Growing up Darden: My classmates thought my father, who prosecuted O.J. Simpson, was a traitor
I was 15 years old in 1994 when my father, Christopher Darden, joined the prosecution team against O.J. Simpson, a case very much in the news again thanks to “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” now airing on FX. To say the least, it was a turbulent time for me: the daughter of a black prosecutor, prosecuting a successful black man in the trial of the 20th century.
I grew up in East Oakland, in a mostly black and Latino neighborhood. My parents never married and I lived with my mother. Life before the trial was simple. Our street had less crime compared to other blocks in the area, and all I wanted in life were straight A’s, a boyfriend who shared my love for X-Men cartoons, and TLC concert tickets. As the racial tensions surrounding the case grew, so did my anxiety. I worried the students at my predominantly black high school would harass me when they found out about my father. Many black people sided with Simpson and thought my father was a traitor.
Most of my classmates told me, “I don’t agree with what your daddy is doing, but you’re cool so I support you.” But not everyone felt compassion. While walking down the stairs after class one day, a black kid stopped me on the steps when other students were around. He said to my face, “Dude, I’m sorry, but your father is a Tom. A straight up sellout.” Then he strutted away as if he’d accomplished something. Embarrassment and shock left me speechless.
On the flip side, black people who suspected I was related to “that Darden” and believed Simpson was guilty would whisper conspiratorially in my ear. “I think he did it,” they’d say, “but don’t tell anyone I told you that.” They feared others would consider them sellouts too.
I understood why many black people, especially black people in Los Angeles, supported Simpson. I remember the beating of Rodney King and the shooting death of Latasha Harlins, 15, over a bottle of orange juice. Like today, black folks were tired of racially motivated killings. Still it hurt to see my father, a proud black man who encouraged me to embrace my heritage, be called a traitor. My father wanted justice for victims Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman…
“Hey, I noticed your last name is Darden,” said the short, middle-aged black man from my Bay Area fitness class in 2003. I knew what was coming next.
“Are you related to Chris Darden, the bald-headed guy from the O.J. trial?”
I gave my usual response.
“Oh, no,” I lied.
“Good,” he said while pounding his clenched fist into his palm. “Man, if I ever saw that [racial slur] I’d … “
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It may surprise some readers to know that this journal quite enjoys John Podhoretz. He has an excellent voice for Twitter, and his monthly GLOP podcast, especially, is not to be missed. We have sharp disagreements on several recent foreign policy adventures, to be sure, but this post is neither the time nor the place for that. Besides, we would never expect expertise in 1970s pop culture to translate into expertise in foreign policy, and so we are happy to agree to disagree there.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore his recent misinterpretations of two of our favorite cultural satires: Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy and Anthony Trollope’s novel The Way We Live Now. Not only does Podhoretz misunderstand basic elements of these works, but the nature of his errors reveals a great deal about the inability of conservative pundits to comprehend the appeal of Trump’s campaign.
In the Weekly Standard and elsewhere, Podhoretz has compared Trump to Idiocracy’s President Camacho, a former wrestler who becomes leader of the free world in the dystopian future in which the film is set. (Basically, Idiocracy imagines a United States grown progressively more idiotic over the generations until it becomes a garbage strewn, consumerist hellscape with no culture or appreciation for intelligence.) And, indeed, no one watching the present campaign can deny Trump’s frequent vulgarity, lack of policy knowledge, and overall coarsening effect on the race—though Roland Barthes may disagree with the implicit critique of wrestling.
The film, however, does not present Camacho as the cause of the country’s degeneration. He is at most an exploiter or even unwitting beneficiary of it. The main source of the decline presented in the film is the effect of less intelligent people having more offspring than intelligent people (which we will assume is pure parody and not comment on the policy implications thereof). The other reason given—and a much more compelling one—is the gross culture of consumption promoted at all costs by a (presumably global) corporate elite. “Brawndo,” a Gatorade-like drink, famously replaces water in irrigation and drinking fountains not because of Camacho but because its corporate owners succeed in buying off the government and installing it by official mandate.
It is not an accident that the idiocrats’ lives are totally commercialized, and any comprehensive interpretation of the film must acknowledge Judge’s critique of the dehumanizing effects of a consumer economy run amok and the selfishness of the corporate masters that sponsor it. Podhoretz ignores these elements of the film completely, yet it is precisely this interpretation which may explain so many voters’ willingness to embrace unconventional (and conventionally unappealing) candidates. They see that their country is being turned into an idiocracy—or at least a social and cultural wasteland—as its government and the leadership of both parties seem incapable of deviating from the preferences of the donor class.
Podhoretz misses a similar point in his discussion of The Way We Live Now. On the latest GLOP podcast, he summarizes the novel as the
“…greatest novel ever…involving a mysterious financier who takes London by storm because he announces that he is building the intercontinental Chinese railroad [the railroad actually runs from Mexico to Salt Lake City—ed.], and of course it all turns out to be a Madoff-like scheme. So that’s a book about a really disgusting rich person that, if you’re interested in thinking about the kind of damage that really disgusting rich people can do to a perfectly civilized country, you might want to read.”
This interpretation is so simplistic (and factually incorrect) that one wonders if Podhoretz has actually even read the book. It is true that the central character, the financier Augustus Melmotte, is a hustler and a con man. But Trollope’s portrait of him is at times quite sympathetic, and his real disgust is directed much more at the decadent British society that enabled a character like Melmotte to succeed and which flattered him profusely for a time. Various dissolute aristocrats, in hoping to get something from Melmotte, laid the foundations for and actively contributed to the unfolding disasters. Trollope’s Britain is anything but a “perfectly civilized country,” nor would a serious reader consider it ruined by one “disgusting rich person” alone. In placing all of the blame on the Jewish Melmotte, Podhoretz oddly takes the position of the anti-Semitic British aristocrats who are shown to be the most venal characters in the book.
Once again, in Podhoretz’s interpretation, Donald Trump alone is responsible for all the ills of the conservative movement. In his view, apparently, the movement was without flaw before Trump: Conservative intellectuals were not at all out of touch with the movement’s constituency. The party’s policies had produced splendid results in the last Republican administration. And certainly nothing about the state of the party could have enabled Trump’s rise; certainly no introspection over its basic agenda is required.
Please.
