Sunday, July 17, 2016

Bikers for Trump


Might be an interesting week in Cleveland...





Looks like the Rohirrim lined up at Minas Tirith:







26 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

What could be worse for elites used to dictating policy to the base than having the party base show up and appear to dictate policy to the elite.

MetLife Inc, Walgreens, Hewlett Packard Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co, UPS, Motorola, Koch Bro, Wells Fargo & Co, Goldman Sachs, Ford Motor Co, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Apple announced that they wouldn't be going to the Repub convention. That tells you something, they are none-too-happy about the populist movement that threatens their hold on power. This is probably the least corrupted Repub party we've seen in our lifetimes. Workers vs the billionaire elite writ large.

The Dem narrative is that these working classes are all racists, so the non-white workers must support the Dem's billionaire-academic agenda or risk going back to the bad old days.

How awkward for Bernie, he is going to the convention supported by billionaires, dominated by war hawks, and hell-bent on dividing the country on race among the working classes, everything he is against, he must smile, grin and tell his supporters to support.

It's too bad the Repubs can't bridge the racial divide and really start to destroy the Dems, they've got a chance to offer a different vision than Dems that would appeal to non-whites. But they are probably going to squander the opportunity.

Matt Franko said...

"dominated by war hawks, and hell-bent on dividing the country on race among the working classes, everything he is against,"

I dont think he is against our current war oriented MENA policy or dividing the country into classes... He just hates people who make too much munnie and save too much munnie according to him... because he thinks that's where the munnie comes from... this is about the same technically as the MMT top end of towners saying "deficit too small!"... ie not qualified...

Greg said...

I think you might be missing why those companies aren't going to the repub convention Ryan. In my view it is less about some populist movement the repubs are stirring up which threatens their hold on power and more about trying to distance them selves from some of the more repugnant social views which the GOP recently is doubling down on. All those companies have LGBT workers, many in high places. All those companies have immigrants working for them. Many of those companies have physical assets abroad that are threatened by irresponsible hawkishness.

You certainly can argue that Hillary is more hawkish than Trump but I would say Hillary is hawkish in a more predictable way, that is consistent with how America has behaved the last 3 decades. Trump is likely to say or do something to provoke reactions which are completely out of the realm of recent confrontations. In addition Trump is much more likely to act out of pure hubris and for personal retribution than Hillary I think. If president he is likely to feel he can do as he pleases while Hillary operates within currently accepted bounds.

Malmo's Ghost said...

No one is going to unite a divided America. It's far past the opportunity to do so. Obama--the most divisive president in history-- saw to that and good.

Just accept the fact that Hillary isn't going to be president and that Trump will be eons more circumspect once in the White House.

Ryan Harris said...

Exactly Greg, Dems are positioning themselves as the less scary option, war but a more predictable war! A bulwark against chaos? The problem is that enough people aren't scared of Trump. Clinton needs Trump to go back to the early election where he seemed unpredictable, instead she is getting steady-predictable-trump.

Agree, the weakness in the Demo-Repub dividing line is race and those involve social issues. But someone has to offer an alternative to change those divisions and no one is, just the same old. The pope tried to bring republicans around to a more inclusive, compassionate policy, but no response in the USA. Easier not to rock the boat.

I think the Trump campaign view is that the chaos in the electorate is being created by billionaire-academic elite not by bikers and catholics. Buffet's Coca Cola-Wells Fargo, Zuckerberg's Facebook and Koch Bros are the problem, not dudes riding bikes, people going to church. Showing well organized, peaceful bikers and a screaming hillary calling them racist scary violent people, well, let's see how that works out, I don't know. Trump's message is that he knows what all that $$$$$$upport for Hillary means, war and violence and terrorism and endless chaos. He says he will instead promote US workers interests and end the terror campaign by billionaire democrat's interests.

It's never been done, but seems to be working in the polls.

Greg said...

" Obama--the most divisive president in history-- saw to that and good."

Mal, thats a load of crap.

Has he presided over a very divisive time? Yes Has he been a divisive figure? Only in the minds of people who view "bipartisanship" as giving the opponent control of everything.

Obama biggest error was believing for too long that he could negotiate with conservatives. Conservatives do not want Obama to have one single victory.... not ONE! They are in a burn the house down mode while trying to make sure he cant get his way. The modern American conservative movement is a poison to a functioning society. If they dont get to dictate via a majority they play passive aggressive and just bring things to a halt.

Modern conservatives dont want to talk about race because they are in denial that race plays a role anywhere.

You cant bring someone on your team that doesn't want to play for you and many conservatives dont want to play with anyone else.

There is only one side that needs to give up something to find a compromise

Greg said...

