Tuesday, September 06, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump's trips to Mexico and Detroit, and what they were meant to achieve. Though rightbloggers may pretend to think so, no one really believes Trump will make much headway with black and Hispanic voters. It’s now axiomatic that Trump talks about non-white people as a way of talking to white people.

What’s more interesting is to consider why he bothers to talk to them. It's possible that Trump’s people are trying to remove any embarrassment from the decision to vote for Trump; if, for example, white folks are embarrassed by his racially-insensitive statements, maybe if his team shows him in a black church  or standing at a lectern next to a Mexican President, that’ll ease their minds -- the presumption being that white people really want to vote for Trump and will do so if only you remove these perceptual roadblocks with a little theater.

As I mention in the column, there's a problem with this theory: It's hard to believe anyone who might vote for Trump would also be thinking, 'I dunno, maybe he's too racist."  But maybe I've been looking at it the wrong way: Maybe the Trump team's presumption is that a majority of voters really want Trump just because he's a famous TV star and a classy name brand, and the things he says don't really matter -- they're just mistakes he keeps making; or, rather, he's doing what he's supposed to by acting brashly "politically incorrect" -- the problem is, he has to be offensive to achieve that effect. It's a dilemma!

This might explain the vagueness and vacuity of his policies, as shown by the recent confusion over whether he was "softening" or "hardening" his immigration plan.  To him, it's a nuisance that policies have to be part of the pitch in the first place. If only he could be silently resolute-yet-compassionate and let that be the end of it! If he can't, then the next best thing is to treat that whole part of the job, the meaning part, with such breezy contempt that eventually no one knows what to believe except that Trump is Trump.

It may turn out that immigration was never, as it was commonly portrayed back at the outset of his campaign, the come-on for Trump; maybe neither populism nor racism are important to it, either. it was always Trump himself as the gold-plated, silk-suited avatar of Americans’ hopes and dreams. I leave it up to you whether that’s more or less depressing than thinking he's a fascist.

Monday, September 05, 2016

HAPPY LOST PRODUCTIVITY DAY!

My Village Voice column, usually seen on Mondays, is delayed a day for the federal Labor Day holiday. As I have observed in the past, conservatives used to let this official recognition of the labor movement pass quietly, or with a grudging show of respect -- hell, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post used to print the lyrics to movement anthems like "Pie in the Sky" on its editorial page!  But in recent years they've gotten tetchy about it. Today's Post ed page concentrates instead on demonizing gay people -- in other words, it's just another day! And elsewhere in the alternative rightwing universe, the brethren dream of getting rid of Labor Day, or at least the reason for it.

At Front Page magazine, Matthew Vadum rejoices that Grover Cleveland's institution of Labor Day diverted attention from the redder May Day. (Vadum also rejoices that during the Pullman strike Cleveland "deployed U.S. troops to Chicago to preserve property rights," i.e. to mow down strikers.) He seems to think the holiday's inception helped bring down labor unions, which would make it very slow-acting poison indeed; but mostly he's just glad that nobody knows anymore what the IWW is:
Americans don’t care about the labor movement because it hasn’t done anything for them. They don’t care that the movement is dying, and in most cases aren’t even aware it’s in rough shape. And that too is a good thing.
Too bad he didn't follow his logic all the way out, and call for citizens to celebrate Labor Day by going to work -- then we'd really know they'd gotten the message!

At Conservative Review, Nate Madden is closer to the mark with "INSTEAD OF LABOR DAY, WHY NOT MAKE CONSTITUTION DAY THE NEW NATIONAL HOLIDAY?" "Innovation" and "market forces" have made unions obsolete, he declares: "Thanks to modern technology and market innovation, workers are better equipped to look out for their own rights, make their own hours, and negotiate their income than ever before in human history." Get with the gig economy, comrades, and maximize your pre-dawn hours driving for Uber instead of parasitically sleeping! In place of labor, Madden says, we should celebrate the Constitution, or rather the rightwing talking points with which such as he always frame it, e.g., "We have a federal administrative state that usurps power from the several states at every turn..." Hell, maybe he can convince citizens that unions and the Civil War were both huge mistakes!

Trey Sanchez of Truth Revolt, alas, cannot bring himself to dream big like that, and mainly grumbles that the Kenyan Pretender went on and on about "workers" and "labor" in his holiday address: "He left no time to thank capitalism, the free market, American entrepreneurs, innovators, or risk-takers. Just himself and organized labor," Sanchez sulks. Don't worry, guy -- when Trump gets in, the Presidential Labor Day Address will be replaced by a sale flyer.

At the Weekly Standard, Irwin M. Stelzer presents us with "A Labor Day Conundrum: What Happened to American Productivity?" U.S. productivity has been climbing for decades, even as wages have stagnated, but Stelzer sees it dropping off a little and says it won't do:
The economy has created more than a million jobs so far this year, but it hasn't increased its output of stuff very much. If millions more workers can only manage to produce the same amount of goods and services, output per worker— productivity—is declining. Think of it as a 12-inch pizza that once required two chefs to produce, but now has three on the job, perhaps because the oven is old and prone to break down (or the chefs are busy taking selfies, but that's another story for another day).  
Goddamn lazy pizza makers! Two on a pizza, so they have plenty of time to goof off and take selfies -- hmmph, must be millennials too! Anyway, they'll get theirs, because "the two original chefs now have to share their pie with another worker because their productivity has declined." And don't come crying to Paul Ryan for calzone benefits!

Leave it to National Review to find the heartstring-tugging angle:
I was Forced to Join a Union
Now it can be told! Ripped from today's headlines!  “As a condition of my employment as a professor at George Washington University, I must pay the SEIU every month,” wails Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who apparently couldn't find employment at some right-to-work college like Liberty University and so was forced to accept the onerous terms of a top-tier D.C. university.

“Of course, the SEIU will say that I am not forced to join the union and pay the $36 monthly dues,” she laments. “Instead, I can pay a monthly agency fee of $29.38. But I have to do one or the other.” How will Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a lowly former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, make ends meet? Maybe she should ask the SEIU-repped security guards and nursing home aides (from whom you never hear these kinds of complaints, doubtless due to censorship) how they do it.
The SEIU might also say that in return for the dues or agency fees, they bargain on my behalf with George Washington University. I have no need for anyone to represent me. I can represent myself. If GW does not offer me enough to make it worthwhile for me to teach, I can look elsewhere or find other employment.
If Diana Furchtgott-Roth can do it, so can the bedpan-cleaners and watchmen. But whatever they do, they absolutely shouldn't band together to increase their bargaining power -- because, as Furchtgott-Roth's case proves, that only leads to unfairness.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

THE LONG-AWAITED END OF #NEVERTRUMP.

