Basket of Deplorables (and Binders Full of Women)
Well this isn't good.
Half of Trump supporters are bigots? Could be. I'm skeptical...not...super skeptical...but skeptical. Also: it isn't the sort of thing you should claim without evidence. And I don't mean: evidence that some Trump supporters are bigots...
Liberalism did it's now-normal thing when Mittens said that he had "binders full of women," despite the fact that it was perfectly clear to every sane person what he meant, and there was nothing wrong with it. Rather like they're doing now with "make America great again." They didn't really even spin the comments so much as just made up shit about how they were bigoted. At some point, spin becomes fabrication.
This Clinton comment seems to come from the same place--that is, the view that all/most conservatives are bigots. A response is: Trump isn't a conservative. Also: Trump has given us reason to think that he's a bigot, and attracts bigots. I am inclined to agree with the response...but, OTOH, I'm skeptical of my own inclination. The drumbeat of racism, racism, racism (and misogyny, etc.) coming from the left makes it hard for me to think. One can be vociferously against illegal immigration without being racist. That's the position of most conservatives. I don't know what to think about Trump. But I've become so aware of the steady stream of false accusations of bigotry from the left that I may over-react. Liberals used to realize that conservatives value law and order--and "law-and-order type" was an insult. But racism is worse, and so the fact that conservatives value law and order has been conveniently forgotten so that it's easier to think they are racists.
Anyway, unlike "binders full of women" and "make America great again," Clinton's comment does seem to me to be genuinely objectionable. Or at least treading on dangerous ground... Obviously there won't be much liberal objection to this, since it's their candidate...and pretty consistent with their view of conservatives...and of everyone who disagrees with them...
I expect this to be tactically bad for Clinton. For one thing, it touches again on one of the shittiest things about American liberalism: the routine attribution of racism to conservatism.
OTOH, truth is a defense, and if there's data, then she ought to produce it, and we ought to defend her comments. Seems to me, anyway.
Half of Trump supporters are bigots? Could be. I'm skeptical...not...super skeptical...but skeptical. Also: it isn't the sort of thing you should claim without evidence. And I don't mean: evidence that some Trump supporters are bigots...
Liberalism did it's now-normal thing when Mittens said that he had "binders full of women," despite the fact that it was perfectly clear to every sane person what he meant, and there was nothing wrong with it. Rather like they're doing now with "make America great again." They didn't really even spin the comments so much as just made up shit about how they were bigoted. At some point, spin becomes fabrication.
This Clinton comment seems to come from the same place--that is, the view that all/most conservatives are bigots. A response is: Trump isn't a conservative. Also: Trump has given us reason to think that he's a bigot, and attracts bigots. I am inclined to agree with the response...but, OTOH, I'm skeptical of my own inclination. The drumbeat of racism, racism, racism (and misogyny, etc.) coming from the left makes it hard for me to think. One can be vociferously against illegal immigration without being racist. That's the position of most conservatives. I don't know what to think about Trump. But I've become so aware of the steady stream of false accusations of bigotry from the left that I may over-react. Liberals used to realize that conservatives value law and order--and "law-and-order type" was an insult. But racism is worse, and so the fact that conservatives value law and order has been conveniently forgotten so that it's easier to think they are racists.
Anyway, unlike "binders full of women" and "make America great again," Clinton's comment does seem to me to be genuinely objectionable. Or at least treading on dangerous ground... Obviously there won't be much liberal objection to this, since it's their candidate...and pretty consistent with their view of conservatives...and of everyone who disagrees with them...
I expect this to be tactically bad for Clinton. For one thing, it touches again on one of the shittiest things about American liberalism: the routine attribution of racism to conservatism.
OTOH, truth is a defense, and if there's data, then she ought to produce it, and we ought to defend her comments. Seems to me, anyway.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:19 PM
5 Comments:
From the ever reasonable Drum:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/here-latest-campaign-faux-controversy
Oy...
But what if some of those survey answers, unpalatable though they may be, are factually accurate..?
