Bloody Hell

The remarks “poisoning the blood of our country” are straight out of Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf” — his blueprint for a “pure Aryan" Germany and the removal of Jews.
Axios Explains: The racist history of Trump’s “poisoning the blood”

Pearls = Clutched.

The continued fascination, if not obsession with Donald Trump’s racism and/or race baiting, and the unwillingness of the Republican Party as a whole to come out against same is, by now, a well-known phenomenon. And, of course, the campaign to re-elect President Biden wants to keep harping on it.

“Every time he says it, we are going to call it out,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director. “He’s going to echo the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini, and we’re going to make sure that people understand just how serious that is every single time.”
Why Biden’s campaign keeps linking Trump to Hitler

Okay. So people know. Now what?

There’s a pretense at work here, the same one that pops up whenever the response to some tragic act or another is “this is not who we are.” A pretense that states that bad actions, and bad rhetoric, are only the preserve of people who themselves are objectively bad.

Rejection of ideas like all of humanity are brethren, or the content of one’s character is independent of the color of one's skin (or the faith one follows), is not new. Often, it’s borne of the idea that others represent a threat to the in-group that the in-group itself does not, or can not, represent to those others. Consider this passage from Deuteronomy:

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 New International Version (NIV)

Note the concern here, supposedly put forth directly by the Abrahamic god, that Jews who marry Gentiles will be turned to other faiths, rather than being able to bring their new spouses into Judaism. This is pretty much the same thought process that underlies Mr. Trump’s “poisoning the blood of our country” remarks.

So when the Biden campaign decides that they’re going to make it a point to constantly remind people that Donald Trump’s rhetoric carries shades of Adolf Hitler, the goal there is what? Somehow shame Republican voters into being more courageous in the face of what they see as an existential threat? That hasn’t worked so far. Remind Democrats of who they're up against? I can’t imagine that any of them have forgotten. Convince the marginally-attached or swing voters to turn out for Biden? That’s not how negative campaigning has ever worked.

The problem with making racists out to be monsters is that people come to only see those they understand as monsters to be racists. And while the fears of many conservative Americans may not resonate with people outside of those circles, that doesn't mean that the people who hold those fears don't see them as valid. And so they don't see themselves as monsters (and, accordingly, as racists). And this explains why Republican politicians aren't lining up to call Donald Trump out on this. (Senator Mitch McConnell’s wry comment that, as President, Donald Trump was fine having McConnell’s Taiwanese wife in his Cabinet was pretty good, however.) When Senator J. D. Vance says that comparisons between Mr. Trump and Adolf Hitler are “preposterous,” he’s standing up for Republican voters who are willing to buy into the belief that a person’s values and ethics have a strong correlation with national or ethnic origin, but who are unwilling to see themselves as anything like the ethno-nationalists of 1930s Germany. After all, only a monster could have thought that following Adolf Hitler was a good idea.

And that’s what makes hammering on this so pointless. Not that people's minds are already made up, but that their self-images are already set. I think that the back and forth over Trumpian rhetoric has become about virtue signalling, and, as such, statements only really land with people when they align with that person's conception of virtue. And as conceptualizations of virtue become more openly partisan, attempts to appeal to shared values are going to be less and less effective.

Kind of Gray

At an event on Wednesday, a voter asked Haley: "what was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

She replied that the cause "was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn't do."

"I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are," Haley continued. "And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people."

After Haley gave her answer, the voter told her that it was "astonishing" that she gave an answer "without mentioning the word 'slavery.'"
Nikki Haley didn't say slavery caused the Civil War. Now she's facing major backlash

Personally, I'm not really sure why one would bother to ask Nikki Haley what she thinks of the Civil War. ("And I wanted to see what you think was the cause of the Civil War," does not strike me as a good reason.) The fact that it was going to result in an open pander to conservative Southerners who still want to hold on to the idea that the nation as a whole should consider their ancestors to have been good people in spite of the fact that slavery is now considered one of the worst evils of humankind (a rather predictable trap that occurs when one believes in absolute morality) should have been evident from the start. And maybe that was the point. After all, I'm pretty sure that whomever asked the question was expecting the response they received.

And that response does the following:

• It casts a good chunk of the Southern population as brittle and backwards. But this is just reinforcing the stereotype that a lot of people already have of White Southerners; closeted Klansmen who will, the moment the opportunity presents itself, re-litigate the Civil War in the hopes of reinstating at least Jim Crow, if not chattel slavery. Those same White Southerners are already well aware, and resentful, of this stereotype.
• It casts the Republican Party as dependent on "deplorables." Again, this is a stereotype that a lot of people who aren't Republicans (and some who are) already hold. In a republic where one person has one vote, the votes of bigots count for just as much as everyone else. And pointing out, again and again, that people see Republican voters as tolerating bigotry does little other than give (alleged) Republican office-seekers, like Nikki Haley a reason to stoke resentment of the contempt in which those voters are held.
• It boxes in those people who think that what Ms. Haley has said is garbage. Because anyone who stands up to say that Ms. Haley's statements make them look bad to the rest of the nation will be immediately tarred as being a shill for the Democrats.

