White Trash and Trump Chumps

Reading Nancy Isenberg's book, "White Trash" brought to mind a disturbing story I heard on NPR one morning.  It was told by a white man from Mississippi about his father.  When this man was about 8 years old, a neighboring farmer, a Black man, got a new mule and with that mule he was able to plow his fields admirably straight. Driving by those immaculate fields with his father, the boy remarked how good the fields looked. The father said nothing, but the next day the boy heard someone had shot the Black farmer's mule. 
"Did you shoot that mule?" he asked his father. 
"Sure did."  
"But, why?"
"'Cause if I'm no better than some nigger, then what am I?"

Just Wild for Adolph

That story encapsulated for me the importance of "pecking order," in American society.  The poor, the uneducated need somebody below them to disparage.  If they cannot feel superior by virtue of having gone to Princeton, well, then at least they can feel good about being white. You may be out of work, or working at some dead end job under the yoke of some boss, but you are at least not a Mexican wet back sneaking into America. You belong. You make America great by your very presence.

70 years later; Just wild for Donnie John

This is much of what underlies the deep resentment of President Obama, an uppity Black if ever there was one, a man so intelligent, articulate, one of the best writers to have ever been President, a man of such virtue the only way to attack him is by attacking his origins--born in Kenya. 

There was that sign I saw in rural New Hampshire: "Somewhere in Kenya, a village has lost its idiot." Only one possible explanation for that sign. You know what the guy who put up that sign is like.

Which means the usual "ground game" of trying to go door to door to persuade people is doomed in this election. Either people have understood the appeal of Mr. Trump as the man who says, "You are what makes America great, that is, white," or they have not. 

Of course, there are also the Bernie or Bust crowd enthusiasts, who are just as pernicious in their own self importance, but numerically, they are not as important.

The fact is, this election is not so much an election as a census, a referendum. How many of our fellow citizens are prepared to shoot that mule?

What Ann Richards Can Tell Hillary Clinton

Ann Richards, the governor of Texas, gave the keynote speech at the 1988 convention which nominated Michael Dukakis, who went on to lose to George H.W. Bush.  Hardly anyone I know can remember much about Michael Dukakis, but I know a lot of people who remember Ann Richards, because of that speech. 

I just watched it again on youtube and was surprised to see how many of her lines have become part of common reference: Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels; George Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple; he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

But what was really effective was her simple affirmation of what Democrats wanted: good day care, safe abortions, strong labor unions, fair trade treaties and what Republicans wanted:  to divide and to pit one section of the country against another, to let every man fight for himself, to kill government. 

I hope Hillary Clinton will take a look at that speech before she gives hers Thursday night. 

Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtIFhiqS_TY

Michelle, Ma Belle

All Class

"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves; and I watch my daughters –- two beautiful, intelligent, black young women –- playing with their dogs on the White House lawn."

"Don't tell me this country isn't great, or needs to be made 'great again.' It is the greatest country on earth."


--Michelle Obama

The If Only Donald/Hillary Debate

Tony Schwartz's description in The New Yorker of his magical mystery tour along the way to writing the book, "The Art of the Deal"  sparked all sorts of fantasies about the dream debate between the Donald and Hillary Clinton.

Here's one, of what I'm sure will be many:

The Donald:  Hillary you are so low energy, I don't know why you'd even want to be President. I mean you'd be worn out every day by noon. People love me. I'm on the front cover of all the big magazines. They sell millions when they put my picture on their covers. And you know what? That energizes me. But you, I mean you were the worst Secretary of state in this nation's history. Obama and you are so politically correct you won't even face the terrorists groups who are cutting off heads. Radical Islamists are cutting off heads and you won't even call them Radical Islamists. 

Hillary: Well, it's hard to know which of those fragments of thoughts to respond to, but let's start with the Secretaries of State.  If I'm the worst Secretary of State who's ever been, why don't you name say, five Secretaries of State, who did a better job?

The Donald: There was that lady. 

Hillary: The lady? You mean Condoleezza Rice? Or Madeline Albright? 

The Donald: Condoleezza. Nice lady.  I like Condoleezza. She had some guts. Not bad looking either. People say I'm a racist, but I can appreciate a beautiful woman no matter what her race. Blacks love me. I give 'em jobs.

Hillary: Can you think of other Secretaries of State?

The Donald: Colin Powell. Nice guy. I like the guy. 

