The Trump phenomenon

http://www.mediaite.com/online/not-kidding-senior-donald-trump-advisor-s...

Camerota: What do you think about the idea that he was suggesting that there would be violence? Threatening that there would be violence?

Clovis: I don’t think he said violence, he said riots…

Camerota: Riots are violence, by definition.

Clovis: I don’t accept that.

bekayne wrote:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/not-kidding-senior-donald-trump-advisor-s...

Camerota: What do you think about the idea that he was suggesting that there would be violence? Threatening that there would be violence?

Clovis: I don’t think he said violence, he said riots…

Camerota: Riots are violence, by definition.

Clovis: I don’t accept that.

 

Except for when those involved have dark skin or are wearing Bernie Sanders shirts.

Media Culture and the Politics of Fear

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/21/media-culture-and-the-politics-of...

"The politics of fear is rampant in the United States..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/toure/donald-trump-white-lives-matter_b_94...?

We should just call it what it is: Donald Trump is the leader of the White Lives Matter movement. Someone had to start it — they were gettin’ out of control. First, one of them became president and now they’re in the streets protesting every time a Black thug gets shot. They’re gettin’ a little too free.

bekayne wrote:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/toure/donald-trump-white-lives-matter_b_94...?

We should just call it what it is: Donald Trump is the leader of the White Lives Matter movement. Someone had to start it — they were gettin’ out of control. First, one of them became president and now they’re in the streets protesting every time a Black thug gets shot. They’re gettin’ a little too free.

I want to see a white pride that celebrates heritage and foments self-love and rejects racial superiority and dismisses the absurd delusions of white marginalization. Steal “white pride” from the Klan and rechristen it as a new white pride that has no time for hate.

What does white trash have to be proud of? If anything they are the worst of the worst because they don't have racial prejudice as a reason to give for their low status, only closed factories.

There is no "white heritage". There really isn't any black heritage either. There is black American heritage but that isn't the same thing. I read an article by a woman who wished her daughter could live in Nairobi for awhile to understand what it is like to "not be black".

Black people in predominantly white countries or those which have been colonized have a collective identity based on the collective experience of being victimized by racism. White people don't have a self-identified collective identity.

The Hispanics for Trump article also illustrates the complexity of identity politics.

Identity politics of the left needs to transition to class politics which isn't to say we should abandon the issues of racism and sexism etc. but we do need to focus far more heavily on class or we are playing into the hands of the right.

Poindering wrote:

Quote:

What does white trash have to be proud of? If anything they are the worst of the worst because they don't have racial prejudice as a reason to give for their low status, only closed factories.

[i]Only[/i] closed factories?

I assume that you mean, unemployment, by itself, is half the evil of unemployment AND racism together. But still, you might want to think about how you're phrasing things here, especially when you're also using terms like "white trash" to describe economically marginalized people.

I agree with the writer that white people can be proud of their heritages, though I'd conceive those heritages as being "English, French, German, etc" rather than "white".

They can always just tweet that upon further reflection, they've decided to stay behind to 'try to change the system from within'.

Trump wants the U.S. to reconsider its role in NATO.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-nato-idUSKCN0WN27T

Quote:

Trump wants Israel to pay money back to the U.S.

Quote:

Trump wants the U.S. to reconsider its role in NATO.

That typical right-wing sonofabitch!

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Quote:

Trump wants Israel to pay money back to the U.S.

Quote:

Trump wants the U.S. to reconsider its role in NATO.

That typical right-wing sonofabitch!

Trump is basically Pat Buchanan, minus the religion, and with a less thought-out ideological system. I have to admit that, if I were voting strictly on foreign-policy, and if the only two candidates were Trump and HRC, I would give at least a moment's thought to voting for Trump.

BUT, there are other issues besides foreign-policy, and even on that score, planks like Force China To Murder The Leader Of North Korea come pretty close to cancelling out the appeal of less slavish adherence to the dictates of the neo-con and Israel lobbies.  

http://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-castigates-obama-savages-iran-deal-vo...

There were some people here who were pretty gullible. This should end that. But probably won't.

Pondering wrote:

voice of the damned wrote:

Poindering wrote:

Quote:

What does white trash have to be proud of? If anything they are the worst of the worst because they don't have racial prejudice as a reason to give for their low status, only closed factories.

[i]Only[/i] closed factories?

I assume that you mean, unemployment, by itself, is half the evil of unemployment AND racism together. But still, you might want to think about how you're phrasing things here, especially when you're also using terms like "white trash" to describe economically marginalized people.

