Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

Reality show, indeed.

Media specialty after all.

 

Every time emails are leaked, new allegations surface.

Buckle up, there is more to come.

 

I have been thinking to check on just how early I can vote. I have always done so on "the voting day" but I am thinking that if I vote early then I can tell them all what they can do with whatever their latest astounding revelations are.

 

Perhaps a little more seriously, I have long felt that under no circumstance should a person ever pay the slightest bit of attention to anything that is said in the last couple of weeks. And I imagine that this time around there will be quite a bit that is said.

[Al_U_Card]

I have long felt that under no circumstance should a person ever pay the slightest bit of attention to anything that is said in the last couple of weeks.

Good thing that this has been out there for a while... so you could say that U.S. Democracy has been sold for cash?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYRUOd_QoM

[kenberg]

I don't really mean to ignore any posts, it's just that I think the campaign has become like one of those parties that's is over and has been over for a while, but for some reason the guests don't say goodnight and go home.

 

I will say that I think it is important for Trump to be thoroughly beaten. It is clear that he will be peddling his conspiracy theories. Jeff Bezos, Paul Ryan, conservative commentators such as George Will, a former Miss Universe (whose name I don't recall and don't plan to look up), women who don't like being grabbed even by stars, and God knows who else are all in cahoots to deny him the election that is rightfully his. Maybe we could start an "I am in the global conspiracy" list. I fervently hope we do not have to go through any hanging chads, now or ever. He needs to be solidly defeated. He needs to be gone.

 

Then we need to start some serious discussion of what is actually ahead for us.

 

But first things first.

Gone and emphatically, clearly, beyond question gone. It's important.

[ggwhiz]

 

Gone and emphatically, clearly, beyond question gone. It's important.

 

The more emphatically he is gone the more likely the GOP decides they have to actually govern no matter who is in the White House if their brand has any hope of getting the keys in the next few decades.

 

I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall when they post mortem this one.

[cherdano]

What a week it has been in US politics.

 

FWIW, I don't believe that Trump is a real racist or "ethnicity-ist". I don't think he gives a BEEP.

 

I believe Trump is a media-ist and a populist. He knows that his potential voters are racist, so he will say racist things that his electorate thinks are funny or need to be said.

 

When I saw this post, I wanted to reply that I find this very plausible, but that I find his misogyny extremely genuine and authentic. A few hours later, I had read about the Billy Bush tape, and the post had become somewhat superfluous... (Not that I deserve much credit - I hadn't realised what a serial sexual predator he is.)

[Winstonm]

I don't really mean to ignore any posts, it's just that I think the campaign has become like one of those parties that's is over and has been over for a while, but for some reason the guests don't say goodnight and go home.

 

I will say that I think it is important for Trump to be thoroughly beaten. It is clear that he will be peddling his conspiracy theories. Jeff Bezos, Paul Ryan, conservative commentators such as George Will, a former Miss Universe (whose name I don't recall and don't plan to look up), women who don't like being grabbed even by stars, and God knows who else are all in cahoots to deny him the election that is rightfully his. Maybe we could start an "I am in the global conspiracy" list. I fervently hope we do not have to go through any hanging chads, now or ever. He needs to be solidly defeated. He needs to be gone.

 

Then we need to start some serious discussion of what is actually ahead for us.

 

But first things first.

Gone and emphatically, clearly, beyond question gone. It's important.

 

I was watching television the other night (my only news sources in off hours are cnn or msnbc) and I thought an extremely important point was brought up that for many, many years the right wing of the Republican party with the blessing of moderates has been building a bubble of delusion or a reality bubble that excludes everything but the right wing spin. This has made it almost impossible for those who have chosen to immerse themselves only in conservative messaging to hear an opposing point of view, no matter how valid that point of view is.

 

I think that explains why there are so many hard core Republicans who still insist that there was some kind of stand down order given in Benghazi and that Hillary Clinton's 33 thousand deleted e-mails is somehow important but there has never been mention of the 2 million deleted e-mails from the Bush administration.

 

Bursting this bubble of delusion will be difficult, but it needs to be done. I'm open to ideas as to how to do it.