@Ryan

I agree with you about how these optics might play out in the election. Hillary is far from a slam dunk and the "scary Trump" line, while it has been effective (especially with many conservatives), has a limited shelf life. Trump has a lot of time to further confirm it or refute it.
I dont think Trump can win a national election on the white vote only however. He is close to zero with blacks in too many places and very low with hispanics in many others.

I do disagree with your "billionaire democrats" line however. These guys are A-political as far as party. They want as much certainty as possible and the predominant view of most movers and shakers is neoliberalism not liberalism. Neoliberalism is to liberalism what New-keynesianism is to Keynes. An Orwellian maneuver to hide the true intention of the philosophy.

NewKeynesians are monetarists who want the "state" subjected to bank control, not banks subjected to state control as Keynes advocated at times.

Neoliberals are conservatives who want all rights extended to 'humans' to be extended to capital and corporations.

Tom Hickey said...

The present divisiveness in the US began with the Civil Rights Act and the Vietnam War. The Civil rights Act brought out the racial divide that had existed since the Civil War and emancipation. This was a working out of the divisiveness that existed at the founding of the US. WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII put a veil over it, but it remained.

The Countercultural Revolution of the Sixties brought out the extreme divide between radical and reactionary element regarding social liberalism. This was amplified by the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act. The GOP under Nixon adopted the Southern Strategy to flip the "Solid South" to the GOP.

The rise of an organized Right had been visible in the Forties with right-wing resistance to the New Deal and later attempts to turn it back as creeping socialism. Economically this was typified by Hayek versus Keynes.

Political divisiveness was also fanned by the Red Scare and Joe McCarthy in the Fifties that saw reds or pinkos under every rock. The advent of the John Birch Society, for instance, was an attempt to organize resistance.

In the Sixties and Seventies, traditionalists were engaged by the anti-war movement on the Left, which they saw as Communist inspired. Right saw the American loss of the Vietnam War as a stab in the back by the anti-war Left, which they attributed to "liberals."

I would say that the contemporary iteration of divisiveness began with the push on the Right. Jimmy Carter helped them by triangulating and moving the Overton window to the right. The contemporary era begins with Ronald Reagan, who solidified the move from the New Deal dominant politically to Conservatism as dominant. Practically, this meant dismantling the New Deal "socialism" and replacing with with neoliberal policy and legislation.

This led to the GOP Big Tent that united disparate interests on the right in opposition to the still dominant Left in Congress and the governorships and state houses.

The rest is history. Basically, the GOP had to throw red meat to the base to keep the disparate coalition together in the push to make neoliberalism permanently dominant domestically and globally. This led to ratcheting up the Southern strategy and appealing to the biases of the base — "guns, gays, and God."

Eventually, the base caught on that the GOP was not about actually delivering on their interests and the Tea Party arose to challenge the Establishment. This led to Trump's rise against a lackluster field of candidates.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton had triangulated further to the right and cooperated in dismantling key pieces of the New Deal. The GOP had opposed "the Clinton's" from the moment of the election and eventually managed to impeach Bill but not unseat him. The Gingrich Revolution managed to break the Democratic control over Congress, and governorships and state house had already begun to flip under the Reagan Revolution.

The Democratic base reacted by electing Obama and stiffing HRC. Then Obama betrayed them with faux bipartisanship that failed to recognize that the GOP would attempt to break him just as they had Bill Clinton. The disappointment that Obama brought to the base led to the popularity of Bernie Sanders as an alternative to another Clinton administration run by the Democratic Establishment.

The Left-Right antagonism during the recent decades has been amplified into general divisiveness through cable TV, talk radio, and now the Internet. Moreover, new reporting has focused on the sensational and infotainment. Murdoch properties set the tone.

The divisiveness is grounded in different world views which are themselves the product of different mindsets. Cognitive scientists, psychologists, sociologists and political scientists are now attempting to discover the basis for this scientifically.

Six said...

Thanks Tom. That seems like a better explanation than believing Obama is "the most divisive President in history" because morons on fringe radio and TV keep repeating it as fact.

db68 said...

Ryan, what republican party do you speak of?

Tom Hickey said...

The US was set up to be divisive by adopting the two-party system of governance rather than a parliamentary system. But even many parliamentary systems are effectively two-party systems.

Initially in the US, it was Federalist (centralization) v. Anti-Federalist (decentralization), North (industry, finance) v. South (agriculture), free v. slave-owining, etc. Those divisions are still in evidence.

Tom Hickey said...

George Washington warned about party and factionalism in his Farewell Address in 1796.

Six said...

Yes, it's a very frustrating arrangement. Changes seem to happen slowly or not at all.

