37 thoughts on “Color Me Naive

  1. Don’t be naive enough to take anything written by a rabid lefty like Heather Digby Parton seriously.

    “Poll results” like the ones that she quotes are just silly. Does she say anything about the methodologies of the various polls (which are a combination of multiple polling from widely different sources, some of which are clearly politically biased)?

    I could — but won’t waste my time — give you links to various “polls” showing, for example, that 51% of Democrats don’t even know that the earth revolves around the sun in a one-year period.

    No wonder a majority of Democrats think that Bernie is the answer to their prayers. 🙂

    Like

    1. Apparently Digby got this informaton from a New York Times article, and the article does contain some caveats about one of the polls.

      But I have to agree with Vic, there are people like this in the US. How many, I don’t know but I can believe the Trump campaign has attracted a disproportionate share of them.

      Like

    2. The 20% figure came from a single polling firm, YouGov. In fact, most of the post is an excerpt from the NYT article, with a bit of Digby’s snark at the end.

      If you want to analyze and discredit the poll, that’s one thing, but it does help to click the link and read the post before attempting to discredit Digby.

      Besides, racism is dead in this country. Didn’t Justice Roberts already assure us on that point?

      Like

      1. Digby has been discredited for years by the hysterical distortions that she’s written on her “Hullabaloo” website about the Republican Party, and about any number of politicians/conservatives whose views she’s disagreed with. There’s nothing new to see there.

        I could link to dozens of examples in her writing, but I’m not going to bother — I’m stating my viewpoint, not engaging in a debate.

        Besides, the NY Times is always credible, right?

        Like

        1. Invectives can’t relax the facts as reports by the NYT. Unless you can crunch the numbers and/or analyze the methodology to prove either or both are inaccurate, I guess you’re stuck with it.

          Like

  2. I disagree. These people exist. We have white supremacist militias with weapons stolen from the military. We have Neo-Nazis. 20% seems like a high figure, but I would certainly believe 10%. However, another poll indicated that a majority of Trump supporters in South Carolina want to see the Confederate Flag restored to the state capitol.

    Coherent thought seems to be a problem. Last week, the WS Journal ran an article that included an interview with a worker at a VW plant in S Carolina. She was supporting Trump because she felt he would clamp down in free trade. Go figure.

    There are good people in this country, but don’t underestimate the size of the combustible mix of greed, anger, ignorance and guns that we’ve created.

    Like

  3. Because of our oppressive PC culture the media is afraid to tell it like it is. Instead, we get platitudes like ‘anger at washington’ as explanations for their atrocious behavior.

    Fuck that shit. The trump base is a coalition of all the dumb, racist people in this country. They have no coherent ideology, or policy positions they support or oppose. They’re tired of the same old washington politics, you know, like when Bush sabotaged McCain’s campaign in 2000 by spreading a whisper campaign that he had an illegitimate black daughter. Nah, that’s just too politically correct, all that subterfuge. They want their racism a little bit more overt. So rapist mexicans, lazy blacks it is.

    Like

    1. I just find it hard to believe that there are so many of these freaks. It’s scary because you walk the streets, enter stores, go to the mall, and these freaks might be passing you by. This is very disturbing.

      Like

  4. Oh Clarissa, really?

    It’s not like really racist people compartmentalize their racism to only be racist against one group, sadly.

    Donald Trump Retweets Apparent Neo-Nazi Supporter
    Recent tweets and retweets from the account include anti-Semitic imagery, quotes from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and tweets deriding Martin Luther King Jr. The profile also listed a link to a website promoting a biographical documentary of Adolf Hitler.

    Trump, whose Twitter account is a central piece of his messaging operation, with more than 5 million followers, has passed on tweets from users who espouse white supremacist and openly racist causes in the past. Most infamously, he retweeted phony crime statistics that falsely claimed black Americans committed 81% of murders against white victims – in fact, 82% of white murder victims were killed by white attackers in 2014, according to FBI data.

    https://twitter.com/WhiteGenocideTM/status/690560137040400384

    Like

  5. And look, robocalls!
    Everyone’s terrible! But it’s all super pacs not officially connected with the candidates ! winky winky, footsy, footsy

    New White Supremacist PAC Robocalls: ‘Don’t Vote For A Cuban,’ Vote Trump! (AUDIO)
    The American National Super PAC makes this call to support Donald Trump. I am William Johnson, a farmer and white nationalist.
    The white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called “racist.” This is our mindset: It’s okay that our government destroys our children’s future, but don’t call me racist. I am afraid to be called racist. It’s okay to give away our country through immigration, but don’t call me racist. It’s okay that few schools anymore have beautiful white children as the majority, but don’t call me racist. Gradual genocide against the white race is okay, but don’t call me racist. I am afraid to be called racist. Donald Trump is not a racist, but Donald Trump is not afraid.
    Don’t vote for a Cuban. Vote for Donald Trump. (213) 718-3908. This call is not authorized by Donald Trump.

