NPR discusses Steve Bannon and his impact on Breitbart News.
I have written about left of center or centrist organizations writing in a manner which no longer reflects a liberal, progressive, or centrist view. NPR just went out on a limb with its recent conversation with Breitbart Senior Editor at Large Joel Pollak about newly elected Donald Trump’s selection of Steve Bannon as his administration’s Chief Strategist. It is not unusual to have this type of interview on Morning Edition; but, it did take a different direction then what I thought might happen.
NPR’s Steve Inskeep starts off;
“Let’s hear a defense of Steve Bannon.”
Breitbart Senior Editor Joel Pollack glowingly describes Steve Bannon as “a national hero” adding;
“how great it will be to have someone in the White House who can remain so calm under pressure.”
Other evidence points to another Steve Bannon, a Bannon who has been accused of “domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and accused of being a verbally abusive bully who is prone to tirades” by former staffers.
When Steve Inskeep asks about Bannon’s efforts to turn “Breitbart into the Alt-Right program of choice,” Pollak distances the site from the Alt-Right diet of xenophobia, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism upon which Breitbart has been nurtured. He sidesteps the issue of various articles portrayed in Breitbart as being amongst thousands and do not necessarily tie Breitbart as a unifying force of the Alt-Right movement. Pollack also dismisses Steve Bannon’s point late last August of “Breitbart being the platform of the Alt-Right as simple journalism.” In no way does Pollack give credence to an association with the Alt-Right to Breitbart and Steve Bannon. It is here where Inskeep begins to miss the opportunity to strike back and challenge Pollack on these issues and Pollack’s answers.
What is different about the Breibart’s Editor Joel Pollack interview by NPR’s Steve Inskeep is not so much the topic as it is the seemingly lack of forceful challenges to Pollack’s statements. When there is a challenge, they are feeble. For example:
A Breitbart commentary about the Confederate flag “Hoist it High and Proud” is published two weeks after the Charleston massacre of nine black churchgoers. The story line encourages Alt-Right and other readers to proudly wave the Confederate flag as a symbol of the South the same what Dylann Roof is seen doing in countless photos. Here is where Inskeep could step forward and at least challenge the timing. Instead, it passes. Included in the Breitbart article is this passage:
“While your supporters are trashing the monuments and reputations of the forefathers of so many Americans; perhaps, you might want to remind us again which state of the Union, north or south, Barack’s ancestors resided in during the traumatic years 1861-1865? Or did Kenya not have a dog in that fight? The Confederacy was not a callous conspiracy to enforce slavery, but a patriotic and idealistic cause for which 490,000 men were killed, wounded or taken captive.”
Breitbart’s justification for the Confederate flag wave is focused on history and heritage rather than the flag of slaveholders, secessionists, and identificatists the flag has come to represent then and today in many cases. Huh? Where is Pollack taking us and why isn’t NPR’s Inskeep’s on top of this pulling it back to his agenda? Instead we get a feeble but factual rebuttal:
“Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy, declared the Confederate cause was slavery.”
Answering the slavery part was a part of that battle, there is still the part of Barack Obama’s inclusion. Obama never had a dog in this fight that we know of today; however, where does President Obama’s heritage have a place in a discussion about Confederate flag waving by a mass murderer and a recommendation to others to take up a similar action of Confederate flag waving? Oh wait a minute, it doesn’t have a place in the dialogue and Inskeep misses an opportunity again to put Pollack and his deflection in its place. Pollack has just started to turn the discussion away from Bannon and Breitbart. At the least, Inskeep stomping on this might have given Pollack pause, kept the focus on the Alt-Right, Bannon, and Breitbart, and gain the NPR segment some credibility besides just a comment on what Confederate VP Steven’s had said.
Pollack does not stop there and proceeds to apply more of the strategy of “obfuscation and flipping” the script of totally justified accusations of bigotry, misogyny and anti-Semitism into reverse racism by the accuser. Take this standard complaint and deflection by the right.
