.. My advisers are telling me exactly that, Rush, they’re telling me to ignore it. But I can’t. I’m not gonna sit here and let my family be dishonored. I’m not gonna let myself, my family be lied about and I’m not gonna let those lies take root and become established as truth. I don’t care. I don’t care what they say is the right way to do this, I’m not gonna let it happen. When people lie about me, when people wound me, when people attack me, I’m gonna fire right back at ’em, I don’t care. And my advisers are trying to get me to stop, and I just can’t.”
That’s why he continues to tweet, and his tweets are effectively going around a dishonest media to inform and connect with everyday Americans. He’s also conducting negotiations with his tweets by informing people what he’s doing. And by doing this, by tweeting in this unpresidential way, not seen anything like this, it’s just not how it’s done, Trump is also capturing the whole idea of unpredictability, which makes Trump a never ending top-line news story and has his adversaries always on defense.
.. “our side,” I mean, conservatives, some Republicans — admit it, folks, we’ve grown tired and weary of being on defense all the time. We’re tired of getting up every morning and looking at either a person or an idea, something that we hold dear under assault, like marriage, or who can use whatever bathrooms, we’re tired of being on defense, we’re tired having to defend things that shouldn’t need to be defended because they’re under assault.
.. And that’s one of the big invisible unspoken reasons why he has such loyalty is because people who support him are just like a lot of you in this audience, fed up with being on defense and being on a team that never fought back, much less went on offense. But these tweets and this erratic or unpredictable behavior keeps Trump’s opponents on defense, and, believe me, it is a delight to see it.
.. Another thing that Trump is doing with these tweets, he’s leading. And because he’s leading, he’s holding everybody’s attention. What will Trump do next? What will Trump do next? Nobody’s asking, what’s Pelosi gonna do next, what’s Harry Reid? You know, we’re not steeling ourselves for what assault is coming at us next. We’re all looking on eagerly: What’s Trump gonna do next? How’s he gonna bamboozle ’em next? How’s Trump gonna end-run ’em next? That’s what’s everybody excited about here.
Burkina Faso: Land of Honorable People
‘Burkina Faso’ means ‘Land of Honourable/Incorruptible Men’. ‘Burkina’ is a Moore word meaning ‘honour’. ‘Faso’ is the Dioulaword for ‘fatherland’. The Fulfulde language is reflected in the term ‘Burkinabe’, because ‘be’ is its plural for people. This use of all three main languages symbolises the unity of the country.
Trump: Tribune Of Poor White People
Heroin addiction is rampant. In my medium-sized Ohio county last year, deaths from drug addiction outnumbered deaths from natural causes. The average kid will live in multiple homes over the course of her life, experience a constant cycle of growing close to a “stepdad” only to see him walk out on the family, know multiple drug users personally, maybe live in a foster home for a bit (or at least in the home of an unofficial foster like an aunt or grandparent), watch friends and family get arrested, and on and on. And on top of that is the economic struggle, from the factories shuttering their doors to the Main Streets with nothing but cash-for-gold stores and pawn shops.
.. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis.
.. His apocalyptic tone matches their lived experiences on the ground. He seems to love to annoy the elites, which is something a lot of people wish they could do but can’t because they lack a platform.
.. these people, his voters, are proud. A big chunk of the white working class has deep roots in Appalachia, and the Scots-Irish honor culture is alive and well. We were taught to raise our fists to anyone who insulted our mother.
.. Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy?
.. the barely-banked contempt they — the professional-class whites, I mean — have for poor white people is visceral, and obvious to me. Yet it is invisible to them.
.. “We”–meaning hillbillies–“are the only group of people you don’t have to be ashamed to look down upon.”
.. humans appear to have some need to look down on someone; there’s just a basic tribalistic impulse in all of us.
.. By looking down on the hillbilly, you can get that high of self-righteousness and superiority without violating any of the moral norms of your own tribe. So your own prejudice is never revealed for what it is.
.. A lot of it is pure disconnect–many elites just don’t know a member of the white working class.
.. this condescension is a big part of Trump’s appeal. He’s the one politician who actively fights elite sensibilities
.. this condescension is a big part of Trump’s appeal. He’s the one politician who actively fights elite sensibilities
.. they’ve been looking for someone for a while who will declare war on the condescenders. If nothing else, Trump does that.
