I think I'd feel better if half the GOP field wasn't jonesing for the same end times battle of civilizations as ISIS.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) December 16, 2015
Rebecca Traister, at NYMag:
… It has been a violent, sad year marked by mass shootings and police violence and acts of terror and a seemingly endless supply of vitriol and anxiety. But while that series of events may have felt like a random, scary blur as we lived through it, it’s coming into stark and horrifying relief at year’s end thanks to the blaring optics of our presidential-election cycle…
This moment, this election, these years represent the death throes of exclusive white male power in the United States. That the snarling fury and violence are contemporary does not make them less real than the terrors of previous periods; it makes them more real, at least to those of us living through them. And the presidential-primary contest, while absurdist and theatrical, is reflecting very real fury and violence in the non-electoral world: the burning of crosses and black churches, the execution of black men by police, the resistance of male soldiers to women in elite combat positions, a white man with a history of rape and violence against women [calling] himself a “warrior for the babies” after killing people at an abortion clinic, and a younger white man killing nine black churchgoers with the explanation “You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country.”…
Whatever their flaws, their political shortcomings, their progressive dings and dents, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton mean a lot. They represent an altered power structure and changed calculations about who in this country may lead. It is not coincidence that after seven years of a black president people are calling for lynchings at Republican rallies. It’s not some random quirk that eight years after a woman almost became the Democratic nominee, Republican candidates are crowing about their commitment to making pregnancy compulsory and accepting the endorsements of those who support violence against abortion providers.
This is our country in an excruciating period of change. This is the story of the slow expansion of possibility for figures who have long existed on the margins, and it is also the story of the dangerous rage those figures provoke. Listen closely, and you’ll hear the acknowledgment coming directly from the Republican candidates. Here was Marco Rubio in Tuesday’s debate: “What’s at stake in this election is not simply what party’s going to be in charge but our very identity as a people and as a nation.” This is not a dog whistle. This is a statement of fact…
… Clinton, like Obama before her, isn’t carrying just her own baggage, but will stand in as the symbolic target for those whose fury at increased female autonomy has been building. In a nation where women who were not permitted to cast votes still live and breathe, her campaign, as Ms. Clinton has herself declared in other contexts, is living history. If she wins, she — and we — will be forced to do battle with this rising, chilling, ever more open threat from those who feel enraged that their country is no longer their own. I fear that there’s a lot more terror ahead of us.
amk
“the death throes of exclusive white male power in the United States”
just because of one sole black guy in WH >>> congress, senate, most govnors and leges filled with white male power? what a load of bs.
piratedan
my best guess is that this may be another test of our democracy where not only white dudes are put out that a black guy now has control, the election of someone like Hilary also strums the chords of their inability to relate to women outside of their ability to cook food or provide sex. It’s a strange new world for white dudes who’ve only known that their kind were large and in charge inside their insulated worldview.
Anything that brings home the point that other people can and do handle money, power and responsibility and lessens their special snowflake status simply scares the living shit out of them and is to be avoided at all costs. Also worth noting is that there are a fair share of women out there that feel the same (Martha Blackburn, come on down!).
As a middle class white dude myself, I have to fight this surreptitious branding and bias on a daily basis and its frightening how pervasive it is woven into the fabric of our everyday lives.
cokane
It hasn’t been a violent year tho.
That’s the problem with these dumb think pieces. 2015 was one of the least violent years in human history. We need to make more progress but man… the frames of these pieces just arent true
Frankensteinbeck
@amk:
Note the word ‘exclusive’. Much like when one single black guy got into the major leagues, the loss of absolute privilege is more terrifying to bigots than the loss of majority status. Yes, a black man became their boss, and they freaked the fuck out. It’s an alien world to even the mild-to-moderately racist.
David Koch
I don’t think it’s been a sad year.
Yes,there’s been gun violence, but that happens every year; is this year worse than Sandy Hook.
On the contrary, it’s been a year of triumph: detente with Iran, establishing relations with Cuba, a global climate change pact, killing the Keystone pipeline, ending gender segregation in the armed forces, lowering unemployment to 5% after adding 14 million jobs over 69 straight months, defeating legal attacks on ACA & Fair Housing Act, and establishing gay marriage as the law of the land.
This is why I can’t stand loser emoprogs. They love to wallow in their neurosis and self pity.
jl
@cokane: I agree.
Daesh will be destroyed very quickly after some solution is found for the stalemate in Syria, and governance for Sunni portions of Iraq.
I fear the problems getting to a solution for both situations, including Russian, US and Turkish cross purposes in Syria, more than what Daesh can do to the US in the meantime. You want stress and bloodshed, just wait and see what happens if that goes wrong. And if Russia, EU and US can agree to a way forward, the GOP will start screaming nonsense about who ‘lost Syria’ and it being the biggest defeat and ghastly surrender by US, far worse than Daesh ever was, as the Sunnis and outside powers reduce them.
Also need to remember that a lot of this decline of the white male anxiety is whipped up by cynical operators in GOP and various reactionary media organizations. It’s more BS than a real thing.
And I think declining economic prospects for a lot of people, including poor, working and middle class whites have a lot to do with it. I just checked the BLS employment population ratio statistics for prime working age (25 to 54) white dudes and they have gotten slammed since the 2001 recession, and double slammed in 2007 recession after not nearly recovering to levels before 2001. And they have only recovered to half to 2/3 of where they were previously from depths of the 2007 recession in terms of employment. Whites, and white dudes are still better off than minorities in absolute terms, but they got nicked badly since 2001, far worse even than in the bad old 1970s. Maybe for the first time since the Great Depression, a large proportion of whites have experienced what minorities have experienced in recessions.
I go more with cynical exploitation by GOP and reactionaries of hard times (relatively) that they have themselves created for whites and are simultaneously trying to exploit for political gain. I think that is more important than racism and bigotry, though those are also big problems and a big complicating and amplifying factor.
jl
A person might want to review domestic strife, troubles, and violence in the US ‘homeland’, what would now be whipped up into homegrown terrorism frenzies by the cable news, from US history.
Check out the Karl Rove’s delusional economic golden age of the robber barons, 1870s through 1890s. And early 20th century. Fun times, they were (not) for working class people.
Ruckus
@jl:
Looks like a lot of truth to what you say there.
