Why poor whites are so angry
You hear people ask why the white working class went from resentful to bat-shit insane right around the time Obama got into office.
Therefore it must have been racism.
Except that Obama is gone and the white working class is still just as angry.
Therefore it must be...racism?
I have an idea. Let's consider a non-irrational reason, like economics.
This chart is completely true, and also doesn't explain anything.
Then last week Pew Research had an interesting poll.
Lower-income white families experienced greater losses in wealth during the recession than lower-income black and Hispanic families did. Prior to the recession in 2007, lower-income white families had 10 times as much median wealth as lower-income black families – $42,700 versus $4,300 (figures in 2016 dollars). Lower-income Hispanic families had a median net worth of $8,400, lagging white families by a ratio of five-to-one.These large wealth gaps were trimmed roughly in half by the Great Recession, which cut the median wealth of lower-income white households to $21,900 in 2010, a loss of 49%. Losses for lower-income black and Hispanic households were much smaller, 3% and 5%, respectively. The larger losses for lower-income white families may have arisen from their greater exposure to the housing market crash. In 2007, 56% of lower-income whites were homeowners, compared with 32% each of lower-income blacks and Hispanics. The homeownership rate among lower-income whites has trended downward since then, falling to 49% by 2016, but the rate for blacks and Hispanics is largely unchanged.
A 49% hit on your wealth is a damn good reason to get angry.
Anyone with half a brain can understand that.
The share of lower-income white households that have no wealth or are in debt was higher in 2016 than in 2007, but the opposite is true among lower-income black and Hispanic households. A corresponding sign of recession-induced stress on household portfolios is the share of families with zero net worth or in debt. This share edged up among lower-income white families, from 14% in 2007 to 17% in 2016. Meanwhile, the share of lower-income black families with zero or negative net worth decreased from 32% to 23% and the share among lower-income Hispanic families fell from 23% to 15%.
So half of your life's savings vanishes, while debt goes up.
For those that still don't understand how that might effect someone, consider these charts.
When you include class in the conversation things get a lot easier to understand.
Comments
And yet here in 'Murica...
...talk about class issues is socialism, marxism, cultural marxism, cultural bolshevism, bourgeois concerns or whatever shit term the Patreon Iedologues, be they corporate centrists or idiot alt-righters, wanna throw out there at any given time.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Racism is there, but there are other reasons to be angry
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I have written about this before and highly recommend reading
the full article. It's is about how Obama and Holder screwed millions of people who had lost their homes after banks had been bailed out.
This should be considered one of the biggest crimes against people in this country by not only Obama, but by every damn person who had a role in it. Including Clinton and the people in his administration that made this possible.
This is how the mortgage crisis should have been handled so that people could have remained in their homes. Instead, Obama sat bye while up to millions of people lost their homes while the banks continued to commit fraud. What could have been done for people who were foreclosed on is that after banks took their homes, they should have had first crack at buying them back. Or you know, banks should have offered this before they kicked people out....
Special Investigation: How America’s Biggest Bank Paid Its Fine for the 2008 Mortgage Crisis—With Phony Mortgages!
Alleged fraud put JPMorgan Chase hundreds of millions of dollars ahead; ordinary homeowners, not so much.
There was so much evidence of fraud being committed all over this country that attorney generals had iron clad cases against banks and they could have easily won them. But Holder talked them into combining them for a class action lawsuit. I don't remember the details, but it was clear that they would have won them.
Kampala Harris was AG in California and her office also had cases that would have been easily won.
Again I don't remember the details, but Holder somehow got them to stop them.
Kampala's office had spent years on the cases and were livid that she just walked away from them.
One of the biggest cases were against Mnunkin's company where one of the foreclosure was against an elderly woman who owed his company $.24 in back property taxes.
What was allowed to happen to the people Obama should have defended was just another of his selling out people who he was supposed to represent.
This is just another issue that he is now being well rewarded for doing for his masters while hanging out with the rich and famous.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Sordid history.
But what now? Some are stepping up....
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
@snoopydawg My thoughts are that
My thoughts are that this was an orchestrated event. People are more easily controlled when they're hungry, poor and have no roof over their heads.
