Lily Salter's Blog, page 1005
August 26, 2015
Trump v. Ramos in perspective: What really matters in The Donald’s latest media feud
The defining feature of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is that it isn’t so much a “campaign” as it is a rolling series of feuds and petty disagreements provoked or nurtured by the candidate. The list of politicians, reporters, celebrities, and publications Trump has traded insults with over the last two months is long and forever growing, and its most recent addition is Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, whom Trump ejected from a press conference yesterday after Ramos tried to pin him down on his immigration plan. Because everything about Trump has to be about the spectacle, the discussion turned immediately to the clash of personalities and attempts to figure out which party merited our outrage: Ramos for speaking out of turn at the press conference, or Trump for having him thrown out. Dopes like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Ramos – the most prominent Spanish-language journalist in the country and perhaps the world – was “looking for his 15 minutes of fame.” Erick Erickson, who made a big show of disinviting Trump from his GOP 2016 for insulting Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, sided with the Donald completely in his fight with Ramos. “What is really amazing,” Erickson opined, “is that the media is more outraged with Trump throwing Ramos out of the press conference than they are at Barack Obama sending the Department of Justice after reporters.” If you want to ding Ramos for creating a scene and speaking out of turn, fine. Whatever. The outrage you muster over Ramos should be tempered by the fact that he was trying to nail down the Republican frontrunner on the details of his immigration plan – a plan that is obviously illegal, is in flagrant violation of international norms, and would condemn a broad swath of people to a nightmare of stateless existence. Just to refresh everyone on what we’re talking about here, Trump’s plan for immigration is to deport every single undocumented immigrant in the country, deport their children who are U.S. citizens by birth, and then revoke birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants. He’s had plentiful opportunities to explain precisely how this plan would work, but instead of providing details he talks about how dangerous immigrant criminals are. The notion that we’re going to round up people who were born citizens of this country, deny them their constitutionally guaranteed rights, and expel them from their native land because of the actions of their parents is morally indefensible and legally unjustifiable. The fact that this is the position of the front-running Republican candidate for the presidency should be treated more scandalously than it is. In calling for mass deportation and ending birthright citizenship, Trump is creating the conditions for a massive humanitarian crisis in which huge numbers of people inside and outside the United States find themselves unbound to any state or government. “Stateless individuals cannot participate in any political process anywhere,” Mother Jones’ Bryan Schatz explained this morning. “They're often subject to arbitrary detention. They have limited access to health care and education. They are especially vulnerable to crime and have little legal recourse if they are victimized. They have no economic rights and few job prospects.” Trump’s plan essentially calls for the existence of a stateless underclass within the country, a whole segment of the population condemned to disenfranchisement and victimization by the accident of their parentage. This is what Jorge Ramos was trying to get Trump to elaborate on when he spoke up at that press conference yesterday. Instead of answering Ramos’ questions, Trump threw him out. When Ramos came back and was given the opportunity to ask about Trump’s immigration plan, Trump offered his usual mix of bluster and evasiveness. On revoking the citizenship of children of immigrants, Trump said “great legal scholars” agree with him. Asked how he’d deport every single undocumented immigrant, Trump offered that he’d “do it in a very humane fashion.” He didn’t even pretend to provide a coherent rationale for all the horrible things he wants to do to immigrants and their families. If you’re upset by Ramos’ tactics or offended that he wasn’t respectful enough towards Trump, you’re very much missing the larger picture.The defining feature of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is that it isn’t so much a “campaign” as it is a rolling series of feuds and petty disagreements provoked or nurtured by the candidate. The list of politicians, reporters, celebrities, and publications Trump has traded insults with over the last two months is long and forever growing, and its most recent addition is Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, whom Trump ejected from a press conference yesterday after Ramos tried to pin him down on his immigration plan. Because everything about Trump has to be about the spectacle, the discussion turned immediately to the clash of personalities and attempts to figure out which party merited our outrage: Ramos for speaking out of turn at the press conference, or Trump for having him thrown out. Dopes like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Ramos – the most prominent Spanish-language journalist in the country and perhaps the world – was “looking for his 15 minutes of fame.” Erick Erickson, who made a big show of disinviting Trump from his GOP 2016 for insulting Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, sided with the Donald completely in his fight with Ramos. “What is really amazing,” Erickson opined, “is that the media is more outraged with Trump throwing Ramos out of the press conference than they are at Barack Obama sending the Department of Justice after reporters.” If you want to ding Ramos for creating a scene and speaking out of turn, fine. Whatever. The outrage you muster over Ramos should be tempered by the fact that he was trying to nail down the Republican frontrunner on the details of his immigration plan – a plan that is obviously illegal, is in flagrant violation of international norms, and would condemn a broad swath of people to a nightmare of stateless existence. Just to refresh everyone on what we’re talking about here, Trump’s plan for immigration is to deport every single undocumented immigrant in the country, deport their children who are U.S. citizens by birth, and then revoke birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants. He’s had plentiful opportunities to explain precisely how this plan would work, but instead of providing details he talks about how dangerous immigrant criminals are. The notion that we’re going to round up people who were born citizens of this country, deny them their constitutionally guaranteed rights, and expel them from their native land because of the actions of their parents is morally indefensible and legally unjustifiable. The fact that this is the position of the front-running Republican candidate for the presidency should be treated more scandalously than it is. In calling for mass deportation and ending birthright citizenship, Trump is creating the conditions for a massive humanitarian crisis in which huge numbers of people inside and outside the United States find themselves unbound to any state or government. “Stateless individuals cannot participate in any political process anywhere,” Mother Jones’ Bryan Schatz explained this morning. “They're often subject to arbitrary detention. They have limited access to health care and education. They are especially vulnerable to crime and have little legal recourse if they are victimized. They have no economic rights and few job prospects.” Trump’s plan essentially calls for the existence of a stateless underclass within the country, a whole segment of the population condemned to disenfranchisement and victimization by the accident of their parentage. This is what Jorge Ramos was trying to get Trump to elaborate on when he spoke up at that press conference yesterday. Instead of answering Ramos’ questions, Trump threw him out. When Ramos came back and was given the opportunity to ask about Trump’s immigration plan, Trump offered his usual mix of bluster and evasiveness. On revoking the citizenship of children of immigrants, Trump said “great legal scholars” agree with him. Asked how he’d deport every single undocumented immigrant, Trump offered that he’d “do it in a very humane fashion.” He didn’t even pretend to provide a coherent rationale for all the horrible things he wants to do to immigrants and their families. If you’re upset by Ramos’ tactics or offended that he wasn’t respectful enough towards Trump, you’re very much missing the larger picture.
