of movie tropes.
Did they actually take that man’s coat, at the Trump rally? I don’t know about other people, but I’ve only got one winter coat, and if you have to be outside much in the winter you kind of need one of those, even with this weird winter we’re having. At least you do in New England.
Regarding “The Force Awakens”: It bothered me that being brought up as a soldier didn’t make Finn’s behavior more unusual. He was bizarrely normal. You would think that sort of childhood would have more of an effect.
These are the results from someone’s survey of self-identified feminists on
TumblrReddit. Obviously these are self-selected respondents, andTumblrReddit feminists probably aren’t a representative sample of all feminists; but I still thought it was interesting.Two horrifying stories from Germany (CW for rape and child abuse):
Let’s not shy away from asking hard questions about the Cologne attacks | Gaby Hinsliff | Opinion | The Guardian
Over 200 Members of German Choir Were Abused, Investigator Says – The New York Times
And edited to add: Where the racist feminists at?, about the accusation that feminists are ignoring the Cologne attacks.
Did they actually take that man’s coat, at the Trump rally?
I don’t know–AFAIK there hasn’t been any follow-up with the people whose coats were maybe taken. If security was employed by Trump then maybe; if employed by a third party I expect not.
When looking for more info on the coat thing I found this:
[There was chatter on Facebook from non-Trump supporters about obtaining tickets and either not showing up or walking out shortly after the event began, so it’s hard to know how many of the 20,000 were Trump supporters or potential supporters interested in hearing him speak.]
Just pitched a cartoon to a well-known SJ website regarding why feminists shouldn’t use the word “neckbeard.” The editor (who is smart and very plugged in to online SJ causes) was positively inclined towards the cartoon, but one hitch: She had never heard of the term “neckbeard.”
Which goes to show how, even when you restrict yourself to a really narrow thing such as “online SJ media which is aimed mostly at young feminists,” there are HUGE differences of experience depending on what “neighborhoods” of the internet people hang out in.
Comment I just posted on Tumblr, related to Trump’s boneheaded 20,000 free tickets stunt, and also to a petition in some town asking a venue Trump has rented to cancel Trump’s appearance:
It’s a bit grating that Trump (or politicians in general – although I doubt any other major politician would pull such an asinine stunt) gets away with behavior that ordinary folks can’t get away with. It seems unfair. But in this case, the Chief probably made the right call – had he canceled the event, Trump and his supporters would have screamed “censorship” on Fox for weeks.
My feeling is that Trump has a free speech right to speak in any willing venue (if he abides by safety codes); venues have a free speech right to choose to host or – crucially- not to host Trump; and everyone else has a free speech right to sign a petition trying to persuade a venue to not host Trump.
Personally, I wouldn’t sign that petition. I have a personal preference for political candidates to be able to find venues to speak at, and I wish more people shared my preference. I think a healthier political discourse would include much less trying to shut the opposition up. It’s part and parcel of a discourse in which people on all sides routinely demonize opposition.
There are cases in which I think trying to get a speaker disinvited can be legitimate – for instance, a college commencement. But trying to stop someone from speaking just because one dislikes his politics is disturbing; it’s double disturbing in a case like this, where the speaker is a politician supported by (at a guesstimate) 10% of Americans. It implies that 10% of Americans are being written off as hopeless dead ends whose views and leaders don’t even deserve an airing.
OTOH, it’s also a purely symbolic issue. Trump currently has more access to the public square than anyone in the country with the sole exception of Barack Obama; it makes no pragmatic difference whether or not he can speak at one particular venue, because he doesn’t need those venues to reach his supporters or get his message out. So, symbolic. But I still don’t like it.
@Ampersand: Interestingly, I first heard “neckbeard” from someone I knew offline, a hipster-ish geeky guy.
closetpuritan, @38: I think what we need to see is Phish give away 20,000 tickets, have a concert and then have Trump come out and speak to the crowd.
@40, Amp: I find my self in agreement with this post. I think this is worth some comment:
There’s a meme that you’ll see on conservative sites purporting to describe how the left deals with the right on college campuses and other areas when they want to debate the left or question leftist views: “Shut up, they explained”. And what you say up there is exactly the explanation of where this comes from.
@23, Kate
It was shameful for us (and Canada and Cuba) to discriminate against people who were being persecuted because of their religion. And that’s likely why the current State Department rules list religious persecution as a humanitarian reason for permitting people otherwise banned from entering the U.S. to actually enter. A rule that permitted President Carter to ban immigration from Iran but permit some Iranians to enter the U.S. back in his Administration, and would permit President Trump (gah …) to effectively exclude Muslims from the Middle East from the U.S. while permitting Jews and Christians to enter.
@25, Ben
Yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Would they be outraged? And would they find it an issue they just couldn’t get around when they decide who to vote for?
Who is this “y’all” you’re referring to?
@36, Amp:
On that survey, for questions 3 – 6, what do you think these Tumblr feminists considered a “man” and a “woman” to be? I know there’s differences of opinions in the feminist circles on that.
@37, Amp:
Has the Rotherham sexual exploitation scandal ever been discussed here?
Overall:
It appears that the consensus here is that Trump’s supporters are basically a bunch of white racists, and that a strong desire to enforce our immigration laws, through building a wall, is essentially racist. Interesting. I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. Frankly, this is exactly what I was talking about when I said that a lot of people are motivated by the perception that the left is condescending and wishes to shut people up by telling people a) what they do think (regardless of whatever explanation they themselves may offer) and b) what they should think – in this case by accusing them of racism instead of actually addressing the issues with them.
I share the frustration when people tell me what I think, regardless of what I actually say, simply as a means of dismissing what I have to say. In this vein….
