Teresa Hanafin writes the Boston Globe’s Daily “Fast Forward” to start each day.
Today she wrote:
Trump is making America hate again.
At his North Carolina campaign rally last night, Trump lashed out at Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar — a US citizen who was a refugee from Somalia as a child. His supporters, predominantly white, started chanting and shouting, “SEND HER BACK!” Kaitlan Collins of CNN reported that Trump “paused a moment to let that chant grow some momentum.”
This is really ugly, folks.
As Tim Miller, former aide to Jeb Bush,tweeted: “Imagine how this video of the President leading a white mob in a ‘Send Her Back’ chant targeting a black refugee is going to look in your kids’ high school government/history classes.”
Former Obama speechwriter (and Mass. native) Jon Favreau wrote, “The crowd at Trump’s rally chanting “send her back” after the President viciously and dishonestly attacked Ilhan Omar is one of the most chilling and horrifying things I’ve ever seen in politics.”
Note the word “dishonestly.” It refers to the lies Trump told about Omar during his speech, lies that are widely circulating on the right. For example, Omar never said, “You say ‘al-Qaida,’ it makes you proud.” But this is Trumpville, where the truth goes to die.
Get ready for a 2020 campaign that is even more hate-filled and divisive than what Trump spewed in 2016.
Omar responded on Twitter with an excerpt from Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” poem:
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Is it just me or will Trump’s crowd soon start chanting: “Sig Heil!”????
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Representative Ilhan Omar is a US citizen who has lived in this country longer than Melania. Trump believes that only white people can truly be US citizens.
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Lets send Melania back. Where as Omar came in legally, Melania did not.
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“Secretary Betsy DeVos
Just wrapped up a powerful conversation with parents, students, and local education leaders in North Carolina about how #EducationFreedom Scholarships could give even more students in the Tar Heel State the opportunity to access the right education for them.”
Meanwhile Betsy DeVos and her giant entourage are burning through millions of public dollars promoting private schools and lauding private school students while bashing public schools and public school students.
She does nothing else. We’re all paying for a political campaign promoting vouchers, where not ONE public school student will benefit in any way. They simply don’t work for students in public schools- refuse to lift a finger. Our students don’t meet their ideological requirements for support.
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It’s more likely public school TEACHERS don’t meet their ideological requirements. Many people on this list seem to support Ilan Omer’s radical anti-American and anti-Israel stance. You should expect to be attacked. And, you should be attacked if you align yourselves with Omer’s positions. The only way to get your malign influence out of public discourse is to demolish the public school system, which is your power base. Unfortunately. But if teachers would give up their destructive socialist ideology, support for the public schools would be readily forthcoming. Professedly capitalist teachers. What a thought.
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HAAAA HEEE HOOAA HAAAA HEE (Oh, make it Stop!!!) HIEEEEEEE HA HA HAHHHHAAAAAA. OMG!!! Say it again, Harlan. Oh, Lord. One has to turn to a rant by IQ45 himself to find such delicious self-parody.
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Making a few assumptions, are we, Harlan?!?!? HAAAA HEEEE Oh, Oh, OMG HAAAAAAAAAAAH. OK. OK. I’m better now. HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
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And a hearty welcome back to you, Mr. Underhill!
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Harlin, her name is Omar, not Omer.
I’m sure you can understand why it’s important to spell someone’s name correctly, right Mr. Underwear?
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Harlan Underhill: “Many people on this list seem to support Ilan Omer’s radical anti-American and anti-Israel stance.”
Rep. Omar is courageously speaking to a truth that special interests do have undue influence in Washington, whether they be involving Jewish interests and Israel through AIPAC, or the oil lobby through the Koch brothers. Pharmaceutical companies have poured close to $2.5bn into lobbying and funding members of Congress over the past decade.
How should we call out Israel for its abuses of Palestinians?
We aren’t supposed to criticize Israel’s use of money in influencing US policies which allow the continued building of settlements on Palestinian land and the moving of our embassy to Jerusalem?
Omar is being criticized but where is the anger when Trump debases blacks [don’t kneel to protest] or Central Americans [they’re all rapists, criminals and drug dealers], or average people [I love people who are poorly educated.]. He pandered to White Supremacists. What about Trump’s being attracted to beautiful women like a magnet and he just can’t help himself? Trump said all Haitians have AIDS.
During the 2016 presidential election, Trump called out a Gold Star Muslim family and insinuated that the mother wasn’t talking because she was Muslim.”If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”
The very first time that Trump appeared in the pages of the New York Times, back in the 1970s, was when the US Department of Justice sued him for racial discrimination. He is as racist today as he was back in the 70’s. None of this seems to matter.
Trump is the racist. Rep Omar is a US citizen. Trump has no business saying nasty things about a member of Congress who is a Muslim woman.
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Harlan wrote, “Many people on this list seem to support Ilan Omer’s radical anti-American and anti-Israel stance.”
Well, I had read what Trump has been shouting from his hate built Troll’s pulpit but since every word that comes out of his mouth or from his twitching Twitter fingers are laced with endless lies, I ignored the claims that Ilan was anti-American and anti-Isreal.
But after Harlans’ hate-filled and probably ignorant comment, I did some fact-checking to see if Omar really is anti-American and anti-Israel.
Omar’s response to a question about that theory: “nothing I said, at least to me, was meant for that purpose.”
Then Harlan spouts this crap:
“you should be attacked if you align yourselves with Omer’s positions. The only way to get your malign influence out of public discourse is to demolish the public school system, which is your power base.”
Hey, Harlan, I’m waiting for the haters that you allegedly support and think like to attack me. If I survive the first strike by the Trump blowhards, I will be more than willing to retaliate … but only as a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat vet would respond.
In addition: USA Today fact-checked Trump’s false claims about Rep. Ilhan Omar and discovered one lie after another from Trump’s gutter mouth.
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/1764862001
‘President Donald Trump accused Rep. Ilhan Omar of professing a “love” for al Qaeda and talking about “how great” and “how wonderful” al Qaeda is.’
“That is false.”
And there’s a lot more fact-checking Trump’s parade of vile, lies.
Trump’s mouth should be cleansed with lighter fluid followed by a match.
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Khizr Khan: I am a Gold Star father.
I was thrust into the spotlight when Donald Trump insulted me, my loving wife, and our fallen son.
I was reminded of that painful moment this week when Trump told four Democratic women of color to “go back” to their “crime infested” countries.
I’d walk through broken glass to rob Trump of his power and defeat his Republican Senate.
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Harlooney Underpants should go back to his native land, Trollandia.
Just when you think these far right wing nuts can’t get any lower, any more hateful, any more stupid, along comes this troll-bot.
But seriously, I was so appalled and disgusted by that hate rally of Trump, it chilled me to the bone. How the hell do you ignore this kind of rabid unreasoning hatred laced with toxic lies on an epic scale.
Please, America, come to your senses and reject this abominable demagogue in 2020.
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#45 is blaming the deplorables for the hate speech. His lawyers must have advised him to insert some distance between him and the hateful chant.
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MAGA: Make the Abomination Go Away
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I am one of Harlan’s closet and best friends. You ALL leave him alone! Stop taunting him! I want him around hale, healthy, and hearty so he can spew forth all his Harlan-ness.
I get no distractions or diversions in my work-a-holic life. The least I can have is Harlan as a safety net.
Thanks, Harlan.
If you all don’t stop, you will discourage Harlan from writing on this blog, and that leaves ME without any enter-taint-ment.
Remember: This is all about me!
BTW, Harlan, how are all those Social Security checks you’ve been cashing and consuming going? You know: the ones that come from that horrible big government, anti-libertarian, socialist establishment known as human decency/human dignity?
Ahhhh . . . Never mind . . .
