I’m happy to be back from vacation, rested, and ready to write. I actually did a little writing over the weekend, but I see that Nancy and David have covered some of the same ground. Nonetheless, I am going to bump the post to the top with only some slight modifications to reflect the news broken last night by Andrew E. Kramer, Mike McIntire and Barry Meier of the New York Times.
Paul Manafort grew up in New Britain, Connecticut where his father served as mayor. Later on, he moved to Washington DC where he got undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown in the early 1970’s. He’s not a child of the South. Jim Crow was never a way of life for him, and that makes him different from his old partners Lee Atwater and Charlie Black. I mean, I fundamentally disagree with the politics of the Southern Strategy but I can at least understand why some (white) people raised in the South would want the South to preserve its heritage and expand its political influence. The southern takeover of the Republican Party was a triumph for those folks, and if it involved some cynical and even hateful means, at least I can understand the ends. But what excuse does a Connecticut Yankee have for this behavior:
Since the 1980s, Manafort’s business partners have included Charles Black, who helped launch the Senate career of outspoken segregationist Jessie Helms, and Lee Atwater, who was behind the infamously racist Willie Horton ads run by the George H. W. Bush campaign.
And it was Manafort who arranged for Ronald Reagan to kick off his post-convention presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964. In his relatively short speech, Reagan declared, “I believe in state’s rights…And I believe that we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I’m looking for, I’m going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.”
To the all-white audience at the Neshoba County Fair, still simmering about a host of federal civil rights interventions, the location of the speech and the language of “states’ rights” sent an unmistakable message about restoring an imbalance of power in their favor.
Why would Manafort even want to get in bed with the rageoholics at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi? Why would he want to empower them?
It’s this mercenary value system that explains why Manafort has made a career out of advising monstrous dictators and conscienceless oligarchs. Manipulating people’s anger and insecurities into fear and rage has been his trademark for his entire career, which is why he could not care less about Trump’s negative influence on the body politic or his incitements to violence.
He doesn’t care about anything but winning, and if his ties to Putin can help Trump, he doesn’t care about the implications of that either.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
I don’t know how anyone can not be suspicious that Manafort might have something to do with the way pilfered Democratic Party emails and text messages are being selectively released to do damage to Hillary Clinton for the benefit of Manafort’s newest client. The consensus among analysts and the intelligence agencies that Putin’s Russia is behind the hacking is very high, and obviously Trump believes it himself since he asked Russia to do more of it.
In any case, Manafort has been partnered up with folks like Charlie Black, Lee Atwater, and Roger Stone (the most notorious political ratf*ker of all time) for more than thirty years.
These guys will have their own wing in the Southern Strategy Hall of Fame in Hell.
The number of people who know this history and can connect the dots is small, but that doesn’t mean that the message and the values of these racial villains has gone unnoticed.
Earlier this week, the Republican National Committee hired three new staffers to assist with African American outreach. They will have their work cut out for them. Donald Trump’s average level of black support from four recent national polls is 2 percent, and a July NBC/Wall Street Journal battleground poll showed Trump getting exactly 0 percent support among African American voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And the candidate is not helping his own cause. He has demonstrated a steady penchant for resurrecting racially divisive campaign tactics of the past, tactics that simultaneously ignored black voters and used race as a wedge to attract disgruntled white voters in the South.
I’d like to point out that many of us were calling out the “White Hands” and Willie Horton and Southern Strategy stuff as morally reprehensible back when it was mainstream and standard Republican operating procedure. Trump isn’t really an outlier so much as a candidate for a time that is now in the rearview mirror. What’s different this time is that it’s not being done to empower the South or even to assist business in rolling back the regulatory state. It’s being done for no reason at all except to help Donald Trump.
And, as you can see by the alarmed response of the Republican Establishment, they have no interest in using a torn and frayed playbook to further the ambition of Donald Trump. Things would be different if it would work and if the prize were something worth having. I know this, because everyone was fine with it when another Connecticut Yankee, George H.W. Bush, used it to win power for himself and his allies. But that’s the thing.
Poppy Bush went along with empowering the South and allowing a conservative takeover of his party, but he also had real allies who benefited in the bargain.
If Trump has any allies at all, they’re his kids. And, if I were them, I wouldn’t even count on that.
How exactly did Manafort get from Georgetown to the Ford camp and from their to the Reagan camp?