So Il Douche went to Mexico, couldn't get them to pay for the wall, and slunk back home -- and changed from being a fearless advocate for America in the Trade Wars to an advocate for our "hemisphere."

Seems to me like just another olio in the Trump vaudeville -- but look at the heretofore Trump-skeptical conservatives who think it was fantastic:

I mean, sure, you expect auto-sellouts like Byron York, who got on the Trump train last year, to suck up ("Mexico Gamble a Huge Win"). Ditto Hindrocket from Power Line ("TRUMP'S TRIUMPHANT TRIP TO MEXICO"). But what about Legal Insurrection's Kimberley Kaye? Back in January she was trembling like Lucy in The Searchers over the Trump invasion:
Watching the rise of this new populism, one of my many concerns is whether the charlatans wearing the cape of Conservatism will damage its value, diminish its meaning, and in general, confuse those who know no difference. But then I see people like Sen. [Ben] Sasse and I’m somewhat relieved.
Today Kaye's a lot more fair-and-balanced ("WATCH LIVE: DONALD TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION SPEECH... Did they talk about the wall or didn’t they? THE MEDIA WANTS TO KNOW" -- haw haw, that stupid media!), and her commenters are even easier to read ("I can hear the Jacobin Rags head exploding now").

Let's visit Erick Erickson -- surely this #NeverTrump leader ("it is important to go on record now, while he can be stopped, that we will play no part in his rise") sees through this nonsense?
Two Things Donald Trump Got Absolutely Right
GTFO.
First, Donald Trump and Mike Pence went to Louisiana. In the midst of terrible devastation, while President Obama was on vacation and Hillary Clinton was fundraising, Team Trump went to Louisiana. They drew positive media exposure and looked Presidential.
The Play-Doh that Proved a Presidentiality!
Second, Trump went to Mexico and Hillary did not. I think the positives of the trip outweigh the negatives. The Mexican President’s refusal to contradict Trump on stage about whether they discussed the wall only made him look petty and meek afterwards.
Clearly in a Presidential runoff between Trump and Enrique Peña Nieto, Trump has the edge.
Trump’s speech this evening has, I think, done him no favors outside his base, but going to Mexico today worked.
To paraphrase Sam Houston, Erickson has all the qualities of a prostitute, except hard limits. But surely there's someone at erstwhile #NeverTrump HQ National Review who can at least face up to Trump's failure? Not so far! Jim Geraghty:
Part One of Donald Trump’s busy Wednesday is complete and the meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto went pretty well...
The headline is that Trump and Pena Nieto discussed border security and building a wall, but didn’t discuss Trump’s frequent pledge that Mexico would pay to build the wall. But the brief press conference between the two men was cordial, and no shoes or rotten fruit were thrown. Trump may have read aloud his prepared statement with all of the sincerity and comfort of a hostage tape, but all in all, it looked like any other meeting of an American leader at an international summit.
In other words, Trump didn't seem to know or care what he was saying, but we grade Republicans on the curve and that gets a "P" for Presidential! Also, why would Geraghty acknowledge that Pena Nieto called Trump a liar?  It's not like they're paying him for updates.

I know there are still a few poor minor-league souls out there acting like resistance is anything but futile, but let's face it: There is no #NeverTrump movement left to speak of. Not that you'll see any "I was wrong about Trump" essays from them -- at the moment they can afford, and would understandably prefer, to spare one another that embarrassment -- unless Trump gets elected, in which case they'll start accusing each other of apostasy and some will be forced into ritual confession.

And to think, just months ago we were talking about them as if they might have some principles! Well, you always want to be scrupulously fair to them, despite all experience. Otherwise you might as well be a Republican.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

WHINING ISN'T EVERYTHING, IT'S THE ONLY THING.

It's a small thing really, but writing professors are always talking about the Telling Detail, so: wingnut Cornell Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has acquired a new second home -- not bad, the life of a tenured radical! -- and talks about it thus:
For the past six weeks I’ve been back and forth several times, and expect to split the year between Ithaca and Rhode Island again like I did for five years prior to selling our prior RI home in June 2013. During these breaks from Ithaca I’ve come to understand how living full time in Ithaca is a political pressure cooker.
Really? I know the place as the rich, cultivated home of two colleges, hard by Lake Cayuga and dotted with parks and awash in natural beauty. Plus you have two houses at least, and your adjuncts probably do all your work. What pressure?
In Ithaca, everything is political. You can’t escape it. You will not be left alone.
You will be made to care.
Oh yeah? Can you give us an example?
Even about your coffee, as I joked when we left RI for Ithaca full time:
Please excuse me while I go cry into my organic fair-trade soy latte served in a compostable eco-friendly sustainable cup, a portion of the proceeds of which will go to help indigenous mountain farmers in Central America.
So... you will be made to care by something written on your paper coffee cup? This is the outrage? Couldn't you just bring a mug to Starbucks that says I HATE HOMOS WHATSAMATTER YOU AGAINST FREE SPEECH and make them pour it into that?
There is no non-political life in Ithaca. It’s Obama’s America, compounded by geographical isolation and liberal homogeneity:
And the Professor links to Michelle Obama's "Barack Obama will require you to work" speech from 2008, which just seems eerily prescient today, since we're all slaving in work camps and some of us only have one home.
The personal life is dead, history has killed it.
With this he links to, I swear to God, a clip from Doctor Zhivago.

All these ominous cliches, and nothing, not one blessed thing of substance, to back them up. And the punchline is, he's spewing this self-pitying, Obama's-America, all-is-lost guff even as he informs us of a spectacular manifestation of the fact that he is the polar opposite of persecuted.  You can just imagine -- actually, you can only imagine him doing this while inwardly laughing at the dopes who take him seriously.

The massive grifts pertaining to the Trump campaign have been instructive, but let's not forget it didn't start with Trump; not by long shot.

Monday, August 29, 2016

GENE WILDER, 1933-2016.