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Harlan, you really have some nerve accusing the people on this forum—let alone all teachers—of being socialists in need of being replaced in the classroom by “professed capitalists.” I don’t know where to turn first—against the personal attack, against your playground-level name-calling, against labeling those whose foreign pol positions you disagree with “anti-American,” against the simple-minded categorization of liberal positions as “socialist,” or against the blatant inference that those on this board (due to their ‘socialism’ or their support of the congresswoman) are anti-American. And it irritates the h out of me to have to react to “socialist” as though it were an ad-hominem attack. What the heck???
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Robert, and Medicare, don’t forget Medicare. Or the military. Especially the VA health care system, the most cost-efficient, popular health care in the US which is modeled on—gasp—European-style health care (fun fact—the VA is the only federal health care program that has the authority to negotiate drug prices). Or the FDA. You know, that evil agency that approves the drugs he uses so that they won’t kill him (Damn!). Or the CDC. Or, well you get it. Must be wonderful to live in a world of delusion. Mixed economy. Look it up. It’s part of Econ 101.
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Harlan Underhill
I must have missed her Anti American and her Anti Israeli remarks. I also must have missed those calling for Nationalizing the means of production. What I have not missed is the actions of Private Bone Spurs.. The “flag waving yellow bellied armchair patriot”,. A coward who was born with a silver spoon and did not have the courage to object to the war he cheered on from the sidelines. An authoritarian wiping his ass with that flag and the constitution. While he sells American policy to the highest bidder.
If you support a bigoted demagogue who committed what most Americans would call treason. An accused child rapist who can not tell the same lie twice in a row without lying about it. It is time for you to go back to where you came from.
We the good people of the the United States will be happy to provide you with a one way ticket on January 21 2021. Start packing your bags.
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Thanks Greg and others.
Thanks Harlan!
BTW, this is one of the biggest problems in this country:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/29/working-class-voters-america-republican
It may explain a lot about a lot of – or far too many – people in the USA.
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“chilled me to the bone” — me too, Joe Jersey.
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Harlin, are you for real?
Putin is dump’s boss … make no mistake. His salute to Kim was to cover up for whom he really works. Putin has hundreds of billions of $$$$$$$$$$$$.
And remember, “Ivankuh” purchased electronic ballot boxes from China.
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Robert Rendo, that’s an old but interesting link examining truth & fallacies behind the stereotype that poor rural/ Southern folks vote Republican & against “govt handouts” even tho they’re living off them. One of the most revealing points is that folks who are actually in working class &/or poor prefer to see themselves as “struggling middle class.”
Speaking here as a person raised in rural upstate-NY by an “odd couple,” my 8th-gr-ed, IN-native, entrepreneurial Dad & Ivy-league-ed northeastern Mom; family friends ranged the entire SES spectrum, as did our liberal collegetown plunked into Rep dairy country.
Hard-core Rep/ libertarian rurals not only accept SS checks from the @#$! govt, they operate in the cash economy & live off the grid as much as possible. What they are all about is individualism, independence, survivalism. The govt is a scam—elders are still nostalgic for pre-income-tax days—so taking govt handouts is justified. If they can barter instead of buying, they will. Materialism is not a thing: they’ll keep a plum piece of land in the family forever regardless of sale value, turning their backs on McMansions downhill, & populate it w/a few trailers occupied by family members. (They’ll rig an illegal hookup to cable if they can, or just go w/o TV.)
About the only govt pgm they buy into is military service: they can exchange life-threatening service for good trades training & reap decent med care at VA clinics for life. These are people who for the most part like to work hard, but not for others unless absolutely necessary– except for family; the clan is interdependent & a more trusted source of revenue than the govt. They prize above all the ability to build their own stuff to meet their own needs.
Definitely a hard nut for Dems to crack. If you can get them to vote at all.
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Wow. Your comments make me sick, Harlan.
The vast majority of teachers at my school voted for Trump. Explain THAT “socialism.”
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Pimp, Yvonne, Putin is the current occupant of the White (-r, or -st) House’s pimp. That’s much more than a boss. You get time off with a boss.
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Harlan, so nice to see you’re still around, spewing nonsense, and making it clear that your neurons have been on an extended leave of absence.
Bro, if you voted for and support Trump, then it is you – and others like you – who are antiAmerican, and antiConstitution, and antiRepublic.
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I have to laugh in a way at this thread, but laugh with sincere respect to all the people here and with no mockery.
Harlan, to borrow some words from another poster who I think is a brilliant thinker, is basically someone on this blog who growls loudly but has been de-fanged and de-clawed.
I am thinking that Harlan has gotten SO many responses that I picture him with his Jiffy Pop and Mallow Mars on the couch with his lap top, grin as wide as the Grand Canyon, remarking to himself, “OMG! I’m getting ALL this attention! You love me . . . . You really love me!”
No matter what you all think about Harlan, I think it’s great that he slithers around us and attempts to bite.
The dullest stone makes for the best knife sharpening.
Harlan, BTW, what about all those teachers out in Arizona who vote red and protested and demonstrated for better pay? I’m glad they got raises (not enough!) but I sort of liken them to sheep walking around seriously maimed and complaining that the slaughterhouse (that they voluntarily enter into) hurt them. They are no “socialists”, Harlan. Many of them support the GOP.
Still, improvement and betterment are preferred at any level, no?
Harlan, I would do almost anything to have you respond to this thread.
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I always listen to other people’s viewpoints, Harlan. It’s been a part of my training in communication techniques and I just see it as a point of human decency. “Do unto others…”.
This one, however, goes WAAAAAAY over the top.
There are so many misrepresentations and false assumptions and the overall tone and innuendo in that short little blurb if yours is so ridiculously insulting that I just have to shut you off like a faulty toilet water supply valve.
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It isn’t just you, Diane.
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Maybe I was naive but the Trump Administration shocks me with this hateful stuff. I did not anticipate seeing this in the United States in 2019. It seems to get worse all the time, like they have to amp up the vitriol monthly to keep their supporters engaged. It’s alarming because you don’t know if there’s a line they won’t cross. What is their line? I don’t know. I don’t think they have one.
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Limbo party! How low, how low, how low will they go?
It’s looking a lot like 1933.
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This is an interesting post from someone that worked in British intelligence. He states that the biggest threat to the US is the Republican Party. They are reshaping our institutions and values to conform to their will. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-gop-climate-change-fbi-russia-racism-us-intelligence-a9009441.html?utm_source=reddit.com&fbclid=IwAR3oUaHIukZtTA1XsMeyJbpuYxO_kMxhYnZi1nmJp7yXfm4nJR3Nwxg2iU8
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Sorry Chiara. You are a wonderful person, but maybe you were naive. I saw this coming years ago. I NEVER thought Trump running for President was funny.
I distinctly remember a famous comedian, whose name I won’t mention here, in the summer of 2015, right after Trump announced his candidacy with that horrendous “Mexicans are rapists and killers” speech. This comedian was celebrating that he could leave his show on a high note, because Trump was so “funny” as a candidate. I was sickened by it then, because I KNEW Trump’s rhetoric was NOT FUNNY.
I’m not saying I was some kind of prophet. But I teach Holocaust and genocide history, and I recognized the type of demagogue Trump is.
I wept the night of the election, and for many days afterward. And the next day at school, a bunch of white boys made a human chain across the hallway, stated that they were “the wall,” and blocked our Latinx students from passing. That has NOTHING to do with socialism or capitalism, Mr. Scumbag Underhill. That is only evil.
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Malcolm Nance recently commented that if Individual-1 wins the 2020 election, it might well be the last national election we will ever have. I tend to agree. The Republicans in Congress don’t like to work anyway, unless there is some payoff for them in the deal. Lloyd has implied that the current trajectory of politics in this nation will lead to violence. I tend to agree. The notion of civil war in the U.S. in the 21st century is no longer in the realm of fantasy science fiction. Especially when one sees both the hate and the flaunting of ignorance as a virtue at these rallies.