How do you come by this consensus view about what people here think of Trump supporters? For example, who here has said anything about building a wall? All I find is —
– @ 14, you mention the 2006 Secure Fence Act, and
– @31, closetpuritan says: “It’s not all ‘Trump supporters are racist because they want to build a wall on the border!’”
Indeed, the only discussion of immigrations laws I find, other than from you, is
– @10, when I summarize Orenstein’s article, and
– @17, when MJJ offers what I perceive to be a sympathetic analysis of the Republican rank-and-file’s frustration with the Republican establishment (echoing the themes of the David Frum article).
So you and I may agree that someone in this discussion has pre-conceived notions about what other people think, and has engaged in the practice of telling them what they think rather than actually listening to what they’ve said. But I suspect we might disagree about who that person is.
I readily concede, I think racism influences Trump supporters; I think racism influences pretty nigh everybody. As I said @ 29, “I subscribe to the view that racism is the norm, not the exception….” But I sense this is a minority view on both the Right and the Left.
Finally, of what relevance is it that anyone would find a statement “condescending”? Does that mean the statement is false or unsupported? And if not, they why should I care? Sure, for purposes of propaganda, I know I want to avoid sounding condescending, and I may want to detract from an opponent’s argument by calling it condescending. But for purposes of this web page, I’m more concerned with an idea’s merits than with whether people would find the idea appealing. If you’re looking for nice-sounding political pabulum, I expect you can find better sources than here.
They were. The first actual feminist he links is on the 7th. This broke on the right on the 3rd, before it hit the mainstream media (if Breitbart hadn’t picked it up on the 4th it would have been covered up and not have even made the headlines). The right have been hoping there would be some sort of feminist outrage, but literally nothing happened. It’s incredible, don’t think there’s been any real coverage on feminist blogs to this day.
And it’s still being covered up btw. There were mass sex attacks across Europe, not just Cologne. Even now we have feminists doing their best to minimise the attacks and denialism about the response of the authorities. Myers is only spinning that this is the best response to sex crime by the authorities ever and there’s nothing to worry about just because it’s convenient for him, and you’re lapping it up because it panders to your prejudices. It’s amazing how people who are obsessed with inept responses to sex crime have just switched off their brains in this case.
ISIL is targeting Muslims who don’t follow their particular brand of Islam. Those Muslims are also being persecuted for their religious beliefs and should be included as eligible refugees, just as I’d include Christians who were being persecuted by the Nazis, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists.
On the one hand, I’m with you on the SJ definition of racism (which I don’t think is a minority view on the Left). On the other, I think most Trump supporters also fit the old fashion, N-word using sort of definition of racism. For example, these Trump supporters who kicked out a Muslim woman silently standing at a Trump rally in a Hijab and a t-shirt reading “Salam I come in peace.” Trump supporters have much more potential for violence than your garden variety “privledge + power” racist.
I share the frustration when people tell me what I think, regardless of what I actually say, simply as a means of dismissing what I have to say.
Ditto. That quote from me that nobody.really mentioned was about how Trump had said stuff that was unrelated to either race or immigration but still fell into the category of the mainstream media expecting people to be outraged about it [e.g. comments on McCain], but no outrage. And then I went on a bit of a rant about Trump’s non-racism, non-immigration-policy-related character flaws.
But RonF, if you wanna know what I think on this particular issue that you brought up….
As far as people dismissing Trump supporters’ reasons for supporting him with racist, I agree that people should not do that. Even for the Trump supporters who are somewhat or flat-out racist, that’s generally not the only reason they support Trump, and probably not even the most important reason to them, and while it’s understandable that people would care more about racism being one of the reasons since they feel moral outrage about that, it’s also the reason that allows them to most easily dismiss Trump supporters so I think they should engage with the other reasons. And from what I’ve heard, the truly white-power-style racists don’t wholeheartedly support Trump because he’s not anti-Jew.
I don’t think everyone who cares about reducing illegal immigration is more racist than me, or that racism is the only reason to care about reducing illegal immigration. I do think that it’s hard to imagine someone who’s racist but doesn’t care about illegal immigration [on the Southern border], and people who want to reduce illegal immigration because of racism would also be in favor of reducing immigration, period, except perhaps from the “right” countries. So Trump talking about “building a wall” is going to attract racists even if his reasons were completely pure and free of racism. And given that Trump has basically said that Mexico was sending over its rapists and drug dealers, and that most white people are murdered by black people, I’m pretty sure that Trump is somewhat racist. Not all of his supporters are necessarily racist, but there are a lot of racists in America and they presumably have some opinion on who should be president, and he seems like one of the better ones for them to support if they want to achieve their policy goals [stopping the Mexicans from coming into our country]. Even the ones who are not racist probably are somewhat apathetic about racism if they don’t care about him saying racist things.
Do I actually need to tell you that this runs afoul of the comment standards here? Do better.
Ron:
Oops! I accidentally wrote “Tumblr” when I should have written “Reddit.” It was a survey of feminists on Reddit.
I think that only TERFS (“Trans Exclusive Radical Feminists”) and some older feminists have definitions of “man” and “woman” that exclude trans folks. Since the Reddit feminists don’t seem like radical feminists (see the questions about legalization of prostitution and about approval of porn) and Reddit users are young to middle age-ish, I think it’s safe to assume that their definition of “man” and “woman” is trans-inclusive. Probably if you want to pursue this line of questioning, however, you should take it to the Mint Garden.