I agree with the writer that white people can be proud of their heritages, though I'd conceive those heritages as being "English, French, German, etc" rather than "white".

That's the only description that identifies them by race. "Economically marginalized people" is academic/activist speech that includes all races and sexes which disappears poor marginalized white people who are argumably even worse off than minorities as they don't have the excuse of race to explain their marginalization because they have the "advantage" of being white.

Well, I'm pretty sure you could come up with a desciption for economically marginalized whites that doesn't do double-duty as a class-hate epithet. "Economically marginalized whites", for example.

And what do you mean by the word "excuse" in relation to race? Usually, an "excuse" implies an unjustified explantion for a personal or situational shortcoming. I'm not sure that applies to either racism or factory closings.

And how are poor whites "worse off"? Do you mean morally, in that they have less of an excuse for being poor(and hence we can assume it's their at least partly their fault)?

Or do you mean socially/economically, in that somehow, not having that excuse pushes them lower down on the social/economic ladder? (I'm not sure how that would work, unless you mean that no one wants to help them because they're not victims of racisn.)

Mar 22, 2016

Past Terrorist Attacks Helped Trump Capitalize On Anti-Muslim Sentiment

By Nate Silver

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/past-terrorist-attacks-helped-trump-...

Here's the real reason the establishment is up in arms over Trump. He opposes free trade.

Take this criticism from an "economic journalist" writing for the "liberal" New York Times:

NYT Adam Davidson wrote:

When asked last fall how he, as president, would guarantee health care for the uninsured, he answered, ‘‘I would make a deal.’’ He plans to make a deal with pharmaceutical companies to lower prices, make a deal with hospitals to treat the uninsured. …

The centrality of the ‘‘deal’’ to Trump­onomics is especially strange when you consider how tangential that concept is, or at least should be, to a modern economy. In Microeconomics 101, deals are an afterthought: Transactions have the most socially optimal outcome when buyer and seller reach a mutually beneficial agreement.

The very idea of a ‘‘good’’ deal for one party and a ‘‘bad’’ deal for another suggests a suboptimal outcome; an economy built on tough deal-making, with clear winners and losers, will always be a poorer one. Meanwhile, in macroeconomics — which covers the big, broad issues that a president typically worries about — the concept of the ‘‘deal’’ hardly exists at all.

The key issues at play in a national or global economy (inflation, currency-exchange rates, unemployment, overall growth) are impossible to control through any sort of deal. …

It’s easy to dismiss Trump as a loutish ignoramus who simply doesn’t understand how modern economies function.

I'm certainly no Trump supporter, but Trump is not the ignoramus here. All these on-the-take journalists and politicians who are being paid to be willfully ignorant of stark economic realities and their obvious root causes are the real ignoramuses. (And, of course, the ridiculous theologians parading around as economists.)

Does anyone — i.e., anyone who believes in the concept that words have objective and logical meaning — believe that free trade globalization has been a "socially optimal" and "mutually beneficial agreement" to all parties involved? That scaling back this colossally failed experiment would be unfair, producing "clear winners and losers" and a poorer economy? Might as well claim gravity causes people to float up into the sky.

Clearly the oligarchs who somehow took charge of developed and undeveloped economies have been the really big winners; and everyone else, really big losers — as well as being on the hook for a mountain of debt paid out to the winners over 3 decades of reckless tax cutting.

It's been a 35-year pyramid scheme that has grown in complexity, audacity and the very real danger it poses to civilization. Masters of the universe loot global wealth like leeches attached to the body economic. A stock market manipulation scam here; a currency market manipulation there.

Next they are hitting us like a lamprey causing massive shocks throughout the entire system.

The big gaping hole remains an open wound. Whether or not the body will regain its health remains an open question. Same with: will this super leech strike again? Or, when will it strike again?

But the establishment sticks to script, in any case. They say the same self-serving policies that put the global economy on life support are the cure to all that ails us. Real hope and change. Their economic experts know how to "create middle class jobs" and "grow the economy."

Just ignore the past 35 years when they were busy destroying middle class jobs and killing economic growth. Just ignore the global economy teetering on the edge of collapse, which they say is this mysterious phenomenon of "secular stagnation" whose cause is unknown.

This bunkum is beyond outrageous. It's outright Orwellian. Fuck these liars in public places. The emperor wears no clothes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xRshS1xl5E