“NPR is taxpayer-funded (boy, this sounds familiar), and has an entire section of its programming and a regular feature called “Code Switch,” which from my perspective is a racist program by calling election results, ‘nostalgia for a whiter America.'” (Angry white America striking back at liberalism, sounds Star Warish as in “The Empire Strikes Back”) Some have called Breitbart’s “the history of the Confederate Flag program”racist, it is not racist and this was one opinion article in a 24-hour news website as compared to NPR’s Code Switch.
“’NPR has racial and racist programming I am required to pay for as a taxpayer (a white listener at that – my emphasis). You can read Breitbart, you can read something else — I don’t think talking about the history of the Confederate flag is racist. There are people who disagree with it as a symbol; but besides that issue, you’re picking on one opinion article to judge Breitbart and it is a 24-hour news website providing coverage from within a conservative worldview.”
It is here I have a major problem with liberals and progressives in general. We have an out right supporter of the Alt-Right who has reversed the tables on us and we can not ever find the words to kick some major butt here in rebuttal and in telling the truth. This is why we lost an election because we could not put two words together to call out Trump and his “rabid” supporters on their beliefs. Not even Bernie touched this hot poker.
Blue collar, middle class, and white America was left with the idea that what Trump has said, what Pollack is saying, what Breitbart has said and stands for is ok, and what Trump rode into the Presidency represents the truth. Guess what, it is not ok and it is not the truth. Our failure to come back at these statements has reaped something no one really likes.
Trump’s Chief of Staff Steve Bannon has worked hard to build Breitbart into an Alt-Right Sky Club for Alties looking for comradery, a glass of beer, and an ideology rest stop. It is “a loose coalition of white nationalists, “identitarians,” neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, racists, and misogynists who were ecstatic over Bannon’s appointment.” The point man for the Alt-Right and Breitbart, Joel Pollack took the NPR segment in a different direction to distance Steve Bannon from Breitbart and ” flipped the script to turn totally justified accusations of bigotry, misogyny and anti-Semitism into ‘reverse racism.”
Truth be told as detailed by Kali Holloway at AlterNet;”Bannon has spent four years ensuring that Breitbart contains all the Sky Club hors deourves and drinks the Alt-Right can feast on, from an entire section tagged ‘black crime’ to frequent contributions from Jason Richwine, whom the Daily Beast notes ‘resigned from the conservative Heritage Foundation when news broke that his Harvard dissertation argued in part that Hispanics have lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites.’ That, Pollak should be told, is actual racism. Textbook.” NPR and Steve Inskeep were just not up to the task of rebutting Joel Pollack or cornering him to keep him on the defensive. As Kali might say and I will say, we missed the chance to pin the tail on this donkey.
And Steve Bannon will be wandering the halls of the Whitehouse as Chief Strategist advising a man who has no experience as a legislator and is a poor leader.
Normalizing the Abnormal: NPR Begins Its Whitewashing of Breitbart’s Racism Kali Holloway, AlterNet, November 16, 2016
“Obfuscation and flipping”: just listen to Kellyanne Conway and see if you can contain yourself from screaming at the TV. God, it’s going to be a long 4 years!
JD,
Funny. As I was reading the responses to the interviewer’s sophomoric questions, all I was thinking about was Conway and her “ability” to totally ignore any and all questions. And it has led to my screaming at the TV when she speaks, and has risen to the point where I simply cannot watch anymore.
In Asimov’s “Foundation”, mathematicians were able to take all of the dialogue from a person; turn it into numbers; reduce them and come out with a short and concise sentence or two that showed what the speaker actually said. One of the characters(a diplomat I think) spent a week or two speaking constantly and after the math was done, it was found that he had said absolutely nothing.
That is Conway.
NPR has sucked for so long that it isn’t even worth commenting on anymore. They are lost. Completely lost in an alternate reality of milk toast pablum. I can’t stand to listen to more than two minutes of it on my car radio without hearing something so gutless it makes me cringe.
Having grown up in the American South at the end of apartheid, I’m very familiar with the claims of “heritage” and “culture” in defense of flying the Confederate flag of treason against America. The only “heritage” and “culture” they celebrate is the heritage of treason and the culture of racism.