Ann Coulter is also from Connecticut. What is it about Connecticut conservatives (at least these two) that drives them over the cliff?
Racism is nationwide, it’s acolytes have also been nationwide. School desegregation drove Louise Day Hicks’ Catholics in Southie. Manafort’s folks are Italian-Americans in a city with a large Polish-American presence and presumably Catholic culture. How were the New Britain schools desegregated and when?
What did Manafort’s dad do? From where does Manafort get his take-no-prisoners edge? He’s kind of a man without a biography on a lot of things. I get that Charlie Black might have fixed some attitudes about politics for him. But there are some formative experiences somewhere that are hidden. (Did he get mugged in DC, for example, using the old definition of a conservative?) Or was he formed at home and school in his current attitudes like Trump was. Is Manafort yet another “fortunate son”?
The sort of campaigning represented by Helms’s “White Hands” commercial still is standard mainstream Southern Republican fare if they are an a tough race with lagging white votes. Or if they are going up against a black candidate. But that mainstream Republican tactic has been obscured by the constant use of Obama as the black figure in those ads. What do you think that mainstreaming birtherism was about. Look at the “mainstream” Republicans who played coy with that one? Even John McCain had a moment of “doubt” about the President’s legitimacy.
Why would Manfort want to get in bed with the regeoholics of Neshoba County? Is he a Pat Buchanan Republican by any chance? That would explain it nicely.
The Republican party was overtaken by big business in the 1870s when big business first came into existence. The party had barely formed when it was captured by bastards. In the 1850s and 1860s, it was a party of noble purpose. Even if Lincoln tried to sidestep abolition, he wanted to orient the nation toward the slow withering of the institution of slavery. After this catastrophic war, Republicans fought for and passed landmark legislation and two constitutional amendments. But then a cynical choice was made that it would be easier to maintain power and push their agenda if they didn’t keep offending the South.
The party then became a pretty straight-up pro-big-business party for the next 80 plus years. But the 1950s brought the Civil Rights movement which began to split and fragment the Democratic party along an ancient fissure that had long been papered over. When the Democrats clearly chose equality over racism, the Republicans saw an opportunity, a Faustian bargain to be had, and they did not so much as blink before signing on the dotted line in blood.
So here we are a couple of generations later, watching a drama unfold in real time. In their heart of hearts, Republicans don’t think they made a mistake in casting their lot with racists. They think their mistake was Hart-Celler, the “65 immigration act that opened the door to Latino immigration. The majority of Republicans in leadership have chosen power over virtue again and again for 140 years now. So why should little Paul Manafort be singled out among all those ratfuckers for doing what they’ve done all along?
I’m not sure about your history here.
The Republicans were the party of business from their beginning. The Whigs had been, and the anti-slavery Whigs who were the basis of the new party carried that with them. Lincoln was a lawyer for railroads, which were the biggest business interests of the time.
the overwhelming importance of slavery and the war for the first few years of the Republican party doesn’t mean they didn’t have other policies too, and those were always pro-business policies.
Also important to acknowledge that nationwide there were differences among Republicans and alignments and principles weren’t static. In the west for some period of time around the beginning of the 20th century, Republicans were the progressives and anti-big business force. Much of that flipped with the Great Depression and FDR Democrats, but farming community voters outside the south retained their GOP identity. While not consciously, many still vote for Lincoln-Teddy Roosevelt the same way many Democrats still vote for FDR without recognizing that what they expect is not what they have gotten or will get from either a Republican or Democratic administration today.
Do you think it fair to hold it against Lincoln that he took cases for the railroads? He took cases for all sorts of folks and does not appear to have had his own agenda other than to build his practice. He made an early move against slavery and faced enormous ridicule. He then backed way off and was scared of it through the end of his political career. I’m not sure it wasn’t his wife who dragged him into it to begin with. She was more the committed abolitionist.
I don’t think I’m holding anything against Lincoln to say that he was, personally and politically, pro-business. I think that’s a factual statement backed up by history. You can also find pro-labor statements from him.
