You Can’t Make This Stuff Up — 2016 Republican National Convention Open Thread

by

by wj

The anti-Trump forces have failed in their attempt to force a roll call vote on the convention rules. Featured during the attempt: the person chairing the convention up and walked off the stage for 10 minutes. Didn’t bother to try to gavel things back into order. Just left.

Just caught on the radio, this from a delegate on the whole roll call vote effort: “Trump is our nominee. We should just do it, without messing around with rules or anything.” Because why should rules, whether Rules of Order or any other kind, be given any notice when what is important is doing what we want? Good to know.

227 thoughts on “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up — 2016 Republican National Convention Open Thread”

  2. Yes, because the “bound delegates” are not bound to vote a particular way on a rules question, so they want to raise a motion “unbind all delegates”.
    And unless it’s a roll-call vote the Chair can just say “too bad, you lose”, no matter what the actual tally. Which is exactly what happened.
    I think the NeverTrumpers were going to lose anyway, but it seems that Ryan and the GOPe didn’t want to take any chances.

  4. Speaking of “you can’t make this stuff up,” WTF is with this plagiarism thing? It’s weird as cat sh1t.

  10. that had to be deliberate sabotage by the speech writer. steal stuff about the importance of hard work from a self-made black woman and give it to the imported 3rd trophy wife of a racist huckster ?

  11. Trump is supposed to say “The Aristocrats” and then drop the mic, per John Cole.
    Scott Baio was there to give everyone pink-eye.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzbSF2Tvl3U
    David Kurtz:
    The irony of the Melania Trump plagiarism is that she was the only element of Monday night’s low-rent infomercial tableau that wasn’t saturated in violence, revanchism, Dolchstoss myth-making, and darkness — but it was tainted, too.

  13. Let’s keep in mind that Trump et al can win this thing based on the very dumbass incompetence they displayed last night, which close to 49% of the pathetic electorate now identify as their birthright over and above any snooty, Ivy League elitism any of the rest of us, including the three traditional Republicans left in the country, might lay claim to.
    Their victimization is their victory.
    The worse they look and do, the more they are sorely victimized by our politically incorrect criticism of their behavior and the angrier and more armed his supporters become.
    If we were Jews in 1937 Germany, we wouldn’t be making eye contact with the jackbooted Nazis who were making us shovel snow off the sidewalks, would we, for fear they would take it as a challenge to their brutal mano on mano dominance born of bullshit victimhood, and then really put it to us.
    Nevertheless, carry on.

  14. Let’s keep in mind that Trump et al can win this thing based on the very dumbass incompetence they displayed last night, which close to 49% of the pathetic electorate now identify as their birthright over and above any snooty, Ivy League elitism any of the rest of us, including the three traditional Republicans left in the country, might lay claim to.
    Their victimization is their victory.
    The worse they look and do, the more they are sorely victimized by our politically incorrect criticism of their behavior and the angrier and more armed his supporters become.
    If we were Jews in 1937 Germany, we wouldn’t be making eye contact with the jackbooted Nazis who were making us shovel snow off the sidewalks, would we, for fear they would take it as a challenge to their brutal mano on mano dominance born of bullshit victimhood, and then really put it to us.
    Nevertheless, carry on.

  16. My second 10:48 AM comment bears absolutely no similarity in word, tone, or meaning to my first 10:48 AM comment.
    I deny any inference you may be suggesting.
    I’ll concede the two side by side are more like the first two lyrics to a rhythm and blues song, the first line repeated, but wearily and without hope that anyone heard me the first time.
    You know what I’m saying?

  17. If you pop over to cleek’s joint, he has more on the pattern emerging via a vis Trump looking within the soul of the boy sitting next to him so he could cheat on his metaphysics exam.

  18. WTF is with this plagiarism thing?
    …
    it’s like they think the whole country is as dumb as the typical Trump supporter.
    Well, they can be certain that their supporters will look at any suggestion that Melania** plagerized from Michelle and instantly react that it’s a fraud by the elites. In short, they won’t believe the fact, because that’s not what they do.
    As for the rest of the country, I’m not sure Trump really accepts that we won’t buy it, too. After all, he managed to scam the majority of the Republican Party in the primaries. When everybody kept saying he couldn’t. So who’s to say he can’t do the same for the general election?

  24. Get a gander at Trump’s congratulatory tweet to Melania (I’d like to brainya, but I’ll abstainya) for her speech last night side by side and word for word next to Barack Obama’s tweet to Michelle at the 2012 Democratic convention.
    Scroll down to see it.
    http://juanitajean.com/melania-loves-michelle/
    WTF is bizarro going on?
    What are Trump and his people up to?
    It’s going to be even more sidesplitting when we find out than wj’s proffered theory that Trump is working for Putin and the Russians.
    It’s like the Seinfeld show when Elaine starts hanging out with BizarroWorld Jerry, Kramer, and George.

  25. In a contest between Steve King, Philip Bump, Chris Hayes and Charlie Pierce to see who can out-stupid the rest, that is an accomplishment of some…note.
    It even out-distanced Hayes’ assertion that “if you’re looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well”. For every one. That’s a lot of Hitlers and Stalins.
    That’s some weapons-grade stupidity on display, there. Remember, though, that he represents a lot of stupid back home.

  26. As the wreckage of the GOP convention unfolds, you might want to peruse a pretty good primer on how so-called free trade has died.
    This is an issue that has caught on – on both sides of the political aisle.

  28. The US would be better off to instigate unilateral free trade. But, if it did that, individuals and institutions inside and outside the country would scream bloody murder.

  29. Get a gander at Trump’s congratulatory tweet to Melania (I’d like to brainya, but I’ll abstainya) for her speech last night side by side and word for word next to Barack Obama’s tweet to Michelle at the 2012 Democratic convention.

    That tweet was a fake, wasn’t it? I think it was just somebody’s joke.

  30. CharlesWT: that sounds like policy that the UK followed in the late 19th century. One problem: if you unilaterally remove tariffs/barriers, you lose all negotiating leverage to get others to lower their barriers.

  32. In the long term, tariffs/barriers are likely to harm the country setting them more than the countries that wish to trade with it.
    In the US, price supports/barriers for sugar cost consumers billions of dollars a year while make a few people in Florida and elsewhere very rich.
    And, in the case of sugar, the external harm is pretty high to. A lot of people in the Caribbean islands, Central and South America would be living much better lives if they could sale sugar to the US at free market rates.
    On the other hand, just about everybody would be better off consuming less sugar and other sweeteners.

  33. Maybe if we get Trump revved up that most sugar subsidies are going to guys with furrin-sounding last names like Fanjul, we can finally get rid of them. The subsidies, I mean.
    But that’d require that he win, first, and that’s not something I look forward to.

  34. …and because sugar prices are elevated, HFCS has stepped in as a cheaper alternative.
    It’s a cascade failure.

  35. Well, he’d have to get rid of guys with furrin-sounding names like Rubio too, if he expects to make any headway against big sugar.

  37. I’m trying to remember if there has ever in my lifetime been a previous case where the nominee left town, and wasn’t present on the day that he was actually nominated by the convention.
    Yes, transportation is faster and communications are better than ever. But still, to just up and leave town. Weird.

  38. Trump left town?
    Scott Whathisface tweeted that Hillary is a c**t.
    Melania made a truly memorable speech, dispelling any attempt to sell her as more than arm candy.
    The chair actually left the podium for over five minutes while the delegates yelled at each other.
    ONe of Trump’s fundraisers ahs quit, made over how the roll call vote was handled.
    One of the speakers said Obama is a Muslim (Cotton?).
    Even the corporate media isn’t buying that poor lady’s claim that Hillary killed her son.
    No one is dead yet. I was expecting violence, and it hasn’t happened. Yet.
    So, so far I’d have to say I have been enjoying the convention. But I’m assuming that the convention give Clinton a bump. I still wish Bernie had gotten the nomination, but CLinton is running a better campaign than she did last time and Trump evidently can’t organize his way out of a paper bag.
    So I am feeling cautiously optimistic.
    I do hope that there is not violence.

  39. In the long term, tariffs/barriers are likely to harm the country setting them more than the countries that wish to trade with it.
    As a universal rule, this assertion is absolutely not true….cf Japan, S. Korea, China.
    But then again, your conception of the “long run” is longer than most. But it is an assumption that needs to be spelled out, not smuggled in to the discussion as a “given”.
    and….SAUL ALINSKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  40. So with NAFTA we beat up Mexico to enable us to sell them cheap corn and they, in turn, would kick all their inefficient peasant farmers off their land and send them to labor in the factory system making cheap stuff to export to the USA.
    How did that work out for you, free market anti-mexican immigrant conservatives?

  41. I’m working on a concept for a new game. The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with things that you could do if your goal was to stage a convention which would do maximal damage to your general election prospects. You have to include the reason why it would be counterproductive (just to show that, unlike the Trump campaign, you have a clue).
    BUT, you are not allowed to include any of the things actually done by the Trump campaign this week. That’s what makes it a challenge.

  42. Japan, South Korea and China hardly prove a counterpoint. Japan has been in the economic doldrums for decades. South Korea and the other Asian tigers went through severe economic upheavals in the ’90’s. And China may implode at any moment.
    Why would free marketeers be against immigration?

  43. “I’m working on a concept for a new game.”
    I might have some actor come out and talk to an empty chair.