A minor point given all the crap that Breitbart spews, but it seems not to have been remarked upon that “which state of the Union, north or south, Barack’s ancestors resided in during the traumatic years 1861-1865? Or did Kenya not have a dog in that fight?” presumes that Obama’s only ancestors were on his father’s side.
bob:
True it is a point; but, the whole topic is a non sequitur to the topic. If NPR was quick enough; that would be the first point and yours would be the second point. This is where the Left fails in making rebuttal points and also in bringing the conversation back to the topic. The Alternet writer is correct in her critique. It has to start somewhere and too many were relying on HRC to rebut commentary like this.
@Bob, indeed. But Breitbart presumes that its readership is ignorant and racist. To judge by their demographic and market share, they are correct.
The Trump defense of Bannon and Breitbart seems to be that they aren’t racists or fascists, they just make money from racists and fascists. Sort of like Kellyanne Conway saying of Trump’s gaffes and outrages, “tweets aren’t policy”.
Jack:
They can’t say it directly and this is just another way to get the message out there.
” . . . they just make money from racists and fascists.”
Kinda like drug dealers. They don’t use drugs, they just make money from those who do.
Joel:
There is a strategy they are using to advocate this.
And there is another reason besides bad journalism.
Look at how many people on the left derided Clinton for her deplorables comment. The thing is, it was right(though I think she underestimated the percentage).
People do not like to call other people racists or fascists, almost as people do not like to be called racists and fascists. Just another politically correct trend(always be polite even if you are talking to a person who makes your blood boil.
What Inskeep should have said was something like:
“Patriotic and idealistic cause? Have you ever bothered to read the Confederate Constitution? It as all about protecting slavery, and defending that flag is racist in the extreme.
And you just showed your racism with your comment about Obama’s ancestors. That has nothing to do with the flag, you are just deflecting from the actual topic and further denigrating the POTUS because some of his black ancestors were in Kenya during the Civil War without any thought as to where his white ancestors resided, not that that matters.
And to top off your obviously racist comment about Obama, you ignore the fact that you would have a hard time tracing any substantial amount of Americans who ancestors all were in either the north or the south during the civil war. Try to stay on topic and answer the questions.”
I need the next DNC chairman to stand up and say we are fighting against the racism that the Republican Party has now openly embraced. There are plenty of minorities and even some white people that are not racists to win elections. You just have to get them to the polls.
EM:
Is it deplorable to be a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc. ?
With your Inskeep suggested comment, you are going where I thought he should have went. His one comment about the Confederacy VP was accurate; but, it was not enough. He could have been less direct; but, what you said and what I stated needed to be said. Democrats and their supposed shows are awfully timid in stating the truth blatantly, directly, and loudly in reply. Things like the Southern Strategy will remain a viable tool for the Right as long as it is not challenged aggressively and loudly.
Run,
Exactly.
We keep bringing knives to gun fights.
And with the rise of social media, the ignorance, racism and fascism will only be increased. The GOP created the incredible polarity in our political system with the southern strategy, and trump is the result of taking that strategy totally out of the closet.
We have to treat these people how they are, and how they vote.
And another example of this pops up in the worst state in the Union, North Carolina.
“Fast forward to 2010, when North Carolina Republicans seized control of the General Assembly, which put them in charge of the House and Senate for the first time since 1870, and the governor’s office in 2012. Since then, there’s been a desperate effort to return the state to its less progressive roots. And that’s being kind.
Though a slight majority of the state clearly supports Democratic leadership and progressive policies, the state’s Republicans, bankrolled by the right-wing businessman Art Pope, have targeted jobless benefits, education and welfare spending, while pushing for redistricting and limits on voting rights to keep them in power. They have operated as thieves in the night, presenting bills crafted in midnight sessions to their Democratic colleagues only a few hours before a vote is to be held.
North Carolina’s 2016 election results demonstrate the rural-urban divide that is emerging across this country.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/whats-the-matter-with-north-carolina.html?_r=0
It is not “rural vs. urban”. It is racism pure and simple. And to write such inaccurate drivel is helping the racists.
Later on, the author almost, almost has the heart to speak the truth, but she cannot get herself to do it:
“Today, North Carolina’s citizens — including an increasingly diverse and growing minority population — are being disenfranchised by the Republican-controlled General Assembly.:
“including”
She should let us know which of the white citizens have been disenfranchised.