Why did we not allow lower-income people to come in and buy the foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar, so that maybe they could get a good deal and get ahead of the game? Many properties here in Colorado (and I'm sure the country) had notices posted not to contact the bank. The notices said some garbage about not knowing who was carrying the note. They know damn well who is carrying the notes on these properties. Instead, they were held so that investors could come in and buy them up, then turn around and charge astronomical rents. Our rents in the metro Denver area have just about doubled in the last several years. Our average home prices have almost doubled. Who in the hell can afford this?
I used to think I would suck it up and move to an area more affordable. Can anyone tell me where those areas are? Even in depressed areas that don't warrant such values, home prices and rents are out of reach for many.
It is sickening that these fools have done this and our government officials allowed it, and even worse, encouraged it.
Then, it is made to be a crime to not have a place to lay your head. It is criminal to feed the homeless in parks. It is a crime to park your car or camper anywhere for more than a couple of hours. It is a crime to have no money.
Sometimes I think the only thing that keeps me going is my rebellion. I've got to stay around just to be a thorn in their shoe. I've got to fight this...We've got to fight this, if nothing else, just to do our part of pissing off the right and not making this easy for any of them!
In life, as in dance, grace glides on blistered feet. ~Alice Abrams
Thank you for saying this!
I have been feeling this same way for so long, and I'm sure that we aren't the only ones who think this.
After people either lost their homes or did a short sale, the homes were bought for much cheaper. This didn't make sense until I read that Dimon was able to sell those homes off and then receive compensation from the government.
I read an article on how homelessness is skyrocketing in the west and that it's because of the high prices of rents.
Blackstone was a financial firm that bought up huge swaths of homes and have now become absent slumlords after they jacked up rental prices.
This took homes off the sellers market and there are few affordable homes for first time buyers.
Plus, trying to find affordable rental homes is almost impossible. If someone can't pay their rent, there is lots of others that can..
It's easy to see that this is happening to more and more people. It only takes one illness, accident, job loss or some other event that can happen to anyone and boom, you are out in the streets.
And we know that depressions and downturns in the economy happen every so many years and that there is one on its way. gjohnsit has been writing about the number of financial issues that are being allowed to grow to a boiling point.
It's always the same damned thing. Who benefits and follow the money.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
In the comments from the article I read people saying this
if rents are too expensive for people who live in the higher priced states, then they should move to areas where it's not so expensive to live. Like Detroit. Gawd! (face palm)
There is a reason why rents there are so cheap. It has something to do with jobs. Empathy for less fortunates has been bled out of so many people who have no idea what living on the edge is like.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
They allowed banks to dual-track
Restructure your loan with HAMP (a really pathetic program, by the way) on one hand, AND continue to foreclose on the other--at the same time.
They really needed to cram down all those inflated mortgages--i.e., cram the principle down to the market value of the house--(just suck it up, banks; you knew better than to loan to people without money, no?), thus keeping people in their homes and keeping banks in business.
But no. Obama and his Citibank cabinet said, "The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest billionaires."
Ugly Numbers. I Wonder If You Could Correlate That Data Into
resource intensive areas. I bet you could.
You've got these numbers ALL AROUND the Great Lakes. In Appalachia. Gulf of Mexico. Eastern Washington. NorCal.
Where there's a natural resource to be exploited you'll find these numbers... dollars to donuts.
Welcome to the future: feels neocolonial to me. And it's scary.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Sadly a donut costs
a dollar these days. I remember when I could get a Much better one than Drunken's or Timmy Ho's at the local corner store for a nickel. Literally. Same as a candy bar.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Liberal dogma since the 1950s has been that inflation is good.
As long as I’ve been alive, the liberal dogma and politically correct position has always been that Inflation Is Good because reasons.
Blah blah Samuelson, blah blah Galbraith, blah blah Keynes.
The dollar seems to buy less by a factor of 16 to 20, compared to when I was a kid.
Yet we’re supposed to believe that the only people who identify this kind of inflation as a problem are right-wing crackpots — followers of Barry Goldwater then, or Ron Paul now, and/or “gold bugs” (investors in precious metals).
