So Should I Just Wring My Hands?

[AGBF]

This article really resonated with me. After watching Donald Trump make an incredible speech to a group of "his base" at The Kennedy Center last night, a group who cheered when he said that they (he and his base) had beaten "the fake media" and now "I am President and they're not", I felt weary. Would he never stop proclaiming the same things? Would he never learn or move on?

This insightful article, coming at the problem of what Trump does to women and the utter uselessness of protesting it when there are no consequences to his behavior, was a great antidote to my poisoned mood this morning. It suggests that the alternative is to focus on other issues than Trump's misogyny and other behaviors over which we have no direct control right now and focus on the "the travel ban" and matter being litigated and fought in the legislatures. At least that is how I read the article. I thought some others of you would enjoy this. I was hoping to hear from you. Matata? ksinger? Others?

Outrage at sexist remarks used to be my job. With Trump, it isn’t enough....https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/06/30/outrage-at-sexist-remarks-used-to-be-my-job-with-trump-its-nowhere-near-enough/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-posteverything:homepage/card&utm_term=.28bd0688a163

Deb

 

[Dee*Jay]

Deb, you don't seem to me like much of a hand wringer -- and I certainly mean that as a compliment!

Pvss Grab continues to show his true colors, now with a new attack on the Morning Joe hosts, despite being implored even by his own party to Just Stop. http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/01/politics/donald-trump-morning-joe-tweet/index.html

As for the travel ban, the irony is that had he left the sleeping dog lie we would be nearly at the limit of people we can accept from his proclaimed evil countries for the year, but given the now-allowed entry for people with certain close ties to others already here the projection is that twice as many will enter this year as those entrants re not counted against the limit. Oops. Law of unintended consequences there Cheeto. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...tion-ban-meets-law-of-unintended-consequences

I've (much) more to say on this but I have promised to help the CB go out and get the GPS thingy on the boat working so he can find the best place to fish and (hopefully) produce some fresh salmon for lunch. I'm sure there will be more to say on this long after we're calibrated to some satellites (or however that works...) so I'll be back later.

 

[arkieb1]

I saw the Sarah Huckabee Sanders thing where she stood up and said "Americans knew what they were getting" and I thought to myself yes, many sexist racist A-holes knew exactly what they were getting, they voted for him, they continue to support him. Even on here I've read a number of conservatives write they are sick of political correctness and yet say one bad word about Trump, his family, his minders and that's somehow uncalled for, so much so I've pretty well stopped commenting in political threads.

I make the observation that an over-blown fear of terrorism fuelling this hyper sensitive fear/paranoia of everyone and everything, and an imagined return to a golden, glorious economic age Americans want back so desperately, but will not find any time soon have a lot to answer for, including the rise of Trump.

 

[AGBF]

Even on here I've read a number of conservatives write they are sick of political correctness and yet say one bad word about Trump, his family, his minders and that's somehow uncalled for, so much so I've pretty well stopped commenting in political threads.

I am afraid you didn't understand what being "politically correct" means in the United States, arkieb. It is probably a cultural thing that does not translate from the US to Australia, another example of how, although we both speak English, the nuances of culture can get lost.

When someone in the United States says he is sick of "political correctness" it is a dog whistle to to other right wingers. The person saying it does not mean that he is actually tired of having to be constrained by considerations of courtesy or protocol. He is saying that he wants to be free to use the old slurs against women, blacks, and minorities that white men were able to use in The Good Old Days here in The United States. He doesn't want to have to grant equality to women by by calling them women. He should still be able to call them "girls" and address them them as "honey". He shouldn't have to worry all the time about whether he has used the "n" word when referring to a black person. After all, he doesn't really mean any disrespect. And so forth.

So Donald Trump brought down the house as he addressed his Baptist audience last night by announcing that people were now going to start saying "Merry Christmas" (instead of "Happy Holidays") again.

In other words, we would return to excluding Jews and Muslims from the US mainstream.

I was brought up in the 1950's and 1960's, so I was brought up with Christmas carols and Christmas pageants. I loved it. I celebrate Christmas. I do say "Merry Christmas" to people, even people I don't know, during Christmas season. But I found what the president said very offensive. I found it deliberately divisive, not kind or Christian. ( I know his aim was not to be Christian).

But, as the article said, I cannot just sit here and wring my hands. I'm wondering if I should be reaching for my wallet and looking up the address of the ACLU again. I am thinking of putting them on speed dial.

Deb/AGBF

 

[ksinger]

I skimmed your article Deb. I enjoyed the phrase "our nation’s collective, surreal Groundhog Day". Indeed. And your breakdown of "political correctness" to Arkie, is pretty brilliant, and ties in nicely with the "consequence-free" vibe that seems to be infusing just about everything these days.

However, at the risk of sounding like I really have rolled over and am mostly dead, I just do not have the juice anymore, for outrage, or for willingly imbibing too much news of what I am utterly powerless to stop, or even slow. I get quite enough from the hubs, who still is in the thick of it.

