“One wonders if these people are people at all”
If you tuned in to CNN earlier today, you might have found yourself greeted by a chyron that could have been ripped straight out of a Newt Gingrich Nazi fanfic: Alt-Right Founder Questions If Jews Are People. The real question, of course, is whether our president-elect should distance himself from an explicit group of neo-Nazis. And according to CNN, the answer is a resounding “WEELLLL …”
That’s from that meeting Saturday.
An anchor whom no one seems to be able to name but who looks suspiciously like Jason Sudeikis in Mitt Romney makeup starts us on our journey:
Richard Spencer, he’s the man who actually coined that term, “alt-right.” He was in Washington this weekend. He was spewing, as he often does, what I can only describe as hate-filled garbage. Of Jews, Spencer said … “One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem.”
Does President Trump need to formally denounce and disavow these groups as a whole?
It’s too late for that, Trump has welcomed them into his “administration” (the one where he waves at the crowds and someone else does the actual work).
Moving on, though, there are the optics to consider. Does Trump really want to risk alienating Nazis when they’ve been such devout, loyal supporters? According to Berg:
Part of this is also a political calculation. They found that they need these people in their coalition to succeed, so can they disown them and cleanse their coalition of these people?
Can they cleanse the undesirables, indeed. CNN, unfortunately, offers no answers. Instead, all we get is a lively debate of the pros and cons of the president-elect denouncing people who question whether Jews are human, because they have been loyal parts of the coalition that put him in office.
CNN will be airing live executions of staffers within six months.
We’ll be numb to it soon.
Well I’m not gonna numb to it. Never forgive; never forget.
“Can they cleanse the undesirables, indeed. ”
Careful now, careful. You are starting to sound like Hillary Clinton, with her talk of ‘deplorables’. (That likely cost her the election.)
The deplorables comment didn’t cost her the election; it’s quite apparent that her losing was essentially a forgone conclusion that was not effectively captured by polling. Trump spoke to the rubes with a message that resonated with them as well as tapping their racism and misogyny.
Amazing how “deplorables” can apparently cost Clinton an election, but an endless stream of insults can apparently win it for Trump.
Doesn’t matter either way; at this point in time winning is far more necessary than being right. Now how you do that without becoming a Neville Chamberlain is beyond me, but the trogs have a stranglehold on the EC at the moment.
Emily, I do not endorse Trump. Far from it. But calling those who support Trump out of frustration, and from seeing their hopes going down the gurgler ‘deplorables’ played right into his hands.
Politics was never about fair play or fairness. Just about winning.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-fury-and-failure-of-donald-trump-w444943
“Some years ago, public intellectual Noam Chomsky warned that the political climate in the US was ripe for the rise of an authoritarian figure. Now, he shares his thoughts on the aftermath of this election, the moribund state of the US political system and why Trump is a real threat to the world and the planet in general.”
Worth a read.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky
Not that I agree with Chomsky on everything. (I don’t even agree with Ophelia Benson on everything. ;-)
Omar, I was not insinuating you support Trump. That you are commenting here is good evidence you are not a Trump supporter, lol.
What bothers me, however, is the idea that Trump can insult anyone and everyone as unjustly as he likes (the Khans, Megyn Kelly, Alicia Machado, and of course, Hillary Clinton, and many others) and still win. Yet Clinton has one word deliberately taken out of context (she didn’t say that all of Trump’s supporters were deplorables: she was referring to the extremists) and that is apparently what lost her the election. The reason the use of “deplorables” seemed so bad is because it was whipped up the media and of course by Trump and his surrogates. Sexist attitudes probably also made it seem worse: men are allowed to bully, insult and intimidate, but women can’t even say anything with too acidic without causing outrage. It’s just too simplistic to lay the blame for her defeat on one single utterance.
Trump’s supporters were not carrying around signs saying “No TPP”, “out of NAFTA”, “want a job”, or anything like that. They were carrying around signs that said “Trump the bitch”, “Lock her up”, and various racist, sexist, and white supremacist slogans. Not all Trump supporters? Probably not. But the visible mood of the campaign suggests this was not an uprising of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, but was more likely an uprising of white males (and way too many white females) who are objecting to the fact that people they disapprove of are asking for, and sometimes receiving, the same rights they enjoy.
And let’s not forget that Clinton got more votes. In other words, there were fewer people who wanted Trump than who didn’t want Trump, and now we all have to live with what these angry, obnoxious, shouting, heiling people have brought us.
What’s the old saying? A woman has to work twice as hard as a man to be considered half as good? Well, there seems to be something similar happening inversely with corruption and evil. Clinton was a little bit corrupt (or at most, about as corrupt as anyone gets operating at that level in the US political system), while Trump was much worse, but given a pass. (An acquaintance of mine, I’m not sure I can call her a friend anymore, actually referred to Clinton as “Hitlery!” I mean Jesus, Trump’s the one who actually had the support of the KKK and neonazis).We have the eternal flogging of her fucking e-mails versus a weekly parade of what should have been career ending racism, misogyny and stupidity, on top of a history of fraud and bankruptcy.
I hope there is a “posterity” that will look back and try to figure out how this happened.
YNnB:
“We have the eternal flogging of her fucking e-mails versus a weekly parade of what should have been career ending racism, misogyny and stupidity, on top of a history of fraud and bankruptcy.”
Very apt. But the reality is that the playing field has never been level. The Trumporamus has been able to get away with rorting the tax system, going banko with judicious use of the bankruptcy laws, and being a sexual predator and general all-round taker. If Clinton had behaved as Trump does, Trump would howling from the top of his tower about how she was too uppity and did not know her proper place.