I don’t say this because I have some desire to be condescending or to sneer at people, but it must be the case that white evangelicals are the dumbest people on the planet.
I grew up with Donald Trump, folks. He’s a poor man’s Howard Stern. He’s about as evangelical as Truman Capote and Andy Warhol, and he lacks their talent.
The man is strictly an entertainer and master of bankruptcy. His book should have been titled “The Art of Going Broke and Getting Banks to Bail You Out.”
He’s the poster boy for bail outs and special rules for people who inherit money from their daddies.
His personal morals and family values would make Lou Reed blush.
He’s Joey Buttafuoco with a golf course and skyscraper.
He does not give a fuck about you.
“but it must be the case that white evangelicals are the dumbest people on the planet.”
Good morning, Mr. Van Winkle. Sleep well?
A good and gentle reminder to those on the left that “white evangelical” doesn’t mean what they say in public.
These are “Jim Crow” Xtrians and would have happily followed Hitler if they had lived in Germany.
The funny thing about this statement is that “white evangelicals” are the last people to self-identify as that. They’re “born-again Christians”, dontchya know.
Just because a person identifies as an “evangelical” certainly doesn’t mean that they aren’t primarily motivated by nakedly racist appeals. Their Jesus is a much different one than the likely dark-skinned, Middle Eastern dude who was always talking about peace, love and giving all your worldly possessions to the poor. To quote Richard Dawkins, their god “is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” I came from a conservative evangelical upbringing, and a lot of the people that I knew who were the leaders there were horrendous bigots. They could hide it well, but they couldn’t keep it under wraps all the time. It was always bubbling just below the surface for so many of them. And those who weren’t bigots simply kept their mouths shut. The bigotry is one of the reason I eventually walked away.
At least Joey Buttafuoco could fix cars.
Yeah, the armed occupiers of the Wildlife Refuge settled in for years but neglected to bring food.
Which is what’s alleged to have gotten the Hammonds(?) into prior trouble, with covering up that crime the reason for the arson.
After all, the Bundys have so far gotten away with stealing public resources in the form of forage (by using, but then refusing to pay (even the already-subsidized, artificially low established rate) for public lands grazing “rights” — scare quotes obligatory.
Why would these #YALLQAEDA have any qualms about stealing the public’s game to get them through the winter?
(I have my doubts re: the prowess as fair-chase hunters of these yahoos . . . but then not much such prowess is required to bring down off-guard, essentially tame critters from a distance with high-powered rifles out-of-season.)
heh… beat me to it, plus what’s up with dissing Lou Reed? He and his wife, Laurie Anderson, practiced yoga and Tai Chi for years and were advocates for clean living. I think Reed’s “family values” were of a much higher standard than the average Evangelical, at least in the latter portion of his life.
http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Celebrities/Meditating-On-The-Wild-Side.aspx
JMHO, of course.
Yes, Lou Reed spent the last years of his life in a domesticated state.
On the other hand, Lou Reed had an actual career and life before that. And he stood for something, and it wasn’t straight bourgeois family values.
Billmon: The Road to Yeehawd
Overlapping Venn diagrams for fundies and bundies, but the bundies are giving the fundies a run for “dumbest people on the planet.
Excellent for 1787, 1787, 1787
The US has been legally owning stolen land since 1787. Just ask the Huron, Sauk, Fox, Illini, Ouisconsin, Shawnee, and Potawotami.
Everyone lives on stolen land. England is stolen land, France is stolen land. Italy is stolen land. Greece is at least three times stolen land. Egypt is also multiply stolen land. The Cro-Magnons stole all of Europe from the Neaderthals and possibly commited genocide on an entire species. And these are the ancestors of the modern white peoples.
I’m quite sure, although I have no authorities to cite, that the Native African, Asian, and Pacific Islanders have similar atrocities in their history.
To be human is to to be violent and greedy. So don’t just blame Christians or Americans or even all white people.
