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Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee. Photograph: Mark Humphrey/AP

Did I tell you Donald Trump is a vulgar, foul-mouthed, meat-faced, 71-year-old redneck buffoon? To be honest, he is a fossil-fuel guzzling, Big Mac-eating, pussy-grabbing, racist dick. He has hubris syndrome with paranoid narcissistic disorder. Do you read his tweets? The English is dreadful. How can a man run the country who is so uncouth, with that hair, those ties, those baggy suits? He is a Baathist generalissimo, the president of a banana republic. He is anti-Christ. There. Does that make you feel better?

All the above phrases are culled from a brief Google scan on the current American president. They reflect a melange of national shame, liberal trauma, snobbery and class hatred. They extend across the Atlantic and around the world. They assume two things. One is that Trump is so appalling it is inconceivable he could win a second term in office. The other is that deploying the same language as he did to win office is the best way to send him packing.

I hope the first is true, but I am not sure about the second. The comparison this week between Trumps scripted and spontaneous reactions to the Charlottesville riot spoke volumes of his technique and his appeal. He failed to fully address the one aspect of the riot where attacking the left might have had traction, its Orwellian history scrubbing of the Confederate hero General Robert E Lee. Instead he used the occasion to denigrate the alt-left, and ramp up his appeal not just to the alt-right but to the silent right that, perhaps ashamedly, sympathises with it.

Trump made it almost arrogantly clear that his formally scripted criticism of the right was merely to appease Washingtons liberal elite. He promptly erased it in the sort of street fight with the media that his followers love. Every time this happens, Fox, Drudge, Breitbart and his social media operators gleefully edit clips and feed them to his millions of supporters. A BBC documentary by Jamie Bartlett this week showed how Trump may be a gastronomic and sartorial throwback, but he is a master at social media. The 1990s thesis that the internet would turn the world into one vast lovable, liberal community has never looked less likely than today. It plays into the hands of the political polarisers.

Trumps approval rating is at a historic low for a first-year president of 34%. Republicans are almost as appalled by him as Democrats, since they fear he may lose them votes in next years mid-terms. This is even though they have not done badly in recent byelections. Hence the two former Bush presidents issuing a joint statement denouncing racismtoday. The basis of Trumps second-term appeal is already emerging: the tried and tested technique (see Margaret Thatcher) of taking on his own government and keeping up the fight.

Eliminating Trump will depend not on making liberal America feel good, but on detaching him from the bulk of his conservative support. The battle will not be for the elusive centre of American opinion, an entity that political scientists such as Jonathan Haidt and others have declared non-existent. It will be over a group that both Trump and the failed Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders identified as the white working class, urban as much as rural. Sanders did astonishingly well, given his socialist credentials.

Forty-two per cent of American adults are classified as white working class. For two decades they have seen incomes shrink in favour, as they see it, of welfare recipients, identity groups, graduates and the rich. Defining them as racist xenophobes and deplorables, as did Hillary Clinton, when they craved jobs and income security, was a sign of the class cluelessness, analysed by Joan Williams in the bestseller White Working Class. Written like a Victorian explorer encountering unknown tribes on the Congo, it has joined JD Vances Hillbilly Elegy in charting the origins of Trumps appeal.

Tolerating Trump may stick in the craw, but it must be counter-productive to feed his paranoia

These people made up the bulk of the 63 million who voted for Trump. Insulting him insults them. When the insults carry a tinge of cultural, intellectual and class superiority, they bite deep. As Edward Luttwak points out in the Times Literary Supplement, liberal America finds it hard to believe that since the crash the median American family cannot any longer afford a new car. That is the key to Trumpism, not the loud-mouthed spoilt brat but the word JOBS with which he ends his tweets.

In New York recently I read in the New York Times each day pages of columns competing with each other not just in criticising but in jeering at their president, to the point where I could understand his paranoia. Articles in the New Yorker discussed his mental health, his impeachment or his dismissal for incapacity under the constitutions 25th amendment. It was all preaching to the converted.

Meanwhile a deafening wall descended somewhere beyond the Hudson river, where there lay a frightened, puzzled, increasingly poor America, one that had put its faith in a man who seemed to speak its language and address its fears. No one was reaching out to them, calmly explaining that others than Trump felt their pain. Trump does not appeal to the Republican wealth nexus, as did Ronald Reagan. He appeals to those whom the left thought were its own, and whom it has long neglected. Hence perhaps the fury that lies behind the insults.