I have often—too often for most of you, I’m sure—noted the disturbing parallels between the end of the Weimar Republic and contemporary times. Here’s one example that will hopefully not bore you. Last night’s hateful chants are a continuation of the “Lock Her Up” rallies. Let’s, for a change, assume these things actually happen. The logical end of “Lock Her Up” is concentration camps of political opposition. You know, the very reason that Dachau, the first concentration camp, was established in March 1933. The logical end of “Send Her Back” is concentration camps for citizens—repeat that a few times…CITIZENS—who are parts of vulnerable minorities, be they ethnic, political, or social. The other logical end these chants is killing, assassination, and other forms of politically-motivated violence. As Victor Klemperer’s diaries demonstrate [I’m beginning to sound like Duane with Wilson], intimidation in the streets and in social relationships were effective because everyone understood that political violence was an accepted state-sanctioned tactic. All of us have experience greater or lesser example of this in our personal interactions in the past few years. Will they be ratcheted up? I tend to think they will. And who will be first victims of violence? If it is a member of Congress, will it change things. I tend to think it will not.
Finally, I was thinking the other day that another hallmark of despotic regimes is the imprisonment and exile of political leaders, especially leaders who symbolize political movements or eras. Is it unthinkable, if Individual-1 should be reelected, that the life of President Obama hangs in the balance? Is it unthinkable that Individual-1 will lead efforts to remove Secret Service protection from President Obama and his family? Is it unthinkable, like in so many examples we have seen in history, that he would have to seek asylum and bring many of his associates with him? I’m certain Germany would take him since they’ve stepped up before many, many times. And what of the judiciary? Reelection of Individual-1 will unleash a series of pardons that will make a mockery of the justice system. It will become another tool of political mockery. Who will our Roland Freisler be? Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito?
The dark shadow cast yesterday only seems to grow darker and wider.
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GregB — “intimidation in the streets and in social relationships were effective because everyone understood that political violence was an accepted state-sanctioned tactic. All of us have experienced greater or lesser example of this in our personal interactions in the past few years.
I haven’t. What are you talking about?
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I guess you’re lucky. As one with brown skin who has encountered racists and cultists over the past few years, I’ve experienced it a lot in the past few years.
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Well that @#$%! sucks, GregB. & I’m really sorry you had to experience that. What a bubble I live in that I didn’t even know to what you were referring. Just fat dumb & happy up here in NJ, where my husband works w/every color/ nationality (& has for decades, as an engr), & I free-lance-special to black & Jewish PreK’s, not FT so I don’t know what kind of crap my students & teachers have to put up w/ outside school walls, & mother to musicians who play w/every color/culture, a happy enough bubble of their own.
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Sorry. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that 46.09 percent of those who voted in the 2020 election chose some sort of poisonous, sluglike lifeform for President.
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Hillary was Ebola. The slug was better.
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I’m sure that Harlan would prefer Hitler/Mussolini/Franco/Pinochet to Hillary. Clinton would have never engaged in the racism and race baiting of the cretin-in-chief.
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I agree with you, Harlan. Hillary was Ebola and Trump and company are the venom from an Inland Taipan. They are both bad, only in different ways and more accurately, in different styles. A plutocrat is a plutocrat, whether you call her Hillary or Donald.
I prefer Bernie and AOC all the way.
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Have you heard about dehumanization, sir? The thing that leads to genocide? NO ONE SHOULD BE COMPARED TO A DISEASE. Not even you.
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Perhaps he’ll actually get a popular majority in 2020.
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Only if the current occupant of the Whiter House could manage to get an amendment passed limiting voting to members of the Mar-a-Lago asylum for the criminally insane and predatory
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Bob S: I do love “Whiter House”!!
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We are in hell.
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While it’s true that Trump has ratcheted up the hate and intolerance (and xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny, and cruelty), the U.S. has been hateful and intolerant since its inception, with white European (mostly male) intolerance and hatred of indigenous Native Peoples and Africans ripped from their homes and enslaved here.
Racism against the Asians who helped build the transcontinental railroads and the Mexican, Southern and Eastern European immigrants who worked in the fields, mines, and factories and were forced to live in barrios and slums merely continued the shameful U.S. traditions of intolerance and cruelty toward “The Other”.
All that intolerance and cruelty are embedded parts of U.S. history and character, which many of us have struggled to escape from since we were born and then brainwashed by this anti-democratic, intolerant, white patriarchal culture inherited from (mostly northern) Europe.
We will never see it happen, but Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are needed to exorcise the twin demons of the U.S.’s Original Sins: the genocide of the indigenous Native Peoples and the slavery of Africans.
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While I do not disagree with you in any way about the examples you cite, you have to look at this like triage. The immediate problem, although it is not nearly as old, is the hate of Republicans and the current occupant of the White(-est) House. And as long as their power reigns, the concerns you raise will never see the light of day.
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Yes. Indeed we do need Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. No question. Also agree with GregB, below. I see these vile, destructive cretins, Trump and Miller and McConnell and their ilk as the death rattle of a lot of ugliness. We are going through a phase transition. Always wrenching. Long, long, long overdue. I look at the young people coming up, and at these brave young Congresswomen, and I see the future. Gives me hope. One day we shall confront this legacy.
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And here’s the thing–here’s why it matters so much, what you are saying, Ed–many millions are living, today, with the consequences of this history, and they still freaking aren’t being heard because millions are like Mr. Underhill, above, and know only the mythology, are clueless, for example, that the Land of the Free has a greater percentage of its adult citizens, mostly people of color, under penal supervision, now–in prison, in jail, or on parole–than does any other country in the world except the island nation of Seychelles. They are clueless that a third of American children, mostly children of color, face quotidian food insecurity. I won’t go on and on, but this stuff is all very much present–it is present, for example, on many of our reservations, where proud peoples living in squalor are trying to pick up the pieces of their proud cultures. The past is present.
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I agree that intolerance and cruelty are embedded in a segment of the U.S. population and the country’s history reveals that character flaw in some of its citizens.
The 2020 election could very well turn out to be a referendum on how many have been raised to continue that history.
On the other hand, time might be running out for those haters because it has been predicted that in 2045, in twenty-six years, whites are going to become a minority in the U.S.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/
If Trump is re-elected in 2020, that may portend that the U.S. is going to become like the former, racist, white-ruled South Africa where a minority of whites will subject the majority of the country’s citizens to a harsh, theocratic, autocratic, kleptocracy ruled by the wealthiest and most powerful old white men and maybe a few wealthy white women.
If Trump loses in 2020 and is evicted from the White House, there is a chance that will never happen even though Trump’s hate-filled, racist hardcore supporters will probably continue to struggle in every election to maintain control and if they do not succeed, they might turn very violent on a wide scale.
But I do not think I will be here in 2045. If I was, I’d have my 100th birthday that year.
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No one can quibble with these historical facts. The hatreds and biases generated are long-lasting. However: though culture changes very slowly, it does evolve.
Government plays a part in slowing or accelerating cultural change. For contrast, look at the former Iron-Curtain countries, where centuries of intertribal warfare were clamped down on & lidded for 75 yrs of Soviet govt repression. When the lid came off in 1989, relations picked up from where they were in early-20thC, & we immediately had war in the Balkans, Yugoslavia, et al, & other of those regions continue to experience volatility and violence. You can see parallel patterns in whole continents whose regional conflicts were suppressed under the govt of colonial empires, & roared back to life as empires withdrew in mid-20thC.
Our cultural evolution has been slow, but incrementally advancing— granted, it took a civil war to abolish slavery—but on the whole steady compared to other nations colonized in the 17thC or taken over by soviets in the 20th.
