Author: oaguabonita

foreign policy vision:

Special Bonus, also apropos:

The Last Waltz, final concert of The Band (plus incredible lineup of guest musicians), Thanksgiving Day 1976:

[Ioffe, via Sullivan @ digby’s place]

“Is there a way to repudiate the worst of Trump–the nativistic, racist, misogynistic elements–and appeal to people whom he brought because of economic anxiety?” [Wehner] asked. “It won’t be easy because he has loyal following. If you morally repudiate him–which has to happen–those people may decide they don’t want to be part of that.”

Yup [he said, with utter absence of symp-/empathy], it’s a quandary, this corner they’ve painted themselves into.

Of course, there’s data-driven evidence that those deplorables comprise the bulk of Trump’s support (I’d guess virtually all his enthusiastic support):

. . . in the general election, while support for Trump is correlated most strongly with party ID, the second biggest factor, per the analysis of Hamilton College political scientist Philip Klinkner, was racial resentment. Economic pessimism and income level were statistically insignificant.

Good reason to think the discriminant function Wehner seeks for distinguishing the deplorables from his hypothesized group of “other” Trump supporters likely doesn’t exist. Good luck with that!

This has turned into a major pet peeve of mine, whether it occurs in the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media, blog posts, or blog comments — failing to recognize and acknowledge that Clinton’s remark clearly and specifically defined whom she was calling “deplorable”:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

“But the other basket, the other basket, and I know because I see friends from all over America here. I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas, as well as you know New York and California. But that other basket of people who are people who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine [sic — or much worse, to heroin], feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

(Clearly, from this actual context, ” — you name it” is a catchall for “and any other form of bigotry I left out of my list”.)

And really, Clinton just stated the obvious, which is why none of the media vapors and rightwing faux-outrage over it even tried to take issue with what she actually asserted. That is, notable for their absence from the ensuing tsunami of Villager tut-tutting and Trumpista faux-outrage were attempts by anyone anywhere (well, excluding the Stormfront et al. fringe) to make either the case that:

1. There are no Trump supporters who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it”; nor even that these bigots do not comprise a substantial subset, at the least, of Trump supporters. (A case no one seriously attempts to make because it’s transparently preposterous on its face.)

Or

2. Actually defending (or pretending to) racism, sexism, etc. as something other than deplorable.

Or

3. Claiming that none of those “deplorables” are irredeemable (though that one imo might, in fact, be a makeable case at least in theory).

No, essentially all the media/center-left criticism took some form other than disputing the validity (obvious, imo) of what she actually asserted (excepting “half”), e.g., “politically stupid”, etc.

While, quite predictably, Trump and his Trumpistas just baldly lied that she’d called all his supporters “deplorables”, disappearing how she specifically defined “deplorables”.

(A personal anecdotal case in point. One day most weeks I and some tennis buddies have beers after playing. Right after Clinton’s “deplorables” remark, we were at one guy’s house having beers and watching some sporting event on the teevee when a GOP political ad came on, prompting the one Trump supporter there to refer to himself as being one of Clinton’s “deplorables”.

I bit my tongue just in time to keep “Really, ‘Charlie’? So which ‘deplorable’ bigot category are you self-identifying as: racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, or ‘other’?” from exiting my mouth. Cuz what would be the point?)

Now, there are plenty of valid avenues for criticizing Clinton for that remark, including the arguably sloppy “half” characterization (which she subsequently repudiated and apologized for) — though to be fair, she did issue the “just to be grossly generalistic” caveat right up front, something likewise generally disappeared from “reporting” about this.

From a purely practical, cynically political perspective, though, the most condemnable thing about it was providing an opening for the utterly, predictably bad “reporting” by media and dishonest reaction by Trumpistas (and even some “friendly fire”) determinedly disappearing the fact that — and how — Clinton actually defined “deplorables”.

Update [2016-10-3 17:9:25 by oaguabonita]: She was right! What she (clearly, specifically) identified as “deplorable” is in fact deplorable!

impersonation embodied in this gear is intentional, i.e., marketing?

[courtesy digby]

I’m inclined to think so.

Given that policing (or, similarly, military) grants some legal sanction to exercising authority over others, I have always presumed that authoritarian personalities would be disproportionately attracted to those lines of work, and thus disproportionately represented in their ranks. Including the ranks of those making purchasing decisions and/or writing grant proposals to tap into Pentagon/Homeland Security programs that provide military surplus equipment or grant money to local law enforcement (which have been the major driver of the ongoing militarization of local law-enforcement entities).

(Disclaimer: This does NOT imply all law enforcement personnel are authoritarians. I presume many enter policing “to protect and serve” (as the noble slogan goes) their communities/nation. The Dallas Chief seems such an example. My premise is simply that a higher proportion of them probably are authoritarians than in the general population. Hard for me to imagine how it could be otherwise, absent very rigorous screening methods, which I think probably no one would claim currently exist in practice.)

It’s not hard to see what the appeal to authoritarians would be in the design of the gear pictured above. Even just the “gee whiz, cool stuff” attraction is probably significant for them.

Is this just brilliant marketing playing out?

Regardless, (like digby, I think) I find what that photo seems to say about the state of the union disturbing indeed.

Own Petition

Turns out he’s a “leave”er who started the petition well before the vote, when polls suggested “remain” would prevail. Now he says

This petition was created at a time (over a month ago) when it was looking unlikely that ‘leave’ were going to win, with the intention of making it harder for ‘remain’ to further shackle us to the EU. Due to the result, the petition has been hijacked by the remain campaign. . . . The logistical probability of getting a turnout to be a minimum of 75% and of that, 60% of the vote must be one or the other (leave or remain) is in my opinion next to impossible without a compulsory element to the voting system.

Got that?

He was all for those rules when he thought they would make the outcome he didn’t want “next to impossible”. But now that he unexpectedly got what he wanted, and the rules he petitioned for would overturn it, they have become the most reprehensible and undemocratic thing imaginable! Those hijackers!

You just can’t make this stuff up.

*Well, hilarious until I’m reminded of the 900-pt. 2-day DJIA tumble and it’s roughly proportional impact on my retirement-account pittance. Thanks, morons!

 . . . ’til [we] know
Too many people have died?”

And do something sane about our insane gun laws.

an exponential, steroid-like boost!

Since this has come up recently in comment threads (roughly, “what constitutes or defines a ‘troll’?”).

My definition:

Trolls DON’T:

-show up in comment threads seeking in good faith to: 1) learn; 2) honestly engage/debate with mind open to persuade/be persuaded by facts and reason combined into valid argumentation.

Trolls DO:

-show up with minds closed, seeking above all else to provoke; insults, ridicule, extreme positions taken primarily for their provocative effect, imputation of bad faith to perceived adversaries (not an exhaustive list of indicators, I’m sure) may all at various times be employed in service to the trolling cause.

Glad I could help.

Means of Dealing with Folks Like Us.

A feature, not a bug.

digby:

In that Playboy article he said he thought Gorbachev didn’t have a strong enough hand and expressed disgust for the Tienanmen Square protesters,”when the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world.” His admiration for Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un is well known.

Nothing all that surprising there. Been pretty obvious for a while now that Trump’s an authoritarian who thinks the main problem with this country is that he is not yet its despotic, all-powerful ruler.

The main thought that prompted this diary, though: is there any reason to doubt that at least a substantial proportion of Trump supporters would likewise love to see the likes of me “dealt with” in similar fashion? That, indeed, that’s central to his appeal?