Trump is easily depicted as a man whose narcissism renders him unsuited to the presidency. He is testing Americas constitutional power balance to the limit. Pundits assume that his ineptitude will be curbed by the grown-ups now gathered around him and by the weight of congressional opposition. Either by unforeseen accident, or by the rise of rivals, they predict he will be a one-term nightmare.

But Trump and his supporters thrive on the venom of their liberal tormentors. The old maxim should apply: think what your enemy most wants you to do, and do the opposite. Tolerating Trump may stick in the craw, but it must be counter-productive to feed his paranoia, to behave exactly as his lieutenants want his critics to behave, like the liberal snobs that obsess him.

If Trump wins again, it will be by convincing voters the system still cares nothing for them. He will say that it will be an eight-year job to bring his anarchic rage to bear on a smug establishment, and let him finish the job. I would rather not help him to that ambition.

Read more:
With every sneer, liberals just make Trump stronger - The Guardian

As for many of the great questions of our times, an explanation can be found in Russian classical literature. In this case, Fyodor Dostoyevskys novella The Double. It is the story of a government clerk who winds up in the madhouse after meeting his doppelgnger a man who looks like him and speaks like him, but who displays all the charm and self-confidence that the tortured protagonist lacks. The doppelgnger in Dostoyevskys story does not drive the protagonist insane just because they look alike but because he makes the protagonist realize what it is he doesnt like about himself. And such it is with the United States and Russia today.

The Soviet Union terrorized the West for most of the 20th century in part because it was so radically different. There was ostensibly no God, no private property and no political pluralism. America could be Sovietized only by losing the war against Communism. Mr. Putins Russia, by contrast, frightens Americans because they know that the United States and Russia should be very different, but many of the pathologies present in Russia can also be found in the United States. What disturbs liberal America is not that Russia will run the world far from it. Rather, the fear, whether liberals fully recognize it or not, is that the United States has started to resemble Russia.

It was the Kremlin that for the past two decades tried to explain away its problems and failures by blaming foreign meddling. Now America is doing the same. Everything that liberal Americans dislike Mr. Trumps electoral victory, the reverse of the process of democratization in the world and the decline of American power are viewed as the results of Mr. Putins plottings.

For liberal Americans, Russia is rightfully a frightening example of how authoritarian rule can function within the institutional framework of a democracy. Russias managed democracy provides a vivid illustration of how institutions and practices that originally emancipated citizens from the whim of unaccountable rulers can be refashioned to effectively disenfranchise citizens (even while allowing them to vote).

Russia also embodies what politics can look like when the elites are completely divorced from the people. It is not only a highly unequal society but also one in which rising inequality is normal, and a handful of very rich and politically unaccountable rulers have managed to stay on top without having to use much violence. The privileged few do not need to dominate or control their fellow citizens; they can simply ignore them like an irrelevant nuisance.

It may take a while before working-class Americans start to realize that while the American economy is dramatically different from that of Russia, the technological revolution led by Silicon Valley could in time tilt Western societies toward authoritarian politics in the same way that an abundance of natural resources has made Mr. Putins regime possible. Robots not unlike post-Soviet citizens are not that interested in democracy.

For many years, Americans were able to look at Russia and its social and political problems and see a country stuck in the past, perhaps someday to develop into a modern country like the United States. But thats no longer the prevailing attitude. Now, whether they realize it or not, many Americans fear that when they look at Russia they are looking at the future. What is most disturbing is that it could be their future, too.

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, a contributing opinion writer and the author, most recently, of After Europe.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 17, 2017, on Page A1 of the National edition with the headline: For America, a disturbing resemblance.

Read more from the original source:
Why Are American Liberals So Afraid of Russia? - New York Times

It should be obvious by now that I (and most conservatives) do not understand how liberals and leftists think. I know what they think; I just dont know how they think. Liberals and leftists have many ideas that baffle me. So, I have a question for our liberal friends: Am I ignorant or are you ignorant? Thats not a joke question; its legitimate. I ask because I must be missing something in that I do not understand how you liberals come to believe and accept the ideas that you believe and accept. Please tell me why in the world you listen to, believe in, and adhere to the leftist nonsense spouted endlessly by liberal politicians and by the leftist media. Here are a few examples of what Im talking about.