My own experiences (older, but not yet elderly white guy) are that I used to be fairly recession proof. But part of that is that there is a reason that this latest one was called the Great Recession, it was a doozy. And of course many of our “finest minds” decided that as long as everyone is getting fucked we might as well go all the way and save the lube. It has made the path back a lot more equal among us common folk.
The other part of course is that a lot of what separated the white from the not white has been exposed and is very slowly and painfully being torn down. The fight to keep that from happening is going to be with us for quite some time. There is no magic trick to enlightenment, only time and hard work, bit by bit. That’s a hard concept for those who have been held, pushed, hammered down to accept but the reality is that changing a culture, especially one of hate is difficult and slow and costly.
Mary G
NY mag isn’t taking this essay very seriously. They put it in “The Cut” section, which is for fashion, beauty and other wimmins stuff, instead of the political section.
This seems a bit over the top. Women got the right to vote in 1920.
David Koch
Wow. The campaign that shrieks against telephone metadata has no problem stealing opponent data, then when caught refuses to cooperate with the investigation.
I’m shocked! I’m shocked!
BGinCHI
Comment eaten.
sigh
Applejinx
This is NOT a reason to vote for (or against) Hillary Clinton in the primary.
The reason to vote against Hillary Clinton is simply that while good she is, she’s not good enough and we can get somebody better, as we did before. If it’s embarrassing that it’s an old very white guy, so be it. He more accurately represents what’s needed, with sincerity and decency rather than establishment politics and Rovian cunning.
Nobody should think that by not pushing Clinton, they are in ANY WAY impeding justice for women, ‘cos Na Ga Ha Pen. Either (any!) Democrat will further the cause of women, and high time they did too. Both the leading Dems are outspoken about equal pay, justice, rights for women as they damn well should be, and while Hillary is a woman Bernie doesn’t make shit up just to sound good. BOTH are staunch allies.
Amir Khalid
Rebecca Traister is describing the textbook reaction of a privileged group upon seeing its privilege begin to erode. Such groups don’t yield their privilege, even for the greater good, without a fight. A nasty fight, often violent, often lasting decades.
@Mary G:
To be eligible to vote before 1920, an American would have to be born in 1899 or earlier. There can’t be many American women that old still alive — one or two, at most.
Applejinx
@David Koch: Oh, nice. Reading between the lines, they repeatedly give Hillary access to the data _I_ _enter_ for Bernie, but when they do it again and again and the very decentralized grassroots Bernie campaign pops up with a few Sandernistas who go and look at what Hil’s doing, suddenly this is a reason to yank access?
If I don’t have access to freakin’ VoteBuilder for entering the canvassing data we continue to amass, I’m gonna be pissed, pissed, pissed. This is a partisan action and a dirty trick by the Clinton campaign who are more closely in control of that system. Good for them for being sharp and all, but this is the kind of activity that would have me refusing to vote for Clinton in the general and that takes an awful lot.
This better blow over very quickly, I’m talking by Saturday the next day I’m to be working with that system, and I’m inclined to call up my local Bernie office and get the reality of what’s happened. Talk about a snake in the grass!
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
While sincere Bernie is, can he match Hillary’s career-long record of advocating for women’s rights? She did so as a lawyer, while on Wal-Mart’s board of directors, as a Senator, and as Secretary of State. I’ve noticed that Bernie tends to see such things as racism and sexism as consequences of economic inequality, rather than as issues in their own right.
Mike J
@David Koch: The only way to end campaign espionage is with economic justice! After we have perfect economic justice, the solution to any wrong doing by the Sanders campaign will magically happen on its own! Don’t get distracted from the problems that will take decades to solve by asking for answers for things that happen today.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
I prefer Hillary. I think her emphasis of bigotry as a social problem and her focusing on helping the poor economically, not to mention her solid experience in peaceful resolution of foreign crises, are a better fit for America’s current situation than Bernie’s hyperfocus on economic inequality. On the other hand, that inequality is a big deal, and I would pull the lever for Bernie in the general without regrets. As long as a Sanders supporter doesn’t drift into the Hillary Is Evil conspiracy theory twilight zone, I’m happy to have them on the team.
Applejinx
@Amir Khalid: Yes he does, and he’s not entirely wrong there. I’m more concerned for how little Hillary managed to help anything while being paid by Wal-Mart and serving them as a director, and if you look you’ll notice Wal-Mart are still appalling, so a lot of good that did. As far as loyally serving Wall Street (the other Wal?) she did that fair and square as their Senator, correctly identifying that they were all that really mattered in New York anyway.
If this business about yanking Bernie’s access to MY database, the one I’m entering data into as a Democratic campaign worker, is a real thing, I also can’t fault Hillary for viciousness or willingness to fight, and it’s nice to see ruthless Democrats for a change. But oh my God, do you really want to go there? It’s fairly early days and establishment politicians really do focus on things like databases and delegates, that’s how the system works after all.
Are we looking at a career long record of lies and Rovian tricks, too? Even the article expresses that the database company repeatedly dropped its firewall and the Sanders campaign protested, to no avail. Was it a honey trap all along? Is this just some dumb story that means nothing and will blow over, or do the Clinton people think they can win by flipping a switch and literally turning off Bernie Sanders’ access to the Democratic machine at the behest of a Clinton?
That’s going to go over about as well as stealing the nomination from Trump at a brokered convention. The Republicans would not be able to get away with doing this. To an establishment politician this is a nuke, outrageous depending on how permanent it’s meant to be.
If we can’t get targeted voter lists from the Democratic machine (which are supposed to be super useful and really are not all that: we’re constantly getting old obsolete data, talking to Republicans by mistake etc) then we will just have to keep going and knock on EVERY door, which we probably should be doing anyway.
Do Bernie’s people have documentation and records of this firewall being dropped, and presumably Clinton people snooping on his private data all this time? It sounds like they have documentation. This is bullshit.
Also, in case anybody’s reading attentively: I’ve commented on how Bernie is winning in Vermont. I am NOT one of the people who apparently got hack-tastic with the database just like Clinton’s people have apparently been doing all along with only token protests from the Bernie campaign, and have not been looking at private Clinton data.