One does not have to like Trump to see that the party is in critical need of intellectual revival. Those positions Trump has attacked, impulsively but successfully—including immigration, trade, and indiscriminate democracy promotion—require serious reappraisal at least, if not a fundamental rethinking. We would prefer that the party improve itself rather than be destroyed, but the responses of Podhoretz and others so far inspire little optimism.
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During the pre-South Carolina debate, Donald Trump notoriously said that Bush (43) should have been impeached. This naturally caused all sorts of outrage among “conservatives.”
But what did Trump mean? That Bush should have been impeached for abuse of power? That would have required a Congress jealous of its own powers. Not such a bad thing. Perhaps it also means if Trump wins but then abuses his own powers, Congress should impeach him as well. I see no reason not to welcome that sentiment, either.
Yet if conservatives think they can conserve anything meaningful from the past (including Constitutionalism) after the wholesale destruction of a regime of civil and religious liberty that was built upon a moral tradition established by a two-thousand-year old civilization, they are deluding themselves. The traditional moral and political defense of civil and religious liberty has been undermined. American citizens, who want to live by the virtues established by that old moral tradition, have no real public means of defending their way of life, because the Washington elites have succeeded in transforming the moral foundations of contemporary political and social life behind the backs of the American people, and without their consent. The old regime of civil and religious liberty has been cut from under the people who long for it. “Morality” today is established, confirmed, and legitimized by contemporary intellectual elites. It seems that the best conservatives can hope for is to defend policies that appear to protect ”conservative” opinions on abortion, health care, limited government, and constitutionalism, seemingly unaware of the fact that those opinions are tolerated among contemporary elites because they have nothing to do with political reality in terms of reversing those policies, or re-establishing the limitations required by a constitutional government.
Frankly, I don’t think any of this matters. The real question is whether Trump is trying to re-establish the ground of politics as central to re-establishing the authority of the people. Policies can be changed, but now they are changed—or kept the same—without the consent of the governed. In fact, policy today is changed only by an administrative elite that is responsive to the interests of the various economic, social, cultural, religious, scientific, media, and entertainment elites. It remains a fact that, in the administrative state, the only thing NOT needed to change policies—or even the entire way of life of a people—is the authority of the people themselves. Does Trump understand that the first political necessity is to take the power out of the hands of the elites? He must, because all of the interested elites, including “conservatives,” fear that he threatens to take precisely that power out of their hands.
In truth, leftist policies cannot be reversed without a political revolution, one that would undermine the established authority of both contemporary liberalism and conservativism. It would also require re-animating the role of the people as a political force in Washington, which has become the heart of the administrative state and the source of the authority of the national intellectual and social elites, or the cognoscenti.
Conservatives such as Victor Hanson and Charles Murray, who are now taking Trump seriously, do so by separating Trump from Trumpism. They want to understand the importance of the political movement created by Trump; and they attempt to do so by separating Trump from the people, from the political constituency he created. But like any political movement, this one is unintelligible without Trump. He mobilized that political movement on behalf of a political reality that was in opposition to the socially constructed public world that had been created by the political, social, and media elites. That elite had dictated what constituted the morally defensible in the political and social world. It had determined what constituted allowable outrage against public decency.
Yet, since the end of the cold War, a whole way of life established by a venerable tradition was under attack by social, economic, intellectual, and religious elites, with little possibility of outrage against those who brought it about, precisely because conservative and liberals alike had accepted the inevitability of what they knew was only a “narrative.” In fact, despite the abuses of authority, and various scandals generated in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, no moral outrage could be directed against the Washington establishment, from without or within. Watergate had established the ground of permissible moral outrage against the political, but it was not on behalf of the people, it was on behalf of the Washington establishment.
Reagan’s questioning of the legitimacy of centralized administrative government, and his defense of civil society, resonated with the electorate. It put the Washington establishment on the defensive for a decade. But by the end of the 1990s, the line between government and civil society had almost vanished, as the administrative state came to be centered on the presidency, with its vast ability to influence public opinion. Public opinion was both vulgarized and politicized during that decade. The coarsening of the culture was accelerated and the politicization of the private sphere had encompassed nearly everything including the movies, television, sports, music, and popular entertainment. Indeed, much of civil society was transformed in such a way as to become merely a reflection of the moral and political opinions established by elite intellectual opinion.
Consequently, it had become increasingly difficult to defend the autonomy of those private institutions in civil society that had depended upon a public, and political, defense of traditional morality. Government itself participated in undermining public support for those civil society institutions, such as the family and the churches, which had been dependent upon the authority of the old morality. This transformation occurred without organized political debate, and without the participation of the people in terms of legitimizing such a radical transformation of public opinion and public authority.
On the contrary, the political and enlightened elite—alone—had determined what constituted acceptable moral standards in the public sphere. As for the people themselves, no outrage at sexual scandal in the highest places, political corruption, or political correctness could resonate politically without the blessing of the Washington establishment. Rather, any kind of moral or political misbehavior on the part of the political establishment was defended on the ground that it was merely private behavior, unrelated to public performance.
But during the Clinton administration, the line between public and private behavior had nearly vanished because of the politicization of the culture and the coarsening of society as a whole. The public moral character of the regime would, subsequently, come to be shaped almost exclusively by the private interests and personal predilections of the cognoscenti. As a result, nearly any kind of private behavior that had an influential intellectual constituency (not necessarily large ones) could demand and receive public recognition in the form of government protection of private behavior as a public right.
It was not long before the only justifiable moral outrage was in opposition to those who still attempted to defend traditional morality. That morality came to be viewed as nothing more than the private, or personal, values of the ignorant and the vulgar, or the bigoted; and therefore unworthy of a public defense. In other words, the only public, or political, outrage that was socially and intellectual acceptable was moral outrage against the old morality. In short, the political and social elites had created an intellectual and political environment that made it nearly impossible to mobilize any public, or political support, for those traditional virtues that had made the defense of civil and religious liberty possible and necessary.
Trump has re-animated the political meaning of moral outrage, by being outrageous on behalf of what had come to be understood as the vulgar and unsophisticated, the hoi polloi. In doing so, he showed that it was the people, themselves, who could and should be outraged—by exposing the agenda and the hypocrisy of the Washington elites.