I wanted to point out that the Republicans mostly started from a pro-business POV, but “pro-business” didn’t mean the same thing then as it would later when businesses had grown big enough to drive the government.
you might get a fairer hearing for the Whigs’ views if you emphasized their interest in building infrastructure (canals, and then railroads) rather than in just seeing them as representatives of big business interests. It was their desire to use federal money to build this country that put them at odds with other factions, and building this country didn’t just help big business. The interests aligned, certainly, but still, the Whigs would never let our bridges and airports get obsolete if they could help it. They’d love the idea of expanding wireless access. They’re aren’t clear ancestors of the modern Republican Party at all.
good points. The Whig catchphrase was “internal improvements” IIRC. Which at that time was the policy of commercial interests, though they might not have deserved the name yet of “big” business.
the fact that commercial interests now don’t seem to care about infrastructure but only about low taxes is amazingly shortsighted.
It’s not quite true, though.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is appalled at the Tea-Partification of the GOP, of government shutdowns and credit downgrades and ideologically blinkered budget hawkery.
It’s why they’re going after Boehner and Cantor’s tormentors. And it’s why they’ll be relieved when Clinton is president. Between regulation they find annoying and no money for anything, they’ll take the regulation.
Abraham Lincoln was an attorney for railroads. Internal improvements were not without benefits for Whig attorney-politicians.
The Republican big business reputation came from the really sweet deal they legislated to rapidly deploy railroads after the Civil War in order to connect the coasts (a geopolitical strategic imperative). The financial industry that rode the manufacturing that those internal improvements created became the “robber barons” of the 1880s and 1890s and sparked the progressive reaction against corruption.
Even the early advocates of internal improvements in the 1810s-1820s had interests in deals that would result in increased land values, easier carriage to market, and other benefits. Their opposition argued for limited government, the likelihood of corruption, and free enterprise. The role reversal happened when the Dixiecrats switched to the Republican Party and subverted it.
The problem is that the modern Democrats are not the new Whigs either. There is no serious movement for internal improvements, just jobs from fixing deferred infrastructure maintenance.
That decision had nothing to do with offending the South in the first instance. In 1875, the Mississippi Plan was put into effect to use terrorism to overthrow the governments of Lousiana, South Carolina, and first of all Mississippi. That plan succeeded because the federal government did not want to redeploy into the South sufficient numbers of troops to bring the rascals to justice and suppress the rising rebellion of the former planters and their allies. Like in the Civil War, people died in this “unpleasnatness”.
In 1876, these coups delivered enough votes so that the election was delivered to the House of Representatives where a long and painstaking compromise was arranged that put Republican Rutherford B. Bayes into power.
It was then that the ideology of warring brothers and Southern valor and the combined veterans events sought to promote unity.
But it was not until the populist rebellion and prohibition movement of the 1890s that murderers like Ben Tillman (in South Carolina) were put into power to pass Jim Crow laws and regulate booze. Needless to say there was some religious politics and the discover of “old time religion” in those movements in the South.
By 1915, Republican oil executives in California were publishing The Fundamentals to fight the labor movement and the “Social Gospel” in Southern churches as well as churches nationwide.
The Faustian bargain has had a lot of participation from both parties at many points in history. What progress was made was when events rushed past the intentions of the office-holder and they wisely allowed some things to happen that they otherwise did not wish.
The destruction of the Republican Party could very well in the future mean that the Democrats might pick up the racist mantle again for cynical reasons. Shutting that door is a primary task for the next decade.
Curious where you found that The Fundamentals intersected with the labor movement. My family has a wee bit of involvement with that piece of history.
One source is George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture
Lyman Stewart
Stewart was one of the founders of Union Oil of California, an early driller there.
Social Gospel
There was a lot of Social Guspel roots behind the rise of the Progressive Movement. It is not surprising that their opponents would pick then and later the tack of Biblical Fundamentalism that excludes a social mission other than “evangelism”.
Darren Dochuk, Notre Dame University, has been pursuing the history of the relationship between oil, anti-labor movements, and biblical religion for quite a while.
Here is is summary of his argument:
Daren Dochuk, The Journal of American History: Blessed by Oil, Cursed with Crude: God and Black Gold in the American Southwest
The fundamentalists were opposed 100 years ago to the settlement house movement (ex. Jane Addams’s Hull House) because these were allied with some labor organizing groups in cities. So the attack was on theological grounds.
Lyman Stewart financed the distribution of The Fundamentals to every Sunday School Supertintendent, preacher, and divinity school professor in America. I’m not sure what his mailing list excluded, but the study series reached deep geographically. And the series was 19 books.
