Friday 18 November 2016

Political Fault Lines

Vox Populi, Vox Stupidi: To be a working-class Trump supporter: “You had to say it’s all right that this guy lies constantly. It’s all right that he encourages violence. It’s all right that despite having more potential financial conflicts of interest than any other presidential candidate ever, he’s the only candidate in recent history who refuses to reveal his tax returns. It’s all right that he has run a series of cons, stealing the life savings from people who put their faith in him in just the way you’re putting your faith in him now.” Paul Waldman, American Prospect
 
RIGHT NOW, the English-speaking Left reminds me of those Shi’ite devotees who ritually flog themselves until their backs bleed. “It’s all our fault!”, they cry into their craft beer. “Trump is all our fault!” Yes, that’s right, Trump is all their fault. Not the stinking, roiling mass of racists, sexists, nativists and xenophobes who, with terrifying  speed, are crawling out of the rank American darkness and into the light. They are not the problem. The problem is the Left – who, apparently, should never have driven them there in the first place.
 
Oh really? So, when the bodies of the three murdered civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were finally disinterred from the earth dam in which the Mississippi Klan had buried them, the Left should have shrugged and said: “Well, you know, good ole boys will be good ole boys!” And when feminist researchers confronted the world with the appalling statistics of domestic violence and rape (not only those relating to the incidence of these crimes, but also those exposing the shocking unwillingness of the authorities to do anything to address them) how should the Left have responded? By warning their “sisters” against “dividing the working class”?
 
Being working-class doesn’t give you the right to pull a white hood over your head and murder three young men for the crime of registering African-Americans to vote. Being working-class doesn’t allow you to turn your partner into a terrified combination of punch-bag and sex-slave. Wearing a blue collar around your neck and dropping out of high school doesn’t give you special permission to crucify a harmless gay college student on a Wyoming fence.
 
Nowhere – not even in the United States – does membership of the Proletariat entitle men and women to inhabit a world in which racism, sexism and homophobia are regarded as harmless sins to be winked at and condoned. And yet, this is precisely the sort of free-pass culture that the Left’s energetic self-flagellation over Trump’s victory appears to both imply and condone.
 
Why can’t these bloody-backed leftists see what the American newspaper columnist, Paul Waldman, writing in The American Prospect, sees so clearly: that the working-class voters of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – the American Rust-Belt – were never, ever, the Left’s to win over, or win back.
 
As he acidly observes; to be a working-class Trump supporter: “You had to say it’s all right that this guy lies constantly. It’s all right that he encourages violence. It’s all right that despite having more potential financial conflicts of interest than any other presidential candidate ever, he’s the only candidate in recent history who refuses to reveal his tax returns. It’s all right that he has run a series of cons, stealing the life savings from people who put their faith in him in just the way you’re putting your faith in him now.”
 
What possible reason could any working-class person have for overlooking such failings other than an all-consuming desire to elect a fellow racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, Muslim-hater President of the United States of America?
 
To be poor in America is to be despised. But to be poor and white in America is to feel a special shame. To be poor and white in America is to experience the pain of failure in a way that only the social proximity of failures even more painful and unforgiveable than your own can assuage. You may be poor and white, but you are not poor and black; poor and Hispanic; poor and gay. And, if you’re a poor man, then, at least, you’re not any kind of woman.
 
To see these “others”, these “inferiors”, raised up: to have a black man in the White House; to see a liberal feminist getting ready to replace him; this was simply intolerable. And, to prevent it from happening, poor white Americans were willing to support a candidate with all manner of failings.
 
Waldman calls these folk the “unpersuadables” – but in that description I believe he is mistaken. The shame of poverty and failure is not only assaugeable by the existence of human-beings worse off than yourself: people with life experiences even more humiliating than your own. Shame and failure can also be made bearable by the realistic and believable prospect of escaping them.
 
That is what the Left failed to offer working-class America.
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 18 November 2016.