Yes, we like all nations established ourselves by trampling indigenous cultures—we also created unique future problems by incorporating slavery right in our national territory (as opposed to Euro nations who did this in colonial territories).
None of that excuses what Trump is up to, it just explains why he’s able to do it. He’s using a period of economic upheaval to stir up century-old hatreds to increase his political powr.
It’s what-aboutism to claim oh we were always bad, here we are being bad again. Don’t let that sort of cynicism erase 100 years of slow, steady, imperfect evolution. We have the govtl structure necessary to turn things around, & must use it.
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Trump may have launched this latest tweet controversy to distract attention from the release of documents from the MIchael Cohen case, showing he was in charge of the cover up and the hush money, which he repeatedly denied.
Whether it’s the “take a knee” controversy or this one, these are meant to rule up the base and distract from something embarrassing to him
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Yes, the immediate problem is that nearly half the country condones the degeneracy, stupidity and planetary harm (destruction of democracy and ultimately of all civilization) that goes along with the disruption and expectation of economic gain.
Part of this has to be the extreme wage inequities that exist.
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I was slightly heartened by the House vote, today, on the $15.00 minimum wage. At least that will force McConnell to have to try to justify himself before his constituents in the second poorest state in the nation, and it will make the Repugnican Senate go on record. But the $15 minimum is aspirin to a cancer victim, ofc.
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Bob Shepherd: The House on Thursday approved legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 in a 231-199 mostly party-line vote on Thursday.
What’s with the ‘raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025″? The Senate didn’t wait until 2025 to give their huge ‘tax cut to the middle class”. Nobody can exist on $7.25 an hour. The House could have done better than this if they were interested in helping people.
Now the Senate will not go along. Nothing new there.
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Exactly, Carol!
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I suspect that the reasoning was that this would provide adjustment time for those states where the minimum is now very, very low.
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Bob Shepherd: It’s difficult to adjust to a pay increase. Going from $7.25 to $15.00 has to be done very slowly.
When I was teaching, I always wanted small increases in my salary.
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Thank you for acknowledging the wage issue. When people are suffering, it’s pretty easy to turn them to scapegoats for answers. “It’s all the fault of them n—–s” or “God hates fags” or whatever other fears and hatreds you can tap into. When people are secure, they’re generally much more likely to let other people go about their lives.
Which is why – broken record alert! – electing neoliberal Democrats is only going to make the problem worse. People expected things to get better with Obama and his “Hope and Change”. When things instead got worse, Trump was the logical outcome. If Democrats manage to win this time and things don’t improve significantly (for actual people, not for billionaires and corporations), the next Republican will make Trump seem like Eisenhower (just like Trump made Dubya look like Abraham Lincoln).
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I think what’s happening in education is a mirror of what’s happening in general, here and around the world.
Corporate machines have to be brought down or fundamentally altered, wealth has to be much better distributed, and resources. But it’s not a choice between fascism and socialism, and no one should be setting it up that way. Survival, not just survival as we know it, but survival period is in the balance.
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Thank you, dienne! ” Broken record,” indeed!
STOP w/the neoliberals…hasn’t anyone learned a lesson from the Obama W.H., the guy who gave us…Arne Dumcan’t, that guy who absolutely ruined public education for our children…the guy who paved the way for DeVos…the guy who people continue to venerate?
I am NO IQ45 fan (if I were, would I call him that?!) & NO, he CANNOT be reelected in 2020, but, Dems, you HAVE to do better than Joe!!!
(Or else we absolutely WILL get another 4 of IQ45…guaranteed.
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Yes, please tell me how neoliberals are worse than fascists. I’m all agog.
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I voted for Obama twice. The alternative was worse. Or I could just stomp my feet and not vote or vote for a guaranteed loser like Jill Stein. Obama was horrible on many issues but he did give us Sotomayor and Kagan and for 8 years far right wing justices were not appointed to the SCOTUS or to the lower courts. He introduced the very flawed Obamacare which was not universal health care but at least a baby step towards better health care for many millions. We would not even have gotten that much from the GOP.
I CANNOT believe that we are going to have a do-over of 2016 as regards Trump vs the Democratic neoliberals. My boring broken record alert: I WILL vote for any Democrat over a racist, hate monger, demagogue and criminal.
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dienne77
Seriously, I hate to break this to you. There was no Obama to Trump voter. The election in 16 was not about downtrodden workers voting for a faux billionaire populist. The blue collar vote that came out for Trump was always there. Forty percent of Michigan UAW members were supporting Wallace in the fall of 1968. In Trump they finally found a person worth coming out to vote for. And I think my credentials as a member of the Blue Collar White Working Class are a bit better than yours. When I speak to these people and point out how damaging Trump has been to the Union movement to Union construction in particular (can’t get more blue collar than that). When all of their other arguments fail, their go to place for an answer of last resort is: “there are things more important than my job. ” “Like American values. ” American values to them were not written by Emma Lazarus. It is code for “Make America White Again”
The election in 16 was not about decimated workers in the industrial Mid West voting for Trump. The election was about minority voters sitting it out. About young voters doing what they frequently do; in part because Hillary did not inspire. . They did not sit out because Hillary was a neo liberal corporate shill. Which she in fact was.
What the midterm elections may have proved is that they learned there are lesser evils. Hopefully we find that to be true again.
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In a sense, Greg, fascists are what you see what you get. Neo-liberals falsely hide behind goodness, morality, identity, and equity when in fact they work against those things. They are little more than a bunch of plutocrats who use the best and slickest, most expensive type of advertising copy that can buy and pawn it off to the not-so-bright public.
Neo-liberals want what fascists want, but they get it without guns. They seduce, they lie, they trick, they appeal to people’s vulnerabilities to get what they want, and they steal, scheme, lie, cheat, and swindle with white kid gloves. Their blade is so sharp and honed that you don’t even know you’ve been slashed until you faint from too much blood loss, and by the time that happens, Neo-liberals are onto the next town.
Fascists are obvious. They don’t have to be otherwise ultimately . Neo-Liberals cannot be obvious. They have to be ultra-slick. For that reason alone, they are in ONE sense worse than fascists because they are traitors to those they purport to defend and protect.
Obama and Arne Duncan are perfect examples. So are Pelosi and Gillebrand.
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I agree completely that things get ugly in an extended economic downturn. Much easier to stir up old tribal resentments & convince folks someone’s trying to steal the food off their plate.
However, I’d argue putting this statement into that context: “People expected things to get better with Obama and his “Hope and Change”. When things instead got worse, Trump was the logical outcome.” The recession started in end-2007, economy collapsed 2 months before O’s election. His admin staved off depression & stimulated recovery; he was re-elected. Things didn’t get worse economically, they slowly recovered.
Probably a good # of Trump voters were looking for someone they thought could speed up recovery, & bought into his boasts that he could stem global trade, restore mfg hegemony, open up more jobs by throwing out immigrants.
Maybe I’m just splitting hairs. But I think so many other factors were involved causing Reps to choose Trump in primary– some Dems to switch to Rep– other Dems to sit out elections or vote Green. Dems rejecting neoliberal policy & hence HRC. Reps & Dems fed up w/interminable wars, which only Trump spoke of ending. Racist Reps hot under collar over 8 yrs of a black president went for the racist primary candidate. Bernie fans turned off by Dem Party establishment. Dems & Reps sick to death of knee-jerk PC identity politics, to whom Trump’s outrageousness was bracing.
If Trump was some kind of “logical outcome,” I think it’s in the larger picture that includes right-wing populist rise in Europe—a sort of stuttering backstep/ backlash as national borders get blurred by changes to longtime trade patterns due to globalism.
