#the trump effect

[odinsblog]

Since the founding of the United States, politicians and pundits have warned that partisanship is a danger to democracy. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, worried that political parties, or factions, could "allow cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men" to rise to power and subvert democracy. More recently, many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions.

A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

The World Values Survey data used is from the period 1995 to 2011 — well before Donald Trump's 2016 run for president. It suggests, though, that Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

Miller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy."

Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

(continue reading)

[aunti-christ-ine]

So . . . who else has been compelled to play a super-sorrowful "womp-womp" followed by a chorus of "neener-neener" on their teensy-tiny violin? 😭🎻 Awww, poor man-baby!

🙄 .. 🫣 .. 🤭 .. 😁 .. 😄 .. 😆 .. 🤣

(I love this woman!)

[batcavescolony]

Non-Americans please look away, this is private family matter.

[ot3]

there are no amount of domestic policy gains you can cite that will make people change their mind about voting for biden. it's not like the people refusing to vote for him are too uninformed to understand that biden has provided significantly more domestic protections for LGBT people than trump will, but some people are simply willing to risk their own political standing to avoid legitimizing genocidal regime. i dont think anyone in the world is operating the impression that trump would provide less funding and arms to israel but i also don't think it's a stretch to say that there are huge swathes of center-lib shitfucks who will suddenly change their mind about carpet bombing civilians when it's The Friggen Cheeto Man doing it instead of their favorite blue ghoul.

[folksy]

creatures of horror

pumpkinhead (1988) / brain damage (1988) / alien (1979) / the thing (1981) / possession (1981) / eraserhead (1977) / the fly (1986) / basket case (1982) / beetlejuice (1988)

[southpauz]

You guys are losers holy shit. Y’all are freaking out over nothing. Y’all kept reading into misinformation cause you’re chronically online and you only get your source from fucking fear mongering idiots on twitter and TikTok.

🚨 Tw: racism, death threats, homophobia 🚨

This is one of the MANY messages and emails I received the moment after Trump won, btw.

Trump emboldens racists and hateful bigoted rhetoric because that is his base and that is who he is.

[my-dark-happy-place]

As someone outside the US it is absolutely nuts to me that the election is as close as it is. Like wdym alsmost 50% of voters actually unironically are voting for a convicted felon with delusions of grandeur.

[tanadrin]

terrible take I keep seeing is "well, if trump is as big a threat to democracy as liberals/leftists say he is, you should be glad someone tried to kill him. that you condemn political violence is evidence he isn't really a threat, or you're a hypocrite."

absolutely moronic. assassinations make more political violence not only possible, but likely. they are inherently destabilizing to democracy! and an assassination of a single far-right leader would not make the sentiment that supported that leader vanish overnight--the idea that killing one right person can irrevocably alter the course of history in a positive direction is a fantasy for people who write time-travel stories, not a useful model of actual politics.

[clustxr]

hi y'all. i know i don't make a lot of original posts here. however, on may 31st, i watched as my friends and peers were brutalized at the hands of cops from departments across california.

edit 6/12/24: students for justice in palestine at uc santa cruz has published a press release. it is easily the best way to understand what happened that night. please take a few minutes to read it.

uc santa cruz police made a statewide call for mutual aid in order to disband the gaza solidarity encampment located at the main entrance of the campus - initially established at the quarry in the center of campus on may 1, it moved to the entrance on may 20 in solidarity with the UAW strike. on tuesday, may 28, protesters barricaded the main entrance, cutting off the primary way of getting on campus; though the western entrance to UCSC was left unblocked (except for a few hours on tuesday), the main entrance remained obstructed until the raid began late on thursday night. this road blockage is what admin cited as the reason for the raid, along with "campus safety" and "academic freedom".

it's important to note that prior to blocking the road, students had been encamped for 28 days, and had been holding peaceful, law-abiding rallies since october. nothing worked. months of following the guidelines that admin had set, and of course student voices were dismissed and ignored by chancellor cynthia larive and cpevc lori kletzer (the latter of whom, by the way, showed up at 6 am "walking her dog" and smiled while watching her students get suffocated and beaten). the escalation would never have happened if student demands had been met at the very beginning.

hundreds of cops in riot gear from as far out as uc davis showed up to abuse students. over 115 arrests were made, including 3 ucsc professors, transported off by buses that were fifteen years past their intended end-of-use date and had also been servicing the campus prior. is this "campus safety"? is this "academic freedom"?

from just before midnight until approximately 9am on friday, cops kettled, suffocated, shoved, yanked, beat, and bruised students. one got a battery charge for writhing and bumping a cop after another slammed him in the head with a baton. another had a bag placed over their head, leading to suffocation, vomiting, and loss of consciousness. at least two protesters were confirmed to go to the ER that morning; many more have had to seek medical attention for lasting injuries.