  44. OK Russell, you get half a point. On the basis that not all of the chairs were empty at the actual convention.

  45. I, from the great state of WTFistan, am going to nominate the empty chair to lead the country.
    Then I’m to sit Grover Norquist’s drowned baby in the chair for four years and let the corpse rot in the rain on the front lawn of an empty White House with Walker Percy vines cracking the masonry so the filth among us get a good stinking whiff of their fulfilled desires.
    But, I question the premise:
    “our goal was to stage a convention which would do maximal damage to your general election prospects.”
    Being a lout, and surrounding one oneself with louts in order to appeal to the lout element in America .. running roughly at the 44% of the electorate rate at the moment, and said louts fluffed vigorously by the Republican Party for 40 years leading to this moment .. is a game that has worked for Trump et al since he was knee-high to a mass murderer.
    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all

  47. Lou Holtz …
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lou-holtz-immigrants-invading-must-assimilate
    … and fuck football too, becomes right wing theocrat vermin Erdogan:
    http://www.wlwt.com/national/turkish-president-demands-us-send-rival-cleric-home/40748682
    BLack Lives matter needs to gun and ammo up militarily to kill the gummint filth who come after them:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dan-patrick-investigate-black-lives-matter
    That will be the true meaning of the Second Amendment

  49. Okay, I read the Carlson piece. That wasn’t so great, though the potshots at rich people self righteousness rang true.

  50. And even the excerpt was Trump- like in some ways. Note to self– the enemy of my enemy isn’t necessarily my friend.

  51. Setting wj’s proposed game in the specific context of the current GOP convention:
    1) Give a prime time speaking slot to He, Trump’s head detective in Hawaii (Hugh Jim Bissell) to reveal his shocking findings about Obama’s birth certificate.
    2) Bring a 3-foot-tall stack of paper onto the stage to represent He, Trump’s tax returns and set it on fire.
    3) Buy the rights to every Capitol Steps song about He, Trump going back to at least 1990 and play them as theme music. Or better yet, do that without buying the rights.
    I can’t find it on line, but the Capitol Steps 1990 (!!) song “No-Trump Bid”, sung to the tune of “If I Only Had a Brain”, includes such lines as

    Oh, I-I-I-I am Donald Trump!
    Although I made my wife Ivanna cry,
    My three best friends are always standing by.
    Their names are Me, Myself, and I.
    The New York financial powers
    Are a-selling off my towers;
    They are things you can obtain.
    But I’ll still be quite unsubtle
    With my last name on the Shuttle.
    If you only had my plane …
    Once Ma-a-a-rla said that I
    Was the very, very best she ever knew.
    And if we do the deal I’d like to do
    What I did to her, I’ll do to you!
    While my debts are liquidating
    I promise I’ll be mating
    With discount beauty queens.
    And I’ll still be controversial
    When I film my next commercial,
    In my No Excuses jeans!

    Explaining the ways in which these convention stunts would sabotage the campaign (while, and by, firing up The Base) is left as an exercise for Very Serious Persons.
    –TP

  53. Have the nominee “on a trip, away from the convention” when the actual nomination vote takes place. Then, after the vote, have them connected by video to the Jumbotron.
    Except that it turns out that the nominee was in the middle of a Furry & Farm Animal bunga-bunga orgy party when the video camera is turned on, and so distracted that he doesn’t notice that the camera is live.
    The guys in the control booth are so shocked that they immediately have a seizure, and are too busy twitching on the floor to cut the feed.
    Hillary Ensues.

  54. Just to offer my own entry:
    You could speak in praise of beets (as well as avocados).
    For the record, there is only one way to make either one edible: feed them to pigs and make pork out of them.

  55. I’m still scared. I know it’s too early to say, but Trump’s chances of winning are still way too far from zero for me to feel comfortable.
    We still have the DNC and debates to be held, not to mention whatever else comes out between now and November, so things could look way better in a few months. But, right now, this situation has me nervous.
    I’d put it this way – given where we are right now, I would accept a guaranteed Romney presidency over the possibility of Trump beating Clinton. (Hell, I might take another GWB term in lieu of that. It’s that much of a nightmare.)

  57. HSH, you mean because she says of Mrs Trump that “A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama.”
    Wow! How well will that play with the Republican base?

  58. That’s one part of the weirdness. But the fact that it happened at all, the incoherence of the response(s) from the campaign – the whole thing is just goofy.

  59. i like the fact that McIver’s statement, the one in which she refers to herself as an in-house staff writer for The Trump Organization, is on The Trump Organization’s letterhead.
    The Trump Organization is Trump’s corporation’s name. she’s an employee of Trump’s corp, doing campaign work using the corp’s resources.
    if we had a functioning Federal Election Commission, this would be something for them to investigate.

  60. Well wouldn’t Trump Organization be just as much of a person as any other company? So why shouldn’t it donate resources to the candidate of its choice?
    Now if the resources exceed whatever the donation limits are these days, or if the campaign fails to report them properly, that’s a different story. But the next reporting deadline is still a ways in the future.

  61. The black actress Leslie Jones subjected to this racist Republican vermin abuse on Twitter needs to gun and ammo up NRA-wise, unlimited capacity clips, and find these f*ckers and take care of business.
    http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/20/486726291/twitter-permanently-suspends-conservative-writer-for-targeted-abuse
    Here’s a piece of sh*t Republican as*hole of a different color:
    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/19/3799606/trump-pastor-partisan-prayer/
    He was interviewed in NPR this morning over the phone and he was all chickenshit “er, umm … well, in the context of, … the Lord is with me … my job was to … blah, horseshit, blah … Donald believes in the sanctity of marriage …. we are all God’s people (no we’re not, I am, the Pastor isn’t. He’s Lucifer’s lickspittle) and refused to repeat his threats to me and all liberals on the radio.
    I guess it was the wrong venue.
    He then got back to the Convention and ate chitlins off Bobby Knight’s nutsack before Knight pummeled him with a metal folding chair for being a “boy” and missing the lay-up on Public Radio.
    See, the Republican Party, as I’ve pointed out before, in their politically correct big tent way, seeks out the biggest, violence-threatening, motherfucking, eminently killable, Godsucking, pigfucking, self-aggrandizing, subhuman vermin of every race, creed, color, nationality, and gender and takes them to its hate-filled scum bosum, which then Trump ogles as it bounces by.
    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/19/3799606/trump-pastor-partisan-prayer/
    We need many more guns and killer ammo to save this country.

  62. You could speak in praise of beets
    Yikes, another red / blue divide?
    My wife and I grate raw beets on salads. We love them roasted and dressed with a nice vinaigrette. Shred them up and mix them into potato pancakes.
    My wife loves avocado on her burgers.
    Pork, of course, is also OK with us. We contain multitudes.
    I’m looking forward to the (R) convention, the (D) convention, and the election as a whole, being over and done with. I’m somewhat startled to say that I really don’t know who’s going to win it. Whoever it is, we’ll deal with it, one way or another.
    We’ve had some really, truly, crap Presidents. Just utter rubbish. Somehow we’ve gotten through it.
    Maybe we will this time, too.
    It seems to me that the liberal program that held sway from FDR through LBJ, and which continued in a bastardized (in every sense of the word) through Nixon, is kind of played out.
    The pragmatic realpolitik liberalism V2.0 from Carter through Clinton and Obama, maybe likewise.
    The resurgent conservatism of Reagan and the Bushes, likewise.
    Trump, for all of his numerous faults, seems to have hit upon something that has some real energy. I’m not sure he has the ability to channel it in any kind of positive direction, and I’m not sure how much of a positive direction is even there as a potential.
    But by god it has some juice.
    No matter who wins, it’s not going away.
    We need to figure this sh*t out.

  63. Trump, for all of his numerous faults, seems to have hit upon something that has some real energy.
    R.A.C.I.S.M.
    We need to figure this sh*t out.
    Yup.

  64. We need many more guns and killer ammo to save this country.
    FWIW, you can count me out on this one. If I have to go shooting people I disagree with to save the country, my choice is to let the country fall by the wayside.
    A country that needs its own citizens to kill each other to stay together just might not actually be a country. And yes, I am aware of the civil war. If anything, it might just make my point.
    I have friends and family members who think Mexicans are a scourge, who own remarkable arsenals, who are stocking up on dry goods to prepare for whatever the Armageddon of the week is, who are voting for Trump, who are living out whatever strange (to me) right-wing fantasy you can think of.
    I am, somehow, still able to sit down and have a meal with them and enjoy myself. Once in a while, I learn something from them. Mostly, I think they’re nuts, but I know a lot of nutty people.
    I’m not interested in shooting any of them. None of them actually seem to want to shoot me, when it comes right down to it.
    I’m sick of guns and talk about guns as any kind of path to helping anything other than, maybe, actual threats of truly imminent physical harm. Is a bear charging you? You want a gun. Politically, as far as I can tell most of the positive changes that have come about in this country have been through primarily peaceful means. Let’s stick to that.
    The fact that “the other guy does it”, even to the degree that is is true, is, to me, not persuasive.

  65. R.A.C.I.S.M.
    That certainly is a part of it. Folks who think not are, IMO, living in magic pony land.
    But, as always, it’s not the whole of it.

  66. In tonight’s amazement, scheduled speaker Ted Cruz
    a) manages to totally avoid endorsing Trump,
    b) slips in an admonishment to “vote your conscience” in November (thus playing to the meme of the NeverTrump folks), and finally
    c) gets booed off the stage.
    Definitely a tour d’force performance in this tightly scripted event. And from Trump’s expression as he walked onto the stage at the end, he is seriously regretting letting Cruz speak.
    Seriously, if someone wrote a novel (or even a short story) with a scene like that, “utterly unbelievable” would be the kindest review it would get.

  67. Trump is such a fool. why on earth would he let Cruz speak?
    and millions of people think he has what it takes to run this country.
    w.t.f.