And I don't see how any of that helps anything. I suppose that there are some number of people out there who were both considering voting for Nikki Haley and of the opinion that the South needs to own up to wrongdoing in the case of slavery, and those voters may now go somewhere else. But who cares? It's not as if Ms. Haley had, at any point in this process, a snowball's chance in a blast furnace of securing the Republican nomination to be their general election candidate.

All of that noted, it's worth pointing out that one of "the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do" that Ms. Haley feels that "government" had become involved in was the right to treat other human beings as a combination of personal property, machines and livestock. Given that, she could have come up with an answer that spoke the language of freedom and rights by saying that that the war was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of people that governments, local and federal, had openly neglected up to that point.

Of course, however, it's understood that casting the South as being willing to wage war to deny "the rights and freedoms of people" they relied on for cheap labor would have Ms. Haley branded a traitor in the South. So she would have needed to be more "nuanced" than I was, above. But that's a poor reason for her to not be prepared to deal with the question. After all, she's a politician. Weasel wording one's way out of difficult questions is a requirement for the job.

The Corner of Mis and Trust

One of the side effects of increasing political polarization in the United States, and the erosion of social trust that has come with it, is a greater unwillingness to see other people charitably. (And given how often I can be uncharitable, I feel odd typing that.) For example:

The Washington Post published an editorial last month noting that political polarization is increasing along gender lines, with young ("Generation Z") women starting to lean more liberal, and young men starting to lean more conservative. Since assortative mating is also starting to take politics into account, the Post's editorial board was concerned that this could lead to a reduction in marriage rates.

Cue teapot tempest. According to Salon, "It's a good thing most women don't want to date Trump voters," portraying a "no Trump voters" requirement as "the bare minimum." A writer for Medium questions the Post's intentions, asking: "First of all, doesn’t it seem like maybe we’re talking about something else here? Like how worried we are, as a nation, about protecting and cultivating the proliferation of white families and white babies, perhaps?" An author for Lawyers Guns Money accuses the Post of "Malicious false equivalency" and "Refusal to acknowledge right wing violence."

The Daily Kos also had some slings and arrows for the Post's editorial board, taking issue with the following:

As a whole, men are increasingly struggling with, or suffering from, higher unemployment, lower rates of educational attainment, more drug addiction and deaths of despair, and generally less purpose and direction in their lives.

Not so fast, said the Kos author, noting: "Higher unemployment? Really? It’s 3.9%. 'Lower rates of educational attainment?' Nope. Those rates are higher than ever, for both men and women," and then proceeding to flog the editorial board for not blaming the problem on things that liberal America stereotypically cares about, like "stagnant wage growth, out of control housing, and health care costs" and "the male ego and a wounded sense of their assumed primacy in our society."

But here's the thing. I understood, when I read the section quoted from the Washington Post, that they weren't speaking in absolute terms over time, but about men relative to women. Because according to The Education Data Initiative, while "Male and female educational attainment rates both increased between 2010 and 2022," it's also the case that "There is a greater percentage of women who obtain each educational tier compared to men from high school to master’s degree." And that for the current crop of 18 to 24-year olds, while men are more likely to have a high school diploma, they're also more likely to have not attained one. And women convincingly own the post-secondary degree statistics. And this is nothing new.

Likewise, the Department of Labor notes that the unemployment rate for men is higher than it is for women. Again, this isn't something that popped up out of the blue in late November, when open season on the Post was declared.

This isn't to say that the editorial was above reproach. It's paywalled, so I haven't read all of it myself, but the coverage of it pointed out valid limitations in the sample they were using, and like many such things, the employment data is too generalized to be of real use.

Of course, there's nothing unusual going on here. People are seeking to validate, and then amplify, the beliefs of their audiences. Because that's how one attracts, and retains, said audiences. And unlike myself, a number of the people that I've taken note of here write for money; they're charging for subscriptions, selling advertising on their pages or both. And that requires an audience who is willing (or at least perceived to be willing) to share disposable income. I write because I want to write, and Alphabet doesn't charge me anything to host my blog. It takes time, but no money on my part, so I lack a profit motive.