Hillary: Oh, the guy who told the nation we had to go to war with Iraq because of all those weapons of mass destruction the Iraquis had hidden away? Remember that? All the nerve gas? I admit, I fell for that one. But that nerve gas thing sealed the deal, for me.  Of course, I didn't write the "Art of the Deal," so what do I know about deals? But then, again, neither did you, write that book, that is.

The Donald: I wrote every page of that book! That Schwartz guy is such a snake in the grass. After all I did for him. He needed the money and I let him in on the deal, and then look how he treats me.  But you, you know you look even smaller in person than I remember. And whoa! You've gained a ton of weight!  Eating too well at all those Goldman Sacks dinners. Crooked Hillary.

Hillary:  So now we're down where you like to live--in the physical world. What was it? "Little Marco Rubio?" Now it's "little Hillary."  

The Donald: Well, it's hard not to notice. I mean, either I've grown or you're shrinking. Maybe you ought to get screened for osteoporosis. I mean, I've had to deal with guys calling me little, which I assure you I'm not. There's nothing small down there. But you...I mean, maybe some women shrink after menopause, but you'd have to be dealing with some big guys as President. I don't think you can stand up to the pressure. 

Hillary:  Oh, but you would be big enough to deal with all those big guys?

The Donald: Absolutely. But you, the incredible shrinking Hillary, not so much. Just too small and weak.

Hillary: Oh, Donald, Donald, Donald.  Donald, you pride yourself on an animal faculty, in which the chimpanzee is your equal--and the jackass infinitely your superior.


The Donald: I don't have to put up with that crap.

Hillary: Oh, but you do, Donald, because this debate, this is occurring in the real world. They're fact checking everything you say and Tweeting about it, even as we speak.  And the fact is, you cannot even name a Secretary of State beyond the last two Republican appointees.  I might have thought you'd have mentioned Thomas Jefferson. Even you must know Thomas Jefferson. He had a role in the musical, "Hamilton." That is where you get your information, isn't it? TV? Show business.  Yes, I agree, I might not have been quite as good as Jefferson, but I think I did a little better than say, Cordell Hull. Surely, you remember that Secretary of State?

The Donald: Never heard of him.

Hillary: Oh, well he was the guy who sent back the boatload of Jewish refugees before we got into the Second World Ward, because he didn't think they had good character.  He wanted them to have letters of reference, character references from the Gestapo.  I might not have been the perfect Secretary of State, but at least I believe turning away people because they are part of an unpopular group at the moment, like say, Muslims, is a pretty savage thing to do.

The Donald: Connecting the Dots

Smug Elitist 

Resentment is au courrant.  It is the operating principle most talking heads use to explain the appeal of Donald J. Trump.

The underlying current is the people who resent their position actually deserve to be in the underclass. Typical of this attitude is the widely reported comment from Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard and high mucky muck in President Obama's administration, an economist of MIT pedigree. He said people resent being paid what they are actually worth, which is to say, the underclass deserves being an underclass.

While it is probably true many people who have never been able to make much money are poor because they are simply incompetent at mastering remunerative jobs, there is another story when it comes to fairness in the economic and financial life of this nation. 

Truth Speaker: A dangerous Man

This is at the heart of Andrew Hacker's accidental masterpiece, "The Math Myth" in which he demonstrates how irrelevant math tests have systematically eliminated many capable people from jobs across a broad spectrum of occupations from becoming a physician to passing the licensing exam to become  an electrician. 

While it has been easy to  dramatize how pernicious "tests" can be used to perpetrate social injustice, the math test scam has been underappreciated.

Never took a SAT exam

It is easy to see how "poll tests" were maliciously applied to prevent Black voters in the South from voting. The scene in which a Black woman (played, I believe, by Oprah Winfrey) goes to vote but the white clerk asks her to recite the Declaration of Independence and when she recites it, he asks her to recite the Constitution--all this  is absurd enough to drive home the point that almost anyone can be failed if the exam is arbitrary enough. 

It's harder to dramatize the injustice of exams which eliminate some people and not others, but the injustice is just as real and destructive. 

How many people have been thwarted by the American system of eliminating applicants by means of arbitrary "tests" by insisting we have a "meritocracy" when in fact, what we have is an aristocracy of wealth?  The rich typically can afford the tutoring which stacks the deck in their favor.

Those people who were told they could not be electricians or vets or doctors, people smoldering with resentment,  now hear the call from someone who says, "Yes, you were cheated, and I'm going to stick a finger in the eye of those elitists who did this to you."