  69. “Unbelievable” is among He, Trump’s favorite adjectives. It often seems more apt than He seems to intend.
    As for Russell’s assessment that we have survived crappy Presidents before, all I can say is that we know how Nixon’s presidency turned out but we will never know how much better (or worse) off we would be if Humphrey had won in 1968. Or what the country and the world would look like now if Gore had been elected in 2000. “Survive” is a low bar.
    I say we, the US, dodged a bullet in 2008. For one thing, neither Sotomayor nor Kagan would be Justices of the Supreme Court now and for decades to come if McCain-Palin had won. With apologies for the metaphor, we have to dodge a howitzer shell this year. Our right-wing friends and relatives have to learn to suck it up,
    –TP

  71. Shit: Figured out.
    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/laura-ingraham-called-appearing-nazi-salute-article-1.2719389
    Russell, you’re a better man than I am.
    However, I think your friends and mine “living out whatever strange right-wing fantasy you can think of”, are not unlike Aryan Germans who tolerated and did business or who were taught by Jews, or perhaps even dined with Jews, but a few years later were shoveling the latter’s gassed bodies into ovens.
    I think they are for now fairly docile, but machete-hoarding (at the beck and call of the RMA -Rwandan Machete Association) Hutus, who will at some flash point, ignited by movement rhetoric like trump et al, by which I mean elements of the republican party base going back 40 years, will hack their neighboring Tutsis to pieces.
    They remind me of Bosnian Serbs prior to the genocide of Croats and Bosniaks, again egged on by a terrifying political and media rhetoric.
    Execute Clinton! Hang Clinton! At a fucking American political convention.
    The radical Iranians clerics are at least bipartisan and want Death to all Americans.

  72. Politically, as far as I can tell most of the positive changes that have come about in this country have been through primarily peaceful means.
    Well, yes and no. The Civil War was hardly peaceful. The labor unrest from 1880 to 1935 was hardly peaceful. The civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s was accompanied by no little amount of violence on both sides.
    The big things matter. When there are sharp differences about those big things, violence is a not at all usual solution.
    So, the real question is this…are those things of great disagreement these days “big” or not?
    Ya’ never know.

  73. By the way, I take no comfort that a piece of demagogic slime like Ted Cruz seems to be the only filth republican not rolling over for Trump.
    Different asshole. Same machetes.

  74. Trump is such a fool. why on earth would he let Cruz speak?
    Because he needs to gain some sense of ‘legitimacy’ for his campaign? Because the usual metrics regarding what you need to do to conduct a national campaign do not matter?
    Folks have been shorting DJ Trump since late 2015. If this were a real options market, those espousing that opinion would be busted flat.
    Flat. Flat. Flat. Busted. Broke. Buried under margin calls.
    F*ck this guy, but take him seriously. Our institutionalized past the post way of doing things will default to a horse-race narrative.
    god help us…..

  75. Why would Trump let Cruz speak? Especially knowing, from the prepared text, that he wouldn’t endorse.
    Because without Cruz, Pence is the star of tonight’s show. And Trump doesn’t do co-stars. This way, Pence is an afterthought in tomorrow’s news. A bit player carefully put in his place.

  76. “Especially knowing, from the prepared text, that he wouldn’t endorse.”
    There are tweets from the press reporting Cruz showed the Trump people one prepared speech, gave another.
    Cruz’s wife has to be escorted from the Hall afterwards so she wasn’t torn to pieces, which, had it happened, would have been a piece of news that would have merely melted into the overall dumpster fire.
    What, they murdered someone on the floor of the Convention? Yeah, took her head clean off, but did you see the tits on Laura Ingrahm?
    Doesn’t matter. Same Hutu tribe. They’ll share machetes when the time comes.

  77. Jailbird Dinesh D’Snooza’s new film is due out.
    Something to do with that c*nt Clinton.
    Caught a preview on YouTube.
    We definitely need immigration reform, especially to weed out right-wing vermin from the Indian sub-Continent.

  78. “As Donald Trump secures the Republican nomination for president, the GOP convention feels more like a wake than a wedding. And what’s a wake without a good drinking song?”
    The Day the GOP Died (YouTube)

  81. I don’t agree with the Goldberg piece. Trump is a maniac, but Goldberg’s implicit praise of mainstream Republican foreign policy leaves me cold. The only bright spot in the Trump campaign was his criticism of the invasion of Iraq, which is a fine example of how American exceptionalism plays out in the real world.

  82. The Day the GOP Died:
    Trump’s ghostwriter (The Art Of The Deal), now Judas, quoted this statement, attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth about Teddy Roosevelt, to describe Trump: “He wants to be the corpse at every funeral and the bride at every wedding”.

  84. The only bright spot in the Trump campaign was his criticism of the invasion of Iraq
    which only happened after it became acceptable to say such things. before that, he was OK with the invasion.

  85. I agree with COunt up thread. It is scary to me that the hatemongering that the Republican party ahs been promoting for years has become so open. There used to be a layer of deniability, which showed an understanding that hate mongering is wrong. I can remember having long discussions here with Moe and Charles where they tried to claim that either the Republican party ws not deliberately using hateful lies as a tool, or they would claim that “both sides do it” Implicit in either argument is an understanding that hatemongering is a bad thing. But now it is right out in the open: Hillary is a cutn, she’s a criminal, she should be shot, Obama is a Muslim, there’s no pretense of respectability at all. I don;t watch the corporate news, but I have gotten the impression that at least some of the “journalists” on the “news” are covering this behavior as bad behavior, not as normal or both sides do it. It would be nice if the corporate media woudl stop covering for rightwing extremism. Since I’m involved in dog rescue, I have hundreds of Facebook Friends and it is depressing how many of them believe the most obviously stupid stuff. One of them post the other day that Obama was going to use the Strong Cities program to institute martial law, back by UN forces. My policy is to do a quick google, get some sane links and respond with polite disagreement. To the credit of these rightwing FB friends, not one has dropped me. But i do not think the stiff they believe should go without contradiction. Silence is consent.

  86. A view of what went down with Cruz’s speech.
    http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/07/21/i-thought-trump-sabotaged-cruz/
    Never mind the bullet points in Cruz’s speech regarding his lies about praising government … of all things, it somehow landed Norquist’s baby on the moon … praising Lincoln … this crowd would shoot Lincoln in the back of the head again if they got the chance … and his praise of Civil Rights legislation … he’s honkie vermin to the marrow of his bones.
    Cruz and Trump deserve each other.
    We are the corpse at their wedding.

  87. Will today be the day that we learn filth Sean Hannity and vermin Bill O’Reilly, whose careers in what used to be quaintly referred to as journalism were non-existent when FOX pocked up their options, succumbed to loathsome toad Roger Ailes hopelessly romantic overtures to get their jobs?

  88. I have gotten the impression that at least some of the “journalists” on the “news” are covering this behavior as bad behavior
    since i don’t watch TV news, my only real mainstream news source is NPR. sometimes they seem to be ever-so-slightly surprised by the tone, but not enough to call it bad. and never enough to call out the obvious lies, of course.
    i’m sure they’ll find their spines in Philly.

  89. Trump is such a fool. why on earth would he let Cruz speak?

    It’s bread and circuses all the way down.

  91. Goldberg’s implicit praise of mainstream Republican foreign policy…
    …went over my head – and I don’t really care: after all, he is a Republican.
    What the article was explicitly about was the rejection of a bipartisan US foreign policy consensus which has been in place since the second world war – a consensus which does not imply approval of, for instance, the Iraq adventure.

  98. Invoking Cheetos wouldn’t be consistent with lightening. Snack foods tend to be fattening.

  100. The consensus in US foreign policy is not something I’d point to with any great pride. Iraq was not that much out of the mainstream.
    I don’t know enough about what’s been going on in the Ukraine to have a strong opinion, but I get the impression it’s not as black and white as our foreign policy consensus mongers would claim. One doesn’t have to have a man crush on Putin to question whether we are the complete innocents with regards to the Ukraine or Syria or other places where we’ve had our differences.
    My point here is not to defend Trump, whose brain is a confused mess and who scares any sane person, but just to point out that when he is attacked by Jeffrey Goldberg ( I think you might have him confused with Jonah, btw) on behalf of some US foreign policy consensus, I am inclined to reject both sides.

  101. Jeffrey Goldberg ( I think you might have him confused with Jonah, btw)
    This happens to me repeatedly. My brain just reads “Jonah” automatically the first time around.

  102. You don’t have to be a foreign policy expert to realize that something is very wrong when a nominee for President will stand up and say that his administration might not honor it’s treaty obligations to defend a NATO ally from an attack by Russia. Which is exactly what Trump did earlier this week.
    Somewhere, Putin is pinching himself, unable to believe that he just might get so lucky as to have a President Trump to work with (and it is with, not against) next year.

  104. I suspect that as the price of the military’s toys keep going up — the F-35s, the Ford-class carriers to take them around the world, whatever the replacement for the Ohio-class subs is, the nuclear warhead replacement program — over the next 10 or 20 years a lot of the US will discover that they’re much more isolationist at heart.

  106. Has anyone seen this? “So Now We Have Stone Cold Proof Donald Trump Doesn’t Want to Be President” seems like overbilling. The article’s a bit thin, but still interesting enough.

  107. What it comes down to is, Trump would like the title of President. But is completely disinterested in the job of President. By this point, that should suprise nobody.

  108. Not wanting the job could be a good thing if competent people get picked to run things while he travels about doing brand promotion.

  109. A good thing relative to his actually attempting – one would assume incompetently – to do the job, while realizing that, for his surrogates, running things will mean, in part, damage control for his ham-fisted brand promotion.

  111. I’m still scared. I know it’s too early to say, but Trump’s chances of winning are still way too far from zero for me to feel comfortable.

    I feel the same.

    However, I think your friends and mine “living out whatever strange right-wing fantasy you can think of”, are not unlike Aryan Germans who tolerated and did business or who were taught by Jews, or perhaps even dined with Jews, but a few years later were shoveling the latter’s gassed bodies into ovens.

    I know many people think this is extreme, but I’m beginning to think, not so much. I understand Trump is no Nazi, but once you make people feel these prejudices are acceptable, and you encourage large-scale demonstrations in which the vomiting up of the worst manifestations of them are applauded, and part of a sort of mass group-reinforcement initiation, you open the door to unimaginable behaviour, which may not be what the original progenitor intended. And who comes next? We thought Palin was bad, and now Trump is a possibility. What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  113. The thing is, even if someone else is doing most of the job, the President’s words still matter.
    See, for example, Trump’s words on defending NATO allies. If the President of the US up and says something like that, people are going to act on it. No matter whether someone else is mostly doing the job and knows better.
    And who knows what other insanity might come out of his mouth with no warning?