arrestees were given a 14-day campus ban, including those who live on-campus (functionally evicting them & preventing access to their belongings), not to mention subjected to horrifyingly inhumane conditions:

you can find more information on various instagram accounts such as ucscsjp, ucscdivest, fjpucsc, ucsc_encampment, & jawsucsc. there's plenty of other organizations and people posting about this, too. please, don't let ucsc brush this under the rug. demand amnesty for the arrestees and protesters. contact any ucsc admin you can find. the uc has been utilizing police brutality to repress student voices across their institution, with ucla and uc irvine also being victims of this violence. do not let them get away with it.

free palestine, from the river to the sea. if seeing this violence sickens you, remember that this is not even a fraction of what the people of palestine have been enduring for decades. we will not let the university silence us, no matter what.

[if-mirrormine]

to all my american followers, i know that this is a very tumultuous time and i hope and i pray that when this election comes to a close, the result is favourable.

and if you haven't voted yet, there's still time! neither party is perfect, far from it, but i know that voting blue means not having to live in fear of losing your rights, your home, your freedom. you have a chance to be on the right side of history.

💙💙

[strange-scottish-guy]

The campaign of just calling trump supporters 'weird' is actually one of the best things I've seen happen politically in a while

[odinsblog]

In the darkest chapter of German history, during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities.

After years of trying to change people’s minds, Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his own father had to tell him that two men were waiting in his room to take him away.

In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks and criminals. Eventually he concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity.

In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while “one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.”

Facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature.

This much is certain, stupidity is in essence not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are human beings who are remarkably agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but stupid.

The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them.

People who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.

It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological law where the power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position.

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.

He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and is abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil – incapable of seeing that it is evil.

Only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.

Bonhoeffer died due to his involvement in a plot against Adolf Hitler, at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp - just two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity

[contemplatingoutlander]

By Morgan McKenzie | mmckenzie@greeleytribune.com PUBLISHED: December 8, 2024 at 6:00 AM MST

Nearly 18 years ago, immigration agents stormed Greeley’s Swift & Co. meatpacking plant to detain and deport undocumented workers.

Some parents never returned home, leaving behind children, while others fled into hiding to avoid the same fate.

As the anniversary of the raids approaches, some leaders in the community worry history will repeat itself with President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to carry out mass deportations of migrants living in the United States without documentation.

Mitzi Moran, CEO of Evans-based Sunrise Community Health, is one of several community leaders voicing concern over Trump’s plan to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented people.

Throughout his campaign, Trump said it’s time to crack down on undocumented Hispanic and Latino immigrants, once referring to them as “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. and repeatedly calling them “criminals.” He’s said he plans to declare a national emergency to launch “the largest deportation program in American history,” enlisting the help of the military.

Trump’s message that an immigration crackdown could improve safety, restore American jobs and reduce government spending resonated with about 50% of voters across the U.S. and more than 59% of Weld County voters.

Households with undocumented immigrants and many who work with immigrants, however, fear deportations will lead to forced separations of families, negative impacts on the economy and food production and the loss of diversity. And they say places like Greeley, with its larger populations of Latino and Hispanic immigrants, would suffer.

In Weld County, Hispanics or Latinos make up 31.3% of the population as of a July 2023 estimate from the U.S. Census. In Greeley, that number rises to about 39.9%. In Greeley-Evans School District 6, nearly 70% of students identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Echoes of 2006

On Dec. 12, 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted raids at six Swift-owned meat processing plants, arresting nearly 1,300 workers who lacked documentation. At the Greeley plant, which is now owned by JBS, ICE detained 273 undocumented workers out of 2,200 employees.

Concerns about Swift employees engaging in identity theft sparked an investigation that led to the raids, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.  [...] Across the nation, undocumented workers stopped reporting to work out of fear of future raids. Swift, with an estimated 23% of undocumented immigrants serving as production workers at the time, had to replenish its depleted workforce, the Center detailed. [...]

The day of the raids, more than 200 children in the Greeley area were left behind at school as they lost one or both of their parents. The separation of families shook the community, and organizations like United Way had to step up to figure out what to do for children who had nowhere to go.

“Everyone was involved,” Juan Gomez said. “Not just the parent was affected, but the family was affected … the community was affected.”

[Below the cut are more excerpts from this excellent example of local reporting by Morgan McKenzie for the Greeley Tribune, Greeley, Colorado.]

Gomez serves as the vice chairman of the Sunrise Community Health board and works with Sunrise’s migrant farmers program.