WE HEAR endless reports about climate change. The latest from the global warming zealots is they have concluded that household pets are a significant cause of global warming. Yes, these eco-Nazis claim that your little Fluffy and playful Fido are evil because your pets contribute to global warming. A research project by UCLA has determined that the meat based diets of household pets produces carbon emissions equivalent to 13.6 million automobiles per year. (The Sacramento Bee, Aug 2, 2017; How Your Pet is Contributing to Global Warming.) The implication is that you should get rid of your pets. Heres a better suggestion, lets get rid of the wacko leftists, or at least, not listen to their nonsense.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Democrats and other Leftists constantly shout that Republicans want to suppress the votes of seniors and minorities. We are hearing these shouts and screams right now because President Trump created a commission to investigate whether voter fraud occurred in the 2016 election. It must have because the Dems and leftists keep screaming Russia, Russia, Russia. And just last week an ABC affiliate reported that 11 counties in California have more registered voters than people eligible to vote in those counties. The Dems in California tell us that theres nothing wrong if a county has more registered voters than eligible voters. However, if Republicans want to determine if any voting irregularities occurred the shout is Voter suppression. The libs never tell us how requiring someone to show an ID card or to prove theyre a citizen is voter suppression, nonetheless they keep screaming it. Demanding a voter show a photo IDs ensures only legal, registered voters will vote. Obviously, Dems and Leftists think that minorities and seniors are too stupid to obtain an ID card because they keep telling us the difficulty of minorities obtaining an ID card. I dont understand how these minority groups and seniors keep agreeing to being called stupid.

MY FINAL example is Planned Parenthood (PP). According to a new PP guideline for parents, Children as young as 4 are not too young to be told that gender and sex are different and that their genitals dont indicate their gender. The guideline continues, Genitals do not definitively establish gender, and that children can make that decision based on your values and how you talk with your child. This is a version of CHILD ABUSE and leftist poppycock at its worst. These people should be locked up, not listened to. Ill repeat what I said in a previous article, if a gender troubled individual wants to live in his/her own fantasy, thats fine; just dont ask the rest of us to buy into your wackiness. Now these insane people are dragging children as young as four into their Looking Glass world. How do our liberal friends keep listening to such insanity, and who are the real science deniers?

SHIFTING TO local events, kudos to Eddie Rowland, District 2 Commissioner. In case you missed the Aug 2 Reporter, Commissioner Rowland gave a full report on his first 100 days as our newest commissioner. Any newly elected official, from dog catcher to president, has a steep learning curve. That is no different for our commissioners. Rowland came into office with a good plan to spin him up on all the county departments and then went about implementing his plan. His report was a reminder of the numerous departments and offices in our county. Reading it, I was reminded that we expect a lot from our elected officials and usually do not give them the time to learn before we start criticizing, or appreciate the time they spend serving the public. Eddie, keep up the good work. Im sure youll have some good advice for the new District 4 commissioner whomever that will be.

THERE HAS been some recent discussion about the quality of the sexual education at Mary Persons HS. From the MCR July 26 article, MPHS uses the Choosing the Best program for its sex education. At a recent board of education meeting, Lindsey and Sharon Kinsella, 2016 MPHS graduates, petitioned the board to change its sex education curriculum. I applaud these ladies for being passionate about improving the MPHS sex education. Specifically, the women claimed the current curriculum does not provide the comprehensive information needed. I equally applaud Jason Hickman, current student at MPHS, for his letter (Aug 2: What motivates sex ed critics?) in response to the controversy. To use a clich, the proof is in the pudding. According to school officials, Choosing the Best is abstinence based and has been taught for over a decade. The Monroe County Pregnancy Center stated that from 2003-2010 pregnancy rates for girls 15-17 years old dropped by 56% from 30.5 to 13.3 per 1,000. During the same period, the high school graduation rate rose from 50 percent to 85 percent. Based on these figures, I agree with Jason, keep the current curriculum.

MONDAY, AUG. 21 is a total solar eclipse. I was fortunate enough to have seen the last solar eclipse in the United States back in 1979. A total eclipse is a MUST SEE event. DO NOT miss it. Call in sick, skip school, or promise to work on Saturday - do whatever it takes to get into the path of totality. Then, pray for clear skies; youll be amazed.

Weekly Quote: Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded, - Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.

