The Left Has Lost Their Minds

I know, water is wet.  

Owen Wilson in the Guardian: (apparently some kind of publication in the U.K.)

Unlikely to ever lose a job to an immigrant who swings a hammer but doesn’t know how to spell it in English.

Trump’s victory is one of the biggest calamities to befall the west and the effect is that every racist, woman-hater, homophobe and rightwing authoritarian feels vindicated. This rightwing populism can no longer be dismissed as a blip. Indeed, without an urgent change in strategy, the left – perhaps all progressive opinion – will be marginalised to the point of irrelevance. Our crisis is existential.

[Fun fact: In the U.S. we use the letter ‘z’ in words like marginalized. Blame Merriam Webster.]

Multiple factors explain this calamity. First: racism. The legacy of slavery means racism is written into the DNA of US society. The determined efforts by African Americans to claim their civil rights has been met with a vicious backlash. The exit polls suggest that Trump won a landslide among both male and female white non-graduates: only white women with degrees produced a majority for Hillary Clinton.

There’s s much accumulated bigotry here that it takes more words to refute it than I really care to give.

Wilson assumes a whole lot about Trump, his followers and also people who are “non-graduates.”  He means folks without college degrees.  We call them blue collar workers, or did until so many of them lost their jobs. 

Racism is not in America’s DNA, or it seems to be a really recessive gene in me.  My friends as well.  Degreed or not.  I’m struggling here to remember the sweeping statements which Trump spoke, or policies which he suggested which are racist.  Oh he sure stumbled when talking about immigrants in his announcement speech.  But did he say racist stuff?  Facts, please. Specifics.

And if controlling immigration is racist, then let’s get together a list of racist countries. Mexico is my nominee. 

Trump enjoyed support of white non-college folks because they are hit very hard by an influx of immigrant labor.  Nobody ever sneaks across the border and takes the job of a pundit or columnist.  It is true that not enough black folks voted for Trump, but that’s on them.

Years ago the Tea Party was labeled racist since not enough black folks showed up.  For months the movement was labeled racist in the press, and black folks don’t show up in large enough numbers to impress the press?  Only liberals could imagine such a twisted logic.

You heard Trump called every name in the book by the left: homophobe, authoritarian…and the smear will continue.  In truth, Trump is very imperfect. His problem is not that he doesn’t like women, but that at times he’s liked them for one specific purpose way too much.  

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See another perspective on this essay, by someone who writes about UK and U.S. politics. Sam Hooper says Owen Jones Doesn’t get it.

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Wilson says the left ‘might be “marginalised to the point of irrelevance…”  Funny, that is exactly what I heard about the Republican party on NPR just before the election.

I think the left has had its day, played its hand and bungled so many things.  I don’t care much for Trump, his clumsy way of losing track of the tings that matter, or even his treatment of women.  

But don’t you dare call America racist, homophobic, sexist or all these other things just because we exercised our right to stop the left wing global juggernaut. Lots of people lived through the declining global influence of the U.S., the declining economy here and the ridiculous social engineering being practiced all over the world.

We said stop.