dagblog - Comments for "The Accidental Revolution"

You live in Arizona. Mexicans

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 22:41:28 +0000

In reply to Immigration is an issue we

You live in Arizona. Mexicans aren't culturally close to those in Georgia or Nebraska or Indiana.

I think the "loss of jobs" is to some extent just papering over being confronted with too much change. For part of the country. Parts, like those coasts, are coping just fine.

P.S. throw in that Putin is

artappraiser — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 20:42:37 +0000

In reply to Pre-emptive on this comment:

P.S. throw in that Putin is most definitely trying to recreate a Russian empire of some kind.

And that: our borders with Canada and Mexico are pretty artificial and only recently created in the scheme of things. (And we bought Alaska fair and square, no war!)

Edit to add: if we hadn't added Hawaii, our 44th president would have really would have been a furriner!

And then there's Puerto Rico.....

Pre-emptive on this comment:

artappraiser — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 20:34:38 +0000

In reply to Immigration is an issue we

Pre-emptive on this comment: big generalization for fun purposes, riffing off your comment.

To paraphrase George Bush: culture change is hard work. We "new world" nations like say, the Americas and Australia, were created by the iconoclasts and outcasts from the "old world". It should therefore be tougher for the old world countries of 1,000-yr standing,not just nations but also past empires, like England,France or Spain, to do culture change. New world countries that separated from past empires in one way or another are instead supposed to thrive on it. Germany is a special case because of twice being humiliated in relatively recent world wars,and then the winners attempted to remake it, even fought a "cold war" after the hot one to influence the direction the change would take. Japan is a mystery in regard to this except that: it's a tiny island on which not many people can fit. Which takes us back to: England.

We are all prejudiced about what cultures we would like to see continue: I for one admit that when I saw the photo illustration of Percales' Hail Britannia link, my immediate gut reaction was: wouldn't it be sad if all that disappeared. When I wouldn't feel that sad if all old timey culture disappeared from Germany or even France.

The only conclusion I will make right now: if everybody assimilated Anthony Bourdain would be out of a very lucrative brand.

Immigration is an issue we

ocean-kat — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 20:03:31 +0000

In reply to "No one asked us" - view from

Immigration is an issue we need to consider with more nuance but there's a difference between the Arab/Muslim immigrants in Europe and the Mexican immigrants in America. The issue is cultural and how easy it is to assimilate given the cultural beliefs of the immigrants.

I suspect I'll be accused of anti-Muslim bigotry for this post but /shrug who cares. Mexicans are very close culturally to Americans while Muslims are not. Mexicans are mostly modern Christians. Muslims mostly believe in some version of fundamentalist Islam. They're like Christians before the reformation and secularization. I'm no advocate of religion but integrating people with a similar religion to the religion of the culture is easier. Christian nations and even the church accept the idea of a separation of church and state. The polling is clear that large majorities of Muslims do not accept that value that has become fundamental in European and American cultures.

There's also conflicts over free speech rights. European nations accept the right of citizens to criticize anyone and anything. This is not a fundamental value held by a majority of Muslims most of whom support blasphemy laws. There are also conflicts over women's rights with Muslim immigrants so often from countries still mired in an extreme form of patriarchy.

The issue with immigration in America is mostly about scapegoating Mexican immigrants for the loss of jobs. In Europe there are substantial cultural disagreements on the core beliefs of modern liberal societies that hinder assimilation and integration.

"No one asked us" - view from

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:23:43 +0000

In reply to The Accidental Revolution

"No one asked us" - view from UK looks a lot like that in the US, except "spanner" for "wrench" and "ou" instead of "o".

I was thinking that Merkel let in 1 million Arab refugees and it nearly blew up the EU, certainly set Germany off-kilter, while we at about 4x Germany's size had been letting in a half million Mexicans a year for 15 years. This has shifted now, including fewer Mexicans arriving, but with Indians and Chinese arriving at about 100,000/year each, which may exacerbate some of the same issues. Though you might think these groups being better educated would be better than the low-educated immigrants (especially illegal) that Mexico has provided. If the Indians & Chinese instead compete against higher wage earners and depress middle class salaries, that will generate another kind of revolt. Many people have an issue with immigration - not just from racism or isolationist tendencies. Ignore at our peril.

