I have been saying this for months now. Years, if you take the main point. The focus of Trump analysis should be on his Low-life supporters, not Trump. Trump would not be the Republican Party's choice for president of the United States if he had not been chosen, by the people. The "main point," and it hit me smack in the head during my China studies, is that we make a grave mistake when we look at the madness coming from a society and say, "It was all the dictator." The dictator-take your pick, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin-dictated to the people and they obeyed. The-German, Chinese, Russian-people are not like that, it was the dictator.
It's a comforting explanation which avoids demonizing entire peoples. It is also a beguiling explanation. I experienced a gestalt shift on the issue with China, it had been a nagging, troubling thought until then, until I read an esteemed scholar say it explicitly: that if a free election, truly free and democratic, had been held in China at any point in Mao's reign there was little doubt among other China scholars that Mao Zedong would have won that free, democratic vote.
We know that Adolph Hitler did not stage a Nazi coup, the Nazi Party won 35%-38% of the German Reichstag votes, a clear plurality and that, true popular support, put him in position to become chancellor of Germany and then to consolidate his power to become dictator.
Stalin is a less clear case for me, I do not know enough about Russian attitudes during his reign of terror. But, there are, to this day, Russians who carry posters and placards of Stalin during rallies.
There are those, for example in the New York Times, who are going out in the country and talking to people in Trump Country, listening to their stories, trying to understand, and to give voice to these Disgruntled. I oppose that.
I oppose talking to Trump supporters because 1. It elevates them to those who deserve to be heard with an open mind when, 2. I am convinced that they are ignorant, racist Low-lifes who we should be looking for every legal means to SILENCE.
"Never talk to the people" is my serious, tongue-in-cheek maxim for maintaining faith in democratic governance. It is a maxim that has resonance in Netherlands prime minister Mark Rutte's statement that he would "never, never, EVER" submit a referendum like Brexit to Dutch voters.
There is a man, not a Times columnist, but one who has chronicled his attendance at Trump rallies in the Times and in the New Republic, who has listened to what he has heard there. He comes from a background, in Indiana, from which he can, with some acknowledged difficult shoe-horning, put himself in the work boots and the jack boots and the sneakers of Trump Low-lifes, and who has done so. As have I, from a similar background, with a focus group of one, my beloved brother and Trump Low-life.
He is Jared Yates Sexton and he looks like, but see below, he could be a Trump Low-life, as could I with no major change to my casual wardrobe. Sexton however is an assistant professor at Georgia Southern University and I am a lawyer. Sexton and I can look the part of a low-life-as long as we don't open our mouths.
I have written that the fault for Trump lies with the Low-lifes and they must be silenced as brutally as the law permits, persecuted, stigmatized, shunned and prosecuted to the extent permitted by law and for the rest of their days. It is the course chosen by me from my communication with my beloved,
racist, authoritarian Low-life brother.
Sexton has written the two articles referred to, the one in the Times titled,
"Is the Trump Campaign Just a Giant Safe Space for the Right?"
As if 49 of his fellow Americans—49 living, breathing human beings—hadn’t just been mowed down.
“Hillary For Prison ’16.”
"Trump that Bitch."
“Immigrants aren’t people, honey.”
“You know them crazy black girls, how they are.”
It's a comforting explanation which avoids demonizing entire peoples. It is also a beguiling explanation. I experienced a gestalt shift on the issue with China, it had been a nagging, troubling thought until then, until I read an esteemed scholar say it explicitly: that if a free election, truly free and democratic, had been held in China at any point in Mao's reign there was little doubt among other China scholars that Mao Zedong would have won that free, democratic vote.
We know that Adolph Hitler did not stage a Nazi coup, the Nazi Party won 35%-38% of the German Reichstag votes, a clear plurality and that, true popular support, put him in position to become chancellor of Germany and then to consolidate his power to become dictator.
Stalin is a less clear case for me, I do not know enough about Russian attitudes during his reign of terror. But, there are, to this day, Russians who carry posters and placards of Stalin during rallies.
There are those, for example in the New York Times, who are going out in the country and talking to people in Trump Country, listening to their stories, trying to understand, and to give voice to these Disgruntled. I oppose that.
I oppose talking to Trump supporters because 1. It elevates them to those who deserve to be heard with an open mind when, 2. I am convinced that they are ignorant, racist Low-lifes who we should be looking for every legal means to SILENCE.
"Never talk to the people" is my serious, tongue-in-cheek maxim for maintaining faith in democratic governance. It is a maxim that has resonance in Netherlands prime minister Mark Rutte's statement that he would "never, never, EVER" submit a referendum like Brexit to Dutch voters.
There is a man, not a Times columnist, but one who has chronicled his attendance at Trump rallies in the Times and in the New Republic, who has listened to what he has heard there. He comes from a background, in Indiana, from which he can, with some acknowledged difficult shoe-horning, put himself in the work boots and the jack boots and the sneakers of Trump Low-lifes, and who has done so. As have I, from a similar background, with a focus group of one, my beloved brother and Trump Low-life.