I Don't Think That Is True, ll. It May Have Been True Through
the 60s, that the Liberal view was inflation is good, but I think that changed in the late 60s and early 70s.
Liberals became quite austere in their economic dogma. Fighting Inflation, Reducing the National Debt, and Dangerous Deficits took over – in a big way.
Probably mid 80s? Codified with Clinton. Furthered with Obama. Those guys did pretty much everything they could to keep inflation "down" by jiggering the numbers. Inflation kept going up, they just hid the numbers to pad the bottom line and ensure that the "extra monies" went to the right pockets.
What we didn't get with inflation this go around is a situation where wages and debts tacked with it. Wages and costs should have gone up and debts should have gone down.
But debts can't go down, man. Liberals believe that, BTW, I think. "That would be like wasting money." "Why should the debtor skate like that?"
It's part and parcel the neoliberal code. Man serves the market. All the freedom you can afford.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
You’re probably right since you’re there & my view is from afar.
I expatriated to Europe in the mid-70s, before inflation ballooned into the double-digits.
Everything that came after — Carter, Reagan, Laffer-curve economics, Iran-Contra, etc. — all those developments and conditions in America were something that, by then, I could only follow by reading about them.
Years later, I did grocery shopping for family members in Hawaii and was initially really shocked by the prices.
One big thing was the value of the US dollar crashing from around 4 German marks down to DM 2.50. Now it would be the equivalent of DM 1.68 or so.
@lotlizard For a capitalist,
For a capitalist, Keynes isn't bad.
For my part, every time I talk about anything that isn't classical Chicago school, somebody somewhere (not you)talks about Weimar.
It reminds me a lot of how every time I talked about a left-wing Democratic party people would talk about McGovern.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
A decade and a half ago
we went for a bike trip on a trail around La Crosse, WI. La Crosse itself is something of a college town (UW-La Crosse), but we were fairly shocked by the conditions of hilly Western Wisconsin. People sitting in a restaurant with strips of wallpaper coming down. The place was full nevertheless.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
North of La Crosse...
...they're called coulees. My father-in-law grew up dirt poor back in the coulees off of Moen Coulee Road near Blair, WI.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
They voted for Obama
twice. He bailed out wall street, but well, to bail out Main Street, mmmmm, no. So 2016, they saw no reason to vote at all. Whites, POC, women all down from the Obama elections. They didn't ALL go racist and switch to Trump.
Absolutely. One pundit said Hillary lost to the Abyss
Yah, the initial reaction is that white America went racist in droves and voted for Trump. Actually in many areas, Trump under performed Rommey. As one pundit voters didn't go to Trump but just fell into the abyss and did not vote.
Which in many ways, BTW, really shows up the Russia bullshit. So how did the ads suppress the vote? Actually what suppressed the vote was Hillary the candidate.
don't you get that fascists understand all this?
Just like it worked in Germany after ww1. Devastate their economy. Point a finger at the non whites. Employ corporate controlled media. Build massive war machine. Check. Check. Check and check.
The economy and racism go hand in hand. Why else these economic policies?
Yes, gjohnsit, spot on...
even me, i'm poor, born, and more by choices i've made and miscalculations and chosen lifestyle than millions to which you refer, but i feel the pain as many of us on c99 do, the ongoing pressure to make it through the month, kiting the way; my neighbors feel the pain which you express, also.
At least i read a few current writings getting at this issue you bring to today's table; hoping it's a beginning, a reaping of Occupy and synergy bubbling to surface and by grace necessary to move the moguls from DC's-Mordor.
Keep on trucking!
It isn't just economics
Obama was by definition a lightning rod for racism, but he refused to address it. This let the racists and potential racists simmer for eight years. Instead of appearing dignified and nonthreatening he appeared smug and condescending, and selling out America to the banksters and betraying us to the health insurance companies didn't help. And when the racist backlash hit, with police murders replacing lynchings, he did nothing, telling the racists that they could act with impunity.
On to Biden since 1973
The thing is
he is smug and condescending. His biggest interest was in working with republicans. The Left was actually something he disdained to work with. He bought on, to some degree, more or less, most of the republican platform even going to cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit. His signature victory, his health insurance program, was a republican plan, Romneycare.
