The Trump presidency

[camouflage]

I was expressing my opinion that it was stupid to vote for Trump. I won't go into all the reasons. It's my opinion and you can of course disagree.

The stupidity, smartness or in between-ness of people who voted for Clinton are irrelevant to the crisis we are facing now. She's out of the frame.

Crisis? What crisis? America has it's Potus, the elections over, we can all go home.

 

[Pickman's model]

Crisis? What crisis? America has it's Potus, the elections over, we can all go home.

yeh to hide in the cellar till it's all over

 

[bimble]

I usually just lurk here because it's a bit adversarial for me, so having made my adversarial posts I will now return to lurking

You are wise.

 

[CRI]

Sound like US politic is a total zero sum game, either/or all the way through... where even working class whites have no interests whatsoever in common with working class black people. Unbelievably toxic. British racism almost looks amateurish and half-arsed in comparison.

By the way ignoring the kleptocracy isn't really an option, they control your water, your food supply, your credit, your real estate, your energy and the monopoly of violence held by the state. Try an ignore them, watch as they gather round and then pounce all at once like a pack of hyenas and choke you to death right there on the curb in front of everyone, "I can't breath" or no. Ignoring them would be an error.

It is toxic, very toxic.

I'd suggest the racism of Britain is the legacy of colonialism. For British folks, the African slave trade and genocides of indigenous people were things that happened "somewhere else," mostly involving clearly inferior different looking people. However, remnants of the feudal system were apparent everywhere, making class distinctions more obvious and ingrained in society.

Exploitation of African people through the triangular trade and plantation slavery and the extermination of indigenous people were right there at the centre of America's foundations. The economy depended on both, so like the class system in Britain, racism became entrenched in society, and in the American psyche.

I know you can't ignore kleptocrats, but you can try your level best to disrupt their machines, stoke distrust and division between them, look for alternatives to begging for the crumbs they throw

 

[CRI]

you referred to 'the stupid people who voted for trump'. rather different, don't you think?

Okay, if you're going to be picky picky, I'll retract that. I maintain that it was stupid to vote for Trump. Is that better?

 

[CRI]

Crisis? What crisis? America has it's Potus, the elections over, we can all go home.

SNAFU

 

[Pickman's model]

Okay, if you're going to be picky picky, I'll retract that. I maintain that it was stupid to vote for Trump. Is that better?

It's not picky if you don't know what you said

 

[CRI]

Officials Beg Trump to Send Help After Storms Kill 20 Across South

Desperate officials pleaded with President Donald Trump to send federal assistance Monday after at least 20 people were killed by storms and tornadoes that caused devastation authorities likened to the impact of a nuclear blast.

In Dougherty County, Georgia, where four people were killed, county commission Chairman Chris Cohilas said Monday that he has been "begging FEMA for boots on the ground," referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This is an example where presidents of all political persuasions pretty quick to issue some kind of statement and promise help (whether or not it comes, etc.) GWB was severely criticised for a less than robust response to Hurricane Katrina. Does Trump or anyone in his team realise this is a thing they're supposed to do?

 

[CRI]

It's not picky if you don't know what you said

Will you just accept that I retract the statement and drop it? Sheesh.

 

[Pickman's model]

Will you just accept that I retract the statement and drop it? Sheesh.

I am glad you have retracted and dropped it and there let's let the matter lie

 

[DotCommunist]

It is toxic, very toxic.

I'd suggest the racism of Britain is the legacy of colonialism. For British folks, the African slave trade and genocides of indigenous people were things that happened "somewhere else," mostly involving clearly inferior different looking people. However, remnants of the feudal system were apparent everywhere, making class distinctions more obvious and ingrained in society.

Exploitation of African people through the triangular trade and plantation slavery and the extermination of indigenous people were right there at the centre of America's foundations. The economy depended on both, so like the class system in Britain, racism became entrenched in society, and in the American psyche.

I know you can't ignore kleptocrats, but you can try your level best to disrupt their machines, stoke distrust and division between them, look for alternatives to begging for the crumbs they throw

you'll no doubt know then of the large afro-carribean population in england, the african population, the abolotionists and britains own and direct involvement in the slave trade? Britains history in India, the Raj?