EM:
Tale of two cities . . . Rwanda scores better on voter registration than NC. Michigan barely escaped the voter registration legislation other states have in place now. The House still has many more Rep Reps than it should have due to gerrymandering in swing states such as Michigan and North Carolina which do vote Dem in Presidential Elections. http://wonkette.com/609679/democracy-experts-sorry-north-carolina-youre-now-a-third-world-failed-state ; “North Carolina Now A Third World Failed State.”
Run,
It is the same in almost every state.
In 2012 in PA, House Democrats received 80,000 more votes than Reps.
Reps won 13 out of 18 elections.
on the whole i agree with you all
but find it funny that some of those who have (angrily) told me how much i alienate people by getting angry advocating an angry response to famous people they don’t like.
i had been considering some words of Edward R Murrow who was asked why he did not contradict the lies of the people he was interviewing. He said words to the effect that he thought the audience was smart enough to see through the lies.
i don’t think anyone who is smart enough to not already be a supporter of the hard right needed to be told how dishonest and indeed stupid the remarks of Breitbart/Pollack are.
NPR is the big leagues. They need to be careful, and to be diplomatic if they are going to have anyone to interview, or not be dismissed as “the liberal press” by those who have a chance of being redeemed.
Just by interviewing these people on a pubic forum NPR reveals their core dishonesty and ugliness.
We don’t need knives or a gunfight (yet), and we do ourselves no good by “kicking butt,” except possibly here where no one hears us but ourselves.
Lincoln did not get elected by “kicking butt,” but by the time it came to a gunfight he was ready. Hillary did not lose by not kicking butt. I suspect she lost because the Democrats have let down the “poor,” even if they are old white men, probably since Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act, and then let himself be led by the hand into Vietnam.
Hadn’t meant to go this far with playing Pollyanna for you, but let me suggest we spend less time “kicking butt” and more time actually organizing and explaining… even so we understand it ourselves… the terrible implications of Republican “philosophy” and actually go back to applying New Deal (and Great Society) principles in ways that improve the lives of those people both parties despise when they are among their rich friends.
Coberly:
Sometimes after careful thinking one can post maybe one or two thoughts which incorporate all of the things they wish to say in a reply. I like what you say; but, multiple times to get your points across???
The one thing once can say about this election, Trump answers and replies were coarse, bigoted, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, lies, etc. in reply. There was nothing subtle or kind in what he said even when HRC literally trashed him in all three debates. The people loved what he had to say as it was simple and about as base as one can get in what he said. I can list 100 different things he said, retracted, or said “this is what I meant, etc. No one heard the difference or understood the difference in what was being said. They may yet experience the difference going forward under his tutelage. None of what I mentioned needs explaining as by now and this far since LBJ, it should be painfully understood.
People do not want to be organized or explained to. They want what they had in the sixties. It is not coming back and indeed it will get worse for white America and they will be disenfranchised even more as they become the minority. You can reply if you want to; but, this will not be a dialogue back and forth.
Oh, I am not such a Pollyanna as to have failed to note that Hillary’s loss can also be attributed to the massive lie machine that has been employed against her, her husband, and Obama.
it is possible the internet can replace the “press” (which we have lost to the enemy) but not by “kicking butt” without attempting to reach the people who never hear the truth from anyone.
And yes
Run’s posting this article was information and helpful
(cont.)
even calling for the wrong remedy can provide an excellent framework for letting the people know.
but keep in mind the value of a “neutral” voice that brings the truth out without (and by means of not) “kicking butt.”
EM
i hate to say this because so often you and i are on the same side.
but as long as you think no whites are being disenfranchised in NC or America in general, you are missing the real picture
as well as being a racist. a sure way to lose elections.
white people are people too. most of them are not “racist” in any meaningful sense of the term. and they will vote for a black man, or for policies that limit the harm real racists can do, if you give them half a chance… with policies that help them, and without rhetoric that insults them.
it is completely true that the “power structure” in NC and elsewhere is completely white. but that is an accident of history. the important word is “power” not “white.”
Cob,
We share totally opposite beliefs. Among the Trump voters there are no such people who would “vote for a black man”.
Anyone who tells you they voted for Obama in the past and Trump this election are stone cold lying to you. These people only vote Rep.