46 comments:

pat said...

so after almost 5 decades of hard work and education there are 61.5 million irredeemable racist misogynists over voting age in the US......seems a rather high proportion to me, perhaps there have been other motivations as well.

JanM said...

So the left do, in fact, have cause for self-flagellation. Beware the person who thinks he has nothing left to lose!

Andrew Nichols said...

As he acidly observes; to be a working-class Trump supporter: “You had to say it’s all right that this guy lies constantly. It’s all right that he encourages violence. It’s all right that despite having more potential financial conflicts of interest than any other presidential candidate ever, he’s the only candidate in recent history who refuses to reveal his tax returns. It’s all right that he has run a series of cons, stealing the life savings from people who put their faith in him in just the way you’re putting your faith in him now.”

Your problem is that most of this could just as easily have described Clinton and her corrupt "Clinton Foundation".

Guerilla Surgeon said...

'Your problem is that most of this could just as easily have described Clinton and her corrupt "Clinton Foundation".'

No that's not quite true. Clinton is less corrupt than Trump, who thinks the universe owes him wealth. And apart from his lies and his financial conflicts, there are also the issues of where he puts his tiny hands or at least where he boasts he puts his tiny hands, his stiffing of contractors, his racism, his employment of illegal migrants (part of his general hypocrisy), his university – which has been characterised as outright fraud. And he only escaped prosecution in Texas because he made a huge contribution to a Republican politician there. I mean I could go on, but it's a waste of time because Trump supporters refuse to engage with any of these actual facts. Their only response – and I must confess after posting a list of his wrongdoing is about 30 times I only had one – is to give me a list of Hillary's failings. All of which I know.

Trump got in on the votes of the white working class to whom he promised jobs. Well, that was pretty much a lie, even though he may well have partly believed it himself. But how can you believe someone is going to give the white working-class jobs when he employs illegal aliens?

Trump got in on the back of racism, because white people are losing ground, and think that minorities are somehow getting stuff they can't have access to. The American establishment has always relied on white people's fear of Blacks and other minorities. The fear of being overtaken by someone you feel you are superior to.
Trump got in on the back of misogyny, because the religious right don't think that women have the right to be in charge of anything much apart from the kitchen.

What Trump didn't get in on was the Republican establishment, but even so that establishment does a better job of keeping in touch with rural white America than the Democrats do. Trump got in on the fact that people are sick of establishments and professionalised politicians. Something our Labour Party should take serious note of. Because they are either losing or have lost touch with many of the people they are supposed to represent also. Just remember, when America sneezes we tend to catch a cold.

Patricia said...

85% of the American land mass voted for Trump. Perhaps it is a case of you don't have to like the (wo)man to like their policies. Unfortunately for the last 30 years the (wo)man has been emphasised not their policies.

Ripper said...

Reminds me of the joke I heard when in America.

Only the poor and English tourists walk in America; everyone else has a car.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rationaldoubt/2016/11/view-from-trumplandia-from-a-bernie-ite/?ref_widget=gr_trending&ref_blog=grails&ref_post=atheist

Another interesting take on this. From someone who lives it.

Mark Hubbard said...

Chris your simple minded demonisation of Trump supporters here is why Trump won (and no, I would never have voted Trump; if he got his way he'd bring the economic collapse of US forward by decades, and he's far from a Libertarian).

This is sheer kneejerk arrogance of Lefft: ' Not the stinking, roiling mass of racists, sexists, nativists and xenophobes who, with terrifying speed, are crawling out of the rank American darkness and into the light.'

Okay, explain how the educated women's vote went to Trump, please? And why didn't Hillary get the Hispanic and Black vote she was anticipating? (Without being arrogant and patronising - which is also why Trump won).

jh said...

I was at a BBQ, as a waiting around until it finished worker not as a guest. The big joke was: Trump. I got talking to a woman I forgot how the conversation evolved but I said "well at least he can say those things" (about Mexicans). At which she snorted off and Trump won. What I meant was Trump (unlike the others) clearly signals who his boys (and girls) are: "this is *your* country - and people who come here must have a good excuse. Better than "diversity".

