“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
—-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during a fundraiser—just as Mitt Romney’s infamous “47%” comment in 2012 was made at a fundraiser!—the LGBT for Hillary Gala in New York City on Sept. 9, 2016.
One of the consistent features of both Clintons is that they engage in so much problematic conduct that often one incident worthy of serious criticism will be knocked out of the headlines by another.
Hillary’s 9/11 “over-heating, well, dehydration, well, ok, since it’s on video, she has pneumonia” fiasco, demonstrating that suspicions that she and her campaign aren’t being truthful about the state of her health are not “conspiracy theories,” effectively muted discussion about her “basket of deplorables” classic, complete with an imaginary word, “generalistic,” that if it had been uttered by George W. Bush would have been mocked far and wide.
I categorize this as an ethics quote rather than an unethical quote, because it is both ethical and unethical simultaneously. (The Clinton’\s seldom say things that aren’t adaptable to multiple interpretations; this allows them to leap from one to the other, like they are ice floes, when one meaning is justly condemned or found to be false.)
On the ethical side, it is completely fair and accurate to diagnose Trump supporters as deplorable, defined as “lamentable, or deserving censure or contempt.” This doesn’t apply to those conflicted potential voters who have reluctantly decided that in the terrible binary choice Americans have had shoved down their civic gullets by the two incompetent political parties, Donald Trump is preferable to Hillary Clinton. That is not the most responsible choice—it can’t ever be responsible to give such power to an unstable and ignorant boor—but it is an excusable mistake, given the horrible dilemma.
Supporting Trump, however, as in actively wanting him to become President, is as good a definition of “deplorable” as I can imagine. In this respect, Hillary was too generous. 100%, not merely 50%, of Trump’s supporters are deplorable. They lack the values, civic responsibility, understanding of their own nation and its history, or sufficient intelligence to be competent voters.
You know: deplorable.
That isn’t what Hillary meant to convey by “deplorables,” however, because she knows that the meanings of the labels she used are far broader to her fervent progressive supporters than what reasonable definitions suggest. ( Note: Hillary supporters are deplorable for the same reasons Trump’s supporters are: if one really wants a woman this corrupt and dishonest to become President, that’s inexcusable.) The intent of her statement was to reaffirm that Americans holding particular views that Democrats and progressives refuse to consider or tolerate are not worthy of being Americans at all, and should be treated as “the other,” or exactly as Clinton claims that they are treating Muslims, blacks, immigrants, women and gays.
Here is the insidious message Clinton’s carefully crafted wedge was meant to convey…
“Offensive rhetoric “ is politically incorrect rhetoric, or whatever leftist cant says should offend the good, real Americans,
“Hateful rhetoric” is any position or opinion that opposes the Democratic agenda and the agendas of their favored interest groups.
“Mean-spirited” is to opposes massive wealth transfer from the wealthy, near-wealthy, self-sufficient, industrious and successful to everyone else.
“Islamophobic” means citizens who accept, unlike the Obama administration, the fact that ISIS is a radical Islamic terrorist organization, and that accepting unvetted hundreds of thousands of assimilation-resistant refugees and migrants from area where radical Islam thrives is dangerous and irresponsible.
“Xenophobic” means those who understand that open-borders and illegal immigration without deterrents is an insane and existentially irresponsible national policy.
“Homophobic” citizens are, to the LGBT for Hillary crowd, anyone who has been slow to fall in line with the fastest major cultural shift within memory, the understanding that gay people deserve all the rights of citizens including the right to marry. T%he description also attaches to those who do not believe it makes sense to mandate that any gender, pseudo-gender, self-identified gender or imaginary gender can use whatever locker room or restroom they feel like using regardless of who else may be using it.
“Sexist” includes principled opponents of abortion, who believe that a fetus is a human life that deserves human rights. It includes anyone who believes that a woman saying she was harassed, assaulted,or raped requires evidence, and she does not have a “right to be believed” when that means that the men accused are stigmatized, demonized , punished and harassed themselves in the absence of evidence beyond a woman’s word. “Sexist” also includes anyone who has the courage and integrity to call foul on the continually circulated lie—yes, the current Amy Shumer-Josh Rogan commercial makes me want to leap through the screen— that women are not payed the same salaries when they do the same job, with the same credentials, experience, seniority, demonstrable accomplishments and ability as men in that same job. “Sexist” also includes anyone who points out how corrupt Hillary Clinton is.
Finally, “racist” means critics of Barack Obama. It means anyone who doesn’t approve of airbrushing away history by removing the names of Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, Lee and others from monuments and institutions. It covers those who do not believe that the United States systematically oppresses blacks, or that police departments shoot unarmed African-Americans with joyful abandon. Racists, to Hillary’s audience, also means citizens who object to racial quotas, the use of “disparate impact” to invalidate legitimate and color blind laws, affirmative action, and who believe that voters should be able to prove who they are on election day.
Nobody disagrees that real racists are “deplorable,” because they believe in denigrating and subjugating blacks based on their race. True xenophobes, not those tarred with the label to suppress criticism of policies that reward illegal immigration, but those who are prejudiced toward legal immigrants and foreign visitors, are un-American to the core. Genuine sexists, who don’t support the rights of women to achieve success on their merits unencumbered by their gender, deserve all the opprobrium the culture can muster, are archaic remnants of 19th century ignorance. Fairly labeled homophobes continue to oppress gay Americans as perverts and threats to civilization based on ignorant beliefs thousands of years old, and they do not deserve respect. Actual Islamophobes are religious bigots who would withhold from followers of one of the world’s great religions the right of freedom of worship that the Constitution ensures the rest of us.
These aren’t the definitions Clinton was evoking however. Her goal was to use the vilest and most damaging labels possible to declare vast numbers of American citizens who do not embrace progressive ideology as less than decent, less than tolerable, less than American.
This divisive strategy has been the hallmark of the hyper-partisan Obama Administration, and it is clear that Hillary Clinton intends to continue it, long after Donald Trump is but an unpleasant memory.
That is deplorable.
Ethics Alarms 
So deplorable that a vote for Clinton is as impossible as a vote for Trump a thinking citizen has no options that allow a vote in good conscience.
Now THAT’S deplorable.
You just inspired me to write this updated version of Perry Como’s hit, “It’s Impossible”…
It’s deplorable, to have Clinton versus Trump
It’s just deplorable
It’s deplorable, to hear them both lie on the stump
It’s just deplorable,
Can I find another party
And not feel all sick and farty
Find an option that won’t make me slit my wrists
Oh, how deplorable!
Can The Donald ever learn to speak or read?
It’s just deplorable
Or can Clinton, ever satisfy her greed?
It’s just deplorable…
In November
When we stand before the world and say “Here’s POTUS!”
It will want to take some tar and promptly coat us…
It’s just deplorable,
Deplorable,mmm
Deplorable.
(Perry’s glad he’d dead…)
If you record it I promise to buy it!
Well it just won’t work Hillary. Not everyone who supports Trump is deplorable and Hillary has pissed off enough people by that statement where we may wind up with President Trump for better or worse. My mother used to to use the expression “the pot calling the kettle black” and Hillary’s conduct has been despicable as well as Trump’s. I see absolutely no possibility that Hillary will change in the least. Ethics to her is as meaningful as dirt on the floor.
Thank you Wayne. I’m glad you’re one of the first to respond. It takes away, a little, from Marshall’s pathetic remarks that all true Trump supporters are indeed deplorable.
This part follows the quote that Jack provides at the top:
“But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
Mrs. Clinton is putting the Trump supporters into two groups, not one, and she thinks the second group has some real grievances and nobody (except Trump) recognizes that.
I think use of partial quotes is unethical.
Uncharacteristic of Jack, anyway. Perhaps he will update his post.
Even Jove nods.
The point of the Ethics/Unethical Quote of the Month is to highlight the portion of the speech/article that has ethics implications or breaches. That portion of the quote isn’t relevant to the post, except that I, unlike Clinton, made it quite clear that ALL Trump SUPPORTERS are unethical.