Everyone says he was a lovely man, and I don't doubt it. But I never knew him, and if I did know him and he turned out to be a louse, I'd still love him for his films. There are many great comic movie actors, and all of them have that thing called timing, but while many of them make it look easy, few of them make it look as natural as Wilder did. True, his characters were often outsized and manic, but they were grounded maniacs -- you always knew each of them had a very good reason for his fits. When Leo Bloom in The Producers does that weird gibberish over the loss of his blue blanky -- "ungh nuhngnuhngnuhng, ungh nuhngnuhngnuhng" -- it's not just crazy nutso shtick; you really feel the loss of that blue blanky and want him to get it back. (How awful Max Bialystock would have seemed if he didn't give it back!) I love Jack Lemmon, but great as he is I think he wouldn't have elicited the same feeling in that role; Lemmon, when manic, was clearly operating somewhere above the normal spectrum of human behavior ("Security!"). Wilder, on the other hand, made even his most outre behavior look perfectly normal. He was perfect for the post-psychedelic era; he made you comfortable with psychological wreckage.

Yet he could also surprise you with the unexpectedness of his readings. I'm not just talking about oddities like "Stop, don't, come back," but his offbeat way of realizing classic comic builds. Look at the "do not open that door" scene, rendered below: the payoff would probably be funny no matter what, but the absurdly inappropriate mildness of "let me out, let me out of here, get me the hell out of here" just kills me every time. He constantly gave you something fresh, yet after the initial shock it usually made perfect sense. For a performer, that's not too bad a definition of genius.




NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

....about Hillary Clinton's "alt-right" speech, and the less-alt racism that revealed itself in the wake of the Colin Kaepernick affair. Say what you will about the weird, LOL-nothing-matters racism of the alt-right guys, racial politics has been electoral bread and butter for just about everyone on the right, from the buzzcut Goldwater squares to the Breitbart frogs; the new breed have just found a way to make it superficially creepier. What's really interesting is, that creepiness makes the alt-right thing a great opportunity for mainstream conservatives to finally drop their dog-whistles -- to make the Nazi nerds a scapegoat in the old Greek sense, tie their sins to them, and drive them from the agora -- and lose the stigma of racism they're always complaining about. Alas, they seem incapable, and none of the possible reasons why are flattering to them.

Friday, August 26, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.



I like their sound. h/t @sethdmichaels


•  There can be none more Rod Dreher: Apparently Clay Higgins, a rightwing Baton Rouge character currently running for Congress  ("Looking to be a 'loud, angry voice' in Washington, D.C.," per The Advertiser), wanted to go into Red Cross centers where flood refugees were staying and conduct prayer meetings; Red Cross politely declined, and explained themselves thus:
Is it true that the Red Cross doesn’t allow people to pray in shelters? 
We have been so moved by the outpouring of care and kindness we’ve witnessed among Louisiana residents. At the Red Cross, our priority is also providing comfort to all that reside at our shelters. We recognize and are sensitive to the fact that hundreds of people from different backgrounds are often sharing a large space with limited privacy. It is of the utmost importance that we respect people’s individual needs, backgrounds and beliefs in accordance with our Fundamental Principles, which state that we bring assistance without discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinion. With this in mind, and for the privacy of our shelter residents, we do have policies in place on who can enter shelters to ensure that people have a private, secure place to stay as much as possible. Please know people in the shelters are also welcome to pray and gather among themselves.
Dreher quotes these very words, and responds:
So much for the “Cross” in Red Cross. No wonder south Louisiana people are pissed off at them.
Elsewhere at his blog -- check the caption:


Maybe his whole Benedict Option off-the-grid malarkey will in the long run be a blessing to us all.

•  I see people are debating the efficacy of Hillary Clinton's alt-right speech. I of course am fully on board -- she's adopted my method! I've been telling the world about the very large racist component of conservatism for years, starting from back before they had a fancy "alt" name for themselves. I've also told people how they take small stories like the "knockout game" and inflate them into harbingers of race war, and how more mainstream wingnuts promote such loony ideas as a hi-sign to the neo-Confederates in the back room. I have been vilified for it by VDare and other such like, which is just gravy -- I really do it for the Moscow Gold, and also because I think it's  important that we cut the crap and acknowledge where all their crocodile-tear hurts-me-more-than-it-does-you social welfare and policing policy ideas really come from. Hillary's not all the way there, of course -- her husband was a big part of the bullshit, after all -- but I'm for anything that pushes the ball along.

•  Speaking of the alt-right, D.C. McAllister of The Federalist tells us "It’s important, therefore, to step back and analyze exactly what the truth is about race in today’s politics," and the truth is that conservatives aren't the racists liberals say they are -- in fact, liberals summon racism (or something that looks very much like it) by invoking its name:
Those accusations increased so dramatically during the Obama presidency that I would also add it has created an emotional backlash that has caused many Americans to develop negative feelings toward minority groups. We are seeing much of this negativity expressed in politics today. It is important to understand this development in the right context. It doesn’t stem from white supremacism, but frustration born of racial identity politics...

Polls that show Trump supporters having negative feelings toward minorities reflect this backlash. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have misinterpreted such polling, using those errant interpretations to promote the false narrative that Trump supporters on the whole are racist, when they’re actually reacting to the charge of covert racism and to racial identity politics.
When you accuse someone of racism, how else is he supposed to react but with racial slurs? But that isn't the half of it -- apparently, in addition to making these poor people look racist, liberals are also behind the recent murders of cops, and are coming for Rush Limbaugh and D.C. McAllister next:
Today, the violence is directed against police. Tomorrow, other stigmatized groups will be targeted. The question is, what is all this leading to? What’s the endgame? What happens when you stigmatize a group, negate it, make it powerless, and then blame it for all your struggles? They must be annihilated. 
Boy, I remember when they used to call us sissies -- now we're storm troopers! Well, you live long enough, you get to see all kinds of weird shit. Anyway, on to McAllister's solution:
For conservatives to successfully de-stigmatize their identity, they must do something that is not happening right now. They must unite with all stigmatized out-groups. Everyone who opposes the Left has been labeled by the same brand. To fight back, they must unite, overcoming differences to face a common enemy.
Alas, McAllister doesn't say who those other out-groups are. Maybe it includes people who hate gay people -- excuse me, people who are made to look as if they hate gay people. OK, but what other liberal stigmatees are there? Billionaires who want even more tax breaks? Pretty sure they're already with the conservatives. Oil and gas executives? Ditto. I suppose the real play here is to convince white working class people in general that liberals are denigrating them -- Obama said that bitter-clinger thing once! -- but that'll be stretch, since conservatives are these days busy telling those folks their problems are nobody's fault but their own. You know, it's too bad no one in that movement knows anything about community organizing.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

BEARING WESTBORO.