The idea of this vast amount of independents who decide based on individuals, not party, is a myth. Belongs right with the self professed “undecideds” that attract so much attention before(and even after) an election.
The US is totally polarized between left and right. It has been so for more than two decades. the only question is if your side is excited enough to bring people out to the polls.
BTW,
Perhaps you have an example of the conscious effort of the GOP leadership in NC to disenfranchise white people. I have missed it.
Keep thinking this is some sort of “kumbaya” country, where if we are nice to each other we can all get along.
It is a war. If you need proof of that, try and explain Krasting’s thoughts on social security.
“We find that what distinguishes independents from partisans is not their political positions. In fact, most independents aren’t independent at all. They hold clear partisan preferences, but they utterly refuse to identify with their preferred party. Our goal is to investigate what makes independents so bashful and what this might mean for politics.
We find that many Americans are largely ashamed of the dysfunction in Washington. Rather than associate with candidates and politicians who are portrayed by media as stubborn and aggressive, a plurality of Americans would rather present an image of calm, cool independence.
Not only are Americans likely to present themselves as independent but they also prefer that others do the same. Independents are judged to be more likable, more trustworthy, and more physically attractive. They are preferred over partisans as discussion partners and workplace colleagues.”
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/22/10814522/independents-voters-facts-myths
EMichael
you are right. this is war. but sometimes the best strategy in war is a little more subtle than sending the kids out the front gate to sortie with the enemy and kick their butts.
i explain Krasting as a complete idiot. but there is some chance he is just out there trying to disrupt any intelligent discussion of SS before it actually gets enough people to think about what SS means for them. he could even be being paid to do this.
you misjudge me completely if you think i am advocating kumbaya.
where i live the R’s are divided between some really really not nice people, and some pretty nice people who just believe the R line because that’s all they hear. or when they hear “our” line it comes to their ear loaded with hate of all things they hold dear.
some of them could not bring themselves to vote for Trump, others just dismissed the really bad stuff as “politics.” i did not say i think they are smart. but they are human and can be led either to do terrible things they never considered, or to do decent things they never considered.
SOMEBODY voted for Obama that did not vote for Hillary. I don’t think I have heard you explain that.
Of course somebody voted for Obama that did not vote for Hillary, I clearly addressed that (many times in the last month) but even above:
“The US is totally polarized between left and right. It has been so for more than two decades. the only question is if your side is excited enough to bring people out to the polls.”
And that was clearly shown in this election (though voter suppression’s effect is really hard to measure).
“Murray says it appears that Democrat Hillary Clinton’s loss in Wisconsin partly was due to voting patterns in Milwaukee County. He says Clinton got the same percentage of the vote here as did President Obama in 2012, however, it appears 60,000 fewer residents voted this time.”
http://wuwm.com/post/analyst-lower-voter-turnout-milwaukee-contributed-trumps-wisconsin-victory#stream/0
“really nice people”
Yep, I know a lot. Doesn’t mean a lot in this area. And there is precedent about what happens when “really nice people” and their actions are defended:
“So, why the rush to defend Trump’s supporters? Why the self-recriminations? Why the willingness to stretch the bounds of legitimacy to accommodate Trump’s antics? Much has been written about Trump’s demagoguery and its similarity to totalitarian leaders of the past, but what about Trump’s opponents? Are many of us borrowing a page from totalitarianism without realizing it? Are we empowering him? Are we coordinating?
The word Gleichschaltung is often translated from the German as “coordination” and refers to the process of ― politically speaking ― getting in line. It often appears in books about the Nazi era. German Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer and German journalist Joachim Fest wrote about the personal cost of coordinating in their respective memoirs. German author Sebastian Haffner and Americans including journalist William Shirer wrote about the propaganda and politics of coordination.
German-born Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, in one of her last interviews, explains it best.
“The problem, the personal problem, was not what our enemies did, but what our friends did. Friends ‘coordinated’ or got in line.” And this coordination was not necessarily due to the “pressure of terror,” said Arendt, who escaped Germany in 1933. Intellectuals were particularly vulnerable to this wave of coordination. “The essence of being an intellectual is that one fabricates ideas about everything,” and many intellectuals of her time were “trapped by their own ideas.”
