To appease white supremacists
Hillary Clinton says the way to stop xenophobia is to be more xenophobic.
Europe must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from rightwing populists, Hillary Clinton has said, calling on the continent’s leaders to send out a stronger signal showing they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support”.
Definitely. Combat that threat from rightwing populists by being a rightwing populist. Totally makes sense.
Clinton urged forces opposed to rightwing populism in Europe and the US not to neglect the concerns about race and identity issues that she says were behind her losing key votes in 2016. She accused Trump of exploiting the issue in the election contest – and in office.
And she doesn’t want to exploit it, she just wants to…what? Appropriate it? Take it over and do it right: genteelly, apologetically, with gravitas?
“The use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on one’s heritage, one’s identity, one’s national unity has been very much exploited by the current administration here,” she said.
“There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political help from Russia to support your political parties and movements.”
Say “go back” with a pleasant smile.
Hillary: should the US roll back decades of civil rights rulings to appease white supremacists? Or just deport African-Americans to their continent of origin?
— Barbara Ehrenreich (@B_Ehrenreich) November 23, 2018
Personally I think the solution to migration is not giving a fuck… Get us a welfare state that’s actually worth something then we can talk about who lives here…
Yeah, because America’s solution to civil rights inequality of appeasing the racist segregationists until they just stopped being racist was working *so well* before the damn civil rights movement got all uppity and caused the introduction of the various Civil Rights Acts, which set progress back decades.
No, wait…
/s
Damnit. Why did my eyes skip over that last paragraph in your post the first time through?
Carefully read the *whole* post before commenting. I know that. I know I know that. And still I fail.
*sigh*
OB:
According to the UNHCR, there are 68.5 million ‘forcibly displaced people’ world wide.
https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/figures-at-a-glance.html
http://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/
In other words, the future will make the present look like a Sunday School picnic.
I’m disappointed by Hillary Clinton’s comments, but Barbara Ehrenreich’s tweet is pretty ridulous. Maybe she’s trying to make a slippery-slope argument, but it’s a huge leap from reducing immigration to sending American citizens “back” to Africa.
As for Clinton, she’s apparently doing her best to make sure no Trump voters regret their vote by trying to top the level of condescension she reached with “basket of deplorables”:
Who voted for Trump because they wanted “to be told what to do and where to go and how to live”? If anything, it was the opposite, which Clinton acknowledged in her book in a passage where she was told people were unhappy with both parties but were especially tired of liberal busybodies telling them how to live.
I believe Clinton is right that the liberal parties need to listen to concerns and take them seriously, but she is clearly not the one to carry that message, as she does it clumsily and then undermines her goal by insulting the people to whom she’s allegedly trying to build a bridge. That’s pretty much her campaign in a nutshell.
Skeletor. her comment is, like her basket of deplorables comment, not without merit. There have been some studies that show that people want to have the illusion of freedom, but often want to be told what to do and where to go (not all people, of course). Making your own decisions is hard, and people want to both believe they are making their own decisions and not have to do the work of making decisions. That’s why so many people gravitate toward strong leaders, or at least leaders who claim strength (like Trump).
I’m sorry, I can’t find the exact studies now, I”m not sure what keywords to use. And I can’t tell you if it has held up, because I can’t find the exact studies now. I believe the study was trying to understand the long-lasting appeal of authoritarian religions, but I can’t even swear to that right now. Hey, it’s morning, and I’ve only had one cup of coffee.
I found that horrifying, by the way. But it could explain why so many people in Muslim countries vote for IIslamists, and why so many people in supposedly non-authoritarian countries will vote for authoritarians. Freedom is work, and time-consuming, and people feel more comfortable being told what to do.
I think it’s true of just about everyone that we want incompatible things all the time. We want freedom and structure, adventure and routine, excitement and peace. We want a lot of things, and many of them are in tension with each other.
Yep. And I can by sympathetic. It happens at times that I get snappy because my husband always wants me to make the decisions, and I will bark at him to tell me what he wants to do. I don’t want a man telling me what to do, but…sometimes it’s easier. Sometimes I become overwhelmed by a big decision and want someone else to tell me what to do.
Trumpists are certainly keen on telling other people what they can and can’t do. It’s amazing how much cognitive dissonance (and actual harm or discomfort) some people will accept so long as the hated Other gets fucked over.
I get the impression that Clinton thinks she’s trying to be an adult in a panorama of toddlers, as far as the eye can see. I’m not entirely convinced, but I can see why it’s a variety of argument that probably needs to be made, even though either approach fucks over the people that most need help.
In my hometown, the council is adopting a scheme that makes it easier to issue fines to beggars and homeless people and to cause them to go away. There are already a number of schemes aimed at helping such people including government funded schemes and charities. The solution to the ‘problem’ of homeless people is to help them find somewhere to live, by fucking definition. The solution to the few ‘professional’ beggars (those who – we’re told – actually have a home and are begging because it is easier than work and somehow vastly profitable) is to prosecute aggressive beggars, for the police to get to know people living on the street and so on. Prosecuting them or moving them on – especially when there are actually good schemes in our little town which could probably house most of the homeless – isn’t solving any kind of problem that actually exists.
I can’t help but see Clinton’s remarks in the same way. It’s not the same, but I get a very strong smell of Jesus’ “well, there’s always going to be poor people so let’s spend all the money on making me feel good rather than helping the actual poor that are actually starving right here and now.”
I never expected to agree with Andew Lloyd Webber, but here we are.
So do I (get that very strong smell of).