I know, fellas, he's in here a lot, but once more, David French:
Debunking the ‘Born This Way’ Myth
It about time someone smacked down that Lady Gaga or Googoo or whatever she's called!
A new study challenges progressives’ tall tales about sexuality. 
Here is the world according to the LGBT Left: Just as there are black and white, there are gay and straight. One’s sexual orientation, like one’s race, is fixed and immutable at birth. The process of “questioning” one’s orientation isn’t a process of deciding but of discovering...
Cut to the chase: Libtards think gay people have to be gay, and there's such a thing as "transgender," and they call it "science": "This, you see, is science. Anyone who contradicts it...isn’t just ignorant, but bigoted," says French, echoing his passive-aggressive "denying that science not only makes you a Neanderthal, it makes you a bigot" shtick from the previous week. Liberals are always using science against the godly, and it's so unfair, because they also have "the academy, pop culture, progressive corporate America, and, lately, the Supreme Court" on their side. What a bunch of bullies!

Well, this time David French will show them some science: Behold, a study, from The New Atlantis, a wingnut "journal of science and technology" which is not peer-reviewed (indeed, is against peer review as a concept), but whose authors have gone through a bunch of papers and found that gays can be straightened and a good thing too because being gay makes you sick. Q.E.D., faggots!

There's a little pantomime of nuance ("Human sexuality is not so neatly and cleanly divided and determined") to give readers who are unfamiliar with French's shtick the impression that it's really the homosexualists who are rigid and inflexible -- but inevitably French can't keep it up, and he returns to the Old Rugged Crock of theocratic certainties:
Here’s ["the Left's"] vision, in a nutshell: Consenting adults should be able to do what they want with their bodies, and the resulting physical or emotional harm is either reasonably tolerable or can be alleviated through a combination of government programs and public re-education.
It may sound like freedom to you sodomites, but it ends in re-education! See, it's right there at the end of the paragraph. Be grateful French didn't put "the Holocaust" instead -- Jesus put him in a generous mood!
The Judeo-Christian model, by contrast, is aspirational, calling on people not to do what they want, but what they should.
And the reason they should is something something hey where's everybody going.
Admittedly, this path is far easier for some than others...
Some of you men do not love the cilice. Weaklings!
...but there has always been some play in the cultural joints.
???
The Left’s response is alluring, but it offers a self-indulgent path down which lies cultural ruin. The LGBT Left is driving us there just as fast as it can depress the gas pedal, but thanks to [study authors] McHugh and Mayer, we now know they most assuredly are not doing so in the name of “science.”
I have to ask: What is this intended to achieve?  No one who isn't already standing on a pillar with maggots in his legs, or aspiring to pretend to do so, will find the proposition attractive as French puts it. This is strictly "the heathens will be sorry" material. All I can figure is, the idea is to keep the Saving Remnant seething with resentment at the unbelief of the unbelievers so that, if an opportunity arises (such as global conflagration, fantasies of which wingnut grifters like to use to shake down suckers, and which French might just be crazy enough to believe in), they'll be juiced and ready to fan out and effect the gay-straightening themselves, with pliers and pruning hooks.

Again, remember that in addition to being a National Review writer, the man was considered by Bill Kristol and other prominent morons to be Presidential timber. And they wonder why the whole rotten enterprise was vulnerable to Trump!

Monday, August 22, 2016

THE COMEBACK KID.

As I noticed some months back, Jonah Goldberg has been off his feed lately -- shoved off it, I assumed, by the goons and musclemen of Trump Inc. who took over his beautiful conservative Playland. But today he's showing some of the old stuff. His topic is Trump's transparent and offensive pretense of a play for black and Hispanic voters.  (Relevant quote: "You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot. Look at the statistics.")

For a second, Goldberg actually seems to see what the rest of us see:
The conventional wisdom is that Trump isn’t trying to reach out to African-American voters. Rather, he’s trying to signal to moderate and suburban whites, particularly women, that he’s not the racist some have painted him to be.
But then:
I think the conventional wisdom is right, though it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump himself thinks his pitch his sincere.
What? What makes you think --
I would also note that I think the strategy is very Kellyanne Conway, but the words sound more like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
?? So... he's sincere about mouthing the script of his latest campaign advisors?
Shouting at blacks that they all live in poverty is not exactly a nuanced or persuasive way to go. It’s more like a guy losing his temper in a bar argument.
Oh, so that's why you think it's sincere. But then why did you --
But at the general level, some people seem to think it is a terribly cynical thing for Trump to reach out to whites by making an overture to blacks. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. Just because one has cynical motives doesn’t mean one’s actions are objectively bad. Lots of people cynically give to charity to make themselves look good to the public, that doesn’t mean charities should refuse money from anyone not of pure heart.
Keep in mind that Goldberg is comparing "shouting at blacks that they all live in poverty" to charitable donations. One may seem worse than the other, but you gotta look to motive! Similarly, when the guys from The United Way shakes their canister at Goldberg, he tells them, "HEY WHATTAYA CALL A PUERTO RICAN TEST TUBE BABY! JANITOR IN A DRUM!" and offers, as they withdraw in disgust, to explain why this was an appropriate response.
...George W. Bush campaigned with Colin Powell in 2000, not because he was under any illusions that he would pick up a big swath of the black vote, but to reassure those very same moderates and independents that Trump is after. The differences between Bush and Trump on minorities, immigration etc. are deep and wide, but the tactic was similar.
Bush only got 9% of the black vote in 2000, but he won 35% of the Hispanic vote, and in 2004 he won 44% of it. Trump will be lucky if they don't deduct votes from his totals on behalf of those communities.  You only have a couple lines left, Jonah -- play us home!


He's still got it!

UPDATE. I should add that putting quotes from rightwing columnists into Frinkiac is something I learned from @ralphdouthat.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the allegations that Hillary is too sick with some unidentified disease to be President. I'd been seeing shit like this for months but thought it beneath notice, like those creepy "Here's a picture of Hillary with an Ay-rab -- now here's one of Bill next to a chick with big tits!" slideshows that you find in the clickbait zones of rightblogger sites. I should have known nothing is beneath anything in this campaign; now, with Rudolph Giuliani pushing this sick-HIllary shit, I guess it's worth talking about, at least as a lesson in abnormal psychology.

