He’s a longtime reader of this blog!
Seriously, it is scary how hard he is sticking to something I wrote in 2010. His primary “campaign plank”, if you actually want to call it that, is “We’re going to build a big wall to keep all the Mexicans out and we’ll make Mexico pay for it.” That is literally Numbers One, Two and Three in a single sentence.
Last night, he explained to everyone that he could solve the problem of jobs going overseas (implied Lie #1, because “jobs going overseas” is always code for “to non-white people”) in ten minutes just by sitting down and talking to people (Lie #2, spectacularly bold-faced because only a complete rube would buy that one) and getting corporate taxes down so the companies invest in America again (implied Lie #3, suggesting that somehow cutting corporate taxes will magically pay for itself because the only thing stopping money from flowing into American coffers is the greedy grasping IRS).
It’s not that Trump is a huckster that bothers me. I’m cynical enough to understand that every politician presents their vision of what they want to do in their campaign, not what they can do. No, what bothers me is that the man is such a transparent, shameless, empty huckster. I get that politicians make promises they can’t keep, but Trump hasn’t made a single promise that he can keep.
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And what’s even more bothersome is that his supporters are completely oblivious to how much of a huckster he is.
Donald Trump is Darkseid. Tell me different. The lackeys, the “lowlies” at his rallies, the enemies resurrected as boot-licking toadies . . . need I continue? Admit it . . . if he declared that he was going to find the Anti-Life Equation, you wouldn’t bat an eye. I think the only way to defeat a cartoon character is with another cartoon character. In Trump’s case, it would be Voltron, piloted by Jon Stewart and his old correspondents from The Daily Show.
The jobs going overseas thing doesn’t have the racist connotation you’re saying. The decline of American manufacturing is a huge deal to a large segment of the population and it’s lead to a lot of economic uncertainty. No one would care that China makes all our stuff now if there were jobs to replace them. It isn’t “colored people are stealing our jobs” necessarily, it’s “our jobs are leaving and that’s hollowing out the middle class.”
If Trump is president, there definitely will be a wall along the border. It won’t cost American taxpayers a dime because Canada will build it.
“Donald Trump is Darkseid.”
This anti-life equation is gonna be YUGE!
Does that mean Bernie Sanders is Highfather?
@Dasz: In the complex and interconnected world of global finance, it has no racist connotations. But I’m pretty sure that your average Trump supporter, when asked about jobs going overseas, will start in either on how the incompetent foreigners make shoddy goods or how the guys who do their tech support don’t speak good English. Racism is always used as a counter to classism.
@John Seavey: Your average Trump supporter? Maybe. But Trump supporters in Michigan particularly? I wouldn’t impute racism to concerns about “outsourcing” there as much.
Jack-Pumpkinhead . . . Bernie might be Highfather. So could Hillary or Bill, because they’re old enough. Or maybe it’s Obama. Yeah, my Fourth World parallel falls apart if you poke it hard enough. But I still stand by Trump/Darkseid, and I’m going to try and get a sketch of that at the next con I hit. Think about it . . . his Omega Beams would emblazon his name on any property he desires.
@John: Trump’s demographic is drawn mostly from white people without college degrees, i.e. exactly the sort of people who are seeing their jobs go overseas. A lot of things strongly show that Trump supporters are racist as hell, but this isn’t one of them.
There’s a very real concern about jobs going overseas, and I’ll thank you not to dismiss it as “racist” because it predominantly affects poor people.
@Dasz: I’m not “dismissing” their concerns as racist, I’m pointing out that a lot of the time, classist concerns about dilution of the power of labor are transformed by the upper class into race issues as a means of keeping the working class divided against itself. Trump is basically fomenting racist fears of Mexicans and Indians and Chinese people stealing our jobs in order to keep people from looking at the underlying causes of why jobs go overseas.
It’s the same thing factory owners used to do to keep wages low in America. They’d say to the workers, “I’d like to raise your pay, but the fact is, there are Negroes out there who will do your job for ten dollars an hour cheaper.” And the worker would go home, blame African-Americans for their low wages, and never look past it. That doesn’t mean concerns about low wages were “dismissed as racist”, only that you can’t look at the issue without acknowledging that racism is involved.
@John: Let me quote what you said:
“Last night, he explained to everyone that he could solve the problem of jobs going overseas (implied Lie #1, because “jobs going overseas” is always code for “to non-white people”)”
That part in the parentheses is explicitly dismissing the issue as racist. “Immigrants are stealing our jobs” is hundreds of years old(and also what you apparently think we’re talking about) but globalization is a much more recent phenomenon, and they aren’t comparable complaints. You can’t respond to the former in any reasonable way, but you can talk about the latter without racism coming up at all. The fact that Trump isn’t reflects poorly on him and his supporters, but the base issue is still there. Hell, Sanders talks about this a lot too(it’s one of the reasons there’s a bizarre crossover demographic between him and Trump – they’re the only two candidates who talk about it like they care) and he’s not being accused of racism for it.
Them jobs go overseas because those sneaky foreigners will work for 6 cents a day which Americans won’t do because unions. Also job killing EPA regulations. Plus they’re laughing at us. What a buncha dopes they say, what a buncha maroons.
An interesting thing talking to Trump supporters I’ve seen (yes, I know some), and is echoed in the cracked article, is rage.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/undercover-at-trump-rally-6-surprising-things-i-learned/
There are racists, of course. Many people, however, are simply mad at the Republican party for ignoring them. They back Trump not because they hate Mexico, but because they want to send a message to their party.
Truely, a case of being careful what you wish for…
So voters have to choose between Republicans who will ship jobs overseas and Democrats who ship jobs overseas and call them racist when they complain.No wonder Trumps gonna be president. If I were you guys I would build a wall pronto
The main thing Trump is going to do in this election is hand it to the Democrats. Either if he becomes the Republican nominee (because most people who aren’t members of the GOP base really don’t like or trust him) or if he doesn’t (because his supporters will be pissed and he is guaranteed to stir up trouble for whoever does become nominee… even in the very unlikely event that they make / offer to make him their veep).