@doh1304 That's because the PTB
That's because the PTB had decided to organize all of American politics around an expanded race war.
Not sure that's what Obama had in mind when he started running for President, but he's not the kind of guy to disobey orders.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I expect that people will keep asking
"was Obama a toool of the oligarchs or just a coward, or did he really believe" for as long as there is American history. I see it as something like "was Lenin really a German agent or just a coward?" (personally I'm in the "coward" camp)
On to Biden since 1973
@doh1304 It's probably both.
It's probably both. In other words, he's obviously their tool, but in performing his function he probably had to do some things he didn't like. I doubt even Barack Obama, with his authoritarianism and his disgusting meritocratic spin on race relations ("nobody cares if you've experienced some racism" combined with a hefty dose of well, I made it, why can't you?) actually wanted to sit there and do nothing while unarmed Black people got shot because they're Black.
It's a little like Syria. "We know these tactics will work because they worked so well in Somalia and Yemen." But you'll notice he fell into line and did what they wanted anyway.
On a side note, I thought the reaction of even people like emptywheel, who I admire, to that statement was shockingly simplistic and naive. Everybody all over the Web started saying "My God! Barack Obama thinks Somalia and Yemen are a success!"
He needed to have a snark tag digitally inserted to float above his head on the broadcast.
To think Somalia is a "success" by any measure, you'd have to hail from Mars.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Eight years of ignoring domestic issues
in favor of reaching across the aisle, chasing the unicorn of "clean coal," and keeping the goddamn wars in Afghanistan going, for Christ's sake.
As for the Flint water crisis? Show up and do a photo-op of drinking a glass of water. I'd expect that from a low tier Republican.
And don't forget , DT picked up a lot of Conservadem
voters. See below, from WaPo.
Supposedly, a lot of these folks are former Reagan Republicans, many of whom sat out Presidential elections for several election cycles--until DT made a direct appeal to them as 'the forgotten men and women.'
I could be wrong, but I suspect that the Dem Leadership will have to come up with a better plan then offering more 'job training programs,' if they sincerely want to win over these Southern and industrial-state Conservadems. I'll be interested to see what their strategy will be--if they have one.
A recent poll or focus group (forget which) shows him weakening somewhat, but basically holding his core base. IOW, they're getting plenty fed up with various things--his Tweeting, his running off at the mouth, etc.--but many of them are still sticking with him--for now.
(I think that this is an ongoing survey conducted by USA Today.)
[Edited: Added link and sentence.]
Mollie
The "Grand Bargain" isn't dead--it's being implemented incrementally through piecemeal legislation. Please read the 2010 Bowles-Simpson proposal, "The Moment Of Truth."
"The standard of living of the average American has to decline. I don't think you can escape that."
--Paul Volcker, The New York Times, October 18, 1979, Page 1.
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
@Unabashed Liberal And yet Bernie did great
And yet Bernie did great in WV. Go figure.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
An after election analysis said that
Trump's strongest support was from the $100k income group (take that Chuckie!) It is quite believable - the borderline (if just in their minds) wealthy probably are the most subject to selfish and thoughtless greed.
On to Biden since 1973
I actually know alot of poor white people.
Probably most of the white people I know are poor relative to the annual income levels used to designate those in poverty vs those in the middle class.
I don't think any of them that I know of voted for Trump. I don't think most of them voted at all. Most of them are very aware of the crimes committed by our government and the duopoly that authorizes it all.
I think this narrative that poor white people supported Trump is generalized bullshit. Seventy percent of this country is poor. Trump got about 24% of the voting population's votes, most of people in the middle and upper class. So he got a small percentage of poor white people's votes.
It's inaccurate to generalize about the humans in this country relative to how they vote because half and up to two thirds (2014) don't vote at all. That's how conditioned Americans are to accept everything relative to this duopoly political system.
Yep. By now, a lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert
recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages.
Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
It comforts us to know we are morally superior to those who trudge towards empty expanse of sand #2, soon to be studded with skeletons of would-be swamp drainers and MAGA trekkers.
Shamelessly stolen
OK, for the first time ever, I've now stolen someone's comment to use as a signature on the same board the comment came from.
