Why Poor White Males Are the Core of Trump’s Support

“People become how they are treated. “

That’s all they know. Unregulated capitalism is a mean culture.

“since the chance of Clinton doing so is zero. Zip. Nada.”

Worse than zero, it is guaranteed that things will get worse for them under Clinton and they know that.

The integration of the police and military forces, then, was a shrewd act by the elite. Perhaps it will prove to be enough, at least long enough for this almost-53-solar-orbits white non-elite non-enforcer to win Ian’s “Death Bet”. (I never mated or bred.)

Of course, the non-elite white enforcers could have taken over long ago, if not for their weak ethnic and/or class solidarity; so far, enough of them can always be bribed and/or otherwise persuaded to turn their guns on their own kind. Anglo-Celts formed the bulk of the soldiery on both sides in the U. S. Civil War, to list the greatest example of this phenomenon.

Great post.

I take some issue with “better under Sanders.” While I don’t totally disagree, I also dont think “more entitlements” solves anything. This is a crisis of feeling useful, of having meaning within the system. Tax the rich, give it to the poor, but they still won’t have “meaning.” If anything, that makes it worse.

“This is a crisis of feeling useful, of having meaning within the system. Tax the rich, give it to the poor, but they still won’t have “meaning.” If anything, that makes it worse.”

Philosopha please.

Give me idleness with an assured middle-class level of necessities and creature comforts for the rest of my days (which of course, our alleged welfare state does NOT do, right-wing propaganda notwithstanding), and I would be cheerfully constipated about “meaning” for the rest of my days. 😆

Before my quibbles, let me say I LOVED this article & the basic gist is spot on. These parts, especially:
people who are in pain do not react well to some smug upper-middle class jerk telling them they are privileged when their lives are clearly terrible.
&
Strangely, they don’t think that all the people who tell them they’re bad are right. Instead they think those people are assholes.

In many cases assholes they’d like to give a good beating to.

yesyesyes!!!!!!!

The quibbles:

LOTS of latinos & blacks in the military & probably in the police force/prison guards too. Also women tho in (I think, based only on personal observation of military, but fairly extensive personal observation) smaller #’s.

& poor women are just as pissed off as poor men. As are poor people in general, tho not everyone is pissed off at same thing or to the same degree. One thing everyone in the lower rungs of the ladder (and by that I mean the bottom 50% of the household income scale, more or less, tho it may go higher than that) has in common is that they/we almost all know they/we are getting screwed.

& not sure if this is a quibble or misperception, since based on your other writing I’m almost sure you would agree with what I’m about to say:

People become how they are treated. You have to feed the better parts of them if you want those parts to win. If half the “good jobs” they can get are violent jobs, if the remaining good jobs (manufacturing) are going away, and if the rest of their jobs are ass, you should not be surprised that they become mean.

You make them this way, then you demonize them for it.

Poor people are NOT meaner than rich people. Or upper middle class people. In fact, I dare say they are on the whole nicer. Part of that is because working with your hands, for those poor who do, is kind of its own stress release valve. If you could make enough money at it landscaping would be a wonderful job for anyone physically up to it, especially if you like plants. That wouldn’t explain all of it, but I’d certainly agree with your past observations that poor people or people who have been poor at some point are FAR more likely to see others in need and reach out to help than well off people who have never been anything but.

Other thoughts on how well off leftists talk about certain groups :

One thing everyone anywhere on the ladder who has a brain realizes is that the world is in deep shit (excepting the few upper middle class people who have a sort of religious faith that things are getting better and always have been since the dawn of time, and a few other people who seem to be heavily medicated & tell me I should float in a zen state & let things happen–the person who made that particular comment was not a buddhist). I’m not just talking economics. I’m talking climate, surveillance state, war profiteering, etc. Sadly, most conservatives seem to have bought that climate change is not under human control & either will fix itself or else we’re all doomed so might as well ignore it. Most think the panopticon we are building is a done deal so they just shrug in hopelessness. War profiteering you are more likely to get united action against because people are more hopeful it can be stopped and because they consequences are more immediately obvious.

Most of the left, based on how they talk, would be surprised to know that most military men & women are NOT war-mongering types. Yes, prolly a whole bunch joined up because they think going into combat will be great fun, but they are a minority, and a smaller minority post-actual combat. Even those who went to war and liked the adrenaline rush so much they want to go back would, in almost all cases, NEVER send other people into war so they can turn a profit or advance their career.

Also, seriously, more well off leftists need to quit thinking more money=smarter. I graduated from a pretty well regarded law school & have worked in law & film & I have done landscaping & unskilled construction for less than $10 an hr, among other things. You get a wide range of all sorts of intelligence in every field. A lot of the snide well-off people making nasty comments online about other people’s supposed dysfunction & lack of intelligence are most certainly NOT smarter than a whole bunch of the people they are trashing.

