"ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights"

[marmar]

Letters from an American
Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 09, 2024


Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information. Daniel Laguna of LevelUp warned that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise the costs of gaming consoles by 40%, so that a PS5 Pro gaming system would cost up to $1,000. One of the old justifications for tariffs was that they would bring factories home, but when the $3 billion shoe company Steve Madden announced yesterday it would reduce its imports from China by half to avoid Trump-promised tariffs, it said it will shift production not to the U.S., but to Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil.

....(snip)....

In The New Republic today, Michael Tomasky reinforced that voters chose Trump in 2024 not because of the economy or inflation, or anything else, but because of how they perceived those issues—which is not the same thing. Right-wing media “fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win,” Tomasky wrote. Right-wing media has overtaken legacy media to set the country’s political agenda not only because it’s bigger, but because it speaks with one voice, “and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”

....(snip)....

Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.

Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights. ..................(more)

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-8-2024

[chia]

1. Heather Cox Richardson has been one of the people keeping me sane. She is a treasure.

Also, Joyce Vance, Jess Piper, Connie Schultz, Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Receiving their calm wisdom and experience (and warning) in my emails every morning is an antidote to the frenzy I can’t deal with right now.

[LAS14]

23. Might I note that almost, maybe all of these people can be seen on the dreaded MSM.

We are now desperately dependent on news outlets with resources to keep broadcasting the truth.

[gab13by13]

2. Magats just tabled a bill that would increase Social Security benefits

for a small group of people.

Here is my take, just a guess. Magats are waiting for when they control Congress and then anyone who gets a pension; military, teachers, from employers, is going to have their Social Security benefits reduced. I will be affected since I get a pension, I am 77 and have savings to make it through the rest of my life, but others won't be so lucky. Maybe my company will abolish my pension, who knows, that can happen when Magats deregulate.

I guarantee they are coming after SS. They could be waiting to do what shrub tried to do, privatize it. Put the trust fund in the stock market and when the economy crashes so does the money for Social Security and Magats will have indirectly gotten rid of SS.

My daughter is 49 years old and for the past 10 years she has been planning that she will not get SS. She has her college fund for her son ready to go. She has no debt except for her mortgage and she is the CFO for a small company and she sees what is coming.

We have an evil, mentally ill piece of shit who isn't going to get any saner, buckle up, try not to go into debt.

[Joinfortmill]

4. Yup, they voted against their own interests

Their day of reckoning will be wrought on them by their own 'savior'. If it wasn't so dangerous, it would be comical.

[Walleye]

31. I don't know why people don't understand this. Republicans have been against Social Security from the beginning.

They haven’t changed, they will kill it first chance to get. People refuse to believe obvious facts

[Irish_Dem]

3. Their hatred and supremacy is more important than economic prosperity.

[Pototan]

5. Here's the facts

White Women were a clear majority for Trump
Women overall: Trump 45%
Latinos: Trump 45%: Hispanic men Trump plus 10%
Black men: Trump 21%
Muslims; Stein 53%, Trump 21% Harris 20%

I'm a white man who has voted for Democrats all of my life, and I'm 72 years old. Don't you dare blame me. I'm not at risk from Trump because of my gender, race, ethnicity or religion. The groups I listed here are very much at risk.

I may end up being wrong and Trump and the Republicans may not institute Immigration Deportation, aimed mostly at Latinos. Now, I know some say that the Latinos who voted for Trump are second generation. But who do you think will be pulled off the jobs and out of schools? As I said, I'm 72 years old and third generation Italian American. No one I know is at risk.

My wife is 69 years old, and we have no children. I work hard in elections to establish and preserve reproductive rights. Not anymore.

I defended George Floyd and the NFL players who took a knee. So much so, that some of my friends didn't invite me to watch the Sunday NFL game at their houses for a year.

I stood with a sign protesting the Muslim ban at Logan Airport in Boston.