  115. From Larison’s article:
    “First, if our allies can always count on the U.S. to come to their aid and can also rely on the U.S. to bear most of the burden of their defense, they will never have any incentive to increase their own military spending and they never will increase it. They will cheap- or free-ride forever, and will remain dependent on the U.S. for as long as we let them. That is how our hawks like it, but that doesn’t mean it is a desirable arrangement. It isn’t good for the U.S. to be in the position of subsidizing the defense of wealthy allies indefinitely, and ultimately it puts European allies in the unenviable position of depending on the continued willingness of a distant great power to guarantee their security.”
    I love the part about ” That is how our hawks like it.” in fact, that’s how anything at all happens. While being ridiculed for using the term “American exceptionalism, I came across this interesting article by Harold Koh. I would draw your attention to part II, where he says, in pertinent part:
    “… human rights problems may arise as often when the United States does not exercise its exceptional leadership in human rights, as when it does. If critics of American exceptionalism too often repeat, “America is the problem, America is the problem,” they will overlook the occasions where America is not the problem, it is the solution, and if America is not the solution, there will simply be no solution.”
    This is actually the issue. If we want to have a say in how power is used, and want it to be used benevolently, we should keep it. If we’re afraid of that burden because we don’t have the wherewithall to elect decent Executive officers, then that’s a worry. If we’re just tired of being criticized when we try and fail, we’re cowards.

  119. From Trump’s prepared speech:
    Anyone who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never will be.
    The obvious question, given what we have seen so far this campaign, is: Does this mean that Trump is saying that Trump is not welcome here? Works for me.

  121. Sounds like the doom and gloom, and America Sucks! speech that Trump plans is right up your alley, Donald! Hope you’re tuning in!

  122. “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is giving a speech tonight, and Politico has obtained an advance copy. It’s a familiar stew of Great Man Theory, protectionism writ large, and supporting our troops/cops, but on a night when millions of Americans may be focusing on Trump for the first time, here are seven* lines that drip with alarming levels of authoritarianism:
    […]”
    7* Authoritarian Lines in Donald Trump’s Speech: Remarks as prepared for delivery combine statist policies with Great Man fantasy

  123. More Harold Koh
    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/harold-kohs-slippery-inadequate-criticism-of-the-drone-war/275692/
    which quotes a speech by the same Harold Koh
    This Administration has not done enough to be transparent about legal standards and the decisionmaking process that it has been applying. It had not been sufficiently transparent to the media, to Congress, and to our allies. Because the Administration has been so opaque, a left-right coalition running from Code Pink to Rand Paul has now spoken out against the drone program, fostering a growing perception that the program is not lawful and necessary, but illegal, unnecessary, and out of control. The Administration must take responsibility for this failure, because its persistent and counterproductive lack of transparency has led to the release of necessary pieces of its public legal defense too little and too late.
    Sounds a lot like what Donald has been saying here. Wish you would realize that!

  124. See? Trump is already making America grate again.
    Well, I guess I asked for that.
    I tried to frame a counter argument to the Count’s and bobbyp’s rebuttals to my comment about positive change mostly coming through non-violence. I found it surprisingly difficult to do so.
    Back to the drawing board.
    The scariest thing about Trump, to me, is the surprising level of support he has received. Whether Trump wins or not, those folks aren’t going away.
    They are your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends, and your family. They live in your neighborhood.
    Most of the folks I know who are anti-Trump basically see his supporters as some form of idiot. Which can be a handy way of not addressing whatever it is that motivates them. I think they are, by and large, reckless, but I’m not sure they are all that stupid.
    I listened to a number of Trump supporters interviewed on the air on my way to work this morning. What I came away with was the impression that they all really, really, really want a pony – they don’t have a particularly crisp idea of what they want, they just know they aren’t happy, and they want things to be “different”. Better. If asked to be specific, they were incredibly non-specific. More freedom. More free enterprise. More safety. Less regulation. Less political correctness.
    Basically, it seems, to me, like they want to be comfortable again. They want to be confident. They don’t want to be anxious. They don’t want anybody telling them they aren’t good people.
    All of that may sound like “stupid”, but I think it’s more a matter of being at a loss. Which is not the same thing.
    All of them seemed to want a leader, which is understandable when you’re at a loss, but it’s a pretty vulnerable position to be in.
    Anyway, that’s my take on it all. Or, not so much a take, a “take” implies a tentative understanding, which is more than I would claim.
    Those are my impressions.
    I have no freaking idea where the country is going.
    As far as guns go, if it gets to the point where people are actually physically threatening me or my wife, and the cops can’t deal with it, maybe I’ll get a gun. More likely, a bat and a good dog or three. In any case, barring actual physical threats, I’m not interested. Whatever the political history of the US is, as far as political engagement goes, I cast my lot, as a matter of personal preference, obligation, and commitment, with non-violence.
    I’m just not interested in shooting people because their understanding of what a good polity looks like is different than mine.
    yes, there are people who roll that way, but no, I don’t want to respond in kind.
    If we can’t get our shit together and come to some kind of basic common understanding of what we’re about, then maybe it’s time to call it a day. The US has played a really important role in the world, often but far from always for the better, but we’re not indispensable.
    In any case, I’m not interested in killing anybody about it.
    When the US civil war broke out, lots of folks stood up and risked (and gave) their lives to save the Union.
    I’m not interested in killing anybody, or dying, to save a union that isn’t really a union. If it comes to killing each other, my vote is you go your way and I’ll go mine.
    To each their own.

  125. It would be nice if we could fit world events impacting human rights into neat little boxes of “here is a situation where acting would make things better” and “here is a situation where acting would make things worse” but it’s never that simple.
    Also, what in the world does Koh even mean by “exercise its exceptional leadership in human rights”? AFAICT that could be anything from tsk tsking at some thing or another to full out invasion.
    In any event, in the end, if part of the “solution” is dropping bombs then the person/group proposing the bomb dropping should have a heavy burden to carry that can’t be summarized as exercising exception leadership in human rights, which sounds quite Orwellian when it comes to violence. YMMV

  126. Sounds a lot like what Donald has been saying here. Wish you would realize that!
    Not really. I guess you and I should let Donald speak for himself.

  127. russell: What I came away with was the impression that they all really, really, really want a pony
    kind of like the Bernie people. Maybe we should figure out our agenda and work for it through “the establishment”. Kind’a like Hillary has been doing since she was 21.

  129. “kind of like the Bernie people. ”
    I think there are all kinds of Bernie people. some just want a pony, others have a more tangible agenda.
    it’s quite possible that there are all kind of trump people, too, I’m just not in a position to speak for them.

  130. Sapient, I’m ignoring most of the election season from here on out, unless something either remarkably good or terrible ( riots or whatever) occurs. I’ll vote for Clinton as the lesser evil and be horrified if Trump wins, but no, I don’t have any interest this year in listening to people at either convention. I watched ” Bull Durham” on cable tonight instead. I gather the Republicans have all been liars or buffoons or inadvertent plagiarists so far and have heard about Cruz. Secondhand accounts are fine. There have only been a couple speeches at conventions I really liked– Cuomo in 1984. Maybe that’s it. I was about to say Jesse Jackson, but I can’t actually remember if I saw it or what he said, so maybe there was just one.
    The only people I really like to read or listen to during election season are people who discuss issues in ways that don’t seem mainly motivated by partisan concerns, which is why Larison has impressed me so much lately. He supports Obama on Iran, criticizes him on Yemen and disagrees with both Trump and mainstream Republicans ( and Clinton) because of their militarism. I already know I am voting for Clinton, so I don’t need to read a lot of BS from now until November.

  132. Sapient, I think you need to avoid claiming that Trump’s plans are ‘right up [Donald’s] alley’ or I’ll bounce your ass out of here. Donald’s not going to rise to the bait, but if you want to pick a fight, get on a flight to Cleveland.

  133. I’m not keeping up enough with the day to day melodrama to make directly salient comments, but I was struck by a thought the other day after (finally) watching “O.J.: Made in America” the documentary miniseries.
    It’s a really good series, BTW – lots of footage from a long arc of OJ’s history (from USC days through to prison sentence for the Las Vegas robbery), plus interviews with many of the characters who knew him AND with some of the prosecutors (e.g., Marcia Clark) and policemen (e.g., Mark Fuhrman!) who tried to bring him down. What makes it strong is that although it’s “about” OJ, the subtitle is almost as vital – it’s about America, specifically Southern California. (FWIW, I grew up there but left before OJ appeared – it’s not at all my SoCal scene.) Race relations, police behavior (under Bill Gates), and above all the culture of celebrity, in which OJ had, prior to the murder of his ex-wife & her friend, almost transcended “color” entirely.
    But what jumped out at me, in the discussion of the murder trial, was an answer to the question: “How did the jury get it so wrong?” (Yes, OJ did it.) And the answer is simply, “That’s the wrong question.” Because it becomes clear that the jury (collectively) were not primarily engaged with the matter of who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. What they wanted was payback for Rodney King, and the many other blacks who had suffered injustice at the hands of white cops who got away with it. Simpson’s million-dollar legal “Dream Team,” led by Johnny Cochran, simply but critically provided them the rationale to do this.
    And this struck me as analogous to much of Donald Trump’s support. They don’t care that he lies. They don’t care that he had no experience in government and would probably be a crappy executive (based on his record of business failures). We’re asking the wrong question, and therefore offering the wrong answers (“Look, he just lied again!” “See how many of his businesses failed!” “Listen to how cheerfully and vulgarly he insults women / blacks / Muslims / etc.”). These are largely irrelevant to the diehard Trumpist.
    What they want is payback for the injustices of the world, and a rationale for supporting someone who promises such a payback. If they win, I hope that 25 years later – if we survive – they feel no worse than the OJ jurors interviewed who more or less said “Yeah, he probably did it, but it was the right verdict at the time.” Alas, I fear that The Donald in the White House poses a greater threat to the common weal than The Juice on some Florida golf course.