He is Jared Yates Sexton and he looks like, but see below, he could be a Trump Low-life, as could I with no major change to my casual wardrobe. Sexton however is an assistant professor at Georgia Southern University and I am a lawyer. Sexton and I can look the part of a low-life-as long as we don't open our mouths.
I have written that the fault for Trump lies with the Low-lifes and they must be silenced as brutally as the law permits, persecuted, stigmatized, shunned and prosecuted to the extent permitted by law and for the rest of their days. It is the course chosen by me from my communication with my beloved,
racist, authoritarian Low-life brother.
Sexton has written the two articles referred to, the one in the Times titled,
"Is the Trump Campaign Just a Giant Safe Space for the Right?"
And then it dawned on me: For them the arena, and then the parking lot, had become their own safe spaces, where these people, who had long been reined in by changing societal expectations and especially the heavy burden of political correctness, felt they were finally free of the ridiculous expectations of overly sensitive liberals.
At the same time there was an overt hostility to dissent and difference. At one point a man standing nearby looked me over and said, “You don’t look right.” I had no doubt that, had I suggested that Mrs. Clinton was not in fact a lesbian communist, I’d have been forcibly removed, or worse. And I saw cars of supporters hurling slurs at a passing motorist waving a Mexican flag out his driver’s-side window.
...
Perhaps the appeal lies elsewhere. Maybe all this electoral chaos has been sown as an excuse to gather in public, under the guise of civil engagement, to say the vile, hateful things that the majority of the country has long shunned. It’s not about Mr. Trump; he’s just the cover, the cheerleader, not the quarterback.
...
Commentators have tried to cast Mr. Trump as a master manipulator, using his supporters to carry him to the White House but having no real interest in improving their lives. That may be his intention. But the reality is the other way around: His supporters are using him. Indeed, as I got in my car to drive home, I realized that since leaving the coliseum, of all the things I had heard people say, there was one phrase I hadn’t heard his supporters utter even once: Donald Trump’s name.
And in the New Republic under the lede "American Horror Story," sub-lede
"A Donald Trump rally is a homophobic, misogynistic, racist nightmare.":
[On the Orlando Massacre]:“The gays had it coming!” a man shouted and gazed back at the guy who’d called Hillary a bitch. They met eyes, shared a smile, a look of recognition.
[On the Orlando Massacre]:“The gays had it coming!” a man shouted and gazed back at the guy who’d called Hillary a bitch. They met eyes, shared a smile, a look of recognition.
As if it were some kind of joke.
As if 49 of his fellow Americans—49 living, breathing human beings—hadn’t just been mowed down.
...
The coveted item for the day, however, were screen-printed anti-Hillary T-shirts“Hillary For Prison ’16.”
"Trump that Bitch."
And the real star, a shirt you could hear vendors peddling from a hundred yards away: “Hillary Sucks, But Not Like Monica.”
...
The “dishonest” media and Trump’s revocation of the Washington Post’s press credentials, during which my section chanted “Kill them all / kill them all.”
...
The “dishonest” media and Trump’s revocation of the Washington Post’s press credentials, during which my section chanted “Kill them all / kill them all.”
[Those are actionable words. These Low-lifes could be arrested and prosecuted civilly and criminally.]
At another point, a boy interrupted with “We all bleed red” and was dragged out by security as
Trump sarcastically called, “Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt that person!” and the crowd replied, “Hurt him! / Hurt him!”
[Arrest the Low-lifes! Arrest the Low-lifes!]
...
On everybody’s lips were strange non-sequiturs of hate.
“You can’t trust Latinos. Some maybe, but not most.”
“You know them crazy black girls, how they are.”
That’s when I realized what had been there all along. This campaign, whose success has long been attributed to the forgotten working and middle classes, the so-called Silent Majority, has been, and always will be, an unholy alliance between the Hateful and the Privileged, the former always on a never-ending search for new venues for their poison and the latter enjoying, for the first time since Reagan’s ’80s, an opportunity to get out and step on some necks in public.
I hope that the Low-life's can be silenced through peaceful, legal means, through prosecution, targeted legal profiling, social ostracism, black-balling, and defeat in November. I think they can. But I do not know for sure that they can. The Low-life's are a violent bunch. I hope that nobody is seriously injured or killed and I do not think they will be but righteous protesters of these Nazis have been attacked repeatedly. If the Low-lifes start violence they must be met with violence used in self-defense. If the Low-lifes use deadly force they must be met with deadly force. The minimum number of Nazis should be killed but every Nazi who must be killed must be killed.
No more talk with Nazis.
I am Benjamin Harris and this is Public Occurrences.
I hope that the Low-life's can be silenced through peaceful, legal means, through prosecution, targeted legal profiling, social ostracism, black-balling, and defeat in November. I think they can. But I do not know for sure that they can. The Low-life's are a violent bunch. I hope that nobody is seriously injured or killed and I do not think they will be but righteous protesters of these Nazis have been attacked repeatedly. If the Low-lifes start violence they must be met with violence used in self-defense. If the Low-lifes use deadly force they must be met with deadly force. The minimum number of Nazis should be killed but every Nazi who must be killed must be killed.
No more talk with Nazis.
I am Benjamin Harris and this is Public Occurrences.