And then each of those establishes a legal system for identifying who has the claim to what land. And that legal system gains such legitimacy that people find it more convenient to operate through it than go out an steal the use of land. The current basis of that legitimacy with respect to the land that was redistributed after theft or, in the case of the Louisiana purchase, purchase from the last theif, is the Northwest Ordinance. The Yeehawdis seek Constitutional legitimacy for treating leases of public lands as fee simple. That just does not fly under existing law.
If they were to assert private ownership of their sagebrush badlands unopposed by the federal goverment, I think there are tracts that other people might band together with guns and occupy, an altogether different tactic that camping in public spaces to protest grievances. Most buildings unoccupied for many years might be on that list. Most offices well heated and lighted but occupied only eight hours a day might fall on that list. But if this era is another one of individual land grabs, be careful what you ask for. There are many ways for societies to spin off into fragments.
In civilized society, either theft is tolerated or it is not. Either killing to get your way is tolerated or it is not. This is another of those moments for deciding what sort of society we are. No doubt Freud and the aftermath of his opening up analysis of society and culture ended the possibility of Enlightenment noble savage or natural law arguments about rights and laws. But that does not end the post-traumatic stress that went along with violent theft of land and labor in the New World. And the consequences to the victors and victims have been continuing tragedy. Some folks in each generation just would like to break some of the chains of tragedy to have a little bit better world, you know, progress.
“In civilized society, either theft is tolerated or it is not. Either killing to get your way is tolerated or it is not. “
It is tolerated. it depends on who does the stealing and killing. My point is that the USA is no worse than most other societies and better than at least half.
“Theft” and “murder” are defined by law. And those who make the laws ALWAYS exempt themselves to some extent.
The “white evangelicals” who get prominent in politics are closer to the “heartland” versions of Donald Trump, Joey Buttafuoco, and Howard Stern wannabes than you know.
It is no accident that politicized evangelicalism is most popular in the white working class and white middle class communities in which domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy, and know-nothingism are most prevalent. It functions as a co-dependent cause of these social pathologies. To not be ignorant would be to have to face some hard truths about one’s upbringing, one’s parents, one’s friends and neighbors, and the values of one’s most intimate society.
Threre are definitely obvious equivalents in other ethnic communities who do not take so forceful a religious front. Elvis sang gospel, but it was Perry Como not Frank Sinatra who was most famous for his Ave Maria.
Most politicians, even ones motivated by policy issues, at base do not care about the voters except instrumentally. Some are better at hiding that than others, but there is a stance that all practiced politicians have in meeting voters that imposes a huge wall of distance. It is as practices, obvious and as different as the similar wall that used car salemen (indeed any car salesmen) fall into.
Donald Trump’s attraction stylistically is being different from that stance. He’s more directly like your asshole boss; you know exactly what you are getting and if you have to live with that you have to live with that. A huge part of America survived on practiced resignation.
Bernie on Wall Street.
Finally hits back on falsehoods Clinton promulgates.
So much for the claim that Bernie can do nothing without Congress.
However, I think Bernie just sealed his doom and possibly signed his death warrant.
But, God!, here’s a man worth following into the breach one more time. Otherwise we might as well just become cattle for the Clinton’s and Bush’s.
I’m getting sick and tired of all these yahoos that declare a President can’t do anything. It’s nothing but cover for Obama who signaled that he wouldn’t do anything when he began naming his Cabinet appointments — almost exclusively Bush and Clinton retreads that anyone with a soupcon of awareness knew “won’t do anything” was their mission.
Sanders is the anti-pearl clutching DEM candidate. IOW a leader.
I think he can do a lot…it all depends on how far he’s willing to push statutory and, frankly, constitutional bounds. Pushing said boundaries would make a lot of people, particularly those of the Tom Friedman variety (which includes the entirety of the media, up to and including MSNBC and all of their hosts) head to the fainting couch. I’m not sure it would fly. Would I do it anyway? Perhaps…here’s to hoping someone will?
and here all I’ve heard on progressive blogs is that Dodd-Frank is worthless
Who knew
Eh? The rightwing noise machine has fed hatred, bigotry, fear and loathing for decades now, and in many ways, Trump is the logical outcome.