For example, decades of IQ testing seem to indicate that blacks are, on average, less intelligent than whites. And criminal justice statistics seem to demonstrate that there is a higher rate of most criminal behavior among blacks than among whites...
This is a troublesome set of apparent facts about humanity, and denying them to those who assert them is not only wrong but counterproductive. Belief in these statistical assertions does not constitute racism, but there are racists who misuse them as justification for the racist belief that blacks are less morally valuable, or less human, even, than whites.
Our public discussion of these matters is going to need to get more sophisticated or we're going to keep the Trump-phenomenon-generating dynamic in this country alive and well. That is, roughly, uneducated white folks are tired of educated white folks' condescending denial of facts in support of "social justice."
And that means actual racism will be more attractive to the uneducated and downtrodden.
Yeah, I have to say that there are factual issues there that take us into areas where even I'm loath to tread...
But yeah, there's evidence that the Trump supporters are right about some of those things.
And, in general, there's evidence that stereotypes about groups are pretty accurate. According to one thing I read: more accurate than psychological studies, on average.
Black men do commit more violent crimes than white men. And I think one of the things that drives many conservatives crazy is that they admit this while liberals often won't...and, though conservatives are right, and you can't be racist in virtue of acknowledging a fact because it's a fact, liberals call them racists for it.
Anyway...there's a big problem / issue here... but current custom prevents it from being discussed. And indiscriminate accusations of racism for believing things about issues that are off-limits with respect to discussions about whether they are true or not...that's a particularly crazy type of craziness.
I obviously agree that Drum's an extremely reasonable dude, Aa, and I think he's been kicking exceptional ass of late...but I regretfully have to agree with the Mystic on this one.
Needless to say, that'd get us both (falsely) accused of racism in many places.
Had to mull over this for a couple of days. I think, ultimately, this was a political move by the Clinton campaign to remind swing voters how deplorable Trump and many of his supporters truly are. Do you really want to vote for a racist and mysoginist like Trump? Many of his supporters are indeed racist and deplorable (spend five minutes watching a Trump rally to convince yourself of this). Because if you do support him, you are in a real sense supporting racism.
Jay Smooth puts it oh so well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2btmsEYMMhU
In 2004 an academic wrote a scathing letter after Bush beat Kerry, saying he did not blame Kerry for the loss. He blamed those, who, voted, for Bush. Wish I could find it...I feel the same way here. Someone who votes for Trump is being deplorable (they might not be personally, but at that moment they are being deplorable). Philosophical arguments aside, that's what I think and feel at the moment.
Yeah, I feel you man. And I like Jay Smooth and think he's a reasonable guy.
Two or three years ago, I'd have agreed with few reservations.
And I really do feel the draw of that position.
I just still have my doubts.
For example, I read somebody say, basically: there are a lot of people out there who are not drawn to Trump's shittiness. In fact, they're repelled by Trump's shittiness. They're just repelled so strongly by certain things about contemporary liberalism that they're willing to put up with a stupid, authoritarian asshole if that's what it takes to tap the brakes on the country's current ever-more-liberal trajectory.
My own pathological obsessions about this, as you all know because I won't shut up about them, concern the left's ever more bizarre, ever more politically motivated theories of non-political matters...which always involve acquiescence to political correctness. The crazy lefty theories...the total fucking freakouts against people who don't believe them...the representation of the purely descriptive as normative/moral....and the fact that government institutions like the Department of Education and DoJ are now forcing utterly crazy leftist theories onto the country via misuse of the coercive power of the state....
Well, this is extremely alarming to me.
Not alarming enough for me to vote for Trumpo...but enough that I think I can sympathize with the hypothetical Trump voters described above.
And if you're voting for parties / ideas rather than people...the view makes a lot of sense.
Anyway, obviously I may be slipping off the deep end here... And my thinking is *clearly* clouded by the fact that the left has so devalued the charge of racism. Even though I think that some concerns about Trump are legit, years of listening to BS cries of "racism!" have had their effect...as have the patently false charges of racism against the guy.
Anyway. I'm all messed up on this.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home