And lastly, I know a bunch of Trump supporters & have a coworker who likes Ted Cruz–not one of these people has anything against blacks or latinos (Muslims are a different matter in some cases). The Ted Cruz person is married to an immigrant but likes Cruz’s immigration stance; his thinking is they jumped through lots of annoying hoops for years so punish the people who tried to skip the hoops. The Trump people don’t seem to even care about his immigration stance but basically like that he talks tough & trashes the establishment. They buy into his “I’m rich so I can’t be bought” schtick. Your take on them is pretty much spot on. He appears different from the usual so they hope he will be. And he has one huge advantage over Bernie–Bernie has to walk a tightrope. He has to criticize the dem establishment without criticizing Obama too much; most registered democrats still like Obama, heaven help us all. The GOP are, in this one way, clearly smarter than Dems–they nearly all know their leadership sucks so Trump can have at it with no fear of blowback.

Let’s face it, there is no reason NOT to hate the Dem establishment unless you are part of it (or unless you just don’t hate people, and are forgiving of their errors & assume basically good intentions gone wrong or whatnot). In some ways they impede goodness more than the GOP. At least the GOP is more or less honest about it’s goals and what it is. The Dem party pretends to be for progressive goals and with media assistance manages to fool people that it actually is something other than a corporate front willing to sell out the future of the world and screw over at least 80% of the people here and now and blow up whoever as long as it improves the money & party perks of the Dem leadership. I have no idea if Trump will be better and I’m not voting for him because I can’t stand the man, but if there were no other choices ‘tween him & the Klein/Yglesias types, can’t blame anyone for being willing to roll the dice on him.

Let me add that, IIUC, for most of the time since 1968 Congress has been in Democratic hands, the plight of the poor and working classes is in no small part the result of their actions and inaction. During that time a Democratic Congress could have pegged the minimum wage to inflation, the mean wage, or the mean income, for instance. It is true that working class Whites turned their backs on liberals in reaction against the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s, but the liberals did not have to turn their backs on them.

The share of the total income of the bottom 80% of US households vs the top 20% of households also peaked in 1968: 57.4% vs 42.6%. As of 2014, the last year for which the Census has data, the share of total household income of the top 20% has increased to 51.2% while that of the bottom 80% has declined to 48.8%.

So in 1968, the bottom 80% share of household income was 14.8% greater than that of the top 20%. In 2014, it was 2.4% less. That is a 17.2% negative swing.

I agree with Ian. I have said for some time now that any movement that can successfully challenge the status quo needs white working class males. They need to be respected, listened to, and included at all levels of the movement. Pandering and a few perfunctory, insincere gestures in their general direction (what seems to be the current standard practice of the modern Democratic party) just doesn’t cut it.

You just can’t treat people this poorly. Eventually they will and do push back. The Dream is a Nigtmare for many, many people. Social Contract was broken way back when and is worse and worse. Social dissolution is up ahead. If the Scam wears thin, they will bring out the Gendarmes. Make book on it.

Breton

While I’m pretty much 100% in agreement with Ian here, I’d like to add that the white working class seems more resentful of the immigrants who take jobs than of the employers who hire them, which is where the REAL problem is.

I notice that Trump’s negative rhetoric is aimed at those who have the least amount of power in the system, which is the standard conservative strategy. It’s never the elites’ fault. He’s really not that much different from the establishment in that regard — he’s just rawer.

If we had an opposition party, perhaps the white working class would have formed a strong coalition with minority and immigrant workers, given that it’s the same cadre of elites that has been screwing them all. But we don’t. So we get Trump. And for this reason I also don’t believe the working class will turn its rage at the “job creators”, even when these same “job creators” are dispensing their jobs to desperate immigrants.

The lack of a left-wing, pro-worker party in America will ultimately cost us all dearly.

The point is that electoral politics is not the path to revolution, it is the path which supports the status quo.

So those supposedly revolutionary candidates are doing their part to mollify the angry segments of the electorate — by acknowledging/reinforcing the anger — while reinforcing the status quo.

Revolution, if it comes, will come from outside the electoral system/process. Neither Trump nor Sanders has shown any intention of engaging in that sort of revolutionary action.

But as long as they show an apparent interest in in the problems and condition of those who are marginalized by the political/economic status quo, so long will the marginalized be tamed.

Once the presidency is assumed by one or another of the status quo candidates, it will be up to him or her to quiet the masses and prevent rebellion/revolution.