As polarization grows (which it can't do forever) and the camps define themselves more and more by their opposition to the other, we can expect to see more of this sort of thing. And that's partially because the country is at a point where being uncharitable is seen as the correct thing to do. I'm somewhat Left-leaning overall, but not particularly partisan because I don't believe that there are a number of people in the political and media spheres who are engaged in deliberate wrongdoing. I might not agree with what they're up to, but I would still submit that they're actively engaged in doing what they think will make the world a better place. It may turn out to be a road to nothing but sorrow and pain, but it's genuinely paved with good intentions.

P.S.: It's also worth noting that the American Enterprise Institute noted that attitudes towards Donald Trump was becoming a deciding factor in who people would or would not date some three years ago... The Washington Post isn't the first to see something here.

Keeping On

I wasn't really paying attention, but last Friday marked 17 years, to the day, that I've been writing this weblog. (It was even a Friday when I made my first post.) It's been an interesting time. What's interesting about it is that despite the fact that I pretty much make it a point to post often enough to ensure I hit 13 posts a month (a decision I made after January of 2007) it hasn't come with a sense of being disciplined about it, even though I suspect that this is precisely how many people would see it. It's just something I do, and other aspects of my life have simply flowed to fit around it. In fact, I don't have much of a sense of it at all. At a Christmas dinner yesterday, I was asked what I've been doing with myself, and despite all of the time that I spend wandering the World Wide Web in search of things of interest, drafting (and sometimes abandoning) topics and writing and posting things here, none of it came to mind when I went to answer the question. It's just sort of faded into the background of things.

But I suppose that, in the end, this is what one wants discipline to be like. The activity stops being something that one has to actively fit into their day on a regular basis, and it just becomes something that one does, almost as if it were a part of oneself. At its worst, it can feel like a compulsion, or even an addiction, in the sense that I start to become a bit put out when I don't attend to it regularly enough. It nags at me, and drags my attention back to itself when I would rather be doing other things. But again, it's possible that this is a feature and not a bug.

I've decided, time and again, that I wouldn't use Nobody In Particular as a place to complain about the world and/or people in it. I've pretty much given up on that. I, like a lot of people, I think, tend to be somewhat more attuned to the negative things that I encounter in my life than the positive. One thing that I would like to do, however, is delve more deeply into philosophy, just because I find the subject interesting. I'll also have to get out with my camera(s) more. I've started to notice that I don't shoot as much as I used to, and that tends to be more positive activity than being irritated with current events and the coverage thereof. So it's on to year 18 of this activity. It hasn't done what I'd set out to do with it, and I'm not really sure anymore what it does, but it's still been a worthwhile part of my life.

Papered Over

Recently, the Colorado State Supreme Court issued a ruling that, in effect, states three things:

1. That the events of January 6th, 2021 constitute an insurrection against the United States of America.
2. Then lame-duck President Donald Trump participated in the above insurrection.
3. The Presidency of the United States is an office of the government of the United States.

And because the court found the three above statements to be true:

• Donald Trump is no longer eligible to hold political office in the United States.

As a result, the court has said that Mr Trump is ineligible to be on the primary ballot for the Colorado presidential primary. There's been a lot of back and forth about this, and one of the arguments that comes up quite often is that the voting public should be allowed to vote for whomever they please. I find this be be a strange argument, mainly because it's more or less unique to this circumstance. It's never been argued that former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger should be allowed to run for President, and have his name on ballots, even though he's ineligible to serve. If not meeting some of the Constitution's requirements for eligibility to be President mean not having one's name on ballots, why would others be any different?

But honestly, none of this is the least bit worthwhile. The Constitution, the United States Criminal Code, policy, regulation, all of it; they are all simply words on a page. When I was younger, and people would bring up the fact that this or that group had some or another right under the Constitution, I would rather testily remind them that: "The Constitution doesn't protect anything. People have to do that." And American history is full of examples of the Constitution being ignored because it was in enough people's interests to ignore it.

The secret to Donald Trump's success as a politician (and I doubt that he is alone in this) is that he has been able to convince people to count his being in office as one of the things that they understand themselves to be entitled to as a matter of right and wrong. And one of the big reasons that drove ignoring the the Constitution is that it's provisions went against what people understood to be their rightful entitlements.

The United States, like most nations, really, is a nation of laws only in so far as the public sees those laws to be operating to their benefit. Part of the reason why none of the myriad charges that Donald Trump is facing right now have made a dent in his voter base is that those voters perceive the charges against him a a deliberate misuse of the law in order to deprive them of someone who actually cares about them and their success. As the saying goes, this isn't rocket science. Commentators who insist that Donald Trump is somehow managing to defy the laws of political gravity are, as far as I'm concerned, very unclear on how political gravity actually works. The current system exists, not because it is somehow just or morally correct, but because people, either actively or passively, approve of it. Once that approval is eroded, all bets are off. Regardless of what anyone, or any court, has to say about it.