Debate night.

I guess I will be joining the 100 million or so other Americans who will be watching the presidential debate tonight. 

The bar has been set so low for trump that if he simply stands there without falling asleep, throwing up, or calling Lester Holt the n word, he will be declared the winner.  

Poor Hilary is going to have to try and prove to America than she is more qualified to be president than a serial lying reality television star who refuses to release his tax returns.

 Good luck with that, because given all of this, she is still in a dead heat with the guy.

I will also be live- tweeting over at @fieldnegro with a few thousand of my twitter friends, so feel free to come over and join me.

*Pic from washingtonpost.com

Revenge of the angry white males.

 I will give it to the elites in this country, they have done a wonderful job of convincing poor white folks that the brown bogeyman is going to get them. That somehow all of their misery and frustration with whatever sad fate life dealt them, is the black and brown man's fault.

Donald trump, instead of trying to enlighten the poor and working class, has chosen to exploit those fears instead of trying to educate his army of frustrated angry white males. 

One of the greatest tricks that the powerful was able to pull off was convincing all of these people that conservatism is their ticket out of trailer park and rowhomes.

Anyway, I read an interesting article this morning ( by someone named Ian Walsh, I think) from the white perspective about the rise of trump, and this might be a good time to share it.

"This is not hard to understand. Wages for working class white males peaked in 1968, fourty-eight [sic] years ago. Coincidentally, I was born 1968.

I am not young.

For their entire working lives, conditions for working class males have been getting worse.
“Free trade” has not worked for them. China joined the WTO in 2000. Here’s what happened.

Now, imagine that chart adjusted for population increases.

So, for damn near 48 years, poor whites have done terribly. For fourty-eight years, ordinary politicians have promised to do something about it, and nothing has improved.

Do not tell me, or them, that they are “privileged.” Yes, it is better to be poor and white than poor and black, and better to be a poor white man than a poor white woman, but people who are in pain do not react well to some smug, upper-middle-class jerk telling them they are privileged when their lives are clearly terrible.

It is a FACT that working class whites will not see any improvement worth mentioning under any normal politician, including Clinton. They may see an improvement under Trump, they certainly would under Sanders.

They are voting for what they see as their interests, and they are not necessarily wrong. Certainly, Trump is more likely to help than Clinton, as the chance of Clinton helping them is zero. Zip. Nada.
It is insanity to expect poor white males to accept 48 years of decline and not get angry. It’s perfectly reasonable for them to respond to a man who offers them a better life in a way that is different from all the politicians who have failed them in the past.

Trump does not feel or campaign like an ordinary politician. Poor whites read this as: “He might not betray us like all the normal politicians do.”

At the least, it is worth a try.

Now, when I say “poor whites,” smart people should hear “people who are willing to be violent.”
Who mans America’s actual fighting regiments? That’s right, poor whites.

Who are your police? Who are your prison guards?

Right. Even if they make decent money as a cop or guard, they’re poor whites by culture: Scots-Irish core.

These are bad people to alienate to the point where they are willing to turn, en-masse, to a demagogue.

Just saying.

You may not like this, but the cold reality is that you need to keep the people who enjoy violence under control and, ideally happy–wanting other things more than they want to crack skulls. At the least, you make sure that they spend all their time killing and hurting each other and poor brown people, not their “betters.”

You have to be real stupid to lose control of your society’s fighting class. You have to be real stupid to degrade them over a period of decades, to employ them en-masse in jobs where they beat up other people.

Demonizing poor white men as “trailer trash” has simply alienated them. Telling them they are all sexist, racist scum has not “raised their consciousness.” Strangely, they don’t think that all the people who tell them they’re bad are right. Instead, they think those people are assholes.

In many cases, they’d like to give a good beating to said assholes. For example, Kevin Williamson:

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.

You have treated these people like shit. You know how you get treated at bad jobs? Like disposable trash who can be ordered to do anything?

People become how they are treated. You have to feed the better parts of them if you want those parts to win. If half the “good jobs” available to these people jobs that involve violence, if the remaining non-violent jobs (manufacturing) are disappearing, and if the rest of their jobs are ass, you should not be surprised that they become mean.

You make them this way, then you demonize them for it.

Trump does not talk to these people like he despises them. (Neither does Bernie.)

Clinton does. She’s pandering, she knows it, and it comes through. The disdain drips.

The quality of life for the average “white male” peaked in 1968. Then, you call them trash, they have almost no good jobs, and you’re surprised they’re angry? You think they aren’t human? You think they are Jesus, and can be treated like crap for longer than most of them have been alive and that there won’t be consequences? You think that because other people are treated even worse, they will sublimate their own mistreatment?

