dagblog - Comments for "Right about the Alt Right"

No need to mention that David

rmrd0000 — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 21:16:37 +0000

In reply to Let's hope they keep failing

No need to mention that David Duke is robocalling for Trump.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-duke-donald-trump_us_57c47270e...

Edit to add:

"Pastor" Mark Burns felt today was a good day to post a cartoon of Hillary in blackface

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/08/29/trump-pastor-puts-hillary...

Let's hope they keep failing

NCD — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 20:23:53 +0000

In reply to The GOP may be failing on a

Let's hope they keep failing at the Presidential level. At the state level the damage mostly ends at the state border. At the Presidential level, economically and militarily it can lead to disasters that encompass our entire nation and world, as we experienced under GWB.

BTW top MSM news is Weiner and Abedin are splitting. Sexting. Maybe as big as where Lohtge peed in Brazil.....

Hillary's election is about

rmrd0000 — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 18:15:17 +0000

In reply to The GOP may be failing on a

Hillary's election is about control of SCOTUS. Many courts have overturned onerous voter suppression laws. We need justices on the Supreme Court who will uphold these decisions.

The GOP may be failing on a

ocean-kat — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 18:05:28 +0000

In reply to Josh at TPM adds along the

The GOP may be failing on a presidential level but they're winning at every other level of government. They control the house and the senate and most states. While the consensus is that Hillary will win the presidency there's still doubt whether democrats will win the senate and not even the most optimistic democrats are predicting we'll control the house.

Think of him as a bad

barefooted — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 16:45:54 +0000

In reply to Excellent analysis and

Think of him as a bad comedian with nothing left to lose - all that matters in the end is recognition from the folks in the peanut gallery.

Josh at TPM adds along the

NCD — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 14:52:22 +0000

In reply to The problem that the country

Josh at TPM adds along the same line today: I continue to think is one of most apt insights I've seen into contemporary American politics: the GOP is a failed state and Donald Trump is its warlord. .... Like warlordization in a state collapse context, Trump's action confirms the breakdown of institutional control but also makes recovery and unity even more difficult to recover... the rightwing media echo-chamber created a framework in which you are immediately discredited if you do not subscribe to a series of demonstrably false claims, non-facts and theories.

The top GOP claim for decades is government is always the problem.

What happens if government is required to get the nation through some future catastrophe, in a Trump administration, with GOP control of Congress?

It could be a career ending move to even suggest government prevent the plunge off an economic cliff.

A kind of reverse of an incident related by Alexander Solzenitsyn, at a Communist Party Congress. After a Stalin address, a standing ovation went on for over 45 minutes, as the fear was the first to sit would not live to see another address.

In the case of the Trump GOP, the first to stand and suggest government must do something would be a in a similar fix.

I second NCD, well-put.

Michael Wolraich — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 13:22:03 +0000

In reply to The problem that the country

I second NCD, well-put.

Woah woah woah - covering a

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 20:55:44 +0000

In reply to Thank you for asking.

Whoa whoa whoa - covering a lot of ground a bit too quickly.

The American Revolution had "fascist elements"? I suppose everything must a bit, perhaps.... but what? Which founding father was promoting anything close to fascism? And how were the colonies of 1776 "capitalism in decay"? It was more about land concessions and successful capitalism that no longer felt obligated to pay a high percent to a faraway power when the the settlers were largely the ones who won the cross-Appalachian war with the French, etc.

In Germany, the dark days of hyperinflation were 10 years old when Hitler assumed power as Chancellor in 1933. Germany only suffered 2 bad years in the depression - much more benign than the US - and the big infrastructure projects Hitler implemented were a big success for Germany capitalism from 1933-1936 as can be seen from the GDP graph there. How a prosperous revived economy led to the worsening of fascism (including the break of Kristallnacht) after 1936 would contradict your thesis.

The Russian system has been oligarchic and mafia-like since the breakup of the Soviet Union and before, with strong nationalism/nostalgia for Soviet & Mother Russia such as from Zhurinovsky and of course Putin is well-entrenched, pre-dates any significant capitalist effort, and was always fueled by the disgruntlement of old people who were cared for very poorly but predictably under the Communist system.

