Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 27, 2017

Public Policy Polling (PPP) conducted a national poll after Charlottesville. Trump voters said they would rather have Jefferson Davis as President than Barack Obama by 45%/20%, while Obama won that question 56/21 with the overall electorate. Draw your own conclusions about Republicans and Trump voters.

PPP asked what racial group faces the most discrimination in America, and 45% of Trump voters said its white people, while 17% said Native Americans. Only 16% of Trump voters picked African Americans.

When asked what religious group Trump voters think face the most discrimination in America, 54% said it was Christians, followed by 22% for Muslims and 12% for Jews. Overall, 89% of Americans have a negative opinion of neo-Nazis to 3% with a positive one, and 87% have an unfavorable opinion of white supremacists to 4% with a positive one. Just 11% agreed with Trump that it’s possible for white supremacists and neo-Nazis to be ‘very fine people,’ to 69% who say that’s not possible.

PPP published the survey on August 23rd. The margin of error is +/-3.3%.

Trump vows to stay in Afghanistan:

Our Navy forgets to steer the boats:

Texas changes its tune about the federal gummint:

Trump threatens government shutdown:

Charlottesville showed us there are vermin down below:

Some think total eclipses are a bad omen, but views differ:

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Trump Revealed Himself in Phoenix

The Daily Escape:

Luecantha by Philip Grausman, at Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey – photo by Wrongo

Wrongo and Ms. Right have been away, including visiting the Grounds for Sculpture. While we were on the road, Der Trump spoke at a “Trump for President” rally in Phoenix, where he committed to pardoning former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. You remember Joe Arpaio, the guy that defied a court order to stop racially profiling Latinos, the guy who was found guilty of contempt of court when he wouldn’t stop the profiling? What would it mean to pardon Arpaio? It would once again show that Trump doesn’t respect judges, or the law.

He also promised to cause a government shutdown if Congress didn’t fund the cost of his border wall. Wasn’t Mexico supposed to be paying for that?

Most disturbing, Trump told his supporters that people are trying to take away “our culture”: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

They’re trying to take away our culture. They’re trying to take away our history. And our weak leaders do it overnight. These things [statues] have been here for 150 years, for 100 years. You go back to a university and it’s gone. Weak, weak people.

Whatever could Trump mean when he speaks about “our culture”? He’s aligned himself with America’s neo-Confederates. He wasn’t talking to the entire nation, he was talking to the Phoenix crowd and to his supporters around the country. If there was any doubt that Trump was staking a claim for neo-confederates and white nationalists, consider his conclusion:

We are Americans and the future belongs to us. The future belongs to all of you. This is our moment. This is our chance. This is our opportunity to recapture our dynasty like never before.

From Booman:

The “Americans” he is talking about are not all Americans, and what dynasty could he be referring to? It isn’t a Democratic or Republican dynasty. It’s an uninterrupted record of unquestioned white supremacy that was disrupted and can only now be “recaptured.”

Is this just a political stance, or does he truly believe what he says? Hard to know. What is unambiguous is that he’s now leading a neo-Confederate movement that sees white nationalists and white supremacists as “good American people”. What is now clear is that Trump is speaking only to the white Americans whose forebears founded this country.

Who should remake the country, you know, and make it great again? He’s talking to his base, which includes White Supremacists, White Nationalists, the militias, the Klan and the American Nazis. They are the ones he says should remake this country, not that it was all that great 150 years ago.

Think this is wrong? He’s tripled down on including these groups as part of his base since his gaffe at Charlottesville, so now we have to believe that he really means it.

From the New Yorker’s David Remnik: (parenthesis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

During his speech in Charlotte (before the election in November 2016)… [President]Obama warned that no one really changes in the Presidency; rather, the office “magnifies” who you already are. So if you “accept the support of Klan sympathizers before you’re President, or you’re kind of slow in disowning it, saying, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ then that’s how you’ll be as President.”

Somebody was smart enough to know what would happen if Trump was elected.

Trump is willing to leave identity groups like people of color, feminists, minority religions like the Jews, and the LGBTQ, to the Democrats. In TrumpWorld, they bring you the fake news. They brought you the trade agreements that took your jobs away. They let Mexicans and Muslims into your country.

In Phoenix, he called journalists “sick people.” He accused the news media of “trying to take away our history and our heritage”. He questioned the media’s patriotism:

I really think they don’t like our country…I really believe that. And I don’t believe they’re going to change..

Trump isn’t worried about his lies. Its the MSM who are liars, and their stories are all fake. When Trump delegitimizes the news and media organizations, it is every citizen’s duty to resist.

Control the media, control the people.