[Al_U_Card]

Heads in the sand are what empowers the crooks (Clintons both, the Bushes, Cheney and the rest)

 

Taking them to task is too hard. Voting them out and then finding those that would prosecute them is the only way forward. It can happen (Watergate is an example.) but tremendous fortitude and resolve is required. We are headed for a police-state cleptocracy and only a massive movement by all has a chance.

 

I won't hold my breath on that one.

[kenberg]

Bursting this bubble of delusion will be difficult, but it needs to be done. I'm open to ideas as to how to do it.

 

The single most important thing is for those of a liberal persuasion to focus on conservatives whom they respect, and vice-versa. I still recall from the 60s that there was a guy in our group who insisted in 1964 that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Johnson and Goldwater. He was in the Socialist Worker's Party and that was the party line. Of course there is a wide range of conservative thought just as there is a wide range of liberal thought. Yes there are some crazies. But if a liberal cannot think of a conservative he respects, or a conservative cannot think of a liberal he respects, they need to think a little harder.

 

That would be a start. A pretty good start.

[Winstonm]

The single most important thing is for those of a liberal persuasion to focus on conservatives whom they respect, and vice-versa. I still recall from the 60s that there was a guy in our group who insisted in 1964 that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Johnson and Goldwater. He was in the Socialist Worker's Party and that was the party line. Of course there is a wide range of conservative thought just as there is a wide range of liberal thought. Yes there are some crazies. But if a liberal cannot think of a conservative he respects, or a conservative cannot think of a liberal he respects, they need to think a little harder.

 

That would be a start. A pretty good start.

 

With fewer and fewer moderates, how does one chose, though? Back in 1994, when my viewpoint was more conservative, I used to argue that John Kasich would be a good candidate for President. I still think Kasich can be reasoned with, but it is unclear to me how flexible he is.

[Al_U_Card]

A great quote from my favorite polemicist (Mark Steyn, Canadian wise-guy, eh?)

 

"Hillary, by contrast, is in trouble not because she's a sleazy, corrupt, cronyist, money-laundering, Saud-kissing liar. Democrats have a strong stomach and boundless tolerance for all of that and wouldn't care were it not for the fact that she's a dud and a bore. A "Hillary rally" is a contradiction in terms: the thin, vetted crowd leave more demoralized and depressed than when they went in"

 

That being said, maybe we can interest Ralph Nader in running for once when he might actually have a chance at winning...

[kenberg]

With fewer and fewer moderates, how does one chose, though? Back in 1994, when my viewpoint was more conservative, I used to argue that John Kasich would be a good candidate for President. I still think Kasich can be reasoned with, but it is unclear to me how flexible he is.

 

Here is what I am getting at. As a 13 year old supporter of Adlai Stevenson, I could tell the difference between Dwight Eisenhower and Joe McCarthy. Four years later I still supported Stevenson on his second try, but I was fine with Eisenhower. Supporting Stenson did not equate to villainizing Eisenhower. We seem to be losing this. Probably there are many reasons, but the reason that is most under our own control is how we ourselves treat those we disagree with. The country would have been in decent hands under a President Romney (father or son). But not under Trump. Had Kasich been the nominee this time around, I think he might have won. At the very least, the campaign would have had an entirely different tone. We must recognize that Kasich would be a choice, maybe one we disagree with, Trump would be, he already is, a disaster.

 

A week or so back I posted a link to a Kasich piece about the TPP. It's complicated, but he has some points and we need serious discussion.

 

A long term big issue with me is education. I don't see how we can succeed as a country unless we do something about education in the poorer (often but definitely not always minority, with "minority" covering a lot of ground) communities. A nearby county is often touted as the wealthiest majority black school district in the nation, but it recently lost federal support for Head Start because of lax supervision of the teachers. One of these teachers proudly sent home a photo of a 3 year old being required to wipe up his own urine when he had an accident, with the caustic comment that at least the kid is really good with a mop. She still has her job. The problems are serious and will not be solved with platitudes, either from the left or from the right.

 

We need people who can see clearly and who can work productively with others to solve problems. Just that much now can seem like a distant goal. But it is where we start.

 

First we Dump the Trump. This was a serious national error, and it must be broadly seen as a serious national error.