I can add union rights in that mix, because they let us down, too

I'm sick and tired of donating money and working on campaigns for the very people who vote against themselves and me. After all, I don't need them. We'll see in the next year or 2 if they need us.

My advice: Don't come calling. I'll be laughing too hard

[Maeve]

6. One more paragraph

Investigative reporter Miranda Green outlined how “pink slime” newspapers, which are AI generated from right-wing sites, turned voters to Trump in key swing state counties. Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?

Ignorance is no excuse, but it does seem to be a major reason.

BTW, I saw this thread title and then went to my e-mail. I came back when I read the lines you quoted. She is a national treasure

[LAS14]

24. Yes, but how do we fight ignorance? I'm not sure but see my post #23. nt

[Maeve]

32. MSM hasn't been up to the job

And I'm not sure how we educate people who want to stay out of the loop. Yes, kids need to be taught; that is why they want to destroy the Dept. Of Education. We need to find other ways to reach people.
Still dealing with grief; not thinking at my best yet.

[LAS14]

33. Unfortunately, kids no longer get their news from MSM. That's one reason it hasn't done its job. nt

[Maeve]

34. Not just kids. Not sure what 21st century needs

But it isn't 19th or 20th century thinking. If we are to defeat fascism, we need better than we've done so far.

[ck4829]

7. K&R

[dlk]

8. Not regulating the internet and social media has been our downfall

Protecting misinformation and hate speech serves whom?

[Elessar Zappa]

12. How do you regulate the internet and social media

without violating the first amendment? Remember, hate speech isn’t illegal in our country.

[dlk]

16. The First Amendment does not protect all speech in all circumstances

There are myriad ways and America has enough minds bright enough to create solutions, if we were so inclined. Americas have been suckered and we will be paying a very dear price very soon.

[travelingthrulife]

19. We quit pretending the Constitution is set in stone rather than a fluid document

that we know will have to be updated periodically to meet the current era.

[Elessar Zappa]

21. I don't think even liberal judges

would sign on to any significant regulation of speech on social media.

[LAS14]

25. That's why we need to focus on educating our children about how...

... to judge what they see on social media. Someone here a week or two ago published a really helpful list. The day was when I could easily imagine a curriculum from grade K through 12 to deal with this sort of thing. Anymore what I see are hordes of uneducated parents raising Cain about "parental control" and threatening good teachers' jobs.

It's a problem.

[Dem4life1234]

9. If the country were not diverse ..

These men would vote for progressive ideals.


But it's all about insecurity and punishing those they hate for being different.

It's a very American thing that you don't see in more ethnically homogenous nations. People are weird here.

[paleotn]

10. Simple economic fact. Cost structures drive pricing.

The rearrangement of supply chains towards overseas production took decades. Generations really. Unwinding that will take nearly as long. Many industries simply don't exist in the US anymore and would have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

And even if we did, at US wages, as low as they may seem, anything remotely labor intensive to make will cost double or more produced here than it costs to be made in China or Vietnam. Not just the direct labor, but the labor and other costs of every single component that would ALSO have to be produced in the US.

Walmart sells cheap because they buy cheap, allowing them to pass on the cheapness and still make a bundle. Same for every single solitary retailer in America and Europe. But for better or worse, this level of consumption drives our economic prosperity. Without it, we will all be poorer.

Put succinctly, the bastard is going to crash the US economy with this crazy shit and we'll all pay the price. Except those ordinary white men with marginal marketable skills will pay far more than me. In some selfish ways, I find solace in that.

[hatrack]

18. It's also the real reason for the contraception obsession on the right . . .

Sure, there's some full-on religious bullshit troweled on to make the crazies happy, but it's all about wages.

Certain industries have to be run here at home - agriculture, transportation and cargo handling, construction, maintaining infrastructure, some manufacturing, utilities, mining, etc.

Lower birthrates mean fewer domestically born workers over time. If there are fewer workers, those in the workforce can demand higher pay, and that would be a huge honking tragedy for tech-bros and billionaires.

