This is my biggest frustration with them. Trump can’t speak four sentences without sounding like a moron and the Democrats managed to put forth a candidate who will manage to lose a debate to him (if Biden was capable of winning then you would’ve heard from him outside of campaign ads lately). Instead of trying to show how their policies are better they’ve gone 100% on the anti Trump campaign which clearly is just pushing people more into their respective corners. I haven’t seen one reason to vote for Biden other than he’s not Trump.
One thing that eludes younger folks is how entrenched racism is, and how the perception of what is racist varies. Look at some of the old Disney cartoons portraying black people, or recall that desegregated schools was a divisive political issue for people in Trump's cohort. Many of them draw the line at actual racist actions, like going to Klan meetings, not a set of biases, perceptions and cultural impressions. To them, something like not wanting a black neighbor isn't racist at all, it's simply how things are: we are over here, they are over there and we like it that way. I say this growing up in a town in rural South Carolina: I could go out for Thai food, and hear 8 different languages from the patrons, but each group had their own part of town. I think of some of the things I have heard from my grandparent's generation that are wildly ignorant, racist and disgusting, but to them it's casual conversation about a different (and perceived to be inferior) culture. If I said them to my friends at a party, I'd be lucky to have friends the next day. I think of things like "To Kill a Mockingbird" where the response was "but a lot of the time they DO rape women!", and the crime waves of the 80s and 90s that had black kids as poster children. Especially down South, it was regarded as a distinctly different and inferior culture. It made sense: "they were poorer, worse educated, held worse jobs. They were loud, smelled funny, behaved weirdly and couldn't be trusted. There was no old money backing, and the ones that were successful, seemed to do so in spite of the culture, not because of it: all the rich black folks on tv talked like me!" No one understood shit like redlining, or why that was how it was. To these folks, Trump's not racist: he's simply acknowledging reality. No, he shouldn't rent to black people, that would be bad for his business. If this disease is hurting them disproportionately, it's not Trump's fault, they should have x or shouldn't y. He's not racist, because he's not going to Klan rallies, or ACTIVELY engaging in things they would consider to be racist. He's just acknowledging the reality they have lived for 70+ years, and FINALLY a politician who's not pretending otherwise. They see things like "black/asian/latino people are genetically more likely to have x or y thing" and go "SEE? There are differences, so it's not racist to assume they are inferior. If they weren't inferior, why can't they do X or accomplish Y?" They then see the identity politics play out and mistakenly assume it's a zero sum game: if they succeed, we lose. If there are more of them in control, my share (or more accurately, the chance of me getting a share) goes down. Couple that with the decline in religion they see, which again....for 70+ years was ostensibly the reason they lived the way they did, they are mortally afraid their lifestyle is under assault. This isn't a minor thing, and it manifests as gun control, or abortion because those are wedge issues that are easy to fund. To them, what is being called racism is simple, objective reality that hasn't changed much their entire life until 2008. They have had it vividly and consistently confirmed that they are superior based on genes and the other races are inferior: scientifically, culturally, religiously (Jesus is white in all the portraits I've seen, going back 500 years, and all the way to Italy). It's as objective as reality can be, and for some reason over the past 40 years, politics has divorced from that reality. Now, they are being called racist, and stupid, and evil? Because a bunch of kids believe lies they read on the internet and won't listen to the truth (as spouted by Fox News)? Remember, some of these folks are old enough to remember WHY the Nazis were doing what they did, and they didn't disagree. We all sit here, on the comfy side of history, recognizing it for the evil it was, but some of these people had to live through the period where it wasn't so certain. We're only talking three generations removed from actual slavery. I see it very simply: if you label anyone a racist/sexist/etc. you lose the ability to have a productive dialog. And these days, what's considered prejudiced is MUCH wider than it used to be....the standards have changed incredibly quickly (to put this in perspective, Bill Cosby was drugging/raping women at the same time we were all out dancing to a Tone Loc song about date rape drugging a girl in the club and we all thought it was hilarious. Today, that shit is unthinkable.). That's to our credit (eventually), but you can't cut such a wide swath of people as irrelevant to the cause as you could a few years ago. It's simply not possible to say "we don't want the racist/sexist/prejudice votes" because you can label just about anyone with that. Those Harvard "identify your bias tests" didn't exist forty years ago. These people obstinately cling to their beliefs, and by discounting them (and their beliefs), the modern Democratic party has calcified them. Also, we have to keep in mind how much we've seen the "experts" shift over the course of their lives. Science has made incredible leaps, but a lot of that impact has tailed off recently for them. Now, instead of landing folks on the moon, we just get a bunch of apps that are confusing and pointless to them. Instead of new, revolutionary medicine, they just get chided by doctors on things they shouldn't do, often things they've done for decades with no issue. They think of how "experts" have changed their line on economics and psychology just in the past few years....and yet, nothing really changed for them. Their lives have been remarkably stable, so they think...hm. Maybe all these academics are full of shit. Maybe these experts are just trying to justify a job they shouldn't have. Maybe the experts can't tell the truth about x or y, because it's no longer acceptable to say anything bad about the browns or the yellows or the blacks. Maybe I shouldn't pay attention to them at all. It's not like they didn't live through times where the government perpetuated some MAJOR scams that played out on national television. If the experts are full of shit, and Trump is the only one acknowledging the patent reality they've experienced for 70+ years...hell, why wouldn't they listen to them?
this is about as good a post as I've seen on the subject, and it's worth it to everyone to read it in full. Well done man
You missed the best part, where he said to "shoot [them] down." Boats. Shoot down boats. I just hope he's also prepared to sink their jet fighters.
So basically, we're gonna have to wait until all the 'Boomers die-off to move forward in this country?
Speaking of Mitch McConnell, his office released a press release about an interview he sat for earlier in the day. In it he stakes out a position against any future money going to states hardest hit by coronavirus, under the (added) heading "On Stopping Blue State Bailouts", as if Blue States hadn't been bailing out Kentucky for fucking decades.
He must also assume that no human beings whatsoever still vote Republican in Blue States. Thats country first if I’ve ever seen it. He is such a sack of anuses, my god.
https://twitter.com/TPMLiveWire/status/1253362593772822530 Cuomo is right, but it's also an example of the kind of fracturing that I've been both expecting and worrying about for a while. Blue states are getting real sick of Republicans' shit, and Republicans seem to think that single-party minority rule can continue indefinitely.
People like McConnell often forget, or act like they forget how much of the red states are bankrolled by the wealthier blue states. One of their favorite talking points is say how much the "liberal elites" or the "coastal elites" hate red state people even though the politicians were educated at the very same prep schools and ivy league institutions.
Kentucky has the second-highest federal funding in your country (per capita) after Virginia: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/03/14/states-getting-the-most-and-least-from-uncle-sam
Sorry for being late to the party, we missed the "keeping black children out of white schools" happy hour.
Did I really hear the President of the United States suggest injecting disinfectant or shining UV light into the body to combat a virus? What the actual fuck? https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...d0kjU74_MXQiSZY7YgKW7vsBiyuulaAXOu_AwikDE_MVw