PolitiFact, that supposedly neutral, left-biased fact0check source, made the same defense of Clinton you just did—and it is a defense, the old “I was quoted out of context!” bit. (Be honest, now: did you see this in PolitiFact first?) The fact that Clinton talks about the “good” people who are “supporting Trump”—I guess that’s what’s in the basket, though you do realize, right, that she calls this a “Basket of Deplorables,” and not a “half-basket of deplorables,” —she describes them as people let down by and suffering under the the very adminsitration she has sworn to follow in every way.
Which raises some other ethics issues, the usual ones with Hillary.
If I quote a passage from “War and Peace,” I don’t feel I have to quote the whole book. In this case, the quote had 85 words, or about a third of the Gettysburg address. THAT address painted an inclusive, unified vision of America, Clinton’s first section, and coming first, it is the context for the second part, not the other way around is about dividing and demonizing, and nothing in the part you quote changes that one whit,
That “To be honest now …” remark addressed to me strikes me as ad hominem, not worthy of Jack Marshall. No, I didn’t go to one of those fact-checking sites that you rant about. (Really, do you find no reliable sources?)
FYI, I first saw the quote in the Washington Post, but it was split in two. Curiosity led me to seek the transcript, which was on the Time magazine site. It became immediately obvious to me that the right wing would pull a Krauthammer, attacking only part of the statement and acting as if that was all there was.
My biggest complaint about this campaign is that we know that a sizable number of Americans are not making any economic gains, mostly because of where they live. Both parties for years have proposed practical remedies to help these Americans but never applied them. I don’t know whether this is political inertia or jealousy that credit for any successful effort will go to the other side. Hey, the ones left out are also part of us.
Al, you should know that I really despise erroneous uses of “ad hominem attack.” If would I wrote strikes you as an ad hominem attack, then you don’t know what one is. I suggested that because PolitiFact thought it fact-checked the quote in question by adding the next section, and your argument was so similar that I wondered it you had seen it. I apologize for the apparently unwarranted assumption: in truth, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, because the argument is terrible. First of all, a subsequent statement typically doesn’t change the earlier one, at least in competent rhetoric. “Context” must be apparent to the listener while the listener hears the supposedly contextualized statement. (Remember that Trump’s alleged racist statement that Mexican immigrants are rapists”was frozen in stone by the news media despite his “some of them are good people” qualification later in the same paragraph, which does make the latter statement contextual.) Others here are correct that Hillary’s Part 2 implied that some of Trump’s current supporters were misguided “good people” a.k.a. Democrats. Wait—why are good people half of the “Basket of Deplorables”? Because that part of the speech was an afterthought….not “context.”
Hillary was the one using the ad hominem fallacy: Donald Trump is bad because his supporters are bad people—deplorables. That’s what actual ad hominem is: the argument that a position is wrong because the one who advocates it is evil, stupid, untrustworthy, or Bill Cosby. That is so far from what I wrote that they aren’t in the same hemisphere. I didn’t suggest that your argument was wrong because you might have been inspired by PolitiFact. And “be honest now” is an idiom: if you think that suggests you are dishonest, you’re hyper-sensitive.: it is like, “admit it” or “come clean.” I explained why the second part of Hillary’s smear doesn’t change the first; i didn’t attack you instead.
Simple rule of thumb: “You are an idiot because your argument is idiotic”: not ad hominem. “You argument is wrong because you are an idiot”: Ad hominem.
And no, I am not saying YOU personally are an idiot in either example.
“Context” must be apparent to the listener while the listener hears the supposedly contextualized statement. (Remember that Trump’s alleged racist statement that Mexican immigrants are rapists”was frozen in stone by the news media despite his “some of them are good people” qualification later in the same paragraph, which does make the latter statement contextual.) Others here are correct that Hillary’s Part 2 implied that some of Trump’s current supporters were misguided “good people” a.k.a. Democrats. Wait—why are good people half of the “Basket of Deplorables”?
Huh?
They aren’t, Jack. You’ve read her statement entirely wrong if you think she said the “good people” are “half of the Basket of Deplorables.”
She clearly said that the Basket of Deplorables is one half of Trump’s supporters, and the other half are good people.
She said it right here, in the part you quoted:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.
So yes, the latter half of Clinton’s statement adds exactly the same tpye of context as Trump’s “some are good people” line.
From Clinton’s speech: “But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
____________________
The implication is that if someone — i.e. the Government — would recognize and come to the rescue of these forgotten struggling ones, that — poof! — they *as problem* would disappear. The wind would cease to billow their sails. They would return to contented existence, like a happy cow. But most importantly they would get out of the political arena where their static and their up-rising is upsetting the Apple Cart of American politics. Their manifestation has shaken the structure of politics.
Once again, in order to understand a New Right which has been defining itself in upright, cogent, well thought-through terms — I refer to the European New Right and GRECE — one has to become familiar with its discourse. When one does that, one will see that this *tossing of scraps of bread* and the promise of a renewed quiescent *circus*, and the flaccid ideological space in which so many Americans sadly exist and are at home in, is precisely what they are advocating against. According to this view, Europe must WAKE UP, and must resist this sleepy, dreamy, multicultural socio-economic multiculturalism that is the death of Europe. And America must understand how a large System, headed up significantly by America and its systems, stands behind this. (This is a large aspect of the European Alt-Right discourse).
This is tough material to chew and to swallow becuase it means being challenged to step out of a culture-wide definition and the expand the boundaries of the American self-concept: A doctrine, an economic platform, an egalitarian philosophy, a universalization of values, an imposition of these values.
In this sense the philosophers of this New Right appeal to thoughtful Americans, and Americans who may be appalled by what is going on in American society and culture, to recommect with Europe in this special and in some senses spiritual sense.
The Right in American has FRACTURED. It has no cogent position that I can see, and no position around which an American-European can rally. There is no ‘dog-whistle’ here since the terms are openly stated. America is an extension of Europe and — some say — she must return to self-definition which is European. That means, to exist and abandon the classical American multicultural model and what is sold in the realm of ideas.
For this reason the process of ‘rediscovery of America’, and what it means to be American, interweaves with all the problematic issues and definitions of culture-race, cultural identification, idea, value, and all else.
I have the sense that this is the time of real activism and renewed theoretical definition, and as I have said: redefinition of ideology.
Which will be worse: a Trump presidency or a U.S. Supreme Court with at least a five justice very liberal majority for the rest of my life time?
Or a very conservative 6 or more majority who Trump has categorically pledged will overturn Roe vs Wade, Obergefell vs Hodges, Griswold vs Connecticut, Eisenstadt vs Baird, and so might reasonably be expected to review Lawrence vs Texas and possibly even Loving vs Virginia.
Though given other things Trump has said, regarding the military obeying illegal orders, this may be the least of our worries should Trump make use of some of the very expansive anti-terror legislation signed into being by Obama, with the pledge that *his* administration wouldn’t misuse it.
Many Trump supporters want to see Clinton and Obama executed as traitors. Given the power of the POTUS now to have ISIS supporters put before military tribunals, and given that Trump has stated that Clinton and Obama founded ISIS, and given the support for Trump by dozens of generals retired before 2001, who could be recalled to active duty just to serve on these tribunals…. but then, Trump says a lot of things. He might not mean it.
It would all be quite legal, and although unconstitutional, that point might become moot. Trump doesn’t seem to know or care too much about such nice distinctions.
More likely, with a liberal majority any chance to control the borders will be gutted, CO2 will be regulated with total impunity by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. There will be no Congressional control over the executive branch, the Second Amendment will be gutted. I doubt abortion rights will be demolished, nor will gay rights under any scenario.
Hyperbole
Or both. Which is entirely possible.
The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the largest police union in the U.S., has endorsed GOP nominee Donald Trump for the presidency.
On Sept. 16, the FOP released an official statement announcing that the union was endorsing Trump after more than two-thirds of its national board voted in support, The Hill reports.