  135. All I know is I’m pretty sure I heard a few bullets whiz past my head on my way to work this morning, the road was about to collapse under my car, and I’m expecting the building I work in to be bombed any moment.

  138. There have a few articles at “Medium” by people with family members voting for Trump. I couldn’t find the one I wanted to link to, but basically there seem to be people who fit dr ngo’s description. They see a lot wrong with the country and think Trump is the person to shake things up. They see mainstream politicians as people who are corrupt and cynical and so forth.
    The one I saw a few weeks ago (and can’t find) was about a woman whose mother (or grandmother, but I think it was mother) has been active in causes helping the poor and had convinced herself that Trump wouldn’t really do some of the things he has said he will do. Told of some horrifying thing he had said, she didn’t believe it. Shown proof that he had said it, she was quiet and had nothing to say, but still wanted to vote for Trump.
    So not everyone who supports Trump is a racist. Some are apparently well-meaning people who are self-deluded. There are also lefties I’ve seen who think that Trump will be the less effective of two evils, meaning that they think Clinton will be more effective in plunging us into new wars and doing other bad things. I think that’s delusional too. It doesn’t take that much political effectiveness to plunge America into wars. And I do wonder if he would actually use, say, tactical nukes, breaking that taboo.
    Trump has already moved the Overton Window to the point where open racism and bigotry are no longer kept in the shadows. He doesn’t dog whistle. Of course we’ve had decades of dog whistling from many Republicans (and I would argue some Democrats on some issues, but this post is too long). but Trump has finally taken the plunge and just supports bigotry outright.

  139. I generally ignore stuff from these guys, but this caught my eye. Of course, there had to be at least a brief jab at Obama included, but it’s still interesting to see what more conservative sources are saying about Trump.

  140. my biggest concern is that Trump appeals to reactionary authoritarians. and those people aren’t going to swayed by facts or reason. they don’t care about actual Trump because symbolic Trump tickles their resentment nubs just right.

  142. I don’t want to honour Trump with comparisions to Hitler but there were Jews for Hitler (of the national conservative persuasion, naturally) who also thought that his antisemitism was just for the rubes and purely tactically motivated. In power he would clean out the Augian stables that the liberals/democrats had left (what we over here call a ‘horse cure’, a necessary but very drastic treatment).
    And of course there were the communists who wanted Hitler to take over, so they then could liberate the people from the fascist monster AFTER he had enough time to do damage to the country and thus discredit himself and his movement (sharpening the contradictions).
    And the conservative power brokers believed that Hitler, once in office, would be easy to control, a popular/ist puppet to bring in the masses.
    We all know what came out of these illusions.
    Again, Trump is not Hitler. He has no grand but evil vision going beyond his own vanity. But unfortunately these days much more damage can be done far more easily by a self-aggrandizing buffoon in the wrong place than by an evil mastermind in the olden days (Hitler was less of a genius than he himself thought but far more capable than he is popularly portrayed).

  145. So Trump is the joke that’s funny because of how upset you imagine those people will get when they hear it?

  147. So happy about Tim Kaine as the Veep pick. I would support him for president here and now. I love that man.

  150. Speaking for myself, it’s interesting to read a piece from the viewpoint of an intelligent conservative who acknowledges the social injustices that partly motivate poor white Trump supporters. I have no contact with that world, though my father grew up in the Ozarks, living in homes with dirt floors and his mother had a third grade education and used ” nary” in sentences. They were from the same stock as the people in Appalachia. ( My younger sister is more interested in the family genealogy– I mostly zoned out as a child when the grandmothers talked about their family history.). My father was raised out of that world by FDR and WWII and got a college education after the war. I recognize some aspects of it, the pride, for instance. I have difficulty connecting the world my father described with the social catastrophe that the writer is describing in Appalachia now, but obviously the loss of factory or coal mining jobs can create Trump supporters.
    Anyway, I’ve been trying lately to step outside my liberal- left Internet bubble. The country is so polarized it seems like a good idea to do this.

  151. Anyway, I’ve been trying lately to step outside my liberal- left Internet bubble. The country is so polarized it seems like a good idea to do this.
    Agree. I live near the Appalachian mountains and know many people who are very wealthy in my area, and those who are not. I currently live in a place which is very much still de facto segregated by race. By class too, I guess, although I see a lot more white people whose income is different from mine (up and down) than blacks.
    I don’t think the article explains anything. Sure, jobs have been lost. That’s true for all of us, me included. Jobs have also been won. The tech industry has thrived in Virginia, very close to the Appalachian mountains.
    The whole “looked down on me” thing: I come from a place where people do that to other people, and I’ve had that experience. For example, I went to the University of Virginia, and during the time I was a student, worked as a food service person. My parents didn’t know it – they were paying my tuition and board and a small allowance, but I felt that I needed a bit more, so took on a job. It was very apparent how people viewed me – because most students didn’t do that there. Somehow, I didn’t turn into a fascist just because people thought I was a subhuman food service worker.
    I actually know people, good people in some ways, who have some kind of tribal racism going on in their heads or culture. One woman I know, who has great-grandchildren (when only a few of my same-age friends have grandchildren) has a granddaughter who married a Hispanic guy. This woman has a bumper sticker on her car saying something about You Speak English!!! (not sure what it actually says, but it’s some kind of Uncle Sam says you have to speak English!!!). So yeah, it was an adjustment for her, but maybe now she’s making that adjustment because she likes her family.
    Other than being a cultural phenomenon, what’s there to understand or do about it? Just be nice to them, and vote for the non-fascist people. Lets also keep in mind that the Republican party, even the ignorant racist tea-party people, is demographically wealthy white old people. These are not, usually, poor white folks.

  153. Not usually. Obviously there are some poor white folks in the Trump movement, and it’s great to hear from them. But how has that article changed your views on policy hsh?

  154. The tech industry has thrived in Virginia, very close to the Appalachian mountains.
    …and? Really: and? How is this relevant to what – to who – the article discusses? Are the wages from those skilled professional jobs somehow trickling down to the displaced labor pool at large? Is the tide of tech job earnings lifting the boats of the working class?
    I will say your response does a pretty damned good job of underscoring the article’s point.

  155. Interesting article Donald. What caught my eye was this
    The other thing the Marine Corps did is hold our hands and prevent us from making stupid decisions. It didn’t work on everyone, of course, but I remember telling my senior noncommissioned officer that I was going to buy a car, probably a BMW. “Stop being an idiot and go get a Honda.” Then I told him that I had been approved for a new Honda, at the dealer’s low interest rate of 21.9 percent. “Stop being an idiot and go to the credit union.” He then ordered another Marine to take me to the credit union, open an account, and apply for a loan (the interest rate, despite my awful credit, was around 8 percent). A lot of elites rely on parents or other networks the first time they made these decisions, but I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. The Marine Corps ensured that I learned.
    About racism, people have said ‘everyone is a little bit racist’, and I don’t think I’m an exception. So it’s not really a matter of figuring out ‘why’ Trump voters are racist, it’s trying to understand how Trump was able to package that racism and make it palatable and advertisable.
    But the above passage is what drives me nuts about conservatism. Here, the writer acknowledges that steps have to be taken to stop people from doing dumb things. Yet if it were proposed that the government took people by the hand and stopped them from doing stupid things, conservatives would scream ‘mommy state’. Now, I don’t think it is a coincidence that people who are profiting from this, like payday loans or those remortgaging firms, support the conservative party, but when you couple this laissez faire state with the fact that everyone can be racist, you end up screwing both poor African Americans and poor whites and then you convince the poor whites that what they should be getting (but are not) is being taken from them by poor African Americans like folks in the Republican party have, you can keep them voting for you without actually having to do anything. Neat racket.

  156. Most Trump supporters I know feel about HRC the way most here feel about Trump. Both sides seem to hear what they want to hear and to disregard what makes them uncomfortable. I can’t stomach either one.

  157. Yes, but do Trump supporters dislike HRC because she’s a woman? I tend to think that there is a lot of male resentment at the heart of many Trump supporters, just like there has been a lot of racism motivating a dislike of Obama.
    This Times article was interesting from that standpoint
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/opinion/campaign-stops/why-men-want-to-marry-melanias-and-raise-ivankas.html?_r=0
    There was also this Vox article
    http://www.vox.com/a/hillary-clinton-interview/the-gap-listener-leadership-quality
    With this interesting graf
    Let’s stop and state the obvious: There are gender dynamics at play here.
    We ran a lot of elections in the United States before we let women vote in them. You do not need to assert any grand patriarchal conspiracy to suggest that a process developed by men, dominated by men, and, until relatively late in American life, limited to men might subtly favor traits that are particularly prevalent in men.
    This isn’t to pick a fight, and I certainly have my reservations about Hilary, but I think the vox article raises some interesting point, especially about the narrative of Bernie v. Hilary.

  158. If I thought HRC was some sort of savior (from anything other than an utterly disastrous Trump presidency), I guess I’d be analogous to a Trump supporter. As it is, I support her, warts and all, because she’s not Trump (though I will admit I don’t buy into the right-wing narrative that she’s evil to the core). I’ll take the less-than-perfect status quo for the time being.

  159. Is the tide of tech job earnings lifting the boats of the working class?
    Yes. The unemployment rate in Virginia is 3.8%. That is very low. There are many job opportunities for skilled and unskilled people here, and people can learn to do things that pay a decent wage. If we didn’t have a Republican state legislature, we’d have Medicaid expansion, and people on the lower end of the wage spectrum would be doing better. If we had more appropriate infrastructure support, there would be even more job opportunities. It’s not that hard, and the nostalgia for dangerous and polluting industries (like coal mining and textile manufacturing) is certainly not lifting anyone’s boat.
    I am happy to support policies that redistribute wealth more fairly, which is why I support Democrats. Yes, establishment Democrats.

  160. Donald,
    Yes, an insightful take on an isolated culture…a vein mined by others such as Joe Bageant, for example. Despite the swipe at Tom Frank, the question remains….why do these folks vote for Republicans? Surely, the fact that they are “looked down upon” cannot explain it. The literate class has traditionally mocked “hillbillies”, yet they voted overwhelmingly for FDR.
    What changed? Economic decline, technological advances, and an activist federal push to enforce racial equality.

  162. lj,
    You might also appreciate that when Truman ordered the armed forces to desegregate they undertook that mission to a significantly greater extent than any other American institution.

  163. The author’s point was that both culture and policy play a role in the plight of poor people in Appalachia. I remember in the 90’s when free trade bills were being passed that we constantly heard from advocates that free trade produced both winners and losers, but the net benefits were positive and the losers would be compensated. This being America, that last part didn’t happen. Entire regions were hit hard by the loss of factory jobs and the results were bad.
    One of the things the writer is saying is that the loss of jobs can have bad effects on the poor whether they are black or white. That’s a stereotypical liberal point, not a conservative one. He also emphasizes personal
    responsibility, which conservatives think is something only they do.
    As for racism, sure, people who are poor shouldn’t be racist or commit crimes or take drugs or whatever and not everyone falls into these behaviors.
    The point he makes that I think liberals should hear is about condescension. I think that’s pretty common. I also hear people saying that Democrats can win these days without the white working class and that might true. It’s also true that pundits in the past few decades often spoke about white America as though it was the real America and that kind of thinking is poisonous, But one can go too far in the other direction and dismiss them with contempt since we don’t need their votes.

  164. “Why is this a good piece, russell? What did it explain to you?”
    not so much explain as articulate.
    most people I know who are opposed to trump see his supporters as, basically, idiots. and probably racists.
    it’s not constructive.
    I share McK’s concern that the two sides in our increasingly polarized polity are unable to hear each other, and are frankly uninterested in doing so.
    I am concerned about the election being, as the piece describes, a matter of “which tribe is bigger”.
    I thought both speakers in the article did a good job of articulating a point of view that is foreign to my own. and without demonizing the ‘liberal elites’ they see as their opposites.

  165. Notice anything? Yes, I notice that people who live in the mountains don’t have as many job opportunities. They never have. NAFTA didn’t cause it, and no amount of nostalgia can reverse that historic fact.
    The point he makes that I think liberals should hear is about condescension. I think that’s pretty common. It is common, and people shouldn’t feel that way, but it’s hard not to feel that people are stupid when they behave contrary to their own interests, and also bring everyone else down with them. I get similarly angry at wealthy people who vote for policies that make no sense for the country, although they may be selfish rather than stupid. Does it help to be angry? No, but I can’t help making the evaluation that I make.

  166. “the Republican party, even the ignorant racist tea-party people, is demographically wealthy white old people.”
    my impression is that Trump supporters and the normal (R) demographic are overlapping but not identical sets.

  167. my impression is that Trump supporters and the normal (R) demographic are overlapping but not identical sets.
    That’s also my impression, but I’m pretty sure that wealthy old and white are still big factors. I’d be interested to see the numbers, but I guess it will be awhile before reliable ones are available.

  168. “The literate class has traditionally mocked “hillbillies”, yet they voted overwhelmingly for FDR.”
    I’m not a hillbilly so I can’t really speak for them. but I do note that FDR first ran for POTUS almost 85 years ago.
    different times.

  169. My purely subjective sense is that male-favoring voters are no greater and maybe less than female-favoring voters. Neither are rational in my view. Dismissing the hard right as sexist overlooks the Palin phenomenon. Yesterday’s narratives do not fit the current times. Some are slowly coming to grasp that notion, most are not. As a conservative, I can’t come close to getting Trump.

  170. “but it’s hard not to feel that people are stupid when they behave contrary to their own interests, and also bring everyone else down with them”
    Because you know what is in their best interest? You have the magical best interest meter? The lack of policy discussion, yes on both sides, is just an ever hardening stance that their policies are bad, ineffective at best and designed for evil consequences most likely. Because they are bad people, or stupid people listening to bad people, or elites not listening to real people.
    Just once in this election cycle it would be great to hear someone say, “That’s an interesting proposal. I think our proposal is better for these two reasons but theirs has some good points too”. Not happening. Maybe in a debate where Clinton takes on the Obama tactic of coopting the other sides winning positions, even though they don’t agree at all. Outside that, not happening.

  171. it’s hard not to feel that people are stupid when they behave contrary to their own interests
    It may be that people’s own understanding of what their interests are differ from what folks like you or I think they are, or should be.

  172. I would add that the most ardent Hillary haters I know are all women. I have no explanation for their vehemence. I know lots of young white men and women that don’t like her much. This old white men trope is getting tiresome, Trumps supporters and Hillary’s haters stretch far beyond that demographic. In my circle of acquaintances certainly.

  173. Dismissing the hard right as sexist overlooks the Palin phenomenon.
    this presumes the Palin phenomenon wasn’t itself based in sexism. but there was plenty of sexism from the right towards Palin – it was just of the “hubba hubba” variety, not of the “women can’t do the job” variety.
    take it away, Rich Lowry:

    I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.

    or, check out Right Wing News’ “10 Hottest Pics of Sarah Palin” !

  174. …the Obama tactic of coopting the other sides winning positions
    I cannot recall such an instance. Please provide one or two.
    Thanks.

  177. Hmmmm. Is it sexist now to comment on someone’s attractiveness? That’s a mighty broad brush. But keep on pigeon-holing the other tribe. Eventually, if you call them enough names, they will see the error of their ways.

  178. ” it’s hard not to feel that people are stupid when they behave contrary to their own interests, and also bring everyone else down with them.”
    The article was indeed very interesting. The impression I got was of a lot of simmering resentment, plus a big dose of “cut off your own nose to spite your face” reaction.
    It’s hard to avoid condescension, but I guess it works better if a Marine sergeant delivers it with a “don’t be STUPID” remark.

  179. Just once in this election cycle it would be great to hear someone say, “That’s an interesting proposal. I think our proposal is better for these two reasons but theirs has some good points too”.

    I would be interested to hear how massive tax-cuts for billionaires would advance the interests of poor whites in Appalachia.

  180. I would like the text of the policy plank entitled “Massive tax cuts for Billionaires”. Or is that, once again, an interpretation of an outcome of some policy that might have multiple other outcomes? Some of which may help poor people in Appalachia?

  181. There are numbers, in your(sapient) link 31% of Tea Party supporters were men over 50. If everyone of them were white that’s 31%. In 2014, when the Tea Party was where all the crazy, ignorant, bigots hung out, right?
    Lots of people who aren’t old white men don’t like Hillary.

  182. Lots of people who aren’t old white men don’t like Hillary.
    I don’t disagree, but percentage-wise, polls indicate that women are voting for her almost two to one. African-Americans are almost 100% behind her. Again, we really won’t know for sure until the election.

  183. bobbyp, he did it in the debates in both elections, but more in the first one. I don’t think it’s controversial, he was pretty roundly congratulated for not dying on the wrong hills. Let me think about it to come up with an example.

  184. Hmmmm. Is it sexist now to comment on someone’s attractiveness?
    It’s sexist to reduce a professional’s primary perceivable qualifications to their attractiveness and flirtatiousness. In particular, it’s sexist when this is done to women but not to men.

  185. I remember evangelical leaders opposing Palin because she was a woman. Some simply said that G#d forbade women to be rulers of men, others demanded a written statement from her husband allowing her to run.

  186. I wrote a hilariously (he claims) divisive comment with my left hand that started out with something along the lines of “Well, Roger Ailes saw something he liked in Sarah Death Palin early on, but I can’t think what it was. I almost WISH it was “I love seeing you arrive, but not nearly as much as I like watching you leave”, but I have a queasy feeling it was something to do with her other classy individual character traits, like maybe her ability to come to the rhetorical, political negotiating table and use it as her own personal toilet” …. but my right hand accidentally deleted it.
    “Is it sexist to comment on someone’s attractiveness?”
    I have a baseball/softball teammate who, when another guy makes an egregious error or strikes out in a clutch situation, instead of giving him the silent treatment when the other guy comes back to the dugout, he waits a beat or two, and cracks to no one in particular in a loud baritone voice, “Well remember, we have Bob on the team because he is such a stunningly attractive man.”
    I suppose if we considered an election a national job interview, we might find it unprofessional to smack our lips and comment on the cut of her jib, but then John F. Kennedy was not without his throbbing female admirers.
    I mean, the Judge in a courtroom does not say: “Counselor, I rule against your motion to adjourn, but may I interject that it puts an extra skip in the Bench’s step watching you wink at the jury during your closing flirtations … umm, sorry, I mean arguments.
    “In 2014, when the Tea Party was where all the crazy, ignorant, bigots hung out, right?”
    True, there was some overlap between the 31% you cite, the 23% who were clinically insane, the 34% who were willfully ignorant bigots, and the 11% who were armed.
    Their commonality to a great extent was that few of them seemed to mind that many of the 31% white men over 50 were on Medicare, which they thought was a dip at a purely private party, or PPP, as we call it in the business.
    Anyway, I may have voted for John Adams, even if he was a “hideous hermaphroditic character”. Or, maybe, Jefferson, who was “dead” during to the Federalists during the 1800 election, which has all of the viciousness of being “Kenyan” in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, and everywhere in between, but none of the perks.
    The Founders founded more than we care to admit:
    Us.
    I’d be happy to quit judging “old (dead) white men” (I am permanently the second, and approaching reluctantly, heels dug in, the first), if they would only stop judging us from the grave.
    A peace offering:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyoeJr6ZcPM

  187. Because you know what is in their best interest? You have the magical best interest meter?
    But what about when they know, and say, that a particular behavior is not in their best interest? And then go out and do it anyway. Judging from that interview, that’s what Hillbilly Elegy talks about a lot.

