The state of the union
Republican primary voters in the 3rd Congressional district of Illinois nominated an actual Nazi (no "neo" prefix required -- he's the former head of the American Nazi party) as their candidate for the district's House seat. In California, the top-polling Republican Senate candidate has expressed anti-Jewish views so ugly that they would surely meet with the approval of Hitler himself. The Republican front-runner for Paul Ryan's House seat, too, is a white supremacist and anti-Semitic rabble-rouser.
Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to trash Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran, because despite all the assurances provided by inspections and US intelligence, he simply doesn't believe that Iran is adhering to its side of the deal. It's true, of course, that one would be foolish to trust a rogue theocratic regime with crypto-fascistic tendencies which tries to enforce its religious taboos abroad while empowering religious bigots and thugs at home, and which pursues a recklessly aggressive foreign policy while openly disdaining international norms and agreements and threatening the world with nuclear weapons. But during the Obama administration, Iran had no way of knowing that it would soon be confronting such a regime in Washington.
Is America great again yet? Because I'm not sure how much more of this kind of greatness I can take.
[Image at top found via Hackwhackers]
posted by Infidel753 at 12:17 AM
11 Comments:
That 3rd paragraph is a thing (think) of beauty!
Sucks to be right these days.
Here's the deal: There's been a lot of rage and frustration out theresince the civil rights confrontations of the mid- to late 60s. That era was immediately followed by a series of sea-changes in the economy (the entry of more women in the workforce, business management viewing employees as a "cost center" rather than an asset, management fads like "rightsizing" and "downsizing," workers being replaced by automation, waves and waves of mergers and acquisitions, etc.) which made it very hard for a large segment of the American public to thrive. Whites in particular decided that civil rights improvements for minorities caused their economic struggles, and created this outrage. It was pent up, since it began, by the fact that few, if any, national-level politicians and pundits would discuss it much. There've been little bits of overt racism and prejudice expressed at that level, but it was usually shamed rather quickly, whenever it came up. (Think Trent Lott of MS being driven from office over remarks he made that were favorable to the "Dixiecrat" presidential candidacy of Strom Thurmond.) Locally, there have been Right-wing pundits who've expressed prejudice (listen to talk-radio in southern California sometime and listen to how Mexicans are denigrated) but on a nationwide scale, this sort of thing is veroboten.
What's happened is that lid of instant shaming has, essentially, been blown off. Racists and haters are now free to express their hatred ... and be supported for it, because support for their views had always been there, there simply hadn't been anywhere for it to go (again, at a national level) before the Groper-in-Chief's election.
The question is, what can be done about it? I see no cure. The business world and political establishment allowed this festering rage to be built up over the years. They profited handsomely, over the last few decades, from the economic demise of the American middle class. They happily promoted American Rightism as their "solution" to this mess, knowing all the while that it only further lined their pockets at workers' expense. They also helped keep that simmering outrage alive, by repeatedly presenting people like "welfare recipients" and illegal immigrants as the middle class's chief villains.
Is it possible to get white Americans to understand that Mexicans, welfare recipients, and "uppity" blacks haven't wiped out their jobs, it was (instead) the business world they've supported all these years that did so? I don't see how it can be done. They're too deeply enmeshed in a factless world of delusion in which they view their true enemies as their heroes. The bottom line is, we're in for a long siege of this. Best to brace for it.
The third paragraph...wow! That'll get you thinking.
How Rudy was so "beloved" in NYC, I'll never understand
Thanks for the links, Infidel! It's just appalling how Trump and his accomplices in the rotted-out Republican party have degraded this country in so many ways, with the active, gleeful approval of so many knuckle draggers with whom we share it. To think that it's thanks to an archaic Constitutional gimmick that Democrats lost two presidential elections in the past 18 years -- that they won in the popular vote -- adds to the frustration and anger for me.
Donna & Martha: It's a comparison that has struck me for a while.
One: I'd rather it wasn't right, but there we are.....
PsiCop: Race has always been one of the methods by which the ruling elite kept the working people divided against themselves. But don't forget that not all, or even most, white people think that way. Tens of millions of white people voted for Obama and would again, and Jim crow and even slavery would still be with us if the majority found them acceptable. The problem is mostly with the uneducated, who naturally have the most difficulty spotting the flaws in their own world-view.
Adam: Being attacked has a way of producing a rally-round-the-leader effect, regardless of what the leader is like. Bush benefited from it too.
W: Thanks for posting so much information about all these issues. Unfortunately when a series of freak events puts a malignant idiot in charge, other malignant idiots feel empowered. On the plus side, the Republicans are becoming the party of trash.
Every time hubby puts the news on I cringe because I know there will be more bad news.
Hang in there -- Mueller will soon be bringing better news.
I don't know how Trump supporters can think we're being made great again when our country is looking pretty stupid and racist at this point to other countries.
I think they despise other countries -- insofar as they even acknowledge the fact that other countries exist.
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