Annette voiced her concern some months ago, that piling on unnecessary stress was probably very bad for my health. I took stock and decided I agreed, and have almost quit doing any news at all. Those of you who do not live in a state as reliably ultra-conservative as Oklahoma, can't really understand the level of energy, even on a local level - and one could argue that the local level is much more immediate and important - required to swim against the roaring torrent of meanness and flat out dirty dealing (always coyly wrapped in a flag and a bible of course) that is constantly happening at a local level. It's like staring into the pit: gaze too long and the pit starts gazing back at you.

Oh, and my husband, that teacher of many years and long teaching lineage, walked away from the classroom this last school year, after 22 years. It's been going on for some time now, but education in Oklahoma is dying even faster now, right before our eyes. Also very difficult to watch.

 

[arkieb1]

Actually Deb, I think there are a small number of conservatives on here that write they are sick of political correctness meaning exactly that, because I've seen them defend Trumps sexist statements, as "locker room" talk so that somehow makes it O.K in their minds that he can make derogatory remarks about women because yanno "boys will be boys." I'm also tired of justice systems in both your country and my country where judges let off white male college students that date rape young women - similar set of premises the young man comes from a good respectable family, she was dressed in short skirt or a tight dress or from a minority, agreed to go on a date with the guy and somehow she was asking for it. Yes, we have rape culture at our Universities too, we don't however have a President that encourages it.

As a part Asian, part Aboriginal, and part white woman, I think you underestimate my interpretation, a small number of people here have actually hinted that they are O.K with your definition of it, and perhaps the statements that raise my eyebrows the most is this notion many entitled white people on this forum have of reverse discrimination. And again they don't mean it as being nasty, they simply, completely, mind-bogglingly fail to comprehend discrimination based upon ethnicity altogether.

There are a few people on Youtube and in literature that describe it as "whitelash", a whole movement of white people trying to somehow regain positions of domination, power, or social advantage from groups they feel threatened by.

The only major difference I can see is that Australia although ethnically diverse has a much smaller population, and a better system of law and order. But since the global threat of terrorism we, and many parts of the UK, I'd argue politically have experienced the same thing, a move towards a radical conservative right that is O.K with oppressing what the white middle and working class perceive as "the other," they market themselves on wanting to close the borders and circle the wagons so to speak and hark back to this golden age of nationalism, both economically and socially.

Me, I still can't come to terms with the hypocrisy of how so many of your working class believe the man in the golden tower represents them - he might speak with the same set of values but lets face it, in real life he wouldn't wipe his thousand dollar boots on most of them.

 

[minousbijoux]

Me, I still can't come to terms with the hypocrisy of how so many of your working class believe the man in the golden tower represents them - he might speak with the same set of values but lets face it, in real life he wouldn't wipe his thousand dollar boots on most of them.

Yes, this is what surprises me as well - I feel that if any of his supporters had direct contact with him, they'd realize that they are not immune to his behaviors. He would not hesitate to take advantage of them - be rude and dismissive, fail to pay them for services rendered and generally feel entitled to take their money, and sexually exploit their wives and daughters as he deemed fit.

 

[t-c]

Me, I still can't come to terms with the hypocrisy of how so many of your working class believe the man in the golden tower represents them - he might speak with the same set of values but lets face it, in real life he wouldn't wipe his thousand dollar boots on most of them.

Trump even explicitly told them that he doesn't think much of "poor people" and they cheered! Fools.

Trump Tells Local Iowans Why He Prefers the Rich

 

[ksinger]

Yes, this is what surprises me as well - I feel that if any of his supporters ...".

Insert whatever bit of reality they feel they'll never have to encounter, doesn't matter what it is. Just no surprises there that they are mightily motivated to stay right, and can deny almost anything in order to avoid the ego hit of being wrong.

There's this though. From George Orwell, 1946.
He hit the nail on the head. Everything old is new again, I guess?

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose

"The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say ‘Guns before butter’, while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words.

Actually, however, the avoidance of reality is much the same everywhere, and has much the same consequences. The Russian people were taught for years that they were better off than everybody else, and propaganda posters showed Russian families sitting down to abundant meal while the proletariat of other countries starved in the gutter. Meanwhile the workers in the western countries were so much better off than those of the U.S.S.R. that non-contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders had to be a guiding principle of policy. Then, as a result of the war, millions of ordinary Russians penetrated far into Europe, and when they return home the original avoidance of reality will inevitably be paid for in frictions of various kinds. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one's subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one's thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean word where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality."

 

[LLJsmom]

Insert whatever bit of reality they feel they'll never have to encounter, doesn't matter what it is. Just no surprises there that they are mightily motivated to stay right, and can deny almost anything in order to avoid the ego hit of being wrong.

There's this though. From George Orwell, 1946.
He hit the nail on the head. Everything old is new again, I guess?

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose

"The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say ‘Guns before butter’, while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words.