Worse, you marginalized them and then used them as your primary violent enforcers?
That’s not just immoral, that’s crazy stupid.

Remember, they don’t just hate people who are brown. They hate most rich whites. And by rich, they mean a lot more people than the actual rich.

Treat people like trash, and don’t be surprised when they come back to bite you." [Source]

Ok, we get it, it  they will "come back to bite" us. But I am pretty sure that the people in the top ten percent will not be getting bit.

Instead, all of the barking will be at the people who look a little different than they do, but sadly, who are just as weak and as helpless as they are.

*Pic from fallingdownfilm.com

Poor "Mr Newport Beach".

“Obama is the worst thing to ever happen to this country,” declares the wealthy, rakish, silver-haired Newport Beach white guy to his small group of perfectly tanned 50-something females sitting just a few feet away from us at a stunning restaurant patio overlooking the sun-kissed California coastline, just off of Highway 1, as he sipped his pinot and adjusted his wraparound Ray Bans, flush from the economy’s spectacular recovery that has benefitted his exact demographic most of all, stroking his purebred dog and taking various selfies with their $500 phones, oblivious to the furious swirls of irony and hypocrisy fluttering just above their heads.

I laughed out loud. Couldn’t help it; I had just overheard Mr. Newport Beach say something about how Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster (despite how, of course, it’s not), and if America were to somehow actually develop a health care system similar to, say, Canada’s, that would be the end of America for certain; we’d never recover from such a devastating blow. Or something. And then came the “worst thing to ever happen” quip, and I couldn’t hold back.

The worst ever! Except for the last guy.

They didn’t hear me, of course; the orgasmic thrum of their perfect lives drowned out my chuckle, and as I turned and looked at this beautifully entitled, happy crew from my vantage point only a few feet away but a million light years in perspective, we all shared one of the most spectacular, envied locales in the world and all of us sipped superb regional grape and not a single one of us suffered the slightest personal, social or economic indignity, every first-world need instantly met, every crab cake perfectly formed, the sunshine as flawless as Jesus on toast and no lines at the restroom and lots of free parking for his Lexus SUV.


A few thoughts struck me, all at once. The first was how nice this group all seemed – and of course they probably were – and I imagine if we had all had met under different circumstances and been chatting about, say, the weather or the soul-exploding coastline, I’m sure we would have been fast, easy friends – noting that, if we wanted to remain that way, we’d never talk about politics. Or religion.


Even so, I desperately wanted to ask Mr. Newport Beach what his stock portfolio looked like a mere six or seven years ago, when Bush & Co. ravaged the country and led us into one of the deepest, most brutal social and economic pits in modern history. Did he lose half his net worth? More? Was he worried he couldn’t feed his family or pay his mortgage? Did he lose his house? His job? Did he blame Bush? Clinton? Islam? The gays?


And by the way, how does he like the recovery so far? Which of his three perfect, multimillion-dollar homes was he on his way to, right now?
I also wanted to know, when Bush/Cheney lied to the world, openly violated the tragedy of 9/11 and invaded Iraq, killing tens of thousands, was he furious? What about now, when even Fox News is calling out Cheney and declaring Iraq invasion a colossal mistake, a lie from which we’re still unable to extricate ourselves?


Nevertheless, Obama ended Bush’s disastrous war, just like he said he would, on time and under budget. Does it matter?


And what of Newport’s female companions? I wonder if he knows that upwards of 99 percent of sexually active women have used some form of contraception. Is he in line with the GOP’s recent spate of nasty misogyny and anti-abortion spew? What about the awful SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision, further bashing women, and Obama’s immediate moves to defend women’s rights? Is he aware? I bet those women are. Or surely, their daughters.


And really, what about the stock market? The Dow dances around record highs, Wall Street snorts rails of finely chopped gold every day, the income gap between the 1% and everyone else is more demeaning than ever and the banks haven’t fundamentally changed in the slightest. Why isn’t Mr. Newport Beach positively orgasmic about the Obama Administration’s generally wealth-favoring policies that made it all happen? Say what you like, but Obama managed to do what nearly all economists and pundits thought impossible back in 2008: reverse the ugliest, GOP-led social and economic tailspin in modern history, and make guys like Mr. Newport richer than ever.


My new friend looked good. Healthy. Fit. Good teeth, thick head of silver hair, that prostate cancer scare a couple years back easily nipped by a few wildly expensive treatments he never paid a dime for. Who did pay for his insurance? His company? Medicare? Did he have any idea what it was like not to be able to afford it, or be offered any in the first place?


