Race Bait Distractions

[Kyle]

Is it any wonder that when Trump is again facing a failure on repealing Obamacare (McCain just announced he'd vote against it), he decides to issue a bunch of divisive statements about black athletes not standing for the national anthem and how they should be fired.

Obamacare might still be repealed, but it looks doubtful. But that's not the point. The point is, whenever it looks like the news cycle is going to start reporting on another failure of Trump, he does something bombastic and divisive that the majority of americans will find repulsive, but his core base will celebrate. It's shameful.

[FlameBlade]

He is a White Supremacist Presidency and incompetent at the same time. It's all of the above to your statements.

I should note that Trump has been race baiting the whole time. It's his way of sucking up media attention.

[Phoebe]

Sorry, this race baiting stuff won't work on Trump's totally non-racist base. They have economic anxieties tho.

[WillyGilligan]

I guess that's my cue, Phoebe. Not sure that it's race baiting. I think he just likes sounding tough on things that get his base riled up. Now the multiple-time draft dodger gets to play patriot, offer up some kind of violence to the Left (which makes his base happy), and distract from the failure that is Republican government. And the fact that his threats don't seem to be getting North Korea to back down. Probably won't be an actual nuke just now, but the situation is getting worse.

But I do see that the protests were all from black players and there seems to be no "acceptable" form of protest for BLM from the conservative side of my FB feed. So it can certainly be a dog whistle, but in that case the flag/anthem angle is giving him the opening to use it. I still see the Trump supporter = racist argument to be a square/rhombus problem, but it is possible to talk to the squares while appealing to the rhombuses (rhombusi?) at the same time with the right situation.

Interestingly, this seems to be working in Trump's favor AND in the favor of the protests. Attention was dying in the offseason and Kapernick wasn't getting signed by any teams. If he hadn't made it a rights issue by having the POTUS weigh in the way he did, would we have this much interest? There are people now who aren't necessarily on BLM's side taking a knee in social media because they believe in the right to protest. The questions are going to be who benefits more? Will all of this protest change anything, or is it going to energize the Right enough by the midterms to override just how useless the Republicans are being?

[Mike]

Trump's response to armed white supremacists marching and killing counter-protesters to defend Confederate symbols.

Trump's response to black athletes silently protesting police violence.

I agree that he may just be playing to his base, but he's playing to them with racism. They seem to really like racism.

[Phoebe]

What Mike said. It's possible for him to be playing for distractions, for his base, and to be a total flat-out racist scumbag at the same time, because for some weird reason, his base just laps up this racist stuff.

[Phoebe]

[FlameBlade]

Just as a reminder, there are two groups of people that Trump has yet to insult...

White Supremacists
Putin

[mimekiller]

[Bonefish]

Is it possible that people could have different feelings on the appropriateness of protesting the national anthem that are disconnected to racism?

[mimekiller]

[DMDarcs]

I've noticed a distinct lack of attempted criminalizations of Jehovah's Witnesses. They don't stand for the flag or national anthem either.

[Bonefish]

[WillyGilligan]

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

[mimekiller]

[WillyGilligan]

Ah, the good old Doctrine of Relative Filth. Either we're all saints, or nobody's a sinner.

Sadly, I'm a patriot. While there's a ton of things we need to improve, especially in the ME, that does not make us equivalent to Putin. For one thing, we've never nuked a journalist for saying mean things about the President. And there were whole fortunes made off of bad-mouthing Obama.

And more selfishly, if we put down the hegemony we are screwed. We MUST lead in the world, because we have a butt-load of debt backed up by being the reserve currency. Letting our allies down makes them lose faith in us and pushes us closer to losing the thing that actually made us great. It's a monkey trap, but the bait was a grenade. If we let go, we can remove our hand just to watch the whole thing blow up in our face.

[Bonefish]

Seriously, we've already seen what a world with British Hegemony, or a contest between British, French and Russian great powers looks like. It's not pretty. Why would we desire to go back there?

[Phoebe]

The Mike Pence, Paid Protestor meme is pretty darn amusing.