I’ve been looking at and entering canvassing results from New Hampshire, and while I’m seeing a decent amount of Bernie support (about evenly split between strong and middling), I’m not seeing shit for Clinton support yet. If she is trying to do an ‘inevitability thing’ and has to go so far as to use machine politics to try and remove the legs of her rival before any primaries, that only confirms how desperate she must be. We are entering that data FOR HER. The eventual nominee gets to use it. We are faithfully coming in to campaign offices all over the country and filling up the DEMOCRATIC database with new, fresh, useful data, all manner of stuff such as voter interest in things like ISIS, economics, womens’ issues and I for one never intended to withhold this data from Hil should she manage to win. I thought we were already sharing it, which shows how much I know.
Where the fuck are Hillary’s people? We are doing the legwork for the Democratic system, and they’re laying honey traps and fishing for an excuse to take OUR WORK and not even let us use it. _I_ am entering that data and teaching people to do it, never thinking for a moment that I was really only working for the Hillary campaign and MY data would be taken from me and my candidate.
Christ, I’m pissed. This had better blow over and turn out to be a big nothing, because if this is a serious procedural move, it’s going nuclear and I am disgusted more than I believed possible. Again, I thought nothing could possibly happen that would prevent me from closing ranks and backing Hillary should she win, but this could be it if it becomes a serious thing.
OUR stadium filling. OUR ground game. OUR canvassing. OUR party.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
I find both her article and the responses to it, well, predictable. She blew the point on women’s suffrage with some bad math, but the rest was on point. I suppose it’s easy to marginalize white male supremacist rage when you’re not the one in the crosshairs…
Donut
I am surprised at how quickly some of you poo-poo the premise of the NY Mag piece. It’s like you haven’t noticed what and how Donald Fucking Trump has been doing for the last six months and how many middle aged white people who feel marginalized are responding to him . The whole fucking point of the campaign is the Make America Great Again. So think about that. Great again for who? It ain’t never been all that great to be American if your skin-suit is a little heavier in melanin content. The people showing up at Trump rallies are not going down quietly, they’re pretty much ready to start stomping on brown people, which to them is the natural order of things to which America needs to return. Wake the fuck up. Trump is the current figurehead of a real social movement for a non-trivial number of racist white people and their enablers. This is gonna get way uglier.
Have a nice day.
Mike in NC
The people we’ve been meeting on our river cruise seem to be almost exclusively affluent white retirees, mainly Americans with a few Scots and Canadians, and a few Asian-American families. None appear to be Republican primary voters, because why would they even consider visiting what FOX News has convinced them is a European hellhole? Still, conversations over lunch and dinner often frequently include concerns over the future of children and grandchildren, though nobody has stated it is the end result of 30+ years of GOP trickle down economics, which every idiot in the klown kar wants to accelerate.
raven
@Donut: Oooo, boogie boogie.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC:
Being that they’re relatively affluent, they might have benefited from these economic policies.
Applejinx
I should also point out, since I got all pissy, that politics isn’t tiddlywinks and I could very easily see still voting for Clinton in the general election, depending on how this DataGate plays out. I’m convinced I see what’s going on here and it all depends on how things unfold.
Looks like we’re all putting on our Big Democrat pants at this point. God help the Republican who runs in 2016, they’re gonna be goddamn flattened. Democrats didn’t used to be this hardcore. It bodes well for getting our policy enacted, and that’s encouraging at any rate.
If the article ‘David Koch’ posted, which I’m also seeing other references to elsewhere, means they’ve killed our access to the systems I’ve been entering data into, that’s a nuke. I’m going to have to wait to confirm that, find out if we still have VoteBuilder and the ability to print out canvassing/phone-banking sheets and campaign. We are campaigning for the Democratic party, for God’s sake. It’s possible this is some other database and suspending it wouldn’t be cutting off the fundamental mechanism by which we work with voter lists? I’ll find out today, I’ll ask Megan my local organizer if we have access to what we use.
If it’s a real thing and it’s temporary, we just got reminded how hardcore the Clinton campaign really is. We should expect a fight: we’re seeing one right now, if the discrepancy between support on the ground and the full-media spin for Clinton inevitability is anything to go by. Maybe at this point the only way Clinton can still win is by declaring Sanders disqualified and banning him from the party, something I’m sure she wished she could do to Obama. If so, points for hardcoreness for recognizing it this early and trying to move on it, whatever the cost.
But.
If that’s the truth, we also just got an excellent tool for going to undecided people (campaign workers know everybody is ‘undecided’ ;P ) and saying, who do you trust is telling you the truth? This could go viral. If the Clinton campaign wanted the Bernie campaign to quiet down and go politely away, this doesn’t seem to be the way to do it. On the contrary, I’d like to see this blow over so that rifts COULD be patched in an emergency: what if Bernie got hit by a truck or shot by a rabid Trump supporter, and we had to resort to Hillary? We’d want her as untainted as possible and to make the best of it.
My gut level response is that we just don’t know enough yet. I don’t even know what database, the only database I know is the one we fucking depend on and are building for all Democrats in the long run, the same system that was there for Obama. That’s the only database I see, and the campaign fundamentally runs on the back of that database.
The Clinton campaign might think that in an emergency they can come up with an excuse to flip the switch on THAT database and render the Sanders campaign instantly helpless, like it had never happened, and the Sanders supporters automatically invalid.
The primary election does not depend on that database. It’s a GOTV/canvassing tool, nothing more, and even if it’s taken away and never comes back, the right to vote in the primary is unaffected and the result will be honored or there’s hell to pay. You can’t just flip a switch and shut off a Democratic presidential campaign on the back of a few computer hackers: it’s like shooting people for shoplifting, something we also consider unsuitable to do (and if it’s shoplifting, apparently the Clinton campaign’s been doing that all along. Can we switch HER campaign’s access off? If we did, would anybody notice? Where are her canvassers?)
We will learn more about what’s happening today, but if the Clinton campaign thinks they can yank Dem machinery away from Sanders before a single primary’s taken place, they will learn it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire. The people I see working for Sanders only grudgingly trust Hillary already, and this could really fuck things up. It makes me personally want to get out and hit the bricks and walk door to door until my legs fall off, asking ‘do you know what they just tried to do to us? Please go vote for Bernie in the primary and stop this kind of ruthless politics from carrying the day’.
raven
@Applejinx: If you want anyone to read this you better post it when the morning thread pops in a few minutes.
