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Donald Trump - MAGAtwat news and discussion

hitmouse said:
Again, I'm probably repeating myself here, but for me it's not "this reason is important and that reason isn't", it's "I think focusing on this reason opens up the possibility that people might be persuaded to think differently, and I can't see how focusing on that reason does".
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Exactly. This is why I tried putting it in terms of what the Democrats could have done.

The Democrats had a new candidate. They could have said “things will be different under Harris” and “we hear you. You’re suffering. We’ll do x, y and z to make things better for you”. But they didn’t. They defended their record. They defended the status quo. They said things were better under Biden. People looked at their groceries bills and thought “the fuck they are!”

So there could have been a party talking about the economy in a way that made sense to voters, just without the mad racist shit. They could have said: he’s what we’ll do on inflation, and that stuff about immigration? Actually, have you thought about [insert sensible non racist thing]. But no, they didn’t do that.

For me, that’s where we are. It’s “what should the Democrats have done?” Not “the racism isn’t important”. Because it is!
 
danny la rouge said:
Exactly. This is why I tried putting it in terms of what the Democrats could have done.

The Democrats had a new candidate. They could have said “things will be different under Harris” and “we hear you. You’re suffering. We’ll do x, y and z to make things better for you”. But they didn’t. They defended their record. They defended the status quo. They said things were better under Biden. People looked at their groceries bills and thought “the fuck they are!”

So there could have been a party talking about the economy in a way that made sense to voters, just without the mad racist shit. They could have said: he’s what we’ll do on inflation, and that stuff about immigration? Actually, have you thought about [insert sensible non racist thing]. But no, they didn’t do that.

For me, that’s where we are. It’s “what should the Democrats have done?” Not “the racism isn’t important”. Because it is!
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Harris did outline plans including action against price-gouging, though it seems like she didn't push them that hard, especially after Trump likened them to "Communist price controls"

Harris points to the market power of large corporations as a key cause of rapid price increases for essential goods, saying companies use their outsized role in a given market to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product at a more affordable price. Consumers, the Harris campaign says, are left with nowhere to turn.

The grocery industry exemplifies the damage caused by mega corporations, according to the campaign. "Extreme consolidation in the food industry has led to higher prices that account for a large part of higher grocery bills," the campaign said in a statement on Friday.

abcnews.go.com

Harris unveils economic plans on inflation, housing. Here's what economists think

Proposals include a ban on grocery price gouging and subsidy for homebuyers.
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Bit like post-Brexit vote here. Regardless of whether or not you thought brexit was a good idea, you can't deny that it emboldened racists to be openly racist.
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Yup. People missed the barn door with that one. We were busy thinking about the ins and outs of the EU, when actually it wasn’t about that at all. It was about the far right dominating the conversation. And they did.
 
hitmouse said:
Just catching up on various things...

I mean, I suppose in the long run the end goal's anarchist communism, but as a medium-term goal I'd be happy with getting gestures wildly this fucking thing to stop happening.
About focusing on bigotry vs "legitimate concerns" or whatever, this is what I mean by strategy, it's not about saying whether bigotry or people having economic worries is more important, it's what we can do with those things.
Like, if you start from people being bigoted, where does that lead you, what can you say? You can say "that's bad, you shouldn't do that", and maybe that's worthwhile in its way, but I dunno how likely that is to change anyone's mind. But if you start from people being worried about not being able to afford groceries, then you can say "I agree you should be able to afford groceries, but I don't think what you're doing is the best way of achieving that", and that seems more likely to go somewhere productive. And fwiw I think this has merit even if the bigotry is really important - hard to settle these things, I'm sure for many Trump voters, probably the majority, there's a confused and confusing mix of the bigotry and thinking eggs are too expensive, but even if we agreed to arbitrarily say that, say, 90% of Trump supporters are mostly driven by bigotry and 10% mostly care about the cost of eggs and toothpaste, a serious attempt at peeling off 10% of Trump's support would still be worthwhile and a good thing.

What does this actually mean, though? Are we talking about killing all 72,743,156 (at last count) people who voted for Trump? Cos if you're doing that, I think it only seems sensible to also kill everyone who voted for the party that's arming Netanyahu, deporting migrants and taking oil production to record levels. I dunno what we're doing with non-voters and people who voted third party, but it'd be a bit rude to leave them out.

Appreciate you've dipped out of the conversation, but for the record, see above, IAF's approach seems to be exactly that.

Again, this isn't about blame, that's not that interesting to me. What I (and people who think like me?) am trying to do, no matter how ineptly, is to offer constructive critique about how to do things better in future. I'm not interested in offering constructive criticism to Trump or Trump supporters because I don't want them to do better, I want them to fail; I want antifascists (or however you define "our lot") to do well, which is why it's worth looking at our weaknesses.