Thanks for re-emphasizing the phenomenon of “cause-and-effect” as it applies to human nature.
A person is, essentially, three things: their physical biological genealogy, their inborn personality—and the effects of the culmination of a lifetime of the influences of all the social climates they’ve live in and/or inhabited.

Ian, speak for yourself! I was born in 64 and I’m not old!

Seriously though, those charts you show is my family personified. I come from a working class, blue collar family. I worked my way up to lower middle class but couldn’t get any higher because both my brother and grandmother kept needing financial support. My brother became a heavy duty equipment mechanic who lost job after job after job as companies shut down or moved.

I got sick and became disabled. My family collapsed back into my grandmother’s house in 2013 . Neither my brother nor I are married. Neither of us has any children. He lives in my den. The working class has every right to be enraged to the point of violence. I am. My brother is. It’s just that we’re not the types of people who start violence. Neither one of us likes Trump but I think my brother may be mad enough to vote for him.

Effem permalink
March 18, 2016

“Great post.

I take some issue with “better under Sanders.” While I don’t totally disagree, I also dont think “more entitlements” solves anything. This is a crisis of feeling useful, of having meaning within the system. Tax the rich, give it to the poor, but they still won’t have “meaning.” If anything, that makes it worse.”

Screw that puritan work ethnic crap. Someone who has been poor and slaved all their life would be just fine with something like the guaranteed income. They don’t need to be working like a slave to make someone else rich as a life affirmation. You obviously work at one of those cubical jobs doing nothing productive. I would eat a shotgun if I had to do that. I chose not to.

Hey SnarkyShark,

You obviously work at one of those cubical jobs doing nothing productive. I would eat a shotgun if I had to do that. I chose not to.

It’s not so bad actually. Write a little code, drink a little beer, get down tonight!

Billikin PERMALINK
March 18, 2016

Ché Pasa: “Revolution, if it comes, will come from outside the electoral system/process. Neither Trump nor Sanders has shown any intention of engaging in that sort of revolutionary action.”
Billikin: Trump is moving in that direction by encouraging violent confrontation and by scapegoating.

Unfortunately, none of this is outside the mainstream of American electoral politics. It’s never been particularly polite, and it has frequently become a — sometimes bloody — contact sport.

I see a lot of arm waving and foot stomping from Trump, but as long as he stays within the electoral process, he’s not fomenting a revolution. On the other hand, if he were agitating in much the same way but outside the electoral process, then I’d have a different opinion of his actions.

A populist revolt from the right is certainly possible, but I’m not sure that one led by a plutocrat and con man would get very far.

Stranger things have happened, though.

Aside from so many obvious points, so weird that the high water mark for labor militancy in the US was right after WW II. The graph tells that story too, not just that of the shitty years of our lives. Then it was crushed, despite Truman bravely vetoing Taft-Hartley. (A war criminal too, I am aware. But we Americans have to grade them on a curve. Jimmy Carter arguably the only President I saw who wasn’t.)

To my mild frustration, my use of a search engine has failed to turn up a quote I was seeking, in which someone said of a fellow politician that he wanted to “abolish the people”.

I wonder if the U. S. oligarchy is not indeed trying to “abolish the people”; that is, the non-elite white people on whom the oligarchs have been depending for decades. This could mean that they are smarter than Ian gives them credit for–they have seen the dangers, and have moved and are moving to thwart those dangers.

By integrating the armed forces and police agencies, they have blunted, at least somewhat, the ability of non-elite white enforcers to overthrow their employers.

Also, by opening the borders (with just enough enforcement and deportations to create the illusion that they are not opening the borders), the oligarchy has already ended the status of non-elite whites as a national majority, if I am correctly informed.

These changes would, at least somewhat, blunt the ability of the non-elite whites to overthrow the oligarchy, even if the “rednecks” did develop the necessary class consciousness and solidarity.

Meanwhile, the oligarchs can continue to cultivate the traditional bigotries of their pale minions carefully, just enough to keep them from achieving enlightenment and joining their non-white fellow victims against the oligarchs.

http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/67891661/pol-is-always-right

Following up on Bob McManus’ find of Brecht’s poem:
.
Die Lösung
.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
.
The Solution
.
After the uprising of June 17
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union distributed
In Stalin Avenue leaflets which read that the people
Had forfeited the government’s trust
And only through redoubled effort
might regain it. Would it
Not be so much simpler, if the government
Dissolved the people and
Chose another?
.
Note: Volk can refer to both the people and the nation

About ‘abolishing the people’

http://fabiusmaximus.com/2008/11/06/padron-3/

I saw this post about the elites using immigration as a ‘reverse election’ to get themselves a need people more pliable to their wishes. Can’t really say if it’s correct.