Congratulations. You've been plagiarized.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I plagiarized a line awhile back
"Neo-liberalism: it's a restaurant with a ninety page menu, but no food."
Didn't use it as a sig line though. Just to needle some neoliberals at Daily Kos.
@Big Al You're right.
You're right.
I keep trying to tell people it's not more than 25-30% of the population, at most, that holds extreme racist views like the ones you hear at white supremacist rallies, or occasionally coming out of the mouth of Donald Trump. Those people have held those views for a long time. As a white Southerner who doesn't hold those views, I don't see any more of them around than there always have been, not in my neck of the woods anyway. People who supported Trump for his racism look like the same people who have always been around holding the same views they always have. I don't see how Trump empowers their viewpoint any more than George W. Bush did. White racist in the big chair=white racist in the big chair. If people didn't get all lathered up about George W. Bush--and believe me, they didn't (I know who was out in the street because *I* was out in the street, and it wasn't millions of white people by a long shot)--then why are they all lathered up about Donald Trump?
I'll tell you why: the media.
The media (mostly) didn't make an issue of Bush's racism and downplayed or even ignored significant instances of it. Katrina forced them to notice, for a little while, because that many dead Black bodies all at once are hard to cover up (when the deaths happen one or two at a time, it's easier for big media to ignore). But that faded into a discussion of government incompetence and then faded into silence.
In contrast, the media has been like a screaming centrifuge since summer 2016. Sadly, they've got a bunch of white liberals--and apparently a lot of Black people too--convinced that somehow Trump's racism is qualitatively different than the fifty million times we've had a racist in the Oval Office before, apparently because Trump shoots his mouth off on Twitter, and that's worse than getting Black people disproportionately killed in war, doing a neat bit of social engineering to move large numbers of them out of public housing and into prisons, denying them their voting rights by creating a new form of Jim Crow, or cutting the social welfare programs that a lot of them live on, driving more of them into poverty. It's also worse than creating a new form of sub-prime mortgage that racist bankers waggishly call "ghetto mortgages" which target them for economic predation by playing on their desires to have a home. It's also worse than responding to racist murders of unarmed Black people by cops by inventing a Task Force. In other words, sitting on your hands.
Apparently, saying racist shit on Twitter like a fat, overgrown, ugly troll is worse than all that. Who knew?
What makes it different and worse is the media screaming at fever pitch that it is different and worse.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
More likely we are talking 5% or less
The vast majority of people don't give a shit about race. They have better things to think about.
Racism is much more subtle than that
in reality. Sure, Trump let fly with it, and I think that is what brought him a lot of support - he goes right on and says what they themselves dare not say or even acknowledge that they feel. But it is there, in many subtle forms for many Americans.
But I do think the premise of your diary is spot on. And I think the other piece of that is that it is not only poor whites who feel threatened now. Something like 30% or so of his supporters are supposedly in the $75K per year range. While that is certainly NOT poor or anywhere near it, it is, as we all know out here, still somewhat precarious. At that level you're close enough to be OK on paper, but if one disaster happens, who knows what that does? And if you lose your SS or Medicare, why all bets are off then unless you've saved one hell of a lot of money. Rump promised not to touch that, and he also pounded on the corruption which everyone does see now. But he's not an actual politician, and I think that made many people simply take a chance that maybe he wasn't lying.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
That was certainly my reasoning
I voted Stein because there was, in fact, another choice. But if forced to choose between Trump and Clinton my stance has always been that Clinton was the absolute certainty of BadThings(tm) and Trump was more like a wild throw of the dice. He'd do BadThings(tm), certainly. But it was hard to know how much and what sort. If nothing else, he didn't seem hell bent on war with Russia. If forced to choose between Trump and Clinton I'd have gone Trump.
The time between the election and now has only reinforced that viewpoint -- largely due to #RussiaGate. As far as I'm concerned, the Democrats and Clinton had better put up some solid, externally verifiable proof that "Russia hacked the US election which constitutes an act of war" or else I class them as suicidal maniacs hell bent on global destruction. The notion that buying ads on Facebook is an act of war is so improbably ludicrous that I shouldn't have to say that it doesn't count -- but I do. In addition, the Clinton camp continues to call for ever more oppressive censorship and domestic surveillance. I find that fairly scary and it's changed my opinion to the negative also.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Clarification
"Subtle" is not "extreme racist views".
