Donald Trump Is Winning Because White America Is Dying

[KamaAina]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-noam-chomsky-white-mortality_us_56cf8618e4b0bf0dab31838f

Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, says that the rise of Donald Trump in American politics is, in part, fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness that may be caused by an alarming spike in mortality rates for a generation of poorly educated whites.

“He’s evidently appealing to deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors like those that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war and catastrophe," Chomsky told The Huffington Post in an interview on Thursday.

Trump's rise as the Republican presidential front-runner has been confounding for Americans across the political spectrum. The bombastic, billionaire demagogue has won three of the first four primary states and holds a lead in the polls, both nationwide and in upcoming primary contests. He now appears poised to take an insurmountable delegate lead over the next several weeks, based on a platform of hate and vitriol targeted at women, Latinos, Muslims and other minorities.

A legion of less educated, working-class white men has fueled Trump’s rise. And while many say the business mogul is capitalizing on their fears about the perceived decline of white dominance in America, Chomsky says there may also be more existential forces at play.

[840high]

1. There's a revolution on both sides.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

26. Both sides? The revolution on the right is America isnt racist enough, is what it seems to me.

[daleanime]

2. Their fears and anxieties.....

definitely play a large role. The fact that they've lived on a diet of shit disguised as political thought doesn't help either.

[Rex]

3. Kinda, imo it is more like the South is dying.

The Good Old Boys are circling the drain. Too much wanton destruction by too many GOP governors. The White South is dying off and scared as hell.

[davidn3600]

4. Where is the GOP dying? I keep seeing this shit....

Do you understand that if Trump wins in November, the Republicans will have control of the White House, likely the Senate, the House for sure, the state governorships for sure, and the state legislatures for sure. And they will no doubt be able to stack the Supreme Court.

Yet I keep seeing this bullshit about the GOP is a "dying party" and they won't be around much longer. Do you realize that if the above happened they will hold more political power than either party has held at one time since World War 2? Does that sound like a dying party to you?

We have been told that the Republicans are dying since the days of Nixon. It's not happening!!! The Republicans are drawing record turnout in 4 of the 4 primary contests while the Democrats are down in all 4.

[joeybee12]

9. +1

I know...this prediction has been going on and unfulfilled for quite some time.

[killbotfactory]

10. It's like the war on christmas

It's not actually happening

Everyone who is left of the republicans, and wants things to change for the better, needs to vote en masse. repeatedly. forever.

[840high]

45. +10

[Yavin4]

5. Majority of working class Whites (esp. White males) vote Republican

if they are suffering, they have no one else to blame but themselves. They could have joined with the working class of other races and formed unions and put economic and political pressure on the establishment to change things for the better for everyone.

We have the economy that we have, the healthcare that we have, income inequality, etc. ALL because White working class America convinced themselves that their race would save them.

They were wrong.

[dreamnightwind]

7. I see it differently

I see a corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, our political discourse, and our government in general.

What policies have the corporate Democrats been pushing that would have stopped this from happening? The Republicans and Democrats have made common cause to do things like bring in H1-B visa replacement workers at far lower wages, enable manufacturing outsourcing, deregulate the financial industry to allow multiplication of large fortunes through shady over-leveraging schemes, put corporate health insurance companies in a position to profit off of our ill health, it goes on and on.

How does a union stop manufacturing outsourcing? It does no good to strike when a corporation simply moves the entire facility to a foreign country. I am pro-union, but it doesn't seem right to me to blame workers for not stopping the outsourcing.

Our party, since the founding of the DLC, has not been on the side of workers, they have been on the side of ownership. We must change that rather than blame displaced workers for their fate.

I share your low opinion of the political beliefs of Republican voters. But I don't think it explains the larger dynamic of corporations making record profits while hiring foreign workers at 1/10 the price, just to give one example of how the system is hurting people. This wasn't a ground-up process, it was a top-down screwing of the American worker.

[Jitter65]

14. Why don't you blame corporate moguls and their stockholders? The stockholder have the real

power to change things...more so than government.

[dreamnightwind]

18. I absolutely do

They are the ones who are driving this whole process, it's their agenda that is being served. They essentially own both parties, our media, and our government.

Re stockholders, if I understand correctly how corporations work, only the large stockholders would have much sway, it isn't exactly one person one vote, right?

edit to add: though I blame those forces, I don't look to them for the solution. It is up to us to learn how to elect politicians who will run without the benefit of corporate money, as Bernie is doing.

[One_Life_To_Give]

20. Governments are instituted amonst people

to secure the rights of the people. Not to be the lackeys of the Rich and Powerfull.