Give me idleness with an assured middle-class level of necessities and creature comforts for the rest of my days (which of course, our alleged welfare state does NOT do, right-wing propaganda notwithstanding), and I would be cheerfully constipated about “meaning” for the rest of my days. ?

People with a high living standard and copious free time would be in a good position to organize politically…so I doubt this would ever actually happen, unless the Panopticon really is good enough now to hold the masses down even in that case (it may be.)

Not to mention poor whites (et. al.) are regularly told to pee in a cup as a condition of employment. The wealthy upper-middle class, for the most part, are not. How humiliating is that?

“You think they are Jesus, and can be treated like crap for longer than most of them have been alive and that there won’t be consequences? You think that because other people are treated even worse, they will sublimate their own mistreatment?”

No, they’re just arrogant enough to just think that the power of advertising, marketing, polling, “big data” and the like will allow them to be manipulated to believe whatever the elites wish them to believe, even if the results are contrary to what they witness with their own eyes (e.g. “free trade deals and open borders are good for everyone!”).

Here in Wisconsin, when Scott Walker went to gut the public sector employee unions, he was very careful to exempt police and firefighters (ironically, the most expensive pension expenditures), and instead go after “lazy” schoolteachers.

More simple put, Jewish oppression and Jew predation.

While I completely agree poor white men get demonized by rich liberals, the picture isn’t quite as simple as “they vote against their self-interest”. See http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/bubba-isnt-who-you-think/?_r=0

Capitalism leads to fascism nothing new but everytime the same shit.

I’ve worked for DOD and related agencies for over 33 years, ten of them constantly in the Middle East, no rotation, no rest, I’m physically disabled now in nursing/retirement home with no real support of any kind. I agree and have said before to people in the comfortable upper middle class what happens when people like us get tired of your condescension we own all the guns? The particular instance was a very conservative person, a physician, my brother actually. His response was as long as there are pick-up trucks and six packs of beer his class could just buy us off. Which by the way is a hugely condescending response in the first place. Anyway, I worked with conservative white warriors as I’ve said for along time, and I ended referring to them as “kill ’em all cowboys.” Those are my brother and people like him allies, but I just don’t see how it ends well for either side. I know a lot of people like me who entered into service during the mid Cold War period in the 1970’s and by the time I left disabled in 2009, I felt betrayed by my country by lies and that I was a murderer, not feelings I ever wanted to feel about myself. We killed thousands and thousands of innocent harmless people for no reason whatsoever. Please if you’re sane at all don’t ever thank me for my service. I know other former DOD/agency employees who won’t even return to the US, and they spent around 30 years serving the US like me, and I’m seriously thinking of immigrating to Germany or the like, I can’t stand it anymore. Good luck, I wish you well, and I don’t feel like I owe my country anything after 33 years and ending up a murderer that you won’t even acknowledge publicly and that I feel ashamed to be. So pulling the Patriot string doesn’t work with me or my friends either. Hillary or Trump, eh? I don’t see it ending well, just leave the rest of the world alone, they deserve it but I doubt that’s what will happen.

Has Donald told anyone how soon he’s going to start having his clothing line manufacturing done in the USA, not China as is the case now? Or maybe it’s Bangladesh. Also his daughter Ivanka has her designs made in China as well. Has that inconvenient fact ever been mentioned at one of the rallies?

Disagree about the wages being the ‘biggest’ effect, I think unemployment is far larger effect.

Boilng frog syndrome, the wage effect had been like the slow heating with decades of gradual decline. Unemployment is being dropped into the boiling water straight away.

Finally hope gives way to despair and for some anger as there are no new jobs even close in financial or psychological wages and no one at the elite levels cares. Which adds a feeling of betrayal as well, decades of ‘doing the right thing’ and loyalty to Dems or Reps…and thrown on the heap just like all the ‘others’.

Too many drank the kool aid about the uselesssness of those ‘others’ deriving a psychological wage, now they are in the same boat.

Now the challenge is for everyone at the bottom to unite or they will continue to be picked apart by the elites.

I always use the cautionary story of the disabled Houston veteran complaining about being discrminated against, after voting against the very law that would have protected him, because he didn’t want some others to be protected against discrimination. Well that didn’t work out well did it.

As long as the working class white males think that way and are not prepared to unite with others in common cause then they are (and have been) easy marks for manipulation, or just being ignored.

As for those who think there will be some huge explosion, nonsense. Any Govt will crush them in minutes, then hire a few of them to brutally police the others. The prisons can easily be expanded to jail 25+% of them, just as they did black males, wouldn’t surprise me if some neo-liberal think tanks haven’t already ran the numbers on that option.

Could Trump (or Trump like person) change the economy? Maybe, but the odds are against it. A Sanders type has a better, though still lowish, chance. With anyone else it is guaranteed to get worse (with Cruz you get a Christian theocracy thrown in as well).