 

[redsquirrel]

This piece has been doing the rounds of my FB friends. The author is a right-winger (so some will dismiss this piece on that basis alone). Apologies if someone has already posted it here.....
<snip>

What utter cack. Oh no, a supporter of a authoritarian, eugenics practising communal society doesn't like democracy.

And all the nasty shit within that post "rainbow-flag polity" FFS

 

[CRI]

you'll no doubt know then of the large afro-carribean population in england, the african population, the abolotionists and britains own and direct involvement in the slave trade? Britains history in India, the Raj?

Oh absolutely. The point I'm making though is that enslavement of people of colour on an industrial scale didn't take place within the UK itself. It happened "out there" in a far away land. Even where British servicemen and their families sometimes travelled to "there" and saw it firsthand, imo, the distance and different context made it easier to keep it at arms length. What you DID get on British soil was exploitation of poor white people, particularly in the industrial revolution, but also way before that. I remember touring Cambridge once to hear the guide coyly refer to local peasants providing the labour effectively as slaves.

African slaves outnumbered white people in many areas of the US south before the civil war and lived cheek by jowl with their white masters. White Americans took part in the slaughter of indigenous people directly. White Americans may have left the feudal and class bound systems of Europe behind them, but embraced other social divisions based on race. It wasn't just a Southern thing, either. There's a saying that white folks in the south didn't care how close black people got to them, so long as they didn't get too uppity. White people in the North didn't care how uppity they got, just so they didn't get too close. I don't think things have moved on that much from this.

This reminded me - there was a programme maybe a year ago, where they'd found records of the compensation given to slave holders after slavery was abolished in the British Empire. It busted the idea that slave-owners were just a small rich elite. Seem to recall, there were more slave-owners per head of the population in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK. This is it:

The history of British slave ownership has been buried: now its scale can be revealed
A new BBC documentary tells how a trove of documents lays bare the names of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners, including relatives of Gladstone and Orwell

These British slave-owners probably never saw their slaves or witnessed enslavement first hand while American slave owners tended to be very close to their slaves, and the brutality meted out to control them. I've a hunch these different relationships between slave owner and slave shaped the different ways racism plays out today in the two countries. Just to be clear, in neither place did someone have to be a slave owner to collude with slavery or to be a white supremacist.

 

[teqniq]

These British slave-owners probably never saw their slaves or witnessed enslavement first hand while American slave owners tended to be very close to their slaves, and the brutality meted out to control them. I've a hunch these different relationships between slave owner and slave shaped the different ways racism plays out today in the two countries. Just to be clear, in neither place did someone have to be a slave owner to collude with slavery or to be a white supremacist.

I suspect you may be unfamiliar with the history of the slave trade associated with Bristol and Liverpool.

 

[Crispy]

I suspect you may be unfamiliar with the history of the slave trade associated with Bristol and Liverpool.

No slaves came through those ports though did they? Goods to Africa, commodities from America, but the third side of the triangle didn't touch down in Britain.

 

[teqniq]

Mostly, yes but some were traded as servants to the wealthy in both ports.

 

[butchersapron]

No slaves in Bristol.


Freed and runaway slaves though.

 

[CRI]

I suspect you may be unfamiliar with the history of the slave trade associated with Bristol and Liverpool.

I suspect you are mistaken. I worked in Bristol for five years and am quite familiar with its enrichment via the Atlantic slave trade. But, there were no plantations in Somerset or Gloucestershire, no slave markets on the scale of say Charleston, South Carolina. I'm fully aware that there have been people of African descent living in the UK since at least the Roman period. However, the numbers have been relatively small compared to white British people. There were like 4 million enslaved people of African descent working plantations in the South by the mid 1800's. Few white British people ever saw the slaves being exploited in the Caribbean or US, event though many profited from their enforced labour. Every white person in the Southern USA would have witnessed plantation slavery. Do you see how this might have made a difference to the context and legacy of the racism that followed? Not saying one "better" than the other, just different.

 

[teqniq]

Ok fair point(s).

 

[CRI]

No slaves came through those ports though did they? Goods to Africa, commodities from America, but the third side of the triangle didn't touch down in Britain.

This - it's crucial. Even where African people were "traded" as servants in Bristol, Liverpool or London, this was nothing like the scale or brutality of the slave markets along the southern coast of the US, where men, women and children, usually shackled, often partly clothed, sick and injured, were bought and sold at auction. All white Americans in the south would have witnessed this, and/or the plantation slavery system, whether or not they owned slaves themselves. They accepted it as "normal" and went to war in order to defend the practice. I'm not giving Northerners a pass here, but just trying to explain one aspect of what I mean when I say white supremacy has been entrenched in the United States from its foundations.

