Ultraconservative politics are bullying the state government, but there is hope in the numbers being rallied to the cause. Donald Trump's triumph across the South and Midwest, which won him the Electoral College and the White House, did not extend to Governor Pat McCrory in my home state of North Carolina.
Guilford County, like North Carolina as a whole, set an all-time record for the number of ballots cast during early voting despite GOP efforts for suppress voter turnout.
It is 1968. Year of blood. Year of protest. Year of insurgency. Year of a pivotal election: Republican Richard Nixon versus Democrat Hubert Humphrey. I decide that Nixon and Humphrey are indistinguishable, and I refuse to vote. I encourage others to do the same. It's a mistake I regret to this day. At first, students on the left were full of hope about the 1968 election...The only way Donald Trump does not become president of the United States is if Hillary Clinton does
Reader Comments: Millennial Sit-in Against GOP Politics of Hate; Call to End Voter Suppression; Does the Left Underestimate the Danger of Trump?; Thinking About a Protest Vote - Lessons from the Past; Garrison Keillor and Trump; Why the Protests in Charlotte; Police Violence and Racism; Prison Strike; Women's Boat to Gaza; Colin Kaepernick; Chelsea Manning; Life After the USSR; Jewish Grandparents Message; Announcements: Standing Rock Call-in; and more....
Our country's greatest failing, the true disaster, of our time: the scourge of growing inequality, economic and political. It is despicable as the very wealthy convert their financial might into political power to guard that wealth while exacerbating inequality further. This is the vast difference between a society whose arrangements serve all its citizens or one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud - democracy in name only.
In Mexico, Trump is solemn and praising; in Arizona, he's back to hysterical horror shows. His return to his old self was swift. Trump's Wednesday night speech was fiery, leaning on his usual depictions of immigrants as murderous, villainous, sexually deviant leeches. And then, he not only pledged every harsh anti-immigration tactic he'd floated for the past year, he expanded on them all - aimed at revving up his conservative base.
Trump's nationalism is absolutely about ethno-purity and an element of populism as well, although it's clearly a misdirection...it's largely about wounded national pride which has been a potent motivating force on the American right for a very long time. The reason Trump is now playing the conservative anthem "Proud To Be An American" at his rallies is: Good old fashioned jingoism - the one thing that brings the old right, the new right and the alt-right together.
"History is watching: - former CBS News anchor Dan Rather on Facebook rips Donald Trump's veiled assassination threat against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump in a bid to his followers, who also oppose gun control, said his "Second Amendment people" might be able to stop Hillary Clinton's appointment of Supreme Court justices. This is a new level of the GOP's war on women, where the right has fueled attacks on women and the murder of abortion providers.
MSM/GOP; More ears on us; Those darn kids; Black-owned media disappearing; Brexit: old media's last hurrah?
Trump's strategy and campaign is to appeal to majority white, working class voters who have economic anxiety and fear of demographic change. Trump's candidacy viewed in the context of historical continuity - nativism is a primary political discourse in American history. Trump has shown us that it is just as powerful now as in the 1850s or the 1920s. Indeed, "Make America Great Again" recalls the 1920s Ku Klux Klan's appeal for "100% Americanism."
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