Get smart unite together and unite with others or keep getting done over are the options.

atcooper ” I tell them they can thank me by making fewer future vets. Vote for folks who will keep the vet services funded, etc.”

Well said. Nailed it.

As American “liberals” are likely to discover in the near future they’re in a cleft stick of their own making. They’ve consistently supported and abetted the ruling class’ power and resource grab in the forlorn hope of maintaining their diffferentials. They’ve disarmed themselves leaving the profession of arms to those whom they’ve consistently reviled and despised.

The American officer class are now overwhelmingly Southern White Baptists from the fundamentalist wing of that sect.

The American non-comms and enlisted classes are to a large extent drawn from white working class males.

Both groups have ample reason to hate and despise American “liberals”.

Machiavelli summarised in one brief sentence what is now an existential problem for American “liberals”:

Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.

So can we now start saying that whites have a “victim mentality” when they complain about their reality?

Timely post. Salon just answered it by calling Trump supporters scum who should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/20/who_are_these_idiot_donald_trump_supporters_trump_loves_the_poorly_educated_and_they_love_him_right_back/

Black America, if there is such a thing, supports Hillary. I definitely would not call them warmongering, banker-loving scum for it. Even if I disgree with their voting strategy.

@Ian D

It’s strange that you spent the last 30+ years helping to project Amerikan power and FP and now that you are retired you expect ‘us’ to stop it.

You NAILED it in this article. I’ve said as much to people who have not a clue as to how Trump could become a candidate. I’m sharing the hell out of this. Thanx.

I suspect Mark is using a different definition of “liberal” than Lisa or I would use.

After all, he calls himself a “conservative”, but he doesn’t talk like a worshipper of Mammon, so he can’t be “conservative” by the USAmerican definition. U. S. conservatives worship Mammon, including the ones who delude themselves that they worship the Christian God.

Various thoughts:

1. Trump hysteria is a distraction. He will not win against Bernie, period. & while I can think of rationales/circumstances where he theoretically could beat Hillary, it is unlikely. All anyone has to do against him is run ads of what he’s said about women & latinos over & over. He’s probably said stuff about blacks too & if not HRC can make something up & it’s not like people won’t believe he said it, given all the horrid stuff he’s said about everyone else. I’m not a political pro & took me about ten seconds to think of how to crucify him w/out lying. He will try to walk it back but his only hope against her would be for Bernie supporters to abandon the DNC in bigger droves than is likely realistic. OTOH, he’s kept all the attention focused on himself, making it easier for the media to hide Bernie (or any other real populist, if there were any), which may have been the point.

2. I frequently wonder if Trump has been trying to lose & it’s just not working. Bringing up the wall again & promoting his products during press conferences, saying he could shoot someone for the hell of it in the middle of the street & his supporters would still back him, the “blood from everywhere” comments, “beat up protestors & I will pay your legal bills” etc. At this point, his ego may have kicked in and he really wants to win even if he doesn’t want to actually be prez, but it’s going to be hard if not impossible to walk back all that stuff. His efforts at self-sabotage failed in the primary, kinda sorta, but will probably succeed wonderfully in the general.

3. Why are poor and working class whites more responsive to Trump than poor and working class blacks and latinos?
@Billikin – you are right. I was being oversimplistic based on a somewhat skewed frame of reference simply because I’m annoyed with overly simplistic framing in the other direction. Trump does say awful stuff and he does encourage or at least not condemn his supporters who are racist, and just because they are not in my circle of aquaintances doesn’t mean they are not there. Shorter: You right, me wrong on this one. Or you right, me partly wrong, at least.

4. To all the “don’t vote/voting is not a revolutionary act, we want a REAL revolution” people: While it may come to that, keep in mind the following as far as getting what you want:
Most of the people in the US who are likely to start a fighting revolution are more like the Bundy ranch nutbars than Che or Malcolm X.
Most leftists don’t have the stomach for a real fight. Or such is my impression. So, if there’s a revolution, it may not be the one you want, or there may be another one at the same time and they might kick our ass.
If there is a real revolution, it will be a slaughter. No matter who wins, a slaughter. (I’m not getting into what it would actually take for a successful one, but seriously, even should circumstances come about, which is highly, highlyHIGHLY unlikely to happen any time soon or in time to stave off climate change from progressing way too far, but should it happen, it won’t be pretty for anyone.) I am filled with fury and anger to a degree that would freak out most people a great deal of the time and don’t like most people very much, but even I don’t want to see this or anything like it.