  188. McTX wrote:
    “Yesterday’s narratives do not fit the current times. Some are slowly coming to grasp that notion, most are not.”
    I agree. Walker Percy, a conservative (in the old sense) Catholic writer but with keen sensibilities, wrote years ago:
    “Something is dreadfully wrong with the world of the emotionally mature, integrated man. What it is becomes clear in the writings of Heidegger and Marcel. The modern world, not merely the slums of Paris but the pleasant American suburb, is implicated in a special sort of tragedy. This tragedy is not the catastrophic wars of the 20th century—though God knows these are tragic enough. These particular events are only symptoms of the tragedy; indeed they might even be said to be desperate attempts to escape it. The tragedy has rather to do with the fundamental banality, the loss of meaning, of modern life—what Heidegger calls the “every-day-ness” and the homelessness of life in the modern world, a world which Marcel refers to as a broken world.”
    – See more at: http://www.libertylawsite.org/book-review/walker-percys-american-apocalypse/#sthash.gPEZABab.dpuf
    Percy believed World War I was a singular turning point for Man’s view of “Man”, that a nearly new species was taking form, to put it inelegantly.
    Yeah, yeah, I know, Heidegger.
    I call its latest presentation the Sociopathic Performance Art Menace — now enabled by new social media instruments. Havoc for havoc’s sake, and with a deep streak of sado-masochism running through it.
    This derp:
    https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.jso2m3izf
    and, this link to an alt weekly newspaper in my town, might not seem like it is relevant to the discussion here, but there is something … … something terrifically and terrifyingly bad news going on with the intersection of culture, media, and politics.
    http://www.westword.com/music/is-this-the-most-hated-band-in-colorado-8111362
    But to get back to Republicans being divisive among themselves:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/07/22/daily-202-why-trump-sounded-more-like-a-strongman-than-a-movement-conservative/57916dc84acce20505087cdf/
    She agrees:
    http://fusion.net/story/328809/medea-benjamin-donald-trump-rnc/
    http://on.aol.com/video/code-pink-protestor-interrupts-trump-s-rnc-speech-57918d0844c8a36191181118?context=PC:homepage:PL6384:1469168188490
    Play the videos contained therein.
    This guy agrees with her:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2XWa1XuKSI
    In fact, both of them have kissed Becky. How many times does he have to tell us:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuL2QwsNeM8
    They are here. There is footage of Trump pausing during his acceptance with that “look” on his fat face, as she was removed from the Quicken Loans Nurnberger Stadion, which I can’t find at the moment.
    Rich Little couldn’t have done a better impression of Il Duce:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciQ6MGU4GV8

  190. It’s hard to avoid condescension, but I guess it works better if a Marine sergeant delivers it with a “don’t be STUPID” remark.
    Context matters. The crusty gunny was (presumably) once a stupid young Marine, and learned from their mistakes and the mistakes of those around them. It’s far easier to accept that this is someone who understands your life circumstances and is giving you applicable advice rather than a spoiled rich @$$hole on high sneeringly recommending austerity while sipping champagne they barely worked to earn. Admittedly, the presumption baked into the contrast I gave is just as much a matter of refusing to understand the life and circumstances of the advice-giver as it would be for a hypothetical elite to ignore the plebe’s; lack of empathy is common everywhere.
    Basically, it’s a matter of credibility, and that hinges on an accurate perception of the advisor and the advisee. Again, we are in general bad about this. This all brings to mind an old anti-labor quote from Henry Ward Beecher; if you perceive rightly or wrongly that the person telling you you’re an idiot is applying rules that have and will always apply to you but have and will never apply to them, resentment is inevitable.

    God had intended the great to be great and the little to be little. … I do not say that a dollar a day is enough to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking and drinking beer … [b]ut the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live.

    The article does a good job of underscoring how that defensiveness against such perceived elitist scorn can easily metastasize into an arrogant and unhealthy anti-elitist pride in “humility”. But that doesn’t mean that tone and delivery don’t matter, nor that perceptions that you as a demographic are being ignored are baseless and unjustified.

  191. Shorter NV: the exact same advice is resentfully rejected or grudgingly accepted, depending on whether it comes from the correct ‘tribe’.
    And this is all the fault of the wrong tribe. Okay.

  193. “I would like the text of the policy plank entitled “Massive tax cuts for Billionaires”. Or is that, once again, an interpretation of an outcome of some policy that might have multiple other outcomes? Some of which may help poor people in Appalachia?”
    Since 1961, the top marginal tax rate in this country has fallen from 91%, to first stop 70%, next stop 28% under Reagan and now in the low 40 percentile range for billionaires, if they haven’t patriotically stashed the money abroad, regardless of how low or high the rate is at any one particular time.
    I’d like to see a corresponding graph tracing the fortunes of Appalachia as they crane their necks to catch the trickle down since 1961.
    If we’re talking coal, the forces at work have more to do with the vaunted “creative destruction” of the energy markets than anything else.
    Despite that, shades of John Galt did thrive in Appalachia, as evidenced by their mine safety catastrophes and other longer-term ravages of the mining industry.
    I hope Hillary Clinton redistributes more of my money to the economically down-trodden poor whites and blacks in those areas, something along the lines of FDR’s and LBJ’s domestic policies.
    There was and is consensus among a broad spectrum of interests about lowering corporate tax rates as a stimulus but along with immigration reform, a myriad of other issues, Judge Garland, and hundreds of other appointments languishing because a certain party’s base told their leaders to never, ever again sit down with the other side to hash out these issues and make the gears of government grind forward, nothing happens.
    I realize all of this is Barack Obama’s fault. His insistence that all of his policy proposals should never even be discussed, let alone voted upon, in Congress solely because they are HIS proposals, was the root of current enmities.

  194. No, my take is that it’s the fault of the advisee, but we shouldn’t be surprised at this behavior, nor consider ourselves immune to it. It’s very understandable and predictable behavior, even if it’s not particularly forgivable.
    Your “shorter” is a problem because it helps to obscure the perspective of those outside your PoV, though. Reducing grievances and preferred means of redress to a matter of tribal preference can leave you vulnerable to blind spots which can be glaringly obvious from elsewhere. Again, nothing particularly insightful in what I’m saying; I’m spouting platitudes even if I do believe them.
    Even if this sort of thing can’t be avoided, it can be mitigated by taking pains to demonstrate that we made good-faith efforts to hear other points of view and actually consider them, rather than declaring them dog whistles for nefarious intent and/or dismissing them out of hand. Not that I’m saying that’s what you’re doing. But others are.

  195. nor that perceptions that you as a demographic are being ignored are baseless and unjustified.
    They haven’t been ignored is the thing. The author just doesn’t like what’s been attempted to solve the problems. He doesn’t offer much by way of solution because he admits that it’s complicated. He’s in a perfect position to propose policies if there are any that could work. Instead, he says things like “my people–are really struggling, and there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time. Donald Trump at least tries.” This is factually incorrect in every way.
    In Kentucky, Medicaid expansion was adopted. It directly addressed the problem of medical coverage for the very people that are described here. So Kentucky elected this guy. No empathy for somebody who claims that “Donald Trump at least tries.” and that “there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles”. It’s a lie.

  196. NV,
    I apologize if I was too harsh. It certainly is true that all of us will have a better response do information, depending on its source and how it is presented. And while we all should try to look beyond such superficial matters, it isn’t easy.
    It would be better if they got more help from their own tribe.

  197. Their own tribe looks down on them too. It’s a demographic that both right-wing and left-wing political correctness are okay with belittling. Alas.
    —
    sapient, you’re doing the same thing you did above. “Here’s this one thing, in this one place, that helped some people, in some ways. Why on earth can’t these ingrates understand that their wants and needs have been addressed now?”

  198. Their wants and needs? Their wants and needs are about resentment, and I don’t have time for that. They’re bringing themselves down plus a whole lot of other people, and then they believe Trump’s b.s., and whine that they’ve been ignored? What do you propose to do other than fake empathy? I’m talking about something real here, not me being empathetic, which I’m sure they couldn’t care less about, beyond me being polite to them when I meet them in person.
    I mean, yes, it’s sad – Appalachia has always been a land of intractable poverty. Always. It wasn’t because people were mean to the people who live there, although that certainly happened along the way with rapacious mining and manufacturing industries.
    Don’t get me wrong: II feel bad for people who grow up in dire circumstances and don’t know how to escape (although the author of the article managed to do so.) But please don’t lecture me on how I’m supposed to be empathetic and listen to nonsensical racist b.s. and think it’s perfectly understandable. If you understand it, perhaps you have some suggestions to actually do something about their plight. It’s even too “complicated” for the author of the article to be helpful to people who have no interest in constructive change.

  199. Their wants and needs are about resentment
    Not really. They resent not having their wants and needs met. But it’s pretty ridiculous to say that they want (or need!) to resent things.

  200. They resent not having their wants and needs met. But it’s pretty ridiculous to say that they want (or need!) to resent things.
    It actually is not ridiculous to say that because that;s the very problem. Their wants and needs aren’t about having what some see as “their problems” addressed (poverty, lack of medical care, etc.) They reject help with those things. They don’t want handouts. They don’t want government programs. They don’t want health insurance. They “want” to complain and, according to nv, not be ignored. They “want” and “need” resentment.
    Obviously, I’m generalizing about their political choices, not their underlying humanity.

  201. Count, glad to see you link to the Laurie Penney piece I’m With the Banned. I had just been sent it by someone, read it, thought it well-written and some of its insights pretty striking, and was just wondering if it would be of interest to ObWi. I did wonder if its tone was just too British, but of course I realise that’s no disadvantage as far as you’re concerned!