.. what elites see as blunders people back home see as someone who–finally–conducts themselves in a relatable way. He shoots from the hip; he’s not constantly afraid of offending someone; he’ll get angry about politics; he’ll call someone a liar or a fraud. This is how a lot of people in the white working class actually talk about politics,
.. all the talk about “political correctness” isn’t about any specific substantive point, as much as it is a way of expanding the scope of acceptable behavior.
.. the meta-narrative of the 2016 election is learned helplessness as a political value
.. Believing you have no control is incredibly destructive
.. The first time I encountered this idea was in my exposure to addiction subculture,
.. there’s a recognition of the role of better choices in addressing these problems. The refusal to talk about individual agency is in some ways a consequence of a very detached elite, one too afraid to judge and consequently too handicapped to really understand.
.. I think that’s the only way to have this conversation and to make the necessary changes: sympathy and honesty.
.. One of the things I mention in the book is that domestic strife and family violence are cultural traits
.. I had to learn, with the help of my aunt and sister (both of whom had successful marriages), but especially with the help of my wife, how not to turn every small disagreement into a shouting match or a public scene.
.. They’re right that it’s a cultural problem: I learned domestic strife
from my mother, and she learned it from her parents... “They want us to be shepherds to these kids, but they ignore that many of them are raised by wolves.” Again, they’re not all wrong: certainly some schools are unfairly funded. But there’s this weird refusal to deal with the poor as moral agents in their own right. In some cases, the best that public policy can do is help people make better choices, or expose them to better influences through better family policy (like my Mamaw).
.. two of the biggest predictors of low upward mobility were 1) living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and 2) growing up in a neighborhood with a lot of single mothers.
.. I’d make one important point: that not drinking, treating people well, working hard, and so forth, requires a lot of willpower when you didn’t grow up in privilege.
.. for a kid like me, the Marine Corps was basically a four-year education in character and self-management.
.. The other thing the Marine Corps did is hold our hands and prevent us from making stupid decisions. It didn’t work on everyone, of course, but I remember telling my senior noncommissioned officer that I was going to buy a car, probably a BMW. “Stop being an idiot and go get a Honda.” Then I told him that I had been approved for a new Honda, at the dealer’s low interest rate of 21.9 percent. “Stop being an idiot and go to the credit union.”
.. On the one hand, he criticized the elites and actually acknowledge the hurt of so many working class voters. After so many years of Republican politicians refusing to even talk about factory closures, Trump’s message is an oasis in the desert. But of course he spent way too much time appealing to people’s fears, and he offered zero substance for how to improve their lives. It was Trump at his best and worst.
.. It’s not just that he inflames the tribalism of the Right; it’s that he encourages the worst impulses of the Left.
Revolt of the Masses
Life in, say, a coal valley was never a bouquet of roses.
What’s also been lost are the social institutions and cultural values that made it possible to have self-respect amid hardship — to say, “I may not make a lot of money, but people can count on me. I’m loyal, tough, hard-working, resilient and part of a good community.”
.. It’s a culture that celebrates people who are willing to fight to defend their honor. This is something that progressives never get about gun control. They see a debate about mass murder, but for many people guns are about a family’s ability to stand up for itself in a dangerous world.
.. It’s also a culture with a lot of collective pride. In my travels, you can’t go five minutes without having a conversation about a local sports team. Sports has become the binding religion, offering identity, value, and solidarity.
.. But the honor code has also been decimated by the culture of the modern meritocracy, which awards status to the individual who works with his mind, and devalues the class of people who work with their hands.
.. The sociologist Daniel Bell once argued that capitalism would undermine itself because it encouraged hedonistic short-term values for consumers while requiring self-disciplined long-term values in its workers. At least in one segment of society, Bell was absolutely correct.
.. There’s now a rift within the working class between mostly older people who are self disciplined, respectable and, often, bigoted, and parts of a younger cohort that are more disordered, less industrious, more celebrity-obsessed, but also more tolerant and open to the world.
.. Trump (and probably Brexit) voters are in the first group. They are not poor, making on average over $70,000 a year. But they perceive that their grandchildren’s world is quickly coming apart.
.. Their pain is indivisible: economic stress, community breakdown, ethnic bigotry and a loss of social status and self-worth. When people feel their world is vanishing, they are easy prey for fact-free magical thinking and demagogues who blame immigrants.
We need a better form of nationalism, a vision of patriotism that gives dignity to those who have been disrespected, emphasizes that we are one nation and is confident and open to the world.