Reasons Why People Like Trump

 Mr. Donald J. Trump has done everything wrong. Just as a couple of examples: He has not moved the US in the right direction--or has moved it even in the wrong direction--on global warming/climate change. He has weakened protections of the populace against air and water pollution, to favor big business, the polluters. And, maybe worst, through his poor handling of COVID-19 virus, he has allowed nearly 200,000 people to die (yes, he deserves major responsibility for that).

 And yet tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people love him.

 Hard for me to understand.

 And yet: One man interviewed for TV said that he wants to see America go back to the America of his youth.

 I can sort of understand that. In my younger days, we did not even have the words carjacking, school shooting, lockdown, smash-and-grab.

 On the other hand, in those days maybe the Black man was expected to "know his place," and of course stay in it!

 Of course we cannot go back, and we should not want to. Drop that nostalgia, such as it may be, and realize that there are so many ways in which we must progress and are overdue to progress. As far as race is concerned, we are staring in the face the very problems that were recognized 50 years ago.

Copyright © 2020.

Critique of Conservative Philosophy

Conservatives believe that less government is better. They want to leave much to private industry, rather than having government involved in it (financing it, etc.) because they believe government is inefficient, wasteful, and even corrupt.

They also believe in lessening government regulation of business. This is a major conservative tenet. Rather than government ensuring that business takes measures to protect its workers (e.g., from factory injuries), protect consumers from unsafe products, and avoid polluting the environment--the air we breathe and the water we all must drink--conservatives believe that if you just leave businesses alone, they will do the right thing. This ignores the innumerable times that businesses have put their own profit and other business objectives before the health and welfare of their workers, customers, and the public.

Conservative economics have given us "trickle-down" economics under President Ronald Reagan (when it did not work) and now again under Donald Trump. This idea holds that if you cut taxes to the wealthy and to big corporations, they can invest the money they save on taxes and use it to expand their businesses; this creates new jobs--or so the theory goes. As I said, this theory did not work in Reagan's day, and today this same economic theory is being urged on Trump by an economic advisor of his who has been wrong over and over and over again.

Conservative individuals sometimes go so far as to say that they feel they should not have to pay taxes, that the income which they have legitimately earned (through hard work, or being enterprising, or being rapacious) should not be taken from them and given to the poor and needy who, they believe--usually with definite racist implications--simply do not want to work. The recent incident (caught on video and gone viral on social media) involving New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg shows Schlossberg saying that his taxes go to support these immigrant, Spanish-speaking restaurant workers whom he is complaining about through "welfare". This makes little sense, because if they were on welfare they would not be there, working in the restaurant. And if they are there, working in the restaurant, they are not on welfare. But this is typical conservative thinking: Reagan and Trump both got elected by implying that these lazy people (African-Americans and/or Hispanics) don't want to work and simply take money away from the good, noble, hard-working (white) guy who pays taxes.

To go back to some of our earlier points: Public health has been one of the major successes of government. Government entities identify epidemic diseases (food-borne illnesses, diseases, and so forth), identify the sources, and put public-health countermeasures in place.

Also, as I have said, government (except to the extent that Trump is doing his best to undermine and even stop these functions) helps keep our food and medicine safe, our air and water clean, pure, and safe, and nearly every aspect of life in our country as  many of us would like it to be.

Update: A conservative (unfortunately I can't tell you who it was) appearing, I believe, on Fox News, said of the children detained at the US border and wrenched from their parents, "Well, they're not our kids. This exemplifies what I believe to be a very common characteristic of conservative people: no empathy--that is, the  ability to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes.
One time, while I was on a business trip and pleasantly enjoying dinner in Lake Tahoe, I quoted a US Supreme Court justice (I think it was Justice Frankfurter, and I don't recall what the topic of conversation was or what prompted me to come out with this) as saying something to the effect, "Better nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be unjustly punished." To this my colleague said, "See, I don't agree with that!"
But what if the innocent, unjustly accused person had been his spouse, or child, or parent, or sister or brother? I think that, were the matter to touch home in that way, he might feel differently.

Copyright © 2018.

White Man vs. Native, Pt. 2

In the original post ("White Man vs. Native, Pt. 1"), I omitted one legacy of conquest, colonialism, and white settlement. In  many, perhaps most, places these have left a lasting legacy of racism, discrimination, and oppression.

In Australia, the aboriginal peoples are considered "black" and have faced discrimination much as have blacks in America.

In New Zealand, the native people (the Maori) were driven off their land, forbidden to speak their language, etc., with the effect of virtually destroying their culture. Sadly this is a very common pattern.

In Guatemala the indigenous Maya Indians have been disproportionately killed during civil war, even to the point of genocide.

In Peru and/or Equador the Indians have been held to the bottom of the social scale and have even been virtually enslaved. In the 16th century, King Phillip II of Spain ordered that the American natives not be enslaved, but that order was widely ignored, and that has left a legacy that has not been wiped out in 450 years.

