04.27.17
Quote of the Day from WhiteManistan, published by SpecialStan
Ignoring half the country because they voted for Trump and you feel them to be the wrong sorts of people, a still evolving disaster.
Thomas Frank, in the Guardian:
The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic party’s neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had “nowhere else to go,??? they were making what happened last November a little more likely.
Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were all attributable to their poor education, that the only answer for them was a lot of student loans and the right sort of college degree … every time they did this they made the disaster a little more inevitable.
Pretending to rediscover the exotic, newly red states of the Midwest, in the manner of the New York Times, is not the answer to this problem.
The forty year slump won’t be fixed in a few election cycles. The rage is too great, the cluelessness about this on the coasts — yes, where I’m from — the same.
Realistically, you have to face the ugly news that it quite possibly can’t be fixed. And it marks a historical bend where the United States began leaving the world stage as a place that at least attempted to live up to an idealized reputation.
The New York Times approach has been drive-by heartland tourism. A couple people who wrote books, like J. D. Vance and Arlie Hochschildt, are interviewed or regularly invited to weigh in. The Times and others send a small handful of reporters earning six figures a year to read the tea -leaves at various obvious milestones. With obvious results.
Trump’s first 100 days — blue state voters hate ‘im. The people who elected him feel strongly opposite, are unperturbed. Even still very enthusiastic.
Trump’s popularity: repeat.
Coverage of resistance protests marching before crowds of the likeminded.
It’s an unbridgeable chasm, putting the tribes of America as far apart as the separate nations of the Balkans that formerly made up Yugoslavia.
Of course, the Guardian — where the Franks quote is taken from — does exactly the same kind of nose-dip heartland sampling of the other America. Call it: What’s up in WhiteManistan, mailed in from bordering SpecialStan (or Richistan). [1] Sentiments and observations reported in slightly more than 140 character bursts, compiled and aggregated for review.
Eventually it will occur to all that making sure WhiteManistan had money and a future, rather than throwing it to the wolves for the sake of corporate transnational big business, an astonishing commitment to global militarism and a warped vision of the rewards appropriate for a super-educated, super-talented demographic calling the shots, was the only way to guarantee one.
In SpecialStan (Richistan): Say hey! Barack Obama, 400k.
1. Bruce Haines, a Republican former steel executive who runs the Historic Hotel Bethlehem, praised Trump’s installation of Neil Gorsuch on the supreme court and said support for the president in the business community was robust.
“The divisions are as strong as they were on election night,??? Haines said. “The Trump people are just as supportive of Trump as they were on election night, and the anti-Trump voters are probably stronger against – there isn’t anything that guy’s going to do to get the Hillary voters. They’re just not going to accept anything.???