Better by far to mandate higher birthrates - because that's exactly what the Project 2025 bullshit is really all about. It won't go full Ceausescu for a while, but it can certainly get there over time with sufficient fervor from the Randroids and paleo-Catholic useful idiots.

[travelingthrulife]

20. Boils down to bigotry.

They could bring in guest workers from other countries and still make a bundle.

[hatrack]

22. But that would mean angry MAGAts . . .

Not that the owners would give a shit, but their elected purchased political representatives might be . . . discomfited.

[paleotn]

35. Absolutely, and many would love to come here.

Some would like to stay. Some just want to work, send money home and then go back home themselves. Lots of seasonal guest workers here in VT, winter and summer. Particularly in the ski industry. My wife does work for a local free clinic on occasion. Last winter she had some fun conversations with guest workers from Jamaica and other places in the Caribbean. Seems some love coming to VT during our snowy winters. Our ski industry couldn't function without them. Simply not enough warm bodies up here, so any and all are more than welcome to come, work for awhile, even stay permanently if they chose. Guess that's what separates us from the hateful magats who's own rottenness harms their own economy. They're such fucking idiots on so many levels.

[Blue Full Moon]

11. Yes indeed

[Martin68]

13. This is exactly what I've been saying all along. The right wing media is democracy's biggest threat.

They can lie to their audience with impunity, and their audience laps it up. Russia is an insignificant threat compared to our enemy within.

[Solly Mack]

14. K&R

[IronLionZion]

15. That's why GOP likes to cut funding for education

they benefit from keeping people uninformed and misinformed with BS.

[Blue Full Moon]

17. That's how they got where they are at

[ismnotwasm]

26. Yup.

[Beck23]

27. Trump doesn't understand tariffs

Trumpers believed the other country would pay the tariff, just like Trump did. I'm doing my import buying before he takes office. Also, sell stock now before the recession.

[ananda]

28. Yes, the South has never recovered from the Civil War.

I live in Texas, which was a confederate state.

My ancestors fought in the Civil War and owned slaves
when they lived in Tennessee.

They came to Texas in the 1850's. They got Spanish
land grants of 208 acres each, which they divided up to
farm One named Richardson fought in the Civil War.

My grandparents were dirt poor farmers all their lives.
They did worship Roosevelt, who literally saved their
lives. But they were always very racist bigots. They
relied on my Dad to help them stay afloat and keep
the farm.

My dad married an Irish Catholic liberal Democrat from
California. She kept him in line to a good extent. He
did usually vote Republican, mainly because he was pro
business and very anti-union. But after she died, he
remarried to a southern bible thumper, and Fox News
was their main source of information. He then went
totally to the dark side.

My aunts and uncle turned Republican, and many of
their kids and grandkids are Magats.

I once knew a woman in Houston who was still living
in the Confederacy. Her daughter named her grandson
Jackson, and her son had a Confederate flag on his
truck.

This is true all across Texas, except in the blue cities.

It's not just Latinos in the border counties, it's people
with a Confederate legacy too.

[Beck23]

30. I left Tennessee

I left the South as soon as I could to escape the bigots and Bible beaters. I live near DC now in Virginia (Northern). This is a very Democratic area. We recently replaced a too conservative Democratic state senator with a senator who is a child of Indian immigrants.

However, it looks like nationally, we are moving toward the racists, oligarchs, and Bible beaters.

[Tadpole Raisin]

29. Republicans know better about tariffs but they also knowingly supported the lie.

Now they will try to modify in Congress what TSF wanted to do with targeted instead of radical massive tariffs and call it a victory, successfully controlling’ TSF’s worst impulses.

What if the self described brilliant TSF balks? Can he do an executive order with his idiot but efficiently evil WH backers (like S. Miller)? Can he thwart congressional republicans efforts to tone him down? What then?

There are no brakes now, not really. And everyone who has ever come into his orbit has learned that, often the hard way.

He feels invincible now and if he acts on that we are F**ked!