[helene_t]

Nice article about Trump supporters and the white working class. The author (who is one of the few journalists with a working class background) claims that the narrative that Trump supporters are "white trash" (i.e. working class) has little to do with reality but more to do with the fact that journalists are middle class and therefore assume that the working class must be to blame:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-bias-working-class-americans?CMP=fb_gu

[barmar]

Nice article about Trump supporters and the white working class. The author (who is one of the few journalists with a working class background) claims that the narrative that Trump supporters are "white trash" (i.e. working class) has little to do with reality but more to do with the fact that journalists are middle class and therefore assume that the working class must be to blame:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-bias-working-class-americans?CMP=fb_gu

I suspect some part of this is also because the white trash supporters make better media fodder. They hoot and holler at rallies, so they naturally end up on camera. When reporters and comedy show correspondents want to find Republicans to interview, they go to redneck bars in red states. Since these folks end up on camera most, and they're consistent with our preconceptions about the kind of people who might support a bigot/misogynist like Trump, we naturally assume that they're representative of most of his supporters.

 

And the far right probably still think that all liberals are hippies. "All in the Family" was 40+ years ago, but many people probably still think that's the norm for the two parties.

[Winstonm]

Here is what I am getting at. As a 13 year old supporter of Adlai Stevenson, I could tell the difference between Dwight Eisenhower and Joe McCarthy. Four years later I still supported Stevenson on his second try, but I was fine with Eisenhower. Supporting Stenson did not equate to villainizing Eisenhower. We seem to be losing this. Probably there are many reasons, but the reason that is most under our own control is how we ourselves treat those we disagree with. The country would have been in decent hands under a President Romney (father or son). But not under Trump. Had Kasich been the nominee this time around, I think he might have won. At the very least, the campaign would have had an entirely different tone. We must recognize that Kasich would be a choice, maybe one we disagree with, Trump would be, he already is, a disaster.

 

A week or so back I posted a link to a Kasich piece about the TPP. It's complicated, but he has some points and we need serious discussion.

 

A long term big issue with me is education. I don't see how we can succeed as a country unless we do something about education in the poorer (often but definitely not always minority, with "minority" covering a lot of ground) communities. A nearby county is often touted as the wealthiest majority black school district in the nation, but it recently lost federal support for Head Start because of lax supervision of the teachers. One of these teachers proudly sent home a photo of a 3 year old being required to wipe up his own urine when he had an accident, with the caustic comment that at least the kid is really good with a mop. She still has her job. The problems are serious and will not be solved with platitudes, either from the left or from the right.

 

We need people who can see clearly and who can work productively with others to solve problems. Just that much now can seem like a distant goal. But it is where we start.

 

First we Dump the Trump. This was a serious national error, and it must be broadly seen as a serious national error.

 

I think the rot began with the abolishment of the Fairness Doctine, which occurred when Reagan was President. This freed news organizations like Fox News to produce one-sided broadcasts withput having to provide time for conflicting views or arguments. It escalated with the increased importance of talk radio where Rush Limbaugh, et al, were able to paint word versions of issues that shut out any possible explanation other than theirs. Thus began the right wing (un)reality bubble in which Hillary Clinton is an evil witch who issued a stand down order in Benghazi and then lied about doing it to the families of the victims, whose 30 years of public service were just a cover for her real goal of personal wealth from speaking fees, and who deleted secret e-mails that would have proved all of the above.

 

This is what the Trump supporters really believe. Once you are trapped within an information reality bubble such as this it is quite difficult to extricate yourself from it. It is quite similar to being part of a cult where only the cult leader and followers are allowed to speak so reality becomes whatever they say it is.

 

It is pretty hairy stuff as, to me, it requires a mindset of the leaders of this type movement that regardless of any consequences or deamages to themselves or others, the ideology is so critically right that any means is justified if the end result is the victory of the belief system.

 

I think there is an appeal to more fundamental religious believers in the black/white, right/wrong aspect of the Right's message, and it allows them to block out any contradictory information or ideas, much as they do with rational challenges to their faith.