Actually, however, the avoidance of reality is much the same everywhere, and has much the same consequences. The Russian people were taught for years that they were better off than everybody else, and propaganda posters showed Russian families sitting down to abundant meal while the proletariat of other countries starved in the gutter. Meanwhile the workers in the western countries were so much better off than those of the U.S.S.R. that non-contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders had to be a guiding principle of policy. Then, as a result of the war, millions of ordinary Russians penetrated far into Europe, and when they return home the original avoidance of reality will inevitably be paid for in frictions of various kinds. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one's subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one's thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean word where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality."

Ksinger, I can't understand everything you wrote the first go around but I will reread. I do understand the quote and thank you for thinking about it and sharing.

 

[arkieb1]

Ksinger - I agree wholeheartedly I think there are people with lots of views out there, those that voted for Trump that cannot be wrong, those that are blindly unable to see they were wrong and if here is anything to go by those they think it was partially wrong but use the justification the alternatives were somehow going to be SO much worse to help them sleep at night. I've stopped arguing with them. However, I live in hope that Trump is unstable enough that he will eventually implode and your political system will remove him.

 

[yennyfire]

Have you read this article? A neighbor (Christian), married to a Muslim dentist, posted this today. They are moving out of Atlanta for CA because of the way their lovely family has been treated by so called friends post election. They no longer feel welcome here. Antisemitism is also on the rise here (swatikas painted on bathroom walls in middle school, elementary boys saying "Heil
Hitler" to a Jewish classmate who's a hall monitor and told them to be quiet in the hall, etc.)

I am truly despondent by the beyond believable things that come out of Trump's mouth. I'm honestly embarrassed to call myself an American and am becoming increasingly nervous about my children identifying as being Jewish in our small Southern town. What a sad state of affairs. How we've come to this defies imagination and seems like a very bad horror movie!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...7ef4bc58d13_story.html?utm_term=.90a1a1bf7a21

 

[VRBeauty]

This NYT editorial says it all:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/...smid=fb-share&referer=https://m.facebook.com/

 

[ksinger]

This NYT editorial says it all:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/...smid=fb-share&referer=https://m.facebook.com/

Sadly, every word of this succinct piece, is part of what is absolutely the most perfect summation I've read since the horror began.

 

[Gussie]

I skimmed your article Deb. I enjoyed the phrase "our nation’s collective, surreal Groundhog Day". Indeed. And your breakdown of "political correctness" to Arkie, is pretty brilliant, and ties in nicely with the "consequence-free" vibe that seems to be infusing just about everything these days.

However, at the risk of sounding like I really have rolled over and am mostly dead, I just do not have the juice anymore, for outrage, or for willingly imbibing too much news of what I am utterly powerless to stop, or even slow. I get quite enough from the hubs, who still is in the thick of it.

Annette voiced her concern some months ago, that piling on unnecessary stress was probably very bad for my health. I took stock and decided I agreed, and have almost quit doing any news at all. Those of you who do not live in a state as reliably ultra-conservative as Oklahoma, can't really understand the level of energy, even on a local level - and one could argue that the local level is much more immediate and important - required to swim against the roaring torrent of meanness and flat out dirty dealing (always coyly wrapped in a flag and a bible of course) that is constantly happening at a local level. It's like staring into the pit: gaze too long and the pit starts gazing back at you.

Oh, and my husband, that teacher of many years and long teaching lineage, walked away from the classroom this last school year, after 22 years. It's been going on for some time now, but education in Oklahoma is dying even faster now, right before our eyes. Also very difficult to watch.

Ksinger, I am in Oklahoma this holiday weekend and I am in awe (not in a good way) of the trump followers here. I really try to stay away from political crap because I get so upset about it all. Being from Texas I have learned that I am often in the minority of opinion and it's best to keep my mouth shut. But the ignorance on both sides of the red river is truly scary.

One thing is for certain, there is a difference in being ridiculously poltically correct (everyone is outraged by anything these days) and just being a blatant pig.

 

[ksinger]

Ksinger, I am in Oklahoma this holiday weekend and I am in awe (not in a good way) of the trump followers here. I really try to stay away from political crap because I get so upset about it all. Being from Texas I have learned that I am often in the minority of opinion and it's best to keep my mouth shut. But the ignorance on both sides of the red river is truly scary.

One thing is for certain, there is a difference in being ridiculously poltically correct (everyone is outraged by anything these days) and just being a blatant pig.

Yeah, Texas does have the advantage of some very large diverse and cosmopolitan cities but still, when you're from Texas and can manage to be appalled by your slightly northern brethren, you know it's very bad. Okies can be a hard, heartless bunch. But at least they're cheap too. Ask whoever you're visiting here to hold forth on the education crisis here right now, all tied into our knuckle-dragging legislature. Often staffed by such stellar characters as Ralph Shortey. He was a semi-permanent fixture and object of scorn on Stewart's The Daily Show, but now he's a going to be a permanent fixture in the state pen for soliciting sex from an underage teenaged boy, (while his wife was at home) all caught on text and email. It was pretty vile.

Of course, like anywhere, there are lots of good, decent people here too. You just have to be very careful who you talk to, and what you reveal about yourself.