I can’t be certain if it’s ever come up in comments, but there hasn’t been a post about Rotherham. (As there are thousands of other notable stories that don’t get posted about here, he says a touch defensively. :-p )
Here’s the problem here. According to most projections, white people will become a minority in this country before mid-century. Many whites are justifiably worried about this, because they are worried that without political dominance, and without organization explicitly fighting for their interests, they will be politically and socially marginalized. This is not due to forces of nature, but due to policy, largely immigration policy, including both very high levels of legal immigration, and an unwillingness to use enforcement to reduce illegal immigration. (By the way, I think a lot of non-whites are concerned about our immigration policy as well, because large increases in our population are going to have consequences for everyone when it comes to finding work, housing, etc.)
Most polls show that Americans do not want to increase immigration, and that enforcement should come first before dealing with legal status, yet most of the bills proposed to deal with immigration are legalization first and involve increasing legal immigration.
Moreover, despite polls that suggest that Americans are in favor of amnesty, whenever they are actually given a choice, they tend to vote against illegal immigration (drivers licenses in Oregon, Propostion 187, something similar in to Prop 187 in Montana). Yet, on many of the bill judges overturn their will, and on others (drivers licenses) the legislature voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill voters overwhelmingly rejected, and also seem determined to keep voters out of the loop (a subsequent vote in Oregon on giving scholarships to illegal immigrants was done using an emergency procedure so voters would not get a chance to veto it).
A large number of white voters are angry over this. Largely it is lower class whites but increasingly middle-class whites as well, because they know that becoming a minority will hurt them while upper-class whites will be able to insulate themselves from any problems.
Calling these people racist and bigoted is, I think, condescending, because what you are essentially saying is that they are supposed to be apathetic about their own interests in a way that blacks, Latinos, Asians, etc. are not. We have La Raza and Black Lives Matter, but lower class whites are only supposed to think of their interests in non-racial terms.
Except, as you point out in the next paragraph, Trump is not selling himself largely on his right-wing credentials. The implication here is that the silent majority are largely left-wing on racial and immigration issues, and I really question that.
I think part of the problem here is the equating of concern for the interests of white working class people with racism. Many of them have started to feel as if “racism” is increasingly being used as a charge simply to express hostility to the white working class.
I think this quote by nobody.really illustrates my point:
Despite the initial mention of compassion, the three paragraphs largely seem to view the white working class as a problem to be solved. “Let’s find some way to keep them from causing too many problems until they die out.”
I think viewing the rise of Trump in terms of “racism” is part of the problem, because instead of viewing these people as one interest group whose concerns need to be considered amongst everyone else’s, and who are angry for being left out, there is a sense that there is something illegitimate in their concerns. They don’t see themselves as racist, or as hating people of other races, they see themselves as besieged by a political system that hates them, and people who can only view their political concerns in terms hostile to them.
Let’s remember, one of the speakers at at least one Trump rally is a black man (Jamiel Shaw Sr.) whose son was killed by an illegal alien who had been jailed for criminal behavior but released instead of deported. BlackLivesMatter protestors tried to interrupt his speech. Do you think that the people attending this rally are going to view BLM as truly interested in black lives and in building bridges to address common concerns between working class blacks and whites?
MJJ, I suggest not panicking. I don’t believe people of color are at all likely to be a unified political force.
I’m also extremely dubious that there’s nearly as much anti-white sentiment among poc as the more malicious SJWs and the more frightened/angry conservatives say.
Wishful thinking. The “magic asterisk” that renders unnecessary that which the activist community would rather not bother doing.
Just you watch, like clockwork, how 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics are going to be white just as soon as whites are projected to be in the majority. I suspect that you will find a much more favorable view of the early 20th century immigrant “bootstraps” narrative among your average Hispanic voter than the derision for it coming out of the “Latinx activists” that purport to speak for them.
Add in South- and East Asian immigrants who have similar outlooks on the road to success in America and the demographic dreams disappear. (Also, alliteration appears… apparently)
“just as soon as non-whites are projected to be in the majority. “
I share some of MJJ’s anxiety about the transition from white-majority rule to white-plurality rule. Yet it seems to be going ok in California. I wonder how things will go in Texas.
But I also have wondered about MJJ’s idea that white identity politics may gain greater legitimacy once white people are no longer a majority; this might bolster the Republican ranks. The obvious flip side, however, is that the growing percentage of the electorate that is NOT white will reduce the Republican Party into a mere regional player.
But LTL FTC raises a fair point as well: Perhaps the definition of “white” will expand to encompass groups that were previously excluded. This has been the pattern in the past.
As a counter-narrative, however, I think of religion succession. Once upon a time, upper-class Christian denominations got their members from lower-class Christian denominations such as Southern Baptists and Catholics. A Southern Baptist or Catholic would get promoted to foreman. He’d move his family into a tonier part of town, and join the local church — which just happened to be Episcopalian. Thus mainline Protestant churches add members, and social hierarchy was maintained.
Over time, however, lower-class people came to identify so strongly with their original groups that they stopped shedding their old religions, even as they moved up the social ladder. Thus Southern Baptists and Catholics rose in status, and main-line Protestant denominations have become starved for members.
If Asians and/or Hispanics/Latinos identify sufficiently with their current groups, they may resist self-identifying as white. And that might stop the dynamic of expanding the definition of white.
To clarify: I value building public policy based on compassion. Thus, I value redistributing resources to poor people. Compassion would not generally inspire me to target resources specifically to white, male poor people. I do not generally regard white males as a suspect class justifying affirmative action.
In contrast, concerns about electoral politics might prompt me to pander explicitly to this class.