He feels Their Pain

I have no polls, no data, only anecdotes, only the experience of sitting in a room with a man who has failed his electrician licensing exams because he could not work irrelevant math problems and he now faces, after years of apprenticeship, the prospect of never being able to be licensed as an electrician, of having to remain an indentured servant to a man who did pass those tests.  This makes the wannabe electrician burn with shame, but he also burns with resentment because he has seen for years the work actually required of an electrician and he knows he can do that work and never need any math at all.  So he thinks the game is rigged. And he is correct.

Things may be coming home to roost here in America, for a lot of reasons. But if Mr. Trump is swept into office, we can add this to the list.

Mr. Trump and the Underclass

The Donald appealed to people who thought themselves losers until he told them they were winners; there will be so much winning; but they've been stabbed in the back by the winners, who won by cheating them out of what was rightfully theirs.

When I listen to people who intend to vote for Mr. Trump, I despair, listening to those voices come across the radio.  Then I decide the best therapy is shock therapy; really dive deep into the river of despair and when you know you've got as low as you can go, you bounce up to the surface.

This post will reveal how deeply poisoned I have become by class in America. My grandfather, who believed the people and the workers were noble and their capitalist masters evil, would turn in his grave.

But then I remember what my father said:  "I'm all for the workers. But these people are not workers."

So where is the river of despair?  It's a website called, "Shoppers of Walmart."  

I see these folks crossing in front of my car down at Hampton Beach. Sometimes they come into my office. 

They do not care about well formed thoughts, evidence, questioning; they look at me with defeated, defiant eyes and they try to play me.

I do not ask them which New Yorker article from the current issue they enjoyed.  I do not try to discuss the most recent Gail Collins article with them.  Sometimes I tell them about what Rachel Madow said last night, but they stare back with uncomprehending eyes.  She said--what?

 But they love the Donald, who tells them they are winners. When he is President, there will be so much winning, people will get bored with winning. And they will share in all that winning. 

 And they don't care if they are being conned, because they think they are suckers and if it's not the Donald, it will be Hillary or anyone else.

In Deo Speramus. 
E Pluribus Unum. 
Illigetimi non carbarendum.

How The System Gets Rigged

NPR did a wonderful piece on the way the Michigan legislature dealt with a federal welfare program  designed to encourage states to deal with teen age out of wedlock pregnancies.  The MIchigan legislators reasoned keeping girls in college would reduce unwanted pregnancy rates, since, apparently, coeds get pregnant less often than girls who do not go to college, as if it was being in college that convinced girls to engage in contraception while those girls who went to work or just sat home, got pregnant a lot. 

A very odd interpretation of cause and effect, in Michigan.

So NPR interviews a family which has sent both its kids to private colleges using this loophole, and they interviewed the dean of the college which got the money and they interviewed the legislator who got it into law.

When the father was confronted with the reality that the grant he got from Michigan for his kid's tuition was a welfare program, he said, well, this college education will mean my kids earn more money, eventually and will pay higher taxes, which will benefit the poor, eventually. 

When told she was sending her kids to college using welfare, the mother said, well, it's really hard on a family to have two kids in college at the same time, and they are really pressed, financially. Of course, their joint income is $225,000 and they live in a 3,800 square foot house with an in ground swimming pool, but she said it was really hard keeping things going on that income with two kids in college. What about sending the kids to a less expensive state school? Well, but then they wouldn't be as happy there. 

The daughter said she was sympathetic to people on welfare, who needed welfare to buy a winter coat, but then when she was a college graduate she'd pay more taxes to buy more coats for more welfare kids.  When asked whether she thought the money had served its purpose, to prevent her from getting pregnant before she was 20, before she was married and economically secure, she laughed.  "Does going to college keep me from getting pregnant? Well, I think maybe the birth control pills have something to do with that."

The son said, "Hey, if they want to give me money, I'll take it."

I liked his answer best. 

As the NPR reporter said, "There you have it in Michigan: Trickle down from the welfare program."

The college dean said his college was highly ranked and deserved money from the government, which he needed.

The legislator said, hey, if the federal government approved using welfare funds for college expenses, it was legal.
Sadly, nobody asked the legislator how he had voted about funding Planned Parenthood.

All this reminds me of that study in which students were given Monopoly games to play, but some of  the students were given twice as much money and lots of hotels at the start and when the students were questioned after the game, the advantaged students said they had won the game because they were smarter, took more risks and were more worthy.  

The capacity to rationalize injustice is wondrous to behold.