    Pro-Cruz SuperPAC Slams Trump For Confederate Flag Removal, Gay Rights (audio at the link)

    The announcer says, “Stop! What does she mean by forward motion? What’s he agreeing to? It’s not about tolerance anymore. It’s about mandatory celebration. It’s about forcing people to bake cakes and forcing people to photograph gay weddings. Forcing clergy to officiate. It’s about transgender bathrooms in your child’s school. It’s about tearing down our Judeo-Christian values. It’s about tearing down our America.”….
    ANNOUNCER: “On Saturday, send Donald Trump and his New York values back to Manhattan. Ted Cruz for president. Let’s take our country back. Now, before it’s too late.”

    Like

  6. On Clarissa’s surprise: I think these people are extremists on a number of related issues and so their anti-emancipation sentiments get lost among all their other um, unorthodox beliefs.

    Those of us in the mainstream remark,”These crazies dont believe in the legitimacy of the federal government?!” and stop there. We’re already gobsmacked and don’t think of questioning any further.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks these people, and I think the Jewish ADL does too. The blogger journalist David Neiwert writes about them. I am sure the FBI also keeps up with them but of course they don’t publicize their findings.

    Like

  7. I think I will colour you ‘stupid’ Clarissa, and leave it at that.

    You saw it in some media rag sheet, so it just HAS to be true!!! And some fag like Vic saw some old stubfarts at a rod n’ gun club and they just HAD to be racists.

    You morons are living proof we need to clean up our colleges and universities too. How can we expect greatness from our kids when they are taught by clueless fools?

    Like

  8. I finally just read the linked article. Digby didn’t write the report. It was a New York Times article. And though it can perhaps be said that the New York Times leans left (thought I would disagree with that assessment), it’s still the national paper of record and hardly a “media rag.”

    And Vavreck (the author of the NYT piece) even admits to the potential bias in the report stating “Public Policy Polling is a company aligned with the Democratic Party, and some of its results over the years have been suspected of bias. Taken by itself, its conclusions could be doubted. Taken with the YouGov and exit poll data, however, these three surveys can give us a better idea of Mr. Trump’s backers.”

    So this terrible news is an aggregate of three polls conducted by legitimate political bodies. Is there room for error , misinterpretation, or bias? Sure. But I don’t think that results of three aggregated polls can be completely dismissed.

    I think that some people just don’t want this to be true (I don’t either) and that conservatives don’t want to admit that this what their party has come to. I definitely identify as left/far left in my politics so to some extent, this is easy for me to say. But the Republican party/ Conservatives honestly have almost no sound or admirable policies. The party has descended in to the party of fanatical hatred and has no room for women, or for non whites, or for gay people, or for people making less than 200,000k. There is really nothing left in this party. It needs to be disbanded and completely rethought.

    Like

    1. I think that some people just don’t want this to be true (I don’t either) and that conservatives don’t want to admit that this what their party has come to.

      The point of dog whistles is not to disguise the insults from their targets. It’s so people who like to think of themselves as nice moderates have plausible deniability when they support and vote for horrible people and policies.
      Like this:

      The robocalls aren’t new. What’s new is 1)that there’s more reportage and 2)it’s not plausibly far off from what the candidates themselves say and do.

      Like

      1. @ Dreidel. With all due respect, I think you are getting a bit too caught up in details/minutia here and refusing to see the very clear trend. While it is a good thing that the KKK-clad men don’t seem to have been actual Trump supporters, it nonetheless remains clear that Trump’s campaign is partially–if not fully– fueled by racism and xenophobia.

        Instead of recognizing that and trying to find ways to render racist rhetoric unacceptable to Republican and American public discourse, you (and Conservatives like you) instead of search for reasons that Democrats/Liberals are wrong or mistaken. And sure, there are always mistakes and unfair charges. That happens. But the overall trend– that the far right seems nearly overcome by blind racism and seems hell bent on making sure we never have a “non-White” serve as President again– seems unassailable.

        Like

        1. Oh, I just get tired of all the self-righteous superiority displayed by many on the left — “Look at us, we’re so enlightened and tolerant, so much better than those knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers on the right!”

          Liberal websites like “Salon.com” and cable channels like MSNBC pick out the very worst examples of idiocy on the far right, and present it as if t it were representative of everybody who votes Republican. It gets old.