So I don’t subscribe to the dichotomous view that “instead of viewing these people as one interest group whose concerns need to be considered amongst everyone else’s, and who are angry for being left out, there is a sense that there is something illegitimate in their concerns.” I subscribe to the view that people can have a variety of concerns – some of which I find legitimate, and some of which I don’t. Where people have legitimate concerns, I favor addressing them. Where powerful factions have illegitimate concerns, or concerns without remedy, I concede we may need to address them. I find no conflict in these two statements.
So, what exactly are the concerns of white working-class American males without college degrees? I perceive some that I regard as legitimate, such as not getting a fair share of society’s wealth. Thus I favor wealth redistribution.
But I also perceive other concerns that I either don’t value, or can’t remedy. In particular, I sense that members of this class have lost status relative to their expectations. Compare this to Thomas Friedman’s theory that Arabs suffer a “dignity deficit”: They know their culture once dominated the West, yet today they are regarded by the West — and even by themselves – as backwards. The people who feel this most acutely are not the most downtrodden; it is the children of the middle- and upper-classes, the engineering students at Western universities — who had expected to enjoy more status than they now experience.
I don’t know how to remedy this situation. By definition, status has value based on its scarcity. Yes, we sometimes play games with status by handing out “participation trophies,” but this only works in the short term; gradually this merely serves to debase the value of trophies.
As I previously noted, coming out of WWII the white male American worker without a college degree stood triumphant across the globe – in no small part because all his rivals were reduced to rubble. Those days are gone, and they ain’t comin’ back (I hope!). The sources of the problems are largely invisible. In contrast, people with brown faces are easy to spot. But even if we evicted every illegal alien and refugee, it would do nothing to undo the consequences of automation, globalization, and women entering the paid workforce. White men without college educations simply face more competition than ever before – and no amount of “participation trophies” are going to gloss this over.
Now, I will offer this: Religion may provide at least a partial remedy. If people can find satisfaction in the idea that they are valued by God, and what other people think really doesn’t matter, maybe that’s as good as it gets. But as we’ve observed in the Mideast, people suffering from a dignity deficit who find personal justification in religion may also find justification in lashing out.
In conclusion: Thanks in part to our productive working class, the US has never been wealthier – but market forces no longer allocate that wealth very far down the income ladder. So where working-class people have concerns about their wealth, I think society can and should offer at least a partial remedy. But the new economic reality may well involve more people deriving income from wealth transfers. If you used to derive status from looking down on people who took “government handouts,” I don’t know what to do about that. And in the absence of a better option, I can only propose a policy of containment.
If anyone has a solution to the status problem, please share.
I’ve never seen anyone on the left write positively about using religion as the opiate of the masses. In this case, it’s an opiate for the wrong kind of masses.
If it works (which you admit it doesn’t elsewhere), why not just hope for a religious revival among all groups with grievances, legitimate or not? Isn’t that easier than, you know, listening to them and ameliorating their problems?
Also, if one of the main problems with Trumpism is islamophobia, wouldn’t more religion make it worse?
Attributing this to “market forces” is a bit sleight-of-hand-y. It’s very particular tax policy decisions that made keeping wealth at the top more and more attractive.
MJJ:
Part of the reason I find arguing with conservatives about immigration difficult is that conservatives seem to have a very poor grasp of facts and economics, and are not interested in making sure their statements reflect the real world. (It’s similar to discussing climate change.) You made a lot of factual claims in your long post; not a single fact was supported by a link or a citation, and in most cases your claims are flat-out wrong, or at best oversimplified.
It’s not as simple as the census makes it sound – both because they’re counting folks with one white parent as non-white, even though a significant number of those people will self-identify as white; and also because the definition of who is “white” will likely expand over time, as it’s done in the past.
More importantly, political dominance isn’t just a matter of demographics (alas). I suspect whites will continue being a majority in the voting booth for at least a couple of decades after we become a census minority (if we do); and, more importantly in terms of political power, whites will continue having a disproportionate share of the wealth, which is what really matters for political dominance.
Of course, that last fact shouldn’t be of much comfort to non-rich whites – but because of wealth, not because of their race. (Insofar as ultra-rich white Americans like Trump can be said to represent working-class white interests – as it seems Trump supporters believe – then working-class whites have nothing to worry about. But I think they’re mistaken to think that Trump represents the interests of anyone but other rich white people.)
So we’re talking about whites maybe becoming 49% of the country three or more decades from now. Since non-whites are not a single coherent mass, the plurality of Americans will still be white, by a large margin. And there’s every reason to think that whites will retain political dominance of the USA.
Your claim that whites are in danger of being “politically and socially marginalized” is not being “justifiably worried”; it is a ridiculous claim based on completely ignoring both demographic facts and political realities. Worse, it is racial fearmongering. It is telling white people that they should be afraid of being “politically and socially marginalized” because non-white people are immigrating and becoming Americans.
Peer-reviewed research shows that there’s no statistically significant link between native unemployment and immigration. (See also: 1 and 2 and 3). You didn’t link to any research about housing, but I can’t imagine why housing markets would cease responding to supply and demand if some of that demand is coming from immigrants. (I can think of an exception to that: Individual landlords may discriminate against immigrants. But I can’t see any way that would hurt native housing-hunters.)
You could make a better claim for the idea that immigration hurts the wages of the least-educated native workers (those without a high school degree); but even there, the best evidence shows that negative wage effects are somewhere between small and nonexistent. Previous “Alas” discussions of immigration and wages: 1 2 3.
Most of the Trump-like economic arguments against immigration seem to assume that jobs are a limited pie, and therefore more immigrants coming into the US means less jobs available per person. But that’s not at all how the economy works; immigration creates economic growth and jobs. Housing isn’t finite; if more housing is needed, developers will build more housing. (Or prices will rise and immigrants will choose a different area to move to.) In short, a lot of the fearmongering arguments about immigration seem to be too ignorant of even basic economics to be at all credible.
