Defend our Law and Culture, Not George Zimmerman

I think Zimmerman behaved foolishly. Looking at the situation from Trayvon Martin’s perspective, he was being followed first by vehicle then by foot — after dark — by a strange man who is neither law enforcement nor obviously a member of a uniformed security force. That’s unsettling at best, terrifying at worst — and leaves Martin with few good options. Should he presume Zimmerman’s good will and approach him for conversation? Should he keep his head down and walk as quickly as possible home? Should he try to hide? Should he run? Or should he take the worst of the series of bad options and turn and fight — even before Zimmerman makes an overtly threatening move? Some courses of action were safer than others, but all carried a degree of risk.

Zimmerman put Trayvon Martin in a difficult situation, and the fact there was strong evidence that Martin took the worst possible course of action — attacking Zimmerman — doesn’t vindicate Zimmerman’s foolishness. There is not one single concealed carry permit holder in the United States who should look to George Zimmerman as a model of proper conduct . . .

Truth and Trumpism

A more important vice in political coverage, which we’ve seen all too often in previous elections — but will be far more damaging if it happens this time — is false equivalence.

.. You might think that this would be impossible on substantive policy issues, where the asymmetry between the candidates is almost ridiculously obvious. To take the most striking comparison, Mr. Trump has proposed huge tax cuts with no plausible offsetting spending cuts, yet has also promised to pay down U.S. debt; meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton has proposed modest spending increases paid for by specific tax hikes.

..I’ve seen claims that Tea Partiers were motivated by Wall Street bailouts, or even that the movement was largely about fiscal responsibility, driven by voters upset about budget deficits.

.. if you followed the actual progress of the movement, it was always about white voters angry at the thought that their taxes might be used to help Those People, whether via mortgage relief for distressed minority homeowners or health care for low-income families.

.. Trump support in the primaries was strongly correlated with racial resentment: We’re looking at a movement of white men angry that they no longer dominate American society the way they used to. And to pretend otherwise is to give both the movement and the man who leads it a free pass.

In the end, bad reporting probably won’t change the election’s outcome, because the truth is that those angry white men are right about their declining role. America is increasingly becoming a racially diverse, socially tolerant society, not at all like the Republican base, let alone the plurality of that base that chose Donald Trump.

How political science helps explain the rise of Trump: the role of white identity and grievances

we discussed the research showing that most voters are not ideologues, and, in particular, that many Republicans have liberal positions about government spending. This gives a heterodox candidate like Trump an opening.

This post describes the research underlying another key aspect of Trump’s appeal: the grievances of some white Americans and their hostility to minority groups.

Along with demonstrating that most Americans do not organize their political opinions based on ideology, Phillip Converse’s field-defining 1964 essay argued that Americans do organize their opinions around something else: attitudes toward social groups.

Fifty years of research backs this up.  Ethnocentric suspicions of minority groups in general, and attitudes about blacks in particular, influence whites’ opinions about many issues.

.. “it is not surprising that a candidate (Trump) who is well known for questioning President Obama’s citizenship…and said that black youths have ‘never done more poorly’ because ‘there’s no spirit’ would be attractive to a party that these days is dripping with racial resentment.”