I am frustrated by folks on the left who - let me say, I appreciate they're trying to figure out what the left needs to do differently to fix things, it's just
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There's this discourse on the left saying that what motivates the Trumpists isn't racism, it's economics.I'm deeply frustrated with that nonsense, exit polls clearly showed that Clinton voters' primary concern was the economy, while Dumpster voters were primarily concerned with immigration and terrorism (IOW, they were racists). From what I've been reading of late, there's way too much sympathy and concern for the racists that voted for these racists than for the likely victims of the various policies of the upcoming adminstration, in part because of the constant narratives of rural and smalltown white voters as being somehow "the real America", "justifiedly angry", and similar foolishness. I keep coming back to Obama's "bitter" speech of 2008, and how true his words were, despite needing to apologize for it to avoid offending these people
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The racism of Trumpists is the entitlement to kill other people and take their stuff as a remedy for being poor.
It's not that they don't have legitimate grounds for being angry at their economic situation. It's that instead of finding fault with how American capitalism has served them, they've decided their solution is to become criminals and prey on others. They want to "take back" "their" money that's being spent on social programs that benefit others, especially imagined racial others or imagined inferior whites, they want to "take back" "their" jobs that immigrants take (but which, of course, the either wouldn't do or aren't qualified for). They have decided that which others have or are entitled to actually belongs to them, and they are going to wrest it away from them.
Have you read Ta-Nehesi Coates' The Case for Reparations? American white supremacism has always been about appropriating wealth from non-white bodies. Just the way "Aryan" surpremacism was under Hitler. Just
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I'm not sure it's about being poor as much as fear of being poor. The info I've seen suggests that many people who voted for him were actually moderately well off, but were in regions which weren't, meaning that they weren't poor and wanting more, but were worried about losing what they have, and are willing to fight to keep what they have. Sadly, instead of fighting the 0.001%ers who ate most of the US economy, they're going after far easier targets who they've been told are doing all the taking :( Also, presumably many of them think that an even better way to keep from losing what they have is to take other people's stuff.
But it remains the case that if you are in that situation -- middle-ish class and worried about the demise of "your" community and "your" income and so on -- there are two options:
1) Try and figure out how to make life better for everyone and get the economy going well enough that nobody starves
2) Blame your predicament on an out-group, and have no problem with making members of said out-group poorer, or sicker, or hungrier, or dead, for your own comfort and benefit.
One of these options is racist and the other is not.
I think the economy does play a role here: but what is happening is better described as "this is what racist white supremacists do when the economy gets bad enough to look like they might be uncomfortable" than as "the economy is so bad that of course the poor scared white people are lashing out at others, it isn't particularly racist to be worried about some people (who may happen to be brown or foreign or different in some way) getting more than their fair share".
Re: Question of a way forwardsidereaNovember 21 2016, 00:28:29 UTC
We cannot dissolve the people and elect another.
No. Though it does seem that is what the opposition is considering trying. :)
This is a great comment that I appreciate you making and I largely disagree with it, because it seems to me to be caught in a false dichotomy, where racism is not actionable while economics is. I'm going to screen it again because I'm planning to use it as a point of departure for my explaining what I think the long game is.
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The racism of Trumpists is the entitlement to kill other people and take their stuff as a remedy for being poor.
It's not that they don't have legitimate grounds for being angry at their economic situation. It's that instead of finding fault with how American capitalism has served them, they've decided their solution is to become criminals and prey on others. They want to "take back" "their" money that's being spent on social programs that benefit others, especially imagined racial others or imagined inferior whites, they want to "take back" "their" jobs that immigrants take (but which, of course, the either wouldn't do or aren't qualified for). They have decided that which others have or are entitled to actually belongs to them, and they are going to wrest it away from them.
Have you read Ta-Nehesi Coates' The Case for Reparations? American white supremacism has always been about appropriating wealth from non-white bodies. Just the way "Aryan" surpremacism was under Hitler. Just ( ... )
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1) Try and figure out how to make life better for everyone and get the economy going well enough that nobody starves
2) Blame your predicament on an out-group, and have no problem with making members of said out-group poorer, or sicker, or hungrier, or dead, for your own comfort and benefit.
One of these options is racist and the other is not.
I think the economy does play a role here: but what is happening is better described as "this is what racist white supremacists do when the economy gets bad enough to look like they might be uncomfortable" than as "the economy is so bad that of course the poor scared white people are lashing out at others, it isn't particularly racist to be worried about some people (who may happen to be brown or foreign or different in some way) getting more than their fair share".
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No. Though it does seem that is what the opposition is considering trying. :)
This is a great comment that I appreciate you making and I largely disagree with it, because it seems to me to be caught in a false dichotomy, where racism is not actionable while economics is. I'm going to screen it again because I'm planning to use it as a point of departure for my explaining what I think the long game is.
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