People rejected the uglier aspects of Nazism but gave ground in ways that ultimately made it successful. They conceded premises to faulty arguments. They rejected the “facts” of propaganda, but not the impressions of it. The new paradigm of authoritarianism was so disorienting that they simply could not see it for what it was, let alone confront it.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-nazi-propaganda-coordinate_us_58583b6fe4b08debb78a7d5c?
EMichael
we are not getting anywhere. you are accusing me (seem to be) of what i do not think or say. I am terrified of Trump AND the Republicans.
all I have been trying to say is that calling half of Americans racist is not going to help getting them on our side. forget about calling them racists… they can easily be led into pernicious racism. our job is to convince them that it’s the economy stupid and then give them some reason to think it’s not just words.
since you make a point about voter suppression… and I think the first Bush election was stolen in Florida… I’ll amend my question to
what about the white people who voted for Obama? what about the white people who voted for Hillary? are they racists?
i think you are right about “intellectuals” losing themselves in their own ideas. i tried to make that point about SS, and people said “hunh?”
Cob,
Is Obama a racist? Is Clinton a racist?
Then why should I call people that voted for them racists?
Is Trump a racist? Of course he is.
But all of that is besides the point. The majority of the white working class has voted consistently for the GOP since the civil rights act was signed. That is a fact.
These people would not vote democratic under any circumstances. And treating them “nicely” as they elected one of the worse persons in the world is a total waste of time, and harmful to the US and its future.
You should spend some time reading actual studies on these people.
“These results are suggestive, and they fit into a broader academic literature. In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington find that racism can explain almost all of the decline of Southern white support for Democrats between 1958 and 2000. Larry Bartels performed a similar (although far more detailed) analysis in a 2006 paper criticizing Frank and found similarly, that working class voters were closer to Republicans on economic and racial issues, but agreed with Democrats on abortion and women’s role in the family. In his masterful work, “Why Americans Hate Welfare,” Martin Gilens finds that opposition to welfare is driven by racial stereotypes about blacks. In a seminal book, “Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics,” Robert Huckfeldt and Carol Weitzel Kohfeld show that the more a state-level Democratic party relies on Black votes, the less likely low income whites in the states were to vote Democratic. Ian Haney-Lopez argues that Republican politicians have consciously played up racial tensions and animosity to peel white votes away from the Democratic party.
Another clue comes from the fact that working class Latinos and Blacks all overwhelmingly prefer Democrats, and the non-white working class as a whole prefers Democrats to Republicans 68 percent to 16 percent. The only defectors are the white working class.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/29/the_truth_about_the_white_working_class_why_its_really_allergic_to_voting_for_democrats/
Or come up with a reason why the white working class voting habits are so much different that the non white working class.
There is only one I know of.
We need to wake up and smell the country we live in.
“Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president.
In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney L?pez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.
Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney L?pez links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party’s increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class — white and nonwhite members alike.”
EM
one reason might be that in their strategy of winning black votes and womens votes the Democrats say things that drive some white male voters crazy.
i want you to know that i have lived among the white working class all my life and i agree that some of them are despicable people. and, i think, all of them can be moved to violence when confronted by something or someone they don’t understand. i am not in love with the despicable, or, to my shame, the stupid. i am in favor of winning most of their votes… the most of them that are perfectly decent, or would be with just a tiny bit of real leadership. i am also in favor of wooing them from their despicable attitudes by their very animal/tribal natures: give them a good cause they can understand and let them see that their leaders are not racists or women despisers, nor, and this is important, do they despise them: that is their leaders in the good cause (better jobs) do not despise the workers who may have, for now, un-evolved attitudes towards other races or women.
i think we came a long way with this in the sixties and then blew it by forcing the pace or going too far. not helped by blacks who thought MLK wasn’t moving fast enough and took to violence in language if not acts. and not helped by women who talk about men as if they were all rapists and no man ever changed a diaper or loved and took care of his children and wife.
in general i am not over impressed by studies. most of them are affected by the kimel syndrome or the rogoff-reinhart standard of intellectual honesty. i think most of the studies you reference can be explained by the political messages targeted to those groups by the different parties.
no doubt the parties target what they expect to be receptive audiences, and no doubt the parties deliver from time to time very tiny legislation that appears to match their rhetoric. but what the parties really care about is winning elections and the spoils that come with that..
the people are not so dumb that they fail to notice after decades that rhetoric of hope and change changes nothing significant for them. they are only human so they follow the first “strong man” that promises them change is the most primitive language they understand. they’ll hate themselves in the morning.
i want to disengage from this. we are not getting anywhere.
I totally agree with your last sentence.
You should restrict your posts in here to social security, you seem unable to process anything that is not directly related to that subject.
Eve without you last sentence I would have recommended the same after reading:
“one reason might be that in their strategy of winning black votes and womens votes the Democrats say things that drive some white male voters crazy.”
I have never read anything so clueless in my entire life.
EMichael
i am glad that you are able to agree with me at least a little about Social Security.
I am not glad that you felt you had to end this conversation by being rude, if not, just possibly, just a little bit, wrong.
Although I am not able to entirely agree with you about the benefits of calling everyone who voted for Trump a racist, I don’t think I am entirely clueless, and almost certainly not the most clueless you have met in your entire life.
I rather suspect your need to say such absolute “worst ever” things has a lot to do with your need to say they are “all” racists.
But here is a clue you may use. I do not know how many people voted in each Obama and Hillary election, nor how many of them were black, hispanic, or other, by definition, non racists. I asume that you do. So I wonder if you can make the numbers add up. Taking “did not vote” or “vote not counted” and “white voters” and “not white voters” can you come out with a reasonable scenario that leaves all those voting for trump “racists” and none of those voting for trump who also voted for Obama.
I don’t think you can make it add up, but, as I said, I do not know the raw numbers to start with.
and then try to explain in a short paragraph what is “most clueless” about supposing that party propaganda has an effect on how people vote.
See, this is your problem. An entire post that has nothing to do with what I said to you.
“one reason might be that in their strategy of winning black votes and womens votes the Democrats say things that drive some white male voters crazy.”
I have never read anything so clueless in my entire life.
BTW,
I do not have to add it up. If you voted for a racist whose has shown has shown his racism for more than 4 decades, that makes you a racist.
Even if there was another reason, or 100 reasons, why you voted for him, that vote makes you a racist.
we may not be as far apart as you think.
another way of saying what i have been trying to say is that it’s easy to make a person into a racist. all you have to do is keep calling him one.
this is very similar to something child psychologists have known for years: keep telling a child he is bad and soon he will decide “i am a bad person” and act as such.
What do child psychologists say to do when a child is acting badly?
i don’t remember in all detail all the various recommendations. but punishment and lecturing went out of style over fifty years ago, except in families with a history of raising bad children into bad parents.
from my own experience, what you need to do with kids is spend more time with them doing constructive or and fun things where you can provide loving, guiding response to them.
what creates right wing kids i think is where you get the combination of strict punitive parents who ALSO spend constructive loving time with the kids. kids grow up thinking the only way to combat the bad in themselves and others is with strict punishment.
i can’t remember that MLK went around calling all white people racists.
MLK lived in a totally different time.
The major difference in this area is that there was not one single person in the entire US during his battles that believed that blacks were treated the same as whites.
That is not true anymore. Most Rep voters, despite all evidence, think whites are treated less fairly than blacks. The Supreme Court of the US thinks there is no racism in the US any longer.
The Dem Party has not won the white vote in 50 years.
Let me know when you come up with an explanation for that which makes any sense at all.
makes sense to me or to you?
the R’s have taken the race card and played it to victory, and the Supremes are criminals in black robes. They do what is best for their friends… and it helps their friends if the really racist and really stupid people see that a Republican Supreme Court will stem the tide of … the black races taking over.
Now I assume you agree wtth that. You just can’t see how the Dems by playing the other side of the race card for their own political purposes feed into that. Neither party gives a damn about blacks or whites, men or women, or aborted babies. All they care about is playing you off against each other so they can stay in power. and “they” is both of them. It’s very much a card game with them. There are winners and losers, but don’t you expect a seat at the table or more than a nice tip from the winner from time to time.
False equivalencies abound there, Cob.