EU nationalism has 4 major roots - those who see it as usurping their own national identity, those who obsess over immigration, those who've been continually bombarded with typically fallacious or misleading info about how bad the EU performs vs. typically corrupt and bloated local governments, and those people who've gotten left behind in the changing economy - often unrelated to or even ameliorated by EU actions, somewhat related to the effects of globalization and the way intra-country economies tend to agglomerate to the detriment of rural and marginalized regions. Pim Fortuyn was playing the "I want my money" anti-EU card a generation ago, though part of that was the Dutch government's ignoring some basics of gross inconvenience of its decisions on people who would be normally be tolerant and left-leaning (such as messing up traffic into Utrecht for 2-3 years). The Le Pens have been around forever working on a typical smaller percent of conservative discontents. The Greek situation was due to the inherent corruption of the society, reliance on only 2 industries, and how it tried to game EU membership over 30 years. The Nordics are relatively homogenous countries dealing with a bit more Muslim influence that's thrown off white assumptions. Italy is just dealing with the issues of its various Berlusconi, mafia and other corruption in slowly trying to adhere to EU norms. Other countries like Portugal, Spain and Ireland did get caught up in some short-term economic downturns that affected their planning and overall assumptions. Eastern European countries continue to struggle with their pre-wall crony corruption vs. the more transparent EU norms that have trouble sticking. None of this intuits a huge problem with capitalism, only some specific growing pains with various national situations. The EU's meddling in Syria, with subsequent refugee crisis and Merkel's humanitarian stance has brought immigration paranoia to a head, but even that's subsiding, and Erdogan's heavy-handed tactics of the last 2 months have ended any concern that Turkey might be a heavily compromised anchor member of the EU anytime before 2100 - ironically a good thing under the circumstance, but far from what I'd hoped for for Turkey 10 years ago.

The US passed its immigration shock 10 years ago, so fear of terrorists is substituted or blended. The EU actually has socialism (though many programs are very business-focused), whereas the right's panic over US socialism is way overblown considering the whittling away of any welfare, the rampant budget cutting of the last 10 years, how the budget has turned its focus to corporate/bank welfare & of course weapons plus homeland security, etc.

And living next to the microcosm of Berkeley, which has been a strange place for at least 50 years - what specifically does that tell us about what? All major campuses had the PhD student who freaked & became a weird campus fixture for years. Attracts various high and low segments of society.... Is it a bellweather, or simply a mix of almost everything that's happening elsewhere?

Thank you for asking.

Orion — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 19:06:52 +0000

In reply to Good read, Orion. Do you

Thank you for asking.

The big secret about the United States is that no one is particularly doing well here. I'm in Berkeley now and have stayed at a hostel, next to the supposed top public university in the country, that is close to third world. Enough white (and other privileged groups) may be doing badly enough but remember privilege long enough in their recent memory that the Alt Right could maintain momentum. Fascism takes off when capitalism is in decay and those who feel privileged feel their privilege being taken away, from the American Revolution (which had fascist elements) to Nazi Germany.

When I first researched these guys over half a decade ago, I was struck by how committed they were and how polished their message was compared to the KKK or the other white supremacists we are used to. Most the candidates who criticized Trump still do - Gary Johnson and Jeb Bush are not fans - but the GOP essentially gave up to him. There is a rise in these groups in Europe and interests in Russia seem to support them as well, if for no other reason than simply to circumvent the US.

The investment that the outside has in the US is why, like it usually does, fascism will be quelled or usurped. Nonetheless it will be ugly. This country is bizarre. You can feel it in the air. This country is too deranged and chaotic to pull off something like the Nazis did, which in the end failed. An ethnic blowup would probably look a bit more like Yugoslavia in the 1990s, complete with outside powers coming in to keep the peace.

Alot of those outside interests also are doing a lot better in this country, mostly because unlike here, most countries invest in their people. While American citizens beg for bus money, Chinese, Latin American and Asian students have grants from their state. They could get caught in the mess of hate and resentment. It's bad. Even if it's not a majority of people or a plurality, there clearly are enough people to really cause something bad.

Excellent analysis and

NCD — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 03:49:57 +0000

In reply to The problem that the country

Excellent analysis and description which I hadn't heard before.

He also won't tolerate complaints if things go very bad for the country or the world in a Trump administration.

Who knows where that would lead with this mob he has backing him, and who they would target to take the blame. It could get very bad, a government too scared and paralyzed to take action.