Oh it’s definitely a soup of racism whether or not they use the N word. It’s a pervasive sense that fairness is about them having things regardless of the impact on others and always being in the top layer as part of the natural order.
All the other stuff is just the dumplings in that soup. It’s impossible to support him unless deep down you have that mindset because it’s the foundation for everything he does. Racist assumptions about what constitutes “normal” and “good” and aspirational are the subconscious default for many if not most. Much is unconscious but it is no less harmful. The overwhelming and pervasive racism of American society is very obvious to those looking from the outside. The assumptions on which so much of the machinery of society operates is horrific if you know what it is to live without those shackles. You look at what people take for granted is a normal way to think about and behave to others and it makes you want to laugh then cry. It’s like watching seacrabs in a rock pool who don’t know they are on a beach which is part of an ecosystem where there are land crabs and also horses, that don’t give a shit about crabs.

@Carlita for sure racism is a factor and there is no shortage of them but its a factor everywhere to some extent. I was merely saying that is not the real driving force behind his support overall. Even the ones that aren't supporting him because of racism don't really find his racism that offensive because they aren't the ones being attacked. They also are surrounded by them and know them on a personal level and will overlook it so that certainly agree with what you are saying. I'm just pointing out that this racism is the only narrative the left is hearing and it misses the real reason for his support. Like during the campaign that stuff is all the left heard and missed the fact he was telling them he would bring their jobs back. This is something the old southern democrats left the Dems over but no one has addressed the huge issue among the lower middle class that see it as a betrayal of the government that has been brewing for decades with no politicians even willing to talk about it. Once I forced myself to listen to one of his speeches I instantly knew he would win even though the message I heard on the left was he had no chance because of the outrageous stuff he said..I knew this racism stuff was still a big thing in our country because I go to family reunions at times. Living in this part of the country I'm surrounded by them. I'm very much an outcast in my family for many reasons so I tend to know both sides more than I really want.

@JesseBoren
Hey Jesse. I’ve heard a lot of analysis about this issue now over the last three years and I recognise your viewpoint. For sure there are people who hope fervently he will turn back time and restore a way of life they once knew. But the average Trump supporter is of middle income not poor and defies many of the popular stereotypes. They are employed. They are white. When they are analysed the characteristics that most consistently feature in the data is their whiteness and negativity to non whites. Not their income or employment in particular industries although those demographics you discuss certainly exist. People really interested in economics should be interested in concrete plans that accord with observed reality. The most striking thing about the Presidential campaign was Trumos absolute lack of a concrete plan to achieve any of his bombastic promises. He had no programme. No strategy. He just kept whipping people into a frenzy harkening back to the good ole days. The most important thing about the good ole days was that there was only one kind of person on top back them and no pretence that the platform should be shared. And that’s the way those people liked their story told, rich poor or in between.

@Carlita I completely agree with most of that, you certainly won't get me to defend any aspect of their behavior or thinking. I never said anything positive about his supporters and I think he is one of the worst human beings to ever live. He will do everything Hitler did if he is given the chance. Like I said before they aren't using logic and reason so it would seem like they don't have anything to complain about on paper but that doesn't stop people from behaving in different ways. The fact is life has gotten worse for them and their kids. While it might still be better than minorities that doesn't matter to them. The rich have done very well but the middle class is being eliminated for more and more people. They are just too stupid to realize who is really screwing them so they fall back on old racial stereotypes that are being pushed down their throat. Mostly it's a perception thing more than reality though. They have listened to people tell them they are under attack and they hear everyone blaming them. Right or wrong when people start attacking whites in general, much like you have done here, they will react defensively and then it's easy for others to play on that. My point is their perception is as important as reality is. If people ever want peace we must try to understand each other and not get caught up in attacks. The system is the problem but no one can see that because they get caught up in hating the other side so they only focus on the shit that causes the most outrage. Its a long practice of humans that only leads to war, then they kill each other until it hurts too bad, take a break and build up to the next one. We humans aren't nearly as smart as we think we are. Our old instincts that helped us survive are now about to destroy us. I only feel sorry for those that don't really deserve what's coming, but most of us do.

@Carlita even if you don't want to make peace with them you still need to understaand whats driving them if you want to defeat them so it's important to listen to everything not just what pisses you off.. I know how hard that is, it pisses me off too.

@JesseBoren
I agree with you too Jesse! Ironically I’m watching the same process occurring here in my own country and it’s putting the country at grave risk with potentially decades of loss of opportunity for my children with this Brexit nonsense. I watched the entire thing start and I watched the demagogues get started and the media used to tell the population the narrative a minority wanted told. Over the last 15yrs it was assiduously normalised to consider immigration a “problem” instead of the failure of the government to use the tax revenue they were generating from all their economic activity to improve public services and to take sensible planning decisions to protect the country. It was going too well for too many types of people and the right leaning rich don’t want to share. It’s the same everywhere. The US was not regulating their financial industry and we got caught up in that also. We let the rich (individuals and business) keep piling up without proper oversight and when it fell pieces we let them get away with it and the public .

Unlike Obama who wisely (and so luckily for you) pursued a Keynesian approach your economic rescue plan by increasing investment build your way out of the problem, we had elections and installed a new Conservative government for the first time in 15yrs. They set work immediately demonising the poor and immigrants (also conflating the two falsely) while absolving the ones who caused the problem of responsibility for fixing it. Like Republicans do. They pursued an agenda of austerity and reduced expenditure on public services while reducing taxes that benefit the rich the most. Classic. Now 8yrs later the society is breaking and the UN has just published a report castigating is for our disgraceful treatment of the vulnerable, increasing crime and poverty. We have a prisons crisis, an NHS crisis, a housing crisis, a police crisis, a schools crisis and now a knife crime and drug epidemic. And all this was built while constantly changing the public perception and narrative around “immigrants”.

Because the white people have always had a problem with the black, brown and “differently white” people who come here but when it was a few and they had come into the 20th century they mostly grumbled to themselves and didn’t talk about it in polite society. The victims just internalised the racism and didn’t talk about it either. Then it started to become fashionable to talk about it in the papers and in public because more came and now you could see them and the shops and the overheard languages and the food smells and the kids in the school grounds and hospital queues looked different. People started banging on about religion and wanting it to matter because they brought their religions with them and the English don’t like religion much as they are tired of fighting wars over it. Religion is something you used to do on a Sunday that you don’t do anymore and just watch on TV when the Queen goes for a national event.

So the was running out because damaging public services damages people and its people who generate wealth for a country. Destroying the services that support people means they become vulnerable lives of crime instead of being productive and compromising their mental and physical health means the same. Everyone’s miserable and feeling they are hard done by (except the really rich who continue get richer but always want more as usual).

So let’s blame the immigrants!!!!! It’s worked for the last few centuries so why not try it again eh?
Funny story, they really don’t like the black and brown people but since they have been conditioned for the last ten years to just resent difference they could now also be persuaded to hate other white people ! The European immigrants that came in greater numbers for employment opportunity from poorer new entrants to the EU. Suddenly a whole bunch of extremely white white people who normally have no problem hating black people in their own country were the new targets of racial hatred. Talk about irony! I have lived to see the day when a milky white Polish person has almost the same chance of getting smashed in the head after last orders in the pub as a .

You know why? Because the British decided strip these people of their protective whiteness. If you ever want consider what is meant by the term race is a social construct consider this modern day repeat of the “Irish aren’t white” nonsense from the 1800’s when you didn’t want them in your country. Being considered white is not so much biology but a present white people bestow on each other because it is the access key to the highest level of “privilege” in a society. You can only be on the top layer of acceptance and possibility and advantage with the White Club badge. So there is always a competition with the ‘Not Scandinavians who always get to be White’ to see who wins the prize this century. In order to hate them sufficiently the British decided to revoke the White Badge from the whitest people that ever walked the earth, the people originating from the Caucas region of Europe who originated your Caucasian ethnic label!!!!!
Hahahahaaaaaa. I watched this bullshit happen right in front of my face. Suddenly all discussions on the news about “racism” were about white people fucking up each other without the slightest hint of irony. The blacks and the brown Muslims were just kind of looking at each other shaking their heads like wow, you mean we finally get a breather huh? We’ll take it but this is mental man.

So the conversation about Brexit suddenly became possible when it had been as unthinkable before as America suddenly deciding it’s not going to bother maintaining a border with Mexico. That suited a certain group of rich people who don’t usually show their faces. It doesn’t really suit anyone else and people can’t acknoweldge that because it means facing what they have become. It’s like asking a Trump supporter to admit it was all a huge mistake and going along with it meant you weee a bigger shithead than you ever realised.

So here we are. Both of us. America and Britain. About to fuck ourselves permanently because we can’t just admit we don’t like people we don’t think are the right kind of white.

This high level of concern white people have about people calling out the effect their whiteness has on their thinking and behaviour and characterising it as “attacks” is the root of the problem. They have a nice term for that now, White fragility. The moment I heard it explained I instantly recognised the behaviour. I don’t have any interest in maintaining anyone’s white fragility. It’s a white person problem that white people have to solve for the human race to progress as it should. If it’s more important for people to hide from and deny their own racism, conscious or unconscious (everyone has a bit of racism but some more than others) than to stop being racist it only helps the people trying to use you. I don’t coddle people. I do internal work on my own racism and bias all the time. I interrogate my tendencies and beliefs and choices and reflexive thinking constantly. I gave my own bullshit and try to do better. It’s a work in progress and I’m one of those people who scores as Not Biased on those psychometric tests they do in research to catch your prejudice! We need to make this normal for everyone to do instead of to spend hours insisting how not racist they are and how we should stop labelling people because it upsets them. Work on the racist thinking and the behaviour will follow. That’s how I’m raising my kids. To interrogate their own natural bias and eliminate it.

@JesseBoren
I listen people for a living Jesse. So I know how important it is understand motivation and how people tell their story to themselves. I have to understand that to make a professional diagnosis of what is REALLY going on. That’s my professional skill. And it has made me acutely aware that just because people sincerely believe something it doesn’t always make it true. It gives you clues to understand what actually is true. To help them you have to give them a way to link their thinking with the evidence of their behaviour and it’s consequences, the events occurring around them and the factual reality of why. We call that “giving the diagnosis” in my business. We use different ways to do it depending on where the person is in their thinking but we know we have to do it for their own good or they won’t get better.
There are people who sincerely believe that they are inherently superior to me because they are white and born in America. They are completely mistaken. It’s quite funny when I think about it. But they are serious. It’s in their best interests to be helped to understand the reality. Telling them they are right but try not to say it in public is not going to help them.

@Carlita I really just mean it's like the placebo effect, peoples belief in something can affect the outcome to some degree. If someone smart on the left comes along and develops a campaign based on addressing these concerns they will easily take many of Trumps supporters away. That's largely how Obama came from nowhere and won. He did it much differently and didn't do anything he said them to believe. Trump is loved because he has done it so he will be more powerful next time. If racism alone would have such an effect on voting I don't think Obama could have won. Not saying there is no effect just not as much as the media make it out to be. There are real issue driving his support. We have been trying to get rid of the Mexicans since we stole their land, except when it serves our purpose. The conservatives talk of laws but refuse to acknowledge the racism built into those.I watch what goes on over there some, mainly I use your papers to get the stories we don't get. We are one of the most censored nation in the western world. They like to just ignore stuff more than anything. The conservatives are so badly informed since they tend not to be as smart they get lied to more than anyone. It says a lot that their side has to resort to lies, kinda tells you right there who's on the right side.The new data coming out shows intelligence was the single biggest factor in the election. The dumb picked Trump while the smart did not. People even switched parties on this one so what Party you where in didn't seem to matter that much. From my experience that seems to be dead on. It seems ignorance is still the number one enemy of humans no matter what side of the globe you are on. My DNA is 100% European coming from mostly from the british isle, my parental line coming from the only native haplogroup from there, Haplogroup I if my memory is correct. My ancestors came here between 200-300 years ago they say.

@JesseBoren
I get you Jesse. I must say I am amazed by some of the quality of reporting in America. The people aren’t given the proper information to make decisions. No wonder people struggle with the issues. It’s frustrating watching the biased strange reporting. And you quality sources are dismissed as liberal MSM bizarrely.

@Carlita fighting ignorance never ends, but here it's like standing in the river and trying to get it to go the other direction. I'm naturally good at explaining things I guess so I'm constantly explaining things to people that are confused. They are all confused. They don't know how to tell good info from bad so they just believe what they want to. Fox news has a big role in keeping them confused.

I honestly haven't enough time left in the rest of my LIFE to argue with the wilfully ignorant anymore.
Any change / improvement must come from within since all demonstrable facts are dismissed outright.

One complete falsehood (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-law-separate-families-passed-1997/) and two assertions backed up with no evidence.
Zero for three. Care to have another go?

@MrBeelzeebubbles Well, if you think what I said is not true....there is nothing I can do to change your mind. OTOH, you may watch the Spanish TV -100% against Trump- to repeat what I just wrote.
Dear, you need to know the way some Latino cultures work.

@DUCHESSA Sigh. The Bill Clinton did not sign a law that mandates the separation of families caught entering the US unlawfully. This is simply not true. Look it up on any of the reputable fact checking websites.
And I don't care about the political leanings or ethnic background of a TV station, I care whether it tells the truth. So, Fox, RT and the Daily Mail? Different perspectives, all bullshit.
And 'some Latino cultures'?
Really?
Bigot much?

@DUCHESSA
That's Not true either.
EVIDENCE, solid concrete evidence convinces us, not backstreet political lies.

@MrBeelzeebubbles Well, dear...you believe whatever your heart desires....said law is a good one because protects the kids; I know you won't accept this because DT used said law OPENLY....the same with the deportation of many illegals. See, the difference between DT and Obama -to mention only one example- is that Obama did so without any noise....and he deported a lot more illegals than any other recent president. FYO, USA is not the only country in the American continent deporting illegals; Chile and Argentina are doing exactly the same. See, my friend, we don't have to fix other people' s problems. Te veo, cariño.

It doesn't matter what you believe. It doesn't matter what I believe. It matters what is true.
And speaking of truth, it's true that more people got deported under Obama than previous presidents.

This is because they started actually recording everyone detained within 100 miles of the Mexican border, instead of just dumping them back in Mexico without even counting them. Because that's the honest thing to do.

Mandatory separation had got nothing to do with helping kids, otherwise they wouldn't stick them in chain link pens. And funny how quick Trump backflipped when the photos started coming out.

Pretty much every country deports illegal immigrants. I used to live in Australia. Our largest group of illegal immigrants were from the UK. That didn't get much press. Guess they weren't brown enough to stir up our local racist Trump fan equivalents.

@MrBeelzeebubbles As I said...you believe whatever your heart desires....You are not Latino. you don't speak Spanish...and most certainly you don't know the Latinos' cultures -there are many / don't think the Spanish unifies the people- three facts that make the difference when listen to what people talk in said language.
To try to inform you is a waste of intelligent time.
BTW, if you believe the pens were the kids were housed were built by DT 's orders you are worse than what I think.
BTW2 I doubt very much UK nationals have a problem in Australia...since this country is part of the British Commonwealth

@Morganfreeman Ummm... thanks for the word salad, but no.
From claiming that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's (it wasn't, we've got the photos for fuck's sake) to his recent claim that only the USA gives automatic citizenship to anyone who is born there (Mexico and Canada have the same law), he consistently says things that are provably, demonstrably false.
That is the reality.

@Morganfreeman again, no, sorry.
A word salad is a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases",[1] most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. The words may or may not be grammatically correct, but are semantically confused to the point that the listener cannot extract any meaning from them. The term is often used in psychiatry as well as in theoretical linguistics to describe a type of grammatical acceptability judgement by native speakers, and in computer programming to describe textual randomization.

@Morganfreeman Your grasp of rational debate is a wonderful example of the Dunning Krueger effect.

@Morganfreeman funny how it worked with CFC's and the ozone layer. We used them. The ozone layer eroded. UV radiation increased. We banned them. The ozone layer is healing. UV radiation is decreasing.

@Mortal same thing for leaded petrol as well.

@Morganfreeman Ozone hole is tradeable property???

From 2015 to 2017 (after having already served from 2003 to 2007), the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works was chaired by oil lobbyist and climate change denier Jim Inhofe, who had previously called climate change "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people" and claimed to have debunked the alleged hoax in February 2015 when he brought a snowball with him in the Senate chamber and tossed it across the floor.(from Wikipedia article on"Cllmate Change Denial" )

Organised campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with conservative economic policies and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of CO2 emissions.[27] Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates and conservative think tanks, often in the United States.(Wikipedia article on "Climate Change Denial" ).

Notice who is seeking to profit by climate change denial.