I sipped my rosé, took a deep breath, enjoyed the magnificent landscape as one final, predominant thought swam into view: how? How can there be such a radical disconnect between Mr. Newport’s engorged portfolio, his fantastic insurance plan, low mortgage rate and grotesque corporate privilege – most of it born of the past six years – and Obama’s overall policy successes? Does he consider it all just a fluke? Dumb luck? Is he drunk on Limbaugh and Fox News, unable to see actual facts?


Look here, Newport: Since Obama took office, corporate profits are way up. So is business investment, job growth (moderately), retail sales, manufacturing (well, barely). Want to buy another house? Interest rates are fantastic. The housing crisis has largely subsided, and home foreclosures are way down. Also, people are buying lots of new cars, and there’s a fully recovered auto industry ready to meet all demand.


Did he know federal discretionary spending is well below average? Or that the poverty rate has stabilized? And the stock market is, as mentioned, breaking records, benefitting rich white dudes more than ever?


Of course, it’s all pretty shaky. Flawed and imbalanced and could give out at any second – but that’s just the nature of the excruciatingly complex, unstable world economy these days. And while corporations are raking it in, workers are seeing less and less of their fair share. There are still myriad problems, and Obama’s policies are far from perfect. No party’s ever are. Regardless, given the impossible economic hell-pit Obama was left with, it’s unlikely any president could have possibly done better.


Clearly I’m missing something, a huge bed of terrifying data to prove all these respectable charts and graphs wrong. But where is it? I’ve heard Mr. Newport Beach’s bizarre lament a thousand times, but I’ve yet to see a solid batch of evidence that proves Obama’s outright failure, or the nation’s savage decline. I see a blip about food stamps, I see a few weak economic signs here and there, but mostly, since 2009, it all’s been somewhere between timidly and shockingly positive. Did God smite us for gay marriage? Did the abortion factories, death panels and Nazi Kenyan socialist brain-washing farms steal my very soul? Hard to tell with all this perfect sunshine in my eyes.


The bottom line seems obvious: Much to the GOP’s bitter revulsion, it turns out a calm, intellectual black man really can run an entire country – certainly far better than an inarticulate Texas bumbler, and even in the face of what is easily the most obstructionist, hateful, acidic and often downright racist Congress in modern memory. Quite an achievement, really.


It’s curious, no? The unmitigated hate for Obama comes from the right, but the real disappointment comes from the left. It’s we liberals who seem to have the most legitimate gripes with a man we all thought would be far more radical and revolutionary. From the NSA to drone warfare to a shocking lack of transparency, a shameless kowtowing to Wall Street, a lack of serious education reform and barely a blip about the environment (until very recently) – Obama has been a far more mixed bag for the left than anyone wants to admit.


But right now, that seems like quibbling. To hear Mr. Newport Beach tell it, my president is a downright monster. Who cares if he ended the war, saved the economy, restored America’s stature in the world, nailed Osama bin Laden, invested billions in clean energy, partially reformed what is still the most expensive, least effective health care system in the industrialized world, or made the rich even richer? The guy’s the worst thing to ever happen to America. I mean, obviously. Now who wants more wine?" [Source]

Hillary, it might be time for that Q word.

Hillary this was not a good time for your little Bobby Kennedy reference. I mean honestly, WTF were you thinking? Even if we take your word that you were merely making a historical reference, for you to do that almost 40 years to the day after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated was incredibly stupid. And I know I said I would vote for you over McCain if you got the dumbocratic nomination, but now......I don't know. You are either incredibly naive and stupid, or you are incredibly insensitive. Believe me, none of the above choices are any good.

Just days after Mike Huckabee's bad joke at an NRA gathering, and when pictures like the one I am showing with this post are popping up on the front page of Southern Newspapers; do you really think it was wise to even talk about someone who was assassinated while running for President of these divided states? Quite a few people believe you were making a reference to the "O" man Hillary, and that you were really saying that you should stay in the race, because like Kennedy, or King, he [Obama] could be shot. That's what folks are thinking, and quite frankly, how can you blame them for thinking that way? Quite a few black folks do not believe that A-merry-ca will allow the "O" man to go all the way. We are hoping for the better, but we are expecting the worse. We remember 1968 just like you do. You didn't have to remind us.

I caught your apology while you were standing in that grocery store in the middle of nowhere, and I like the fact that you were wearing black. I think it was appropriate. I think most people believe that we were looking at your political funeral, so the black outfit really set the tone. All that was missing was the coffin and the flowers. You are hoping for the "O" man to slip up in a major way to open the door for you. But you are the one slipping up, and your political career is going down the tubes with every stump speech and interview that you and your husband give.

Hillary, I watched your little slip of the tongue over and over, and I still can't tell what you really meant by your comments. But that, in a nutshell, is your problem. I can't believe you, and I don't even dislike you that much.