Exposed: Shameless climate denial, brought to you by Big Coal
The Koch-affiliated groups Americans for Prosperity and the Institute for Energy Research, known for spreading lies about climate change in order to influence policy. The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heartland Institute, also known as America's preeminent climate deniers. A secretive, Karl Rove-linked operation that spent millions on ads supporting Mitch McConnell in his Kentucky Senate race against Alison Grimes and President Obama's purported "War on Coal." And an attorney known for making life hell for the scientists conducting important research on climate change. What they all -- and many others -- have in common, according to a searing investigative report from the Intercept: they all received funding from Alpha Natural Resources, the country's second-largest coal company. This information shouldn't be surprising. But until the company filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, it was nonetheless withheld from the public. That's because, as the Intercept explains, many of these nonprofits, despite the outsized role they play in politics, are not required to reporting information about their donors. Even now, there's no way to determine how much money Alpha Natural Resources allocated to fund these groups. Given the hard work they put into undermining everything from EPA regulations for coal-fired power plants to the very science of climate change, though, it's easy to imagine that the company felt that it's contribution was well worth the expense. Christopher Horner, the attorney exposed as being on Alpha Natural Resource's payroll, has been particularly effective toward those ends. His harassment of climate scientists stretch back to Climategate, the 2009 scandal-that-wasn't, to the present day, the Intercept reports:
Horner has filed numerous records requests for personal emails from climate scientists and litigated to force universities to comply with his requests. Horner continued his investigations of climate scientists earlier this year by filing a records request with John Byrne, distinguished professor of energy climate policy at the University of Delaware. The request was made on behalf of the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, where Horner is a senior fellow. “He has been instrumental in orchestrating the attacks on climate scientists over the past decade in the form of vexatious and frivolous FOIA demands, efforts to force scientists to turn over all of their personal email,” says Dr. Michael Mann, a climate scientist targeted by Horner. Horner has also often cast scientists as villains. He claimed on Alex Jones’ program “Infowars” that climate science is a backdoor strategy for enacting “global governance.” On Fox News, Horner mysteriously claimed that White House science adviser John Holdren is “if not borderline communist — communist.”Horner's published two books detailing the global warming "fraud;" he has not published any peer-reviewed research on climate science. He was, that is to say, a dubious source to begin with. But if this "rare window into the subterranean world of money in politics" proves (or reaffirms) anything, it's just how much influence Big Coal has on the decisions that affect not just its own future, but our entire planet's -- by paying third parties that can feign disinterest to do its dirty work.
Josh Duggar has checked into rehab: “A long journey toward wholeness and recovery”
Josh Duggar, the disgraced star of "19 Kids and Counting," has checked into rehab, a statement posted to the official "Duggar Family" blog confirms. This news comes just weeks after a massive Ashley Madison data dump unearthed his past infidelity and led to the confession that he'd long-struggled with a "secret" pornography addiction. "As parents we are so deeply grieved by our son’s decisions and actions," Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar wrote on their blog. "His wrong choices have deeply hurt his precious wife and children and have negatively affected so many others. He has also brought great insult to the values and faith we hold dear." Jim Bob and Michelle explained that the move to check their 27-year-old into a long-term treatment center would be "a long journey toward wholeness and recovery." You can read the full statement here.Josh Duggar, the disgraced star of "19 Kids and Counting," has checked into rehab, a statement posted to the official "Duggar Family" blog confirms. This news comes just weeks after a massive Ashley Madison data dump unearthed his past infidelity and led to the confession that he'd long-struggled with a "secret" pornography addiction. "As parents we are so deeply grieved by our son’s decisions and actions," Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar wrote on their blog. "His wrong choices have deeply hurt his precious wife and children and have negatively affected so many others. He has also brought great insult to the values and faith we hold dear." Jim Bob and Michelle explained that the move to check their 27-year-old into a long-term treatment center would be "a long journey toward wholeness and recovery." You can read the full statement here.
August 25, 2015
Bob Odenkirk forces Jimmy Kimmel to ask him the questions everyone is too afraid to ask
Bob Odenkirk is convinced that everyone has been a lot nicer to him since the news broke that he'd been nominated for his first-ever Emmy for "Better Call Saul" -- too nice, in the actor's opinion. That's why, while appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel" Monday night, Odenkirk resolved to bring his own hard-hitting questions to the interview, the ones he wished people would ask him. "I feel like you're the type of guy who could cut through the B.S. and ask me the real questions," Odenkirk said, before handing Kimmel a stack of notecards. Among the "questions": "Why are you trying to steal Jon Hamm's Emmy" and "You're ugly. Discuss." Watch the clip courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel Live below: Bob Odenkirk is convinced that everyone has been a lot nicer to him since the news broke that he'd been nominated for his first-ever Emmy for "Better Call Saul" -- too nice, in the actor's opinion. That's why, while appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel" Monday night, Odenkirk resolved to bring his own hard-hitting questions to the interview, the ones he wished people would ask him. "I feel like you're the type of guy who could cut through the B.S. and ask me the real questions," Odenkirk said, before handing Kimmel a stack of notecards. Among the "questions": "Why are you trying to steal Jon Hamm's Emmy" and "You're ugly. Discuss." Watch the clip courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel Live below:
Bernie Sanders is wrong about the Koch brothers: They’re even more dangerous than he thinks
Bear with me for a second, because this is going to sound like a #Slatepitch or a hot take at first, I know. But after catching up on the latest from U.S. senator and presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders, who “delighted” a crowd of roughly 3,000 South Carolinians at a campaign rally this weekend, according to the Associated Press, I feel compelled to register a mild criticism. And it’s probably one of the last you’d expect to be leveled against this longtime, unapologetic democratic socialist. Here it is: I think Sanders is going way too easy on Charles and David Koch. Granted, that probably sounds ridiculous. After all, it was only a few days ago that Sanders was calling out the 1 percent, telling the folks in South Carolina that “a handful of very, very wealthy people have extraordinary power over our economy and our political life and the media.” He even bothered to single out the Kochs for special opprobrium. “For the life of me,” he confessed, “I will never understand how a family like the Koch brothers, worth $85 billion, apparently think that's not enough money.” Like their fellow plutocrats, Sanders said, the Kochs “are very, very powerful.” What makes them different from the rest, though, according to Sanders, is the fact that the Kochs are “extremely greedy,” too. Sanders didn’t come out and say it, of course, but the implication was quite clear: As far as the senator from Vermont was concerned, what motivated the billionaire Koch brothers to spend untold millions on turning America into a Randian paradise was greed, one of humanity’s most mundane and timeless vices. Oh, if only it were so simple. If only the pseudo third-party the Kochs have constructed were designed for no higher purpose than its owners’ enrichment. Because if that were true, defeating the Kochs — and their mammoth, unwieldy so-called Kochtopus — wouldn’t be so difficult. The venal are easily coopted; and while many a popular movement has been manipulated for the wealthy, few if any have admitted it. (Stripped of any idealistic veneer, the allure of such a cause is rather weak.) In that circumstance, reducing the Kochs’ status within American politics to that of any other ultra-wealthy special interests would be a breeze. With the notable exception of sociopaths who thought Gordon Gekko was the hero of “Wall Street,” no one thinks greed is a good thing; and “I want more, more, more!” is not a winning campaign slogan. Exposed as covetous misers, the Kochs would become pariahs. Maybe their example would convince other plutocrats that such public corruption wasn’t worth the risk. Thing is, if we lived in such a world already, we wouldn’t need Bernie Sanders. If the hollowness and impracticality of Koch-style libertarianism were so obvious, there’d be no need to portray them as such menaces to society at large, because their influence would be meager already. That’s not to say that the Kochs’ wealth doesn’t bestow on them a disproportionate level of power. It does, absolutely. But it is to say that for those who aren’t on Sanders’ side already, the Kochs’ villainy is not self-evident. However, there’s another reason why Sanders’ shrugging off the Kochs as purely greedy is a mistake, and it’s one that has more to do with the mindset of his followers than any potential recruit. Simply put, if those who support Sanders and social democracy in general want to defeat the Kochs, they’ll need to take them more seriously. And they’ll need to grapple with the possibility that despite being out-of-touch anti-government zealots, the Koch brothers, like the road to hell, really do have the best intentions. That doesn’t mean the rest of us should lay off or play nice, mind you. It just means recognizing that, as the American Prospect’s Paul Waldman once wrote, “no one thinks they're the villain of their own story.” And in this respect, if no others, the Kochs aren’t any different. Now, having said all that, my argument that Sanders is being “too easy” on the Kochs might seem odd. But I don’t mean that he’s going too easy on them in respect to their character or their overall impact on the world. Rather, I mean that he’s selling them short with regard to their seriousness as a threat to not just the welfare state but the whole idea of popular government. Because what the Kochs have built, and what they are still building, is not about them or their bank accounts. It’s far more ambitious. If the Kochs were to pull a “Leftovers” and disappear tomorrow, for example, it wouldn’t cause the many far-right and libertarian organizations they support to vanish, which is what you’d expect to happen if increasing the family’s fortune was the true goal. Instead, some other coalition of plutocrats from above and reactionaries from below would step in. Because, ultimately, American conservatism is bigger than the Kochs, no matter how many billions they have at their disposal. It’s an ideology, not a scheme. And since conservatism promises to maintain many social privileges (and not only those of the wealthy) that’s not a superficial distinction. Yet even if you don’t buy that analysis, there’s this: If you want to defeat your opponent, you need to understand them first. Sure, the Kochs are secretive and their motivations can be murky. But whatever it is that keeps them fighting, greed — and greed alone — isn’t it.
“The bimbo’s back in town”: Donald Trump live-tweets Megyn Kelly’s return to Fox News
Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.Megyn Kelly returned from her suspiciously timed vacation Monday night, and Donald Trump -- who likely had a role in the timing of her absence -- couldn't pass up the opportunity to live-tweet her homecoming. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... Although Trump merely retweeted someone else calling Kelly a "bimbo," it's worth noting that it's the second time he's done so. It's almost as if he believes that while retweets aren't endorsements, repeatedly retweeting the same insult about the same person won't give people the impression that it's a belief he shares with followers. Once he had finished dispatching Kelly, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, Trump turned his attention to Jeb Bush: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... At least he didn't attack Jeb for how he looks -- at least not yet, it's only 8:08 a.m. on the East Coast.