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Robert, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Your argument—as that of the ill informed one who started this—does not resonate with me. It reminds me of the how the USPD broke with the SPD in the early 1920s and then the KPD became more intense in its opposition to both. The three parties of the left fought each other so ferociously that they all ended up be exterminated by the Nazis. So no, neoliberals are not fascists. They are an aberrant ideology that can still be fought within the system if they are in the majority. If fascists are in the majority, there is no system left within which to fight them. Their opposition is dead, intimidated because they fear death, or imprisoned.
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Joel,
Thank you for bringing some real facts and common sense to counter some of the Trump-enabling posters here.
I can’t believe anyone could possibly call Obama or Bill Clinton as bad or worse than Trump because he is a “neoliberal”, a meaningless slur that is overused and never explained. Some “neoliberals” (Tim Kaine, Ralph Northam) are far better on public education than their DFER rivals, yet some on the left don’t consider their DFER rivals to be “neoliberal” because they supported other progressive ideas..
“Neoliberal” is as ugly as saying “Commie” or “socialist” — words the right wing use to engender hatred. I watched the right wing turn “liberal” or “libs” into an ugly slur thrown at politicians to attack them and now I watch “neoliberal” used the same way but by people on the left. It turns politicians with nuanced opinions into caricatures. The people who use that ugly slur want people to believe that those people are all corrupt and that’s why they have the views they have. But of course if their favorite candidate doesn’t have a good position on a different progressive issue, they excuse it.
It is similar to the ugly way a few people on the left join the right and throw out the phrase “identity politics” to insult and undermine Democrats who care about race issues –mostly because those race issues just don’t matter as much to them as some fealty to whatever issue they deem is more important.
I find it sickening that we could have had guaranteed liberal Supreme Court Justices and many more progressive federal judges and instead our judiciary is dangerously remade to enable the fascist tendencies of the right wing Republicans. That has nothing to do with a single neoliberal Democrat and everything to do with the people who insisted that having Trump would be absolutely no worse than a “neoliberal” Democrat. They were wrong and the Supreme Court proves it. That they not only won’t admit their mistake but are still doubling down on it reminds me of Trump.
As Joel points out, the so-called “neoliberals” believe in democracy. I’m starting to think some people on the left no longer do, in their willingness to help elect a fascist because they are angry that their favorite candidate did not convince enough primary voters to vote for them.
It is one thing to decide that the Democratic candidate doesn’t motivate you enough to go out and vote. It is another thing to actively work to undermine that candidate by saying that they are a corrupt neoliberal and Trump is no worse when that very statement has been proven wrong.
And yes, those women who we saw who still love Trump, and those men chanting ugly things at Trump rallies are never going to vote for Bernie. Trump’s appeal was to those who want scapegoats to hate. Trump gives them the “other” — non-white, non-Christians. The left gives them “neo-liberals” — the ones who only care about “identity politics” and not the working class.
I don’t think Biden will win the primary. But if he does, it will likely be because lots of African-American voters in the primary decided he was the best chance to defeat Trump and their votes helped him win primaries. If Biden – or another candidate who isn’t the anointed one — does win the primary, he or she should have a fair chance to win the election. Sit it out if you must because having 4 more years of Trump is no big deal to you in your position of white privilege. But if you are actively working to undermine the democratic candidate by spreading lies intended to paint the Democrat as absolutely no better than Trump, then you are actively supporting Trump. Own it. And don’t blame the candidate.
This election is too important. If Bernie wins the primary and some moderate Democrats start the same kind of nasty and ugly character attacks about how Bernie is a lying corrupt sell-out who can’t be trusted, they will be helping Trump win. And if another candidate wins and progressive Democrats start the same ugly lies about that candidate being no better than Trump, they would be just as bad as the moderates who wanted to destroy Bernie’s candidacy with lies and did not care if it meant Trump won.
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Pardon my being “ill-informed”, Greg. Don’t you just hate being ill-informed? I hate being ill-informed. I’m sorry for being ill-informed. I’m glad that you are not ill-informed, even while I remain ill-informed. God, I wanna be not ill-informed.
I will agree with you about one thing you said, and that is with fascism, there is little hope of changing a system without getting jailed or executed. With neoliberalism, there is still time to attempt to administer an antidote to the poison. Neo-liberalism buys time, and yes, the extra time is critical.
To Greg and NYCPSP:
But gone too far, neoliberalism slowly changes the rules for governance, which can peacefully alter the power structure to prevent true and just change. Propaganda and slick speeches keep the angry masses temporarily soothed and permanently ignorant. Just look at Obama’s education reforms; they put CCSS and limited thinking – tethered to test taking – up on a pedestal, dumbing down millions of children for life. Did Obama and Duncan “believe in democracy” when they shuttered all those neighborhood schools in Chicago that residents did NOT want closed? Did neoliberal Obama “believe in democracy” when he proudly extolled the virtues of those who fired ALL the teachers in Central Falls, RI, even though at least half them were hired back (so, clearly they were not all the nightmare Obama characterized them to be!).
Greg, you’re right about the “softness” off neo-liberalism vs. the harshness of fascism.
NYCPSP said that “As Joel points out, the so-called “neoliberals” believe in democracy.”
Yes, they believe in democracy, but they don’t really believe in the dignified redistribution of wealth, and – while I won’t accuse anyone of being ill-informed or a Trump voter enabler – when a society becomes so tilted to the point where economics are grossly on the side of the ownership class and there is little to no middle class, then that society, with all its machinery and mechanisms in place, cannot call it self a “democracy” unless it is doing so nominally and for show.
Democracy requires freedom from want and need and a freedom to have expression of voice.
Or maybe I’m living in a freeze frame, stuck inside a Norman Rockwell painting . . .
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With neoliberals the destruction of the middle class is more subtle, slow moving and refined. However, a continuous loss will eventually end up as nothing. I too will vote for any candidate other than Trump.
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Robert, you were not the ill-informed I was referring to. It was the individual at the top of this thread.
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I should have written “…who started this thread…'”
This person is without question the most ill-informed person who participates on this blog. She makes me miss Charles and Harlan.
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NYC public school parent
I think you meant Joe.
But on the subject of neoliberals, I am glad that spell check still does not recognize the word. My problem with the New Liberal is that it describes a non sequitur. The notion of liberating markets and 20th century liberalism do not logically follow one another. And thus we have the NDC/DLC wing of the Democratic party following the dictates of Milton Friedman, Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Now calling that liberal is a slur in itself. I prefer simplifying the description and calling the philosophy what it is; ‘Corruption’. It fits well with its advocates in both parties. The notion of free markets describe something that never has and never will exist. A government decision to intervene is no different than a decision to not intervene. Either way you are picking winners and losers. And I think we can admit who the winners have been for a half century since Reagan. (or Carter).
The people are to be forgiven if they then think that “both parties are the same”
But that assumes that peoples votes are based “solely on a narrow versions of Marxian economic determinism”. The culture of the right wing voter is not based on economics. It is and has always been primarily based on race and hate. It cuts across economic class. Thus my well off accountant can complain about undocumented immigrants on Obamacare; something she knows can not be.
The 2016 race was lost in who did not come out to vote . I would hope that issue has been resolved. There are lesser evils. And a piss poor Democrat will be leaps and bounds better than anyone in the party of hate and fascism.
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I respectfully disagree with you, Joel. I don’t perceive Dienne as ill-informed. She’s opinionated. She comes off strong, in my opinion, but she is a very lucid and razor sharp thinker.
But I won’t use blog time to endorse this one or that one or make this about personalities. We are all in this for a very common cause.
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Robert, you must have many dull razor blades. See democracy’s comment below for an example of lucid thinking.
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It is unbelievable that some people support the lying, racist, misogynistic, narcissistic, xenophobic, bullying unfit ignorant Orange Swamp Monster.
…………………………………..
