Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer’s 1989 book Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America is perhaps the most influential in recent American historiography. If you’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t yet gotten around to its 900 pages, Scott Alexander provides a lively synopsis at SlateStarCodex.com that is at least an order of magnitude shorter.
But how does Donald Trump fit into this handy model?
In general, Trump is a nightmare for making sense of via Fischer’s Albion’s Seed model. His background combines a whole bunch of aspects of America that Fischer de-emphasized in his book:
– New York City (home)
– Scottish Highlanders (mother)
– Germans (father)
– Jews (Trump has spent 50 years in a predominantly Jewish industry, New York real estate)
– Irish Catholics (Trump attended Fordham)
– Italians (Trump has presumably paid off a few Mafioso in the construction site port-a-john business)
Trump is a like a cyborg from the future specifically engineered to cause analytical trouble for people like me who’d gotten comfortable using Albion’s Seed as a cheat sheet.
COMMENTS:
* The old thread has been broken. All is in limbo.
If the sun were to be disappear, the planets will no longer revolve in orbit and seek a new gravitational system.
Adrift we is.
Are we supposed to treat women the same as men? Give them the same opportunities and require from them the same responsibility?
If so, the following complaints are nonsense. Male sportswriters are subjected to at least as much nasty criticism, only they complain about it less.
Katie Mettler writes for the Washington Post:
The men in the video, average and unsuspecting, had no idea that the mean tweets they were asked to read would be so mean. They were not written by them but by others, so they didn’t know they would include words that start with “b” and “c,” that they’d be about death threats, beatings and rape.
They didn’t know they’d make people cry.
Recruited to appear in a now viral #MoreThanMean PSA video about the harassment faced by women in sports media by a blog called Just Not Sports, the men were simply told they’d be reading aloud mean tweets to Chicago reporters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro.
The men chuckle at first as they sit on stools in a brick covered loft, directly across from the two women, rambling off mostly benign insults.
“Julie DiCaro is a run of the mill mediocre beat writer,” the men read from one tweet. “Not atrocious, not good, just sorta.. there.”
“I’m actually not a beat writer at all,” DiCaro says, laughing. “But okay.”
Another guy reads a tweet labeling Spain a “scrub muffin.”
“I don’t even know what a scrub muffin is,” another reader remarks.
“I don’t either,” Spain admits.
“I love muffins,” says the smirking reader.
It almost felt like a segment of Jimmy Kimmel’s comedic “Mean Tweets.” That’s what the men thought, too, one of the video’s creators told Forbes.
Not even a minute into the more than four minute clip, the tone shifts entirely. The background music turns less peppy. The tweets get dark. The men, no longer chipper, start to sweat, fidget and apologize.
* The Republican base is embarrassingly out of touch with its pundit class.
* Our ancestors endured ice ages and plagues, famine and war—all in the hopes that one day we’d spread their values to Iraqis via dronestrike.
* See if we frame Western values as a particular historical heritage, people might develop PRIDE in that heritage, which is borderline racism.
* Every nation on earth is a larval Western nation, anxiously awaiting the day it with metamorphose into the next USA:
* Trump’s foreign policy is a mess. Prioritize American interests AND quit serially regime-changing Muslim countries overseas? Incoherent!
* All my friends and contacts who are involved professionally in the foreign policy status quo agree Trump’s speech today was a total bust.
* Fingers crossed for Fiorina as VP pick! She’ll fill in key gaps on the Cruz ticket, like private sector experience and a masculine jawline.
Dennis Prager writes Mar. 1, 2016: I have been a radio talk show host for 33 years, nationally syndicated for 18. I have never experienced anything similar to what I am experiencing now. Until recently, the only hate mail I ever received was from a small number people on the left. The major reason for this, I am convinced, is that I don’t yell at callers and I treat callers who disagree with respect.
Reading my emails these days is a brand new experience. I receive hate mail, sometimes laced with obscenities, from Republicans. Most come from Donald Trump supporters, even though whenever I explain my opposition to Trump, I also explain that I understand why so many people support him, and even though I ask anti-Trump listeners to respect these Trump supporters.
To show how widespread the hatred among Republicans is, here are excerpts from an email sent by a Ted Cruz supporter in Michigan. He was livid at my having suggested that Cruz consider announcing that he will now back Marco Rubio to give Republicans a unified opposition — the only chance to stop Trump. I might add that I have said many times that if I could simply appoint a Republican president, it would be Cruz, since he is a true conservative and he doesn’t care whether people love him. However, I believe that Rubio — at least until this weekend and his imitation of Trump’s high school level of personal insults — has been the Republican with the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton.
The listener’s email read in part:
“Dennis, I can’t tell you how pissed off I am at you for suggesting Cruz drop out in favor of the back stabbing, lying Rubio. You have compromised your own principles. … Despicable! (people) like you … lie about ‘if I could appoint a president, it would be Cruz.’ Screw you and all your Salem colleague’s (sic) for pushing the false narrative ‘Rubio is more electable.’… I am no longer a faithful listener and have switched back to Rush after many years. You have lied by obfuscation, and tried to manipulate your listeners, and for that, I despise you and the other Salem turncoats. You all can go f—yourselves!”
As noted, I have quite a few emails from Trump supporters who after years, even decades, of listening to my show, have decided that I am no longer worthy of being listened to. If one doesn’t support Trump, they believe, one is a traitor to the cause.
It is important to point out that I have said over and over that I would vote for Trump if he were the nominee because it is difficult to conceive of even Trump being worse than four more years of a left-wing president and decades of a left-wing Supreme Court. But to more than a few Trump supporters, that is not enough: If you don’t support Trump, you are the enemy.
In a nutshell, the hatred and contempt some of the Republican candidates have shown one another is reflected among rank and file Republicans. I understand why — most Republicans view this election as the last chance to save America from becoming the opposite of what it was founded to be. The left has been eating away at America’s foundational values for nearly a century, and it has been largely successful. Two examples: Seventy percent of college students do not believe in freedom of speech if the speech might hurt someone’s feelings, and many young Americans support a democratic socialist for president.
Meanwhile, many Republicans believe that only their candidate can turn things around. Therefore, Republicans who oppose their man are regarded as no different from Democrats — indeed, perhaps worse.
So this is where we stand today:
Many anti-Rubio Republicans regard Rubio as a traitor on the immigration issue and therefore have contempt for his supporters. Many anti-Cruz Republicans regard Cruz as an extremist conservative who is, moreover, a misanthrope, and therefore have contempt for his supporters. And many anti-Trump Republicans — perhaps most — regard Trump as a dangerous fraud, and therefore view his supporters with contempt.
Needless to say, with these attitudes, there is little chance any Republican can win.
So, then, despite eight years of failure under a Democratic president, and with Hillary Clinton — widely regarded as an untrustworthy woman who has put her pursuit of money and power above the interests of her country — as the Democratic candidate, Republicans will still lose.
And Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves.