 

[IC3D]

polly the joke appears to me she's appealing to the archetypal empowered woman Michelle Obama to rescue her from her abusive husband. You don't have a problem with that cos it might be true cos of analysis.
It's not saying she's intelligent and strong certainly.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This - it's crucial. Even where African people were "traded" as servants in Bristol, Liverpool or London, this was nothing like the scale or brutality of the slave markets along the southern coast of the US, where men, women and children, usually shackled, often partly clothed, sick and injured, were bought and sold at auction. All white Americans in the south would have witnessed this, and/or the plantation slavery system, whether or not they owned slaves themselves. They accepted it as "normal" and went to war in order to defend the practice. I'm not giving Northerners a pass here, but just trying to explain one aspect of what I mean when I say white supremacy has been entrenched in the United States from its foundations.

I think you make some very good points here, but you also hint at a hugely important part of the story, imo, namely the way that slavery was ended in the US. In other former slave societies, such as Cuba and Brazil, while lots of racial prejudice and discrimination still go on, the visceral hatred of white people towards black people that exists in spades in the US isn't present. I think that has to do with the way slavery ended, in Cuba's case a while after the US, but with the slave-owners' consent and indeed with the active support of many of them. In the US, slave owners were forced to give up their slaves after a bloody civil war, and the wounds from that fester. They were forced to free their slaves, but they were left in charge - the power structure was unchanged. And that festering resentment shapes US racism still.

How flying the Confederate flag in the US isn't seen as equivalent to flying the Nazi flag in Germany, for instance, is instructive. The South was defeated in the Civil War but it wasn't deconstructed.

 

[coley]

Yes, it is one person's opinion, but I keep hearing similar opinions from other people of colour in the US - on social media, and folks I'm still in touch with from living there. I thought it might give some insight for those still wondering why most minority ethnic voters, especially African Americans, didn't back Sanders for the nomination and overwhelmingly voted for Clinton, while white Americans (including 53% of white women) chose Trump. It's also not just about the one issue of TTP. It's that Sanders has consistently failed to convince Black Americans that he genuinely understands their situation, how white supremacy is embedded in American society and won't throw people of colour under a bus in pursuit of policy that will benefit white people/harm not white people. For example, if he's trying to "win back Trump voters," (remember - they're nearly all white people) that will probably mean conceding something that will disadvantage non-white Americans.

I know Sanders is trying to win people back to the left, but when he ignores what people of colour are saying to him, he is going to fail. I've already seen white Sanders' supporters critizing Black people on social media for not lining up behind Bernie,often trotting out racist tropes about intelligence and laziness. That's also not going to win people over. I, too, despair when I see people supposedly on the left drinking from the same glass as those on the right, so surely it's understandable that POC in America may be dubious about hitching their wagon to either end of the spectrum.

When I try and explain to white people in the UK just how deeply embedded white supremacy is in the US, I tend to meet with disbelief or "does not compute" blank looks. It's been pretty much the same on Urban, often with the addition of defensiveness and taking it personally (i.e. "How dare you say all white people are / I am racist?" when that's not what I've said. :/) It's not about individual people being prejudiced, calling people names or wearing white hoods. It's about a nation founded on white supremacist values that are still woven tight into the social, economic and political fabric of America. It's why people of colour thought moderate Clinton was a better bet as the Democrat nominee. It's why the GOP have rode so hard to keep non-white people from voting since forever. It's why it was mainly congressmen and women of colour who boycotted Trump's inauguration and are saying they won't work with his administration, and why folks of colour are angry with white politicians who make any ovations towards the Trump team. It's why the policing tactics at women's marches across the US where miles away from those used in Black Lives Matters demos (and why some white women are suggesting the lack of incidents on Saturday shows they know how to "organise right" ergo, Black people don't.

Nowt's going to change until there's acknowledgement of the situ as a starter.

By the way, he name checks Maxine Waters. She is my hero. I agree that the only way to deal with the rising kleptocracy in the US is to flatly refuse to engage with it. Full stop.