Trump falsely claims he tried to stop ‘Send her back!’ chants about Rep. Ilhan Omar
— President Trump, in remarks at the White House, July 18
At a Trump campaign rally Wednesday, the crowd broke into an extended chant — “Send her back!” — about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
The president had been attacking Omar, a Somali American immigrant and practicing Muslim, with false claims for days. We just gave him Four Pinocchios for claiming she supports al-Qaeda.
Trump said he tried to stop the “Send her back!” chants by quickly resuming his speech. This will be a short fact check, because video of the rally totally debunks his claim.
The Facts
Trump got this ball rolling Sunday, with Twitter statements telling Omar and three U.S.-born lawmakers of color to “go back” to their countries. He doubled down on those claims over the following days.
Trump was attacking Omar by name at the North Carolina rally when the crowd began to chant “Send her back!” He let the chants linger for 13 seconds before resuming his speech. After the chants died down, Trump kept criticizing Omar.
After a minute or so, Trump resumes the attack: “Omar minimized the September 11th attacks on our homeland, saying ‘some people did something.’ I don’t think so. Some people did something. Yeah, some people did something, all right. … Omar laughed that Americans speak of al-Qaeda in a menacing tone and remarked that, ‘You don’t say America with this intensity. You say al-Qaeda. It makes you proud. Al-Qaeda makes you proud.’” (The claim about al-Qaeda is a Four Pinocchio distortion of what Omar actually said in a 2013 interview.)
The crowd stops him again, chanting “send her back!” for 13 seconds. The president stands onstage, waits for the chant to die down, then keeps talking about Omar…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/18/trump-falsely-claims-he-tried-stop-send-her-back-chants-about-rep-ilhan-omar/?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.ec1cf6439630
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Yeah, and he says he didn’t like it and disagreed with it.
I’m sure he tried to stop Epstein too, and he probably tries to stop himself from Tweeting by watching TV.
Four Pinocchios plus the entire cast of characters from Shrek.
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I watched that. He wallowed in it. He let it go on and on, soaking it in, obviously very, very pleased with himself and his disgusting, hateful, racist mob.
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Maybe he was humming Oedipus Rex to himself.
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According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), telling someone to “Go back to where you came from” constitutes “Harassment Based on National Origin”:
“Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ whether made by supervisors or by co-workers,” says the EEOC’s website.
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That’s what Tim Kaine was saying.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1756337001
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Akademos: Our reprehensible Liar-in-Chief claims that he disagreed with the supporters who started this chant. Tapes don’t lie. Trump’s attacks are vile. Trump has told over 11,000 lies since being inaugurated. He puts down people who are disabled, calls people who disagree with him nasty names, rants about Central Americans being rapists and drug dealers, and wants only immigrants from countries like Finland. What a role model. Children can hear him speak this way and think it’s acceptable.
He was luxuriating in the crowds who support his lies.
…………………………………………………………
Trump had been in the middle of denouncing her as an anti-American leftist who has spoken in “vicious, anti-Semitic screeds” when the chant was taken up by the crowd.
President Trump said he disagreed with his supporters chanting “send her back” after he railed against a Somali-born congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, at a rally Wednesday in North Carolina. **Video contradicts his claim. **
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Good catch.
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Well, I for one am nonplused by the NC rally. I cannot manage the cynical categorization of this into ‘Trump will be Trump,’ or ‘That’s Trumpistas (or maybe North Carolinians) for you.’ The scene hit me viscerally when I read today that not only did Trump not object to the “Send her back!” chant by swiftly continuing his speech—as he claims—he in fact let it continue for 13 seconds. That picture brought tears to my eyes. I don’t even care if carolmalaysia’s cite is correct that he in fact continued his rant against Omar, which incited another round of the chant. 13 seconds of letting it go on in the first place tells me all I need to know.
Not sure what these tears are about (maybe you can offer suggestions). Partly shame, for sure. But whose shame? Many people can be incited into behavior they’d normally not do, if they’re in a crowd led by a charismatic person who they generally look up to. Such a leader will initially gather approval by exhorting universally-held opinions, then lead the crowd further down his own path/ agenda inch by inch until he’s got them yelling approval for things they don’t precisely agree with when questioned alone in the light of day.
I think it’s tears of recogniion, and sorrow. I recognize this sort of scene from any number of historical events here & abroad; it’s not much different from KKK speeches with crosses burning. But, I’d always thought, such scenes are in our past, or even if they crop up in our present are universally condemned. Yet I already know from today’s news that there is no universal condemnation from this man’s party, in fact only a paltry few are on record condemning his tweets prior to rally suggesting “even” the three American-born among “the squad” “go back where they came from.” So… sorrow.
All that’s in my ears now is the voice of my [now-deceased] close friend/ roommate from college yrs in the ‘60’s, who often used to tell me, yes it could happen again, & it could happen here. (She was Jewish.)
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There should be more reactions like this one. Dan le Batard calling his own network, ESPN, cowardly and saying if they don’t speak out, they’re complicit. And that’s what the Republicans should be saying to each other, until they all become American again.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/ftw.usatoday.com/2019/07/dan-le-batard-trump-rally-espn-racist-send-her-back-chant-response-video-ilhan-omar/amp
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Well, that response confused me so much that I had to look up the definition of nonplussed. It turned out that my definition was close to Meriam Webster’s: surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react. Is that what you mean by “There should be more reactions like this one.”? If so, I’m even more confused than I was when I started this comment.
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Dan Le Batard’s reaction.
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Got it. Makes sense now.
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I really want to thank you for bringing this to our attention. I’ve hated the whole segment a couple of times and it’s really important when a sports reporter who has mostly white guys listening. Always liked him on Highly Questionable, respect him now.
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You’re welcome, Greg. Just happened to see it after reading Bethree’s comment.
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What you said, bethree5.
& “He in fact let it continue for 13 seconds.” Same thing when he said,
“There were some very fine people on both sides.”
We know us some IQ45–actually, less, mixed w/ignorance, fear-mongering & narcissistic personality disorder (as stated by a # of psychologists/psychiatrists).
That’s why it’s time to GOTV–for the right Dem candidate. You all know who he is.
&–follow your local League of Women Voters to get “Abolish the Electoral College” postcards to send to your Congresspeople to pass the bills that would do just that.
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Pray to the karma in order to awaken real human beings who have a pure humanity in human form.
All criminals regardless of being ignorant, illiterate, malice or pure greedy, lusty and jealousy of being poor with too many unsuccessfully materialistic desires, please
learn how to patiently work hard and how to diligently spend half of what you earn.
Within 10 years of saving 50% of what you diligently work for with passion, yes, you will understand the easy life of all colored children have in education and in their marriage.
Most of all, the majority of these children are very well manner and very loving citizens to their parents and all of their friends, neighbors and acquaintances
I am speechless to all frustrated intellectual people as well as to all blinded mind within inhuman people. Oh karma! When it comes, nobody can avoid it. But, please let people accept their consequences and remind their good promises in their conscience.
Otherwise, why do God give Evils to have the look of sheep and to have power to harm innocents? Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, IQ45 and their supporters plus many more of others in all shapes, forms, cultures, religions… are the examples of Evils in human form. Sigh! back2basic
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So apparently The American Dream is now only for white people. Anyone who willingly votes for this Putin-owned treasonous predatory failed steak-salesman supports racism and the destruction of American democracy. Deplorable indeed.
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Trump plans next year to admit no refugees at all. Zero.
I wonder if he plans to remove the Statue of Liberty or blow it up.
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Zero. My heart aches. What is being done in our name? And how will history judge us all?
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One commenter here says something that lots of people think is true, but it isn’t. It’s merely the regurgitation of what Republicans claimed – with little to no merit – throughout Obama’s two terms of office.
The statement the commenter made was this:
“People expected things to get better with Obama and his ‘Hope and Change’. When things instead got worse, Trump was the logical outcome.”