Most people aren’t all that logical anyway, as most of us tend to be ruled more by our emotions. But the rightwing propaganda juggernaut has brainwashed the rubes and marks to be utterly devoid of curiosity and completely impervious to factual reality.
The rightwing PTB set up the Family/Fellowship to shepherd the Prosperity MegaChurches and the weird Jews for Jesus organizations. Their whole goal to work hand in glove with Fox, Hate Radio, Red State type websites and the like to keep the rubes hatful, fearful, and angry. Bigotry is the main tool, as was handed down from Mt Sinai by Zombie Reagan – Cadillac welfare queens was the war cry that still resonates.
My RWNJ fundie family all go to churches that focus almost solely on the Old Testament, where their “god” is portrayed as jealous, nasty, vindictive, war like, a murderer demanding blood sacrifices (for no reason) and so on.
New Testament Jesus is paid lip service and used mainly to brandish in perceived heathen faces. Anyone who does not subscribe to their exacting belief system is deemed a Satan-worshipper, but IMO, it’s the Evangelicals who worship Satan (at least the concept) the most. I once told my RWNJ fundie family that I didn’t believe in Satan, and believe me, the upset and consternation was much worse than when I said I didn’t believe in God. Punishment for alleged sins is big with these folks, and if you don’t believe the way the do… you are doomed and what you say is worthless.
But yes, these credulous fools can be made to accept any carny barker that their Fundy Preachers tell them to, such as, Mitt RMoney, the Mormon Bishop. It did make me laugh when my family started gushing about what a “wonderful man of God” he was… because they had carried on for years about how Mormons worship Satan. Something changed… how ’bout that?? No surprises.
Same goes for serial adulterer and serially bankrupt Trump. If he gets the nomination, my RWNJ fundie family will fall in line and vote for him, all the while singing his praises about what a man of God he is. Yeah, Trump’s a man of God, alright, the God of Mammon. But hey! That counts, don’t it? And he’s white!!!111!!
Are you all really so foolish as to think that “right wing evangelicals” are the only people who are supporting Trump?
Give me a break!!!
Y’all don’t get out much, do you?
Go to any white working-class bar or diner in the U.S…north, south, east or west, Irish, Polish, Italian, home-grown Protestant or whatever other subculture you may dredge up from your old litany of middle class fears…and start putting down Trump strongly. I dare ya. Bring backup. You gonna need it.
Trump’s support doesn’t just come from a bunch of die-hard, right-wing so-called “Christians,” folks. They’re just the sensationalistic media’s image of the day. The real core of his support comes from working-class and middle-class white people…lots of people raised in various Roman Catholic traditions and lots more from Protestant upbringings as well, people who are about as “religious” as is Trump…a group have been media-tranced into believing that their exceptionalist, entitlement-driven White American Dream has been stolen by so-called minorities (Soon to be majorities, bet on it.) that to them are absolutely, positively represented by Obama and the (
theoretically) racially inclusive, politically correct Democratic Party and its centrist media.WTFU.
AG
This one, actually, I’d bet on. At least the final paragraph.
I think he’ll get utterly spanked by Clinton, though, which I think you disagree with, Arthur, right? It reminds me of–you ever see a movie called The Great White Hype?
Did I ever see a movie called The Great White Hype?
No, but I’ve been living it…under it, at any rate…for 50+ years.
Does that count?
AG
Absolutely correct.
Yeah, the Howard Stern fans should be supporting him because he represents what they stand for. That doesn’t make then stupid, just juvenile.
The evangelicals are plain imbeciles because Trump couldn’t possibly have more contempt for them.
The Democratic Trump:
Spoken from the heart of Trumpland. There is not wonder at how New York is tilting on a number of issues at the moment. New York and West Virginia are for the moment the same in political culture at least on an upstate downstate view of things, and downstate is hard to break down in NYC proper because of map scales. But likely breaks by ethnicity and class.