Donald Trump’s incoherent China-bashing: Why his response to yesterday’s market plunge is (vaguely racist) gibberish
On the morning of this week's stomach churning stock-market roller-coaster ride, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump came out swinging with an Instagram video shot heard round the world. Looking very seriously into the camera, he said:
"I've been telling everybody for a long time China's taking our jobs. They're taking our money. Be careful: They'll bring us down. You have to know what you're doing. We have nobody that has a clue."He followed up with some very strong, powerful, patriotic tweeting: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s... As Politico reported, most Wall Street analysts scratched their heads at The Donald's "analysis"
The facts are that the U.S. economy is not actually highly tied to China. And many market strategists believe the U.S. market was ripe for a significant correction with valuations at historic highs and fears rising over coming interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. The Chinese decline was simply a convenient trigger. And by earlyMonday afternoon the Dow Jones industrial average had already reversed much of its initial 1,000-point drop. “China is a growing market for the U.S. but it is still very small. Even if you throw in all the rest of the emerging markets, it’s still just 2 percent of our GDP,” said Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics. “It’s a problem for big U.S. companies like Apple and GM that want to take market share among Chinese consumers. But it’s not doing damage to most of the U.S. economy. And this is hardly a market calamity. It’s simply a correction that takes us back to where we were in the spring of 2014, which was a pretty good place.”Donald Trump is a very successful real estate magnate. But the way he talks about the world economy shows either that his knowledge is limited to some talk over drinks at the club or he's just a plain old nationalist demagogue. I'd guess the latter. He can't be that dim. The fact is that while immigrant bashing has been the big applause line in Trump's stump speeches, he has spent almost as much time bashing China and promoting himself as someone who "has a clue" about how to make the world economy work for Americans because he knows how to negotiate a deal. (He often digresses at this point into a long story about how nobody thought he could pull off the purchase of the Doral golf course but he went in there and kicked butt and took names. According to this, it was actually his 9 months pregnant daughter Ivanka who made that deal, but whatever.) Trump's appeal, therefore, is not limited to his harsh nativism. His chauvinism and nationalism are just as potent. Indeed, it's entirely possible that we will see a shift in the emphasis among all the Republican candidates, including The Donald, away from deportation and wall building to China and Japan bashing. One gets the sense -- from Jeb Bush's comment yesterday explaining that he was really referring to Asians with the term "anchor baby," as well as from Scott Walker's inane demand that the president cancel the Chinese premier's visit because of the stock market drop -- that someone has decided blaming Asians rather than Mexicans for whatever their voters are upset about is a smarter tactic. Asian Americans are a smaller voter demographic to be sure, and they moved pretty heavily into the Democratic column in recent elections. But the way these Republicans are going, every last racial and ethnic minority will feel personally insulted before anyone casts even one vote in Iowa. So how exactly does Trump plan to make good on all his talk? Trump told Joe Scarborough back in June that he would bring on his good friend investor Carl Icahn, former GE Chairman Jack Welch or KKR's Henry Kravis, all very famous names from the 1980s, as Treasury Secretary. He explained:
[China and Mexico] “are taking our business like we're a bunch of babies. We don't have our best and our brightest negotiating for us. We have a bunch of losers, we have a bunch of political hacks. We have diplomats. I know the smartest guys on Wall Street.I know our best negotiators. I know the overrated guys, the underrated guys, the guys that nobody ever heard of that are killers, that are great. We gotta use those people.” We have people that are better than any of their negotiators. ... We don't use them, Joe. We use people that are soft and weak and frankly stupid and incompetent.”He has since said he would also use them as trade representatives and other "negotiators" in various ways. Because they aren't "babies." In fact, they are all in their 70s. When Kravis heard this he reportedly said it was "scary" that Trump would want him to be Treasury Secretary. Icahn too at first demurred, saying that he was surprised that Trump would want him. After watching him debate he changed his mind and accepted the offer in a tweet: https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/stat... Tweeting must be the new medium for all those high level global negotiations Trump keeps talking about. No word from Welch as yet. But all this brings up some very interesting questions. Icahn, Kravis and Welch are progenitors of of the corporate-financier strategy that upended American business in the 1980s. Kravis was an inventor of private equity, Icahn was a notorious corporate raider, and Welch created the concept of the modern corporation. In fact, Welch famously set forth the idea that every manufacturing plant should be built on a barge so that factories could float between countries in order to profit from currency manipulation,subsidies, and low taxes or labor costs. How that would make America Great Again — as opposed to a few wealthy businessmen — remains unanswered. Carl Icahn, meanwhile, served as a model for the Gordon Gecko chatacyer in Wall Street" and has been called "one of the greediest men on earth." He's worth $25 billion or more, not quite as rich as a Koch brother, but certainly among the richest of the Masters of the Universe. He and Welch and and Kravis, Trump's boys, are the guys who would willingly bring down the state -- for profit. They are the swashbuckling business revolutionaries of the 1980s who made their careers as economic wrecking balls, loathed by the financial establishment for their destabilizing predatory activities and the destroyers of well-paying jobs for American workers. These are the men the GOP frontrunner wants to put in charge of the economy. As a friend of mine ominously put it the other day, "There might just be a group of 70-something-year-old billionaire revolutionaries who just think they can run the country directly instead of dealing with those pesky annoying politicians. They upended corporate America, which was much tougher than politics." These free-trading, corporate raiding, off-shoring billionaire contemporaries of Trump, the 2015 populist hero of the white working class which worships him for his phony advocacy on their behalf, represent the apotheosis of rapacious American corporate values. It would be funny if it weren't so frightening.
These candidates can’t take a joke: Inside the baffling humorlessness of presidential politics
“By he way, you may have seen that I have recently launched a Snapchat account,” Hillary Clinton told Iowans last month. “I love it—those messages disappear instantly, all by themselves.” The joke was on herself, of course, referring to the much-criticized private email account she used as Secretary of State. Since the dawn of the television era, our most skilled politicians have deflected attacks by making wisecracks at their own expense. But self-deprecating humor is in short supply on the 2016 campaign trail, where the candidates have mostly fired their one-liners at each other. A typical example: citing recent news reports about cyberattacks , Republican candidate Scott Walker said that Russia and China now know more about Clinton’s email server than do members of the U.S. Congress. For both parties, of course, the easiest target is Donald Trump. “Finally, a candidate whose hair gets more attention than mine,” Clinton jibed. After Trump visited Iowa in his private helicopter, Bernie Sanders joked that he had left his own chopper at home. These kinds of quips might draw a few chuckles from from a campaign crowd, but they won’t humanize candidates—or disarm their opposition. To do that, you need to poke fun at yourself. Consider the master of the genre, John F. Kennedy. When he ran for president in 1960, JFK faced three big negatives: his family wealth, his Catholic religion, and his young age. So he made jokes