But that required using outrage on behalf of the political sphere once again. It also required an appeal to the people, against the establishment. Although in the past quarter century, nearly every aspect of the culture had become vulgarized, manners had been coarsened in both public and private life without complaint, it had become nearly impossible to mount a political opposition to the transformation of the culture. On the other hand, the establishment had erected a wall around public political behavior, in which coarseness or vulgarity, which so permeated the rest of society, was off limits in terms of political competition and debate. It appeared that only in politics are there rules of civility that still had to be observed. But the arbiters of good taste depended upon an agreement among themselves that required control of the public conversation, or the narrative. As a result, the people must only be able to understand their government through the lens provided by the national political, social, and media elites.
Trump’s unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of elite opinion concerning what is allowable in terms of the conversation, shattered political correctness and threatened the social and political control that was dependent upon the agreement of all of the intellectual elites. He could not do this in any civil, or politically acceptable, manner. Perhaps he thought that the political world ought to be treated in the same way as the rest of society. He coarsened and vulgarized politics in the same manner that the elites had coarsened and vulgarized the popular culture and the whole of civil society. That was too much for all of those who had come to understand themselves as the arbiters of manners: the sophisticated or the cognoscenti.
Not surprisingly, a liberal and conservative establishment—which had not been able to summon up any moral indignation against the outrageous behavior of the elites in the past quarter century—are outraged by the outrageous behavior of Trump. By making outrage political again, and placing that outrage in the hands of the people rather than the elites, even the behavior of the Clintons in the 1990s—which had not resonated at the time because none of the elites would or could make an issue of it—has re-emerged in a political manner that was almost inconceivable before Trump.
And this is not because Trump has said anything new or radical. It is because he did what no educated intellectual, or academic, would do: he took the side of what had come to be seen as the simple, if not ignorant, common man, against the enlightened and sophisticated elites of the social and intellectual world. He seems to understand that the coming political battle is a battle for control of public opinion, as Lincoln understood that term. Public opinion is, and has been for decades, treated as the private preserve of specialists, post-modern intellectuals, social scientists, lawyers, bureaucrats. Or, to put it in Hegelian terms, public opinion has been formulated, authorized, and legitimized by what has come to be understood as ‘the rule of organized intelligence.” There is no respectable opinion that has been able to emerge without the authority and the consent of the intellectual elites. In fact, there seems to be nothing quite like the political challenge to the authority of the cognoscenti, such as that posed by Trump in his appeal to the political authority of the people.
Again, what Trump seems to have understood is the necessity of revitalizing the political by reestablishing the authority of the people, rather than upholding the intellectual authority of the cognoscenti. Given his flamboyance and his unorthodox methods, many question whether he seeks power on behalf of the people, or on his own behalf. That will depend upon whether he is ambitious enough to understand that his self-interest, and his glory, will be assured by his success in pursuing the public good. Whether he will know how to harness and mobilize that political movement on behalf of restoring a constitutional order remains an open question.
Nonetheless, in the case of those who might learn from Trump, they need to understand that the fundamental problem of our time is to determine how to re-animate political rule in a way that allows public opinion, understood to arise in the creation of constitutional majorities, to establish the legitimacy of politics and policies, so that the resulting policies are compatible with the rule of law and the common good. If the people are to understand themselves as a sovereign people, they must reestablish the authority of the Constitution in a manner that makes it possible to restore the theoretical and moral ground of civil and religious liberty. That requires revitalizing the meaning of citizenship and reaffirming the sovereignty of the people and the nation.
Since the end of the Cold War, our leaders have understood their offices in terms of global and administrative rule, rather than political rule on behalf of the people and the nation. We have become so accustomed to administrative rule that we have forgotten that political rule requires the consent of the governed (not the consent of self-interested minorities of whatever kind) to establish its legitimacy. But such consent is possible only when a people understand themselves as a people, in a country where the regime supports the people by recognizing the political rule of its citizens. That requires distinguishing our citizens from all others.
It seems that Trump, at least, recognizes the necessity of re-establishing the sovereignty of the people as the first step in reaffirming political rule. In a certain way, this is an American form of the problem at the center of the Strauss-Kojeve debate: on the one hand a universal bureaucracy and a global elite that caters to human pleasure (sports, entertainment, erotica), which Strauss considered a tyranny; on the other, the question of whether there is sufficient pride in human beings for them to fight to retain their freedom and dignity, and hence reestablish a particular political order which is their own. (And not in Kant’s meaning of “freedom” and “dignity,” but the meaning established by the earlier philosophical and theological tradition).
Recreating the political authority of one people is the first step on the road to re-establishing the political conditions of civil and religious liberty, provided there is sufficient civic spiritedness, if not yet virtue, in the citizenry. But that requires political leadership that is capable of animating the civic spiritedness necessary for the revival of the political virtues required for self-rule. The administrative state has fragmented, isolated, and infantilized the people. Constitutionalism is at its core a political defense of the sovereignty of the people. Consequently, the fundamental problem is how to reestablish the sovereignty of one people, and restore the political authority of a Constitution that protects the natural rights of its citizens. Is Donald Trump up to the task?
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on The Trumpian Philosophy
Bigotry and hatred is unknown among Jews, so when we encounter it among the goyim, it shocks our tender sensibilities.
Bigotry and hatred are unknown in the Torah, right?
Incidentally, a recent poll shows that Donald Trump receives 61% support from Israelis, while he hardly receives 6% support from America’s elite Jews.
As Leo Strauss said: “The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption. The greatest expression of this, surpassing everything that any present-day man could write, is that great Jewish prayer, which will be known to some of you and which is a stumbling block to many, Aleinu leshnbeia It would be absolutely improper for me to read it now.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been uncomfortable spitting during the Aleinu prayer. Or maybe you’re not Chabad and you don’t spit. If that’s the case let me explain this dandy little custom.
The Aleinu prayer concludes every service. And after we say the first line of this prayer, we spit. In this first line we praise the Master of all things that He has not made us like the nations of the world, nor caused us to be like the families of the earth; that He has not assigned us a portion like theirs, nor a lot like that of all their multitudes, for they bow to vanity and nothingness – [SPIT]. But we bend the knee, bow down, and offer praise before the supreme King of kings…
Now first I want to be clear that the bracketed word [SPIT] written above is not in the prayer book. I put that in just to show you where we spit.
Second, this particular line that He has not… has caused a lot of problems throughout the centuries and in some prayer books it was taken out so as not to cause trouble with the nations of the world, and it remains out.
Third, even today, there are some Jewish groups that are very upset by this line because they feel it is insulting and discriminatory to other religions and ways of life.