Donut
@raven:
Fuck you. I’m not scared. I’m just pointing out that long before the start of the Obama era, white dudes have been terrified that calling all the shots is not a lock for them any longer. Obama’s assumption of power just brought all of that out into the open, finally. The rhetoric Trump employs is resonating with a lot of confused people who can be manipulated. I certainly don’t fucking agree with it, just making it clear that any half-wit with a basic grasp of both history and politics should be to grasp that what is going on with a certain large slice of white Americans won’t blow over any time soon.
Did I mention you can fuck off?
Have a nice day.
bago
Both Mad Max and Star Wars were amazing. I don’t want to re-live the ’80s though.
raven
@Donut: Same as it ever was chicken little.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Since 1992, the only presidents who have helped the economy have been Democrats.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I think that’s generally been true post-WW2.
Satby
@Applejinx: you’re seriously too deep in the weeds on this one. I read every word and still don’t really care. If this database cluster f is enough to get you to state you wouldn’t vote for Clinton in the general, you’re just a reverse PUMA looking for an excuse not to vote for her.
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx: Where are you getting that? If you’re surmising some dastardly plot by the Clinton campaign from the article Koch linked, you’re not “reading between the lines” — you’re reading things that aren’t there.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’ll give them Reagan 83-84 over Carter, which is the entirety of what the myth that Republicans are better for the economy is based on.
Applejinx
@raven: What I’d really like is a ‘woops, the staffers got scolded, the DB company got told to stop dropping its firewall again and again, nothing to see here’. If that were to happen by the time of the morning thread, nothing would please me more. Politics isn’t tiddlywinks and we’ve got to expect some rough stuff and I for one can embrace that in the spirit of Democrats becoming seriously badass, which I wasn’t sure I would live to see.
If this stuff is really a thing, you’re not gonna need me saying it.
Because the whole world will be SCREAMING that this is the way the Clinton establishment campaign shuts down the Obama-like threat of the Sanders campaign which has raised double the individual voter contributions that Obama did by this point. Two million. Two million contributions toward the election of a strong progressive Democrat, and they think they can pull shit like this.
Fuck no. I will go knocking on doors myself, without voter lists. I don’t even care, I’ll knock on every goddamn door, and I’m sure the people will be super interested in WHY I ended up having to get together with my two million friends and knock on their doors without benefit of Democratic voter lists. All over a few computer nerds who are not even hackers, because the database company has been dropping their firewalls between campaigns ALL ALONG and nobody listened when it was Bernie complaining and now it’s grounds for just plain shutting off the whole Sanders campaign?
That is not how democracy works.
We’ll see. Again, I hope this blows over very quickly and we can close ranks to some extent, but it could be gasoline on a fire IF repeat IF it is a serious attempt by the Clinton campaign to literally shut off and invalidate the Sanders campaign before a single primary. Not even the Republicans sink that low, they’re still trying to figure out how to invalidate Trump.
Satby
@Betty Cracker: I’ve been wondering if a well known Hillary hating commenter changed their nym.
Schlemazel
Always nice to see people with similar goals and ideals rationally debating differences, so much nicer than jumping immediately to insults and snottiness.
OTOH I have a title for PBHO’s autobiography for after he leaves office, “B. Hussein Obama, From Kenya to the White House”. It would be a fabulous last troll of the wingnuts
Baud
@Applejinx:
I appreciate your passion for Sanders, but this tells me you’re losing a grip on reality.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Carter’s last 2 years got hit by the increasing in oil prices due to the Iranian Revolution and Paul Volcker putting the brakes HARD on the money supply.
Baud
@Satby: No, they are different people.
Another Holocene Human
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L’étendard sanglant est levé,
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Yeah, and oil prices crashed in Reagan’s first term, IIRC. I’m just talking about results.
Another Holocene Human
And she was doing so good up until then.
Another Holocene Human
@amk:
Can you read? Only one Black guy with power breaks an exclusive hold.
And they ARE raging about that exclusive hold. Just listen to them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Also, once inflation rates went down, the Fed eased off the brakes on the money supply.
rikyrah
I have mentioned this, and will continue to do so: of all the things President Barack Obama accomplished in his term as President, removing the club of foreign policy from the GOP and proceeding to beat the shyt out of them with it – DRIVES THEM INSANE.
I have not always agreed with the President on foreign policy, but I have given him my trust, because of my belief that he fundamentally is different from the neo-cons, and will not do things that are idiotic.
There is also the rage that, in the 7 years of his Presidency – HE HAS KEPT THIS COUNTRY SAFE.
We joke about how nobody wants to be known as #2 or moving up in the ranks of Al Qeda or ISIS, because we know that PBO is looking for them, but this is a reality.
He kept our country safe.
He didn’t involve us in ridiculous wars.
He didn’t put forth a foreign policy of the United States running over the rest of the world.
Most of these White Men long for the delusional world of Mad Men. They long for the days of when what the United States said GOES and the rest of the world was supposed to just fall in line. Like so much of their world view, that world is GONE and is never coming back. The bad guys are armed with weapons that can do damage to us, and there are merchants of death willing to arm them well.
Trump blusters bullshyt for a world that does not exist anymore. Donald Trump, nor the entire GOP field is smart enough to navigate the foreign policy world that Barack Obama is setting up for the next President.
And, they’re mad that they can’t pin a war on President Obama – THAT WASN’T STARTED BY GEORGE BUSH.
It angers them, so much. Their world is crumbling and gone, and they want it back, and it’s not coming back. But, they support the clown willing to lie to them…willing to tell them that that world can come back – if only you vote for me.
Schlemazel
LIke this except the other way around for me
http://www.gocomics.com/fminus/2015/12/18
BillinGlendaleCA
I added some pictures to my XMAS album.
Also some nice pics in this album(there is a pic of a snake).
Amir Khalid
@Satby:
If you’re suspecting that Applejinx and Thoughtful Today are the same person, no. They have clearly different styles of writing, and TT has a nasty tendency to red herrings and ad hominem attacks.
Another Holocene Human
@jl:
There is a whole lotta bs out there, agreed. Fake stuff to be scared of, served up daily. But status anxiety is very real, very stressful, and can make people do terrible, terrible things. And FOX news doesn’t teach people to think this way–their whole upbringing years ago set that up. Add in some economic anxiety and the status anxiety becomes a blaze that won’t be quenched. A lot of white households are losing ground (maybe you shouldn’t have voted for Reagan and Newt?), creating the very real underpinnings for the freakout over the Black Man In The White House.