“[Trump] has seriously looked at the issues facing law enforcement today,” said FOP national president Chuck Canterbury. “He understands and supports our priorities and our members believe he will make America safe again.”
http://www.americanow.com/story/society/2016/09/16/americas-largest-police-union-endorses-trump?fb=ov
2/3 of the national board think Trump’s ethics are not just acceptable, but laudible. They didn’t endorse Romney, but they do endorse Trump.
I find some cold comfort that 1/3 did not. Possibly as many as one in three still have some shred of Integrity.
And on another issue…
The evidence suggests otherwise. Many are fine with it, Jack. It’s no longer unacceptable for them to be out and proud.
You mean you would expect law enforcement to endorse a women who doesn’t respect laws and regulations? From a party that officially adopts BLM platform? No shit they aren’t going to endorse her, trump may be despicable but he hasn’t proven to himself to be, or think he is, above the law. 70 years old and although the guy had done some shady, unethical things he isn’t the one who constantly disregards laws and ignores the intent of such things.
Your too smart to be so biased and partisan.
I can entirely understand them, or anyone else, not endorsing Clinton. I wouldn’t.
No, they endorsed Trump, when they wouldn’t endorse Romney. Think about that.
Fuhrer befehl, wir folgen dir. Literally. A Leader. A Strong Leader. One unafraid to make “tough choices” and “see them through”. If this doesn’t raise hackles on your back, you have studied neither history, nor what has happened in Russia, Byelorus, etc. Places with “leaders unafraid to make tough choices and see them through”, and who don’t worry about legal niceties that get in the way. Strong Leaders, with the backing of the Police. I won’t call them “law enforcement”, as laws are the last thing they worry about when enforcing Order.
And did they give reason why they did not endorse Romney? If they did not endorce Romney, did they endorce Obama?
I will bet you, because it happened to so many people, including myself, that *they* (many people who are also police) were in a sense racialized away from the entire trend that would clamor for a Black president. I just made what I think is a true but also a very problematic statement, and one that cannot be made without slipping over into ‘unthinkable thought’. And as always such statements have to be unpacked. And this takes some time.
But I will bet you that ‘white America’ has now come to understand, perhaps less intellectually but certainly viscerally, what are the ramifications of a transformation of America into an active multi-ethnic or multi-racial nation. And I will also bet you that some large percentage, though they are chary of articulating a ‘racist’ position (as any such articulation will be labeled) desire for America to become again more of what it was. I will further suggest that ‘Make America Great Again’ very certainly, and yet without stating it as such, is at least a reference — political and social nostalgia? — to that former America. And I feel I can say — though it is intuitive more than anything — that if the police are tending to lean toward Trump it is because they advocate for, they long for and desire, a very specific identity that (and I will contradict myself) is nebulous in some senses because it cannot be clearly thought-through. I am referring to race and identity here.
One cannot think straighly and clearly in these areas and all sharp though is dulled when it hist the PC fog.
So, I am pretty sure that if the FOP is endorsing Trump, they do it because they pretty clearly see where the democratic-party policies go and what they will result in.
So I think it must be understood that race and identity of the very nation itself is very very much an issue here, and perhaps it is the main issue? But it cannot be conscious.
__________________________
I notice your concern for ‘furher befehl’ et cetera, and I very much respect it. Yet I’d suggest that if you take what you seem to propose to its extreme, you wind up as advocate for precisely what we live in the present. And that is essentially a form of hyper-liberalism which will tend, as it is now tending, toward exactly what we are living in our present.
It takes ‘strong idea’ and in this sense an authoritarian relationship to ONESELF to make any real progress within oneself, does it not? Any self-disciplie whether in ethics or in study or in sports or in art or even in *renunciation of the world* (spiritual discipline), is essentially a form of applied self-fascism. I am being serious.
One cannot constantly *liberalize* and there will come a point, naturally and inevitably, when the tide turns. And therefor one must predict, as natural reaction, a conservative reacion.
Yet based on what you seem to say, you have no way to allow this. Do you see my point?
Excuse me. I meant to write: I will bet you, because it happened to so many people, including myself, that *they* (many people who are also police) were in a sense RADICALIZED away from the entire trend that would clamor for a Black president.
Also, I mispelled ‘endorse’. Endorce actually looks right to me.
Steve: No shit they aren’t going to endorse her, trump may be despicable but he hasn’t proven to himself to be, or think he is, above the law.
He absolutely has, in ways that have been well documented here. He has crowed that he will give soldiers illegal orders and that they will follow them. He has endorsed war crimes. He has bribed government officials investigating him. He has committed fraud. He has suggested violating the first amendment more times than I can remember. He has endorsed political violence. All of that shows that he does in fact think he is above the law.
I find it interesting to listen to, to think about, to analyze, to *understand where they are coming from and what concerns them* those who are working hard to frame this ‘Alt Right’ and by extension the Basket of Deplorables. When one begins the process of understanding the ‘alternative narrative’ that has, somewhat miraculously, entered into popular and mass discourse all on the sudden, one is led automatically and quickly into the very heart of a polemical discourse. Here is Rachel Maddock:
One has to take this into consideration; one has to take it in, process it, sort through it, and then — if one is interested in accurancy — critique it, correct it and send up the corrected version.
What is interesting, from my perspective, is that right now we are witnessing a period in which *standard narratives* are collapsing. There are other narratives which are making their presence known and felt and, as with Maddock, and because they are new, strange, and part of ‘unthinkable thought’ (what you are not allowed to think because of systems of control that have been established which monitor and patrol the paramters of *acceptable thought*), they HAVE to be framed in a certain way, in the darkest way, and the first one to get in there and perform the framing will generally set the stage of all future references.
But the truth is substantially different (though one could not deny some of the facets which Maddock refers to). One has to unpack it all. And what *unpack* here means is to go back over the entire post-war history of Europe and to examine the Overarching Directing Narratives. This takes time and it requires sincerity and perserverence. It is not done in a moment or in a day. In essence it is a process of redefining meaning, value, the self-in-the-world, but importantly a certain essential *core* that can be understood as being *European*.
The *real* ‘Alt-Right’ is essentially a European philosophical school that came into being just around the events of 1968 in France. It is also a way of looking at and interpreting those events and their ramification. It is ‘anti-liberal’ in some senses similar to the anti-liberal position of Robert Bork as detailed in ‘Slouching Toward Gemmorah’. But in truth it is quite distinct insofar as it cannot be said to be either of the classic (European) right or of the left. It is a fresh, open, and reasoned examination of the entire question of what it means to be *of the right*. That in itself can be spoken about only in a somewhat long discourse. One can investigate GRECE and Alain de Benoit to get some grasp of how it began and what are the ideas and proccupations that motivate it.
But it is crucial to understand that this European Right regards America and its various forms of liberalism, and this liberalism which is at the heart of America and indeed which brought it into existence and animates it, as a danger to Europe. It focusses on the post-war epoch when, as a result of such stunning victory, America called the shots in redesigning Europe *in its own image*. America, according to some on this right, is an adversary but not an enemy. This is a crucial distinction. This conservative Europe which is now developing in Europe and which is generally referred to negatively as ‘far right’ or ‘extreme right’, is a nativist, self-protectionist, and yet intellectually adept and reasoned philosophical movement in political and cultural ideas.
One cannot understand the American version of the ‘Alt-Right’ if one does not take some time to understand the philosophical, social and cultural expositions of this European right. My endeavor is and has been — always stated openly and clearly — to provide a service to those who are interested in exploring politics and culture by examination of different and varied material. There are a dozen European philosophers one could mention in this connection, but one only need GRECE as a starting point (Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne) (https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupement_de_recherche_et_d%27%C3%A9tudes_pour_la_civilisation_europ%C3%A9enne)(I don’t know if this page has an English translation).
That is, if one desires to understand. Now, it is quite obvious and it must be stated so: many will not and do not *desire to understand*. I find this the most interesting area and it is the area that intrigues me: How it is that people establish intellectual walls and how they keep *dangerous* ideas on the other side of that wall so that they do not have to be thought about.