Didn’t get from your link a connection between Lyman and labor unions. Yes he & Milton financed The Fundamentals widely, including to the Philippines but all I’ve read (letters, Biola research & Union research)indicated that Union set itself apart from Standard in its treatment of employees. Could be wrong but my family has a fair amount of his letters and corp memos & Union’s biographies. Anyway, not the place to have this conversation, sorry BooMan.
Just want thank the various commenters in this thread. I’ve learned about, or at least been reminded of, many aspects of the history of the GOP.
An interesting piece about that period…
Whitey Bulger, Boston Busing, and Southie’s Lost Generation
“This year, in the 40th anniversary of the explosion that was Boston busing, it’s time to be clear: busing wasn’t just about black and white. It was also about green–who had some in their pockets, and who didn’t.”
http://www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org/#!southies-lost-generation/c551
It is fascinating.
I’ve always thought it was all about money for Coulter. She doesnt particularly care what she says as long as she gains press and cash from it and there was always way more money sloshing around in the cracker swamps.
What I’ve long found remarkable is the way Republican ratfuckers so blithely dismiss Atwater’s confession in that Atlantic article back when he died.
“My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The ’80s were about acquiring–acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”
Those were wise and intelligent words, but his colleagues dismissed them out of hand as just another Atwater cynical ploy to redeem his reputation. I don’t think a man who was thinking cynically would tear himself down and apart in order to revamp his image. I think staring down certain death caused him to reevaluate his life. That at least seems a more likely explanation. But accepting it at face value would force the ratfuckers to look at themselves. And if they did, they’d then have to make the very same self indictment that Atwater made. So I guess they’ll just have to wait until the very end, when the reality of death can no longer be denied.
What excuse does Manafort have?
When I lived in New Haven in the 1990s, it was well-known that the Grand Wizard of the Klan lived in nearby Ansonia.
Connecticut’s cities are mostly bombed out slums, with clusters of affluence. Bridgeport is a slum and a port. New Haven is Yale and a slum. Hartford is a bunch of insurance companies and a slum.
And of course, that’s where the majority of Connecticut’s black people live. At least when I was there…
That’s a good description of Connecticut when I lived there in Hartford. Hartford had a decent center city surrounded by slums north and south.
I’m not confused by Northern racism. I’m confused by a strategy aimed at empowering the South when you’re a northerner. Manafort is one of the most effective and ruthless of the architects of the Southern Strategy.
Speaking of architects of the Southern Strategy, Manafort had to cross paths with Harry Dent, Sr., one of founders of this nefarious strategy. Dent began his career with Strom Thurmond and was instrumental in helping Nixon in 1968 win some of the states in the South, like South Carolina. Later Dent worked in the Nixon White House and on the presidential campaigns of Ford and Bush I. A Time 1969 article reports that some people described Dent as a Southern-fried Rasputin in the White House.”
http://downfalldictionary.blogspot.com/2010/07/harry-s-dent.html
When you’re already a racist, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to empowering the south’s racists.
The Star — `Back in time 60 years’: America’s most segregated city
Why Milwaukee, far from the Deep South, gets the unwelcome title as the most segregated place in America.
I’m so weary of “liberals” that only measure racism by one metric — speech. And pat themselves on the back because white people they know never utter racial slurs or support political candidates that use race in their campaigns (Clintons excepted they aren’t “real racists;” only savvy Democratic pols that do whatever it takes to win.)
Was this a dog whistle, too”
“President Carter opened his general election campaign in Tuscumbia, Alabama, then the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan (there was a Klan rally the day Carter came to Tuscumbia).”
Call up the fainting couches.
“Reagan ended up winning Mississippi by 1.4% of the vote. Both Reagan and Carter were politically smart to take the opportunity to speak before large audiences in the rural South in states where the election would be close. It would be false to say that Carter was appealing to racists because he kicked off his campaign in a town that was the current home of the Ku Klux Klan, and it would be equally false to say that Reagan was appealing to racists because he mentioned his lifelong theme of state’s rights at a county fair several miles away from the site of an infamous crime 16 years earlier. Today, columnists and commentators who tell you that the “kick off” for Reagan’s general election campaign was an appeal to racists are demonstrating that they don’t bother to check the facts before they make extreme allegations. People who are making coded appeals to racism don’t tell their audience that the “stereotype” of welfare recipients is wrong, and that “the overwhelming majority” of them want to work.” (http://volokh.com/2011/08/16/reagans-infamous-speech-in-philadelphia-mississippi/)
What in the holy hell does Jimmy Carter’s campaign actions have to do with this post, or the 2016 campaign?
Posting something from The Volokh Conspiracy without a criminal examination? Really? Shit, I found two obfuscations in my first brief scan of the linked post. I bet there’s more in there.
And then you read a link in that post, and you discover that Carter apologized for the offensive statement he made during the 1976 campaign. Did Ronald Reagan ever apologize to Bayard Rustin for anything? No.
This is shameful online behavior.
I meant “…critical examination…”, of course.
And Reagan DID apologize to Carter for mischaracterizing the town as the birthplace of the KKK, instead of only its present headquarters.
At teh Washington Post:
The Volokh Conspiracy Who are we?
All of us are law professors, except David Kopel, John Elwood, and Stewart Baker, who are lawyers. Naturally, we speak only for ourselves, and not for the institutions that employ us.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/who-are-we?utm_term=.f133d3edaf02
Not historians, per se, but refute their facts, not the source. Or do you only source the New York Times?
They explain their position in the quote. You find a red herring to blather about.
And, since you did not seem to get it, their conclusion from the historical context was “neither-siderism”, not “both-siderism”.
I refuted one of their post’s prime factual obfuscations in my first comment.
Those of us who went thru the Bush Administration don’t share your credulous view of this blog.
As an example of how Volokh and the blog have performed during the Obama Administration, I hope you share my displeasure with the fact that The Volokh Conspiracy has been a particularly prominent force in the legal movement to destroy the ACA, and in fact was cited in the Hobby Lobby case which went to the Supreme Court.
mino, you could look at pretty much any policy issue you care about, and you would find Volokh and his blog partners in opposition, and you would often find them using some dodgy scholarship to defend their opposition to you.
The difference between Carter and Reagan is immense, even in the content of their speeches.
Carter desegregated Georgia’s merit system and negotiated desegregation of public operations throughout Georgia.
Reagan was dogwhistling to the Hell No bunch that was mobilizing against Carter.
Don’t interrupt him, Tarheel, when he’s trolling so good.
Find a more convincing example. This does not do it for me and I lived through that period.
The speech: http://web.archive.org/web/20110714165011/http://neshobademocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSec
tionID=297&ArticleID=15599&TM=60417.67
I think Reagan the next to worst president in my lifetime, policy-wise. State’s Rights was about so much more than just race….
“On the practical level, the states’ rights offensive has provided a short-cut way to truncate Democratic social programs, reduce financial obligations to state and local governments, trim Federal employment and meet Mr. Reagan’s budget-cutting goals. On the theoretical level, it is the foundation for review of Federal land policy that has prevailed since the formation of the Union and for an attempted reversal of the Government’s main doctrinal thrust of the past 50 years.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/04/us/reagan-and-states-rights-news-analysis.html?pagewanted=all
Next to worst President in your lifetime? Try worst American ever.
Dubya?
Buchanan?
It’s not that simple and all of us, myself included, fall into the trap of referring to a racist/bigot faction as if that alone defines voting behavior and it is unvarying over time and place. For example, the 1968 presidential election. Votes for Wallace in the south were a mix racism, regionalism, and southern populism. Outside the south, votes for Wallace were mostly based in individual racism and somewhat pure in that orientation. However, that doesn’t mean that racism was absent from those that voted for HHH and Nixon.
We also have to look back at 1964 when a Texan couldn’t carry the deep south when a New Englander has carried most of it four years earlier.
As a “native son” Carter of course had to appear in locations to remind voters that he was still one of them even as he distanced himself from racism. Reagan’s AL appearance, OTOH, was to rally the Goldwater/Wallace/Nixon (Southern Strategy) voters that was conceived and promulgated on nothing more than racism through use of dog-whistles. Carter did manage to succeed by losing voters in the deep south by smaller margins than LBJ had. Compare the loss margins for Carter in AL and MS with those for LBJ. Difficult for me not to read that as an evidence that racism was a less potent factor in 1980 than it had been sixteen years earlier even if the precise amount of the reduction isn’t quantifiable.
The 1960 and 1976 electoral maps are very much alike, but the drivers in those two elections couldn’t be less alike.
Marie3’s not the only one who’s weary around here.
And she is extraordinarily self-congratulatory, so she’s familiar with the feeling of her palm against her back as well.