 

There is no easy fix but a good start would be for us all to acknowledge that news organizations have a responsibility that comes with their broadcasting rights to tell all sides of a story, not just the spin that fits their political profile. A press controlled by a single party, either Democrat or Republican, is not a free press. It is time to disentangle the news from political parties. This will not be easy. However, I think to have a free society it is a necessity.

[Winstonm]

I normally put little stock in Salon.com as I find that site too biased, but I do glance at it from time-to-time, and today a guy named Aaron Barlow had an article in which he summed up what has occurred with the right wing media and followers:

 

Lies don’t generally work over the long term. Sometimes they seem to, setting up a belief that the lie is a useful strategy. The “Southern strategy,” the Republican Party’s 50-year campaign of appealing to racial bias, provides a good example. While claiming their success based on the Southern strategy was due instead to their economic policies, conservatives created a belief within the party that the lie can be an effective and sustaining weapon of political battle.

 

The political-lie strategy needs two prongs. First is the lie itself. Second is the concurrent painting of the target as a liar. The most obvious contemporary example is Donald Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton, preempting any of her attempts to bring attention to his own much more frequent lies. (Look at the fact-checking of their debates.) Similarly, Trump uses Bill Clinton’s sexual scandals to deflect attention from his own. Not only do these take advantage of the “both sides do it” false equivalency the contemporary news media has such a hard time shedding, but they box in the opponent. The Clintons have been subject to this strategy for 30 years. In fact, much of the hatred toward Hillary today comes not from anything she has done but from the campaign of lies against her that depend on calling her the liar. No matter how often she is shown not to have lied about the Benghazi attacks, the incident is thrown up as an example of her lies almost any time a lie by Trump is exposed.

[helene_t]

Please, take Corbyn and his supporters

Strange that Corbyn is considered an extremist. I suppose the British polical landscape has almost moved as far right as the US one, to the point that the choice is between moderate right and ultra-right, and everything which in my continental perception is centre or left is considered radical.

 

My right-wing (relative to the Danish spectrum) cousin always upvotes my Corbyn reposts on Facebook. In DK I am centre-right (moderately anti-tax and anti-union), in the Netherlands I am centre (mostly pro unions but also sometimes pro deregulation), in the UK I agree with Corbyn on almost all issues although his style is sometimes a bit too much for my taste.

[kenberg]

Nice article about Trump supporters and the white working class. The author (who is one of the few journalists with a working class background) claims that the narrative that Trump supporters are "white trash" (i.e. working class) has little to do with reality but more to do with the fact that journalists are middle class and therefore assume that the working class must be to blame:

https://www.theguard...icans?CMP=fb_gu

 

I like this article a lot.

 

Last March, my 71-year-old grandmother, Betty, waited in line for three hours to caucus for Bernie Sanders. The wait to be able to cast her first-ever vote in a primary election was punishing, but nothing could have deterred her. Betty – a white woman who left school after ninth grade, had her first child at age 16 and spent much of her life in severe poverty – wanted to vote.

 

 

I started on something, then erased it, then wrote again, then erased it again. Let's just say that when the author, Sarah Smarsh, speaks of her grandmother I understand her completely.

 

Trump should never, never, have the support that he has. If Dems, and Reps, for that matter, seriously want to address this, they should read this article. Out loud. Twice. At least.

 

For starters:

 

The two-fold myth about the white working class – that they are to blame for Trump's rise, and that those among them who support him for the worst reasons exemplify the rest – takes flight on the wings of moral superiority affluent Americans often pin upon themselves.

 

I have never seen them flap so insistently as in today's election commentary, where notions of poor whiteness and poor character are routinely conflated.

 

 

 

 

No my mother would not have been a Trump supporter. She would also not accept the blame, and she did not take well to moral condescension.

[awm]

Not sure I really agree with the article that Helene posted. It's actually true that Trump's candidacy is to a great degree supported by non-college-educated whites. Here's a poll from August for example that has Trump leading 51-26 among non-college whites and losing 33-47 among college-educated whites. Of course you can find millions of non-college whites voting for Hillary (26% of millions of people is a lot) and you can find college-educated whites (or even college educated blacks or latinos) who are voting for Trump. Generalizing about large groups of people often leads to misconceptions; I can understand why someone who's from a poor white background and doesn't support Trump might be offended by such a generalization, but that doesn't contradict the fact that people from similar backgrounds are supporting him in large numbers.