Among the outtakes: At the New York Observer, a paper run by Trump’s son in law, Austin Bay complains “the media is 'flat-out' unfair,” which has been “only just discovered” by a certain prominent media reporter who “emerged (at least momentarily) from the New York-Washington-Los Angeles media jungle” to acknowledge bias against Trump. The punchline: The reporter in question is Howie Kurtz. That's right -- the reliable Fox News pushover Kurtz is Bay's Mr. Media Bias Insider! Next up: The scales fall from the eyes of Mickey Kaus! (Bay goes on for over 2,000 words, rehashing Hitlery's Greatest Hits, and closes with a series of links to his own work: “SEE ALSO: WAR ON HONESTY I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.” C'mon, Austin, you can grift better than that -- offer them parchment editions bound in Corinthian leather!)



Thursday, August 18, 2016

TRANS DERP EXPRESS.

I hate to go to that well again but goddamn, David French is on a roll. In this case he tackles the transgender menace. Apparently a lot of kids are goin' trans nowadays -- it's "fashionable," a fad, like pop rocks and rainbow parties -- and like them incredibly dangerous!
Indeed, transgender diagnoses have become so fashionable that doctors are sometimes stampeding to prescribe life-altering drugs even to kids — and then later, when the kids grow up, recommending mutilating surgery. In other words, doctors aren’t necessarily waiting for evidence of “consistence, insistence, and persistence"
"When the kids grow up" means "when they're adults," by the way. Oddly, I haven't heard of any American parents being forced to let their kid's dick get sawed off -- please let me know if you have! -- nor even to let him or her take the initial "life-altering drugs" (I assume French means hormones, but he doesn't specify, perhaps hoping his readers will imagine an Instant Pussy Pill that alters your young'un in a puff of smoke and with a sound effect like twink).

In fact, so far all French can offer for data is a vague reference to the number of minors in the U.K. some anti-trans group says are seeking counsel for gender dysphoria, which is up hundreds of percent -- though when you trace his source you see that means it's gone from 94 to 969, out of a population of 64.1 million.

So what does he have as evidence that the Transmanian Devil is sweeping America?
Here in the United States, the evidence is more anecdotal...
Uh huh.
...but the anecdotes are disturbing. Rod Dreher...
Rod Dreher! There's the tell. You may have read some of Brother Rod's anecdotal Tales of Trans Terror, but if you know his work at all you'll know that for hysteria he outstrips even French, especially when it comes to sexual apostasy.

Now assuming, as I said, that no one is forcing this stuff on the families of the prototrans kids, what is French's beef? It's not as if people can't judge for themselves whether they want it for their kids; aren't Republicans, after all, of the party of personal responsibility? Even a whiner like French can't pretend that Ma and Pa Kettle would let their boy Jethro take pussy pills just because he saw Caitlyn Jenner on the teevee and felt unbidden feels.

It seems what's really enraging French is really that transgenderism is acknowledged and (especially) that it is acceptable among people he can't successfully marginalize. The tell is in lines like "It’s all science, you see. And denying that science not only makes you a Neanderthal, it makes you a bigot," of which the wretched thing is full.  His sputtering rage is not that something is being forced on him and his, because it isn't, as much as his desire for unearned sympathy compels him to pretend -- it's because someone else chooses it, and when he tries to bully them he finds himself unsupported, because bullying such people has gone out of style. How that must sting!

UPDATE. Early in the morning and already comments are glorious. Here for example is Big_Bad_Bad_Bastard, with an apposite reference to French's earlier obsession: "Anecdotally, the vast majority of male-to-female transpersons are millennial boys who were ashamed of their low grip strength. Now they have perfectly acceptable female boomer grip ranges."

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

BUTCH, PLEASE.

A new study shows grip strength among young people today is not as good as it was among people of their parents' generation.

Part of me interprets this to mean that the Modern Youts are sissies, not like me when I was a lad -- well, actually I was kind of a sissy, but still I was compelled by the social pressures of that get-out-the-house-kid era to perform physically demanding jobs, loading trucks and slinging hash and the like, and I bet my grip-strength then could beat the band (had I but known to have it measured so I could wave it in you young punks' faces!).

That is, as I say, how part of me interprets it, for a few seconds anyways; but, like any sensible, grown person who is still troubled by ridiculous, juvenile reactions like this, but also has matured enough to take them in stride,  I remind myself that every generation feels the succeeding generation to be degenerate and weak by comparison; and that even if I don't approve of the way modern parents raise their kids, it's their business how to raise them, not mine.

In other words, not that being a little less of an asshole than I might be is much to brag on but I'm apparently a little further along the evolutionary scale than erstwhile Presidential can'tdidate and eternal pain in the ass David French of National Review, who reads the grip-strength report thus:
If you’re the average Millennial male... You’re exactly the kind of person who in generations past had your milk money confiscated every day — who got swirlied in the middle-school bathroom... Welcome to the new, post-masculine reality
Once upon a time it was only selected sissies who got the dick-wagging locker-room treatment -- now David French will take all you millennials on! Look what a tough guy he was in high school:
I look back to my own childhood. In 1985, I was 16 years old, and I was a nerd’s nerd. I toted graph paper and 20-sided dice to school to play Dungeons & Dragons at lunch. (I like to think I was the finest dungeon master Scott County, Ky., had ever seen.) When I wasn’t playing D&D, my nose was buried in Lord of the Rings, or the Shannara books by Terry Brooks, or the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey...
[Blink. Blink.] I'd like to give him credit for 'fessing up, but still I have to ask: if French was such a numpty as a teen, why is he barking out butchness lessons to young people now?
But none of my nerdiness relieved me of the responsibility of learning how to be a man — a protector, builder, and fixer. So that meant spending my Saturdays hauling out the ramps to change the oil and oil filters on all our cars.
Cars, plural? Look-surey!
That meant helping my dad build a new back porch or constantly wrestling with immense piles of firewood. (We heated our house with a wood stove.) I made extra money working in neighborhood yards. Being a guy meant doing manual labor...
Ah, so like many of us fossils French had chores, and after-school and summer jobs. How nice. But so what? Some generations back, kids could count on being bound to their parent's serfdom and poverty till the day they died. That was manhood then. We have progressed, and now that fate is less common in America than it was -- including for French (Harvard Law, 1994! Dungeonmaster's come a long way).

So why does it bother French so much that the new breed have it easier than he did? If you're a generous sort, you might think he's just concerned that kids today are deprived of the pleasurable experience of useful labor -- of joy in their own physical strength and a job well done. But French is a wingnut: Promoting pleasure, let alone the physical kind, is the furthest thing from his mind. He snarls, he nags, he kvetches -- never does he suggest they're anything rewarding in physical labor except the opportunity to escape his bitching about it.

