Not every Trump voter is racist or misled.

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Saturday November 14, 2020 · 3:24 PM PST

2020/11/14 · 15:24

Not every Trump voter is racist or misled. There is an article in The Correspondent that we should pay attention to. Excerpts below

But from a non-western perspective, one that also happens to be my own, the US is far from a developed society – let alone a functioning democracy. The conditions are different, of course, but the US exhibits the same voting behaviour common in so-called Arab democratic dictatorships, Read Rob Wijnberg’s piece ‘Dear news media, stop covering the US as if it’s a democracy where voting for authoritarians is motivated by very specific rationalities and trade-offs

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So, in a democracy where you can’t change the system, and you don’t expect much from that system either, a different rationale comes into play that is so often overlooked by punditry in western countries: you maximise your little stake in it.

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Once we start looking at the US as a flawed democracy that also disenfranchises voters, pushes “change candidates” out of the system early, and is dominated by powerful lobbying industries and astronomical presidential campaign funding requirements, we can get a fuller picture of why people can vote for a politician like Trump in such incredible numbers.

This is a necessary readjustment of perspective, even as Biden takes the reins. Because the Democratic party, and the US as a whole, will fail to keep Trumpian forces at bay if they don’t realise that voting for Trump can actually be a rational decision. There are cold, hard reasons why people voted for Trump again. And they will do so again in the future.

We ignore this only at our own peril. Read it.

Wall Street is shunning Trump

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Saturday September 26, 2020 · 5:06 AM PDT

2020/09/26 · 05:06

This in From CNN.

President Trump is promising four more years of low taxes, light regulation and a laser-focus on the stock market. Yet professionals on Wall Street are shunning Trump and funneling staggering amounts of money to his opponent.

The securities and investment industry donated just $10.5 million to Trump's presidential campaign and outside groups aligned with it, according to a new tally by OpenSecrets. It has sent nearly five times as much cash, $51.1 million, to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Even the “smart money” of Wall Street can read the handwriting on the wall.

Counterfactual if Hillary were president.

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Sunday May 05, 2019 · 6:31 PM PDT

2019/05/05 · 18:31

Due to spending some of my childhood in a rural working-class area, I saw how both parties had abandoned the white working-class culturally. To the horror of my Kossack friends, in 2016 I put a James Webb sticker on my car because he could appeal to these voters.

Webb flamed out and Trump went on to harvest their votes.

In any case, we were doomed in the 2016 election. Let's suppose that the coin, when it fell on its edge, had landed the other way and Hillary were now in the White House. We would have four years of a terrible presidency followed by an overwhelming Republican sweep of both the Congress at the White House.

Why would Hillary have been a terrible president? It would be for the same reason she was a terrible candidate. She, in her own words, is politically clumsy. She has now pulled defeat from the jaws of victory three times. (remember Hillarycare? ). I do not buy the excuse she was under unrelenting attack, Obama was too and he could handle it.

In any case, let us hope -- no pray -- that 2020 is better.

The tragedy of self implicit racism

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Wednesday May 09, 2018 · 2:48 PM PDT

2018/05/09 · 14:48

In 1994, Marc Elrich, then a 6th-grade teacher in Montgomery County MD, showed his class a film based on a Langston Hughes story about a young black boy who attempts to steal the purse of an elderly black woman. He fails and the woman takes him into her home, where she proceeds to apply generous amounts of love and understanding to his wounds. Here is what followed

"An “A” student, who is black, raised his hand and said "You knew something bad was going to happen when it started. As soon as you see a black boy you know he's gonna do something bad."
Me: "Just because he's black, he's bad?"
Student: "Everybody knows that black people are bad. That's the way we are."

I cried when I read it. 24 years later I still cry when I think of it. Read the whole article

Marc is now the leading candidate for County Executive of Montgomery County, a Washington suburb, the largest county in Maryland.

Why is this march different than other marches?

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Saturday March 24, 2018 · 7:12 PM PDT

2018/03/24 · 19:12

Why is this march different than other marches? On this march the marchers have power. They can return home and vote. Those who are under 18 can get their older brothers, sisters and get friends to vote. We are where we are because young adults vote in abysmally low numbers allowing us old guys to rule. They can directly change this

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

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Thursday March 01, 2018 · 8:32 PM PST

2018/03/01 · 20:32

Every day I open Kos and I see large numbers of stories on Trump tweets and policies. These consume uncountable electrons, and more importantly large amounts of our attention. We should cut this out, or at least reduce it. His tweets and utterances are evanescent — their “policy” lasts no longer until his next visitor.