I mispelled Gomorrah.
And the link to GRECE was messed: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupement_de_recherche_et_d%27%C3%A9tudes_pour_la_civilisation_europ%C3%A9enne
This conservative Europe which is now developing in Europe and which is generally referred to negatively as ‘far right’ or ‘extreme right’, is a nativist, self-protectionist, and yet intellectually adept and reasoned philosophical movement in political and cultural ideas.
Concur. One we last saw in the 30’s. “Travail, famille, patrie” replacing “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. The Clivedon set’s view. One we’re starting to see grow worldwide, even in Australia with One Nation. “One People One Nation One Leader”. Or in the original, “Ein Volk Ein Reich Ein Fuhrer”.
And here I am, a Cold Warrior from way back, having done my bit against Leftist authoritarianism in the past, now having to fight my parents’ ancient enemy once more. I just hope my son won’t be confronted with a resurgence of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” after me. And I thought all I’d have to do is oppose the “malefactors of great wealth”, like Clinton’s backers. No such luck.
I briefly reviewed One Nation. I committed the sin of resorting to the Wiki page. If I understand you right I think that what you are saying is that you fear a resurgence in right-wing authoritarian populism that — as seems to be your view — will turn ‘fascistic’?
It also seems that you regard, perhaps *instinctively*, the platform of One Nation-like groups as being Nazi-like because they desire — to put it in stark terms — to *keep Australia white*? Or that they have an instinctive resistance to hyper-liberal policies?
You might be interested in this group of artciles. I read the one on Pauline Hanson. http://www.counter-currents.com/tag/australia/
I assume that you are aware that groups like GRECE (de Benoit in France) attempt to understand the European civil conflict (WW2 as a European civil war) by coming to understand the right-wing or conservative or old-liberal reaction to impending communism. For this reason they can examine with some freedom the ‘fascist’ discourse and to see it in numerous ways as a ‘positive reaction’ to the danger of communism.
Factually, and this is my understanding, the nativism and nationalism of this movement in Europe at that time, reflected genuine and responsible sentiments of common people. I have found that when a people takes upon itself to define itself, it will do so in conservative terms. They do not, again in my experience, embrace multinationalist, universalist, multiethnic and multiculturalist doctrine. I have come to conclude that one must learn these modes. One has to be submitted, if I can put it this way, to a process of mild or heavy indoctrination (in the honest and truer sense of the word) and one takes on these views, and believes them, believing that one is taking on an ethically higher and more moral doctrine. Thus, these received views tend to function well in a post-Christian world and they seem to replace religious sentiments.
And since we live in an era of extreme liberal indoctrination, such as the post-60s world really and truly is, the work as I see it is to construct a conceptual alternative, and this must be done philosophically and through structured ideation.
While I cannot make any ultimate statements about what will happen with the new right in Europe, what I think I can say is that the philosophers which are attempting to define new interpretive models seem anything but ‘Nazis’. Additionally, nearly all of them oppose ‘Teutonic Imperialism’ and they wish to avoid repeating anything even remotely similar. It is fair however to describe them not as anti-semites but as Jewish-critical. And Jewsih criticism is always problematical.
Some part of what you write confuses me. If you were a ‘Cold Warrior’ that means ‘anti-Communist’, doesn’t it? But does that mean that you are also critical of the post-Marxian shift? As with the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’?
I believe Colin Powell has best described both.
Jack, you are projecting an *awful* lot into the terms “sexist,” “racist,” etc. that was neither said nor implied by Clinton’s statements. If she were referring to Jeb Bush supporters, you might have a point. But Trump supporters have undoubtedly exemplified these qualities in their classical senses. Go to any pro-Trump site and read the things they say about Muslims, then tell me they are simply “accepting that ISIS is a radical Islamist terrorist organization.”
You’re twisting Clinton’s words to mean something she didn’t say or imply, and overlooking the clear meaning of them. That’s unethical.
No, it’s unethical to allow this kind of dog whistling to go by without flagging it. I have accurately described what progressives and Clinton supporters mean when they call people racists, homophobic, sexist, etc. I have chronicled too many examples of that to count, right here on Ethics Alarms. All of these words are politically loaded labels with far more narrow and appropriate definitions—I didn’t load them. Listen to MSNBC for a half hour. For example, are you seriously going to argue that the principled position that illegal immigrants, being illegal, have no right to stay in the US or see their children receive special benefits (they are “Dreamers,” you know, not illicit residents! ) isn’t routinely derided as motivated by racism and xenophobia by Democrats, including elected officials, and progressives? Are you seriously going to try to tell me that Hillary Clinton doesn’t pander to this voting bloc? Are you going to tell me that NARAL and other pro-abortion groups don’t demonize opposition to abortion as sexist? Are you seriously going to try to tell me that Hillary Clinton doesn’t pander to this voting bloc? Democrats are cheering Colin Kaepernick for saying that police departments are “oppressing blacks” by not suspending police involved in shootings without pay! It’s racist to employ due process—that the BLM position, and Hillary is seeking those votes too. You really think it’s the slightest stretch to conclude that this speech was also aimed at that bloc and their own bigotry?
Go ahead. Make those cases. Or admit that I’m not reading a thing into my translation of Hillary’s basket passenger list.
In *this* context, the terms racism and sexism did not refer to those arguments, but to arguments like “Deport all muzzles” and “Execute that bitch Hillary,” comments which are common among the “deplorables” Clinton referred to. So yes, while liberals–including Clinton–do at times use the terms racism and sexism to condemn legitimate disagreement, that was clearly not what Clinton was talking about in her condemnation of half of Trump’s supporters, and is this irrelevant to the ethics of her statement.
*muzzies
Chris, come on. I use words to mean the same thing every time, before every audience. When I use a label with people who distribute those labels in a certain way, I know that is how they take them—if it is too broad an assumption, I have an ethical obligation to say so. Take the exact context of these comments: You must conceded that virtually all of the LGBT audience regards all those who oppose gay marriage as homophobic and bigots. I’ve been following the rhetoric on this for years. This groups is not inclined to be braid-minded about the religious beliefs involved: to them it’s bigotry. True? And if Hillary was talking about “sexism” to a Planned Parenthood group, what would that audience assume she meant?
“You must conceded that virtually all of the LGBT audience regards all those who oppose gay marriage as homophobic and bigots. I’ve been following the rhetoric on this for years. This groups is not inclined to be braid-minded about the religious beliefs involved: to them it’s bigotry. True? ”
Nope. “Most” I’ll grant you. Not “virtually all”. Or maybe it’s different in the US. It’s true though that they tend not to be broad-minded on the subject of religious beliefs in general – like the flat earth for example. They don’t consider flat earthers to be bigots or morally deficient, just very very stupid, and not worth debating at length. Same with Moon Landing Hoaxers.
Hanlon’s Razor. But most people don’t follow it, and when the conduct in question is felt as personal antipathy, I’ll stick with “virtually all” take it personally, as in “prejudice, hate and bigotry.”
“I use words to mean the same thing every time, before every audience.”
Yes, but Hillary Clinton doesn’t, so I’m missing your point. You’d be better off arguing that Clinton’s previous use of the terms “bigotry” et al. has damaged her credibility so that it makes it hard to take her seriously when she accurately calls out Trump’s supporters for real, legitimate bigotry. Instead you said this:
These aren’t the definitions Clinton was evoking however. Her goal was to use the vilest and most damaging labels possible to declare vast numbers of American citizens who do not embrace progressive ideology as less than decent, less than tolerable, less than American.
Of which there is no evidence. Again, if she were arguing that anyone who opposes Planned Parenthood is sexist, you might have a point that she was accusing “all who do not embrace progressive ideology” of being bigots. But she was specifically referring to a subset of Trump supporters, which you must know *are* racist, sexist, xenophobic and Islamophobic by definition. These are the guys who genuinely believe–and say–that Trump is the last hope for an ethnically white America. These are Alizia’s people, though most aren’t as educated as her and are more blunt.
