Jonah Goldberg continues to act like a man who, having taken some introductory undergrad philosophy classes, has thereby weaponized his stupidity. But all his musings about the Buridan’s Ass paradox facing conservatives who can’t support Trump or maintain their credibility if they endorse Clinton are summed up in the following admission:
“But, there’s a practical point here too. I plan on being in this line of work for a while longer. In the future, I want to be able to continue to say character and ideas matter without someone shouting, ‘Oh yeah, then why did you support Donald Trump?’” – Jonah Goldberg, July 2, 2016
His essay is laced with obnoxious asides that have no other purpose than to try to demonstrate his wingnut bona fides. There’s the snide reference to Lena Dunham’s unattractive nude body, and suggestions that Bill Clinton patronizes the Bunny Ranch whorehouse and may be a murderer, and a preposterous statement that Victor Hanson Davis is “one of the finest historians alive.”
But this is all in the service of finding some kind of way to maintain a career “in this line of work,” while at the same time trashing the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in an Election year when his opponent is the notorious and nefarious she-demon, Hillary Clinton.
It’s not really a paradox at all. It’s basically what happens if you trap a wolverine in a burlap bag. They thrash about in wild and increasing desperation as they begin to slowly suffocate.
And, so, Goldberg is feeling the sting of the critics who say he’s a hypocrite for supporting a squish like Romney but failing to swallow his principles for Trump. And he wants to assure them that he’s still on their side…still a valuable soldier in the greater battle.
And, it’s true. In a few months, this election will be over. And those who refused to support Trump will actually have the upper hand and few problems continuing or resuming their line of work.
But, then, that’s really all that needs to be said. All this writhing about is unseemly. Just say that Trump should not be president and admit the obvious next step, which is that Clinton will make a more acceptable president regardless of whether you’re a conservative or not.
Goldberg has the special problem of having tried to make the case that fascism in America is primarily a phenomenon of the Left. Trump’s followers put the lie to that, once and for all. Trump’s coy alt-right Nazi sympathizers are not exactly vegetarian gun control advocates.
No clearer evidence that the modern conservative project has failed absolutely. Trump is the modern conservative’s id. If even Jonah Goldberg is repulsed by that reality, the project has failed. If “I will lie to prove I’m part of the gang” Goldberg can take Trump, the gang is over. Gone worse than the Whigs. Gone worse than the Know-Nothings.
Why can’t Democrats start saying that directly? The conservative project championed by William Buckley and Barry Goldwater has choked on its own corruption.
can’t take Trump
System doesn’t allow major parties to collapse anymore.
Really doesn’t seem to care much what the system allows.
Reality . . .
For those of us cursed and blessed with the ability to objectively analyze it, it’s been apparent for decades that the Republican party has been slowly overheating, and is in the process of going critical and melting down. Driftglass has a great analogy to a nuclear reactor from a decade ago.
Unfortunately, roughly 30% of registered voters will believe whatever they’re told to believe by their sources of authority, whether it be Fox News, or whomever seems the most authoritative at the moment. And while 30% isn’t a majority of registered voters, it can be a majority or plurality of the electorate, depending on the particular election.
Perhaps the Republican party/conservative movement is about to collapse and implode. I’ve predicted that if Trump were the Republican nominee that it could destroy the Republican party as a national party, or at least make it unable to compete for a few election cycles. An implosion after 2016 would be right in time. The 2018 and 2020 elections are important to de-gerrymander the House and gain control of it.
But I don’t think it’s a sure thing, at all.
I think it depends on whether the election is close enough to blame on invisible liberals and illegal immigrants voting 3000 times each, or whether the outright social dominator bigot is totally annihilated in a landslide. In essence, the difference between the Republican base claiming yet another stolen election and doubling down to find that more charismatic authoritarian leader, or getting depressed and staying home to binge watch Duck Dynasty and The O’Reilly Factor in comparative safety for a decade or so.
Let the 7 or 8 sane Republican office holders and the sane Republicans out and about the country remake a conservative party that is at least sane, if not still anachronistic and focused on the wealthy. Give them the right wing of the Democratic party even, so that the left wing can get back to pulling the country to the left, instead of having to convince liberals to be liberals.
The “good” thing about Trump is his unabashedness to expose the conservative ID for what it is. Articles like this one that Booman is writing about shows just how hard it is for the media to play the BothSidesDoItTM BigLie. Hell, here is a Republican who admits his party is broken and has to compare his broken ass party to some actress’ body, as if that is relevant to something.
Only Nixon could go to China. Only Clinton could destroy welfare.
Only an outright authoritarian buffoon could destroy the Republican party? Perhaps we’ll find out.
Sadly, never ever could they admit that Palin was not qualified to be a heart beat away, surely it will not come to pass that they will utter such blasphemy to deny the tangerine cream tart will not get their vote. No matter what vacillations they profess. Thats why there is a supposed curtain on the voting booth, after the fact they can lie and say they did not vote for him when and if he loses. A nation that elected Nixon, Reagan, and W twice, I have no confidence in they fact that the American electorate will not elevate him and give him the keys to the kingdom.
Don’t the neocons have a somewhat separate support system. I think they will be fine.
They do, which is why Bill Kristol tried to get William French to run. He couldn’t support Trump, yet couldn’t bring himself to admit that Hillary was the better candidate for the neocons. Of course, French pulled out a week later, making the entire effort a bad joke.
Goldberg, Kristol and all the rest of the ones on the right who won’t endorse Trump and can’t admit that Hillary’s the one they’ll be voting for remind me of the occasional colleague who’s obviously gay but married to a woman, usually with children from a prior marriage, who can’t come out and say what everyone already knows.
The sunk cost fallacy.
Mean the Democrats?
this inconvenient truth frightens the hell out of me…
Is this actually true? Wingnuts and their media serviators are amazingly good at punishing people who accurately call for the right thing and rewarding those who lie us into misery. Phil Donohue is still persona non grata for being right about the Iraq War while any number of hacks who pushed for war are regulars on the talk shows they won’t let him host. The business press continues to haul out inflation hawks to speak after 8 years of being humiliatingly wrong and a 30 year bond market that predicts we’ll be dead before inflation ever comes back. Country music stations still won’t play the Dixie Chicks.
I suspect any conservative pundit/media figure who calls for Hillary to be president will never be heard from again after November, precisely because it’s true that even the truest red conservative would be be harmed by that nutcase Trump as President. Truth is not welcome in the conservative mindset.
If that is the case, and I suspect that it is, then people like Goldberg and others need to sit down and have a “come to Jesus moment” about whether they still want to try and be a viable piece of what passes for today’s modern conservative moment, or whether they need to start working on finding another niche within the world of political punditocracy. The fact of the matter is, as you correctly state, there is no room for nuance or wobbly pseudo-ideologues in the conservative media world.
It’s two minutes until midnight, Jonah. Either shit or get off the pot. Your brain is starting to numb from sitting on the shitter so long pondering your choices.
They’ve never known anything but the coddling of that movement. Can they even function outside it?
Exactly. Where else does a hack like Goldberg turn? If he’s not published within the mighty Wurlitzer, he’s not published.
Absolutely correct, Parallax. His sinecure is only secured by his willingness to catapult the propaganda (remember “Liberal Fascism”, everyone?). He could try the David Frum path, but I doubt that would work. Recall that Jonah’s not just a wingnut welfare recipient, he’s a legacy, and his Mommy is still on the CLENIS beat:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/22/lucianne-goldberg-going-highly-sexed-camp
aign-believed-every-one-women/
’90’s forever!
Which is interesting because Lucianne’s early career was ultra-right dirty politics with a touch of the CIA. There are reports that she tried to insinuate herself into the LBJ camp and then the JFK camp in 1960. By 72 she was using CIA cover to spy on the McGovern campaign. And long after her efficiency as a sticky piece of toffee was gone she was pulling the strings around Monica Lewinsky.
Her doughboy son is merely a chip off the block, but probably more banal and less than his mother.
Nothing may change in politics with Clinton ascending, but it will shake up the punditry. They’ll all be looking for safe shores.
If they endorse Clinton loudly enough, they’ll get TV gigs as ‘the liberal’.
In 4 years people will barely remember who Trump is.
Being wrong is no barrier to work in punditry.
After Trump loses, the Conservatives who held their noses and voted for him and the ones who simply refused to vote at all will take approximately a single day to wail and gnash their teeth. Then it will be back to full attack mode on Hillary for whatever they can sling and make stick.
There will be special committees out the wazoo as they try to wrangle any kind of damage from whatever “trumped-up” charges they can muster. Bill will be back up for scrutiny, and probably Chelsea, too, while they’re at it.
Republicans are shameless, and losing again will make them even more shameless. They cannot and will not learn. Their pundits and their FOX reporters will simply rewrite history, invent new charges, and sink their teeth into anyone the Clintons have known.
ugh
They have already convicted Hillary for violating the handling of classified e mails. She is obviously guilty of that, the word goes, since the servers were unauthorized and there were allegedly classified e mails on them. And I saw today they are readying the ” fix was in” idea if she is not Indicted. And this time it includes Obama as well, granting her a pardon or weighing in on Lynch. This is all offensive to me, to convict her with no indictment and no trial. And I am not the best supporter of her. Still she is light years ahead of the Orange Man.
The fact is, and I’m afraid this is going to be the case for a very long time, there is NO DEMOCRAT who will ever be considered legitimate as President by the right wing. The only way this will ever change is if the Republican Party itself is able to exorcise this demon from their midst. As long as the Republican Party base consists of a plurality of people whose worldview is steeped in the fever swamps of right wing conspiracies, there is really nothing else that can occur, but exactly what you cite. I have little confidence, and there is almost no evidence, that anyone in the GOP who does not count themselves among this insane plurality has the faintest notion about how to kill this zombie they have created. All they can do is stand by and hope that it somehow kills itself.
I agree. That is why we need to take back congress. Otherwise, as donnah said, there will be endless committees looking into endless imaginary wrongs. I doubt they will ever be able to exorcise their demons. There will always be those who adhere to and believe the lies and irrational behavior. Duplicitous Don is just the latest incarnation of the evil within.
Let’s ponder major statements from a couple of Presidents who are frequently labeled More Progressive Than President Obama by a number of community members here:
Even more ludicrously:
Happy Independence Day, everyone!!
So then name one such “community member” here, providing example of claimed labeling. And on the outside chance you can document a single such example, then proceed to likewise document the “frequently” claim. And in the extremely unlikely case that you can document both those claims, go on to demonstrate that this is true for “a number of community members here . . . “.
Absent that, Neal’s troll rating seems warranted (and such trolling here’s been tiresome for a long time, now).
Yes, it is a remarkable infestation, this poster who usually decorously shits on other posters while every once in a while trying to flatter BooMan about how superior he is to everyone visiting here (but I’m sure BooMan is taken in by the slime). What could this be all about? Maybe he’s employed by the ‘burnish and protect’ division of Barack Obama’s legacy commission. Or Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political machine. Thou shalt not criticize the bosses!
I meant of course ‘NOT taken in by the slime’!
This is parody, right?
No, he’s completely serious, based on his posting history.
Right.
Yes. And if you point out that he’s more than a bit ungrateful to Booman, who happens to host this blog, you, too, will be accused of being one of Booman’s sycophants.
And many of the people who bitch about trolls and ad hominems never call out Quentin for such behavior. Odd, that….
In fact, I consider cfdj one of the better-informed, more-reasonable-and-open-to-honest-debate/discussion commenters here when he’s responding substantively to content of a top-post or comment, rather than engaging in the generalized trolling I objected to here.
What could be worse than such trolling? The sort of personal attack (replete with baseless, utterly ridiculous, tinfoil-hat-level conspiracism) that you just engaged in.
oaugabonita, you don’t engage in this stuff, but many others here, in complaining how disappointing President Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party is, frequently talk of how far Right they believe the Party has moved. They’ve abandoned the New Deal and Great Society, these Frog Ponders claim. If they would just return to the policies of LBJ and FDR, then our electoral problems would cease and our policies would be better.
Some go further to claim that President Obama’s policies are equivalent to pre-Reagan Republicans.
And, indeed, one has written repeatedly that President Nixon has a better progressive record than President Obama. If she wishes to defend her frequently stated position, she may do so here.
I would love it if these disparaging, slanted claims would cease. If this exchange helps bring that about, I’d be pleased. I’m not counting on it.
At the very least, they’re going to be made to defend their slanted claims.
But it seems completely obvious to me that the place for demanding such defense is in particularized reply to the offending (by your lights) comment.
NOT in generalized trolling of the board. Which I think is also counter-productive to your stated goal, since I think it’s very UNlikely to provoke the demanded defense, but very LIKELY (in fact, virtually certain, imo) to escalate the inter-factional rancor even further. (The decline of this place into feuding factions is the worst effect wrt the Trib of this primary season, and the main cause of my declining interest/motivation to show up or comment.)
You began,
Now why might you suppose that is? (Let me be the first to assure you that it’s not due to any form of sainthood on my part. I can be as mean, nasty, offensive as anyone in the right circumstances.) I have a high enough opinion of you that I don’t believe I possess some sort of superhuman capacity for choosing not to engage in certain kinds of interactions that you lack.
You think community relations would be helped if I named names of individual community members engaging in the behaviors I’ve summarized here?
Gosh, I sure disagree with that.
These behaviors are easily observable by looking back at comments threads from recent days, weeks and months. You can find out which commenters have made these statements if you care to know.
I’ve displayed an eager willingness to discuss views with individual commenters when my schedule allows; I completely agree that this is the best way to go about things. I find it strongly preferable to downgrading a comment or engaging in broader disagreements.
In combing through videos of past Presidents yesterday morning, I was angered by the statements these Presidents made and the actions behind them. It caused me to reflect on some of the things written here recently by community members. I’ll concede it was done in reaction to my resentments.
President Obama has a mixed record, like every single President we have ever had. I believe the view of history will be much kinder to him than the contemporary views of a substantial number of people in this community. I make that case here, often by being willing to engage in examinations of policy outcomes and legislative/judicial/Executive histories in great specifics.
the “couple [means 2!] of presidents” that you originally claimed (the comment’s most trollific element) are
were NOT LBJ and FDR (as you began your response), but LBJ and Nixon!. And your reply was mostly unresponsive to the specific objection I raised (i.e., you didn’t “name [even] one” or provide even one specific example in support of that original claim. Rather, you retreated into repeating generalities about “many”, “frequently”, “these Frog Ponders”, “some”, etc. Jus’ sayin’.
And while I would certainly disagree with any claim (you say such has been made, I don’t claim to know) that Nixon (or his Presidency) was more “progressive”* than Obama (or his Presidency), Nixon did preside over some of the most “progressive” legislation (particularly in environmental policy areas, e.g., the Endangered Species Act, among several others) in our history. That’s just a fact. What’s salient for any claim that Nixon was more “progressive” than Obama is the political context in which they presided. Nixon’s signing of landmark environmental laws was (imo) mostly just recognition of the handwriting on the wall (i.e., substantial bipartisan majority support both in Congress and the public), not reflective of any noble, personal environmental ethic on Nixon’s part.
Meanwhile, though you could argue endlessly over the extent of “progressive” accomplishments over which Obama has presided, whatever they have been, they have had to be achieved over relentless, entrenched, obstinate, all-obstruction-all-the-time GOP opposition.
Anyone who would elide over that critical distinction of historical political context is either very ignorant or just dishonest.
*I think I dislike this term about as much as booman dislikes “neoliberal”, for reasons I’ve laid out here on occasion, so I won’t repeat them.
I hear you on your first two paragraphs here, oaguabonita; conflating LBJ and Nixon in the manner I did in the original post was unfair. My first post here was ill-advised.
It’s hoped that you can see how naming names here at this point could be counterproductive to community relations.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything else you wrote here. Accurate summaries of policy and legislative histories, and the contexts under which these things are discussed, are neccessary elements of providing fair-minded judgments on politicians.
something about seeing how there could be valid reasons for choosing to NOT specifically name names. I can understand why you chose not to.
Given the rest of your response, I’ll leave it at that.
A few months ago, I wrote something similar to what centerfielddj wrote, commenting without naming names of commenters about a certain sort of attack that I found bothersome. Someone (call him John Q. Offended Reader) responded asserting that I was setting up a straw man and claiming that the sort of attack I had mentioned had never occurred. I then did a bit of searching and found that Offended Reader had himself written an attack of the sort that I mentioned.
In fact, I think I may have seen that very exchange. (I think I may even have commended you for documenting your claim when challenged! In large part because by documenting an example, you eliminated the option of continuing the denial tack.)
But wouldn’t it all have been simpler and cleaner, and left less opportunity for misunderstandings (feigned or honest) and needless divisiveness, if you’d made that point in direct response to the offending attack (which has been my main point in this sub-thread)? (But, yeah, I get time constraints . . . though would bet you spent more time searching up the example than you would have responding to the offense in real-time, no?)
I also don’t really get or agree with the hesitancy over naming names (which can be done factually, civilly, with documentation, e.g., links, and without nastiness or vituperation). Commenting here creates a record. Can’t see how there could be any valid objection to supporting a statement by documenting from that record that an individual said what you allege they said (again, assuming that’s done civilly and factually — not implying it can’t be critical, though). Anybody who can’t take that kind of heat is hanging out in the wrong kitchen, imo.
No member of the community has issued denials that a Frog Ponder has called President Obama’s record inferior to the Presidential records of FDR, LBJ and even Nixon. At the moment there are no misunderstandings or denials happening here. That’s important to acknowledge.
I’ve often issued direct responses to individual commenters who have made claims which I found outrageous or off base. These types of claims are among them. These discussions have rarely resulted in reconsiderations from the commenters.
The Administration’s drone policies and outcomes are ones I generally dislike. They’ve made significant, consequential mistakes in Syria and elsewhere. There are areas of criticism of the President which I share, and I sometimes join the critics here with my own comments, upgrade criticisms which appear to be in good faith, and let the vast majority of critiques go by. I understand that everyone has their own opinions, and those are often closely personally held.
At times I feel the need to intervene, if not to change the mind of those with whom I disagree, but to influence the views of those who can be persuaded.
Chasing down the comment by the person who denied having made it was definitely time consuming.
Nixon had LBJ’s liberal Congress, esp the House. You ever read Perlstein’s Nixonland? There is a free online download.
Nice career… What is that line of work exactly? It seems rather unseemly to me. If there is one thing we should all be learning this year it is that “this line of work” is a destructive one. And that really does apply to all in it no matter their ideological bent.
Endorsing Clinton will be worse for Goldberg than endorsing Trump, provided Clinton wins. Trump then becomes irrelevant, and the horrors that would have ensued had he been President remain unproven empirically The Repub media machine’s job will be to demonize Clinton, as they already have been doing, and as they did to her husband and Obama. How do you function as a Clinton endorser then?
The way out for pundits like Goldberg is to endorse Johnson. Then they won’t have to answer for having supported Clinton or Trump. And if they can build up Johnson to carry a few states, they could throw the election to the House. I have a diary on this:
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2016/7/4/132926/6490
In no universe do they throw the election to the House. Doing so would require Johnson to carry blue or at least purple states. Johnson on his best day maybe throws Arizona or Utah to Clinton.
At the very least, though, a strongi enough Johnson/Weld buzz could bring more “mainstream” Republicans to the polls since they’d have a Presidential ticket to vote for thereby decreasing our chances of winning impt downballot races.
Jonah’s best strategery is to fake a medical problem that keeps him from punditing until after the election.
Since Jonah’s mom is clearly “patient zero” of the Zika pandemic, a heritable Zika infection would be completely believable.
Goldberg is the sort of pathetic fop who qualifies as an intellectual on the right. The guy is about as cogent as Gingrich, his insight nonexistent and his vision soars to the level of “salmon that crap butter-scotch-flavored ice cream.”
That people like this can pass themselves off as credible is evidence of how far we’ve fallen through the looking glass.
As an exercise in compassion (not that Jonah G deserves any), imagine that Ted Cruz were running against your most despised democrat – Lieberman, Lanny Davis, Jim Webb, Cory Booker, Schumer, some racist southerner, Wasserman Schultz, Max Baucus … pick the one you hate the most – for me it’s Lieberman.
You’d still vote for the dem because of SCOTUS and executive action on bills placed on the President’s desk.
Goldberg & Co. have so much invested in plutocratic issues that a liberal SCOTUS majority and democratic president would decimate that they can’t pull the trigger for HRC, even though Trump is has negative qualities that set him aside from even the most abhorrent people in the list above.
Second guessing myself, the thing about Goldberg, who is now exposed as speaking for an almost negligible portion of the electorate, I think he care more about neo-con foreign policy than everything else combined. A liberal SCOTUS might not even bother him – maybe privatization of social security and denial of basic health coverage aren’t that big of a deal for him as long as he can cluster bomb Iran and Syria to his heart’s content.
When 2016 is in the rear view mirror, I still think that the most lasting significance of the Trump phenomenon will be the creation of the long-overdue schism between the conservative intelligentsia and the 40% of the population they require to getting them within reach of enacting their policies. The Cheney/Bush/Reagan/ NRO/Romney/Ryan/Weekly Standard/George Will/WF Buckley wing of the party is infinitesimally tiny. Their messaging to their electorate is pure snake oil but it’s been working so diabolically well for so many decades that they’d lulled themselves into believing that “the real America” actually understood and supported their ideas. The damage that Trump has done to that snake oil operation seems fatal.
I suppose they could put it back together if they could create a Manchurian Trump candidate – someone who truly embraces the Paul Ryan budget and all its implications but who can generate enough Trump-level bravura to reach the double-digit IQ base of the GOP. The person that comes to mind is Rush Limbaugh. He could probably reach the Trump electorate while giving the Jonah Goldbergs and Paul Ryans confidence that he could be relied on to do what they need him to do. That would at least get them back to the mid- to high-40% level that Romney and McCain reached and they might conceivably benefit from some black swan event and luck into the white house in one of the next few elections, where they could do the kind of rapid industrial strength damage that Cheney and Bush did. Otherwise, I think the conservative movement is thoroughly and irrevocably screwed.
As I re-read this … my God … Trump has lowered the bar of common decency and intellectual honesty to the point that Limbaugh actually seems presidential in comparison. That’s truly frightening.
That’s pretty much my take too. It’s also my fervent prayer. Let this be the moment when the Republican coalition fractures beyond recognition. The rump may continue to thrash around for another presidential cycle or two, nominating Cruz next time and getting throttled again, with jackasses like Ryan and McConnell doing their best to hold it all together since the Rs will remain competitive (even dominant in down ticket races) unless and until Democrats learn to show up for EVERY FUCKING ELECTION.
-ligentsia” isn’t an oxymoron?
as an exercise, I don’t think anything could get me to vote for Joe Fucking Lieberman. I don’t think I can find a single good word to say about Hillary Clinton, but I will vote for her. Joe would cross that line.
You don’t think capped universal pre-school childcare is a good idea?
What rock do you live under?
. . . unattractive nude body . . . “
WARNING!!! WARNING!!! WARNING!!!
Repulsive mental image just ahead. Proceed at own risk!
Still there, huh? OK, go ahead, try to imagine Pillsbury Doughboy Goldberg’s “unattractive nude body”.
Don’t claim I didn’t warn you!
I read the words, understand the thought behind those words, however my mind refuses to go there.
Must be some sort of mental self preservation thing.
Liberals Shouldn’t Affirm Trump’s Message About Globalization
by Nancy LeTourneau
July 5, 2016 8:49 AM
To be honest, I didn’t listen to or read Donald Trump’s speech last week in Pennsylvania. For a while now I’ve been saying that it is not worth the time spent critiquing what he says about policies because he consistently changes his tune and backtracks when the mood and/or circumstances suit him. But after reading several critiques of what he had to say, I finally decided to take a look.
For a great refutation of that speech, you’ll find none better than Paul Krugman. But the approach that concerns me the most comes from those on the left who reinforce what the presumptive Republican nominee said. I’m sure it has come from others, but an article by Egberto Willies is the one that set off a lot of alarm bells. He quotes Trump’s speech extensively and then says:
Since when do people who claim to be reality-based think it’s a good idea to “forget about the inaccuracies?” And since when do we find “truth” from someone who is a liar, a demagogue, and a bigot? I’m not saying that’s impossible, but we can’t simply forget about the inaccuracies. Because whatever truth might exist is embedded within the same message being peddled by a lying demagogic bigot.
………………………
Both Sanders and his supporters try to distance themselves from the more noxious things Trump proposes by suggesting that we can separate his message about globalization from the nativism he also espouses. Here is how the Senator recently put it:
The trouble is that it is impossible to separate that message about globalization – whether it comes from Trump or the Leave campaign – from the demagogy and nativism on which it is grounded. Notice how Trump talks about “independence.” In the same speech he talked about how the U.S. has become dependent on foreign countries and he will put America first again. Of course, that also means “closing our borders.”
I could not disagree with you more. This is the DNC infection spreading this equivalency.
Why are you slandering Sanders who has been on that issue for decades. Was Occupy wrong? I don’t think so.
I don’t give a damn if Trump co-opts some sound bites he probably doesn’t even understand.
PK can be devastatingly wrong. Here he is in 2000, selling China’s MFN. And handwaving off the union objections as being all about privilege…http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/10/opinion/reckonings-a-symbol-issue.html
DNC is dying to kill this discussion while they quietly enact TTP and TTIP. With a few tweaks to make it ALL GOOD. Though Brexit may have spiked TTIP for the present?
“I don’t give a damn if Trump co-opts some sound bites he probably doesn’t even understand.”
Oh, let’s not give Trump too much credit. “Co-opt some sound bites”? I doubt it. He’ll say anything that stokes anger and resentment and fear and hatred. You ought to focus on why he said this crap and get rid of the conceit that he is co-opting anything that Senator Sanders has said.
Cathartic isn’t it? To punch down?
Be a real contest as to which group of voters is the most hateful and dismissive of the other. Dems claiming a lot of moral superiority, too. Without taking any responsibility, it seems to me. A common disease these days.
An economist who has had the responsibility of advising and evaluating globalization, Nouriel Roubini.
Former Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.
“Establishment parties were once controlled by globalization’s beneficiaries: capital owners; skilled, educated, and digitally savvy workers; urban and cosmopolitan elites; and unionized white- and blue-collar employees. But they also included workers – both blue- and white-collar – who were among the losers from globalization, but who nonetheless remained loyal, either because they were socially and religiously conservative, or because center-left parties were formally supporters of unions, workers’ rights, and entitlement programs.
[…]
…economic theory suggests that globalization can be made to benefit all as long as the winners compensate the losers. This can take the form of direct compensation or greater provision of free or semi-free public goods (for example, education, retraining, health care, unemployment benefits, and portable pensions).
[…]
The backlash against globalization is real and growing. But it can be contained and managed through policies that compensate workers for its collateral damage and costs. Only by enacting such policies will globalization’s losers begin to think that they may eventually join the ranks of its winners.”
(Denying the damages is not a solution, no matter who is saying it.)
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/globalization-political-fault-lines-by-nouriel-roubini-
2016-07
Fine.
But nothing here changes what many feel was the basic premise of the Sanders campaign.
He wants to take the Democratic Party back.
Some ask ‘back from what?’ To me, and some others, the answer was obvious. Based on his comments the last 7 years, it’s ‘back from the black guy and all his blackiness’.
White guy who fled the Bronx (!!) to a virtually all white state, and settled in a sundown town in a sundown state. Then became a career politician who never made inroads with a key demographic with the political party he aligns himself with, even though that party cleared the way for his ‘independent’ elections for the last 20 years.
Black members of congress can’t stand him, and it’s pretty obvious the current POTUS can’t stand him. To some that’s a pretty big poker ‘tell’.
At the start he never even tried to hide it, with proclaimations that some voters did not count as much as others And the ones that did not count as much? Always POC, who (it was claimed) would come around if only they listened to those who knew what was good for them, and the ones that knew what was good, that POC should listen to? White people like him.
He kept it up until he realized his white privilege stance was obvious to POC, then he stopped and started mouthing the proper dog whistles.
He is a creepy white cracker who’s policy’s, if implemented, leave POC just as far behind as they always have been. His ‘raise all boats so everyone benefits’ is the same bullshit that republicans spout as an excuse to do nothing. It’s called ‘trickle down economics’. Translated that means ‘I got mine, fuck you’.
He screams white privilege with every speech, with every finger pointing gesture, with every visit to the Vatican. The crowds he collects (which I have seen with my own eyes) shout white privilege.
So to some, his campaign is NOT all that different from Trump in its basic foundation, which was and is, an appeal to white resentment.
Just look at the white crackers he collected on this site! Some were just openly racist with their posts. POC only do what their ministers tell them to do? POC in the ‘south’ just need to educate themselves?
You have repeatedly aligned yourself with crackers on this site. You have figuratively help them wave the confederate battle flag. So, just like Trump supporters, you own that.
It’s not a coincidence that they yearn for the 40’s and 50’s.
You are either blind and stupid, or you agree.
Denying the damages is not a solution, no matter who is saying it.
.
Since you seem to be unable to divorce the material from the messenger…
Black America and the Political Economy of Neoliberal Trade Deals
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/21/black-america-and-the-political-economy-of-neoliberal-trade-d
eals/
A whole page of links…
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=blacks%20un
der%20neoliberalism
I’m not in agreement with everything nalbar wrote, but I would quarrel with the idea that African-Americans have a relatively undifferentiated set of problems they share with other Americans negatively affected by globalization and other policies your writers claim here as neoliberal.
An example arrives in our domestic reaction to the Brexit vote. Sanders and others, including many here, want to lay claim that Great Britian’s electoral result is entirely related to trade policies which exploit workers. This ignores the fact that strong majorities of younger voters and non-white voters voted Remain. Why was this so? Aren’t their economic circumstances undermined by EU policies as much or more than others?
I’ll outsource some of my argument here to Brother Pierce:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46308/trump-brexit-populism/
“”Neo-liberalism” is not a magic word that makes xenophobia disappear, and chanting “DLC!” is not a spell that converts an enthusiasm for torture into a formidable attack on the globalized economic elites. It does not transform Nigel Farage into Ramsay MacDonald any more than it transforms He, Trump into Fightin’ Bob LaFollette.”
Some useful discussion of our nation’s political history and contemporary circumstances is pursued by Pierce in this piece. Our movement could be helped by considering how many of these lost white voters are, in the end, not persuadable to vote for a Party which has a broad racial coalition.
So 17 million Brits are racist thick-os? Great comment section from actual Brits.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/brexit-political-awakening-young-people/
Here we go again.
Young people in the UK seem to have many of the same complaints as young people in the US. Yet it seems that you take a quite different tack with young Britons than with young Americans. You (in line with Sen. Sanders and other commenters here) have been fond of portraying young Americans as victims of a rigged system, and in particular, as being screwed by an older generation of so-called liberals who have drunk the globalization Koolaid. Whenever anyone points out that young people have been turning out to the polls in rather meager numbers–and then winding up with results that exacerbate their discontent–you reply along the lines of, “Well, you Establishment types haven’t given them any reason to vote DLC DLC Debbie Wasserman Schulz Clinton Foundation.” Now let’s turn to the UK. Young Britons are feeling alienated and fucked over by the older generation’s rejection of the EU. But your response is what exactly? To blame young Britons for their low voting turnout. To insinuate that they’re elitists who don’t understand the anger of working-class Britons who voted to Leave the EU.
I’m fine with your vigorous advocacy of a particular position. But please, a modicum of consistency would be nice.
I don’t KNOW Britain. Which is why I posted the British link with its comments. Jeebus.
Were all those low income grannies worried about the NHS TORIES? Where is Pierce’s discussion of why Tories voted to support BREXIT?
A majority of those who backed the Conservative in 2015 voted to leave the EU (58%), as did more than 19 out of 20 UKIP supporters.
Nearly two thirds of Labour and SNP voters (63% and 64%), seven in ten Liberal Democrats and three quarters of Greens, voted to remain.
How do you square THIS with being anti-trade? Like Sanders, supposedly. FAIR trade, not “free”.
Well, this might explain the Tory BREXIT vote. Brits will think Thatcher is reincarnate in May…
As Andy Beckett pointed out in the Guardian on Friday, within minutes of the BBC declaring victory for Brexit, the free-market thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) revealed the plan B that has otherwise remained hidden from view. “The weakness of the Labour party and the resolution of the EU question have created a unique political opportunity to drive through a wide-ranging … revolution on a scale similar to that of the 1980s … This must include removing unnecessary regulatory burdens on businesses, such as those related to climate directives and investment fund[s].”
A week later, and this possibility is no longer merely theoretical: George Osborne has now proposed to cut corporation tax from 20% to below 15%, to staunch the haemorrhage of investment. During coming months and years, the unfolding crisis will provide countless pretexts for similar emergency measure that benefit business and roll back the state. So there will be no vote in parliament, no second referendum, no fresh elections: just the most massive legislative programme in history within the current parliament, in which the Tories command an absolute majority based on 37% of the votes cast in the last general election. So much for taking back democratic control.
(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/disaster-capitalism-tory-right-brexit-roll-ba
ck-state?CMP=share_btn_fb#=)
Already Great: Why Donald Trump is Attempting to Sell a Version of America That Never Actually Existed
Trevor LaFauci
July 3, 2016
……………………………………
So Donald Trump came up with the phantom idea that America is no longer great. This notion is not backed by any empirical data; it exists solely in the minds of low-information Republican voters looking for someone to blame for their hardships. Because for this voting bloc in particular, times have been tough for a long time now. Thanks to Reaganomics, wages have been stagnant for nearly thirty years. Due to increased globalization, corporations have opted to shift jobs overseas and avoid paying taxes rather than keep jobs here at home. Student debt has crushed a generation of students so there now exists a large segment of the population with a college degree being forced to work minimum wage jobs. Green jobs and the new green economy has pushed coal country to the brink of extermination. And those with nothing more than a high school degree have become lost in our modern economy, falsely blaming immigrant workers for their lack of job prospects rather than a generation of trickle-down economic policies that were never designed to reach their pockets in the first place.
There’s a reason that Donald Trump doesn’t specify when America was great. Because for those outside the Republican base, there exists a very real America where life was simply not great for various segments of our population. Prior to 2015, life was not particularly great for a generation of LGBT Americans, who were denied rights and protections simply because of whom they loved. Prior to the 1970s, life was not particularly great for a generation of African-Americans, who were forced to attend inherently unequal public facilities, public schools, and institutions of higher learning. Prior to the 1960s, life was not particularly great for a generation of women, who were expected to sacrifice their own careers to be the subservient housewife to conform to the accepted gender norms of the time. These groups in particular have experienced firsthand our country’s long march toward justice. Many fought and died to provide opportunities to future generations that they themselves were unable to receive. With so much progress made and still more to come, these groups will simply refuse to return to a time when they were treated as permanent second-class citizens.
And that is what the notion of making America great again is truly about: White supremacy. Donald Trump’s campaign has been built on racism, sexism, and xenophobia. For him, America would be great when certain segments of our populations would know their role and place in society. We’ve seen him refuse to repudiate David Duke because he knows he needs Duke’s supporters in the general election. We’ve seen how he thinks women should be seen and not heard. We’ve seen him promote an anti-immigration stance that would bar an entire world religion from entering our country. Donald Trump would thoroughly embrace an America dominated by a single religion, where there existed a strong sense of nationalism, and an ingrained distrust of foreigners. This is a version of America that never actually existed but is one that Donald Trump would love to come to fruition. Should that happen, America wouldn’t excel, but instead would become a fascist state led by a mentally-unstable ruler.
Yeah, he should just vote for Hillary, who after all is a neoconliberal, or maybe that’s neoliberal conservative, or maybe she’s a neolibertarian. And if Goldberg were to vote for her, it would not be a reflection on him, but rather a reflection on Hillary. It would mean that she had prostituted herself to Jonah Goldberg to get his vote. Is there really any other interpretation?