Nick J said...

Thanks Andrew. I looked at some stats in this weeks Archdruidreport.....white women didnt vote for Hillary en masse. Neither did white working class vote for Trump en masse.

Im beginning to think Chris needs to refine this Leftist self flagellation down a bit and see if it applies most to the academic Left and intellegentsia? I suspect it does because they are forever telling the rest of us that the world as we see it in empirical terms just isnt so. No the jobs we lost to migrants of another culture did not happen and to say so is racist....yeah really?

Maybe this belligerent self flaggelation is warranted. Why the hell should the Left expect of right the votes of anybody to whom their policies are not relevant? Seems to me the triumph of Trump was more down to the workers not voting for Hillary or Trump. Seems the middle got split going by Greers stats.

David Stone said...

Hi Chris

Isn't it that the 'deplorables ' being irredeemable , the left is culpable rather for just staying at home?

I think you have to either blame l voter indifference or else the lack of appeal provided by the lefts political machine. I don't think it was a lack of funding.

Cheers David J S

Victor said...

Chris

Excellent post


JanM

Yes, you're right. But Chris is also right. Being just a couple of steps from the bottom is no excuse for mental, verbal or physical brutalism. Nor is there much to gain from taking this path.

pat

Of course there were other motives. Most of Trump's voters would have voted Republican whoever was on the ticket, provided he didn't say he approved of abortions.

And, for the better off amongst them, what's not to like about lower income and inheritance taxes?

And, yes, many of the working class swing voters had genuine and fairly all-encompassing grievances related to America's long, unhappy age of neo-liberal hegemony.

But it's not unknown for battered, battling, anxious, pissed-upon, otherwise decent people to put their faith in racist demagogues, who promise them the earth and deliver ignominy and disaster.

And when they do so, they cannot wholly avoid responsibility for their actions.

Over the last week and a bit, the battered, battling, anxious, pissed-upon, otherwise decent people in the following celebrated scene from a Hollywood musical have been much in my mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co


Andrew Nichols

Just what is that you know about the Clintons' finances that nearly forty years of official probes and investigations have not brought to the surface?

And, no, I'm not denying that they're partially responsible for the mess their country and some other parts of the world are in.

Victor said...

Patricia

I understand from your previous posts that you don't much like America. So it's possible that you've never flown across it.

Had you done so, you might have noticed that a very large part of it is empty. And much of the remainder is quite sparsely populated.

So the percentage of land mass that voted for Duce Trump is not really relevant.

Victor said...

David Stone

To my surprise, I find myself partly in agreement with you.

The Democrats fielded a poor candidate, with a lot of baggage, some of it deserved and some of it largely based on myth. And she'd been around for a long, long time, which was a huge disadvantage with an electorate anxious for change of some sort.

She campaigned badly, going AWOL for a number of weeks after the convention and choosing a running mate who, despite his apparently excellent Spanish language skills, didn't belong to either of the two large minority communities on whom her success seemed to depend.

It's been suggested that some Hispanic Americans felt they were being patronised by this otherwise not particularly distinguished choice. And I'm sure that many young Americans would have felt patronised when the candidate brought the likes of Katy Perry along with her.

And it was all part of the old politics of glitz and unreality when what people were looking for was "authenticity" (i.e. the ability to APPEAR authentic).

Above all, the candidate took the ailing, post-industrial heartland for granted and failed to make much of an appearance there.

Despite all this, the candidate gained a respectable majority of the popular vote. And she lost most of the "swing states" by really quite small margins.

My feeling is that this was the Democrats' election to lose and they actually worked quite hard (if unintentionally) at losing it.

So, although I would agree that the US has deep-seated problems and psychoses stemming from the doleful neo-liberal inheritance, it's also true that the election result was the product of tactical mistakes and other epiphenomena.

How it will all look in four year's time, is another matter.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Here is what should be bluntly said to the American voter who is whining about Trump.