Chris writes: “But she was specifically referring to a subset of Trump supporters, which you must know *are* racist, sexist, xenophobic and Islamophobic by definition. These are the guys who genuinely believe–and say–that Trump is the last hope for an ethnically white America. These are Alizia’s people, though most aren’t as educated as her and are more blunt.”
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I suppose in some senses you are right. I just happen to feel confident that I can define each of those positions. I can also clarify that racialism is not necessarily the ‘racism’ that you dislike, and too I can talk about and explain ‘sexism’, ‘xenophobia’ and ‘islamophobia’. In fact, and especially if you use other terms that are not so tinged, they can all be sensible, intelligent positions.
I have seen no discourse that is specifically by Trump people speaking about what they want and hope for. You have got me interested to find out more. I am actually more of a theorist, and obviously a Eurocentric, than a classic ‘common American’. Plus I am a naturalized foreigner, and this makes a difference. It is possible that much of what I think, and say, would not be so well received by this common man.
Here are a couple of windows into the views of this common Trump deplorable.
“Yes, but Hillary Clinton doesn’t, so I’m missing your point.”
I think you made his point… But I hate it when people put words in my mouth, so I’m going to make my own: Words should have meaning. Easily understandable, unjargonized meaning. This idea that words change depending on who the speaker or the audience is isn’t entirely without merit, but it is when you’re a national politician on national TV. National candidates by the nature of politics either speak to the lowest common denominator or disenfranchise voters, and Clinton saying words with meanings outside the accepted common vernacular, and us translating for her, is either us giving her a benefit of the doubt I’m not sure she’s entitled to or a measure of dishonesty that we are actively covering for her.
“You’d be better off arguing that Clinton’s previous use of the terms “bigotry” et al. has damaged her credibility so that it makes it hard to take her seriously when she accurately calls out Trump’s supporters for real, legitimate bigotry.”
But then there’d be so much less ammunition. Very few of Trumps policies are bigoted by definition outside a very tortured and convoluted reading of them. The same with his followers, it’s a minority, and, I think, not even a particularly large or vocal one, that says the actual vitriol Clinton is trying to paint the group with. If we hear more from the worst of them, it’s because the media is actively hunting them out, and they damage their credibility just as badly as it does Clinton, that is to say: Neither of them have credibility to damage, but if they did, it would hurt them.
“Of which there is no evidence.”
Except for the last several years of her talking. You seem to be arguing that she’s moved away from the definitions she’s used for years, without making a single mention of it. I have no idea why you think that, except that it paints her in the most positive possible way, and you might be suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome. You’re covering for her in a way that is intellectually dishonest, and you should stop while you’re behind.
“Again, if she were arguing that anyone who opposes Planned Parenthood is sexist, you might have a point that she was accusing “all who do not embrace progressive ideology” of being bigots. But she was specifically referring to a subset of Trump supporters, which you must know *are* racist, sexist, xenophobic and Islamophobic by definition.”
“Specific” implies “explicit”, can you quote the portion of her speech that made that distinction, and if you can’t why do you believe it to be true?
HT, when Clinton referred to the sexists and racists in Trump’s “basket of deplorables,” do you really think she was talking about mainstream conservatives who oppose Planned Parenthood and illegal immigration? Her meaning was clear. She was talking about Trump’s supporters in the alt right and beyond. This has become a major theme of Clinton’s campaign. It isn’t giving her the benefit of the doubt to assume she was talking about the extremists here, rather than “anyone who opposes the progressive agenda,” it’s obvious she was doing so.
“HT, when Clinton referred to the sexists and racists in Trump’s “basket of deplorables,” do you really think she was talking about mainstream conservatives who oppose Planned Parenthood and illegal immigration?”
Yes, frankly. This election, as with so many other elections will hinge on the moderates. I think that Hillary is attempting to guilt moderates away from Trump by associating conservatism with the worst minority among them.
This amounts to a nudge-nudge-wink-wink to the politically woke, but it’s obvious red meat to the undecided: “You’re going to support HIM? What? Are you a racist? Because his supporters are! If you support him, you must be a racist. Or at least 50% racist. BIGOT!”
We might disagree, but that’s EXACTLY what I think.
“Her meaning was clear.”
No it wasn’t and it almost never is. (See? That’s the correct usage of ‘almost never’ as opposed to, for instance, “frequently”.)
“She was talking about Trump’s supporters in the alt right and beyond. This has become a major theme of Clinton’s campaign.”
Except that even by her own numbers, the entire alt right isn’t anywhere near 50% of Trump’s supporters. This is the kind of bullshit I was talking about with Clinton Derangement Syndrome…. There’s no way to logically read these meanings out of her statements, and yet you really do believe she meant this.
“It isn’t giving her the benefit of the doubt to assume she was talking about the extremists here, rather than “anyone who opposes the progressive agenda,” it’s obvious she was doing so.”
Except that she didn’t say it, and so attributing it to her is the dictionary definition of giving her the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, frankly. This election, as with so many other elections will hinge on the moderates. I think that Hillary is attempting to guilt moderates away from Trump by associating conservatism with the worst minority among them.
But she wasn’t associating that with conservatism, she was associating it with Trumpism.
“This amounts to a nudge-nudge-wink-wink to the politically woke, but it’s obvious red meat to the undecided: “You’re going to support HIM? What? Are you a racist? Because his supporters are! If you support him, you must be a racist. Or at least 50% racist. BIGOT!””
Sorry to sound like I’m in an improv class, but my response to that would be “Yes, and?” This is not only an effective strategy in response to Trump, it’s a fair one.
“Except that even by her own numbers, the entire alt right isn’t anywhere near 50% of Trump’s supporters.”
True, which is why she later apologized for over-estimating the amount.
Having a conversation with you is like sword-fighting a fart, whenever I think I’m engaging your point of view, I find that you’ve completely abandoned it, leaving only behind a slight odour reminiscent of boiled eggs.
You started with
1)Hillary uses language differently than other people, in fact, different than her own previous usage, and that we’re being obtuse in our reading.
2)There is no evidence that Hillary meant what we think she did.
3)She was obviously talking about REAL -phobes and -ists, not just people she doesn’t like.
When these positions became untenable (because 1) We have no reason to believe that is true, 2) It’s called history, and 3) Isn’t even alluded to, nevermind ‘specific’) you shifted subtly to:
4) What? Do you think she was actually saying something bad about Trump supporters?
5) Her meaning is clear and obvious.
6) It’s obvious that a talking point from the week before should be seen as the baseline for all present and future discussions, because in that context she slanders as few Americans as possible.
When those positions because untenable (because 4) Yes, I do think that, and so should anyone with firing neurons. 5) Her meaning is NEVER clear OR obvious, and 6) is desperate, desperate spinning, not held up by scrutiny.), you then switched to:
7) “she wasn’t associating that with conservatism, she was associating it with Trumpism.”
8) Trump supporters ARE actually bigots.
9) She misspoke.
Did I miss anything? I can respond to the last set, but have we picked the hills your argument is to die on yet, or have they yet to be found?
Humble Talent (I won’t insult you by calling you Deplorable, and you shouldn’t insult yourself by associating yourself with that group–more on that later), my argument has actually been very easy to follow, and your lack of understanding it is on you. For instance, you summarize one of my points as this:
“4) What? Do you think she was actually saying something bad about Trump supporters?”
Which can’t possibly be interpreted from anything I’ve said. Of course she was saying something bad about Trump supporters. No one has disagreed on this point.
Perhaps you didn’t take Clinton’s meaning because you haven’t actually interacted with the “deplorables” she was referring to. I have. Today on Twitter, I responded to a Trump supporter who advocated deporting people for the thoughtcrime of believing in Islam. About 30-40 alt right Trump supporters responded. They were, in no particular order, Holocaust deniers, self-proclaimed racists, and self-proclaimed anti-Semites. Many of them said we should deport all non-whites. Some of them called me a “kike.” Take a look:
I have no doubt that this is who Clinton was referring to. She was wrong to say they make up 50% of Trump supporters, but she was right about everything else.