Citation, please?
Virtually every significant immigration reform bill proposed for the last several presidencies included both enforcement and legalization aspects, or was enforcement-only. The only exception I can recall is the DREAM act. What am I missing?
For obvious reasons, a poll result that has been repeated in national poll after national poll, including many from well-established firms using good methodologies, does a better job of measuring the general population’s preferences than ballot measure voting does. It’s not even a close thing; most Americans want a path to legalization, and in many polls the numbers are overwhelming. Your views simply don’t represent most Americans’ views.
Ballot measure voting is not representative; for one thing, anti-immigration ballot measures are generally only proposed in years, in states and on issues where the bill’s proponents have done private polling and determined in advance that they have a shot at winning. As such, the voting outcomes represent the strategic choices of ballot proponents, not a representative sample of Americans. That’s why over half of all immigration ballot measures that Americans have voted on come from just three states, Arizona, California, and Colorado. When we consider the ballot measures calling for strong anti-undocumented-immigration measures that couldn’t even get enough signatures to get on the ballot, such as the Oregon Respect the Law Act of 2008 and the Washington Identity and Citizenship Verification of 2015, the success rate of these ballot measures looks much less impressive.
I think virtually all white people, lefties included, myself included, are racist in some way. Am I being condescending to myself?
That aside, civil rights struggles of minorities that actually discriminated against is entirely different from similar claims coming from majorities who are in a panic because supposedly, three or four or more decades from now, there will come a time when whites will still have the plurality, still be the biggest voting group, still have disproportionate wealth and political power, but might not still be a demographic majority. That’s ridiculous. Racial civil rights struggles are admirable coming from racial groups who are actually discriminated against and don’t completely dominate the wealthy and governing powers. They are racist, however, when they come from a racial group who is in power by virtually every measure.
You’re trying to get around this obvious problem by conflating “lower class” and “whites,” in order to be able to claim that Whites have a claim for being a racial group that needs to organize in self-defense. But the ONLY claims lower-class whites have for being a disadvantaged, discriminated-against group come from their class, not from their race.
What legitimate interests do “white” working class people have, that are not also in the interests of working class people in general?
No one is claiming that policies that help working-class people – such as affordable health care, the minimum wage, stimulus to increase employment, increasing the EITC, etc etc etc – are racist. The pattern you’re claiming here, simply doesn’t exist.
Looking more specifically at Trump supporters, we’re talking about someone who says things like calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”; and “Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that”; and “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” (I’m not even going to get into Trump’s misogynistic comments here.) Why isn’t it fair to criticize people for supporting someone who makes overtly racist statements?
Any port in a storm. That said, I’m quite serious about the role of religion as a partial remedy for the problem of status.
New England developed a culture of dignity – that is, the idea that your worth is intrinsic; every individual was created, and valued, by God. Anyone who denied or, conversely, publicly affirmed your worth, betrayed their failure to internalize the idea that their statements were irrelevant to the issue. This resulted in relatively reserved behavior: You are not expected to require, or give, excessive affirmation to your neighbor. In contrast, the South developed an honor-based culture – that is, the idea that you only have the value that others acknowledge. This resulted in a more mannered culture, with demonstrative rituals to avoid giving offense – lest it result in a dual (an “affair of honor”).
It’s easy to exaggerate the importance of this distinction; after all, we still have gun violence and suicide in New England. But lower rates than in the Southern and Western states.
So imagine that we find a way to promote the idea that our worldly sorrows are all part of God’s plan, and that it is our duty to endure our circumstances patiently — even with pride, knowing that our brave stoicism publicly displays our faith in God — and we will be rewarded in heaven. Would that tamp down seething resentments over frustrated expectations? Maybe….
You prefer Latin masses? :-)
As I’ve said, I don’t know how to ameliorate their problems. What do you propose?
So how do you do that while actively addressing the concerns of the better performers in the Oppression Olympics? How long until someone asks “why are we the only ones who are asked to shut up and take it, because God?” I’d give it about eight seconds, give or take.
I suppose one could try and bring back the 80s-90s pseudoscientific gobbledygook of Frances Cress Welsing or the ice people/sun people theories of Leonard Jeffries in order to convince white people that they are in fact lesser beings, but I doubt that will work.
Most political change requires the support (or at least acquiescence) of working and middle class white people in order to succeed. If all there is on offer is an “I drink white tears” coffee mug and a dictionary’s worth of obfuscatory grad school jargon, all the wishful thinking in the world about demographics isn’t going to help you.
The social justice left can either confront its classism w/r/t whites or they can savor their ideological purity while losing again and again and again…
A really interesting study of Anti-Semitism in Europe.
They interviewed a lot of Jews. Some interesting (to me) bits:
* Anti-Semitism on the internet is extremely commonplace.
* The rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary is both violent and scary.
* There’s a really interesting political divide: anti-semitism is both left-wing and right-wing (as well as muslim and christian extremist) but which it is varies a lot by country, and particularly eastern vs western Europe.
* The free responses have a lot of really great stuff, including this quote from a Hungarian man in his 60s:
“If the economic and social situation of the country improves,
perhaps antisemitism will decrease, but unfortunately there
is another fact which could influence this: the growing
Roma-hate. [Fight it? It must be tackled], but it is hopeless
against stupidity, prejudice and impoverishment.”
Anyway, a lot of good stuff there.