Somehow voting seems better (& yes, of course, combine it w/protests, product boycotts, civil disobedience, whatever, & no I’m not a pacifist & I’m the last person to say violence is never called for, but it really shouldn’t hardly ever be a first option, and ideally not a second one either)

& if you think you are somehow fighting the power by not voting & that’s what you mean, that’s just silly. The powers that be don’t care if you spend voting day sitting at home watching TV or planting a garden. Anyone who wants to maintain the status quo will be very, very happy if your “revolt” is limited to watching The Hunger Games or writing comments on blog posts or growing your own food (not that anything is wrong w/any of this, they are all fine things, but none of them is particularly worrisome to the board of ExxonMobile or Halliburton,and none of them are going to stop us from screwing up other countries or ourselves). If everyone who hates the system boycotts the voting booth, then only those who like the system will get to affect what it does. The DNC, the RNC & the MIC all salute your solution.

5. the Trump phenomenon illustrates is that this is a group of people who are fully conscious that they are losers
No. Working class does not =loser. Rich does not preclude being a loser. Depending on your personal frame of reference the two may have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

every black man in the work force got horror stories about white males and a lot of white women are bad too.

@MW

You seem to be confused about how our political system operates, voters don’t make the decisions that affect whether Exxon or the Banksters rule the economy. Politics and its minions play their roles in the Kabuki to keep the rubes believing, as you seem to do, that either Party actually represents the voters/sheeple they spend $Billions to attract to the voting pens.

Promoting voting, like submissive conditioned children, is how they justify and gain consent from the rubes to continue their abuse.

Boycotting the Political System is the only truly nonviolent means of attacking the System because they can’t react to it like they do to demonstrations, activists and other organized political movements with infiltration, disruption and brute force.

Trump has changed the calculus used to condition and control the rubes and is directly attacking the corrupt parasitic political class, its funders/controllers and its minions with amazing effectiveness and just about everyone in the elite power structure is terrified and thrashing about trying to stop ‘the People’ from regaining some control over their lives or at least having some real choice of who represents them.

Sanders is the diversion used to attempt to return the wayward Liberals to the voting pens with empty statist rhetoric about reform that will disappear when he kisses the Queen’s ring and returns to promoting the status quo.

Trump is enabling a Riot in Cell Block Number Nine and the jailers are calling in reinforcements to keep the prisoners locked down eating the thin gruel they are forced to survive on.

Lambert over at Naked Capitalism seems to have nailed the HRC ‘grand strategy’:

Shaft the Dem left and grab the ‘moderate’ republicans that won’t want to vote for Trump (who they want as the GOP candidate).

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/03/the-democrat-establishment-plan-for-a-three-front-anti-trump-republican-splitting-anti-left-campaign.html

Yep, as dumb as the Libyan campaign…. just what you would expect from the hubris drunk, cannot tie their shoelaces on their own HRC crowd and Dem elites. This is their wet dream, become the new Republicrat party leaving rumps on the left and religious/social right who are powerless and then rule forever.

The holes in this ‘strategy’, that if he even has a moderate IQ Trump could utilise, are multiple.
Firstly what if those ‘moderate’ Reps don’t vote for her? In their tiny little minds they seem unable to realise just how hated she is in nearly all quarters.
What if many of the Sanders voters, especially the younger women, don’t vote for her?
What if the nearly always (and to their detriment) disciplined black voters split and a fair proportion of them, remembering the past, don’t vote for her.

All Trump has to do is throw a few bones to various groups, not so much to get their vote…but to get them NOT to vote for HRC. Then her support collapses.

She is vulnerable on so many dimensions, forget the email stuff that is meaningless except as a nuisance’ and a distraction, but the war mongering, her past record of neo-liberalism makes her the sort of target any real populist would dream about…she is the living embodiment of the ‘establishment’ that so many hate.

Trump has the freedom to go to the left or the right of her when he wants. She is stuck and has no strategic freedom at all. It would his election to win or lose.

———————
Re Mandos point, dead right. As I said before, they took and enjoyed their ‘psychological’ wage while getting their pockets picked. Naturally politicians played them like fiddles and used them as mugs.

The questions are: have they woken up yet and by how much? They are never going to get their fabled 1950s back, where the ‘darkies’ knew their place, ‘uppity’ women got a smack across the mouth, ‘pooftah’ bashing was a sport and hypocrisy was a religion. As large a group as they are, they will get nowhere economically (except perhaps under Sanders) unless they can politically unite with other groups, doesn’t matter how much they huff and puff about their guns.

There is a great book (the best in fact) on the Battle of Britain (Most Dangerous Enemy) and one chapter talks about ‘enlightenment’, which comes far too often from pain and a final acknowledgment of failure. Both are necessary before change can happen.
So will they, as a group, follow that path and change, or cling to the old ways and drink or drug themselves into oblivion, while still being mugged endlessly?