about all three, which defused them better than any other retort could. “I just received a telegram from my father,” Kennedy told a campaign audience. “He says, ‘Don’t buy one more vote than you need. I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide.” To deflect fears that he’d take orders from the Vatican, Kennedy joked that the Pope had misspelled American cardinal Francis Spellman’s name. And when Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn suggested that JFK might be too young to be president, Kennedy replied, “Sam Rayburn may think I’m young, but then most of the population looks young to a man who’s 78.” The other president who excelled in self-deprecating humor was Ronald Reagan, who poked fun at his old age rather than his youth. He often quoted Thomas Jefferson’s claim that a person’s age shouldn’t be a barrier to public office. Then, after a pause, Reagan would add, “And when Tom told me that . . .” Reagan’s most famous quip came during a 1984 debate against his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale. Noting that JFK had gone for days without sleep during the Cuban missile crisis, a reporter asked Reagan—who was already the oldest president in American history—whether he “would be able to function in such circumstances.” Reagan smiled, then replied. “I want you to know that I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan’s staff had obviously anticipated the question and had prepared a snappy reply, courtesy of the jokewriters that were paid to sprinkle levity into his speeches and press conferences. That practice also went back to Kennedy, who hired several humorists for his 1960 campaign. So did JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, whose “Humor Group”—as his jokewriters called themselves--assembled on Mondays at 5 p.m., in an office stocked with liquor. They included a young author named Peter Benchley, who would later make millions from his best-selling novel Jaws. But most of their jokes never made it into LBJ’s speeches. Lacking the Ivy League polish of Kennedy and other East Coast elites, LBJ also lacked the confidence to poke fun at himself. So he rejected any jokes that were even mildly self-deprecating, deeming them “unpresidential.” Ditto for Richard Nixon, who was simply too uncomfortable in his own skin to make jokes at his own expense. Like LBJ, Nixon displayed a sardonic wit when sparring with the press. But he could never affect the happy-go-lucky humor that Americans appreciate, as his own staff realized. “HUMOR—Can be corrected to a degree, but let’s not get too obvious about it,” one adviser wrote in 1968, during Nixon’s successful bid for the White House. “If we’re going to be witty, let a pro write the words.” (Nixon demurred, refusing to hire a full-time comic for the campaign.) Gerald Ford brought a bit more humor to the White House, even doing a gag at a journalists’ dinner about his alleged clumsiness. But Jimmy Carter was all business, often rejecting jokes that his staff inserted in his speeches. “If the American people wanted Bob Hope for their president, they should have elected him,” Carter snapped. We do want someone who can laugh at themselves, however. And since Reagan, that’s been hard to come by. The two Bush presidents? Too awkward. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Too cerebral. Channeling Reagan, GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and George Pataki have made some cute quips about their respective ages. Huckabee said that most of America’s B-52’s were older than he was—“and that’s pretty scary”—and Pataki joked that he had been considering a White House run “since the Civil War.” Otherwise, though, it’s slim pickings for self-deprecating humor in 2016. Hillary’s joke about her email was the exception that proves the rule. Get ready for candidates to lob barbs at each other, not at themselves. It won’t be pretty. And it probably won’t be very funny, either.“By he way, you may have seen that I have recently launched a Snapchat account,” Hillary Clinton told Iowans last month. “I love it—those messages disappear instantly, all by themselves.” The joke was on herself, of course, referring to the much-criticized private email account she used as Secretary of State. Since the dawn of the television era, our most skilled politicians have deflected attacks by making wisecracks at their own expense. But self-deprecating humor is in short supply on the 2016 campaign trail, where the candidates have mostly fired their one-liners at each other. A typical example: citing recent news reports about cyberattacks , Republican candidate Scott Walker said that Russia and China now know more about Clinton’s email server than do members of the U.S. Congress. For both parties, of course, the easiest target is Donald Trump. “Finally, a candidate whose hair gets more attention than mine,” Clinton jibed. After Trump visited Iowa in his private helicopter, Bernie Sanders joked that he had left his own chopper at home. These kinds of quips might draw a few chuckles from from a campaign crowd, but they won’t humanize candidates—or disarm their opposition. To do that, you need to poke fun at yourself. Consider the master of the genre, John F. Kennedy. When he ran for president in 1960, JFK faced three big negatives: his family wealth, his Catholic religion, and his young age. So he made jokes about all three, which defused them better than any other retort could. “I just received a telegram from my father,” Kennedy told a campaign audience. “He says, ‘Don’t buy one more vote than you need. I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide.” To deflect fears that he’d take orders from the Vatican, Kennedy joked that the Pope had misspelled American cardinal Francis Spellman’s name. And when Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn suggested that JFK might be too young to be president, Kennedy replied, “Sam Rayburn may think I’m young, but then most of the population looks young to a man who’s 78.” The other president who excelled in self-deprecating humor was Ronald Reagan, who poked fun at his old age rather than his youth. He often quoted Thomas Jefferson’s claim that a person’s age shouldn’t be a barrier to public office. Then, after a pause, Reagan would add, “And when Tom told me that . . .” Reagan’s most famous quip came during a 1984 debate against his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale. Noting that JFK had gone for days without sleep during the Cuban missile crisis, a reporter asked Reagan—who was already the oldest president in American history—whether he “would be able to function in such circumstances.” Reagan smiled, then replied. “I want you to know that I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan’s staff had obviously anticipated the question and had prepared a snappy reply, courtesy of the jokewriters that were paid to sprinkle levity into his speeches and press conferences. That practice also went back to Kennedy, who hired several humorists for his 1960 campaign. So did JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, whose “Humor Group”—as his jokewriters called themselves--assembled on Mondays at 5 p.m., in an office stocked with liquor. They included a young author named Peter Benchley, who would later make millions from his best-selling novel Jaws. But most of their jokes never made it into LBJ’s speeches. Lacking the Ivy League polish of Kennedy and other East Coast elites, LBJ also lacked the confidence to poke fun at himself. So he rejected any jokes that were even mildly self-deprecating, deeming them “unpresidential.” Ditto for Richard Nixon, who was simply too uncomfortable in his own skin to make jokes at his own expense. Like LBJ, Nixon displayed a sardonic wit when sparring with the press. But he could never affect the happy-go-lucky humor that Americans appreciate, as his own staff realized. “HUMOR—Can be corrected to a degree, but let’s not get too obvious about it,” one adviser wrote in 1968, during Nixon’s successful bid for the White House. “If we’re going to be witty, let a pro write the words.” (Nixon demurred, refusing to hire a full-time comic for the campaign.) Gerald Ford brought a bit more humor to the White House, even doing a gag at a journalists’ dinner about his alleged clumsiness. But Jimmy Carter was all business, often rejecting jokes that his staff inserted in his speeches. “If the American people wanted Bob Hope for their president, they should have elected him,” Carter snapped. We do want someone who can laugh at themselves, however. And since Reagan, that’s been hard to come by. The two Bush presidents? Too awkward. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Too cerebral. Channeling Reagan, GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and George Pataki have made some cute quips about their respective ages. Huckabee said that most of America’s B-52’s were older than he was—“and that’s pretty scary”—and Pataki joked that he had been considering a White House run “since the Civil War.” Otherwise, though, it’s slim pickings for self-deprecating humor in 2016. Hillary’s joke about her email was the exception that proves the rule. Get ready for candidates to lob barbs at each other, not at themselves. It won’t be pretty. And it probably won’t be very funny, either.“By he way, you may have seen that I have recently launched a Snapchat account,” Hillary Clinton told Iowans last month. “I love it—those messages disappear instantly, all by themselves.” The joke was on herself, of course, referring to the much-criticized private email account she used as Secretary of State. Since the dawn of the television era, our most skilled politicians have deflected attacks by making wisecracks at their own expense. But self-deprecating humor is in short supply on the 2016 campaign trail, where the candidates have mostly fired their one-liners at each other. A typical example: citing recent news reports about cyberattacks , Republican candidate Scott Walker said that Russia and China now know more about Clinton’s email server than do members of the U.S. Congress. For both parties, of course, the easiest target is Donald Trump. “Finally, a candidate whose hair gets more attention than mine,” Clinton jibed. After Trump visited Iowa in his private helicopter, Bernie Sanders joked that he had left his own chopper at home. These kinds of quips might draw a few chuckles from from a campaign crowd, but they won’t humanize candidates—or disarm their opposition. To do that, you need to poke fun at yourself. Consider the master of the genre, John F. Kennedy. When he ran for president in 1960, JFK faced three big negatives: his family wealth, his Catholic religion, and his young age. So he made jokes about all three, which defused them better than any other retort could. “I just received a telegram from my father,” Kennedy told a campaign audience. “He says, ‘Don’t buy one more vote than you need. I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide.” To deflect fears that he’d take orders from the Vatican, Kennedy joked that the Pope had misspelled American cardinal Francis Spellman’s name. And when Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn suggested that JFK might be too young to be president, Kennedy replied, “Sam Rayburn may think I’m young, but then most of the population looks young to a man who’s 78.” The other president who excelled in self-deprecating humor was Ronald Reagan, who poked fun at his old age rather than his youth. He often quoted Thomas Jefferson’s claim that a person’s age shouldn’t be a barrier to public office. Then, after a pause, Reagan would add, “And when Tom told me that . . .” Reagan’s most famous quip came during a 1984 debate against his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale. Noting that JFK had gone for days without sleep during the Cuban missile crisis, a reporter asked Reagan—who was already the oldest president in American history—whether he “would be able to function in such circumstances.” Reagan smiled, then replied. “I want you to know that I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan’s staff had obviously anticipated the question and had prepared a snappy reply, courtesy of the jokewriters that were paid to sprinkle levity into his speeches and press conferences. That practice also went back to Kennedy, who hired several humorists for his 1960 campaign. So did JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, whose “Humor Group”—as his jokewriters called themselves--assembled on Mondays at 5 p.m., in an office stocked with liquor. They included a young author named Peter Benchley, who would later make millions from his best-selling novel Jaws. But most of their jokes never made it into LBJ’s speeches. Lacking the Ivy League polish of Kennedy and other East Coast elites, LBJ also lacked the confidence to poke fun at himself. So he rejected any jokes that were even mildly self-deprecating, deeming them “unpresidential.” Ditto for Richard Nixon, who was simply too uncomfortable in his own skin to make jokes at his own expense. Like LBJ, Nixon displayed a sardonic wit when sparring with the press. But he could never affect the happy-go-lucky humor that Americans appreciate, as his own staff realized. “HUMOR—Can be corrected to a degree, but let’s not get too obvious about it,” one adviser wrote in 1968, during Nixon’s successful bid for the White House. “If we’re going to be witty, let a pro write the words.” (Nixon demurred, refusing to hire a full-time comic for the campaign.) Gerald Ford brought a bit more humor to the White House, even doing a gag at a journalists’ dinner about his alleged clumsiness. But Jimmy Carter was all business, often rejecting jokes that his staff inserted in his speeches. “If the American people wanted Bob Hope for their president, they should have elected him,” Carter snapped. We do want someone who can laugh at themselves, however. And since Reagan, that’s been hard to come by. The two Bush presidents? Too awkward. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Too cerebral. Channeling Reagan, GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and George Pataki have made some cute quips about their respective ages. Huckabee said that most of America’s B-52’s were older than he was—“and that’s pretty scary”—and Pataki joked that he had been considering a White House run “since the Civil War.” Otherwise, though, it’s slim pickings for self-deprecating humor in 2016. Hillary’s joke about her email was the exception that proves the rule. Get ready for candidates to lob barbs at each other, not at themselves. It won’t be pretty. And it probably won’t be very funny, either.“By he way, you may have seen that I have recently launched a Snapchat account,” Hillary Clinton told Iowans last month. “I love it—those messages disappear instantly, all by themselves.” The joke was on herself, of course, referring to the much-criticized private email account she used as Secretary of State. Since the dawn of the television era, our most skilled politicians have deflected attacks by making wisecracks at their own expense. But self-deprecating humor is in short supply on the 2016 campaign trail, where the candidates have mostly fired their one-liners at each other. A typical example: citing recent news reports about cyberattacks , Republican candidate Scott Walker said that Russia and China now know more about Clinton’s email server than do members of the U.S. Congress. For both parties, of course, the easiest target is Donald Trump. “Finally, a candidate whose hair gets more attention than mine,” Clinton jibed. After Trump visited Iowa in his private helicopter, Bernie Sanders joked that he had left his own chopper at home. These kinds of quips might draw a few chuckles from from a campaign crowd, but they won’t humanize candidates—or disarm their opposition. To do that, you need to poke fun at yourself. Consider the master of the genre, John F. Kennedy. When he ran for president in 1960, JFK faced three big negatives: his family wealth, his Catholic religion, and his young age. So he made jokes about all three, which defused them better than any other retort could. “I just received a telegram from my father,” Kennedy told a campaign audience. “He says, ‘Don’t buy one more vote than you need. I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide.” To deflect fears that he’d take orders from the Vatican, Kennedy joked that the Pope had misspelled American cardinal Francis Spellman’s name. And when Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn suggested that JFK might be too young to be president, Kennedy replied, “Sam Rayburn may think I’m young, but then most of the population looks young to a man who’s 78.” The other president who excelled in self-deprecating humor was Ronald Reagan, who poked fun at his old age rather than his youth. He often quoted Thomas Jefferson’s claim that a person’s age shouldn’t be a barrier to public office. Then, after a pause, Reagan would add, “And when Tom told me that . . .” Reagan’s most famous quip came during a 1984 debate against his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale. Noting that JFK had gone for days without sleep during the Cuban missile crisis, a reporter asked Reagan—who was already the oldest president in American history—whether he “would