In Mexico, where a majority of the population are mestizo—having mixed Indian and European blood—it's been the people of lighter complexion—that is, having pure or more pure European blood—who have been higher on the economic and social scale. I asked a professor who had lived in Mexico if there was racism or discrimination based on skin color in Mexico and he said "not since the Revolution [in 1920]," but I am very doubtful that it ended suddenly or finally as he claims. I think indigenous people in Mexico ("indios") are still very low on the social scale.

Updated June 21, 2013.


Copyright (c) 2013 by Richard Stein

Ronald Reagan: More on His Legacy

Maybe one of the biggest and most lasting parts of Reagan's legacy is that he made many Americans believe that government is evil—though this idea may in fact be deeply rooted in the American consciousness; one only has to look at the Declaration of Independence.

He persuaded us to make him head of that which he despised, namely the government. Evidently it didn't occur to anyone—least of all Reagan himself—that there was an irony there.

He tried to gut, undermine, and render powerless regulatory agencies such as the EPA and the FDA by cutting funding and causing staff cuts. Some of these agencies are still not restored to the funding or staffing that they need: thus Reagan's legacy lives on.

(These regulatory agencies protect consumers. Republicans--Reagan and more recent ones--argue that anything that impedes business is bad for all of us. So the argument comes down to this: Who do you trust to be on your side--"you" meaning the average Joe--corporations or the government? People mistrust the government but, to my mind, we've had plenty of cases of greedy, even evil and corrupt corporations. And, think of this: We don't elect corporations, so how do you expect them to be accountable, if they are free of all restrictions?)

It may well be due to Reagan that many people today feel that the government takes away their money—which they have earned and are thus entitled to keep—to give to people who don't want to work. (There is more than a hint of racism in this idea; I remember well Reagan's campaign speeches, which to me at least clearly included an appeal to racism. But you only have to look at photos or video clips--such as have appeared over and over—of job fairs that have been accessible to minorities, to see that there have been enormous, incredible, numbers of people willing to expend great amounts of time standing in long lines in hopes of getting a job.)

Further, to this type of thinking, this "redistribution of wealth"—that is, taxing their incomes--is outright socialism. Never mind that we have had an income tax for 150 years now, and the government's power to levy such a tax was confirmed by the Sixteenth Amendment 100 years ago.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

African-Americans and Gay People: Have They Got a Lot in Common?

Recently I posted a comment on Huffington Post in which I said that African-American people should be more sympathetic or empathetic with gay people than they are since they are both minorities who have been discriminated against.

There was a reply to my comment in which the writer denied that the two groups should be compared. I have thought of a few reasons why maybe that person is right.

1. It was never illegal to be African-American.

2. It is not illegal for two African-Americans to marry one another nor for African-American couples to adopt children.

3. African-Americans are not told, from the pulpit, that they are sinners, simply because of who they are, or that they are going to hell because they are African-American.

4. No one has claimed that natural disasters such as floods and tornadoes are the result of God punishing America for tolerating African-Americans.

5. African-Americans may have their own bars and so forth, but those bars don't get raided by the police.

Yes, all those things have applied to gay people. And where discrimination in hiring and housing on the basis of race is illegal everywhere, gay people don't have that protection under federal law, so they may be legally discriminated against in some areas.

On the other hand, African-Americans do get called names (as gay people get called faggot) and sometimes are beaten up or even killed for who they are.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

The Tea Party Should Be Called the Koch Party

I have previously stated my belief that the Tea Party is not a populist nor a grass-roots political movement, not truly the "common man" rebelling against excessive government and excessive taxes, as some of their demonstrations and sloganeering have tried to persuade us. I am happy to be able to say that I find the same idea expressed elsewhere. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the Tea Party:

Former ambassador Christopher Meyer writes in the Daily Mail that the Tea Party movement is a mix of "grassroots populism, professional conservative politics, and big money", the last supplied in part by Charles and David Koch.[134] Jane Mayer says that the Koch brothers' political involvement with the Tea Party has been so secretive that she labels it "covert".[135]

David Koch and his brother are billionaires. Their money allows them to be very powerful and influential. Their interest--not to say that they don't have other aims--is to keep taxes on the wealthy low. Again, on the role of David Koch and his brother in advancing conservative politics:

Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded by David H. Koch in 2003, and led by Tim Phillips. The group has over 1 million members in 500 local affiliates, and led protests against health care reform in 2009.[103]

One million members may sound like a lot but it represents only one-third of one percent of the American population.

