http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6632.html
Election angst
Domestic politics in the United States are worse at this moment than they have ever been in my sad 46 years of life. And if your response is “they did it”, whoever they are, you are, I think missing the point, missing the problem. We are in this together. Once we’ve made a civil war of it we have already lost, however just the side you choose to fight on. Often moral errors feel like moral imperatives at the time.
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Nations are either integrating or they are fragmenting. The United States spent much of the 20th Century integrating. It is currently fragmenting. We currently discuss and perceive this in very racialized terms (a fact which in my view is itself a symptom of the fragmentation). Through about the 1990s, more and more groups of people integrated into a community it is now offensive to describe as “American”. We now refer to this community as “white”, in order to emphasize by contrast the unfairness and horror of the United States’ greatest shame, our failure to fully integrate descendants of the immigrants we involuntarily imported and then brutally enslaved. Since around 2000, in my view, the “white” United States has been fragmenting. Integration has been replaced by ethnogenesis. The communities from which Trump enthusiasts disproportionately arise may be increasingly white supremicist, but they are no longer unproblematically “white” in its meaning as “default American”. They compete for national identity with ascendant “people of color”, sure, but before you go on about racial last-place aversion, note that they compete more directly and much more bitterly with a cosmopolitan but disproportionately “white” urban professional class, whose whiteness has itself been problematized, as underlined by a resurgent anti-Semitism where Jews stand-in for this class broadly.
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…A fault line was always going to appear between the economically dominant class and much of the rest of the country which has been left behind…All humans are racists in some ways and to some degrees, but it was not at all inevitable, I think, that we end up in a “battle between cosmopolitan finance capitalism and ethno-nationalist backlash”, as Chris Hayes put it…It is tempting, among those of us who would be appalled by a Trump victory, to try to sway undecided voters by equating voting for Trump with racism full-stop. That’s a bad idea. If it becomes the mainstream view that Trump voters are simply racists, it leaves those who are already committed, those who are unwilling to abandon Trump or to stomach Clinton, little choice but to own what they’ve been accused of. Racist is the new queer. The same daring, transgressional psychology that, for gay people, converted an insult into a durable token of identity may persuade a mass of people who otherwise would not have challenged the social taboo surrounding racism to accept the epithet with defiant equanimity or even to embrace it. The assertion that Trump’s supporters are all racists has, I think, become partially self-fulfilling. In and of itself, that will make America’s already deeply ugly racial politics uglier. It will help justify the further pathologization of the emerging white underclass while doing nothing at all to help communities of color except, conveniently for some, to set the groups at one another’s throats so they cannot make common cause. It will become yet another excuse for beneficiaries of economic stratification to blame its victims. Things were bad before this election. They are worse now, and we should be very careful about how we carry this experience forward. These are frightening times.
Edit: I want to include Booman’s link as a less polite send up of urbans and their “acceptable” prejudices…
*How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind*
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
And so on.
From the article…
Vox is a wonderful publication along many dimensions. One of its virtues is that it provides constant exercises in how a few statistics or credentialed quotes combined with ones own authoritative voice can mislead bright writers into thinking they know the one scientific truth of things. Matthews and several of his peers at Vox have invested themselves in a narrative that says the sophisticated, carefully evidenced take on the Trump phenomenon is that it’s all racism, nothing else matters. Now, it is obvious that racism and nativism and neofascism are an important and particularly disturbing aspect of the Trump phenomenon, that people who overtly identify as racist or neo-Nazi have found a home in a tent that Donald Trump has made comfortable for them. But it is also obvious that, within the Republican Party, Trump’s support comes disproportionately from troubled communities, from places that have been left behind economically, that struggle with unusual rates of opiate addiction, low educational achievement, and other social vices. If you insist on focusing on individuals, you may miss the connection, because the worst off within communities — actual chronic discouraged workers, addicts — are likely to express no opinion to the degree they can be polled at all. Trump primary voters are white Republicans who vote, automatically a more affluent baseline than the white voters generally. At the community level, patterns are clear. (See this too.) Of course, it could still all be racism, because within white communities, measures of social and economic dysfunction are likely correlated with measures you could associate with racism. Social affairs are complicated and the real world does not hand us unique well-identified models. We always have to choose our explanations, and we should think carefully about how and why we do so. Explanations have consequences, not just for the people we are imposing them upon, but for our polity as a whole. I don’t get involved in these arguments to express some high-minded empathy for Trump voters, but because I think that monocausally attributing a broad political movement to racism when it has other plausible antecedents does real harm. (See also Carl Beijer on the same Vox piece.)
A reminder of how long the GOP has been running this game:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/the-fall-of-conservatism
“Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum–“A little raw for today,” he warned–that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading “Dividing the Democrats.” Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in “the Old Roosevelt Coalition,” it recommended that the White House “exacerbate the ideological division” between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon’s policies; highlight “the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party”; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare.
Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. “Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country,” Buchanan wrote. “We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention.” Such gambits, he added, could “cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half.”