The history of the USSR does not give much comfort on this, the incredible death rate was in middle aged men, often in the lower/working/ middle classes, been in positions of steady work and/or petty power and privilege, then it all went away, so they killed themselves in enormous numbers. It was the women, as usual, who held it all together, the men disappeared into their vodka bottles while the women put the food on the table.

So they will have to get smart, much smarter than they’ve shown since the 1920s and 30s. Obviously some will, like any group they have a proportion of exceptional and talented individuals who have woken up, but will it be in large enough numbers to make a difference to them as a group overall? “Lead us, lead us” they cry right now, when they should be saying “we want this, in our pocket and by then”.

Russia was so lucky to get Putin, who was supposed to be a useless stooge for the oligarchs., has anyone looked at the economic miracle he pulled off and the incredible rise in wages and living standards? But that was sheer luck they got him, there is little chance of that happening in the US, except (maybe) Sanders winning. The US is going to need a ground swell from the bottom to really change things.

Good stuff above the ———– Lisa.

But 1; I believe Trump will be liquidated should he not be stopped by the Corporate/State Media’s efforts. The media, just like it did in the days preceding Rev Kings assassination is giving the public a green light to murder Trump. When Josh Marshall starts chumming the water with “Someone will die” the same way he “cleverly” sold the Iraq Invasion, you know somebody is going to jump the shark. The media engendering a “lone” nut* would be far more practical for the deep state than the trouble and expense of DBA, what with all multiple murders involved to make sure that those who do the “work” never talk.

But 2; Hillary’s State Department experience, while grossly incompetent in pursuing US interests, has proven very useful in this campaign. Hillary’s use of agent provocateurs to create “false flag” operations that got Sander supporters to fight Trump instead of her, although patently obvious to intelligent observers, has worked….beyond even her wildest dreams. Who ever cooked-up using Bernie supporters to engage in violence against Trump supporters…and thus discredit Sanders/Trump simultaneously, was cut from the same cloth as the provocateurs in Libya, Syria & Ukraine.

But 3; I did not realize there were so many Sanders supporters dumb enough to fall for such an overused trick, however, they did and are still doing so…even after the evidence shows they are hurting Sanders massively.

*A Bernie Sanders, or somebody who could be painted as a Bernie Sanders supporters would be pure gold.

Why should the Establishment run the risks involved with killing Trump, when it can control the unaccountable vote-counting computers to make him lose, however many knuckle-walkers actually vote for him?

To misquote Parliament in “Chocolate City”, you don’t need the bullet if you control the ballot.

Before anybody says his followers would riot–SFW if they do? They’re not organized, disciplined, battle-hardened street fighters like the Blackshirts or Brownshirts.

Lisa was correct above:

“As for those who think there will be some huge explosion, nonsense. Any Govt. will crush them in minutes, then hire a few of them to police the others brutally. The prisons can easily be expanded to jail 25+% of them, just as they were expanded for black males. It wouldn’t surprise me if some neo-liberal think tanks haven’t already run the numbers on that option.”

It’s getting ridiculously absurd observing Left leaning talking heads and the presstitute media in general go on ad nauseum about racist Trump supporters. Full disclosure: I’m black. Every white Trump supporter is not consumed with racial hatred. The main reason Trump is getting support (even among more than a few black voters) is because PEOPLE ARE BROKEASS AS HELL and have awakened to fact that the usual suspects in both criminal parties do little to improve the lives of the average Joe. Unemployment, underemployment, foreclosed homes, homelessness, stagnant wages, and the craptastic economic woes list goes on. For all the emphasis on the strident anti-immigrant/Muslim remarks Trump made at the start of his campaign, the bulk of his speeches are about the economy, jobs, and unfair trade. THESE are the main issues of interest to his voters and no other Republican is speaking to these concerns. The mask of democracy has been blown off as voters see Trump’s own party working 24/7 to derail his campaign. The guy is winning most of the primaries and his own party works against him? The bulk of these protests are not coming from people incensed over the “racist” Trump. These protests are the work of agent provocateurs courtesy of empire political “fixers” such as George Soros. The powers that be fear Trump can’t be controlled; he opposes trade deals including the lethal TPP, criticizes the mess the US made of the Middle East, questions the safety of giving 30+ vaccines to babies, and questions the official 911 storyline. Anyone doing such would interfere with the fascist agenda the powers that be have been so successful installing under the Dronebama administration. Thus we see an all out assault by both sides of the political aisle to get rid of Trump. Sidenote: Amusing and sad to listen to the black intelligentsia harp on the “angry white male” being mad because Dronebama is in the White House. If the white male is mad, the black male needs to be downright ballistic. 95% of blacks voted for Droneman TWICE and can’t point to a damn thing they got for their trouble – other than being worse off economically than they’ve been in over 40 years.

beverly : 100% right. And those right wing white working class/poor people have finally woken up to the fact that the Republican elites that many have voted for decades, hate them as much as the Dem elites do and that they have been played.

