Every day delivers news of the allegedly rabid presidential candidate. A psychologist attests he’s mentally ill. Trump throws a baby out of one of his rallies. (At first I read the headline thinking he’d actually waded into a long rant attacking a crying child.) Trump is unfit, declares the president. There will be thermonuclear war with him in possession of “the football.” And, of course, full time now, the ongoing cruel feud with the Khan family.
This kind of news doesn’t have any effect on the people who are going to vote for him and against HRC.
They just don’t care. I don’t care, either. Which is not the same thing as saying they’re universally equally mean or as prone to great flights of unreason as Donald Trump.
Many obviously know exactly what he is and will vote for him to throw a bomb into the establishment and Clintonism. And while there MIGHT be more productive ways to show dissatisfaction with the rigged system that we have, it’s still an understandable human reaction.
The constant call of “look, look, look how horrible he is!??? and the we’ll all be doomed if he’s president thing that comes out of our side, the place of so-called betters, ahould be seen as a repetitive sneering. It deserves contempt, too. By now everyone knows Donald Trump.
If you’re in the ascendant half of the population – as I’ve pointed out here before, it’s inaccurate to tar them all as “elite” – it’s hard to see how anyone, let alone nearly half of Americans, could think otherwise. The U.S. has the best economy in the world and by far the finest universities, driving further global dominance; new technologies are opening up a host of even greater possibilities, from elimination of manual labor to the ability genetically to engineer longer life, better health and greater abilities; minorities and women increasingly succeed on equal terms and people can marry whomever they choose; and one can easily travel almost anywhere in this amazing world – but needn’t, because there are Thai restaurants on almost every corner.
Unfortunately, not everyone is part of that wonderful world. Rather, for many, it stands as a threat.
Include me in the Trump-half of America although I won’t vote for him. I find it astonishing that he’s been able to carve out positions to the left of the Democratic Party, positions most certainly meaningless. But still the Democratic Party’s candidate has left no place to go, which is acknowledged.
I have nothing in common with those whose world is the first paragraph. Almost all of my face-to-face friends in Pasadena are from it. And to them I appear as an outsider, at best a nice person, who appears odd but one who can be tolerated in various situations, trusted to look after pets or house-sit.
“[Today], that [other] half is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) white, male, religious and poorly educated. Since that’s pretty much the definition of what, until recently, has been the dominant culture in the U.S., basically no-one else cares,” continues the piece.
No, that’s not right, either. But there’s no way through the walls.
Over 30 years ago I don’t think there was a day I wasn’t at Play It Again Records on the south side of Bethlehem.
When I was at Lehigh, it was a 5 minute walk from the chemistry building, easy to hit at lunch and the end of the day.
Play It Again was the only retail business that would carry Chainsaw fanzine, which was a diy punk rock pub put together by my ex-wife and myself. And it wouldn’t have carried Chainsaw if I hadn’t cajoled the owner, Joe Hanna, a man of open mind, into selling indie vinyl after I got tired of having to buy mail order. Plus it sold my record and our only Chainsaw cassette, “Annoy Your Neighbors With This Tape.”
A few years later, the store was also a hub for the community summer staff for WLVR, Lehigh’s college radio station.
It was a great place, indelibly part of the history, the good part, of the Lehigh Valley.
Hanna was actually the singer in a band we put together in the 80s, Senseless Hate, too. We rehearsed in the store — the original place at 333 S. New St. before it moved up the block to the place pictured. There were a few amusing if pointless shows, one song which made it to a punk rock omnibus.
The space at 129 W. Fourth St. remained, at least Wednesday, equal parts retail store and dream dorm room. Wrestling figures, quirky posters and untold bric-a-brac share the business with rows and rows of records and CDs. The cassette stock has dwindled, but there are some of those, too, and CD-display stands.
Hanna, of Salisbury Township, will still own the building. He said he’s closing because he got an offer he couldn’t refuse from a restaurateur, John Okumus, looking to open a [pizza restaurant] there.
Hanna plans to remain open until Aug. 10, a few days before Okumus gets the key…
[When] Hanna started out, buying music to play at home was the only alternative to sitting by the radio waiting for your favorite song to come on.
“If you wanted to hear your song when you wanted to hear it, you pretty much had to buy the record,” Hanna said. “That was it.”
Buy the record. How quaint.
The business had been stable, I was informed, but the restaurant offer was a very good one. The south side of Bethlehem has been transformed. It went from a long time as a slum off Lehigh to being nice retail and entertainment real estate. Plus, 35 years is a fine run, all things considered.
Economist N. Greg Mankiw of Harvard in the NYT this week on the unfortunate turn of events in which voters now don’t believe it when experts say trade is good:
“You see it in Donald Trump’s railing against immigrants and trade agreements. It may well be part of Hillary Clinton’s shift, under pressure from Bernie Sanders, against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she once embraced as ‘the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade.’
“You certainly see it in the British decision to exit the European Union, which has become known as Brexit. That vote flummoxed most political forecasters, and it makes one wonder whether Americans might also produce a surprise in November …”
The answer, according to Mankiw, is simple: more education. Although not stated baldly, those now opposed to “corporate America-style” (my words) global trade are the stupid — the less educated.
Mankiw: “In the long run … there is reason for optimism. As society slowly becomes more educated from generation to generation, the general public’s attitudes toward globalization should move toward the experts.’” Who are all for it.
N. Greg Mankiw was economic advisor to Mitt Romney. He is also opposed to raising the minimum wage. I would normally post the link to the NYT but globalism and all that hasn’t been good for me. I’m sore about it, even though I’m educated.
Also from the “Oh, That’s Rich!” channel, an explanation, now among the thousands, as to Why “The Tom Friedman Blues” needs to be on your gadget and reviewing stand.
“Thomas Friedman moves beyond his Flat World to divide the world into ‘Web People,’ who he likes, and ‘Wall People’ who he holds in contempt. Donald Trump is naturally the lodestar of the Wall People …
“Okay, so let’s work through some logic here. If you want to see a freer flow of ideas and technology, by replacing patent and copyright monopolies with more modern ways of promoting innovation and creative work, then you are a Wall Person. After all, Friedman’s Web People wouldn’t know how to get by in the world without these relics from the feudal guild system.
“If this means that life-saving drugs, which would be cheap in a free market, are priced beyond the reach of the people who need them, well get used to Thomas Friedman’s world. If it means that we have to turn the whole world into copyright cops to ensure that Disney can collect its royalties on Mickey Mouse, that’s a small price to pay to keep the Web People wealthy…”
I’d like to add that Hollywood got the FBI to confiscate the kickass torrents website and arrest its owner last week so that the Motion Picture Association of American and Marvel Studios would not be deprived of any of their due profits on Captain America: Civil War by the grasping BitTorrent clients of the leeching poors. And, of course, they have momentarily stymied me in my downloading of pirated eBooks on the inequalities and failures of the US system.
Of course, I will inform you as soon as an adequate replacement is put in place. Currently, the Pirate Bay and EasyTorrents don’t cut the mustard.