You’re being ridiculous. You junk the standard usage of race by including as honorary “races” groups you favor and deem to be disadvantaged like Latinos and Muslims. I think that’s mainly motivated by not being willing to give up the rhetorical trick of throwing around the word racist, there’s no way it’s motivated by any understanding of race given that latin is a culture and Islam a religion. But then when people talk about poor whites you immediately pivot back to a notion of pure biological races, and dismiss them because part of the same “morphologically differentiated population” as people like Bush/Gore/Romney.
You can’t have it both ways. If you give up on the language game and admit you’re talking about ethnicity, then poor whites are an ethnicity, and a particularly disadvantaged one, and their organising has as much legitimacy as that of any other group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_White
Pete Patriot:
I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to here.
I’m somewhat skeptical of the claims about mass attacks across Europe on New Year’s Eve. The arguments seem to attempting to associate isolated incidents with the mob attacks in Cologne, which I don’t think makes much sense.
However, more generally, there does seem to be a problem with not reporting sex crimes (e.g.) when “foreigners” are involved.
MJJ:
I think part of the problem here is the equating of concern for the interests of white working class people with racism.
Aren’t you the one doing that? You’re quoting Ben Lehman talking about racism and saying that he’s really talking about those other concerns.
There are real, legitimate concerns that [white] working class people have. And there is also actual racism coming from some white [working class] people. I think it’s more condescending, not less, to pretend when someone says something racist, that’s not what they really mean, they just can’t express themselves properly, poor dears.
Somewhat tangentially, since this is an open thread: a couple years ago, a sort-of-coworker (worked in a different office, at a different job; middle-class) said something very close to that Paul LePage quote that’s been making the rounds–that all the black people in the town I live in [all what, 1-2 dozen?] are young men who are dealing drugs and having mulatto babies. [I couldn’t think of a good response to this and he wasn’t exactly pausing to see if I agreed, but since then I’ve been paying attention to the demographics of the black people I see there, and two I’ve most recently seen were middle-aged women.]
Well, here is one poll showing that more Americans think future immigration should be decreased than increased in addition, the pollingreport poll you linked to also shows that more Americans want it decreased than increased (31% to 24%, 39% stay the same). According to question 7 on page 123 of this Pew report, 49% want immigration decreased, 17% increased.
More polls can be found using Google.
Remember, despite all of the concerns about “amnesty,” the Gang of Eight bill also had provisions that would have greatly increased legal immigration:
As for enforcement vs. legalization, first, note that in my original post I was not arguing whether or not people supported legalization, but whether they wanted it before or after enforcement.
Here is a poll of Hispanic attitudes toward immigration. Despite a general preference for legalization of people here illegally, note on page 6 that 60% of Hispanics support making legalization dependent on enforcement being successful.
Here’s a CNN poll showing 62% to 36% support prioritizing enforcement, and then dealing with legalization.
It is also not entirely clear that Americans are as in favor of legalization as most polls would suggest, or if it is because the questions are asked with a pro-legalization bias (i.e. mass deportation being the only enforcement option and with and with the requirements for the legalized immigrant sounding much tougher than what is likely to happen). According to this poll, Americans prefer enforcement to legalization by 58% to 31% when presented with a realistic attrition-based enforcement scenario.
You are missing the word “first.”
Bills such as the Gang of Eight bill offered legalization within about six months, after a plan for enforcement was submitted, whereas meeting actual enforcement metrics is put off for later. Given that getting a work permit (legal status) is the primary goal of most people here illegally, this means that the pro-legalization people get most of what they want even if the enforcement measures are never implemented. Moreover, there are all sorts of loopholes so that people here illegally can get permanent residence of citizenship even if the border measures are not enacted, for example, if they are delayed by litigation. Moreover, determining whether the measures have been met is at the sole discretion of the Secretary of DHS. Source.
The point is, a lot of people believe that if enforcement does not come first, advocates for more immigration will make certain it never happens, as occurred after the 1986 amnesty.
Cologne sex assaults: Refugees attacked by mob, German police say
For what it’s worth:
I said that Americans keep imagining that there’s this group of lower-class white racists who are just waiting in the wings to swing every election (since 1980, when they actually did) but there’s very little evidence of that group existing.
I then said that there’s a group of Republicans, underrepresented on the national level (which is a credit to the party leadership), who are primarily attracted to the racist aspects of right-wing ideology, rather than the economic or moral aspects. I said that these voters gravitate towards Trump, because they do.
I don’t think that these voters make up a majority of the Republican party. I certainly don’t think that they’re all uneducated white men. Or that they represent a majority of uneducated white men.
yrs–
–Ben
there’s no way it’s motivated by any understanding of race given that latin is a culture and Islam a religion. But then when people talk about poor whites you immediately pivot back to a notion of pure biological races, and dismiss them because part of the same “morphologically differentiated population” as people like Bush/Gore/Romney.
You can’t have it both ways. If you give up on the language game and admit you’re talking about ethnicity, then poor whites are an ethnicity, and a particularly disadvantaged one, and their organising has as much legitimacy as that of any other group.
Given that people will attack brown non-Muslims when attempting to commit hate crimes against Muslims, I think there’s merit to saying that in the minds of the attackers it functions like a race.
But I think there is something to the idea that “poor white” functions as an ethnicity–specifically, I think that having a “working class” accent can function like an ethnicity. OTOH, arguably socioeconomic status already covers that.
***
More on ‘neckbeard’:
I was talking to hipster-geek guy about this:
HGG: “I’m surprised you didn’t hear that term from your husband before you heard it from me.”
Me: “I actually don’t think I’ve ever heard him use that term.”