          Sure, there are some racists backing Trump. There are also some rapid Democratic-voting extremists on the left who would like to end all free speech on campuses, make it illegal to have gender-segregated restrooms and showers in public schools under any circumstances, and see Israel utterly destroyed by terrorist barbarians — but you don’t see much of the media falsely presenting those left-wing extremists as comprising the majority of Democratic voters.

          Like

          1. Actually, the media are consistently forgetting to mention how conservative students terrorize professors and administrators making it look like speech codes and over sensitive snowflakery are the purview of liberal students. Find me a single article or blog post that mentions the contribution of religious, conservative students to the culture of trigger warnings and ideological intimidation on campus. I can guarantee you won’t find even a single one. So who is favored by this bias?

            I taught at 4 universities in different parts of the continent, and in all of them, it was solely very conservative students who consistently tried (and succeeded) shutting up me and my colleagues. And the issues they found intolerably offensive were extremely trivial.

            Like

          2. “There are also some rapid Democratic-voting extremists on the left who would like to end all free speech on campuses, make it illegal to have gender-segregated restrooms and showers in public schools.”

            Surely you see how there is a difference between wanting same sex restrooms and wanting slavery to come back? The first is annoying, perhaps wrongheaded or immature, and perhaps even misogynist. But its worlds and worlds apart from thinking that slavery was actually a good thing. I don’t think Democrats and Liberals are perfect but there is something pretty profoundly disturbing about a large percentage of a candidate’s base thinking it’s OK for some people to own other people.

            Like

            1. There’s also a profound difference between idiots saying stupid things to gotcha questions by pollsters (like wishing slavery hadn’t ended — NOBODY expects slavery to come back), and idiots like the ACLU zealots who are actively trying to force gender-neutral restrooms on schoolchildren, and the anti-semitic academic organizations who are actively pushing through BSD restrictions that would be suicidal for Israel.

              There’s an old saying: It isn’t the creed, it’s the deed that matters.

              The slavery talk is just jabber by morons. They’re never have any access to power in this country, no matter what delusions they have about Trump. So who cares what they think? Groups like the ACLU and certain academic organizations have power, and their agendas have the potential to be very dangerous.

              Like

              1. “What are the academic organizations with power?”

                I have no idea who has the real power in American academia, but several national organizations that support the BDS movement and have gotten respectable national press are the National Women’s Studies Association, the American Studies Association, and the American Anthropological Association.

                Nobody’s calling them hysterical terms like “crazies” or “knuckle-draggers.”

                Like

    1. Oh, I know very well about the report and the reality it describes. But note how there was zero interest towards it from people who have been papering every horizontal surface in the country with overwrought accounts of SJW snowflakes demanding trigger warnings.

      Like

  9. And now this thread has gone from a horrified “I can’t believe people like this exist” to the shrugging of shoulders, “Sure they exist but they are nobodies so who cares what they think?”

    The idea that we should be discomforted by such blatant hatred in our midst is thrown out because Hey! Look over there! There’s someone who wants unisex bathrooms!

    Like

  10. “And now this thread has gone from a horrified ‘I can’t believe people like this exist'”

    Show me where I was “horrified,” or ever said I didn’t believe such idiots exist. I just said that such people aren’t the least bit important, because they have no power. And that’s absolutely correct.

    The “someone” who wants to force unisex bathrooms on public schoolchildren isn’t a phantom voice in a silly exit poll. It’s the real menace of extremist ACLU lawyers who want to kick traditional American values in the teeth because — well, just because if a view is held by white Christians, it’s automatically got to be condemned as racist.

    I’m not a Christian, and not a social conservative. But self-righteous lefties who claim to be so tolerant while they hate and oppose every mainstream view in their own country, just because it’s the mainstream, traditional view — make me sick to my stomach.

    Like

  11. In case I was not clear: I found the original post something of a reminder. I know those crazy people exist but am used to that fact. It is good to take a moment to step back and remember it is simply horrible that they do. Almost like a war memorial reminds you to take a moment to reflect upon past carnage and loss.

    These people may not have any significant political power but I imagine they cause harms on the individual, interpersonal level in small but significant ways in their everyday lives.

    I am not going to get in a tizzy about a court case about bathrooms that as far as I can goggle, has not yet been resolved. Who knows, your side may yet prevail Driedel.

    In short, I was bemoaning the devolution of this thread.

    Like

  12. I mean, the “American way of life” and “American values” are indeed damaged by the racist nut cases, especially for the Americans their hate is directed at.

    Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.