Anyone responding to a post about the moral sewer which is the Trump campaign by giving us a heaping helping of Both Siderism has lost the fucking thread.
And you know what makes this execution of Both Siderism particularly inappropriate? The linked story doesn’t back her up very well at all. The reporting finds Republican governance and outright terroristic political actions by naked racists in response to local efforts to reduce segregation primarily responsible for the awful circumstances in Milwaukee.
So what’s she doing here?
I’ve lived in the areas the article refers to; in Milwaukee itself and out in the suburbs in New Berlin.
I’m just confused by why you think liberals can’t measure racism by segregation. This situation is quite well-known to locals.
How are liberals contributing to the problem and what policies do you think would solve this?
When’s the last time liberals did so publicly? It’s all OMG, X (politician or celebrity) made a racist comment (must be condemned and the speaker must apologize) or OMG, X state is disenfranchising AA voters. IOW, PC speech monitoring has become a substitute for that time in the 1950s-early 1970s when Democrats/liberals actually focused on segregation and made efforts to increase desegregation.
The change in focus has benefited politicians in both parties because it’s easier to turn out a block of reliable voters in segregated communities than integrated communities.
Do you think the residents of Flint, MI would have suddenly had their safe water turned off in favor of contaminated water if the city were 57% white and 37% black on the say-so of white Republican in the statehouse?
That article’s been written a few times before about Milwaukee and similar ones about Chicago. Publicly calling out segregation won’t stop human behavior, such as the factors that drove white flight, but I’d say there is some value in doing so.
There are some policies that contributed to segregation. Such as the building of freeways that divided and cut off neighborhoods, especially black ones. Urban politicians would do well to explore policies that would encourage integration because this is not a priority for anyone else.
As for all the other things you mentioned… trivial issues don’t really make a difference for anyone. But, voter suppression isn’t in the same league as shaming racist speech.
I’m trying to see what the greater point is here. Perhaps it has more to do with why poor and working-class whites and minorities don’t have greater solidarity.
Plenty of public policies promulgated by white politicians facilitated and maintained segregation and lack of enforcement of non-discriminatory laws added to the segregation. We’ve seen in the latest round of predatory mortgage lending that loan terms differed not based on income but skin color. How much of that “white flight” was in fact housing and lending discrimination? The white family with $10,000 annual income could get a mortgage for new house in a new neighborhood and the AA family with $12,000 in income couldn’t? So, the second family is stuck.
Silly to claim that human behavior can’t be changed. It changes all the time, but humans are vulnerable to demagogues which is where government (the people) can intervene to reduce and limit the impact of demagogues. Children aren’t born racists — they learn it from their homes, neighborhoods, schools, and churches.
Yes, I’m well aware of these policies and share your disgust at their effect on minorities.
I never claimed human behavior can’t be changed. I don’t think lectures on segregation from politicians are going to do it, especially in the Milwaukee area.
Since there’s nothing new in this discussion I’m going to move on.
This from Adolph Reed:
While undoubtedly influenced by the milieu of an elite university, Maggie Thatcher was a scholarship student in science and made her own way in politics without family money and political power. She didn’t even identify with feminism much less seek votes because she was a woman. Her identification and public policies were strictly upper-crust and dismantling the gains workers had achieved. However, the spirit of feminism (and the aspirations of self-government by the people and not by privileged birth) was always about being evaluated on one’s own performance, and on that criteria she did succeed.
I think that people who work for people of power are essentially in love with power. That would be a simple answer for why Manafort is in the business. It has a lot more to do with his youth and how he was raised than where he was raised.
But what is Manafort’s connection to Putin? Manafort worked for Yanukovich. Yanukovich, the duly elected president of Ukraine, was favored by Putin over the anti-Russian Nazis who took over the Ukraine in an armed coup. There are a lot of people in the world who don’t favor Nazi coups. Maybe not everyone here, but I’d say that most people around the world are still aware of the negative press that they got for WWII.
Is linking Manafort to Putin through yet another head of state kind of theorizing that link a little too much? It’s reminiscent of the Panama Papers link to Putin even though Putin’s name was never mentioned in the Panama Papers. Not sure where Kevin Bacon fits in here.
So if Kissinger backed Pinochet, and Pinochet got his fashion advice from 1939 Berlin, and Kissinger says Clinton was the best SOS since him…….
Bob, please shut the fuck up about Nazi coups in Ukraine. I will ban you if you continue.