Back to the original topic, the Bikers for Trump group is an impressively large number of people pretending to be rebels.

John said...

I was always under the impression that bikers are nothing more than criminals: outlaws who've swapped horses for two wheels, rustling cattle for selling crystal and who knows what else. Unless all these bikers have all came into some terrific inheritance, riding around all the time is not conducive to full time work. For good or bad, looking like members of ZZ Top doesn't help the cause of finding employment. And so these self-styled "free spirits", these deluded and faux "rugged individualists" are central to the drug and crime wave taking America apart. No wonder they're for Trump, and no wonder Trump sees kindred criminal, and racist, spirits in them. Other than that, they have nothing in common, although a Trump presidency would ensure good business to be had by the criminal biking fraternity. Buy futures in crime!

Malmo's Ghost said...



No one claimed divisiveness started with Obama. What I said--absent a dubious wiki copy and paste--is that he is the most divisive president in history (I'll add to that he's hands down the most divisive).

He's a shameless race baiter, cop hating, conservative white male bashing, gender pandering, war mongering, Wall Street lackey, feckless open borders advocate, creator of our politicized and rule of law absent justice dept, anti worker TPP advocate, promoter of the widely unpopular Obamacare POTUS.

There has never been a more polarizing president. Never. Not even close.

He might not have caused the divide in America but no one else has added more fuel to the fire than him. Period.

Malmo's Ghost said...

...and 95% of the MSM-- who are liberal Democrats-- are his personal megaphone adding even more fuel to the fire of division.

Malmo's Ghost said...

..and Trump might very well end up being more divisive than Obama after he's elected. And he will be elected...in a landslide.

Matt Franko said...

I still say they are all simply stupid....

Six said...

Good job sticking to the script. Don't forget to preface your comments with the phrase "mega dittos, Rush".

Malmo's Ghost said...

Six,

Typical liberal name caller.

Malmo's Ghost said...

Six,

The floor is yours. Defend Obama. I'm all ears.

Six said...

I can't, I'm not a true believer. He's a lot of the things you say he is:

War mongerer, Wall Street Lackey, TPP lackey ... Check, check and check. The Great Recession Stimulus was half-assed (in his defense it was probably all he could get) and ACA was massively complex and compromised, but again, it was probably all he could get. Ironically, the people who defiantly scream "All lives matter!" are the same one who desperately want ACA repealed without replacement. In other words, all lives matter, unless you're too fucking poor to afford health insurance.

To summarize, Obama is a pragmatist compromiser who, ultimately, does what his wealthy patrons want him to do.

His harshest critics are quite a bit more divisive than he is.

Malmo's Ghost said...

Six,

I think I might actually like you.... :)

John said...

Malmo: "..and Trump might very well end up being more divisive than Obama after he's elected. And he will be elected...in a landslide."

Right on the first, but (unfortunately?) wrong on the second - landslide for Killary and then a landslide of corpses for Arlington and more so for the any number of countries she wishes to turn into killing fields.

The whole Pence VP thing was farcical. Tune in and you'll hear Trump's backtracking on every dumb thing he's ever said. Tune in an hour later and Trump's doubling down on the original dumb comments - and we can all agree Trump has said so many dumb, mendacious or offensive things that the mind boggles. This isn't flip-flopping. This is multiple personality disorder. What the fuck is wrong with the guy?

It's clear now that a Trump presidency will make Obama's look like one of miracle healing. He's temperamentally ill-suited to office of any kind. Killary is temperamentally ill-suited to being a human being, having been destined by nature to be a close cousin of the ebola virus, but nature has yet again played one of her tricks. What an election choice: madman or killer mutant virus in the shape of a human.

As for Obama, you really have to wonder who it is still defends his record. Yes, he's had a lunatic Congress to deal with, but look at how he's used the powers of the presidency. Look at how reactionary he's been within his remit, using the powers of executive office. But "liberals" defend anything as long as their guy is in office and he makes a big deal out of "identity politics" and is capable of reading off an auto cue, rather than confronting the real issues that are turning the US into a graveyard. It's doubtful whether even Killary of Trump can do for Wall Street what Obama has. Remember what Obama told Wall Street: "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

Greg said...

@Six

"the Bikers for Trump group is an impressively large number of people pretending to be rebels"

LOL!!


And I agree, he is some of the things listed in Mals spittle laced rant but guys like him accuse every democrat or "librul" of ALL those things. Its the standard laundry list of what is wrong with democrats. I am surprised he didn't add Kenyan and watermelon eaten' though

Peter Pan said...

There are a few bikers who actually are motorcycle enthusiasts. It's true! It's true!