The last word goes to Booman:

So, like in the Civil War…and the Civil Rights Era, it’s time for Americans to do battle. This time, our own president is the enemy

You need help getting the truth out, and so does Wrongo. For inspiration, let’s listen to the Beatles song “Help!” from the album and film of the same name. “Help!” was number 1 on both the UK and US singles charts in late summer 1965. John Lennon always said that it should have been played at a slower tempo, so here is “Help!” covered by Deep Purple, live in Denmark in 1968:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 20, 2017

Jon Stewart in a surprise appearance at Dave Chappelle’s show at Radio City Music Hall skewered white supremacists:

If you guys feel like you’re losing out, fucking work harder. I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re a white supremacist, if you think you’re the master race, how come we’re kicking your ass so easily? You’re the master race! How come you’re not winning everything? Why aren’t the Olympics dominated by you? You’re the master race. What do you have left? Golf and tennis, maybe, maybe. And even then, the first black people you came across, you’re like, ‘We can’t play this game anymore.’ Williams sisters, Tiger Woods. O.K.

Suppressing political violence is a matter of will. It requires that we rise above our tribal loyalties and defend the political system that is at the heart of America.

Trump is having trouble keeping members of his advisory councils:

Trump uses wrong finger:

Is the Confederate Flag about heritage? Absolutely:

The monuments are only part of the problem:

Bannon’s real job was easy to see:

The Trump Eclipse requires different glasses:

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Trump Can’t Lead

The Daily Escape:

Zion NP Utah, 2001 – photo by Wrongo

Leader of the Free World. Leader of the Republican Party. Commander-in-Chief. Leader of the US Government. Donald Trump holds all of these titles, but he isn’t a leader. We just lived through a lab experiment in Trump’s leadership, his curious response to the Charlottesville protests. Either he had a lapse in clear thinking, or he cannot show empathy when the rest of us need it.

Either way, he failed as a leader.

On Saturday, America reacted to a moment in which armed racism was celebrated by members of the KKK, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists, who sought a confrontation to help them achieve high status among the far right. The ugliness of the rally – which included crowds of young white men carrying torches, an air of menace, and the offering of the Nazi salute — should make our president think about how not just to defuse the situation, but how to blunt this from becoming a wave of similar protests across the nation.

Trump’s remarks on Saturday said in essence, “All lives matter”. By Monday, when most of America thought that what he said was far less than the situation required, he gave a terse speech saying:

Racism is evil…Those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

There was no emotion or believability behind it, he said what he was told needed to be said, not what he believed. Where was Trump’s sympathy for Jews, African-Americans, Muslims and others that these white-right protesters savaged?

And where was his leadership? Richard Neustadt wrote “Presidential Power” in 1960, a definitive book for its time. Wrongo read it as a freshman in college. Here is a quote:

The president’s primary power is to persuade and bargain, not to command. When a president has to resort to commanding people, he is showing weakness. Commands only work in very special circumstances. The essence of a President’s persuasive task is to convince…that what the White House wants of them is what they ought to do for their sake…

The power to persuade is perhaps the most important tool a president has. Power in our government is dispersed, so the president must bargain and persuade others that what he knows is in their best interest, and coach them to move in the right direction. Do you see Trump doing that?

Dr. Christine Porath of Georgetown thinks that “warmth” is the most important trait for a leader to have:

Warmth is the primary characteristic that people judge you by, and they make that judgment first…Can I trust you? If you seem warm, then that’s great…Leading with warmth, for leaders, has shown to be helpful. It’s a way to connect with people and again they’re more likely to work harder for you and perform better.

Do you see any warmth in Trump? Any empathy? It isn’t there.

Neustadt agrees. He calls how the public views the president, “public prestige”. Even though the public has no direct association to policymaking, the public’s view of the president affects how legislation moves through the Congress and into law. Neustadt also says that a president should think and act prospectively, so decisions he makes today aid his ability to persuade tomorrow.

Trump’s opinion polls are in the dumpster. A very small core of Americans find him believable.

Scott Adams the Dilbert guy, has said that Trump is a master persuader, and that he won the election because of his mad persuasion skills. But, those skills, which did seem to exist in the 2016 primaries and general election, have deserted Der Trump, and have been replaced by continuing Twitter attacks on a growing list of institutions, groups of people, and individuals.

Charlottesville was a protest by those who define themselves not just by who they are, but by who they hate. And they also define themselves as Trump supporters. There were shouts of “Heil Trump” on Friday night. They see no benefit in finding commonality with a diverse America, but pointedly, thrive off of hating our differences.

These people are content to blame “The Others” for their lot in life, and Trump persuades mostly by telling us what he hates, rather than what he likes.

In the 1960s we had much larger, and more violent (though mostly unarmed) protests. Those protesters didn’t want to jet us back to the past, but to propel us forward to a better future.

The white nationalist agitators in Charlottesville want to return us to an era that cannot (and should not) be recreated. All in the name of making America “great again.”

And they back Trump, a charlatan who pretends to lead.

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