(Oh, and many of them have modified their Twitter handles to include “Deplorable” before their name. When you do that, that’s who you’re associating yourself with. You’re not one of the deplorables, Humble.)
Heavens, I looked over that list of tweets and I can’t quite figure why you would participate in that. Does your phone go off every time one comes in? That would drive me crazy. And it seems all those people are doing is trying to inflame the brain of the other. It is very far beneath what I think should be your worthy efforts. Do you ever convince anyone in that format?
But I was able to get a better sense about you — your idealism essentially, how you define yourself as ‘aspiring human’ and a member of ‘humanity’. That belief is, in fact, Christian essentialist but in the American context now ‘post-Christian’. To understand me — not to say that you’d wish to — you’d have to understand that I spent years with Christian texts of all sorts. WR Inge, Francis Schaeffer, CH Dodd, David L Miller, Christopher Dawson.
There is a fellow that I think you would really appreciate — he is very liberal — and that is Robert Bellah. (‘The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial’, and ‘Habits of the Heart: Individualsim and Commitment in American Life). In order to escape my Jewish background — very rigid — I needed a *tool* as it were to shift away and that tool was Christianity. I thought I was a convert in a spiritual sense. Perhaps I still am. But I then found that Christianity is in essence just a perfected or expanded version of Judaism, but *splattered* as it were through various levels of Greek philosophical rationalism. It is also a ‘chaos of ideas’ embedded in a ‘chaos of peoples’ and thus a distorted universalism (IMHO).
Where shall I convert next? (My sister who also is a convert, but more ideologically certain, has suggested a wear a tin-foil hat and try to get in touch with the ETs) 😉 Her husband, also pretty involved in the European Right, remains a Christian in essence. He has had a very strong influence on me. It’s his library I have access to.
This is another interesting (or disturbing) factor in what is happening in the alt-right (the term has really taken hold, eh?): it is a rejection of some of the principles of Christian thought, and the effort to see Christian doctrine as an *imposition* on the tribes of Europe (speaking historically). You might not ever have read or been interested in Nietzsche but in Genealogy of Morals he fairly devasatingly lays bare the sickly-feminine side of Christian Universalism, and of course the ‘transvaluation of values’. Gobbledeegooks to you I’d imagine? If you’d bothered to read what I wrote on Harriet Beecher Stowe and her ‘hysterical evangelism’ you would understand 1) a telling aspect of Christianity and 2) a way to visualize and understand a certain ‘doctrinal sexism’. And 3) a pretty crucial aspect of the American psyche, and one (if I may be so bold as to say) that you are pretty involved in, from the look of it.
It is a rather unwelcome thing to say but overall I would place you in the category of feminine thinking. Your thinking is more feeling. You are emotionally involved. Your ideas are emotional. I know that must be weird coming from a woman.
Based on what (little) I have read of you here, I also have the sense that you would do well to understand anti-Semitism. I know that you don’t understand it at all, I mean in the European historical context. When people say ‘anti-Semitic’ in America they mean, basically, that someone has voiced discomfort or perhaps jealousy that a Jew owns the local shopping mall. There is no background to it. It is such a simple sentiment based in the most superficial aspect. Even in those tweets. Almost meaningless. But in fact the presence of Jews in Europe; the ‘Jewish Project’ seen historically: and the Jewish will-to-power are, in truth, far more serious issues and accusations.
It is absolutely true — of this there is no doubt — that what you would call ‘anti-Semitism’ with no further thought is very much one aspect or topic of the European Alt-Right. Look for those (((parentheses))). And it definitely has a place in the American version, as with Greg Johnson and Richard Spencer. The best of them, as reflects a position of truth and fact, are not Holocaust deniers yet they are revisionists of the Jewish Narrative about the Holocaust. A substantial difference.I think we need another term than ‘antisemitic’ which is so over used it makes no sense. That term in my opinion is Judenhass. Jew Hate.
I am trying to be helpful to what I understand of your position by pointing some of this out. To be able to define ‘antisemtisim’ and Judenhass you’d have to be able to define Philo-Judaism, and even the New Evangelicals have a very shallow Philo-Judaism, despite what they think.
From chapter one of ‘The Broken Covenant’ (1975)
“Once in each of the last three centuries America has faced a time of trial, a time of testing so severe that not only the form but even the existence of our nation has been called into question. Born out of a revolutionary crisis of the Atlantic world in the late 18th century, America’s first time of trial was our struggle for intedendence and the institution of liberty. The second time of trial came not long before the end of the nation’s first hundred years. The stake was the preservation of the union and the extension of equal protection of the laws to all members of society. We live at present in a third time of trial at least as severe as those of the Revolution and the Civil War. It is a test of whether our inherited institutions can be creatively adapted to meet the 20th century crisis of justice and order at home and in the world. It is a test of whether republican liberty established in a remote agrarian backwater of the world in the 18th century shall prove able or willing to confront successfully the age of mass society and international revolution. It is a test of whether we can control the very economic and technical forces, which are our greatest achievement, before they destroy us.”
Chapters:
1) America’s Myth of Origin
2) America as a Chosen People
3) Salvation and Success in America
4) Nativism and Cultural Pluralism in America
5) The American Taboo on Socialism
6) The Birth of New American Myths
http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm. (1968)
http://jamiebrummitt.com/robert-n-bellah-civil-religion-in-america-1967/
Chris writes: “But she was specifically referring to a subset of Trump supporters, which you must know *are* racist, sexist, xenophobic and Islamophobic by definition. These are the guys who genuinely believe–and say–that Trump is the last hope for an ethnically white America. These are Alizia’s people, though most aren’t as educated as her and are more blunt.”
_______________________
Since I have developed a reputation for delving into arcana and abstraction, I see no good reason to stop now. 😉
Bear with me if ye can …
Let me say first that after these comments of yours I realized I did not know enough about ‘Trump supporters’ and so I reviewed many many videos such as are available on YouTube. If someone were to say of me that I seem to have unorganized perceptions, or include too diverse of material, or too diverse of thought in what I write, I could not disagree. However, it is fair to say that what is happening *out there* on the American landscape are various manifestations of social madness, great confusion, and a ‘train-wreck of conflicting narratives’. To speak about this is not easy. To get clear about what one is seeing no easier.
The chaotic nature of the clashes one sees in the vids. The hotheatedness, the over-excitedness, the emotionalized opinions, the readiness to fight. The accusations, the theatrics.
I do not think it inappropriate to make reference to earlier period of American history to try to make sense of it, though there is a certain danger in doing this. So: here goes.
I have been reading ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and also the criticism of it that arose at that time. I am going to make a connection between Clinton, the Democrats, the American post-Christian culture, and the novelization of both the present and history, and do this by saying that UTC is sort of the ur-form of democratic and progressive hysteria, and this hysteria is a manifestation of Christian hysterics, and that these Christian hysterics are a phenomenon of the North: northern idealism and northern activism.
I will go even further and say that this phenomenon, which has now become part-and-parcel of the American psyche, represents the forceful intrusion of a specifically feminine force into American politics. Harriet Beecher Stowe epitomizes this. Here is a snip from the London Times of 1852 in a critique of the work:
“The object of the work is revealed in the pictorial frontispiece. Mrs. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE is an abolitionist, and her book is a vehement and unrestrained argument in favor of her creed. She does not preach a sermon, for men are accustomed to nap and nod under the pulpit; she does not indite a philosophical discourse, for philosophy is exacting, is solicitous for truth, and scorns exaggeration. Nor does the lady condescend to survey her intricate subject in the capacity of a judge, for the judicial seat is fixed high above human passion, and she is in no temper to mount it. With the instinct of her sex, the clever authoress takes the shortest road to her purpose, and strikes at the convictions of her readers by assailing their hearts. She cannot hold the scales of justice with a steady hand, but she has learnt to perfection the craft of the advocate. Euclid, she well knows, is no child for effecting social revolutions, but an impassioned song may set a world in conflagration. Who shall deny to a true woman the use of her true weapons? We are content to warn the unsuspecting reader of their actual presence!”