Mostly covered in previous posts, but just to say - it's not about going around saying "class power", "what do you think of operaismo?", "have you heard of a man called Sergio Bologna?" or whatever, it's about "I think we should get a pay rise that keeps up with inflation", "I think we should get time and a half instead of flat rate for working overtime", "I reckon the letting agent needs to sort out that black mould without charging you any extra for it", "I don't reckon your landlord should be able to put the rent up by that much", etc etc etc. All that stuff is where class power is built, the stuff that it directly impacts on.

Again, I'm probably repeating myself here, but for me it's not "this reason is important and that reason isn't", it's "I think focusing on this reason opens up the possibility that people might be persuaded to think differently, and I can't see how focusing on that reason does".

Fwiw, I would say that at least part of the right's cultural hegemony consists precisely in the ability to keep people talking about nonsense like "wokeness" and not about the price of rent and eggs.
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Trying to reduce how much I'm blithering on, as (slightly ironically) I'm not sure I can put it all in a way that'll actually help much, so essentially, pretty much alla that ^.

It's about trying to work out what is actually going to get us what we want. A bunch of people voted for Trump. I didn't want them to do that. How do I stop people doing it in the future?

<snip>
 
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Jeff Robinson said:
I’ve consumed a bunch of lefty analysis of Trump’s second term and everything I’ve read/watched fundamentally misses the point. These analyses focus on what Trump’s policies will be. Policies, although they can have a very harmful impact, can always be reversed by the next administration and can also be hampered by lack of state capacity (Trump’s wall and immigration plans in his first term fell far short of what he’d promised).

The far greater damage Trump and his policy-makers can do is to the institutions of governance. Trump’s appointment of 3 justices to the Supreme Court in his first term led of course to the overturning of abortion rights and countless many other terrible accounts that outlasted his first term.

This term it’s likely that the aging conservative justices Thomas and Alito will retire under Trump’s watch and he’ll get to replace them with with younger justices, who quite possibly are even more extreme. There’s also the possibility that liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor may die or retire (she’s 70 and has type 1 diabetes). Worst case scenario, Trump could lock in a 7-2 ultra conservative super majority Supreme Court for many decades which will have life time unreviewable power to strike down any legislation it wishes.

In addition, and potentially even more terrifyingly, Trump will have - thanks to his own handpicked justices - absolutel immunity from criminal prosecution for all his core official acts (for example, anything relating to the military or justice department). This means Trump can’t be prosecuted for ordering a military coup, ordering the military assassination of his political rivals or ordering the justice department to prosecute his rivals on trumped-up charges. I know that sounds insane, but that is the genuine holding of the Supreme Court. Given that Trump already attempted a coup in 2021, it’s not at all far fetched that he might try these things. He’s also said he’ll ‘root out t enemy within’ so for once perhaps we should take him at his word.
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This is exactly what I've been saying this whole fucking time.

People who voted for Trump, (some of) my family included, have been coerced and gaslighted into voting for this shit and they'll be at the shitty end when it comes to pass.

Eggs and gas may be cheaper but everything else will be fucked.
danny la rouge said:
I’m maybe missing something here, but I’m not seeing anyone denying racism. Who is denying racism?

Where has this been said? It seems to me like you’re reading something that isn’t there into what people have said.

I’m sorry you feel that way.

I think it’s important to think about what the Democrats could have done differently to win.

Sanders was right when he said that the Democratic leadership defends the status quo while “angry” Americans want change “and they’re right”.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,”

“First it was the white working class and now it is Latino and black workers,” he added.

“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”

The Democrat campaign didn’t hear people. It’s didn’t talk about the things that mattered to people: the fact that ordinary people are struggling, that “more of the same” is unthinkable, that they’re hurting. The Democrats addressed none of that. They lost the campaign as much as Trump won it.

They weren’t listening to people. They, and the Democrat-supporting media, were going wild over a “viral” camouflage hat with Harris Walz on it. That looked irrelevant to people.

If the Democrats want to win, they have to show they understand that the messages “more of the same” and “look, a cool hat!” are not going to do it.

That is not excusing racism. Nor is it refusing to admit bigots are doing bigoted things. It’s saying “fuck sake, Democratic Party, read the room!”

Are a lot of American voters voting Trump for bigoted and racist reasons. No doubt. And it’s a worry.

But ffs, Democrats, “look, a cool hat!”? Get real.
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However true it is, Sanders et al are still talkng about them rather than to them with this stuff.