Trump is following a well-worn GOP path. Certainly he’s doing so in a fashion which is “A little raw for today,” but he’s running against economic and (particularly) modern social pluralism just as Nixon chose to do.
the focus on individuals is a strategy for shattering the social context, both conceptually and in practice. also, it’s facile, and many today don’t know how to think about social phenomenon. I’ve mentioned shattered social fabric in some hard hit regions. pushing X supporters are racists, i.e. Southern Strategy 2.16 is difficult to counter because ppl don’t know how to think of groups and social contexts
This says much and more plainly than most of the article that IMO attempts to cram far too many relevant strands into one election cycle and ends up looking ahistorical.
The only unique aspect of this election cycle is that GOP voters that have been saying “no” to the GOP PTB for decades managed to rally around the one candidate that was least like those the GOP has been offering since 1988 and more likely to go the distance in primaries than any of the “outside-outsiders”* that have been in the the mix during that period of time.
*(Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Cain, etc. “Inside-outsiders” are those from the gubernatorial ranks. Insiders are Beltway denizens.)
With updates, Trump sings Nixon/Reagan’s tough on crime note, GHWB’s “Willie Horton” note, Perot’s anti-trade note, the Bush/Cheney kick some butt message, and the GOP anti-tax note. The only note he tried but never managed to sing was the one for evangelicals, but his weird bullying style seems to resonate with that faction well enough to defeat the fundie theocrats like Cruz. Or maybe it only looked like that. The 2016 GOP elite answer was Jeb? Think about that — he could have been shoved down the throats of enough primary voters to win the nomination. And then what? Another GE loss which would increase the fury of non-CC Republicans.
In the meantime, GOP elites are doing very well on their agenda with the divided government thingy.
I agree that this is a crucial matter and that we are on the verge of de-stigmatizing racism and ushering in a new era of open racial hostility and a politics of vitriolic (white) resentment, however baseless the emotion may be.
That said, when a Repub candidate runs (quite clearly and from day one!) a racial resentment campaign (and easily wins the nomination), when his economic proposals are just the usual “conservative” horseshit (tax cuts that help the wealthy, etc.) while paying no more than lip service to the free trade problem, well, what’s supposed to be the “proper” strategy of the opposition party? How is such a candidate (and his supporters) to be principally characterized?
What we are seeing is just how little real progress had actually been made in race relations in this country, circa 2008, and how (apparently) all it took was the election of a thoroughly likeable (and reasonable) black prez to drive an enormous number of white Americans bonkers. Of course, the “conservative” movement (and its captive party) took it upon themselves at this juncture in our history to deploy a political strategy of portraying themselves as the white party, and engage in the greatest program of obstruction, delegitimization and hysteria (“Kenya!”) ever to confront a popularly elected prez—coincidence?
There’s likely no going back now that this path has been taken—the genie isn’t going to be forced back into the bottle. Post-racial America, indeed! The Repubs thought that national fragmentation would work for them if they could command the overwhelming support of the largest (racial) fragment. They surely were not going to try a strategy of winning the votes of minority voters, since such policies would not be properly “conservative”—they might help ordinary people and not plutocrats!
So Ryan and McConnell’s Repubs crossed the Rubicon, quite knowingly. They can’t turn back on that strategy now and start denouncing white supremacy, and the author doesn’t provide much of an answer to the concern that white supremacy may very well return to the unapologetic days of our past…
Well, think about this then…Do you know how many eligible voters are even IN the Middle Class, though you stretch the definition as far as you can? About 100M of all shades and genders. And while MC voters vote at a higher %, it aint 100%.
From the Vox article…”In the primary, though, the story was, as my colleague Zack Beauchamp has explained at length, almost entirely about racial resentment.” Trump got 13M primary votes.
How is it constructive to drive MOAR resentment? What % of “Obama is a Muslim” is simply a mantra to mock liberals? But it confirms in receptive minds that those are ALL closet racists, even if they don’t know it themselves.
That is called confirmational bias.
Tried to put this in the body of the piece as it is so topical, but no luck…
Edit: I want to include Booman’s link as a less polite send up of urbans and their “acceptable” prejudices…
How Half Of America Lost Its Fking Mind
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
There is a lot of repeating cutesy things as trash talk coming from my Republican friends and family; I have not co-workers after retirement as some of those were added to friends; my neighbors tend to be Clinton voters although there are a half dozen active Trump supporters in the neighborhood.
Typical cutesy: Melania speaks four European languages; Michelle Obama speaks ghetto English. The person I got it from seemingly reflexively shares stuff that either seems to her funny or spiritually inspiring. Two of my cousins passed along the bogus charge that both Clintons and both Obamas were disbarred. Very little for Trump; more contempt for Obamas, Clintons, Democrats, and liberals.
In other words pretty standard Republican trash talk for the past decade.
I have no idea whether they vote for Trump to stick it to Hillary Clinton or just sit it out. The current polls (if they are accurate to the real sentiment) show Clinton + 6% and Ross at dead heat with Burr.
One bunch of my sample has moved from being represented by George Holding (REP, NC-13) to Renee Elmers (REP, NC-02) and the other bunch are represented by Jeff Duncan (SC-03) and Trey Gowdy (SC-04).
