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Trump is not a joke

Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 5:00 pm
by DB Roy
While researching for an article I am writing on nativist politics and xenophobia, I was struck by how nativist groups in the past have played the political game exactly the way Trump plays it now. It's both pathetic and remarkable that the fears that rich whites used in order to manipulate middleclass and poor whites are still being used and still work. Each succeeding generation always believes its circumstances are unique to any other and this is due, in part, because that is what they are told by their handlers. "This great nation has never faced the dangers that we face today and how we choose to react will be the legacy we leave to posterity!" We've never had an out-and-out fascist dictatorship in this country but I feel that we recklessly hurtle towards one without seeing, without believing. We hurtle towards it because we believe we are not hurtling towards one. And, quite quietly one great and glorious day, we will wake up and there it will be.

The ugliness that exists within white America--and there is plenty of it--is tapped into by Trump very effectively. To play on white American fears, a scapegoat that is leading the country to ruin is necessary to name. He's just a jerk but he is no longer a joke. He won't go anywhere but that isn't the problem. He WILL leave a legacy behind that others after him will stand on as their soapbox and it will be effective as it has always been effective.

The following article put into words the very thing I was noticing during my research. We ignore it at our peril. Consider yourselves warned:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... unner.html

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2015 10:56 pm
by DB Roy
Trump continues fanning the flames of racist and xenophobic hatred by saying he would implement a program to deport all 11.3 million illegal immigrants which he compared to the Eisenhower Administration's disastrous 1954 program that deported 1 million illegals called "Operation Wetback," the brain-child of the attorney-general Herbert Brownell, Jr. What amounted to a secret police force operating above and outside the law abducted these immigrants indiscriminately so that families were ripped apart and people who were actually legal citizens were rounded up, herded like slaughterhouse cattle, and released deep in the deserts of Mexico where many, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, died of dehydration or exposure. Brownell told his secret police to shoot any "wetbacks" who tried to re-enter the country. Some border stations shaved the heads of its abductees so that they could be more easily spotted if they tried to get back in.

Trump has the gall to dredge this incident back up and saying he is going to repeat it. He insists that it will be done humanely but how he intends to oversee that is left unsaid. How does one humanely abduct people off the street, pack them like sardines into holding facilities and release them in hostile, remote areas too far away for them to attempt to return? He says he will assemble his own secret police for this job and they will get rid of all 11 million illegal immigrants. The cost is estimated to be between $400 million and $600 million although Trump himself has not mentioned the cost.

So how cockamamie is the scheme? None of the other republican candidates will touch it except to reject it. Bill O'Reilly attacked Trump's idea. How crazy are you when Bill O'Reilly is put off by your insane ravings? But as crazy as it is, Trump has dragged it up because he knows his constituency loves it. He'll never pull it off but now that the idea has been floated, it will gain more and more traction until the right candidate comes along and knows exactly how to put it into action.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino./inv ... st-n462331

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... thing-but/

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 1:08 am
by youkrst
DB Roy wrote:How crazy are you when Bill O'Reilly is put off by your insane ravings?
:lol:

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 2:00 pm
by LanDroid
Two words/one name regarding the deportation of 11 million+ illegal aliens: Elian Gonzalez. Look at what it took to return one boy to his father in Cuba. This ain't gonna happen.

Image

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:03 pm
by geo
I think it's important to understand why Trump is appealing to such a large demographic. But as DB Roy says, in the end he's even too crazy for the far right. FoxNews has already turned against him. I predict he will quickly fade to the background of this race.

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:07 pm
by Robert Tulip
DB Roy wrote: We've never had an out-and-out fascist dictatorship in this country but I feel that we recklessly hurtle towards one without seeing, without believing. We hurtle towards it because we believe we are not hurtling towards one. And, quite quietly one great and glorious day, we will wake up and there it will be.
This was the comment that caught my eye. If you compare the USA to Germany between the World Wars, the level of crisis, despair, suffering, humiliation, threat and sudden poverty and unemployment that enabled the rise of Hitler is simply not present today, whether in the USA or elsewhere. However, similar existential conditions could emerge in coming decades. I think it is hard to imagine the affront to German pride caused by the combination of the loss of the first war, the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, the threat perceived in the rise of communism and the broad challenge to traditional identity posed by modern liberal values in the Weimar Republic.

