Trump

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

Neither. It's because a large portion of his base is very motivated by their racist feelings, and he encourages and appeals to these feelings. It's not like this is new. Politicians on both sides have done it for years now, though in recent years far more with Rs and less with Ds. The new thing is that he openly, directly encourages it and it has been an essential core of his political life, even long before the campaign. So nobody who votes for him, including the ostensibly non-racist Rs, can escape the basic truth that's what they chose. It's as if a more reckless and confused iteration of George Wallace suddenly was able to win everywhere. How else do you explain that, when the economic anxiety argument just does not have empirical support compared to the racial-fear explanation? Sexism is next...

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

As a friend once said before a bar brawl over a decade ago: "Call me a Nigger again, and I'm gonna show you how ignorant I can get".

You keep pushing the Racism narrative, and I ensure you, you will get more racists.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Eliahad]

[Mike]

[WillyGilligan]

It bears remembering that racism is a crime in our society. Sometimes it's legal, as in employment, but more often social. Calling someone a racist is accusing them of a severe infraction. Most people think of racism as the KKK, or avowed white supremacists. But the push to this academic understanding of bias and subtle racism and so on seems to be used most often to discredit criticism. From the conservatives I've read and talked to, it really ramped up during the Obama administration. Even pretty standard criticism from the right got met with charges of racism. That will cause a reaction.

Maybe it is just revealing their existing bias, but ten years ago a lot of these folks would have told white supremacists to go to hell. Now they're willing to listen to White Nationalist rhetoric. Some of that is the racists getting better PR, and at least one commenter I saw showed that our white supremacists are pulling from European models more than they used to. Less religious, more border control and jingoism. But that's not the totality of it. These guys are being convinced that they are under attack, and some of them are acting like it.

Paul would have better information than I do, but I've run across accounts from inmates in prison who joined the Aryan brotherhood for protection. They didn't have racial issues before prison, but they saw a racial gang situation where they would likely be targeted without the protection of the white gang. From another forum I follow, there's at least some of the guys that are being sold that this is the situation they are in. And when they get called a racist for disagreeing with BLM, or calling Obama a socialist*, it's not that they suddenly go "well I guess I'm racist then", but they do start hanging out with the other outcasts in Alt-right echo chambers where they get immersed in this rhetoric. The problem of the bias spectrum is that arguments and experience can move you up OR down the line.

* FWIW, I do think racism is in play whenever someone emphasizes President Obama's middle name.

[Zen]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

Ehhh never mind.

[Phoebe]

[Bonefish]

[mimekiller]

2010:Democrats lose congress
2014:Democrats lose senate
2016:Democrats lose presidency

drrrr its cause of racists.

[mimekiller]

HILLARY 2008: Here's a picture of Obama wearing a turban. I wonder if he was born here?

[mimekiller]

Periodic reminder, and folks, I think this bears repeating, that Hillary literally owned slaves

[Mike]

Feed the troll at your own risk.