Satby
@Amir Khalid: I was thinking of askew actually.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Applejinx: If you want anyone to take you seriously, you’re going to have to explain this more coherently and succinctly. Right now, you’re just shrieking nonsense.
Another Holocene Human
@Mary G:
White women. Black women still faced the post Reconstruction “facts on the ground” in large parts of the United States. And then you have the disenfranchisement of Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans, etc.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: My perception of the times was that the country was in need of some type of “reformer.” If Reagan hadn’t fundamentally changed the trajectory of the GOP from the party of Eisenhower, I might be tempted to treat his presidency more kindly, because the negative effects might have been temporary. Thirty years of hindsight makes clear hour dearly we have paid for his presidency.
Baud
@Satby: Askew was an O’Malley person.
Applejinx
@Baud: Look, let me get better information. I’m trying to stay grounded but you have to admit this COULD be explosive. I don’t consider myself one of the more unhinged sandernistas, at all, but I’m actually out there working for a Democratic campaign. I am literally heading up a data entry team and teaching people to type stuff into a database, so this is personal for me, it’s literally my exact job for the Sanders campaign.
‘suspended’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ‘revoked’, either. It’s good to remember that they’re not saying ‘revoked’. I want to know more about this. Most of all I want to know if the Clinton campaign’s allowed to pull strings and cut Bernie’s access to VoteBuilder, when previous infractions and stealing Bernie’s data got bupkis. You have to admit it’s fascinating, power politics, like the dirty back alleys of Republican dealmaking only it’s all ours.
Suspended for how long? Which database exactly?
Give me a couple hours and I’ll ring Megan and I’ll tell you if we still have access to what we need in order to canvass for ALL of us. Megan can try to log in and see if it works. Nothing would make me happier, but ‘suspended’ seems to imply something major is suddenly taken away, and I’m not sure what it would be if it’s not the systems we’re working with every day.
Betty Cracker
Regarding Traister’s rhetorical flourish:
Traister worded it badly because it can be interpreted as implying that those women were of voting age when women’s suffrage was enacted in 1920. But there are living, breathing women who were born in a country that denied their gender the right to vote. My grandma is one, and she’s still living, breathing and in possession of all her marbles. Well, she’s a Republican, so that last point is questionable…
Anyhoo, interesting how so many latched onto that phrase; a cautionary tale for writers, I suppose. Traister’s larger point — that women achieved full citizenship under the law relatively recently and still struggle to achieve it in politics and other arenas — shouldn’t be in dispute.
Satby
@Another Holocene Human: I thought of that too, but minority men were also denied the vote during those times, and the author is specifically talking about women. I don’t think she necessarily means women who were voting age in 1920, I think she means a class of women who for a portion of their lives were ineligible to vote because they were women. Which expands her point a bit to women now in their 90s. But it’s a stretch.
Edited to: what Betty said.
Alain the site fixer
Morning, folks. Just a reminder that I’m going to enable debug mode for 30 seconds, get an error message, then I’m turning it off. So if you see weird errors, take two breaths and refresh!
Satby
@Baud: ah, yeah. I forgot that, just remembered the Hills is Satan stuff.
Baud
@Applejinx:
Get more info is usually a good approach. The fact that Sanders fired one guy suggests that he thought whatever happened was serious. I also hope this is resolved quickly.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: My first Presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter in 1980, I saw it then.
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Perfect.
Alain the site fixer
@Alain the site fixer: All done. Thanks, and have a great day!
Applejinx
@Amir Khalid: Thank you. I’d like nothing more than to see the Dem candidates fight it out with energy and spirit and then consolidate behind who really has the stronger ground game and is better able to get out the vote and win. I think that’s Bernie, so that’s who I’m doing data entry for.
We’re all good people (well, the trolls are either good people with a twisted sense of humor, or paid in brinks trucks to troll us) and I expect a honorable fight. People who aren’t actually out there working for the campaign might not recognize what’s being talked about here. Some of the tools the DNC provides are more important than others. We canvass and phone-bank, for the eventual benefit of ALL Democrats, using a database. I need to know if it’s this database that’s ‘suspended’, by who, and for how long. Okay?
Baud
@Alain the site fixer: You too.
Another Holocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: Bernie’s hyperfocus on economic inequality seems a great argument to get more people like him and Elizabeth Warren into the Senate. The Senate has been pro-Wall St and capitalist central and it hasn’t really mattered what the President thought either way. The legislators are the ones who write the bills and the tax breaks and all that. The POTUS can influence stuff like NLRB and OSHA (although Congress needs to fund OSHA) and DOL and DOT. BO has used his powers for good there. HC getting the teacher’s union endorsement so early shows that she gets it on labor because they grill the candidates. But, you know, if we’re going to talk about missing the bigger struggle, Dems like Chuck Schumer who never say no to Big Finance, are part of the problem. We need many more senators who are for the people if we want to fix the economic inequality problem.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: So what is this–proving Donut’s point because you’re a white male and your ears were burning, or giving a noogie to a newbie just because?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: Donut’s a newbie?
Applejinx
@Baud: Oh, sure, that’s what’s supposed to happen if you get some staffer who’s acting shady. The Bernie campaign is loaded with nonconformists and moonbats, plenty of whom have a bone to pick with Hillary (even Obama). There’s nothing wrong with canning a guy for doing stuff that disrupts the ability of the Dem organization. I don’t know if anyone canned the people who, according to the article, also stole info from Bernie in turn, but that’s not grounds for hysteria.
Data is not THAT important. Ability to go out and get out the vote, is.
I promise, I’ll go find out whether we still have VoteBuilder. I’m not willing to wake Megan up for that. If the DNC took that away from us to please Hillary, all of us people actively working out in the field for Bernie are gonna have a really, really bad day looking at blank empty spaces where addresses should be, and ‘login refused’ where accounts should be. and I’m not gonna make Megan face that a minute earlier than necessary if that’s what’s gone down.
That would be a brutal attack on the morale of the campaign staffers, a real kneecapping, and that’s why I’m freaking out. You have to be up to speed with how this stuff is done. You don’t expect an attack that damaging from inside the tent. Let me get better information, though I honestly don’t know what else it could possibly mean. What other database is there? This is, like, THE database, the same one we worked from in the Obama campaigns. We’re trying to maintain it for all of us.