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JUST THE WAY IT IS: How do liberals think, or do they? - Monroe County Reporter

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This weekend, my Twitter timeline was packed with anger, dismay and despair over the events in Charlottesville. Millions of Americans may be shocked, but many of us arent surprised by the magnitude of racism and anti-semitism displayed by these events. We've been warning white people about the depravity and violence of white rage, which often goes unchecked and unsanctioned, for decades.

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There is nothing more American than unfiltered white rage and white supremacy. What occurred in Charlottesville this weekend wasnt an anomaly. What occurred on November 8, 2016, was as American as apple pie and what happened this past weekend was, too. This country is built upon the ideologies of white supremacy and we are still grappling with that legacy, as evidenced by tweets Lady Gaga sent on Saturday:

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Lady Gagas message is most likely well-intentioned, but I wish she understood the ignorance of her tweets. The same goes for the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Camila Cabello and Norman Lear, all of whom seem to have forgotten what the origins and history of the U.S. look like.

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But it doesnt surprise me when white Americans display simplistic and superficial ideas of what they think will end public displays of bigotry or inept leadership. White Americans have a tendency to whitewash and deliberately downplay the reality and gravity of their past and present sins. Slavery is regarded as a minor error within the great tapestry of brutality, despite its long-lasting, systemic and ever-present effects. White people are simultaneously fascinated by slavery-era history and deeply scared of admitting how much they still benefit from generational wealth and privilege from as far back as 400 years ago. Slavery allowed land-owning, slave-owning whites to accumulate massive amounts of wealth while racking up major savings on labor costs (some economists estimate the value of slave labor to be as much as $14 trillion). This money was passed down for generations, while the descendants of enslaved people are still suffering from the effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws. Going further back, white European settlers were given acres of land under the 1862 Homestead Act, after Native Americans were forcibly removed, and thousands died, following the 1830 Indian Removal Act. In 1790, free white persons were given naturalization while immigrants like Asian Americans and other non-white groups were denied citizenship and therefore barred from owning land and accumulating wealth. These barriers to citizenship didnt change until 1952. White people in the U.S. benefitted from redlining, the G.I. Bill of Rights and, even today, white women benefit the most from affirmative action laws.

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"There is nothing more American than unfiltered white rage and white supremacy."

By tweeting #ThisIsNotUS, Lady Gaga and other white progressives ignore just how very much this is the United States. This is a country which still holds territories like Guam and Puerto Rico, and routinely destroys the lands belonging to Native Americans for the sake of oil and other resources. This is a nation which forced more than 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps and dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

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The U.S. government uses the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to justify the imprisonment of millions of Americans in horrible conditions in order to use prison labor for profit. It has allowed the practice of forced sterilizations on marginalized populations and still did until 2010. State government officials are continually finding ways to re-draw voting maps in order to sway voters toward the right and disenfranchise people of color. Last year, the United Nations issued a report which condemned systemic and structural racism opposing Black Americans and stated that the U.S. government is not acting with due diligence to protect the rights of African Americans. Their report called for reparations for the centuries of racism and discrimination.

I could go on listing the numerous present and past atrocities perpetrated by this nation. But its important to address what white liberals like Lady Gaga need to understand: people of color have been warning you about the effects of ignoring systemic and overt forms of racism for years.

Racism doesnt always look like the KKK marching hoodless in broad daylight. Racism also looks like white liberals getting angry at people of color who ask them to confront how they benefit from white supremacy and white privilege. It looks like white women telling me that I am being divisive by asking for an honest conversation about race and racism within feminist circles. It looks like tone-policing, emotional labor, objectification, fetishization, the white-savior complex, staying silent when you hear overt racism, saying nothing about working in a mostly white to all-white office, ignoring gentrification and the school-to-prison pipeline, loving The Help but hating Girls Trip.

"It has always been on white people to end systems of oppression that their ancestors either started or were complicit in at one point or another."

White liberal racism and ignorance is colorblind and complexyou dont see color until a Black person beats you at getting the job you wanted. You dont mind putting #ItsNotUs in your tweet, but you refuse to dismantle white supremacy from the top down because youre scared of confronting those you consider to be friends or family. Meanwhile, white supremacists and Nazis harass Black, indigenous and people of color activists online and sieg heil amongst lit tiki torches on a university campus. This has always been you. It has always been on white people to end systems of oppression that their ancestors either started or were complicit in at one point or another.