Extreme racist views are dangerous. Subtle racism is problematic, but almost impossible to measure or remove from society.
Yup, I agree totally.
And the subtle kind, you're so right to point out, is a LOT harder to address.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Having just visited some Trump supporting in-laws
And having to endure a ten minute racist rant about "wetbacks" taking over their little white town and having all those babies (I thought right wingers loved the little fetuses?), I categorically state that a majority of Trump supporters ARE white racists. Not as if racism is Gone With the Wind. It used Obama as a lightning rod and now Nazis (or as D'ump calls them, "REALLY FINE PEOPLE") march in the open.
Hillary made a mistake calling 50% of Trump supporters "deplorables." They percentage is higher.
This is so on the money
You've managed to distill every argument I had during the election with "Liberals" whenever the subject of race came up.
Frankly, I think we all need to carry big paddles and thwack them over their heads every time they start screaming on about this. We could call it a sport of some sorts. Thwack a Dem. It won't really solve the problem, but it might make us feel a little better.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
@Anja Geitz Like whack-a-mole!
Like whack-a-mole!
If it weren't for the fact that even the mildest form of ideological-based violence would be fuel on the fire...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
If only we could find
A corner and a dunce cap big enough to put them in....
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I think a lot of people who make an income from the MIC
voted for Trump for some reason that I just don't get. OK Hillary is bad, but Trump is not the remedy. I sure hope we become less gullible.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Poor whites in Europe: more angry about uncontrolled immigration
There’s a sense that the media and government are covering up migrant-related costs, crime, and cultural decline, while promoting a bogus rosy picture of migration’s supposed benefits.
And then there’s the concerted effort at “moral leadership,” which amounts to trying to make already poor people feel guilty for not sharing.
Bob Cratchit being berated for being Ebenezer Scrooge — while the real Ebenezer Scrooges of the world jet off to Davos and Bilderberg, unperturbed in their bubble of luxury, to talk about how mean Bob Cratchit is for not wanting to make sacrifices for Africa or whoever.
Whites are "expensive" for the multinational corporate owners.
Whites are an "expensive" population for the multinational corporate establishment. Whites like collective bargaining, they like to unionize. They complain more about unfair trade deals, worker protections, environmental protections and other "expensive" stuff that 'adds to the costs of doing business' and makes the "harmonizing" of international human rights standards more troublesome when trying to negotiate multinational trade agreements. International human rights standards have often been an obstruction to the process of negotiating trade deals.
Whites are an "expensive" population for those reasons.
I also think the contemporary medical 'acceptance' for opioids (when they've known for centuries how dangerous they are) is part of the picture.
Mike Taylor
Nothing is more insulting than a rich Democrat...
who looks at those numbers and thinks it's a good thing because "EQUALITY!" See! Now White People are learning what it's like to live like the rest of America! Now they'll treat everybody like brothers and we'll all get together and sing Kuhmbaya, just as soon as those nasty white racists admit they have no culture and destroy every symbol they were raised on because those symbols are racist.
Is it any wonder those "Racist" symbols are defended for even the slightest positive emotion they generate? You take the money, the house, and the pride, all that's left is the symbols. Is it any wonder that desperate people are turning to powerful evil symbols that used to be the source of ridicule for their obvious evilness?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Apg5XQBzs]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Corporate Dems have no problem with the One Percent
owning everything--as long as that One Percent becomes 51% female, 17% black, 5% Asian, 27% Hispanic, and so on. Because Identity Politics. Also the reason they whine that. "OMG Bernie is not even a Democrat!" Because now, even the title "Democrat" has earned an award in the Oppression Olympics.
Class not "race".
There is no doubt that "racism" has existed and persisted in this Country, and is perhaps Culturally ingrained into our Society somewhat from having had a History with slavery.
That said, a lot of what I feel is really going on is just a big, misguided finger-pointing game.