Racism is a total non issue the racists. Some, many, simply do not recognise themselves as racist. They live inside the system that is crushing them, they feel some affinity for their fellow crushed people, including the Black people who live and work alongside them at the rock face (whatever that happens to be). Ergo "I'm not racist".

They see as problematic anyone who tries to find a place at the same rock wall. They don't think of that as racism, they see that as protecting what little they have remaining to them. They see the threat coming from immigrants, Black and Brown people , the colour of their skin is incidental.


There are also other kinds of racism at play, underlying, supporting and amplifying this.
 
pbsmooth said:
well, clearly a sizeable amount. he just won the election, if you hadn't seen. and the w/c voted for him in large numbers. and we all know the drums he kept banging and can read about what people are saying were important to them.
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I think we've all known the election result for some time. But between the ~65m who voted for Harris and the ~120m who didn't vote the proportion of the working class who voted for trump isn't all that
 
danny la rouge said:
Oh absolutely. I’m not a fan. I’m just saying that analysis is correct.
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Yeah. It's interesting, I'd agree it's correct, and it's necessary at this stage.

But it's chin stroking circle jerk pontificating. It's parsing and précis.

Where's the policy? Where's the representation? There have now been multiple generations of people who have zero connection and representation.

Trump - not the GOP - Trump, and hence MAGA are the nearest thing to what's necessary. Really. But it's ventriloquism. And it's venal manipulative exploitative harvesting.

I can't envision or even imagine an American political system that genuinely and honestly redresses this void.
 
story said:
Racism is a total non issue the racists. Some, many, simply do not recognise themselves as racist. They live inside the system that is crushing them, they feel some affinity for their fellow crushed people, including the Black people who live and work alongside them at the rock face (whatever that happens to be). Ergo "I'm not racist".

They see as problematic anyone who tries to find a place at the same rock wall. They don't think of that as racism, they see that as protecting what little they have remaining to them. They see the threat coming from immigrants, Black and Brown people , the colour of their skin is incidental.


There are also other kinds of racism at play, underlying, supporting and amplifying this.
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Exactly. People are are talking as if racism is a “thing” that just exists independently of people and circumstances and history and context. Like it’s a disease people catch, helplessly, and once they have it the only solution is quarantine. Or death. Like it’s just one thing, at that, all the same, all just measles and never polio or cholera or covid or e-coli. But racisms are actually acts of power that are the result of meaning-making systems that produce an understanding of the world. An understanding that includes social dominance and outgroup hostility and fear of the other. And different symbolic and material contexts produce different racisms. So you can’t divorce the circumstances and contexts that people live in from the racisms that they reproduce. You certainly can’t just say “those people are racist” as if that explains their acts, as if them being racist just happened out of the blue, from nowhere, the result of a bad infection one day. Racisms are produced by the contexts as much as they create the contexts.

I also think there is a big communication failure arising from the word “understand”. There have been many good attempts to correct this failure on this thread, but I’ll say it again anyway. You need to understand why people voted as they did in the same way that we needed to understand covid. Not so that we could absolve covid from being to blame for deaths. But because it was the necessary first step towards beating it.
 
story said:
Racism is a total non issue the racists. Some, many, simply do not recognise themselves as racist. They live inside the system that is crushing them, they feel some affinity for their fellow crushed people, including the Black people who live and work alongside them at the rock face (whatever that happens to be). Ergo "I'm not racist".

They see as problematic anyone who tries to find a place at the same rock wall. They don't think of that as racism, they see that as protecting what little they have remaining to them. They see the threat coming from immigrants, Black and Brown people , the colour of their skin is incidental.


There are also other kinds of racism at play, underlying, supporting and amplifying this.
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Yeah, fwiw one of the groups in North Carolina I've been thinking about is (are? I never know how that bit of grammar works) called Rural Organizing and Resilience. The backstory to that is that they started out as a group called Rural Organizing Against Racism, but they found it made their neighbours start off by feeling like they were being targeted and ROAR were having a go at them, so they changed the name to keep the acronym, and the values, the same, but starting off by stressing the things they had in common with their neighbours instead.
To quote one of their old posts:
ruralorganizing.wordpress.com

Building Community in Rural Appalachia to Combat Hate

Recent weeks have seen a frightening escalation of white supremacist violence across the country. The El Paso shooting which targeted Latino immigrants at a Walmart, killing 22 people, came just da…
ruralorganizing.wordpress.com ruralorganizing.wordpress.com

At ROAR we believe that nurturing a strong and inclusive community that knows how to take care of each other and grow trust with one another is one way we can combat it. Part of what attracts people to white nationalism is that it provides cheap answers for people’s real problems. In a nutshell it tells white people that the only way they can get ahead in this world is by stepping on the backs of people of color. We counter this simplistic ideology by showing that we can help each other meet our needs by working together across the lines they try to divide us by, through mutual aid and solidarity. That is why we organize as a community to provide free meals, kids books, clothes, and firewood. Through these efforts we bring people together to build a caring community while helping our neighbors meet their daily needs.
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And that's the approach I think is worthwhile in a nutshell - it's not saying "racism doesn't matter" or "racism is OK", but it's a very long way from "fuck your family" as well.
 
