204 black people killed this year by police (according to the Graun’s counter and it’s day 292). So 0.7 per day. The figures aren’t split by gender, but they do seem to be mostly male (ETA - 195 out of 204 were male) . Got a better source I can look at?
0.7 (0.668 per day when adjusted for gender) would count to me as “almost daily”. Last year had similar figures.
ETA: Even if you remove all ethnicity from the figures, 3 people a day are killed by police in the USA.
The horror is less specific to Clinton and more inspired by the guaranteed maintenance of a status quo that is crushing many. Americans are increasingly impoverished, isolated, disenfranchised by the crushing efficiency of neoliberalism and global capitalism, both of which Clinton has staunchly advocated and supports in private, and sometimes publicly.
After decades of red-baiting and belligerence toward Russia, are rank-and-file Republican voters now longing for Nixonian détente instead?
If “thermonuclear war” is the specific bad thing to be avoided, then putting Putin’s stooge in the White House could be a rational choice.
This is ridiculous, a lot Trump supporters are not racist, there are multiple reasons I’ve heard from friends of many colors as to why
None of those are racist reasons. Quit painting with a wide brush everyone who might vote for him. They aren’t all racists, just like not all Hillary supporters are Communistic Socialist Nazis like Trump supporters say. Use your effing brains and realize the world isn’t black and white; there’s far more gray.
Now that said -I- am not voting for him. I think he’s a sneaky dirtbag of a human being. I will be voting Johnson because he’s the lesser of 4 evils. I might write in Cthulu though as a knee jerk reaction.
I agree. Lots of people are killed by crooked cops, it’s not just black people. It’s the militarization of police that is the problem, but people rarely want to address the real reason.
That might be broadly true, but I don’t imagine a lot of folks who would call themselves conservatives are exactly against neoliberalism and global capitalism, and the status quo is what middle-class white people are practically made of (and what inspires a lot of racism when they can be convinced it’s under threat).
So I don’t think that adequately explains people who support Trump out of fear of HRC.
By your definition every white person is racist because they aren’t marching in #blackLivesMatter marches every day of their life. I do my part by not being racist. That’s where I consider my responsibility ends. I am not racist because my ancestors did something. That time is gone. I’m actually 1/8th black and I just don’t buy into this whole “all white people are racist” agenda that seems to be prevalent amongst far too many millenials.
They may not be able to articulate it beyond ‘dey tuk our jerbs’, but the discontent is economically driven. It’s desperation that drives the ignorant to the ‘strong man’ demigogue, history bears this out time and time again (especially when the party that is supposed to represent their interests scorns and mocks them and offers them nothing). There will continue to be ‘Trumps’ until gush-up economics are addressed; feel fortunate that this time it was an oafish buffoon.
No, they’re just ludicrously and hilariously uninformed ones that belie a critical inability to think (or even just pay attention). So… yay? I have a bridge to sell to anyone who believes Trump when he says he’s an economic or fiscal conservative who’s on the side of the American everyman looking for a job.
Also, Gary Johnson is an idiot who is only losing the title of “least serious high-profile campaign for president” this year because Trump is running. But I guess at least he never ran a personal email server, so… yay?
…except for the repeated observation that Trump supporters, on average, are making well above median incomes. They aren’t an oppressed underclass desperately seeking relief; they’re a fading overclass desperately seeking to hold on to privilege.
Observations by whom? Polls? What are we talking about?
That’s a far broader generalization than is useful.
Edit: It also occurs to me that it is useful to differentiate between Republican partisans who are supporting Trump because he is the R candidate, and those who are supporting Trump because they buy into his bullshit. Partisans will vote for whoever the Republican candidate is (and I’m sure standard shitbag Republicans skew high on income scales), I am talking about those who specifically support Trump.
I see. Didn’t occur to me because my classification of Indians is based on cultural criteria, so an Indian family living in West London might be more traditionally Hindu than another family living in Mumbai. That’s what I meant by it not being useful.
It really is time to drop this whole “Indian” thing in the US. There are around a billion Indians in the world, including quite a lot in the US, and retaining the term for a group that isn’t in any way culturally Indian (and in fact is very diverse) seems positively awkward,
It’s just been going on for so long, it’s hard to turn the boat around. The term “Indian” is enshrined in the names of government agencies and shit.
Educated white people say “Native American” instead, but you’ll hear Native Americans refer to themselves as Indians and then it’s another thing we’re trying to take away from them.
Speaking of awkward.
No. But denying the existence of systemic racism because you are 1/8 black and police militarization is a headscratcher.
You support my point. We refer to dog breeds, not dog races, because they are the result of selective breeding. (progressive late 19th century authors made this distinction about people too, referring to “the human race” but using the word “breed” to mean ethnicity, or selective breeding like the English upper classes selecting tall wives for their sons.)
That’s my point, so I don’t know why you wrote “Except.”
First Google result for “average income trump supporter”:
These figures, as I mentioned, are derived from exit polls, which so far have been conducted in 23 primary states.1 The exit polls have asked voters to describe their 2015 family income by using one of five broad categories, ranging from “under $30,000” to “$200,000 or more.” It’s fairly straightforward to interpolate a median income for voters of each candidate from this data
You’re good with that?
Edit: Want to be clear I am not excusing Trump supporters. I am just challenging the assumption that racism is their most meaningful charcteristic.
Whereas I think it’s important to make clear that the 21st century GOP is a white nationalist organisation, and that racism is the one unifying strand that binds the party together. Trump is their apotheosis.
I don’t disagree with you, and that statement does not contradict my assertion that racism is not the most meaningful factor when assessing Trump supporters. In as much as we are still pretending America is a democracy, we will never appeal to racist people to renounce their racism, we just have to wait for them to die out. If we are talking about getting Trump supporters back into the fold, and voting logically, It makes far more sense to me to address economic/social concerns that everybody has in common. I have heard several analyses that show quite convincingly that half of America is living in poverty. The Democratic party could accomplish much more with smart outreach to these people then they can in ridiculing them or focusing on the irreconcilable attributes. (I personally had, during the primaries, considerable success getting several Trump supporters to acknowledge that Sanders was a far better choice regarding the concerns they had. So it’s doable.)
Thank you for your thoughtful post!
I do need to disagree with part of it though.
Casting a vote for Trump in order to change the supreme court, or simply because he’s the republican is a result of societal privilege.
You need to be comfortable (and white and straight and male) enough to not be existentially threatened by a Pence (Trump) presidency.
Many people don’t have that privilege. If you’re an anti-choice Muslim, or a Latino feeling threatened marriage equality, is holding your nose enough?
You don’t have the privilege of giving Trump a chance to uphold your “conservative values”. You can’t vote for this monstrosity. Your life and livelihood will be in real danger.