"If you voted for Trump, it's your fault. If you didn't vote, it's your fault. If you – out of an excess of purity you voted for either the greens or the libertarians (both of whose leaders seem to be idiots to be honest) it's your fault. Stop whining, suck it up, start working to make sure that Trump is a one term president.

Sharp Tack said...

If you listen to Yale University alumni they'll tell you that 'their' candidate lost the election much in the same way University of Otago alumni talked about 'their' candidate when Cunliffe was trounced.

#differentperspective

greywarbler said...

Are Trumps people total conformists? What is their unifying style?

This book sounds as if it has studied what I am questioning.
The Culture of Conformism: Understanding Social Consent
Author(s): Patrick Colm Hogan
Published: 2001
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-culture-of-conformism/?viewby=title
In this wide-ranging and informative work, Patrick Colm Hogan draws on cognitive science, psychoanalysis, and social psychology to explore the cultural and psychological components of social consent. Focusing in particular on Americans’ acquiescence to a system that underpays and underrepresents the vast majority of the population, Hogan moves beyond typical studies of this phenomenon by stressing more than its political and economic dimensions.

With new insights into particularly insideous forms of consent such as those manifest in racism, sexism, and homophobia, The Culture of Conformism considers the role of emotion as it works in conjunction with belief and with the formation of group identity.
Arguing that coercion is far more pervasive in democratic societies than is commonly recognized, Hogan discusses the subtle ways in which economic and social pressures operate to complement the more obviously violent forces of the police and military.

Addressing issues of narcissism, self-esteem, and empathy, he also explains the concept of “rational” conformity—that is, the degree to which our social consent is based on self-interest—and explores the cognitive factors that produce and sustain social ideology.


Conformism defines the narrow limits of what can be thought and done, and fixes behaviour and perceptions so they cannot be questioned. But Slavoj Zezik does not accept conformism. Here is a clip on the value of dirty jokes in bonding between men. Warning. Anyone may be offended when listening to this. But he is so enthusiastic in his ideas and in explaining them it is worth it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0qiAita4s

polly said...

David Stone,
Yes.

jh said...


What possible reason could any working-class person have for overlooking such failings other than an all-consuming desire to elect a fellow racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, Muslim-hater President of the United States of America?
........
As I said:
In one of the few times you might have heard this point expressed on television airwaves, Marlow said that the No. 1 issue for Breitbart News’ 20 million readers, “has consistently been — since last year — immigration. They are looking for someone who is going to seal the border and prioritize border security as No.1
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/08/electionnightliveresultstrumpclinton/

And if that's true all those other theories that make the left seem more relevant are crap.

Anonymous said...

Chris, you are still living in the same old bubble.

Trump got less votes than Romney and about the same as McCain. He got more of the female vote than Romney, more of the black vote than Romney and more of the Hispanic vote than Romney.

Hillary got less of the female vote than Obama, less of the "African-American" vote and less of the Hispanic vote.

Overall Hillary got something like 8 million votes less than Obama did in 2008 and about 5 million less than Obama did in 2012.

So of normal democratic voters, who was it that didn't vote for Clinton this time. Primarily it was African-Americans and to a slightly lesser extent Hispanics. This is almost like reverse racism and true sexism where African-Americans and Hispanics, both men and women, could not stomach voting for an unliked, untrustworthy, wealthy, white-woman. It looks like they wanted a candidete of change but the centre-left did not offer one. Clinton had "bought-by-the establishment" written all over her. That was the main thrust of her campagain after all. In the end this demographic couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump either. So the real racism story of this election is not about Trump at all. In America it is clear, that when you break down the numbers and look at the facts, there is a racism issue. It has little to do with working class whites many of whom justifyable held their noses and voted for Trump as the only realistic vehicle of change. It has everything to do with whatever reason caused enormous numbers of African Americans and Hispanics to quite deliberately avoid voting at all. That is what the democratic party needs to address.

