Tuesday, September 26, 2017
The formula
President Trump has been focused on insulting professional football players who protest police brutality against black Americans. Meanwhile, Americans in Puerto Rico are suffering in rapidly deteriorating conditions in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Trump has said nothing about that.
I remember once a Texas practitioner explained to me how things went in the Supreme Court of Texas: "The corporation beats government and the individual. The Government beats the individual. That pretty much sums it up." It wasn't totally true, but it was a pretty good predictor of outcomes.
A similar formula applies to Trump: If you want to predict his take on something, it is a good bet that if he can find or create a racial, gender, or ethnic line he will oppose minorities and women.
I wish that wasn't true. But we can't pretend it's not.
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He has fanned the flames for a deeper divide in our country. The man is shameless. He is also again trying to distract us for more important matters such as providing aid to Puerto Rico and his inflammatory rhetoric aimed at N. Korea. All he cares about is keeping his name in the headlines. I wish the people at Twitter had some balls and would close his account down for fanning hate and hate speech.
Puerto Rico prior to the storm was defaulting on loans to very big NY and global banking entities. Our Congress was unwilling to intervene. Hurricane Maria was just a nail in the coffin. A US Territory being treated like a third world country with its people being allowed to starve. At this point, why these people would want to become a US State is beyond me.
Puerto Rico prior to the storm was defaulting on loans to very big NY and global banking entities. Our Congress was unwilling to intervene. Hurricane Maria was just a nail in the coffin. A US Territory being treated like a third world country with its people being allowed to starve. At this point, why these people would want to become a US State is beyond me.
In fairness to Trump--a phrase that pains me to type--today's politics are all portrayed through the lens of your formula. Sometimes its fair, sometimes its not. Maybe Trump hates Latinos, maybe he just found out twenty minutes ago that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. Maybe Trump hates blacks, maybe he disagrees with a protest he regards as unpatriotic. Or maybe Trump, Ego incarnate, has learned that generating conflict is what keeps him above the fold. Whatever the case, its clear that a world where every policy issue is alleged to "create a racial, gender, or ethnic line" played a large part in giving us Trump in the first place. Any now we have to deal with it.
Amen Christine -- as the ice caps melt, Puerto Rico suffers, Rohingya refugees join people from South Sudan and elsewhere in homelessness, U.S. citizens fear losing health care because of pre-existing conditions, we set up new regulations to allow MORE building in flood plains,and my DACA students are panicked over their futures, our President focuses on kneeling at the NFL. Making America great.
CTL-- I'm not saying that policy issues create those lines. I'm saying that this president does through what he communicates.
@ Prof -- I'm not disagreeing with you entirely, only offering an additional layer. Sometimes Trump does pick at a race/gender line, explicitly and despicably (here I'm thinking things like "locker room talk" and "violence on both sides"). Sometimes he does so indirectly, whether or not he does it consciously. And sometimes--because politics--Trump asserts a controversial but identity neutral position, and is nevertheless accused of making a race/gender statement (here I am thinking things like "ratings in the NFL are down" and "Puerto Rico's debt and infrastructure"). The man is a buffoon, but I'm not convinced he has the intellectual wherewithal to blow a dog whistle 100% of the time.
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