You can see hints of what's really eating French when he leaves off grousing about yardwork and starts... veering in an interesting direction. For example:
In the age of zero-tolerance school-disciplinary policies — where any kind of physical confrontation is treated like a human-rights violation — [young men] have less opportunity to develop toughness. Today’s young males don’t have common touchstones for what it’s like to grow up to be a man.
The modern boy's teacher helps him get out of the locker into which, doing only as God and nature intended, bullies have stuffed him, and thus is he emasculated! Why didn't these teachers-union ballbusters let him figure out himself how to deal with bullies? Chances are he'd come out tougher -- well, actually chances are he'd come out emotionally crippled, perhaps suicidal, but at least he'd be a man! Perhaps even a Dungeonmaster! Speaking of which, later French brags that he and his D&D buddies could, despite their nerdom...
...pop the hood of a car and get to work right alongside the future mechanics of my high-school class. We weren’t as good or as knowledgeable, but we held our own. And there were no social-justice warriors shrieking that there was no such thing as distinctively male or masculine pursuits.
Social justice warriors! So that's the problem! Modern boys might be manly enough to suit French -- they might want to work on car engines -- but they're being stopped by Zoe Quinn, Sarah Silverman and their fellow SJWs, who swarm like emasculating Valkyrie over Shop Class, wrestle the boys away from their Ford Fairlanes, and make them write essays for Vox. In their pajamas!

Bottom line, French is a rightwing hack factotum, in fact a hacktotum, and this latest stray datum is only meaningful to him as an excuse to shake his fist at feminists and non-homeschool-educators -- and, mostly, at millennials, because it seems they've turned against conservatism in a big way. In other words, the butch is a bitch.  And not even the fierce kind.

UPDATE. Comments are all very funny, but if you must choose start with the dialogues invented by Pere Ubu and Andrew Johnston ("You are enjoying tankards of fine ale when two orcish barbarians who look just like those assholes who hang around on the north side of the building come up...").

Monday, August 15, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the CryptoTrumpers and their sneaky third way of promoting the GOP candidate, or at least his ideas. There are a lot of columns out there about how of course Trump is a wrongo but still you must admit [insert bullshit here] and call me cynical but this is, in most cases, an admission that you'd openly support Trump if your careerism and social anxieties weren't preventing you. Have a read and see if you don't agree.

I should mention the latest NeverTrump fantasy object that emerged last week, Ted-talking former CIA officer Evan McMullin, Presidential candidate. At National Review Josh Gelertner gamely offers a winning scenario for McMullin, which begins with “If, among swing states, Trump wins Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania…” so I didn’t read it. Kidding! Long pathetic-fantasy short, if McMullin wins Utah and neither Trump nor Clinton has enough electoral votes to clinch, the vote goes to the House, where Gelertner speculates the Republican majority would naturally vote for a nobody rather than for the nominee of their own fucking party. (As David A. Graham’s useful tally at The Atlantic shows, very few GOP Congressmen have come out against Trump.)

“Note, however: If McMullin were to run anywhere but Utah, he will tip the race to Hillary, Ross Perot–style,” closed Gelertner, “…Which means, if he does run anywhere besides Utah, he’s making it clear that he isn’t interested in winning, just in guaranteeing that Trump loses. Which would be perfidious, to say the least.” Enemies everywhere, even in their own fantasies! I hope this guy has his post-election electroshock booked -- interventional psych wards are going to be filling up their calendars quickly this year.

Friday, August 12, 2016

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.


Been listening to a lot of Dave Dudley lately.
This one's my favorite. Written by Mr. Tom T. Hall

• If you've been reading Rod Dreher lately, you know he's been quoting at length (everything he does is at length) letter writers who wish to remain anonymous for reasons you can only guess who claim their children and/or other people's are faking a transgender identity. Here's one who says her daughter is only pretending to be a trans boy because "she developed physically and boys and men started treating her like a piece of meat and a second class citizen" -- in which case it would seem sham trans claims are the least of their problems in whatever hick burg she's stuck in. The correspondent also quotes an anti-trans source that says there's been a "930% Rise in Child Gender Identity Referrals" in the UK; read the source and it shows that in five years such referrals rose from 94 to 969 -- out of a population of 64.1 million. The letter-writer suggests that physicians are "ready to prescribe testosterone shots and a double mastectomy despite the fact that she is a minor" but does not tell us whether the child can be given these treatments against her mother's will; I strongly suspect this vagueness is intentional. Another claimant in the same post says he was an adolescent psychotherapist but had to stop because of all the fake trans kids Big Homo was forcing him to validate:
The children are all absolutely confused, rightly terrified of being linked or in any way associated with beliefs that have been deemed toxic and contaminated – anything from the western tradition. They are desperate to rid themselves of the contagion of their own history. Being “queer” is the new salvation, it is the new blood in which the children are to be cleansed of the sins of their fathers; the youth are celebrated mightily for their embracing of any lifestyle that erodes the power of the individual to stand alone – that erodes the sacredness and sovereignty of our very humanity...
Plus they all listen to that "rap" music. It may be this fellow was actually forced to stop practicing by a state medical board or a restraining order. There's more, oh so much more, in this post and others but if you had to choose I'd say check out the one where someone who "grew up in an American expat family living in a Persian Gulf monarchy... a conservative Islamic society with strict standards and codes for sexual purity"  revisited the Gulf and found that, thanks to the "corrosive" influence of Western culture, the place had gotten all porny and gay:
At the wedding we attended, members of the village performed a very traditional dance where a group of men and a group of women congregate on opposite sides of an open space. The two sides call out responses to one another while they dance on their separate sides, and it’s virtually the only contact men and women have during the whole of the celebrations. During the dance, two young men who had grown out their hair (very unusual in this culture) participated flamboyantly on the women’s side. In a society where women and men are kept strictly separate, no one even bothered to try to prevent them from joining, because it was widely known that they were gay and wouldn’t bother females.
These young fellas should have been out decapitating infidels for ISIS, like real men! Then you get to hear Brother Rod preach about how settlers kidnapped by Native Americans in the Old West often declined to be rescued, which he does not read as desperation or Stockholm Syndrome but as a sign of some sort of spriritual superiority over the Enlightenment-sickened West. Well, I think he's got the Ghost Dance part down, anyway.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

I WILL EXPRESS MY CONTEMPT FOR LIBTARDS WITH THIS ACTION FIGURE BALLET.