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx: Just read about it. Sounds like a typical overreaction to an overzealous employee of one side who was fired immediately. I expect things will return to normal rather soon, or the whole thing will get shutdown for a few days because of the ongoing software problems.
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: You need to take some real deep breaths and think about this. It doesn’t logically follow that losing access to VoteBuilder means you’ll win over more fence sitters and thereby win the primary. Those poll numbers in SC are a big hump to overcome.
You’re also putting all of this on Clinton but the Sanders camp must perceive that a line was crossed because they let that one staffer go. That person has been sacrificed so the campaign can move on. You’ve jumped straight to blaming Clinton without one ounce of blame for that guy who, to put it your way, gave her the excuse. You think it’s justifiable. Well, clearly, Sanders does not think it’s justifiable.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Why give them that? Volcker and his “I’ll save this economy if it kills the patient” policy was a Carter appointee.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Yes this. Not just power at home but power overseas. That’s a huge part of Trump’s pitch, and utterly delusional.
Oh, and we are the merchants of death. For years we’ve been selling arms to everybody.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: What Volcker did was the right thing to do, but it probably cost Carter the 1980 election.
Another Holocene Human
@Satby: The reason I bring this up is that there’s an uncomfortable history in American feminist rhetoric of saying “women, women, women” but actually meaning only middle class white women.
I’m sure she could have phrased it differently and made the same point without the tone deafness. “There are still women living and breathing today who were born into an America where women as a class were denied the franchise.”
We know Zora Neale Hurston was successful in registering to vote (she was a Republican) despite being a Black woman in the South. She was part of that fortunate class of middle class Blacks who achieved this special status while the masses were barred by law, custom, and the threat of violence.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve never seen that nym before. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I don’t hang out here 24/7 sifting nyms so if they don’t post when I’m posting, I’ll never know.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: @Another Holocene Human: Carter’s big mistake was getting elected in 1976.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: Donut’s been posting a long time, though not as frequently recently.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Probably true. If the recession resulting from putting the brakes on the money supply didn’t get him the decrease in oil supplies and the hostages resulting from the Iranian revolution probably would have.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
The economy was better in those two Reagan years. I can easily agree that it would have improved anyway had Congress won reelection. But my original point was that people attribute a good economy to Republicans when on average the Dems do a lot better.
Applejinx
Here’s a thing to do that’s harmless if it turns out it’s some kind of misunderstanding: a MoveOn petition.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Give the voter file back to Bernie Sanders’ campaign
I keep reading about this. It’s Bernie’s people who reported the freaking firewall was down again! I’m gonna check with Megan at 8:00, that’s as early as I want to do it. I think this might well blow up in Schultz’s face if it’s what I think it is, and it’s an incredibly dumb thing to try. More later.
Facebook’s blowing up. Hopefully we can redirect the energy to that petition, blame Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and ride out the drama and still have two undamaged main candidates after this blows over. Turning this into a death battle is fucking stupid and the last thing the Clinton campaign should do, it’s an act of desperation. They must be looking at the same canvassing data I was…
Baud
@Baud:
Ugh. Had “Carter” won reelection…
Kay
@Applejinx:
I agree with you. They shouldn’t suspend access to the voter file over this. Why would you want to “redirect energy” to a petition they’ll ignore? You probably have a much better shot at getting their attention if it blows up on social media.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: It was all about “stagflation”, a made up word to describe a new phenomenon of high inflation (for us) and a stagnant economy. That sort of thing was not supposed to be possible and nobody really knew how to deal with it. As with most things economic, putting all the blame or giving all the credit to any one President is not logical.
People love to blame Bush for what happened in ’07 ( and he deserves more than a little blame) but Glass Steagall was rescinded during Clinton’s Presidency.
Another Holocene Human
@Applejinx: Hillary is up in all the polls. You make me think of this.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I blame Bush.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s my thing–wasn’t a lot of that inflation unpaid war debts from the Vietnam War?
Another Holocene Human
The 70s were actually good for working people, especially women and people of color. It was the rentier class who was getting their lunch eaten during the 70s.
Reagan was their reaction and the correction was so forceful it hasn’t stopped moving to this day.
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
Well, suspending access to the voter file will make Sanders’ supporters think of three big endorsements Sanders got this week. And I don’t blame them.
Democracy for America is/was Howard Dean’s group and Dean lobbied them to endorse Clinton.
Baud
@Kay: You think there is something shady going on here?
Djchefron
@Applejinx: If Hillary wins the nomination will you vote for the Democrat or are you a EMO who would rather see a rethug in office so you can say I told you so?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Holocene Human: Folk who were on fixed incomes(retirees were getting screwed by stagflation).
Applejinx
@Kay: Because we’re all in it together and we’ve got to have a backup plan. I posted about that petition on Facebook. It is already blowing up on social media, believe me. It’s tricky: the database company’s run by Clinton people, so it really seems like a honey trap situation, and we could end up with a lot of people freaking the fuck out and refusing ever to vote for Hillary, even against a Republican.
That would be… not good.
If things are so bad that the DNC is prepared to use a Clinton-controlled database company as a pretext to remove really basic campaign information access from Bernie, that is a desperation move and it’s destructive to the whole Democratic organization. We’re running a campaign that’s not about dirty dealing and attacks. Bernie’s people REPORTED the database breach. In return, the DNC are trying to nuke a DEMOCRAT campaign for partisan reasons.
We need to keep the DNC from destroying their reputation, such as it is. Bernie WILL NOT run as a third party, from the start he’s set out to fairly win the Democratic nomination. We don’t have a working third party system, we have to be able to work with the Dems.
They can’t pull banana republic crap. Even if this is very brief this is a telling incident and a disgrace, completely transparent, and it undermines faith in the democratic systems we have to use to have a functioning democracy at all. You don’t get to just flip a switch and shut off the front-runner because you have insider friends and your media spin isn’t helping enough.
The reason I want to redirect energy to a petition (that may be ignored, but will at least be public) is because it can take the pressure off and allow things to be fixed, and then we can still behave like the Democrats aren’t corrupt. It’s all sort of relative anyway: there will always be some bullshit and some weaselly behavior.