We need white liberals to confront how white supremacy protects them, how they have a privilege which allows them to see blatant racism and still debate the merits of a dialogue with white supremacists and Nazis who want people of color and Jewish people dead. We need white liberals to confront racism in its many forms with courage and persistence, because racism isnt going to die off with younger generations. The white racists in Charlottesville learned their racism from their parents and their own children will learn it from them. Racism is the legacy of white supremacists and the white people who did nothing to stop it. This is us. This is America.

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White Liberals Still Don't Understand White Supremacy - HarpersBAZAAR.com

Last night, I joined thousands at Trump Tower in New York to protest the atrocities that took place in Charlottesville over the weekend. I learned that us liberals and conservatives arent as different as we think. I just wish that were a good thing.

I was never really an activist until the current presidential administration took office. Since then, Ive tried to be conscious about which protests I attend, which chants I engage in, and ultimately be thoughtful about what messages I stand behind. I recall standing under Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue a few days after the election amidst a sea of people chanting New York hates you! donning shirts and signs that celebrated love over hate most notably Love Trumps Hate.It felt wrong. I didnt chant, but I wasnt concerned.

Overwhelmingly, my experience at gatherings like the Womens March on Washington or the protest of the travel ban in New York have been stamped in my timeline as formatively positive. Ive met wonderful, kind, and passionate people spanning from first-time to seasoned activists. I never understood how these people (myself included) were perceived as deviant by the right.

Off to the side of the main gathering near Trump Tower was a small group of Trump supporters. Lined by police within arms reach of one another, a sidewalk was barricaded so that the Trump supporters faced a group of protesters, likely quadruple in size. I squeezed my way to the front, elbows resting on the metal barricade that separated me from my ideological opposites.

Initially, there were some references to America being in the hands of God and how Trump had won so we needed to get over it. It wasnt anything I hadnt heard before.

The mood changed when a man, clad in Trump 2020 regalia, contorted his face, raised his voice and howled, Do you think you would win against us in a civil war? We would crush you! He proceeded to berate a teenage girl for not explaining to him why she had written justice on her sign and called someone a faggot for chanting Boo! I asked him not to use that word and he assured me, Im gay, its fine. My palms met my face were both gay.

The police, mirroring Moses parting turbulent seas, stood as both sides catapulted vulgar threats and insults while throwing their bodies around in uninhibited motions. While I heard things come from the Trump side like, Youre brainwashed and, You pansies are all losers! I was met with comments such as, At least Im not a product of incest like your uneducated asses from the side I was seemingly supporting. People walking through the divide tore signs out of Trump supporters hands and flipped each other off, all the while screaming at one another without pause. No one had come to listen.

My emotions around living in 2017 are without words. Angry, embarrassed, terrified, ashamed, introspective, come close. However, last night I had an unsettling and undeniable realization: the conservative media has just as much content to make us look bad as we do them.

I am firm in my beliefs: black lives matter, trans people are not a burden, Muslim people are at the backbone of America, nuclear war is not the answer, the list goes on. Im no longer grounded in my confidence that we are giving the right the ammo they need to listen to our point of view.

Consider this: Im liberal, and most of my news comes from sources that align with my beliefs. These sources are pushing for what they believe in and its easier to argue that the other side is wrong when they present a clip of someone at a Trump rally yelling go back to where you came from towards a minority group. The same is true about conservative media. Last nights event taught me that the conservative media has ample resources to arm themselves with scenes of liberals threatening violence and rallying around hate, the very hostility were so passionate about ending.

I will continue to show up to rallies, think critically of the opinions I endorse in the heat of protest, and question how I might be contributing to the constraints our country faces. But now, Im committed to supplying the conservative media not with snippets of the darkest sides of our own fight but with ears that are willing to listen. This includes sitting down with myself and my like-minded neighbors to gut check if were always qualified to disarm hate.

My ask is this: if we find ourselves in the face of someone whose opinions dont match our own, we will remember that were speaking on behalf of a movement. We will think about what wed want the Right to see and what concerns of ours wed want them to hear. If were scared for our safety or that of others, by all means we will act accordingly. But in moments of peaceful protest, we will repeatedly remind ourselves that we could end up on the screens of the other side threatening the very hate we abhor.

And damn, our country is divided.

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Liberals, It's Time To Look At Ourselves In The Mirror - HuffPost