People of all backgrounds who are poor, and disenfranchised, and who are economically at the edge of poverty with little opportunity for advancement, do not have either the resources or the time to spend researching the complex details of how the Wall Street Global Banking Cartel and their crooked Institutions rig the system and create the 1% .vs. 99% divide in this deeply corrupted Country. And Government at the Federal level is far too remote, monolithic, and unresponsive for them to possibly exert any influence over, so they look elsewhere.
In that environment, it is easy to blame specific people (race), or groups of people, or project the problems onto ethnic differences or lifestyle choices -- rather to confront the complex policy details, and the Washington-New York Think Tanks where the ideas and brainwashing for these economically destructive "globalist" policies are designed, and Global Warfare (mass murder), and "regime change" policies are first envisioned and marketed (for profit of course).
But the main source of continual tension in our Society comes from Class, not race.
The 1% regardless of whatever background they initially came from live like Kings in this Country (and always have), where as the lower half of the 99% live at the edge of poverty -- and face unimaginable debt, struggle, and hardships in trying to do basic things like pay for College, or sustain their careers and retire comfortably. The costs of housing, day care, medical, education, auto, and even food has always been increasing at far greater rates than worker wages are. And from Washington and New York gatekeepers we have policies designed to destroy American industries, incentivize companies to move manufacturing overseas, hollow out local communities, and take away American Jobs. As economic insecurity rises then other tensions (such as race) also rise with it.
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And one thing that does not help any is "political correctness".
Rather than safeguarding minority interests .. all political correctness does is create a type of straight jacketed culture, and a new type of "scarlet letter" McCarthyism -- where people can no longer even say a certain word (regardless of the context), or express certain ideas or concepts or make potentially valid criticisms or even make simple harmless jokes in public. Political correctness has produced a backlash from "whites" and others in our Country, not because these people are really "white supremacists" (as they are sometimes accused), but because they simply do not like the idea of some Orwellian force (whether Government or Hollywood or the News Media) telling them what they can and cannot say, or what words they can and cannot use.
And the whole "Black Lives Matters" group (Bankster George Soros-funded) only made things worse by instigating or advocating violence, public disruption, and admonishing people for dare suggesting that ... all lives matter. Dr. Martin L. King said: hate can never be conquered by more hate. Only Love can conquer hate.
So instead, we should seek to have an open, free society, in which the rights of the individual is the whole focus and what is emphasized --- rather than the group that the individual belongs to, or the rights of specific "groups", or the rights for specific "lifestyle choices".
And include with that the right to have unfettered free dialog, and the expression of unpopular ideas and thought -- which should always be permitted and never persecuted. Only actions that actually harm people (violence, theft) should be punishable.
If everybody believed in that model and practiced it...then there would be no constant energy or Oxygen given anymore to "racist" thought, or also the fear of accusations of racism.
It would be easier in that environment then to finally recognize that we (the 99%) are all oppressed, and all live at mercy of the 1% Oligarchs in this Country. Their corrupt rules and Institutions would then be the focus of all the new tension (as it should)... and not race.
As comedian George Carlin once said:
At work right now we're having some
issues with this whole "diversity" thing. One of our project managers, a white male, was informed that he WILL switch jobs with a woman who needs experience in his job for her "career path." It is shit like that the surely helps breed sexism, and racism when used that way. He was basically told he has no choice in this, although it has now been put off for 6 months. How in hell does that make anyone feel like worrying about "diversity?" How does something like that not increase any negative stereotypes? How is anyone supposed to just blithely accept that and NOT think that political correctness has gone off the deep end? And to add insult to injury, this little decision had to be heard third hand - they are all fine doing it but just don't want to publicize it. FFS.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
@FreeSociety
One thing I haven't yet noticed being mentioned on this thread is the globalist crap about how workers in affluent countries everywhere and once having better pay 'have to compete' with abused, underpaid-right-down-to-slave-labour workers in other countries, such as China and Malaysia, in the race to the bottom for them all, while - unmentioned - a relative few of the already wealthiest suck up everything that they would have gotten and which would have kept the real economy alive.
That kinda sets a tone for the way foreign workers/other-coloured people would be perceived by those not attributing the fault accurately, due to propaganda.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.