The person looking out for their own wallet I can atleast understand even if I don't empathisize with. But the Chieftan who sells out his own people for personal profit is nothing more than Slaver.

[Yavin4]

43. Europe and Canada have the same corporations that we have

But you know what they also have? They have electorates who vote their economic interests first and foremost. Even the most rabid rightwingers in those nations don't want to end their healthcare systems.

The Democrats are the way they are because they got their asses handed to them by Reagan twice and Bush I. After 1988, they made a concerted effort to move to the center. Why? Because the White working class Democrats from the Roosevelt coalition abandoned them. See Reagan Democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Democrat

Good for labor Democrats like Walter Mondale and Dick Gephardt got crushed in elections.

PATCO, the union that Reagan crushed, endorsed him in 1980!!!

To answer your question, "How does a union stop manufacturing outsourcing?" it's called collective bargaining. Part of the union contract would be to make it expensive for jobs to be shipped overseas. But you cannot get that if you don't have collective bargaining power inside and outside of the corporation.

[dreamnightwind]

47. There are too many other differences between us and Europe

such as parliamentary systems rather than strict two party like we have

Also their political races aren't, to my knowledge, so dependent on corporate money

Another rarely articulated part of the dynamic is that because the U.S. military is being used as the global strong arm to insure corporations access to cheap labor and physical resources, the corporations keep much tighter control over our elections, they are dependent on our military for their global industries and won't tolerate our own people having much say over things for that reason.

I didn't understand your point about unions stopping offshoring, though I tried. How many offshorings of factories have ever been stopped by a union? Using what leverage? I'm sure it has happened a few times, but I don't see any real power unions have when the owners can take their ball and play in another country. Labor has not been able to globalize the same way capital has. Foreign labor leaders are often assassinated by proxy forces of the U.S. government, this has been well documented in a great many cases.

Also with our politicians being owned by corporations, they make it easy to and even provide tax incentives for corporations to move elsewhere, instead of protecting U.S. labor interests.

Hillary is fully onboard with that whole dynamic, no matter what she claims, not that this was about Hillary, but I think it's important to point out.

anyway I just don't buy the approach of blaming U.S. labor, or white American males who vote Republican, for the massive transfer of wealth to the corporate overlords. We live in a Deep State, with captured regulatory agencies, and both parties have done their utmost to bring this about, starting in the late 70s and continuing to this day.

[Lodestar]

30. I have been reading that Democrats in that same demographic (white working class males)

are also fond of Trump, so I think there is some truth to Trump's appeal to this group
regardless of party affiliation even if candidates like Bernie Sanders actually better
represents their interests.

[NashuaDW]

6. David is very correct

I also keep reading here about the imminent demise of the Republication party ... But as David points out they have gained 13 senate seats, a ton of house seats and control most of the state governments.

A President Trump would put the Democratic party in a very poor position, maybe able to sustain a few filibusters here and there, but really not much more than the opposition party.

And Yavin, scolding them does nothing but drive them farther away from the Democratic party. We have to speak to them and offer real solutions.

Gun control and registration - they hear confiscation
Open borders - they hear more jobs lost to immigrants
Immigration reform - see response above

Like it or not these folks are going to vote ... and probably not for the person we want them to vote for.

I live in S FL now and see a lot of Trump bumper stickers and a few for Senator Sanders ... but so for none for SoS Clinton. Not making a judgement - just passing on an observation.

Ignore these people that are easy to ridicule and dismiss and we may see a 'shellacking' in November again.

[KamaAina]

11. What "we", kemo sabe?

News flash: The repuke Congress restricted federal benefits to citizens quite a few years ago. So take your xenophobic trash and shove it!

[JustAnotherGen]

13. I'm hoping he was being sarcastic

[ALago1]

17. Not really.

I mean I'm all in favor of previously red states turning blue. But let's not kid ourselves the main determinant of this is immigration and the associated benefits immigrants get that they can rely on us Democrats for.

[JustAnotherGen]

19. My husband is an immigrant

Came with 20K Euros, never took a dime or a handout and is now a millionaire.

That's why I have the luxury of leaving America and moving to Italy. If these assholes are gonna be maggot bigots - we have no choice but to burn our house down so they can't have it.

We earned that - not them.

They have massive chips on their shoulders expecting that we owe them something because we got ahead.

[pampango]

21. So this is the RW 'immigrants are welfare moochers' argument. What about the 'immigrants are job-

stealers' argument? The RW hates immigrants whether they work or not.

One of the right's favorite meme's is that Democrats only support immigration and work to provide a path to citizenship because it creates more Democratic voters rather than that it is best option for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with whom they will eventually vote for.