In the end almost everyone wanted a change of direction. The way this was expressed in the vote simply differed along ethnic/skin-colour lines. The "Trump team" understood this. The "Clinton team" did not understand it nearly so well. In the end the trends in voting were almost as inevitable as the tides. The failure of the Obama/Clinton democrats to advance the cause of ordinary working and middle class Americans (whites plus blacks plus hispanics) was their undoing. If Democrats and the left=leaning MSM continue to blame and demonise Trump and other centrist to centre-right Republicans, for what are actually democrat failings, then they face 8 or more years in the wilderness, rather than a mere 4 years.

Anonymous said...

Chris, I recommend you have a look at Scott Adams blog. I chanced upon it some time in late September and followed it since then. An alternative view. And if you then review Michael Moore's blog from around the middle of the year where he predicted that 4 states that had voted for the democrats since the 1980s were in danger of being taken by Trump, you might get a more nuanced view.

Today Adams has posted a link to an article by someone who has no love for Trump. Yet that person takes issue with the lefts admonition that Trump is a racist. See the link at http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

If you try to look on the bright side:
a) No TPPA
b) Clinton was more likely to be a war monger than Trump. Libya was a disaster and she was involved in that fiasco.
c) Trump has moved to put relations with Russia on a less adversarial basis. Where as under Clinton there was a chance of America and Russia facing off in Syria.

Anonymous said...

The working class no longer believe what's in the media because it's so often false, or contradicts what the see with their own eyes. Therefore the bias towards Hillary on most media outlets would have been a red flag for many blue collars.

Also, if Labour gets the missing million out to vote, are they so sure they will vote for Labour?

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Chris, I recommend you have a look at Scott Adams blog."
Scott Adams has gone beyond eccentric to bonkers.

"So of normal democratic voters, who was it that didn't vote for Clinton this time. Primarily it was African-Americans and to a slightly lesser extent Hispanics. This is almost like reverse racism and true sexism where African-Americans and Hispanics, both men and women, could not stomach voting for an unliked, untrustworthy, wealthy, white-woman."

Er... You seem to have forgotten about voter suppression. Even though they might not have liked Hillary, it certainly had quite a large effect.

"In one of the few times you might have heard this point expressed on television airwaves, Marlow said that the No. 1 issue for Breitbart News’ 20 million readers, “has consistently been — since last year — immigration. They are looking for someone who is going to seal the border and prioritize border security as No.1"

What amazes me, is that all these people including people like you you JHR are willing to kick to the curb minorities of various colours, some of whom have been in the USA longer than many white groups, women, and LGBT people. Perhaps not quite so surprising and Americans where many of them are from the religious right, who believe that nonwhite people are inferior, and that women should be in the kitchen.
This in the expectation of Trump closing the border and deporting millions of illegal migrants. Neither of which is he able to do. Not without spending trillions of dollars, and even then probably not very effective. And of course they expect him to get their jobs back – also not going to happen. So in a year or so is time I'll be asking how that's going for ya. And of course they/you will blame everyone but Trump.

Victor said...

anonymous at 00.54

The widespread belief that Trump is some sort of "peace candidate" is almost certainly delusory.

To the extent that he has any fixed ideas on foreign and military policy, Trump seems to want powerful armed forces and high on-shore armament levels rather than commitments to allies who, in his view, aren't pulling their weight financially.

Linked to this is his belief in "America First", rather than nation-building and the exporting of American political norms.

Last time a new administration came in with ideas of this sort was as recently as January 2001, with Donald Rumsfeld(remember him?)dusting down plans that he'd originally worked on as a minor functionary in the Nixon administration for the long distance projection of force, as and when required, from the American homeland.

But by September of that same year, pulling back to the homeland was all over. We know what happened next.

Trump is a lot like George W Bush in being ignorant, arrogant, given to playing the tough guy and totally unqualified to have his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Of course, he's more gangster in style than cowboy. And he's also got a quicker temper and a thinner skin. He and Putin may be making nice noises about each other at the moment. But I fear for what might happen once, as seems likely, Trump works out that he's being played for a sucker.

