Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

The estimable Atrios observes:

Since the election there's been this weird back and forth about whether Trump voters were motivated by The Economic Insecurity or by The Racism. . . .

I think it's important to note that the average Trump voter isn't actually an unemployed coal miner, because facts matter, and the portrayal Trump as Working Class Hero (sometimes they remember to write "White") is silly and wrong. Trump's base are not the marginal voters who switched to him from Obama, they are the same Republicans who vote Republican every 4 years. But as for the "but they're racists!" argument. Yes, yes they are. People who are racists generally vote for Republicans.
So on the way home yesterday I got behind a car with four bumper stickers.  The driver was a white guy in his 30s with tattoos on every visible square inch of skin.

The first bumper sticker read "Pave the Bay." That's supposed to be a parody (ha ha, very funny) of "Save the Bay," the movement to clean up and protect Narragansett Bay, which is the defining geographic feature of Rhode Island. His proposed engineering project seems implausible, and I don't see what is to be gained by it. I suspect that for some reason he just doesn't like people who want to save the bay.

The second bumper sticker read "Speak English, or go back to whatever sorry-assed country you left." Ha ha again. Funny thing, he had an Italian flag decal in the back window.

Third bumper sticker: "Some people are alive simply because it is illegal to kill them." So he wants to kill people. That seems nice.

Fourth bumper sticker, and I'll bet you can guess it. "Trump. Make America Great Again."

The Trump base is scheduled to show up in Phoenix tonight. What the over-under on the number of confederate battle flags?

3 comments:

Smith said...

It is amazing how many racist jackasses there are in this country...till I stop to consider that, though Washington and Jefferson and a hell of a lot of others were not jackasses, and were highly educated men, they were racists. Jefferson said that caucasians and African-Americans couldn't live together. Ha! He was living with his African-American wife in the next room...and then there was Strom Thurmond...

Racists are hypocrites. But they're not all jackasses, of course...except in the case of their hypocrisy. Cities like Montreal show how a wonderful cosmopolitan center works with the intermingling of the various cultures and ethnic groups. I think racism is totally an economically-contrived, anthropogenic phenomenon. I have reason to hope because so many people are realizing that we're all on this one Yellow Submarine together, and I think it has helped to expose the horror of a creature like Trump so that so many are forced to disavow him for his utter lack of character or intelligence. Scum of the earth, he is. The fact that anyone at all supports him is very boring. There will always be other scum.

mojrim said...

You're using a very broad brush, Cervantes. The GOP, like the Dems, is a coalition of often contrary interests, not a monolith. Some are there because of race, some for religion, and some for the tax cuts. Most of those people will vote for anyone with "R" on their ticket. The group that was motivated by economics, and broke the "blue wall" to elect him, is disaffected unionists in the rust belt. This is a traditionally dem-voting demographic that has begun slipping into the republican camp out of increasing economic anxiety. They have (correctly) identified the DC Village consensus as the source of their problems; at this point they'll vote for anyone that offers a shred of hope.

Anonymous said...


'Racism' has ceased to be an objective term and, instead, has become a political tool with which to bludgeon your perceived political enemies.

The commenter, "Smith" who follows me around like a little puppy, slings around the term in about every paragraph she writes.

There seems to be no one willing to give an objective definition of 'racism'. If they did, they would lose the ability to weaponize it as needed.