Here is a telling article: http://www.afr.com/opinion/the-new-class-warfare-in-america-20160320-gnmxeb
“Educated conservatives are just as scathing. Take the National Review, a flagship of thinking conservatives, that described Mr Trump as a “ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula”. In January it pulled together 22 intellectuals to condemn Mr Trump’s candidacy as an existential threat to conservatism. Their efforts had no impact on Mr Trump’s fan base. Now the magazine has switched to damning his supporters. By declaring open season on blue-collar whites, Kevin Williamson’s widely read essay on “white working class dysfunction” marks a turning point. Yet he is only putting into writing what many conservatives say.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die,” Mr Williamson writes. “Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible . . . the white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”

————-
” Amusing and sad to listen to the black intelligentsia “..yep. Totally co-opted and as such useless (except for some honourable mentions).
Forgot that old, old lesson: a guaranteed vote is an ignored vote.

It looks more and more that it is black women that are going to have to do the heavy lifting politically.

————–
And if people got smart a combined working class/poorer vote would change the country real fast. As usual the various elites, of all types, will work real hard to prevent that by the usual ‘divide and conquer’ that has been so successful in the past.

And that’s Trumps main weakness and Sander’s strength as he is the only one that could really pull that off.

But if Trump gets up against Clinton he will still get much (but not all) of that vote and…as I always emphasise… lots simply won’t vote for HRC for any reason, especially if Trump is smart in his campaign and increases that ‘non vote’ numbers.
And a heck of lot of the more left wing white working class/poor people, who’d vote for Sanders in droves, will switch to Trump. Of course they will, if I was them I would.
The living in ga-ga land Dem elites just don’t get that.

Trump’s plane made an emergency landing in February.

OH NOES! MADOKA KAMI-SAMA PRESERVE US! TEH GLOBAL ILLUMINATI ARE TRYING TO KILL THE CHOSEN ONE!!!!1!

It must be that; it’s not as if complex machines like airplanes ever develop malfunctions because we live in an entropic universe or anything like that. 🙄

“but she protects young witches only I think.”

Oh, the Ascended Madoka has broader responsibilities.

“What’s that, Mr. Galactus? You’ve lost your appetite?”

“I thought you might.”

I was questioning Communist strategy, not Communist morality (though that could be questioned as well). It strikes me as poor strategy to promulgate a view which forces a large number of existing and powerful institutions to become one’s enemies, in order to preserve themselves.

“A particular reading of the New Testament could easily be used to support utopian Communism.”

The religious right live by the Old Testament*, we don’t want any of that hippy New Testament nonsense here Ian.

*Well the parts that suit them that is.

google george lakoff strict-father

lakoff argues the strict father — not the nurturant parent — is at the heart of conservative ideology. (luv those right wing authoritarians.)

what do you think of the jewish dr samuel h dresner’s 1995 book, “can families survive in pagan america?” dresner makes the case “the [post ww2] cultural revolution has endangered our nation….but, we can restore order to our country and our lives using the tenets of jewish family life and faith. (perhaps mr trump should take note. may help him strategize his “make america great again” notion.) dr dresner shows how the strength of the individual family determines the strength of the nation.

gee, what would happen if the finance, entertainment and media biggies read dresner’s book?

Lisa – spare me please the frankly rather pathetic, and I’m being charitable using that word, special pleading. There are a statistically miniscule and politically impotent number of Americans who are genuinely left-wing or liberal. The remainder of those so described as commenters here repeatedly and eloquently demonstrate belong either to the collaborationist school of American “liberalism” or to the collusionist school. Their structural function is to uphold the current order by providing a useful figleaf and a channel in which those who might genuinely be interested in building a better society can have their energies safely frittered away on matters which have a picayune effect (if any) on the power relations within the American polity. It’s contemptible.

mfi

markfromireland – I don’t think you have taken into account the millennial generation in the U.S.

@ leftleaningartist March 25, 2016

Come back and tell me about it if they ever accomplish anything.

how is white being treated worst than blacks and Hispanics here in this situation. in some aspects it doesnt make any sense. your beating the point way too much about how poor whites are treated with manufacturing jobs. Thats not a big enough mistreatment to act like that. Your giving too much excuses to them for acting the way they act just because they took manufacturing jobs away. If your talking systematic mistreatment, you should look at blacks and Hispanics, you cant compare the 2.