Meanwhile, what of Trumps policies for the Middle East? He's against Washington's nuclear deal with Iran and, at one point, suggested that it would be OK if Saudi Arabia gained nuclear weapons. And he's signalled that he wants to keep the Israeli/Palestinian peace process on the back-burner.

More generally he's intimated that he thinks nuclear weapons are for using and that proliferation is sort of OK. And his short list for Secretary of State seems to include such neo-con blowhards as Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton.

Now I know that Hillary is something of a 'Hawk' and (unlike Trump) firmly part of the American Exceptionalist tradition, which I rather tend to abhor.

As President, she would undoubtedly have been more confrontationalist than Obama, which may or may not have been desirable, depending on the exact state of play at the time.

But, her many misjudgments notwithstanding, she's a well-informed professional, who seems to follow her head rather than her heart or her spleen. To my mind, it's absurd to think she'd have been more of a danger to peace than is Trump.

A further thought is that Trump's success is likely to act as a beacon to other illiberal nationalists overseas, including in countries of significance, such as France and Germany, where elections will take place next year.

And so the world is suddenly at a very dark crossroads.

Andrew Nichols said...

Just what is that you know about the Clintons' finances that nearly forty years of official probes and investigations have not brought to the surface?

You need to loo at more recent info than that old stuff. The emails showed how the CF was a cash flow machine for the Clinton Family channelling large amts of loot from some seriously unpleasant regimes like the ISIS supporting Saudis who were expecting something serious in return from a Clinton POTUSate. I dont think she's any more corrupt than Trump. I just felt that much of what was sprayed at Trump was easily able to be labelled at Clinton. FWIW as a citizen of one of the Unexceptional nations of the earth, I could have coped with Clinton had she not declared her fervent wish to start WW3 with Russia in Syria - and crucially Trump very riskily said he was not interested in maintaining this stupid orchestrated Moscow bashing. This is the sole reason the Republican Establishment hates him. They dont give a ratsarse over his latent fascism which isnt that uncommon in the Repubs but dissing the geopolitical project just isnt on. I sure hope he carries it through. If so he will have done a majorly good thing.

Bushbaptist said...

Trumpy is a follower of the Wolfowitz Doctrine (US World Dominance). He just wants to soften it (if that is possible!) somewhat. He's apparently less interested in "Regime Change" than Clinton.

http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/wolfowitz-doctrine-us-plan-global-supremacy/

Brzezinski had a similar belief, his daughter Mika is on MSNBC 'Morning Joe' with Joe Scarborough. He was one of the 'Advisors' of Obama. Clinton is a avid follower of the doctrine.

greywarbler said...

This speaker on radionz this morning is worth listening to even if it just confirms what you already suspected or know.

Horace 'Chip' Mann - Reflections of a Republican
politics
about 1 hour ago
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201824573

Long-time Republican campaign strategist, Horace 'Chip' Mann talks to Wallace about why the recent US presidential campaign was unlike anything he's ever seen before - and gives his perspective on… Audio

Patricia said...

Victor, I have "flown over" America many many times and to say that because it is not densely populated it doesn't count is, in my view, a very ignorant statement which is why the Democrats lost.

Victor said...

Andrew Nicholls

I've looked at some of the recent stuff. Much of it seems to be conjecture and innuendo, albeit based on some solid facts.

It certainly shows the Clinton Foundation receiving large sums of money from a variety of governments, including, fairly obviously, the cash-heavy monarchies of the Gulf, for whom a few million is small change and gift-giving a fairly standard practice.

The governance of the foundation is highly questionable, reflecting the fact that it's grown in a higgledy-piggeldy way from the standard presidential library project. It also, probably, reflects Bill Clinton's protean personality and penchant for networking with, amongst others, some fairly dubious characters.

Obviously, the Saudis, Qataris et al would be hoping for a more pro-Sunni regime in Washington than they conceive Obama's as being. Whether they would get what they want is another matter.