I don’t consider Trump a joke, although his racist demagoguery is ridiculous. He represents a basic popular intuition that success requires toughness, which means competitive confrontation. America is nowhere near ready for this mentality as a basis of power in such raw form, but like with George Wallace in the 1960s and 70s, Trump presents a strand of opinion among the Republican base whom the eventual candidate will have to appease, just as the linked Slate article helpfully explains how Nixon used an ultrasonic dog whistle to call up the racist right vote while ensuring he did not use overt racist language.

My theory of history, for what it is worth, is based on comparing the USA to ancient Rome, and seeing the causal drivers in politics as prompting a gradual shift from republic to empire. For Rome this was a very slow process. If we imagine the Punic Wars of the Roman Republic against Carthage as like the twentieth century, with Fabius Maximus the Roman FD Roosevelt and Hannibal the equivalent of Hitler, then the emergence of fascist dictatorship with the military consulships of Marius in 107 BC would still be about 25 years in the future in 2040, and a full-blown imperial tyranny would be more than a century away after a long period of civil war.

Rome's 'greatest generation' who won the war against Hannibal gave rise to a steady political degeneration in the following decades, as traditional republican values of liberty and duty were gradually supplanted by imperial centralisation of power and the emergence of a corrupted urbanity. I like to project the possibility of America following a similar path against the risk of economic collapse driven by climate change. I would say that without a paradigm change in our world economic structure the US is on a slide to military dictatorship several decades away, but I think this risk can be identified and averted through an economic and social paradigm shift.

The challenge is to promote dialogue so that the political polarisation between social justice warriors and redneck fascists can be bridged. I think this is possible, and consider that a reformed model of Christian religion will be a decisive factor, bringing together scientific reason with an understanding of human motivations, values and incentives.

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 9:43 am
by DWill
Yes, Trump is going to flame out. He's beginning to foam at the mouth, as in yesterday's rabid speech in which he called Carson a psycho. The Rubio/Cruz ticket that some pundits believe will inherit the nomination could give Clinton stiff competition.

Trump hasn't even been that wonderful as a businessman. He inherited 200 million from his dad and might have more wealth today if had socked the money away in a 401K.

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 11:06 am
by DB Roy
But that's not really the issue. He will not get the nomination. We knew thatfrom the very git-go. But he is showing some future demagogue how to appeal this party's ugly, fearful, hateful base. Trump is building the soapbox that this demagogue will stand on. This person only needs to have the right charisma, looks, manners and handlers. He will package the same hatred in a pretty box with a bow on it and present it to the American people and I'm afraid that they might just accept it. They won't accept it from Trump not so much because they disagree with him but because he's such a stupid, clownish buffoon that anyone with a reasonably clear head would feel embarrassed to vote for him.

I'd like to believe that the old hatreds are dead but they are clearly not. I was arguing just a couple of days ago with a shitload of people on Facebook who are convinced that illegal immigrants will drive "real Americans" (and I'm going to assume that meant "white Americans") extinct. Yes, extinct. Then one guy says that's just what happened to the Indians and a bunch of people agree with him. Another said, that I was no different than the "many Jews" who voted Hitler into power. When I asked him to provide numbers he instead called me stupid.

So, I don't believe these old hatreds are dead. They lie either dormant or quite alive but hidden in way too many Americans (and you may read that as "white Americans" if you wish) and it wouldn't take much to get those hatreds unleashed if the right politician comes along who knows just how to use them to get himself into the White House.

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 11:35 am
by DB Roy
LanDroid wrote:Two words/one name regarding the deportation of 11 million+ illegal aliens: Elian Gonzalez. Look at what it took to return one boy to his father in Cuba. This ain't gonna happen.

Image
With the Gonzalez boy, they were looking for one person. We're talking a special police force that will simply surround and sweep large numbers of Hispanics and Latinos off the streets whether they are citizens or not. Just what we did in Iraq.

But how far will it go before they realize it won't work? The Hispanic population of New Mexico outnumbers English-speakers. How many cities will be turned into battle zones? Do we want to be stuck in the middle of an unwinnable civil war?