How goes the Culture War, soldier? Hilariously! Kurt Schlichter, aka Wild Man, has up a piece of ordnance called "Liberals Are Neidermeyer and That Team the Bad News Bears Played." Real rebels are right-wing, see! The Bears were "incredibly politically incorrect," just like the Delta boys in Animal House, meaning if they were real live people instead of movie characters they'd want to build a wall & no Mooslims:
In other words, they are kind of like Trump voters. They are deemed unfit for polite company, begrudgingly accepted, and generally treated like dirt by their betters. And they are expected to go hang out forever with Muhammed, Jugdish, Sidney, and Clayton, with whom they will have plenty to talk about.
Especially Muhammed! "What you doin' in our country, raghead? Pow pow pow!" As for the Bears, didn't they have a girl on their team? Yuck, PC cooties! But Schlichter keeps at the fanfic:
And Hillary? She’s the sorority mean girl, a frosty, neurotic, mid-western over-achiever whose freaky daddy issues compelled her to marry a guy who treated her with the same contempt as Pops. She’s the a bitter, striving, hard-four Mandy Pepperidge who hooked up with a cleaned-up Bluto because she knew he was going places, but then finally broke him and forced him to become a vegan.
I was sort of with him until he introduced Bill Clinton as Bluto. Canon has to count for something, Wild Man.

Considering he's always bragging on his "hot wife," I don't get why Schlichter's so hung up on angry-teenage-nerd fantasies. Maybe he believes he owes it to La Causa. But who's going to be convinced by this stuff? Are any of them old enough to vote?

LOOK WHO'S TALKING.

Hey guys, Kevin D. Williamson finds something in common between the left and H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain. As you would imagine, he doesn't mean it as a compliment:
The debunking mentality is prevalent in both men’s writing, a genuine fervor to knock the United States and its people down a peg or two. For Twain, America was slavery and the oppression of African Americans. For Mencken, the representative American experience was the Scopes trial, with its greasy Christian fundamentalists and arguments designed to appeal to the “prehensile moron,” his description of the typical American farmer. The debunking mind is typical of the American Left, which feels itself compelled to rewrite every episode in history in such a way as to put black hats on the heads of any and all American heroes: Jefferson? Slave-owning rapist. Lincoln? Not really all that enlightened on race. Saving the world from the Nazis? Sure, but what about the internment of the Japanese? Etc. “It was wonderful to find America,” Twain wrote. “But it would have been more wonderful to miss it.”
Then Williamson lays into this "very left-wing American history teacher" he had in high school in Lubbock, and into Molly Ivins -- I guess because he dimly sensed that some of his readers would resentfully notice he was associating liberalism exclusively with America's greatest geniuses.

The teacher said mean things in class about slavery and capitalism, which Williamson took as some kind of mania -- "it was, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, very important to her — plainly urgent to her — that the American story be one of disappointment, betrayal, and falling short of our founding ideals" -- rather than an appropriate curriculum for sprats raised on blind patriotism and TV. As for Ivins, well, Williamson finds her a "lazy" writer (yeah, I know! Kevin D. Williamson!) and also mean to America like that commie schoolmarm, plus Ivins was born into money, which means her Argument is Invalid because liberals are hypocrites unless they're dirt-poor day-laborers, a kind of credentialing conservatives never apply to themselves because they're saved by Grace or some shit. (At present, they seem to offload their lingering need for prole-cred onto J. D. Vance and with affectations of concern for the poor white citizens of Fishtown.)

I don't think Williamson was thinking too hard about where he was going when he wandered into this dark wood, because eventually he tells us that while "a nation needs its Twains and Menckens" (though why we need them, despite his aversion to liberal scolds, he never tells us), nonetheless -- get this --
But they are only counterpoints: They cannot be the leading voice, or the dominant spirit of the age. That is because this is a republic, and in a republic, a politics based on one half of the population hating the other half is a politics that loses even if it wins...
If you happen to be Mark Twain, that sort of thing is good for a laugh, and maybe for more than a laugh. But it isn’t enough. “We must not be enemies,” President Lincoln declared, and he saw the republic through a good deal worse than weak GDP growth and the sack of a Libyan consulate.
Again, yeah, Kevin D. Williamson -- who has said that President Obama is "neck-deep in blood" because of abortion, that liberals are racist because they prefer successful Scandinavian socialism to unsuccessful Latin American socialism (and also because he projects his own fear of blacks onto them), and who famously looked at poor white communities in America and said, "The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die" -- now wants to bind up the nation's wounds! But first we must turn away from satire and anything that's divisive and entertaining, except National Review articles, and vote for Trump to stop Clinton but don't tell anybody about it because it's déclassé

Well, there's one bright side to this:  for a while we may not have to hear how great P.J. O'Rourke is supposed to be.

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

I HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR MY BULLSHIT -- YOU BELIEVED IT!

Followers of Anti-Hillary Clinton Bullshit from She Killed Vince Foster to She Can't Stand Upright will have noticed the particularly dumb recent bit in which Clinton was alleged to have announced at a rally that she would raise taxes on the middle class.  This makes no sense at all, politically, but hungry propagandists will eat whatever slop you put in front of them and wingnut factota like Robert Kraychik ("Presumably a slip of the tongue, Clinton’s comment came amid broader Marxist-themed demagoguery...") made a feast of it.

Still, you never like to think everyone's a shitheel, and I was a little disappointed with National Review's Deroy Murdock, who put up a column last week called "Hillary: Time to Raise Middle-Class Taxes!" ("So, as of now, Clinton is on record as advocating tax hikes on America’s middle class"). But today I noticed that it has been replaced with an Editor's Note regretting the error. Good man, Deroy! thought I.

Alas, this is from Murdock's follow-up:
Numerous news outlets and opinion mongers, including me, flogged Clinton for targeting middle-income Americans for further economic abuse.
However, PolitiFact subjected the Democrat nominee’s words to forensic scrutiny worthy of the Watergate tapes.
Tscha! Like it was something important.
...This particular story was wrong. However, as the campus Left might say, it nonetheless highlighted a broader truth.
If Clinton reportedly had said, “I plan to dismantle Roe v. Wade,” everyone would know instantly that this was either fake news, or Clinton had a much bigger problem, namely a complete and total short circuit inside her head. 
An eventually inoperative story about Clinton’s envisioning a middle-class tax hike endured for days because she, her running mate, and the man she hopes to succeed all have advocated or enacted middle-class tax hikes — even as America is mired in the economic doldrums.
Old-timers will know what I mean when I say Murdock finds the story "fake but accurate." For the rest of you, I will just point out that his defense is that lies about the most vilified woman in American politics are no big deal because she's the most vilified woman in American politics. (Blaming it on "the campus Left" is the equivalent of throwing the gun when you've run out of bullets.)