What we can’t survive is Trump controlling the Republicans, and Bernie hoovering up all the progressive support and then getting unilaterally shut down BY the Clinton campaign without any consideration of the voters. That database company’s staffed by Clinton people. Debbie Schultz is a Clinton partisan. I realise they want their candidate to win, but this scorched-earth stuff is totally not okay and they have to back down real quick and pretend they didn’t try to run an exploit on representative democracy. The primary is still an election.
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker:
I skimmed over women alive who couldn’t vote, but I cringed at this. Giving the state control over whether a woman ends a pregnancy is not the same thing as making pregnancy compulsory. I hate it when a good argument is ruined by exaggerated or careless language. Our side shouldn’t do that. For one thing, we don’t have to. What they want is bad enough.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
What they were trying to do was deal with it(much the inverse of what we’ve been doing the past 7 years) is with purely fiscal policy. What Volcker did was put the brakes on the money supply, less money chasing goods.
Kay
@Baud:
I think it’s a terrible idea to suspend access to the voter file for one campaign over a data breach. It matters a lot- that’s the data they work with and from- and even if it didn’t matter (in terms of actual lost primary votes) it’s just going to create discord and distrust.
I can’t imagine what they’re thinking. If they don’t back off I’ll contact both the county chair and state chair and complain today. I don’t pretend that will have some profound effect but I think it’s heavy handed and unfair and I’ll call both county and state Party and say so.
WereBear
The thing I find most absurd about the current situation is how working class white men used to coast through high school, pick up a union job, and be in pretty good shape. Hard work, no question, but good wages, benefits, pension, and pride.
Now they are propping up the party who took it all away because they never did stop being racist and sexist and authoritarian blowhards.
Nothing has changed, except the fact that when police kill black men and women are shamed and silenced and Wall Street steals a bunch of money… They get called out on it.
Now, they get caught. That’s the only difference, but it is a very big one.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human: Unsure how one gets inflation from debt, but I am not an economist. Nixon was dealing with a high inflation rate and put in price controls (not that that worked) in an attempt to cool off an overheated economy. That probably had more to do with the stagflation than anything Carter did, my amateur’s understanding is he cooled off the economy but it did nothing to address the underlying fundamentals that were driving the inflation and when the price controls were lifted the inflation came right back only worse as it tried to catch up to what was pushing it to begin with.
Again, i am hardly an economist so I’m probably full of sh!t.
Applejinx
@Djchefron: You can’t say that and simultaneously withhold the voter rolls from the Sanders campaign. I’ve always endorsed supporting Hillary against any Republican should she win, but I’m very concerned about a situation where it appears the Clinton campaign is able to overrule the electorate and install their choice as the Dem nominee against the will of the people.
If they can do that and they don’t back down and go through with it (it’s early days yet, no primaries have happened) then it’s not fair to ask whether I’d vote for Clinton. I would like to be able to vote for Clinton and it’d take a lot to shake that position, especially with the Supreme Court in play. But if Clinton’s people actually use procedural tricks to undermine functioning democracy, in the face of a grassroots competitor who poses a real threat, I have to ask what the fuck do they need ME voting for? They can just do the same for the general and to hell with them.
Ethics exist for reasons. This isn’t just team sports. The system is important, and faith in the institutions we rely on, and this isn’t challenged lightly. Some things you just don’t do.
debbie
@Kay:
This whole thing could be used by Hillary detractors as further evidence of the Cabal of the Clintons. I hope they reconsider.
Baud
@Kay:
Did a quick search on the story. CNN
So not some low level guy if this is accurate. Might explain the reaction.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: See me at #99. Volcker did what he thought had to be done. I suspect he was right.
Kay
@Applejinx:
It’s entirely up to you how to approach it- I;m not a Sanders volunteer and I don’t know who I’m voting for in the primary- but I wouldn’t focus on “Clinton supporters have ties to database company”. You don’t need to go that far afield, into conspiracy territory. Just stick to “suspending database for one campaign is unfair” – you’ll do better with that with Democrats.
I sometimes help with voting rights and I hate the people who promote the stuff like “Mitt Romney once owned share in company that made voting machine patch” because there are much better, cleaner, factual arguments. Every election year in Ohio the Green Party sues on some bullshit like that and it just harms the credibility of voting rights advocates.
Don’t muck it all up. Suspension = unfair.
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx: I agree that cutting off database access is heavy-handed. But you’re making some pretty strong accusations there, e.g., “honey trap,” “Clinton-controlled database company,” etc. Where are you getting this information?
I’m not excluding the possibility that you’re right — it’s clear to me that DWS has had her thumb on the scales for Clinton all along. But it would be helpful to source these allegations if you can.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Oh whatever.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Fiscal policy and Monetary policy should go hand in hand. Until this week, the Fed has been goosing the economy via monetary policy because Congress won’t do fiscal stimulus. What happened in the 1970’s is we had alot of spending(defense and social programs) that goosed the economy from the fiscal side without any brakes on the monetary side.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: My social-media feeds are lighting up with Bernie fans railing about how Hillary’s dirty-tricks squad just shanked the Sanders campaign.
Peale
I have no idea why I should care or vote one way or the other based on access to a data list. It’s too “insider”. To me it sounds like another example of Sanders supporters whining about things that matter to running a campaign, like the number of debates-things that matter to people in the campaign but that aren’t issues that I’d vote on. I really don’t care how easy or hard it is for him to run for office.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin: This is why I stay away from social media.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: As I understand it, yes.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll confess to being a lapsed economist.
Applejinx
@Betty Cracker: Hmm.
NGP-VAN paid by Ready For Hillary
CEO goes all the way back to 1992 Clinton insider
Not what I would call conclusive. They got paid more than I make in two years by Ready For Hillary, but campaigns run on big money and $34,000 might not be all that much. The CEO of the company’s been close with Bill and Hillary for more than two decades but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s having NGP-VAN drop firewalls in hopes of tempting some peon to go data-pirating and get busted.
BUT, the way this unfolded does feel like a setup. Why do such a thing with such horrific optics unless there’s no other choice? I think the Clinton campaign has been seeing the same data I’m seeing… possibly quite literally. They’re seeing all the data, not just their own, and it’s telling them Hillary will not win, and this is the response, even if it seems heavyhanded.