HGG: “That’s because he is a neckbeard!” [I think he was kidding on the square]
This led to further conversation with my husband. HGG first explained the term to me as meaning someone who puts little effort into their appearance, e.g. not removing the facial hair that grows on their neck if they have a short beard (because my dad has a bushy beard he wouldn’t count). I think there was also a connotation of social awkwardness and/or complaining about not having a girlfriend, but the first part was the core definition. My husband said that by HGG’s core definition he’d be kind of a neckbeard, but he wasn’t sufficiently socially awkward and based on his understanding of the term, actually having a beard on your neck was part of the core definition, and also part of the core definition was doing things like spending a lot of time arguing online about how the classes were bad on World of Warcraft, or talking about your online character at a party (not ‘talking about World of Warcraft’ in general, but doing so in a way other people would find tiresome).
But I think there is something to the idea that “poor white” functions as an ethnicity–specifically, I think that having a “working class” accent can function like an ethnicity. OTOH, arguably socioeconomic status already covers that.
The other thing is, there’s also a difference in accent between working class and middle class black accents.
nobody.really:
Depends on the composer. I’ve sung Mozart, Haydn and Brahms, and I’m singing Liszt’s Missa Choralis this spring. But the voice of the average priest? Gik.
Amp, @ 59:
I have a long-held suspicion that conservatives are more likely to hang up or otherwise refuse to participate in polling more than liberals do. I have absolutely no proof of this. It’s purely anecdotal based on conversations I’ve had with people on both sides of the aisle.
However, regardless of that – it seems to me that the primary polls our representatives should use to represent our views should be the election polls. That’s why we have elections! Anyone can say anything to a pollster – there are no consequences. But in an election people actually went to the trouble to register, think about what they are doing (theoretically – but then, Obama was elected twice, so that throws some cold water on that) and vote. That should have far greater weight in our government than polling does.
“Many of Trump’s positions are abhorrent. Many are inconsistent with traditional American values, Republican Party dogma, various articles of the Constitution, and Trump’s own views…. But substance is, in a way, less important than style. Trump couldn’t possibly do half of what he promises, and probably doesn’t really want to do much of the rest.
The important thing is that Trump, by being transgressive in the way he speaks, gives listeners the license to be transgressive in the way they think. When he rails against ‘political correctness,’ he’s talking about the manners and courtesies that many of us would call being ‘civil.’ But his in-your-face bullying strikes a chord with the large segment of the Republican electorate that is tired of being polite: lower-middle-class, non-college-educated white voters who have not prospered over the past two decades and see demographic change as a threat.
* * *
Trump’s arena-size rallies have become set pieces in which big, boisterous crowds get to act out their ‘Make America Great Again’ fantasies. If protesters didn’t show up to advocate the Black Lives Matter movement or tolerance toward Muslims, Trump would have to hire actors to play those parts. Antagonists are necessary for the moments of catharsis when interlopers are identified, scorned, and physically ejected. It is theater, not politics, a symbolic enactment of the grand purification Trump promises.”
Eugene Robinson, Don’t underestimate the power of Trump’s rage-fueled rise.
Most people don’t really want that much. They want a job which is safe and secure. They want hours that allow them to enjoy their evenings and weekends. They want enough money to buy a modest house (apartment in some markets), not too far from where they work with enough left over for a home entertainment system, nice car, boat or something of the sort depending on how they spend their leisure time. Once they have leisure time and a bit of money to enjoy it, most people will find constructive ways to feel better about themselves.
To get these jobs, I propose gradually going back to Reagan-era tax rates and taxing capital gains like income from work. That should produce enough revenue for a substantial public works program with lots of jobs that pay a good living wage. I’d start with uncontroversial projects like repairing dangerous bridges, removing lead from everywhere possible (which will more than pay for itself in the long run) and building security walls around sights which actually might be vulnerable to large scale terrorist attacks (eg. facilities that treat drinking water).
I have heard the argument that historically poor Appalachian communities constitute a distinct ethnicity within American culture, and specifically that it’s an oppressed ethnicity for reasons of historical classism/racism and modern classism (at least), which I find somewhat convincing. The thing is, though, there are poor Black Appalachian people who have lived in the region for generations, have the same accent and use the same words and have the same social markers as White Appalachians, and are just as much members of Appalachian culture as their White neighbors. Being White isn’t a prerequisite for being a member of the proposed Appalachian ethnicity. So whiteness in and of itself isn’t what makes poor Appalachian people oppressed, and I don’t really see how it ever could be.
So people – including white men without college degrees – want to work less, yet enjoy more disposable income. In short, they want the lifestyle their fathers enjoyed, back when their unionized fathers faced relatively little competition, domestic or foreign, human or robotic, in the labor force. We largely agree on the goal.
Now – how do we get there?
The Tax Policy Center publishes a “Historical Federal Income Tax Rates for a Family of Four,” calculating the income tax rate for a family of four with a median level of income from each year since 1955. It found that the median household paid an average income tax rate of 9.30% in 1988 (Reagan), 9.18% in 1992 (Clinton), and 5.34% in 2014 (Obama). Similarly, the US effective corporate tax rate has dropped in half since the Reagan era. How would returning to Reagan-era taxes help achieve the desired outcome?
True, Reagan dropped the top tax rate to 28% — for three years. When he saw how this exploded the national debt, Reagan supported an increase in the top bracket.
The US federal government and most states tax ordinary income on a progressive basis. If we taxed capital gains on a progressive basis, rich people could evade a lot of capital gains tax liability by transferring their capital assets into the names of their minor children. This might be a good formula for making the rich richer at the expense of the national debt, but it’s less clear how this would achieve the desired outcome.