Some complainers even say to go to New Mexico if you think it can't happen everywhere and that scares me because at that point you're not talking simply illegal immigrants, you're talking anyone who speaks Spanish. The illegal population is spread out over the US. Most of the Hispanics in New Mexico are perfectly legal. And to complain about them simply being there reveals the racism. So what if there are more Hispanics in New Mexico? So what? I know a lot of Hispanic and Latino people. My best buddy in high school was Mexican and I dated a Mexican girl in college. I used to hang out with her family and friends--all Mexican. I never had any problems with anyone. So why should I be upset simply because there are more Mexican-Americans or Cuban-Americans in a given area? When I spent a lot of time in Charleston, SC, I realized most of North Charleston is Mexican. Everywhere I went I saw only Mexicans. Okay, so what? I was treated no differently than anywhere else I've ever been. So why should just the presence of brown-skinned Spanish-speakers bother me? The only reason it would is because I HATE brown-skinned Spanish-speakers. That's all--I HATE them. And THAT is what lies at the root of the whole illegal immigrant hysteria. It can't be because they are crowding us out--read the population count. Illegals were numbered at 12 million in 2003 with 700,000 coming every year and staying. Yet in 2007, the official count was 12 million when it should have been around 16 million. In 2011, the official count was 11.3 million. It's decreasing so what is all this damned hysteria? It isn't just xenophobia, once again, it's out-and-out racist hatred.

Re: Trump is not a joke

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:41 pm
by DB Roy
Robert Tulip wrote: If you compare the USA to Germany between the World Wars, the level of crisis, despair, suffering, humiliation, threat and sudden poverty and unemployment that enabled the rise of Hitler is simply not present today, whether in the USA or elsewhere. However, similar existential conditions could emerge in coming decades. I think it is hard to imagine the affront to German pride caused by the combination of the loss of the first war, the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, the threat perceived in the rise of communism and the broad challenge to traditional identity posed by modern liberal values in the Weimar Republic.
It's also wise to keep in mind that these conditions don't really have to exist if you can convince enough people that they do exist. I constantly hear from the pathological Obama-haters about how he has destroyed the country. HUH? How he is a million times worse than George W. Bush. WHA??? What they base this on is unknown to me but they clearly believe it and no amount of reasoning will change it one iota.
My theory of history, for what it is worth, is based on comparing the USA to ancient Rome, and seeing the causal drivers in politics as prompting a gradual shift from republic to empire. For Rome this was a very slow process. If we imagine the Punic Wars of the Roman Republic against Carthage as like the twentieth century, with Fabius Maximus the Roman FD Roosevelt and Hannibal the equivalent of Hitler, then the emergence of fascist dictatorship with the military consulships of Marius in 107 BC would still be about 25 years in the future in 2040, and a full-blown imperial tyranny would be more than a century away after a long period of civil war.
It could come sooner because the rate of change today is so much more accelerated. Although your scenario doesn't exactly inspire exhalations of relief.
Rome's 'greatest generation' who won the war against Hannibal gave rise to a steady political degeneration in the following decades, as traditional republican values of liberty and duty were gradually supplanted by imperial centralisation of power and the emergence of a corrupted urbanity. I like to project the possibility of America following a similar path against the risk of economic collapse driven by climate change. I would say that without a paradigm change in our world economic structure the US is on a slide to military dictatorship several decades away, but I think this risk can be identified and averted through an economic and social paradigm shift.
My worry is that a future demagogue understands this all too well. In 1980, Bertram Gross's book Friendly Fascism hit the shelves. Basically, he wrote of how fascistic principles are couched in rhetoric as "freedom," "human rights," "democracy." Fascism delivered with a smile. It means the opposite of what it says but its strongest believers don't know this. They take it at face value. We see it at work when Dylann Roof killed those black people in a racist attack that the right wing tries to minimize as an attack on "religious liberty." Almost assuredly, those who took this tack believed in it wholeheartedly and that's what's so scary. The worst encroachments on our freedoms will come with rhetoric that it's really freedom and the consolidation of national will.
The challenge is to promote dialogue so that the political polarisation between social justice warriors and redneck fascists can be bridged. I think this is possible, and consider that a reformed model of Christian religion will be a decisive factor, bringing together scientific reason with an understanding of human motivations, values and incentives.
I agree which is why I elsewhere in this forum offered a layout of an alternate Christianity.