All this does is gin up our outrage, if it is possible to gin it up anymore. In most cases, we can only observe, not affect the outcome.

We should spend more time reporting on what we are doing or ought to be doing. This is where our attention belongs. This is what counts in the long run.

I don't say ignore Trump. Just spend less time and verbiage on him and more on us.

Is a military coup possible?

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Tuesday December 12, 2017 · 10:50 AM PST

2017/12/12 · 10:50

I can't believe that I am asking this question.

In short, the answer is very unlikely.

As the country has become more racially and ethnically diverse, so has the U.S. military

. Racial and ethnic minority groups made up 40% of Defense Department active-duty military in 2015, up from 25% in 1990. (In 2015, 44% of all Americans ages 18 to 44 were racial or ethnic minorities.)

The non-whites are our firewall. Thank God!

Profiles in (non) Courage

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Monday August 21, 2017 · 10:24 AM PDT

2017/08/21 · 10:24

Trump supporters, while minority of the general electorate, dominate those who vote in Republican primaries. Many Republican elected officials who would love to rid themselves of the Donald, either to save their party or out of patriotism, grit their teeth in silence rather then set themselves up to lose their next primary.

Still we send our troops to war asking them to be willing to sacrifice life or limb for their country, Could not or congress members to willing to sacrifice their political life for their country. Unlike troops they will not end up 6 feet under, but out of a job with numerous well paying opportunities awaiting them.

Where have all the insects gone?

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Tuesday May 16, 2017 · 9:20 AM PDT

2017/05/16 · 09:20

Another rivet pops off the wing!

Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.

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Such losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the Raw data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."

Read the whole thing.

Trump-like Presidencies and their Successors

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Thursday April 27, 2017 · 7:37 PM PDT

2017/04/27 · 19:37

Stephen Skowronek in the Washington Post says that disrupters usually fail both substantially and politically. They are swept out of office and their successors make the changes. Jimmy Carter followed by Ronald Reagan is the most recent example. If his thesis is true, Trump and the Republican will be swept out leaving the Democrats to make the changes. It is way too early to confidently predict this, but things are leaning that way.

Trump’s campaign resonated for a reason. Debates framed during the Reagan Revolution have worn thin. Americans are growing impatient with the received terms of legitimate national government. But Trump appears to be struggling with the reset. In full view of the early fumbling, we should look more closely at the historical pattern of presidency-led political reconstructions.

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Like Carter and Adams, Trump reached the presidency as a loner. All three found themselves in — but not part of — a long-dominant coalition. Each marginalized party orthodoxy and made their case instead based on some inimitable, personal capacity to put things right.

When the old order loses political purchase, the attractions of the loner-as-leader shine brightly. But such presidents have never been able to reorder national affairs. Once in office, they appear incompetent and in over their heads. Their disruptions characteristically drive the implosion. Reconstruction follows, but under other auspices.

Read the whole thing.

Milo-ism at a Christian High School

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Saturday February 25, 2017 · 9:38 AM PST

2017/02/25 · 09:38

If you want to see something scary, not only to us, but to sane conservatives ( a vanishing breed) check this out. Milo has taken over among the students at a Christian high school. This is where “Christian” culture is heading.

www.theamericanconservative.com/…

That’s why all the good little Christians at my high school are falling in behind him — not because they actually give a crap about conservatism but because he’s giving angry, aimless young men whose church hasn’t given them anything solid to fall back on an alternate source of values that happens to be steeped in fascist and white supremacist ideals.

Custer deserved what he got, bad motto.

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Tuesday February 07, 2017 · 8:52 AM PST

2017/02/07 · 08:52

Custer deserved what he got

I saw this on a sign at a (anti)Dakota pipeline rally. I told the holder that that was a bad sign. He recited the history behind it -- and there is a strong argument Custer did deserve it -- I believe so but that’s another discussion.

In the poor white rural community I grew up in, in their ignorance of history, they would read the sign as celebrating Indians killing whites. There a a lot better things to say such as “Keep oil out of our water” or “Respect our religious freedom.”

We have to be careful of what we say. Too often I see signs which we see as celebrating, but others see as insulting their world view.

We must remember that many (most?) Trump voters are not deplorables, but persuadables.

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