Are the Saudis and Qataris backing ISIS? Well, some members of the House of Saud undoubtedly are. And undoubtedly some Saudi government funding would have found its way into ISIS hands as "Danegeld" designed to keep the movement busy in places a long way from Riyahd.

But the Saudis, like the Americans, Russians, Chinese et al, have fingers in many and varied pies. Their funding for ISIS is hardly to be taken as support for the movement's aims, which, of course, include the overthrowing of the monarchy and its replacement as Guardian of the Holy Places.

As to Qatar, it's emerged as a primary funding source for the somewhat less noxious brand of Sunni Jihadism that includes Hamas, the Moslem Brotherhood and some of the non-ISIS Islamist forces fighting the Ba'ath regime in Syria. Yes, of course, some funding will be reaching ISIS. That's how the Middle East works. You pay everyone. But one thing you can rely on is that they're not hoping for an ISIS victory.

So what it comes down to is that the Clinton Foundation receives funding from people who also fund a huge variety of other people, projects and movements, including ISIS. And you and I give money to these same people every time we visit a petrol station.

Meanwhile, I simply don't buy the notion that HRC has declared herself in favour of starting World War Three over Syria. She's suggested a "no fly zone" but, when I've heard her interviewed over the subject, it seems that she's talking rather vaguely about a negotiated arrangement, which, presumably, would involve Russian agreement.

To my mind, it's a stupid idea for the simple reason that it's not in Moscow's interests. And it reflects Hillary's inadequacies in the field she's meant to know something about. Moreover, I'd agree that, as Secretary of State, she badly mismanaged US relations with Russia, as has every administration since that of George H. W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Trump seems to have adopted his "be nice to Putin" strategy for electoral purposes and because he tends to favour authoritarian rulers, with whom he thinks he can do deals.

Putin, of course, quite likes the thought of a US president who has doubts about supporting the integrity of America's allies. But I doubt whether the friendship will last very long once Trump takes office,particularly if John Bolton or Rudy Giulliani has his ear.

Now, I admit, there may be significant details that I've missed out on, which call this prognosis into question. If so, I'd like to know what they are and I'm quite open to revising my opinion.

Victor said...

Patricia

Will you please not misrepresent my argument.

I have not said that the people in the great American heartland do not count.

I have merely said that much of the vast area they inhabit is not densely populated and that, therefore, its vastness is of no great electoral (or, for that matter, ethical) significance.

And rightly so:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

venezia said...

Some of those stats coming out of the election are interesting. The one which speaks to me is from Michigan where 110,000 voters did not mark anyone for President but filled in all other parts of the ballot. So these voters had difficulty with both presidential nominees. And given that Clinton lost Michigan by 13,107 votes (a state she did not even visit on the campaign trail) I wonder how she is explaining that now.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Further to that Victor, some people are saying that 85% of Americans voted for Trump. Simply because they are stupid enough to mistake the map showing states that voted for Trump, for the actual proportion of votes. I've seen it corrected several times.

jh said...

Is Obama’s World a Utopian Myth?
http://www.vdare.com/articles/is-obamas-world-a-utopian-myth

Identities are only ok in small controllable lumps: tribes with tribal territories are a no - no. That was the whole point of Labour's Great Leap Forward : New Zealand was too European.

jh said...

Russell Brown investigates fake news which is very previlent when Trump trumps (or we hit peak progressive).
Eg
In the closing days of the Obama Administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has shut down a critical Border aerial surveillance program.
..
Obama is doing everything he can to open the border. January 20th can't come soon enough. National Guard remains. http://watchdog.org/282195/border-surveillance-shut-down/ …
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/11/20/report-outgoing-president-shuts-border-aerial-surveillance-program/

Diversity Dividend Brown does everything to open the border and he is an one eyed media watcher.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

More Bullshit from Breitbart. Yawn.

greywarbler said...

A cartoon referring to the backwash from the Trump election.
Alex in The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/business/2016/11/21/alex6891_21112016.gif

jh said...