be able to function in such circumstances.” Reagan smiled, then replied. “I want you to know that I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan’s staff had obviously anticipated the question and had prepared a snappy reply, courtesy of the jokewriters that were paid to sprinkle levity into his speeches and press conferences. That practice also went back to Kennedy, who hired several humorists for his 1960 campaign. So did JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, whose “Humor Group”—as his jokewriters called themselves--assembled on Mondays at 5 p.m., in an office stocked with liquor. They included a young author named Peter Benchley, who would later make millions from his best-selling novel Jaws. But most of their jokes never made it into LBJ’s speeches. Lacking the Ivy League polish of Kennedy and other East Coast elites, LBJ also lacked the confidence to poke fun at himself. So he rejected any jokes that were even mildly self-deprecating, deeming them “unpresidential.” Ditto for Richard Nixon, who was simply too uncomfortable in his own skin to make jokes at his own expense. Like LBJ, Nixon displayed a sardonic wit when sparring with the press. But he could never affect the happy-go-lucky humor that Americans appreciate, as his own staff realized. “HUMOR—Can be corrected to a degree, but let’s not get too obvious about it,” one adviser wrote in 1968, during Nixon’s successful bid for the White House. “If we’re going to be witty, let a pro write the words.” (Nixon demurred, refusing to hire a full-time comic for the campaign.) Gerald Ford brought a bit more humor to the White House, even doing a gag at a journalists’ dinner about his alleged clumsiness. But Jimmy Carter was all business, often rejecting jokes that his staff inserted in his speeches. “If the American people wanted Bob Hope for their president, they should have elected him,” Carter snapped. We do want someone who can laugh at themselves, however. And since Reagan, that’s been hard to come by. The two Bush presidents? Too awkward. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Too cerebral. Channeling Reagan, GOP candidates Mike Huckabee and George Pataki have made some cute quips about their respective ages. Huckabee said that most of America’s B-52’s were older than he was—“and that’s pretty scary”—and Pataki joked that he had been considering a White House run “since the Civil War.” Otherwise, though, it’s slim pickings for self-deprecating humor in 2016. Hillary’s joke about her email was the exception that proves the rule. Get ready for candidates to lob barbs at each other, not at themselves. It won’t be pretty. And it probably won’t be very funny, either.
White people aren’t the enemy: Why social justice demands a rainbow coalition of minorities & poor whites
On average, whites are far better off than blacks. But the problem with averages is that they often conceal radically uneven distribution of the phenomena in question. This is certainly true of wealth among white Americans. It is well-established that white people are overrepresented in the upper classes. And even within the middle class, whites are far more likely to own their own home, to own their own business, to send their kids to better primary schools and have them go on to college. By contrast, the children of most black middle-class families earn less than their parents when they reach adulthood, often sliding into poverty—and for blacks, college does little to ameliorate this trend. Among the lower classes, blacks are far more likely than whites to live in areas of “concentrated poverty,” which has a severe debilitating effect on social mobility. However, the fact that blacks are so much worse off relatively speaking does not entail that white people are generally enjoying prosperity. Overall, 15% of Americans live in poverty—40% of these in “deep poverty.” An additional 30% of the total population lives just at the cusp of poverty. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans struggle with economic insecurity, and most will sink below the poverty line for some period of their lives. And these dynamics persist across generations, regardless for instance, of how hard people work: the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor. A majority of America’s poor are white, as are a plurality of those receiving federal assistance. Why does this matter? Because poor white people seem to be a natural ally for the social justice movement. In fact, there is widespread support among this constituency for policies addressing inequality, enhancing social mobility, protecting social safety nets, and reforming drug and sentencing laws. However, when crime and poverty are discussed in racialized terms, this dynamic changes completely: whites become far more likely to support stricter enforcement of the law and harsher sentencing. They also grow far more receptive to policies which erode safety nets for the poor and redistribute money to social elites. And this is not just a problem for old white men, these trends are just as prevalent among millennials. Is this racist? Of course. But it’s easy to misunderstand what this means. At its core, racism is not about xenophobic reactions to difference, stereotyping people from other groups, or a sense of intrinsic superiority. Racism is about preserving a socio-economic order which privileges the majority group (in this case, whites) at the expense of minorities. And while hate can (and typically does) play an important role in justifying this cause, strictly speaking, it is not necessary: there are plenty of racists who do not hate black people, per se. Many may even have black friends and colleagues whom they hold in great esteem. But this does little to alleviate the gnawing, pervasive and persistent fear that the empowerment of minorities will ultimately come at the expense of whites. For those many white Americans already struggling (or failing) to keep their head above water or support their families, this prospect doesn’t just induce dread—it motivates resistance. More than Hate For contemporary racist movements, keeping down minorities is a means towards the end of preserving white dominance over society; it is rarely an end unto itself. Groups typically recruit people, not with hate, but by evoking love for one’s family, community and way of life, or else appealing to pride in one’s history, heritage and culture. The call is for white people to band together against the forces which threaten these—a mandate through which many find comradery and purpose. It’s counterintuitive perhaps, but the sales pitch for racism relies heavily on positive messaging. This is why so many who participate in ethnic nationalist and separatist groups are so sincerely convinced that they are not racist. To the extent that negative emotions play a role in racist organizations, they appeal primarily to the generalized desperation, helplessness, and sense of foreboding that many whites feel--along with the desire to expropriate blame and direct (out)rage for one’s plight towards some perceived hostile “other.” Because the literature from these groups is rife with revisionist history, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and problematic (or outright false and falsified) empirical claims, it is tempting to dismiss members as whackos or fools—but this would be a mistake. These elements cohere into a mythology which substantiates and reinforces the white identity that so many Americans believe is under siege—and in turn produces a community to protect it. Outsiders sniping at parts of this belief system merely reinforces this siege mentality and further polarizes adherents. The only way to really undermine these groups is to eliminate their raison d’etre. And so the task of social justice advocates should be obvious: to convincingly argue and demonstrate to poor white Americans that it is possible to preserve or even improve their condition and at the same time raise up marginalized groups. Not only have activists miserably failed at this task, their message and tactics regularly alienate impoverished whites while confirming racist narratives. It should be no surprise then that ethnic nationalist and separatist movements have been rapidly expanding in America (and across Western democracies), while their ideology and methods are growing increasingly extreme, and increasingly effective. If the current dynamics continue unchecked, we should expect the problem to grow worse. Fruitless Engagement America’s demographics, economy and culture are evolving rapidly—and as the primary stakeholders in the current socio-economic order, white Americans believe they have