I did a few years of local work (newsletters, discussions, door-to-door, and shop-to-shop) political stuff in a pretty poor and mixed area 2017-2020, and the reception to revolutionary left wing politics was pretty much across the board positive, or at least it was after some conversations about what it actually meant.

The big issues we faced were people thinking that enacting those politics was possible, and obviously related, not having the actual power or ability to fix many (any?) of the problems people faced.

There were also really complicated issues around gangs, low level crime & anti-social behaviour (which the area struggled with generally) and immigration (often earlier waves having issues with later ones) which sometimes resulted in elements of inter-ethic community antagonism (including landlord/tenant exploitation) that we were unable to really find a way through.

What I mean by this is I don't think the problem is really 'the politics' being desirable, it's convincing and ideally showing people that they're actually possible.
 
LDC said:
I did a few years of local work (newsletters, discussions, door-to-door, and shop-to-shop) political stuff in a pretty poor and mixed area 2017-2020, and the reception to revolutionary left wing politics was pretty much across the board positive, or at least it was after some conversations about what it actually meant.

The big issues we faced were people thinking that enacting those politics was possible, and obviously related, not having the actual power or ability to fix many (any?) of the problems people faced.

There were also really complicated issues around gangs, low level crime & anti-social behaviour (which the area struggled with generally) and immigration (often earlier waves having issues with later ones) which sometimes resulted in elements of inter-ethic community antagonism (including landlord/tenant exploitation) that we were unable to really find a way through.

What I mean by this is I don't think the problem is really 'the politics' being desirable, it's convincing and ideally showing people that they're actually possible.
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Well yeah. And right now, they're not.
 
a_chap said:
No need to worry after all - Kennedy's NOT going to get rid of the FDA.

No.

He's going to get rid of the FDA and the CDC (Centre for Disease Control)

www.comicsands.com

RFK Jr. Says He Plans On Getting Rid Of 'Entire Departments' At FDA And CDC In Alarming Interview

Catastrophic.
www.comicsands.com www.comicsands.com
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I'm no fan of Trump or Kennedy but this isn't what this article says. In fact in the interview he says he won't be eliminating agencies.

What it says is that he will 'clear out' whole departments, and gives an example which actually seems pretty left leaning - the failure of the FDA nutrition department to regulate harmful ingredients that aren't acceptable in other countries.

Now I'm sure his approach will have as many or more downsides as upsides but I don't think there's any point being alarmist about stuff that isn't yet being proposed, there's plenty of more concrete things to be alarmed about.
 
lazythursday said:
I'm no fan of Trump or Kennedy but this isn't what this article says. In fact in the interview he says he won't be eliminating agencies.

What it says is that he will 'clear out' whole departments, and gives an example which actually seems pretty left leaning - the failure of the FDA nutrition department to regulate harmful ingredients that aren't acceptable in other countries.

Now I'm sure his approach will have as many or more downsides as upsides but I don't think there's any point being alarmist about stuff that isn't yet being proposed, there's plenty of more concrete things to be alarmed about.
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Yes, I'm holding judgement on that. There is an enormous amount wrong with the FDA regarding both food standards and drug approvals processes.

I'm sure an anti-science nut like Kennedy is not the right person to sort that out, but the idea that it isn't fit for purpose is correct.
 
lazythursday said:
I'm no fan of Trump or Kennedy but this isn't what this article says. In fact in the interview he says he won't be eliminating agencies.

What it says is that he will 'clear out' whole departments, and gives an example which actually seems pretty left leaning - the failure of the FDA nutrition department to regulate harmful ingredients that aren't acceptable in other countries.

Now I'm sure his approach will have as many or more downsides as upsides but I don't think there's any point being alarmist about stuff that isn't yet being proposed, there's plenty of more concrete things to be alarmed about.
Click to expand...

the anti science folk setting up the food and medical safety standards is something to get worried about
 
Ax^ said:
the anti science folk setting up the food and medical safety standards is something to get worried about
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Yes it is but posting that he's shutting down the FDA and the CDC when he's explicitly saying he's not isn't the most useful way of communicating that worry.
 
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