Repercussions of the raids lasted for years. Undocumented residents and people with undocumented family members were too afraid to seek services or report crimes against them, Moran said. [...] At an election watch party, Deb Suniga, who runs public relations for the Latino Coalition of Weld County, felt the room full of women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and those who identify as Hispanic or Latino “go numb” when the first round of results came in with Trump in the lead. [...] They anticipate Trump will move forward on mass deportation plans with full force based on recent moves like naming Tom Homan, former acting ICE director, as the incoming “border czar.” Trump also promised to utilize the National Guard to assist with deportations, despite federal law typically prohibiting the military’s role in engaging with domestic law enforcement, which includes immigration arrests and deportations. [...] Other community leaders who work with immigrant populations question what mass deportations would mean for families and the workforce.

The Sunigas worry entire families, no matter an individual’s citizenship status, will be forced to leave. [...] Economists expect mass deportations to drive up inflation and undercut economic growth, according to an article from Foreign Policy.

Long-term deportation costs are estimated to be $88 billion annually if 1 million people get deported per year, according to the American Immigration Council. This surpasses the Department of Homeland Security’s $62 billion budget in fiscal year 2025. [...] Supporters of deportation say it will give jobs back to Americans, but opponents like Gomez argue citizens won’t fill the roles, citing low pay and harsh conditions. If migrant workers get deported, Gomez anticipates a huge void in the agriculture industry, which is important to Weld County. [...]

Challenging negative stereotypes

Gomez wants Trump and his team to focus on the positive contributions immigrants bring to America just as much as the negative.

Those in support of mass deportation based on the concept that immigrants take advantage of America’s resources are misinformed, Gomez said. Some benefits are available to undocumented immigrants, like emergency Medicaid or free school lunches, but for the most part, they are ineligible for federally funded support. This includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, regular Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income and more.

Undocumented workers get taxes taken out of their paychecks without getting a tax return, Gomez added.

“That’s what a lot of people don’t understand, they’re still contributing to society, but for the most part, they’re not able to get anything in return,” he said.

A 2024 study funded by the National Institute of Justice examined Texas criminal records from 2012 to 2018. The study found that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”

Research shows no correlation between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime from 2007 to 2016 in metro areas around the nation, according to investigations by The New York Times and The Marshall Project. 

The American Immigration Council also looked at data from 1980 to 2022, finding crime rates declined as immigrant populations grew. In 2022, immigrants had doubled to 13.9% of the U.S. population, compared to 6.2% in 1980. However, the total crime rate was 5,900 crimes per 100,000 people in 1980, dropping by 60.4%, to 2,335 crimes per 100,000 people, in 2022. [...] As the nation sits “in a dark cloud” waiting for January, Deb foresees key people from all different groups that represent Latino, LGBTQ+, Black and other populations will come up with “game plans” together.

But first, these communities need to heal and prepare for the changes in a time of anticipation.

“We are stronger together,” Moran said. “We’re stronger united. We’re stronger when we welcome our neighbor.”

[1296-very-good-year]

Well... There goes all hope for limiting climate change. And a ceasefire for Gaza. And any checks on presidential power in the most powerful country in the world.

Trump is never going to prison. The Republicans are ready to dismantle the administrative state from day fucking one, unlike in 2016 when they had no idea what they were doing.

At the very least, I hope you are ready to fight to keep your rights, America.

[tgshydestan]

its so joever

[spurgie-cousin]

Trump is in a decent position to win as of 11:25 EST and so many of the races he's winning are by such miniscule numbers. 5,000, 2,000 statewide and I'm sorry if you abstained and are just cool with it, fine. but this election will make some difficult choices for me and many like me and it just really sucks that so many people care more about an abstract point than the everyday rights of women in particular

like I know no one who abstained wants to hear from people it genuinely might affect, but I have a Peruvian in law who is legal (not a citizen) but who is very at risk of being sent back it Trump even pursues half of the things regarding immigrants he's promised. He has a wife who is American and relatives who have just come here legally with the hope to pursue citizenship which under project 2025 might not be possible for them

Also I'm sure out of everyone the last person you want to hear from is a middle class white bitch but I have wanted to be a mom my whole life and I've held off until I think I can give a baby the best life I possibly can. And I live in a state that might make the decision to kill me if I have complications that would result in an abortion and I legitimately am so scared of that I might temporarily move back to my home blue state, women have died in my state already because of this. Pregnancy is extremely daunting under the best of circumstances but our country's mortality rate for both babies and mothers continues to be under other developed nations and I know other people have it so much worse than me. But in the richest nation in the world it just really sucks that I have to decide between moving away from my house and husband if I get pregnant or staying in a state where I could die for VERY preventable reasons because the doctors were too afraid to give the care I needed.

Anyway I'm not trying to guilt people necessarily like I fucking get it but this does have immediate consequences for more people than just my family. And it just sucks.