In any event, there is a lot of doubt about the source of the economic expansion under Reagan. Reagan happened to preside during an era in which the OPEC oil cartel collapsed and oil prices tumbled, ending the stagnation that had begun during Nixon’s administration. Moreover, while Reagan presided over relative peace and prosperity, he still increased the deficit from $712 billion in 1980 to $2,052 billion in 1988; simple Keynesian economics predicts that tax cuts and spending hikes would stimulate the economy – and they did.
Finally, I generally like the idea of investing in infrastructure; Obama proposed to do this as part of the stimulus package, but much of that spending got stripped out. Note, however, that much of the lead paint and plumbing appears in private property; a program to remove this lead at government expense would likely be a program to subsidize slumlords. I can’t say that this wouldn’t be a good public policy anyway – but I can definitely say that it would not be an uncontroversial public policy.
nobody.really:
This sounds like a fantastic recipe for even more religious fundamentalism.
Ampersand:
I think this is why the left seems to struggle so much politically. They often lack the imagination and vision to actually solve the most significant issues that western societies face (wealth inequality, political corruption, etc), and instead focus so much on smaller issues (the gender/skin colour of who gets elected, what words people use to express themselves, etc). When it comes down to it, many moderates are going to see the simple xenophobia of Trump as less repugnant than the convoluted and hypocritical self-righteousness they see on the left.
I didn’t say that. In fact, nobody really said that.
RonF:
Mitt Romney had a similar belief, and that’s why he thought he was going to win the 2012 election. I think he was proven wrong pretty decisively.
Obviously, I agree.
@Sarah:
Yes–it’s not limited to white people, having accent (and stuff accent’s a marker of) function similarly to ethnicity. There are lower-class black accents just as there are lower-class white accents*. (I’m using ‘function like’ and not ‘be’ very deliberately.) I’m thinking of the Leslie Jones/Louis CK “This is how I talk” sketch…
I’ve noticed that a lot of things that people think of as “black people things” and “white people things” are more like “poor people things” and “middle-class or rich people things”… the ones that aren’t actually “Southerner things” and “Yankee things” instead. Giving one’s children semi-made-up names for their given names comes to mind, although that also seems to afflict celebrities, so who knows…
*Appalachian is one example, but since I’m using “in some ways functions like an ethnicity” and not “is arguably an ethnicity”, I would include things like the rural New England/upstate New York accent, Boston accent, New York/New Jersey accent…
Desipis, you seem really confident that leftist convolutions are going to drive moderates into the arms of Trump. So, since you’re so confident, do you want to bet on it?
I will bet you $50 that Trump will not be the next president of the United States. We can each send $50 to a mutually agreed-upon escrow (I suggest Amp, who is pretty trustworthy) and the winner gets the payout after election day.
To clarify, you would be betting “Donald Trump elected president” and I would be betting on “Donald Trump not elected president.”
Sound good?
yrs–
–Ben
What a curiously long-winded way of saying, “Gosh, I don’t know either.”
Oh, I’m pretty sure somebody has said it at some point in time.
Definitely Trump greatly exaggerated the magnitude of the celebrations (or perhaps confused them with larger celebrations in Palestine*), but
there were police reports of some modest celebrations, so his claims were not completely fictitious.
*The best citation I could find was, strangely enough, a snopes page debunking the claim that the footage was faked.
Ben Lehman, you seem to have vastly over-read my comment. I was making an comment about why non-racists would choose to support someone like Trump, not making a psephological assessment of the entire electorate.
MJJ: There were NOT “police reports” of modest celebrations in New Jersey. There’s a cop or two who now says that they saw celebrations on a couple of rooftops – but
A “police report” would be a contemporaneous written record of the event. The only thing in that news story is a few people (including anonymous people) saying they saw such a thing 14 years ago, but are only saying so on the public record now. That’s an extremely light level of evidence.
Furthermore, Trump’s claim was “Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. So something’s going on. We’ve got to find out what it is.” Even in the best-case scenario – if we assume every word said by the cops now is true – Trump’s account could still fairly be called a lie.
A few days after that Jersey City statement, Trump supporters (and maybe Trump himself; I don’t remember) started saying that he was just wrong about the location — it was actually in Paterson, NJ. Now, I grew up about five minutes from Paterson. My parents still live there. Nearly all of the parents of my high school friends were still living five minutes from Paterson on 9/11. None of them had ever heard anything about this. Someone sent me a link to an article that copied some tweets from someone who said that he’d been in Paterson that day and seen people celebrating. One thing that immediately stood out to me: he spelled it Patterson. You’d think that a local would know how to spell the name of the city. So I went to Twitter and searched. When I searched for Paterson 9/11, I mostly found people saying that it was ridiculous — no one was celebrating there. When I tried Patterson 9/11, I found a ton of people claiming to live either in Paterson or nearby, and that they’d been there on 9/11 and seen people celebrating.
If there had been thousands or hundreds (or even dozens) of Muslims cheering as the towers fell, I’m positive that it would have been aired and commented on endlessly on the cable news channels for years. No mention of it was ever made at the time. Nor was any mention of it ever made during the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq. Is this something that FauxNews would have missed?
I’m extremely skeptical of current claims that there were mass celebrations of any kind in the US as either tower came down.
MJJ:
MJJ, you’ve made this same comment thousands and thousands of times, and I saw the video of you making this comment on the news, and then beating a pinata designed to look like Malala Yousafzai.* I’m really sick of it.
*After fact-checking myself, I see you’ve only made this comment once, and none of the rest of this happened. But what I said wasn’t entirely fictitious.
Really? I could swear I remember swinging at some sort of pinata.
(And after I posted this, I remembered who Malala Yousafzai was, and my attempt to be smart-alecky seemed less funny).
If it helps, I thought it was pretty funny the first time.