By the way, the US does not have "unrestricted immigration" - another version of the RW accusation that liberals favor 'open borders' which I am sure you do not mean to repeat here. The foreign-born population in the US is about 13%. That figure is 20% in Canada; 27% in Australia; 13% in Germany and 16% in Sweden. We do not have 'open borders. Nor do we have 'unrestricted immigration'.

https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign-born-population.htm

You may favor 0 immigration. (Many on the right favor that, too.) But we do not have 'open borders' by any stretch of the imagination.

[Skittles]

28. us Democrats

[ALago1]

29. It's funny. You post a lot but never any cogent arguments.

[KamaAina]

32. You know what to do, Skittles!

[Skittles]

40. Cave assholes

not EVEN worth my time

[ALago1]

16. Restricted eh?

You must have a different definition of that word, given that projected 2016 spending on welfare equaled 462 billion:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_welfare_spending_40.html

[pampango]

22. Where at your link does it say anything about welfare benefits for immigrants? n/t

[ALago1]

23. I was responding to an assertion regarding the "restricting" of welfare spending.

Here's what you're looking for:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/01/immigrant-welfare-use-report/71517072/

[pampango]

24. The 'study' from the RW CIS also says immigrants work more and receive less welfare in the long run

than native-born Americans.

The right wing Center for Immigration Studies' sole purpose is to produce 'studies' that prove immigrants are bad. Please find a more believable source.

About 51% of immigrant-led households receive at least one kind of welfare benefit, including Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches and housing assistance, compared to 30% for native-led households, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration.

Other findings in the report:

Immigrants are more likely to be working than their native-born neighbors. The report found that 87% of immigrant households had at least one worker, compared to 76% for native households.
The majority of immigrants using welfare come from Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. The use of welfare is lower for immigrants from East Asia (32%), Europe (26%) and South Asia (17%).
Immigrants who have been in the U.S. more than 20 years use welfare less often, but their rates remain higher than native-born households.

[ALago1]

25. I think you need to reread what you quoted:

"Immigrants who have been in the U.S. more than 20 years use welfare less often, but their rates remain higher than native-born households."

[pampango]

41. From the CIS I would expect nothing more. n/t

[KamaAina]

33. Of which $462 billion went to U.S. citizens.

$0 billion went to green card holders. $0 billion went to undocumented immigrants.

[PatrynXX]

42. you know most people on welfare in a racist system are white right?

bonk. and I have RW friends who actually believe this BS and they think they are behaving very Christian like .. Except hey the facts get in the way

[pampango]

15. As a sarcastic summary of republican rhetoric on immigration, this is a great post.

It is nice to read sarcastic repetitions of 'freeper' posts that we would otherwise never get to see. I am assuming that is how it was intended.

[Bradical79]

36. That's a racist anti-immigrant lie spread by conservatives

A conservative organization's study claimed 51% of immigrants rely on welfare, but their numbers were fudged. They counted if the head of household was an immigrant, and if any single member of the household received any kind of benefit regardless of if that individual was an immigrant themselves.

Other studies show though that rather than a drain on welfare, immigrants represent a net positive in funding contributing quite a bit more in taxes than they receive in benefits by a large margin.

[JustAnotherGen]

12. And their answer is Trump

Who is against against me and mine. He's trying to gin up violence against anyone who does not look or live like these ass wipes who believe in his message.

I don't feel bad for them. They would laugh if someone strung me up from a tree. They've turned towards hate and that's what they get - dismissed.

And - they need to stay off my lawn.

[BeyondGeography]

27. Our long national whitemare is over?

[Warren DeMontague]

34. It's gonna be raining sensible tan slacks and mayonaisse-laden potato salad!

Maybe a few of those circular jello molds with the fruit in it.

[BeyondGeography]

37. I know that guy

He's a stone cold killer.

[OldHippieChick]

39. But, but, but

Those are some of my favorite things!!! LOL!

[Hoyt]

31. It reminds me of South Africa before 1990s.

[melman]

46. .

Yeah. it's just like that.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

35. White America is dying because RICH White America is killing it.

Buffoons like Trump are the disease, not the cure.

[DonCoquixote]

38. the beast that dare nto speak it's name

For all of Trumps New York accent, this is the same drive to revive the old confederacy that has NOT stopped.

[newblewtoo]

44. I ran across this video

while looking for one that kept playing during the primary with Barbara Jordan. I am just going to throw it out there for folk to see what is going around.

There is no doubt that whites are losing ground but they still make up a majority of Americans. And voters.