I’m not arguing that Jews are bad. I’m arguing that the stronger your in-group identity, the more likely you are to have negative feelings about out-groups. This is not unique to Jews or to whites or to Muslims. There is just as much contempt and hatred for non-Jews among Jews as there is contempt and hatred for Jews among non-Jews.
American Jews might be excused for finding the circus more formally known as the current presidential campaign unthreatening, even amusing. Unthreatening, because the leading Republican candidate has a Jewish daughter; the leading Democratic candidate, a Jewish son-in-law; and her rival is a bona fide member of the tribe himself. All the candidates, moreover, have expressed support for Israel.
And amusing? Well, no need to go into detail on that one. We need a dictionary with more expressive words than “grandstanding” and “mudslinging.”
Some Jews, though, are worried by the Republican front-runner, despite his Jewish connection. After all, Mr. Trump at one point indicated that, if elected, he would approach the Israel-Palestinian impasse as “a sort of neutral guy.” But he later explained that he simply meant that he didn’t see how he could promote negotiations if he openly took sides. “With that being said,” the candidate added unequivocally, “I am totally pro-Israel.”
More troubling to many Jews, and understandably so, is Mr. Trump’s dog whistling (actually, often, out-loud shouting “Fido!!!”) to American bigots and general lowlifes.
Trump was the poster boy for the “birther” movement challenging President Obama’s standing as a natural-born American; he has disparaged Mexicans, said things about and to women that would rightly get any frat boy thrown off campus; he has insulted Latino journalists, mocked Asians, made fun of a disabled reporter, leveled false accusations about American Muslims and rejoiced in the roughing up of a black demonstrator at one of his rallies.
The targets of Trump’s opprobrium have thus far not included Jews. (The former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino’s claim that Trump told him, “The only guys I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes all day” doesn’t count.) But Jews nevertheless have good reason to wonder about the candidate.
Not because of some Niemöllerian “First he came for the Mexicans…” fear. But because even if, as is likely, he never ends up coming for us, the fact that he has gone after others is, or should be, offensive enough.
Truth be told, I’m not terribly exercised by the man. Should he actually come to occupy the Oval Office, he will likely metamorphose; presidents often turn out very different from their campaign personae. The current White House resident, for instance, perceived nine years ago as a hopeless pacifist and pacifier, ended up cyberattacking and sanctioning Iran, relentlessly (and, to some, illegally) sending drones after Islamists, decimating Al-Qaida’s leadership and seeing to it that Osama bin Laden was sent to sleep with the fishes.
More worrisome than Mr. Trump himself, however, are the dogs his whistling has awoken, the purveyors of bigotry and hatred to whom he has gleefully played and whom he, intentionally or not, has encouraged.
There are the boldface names, like France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, who tweeted in French that, were he American, “I would vote Donald TRUMP… May God protect him!” Or homegrown weed Louis Farrakhan, who praised Trump for telling a Jewish audience that he didn’t want their money. The mad minister exulted over “a man [who] can say to those who control the politics of America, ‘I don’t want your money’.” Mindful, perhaps, of the fact that Mr. Trump didn’t ever (as did Bernie Sanders) get arrested during a civil rights protest, Farrakhan added, “Not that I’m for Mr. Trump, but I like what I’m looking at.” Anyone, in other words, who (even in Farrakhan’s diseased imagination) scorns Jews can’t be all bad.
And then there was the David Duke endorsement. Although Mr. Trump eventually disowned the famous fascist, the presidential hopeful first sought to win some unrepentant-Nazi points by pretending to not know who the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard (apologies, dear Harry), felon, racist and anti-Semite was. That, despite his having made explicit references to Duke in the past.
Less well known to those of us blessedly untutored in the rogue’s gallery of racial supremacists are people like self-described “white nationalist” William Daniel Johnson. Or Jared Taylor, whose writings were cited as inspiration by Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine black worshippers in a Charleston church last year. Johnson and Taylor are vociferously encouraging their followers to vote for Trump.
Social media have lately, in the context of support for Mr. Trump, become infested with rants against blacks and foreigners and Jews. One needn’t subscribe to the idea that the candidate himself really holds such views to be distressed by the fact that he has successfully egged on all too many who do embrace them.
Whatever is in store for us Americans in coming months, it’s painfully clear that nativist campaign rhetoric has proven an effective strategy. And that it has brought forth, from beneath the verdant surface of our fruited plain, some truly foul and slimy things.
Posted inAmerica, Jews|Comments Off on Agudah Israel’s Rabbi Avi Shafran: A Troubling America for Jews as Trump Awakes Its Bigots and Haters
* Well, this election might be the clearest in history on immigration. Deport them all versus Deport none. If the American people don’t choose right, we’ll know they get what they deserve.
* The main reason that the Dem candidates cannot go against immigration is that the media will roast them if they do. Trump went against immigration, and then defied the media successfully after being roasted for going against immigration.
But what worked for Trump will not work for the Sanders and clinton. The Dem base is all about conformity these days. Being a Dem means falling in line with whatever dogma the elite are pushing. However, the GOP base these days is all about defying elite dogma.
These roles have reserved from the way it was a few decades ago.
* Jesus! These two f@#$ers really are looking to wipe out white America! I thought Sanders was more sensible than that on immigration. I guess I’ll turn my sights on Trump. Trump or nothin’.
* I liked when one of the moderators said something to the effect of, “After all, Latinos don’t just care about immigration – they care about the economy, and jobs”, as if there was no connection.
I still don’t understand why Sanders flipped on immigration. You’re not going to win every demographic group, and he’d be able to win a higher share of the white and black vote by arguing that fewer Latin American immigrants means more jobs, higher wages, and more government benefits for those already here.
As Mr Trump’s candidacy gathers steam, his campaign is drawing support from white, working-class voters frustrated with the economy and with the Washington ruling class which they believe has ceased to represent their interests.
Among them are a large group of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents, such as Mr Shulsky. According to a survey by Civis Analytics, Mr Trump fares best among self-identified Republicans who are actually registered Democrats (43 per cent). This demographic has already been a crucial support group for Mr Trump in the Republican primaries, and could play an even more important role in the general election.
In Michigan, Mr Trump drew support from disaffected white voters in areas such as Macomb County, a region populated by Democrats that crossed over to support Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. His 12 percentage-point margin of victory there suggests he can do well in other Midwestern states. It mirrors recent wins among that demographic in Massachusetts and Virginia, where he also did well among working-class whites.
While Mr Obama won in 2008 and 2012 by building a diverse coalition of voters and drawing more young people, women and minorities into the Democratic party, that strategy has isolated some white, working-class voters who no longer feel represented, said Lara Brown, a political-science professor at George Washington University.
“The Democrats decided to walk away from that group of voters,” she said. “Obama couldn’t bowl at all. He was talking about arugula.”
While some of America’s urban centres see the improving job figures in their day-to-day lives, some smaller towns have not. “You have a lot of blue-collar industries that have been decimated. And many of the voters in places like western Massachusetts and Ohio and Pennsylvania have seen years and years of economic distress. We can see that in the western part of Virginia,” Ms Brown said.
Daniel Catoe, a 26-year-old construction worker, said he had voted for Mr Obama in 2008 but had been disappointed by the slow economic recovery and his rising healthcare costs, which had doubled under the Affordable Care Act.
“I haven’t pulled a 40-hour week in six months. I’ve got a mortgage and a kid and a wife to support,” Mr Catoe said. “Trump just seems like he understands what we’re out here fighting and working for.”
Following his sweeping victories in Michigan and Mississippi on Tuesday night, Mr Trump paid special homage to the Democrats and Independents who were now supporting him.
“The biggest change is what is happening in the polls,” Mr Trump said. “We have Democrats coming over. We have Independents coming over . . . We will take many, many people away who normally go Democrats. We will have people come over here and who have never, never voted Republican.”
Camille writes: Trump may still be a carnival barker, but he’s looking more and more like a president! Along with most media pundits in the Northeast, I found it improbable if not impossible that Trump could survive his klutz-o-rama cascade of foot-in-mouth flubs, from carelessly categorizing Mexican immigrants as rapists to hallucinating about “thousands’ of Muslims cheering the fall of the twin towers from the mean streets of New Jersey. Surely he would soon implode and pouf into fairy dust!
But only a few weeks after that interview of mine in Salon, I suddenly realized that Trump’s candidacy had a broad support that few had expected or discerned. The agent of my revelation was a hilariously scathing, viral Web blog video posted by Diamond and Silk–Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, two African-American sisters and former Democrats in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They were reacting with indignant outrage to the first GOP debate, broadcast by Fox News from Cleveland on August 6 and hosted by Megyn Kelly, whose loaded questions had impugned Trump as a sexist.
If Trump wins the White House, that no-holds-barred video will go down in history as “the shot heard round the world,” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s phrase for the first salvo of the American Revolution by rural insurgents at Concord. The video signaled a popular uprising and furious pushback against the major media and political elites, who had controlled the national agenda and messaging for far too long. Diamond and Silk threw zinger after zinger in defending Trump: “Here’s the damn deal, Megyn Kelly—or Kelly Megyn, whatever your name is!…. Go back and report news on Sesame Street!…You hit below the belt, Kelly!…He was the only one up there on that stage with any common sense!… He’s going to be the next president, whether you like it or not. Get used to it, girl! Get used to it!”
This fiery endorsement blew me away because it demonstrated how Trump was directly engaging with a diverse coalition in ways that the mainstream media had completely missed. I felt, and still do, that Trump is far too impetuous and thin-skinned in his amusingly rambling, improvisational style. The American president, who can spook markets or spark a war with a rash phrase, must be more coolly circumspect. And aspirants to the presidency shouldn’t care what small fry like bobble-head TV hosts say or do. A leader must have the long view and show an instinctive capacity to focus and prioritize.
Nevertheless, Trump’s fearless candor and brash energy feel like a great gust of fresh air, sweeping the tedious clichés and constant guilt-tripping of political correctness out to sea. Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose every word and policy statement on the campaign trail are spoon-fed to her by a giant paid staff and army of shadowy advisors, Trump is his own man, with a steely “damn the torpedoes” attitude. He has a swaggering retro machismo that will give hives to the Steinem cabal. He lives large, with the urban flash and bling of a Frank Sinatra. But Trump is a workaholic who doesn’t drink and who has an interesting penchant for sophisticated, strong-willed European women. As for a debasement of the presidency by Trump’s slanging matches about penis size, that sorry process was initiated by a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who chatted about his underwear on TV, let Hollywood pals jump up and down on the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom, and played lewd cigar games with an intern in the White House offices.
Primary voters nationwide are clearly responding to Trump’s brand of classic can-do American moxie. There has been a sense of weary paralysis in our increasingly Byzantine and monstrously wasteful government bureaucracies. Putting a bottom-line businessman with executive experience into the White House has probably been long overdue. If Mitt Romney had boldly talked business more (and chosen a woman VP), he would have won the last election. Although the rampant Hitler and Mussolini analogies to Trump are wildly exaggerated–he has no organized fascist brigades at his beck and call—there is reason for worry about his impatient authoritarian tendencies. We have had more than enough of Obama’s constitutionally questionable executive orders. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s mastery of a hyper-personalized art of the deal will work in the sluggish, murky, incestuously intertwined power realms of Washington.
From my perspective as a fervent supporter of the ruggedly honest and principled Bernie Sanders, Trump with his pragmatic real-life record is a far more palatable national figure than Ted Cruz, whose unctuous, vainglorious professions of Christian piety don’t pass the smell test. Trump is a blunt, no-crap mensch, while Cruz is a ham actor, doling out fake compassion like chopped liver. Cruz’s lugubrious, weirdly womanish face, with its prim, tight smile and mawkishly appealing puppy-dog eyebrows, is like a waxen mask, always on the verge of melting. This guy doesn’t know who the hell he is—and the White House is no place for him and us to find out.
Posted inDonald Trump|Comments Off on Camille Paglia Admits She Was Wrong About Donald Trump
A comment to Camille Paglia: We recently moved to Australia from Seattle. A BIG part of the reason was our four children and the cost to send them all to college. Our first child was a wake-up call, and while we had been able to pay and work our way through college many years ago, it really wasn’t an option for her. While my wife and I were able to get subsidized loans back in our day, there were none available for her because of our income level. To be honest, if it was just her, we could have invested in her and made it work. But with four children all likely college bound, it was going to be an impossibility. We investigated our options and moved back to my home country Australia so the kids could go to school.
I have been so impressed with how it works over here. School fees are regulated at all public universities, and the kids are able to get interest-free loans to cover all their tuition costs. Those loans don’t have to be paid back until the child graduates, gets a job, and then starts making more than $55,000 a year. Then the money is deducted from their paycheck along with their taxes, and it can never be more than a certain percentage of their paycheck. It is a way that makes the kids pay for college, but makes it reasonable and affordable.
Even high school I have been impressed with. We have two kids in high school right now, and the schools very clearly value students who are taking a vocational track as much as those students who are college bound. They actually spend a lot of time highlighting kids on the vocational track, and in everything we have seen, it is clear that they are just as valued as students on a college track. In addition, kids can work towards their trade certificates while in school, get apprenticeships that help them prepare, and by the time they graduate most of them have jobs lined up. It also helps that in Australia the trades are well paid and respected, unlike in the U.S.
Nomiki Konst writes: In 2010, when the countries of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya shut down the Internet during their revolutions, democracies around the globe publicly condemned their governments. Today, as North Korea, China and Iran continue to block access to Twitter and Facebook, our government has labeled their actions as human rights violations. The modern world has come to rely on the Internet and the free press as a democratic tool, giving citizens a position in public discourse. The value of these social media tools is so vast that the U.N. has condemned states that deny the Internet — regardless of reason — through its International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
So it should be a shock to Americans that recently in our own country, a grassroots hashtag being used to debate the stances of one of our presidential candidates was shut down. But it was not shut down by the U.S. government, but rather by Twitter itself. The same Twitter that lobbied for net neutrality and to keep Twitter alive around the world. And now that same Twitter has promoted #SaySomethingGoodAboutTwitter, to counter the criticism it faced for censoring its utility last week.
Twitter has become the front line of the debate over free speech. Should the company ban hateful speech? Bigotry? Sexism? Should it shut down or just monitor the accounts of terrorists and drug lords? Against much public pressure, Twitter has chosen a liberal stance and trusted its community to draw the line on acceptable behaviors.
So why this sudden reversal? Why would Twitter shut down a grassroots hashtag that was leading a discussion regarding a Democratic primary? The answer lies in that old saying, “follow the money.”
Three days after Omid Kordestani, the executive chairman of Twitter, hosted a maxed-out fundraiser for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, a Black Lives Matter activist’s notable protest at another fundraiser inspired #WhichHillary — to open debate about Clinton’s often conflicting record on issues. #WhichHillary exploded within hours of the protest and rose to the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter. Clinton, who canceled several financial industry fundraisers recently (most likely to prevent a Wall Street optics dilemma) has lately been relying on donations from the liberal-leaning tech community.
All this occurred within days of the South Carolina primary. As South Carolina voters were making up their minds, this massive campaign challenging Clinton’s history with the African-American community became the No. 1 most discussed topic on Twitter. Yet it came to a sudden halt and was pushed off the trending topics list as its momentum kept building. (And the hashtag’s creator’s account was even suspended.)
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Comment: The worst thing I’ve heard is what happened to the two Coreys (Haim and Feldman). Feldman claims the he and Haim were “passed around” during their child acting career, and that it is well known that there are powerful pedophiles in place in Hollywood (which he refused to name for fear of being sued). I’d sure as hell never let my kid anywhere near the movie business.
After hearing all this, I re-watched “Lost Boys”, a movie I used to like back in the day. It is directed by openly gay Joel Schumacher and stars both Coreys. In hindsight, it is very clear that this movie is an allegory about gay pedophilia. Corey Haim’s character seems quite gay (he infamously has a poster of a half-dressed Rob Lowe in his room). And the main plot deals with Kiefer Sutherland’s gang of vampires trying to convert Jason Patric to vampirism (the film’s stand-in for homosexuality). In the end, the twist reveals that the leader of the vampires was in fact the middle-aged video store owner, who had previously “turned” Sutherland and the other teenage boys, and now wanted to bring Haim and Patric into the fold.
* The Lost Boys is gay propaganda in cant format.
Another one is the reboot to Star Trek:
Captain Kirk is changed from a brilliant adventurer-type into a smirking rentboy roughtrade type who always gets beaten up and ends up on his back with his legs splayed in the air (once you notice it, you can’t unnotice it, disgustingly).
And Spock is played by an openly gay actor whose barely-repressed rage at “not being accepted for who he is” is code for gay repression (including his serial-killer-esque rage when Kirk needles him).
And the black chick is all gay-loving diva-esque behavior. I kept waiting for someone to yell “You go girl!” or have her finger-snap at someone.
And the male cast is 99% all twink-types with shiny faces. The only straight male -looking acting type are Bones McCoy (who’s a drunk).
-I check back here every so often so I can laugh at the amount of dislikes.
-Drinking bleach is funnier than this trailer
-Society isn’t making Gay Man more attractive, just Straight Woman less attractive
-i do not know why this trailer has so many dislikes. im defiantly watching this when it comes out in theaters
-when feminists are trying to take over, we get this movie.
-Who actually believes a bunch of women would come together & start their own company instead leeching off an already male established one because they got quotas to fulfill?
-This movie looks like it should go straight to dvd/blu-ray
* Ghostbusters was bottled lightening, it can’t be repeated. The originals had a chemistry that made the file one of a kind. Not to mention the guy who came up with it Ivan Rietman was talented as heck.
Even as a cartoon series, it was popular – some 600 episodes were made IIRC.
This though has stinker written all over it. They basically had to bully or bribe the originals to endorse this dud. Really a all female team with no chemistry? Excellent way to give the middle-finger to the original fans and keep the younger males away from seeing what they will rightly view as chick flick made for the watchers of The View.
The other problem is Hollywood doesn’t do comedy very well anymore. They’ve become so PC/MC they’ve been reduced to potty style humor as found in Adam Sandler movies or serious unfunny and annoying garbage like the Fokkers. Ben Stiller is not funny and neither are the writers.
Give me the Rockford Files any day.
* Hollywood has turned into a Soviet Propaganda mill. The entire selling point of the original was these guys were losers who wanted to play it safe by staying in college their whole lives and got kicked out for bogus research. The Ghostbusters was their desperate attempt to cash in on their weird esoteric research in college because they didn’t want to get real jobs and be working slubs. They ended up accidental heroes because of Zool and an ancient cult trying to take over the world when at the beginning they were just in it for money.
These Pravda card carrying commies are so heavy into politics and feminist grrrl power, that they missed the entire point of the original film and made this into a girl superhero team. Yeah, no. The idea that people with careers and other options would purposely try to form a superhero team to fight ghosts is something you would expect to hear from people involuntarily confined to an insane asylum. No one in their right minds would leave a career to be a ghostbuster. These idiots are so politically motivated they don’t even see how dumb this plot really is…
* Last night we watched “Love Story” (man were the 70s ever dirty and drab, must be all the leaded gasoline and pollution in the air) and then reading about it on Wikipedia I see that they filmed a sequel, “Oliver’s Story.” Oliver’s female interest is Candace Bergen, playing an heir to the Bonwit Teller fortune. I wondered whatever happened to Bonwit Teller, so I read the Wikipedia entry and low and behold, Donald Trump bought their flagship store on 5th Avenue, tore it down and built Trump Tower in it’s place. When I started reading about “Love story” I did not expect that I’d end up on Donald Trump.
It’s kind of like when you buy a car and then you see that model of car everywhere on the street but had never really noticed it before you bought one for yourself. Trump is Everywhere sung to the tune of Elvis is Everywhere.
* That’s worth watching. On one level, it just cashes in on the original hit. The story is anticlimactic and has nowhere to go. After all, LOVE STORY worked as a romantic tear-jerker. With Jenny gone, where can OLIVER’S STORY go? The plot about Oliver’s ‘good work’ is pretty weak.
Still, it’s watchable enough, but then suddenly, it has the the only moment in either movie that has the ring of truth.
I like LOVE STORY — saw it as kid when impressionable — , but it’s all formula. Even the scenes of raw hurt are exactly what you’d expect and arrive on schedule. Of course the couple must have a fight and reconcile in some special way. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I don’t know what it means but it sounds good.
Everything is contrived — rich wasp boy and poor dago girl — , and even the arty moments are like symbolism 101, like the last walk in the snow together against the backdrop of pure white. It is shameless hokum but works(like the stuff in Dr. Zhivago), and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
LOVE STORY copped some of the New Hollywood style of the late 60s and early 70s. It has an element of grit and realism, but it is really just formula.
But the formula begins to unravel in OLIVER’S STORY because the leftover material is so thin. After all, the only reason we cared in the first place was because Oliver fell in love and then lost the girl. So OS has nowhere to go. But then, this is precisely why OS is more interesting. Since the formula has grown weak, there’s need to flesh out the character, and the result is like a mid-level Woody Allen or Paul Mazursky film. (Or a kinder version of Nichols’ CARNAL KNOWLEDGE.)
But then, bang, Oliver’s outburst at Candace Bergen in the following scene(don’t see it if you don’t want spoilers) really rings true. It feels like genuine pain of life than part of the plan, the formula. For that moment alone, OS is worth seeing. Another good thing about OS is the handling of father-son relationship.
The movie ends on a more hopeful note than the novel though. I prefer the novel’s closing sentiment. “Sometimes I ask myself what would I be if Jenny were alive.And then I answer: I would also be alive.”
Erich Segal was pretty good schlock writer. His novel THE CLASS is a shameless piece of drivel but I ate it up.
>>It’s a romantic tear-jerker. It hits all the right notes, pushes all the right buttons.
You’re right. Ali McGraw was no actress, and the notion of her as a Radcliffe girl studying classical music is hilarious.
But it has all the right ingredients about love, class, father and son, etc.
True, it’s hackwork, but it’s pleasant hackwork, like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, a kind of populist version of both WILD BUNCH and MIDNIGHT COWBOY.
LOVE STORY is a crowd-pleaser. Just listen to the music.
Does it look ‘ugly’? I love the 70s look and missed it in the 80s when everything looked so slick and shiny. The MIAMI VICE look? Never liked it thought I got used to it.
A much better Harvard movie is PAPER CHASE. I can understand how even Harvardites can see that one and feel sort of like ‘home’!
But I doubt if any Harvardite took LOVE STORY seriously. It is a fantasy about rich folks for the hoi polloi. We need some fantasy too.
Another thing… given the total degradation of culture with stuff like GILRS and JESSE AND CELESTE(this trash has to be seen to believed), LOVE STORY now does feel ‘classic’-like.
You gotta admit the ‘I care’ scene is nicely done, and it’s too bad we don’t have scenes like that anymore. We have millennials with their casual attitude sending texts to each other like ‘fuc* me in the butt’.
* Yeah, pretty much everyone who’s reviewed the film has noted it was propaganda. The left went ape-crazy praising the PC-propaganda of Star Wars: The Feminist Awakens. In fact, that was supposed to be a selling point in the reviews: see the latest Star Wars, because it’s all grrrl powered and diverse now!
It made money because of it’s franchise tag and because the studio/director went all out promising the hardcore fanbase that it wouldn’t be the prequels. But there’s only so much yoou can milk a franchise with if the sequel gives you diminishing returns.
The fact that the latest Star Wars made no cultural impact—no quotes being bandied about, no internet memes, no chatter after it was out of theaters—shows that the next sequel will have “disappointing” and “unexpectedly lower” returns than anticipated.
I mean, the most talked about parts of the movie is the references to the old franchise and return of a character from the original trilogy—Han, Leia, and, at the end, the mysterious Luke. That’s a bad thing for Disney; when your movie can only cosplay with the originals, and people are most interested in talking about, not your movie’s new characters or plot, but about old characters you shoehorned into your new movie—well, that means your movie wasn’t that memorable. Which means there isn’t much impetus outside of hardcore fans to go see the next one.
The director also remade the Star Trek films, and suffered the same fate: the first one was a glossy, cosplay remake with literal cultural impact where the most talked about parts were the appearance of a character from the original franchise (Nimoy’s Spock) and the references to the old series. No one remembered the first reboot after it was out of theaters, despite being an ostensible hit. The result? The second Star Trek reboot sequel (Star Trek Into Darkness) “unexpectedly” had “less than predicted” returns. Why? Simple: the movies were no longer Star Trek, but PC-addled action movies with the words Star Trek pasted on them.
* I actually do know one female commercial airline pilot. But she’s a lesbian type who degrades women more than males do. When she’s encountered other female pilots, she invariably tells people how bad they are at flying and how they only got their jobs because of PC. When she gets drunk she actually starts ranting about how women are too stupid to vote (except her). She’s very red pilly and basically will tell you that she’s an outlier in life and knows it. She’s also very pissed off at this Girlbusters movie (she’s a huge Bill Murray fan).