In other regions, white evangelicals as identified in the opinion polls (huge warning there) are a major factor in Trump’s 30% Republican support. Likely so in Iowa as well. Because in those states, there is not the identifiable working-class-bar denizens you are citing. In the South, even NASCAR fans don’t align with that demographic anymore although those types still exist and still have their political opinions and still are a large enough part of the Trump coalition. That said, most of the construction trades are churchg0ers of the Baptist or pentecostal persuasion, except for the ever-increasing Hispanic Catholics. See where the fire is coming from? In and economy in which construction is in a shit market.
I am not speaking of “New York” per se, Tarheel. Nor is this limited to downstate/upstate NY. I am speaking of white working and middle-class New Jersey, Long Island, Queens, a large part of (non-hyped) Brooklyn, Staten Island and the counties north of NYC that are not part of the Manhattan bedroom suburban sprawl. I am also speaking of Middle-to Eastern PA, where I have been spending a good amount of time recently. Of Georgia and Indiana, of all of white working class/semi-unemployed New England right on up to Maine, and I have a gut feeling that the rest of the country is quite similar in terms of the beliefs of people who belong to the unhyped, relatively uncovered-by-media and scared shitless white working and middle class.
They’re gonna go Trump…if of course he survives the machinations of the PermaGov controllers, who fears the threat of his loose cannon style.
We shall see, soon enough.
Watch.
AG
According to a PPP poll in December, in a 3-way match-up running as an Independent, Donald Trump would get a majority of the Independent voters.
Campaign ad fail:
Hope he spends a lot of his money running it.
wow!!! demon sheep has competition!
awful.
awful, awful.
and why is he wearing lipstick – who thought that was a good idea?
and trust ted – at first I thought it said ted talk.
Yes, the demon sheep ad was my first thought as well.
Exactly what constituency is he talking to that fears hordes of attorneys, bankers, and journalists invading the US and driving down wages? As he says “it’s personal to me,” I guess he’s speaking to a constituency of two, himself and his wife. Not that this is recognized as an existing problem. Perhaps he means that it could become a problem the way Trump’s Moroccan refugees flooding across some border could become a problem. It’s asking for far too much imagination on the part of his dumbass supporters.
The lipstick is probably just subtle enough that most people won’t notice it.
no, I think – ok, it’s an awful evening that I spend time thinking about Ted Cruz- but I think he’s trying to fend off accusations that he’s not a citizen. it’s a kind of swiftboat strategy carried out by amateurs. he should have spent actual $ and hired ppl to make an interesting ad. all the shoes. actually the long shots resemble sept 11 in Hoboken except along a river drive not a desert. that’s what it reminded me of. but the close ups of the actors were so strange.
No, I recognized it and I’m not that observant of such things. Ted Cruz in drag! Who’d a thunk it?
I’ll concede on this point to you and Errol. I’m not all that good on finer grain visual perceptions.
Sorry to hear that. I hope your vision has stabilized like my cataracts.
Only meant that I’m not visually oriented. No cataracts.
I know you don’t get this, but Trump’s main audience in the GOP is not the evangelicals.
read the link before you lecture me.
As far as the Howard Stern comment, I’ve been saying all along he’s doing a bad Howard Stern impersonation. But only in terms of style. Os substance, to be fair to Stern, Howard is quite a liberal guy.
The guy couldn’t be any more pro choice, has supported gay marriage forever, always rails about the environment and specifically global warming as being one of the most important issues of the day. He is a huge animal rights guy, supports gun control, has gone off about how important affirmative action is many times, and generally despises religion and refers to himself as a semi atheist.
In terms of presidential elections, I don’t recall him supporting a Republican ever.
He’s probably what Cons would call fiscally conservative. Meaning I bet he’s not thrilled with taxes. But on most of the rest, yes he is kind of liberal. I think a lot of his dabbling in politics is just for ratings. Didn’t he back Christie Todd Whitman at one point because she actually came on his show? Most people don’t remember just how far out there Stern’s WNBC afternoon drive-time show really was. Or remember what got him fired from his Washington DC radio gig(which was early 1980’s before WNBC).
This sort of credulous reporting of the results of such dubious “poll” results drives me a bit nuts.