And the Wikipedia article quotes others:

In an April 2009 New York Times opinion column, contributor Paul Krugman wrote that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grassroots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey.". . .The same month, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) stated "It's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class"[219][220]

Some have claimed that the Tea Party is racist. Going back at least to Ronald Reagan, conservatives have tried to play upon racism. If they were a little more blunt in how they state what they believe, we would more plainly see their unwillingness to pay taxes that, in their opinion, go for welfare paid to people who simply don't want to work. A poll (by the University of Washington?) showed that only 35% of Tea Party supporters believe that Blacks are hard working.

Updates December 17, 2011, December 18, 2011
The Koch brothers fund the Acton Institute and the Heartland Institute (among many other Right organizations), which are anti-environmental organizations which deny human-caused global warming. Many of the Kochs' organizations, like a lot of Right organizations, are interlocking in their funding, etc.
If there's anybody who didn't already know the power of money--the influence upon and control of our national affairs--he should just look at the Kochs.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Mississippi: Not Exactly Paradise

Mississippi is a very backward state. It ranks last among all US states in so many things, like educational levels, obesity, and percentage of people who smoke.

According to an article in 247wallstreet.com,

In nearly every metric associated with poverty, education, employment, health risk, and insurance coverage, Mississippi has been close to the bottom for years.

I'm always saying that people who think they should not pay taxes or who don't like government programs that help the poor should go live in Mississippi. It's the very opposite of a country like Norway, where the taxes are very high but the government provides nearly everything anyone wants or needs. (That all sounds good to me, but it's what conservative Americans call "socialism," and socialism is felt by these same people to be a very damning epithet.)

Mississippi also has been a state with poor racial equality and a lot of bigotry and intolerance in general. It's the state where three civil rights workers from the North—two white and one black—were murdered in 1963. It's also the state where a young black teenager from Chicago was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. (His killers were acquitted by an all-white jury, and later admitted their guilt but could not be retried because of the US legal protection against "double jeopardy.")

At about that time I visited Mississippi myself, and I said to myself at the time, "If ever there's a place that looks like it's been cursed by God, this is it." Driving from Mississippi into next-door Alabama, Alabama looks like paradise--but that's only by comparison.

All this was nearly 50 years ago. That's quite a while, and some things might have changed. Quite possibly you can no longer get away with killing black people there. Still, I think that Mississippi was always basically an agrarian state, with its economy based on slavery. It never recovered from the Civil War and the direct ravages of that war, and the emancipation of the slaves. When I was there, 100 years after the Civil War, it was still a very blighted-looking place. And we see that today, 150 years after the Civil War, it's still very poor.

Mississippi's very poor material and economic welfare and its poor education doubtless go hand-in-hand. The two are inextricably related. Poor education is a cause of poor prosperity, and lack of tax receipts to pay for education in turn will result in poor education, so the two mutually reinforce one another.

Also, people's attitudes have a lot to do with their level of education. Mississippi may very well continue to have backward racial and other attitudes due to its lack of education.

Another state that lately has been much in the news with things like wanting to teach Creationism in its schools instead of evolution and passing anti-gay laws, is Tennessee. In the same 247wallstreet.com article, Tennessee ranks as the third-poorest state. Other notably backward states like West Virginia and Kentucky also ranked among the 10 poorest.

Read more: America’s Poorest States - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2011/09/14/americas-poorest-states/#ixzz1Y3KNnMyJ

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Proportion of Single Black Women: My Take

ABC News NightLine last night ran a very interesting news story. It said that young black women have a harder time finding a marriage partner than single white women in the same age range. In fact, they said that 54% of black women never marry, as compared to 21% of white women.

Demographics were given as a reason. You take away the black men who are unemployed, those who are incarcerated, etc., and there are comparatively few left. The black women interviewed for the show understandably want to find a black male with income and social class comparable to their own, so they certainly are not going to consider those men among the prison population or the unemployed or the menially employed.

Steve Harvey, comedian turned counselor, weighed in and mentioned that black men just have less responsibility toward their female partners and less inclination to marry.

I think there is another reason that nobody dares to discuss. The way I see it is this: More black women than black men have good jobs, and thus can be in the middle class. (In places I have worked, I have seen black women well represented and in good positions; but if there were in fact any black men, they were likely to have jobs like janitor.) Maybe this suggests that more black women than men attain college educations and it would be interesting to see if statistics would bear this out. I think there is another reason, though. I think black women face less discrimination in the workplace. (And now comes the really unpopular thing that nobody is willing to admit.) This is because the white race has always been afraid of blacks, and that fear is directed much more toward black males than black females, who are perceived as much less threatening.

If a white person is walking on the street, or waiting for the el, late at night, is s/he going to be afraid if there is no one about but a black female? or if there is no one about but a black male?

Yes, these are the stereotypes in the minds of white people. Racism (which is pretty much equivalent to stereotypes) does exist. We all believe, but often won't admit, that there is a basis in fact for our stereotypes. I'm not going to weigh in on that question; let the reader contemplate it for himself.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein