Current Affairs – US

With the recent revelations of boorish, misogynistic behavior and speech by Donald Trump (if you are surprised at these revelations, by the way, you have work to do when it comes to noticing narcissistic behavior from your fellow humans), his supporters and GOP partisans are becoming desperate as they attempt to rationalize their consistent intent to vote for him.
As a result, I am laughing out loud when I read some of the attempted justifications.
Dear Trump supporters, you’re embarrassing yourselves.
The argument “sure, Trump may be an asshole, but Hillary is just as bad!” is not credible. You know damn well it’s not. If your child’s school informed you that your child had misbehaved, providing compelling evidence of same, and the child’s response was “but mom, they did it too!”, you might be vaguely sympathetic, but that would probably only extend to saying something like “yeah, but you were caught and they weren’t”. Most likely you would be reminding your child that bad behavior has consequences.
Effectively, you are an adult playing the game of “but they do it too!”. Not credible. It makes you sound like that whining little schoolkid. Juvenile and unserious.
You’re not! I can hear you saying that as you read this.
Well good. Then wise up and try, you know, a better argument.
Ah! So Donald Trump is magically better because he never killed anybody? Like at Benghazi? And he never lost $6bn of taxpayers money?
Look, you can believe anything you like. You want to believe in tooth fairies, aliens from Mars, that the Moon landings were faked, and that Jade Helm was an abortive attempt by the Federal Government to take over Texas? Sure, go ahead and believe. But please don’t kid yourself that any of those beliefs deserve to be taken seriously by anybody with a well-developed set of reasoning and critical thinking skills. There is no compelling evidence to support any of them, and without compelling evidence, arguing otherwise, in many circles, soon makes you look both gullible and deluded.
Arguing that Hillary murdered 4 people at Benghazi is not supportable by any compelling evidence. If it was, somebody would have tried to indict her by now. Now, you can believe that she is being protected all you like, but the GOP has run seven (count them) investigations, and has yet to provide any compelling evidence.
Hillary lost $6bn of taxpayers money? Not even close. As this article explains, what actually happened was that an investigation revealed that the State Department lacked full documentation support $6bn of spending. Yes, that is bad. Negligent even. But saying you have no paperwork to support expenditure is not the same as saying that the expenditure was wasteful. Those are two different things, and if you continue to insist otherwise what you are really telling me is one or both of two things, neither of them flattering (a) you don’t understand the English language, (b) you chose to ignore the facts in favor of signing on to yet another cockanamie partisan narrative. Plus, if you are going to argue about losing money, you are going to crash and burn pretty damn quick. Donald Trump, based on numerous documented and detailed accounts of his business activities, has pissed away billions of dollars of other people’s money. That fiscal probity argument in favor of voting for him is utterly lacking in credibility. Best to not go there.
Look, I know that it is kind of difficult to support Donald Trump right now. Now that the media is catching up on actually, you know, digging into his past to the same level of exhaustive detail that they have been applying to Hillary Clinton for 25 years, some of the information that is emerging about his behavior is deeply unflattering. But you really have to do a much better job of argument. These rationalizations are like a psychologist exam to detect Motivated Reasoning 101. They are also an argument for voting based on nihilism. No positive endorsement of anybody. Only an argument that so-and-so is the Least Bad Option. Come on folks. There are well over 100 confirmed candidates for POTUS, excluding the cats, dogs and other weirdos. You should be able to find somebody to your liking there.

1. From an Iowa farm fair float

Deplorable: Indiana farm fair float depicts mock execution of Clinton at hands of Trump, Obama head as black statue https://t.co/4qVPujnYdP pic.twitter.com/OPkps8pT2T

— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) October 4, 2016

2. This from a self-proclaimed Christian Trump supporter.
Although this is written like an old-fashioned telegram with the STOP words missing, the air of eliminationism is unmistakeable. (“left wing radicals as potential targets for becoming neutralized” is at best, slightly sinister).

I checked in with a friendly Trump supporter I met at a Christian bookstore in S.C. in February. He says this: pic.twitter.com/065GCuOhvt

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 4, 2016

This article from the Washington Post is a look at the worldview and mind of a Donald Trump supporter.
The most important commentary is this one by JJ MacNabb, who writes about anti-government and Sovereign Citizen groups in the USA. As she points out, there is usually one defining event in the lives of many anti-government supporters that convinces them that The System in its broadest sense is stacked against them, that they are never going to be treated fairly, and therefore the only right thing to do is to work to smash The System. In this case, the overturning of the woman’s $450,000 damages award for harrassment seems to have been the trigger for her becoming a fully invested supporter of smashing The System. Everything after that event is an illustration of how resentful and angry people are vulnerable to all manner of wild ideas and conspiracy theories. They then tend to embrace any and all conspiracy theories that start from the premise that an evil cabal is in charge. Hence the resurgence of ideas that overreaching government programs are a tool to subjugate the citizens (Jade Helm and Agenda 21) and the resurgence in popularity of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. It is a recycling of the whole New World Order/Illuminati/Jewish bankers world control trope, which is older than the 20th century, but persistently popular when nativism and racism become acceptable in public discourse.
UPDATE – for an illustration of what happens when people become fully invested in all manner of New World Order-based conspiracy theories, this guy’s Facebook page is a good illustration. He is pretty representative of the sort of people who signed on to the idea that Jade Helm was a covert attempt by the Federal Government to invade Texas.

Quarterback Blake Barnett, one of the highest-rated college recruits in 2015, has shocked the Crimson Tide by leaving college this week.
Barnett started the first game of the season, but was benched after 2 series in favor of Jalen Hurts, and his only other playing time was 3 series in the game on September 24th. Otherwise he has been holding the clipboard as the #2 quarterback.
Predictably, perjoratives like “quitter” have been ladled out like confetti since the news of Barnett’s leaving college broke on Thursday.
Blake Barnett had three options open to him, given that he had apparently been demoted to #2 quarterback at Alabama.
1. Remain on the program, and try to win the job back
2. Remain this season and try (1) but leave after the season
3. Leave Alabama now and transfer to a junior college

The underlying reason for Barnett leaving Alabama are that there is a rule in the NCAA governing playing eligbility that worked against him remaining with Alabama and the football program. The rule states that transferring players lose one season of eligibility after the date that they transfer.
So, if Blake Barnett transfers immediately to another college, and if he meets specified academic and attendance records, he can play football for another college after the fourth game of next season. If he left Alabama after the end of this season, he would not be able to play for any college team until 2018.
Barnett was not a little-noticed scrub when he was recruited. He was universally regarded as one of the top quarterback prospects coming out of high school. However, he is more a prototypical pocket passer, where Jalen Hurts is more of an athletic read-option quarterback. Alabama’s offensive line is not currently very good – Nick Saban admitted as much at halftime in today’s game. At the moment Alabama is having to use the running flexibility of Hurts to win on offense. The reason why Barnett is not playing may have as much to do with Alabama’s o-line challenges as it does with Barnett’s skills and abilities.
Given the o-line issues, and the decision to cope with them by moving to a playbook based on more running plays and read-option calls, Barnett’s decision makes a lot of sense. Let’s go back and look at his options again:

1. Stay and win back the job
This is less likely than it might appear. If you can’t protect a pocket quarterback, you have to find other ways to put up points. If Barnett wins back the starting job, that might be bad for him. He gets to go out there and run for his life if his o-line protection breaks down. If he suffers a season-ending injury, this will not be good for his college career and could ruin his attempt to make it into the NFL (think Marcus Lattimore and Jaylon Smith).

2. Stay but transfer at the end of the season
If he moves to another college he forfeits a year of playing time. He will not be able to play until 2018.

3. Go to junior college now, transfer to a football college in 2017
If he does this, he can play after four games of the 2017 season.

Lost amidst all of the whining about Barnett being a quitter is one important thing that we have to remember. He is not being paid for playing football. He gets to work hard and then go out on a Saturday and put his body in harm’s way for the official sum of $0. Meanwhile, his head coach Nick Saban pulled down $7m last year.
When you get the hook after one quarter of the firs game of the season, you are on the bench, and you are not being paid, but you want to play, why stay at Alabama? I’ll pass on the whining about him quitting on the team. If he was benched after 2 series, that kind of looks like the coaches quit on him.

One thing that is easy to notice on Twitter is how many proclaimed supporters of Donald Trump, in addition to proudly changing their handle to some combination including the word “Deplorable”, are also anti-semitic.
They could, of course be taking their cue from some of Trump’s supporters. like David Duke. Here he manages to combine both anti-semitism and a racist dog-whistle in the same tweet:

Shamefully bias debate moderator, Lester Holt, has been married to his Jewish wife, Carol Hagen, since 1982.#RiggedElection #MAGA #AltRight pic.twitter.com/V46CPLhOtc

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) October 2, 2016

I remind readers once again of the remarkable similarity between tweets like this one and the sort of public comments that the Nazi party made in the early 1930’s when Adof Hitler was consolidating his power in Germany.

One of the processes that was well-documented during the rise of the Nazi Party to power in pre-World War II Germany was its ability to persuade supporters to adopt progressively more extreme and enabling views about out-groups in Germany. The number one out-group was the Jews, but other groups such as homosexuals were also declared to be out-groups.
The process was a progressive one like this:

Criticism –> Demonization –> Dehumanization –> Extermination

This could be seen very easily with the Jews, who, by the beginning of World War II, were being routinely described as filthy animals and vermin by Nazi supporters and in the media. The whole idea was that by re-defining them as animals and vermin, and not humans, the next step, extermination, seemed utterly logical. And so it proved. The demonization was an excellent example of what was once termed “the banality of evil”. People casually and reflexively came to believe that Jews were not entitled to live. No contemplation, no second thoughts that perhaps this might be a Really Bad Thing.
The whole approach in Nazi Germany to opponents was casual eliminationism, the idea that opponents were not even entitled to survive, because they were a threat to Nazi purity and control.
Today we have this delightful news item from the Carolinas. A local political fundraising project for the GOP decided that it would be OK to raffle off an AR-15, 1000 rounds of ammunition and a picture of Hillary Clinton.
The money quote is this one:

“Of course we won’t tell you what to do with the photo, but when we ran a picture of Hillary on the front of our newsletter, we heard that it was VERY popular down at the range”

This, folks is the casualization of eliminationism. It’s just like reading the history of Nazi Germany all over again. The writers of this screed are not only ignorant of world history, they are participants in the casual demonization of a politician that they disagree with. They’re nothing better than enablers of creeping, casual, unthinking eliminationism. In short, the writer of this is a rabble-rousing scumbag. Thinking about it, maybe the right response is to label the author a Nazi, and when they protest, tell them to STFU and go study some history.

A good way to show that you are a bit of a juvenile jerk:

This guy at Trump rally, who refused to give name, confirmed to me his shirt means he wishes Clinton had been killed pic.twitter.com/C2apONBv4d

— Dominic Holden (@dominicholden) September 28, 2016

A pithy commenter online about the idea that Donald Trump is about to magically Behave Differently:

@TPM Great comment on Charles Blow's column in NYT. pic.twitter.com/3oQ9AwJ45U

— lnOrOut (@Undetermined_US) September 29, 2016

Donald Trump is engaging in activities at his rallies that are clearly designed to foster an Us and Them mentality. This tweet will illustrate:

TRUMP in IOWA: "Raise your hand if you're NOT a Christian conservative. I want to see that. There's a few of them. Should we keep them?"

— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) September 28, 2016

As a student of European history, I know exactly where I have seen this behavior pathology before. It’s not pretty.
If anybody reading this is going to try and make the argument that Donald Trump was joking, or that this is not sinister and threatening…
STOP.
Don’t even go there. I don’t want to have to be the one to tell you in sharp words how utterly un-versed you are in world history.

UPDATE – If you want to see what Trump’s remark triggers on an online forum where the barrier to assholes is non-existent, here we go:

Wow the antisemitism came fast after my response to @JeffreyGoldberg tweet pic.twitter.com/CRzkhPMa20

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) September 28, 2016

I have a pretty high tolerance for bullshit. If I didn’t, I would not have reached the age of 61 and still be gainfully employed.
However, I am going to make a promise.
If anybody sends me a message urging me to vote for any political candidate because the candidate’s spouse is so nice/smart/good-looking/would make a great First Lady, I will excoriate and ridicule their message to everybody on my friends list.
If I vote for a candidate, I am voting for that candidate. Not their spouse, pets, hairdresser, accountant, PR flunky, or yard worker.
If I dislike a candidate, it makes no difference that they have a “nice” spouse (whatever that might mean).
If you intend to vote for a candidate, my assumption is that you like the candidate’s message. If you then send me a message asserting that the candidate’s spouse is so nice etc. etc., what you just told me is that you don’t have a cogent case for voting for that person at all. Pointing to their spouse in this way, quite simply, smacks of desperation. Desperate appeals are never appealing.