Good Heavens! ‘The impassioned song’! In my review of the 60s lyricism, and the feminized hysteria of the post war era, I would almost have to describe the whole period of history as an ‘impassioned song’ on the march! (And this automatically arises the question: What is the CURE?)
The old article of course goes into greater details, and interesting ones. It is a sober, masculine-minded critique of a notable topic. But this part caught me because it reveals a strange — and really a dark and even dangerous — truth about *Our Present*: the infection of emotionalism; the contagion of consciousness with hallucinated visions projected onto *reality*; the way that ‘narratives’ (I am as tired as anyone of that word but what can replace it?) are spun, infused with spirit-power and sacrificial blood, and then set loose to run about of their own accord…
…like crazed Hippies, like storming actvists, like shrieking college girls inflicting their emotional will, like mad cop-snipers, like BLM activists all done up in Black Panther get-ups …. (I can go on).
In all fairness I’d have to describe the Right correlary. But what is it? Trump? His followers? Yet they do not seem as much of caricatures. They are not rehearsals of hysterial theatrics, or less so. .
I have just watched quite carefully two relatively recent movies on these themes: ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ and ‘Lincoln’. These are wicked, insidious visualizations that are built on a series of lies! (This is no defense of slavery BTW, it is rather a defense of *historical truth* if such exists) I could very easily use them to illustrate my point of ‘contagion’ and ‘hysteria’. These represent projections into and novelizations of the past and are an infection of historical study and of clear-sighted vision. More: they represent historical hallucination, an active, distorting, revisualization of the past which is, moreover, a theatrical rehearsal of modern sentiments that are cast backwards into caricatures.
So what’s the connection to Clinton and the Dems? (It would not be fair to say that all of this is not a general contagion and it is certainly not the exclusive property of the Democrats, yet, and interestingly, they seem to make the most use of *projections* and *revisionisms*). Well, consider her Basket of Deplorables speech. Consider the following in that context:
“With the instinct of her sex, the clever authoress takes the shortest road to her purpose, and strikes at the convictions of her readers by assailing their hearts. She cannot hold the scales of justice with a steady hand, but she has learnt to perfection the craft of the advocate. Euclid, she well knows, is no child for effecting social revolutions, but an impassioned song may set a world in conflagration. Who shall deny to a true woman the use of her true weapons? We are content to warn the unsuspecting reader of their actual presence.”
Beecher Stowe has said that she’d never been in the South. She said that she wrote her story — no, that the story was received by her in Visions of sorts and merely put down on paper by her — in a fury of religious zealousness. And if what Lincoln said is true (“So, you’re the little lady who wrote the book that caused this great war!”) I think this points to a genuine and considerable phenomenon and something at the core of American politics. But how to speak about it? How to refer to it? Because this is not *rational*, and it is not localizable in reality: these are psychological phenomena.
Some historicans say that the American Civil War is the defining event of American history, and they also say that it is all on-going. Is this true? That we live in the *effect* of these greater *causes*? But yet if we cannot in fact *see* the past with any accuracy, nor agree on what we see, nor agree on what we hallucinate, however is it possible to act rationally in our present?
(Excuse me, I am going to lie down for a while, I think I am feeling nausea.)
I wonder what these Democrats would say about California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for the U.S. Senate.
http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_25243849/concealed-carry-gun-law-california-appealed-kamala-harris
“Local law enforcement must be able to use their discretion to determine who can carry a concealed weapon”- Kamala Harris
So either:
– systemic racism magically disappears when the police determine which among us can carry a concealed weapon.
– the near-inevitably that the police will “use their discretion” in a racially discriminatory manner is a worthy price to pay make lawful gun ownership more difficult.
– These Democrats are wrong
– Attorney General Harris is wrong
– They are both wrong
I have asked this question, and never got an answer.
Both are wrong. She’s ridiculously wrong, however.
I seem to have trouble finding any reporters or columnists calling her out on this statement.
Happy Saturday … 🙂
A few comments inspired by the following concepts:
Offensive rhetoric: Just as there is a progressvely-defined ‘offensive rhetoric’ which, as you indicate quite nicely, fits into a specific ideological platform, I have the feeling that one can also examine ‘the tenets of the American civil religion’ with a similar sharp scrutiny. If what I suggest is so (is true) this means that America and its drving and animating assumptions can be similarly examined. And if that is true, then one can 1) also begin to understand the European New Right critique of ‘americanism’ of the sort that has been shaping European destiny for the last 60 years. And 2) one can independently (of Europe) take a fresh look at the driiving liberalism which is part-and-parcel of both factions in American politics. And that is why I have begun to conceive that the American Left and the American Right are really not so very different one from the other. And that presently the right has come to function as an appendage of the Democratic/Progressive Left.
If what I suggest is true, it may mean that any challenging ideas, any attempt to question or to probe ‘American assumptions’, and the ways that these assumptions inform *the American personality*, is off-limits and yet if attempted will be seen and reacted against as ‘offensive rhetoric’. The issue then becomes what *offends* a particular person’s sensibilities; their grasp of the present; their definitions of the right and the good, etc.
I further suggest that this — what I directly allude to — is part of what exactly is going on today: Challenging, difficult, problematic new views and definitions are edging their way in and they are *seen* as ‘offensive rhetoric’. One need look no further than the opinion parameters of allowed speech. We live in a time of very real censorship and there is much we cannot say nor think.
Hateful rhetoric: I cannot accept your narrow definition. Again, within the ‘tenets of the American civil religion’, and within Americanism generally, any position that challenges or questions the definitions and values that are held up as being ‘American’ and inviolable, will generally speaking be seen as ‘hateful rhetoric’. To unpack why this is seen in that way requires a substantial amount of time. To challenge even minimally certain very specific tenets of civil Americanism, whether in a left-context or a right-cotext, will result in being shunned because on is not thinking correctly. Hateful rhetoric is denounced similarly by the so-called conservative right as it is by the more virulent expositors of politically correct thought and those of the Progressive-Democratic front.
Mean-spirited: It seems to me that it may mean what you take it to mean, but it has to be further considered as a more general *tool* of social and political coercion. How to talk about it? It is not simple. Because it is a sentiment of the emotions, and emotional sentiments, when they ‘infect’ people, manifest themselves in a peculiar zealousness and intensity. When those who think more *realistically* or in harder terms are decried as being ‘mean-spirited’, this represents an attack on their emotional body. Mean-spiritedness, as a concept, as a tool of attack, has a long history in literature it seems to me. The exposition in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is, in essence, a diatribe against such mean-spiritedness. Because I am interested in ‘the tenets of the American civil religion’, and because I notice the degree which these tenets *intrude* as it were into American discourse, I think it is fair to note that declarations against ‘mean-spiritedness’ are imbedded within the American self.
Islamophobe: I do not think that Americans, to speak generally, have been able yet to really conceive, culturally and historically, the danger that Europe faces from islamification. That idea as representing a real threat (‘islamification’) is, for many people, inconsiderable. If this is so, to define an Islamophobic position is less to be concerned that one will explode in murderous rage from time to time (for some reason, or for no reason, who can know?), but rather that islamification represents a tangible, a real, and a present threat. Certainly in Europe and to Europe. But by extension also to America should America choose to keep to the historical path of identification with Europe (and it is possible that she might not and thus such a danger exists). To define a ‘true Islamophobic position’ therefor, is to be capable of defining in area which are tightly controlled. It might mean defining *radical* positions (as for example came up in the Burkini debate), and it may mean (and I think it WILL mean) taking radical social action. That means *shipping them back to where they came from* and that is, of course, untinkable thought. Yet it is precisely in these areas that sharp thought needs to occur.
Xenophobic: This requires a similarly radical reexamination. But the idea of *taking the stranger in* is so fundamental to Americanism that to think in these areas, to open the conversation, becomes intensely polemical, and especially when one starts to speak against the 1965 immigration act:
“Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (H.R. 2580; Pub.L. 89–236, 79 Stat. 911, enacted June 30, 1968), also known as the Hart–Celler Act, changed the way quotas were allocated by ending the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921.”
