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Trump Is Smart

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Clarissa

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Trump is now pivoting towards the general election and is very slyly appealing to “the poorly educated” (c) with “NAFTA was horrible, it took jobs away from American workers and sent them to evil Mexicans.” This line pleases both the haters of Mexicans and the more intellectually limited among Democrats who are desperately looking for reasons to avoid voting for Hillary (aka Bad Mommy who didn’t come running whenever they needed her).

Of course, blaming any single person or trade agreement for the inevitable (and largely quite positive) results of the technological revolution is very dumb. Dragging out the agony of Fordism and keeping the attendant lifestyles on life support would only have managed to hurt more people, selling false hope to younger generations. The sooner everybody realizes that the world has changed and manufacturing jobs have vanished forever, the better.

But try explaining this to the “poorly educated” and to the perennially pouty. Once the slogan of “NAFTA is bad; Mexicans stole jobs” has lodged in their confused brains, there’s no reasoning with them.

Trump knows this and is exploiting this infantile belief very deftly. Those who enjoy calling him a clown and a buffoon will be eating out of his palm in a couple of months because he knows how to soothe the anxieties they feel when facing the world’s inevitable complexity.

30 responses to “Trump Is Smart”

  1. danmillerinpanama Avatar
    danmillerinpanama

    The sooner everybody realizes that the world has changed and manufacturing jobs have vanished forever, the better.

    That’s very sad. Where will we get the cars, trucks, ambulances, refrigerators, air conditioners, televisions, computers, cell phones and other stuff we think we need?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Robots are now making them. And it’s a good thing because manufacturing jobs are repetitive, mechanical, boring and bring no intellectual or personal enrichment.

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  2. anon Avatar
    anon

    Slightly related: Skepticism of the Occupy Wall Street ever producing anything useful aside, I was wondering if you’d like to comment on this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-alternative-banking-group-of-ows/globalization-for-the-99_b_9820454.html ? Particularly in the context of all the post-nation state discussion you have here. Do you think their ideas still rely to heavily on nation states? Do you think there is any hope of protecting people from bad actors in industry? I’d love to hear what you think!

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  3. Benjamin Band Avatar
    Benjamin Band

    Would you be so supportive (or enabling through inaction) towards illegal immigrants if the people taking over the West were Jews and Japanese rather than Muslims and Hispanics?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Us Jews have already taken over the West, right after we created it. Get with the program. 🙂 As for the Japanese, I would not begrudge them a bit of a takeover.

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      1. Benjamin Band Avatar
        Benjamin Band

        Lol, I just don’t understand why people like Donald Trump and Victor Orban are called evil racists for being against illegal immigration. When on the other hand no one gets angry at Japan, South Korea, or Mexico for being against illegal immigration and having tight immigration policies.

        From living in Florida and North Carolina, I’ve noticed that in smaller numbers Hispanics in North Carolina seem more assimilated and speak English in higher numbers than in Florida. I’m worried that a continuation or our poor border controls in the US and EU, will lead to irreversible changes and the loss of our cultures. It would be a great loss for Spanish to replace English as the spoken language in the US since our books, music, and movies are in the English language.

        I also never understood why so many people here in the US think the US and the West are so exceptionally evil because of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism. The west played a huge role in the abolition of slavery. I never hear people talking about Muslims should feel guilty for the Islamic slave trade, or that Japanese need to feel guilty for the Japanese colonial era. I’ve never lived in a communist or socialist country but from reading about them there seems to be a pattern of them failing all over the world, having poor economies, starvation, and insane corrupt power hungry leaders.

        “If I am not for myself who is for me? ”
        -Hillel the Elder

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        1. danmillerinpanama Avatar
          danmillerinpanama

          It’s called self-flagellation, which is apparently a big turn-on for leftists. Perhaps it gives them the safe spaces they seek.

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            “It’s called self-flagellation, which is apparently a big turn-on for leftists.”

            • When you are right, you are right. 🙂

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        2. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          What American artists need to preserve English-language art is simply produce good art, not ban immigrants. Currently, the Spanish-speaking world is producing art of such an incredibly higher quality than the US or UK that you are right to be worried. It’s not the immigrants’ fault, though. It’s the maddening incapacity of American and British artists to remain relevant. I most sincerely hope they get themselves together and go back to producing valuable art.

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          1. Ben Avatar
            Ben

            Even if that’s true, I think it’s a migrant’s responsibility to learn the language of a host country, not the host country’s responsibility to learn the language of the migrants. If I moved to Poland I think I should learn the Polish language not demand Polish people speak English because their is more English than Polish art.

            Besides cultural reasons illegal immigration in the West is allowing cartels and terrorists to bring drugs, kill people, and rape women(some young boys too).

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Drug cartels are in no way related to immigration. Colombian drug cartels operated in the US for decades with great success while the number of illegal immigrants from Colombia was tiny because of the absence of a shared border.

              I highly recommend learning Spanish and immersing yourself in the culture to combat the fears that you are experiencing and that don’t seem to be related to immigration per se. It’s important to know what exactly bothers you, and it doesn’t seem to be immigration.

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              1. Ben Avatar
                Ben

                Aaron Clarey said that illegal immigrants demanding Americans learn Spanish is “Prodding for weakness”. Do you think this is the case?

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Where are immigrants demanding that anybody learn anything? Children of Hispanic immigrants come to my classes all the time to learn Spanish. Because they don’t know a word of it. They are all English speakers. Give people half a chance, and all children of immigrants become native speakers of English.

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              3. Ben Avatar
                Ben

                I’ll learn Spanish after Mexico destroys its border fence, invites 11 million people that speak a language other than Spanish, and throws away the Spanish language to accommodate them.

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              4. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                It’s impossible to “throw away” a language. It’s not a used Kleenex. Any worry about the demise of the English language is neurotic in nature because it’s not based on observable reality.

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          2. Ben Avatar
            Ben

            Can you tell me one Spanish language song that is pound for pound as good as American Pie by Don McLean?

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              I have no idea who Don McLean is. Can’t you think of an artist who made a greater impact on the world? Because this fellow is not known.

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            2. Ben (the other one) Avatar
              Ben (the other one)

              Has it ever occured to you that you don’t know many good Spanish songs because you don’t speak Spanish and have much more exposure to English language media?

              In any case, if you think American Pie of all things is the pinnacle of English speaking culture then you clearly don’t much about your own culture, let alone anybody else’s.

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        3. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “:Lol, I just don’t understand why people like Donald Trump and Victor Orban are called evil racists for being against illegal immigration. ”

          I don’t call anybody evil because that’s just stupid. And whether Trump is racist, I have no idea. But even if Trump suggested handing American passports to every single illegal immigrant, I’d be just as opposed to his candidacy as I am now and for the same reason: he is grievously unqualified.

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          1. Ben (the other one) Avatar
            Ben (the other one)

            It hardly matters if Trump is a racist if he supports policies that damage ethnic minorities. He is either a racist or somebody who doesn’t mind gambling away the rights of minorities in exchange for political power… which practically makes him one anyway for all it matters to the public.

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  4. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    “It would be a great loss for Spanish to replace English as the spoken language in the US ”

    This is what idiot Trump supporters believe.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      One would think that people who love their language so much dedicate themselves to studying and cultivating it in all its beauty. But no, they don’t want to do that.

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      1. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        Yes, the Venn diagram overlap between “people who throw fits at being asked to press one for English” and “people who shit all over English majors as worthless unemployable idiots” is almost an entire circle.

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        1. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell

          Oh, this is a brilliant observation.

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        2. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “Yes, the Venn diagram overlap between “people who throw fits at being asked to press one for English” and “people who shit all over English majors as worthless unemployable idiots” is almost an entire circle.”

          • This is the comment of the week. 🙂

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  5. Evelina Anville Avatar
    Evelina Anville

    “I’ll learn Spanish after Mexico destroys its border fence, invites 11 million people that speak a language other than Spanish, and throws away the Spanish language to accommodate them.”

    It’s probably not worth it to reply but I will anyway…….You do realize that people all the world over learn English, right? And that Americans are some of the most resolutely monoglot people in the world? (I only speak one language myself.) I would guess that in general most Mexicans (living in the country of Mexico) know far more English than Americans do Spanish. I

    I have done some fairly extensive travelling and I have found that even in small, somewhat remote villages in developing countries, at least a handful of people know English to some degree and that I can almost always find an English version of a bus or train schedule.

    The English language is enjoying a period of remarkable ascendancy. It’s strange, and quite frankly insensitive, to complain of English disappearing when some languages, like the Basque language or various African languages, are in danger of becoming instinct and other languages like Irish or Hebrew are starting to revive only because of enormous dedication on the part of their speakers.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “It’s strange, and quite frankly insensitive, to complain of English disappearing”

      • It sounds very bizarre to me, too. English is the language of international communication at this point in history, it is spoken more widely than any other language in the world. Why anybody would freak out over its supposed likelihood of disappearing is a mystery. Right here on this blog we have people from all continents and many different countries. And everybody communicates in English, including me who is not a native speaker of the language.

      I’m not seeing what the problem is.

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      1. Ben Avatar
        Ben

        I’m concerned that English won’t be the main language in sizable portions of the United States, not that English will disappear. It is good logistically for a country to have all of its citizens know one common language. Having English and Spanish Portions will divide the country. Similar to Canada, Ukraine, and Belgium.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Seriously, Ukraine? :-))))) Where is this bit of wisdom coming from?

          Everybody in Ukraine shares a language. This is SO not a country divided by language. Of all things to say about Ukraine, this one is the most bizarre. Have you heard of the Soviet Union? Ukraine was a part of it, actually.

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        2. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          As for avoiding Spanish speaking pockets in the country, the only way is to integrate Spanish speakers which will motivate them to learn English. Pushing them into illegality makes ghettos more, not less, likely.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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