  203. It actually is not ridiculous to say that because that;s the very problem.
    Except it’s not. Collectively, they don’t want to resent things, they want to solve what they see as problems in their community in ways that they view as appropriate, productive, and moral. Just. Like. You. That they shoot themself in the foot does not transform them collectively into squalling children incapable of articulating their real desires, or of being trusted with a seat at the grownup table. Nor does it transform patronizing condescending straw-manning of their political views into meaningful discussion.
    When you dismiss concern over loss of jobs among coal miners as irrelevant and resentful because a different demographic of people in another part of the state are getting tech sector jobs, you’re not unmasking these people as hateful racists self-destructively wallowing in baseless resentment. You’re instead unmasking yourself as a myopic member of the liberal bourgeoisie, unwilling or unable to admit that not everything that benefits members of your class benefits all classes in society. Or to put it in terms you might process better… your privilege is showing.

  204. they want to solve what they see as problems in their community in ways that they view as appropriate, productive, and moral.
    Where’s the evidence that the author of the article we were discussing has that view? I have no doubt that some people (mostly Democrats, some that I know personally) care about alleviating poverty in Appalachia (through government programs which the author of the article we were discussing rejects).
    Or to put it in terms you might process better… your privilege is showing.
    No, actually, your fact-free interpretation of history is showing. Also, your inability to focus on the specific discussion regarding Trump support is showing. There has been a huge loss of coal mining jobs recently, but the industry has been shaky forever, and there’s never been stable employment in the Appalachian mountains. Not ever. The poverty there was evident to me since I was an adolescent in the 1960’s. In 1968, Martin Luther King began a march on poverty before he was assassinated. The people in the Appalachian mountains were some of the folks he was thinking about in that year – I remember it because I lived in Virginia even then. I currently live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains and am well aware of what goes on in my state, not to mention my locality.
    The article we were discussing says this: “The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues … Maybe they get a few handouts, but many don’t want handouts to begin with.”
    I still am waiting for you to offer a solution. Please try to think of something that hasn’t been proposed a gazillion times by, yes, establishment Democrats who have lost elections because of people like the author of the article you admire who favor Trump.

  207. I still am waiting for you to offer a solution.
    A public works effort to restore the areas destroyed or nearly destroyed by decades of mining. Like the CCC, but focused on areas from the OH river valley south to northern GA and AL.
    Pay people to rebuild and restore their own world. Mitigation of mining sites, reforestation of denuded areas, clearing rubble from creek and river courses where that is feasible. Also repair of public infrastructure like bridges, dams, and highways.
    It’d be great to provide some incentives to revitalize traditional manufacturing industries in those areas. also. Textiles and furniture, for example. Not just in those areas, for that matter. But that would require something like a national, or at least regional, industrial policy, which seems to be anathema to many.
    Also, de-criminalize possession, use, and cultivation for personal use of marijuana and set up at least one free, no-judgement no-questions opioid addiction clinic in each county.
    Those are my big ideas.
    I think there definitely is an issue of cultural resistance to help from “outsiders”. I also think that at least some of that resistance is rooted in real condescension toward folks who are, and have historically been, generally considered to be white trash.
    Addressing that, on both sides, is IMO a project that is worth taking on.

  208. What Russell said. I should adopt that meme more often, but others beat me to it.
    The drawback would be that Republicans will oppose it, but then I think they will pay a price with voters. One thing Trump has shown is that a great many Republican voters really don’t have much allegiance to Republican economics.

  209. I agree with Russell’s program 100%, but isn’t it an example of “outsiders presuming to know what’s good for poor Appalachian whites”?

  210. don’t put a federal face on it. I have no problems funding it with federal $$$, but let the direction and hands on oversight come from local and regional organizations. Appalachian ngo’s, basically, which exist now.
    that may make it more acceptable to local folks.

  211. Sapient, I think the difficulty you and NV are having comes down to this. There is a problem. You both see a (different) solution for that problem. However, the people that you are trying to help won’t implement it.
    The thing is, different cultures look at the world and how it works differently. Your solution might be a great one, if implemented in the culture you are part of. But given the culture of the people you are trying to help, it doesn’t work well at all. Not because they are stupid or recalcitrant or wedded to resentment. But just because their culture doesn’t work the same way yours does.
    The same thing applies in lots of other situations as well. And in other circumstances than trying to help people solve problems. You have to accept that, to reach people and move them to do something, you have to talk to them in their own terms. And explain what should be (or what you want to be) done in a way that fits their culture.
    In short, you need to go with the flow, not crossways to it. And, all to often and since at least the days of the War on Poverty, the people designing government programs, and private sector programs, don’t appear to recognize that. Which is a big part of why those programs have been less than totally successful.

  212. I agree with Russell’s program 100%, but isn’t it an example of “outsiders presuming to know what’s good for poor Appalachian whites”?
    The fact that an outsider suggests a program doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong and needs to be rejected. Doing so amounts IMHO to guilt by association. Which I happen to believe is a not-good thing — not to mention invalid.
    Good ideas (like bad ideas) can come from anywhere. In the case of any proposal, it needs to be evaluated on its own merits, not based on who suggested it.

  213. “Good ideas (like bad ideas) can come from anywhere. In the case of any proposal, it needs to be evaluated on its own merits, not based on who suggested it.”
    This runs directly into to the “we only want to hear this stuff from members of our own tribe” point, that I made above.

  214. I’d say it’s probably easier to hear hard truths from someone of your own tribe. But that’s problem recognition and diagnosis. Problem solutions are a different matter for most people.

  215. OK, the Isherwood reference escapes me. ??
    I’m ashamed to say I read a lot of Isherwood about 45 years ago, and remember almost nothing about it except the whole Sally Bowles/Cabaret thing, which presumably stuck because of the play, film etc. Perhaps Sapient means that Laurie Penny conveys a pretty appalling, decadent bunch of people in an allusive, vivid, and in the case of Milo whatsisname, almost sort of sympathetic (and yet totally not sympathetic) way? While in the wings, a fascist menace flexes its muscles…..

  216. Thank you GftNC. That’s exactly what I was thinking, but I didn’t have time, or the eloquence, to put it down.

  218. Which is a big part of why those programs have been less than totally successful.
    Disagree (what’s new? :)). They have ‘failed’ because (1.) they never had sustained widespread political support; (2.) They are starved of the resources to adequately attain their goals; and (3.) They tend to be means based (belittling the client and making the program susceptible to political attack) not universal in nature.
    Rather than worry if the program is delivered using the right accent, fix these and they should have a much higher probability of effectiveness.

  219. …which of course is hard to do when it’s politically correct on both the left and right to marginalize the concerns of these groups, and to treat them as either insignificant voting blocs that are culturally obligated to support your candidates in return for nothing, or hopelessly irrational rubes who are incapable of acting in their own best interests…
    (Oh, and in terms of more proactive, forward-looking stuff, wrs, unsurprisingly.)

  221. I know this post was originally about the Republican Convention. But I couldn’t think of a better topic to which to attach this latest.
    Trump has just refused to endorse House Speaker Ryan in his primary election contest — “I’m just not quite there yet.” Ditto Senator McCain — “I haven’t endorsed John McCain. I’ve never been there with John McCain”. Ditto Senator Ayotte. A party Presidential candidate explicitly saying that he is not endorsing multiple sitting members of Congress from his own party — if that has happened before, I don’t recall it.
    This year just keeps getting stranger and stranger.

  222. i’ve been thinking lately that the smartest thing Clinton could do is run as if Trump didn’t exist.
    don’t respond to his attacks, don’t comment on his blunders and faux pas.
    she should just make her case, and not engage trump at all. if someone asks her about him, she should just shrug and roll her eyes.
    just stand back and let the train wreck play itself out.

  223. just stand back and let the train wreck play itself out.
    it’s what i’d like to see, too. but that’s exactly what the 16 little dwarfs of the GOP primaries tried. they tried to avoid him, hoping he’d flame out all on his own and then they’d be left as the reasonable adults. didn’t work.
    what does seen to work is provoking him into saying crazy things about stuff people care about. and the provocation has to come from someone important or Trump won’t respond and it won’t get any coverage.

  224. I think Russell’s advice to Clinton is good, but signs point to the Trump campaign having more malign fish to fry than winning this thing:
    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/08/02/open-thread-donald-hears-stuff/
    If you scroll down in that mash-up of a post to the Roger Stone small print regarding intentions, you’ll see that the ratfucker to fuck all ratfuckers … the one who professionally ratfucked the stolen 2000 election of Bush II over Gore … Roger Stone’s goal and literal (he claims not literal ..the man’s not a poet; he’s a Republican ratfucker) intentions are to completely delegitimize a Clinton victory in the 2016 Presidential election on a national scale.
    Then what?: his words “bloodbath” “the government will be shut down”.
    Fuck him and the political party he rode in on.
    Fuck the Republicans moderates too. Do we think that these folks with their insatiable Clinton hatred, regardless of how justified it might be in normal political times, are going to do anything but stand by and toast marshmallows on the ensuing bonfire and hope to God that the government might forget to tax them, because it’s too busy being fucked.
    Every election cycle with this monstrosity of a fascist political party, from top to dogcatcher bottom, they up the ante and the threats of chaos, disruption, government destruction, and violence grow more threatening.
    Listen to Trump. His rhetoric echos Stone. It’s not an accident; it’s intentional. He’s throwing a lit match into and on to a mob of angry motherfuckers who HE, Trump, and the Republican Party these many years has been dousing with gasoline and arming to the teeth.
    It stops now. We’re not going to do this for another election cycle.
    Kick it in its fucking ratfucker nuts.
    But, Paul Ryan is worse. He’s a professional killer.
    Nevertheless, I may have to help all of these vermin destroy my government because the Clintons lie like politicians.

Comments are closed.