This is offered just in case you were thinking of letting your guard down, whether out of fatigue or from some misguided notion of fair play. Snap out of it!

UPDATE. Speaking of bullshit --


Next week, it'll be "Me personally, I don't believe in chemtrails, but I heard it from Alex Jones and he's famous!"

Monday, August 08, 2016

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about rightbloggers' baleful initial entries on the Olympic Games in Rio. I think they'll relax a bit now that Americans are bagging medals, but the past several days have been a real sputterfest for the brethren. On the other hand, they did the same thing last Olympics, so who knows.

Here's the cream of the outtake insanity, from Gay Patriot:
BTW: Sexual abuse of minors … when it happened thirty years ago in the Catholic Church it was an abomination that the church must forever be hated and ridiculed for. When public school teachers do it, it’s swept under the rug because Teacher’s Unions are part of the Democrat Coalition. When Mohammedan refugees do it, the state and the media play it down.
(You will not be surprised to learn that Gay Patriot supplies no links to evidence that liberals cover up for Muslim and schoolteacher rapists.)
How about when Olympic coaches do it and the organization covers up for them? Is it still a bad thing? Are Olympic coaches part of the coalition of the left?
I like to think this is a serious question on Gay Patriot's part -- that they consulted their charts and couldn't find Olympic Coaches under either the "Libtard" or "Patriot" columns, so they genuinely don't know whether they should be normal-outraged or aha-libtards-outraged. On the one hand, athletics are butch, hence rightwing; on the other hand, rhythmic gymnastics. Maybe they'll do a little research and call up Béla Károlyi to ask what he thinks about trans people in bathrooms.

Friday, August 05, 2016

THE TRUMP WHISPERERS.

I have noticed a new school of Trump apologist -- we might call them "Trump whisperers." These are conservatives who tell us that they have listened to white working class people, and discovered they have something to say, and that we liberals have not been sufficiently respectful of their needs, and now that these salt-of-the-earth are all backing Trump, that is not the fault of conservatives (who have filled their ears for decades with the poisonous anger they still read back, though in earthier language) nor Republicans (who actually, with their votes, chose Trump), but ours, because we sat in our Ivory Towers eating Brie and Arugula and reading Alinsky instead of attending their plaintive cries. Sometimes their stories come in fictionalized form, as imagined by such as David Frum:
Tom Kean/Tim Kaine? So, so sorry we got the name of your latest precious progressive New South governor a little mixed up. Just kidding: not even a little bit sorry. What you need to take on board is how profoundly so many Americans do not give a … oh yeah, you still live in a country where people don’t use language like that when they talk about politics. Come visit Reddit sometime and see how the other half lives. But I’ll spare your feelings. They like that Donald doesn’t know any of that sh …. Oops. Sorry again.
Apparently Frum thinks it's words like "shit" and "fuck" that the folks back home say to be Politically Incorrect, rather than "nigger" and "fag." Some Trump whisperers like David Blankenhorn of The American Interest actually go among the Trumpists in a sort of Listening Tour (who knew TAI had such a generous budget?) and bring back their pithy assessments, such as this:
I swear I’m not racist. I swear on the Bible, I am not a racist person. But when you go to the VA, it’s nothing but black people working there and they don’t give two shits about you. I went to the triage and there’s two black ladies back there just jabbering about home and stuff, and nothing about work, and I’m just sitting there, I’ve got shingles . . . I’m dying, I’m just waiting, and they’re doing their bullshit and they got an attitude...

I’m willing to take a chance on Trump because I’ve been lied to by the rest of them. What’s the worst thing that can happen? He doesn’t do what he says he’s going to do? I’ve seen that for the last thirty years.
See, you libtards? You got these black people jobs at the VA and they're jabbering while a white man dies of shingles. Had you only understood this man, you might have done something to at least make him feel better -- like go after those jabbering blacks. (Bill Clinton threw a bunch of them off welfare, true, but apparently that wasn't good enough, and now all the Trumpists Blankenhorn talks to hate Hillary Clinton.)

I get the emotional effect these guys are going for, but honestly it comes down to this: liberals have repeatedly diagnosed the problems that keep the working class down and prescribed remedies like taxing the rich, breaking down barriers between all working people, and universal health care. Conservatives, on the other hand, have prescribed tax breaks for the rich, immiserating minorities, and universal gun suffrage. (Also, they focus on the white working class for obvious reasons.)

Liberals have peddled their solutions to the white working class, and to all comers -- but the Trump voters, like pretty much all Republicans from the Nixon Administration to the present, have opted to stick with the latter, in fact, have doubled down on it. Well, we tried; horse to water, and all that.

You'd think Republicans would be happy about this. But some of them consider Trump a liability -- either due to social anxiety or (more likely) a sense that Trump is cutting his and their throats with moderates -- and, as is their wont, seek someone else to blame. So they've settled on the Arugula Eaters -- hell, it's something they know, and if they manage to turn this thing around the Trumpists may remember that when the chips were down, the conservative establishment may not have supported their candidate but they damn sure hated the same people they did -- and hasn't that always counted for something?

Thursday, August 04, 2016

BRIEFLY, ON THE POLLS.

While it's gratifying to see even Fox polls showing Hillary up by 10 points, I would caution you good people that this is August, not the week before Election Day. Also, the polls have been screwy this year. I think partly this has been because of the well-observed rise in distrust of authority, which can be expected to taint pollsters, who used to go door-to-door like Fuller Brush Men to be received with good grace by undisillusioned Americans and now interrupt the work or dinner hours of a more jaded public. But also Trump is such a weird, anomalous candidate that asking whether a person prefers Clinton to Trump is like asking whether they prefer Clinton or one of those Billy the Wide-Mouth Bass singing fish. Maybe they think the singing fish is ridiculous, but maybe it reminds them of their dead dad or good times years ago -- in any case, it's something that, like Trump, has resonances for them outside politics, however silly, and they might well say, sure I like stupid wall decorations more than politics, why shouldn't I?