Brownstein’s last paragraph:

rmrd0000 — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:32:43 +0000

In reply to White Women in the Rustbelt

Brownstein’s last paragraph:

Gallup’s findings on Trump clarify the hurdles Democrats must clear to recapture the House. Job one is generating strong turnout from the minorities and young people most alienated from him in all polls. Beyond that, these numbers suggest Democrats must solve two intertwined demographic and geographic puzzles by winning more blue-collar women in the Rustbelt and more white-collar whites in the Sunbelt. Trump’s tumultuous tenure has provided them an opening with those voters—but no guarantees of pushing through it

Winning white votes continues to be the rate limiting step. If Trump is given credit for benefits people see with the tax cuts, Democrats may find it harder to win House seats. Black and young voters need to vote heavily in this midterm election.

Edit to add:

Factions of BlackLivesMatter are registering votes in black communities. They have even used screenings of Black Panther as registration sites.

I feel drawn to songs to

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:32:39 +0000

In reply to It's a complete fail, he even

I feel drawn to songs to script this conversation: "Sharia, Sharia Baby", anything by Coal Porter and Noël Coward, of course "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and "Turkey in the Straw". Perhaps a mashup called "Dem-a-go-gue-da-vita".
(trivia: did you know "In-a-gadda-da-vida" was really a mumble-jumble "In the Garden of Eden"?)

Plus Peter Gabriel's Supper's Ready, where "we watch in reverence as Narcissus is turned to a flower..."

Oddly it seems Bannon is

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:21:47 +0000

In reply to Not about the campaign but

Oddly it seems Bannon is overall getting defined as "non-criminal" - vicious in his own way, but still some kind of attention to the rules. Which would place him in the minority among that crew - some of them too stupid to even know there are rules, some of them too immoral to ever even care.

Not about the campaign but

artappraiser — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 08:21:28 +0000

In reply to He and Manafort seemed to be

Not about the campaign but there's some interesting stuff in the Reince Priebus mini-memoir by Chris Whiipple at Vanity Fair about how he felt about the optics of the Comey firing and the Mueller stuff:

While Priebus and Bannon watched the fiasco explode as the pundits excoriated the Trump White House on every cable news show, Kushner did a slow burn. He was livid, furious that the communications team could not defend Comey’s firing. Bannon blew his stack. “There’s not a fucking thing you can do to sell this!,” he shouted at Kushner. “Nobody can sell this! P. T. Barnum couldn’t sell this! People aren’t stupid! This is a terrible, stupid decision that’s going to have massive implications. It may have shortened Trump’s presidency—and it’s because of you, Jared Kushner!”

Here he seems to be worrying about them fighting back against getting labeled as friends of the gangsta lobbyists--Manafort &Gates--which is, after all, a classic definition of "the swamp":

But Bannon warned that the hounds had been loosed. “You’ve got Mueller’s team, which has got 19 killers who are all experts in wire fraud, money-laundering, and tax evasion,” Bannon said. “Doesn’t sound like collusion to me. But they’ve got unlimited budgets and subpoena power. And here’s what we’ve got on our side: two guys who’ve got legal pads and Post-Its.

“It’s like [certain members of the administration think that] no one took down the Gambino family,” Bannon continued. “Mueller’s doing a roll-up just like he did with the Gambinos. [Former campaign manager Paul] Manafort’s the caporegime, right? And [Rick] Gates [Manafort’s deputy] is a made man! [George] Papadopoulos is equivalent to a wiseguy out in a social club in Brooklyn. This is like a Wagner opera. In the overture you get all the strands of the music you’re going to hear for three hours. Well, Mueller opened with a bang. He totally caught these guys by surprise. So if you’re not going to fight, you’re going to get rolled over.”

Makes clear to me that for Bannon populism, the last thing you'd want is to have anything to do with those DC swamp type guys like Manafort, you'd be happy with all variety of heartland nuts, but no sophisticados. Manafort's an internationalist cosmopolitan, is he not? Bannon is still a true believer in MAGA, he's not for elitist meddling,rather he'd like to see all out public trade war with China if not real war.

White Women in the Rustbelt

artappraiser — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 07:45:25 +0000

In reply to The Accidental Revolution

White Women in the Rustbelt Are Turning on Trump

By Ronald Brownstein @ TheAtlantic.com, Feb. 8

Support from majorities of white, working-class women powered Trump’s midwestern wins, but those voters are souring on him in office—providing Democrats with a complicated opportunity in 2018.

Cited because, is not the average poll article:

[....]To better illuminate patterns of Trump’s strengths and weaknesses, Gallup provided The Atlantic with more finely grained demographic results in 13 battleground states where there were enough interviews to analyze his ratings in detail: six across the Rustbelt (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) and seven through the Sunbelt (Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado). These findings underscore both the persistence of the demographic divides over Trump—and the continuing tug of regional variations. With congressional elections increasingly pivoting on voter attitudes toward the president, both dynamics will frame the battle for control of Congress this fall [....]