So much untruth packed into so few words.
First, things DID get better under Obama. Remarkably better. As CNN/Money reported, when Obama took office (Jan. 2009), he was facing “problems of the scope and intensity not seen by a president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.” Those problems were the direct result of Republican economic policies. When Obama came into office, the Dow was at 7949, the Nasdaq was at 1440, and the S & P was 805. By the end of October, 2102, the Dow was at 13107, an increase of 65 percent; the Nasdaq was at 2988, more than doubling; and the S & P was at 1412 , an increase of 75 percent.
By March fo 2014, after Obama’s re-election, and despite conservative claims that Obama’s “socialist” policies were hurting the country, the markets continued their climb. The Dow was at Dow was at 16,453, the Nasdaq at 4,336, and the S & P was at
1,878. Surely good news for anyone with a 401k. Why the increases? Obama’s policies.
But it wasn’t just the markets that were put back onto firm footing. As The Post reported just last year:
“…the U.S. economy added 2,188,000 jobs in 2017 — Trump’s first year in office. So far, it’s added 1,306,000 jobs in 2018. But the economy added more jobs in every year of Obama’s second term than it did in Trump’s first year…The economy gained 4.2 percent in GDP growth in the second quarter of 2018, but that still pales in comparison to the 5.1 percent and 4.9 percent growth in the second and third quarters of 2014 under Obama.”
Then there was the restored reputation and credibility of the US around the world, There was the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which helped 20 million people gain health care coverage. There was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, which not only put into place need regulations on Wall Street greed, but also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There was the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The elimination of Osama bin Laden. The end to government-sanctioned torture. Net neutrality. Credit card reform. An increase in Pell Grant awards. The expansion of federally protected wilderness areas. A reduction in the federal deficit. Investments in clean energy. Increased fuel efficiency standards, An expansion of CHIP. And more…..
To suggest that all of these things — accomplished despite Republican obstructionism — somehow equates to “things instead got worse,” is to willfully ignore the factual truth and to engage in the kinds of lies that Trump and his conservative allies use daily.
As we witness to overt descent of the Republican party into racism and white nationalism, we are faced with a question that really shouldn’t be so hard to answer: What kind of country do we want this to be? What – as Americans – do we really believe in? Is it popular sovereignty and equality and “liberty and justice for all?” Or is it oligarchy and white “christian” evangelicalism?
Shouldn’t be hard to figure out, but apparently there are at least tens of millions of us who still do not, cannot, or will not subscribe to the values embedded in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Like Franklin was to have said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
But can we? Will we? Jane Mayer reported this in the New Yorker in September of last year:
“Academic research has also shown that political messages tend not to change the minds of voters who have already chosen a candidate; they are most likely to persuade undecided voters. And in 2016…about thirty-seven million Americans—fifteen per cent of the electorate—were still undecided in the final weeks before the election….Russian cyberwar was enhanced by its consistency with messaging from Trump’s campaign, and by its strategic alignment with the campaign’s geographic and demographic objectives…Russian trolls pretended to have the same religious convictions as targeted users, and often promoted Biblical memes, including one that showed Clinton as Satan…During the weeks that the debates took place, the moderators and the media became consumed by an anti-Clinton narrative driven by Russian hackers…throughout the autumn of 2016 a steady stream of content stolen from the Clinton campaign—which the press generally described as coming from WikiLeaks, rather than from Russia—’reweighted the news environment in Trump’s favor.’ ”
Even after the Mueller report, we are still learning more about Russia’s sabotage of the 2016 election, and the treasonous actions taken by Republicans (like Mitch McConnell) and the Trump campaign (Manafort’s charing of ream of polling data with Russian intelligence, for example). We know that Trump continually cited WikiLeaks, and we know (per a recent CNN report) that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks were tied to Russia. In June of 2016 alone, “WikiLeaks secretly communicated with Russian hackers and Assange publicly announced plans to release new material about Clinton. The Mueller report says the Russian hackers obscured their identities by using online personas for all their communications with WikiLeaks, which included emails and direct messages to WikiLeaks’ account on Twitter. Assange took at least seven meetings that month with Russians and others with Kremlin ties, according to visitor logs.”
Trump is the outcome of fear and hate and lies — lots and lots of lies – and cowardice and Russian undermining of the election and traitorous behavior on the part of Republicans and the inability or unwillingness of millions of citizens to do their civic homework and their reluctance and refusal to subscribe to the American Creed.
But you really can’t blame it on the black guy.
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Excellent, democracy. One can certainly be disappointed with the Obama presidency—as I was with this education policy, immediate cave on repealing the Bush tax cuts, and his near total acquiescence to military hawks—without a wholesale, simplistic condemnation of his entire administration. You make the case with nuance and accurate facts.
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thanks, Greg. I also was not enamored of Arnie Duncan and Race to the Top. Far from it. Obama ‘s extension of the Bush tax cuts was considered to be important to reinvigorating the economy…though to be fair, I also think Obama should have prosecuted some of those who helped to push the economy in the ditch. On Afghanistan and Iraq, all of us can quarrel about what Obama did…but what he didn’t do is to lie the country into an unnecessary war and refuse to pay for it.
All-in-all, Obama was far better for this country than W was and far better than any Republican would have been…and notice…Trump and Republicans are trying to undo everything Obama did, which essentially means the are trying to push the country (and the world) back into a serious recession. How stupid and greedy are these people?
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Democracy,
Yes, thank you so much for this post which crystallizes so much of what I think but don’t have the eloquence you do to express.
I am sick and tired of the far right demonization of Democrats being helped by those angry voters on the left who basically made sure that far right propaganda that would have been ignored in most election years was given much more power. The media ignores far right attacks — as they did when the far right tried to demonize Obama as a non-citizen who supported terrorists — unless those dishonest attacks are repeated by the left or moderates.
If in 2008 a huge group of angry HRC voters decided their own opinion was more important than the truth and started repeating the right wing lie that Obama was not a “real American” and there was something really dodgy about his birth, the press would have had a field day saying “even many Democrats know….of Obama’s untrustworthiness”. If disaffected HRC supporters had repeated the right wing propaganda and given it credibility, he would have likely lost, with HRC voters smugly telling Obama voters that it was their fault for nominating him and not her. And that would have been just as wrong as what I see some people posting here.
What I see is blatant dishonesty by some haters of Obama and other mainstream Democrats that basically repeats word for word the same dishonest attacks made by the far right. The attacks I read here are about as dishonest as the attacks on Obama by the far right — the only difference is that they are made by people calling themselves progressives instead of proudly asserting their far right credentials.
It is always important to criticize politicians but that criticism should be truthful. When it becomes throwing out ugly terms like “neoliberals” to smear them with people here blatantly claiming that those politicians took every action only in service of some rich people who control them and they blatantly lied to the American people, then they are simply repeating right wing propaganda.
Obama made some wrong choices to support. He also made some decent choices with the limited power he had. His choices made things better for most Americans and stopped the horror they were experiencing under the Bush/Cheney regime. To reduce all of Obama as some evil neoliberal who lied to the American people is outrageous. There is no one single right way that only Bernie and no other candidate knows. AOC has different opinions than Bernie on some issues and Bernie has different opinions than Elizabeth Warren on some issues. And most importantly, politicians change.
LBJ did great good for this nation, while also being a neoliberal and making some very wrong choices. Jimmy Carter, another neoliberal, also made wrong choices.
And we saw for ourselves that electing Ronald Reagan did not “show” the neoliberals who supported Carter that they were wrong. It just did tremendous damage to our country and made the dream of a more progressive America get farther and farther away.