the most to lose from these changes. As white privilege is increasingly critiqued and challenged, many have come to fear that minorities have become racist against them, that they are increasingly the victims of reverse-discrimination, and that whites will be increasingly marginalized and persecuted in the future as minorities continue to rise (often resting on the premise that these groups will act as a monolith). When they express these fears, adherents are immediately denounced as ignorant, bigoted or intolerant. Meanwhile, their own culture is mocked and derided with total impunity: It is perfectly acceptable to denigrate impoverished whites as rednecks, hillbillies, trailer trash, white trash, and so on—to mock their religion, traditions, and even their suffering. This is not to draw an equivocation—but to help illustrate the frame of reference that many white Americans are working from: While often blamed for their own misery, blacks and other minority groups can ultimately point towards institutionalized racism, historical disadvantages, and contemporary prejudice to gain some sympathy. However, when impoverished whites are blamed for their own poverty (and for the poverty of minorities on top of it), there is little recourse. Millions of white Americans are struggling with unemployment, food insecurity, homelessness, substance abuse, lack of access to education, healthcare, mental health and social services, etc. But no one really cares. In fact, whites often feel as though they don’t even have a right to express any hardships they face without being immediately reminded that others are worse off. When a white person has the audacity to include their own struggles in conversations about injustice or inequality, they often instructed that their proper role in these discussions is to listen contritely and then validate the grievances of minorities. While the moral imperative for this is certainly understandable, it is also easy to see why many grow frustrated: if you are already struggling to get by, history lessons and statistics on white privilege do nothing to help put food on the table or keep the lights on. The Politics of Spite The antipathy impoverished whites often get from minority groups and their liberal white advocates is perhaps the single greatest cause for their resentment of “other” poor people. Because progressives typically look down on this constituency as ignorant, stupid or crazy, they tend to believe that right-wing politicians are duping poor white people into voting against their best interests—and accordingly, that they can “help” these lost souls “see the light” by presenting them with the relevant “facts” about racial inequality—oblivious that this kind of condescension is precisely the problem: White voters know that GOP candidates will target the poor and bolster the wealthy; this is precisely what they are electing them to do. It is clear that some already-disadvantaged whites may become worse off in some respects (although the policies are often tailored to minimize this), but white voters are confident that “others” will be harmed far more. As a result, the position of white people, even poor white people, may be enhanced relative to the minorities who bear the brunt of these actions. In other words, this voting pattern is not illogical--it is a war of attrition to preserve the status quo. While many impoverished white people may be tired of being the collateral damage of this struggle, there seems to be few alternatives. They have no faith that their views, priorities or interests would be respected in Democratic Party--and this is as much a result of the hostile posture and messaging from the left as it is of race-baiting propaganda from the right. Progressives need to get better at speaking to the interests of poor whites, acknowledging the challenges they face, and connecting white populism to other social movements. Poor People's Crusade 2.0 Many of the problems being highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement have powerful salience for poor whites as well. For instance, a majority of those killed by police, including a plurality of those who are unarmed, have been white. While there are radical disparities between blacks and whites overall relative to their respective populations, this may be in large part because blacks tend to be disproportionately represented in the lower classes and whites in the upper. Were there sufficient data to control for income, I suspect that the rates would be much closer. It has already been well-established that within the black context, these problems are far more pronounced for poor African Americans than for their middle and upper-class contemporaries. Similarly, one reason blacks are far more likely to end up in “the system” is because police operate most heavily in areas of concentrated poverty—which, again, tend to be overwhelmingly populated by minorities (this is why fair housing should be much bigger part of the conversation than it has been). As a result, minorities are far more likely to be arrested, and to be arrested more than once—and penalties tend to grow stronger with each repeat offense, in large part due to mandatory minimum sentencing laws. This is explains much of the disparity between blacks and whites in terms of the prison population. In the courtroom, the conviction rate is roughly 95%, and the only variable which seems to make a large difference is money. Poor whites have a huge stake in all of these problems. Their strong participation can help create a majority-coalition to override resistance from those most invested in the prevailing order; it can render the entire racist system less solvent. However, social justice becomes much more compelling for these constituents if framed as a populist uprising rather than a civil rights crusade. It would be easy to view this as a deflection, but in fact, class tends to track along racial lines due to historical disadvantages, institutionalized racism, and cultural prejudices—and the already significant social disadvantages of class can be exacerbated for blacks by these same factors. As a result, addressing these class-related issues could have a huge impact on African Americans and other minorities without alienating white voters in the process. Put another way: black people don’t need to forgive or ignore racism—we can achieve many (perhaps most) of our pragmatic goals in spite of racism by prioritizing class disparities instead. Of course, this is far less satisfying than having the horrific injustices through which the prevailing order was established not only validated by its primary beneficiaries, but rectified by them as well—with nothing to gain except the knowledge that we’d all be living in a more just and moral society. But this is not going to happen in any foreseeable future. Frankly, it’s a luxury that many white people feel they cannot afford given their own desperate situations. Attempting to guilt, shame or otherwise cajole these voters into supporting social justice initiatives will always be far less effective than appealing to their own interests, values, and frames of reference. To be sure, there will be some issues which are more specific to racial (and/or sexual) minority groups and will gain less traction with these constituents. However, even many minority-specific problems will be at least partially alleviated by addressing economic imbalances. And ultimately, it will be easier to get white voters to care about the problems of “others” when they are not so fearful of their own fate: the central premise underlying the racist system is that minorities can only be empowered at the expense of the majority group (whites). If impoverished white Americans see their fortunes rise in tandem with minorities, they will be less susceptible to this racist messaging down the line--particularly to the extent that cooperation in pursuit of these reforms helps build trust and goodwill across communities. In the near term activists should worry a lot less about changing hearts and minds, dedicating their energies almost exclusively to restructuring laws, systems, institutions and practices. Social justice advocates should be focused, first and foremost, on identifying convergent interests and forming coalitions around them--exchanging ideas, formulating concrete policies, and mobilizing a political consensus to address common problems. If engaged in good faith, and as part of a broad populist platform, poor white voters can be essential (perhaps decisive) for the success of the reform enterprise. Otherwise, they will likely continue to act as a spoiler—and all of us will be much worse off for it.
