War is politics by other means, said Clausewitz.
Politics, therefore, is war by other means, and that is what this presidential election is. It is a war playing out in politics, therefore a cold war. And it is a race war pitting a large majority of white men against everyone else, including white women.
"A communist can become a capitalist but an Armenian can never become a Turk."
-Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations
And thus Donald Trump's Svengali-like hold on his supporters. So great that he joked, accurately, that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support.
Trump has "dog-whistled" his cold race war from the start of his campaign. Only his supporters heard it. The rest of us could only gape in wonder. "They don't care," Olivia Nuzzi wrote about Trump's supporters and his policy positions. "They don't care" about his sexual assaults either; nor about his taxes, nor that he is an "unwitting Russian agent," nor an un-democratic autocrat. "They don't care" because Trump spoke their language of race, and as no one else did. The communication was tuned at the perfect pitch for them, in a language that he and they alone understood, at a pitch that only they could hear. It was a language that we had to have decoded for us by Olivia Nuzzi and others before we understood.
Donald Trump and his supporters will stop at nothing, not even murder, on Fifth Avenue or elsewhere, they will not hesitate to commit fraud, they will not gainsay foreign tampering, they will use undemocratic means--Trump and his supporters will do anything to get Trump elected.
And they will never accept defeat. If need be they will resort to assassination and coup. It is war, after all, by other means.
Politics, therefore, is war by other means, and that is what this presidential election is. It is a war playing out in politics, therefore a cold war. And it is a race war pitting a large majority of white men against everyone else, including white women.
"A communist can become a capitalist but an Armenian can never become a Turk."
-Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations
And thus Donald Trump's Svengali-like hold on his supporters. So great that he joked, accurately, that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support.
Trump has "dog-whistled" his cold race war from the start of his campaign. Only his supporters heard it. The rest of us could only gape in wonder. "They don't care," Olivia Nuzzi wrote about Trump's supporters and his policy positions. "They don't care" about his sexual assaults either; nor about his taxes, nor that he is an "unwitting Russian agent," nor an un-democratic autocrat. "They don't care" because Trump spoke their language of race, and as no one else did. The communication was tuned at the perfect pitch for them, in a language that he and they alone understood, at a pitch that only they could hear. It was a language that we had to have decoded for us by Olivia Nuzzi and others before we understood.
Donald Trump and his supporters will stop at nothing, not even murder, on Fifth Avenue or elsewhere, they will not hesitate to commit fraud, they will not gainsay foreign tampering, they will use undemocratic means--Trump and his supporters will do anything to get Trump elected.
And they will never accept defeat. If need be they will resort to assassination and coup. It is war, after all, by other means.