This is when the former America began to change demographic shape. Ah, but those reading this now know exactly what is being alluded to here, and already the hackles have risen: she is going to expound her ‘racism’. In any case, xenophobia and racism are birds of a feather. Perhaps Hillary and the Dems do see it as you describe, but in truth the definition of a Xenophobic position, and one that can become activist and determining, is hyper-polemical. And if I say ‘America must become white again’, and were I to advocate for this politically, and God forbid for a ‘white homeland’, almost everyone would evacuate the premises. It is untinkable thought. And yet, according to many, it MUST be thought if Europe is to survve as Europe.
Therefor xenophobia is in truth infinetely more complex.
Homophobic: Homosexualiy must eventually, and once again, be seen and described as aberration. A world-movement to homosexualize culture is not advisable. The platform to make this definition/declaration is, to most on this blog, a statement that reads like madspeech. Even if I were attacted to gilrs and even though I know gay men I would still make the same statement. Because you (Jack) accept homosexuality as a ‘valid’ choice it naturally follows that you also see it as a necessary civic choice and marriage between gays as ‘rights’ which are Constitutionally protected. This nicely explains radical American liberalism and how it functions (I say this with the caveat that I do not wish in any sense to offend). But the question has not been settled. And history is long.
So, here, in this just-made declaration, I have delved into hate speech, homophobia, offensive rhetoric, hateful rhetoric and mean-spiritedness! (How am I doing Chris?) These are not terms of thinkable thought within the ‘tenets of the American civil religion’.
Sexist: It means much more than your limited definition! I won’t touvh on it since, as people seem to dislike, my posts grown long. But it can be unpacked.
Racism: The essential tenet of Americanism has to do with reducing disparate people into one blended mass. That is ‘multiculturalism’. It is a complex set of ideas that all tie together. Law, Constitution, history, economics, world-dominion, as well as Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley. To take ANY POSITION of any sort that questions or probes these near-religious definitions which function as certitudes, is to ‘be a racist’. It is far more complex than a relationship or a view of a black American president.
Because no one (as far as I know) on this blog has any knowledge of the background of a biocultural perspective (it is part of the perspectives developed over 30-40 years by GRECE), any talk on levels which seem to support seeing in terms of race distinction, and certainly that of preserving one’s own racial identity, if it is white identity, is illegal, immoral and deplorable.
Racialists and race-realists are in no sense deplorable. No one who think in terms of preserving their very selves at a bio-cultural level should ever be seen in such a way. I suggest that it is ‘deplorable’ if someone is held back from seeing in these terms, or studying the material there to be studied, when it is done by coercive method, shaming and guilt-swinging.
Alizia — At the risk of being the target of another of your rants, I would like to make a suggestion: As one who wrote professionally for a number of years, the maxim “Less is more” was always on my mind. One would do better if one’s ideas and facts are expressed compactly and well: if one can do it in ten or twelve paragraphs, one can probably do it in four or five well-written ones. (For creative writers, see Hemingway. He knew he was no Tolstoy, so he invented his lean, mean writing machine. Very effective.)
Another maxim — “Time is money” — might benefit you. Most of the commenters on this blog appear to be professional people with time constraints. Your ‘readership’ would probably be greater if you could condense your ideas into less space. Less time reading = more readers. At least on this blog, I think.
You could not be the target of a rant, or a response, and you are disqualified from both, simply because you refuse to deal in ideas.
To deal in ideas — and the crucial ideas that are discussed here — requires more I think than something a professional or a non-professional might squeezes in when s/he has a spare moment.
I read posts of any length even when I am in the middle of work. And doing so I gain a great deal.
You’re neither talented enough nor smart enough to be this much of a snob, Alizia. Every commenter here “deals in ideas”–if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be allowed to comment here. The difference is that they are able to express their ideas in a concise way. This is a virtue, not a flaw, and your lack of this virtue does not make it a flaw.
Can’t blame me for trying though, can you? Pretension does not come easy yet I feel I am getting better and better at it. Practice makes perfect!
In all seriousness — but let me say I respect everyone who writes here, including you — I notice in general among Americans a sort of — how shall it be called? — regionalism or provincialism in the handling of ideas. You are a very good example. You really do not have any motivating ideas, hence no ideology that you could expostulate. You might best be described as a progressive-reactionary. I imagine you have read some of the principle texts: maybe Zinn, maybe Chomsky and have *received* a structure of view. But it was not earned insofar as you likely have not read Marx or say Horkheimer and Adorno. There is no background in ideas. In fact, this makes your argumentation really weak and that is one reason you get continually slaughtered. Sorry but it is true. 😦
And really this might be said to be an American trait. Someone once said that what concerns Americans is ‘Can the dog hunt?’ Very practical. Very local. So, when I speak of ‘ideas’ you don’t have a good sense of what I mean. That is one reason why I continue to refer to Benoit and GRECE: intensely idea-rich and philosophically-grounded. These are very serious people and their discourse might be thought of as the rightwing answer to or the analogue of the Frankfurt School. And this is necessary work.
I kmow that you can have nothing but contempt for me for what I say (pretention double-plus with a laaaaarge bag of chips) but despite your contempt I desire to help you and everyone with their argumentation.
If it isn’t fun in addition to being our duty, why else do it?
I’ll let George rant: “You take the trouble to construct a civilization, to build a society based on the principles of… of principle. You make government and art and realize that they are, must be, both the same. You bring things to the saddest of all points, to the point where there is something to lose. Then, all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours.”
🙂
I wonder how many people were aware we kept our refugees from Nazi-occupied countries because German spies weere among them.
People who support illegal immigration are traitors.
I would rather be xenophobic than a traitor.
Trump himself supports gay rights.
Suppose a facility reserves a locker room for women only, and no men could use it.
There is no discrimination against men who identify as Eagles fans, because it also applies to men who identify as Steelers fans.
There is no discrimination against men who identify as Angels fans, because it also applies to men who identify as Dodgers fans.
There is no discrimination against men who identify as Mormons, because it also applies to men who identify as Scientologists.
So, if it applies to men who identify as women just as it applies to men who identity as men…
How does that compare to a girl’s right to fit into a swimsuit or prom dress in case she gets knocked up?
I wonder how common this was in Alabama and Mississippi from 1865 to 1965.
Or were only some girls and women believed if they accused only certain boys and men?
Occupy Democrats often posts this meme on Facebook.
I wonder if it is anti-Jewish to not deny the Holocaust.
Do these people believe that universal background checks for firearm purchases are racist?
Or do they believe that racism is a small price to pay to make lawful gun ownership more difficult?
And if we blur these real definitions with the proggie definitions…
Based on past employment with the NRA, and some bylines at Breitbart.com, judging by the public statements of Hillary Clinton and/or a campaign spokesperson, I have reason to believe that I am on Hillary’s enemies list twice over.
Given those circumstances, I’d be dumber than a chicken trusting Colonel Sanders to deny Trump my support.
I will certainly not vote for Trump….nor Clinton, but I still am a “deplorable.” What is my specific niche within that select group? I happen to be Islamic phobic! That it! Right up front! Been that way for over 40+ years so I am not new to being a “deplorable.” Been that way ever since I was exposed to this “quaint cult” via business ventures in the ME.
The art work isn’t by The Moderate Voice. It was taken from Clay Jones without attribution or compensation. That should be setting off ethics alarms.
Yikes. My error. Thanks. I’ve taken the cartoon down.
Wow…just re-proofed this, since it is getting some new readers. Too many typos, including the embarrassing “Clinton’s” for “Clintons.”
I’m sorry.
It was the choice of the word “basket” that amplified “deplorables” to a damaging level as in they are a bunch of basket cases of whatever suggesting not only Hillary’s attitude of superiority but also that the “deplorables” are beyond redemption and are intellectualy inferior.