Lets take a step back for a second.
Everyone wants to make it as though America is on the verge of some disaster.
And it just isn’t. For the right crime and immigration and the economy are all blowing up. For the left the banks own everything and racism is everywhere and the safety net has been shredded.
May I suggest none of this is actually true.
People have fallen in love with what you might term millianeristic (sp? is it even a word) or last days thinking.
It’s what everyone seems to share. But it just isn’t reality.
I have a lot of sympathy with the piece – it was thought provoking.
I think social networks and tribalism are interacting in a very dangerous way in which threats seem everywhere.
But the situation isn’t the worst in 46 years. Gays have civil rights. We have advanced the ball on health care. The economy – despite its problems – is not on the verge of collapse.
Millennial Madness was what Timothy Leary liked to call it. Not a big follower of Leary’s but the concept of apocalyptic thinking seemed apt enough. Not much has changed there. Another term: collapsitarianism. Seems to be a lot of that. Yes, the world we live in is hardly paradise, but it is not straight out of a Mad Max script either.
The author opined “domestic politics” are the worst seen in 46 years, not the economy or legal regime of the country.
We have a Repub candidate that openly seeks the support of American Nazis, and who pointedly refuses to denounce or condemn them in any way. This is new. We have him now encouraging his (entirely white) supporters to exercise “vigilance” at “certain” polling places, this while his party has spent the past decade implementing national vote suppression strategies targeted at minority voters. This while 14 Southern states have been freed (by Roberts’ Repubs) from the structures of the Voting Rights Act. He is inciting further violence by declaring that the election is already “rigged” against him, thus encouraging (conservative white male) sedition and domestic terrorism upon his defeat.
The candidate of said party is the most unqualified major party nominee American history—which appears meaningless to the 40% of the country that votes Repub exclusively. He has been demonstrated to be an obvious clinical narcissist, entirely amoral, a demonstrated grifter and con man, who strips cash from his gambling enterprises, loads them with his personal debt and then cons suckers into taking the massive loss. He has serious problems with impulse control, also demonstrated repeatedly during the campaign, which also has not the slightest affect upon his (99% white) supporters. It is also abundantly clear that he cannot focus his attention on a matter for 30 seconds. He is, in short, an obvious rightwing authoritarian demagogue.
Should he win it will mean a radical “conservative” party will have complete and absolute control of the federal gub’mint for at least 2 years. I’d say the situation is extremely dire and indeed the worst I’ve seen in “domestic politics”.
Kinda like the Andrew Jackson millennial re-do, no?
http://theweek.com/articles/539274/andrew-jackson-americas-worst-great-president
Jackson was the first “great” president. Jackson’s authoritarian will, his eagerness with the veto pen, his unprincipled use of federal power against non-whites, and his ugly patronage schemes changed forever the character of the Republic. Jackson pushed America’s fragile Republican institutions down in front of the march of mass democracy. He put the executive branch on a tilt that eventually made it superior to Congress, and made the president himself into a kind of populist king and symbol of the people’s will. The American nation has suffered from infantalized Congresses, cowardly judiciaries, and “great presidencies” ever since.
A great deal of the “collapsitarian” fears now infecting this country are actually quite reasonable. The situation in which we find ourselves…along with the developed countries of Western Europe particularly…is absolutely new.
1-A single massive hack or other sort of digital shutdown (EMP-style) would completely freeze this country in its tracks. This is so different than the Mutually Assured Destruction system in place during the Cold War. Only those countries that have become almost totally dependent on digital infrastructure are at risk, and those with the most digital dependence…the U.S. right at the top of that list followed by most of Western Europe…are the most vulnerable.
2-I am not aware of any major country in the world that is so divided by different cultures that its entire governing system is threatened. The federal government has essentially been in a stalemate condition for 8 years. Nothing is really getting done except show talk. No real “go” going on, just posturing. And whatever parts of the government remain functional, they are functioning on a C- or worse level. Sorry, but there it is. In a stalemate, everything gets stale..
3-The U.S. is the single greatest debtor that history has ever seen. The same Cold War concept of Mutually Assured Destruction is essentially the only thing that is keeping its creditors from foreclosing, and as Russia and China become more and more prosperous that whole MAD thing looks less and less viable. Pull out the rug and the whole economy will follow.
4-A well coordinated set of terrorist attacks would shut the U.S. down. Sorry, but there that is as well. Blow up a few tactically important bridges and tunnels and the whole thing would shut down. Retaliation? Who did it? We still don’t really know who was behind 9/11…at the very least we certainly haven’t been told the whole story…and it’s been over 15 years now. Upon whom would the retaliation descend and in what form? Like the Bush II Iraq War? Nice. That worked really well, eh?
People realize all of this, at least on a gut level. And they are afraid.
Enter the current execrable presidential race.
Nice.
AG
The author links on to another piece in an update, that does a great job of looking at the support for both racism theory and economic anxiety theory and concludes that there is support for both.
Economic Anxiety and the Limits of Data Journalism | The Baseline Scenario