GS
More Bullshit from Breitbart. Yawn.
,.....
Very different angle from The Guardian. The Guardian sees Obama’s humanity; Brietbart sees his open border enthusiasm.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Sorry. Breitbart makes shit up. Not listening...la la la la la la la la la. Fingers in metaphorical ears.

Bushbaptist said...

Jh, Brietbart uses the old journalist adage of, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

Their integrity is just about as good as Alex Jones.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Waste of time Bushbaptist. True believers and conspiracy theorists are very difficult to persuade to actually look at evidence. Trump is a prime example.

jh said...

Devoy should read this when she isn't sipping milo and dunking ginger nuts at HRC
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21710264-worlds-rising-superpower-has-particular-vision-ethnicity-and-nationhood-has

Bush Baptist Brietbart is better than Wallace Chapman and his strange feminist Clementine who can't live with the mushy behavioural reality of being a female member of a species.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

No, Breitbart is the lowest of the low, should not be regarded as evidence of anything, and promotes anti-Semitism and general racism. "Mushy behavioural reality of being a female"? – A "man's rights" advocate too? Why am I not surprised.

jh said...

Queenstown wins my prize for the greatest place in the country. It delivers on the promise like nowhere else. That's not to say other places aren't brilliant, because they are. But Queenstown is top to bottom brilliant.

It does no wrong. It sells itself as the adventure capital of the world and it gives you exactly what it says it will. As a package it is unrivalled. It is slick, organised and professional. It is there to deliver thrills and memories and they're available on every corner.
Selfish Mike Hosking:

If this is our biggest income earner, then Queenstown has the model down pat.

And it is full. I was there in January, it was full. I was there this past weekend, it was full. We booked a couple of months ago and we got the last room in a very large resort.

If there is a potential issue with Queenstown it might well be that it is full to bursting. You can see why they have issues hiring people, and finding places to live. It is a living, breathing example of what life looks like when you're spectacularly successful.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11614098

It's our scary future. The only problem Mke has is Mr Pilot takes another run. Try being a worker in the town. Chinese bus drivers sleep in a house "packed full of bunks" or in their buses. You drop at the Hilton where there is half a bus stop and crawl through the traffic for half an hour to wait at a free spot at the depot. And according to Lonely Planet it is tops. Air NZ has a marathon; a driver bottoms his bus looking for an alternate route, traffic crawls from the east side of the Shot over.
This is Rome: just forget about the slaves.

jh said...

Ethnocentrism is not a White disorder and evidence is emerging that immigrant communities harbour invidious attitude towards Anglo Australians, disparaging their culture and the legitimacy of their central place in national identity.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/06/the-misguided-advocates-of-open-borders/

Abstract
Young women of Latin and Turkish origin living in Melbourne find it hard to see any Australian culture. Some see a vacuum; others see a bland milieu populated with ‘average-looking’ people. In contrast, they feel that their own migrant cultures are strong. They ‘get through more’. If there is any Australian culture it is, in their opinion, losing ground to migrant cultures.
https://zuleykazevallos.com/2012/10/06/its-like-were-their-culture/

https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=SCjqAwA%253D&q=superdiversity
Mai Chen is in there
Susan Devoy says we musn't look at the label (made in China)
The BNZ is there
All the public servants are there, listening to Mai's "truthiness"

jh said...

I Recommend The Saad Truth
http://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-pz39j-1e0a475

Unknown said...

Intellectual Diversity on American University Campuses

Across 11 heterogeneous Californian universities, the ratio of Democrats-to-Republicans (registered political party affiliations) was 5 to 1. The ratio was also dependent on the professors’ faculty and departmental affiliations. For example, the humanities had a ratio of 10 to 1, with sociology holding the most lopsided ratio at 44 to 1. A quote by the eminent economist and political philosopher Thomas Sowell is à propos here: “The next time some academics tell you how important ‘diversity’ is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gad-saad/intellectual-diversity-on_b_6525538.html