"It's about a nation founded on white supremacist values that are still woven tight into the social, economic and political fabric"

I'm a liberal, anti racist white guy, don't have no time for the KKK or any of these white supremacist types, My creefull of heavy calibre assault rifles? Just for the squirrels yea'all.

 

[Raheem]

Mostly, yes but some were traded as servants to the wealthy in both ports.

I don't know if there were isolated cases, but I believe that slave traders were generally scrupulous about keeping their business out of our green and pleasant land because they were terrified of the consequences of cases ending up in the English courts. For example, there was an obiter in a 17th century High Court case saying that slaves in India were automatically emancipated if they got baptised, which caused panic in the then colonies, in case it might also apply there.

 

[coley]

yeh to hide in the cellar till it's all over

You have a cellar?
Your card is marked, comrade

 

[coley]

I think you make some very good points here, but you also hint at a hugely important part of the story, imo, namely the way that slavery was ended in the US. In other former slave societies, such as Cuba and Brazil, while lots of racial prejudice and discrimination still go on, the visceral hatred of white people towards black people that exists in spades in the US isn't present. I think that has to do with the way slavery ended, in Cuba's case a while after the US, but with the slave-owners' consent and indeed with the active support of many of them. In the US, slave owners were forced to give up their slaves after a bloody civil war, and the wounds from that fester. They were forced to free their slaves, but they were left in charge - the power structure was unchanged. And that festering resentment shapes US racism still.

How flying the Confederate flag in the US isn't seen as equivalent to flying the Nazi flag in Germany, for instance, is instructive. The South was defeated in the Civil War but it wasn't deconstructed.

Though Sherman and Grant did their level best

 

[CRI]

I think you make some very good points here, but you also hint at a hugely important part of the story, imo, namely the way that slavery was ended in the US. In other former slave societies, such as Cuba and Brazil, while lots of racial prejudice and discrimination still go on, the visceral hatred of white people towards black people that exists in spades in the US isn't present. I think that has to do with the way slavery ended, in Cuba's case a while after the US, but with the slave-owners' consent and indeed with the active support of many of them. In the US, slave owners were forced to give up their slaves after a bloody civil war, and the wounds from that fester. They were forced to free their slaves, but they were left in charge - the power structure was unchanged. And that festering resentment shapes US racism still.

How flying the Confederate flag in the US isn't seen as equivalent to flying the Nazi flag in Germany, for instance, is instructive. The South was defeated in the Civil War but it wasn't deconstructed.

Yes, excellent points. History and social context absolutely must shape how racism is played out. Thank you for this. I need to do more searching on it

In terms of American history, we were taught about "Lincoln freeing the slaves" and such (yeah, right) but not so much about what happened after - how efforts at reconstruction were blocked, resulting in former slaves continuing to be exploited by the same people and a barely altered system from what they endured before.

 

[2hats]

I see the censorship has begun.


More - 'For a few hours, Badlands National Park was bad to the bone in defiance of Trump' - Washington Post

 

[CRI]

Snap - I just started to post the WAPO article about this. Jesus, this is so far from what we used to call normal . . .

It's about both silencing views that don't chime with those of the Trump administration and discrediting agencies and individuals they want to undermine to achieve their goals. They want to exploit public lands, including national parks, for mining and drilling, unregulated livestock grazing, probably selling off chunks to whoever will buy it. Remember the white supremacist militia type dudes who took over the federal land and squatted was it last year? They'll all be cheering and whooping about this.

It could go badly because a lot of Americans love their national parks, but if the Trump administration promises jobs and cheap land and continues to silence environmentalists, they'll change their minds. They'll let them go.

"First they came for the National Parks, but I did not speak out because we need more jobs and hey, I've got a big front lawn anyhow . . . "

 

[CRI]

Donald Trump to Ban People From Countries Posing Security Threat from Entering U.S.
Move is one of several immigration-related executive actions that will come as soon as Wednesday

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump is expected to ban entry to the U.S. of people from countries that pose a national-security threat, one of several immigration-related executive actions that will come as soon as Wednesday, congressional officials said.

It is unclear which countries would be included in such a ban.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump initially said he would ban entry by Muslims but later modified his proposal to suspend visas to people from any place “where adequate screening cannot occur.”


Nations to be included in the ban are expected to be principally in the Muslim world. One official said that Mr. Trump also would suspend acceptance into the U.S. of refugees or certain refugees.