You’re getting more and more like Markos.
Whatever, Voice.
When you have guys like this being called a Nazi then you’ve not only got things 180 degrees backwards but you might as well just be taking dictation from Putin.
I will not tolerate that level of duplicity and dishonesty. This isn’t a disagreement about internal Ukrainian politics, this is a refusal to allow Putin apologists to spew his propaganda on my site.
Well I’m with you on that and I’m against most of the people I’m usually with on Putin. But Bob In Portland is a regular and entitled to his opinion as long as he doesn’t mistake opinions for facts. There are a lot more fantasy spewers here but you tolerate that since you became a Hilbot. Unless we are entering a Soviet era of politics where only the Party line is accepted and deviant opinions are not wanted. I see that on the national stage and i hate to see it happening with you.
But all good things come to an end.
“But for Wales?”
That would be a “Hilbot” who wrote that he voted for Bernie Sanders in his state’s primary.
who called him a Nazi? he’s one of the oligarchs unaccountable to gov, Poroshenko tried to get him to observe the truce but he goes his own way, with his own army that he pays for
The narrative spread is that the Ukrainian opposition to Russia is dominated by “Nazis” and fascists. This is akin to people who shut down legitimate criticism of Israel by crying anti-semitism.
Not to say that there aren’t such groups in Ukraine but that’s far from the whole picture.
Just reading up on that fellow… not someone we want to be associating with but somehow he received a US visa.
Because, for a Russian, could there possibly be a bigger insult than calling someone a Nazi or a fascist?
The Russians lost 20 million dead to fascism.
Repeating that back as gospel is beyond irresponsible, and whitewashing Putin is unforgivable. Taking his side and parroting his propaganda is so morally reprehensible that I won’t tolerate it.
I’m certainly not letting it go unanswered on my own blog, and I sure as shit don’t have time to argue about it.
So, there will be none of that.
As I’ve remarked previously to Bob in Portland, the actual, German Nazis had as policy the extermination, expulsion, or “Germanification” of Slav peoples, including Ukrainians, from the occupied territories. A wartime tool used in pursuit of this policy, in addition to outright murder, was systematically starving the population.
Bob would be correct in pointing out that there are fascist elements in Ukrainian politics, but calling them Nazis is ridiculous.
I’d say that calling the resistance to Putin’s separatists a bunch of Nazis who carried out a Nazi coup is calling the main architects of that coup a bunch of Nazis. Who cares if maybe the most important of them is actually an Israeli citizen and leader of the Ukrainian Jewish community? How could that possibly make him opposed to financing Nazi coups?
As I’ve written – tried to write- the situation there is extremely complex and I’ve concluded that obtaining reliable info is difficult verging on impossible. As far as Bob from Portland goes, I’m with Voice on this, Bob’s pov is well known here and although I don’t see things the same way he does, I recall a prof. in grad school who very kindly did critical readings of some of my work – never got to take a course from him alas – who talked about subjecting [one theory I was working on] to the “hermeneutics of suspicion” with the constructs of Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, even if one did not espouse those theories. that’s my 2 cents.
>>the situation there is extremely complex and I’ve concluded that obtaining reliable info is difficult verging on impossible
this might be the only thing I’ve read about Ukraine in the last 2 or 3 years that I’m absolutely sure is true.
thanks!
Booman, you brought up Putin in your post. As I understand it, the “connection” between Manafort and Putin is the deposed president of Ukraine. Maybe you have more information to shed on the subject that you brought up again.
Do you actually have any real proof connecting Manafort to Putin or are you just doing your daily attack on our new designated target for hate? And I can sympathize. It’s hard to face the reality that your government has had a seventy-year relationship with goosesteppers.
So, Boo, what is the connection of Manafort and Putin besides the Eurasian landmass? I guess you missed all the Republican presidential candidates he’s worked for.
You bet on a bad pony here, Bob. You have buried Hillary with less evidence than is contained in this story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html?_r=0
Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
By ANDREW E. KRAMER, MIKE McINTIRE and BARRY MEIER
AUG. 14, 2016
…Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin…
Well, he now denies it. So that’s that I suppose. Wonder if he paid taxes on it? Doubt it. Left it in an account in some holding company prolly. Which brings up the Orange Man’s tax returns. Could it be The Donald got some money from Putin?
That doesn’t count because it comes from the New York Times. Because Judith Miller. I’ve had that “argument” deployed against my own links to the Times.