* Jenny does NOT despise Oliver for what he is. She admits part of what attracts her to him is his money and privilege. She is honest in that sense. And that’s what he likes about her. She is forthright. And she holds no grudge against his father and sort of understands the old man who, by the way, isn’t really a bigot(by his standards).
On the drive back, she says, “I love not only you, but also your name and your numeral. After all, it’s part of what you are.”
If anything, Oliver despises himself and for conflicted reasons. Being part of the 60s generation, he feels uneasy about his wasp privilege. He is the creation of Liberal Jewish Erich Segal. He feels his place in Harvard is so unearned. He wants to break free of the world he came from. But he is also worried that he is under-performing and failing to live up the standards of his grandfather and father. So, his reasons are both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. He sees himself as failure by standards of both egalitarianism and meritocracy.
Also, he has problems with his father because the old man’s ways are passive/aggressive. He’s not a meanie like Mr. Potter of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. He’s a kindly person, but there’s no doubt he’s been nudging Oliver to excel since cradle and live up to the family name. If his father was a true meanie, Oliver could just hate him and that’d be that. But his father is difficult to hate. He’s no Darth Vader, though sort of like Vader after the mask comes off and he’s a good guy again.
I think there’s a similar dynamics in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. The son is partly angry with his pa because the old man is too ‘weak’. It’s not so much a rebellion against tyranny as against weakness.
Oliver’s father is no doubt an ever-present figure of authority, but because of ‘gentle’ demeanor, Oliver has a difficult time going against it. And there’s that famous genteel wasp restraint which makes it bad form for family members to lay it all on the table and talk honestly. Oliver’s father isn’t Ralph Kramden or Archie Bunker. In a way, Meathead gets along better with Archie because they lay everything on the table. They despise each other but fully understand one another. And that’s why Jenny gets along with her father much better, though I find it rather unreal that an Italian Catholic girl would be calling her father by his first name.
LOVE STORY belongs to one of the several key films of the late 60s and early 70s about parent-child relationships. The younger generation was beginning to make a difference but Hollywood was still controlled by old folks.
Also, there was no clear break between old and new in movie culture.
In pop music culture, the young rockers didn’t care about most of older music. Sure, they had some respect for old blues men and country singers, and etc. But youth culture of 60s was a rejection of much that had come before.
In contrast, even the young turks of cinema were steeped in reverence for the old masters like Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Welles, Griffith, Keaton, Lean, and foreign greats like Renoir, Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman, etc. One of the key features of THE SEARCHERS is the parent/child-like relation between Ethan and Marty, and that was one of the key films of the ‘movie brat’ generation. This is why movie culture is richer(with its deep sense of history and foreign cultures) than pop music culture that is generally amnesiac and narrowly Anglo-Afro-centric.
Even in the key rebel film COOL HAND LUKE, the finest moment is when Luke meets his mother and then later sings a song in her honor after she dies. And the most powerful scene in IN COLD BLOOD is when Robert Blake’s character talks about his father. And the sad thing about MIDNIGHT COWBOY is the two grown men are like orphans. They connect mostly deeply when Ratso talks about his pa and then Joe Buck mentions how his grandma died without him knowing; she was like his only family.
Though Harold’s mother is cast as something of a ‘villainess’, I love her. She’s the kookiest thing I ever did see. She is a great mother. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reJAzTE980s
FIVE EASY PIECES is about some drifter-rebel, but the story leads to his meeting with his incapacitated pa. And GODFATHER, the maybe the most important film of 70s, is essentially about father and son. The darkest parent-child film of the 70s is maybe CHINATOWN. And then you got EXORCIST where a Liberal modern woman hires religious folks to save her daughter from possession by porn-devil.
And even in cases where without parent figures, one of the characters comes under pressure to play the parental role. Like Nicholson in CUCKOO’S NEST and LAST DETAIL where he wants to be the life of the party but finds himself in the role of mentor. BAD NEWS BEARS works in similar vein. And Lucas’ STAR WARS saga is held together by father-son thing. Though SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION the movie was overlooked by critics and audience, it is a pretty solid family drama.
I think the parent-child dynamic became less important in yrs to come cuz the boomers were more understanding of their kids. There was less culture clash since both parents and children grew up under permissive culture of TV and youth pop music. Also, so many kids grew up without fathers in single family homes, so the father-son dynamic has become less of a reality.
It’s incredible how Lena Dunham became the way she is with the full blessing of her parents. And when Sulkowicz made that atrocious video, she got full support from her mother.
We need more Don Corleones.
Look how people are dressed in the final scene of GODFATHER II. Men are dressed like men, no one has tattoos or piercings. Connie isn’t dressed like a whore.
Was it really progress for Italian-Americans to end up like the freaks on JERSEY SHORE?
Btw, that scene says so much about America. How Sonny says, “your country aint your blood” and Michael says “I don’t feel that way”.
Even today, maybe more than ever even, we have this competing or simultaneous themes of ethno-America and credo-America. Since credo-America is supposed to trump ethno-America, the theme of ‘justice’ is invoked to rationalize certain ethnic interests. “Since we were wronged as a group in the past, we need to work together as a people in the present and near future.” So, tribalism is supposed to be bad, but paradoxically it is good and necessary to undo the dominant tribalism of the past. But how long can this go on? If tribalism is ONLY justified on grounds of victimization, does this mean that once a group gains power and privilege, it should drop its tribalism? Jews are coming under this pressure with growth of BDS movement, and some Jews, like Philip Weiss and Glenn Greenwald, are beginning to sound like reform-liberal wasps who became critical of their own group.
One of the surprising things in the Trump moment is the support he got from Palin, Giuliani, and Gingrich. Palin was like a Zionist whore, even going so far as to wear a Star of David bling. Gingrich pandered to Jews at a Republican debate in 2012, saying that the first thing he would do as president is recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel.
Giuliani was like a dog of New York Jews. But they are either supporting or strongly defending Trump when he has pissed off so many Neocon Jews. Palin was Kristol’s brainchild: get dumb shikse whore with boobs to run with McCain to win over the sucker vote. So, why is she going with Trump who has pissed off so many Jews?
Did she realize she’s been used as a whore and that no matter how much she groveled at their feet, the Jewish community just mocked her and laughed at her?
Something interesting is happening.
* LS was partly autobio as Segal lost someone he loved when young.
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
