Sorry, I didn’t see you replying when I deleted my hot-take. You sum up why I ditched it.
I still hope Greg Abbott loses his toes to frostbite though.
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I don’t remember exactly the original post you’re responding to, but if it’s about private utilities, there could be something to it. There are definitely ways to hold private utilities accountable so they are required to conduct routine maintenance instead of funneling monies to their investors. PG&E provides a perfect recent example of how that ends up.
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as @Faffenreffer recognized, as dismally as abbott has represented the interests of texans overall, the bulk of this situation can’t really be fairly laid at his feet which is why he deleted the comment i was replying to, unless my reading comp. skills have taken a serious turn for the worse.
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Ah, got it. I seem to like any opportunity to hate on private utilities.
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Green: I want to stop you there, because a Capitol Police officer was beaten to death by protesters. He died of his injuries.
Metaxas: Look, I’m not a newshound. But I didn’t even seem to get clarity on who were the human beings that committed murder. I don’t know anybody who is pro-murder. What is there to be said except, obviously, we condemn it. Who the heck wouldn’t condemn that? Why would somebody harm a police officer? Even I can’t make sense of what’s going on. Who did this? Are they in jail? Is there a trial? Is it clear why they did that?
And here he retreats to his pocket reality where that never happened. What an asshole!
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i think i disagree.
america generates a lot of economic anxiety for everyone. either too many jobs, or not enough jobs, working too many hours for not nearly enough pay, the way taxes are setup to make it feel like something’s getting taken away from you, ever increasing healthcare and housing costs, and on.
and there’s a certain group of people – who have mostly have no experience with anyone outside of their racial demographic due to the legacy of slavery and segregation – who are told that it’s all the fault of other people taking an unfair share.
it has no basis in reality. that’s why people are further encouraged to believe that education is bad, and that the media lies, and that the government in general is out to get them.
so, i think economic anxiety is a real tool being used to further racial hatred, and to split coalitions of people from working together.
that said, i don’t think we solve this by pandering to maga insecurities. we have to instead target the systems and individuals who are using those insecurities to stoke hatred, and even more importantly breakdown the systems which are generating racial inequity.
where one group has to deal with insecurity, other groups have to deal with both insecurity and actual harms. by fixing the harms, we will incidentally fix some of the insecurity.
[edit] also. wow. the answers to those questions. 
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I think that @navarro’s larger point is that these are generally speaking not people who are living pay check to pay check, about to be kicked out of their homes. Rather they are comfortable to well-off (the numbers of who supports Trump bears this out). If they are claiming economic anxiety, it’s just a cover for their racism rather than economic anxiety fueling their racism.
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yeah, i guess my point is just that nobody in america really feels all that well off or secure. even people who are making good money are really only a paycheck or two from real trouble.
i think covid, and trump’s failure of a response to it, has only helped to show how true that reality is. that’s part of why so many have been willing to ignore the reality of health risks: because it threatens that livelihood.
so i dont think they’re claiming it, i think many really feel it.
for other people, that might mean going after the real sources of the issues. for them, it means looking for scapegoats because the alternative is to challenge the systems that got them to where they are. ( could be even a sense that they couldn’t make it without their artificial leg up. )
it’s what we choose to do with that feeling of insecurity that matters. and they’ve choosen poorly.
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mindy is spot on in her reading of my comment. there are certainly people in the u.s. who are financially insecure, i have no doubt of it. but the ones who stormed the capitol on 1/6 are people who can afford to leave work for a few days to raise hell with democratically elected government, many of these people took off on their private jets, for crying out loud. if you really believe you are one or two paychecks from disaster, why don’t you freaking stay home and save money on your jet?
the average maga is someone white and upper-middle class. this is by god about racism and about control of the government and making sure it stays the government of the white, by the white, and for the white.
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Maybe, but some people objectively are, of course. I include myself in that number.
True, but I think the more secure one is, the more likely one is to support Trump. He seems to be the President of CEOs and “small” business owners.
Sure, but plenty of people would welcome robust government support rather than lose their businesses.
I think I disagree to a certain degree. I do think that some people, a majority of his hardcore supporters, are using it as an excuse to act out their racist ideals. Because when he kicked off his campaign in 2015, he did so by directly attacking Mexican immigrants, calling them rapists, etc. He might have worked in economic issues (they’re taking our jobs stuff), but it’s really about race, at the heart of it.
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Really more like an illness away from real trouble. A bout of cancer can cost you as much as a million bucks.
You have to be very rich indeed to not be bankrupted by a serious illness. SImply not like that in other countries.
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no disagreement about that part at all.
white families have sequestered wealth and they want to keep it. not by playing fair working up each generation from a common starting point, but by leveraging the wealth and connections of a society built to cater to them.
any challenge to that is frightening to them. and none of them - especially the most successful of them - want to acknowledge the privilege and luck that got them there. more than any group, they believe they’ve done it all themselves. even if all evidence is contrary to that.
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Care to change your vote, Mitch?
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Just the opposite. Trump says he is supporting MAGA - aligned challengers to Mitch in the next primary. Mitch will probably put on a MAGA hat and storm Pelosi’s office.
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What do these shitheads think government is for, exactly? What are you paying taxes for if the city or county don’t owe you anything in return?
The GOP is antithetical to the concept of civilization at this point.
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the weak will parish
Parish, eh?
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Some real stellar leadership here.
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Hmm, since he’s their mayor, paid with their taxes, maybe they should take what he’s got… after all that would be providing for their families, and they certainly won’t be asking, sure sounds like a good game plan to me.
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Ah, so he is in fact advocating for a return to the system where each parish is responsible for looking after their poor and needy.
/s
I mean in most places a return to Victorian-era social services would be a step-back but maybe in Texas it would be a significant improvement?
That would be the kind of out of the box thinking he would approve of, I’m sure.
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