Yes, apparently there is a heady jolt to manipulating the mob of vigilantes, and Manifort is one who appreciates the power.
Saw [this piece https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/12/a-massive-new-study-debunks-a-widespread-theo
ry-for-donald-trumps-success] from WaPo this morning which made me think we need to finish the sentence when we say we understand what it is that Trump’s tapped into.
What if the Trump followers are not, as this research points out, the people who lost their jobs…but instead are well employed, doing fine but fear what Manifort tells them to fear; the unknown loss? Sort of a Chris Carter approach.
Fascinating piece of work. Sounds like Trump voters are worried about their kids living on the couch permanently.
The study is interesting.
It is the white people that are not exposed to actual others, but are exposed to social hardship that are voting Trump.
Much has been done with the economics angle, but what he actually looks at is:
link headline sandwiched into the article:
The dead ones don’t. (We needed an analysis/article to conclude that?) [No, I’m sure that wasn’t actually the conclusion of the linked article. It’s just the obvious one from its link headline.]
Your link made to work as link.
check for correlation between killing of Medicaid expansion in red-run states and the health issues that were correlated with Trump support. Or even just a direct correlation between Trump support and residence in a Medicaid-expansion-killing state.
That would have been interesting, and seems like the data were there to do it, given that Gallup had collected zip codes along with the other data on which the analyses were based.
“… anti-Russian Nazis who took over the Ukraine in an armed coup.”
I assume you are referring to the Svoboda Party, which is descended from fascist and antisemitic movements, although there is no evidence they perpetrated or encouraged the violence. Nor do they represent anywhere near a majority of the opposition to Yanukovich, though they played a prominent role.
Support for Svoboda is centered in the far western region of Ukraine.
The violence is linked to groups associated with the neo-Nazi Right Sector movement. This includes members of C14, a neo-Nazi faction of Svoboda. However, most violent of all was the group Bratsvo, led by Dmytro Korchynsky, widely consoidered to be an agent provocateur :
https:/www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/anton-shekhovtsov/provoking-euromaidan
https:
theintercept.com/2015/03/18/ukraine-part-3
Here is a more balanced assessment of the role of the fascist right:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26468720
The influence of Svoboda in Ukraine is very much exaggerated:
http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Election-results-buoy-Ukrainian-Jews-379969
The “brilliance” of the Southern Strategy was that it was synergistic with a suburban white racist strategy.
The same language that comforted Southern racists and made clear they had a new home friendly to their racist values also rallied Northern racists and suburban whites to understand Republicans would protect their segregated neighborhoods / schools.
When the ‘Silent Majority’ made its debut, Southerners heard ‘no outside agitators welcome (racial or anti-war)’ while Northerners heard no busing and I don’t have to worry about a black family moving in next door.
Manafort could very simply be part of the Northern cohort of the same scenario.
The more incongruous case is Arthur Finkelstein. The NY native, gay married, Jewish architect of Jesse Helms racist campaigns plus a host of others.
The potential to become a world class nasty POS seems to not be bounded by geography, education, religious affiliation, sexual preference, or anything else.
At least in Finkelstein’s case, there’s probably an element of social climbing. He and his partner have a huge estate in the heart of horse country north of Boston and they move in the Myopia Hunt Club social circles.
LOL!
Oh, yes, and it was named so for nearsightedness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia_Hunt_Club
Golf course, fox hunting, polo matches every Sunday during the season (it moves to Florida in the winter). Lots of old New England money there, plus big new money that wants to move into that social set. The social climbers are more or less tolerated by the real aristocracy. Finkelstein and his husband have their own private polo field on their estate. So do some other people.
Being a GOP political consultant is highly profitable if one does it Right.
I have it on good authority that “Pennsyltucky” is spelled “Penciltucky” to match the spelling “Pencilvania”
hahahahaha… thought this was just a big joke!
It is.
This story is exploding
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/08/15/daily-202-can-trump-chairm
an-paul-manafort-survive-new-ukraine-revelations/57b0ec7ccd249a2fe363ba20
And Trump hasn’t even given his ISIS speech yet !
The Manafort story in fact is being played in the media I’ve seen cheek by jowl with Trump’s speech, and gutting a lot of its hoped-for boost.
* heh *
I have it on good authority that it’s just propaganda that the Clintonistas are too stupid to see through.
.