...Of The American Experiment?
Who are these fine fellows, above, who attended a Trump rally in Lewis Center Ohio on Saturday night?
Are they rabid alt. right extremists or just a couple of rubes among the millions who have been suckered by 40 years of Ailes/Atwater/Rove/ManafortianStoneism that has been aided, abetted and amplified by the likes of RLimbaugh and a propaganda cable TeeVee network that now have their collective envelope pushed farther and farther rightward every single day by liars and fabulists that populate the websites of Alex Jones and Brietbart.com?
You decide:
...The two friends (James Alicie and Richard Birchfield) from the city of Delaware said they came out to the rally because they've never seen a president in person before. Asked about their shirts, Alicie (left) said he didn't understand why Trump is getting so much criticism about Russia when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama weren't similarly scrutinized. Asked what he would tell Democrats, Alicie said, "To jump on board this train and give him a chance."...
Of course, the two possibilities raised above are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
OK?
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Photo credit: Jeremy Pelzer of Cleveland.com.
Think the header to this post is overly hyperbolic? Well....This.
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10 comments:
Ohio’s 12th congressional district is 87% white and has voted Republican since 1930 except for a two-year term in the early eighties. Which might explain why the only faces with a tinge of colour besides white or orange at the rally were there as a result of Craigslist ads to hawk hats and t-shirts to the rubes.
The orange face was there to hawk lies, fear, and irrationality to his gullible, fearful, and irrational base. A perfect evening for him; and the recorded footage he reportedly replays and narcissistically narrates to staff for hours on end will provide his fix until it’s time to watch Fox and Friends.
Too bad about James Alicie and Richard Birchfield though. They travelled all that way to see a president in person and still haven’t seen one. All they got were those embarrassing t-shirts they’ll have to explain to their grandkids.
I'd be happy to send them to Russia for awhile. See how they like it if they wore the T-shirt, I'd rather be Canadian................
Must be missing the point of this post.
Sorry I showed up here.
Reads like a pithy hit piece.
Perhaps you all might want to put your oh-so superior minds to work elaborating on what you're trying to get at here--that is, without giving into knee-jerk emotions, ad hominum attacks, or fallacious conflations.
Dare ya'.
And I'll also bet you one constitutional republic that you can't and won't be able to.
@ Jon Ghun:
Can’t speak for the others, but what I’m getting at is that the current President of the United States is a proven liar that serially lies to the citizens of the United States and the world on a daily basis, is the subject of a criminal investigation, and appears at self-aggrandizing rallies where he is cheered when he tells the crowd outrageous lies.
According to the Republican governor of Ohio, and the Republican candidate he was supposedly helping (polls show he may be in trouble because of Trump), Trump was not even invited to attend the rally that is the subject of this post.
Here’s a challenge for you Jon. Provide a couple of links to the text of speeches at any of these rallies where the President of the United States does not engage the “knee-jerk emotions, ad hominem attacks, or fallacious conflations” you mention, and is not lustily cheered for his effort by adoring fans like the two fellows who think they’d be better off living in Russia than in the United States with say, Obama as President. Bet you can’t do it.
Here’s one to get you started:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/10/anatomy-of-a-trump-rally-76-percent-of-claims-are-false-misleading-or-lacking-evidence/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.046ee5acdc4d
Here’s another opinion on his Ohio effort:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-rally-speech-ohio-trade-rant-china-space-force-corrected-by-crowd-lebron-james-a8478241.html
BTW, betting on your constitutional republic is exactly what you’re doing. And in my opinion you’re betting on the guy who just might tear it apart.
If we could stay focused on this particular piece that Ross put up, that would be great.
Now please don't misunderstand me: I am not defending Trump and his proclivity to misrepresent or lie. The guy's a world-class prevaricator; and you will not find me disagreeing with you about that matter.
What rubbed me wrong was the way Ross took a pot shot at what are effectively (some of) the victims of this on-going war on the American mind which is being perpetrated by BOTH wings of the American power elite.
When we find that (some/most of) the people are lacking in proper political discernment, the solution is not to blame them for being rabid or rubbish or both, but to inform them more generally. Moreover, the race of these victims has no absolutely relevance to what's being done to them; and anyone trying to break the problem down into racial categories is playing into the bad guys hand by going along with their efforts to Balkanize us.
And I will leave the discussion about who's responsible for the decline of the republic for another day, except to point out that the power to coin money should be exercised by Congress (not the Fed, b.1913); there should be no standing army for longer than 2 years (not the Military Industrial Complex); and the authority to declare war resides in the legislative branch, ie., Congress (not in the executive branch and its out-of-control agencies).
Cheers.
Only 8% of African-American voters cast their votes for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump’s base is on full display at these rallies, and does not include African Americans. To portray Trump’s supporters as “victims”, while ignoring the question of whether a large portion of them are racists is to ignore reality. The victims of Trump’s racist bent are not to be found in his base. They are to be found in the populations bearing the consequences of that base electing him.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonhardt-trump-racist.html
RossK’s question for us was thus perfectly logical and very fair game. Are those two Russian hopefuls rabid alt. right extremists or just a couple of rubes among the millions who have been suckered by Trump’s lies? The answer to that question goes a long way to determining whether your goal to “inform them more generally” is realistic.
Just don’t try to inform that lot more generally at one of his rallies. He’s already informed them he will pay their legal bills if you get carried out on a stretcher. So if you don’t mind, I’ll let you try it first.
Lew, you go ahead and divide people up on the basis of race if you want; but I'm not going there with you. It's a ruse used to confuse and thereby control the unwitting so that don't ever manage to figure out what's being done to them or by whom. Sorry to have to tell you but you're projecting your own bias something terrible and it's not a good look in my eyes; but if that's what you perceive, then i respect your right to do so: Just don't bring that view and insist the rest of us see it the same.
What's most ironic is that both you and Ross are (subconsciously) perpetrating the very problem you're pretending to be opposed to.
It's also a really good idea to never forget who bears the ultimate responsibility for not informing the people of what is truly at stake: It is primarily the corporate media monoliths and the foundation-controlled school systems, not I.
If you're not pleased with where people's heads are at, then perhaps you might want to question yourself about who's filling them up and why they're doing it. To feign dismay over Trump's petty lying while also citing the paper that allowed Judith Miller to write utter fabrications that lead people into an illegal, unjust war killing millions is, well, disingenuous and not something I would ever do. But if you must, drink up heartily; because there's plenty of that cool-aid to go around these days.
Cheers.
Jon, in your first post you showed up here expressing regrets that you had done so, insulted us, and handed out homework.
In your second, you laid out rules for what should or shouldn’t be discussed, posited that Trump supporters are victims and race has absolutely no relevance to what’s “being done to them”, and that they should be informed more generally by some unspecified method.
Now you assert that the racial divide in the country is a ruse perpetrated by corporate media, that I and anyone else who choose to discuss it are the real racists, and that not discussing it is the solution. You also minimize what you previously called “world-class” lying by the U.S. President by now terming it “petty”.
I’ve heard this stuff before. Fake news, I’m not a racist but you are, and only I know the truth. It’s Donald Trump’s message.
It seems that “victims” come in many forms.
THANK YOU LEW! Well said. Now I can go water the plants......
My point in writing the post...
Identifying as being sympathetic to Mr. Putin's Russia is now seen as patriotic to a certain segment of the American citizenry.
If the irony of that mindset is not obvious, well....
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