 

But I think it is fair to ask why a candidate who seems so repulsive in so many ways has such a significant base of support (yes, he will probably lose, but he will still get maybe 60 million votes). And when we ask this question, it makes sense to interview the less educated white voters (where he has a substantial majority) rather than ask (to give an amusing example) the one Trump-supporting African-American teen in Illinois that the LA Times persists on polling.

[onoway]

It's an old link ( March) but probably still pertinent

[Zelandakh]

Strange that Corbyn is considered an extremist. I suppose the British polical landscape has almost moved as far right as the US one, to the point that the choice is between moderate right and ultra-right, and everything which in my continental perception is centre or left is considered radical.

 

My right-wing (relative to the Danish spectrum) cousin always upvotes my Corbyn reposts on Facebook. In DK I am centre-right (moderately anti-tax and anti-union), in the Netherlands I am centre (mostly pro unions but also sometimes pro deregulation), in the UK I agree with Corbyn on almost all issues although his style is sometimes a bit too much for my taste.

Corbyn is certainly on the left and radical side of the Labour party, believing in unilateral disarmament, a high level of tax and spend, the abolition of the monarchy and so on. Many of the official PLP policies are more moderate than his personal ones and that perhaps gives the impression that he is further towards the centre than is really the case. It is also very much the case that the important issues vary from country to country. Nuclear disarmament is a good example of this - I daresay this is less of an issue in DK or NL than in the UK! I sometimes have similar confusion in Germany, when I see the SPD advancing a policy that I consider to be right-wing for example. That does not make me a socialist any more than it makes the SPD a party of the right!

[billw55]

I think the rot began with the abolishment of the Fairness Doctine, which occurred when Reagan was President. This freed news organizations like Fox News to produce one-sided broadcasts withput having to provide time for conflicting views or arguments. It escalated with the increased importance of talk radio where Rush Limbaugh, et al, were able to paint word versions of issues that shut out any possible explanation other than theirs. Thus began the right wing (un)reality bubble ...

I think you might be making an error here. You don't believe in supply side economics. So why do you seem to believe in supply side media ideology? Rush Limbaugh and Fox News thrived because there was a large unmet demand for what they offered. The support for Trump proved this to me again. This isn't a media creation. There are just a lot of people who actually want this.

[MrAce]

[Winstonm]

I think you might be making an error here. You don't believe in supply side economics. So why do you seem to believe in supply side media ideology? Rush Limbaugh and Fox News thrived because there was a large unmet demand for what they offered. The support for Trump proved this to me again. This isn't a media creation. There are just a lot of people who actually want this.

 

I think you may be partially right. I don't think there was a great demand for false information, though.

[billw55]

I think you may be partially right. I don't think there was a great demand for false information, though.

Not specifically I suppose. In the sense that no one was saying they expressly wanted untrue information. The demand was for information (?) that confirmed their views, and truth was irrelevant.

 

 

[Cyberyeti]

Strange that Corbyn is considered an extremist. I suppose the British polical landscape has almost moved as far right as the US one, to the point that the choice is between moderate right and ultra-right, and everything which in my continental perception is centre or left is considered radical.

 

My right-wing (relative to the Danish spectrum) cousin always upvotes my Corbyn reposts on Facebook. In DK I am centre-right (moderately anti-tax and anti-union), in the Netherlands I am centre (mostly pro unions but also sometimes pro deregulation), in the UK I agree with Corbyn on almost all issues although his style is sometimes a bit too much for my taste.

 

Corbyn is not as left wing as his supporters. A number of communists and SWP/WRP types have seen a chance of swinging labour even further to the left, joined the party to vote for him and they are a horrendous bunch. The ONLY racism I've ever experienced is (I'm an atheist) being called an effing Y by such people. I had my fill of them in student politics in the 80s, stifling any opinions that differed with theirs, tearing down posters, spurious use of "no platform", abuse of procedures etc while claiming to be democratic in the face of the extreme right (anybody centre left or further right).

 

And no we're not anywhere close to as far right as the US.