Hillary’s not stupid and isn’t working with stupid people this time around, so there must be a reason for this appalling move. You don’t just abandon democracy unless you’re really sure it’s not going to serve you.
Satby
Databases always get locked down after some kind of security issue while they verify access and data integrity. I don’t see the purpose for hysteria here, but then if the Dems nominate a Mars bar, I’m voting for it for President. All the Sanders supporters who constantly attribute evil intent to Hillary are giving aid and comfort to a right wing meme and that’s annoying. How do you “close ranks” around someone you previously said was untrustworthy with any integrity?
Edited to add: a database does not equal democracy. Get a grip.
Loviatar
For the fuckwads who only focus on the negative in order to miss the greater point.
The world’s oldest living person
—–
Oh, look I spelled fuck wads wrong it should be two words instead of one.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Satby:
Yup. There seems to a great deal of smoke here and little fire, I’m getting cold.
OzarkHillbilly
@Applejinx: A whole lot of assumptions in that and you know what you get from assuming too much. Seriously, I think you have been spending too much time in an echo chamber. Use Occam’s razor and you’ll come up with something like what I said above. Never assume nefarious acts and intentions when stupidity more fully explains a situation.
kc
Is this the new mobile site, then? Scrolling is fubar. Took forever to get to the comment box.
Oh well.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Mine too.
@Applejinx: Thanks! As you say, inconclusive. But the DNC has been pro-Clinton, so I’m not surprised at the conclusion-jumping. Anyhoo, I’ll put up a post on the topic shortly. It’s a big enough deal to deserve its own thread!
debbie
@Satby:
As if the right wing needs any help with that! They’ll try to use this to say that even Democrats know something nefarious is going on.
MomSense
@Applejinx:
Look, there is a lot of sensitive information in the “van” even though it starts with what is publicly available . To drive it, you have to be responsible with how you access it. Users are issued passwords which have to be changed frequently. Presumably users are vetted by the campaign staff (the person who breached the Clinton data damn well knew what he was doing). The firewall was down between the campaigns and Sanders’ National Data Director took advantage. Obviously the Sanders campaign is going to have to change their practices and culture so that they can resume access. Even if I put on my tinfoil hat and accept the idea that this was a setup–the National Data Director surely should have known better than to take the bait. I don’t, btw, think this was a setup.
Applejinx
Megan’s still in bed: turns out I woke her up. I guess it’s sort of moot: literally everywhere on the Internet is the news that it’s essentially VoteBuilder and all our own data we’re locked out of, until we can prove to the DNC we’ve destroyed all copies of data nobody actually downloaded.
I don’t need to have my field organizer try to log in to confirm this. It’s not a rumor, it’s real, so never mind about me bugging Megan to confirm: not necessary.
The big question is, for how long? Every minute we’re locked out of our own data is another reason to ask serious questions of the DNC, of NGP-VAN, and maybe even ask Hillary Clinton. I’m happy to frame it like it’s the campaign doing all this without her knowledge, but at some point she has to take responsibilty and act.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker:
This one’s starting to turn green and looks like it’s growing fur.
Baud
I hope Sanders gets database access back quickly, but what we know so far indicates that Clinton was the victim here. If Clinton’s national data guy had done this, I can’t imagine Sanders supporters not having a fit over it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’m sure the Baud!!!2016!!! campaign would throw a fit as well.
Betty Cracker
New thread up on DataGate.
Applejinx
@Baud: According to the stories, they did, repeatedly, and Sanders people were trying to work out how big the hole in THEIR wall was. Over to the new thread :)
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: Your posts are generally too long.
Paul in KY
@Satby: Certainly many black women in Jim Crow South were denied the right to vote, up until 1964. That’s only 51 years ago!
Paul in KY
@BillinGlendaleCA: Mine was for John Anderson. I was a dipshit back then.
Paul in KY
@WereBear: Excellent points!
MomSense
@Paul in KY:
It’s still happening in Alabama and Texas and lots of other states that have passed Voter ID laws that are preventing people from registering to vote.
We should all be prepared for the culling of the voter rolls in states like Florida. This is going to be a tough slog of an election.
Patricia Kayden
There’s a case before the Supreme Court right now which could entrench White voter domination in red or purple states if it succeeds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-arguments-on-one-person-one-vote.html?_r=0
White Supremacy is not going down without a fight.
Paul in KY
@MomSense: Excellent point, Momsense. Still fuckin happening.
Chris
@rikyrah:
They long for the days of when what the United States said GOES and the rest of the world was supposed to just fall in line.
I think they also deeply overestimate the extent to which that was ever the case. The post-1945 world is absolutely littered with cases where the United States wanted something and didn’t get it, or got it but hadn’t reckoned on the price.
The kind of “America is weak, the entire world is laughing at the size of our penis, and this means we’re about to be overthrown” rhetoric we’re seeing now has been with us for at least that long, precisely because there’s always something going on in the world that we don’t approve of, that the crazies can claim is due to treason or weakness (rather than the simple fact that we don’t, can’t, and never will control the entire world). Right wingers today blame Obama, call our position in the world “unprecedentedly” weak, and act as if this is some kind of catastrophic step down from the golden age of American superpower in the fifties or the eighties. But back in the fifties, we had McCarthyites and John Birchers pointing to the loss of China and the stalemate in Korea as proof that basically the entire United States government was about to turn over the world to the Communists, and back in the eighties, we had people screaming that Gorbachev’s reforms were a ploy and that talking to him was the beginning of the end.
“Things can’t always be the way you want them to be” – the basic life lesson that our right wingers absolutely refuse to learn.
Booger
@Mary G: So yeah, there’s probably not a whole lot of living, breathing women in the U.S. whose age is =>(95+ (Legal voting age in 1920))
rikyrah
@Applejinx:
Where have you been?
This has been their M.O. from the beginning.
They have wanted a CORONATION since 2007.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
Debt is new money. That’s how the Fed creates money, by allowing banks to loan more. So borrowing a lot of money to fund anything, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Interstate highway system creates new money, which means more money for the same amount of stuff there is to buy.
That means the cost of a bushel of wheat goes up, because there is more money in the system to pay for stuff. The amount of stuff is fixed – cars, gasoline, bread, guns. If there’s more money in the system, the ratio of money to stuff changes so that stuff costs more.