Those who are mischaracterizing decent Democrats like Obama as some kind of evil are doing to Democrats what was done to Jimmy Carter, who was also mischaracterized by the left in that way. Perhaps you all are still positive that Jimmy Carter is and was the embodiment is all that is evil and corrupt because his policies were too “neoliberal” and you just know he did it to please his rich funders because he is and was a corrupt liar.
Those people were wrong about Jimmy Carter then and they are wrong about the Democrats now. Almost every candidate in this race has some positions that I despise and others that would be very good for this country. And every last one is an improvement on the far right neo-fascist Republican party that has thrown their full throated support behind Trump.
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“Almost every candidate in this race has some positions that I despise and others that would be very good for this country.”
This is what I think about the 2020 Presidential Election:
Who to vote for in the general election in 2020 cannot be decided on one or more despised or good positions that the overcrowded field of Democratic candidates support or don’t support.
This election is going to be a referendum on a single issue and that issue is Trump or the U.S. Constitution. In 2020, that will be the only issue!
The vote in 2020’s general election will decide if the United States becomes the next Nazi Germany and/or South Africa under apartheid with a brutal dictator that has only contempt for the law and the U.S. Constitution.
The other choice is that an overwhelming majority of voters throw Donald Trump out of office, and the U.S. continues to be a republic where the citizens are allowed to vote for representatives that are guided by the U.S. Constitution that America’s Founding Fathers made the law of the land back in the late 18th century and designed to be flexible through the Amendment process to change with the times.
With Trump, the only positions will be his positions.
Without Trump, we can return to bickering and debating each position and voting for candidates that support those positions each voter believes in. Every year we have elections and those elections allow us to vote for someone like AOC (or anyone in the Squad she is part of) or another Trump or a candidate somewhere in between those two extremes.
Every election allows the voters to get rid of the liars that fooled us by telling us what we wanted to hear so we would vote for them.
But if Trump wins another term, he will claim he has a mandate and the U.S. will be only what he wants it to be, and he will continue to play to his deplorable hate-filled, ignorant supporters that are the same kind of people that supported the rise of Hitler and/or Mao when he launched the insanity of his Cultural Revolution in China.
Trump is so vile and so dangerous that I think the U.S. cannot survive another four years with him in the White House.
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Lloyd, I agree.
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Lloyd Lofthouse: “Trump is so vile and so dangerous that I think the U.S. cannot survive another four years with him in the White House.”
Trump believing that he has a mandate to do what he thinks would destroy this country. He is pure evil and nothing that he does is helping anyone except for the wealthy…well, even they have to breath the foul air and live in the polluted environment that Trump seems to love.
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Good one, Lloyd.
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Joel, Greg, et al,
Democracy makes a cogent to argument here by all means.
And of course, horrible Obama was a much better president than the virus we have in office now. I would take Obama over Trump any time if given a magic wand, and I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d even take Hillary over Trump.
But part of the contention here is that while it’s better to get a piece of fruit that is not so rotten that you can still eat part of it, I still think’s it s best to get a piece of fruit that is of such great quality that you can eat the whole thing. Donald is rotten to the core, Obama had some edible parts, and we’ve yet to get a great peach or pear into office(s). It’s easier said than done, without doubt. But let’s not just look to the executive branch alone by any means . . .
it’s all about relativism for me. EVERYTHING good and bad is on a spectrum.
Obama played down the Flint crisis and he did not opt for a single payer system, which he could have pushed big time. Obama helped to freeze the COLA on SS.
My perception of how far right both parties have gone – with the GOP clearly in a big lead – is that we need to get back to being left of center in many ways. But this is a lesson for we the people far more than it is for the politicians. The people’s pain is the very path to their solution. The cave they fear the most holds the biggest treasure that they all universally seek . . .
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The Orange Scumbag never quits…”Foul Mouthed Omar”. “They can’t stand her and and her hatred of our country.” “The mainstream media has lost all credibility.”
Trump is getting more ‘presidential” every day. The Fake News Media reports what was seen and can be verified on video.
…………………………………………………………..
Donald J. Trump
Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
It is amazing how the Fake News Media became “crazed” over the chant “send her back” by a packed Arena (a record) crowd in the Great State of North Carolina, but is totally calm & accepting of the most vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen…
5:16 AM – 19 Jul 2019
9,500 Retweets 37,753 Likes
Reply 7.9K Retweet 9.5K Like 38K
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
….Mainstream Media, which has lost all credibility, has either officially or unofficially become a part of the Radical Left Democrat Party. It is a sick partnership, so pathetic to watch! They even covered a tiny staged crowd as they greeted Foul Mouthed Omar in Minnesota, a…
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
….State which I will win in #2020 because they can’t stand her and her hatred of our Country, and they appreciate all that I have done for them (opening up mining and MUCH more) which has led to the best employment & economic year in Minnesota’s long and beautiful history!
31K
7:16 AM – Jul 19, 2019
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He talks, thinks and acts like a thug, not the leader of a democratic nation, let alone the United States of America.
What does that say about his supporters and defenders?
Trump and all of his enablers are de facto a criminal organization.
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It is clear that Trump wants to run against these 4 Congresswomen in 2020, not the Dem nominee
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Symbolically, yes. Probably what you’re saying, too, Diane.
He wants to make them one of the centerpieces of his campaign. He’ll paint the entire Democratic Party as holding the views of these four young congresswomen along with the “foreigner” innuendo. “Socialist” will become the filthy catchphrase. He’ll probably use Bernie as a link between their youth and the old guard.
Whoever he runs against, I think the debate rules should be made very clear from the start that the participants must stay at their lecterns and keep their mouths SHUT while the other is speaking. That spectacle of him circling Hillary like a shark and making side comments was disgusting and a chilling prelude of things to come. He follows only his own thuggish rules and instincts.
What a nightmare.
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and then, the next day, when even some Republicans vomited — forgetting as always that there are such things as CAMERAS that record what he spits out–
— he said that he didn’t like it, he never approved of the audience reaction, and he said the he” moved on quickly” when the chant began..but the running clock said he basked in what he had started, in the disgrace for THIRTEEN MINUTES… and then added some names to the list.
Trump Tells America What Kind of Nationalist He Is
https://medium.com/the-atlantic/trump-tells-america-what-kind-of-nationalist-he-is-eeaae3f90402. “When Trump told these women to “go back,” he was not making a factual claim about where they were born. He was stating his ideological belief that American citizenship is fundamentally racial, that only white people can truly be citizens, and that people of color, immigrants in particular, are only conditionally American. This is a cornerstone of white nationalism, and one of the president’s few closely held ideological beliefs. It is a moral conviction, not a statement of fact. If these women could all trace their family line back to 1776, it would not make them more American than Trump, a descendant of German immigrants whose ancestors arrived relatively recently, because he is white and they are not.”
“White nationalists in the United States have always asserted that they are, in fact, the true victims of racial hatred, even as they’ve demanded the exclusion of nonwhites from the polity. When the Confederacy was shattered, its partisans launched a propaganda campaign rewriting the origin of their rebellion as the defense of individual freedom rather than property in man.: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adamserwer/why-were-finally-taking-down-confederate-flags?source=post_page
The Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction with terrorism and violence portrayed themselves as the victims of Negro tyranny, and as the historian Jonathan Sokol has written, when de jure segregation unraveled in the South in the 1960s, white southerners “began to picture the American government as the fascist, and the white southerner as the victim.” https://www.amazon.com/There-Goes-Everything-Southerners-1945-1975/dp/0307275507?source=post_page
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After all of the above, no one will read this but will post it anyway.
Someone MUCH smarter than me said
We can hang together or we can hang separately.
Too; a nation divided against itself cannot stand.
Too
Trump once said something to the effect that he could walk down the street and shoot someone and his base would still support him
It would seem that that is true.
So VERY much with Trump is terrifying I hardly know where to begin
so
I won’t.
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Worth reading!
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