Which is not to argue “that white evangelicals [AREN’T] the dumbest people on the planet”! Loads of independent evidence strongly supports the conclusion that THEY ARE! It’s just that the linked poll is nearly as weak as evidence for such a conclusion could get.
Anyone who’s ever had even an advanced high school course in probability and statistics (which SHOULD include the theoretical underpinnings and extensive empirical evidence supporting the reliability — within stated limits, including “margin of error” — of scientific polling when basic assumptions have been met) would spot the red flags raised by this, from the linked article:
Wow, a sample size of 3700! That approaches FOUR TIMES the typically reported (for very good theoretical reasons!) sample size (a bit over 1000) for actual, scientific polling results. These must be REALLY robust, reliable results, no?
No!
Seeing the red flag raised above, a critical reader proceeds to this, in the fine (ok, actually italic — same effect!) print buried at the very bottom of booman’s linked article:
So, still appropriately skeptical, following that link we find:
We do also finally learn — again, 2 links removed from the original reporting — some details about the weighting methods employed and the bootstrapping methods used* to produce a “bootstrap confidence interval” of +/-3.7% around the reported results. (IOW, if everything else about the methodology is valid Trump’s actual lead over Cruz among GOP “RVs” (or RVs+”leaners”) could be anywhere from under 10% to over 24%; but this would still be true in only 19 of 20 replications of the same sampling) [ = 95% confidence interval reported]; which is another way of saying we could expect the real result to be outside that already-large interval 1 out of every 20 times such a sampling were repeated.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the bootstrapping and weighting methods employed. They at least confer credibility somewhere between the utter worse-than-uselessness (because deceptive, when some people treat them as credible!) of typical online “polls”
(whose “samples” anyone with internet access can self-select themselves into . . . multiple times if they have access from multiple IP addresses . . . or as many times as their patience and perseverance allow if even that rudimentary control isn’t in place!)
and the credibility of actual, reputable, scientific polling, which is distinguished by the one word you will not find anywhere above or in either of the linked articles: i.e., random[-ize/ization, etc.]. Despite it being the core assumption of the theoretical underpinnings of (and empirical support for) reliability of scientific sampling/polling.
(In partial defense of current pollsters, the glory days of random opinion-poll sampling enabled by the near-universal penetration of telephone landlines into households [so a random sample from the phone directory was at least a reasonable approximation of a random sample from the overall population of eligible voters] are gone with the advent of cell phones and decline of landlines.)
*evaluating the validity of the applications of these methods to this particular instance is beyond any expertise I’d claim; would be interesting to see a Nate Silver or that other guy (Wang?) who did about as well forecasting the last couple Prez elections from only existing poll data weigh in on that.
I grew up with Donald Trump, too, and in hindsight it is abundantly clear he was a ‘reality’ star long before such a thing was named; we used to call them celebrities. And boy how he celebrated. His working-class mouth got wall-to-wall coverage; print, radio and TV built his brand for decades. He practically invented the reality TV genre and New York just couldn’t get enough of his scandalous existence; forget the Kardashians. His ‘show’ was in syndication on every metropolitan network through the 70s and 80s.
It’s amusing that he parleyed louche notoriety into a prestige brand on the strength of a lower middle-class person’s idea of what’s classy. I joke that he’s running for president because New York wouldn’t have him for mayor; the job he probably thought should be his. But it’s even funnier that the Republicans are almost nominating him; they can thank McCain and Sarah Palin for this, I’m sure it gave him the inspiration to actually run.
It seems to me that America just came around to Trump’s world-view; he hasn’t changed much. He’s just an ambitious, narcissistic blow-hard with a wallet. I’m not convinced he actually wants to be president, to be honest. I get it that he wants to run, but I think winning would require a readjustment of a personality accustomed to carping opposition, not governance. We’ll see.
Either way, it’s all just a big scam. It’s all he knows.
Y’all enabled and coddled them. So Shrug
they don’t care, BooMan.
they don’t care.
He speaks their language.
Let’s them believe that they can indeed return to their delusional world of Mad Men.