Forget the monuments to Confederate generals. The ordinary working class American doesn’t have time for that discussion and frankly, it does not put food on the table. Democrats keep keying in on things that the ordinary working class American does not have the luxury to opine about.
Forget the Confederate monuments.
If Democrats truly want to get the attention and votes from the working class, let’s look at Texas, especially now.
Democrats have been denigrated by Republicans as the party of “regulations” and the party of “the climate change hoax”….tree huggers and believers in the government having a say over private property rights. That stuff is contrary to what Republicans/conservatives/Texans hold dear. They what little, if any federal regulations of oversight, no government agencies telling them what they can do with their property, and they want “freedom”!
Hurricane Harvey has just shown the nation the result of limited regulations and the denial of climate change.
Harvey to be costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, estimated cost of $190 billion. This is equal to the combined cost of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and represents a 1% economic hit to the gross national product. Where is the U.S. government going to get this $190 billion and why is this amount so high? Texas is known for its land use freedom. Build what you want where you want, it’s your land. Of course this allows people to put acres of non-permeable concrete and asphalt in areas like Huston, so the rain water won’t soak into the ground, it will flow to the nearest tributary. Texas ranks 50th for the EPA’s toxic exposure score, 47th for total toxic chemicals released into waterways, 46th for cancer-causing chemicals released, 45th for developmental toxins released, and 49th for reproductive toxins released. The state also produces the greatest amount of hazardous waste, generating 13,461,911 tons in one year, and now thanks to Harvey, all those toxins are flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.
In summation, Texas is going to cost the USA billions and billions of dollars because they wanted the “freedom” to do as they please, ignore science, and let “free markets” rule the day. Of course when all they failed, they came running to the US government and the taxpayers of Massachusetts for a bailout, no pun intended. The freedom loving citizens of Texas will not be footing the bill for the results of their freedom and the wealthiest Texans probably have a tax shelter and will pay zippo. Nope, ordinary working class Americans from Maine to California will be working a few extra hours each week just to pay for this. And a lot of it could have been avoided.
Looking for a job? The number of people killed on the job in Texas increased in 2014, and the state retained its grim spot as the county’s leader in workplace deaths. And of course Workers’ Compensation coverage is optional for employers.
So this is going to be my sales pitch to any independent voters in the next few years. “You know, those Republicans are really killing us with their deregulation and science denial. I mean, heck, the cost of cleanup for Harvey is going to cost us almost $200 Billion Dollars! They speak about personal responsibility and freedom the way my kids used to when they were teenagers, wanting all the perks of freedom but when they got into a fender bender or lost their cell phone, it was mom & dad who had to bail them out!” And did you see the number of Texans who die on the job? That’s some crazy stuff. I mean, I’d be afraid to get a job there. They don’t seem to care about the planet, the working class, it’s all crony politics with the Republicans taking care of the rich ans screwing the rest of us.”
This is unnecessarily inflammatory, and exemplifies my issue with your commentary.
Had you not bracketed your thread-starter with the first two and the last paragraphs, you would have a comment that nearly all Democrats of any race could enthusiastically agree with. I think you know that.
What you’ve done, instead, is lead off with what you yourself acknowledge, unprompted, is a digression. A belligerently polarizing digression at that.
The confederate monuments, and the racism of Donald Trump and the GOP, have nothing to do with the disastrous policies that have created so much suffering in Texas, and with the flagrantly hypocritical requests that the rest of the country now bail them out. Apparently, even the most rabid Texas partisans don’t mind taking “socialist” tax dollars when it’s their own neighborhoods that have been destroyed by their own foibles.
So — you’re absolutely correct that working stiffs across the country will pay through the nose, again, for the stupid intransigence of Texas on a whole host of related issues.
Nobody — absolutely NOBODY — has said anything like what you say in your final paragraph. So why is that paragraph there?
If you actually CARE about all that even a little bit, why do you include the first two and the last paragraphs? Why the profound belligerence?
It leaves me with the distinct impression that you:
– Have no interest in being inclusive
– Don’t really care about the ostensible focus of your post
Have to chime in — take out the irrelevant (and not-very-compelling) preamble and I’ll be happy to front-page.
You are correct. After a good night’s sleep, I awoke refreshed and edited that out.
You could have made your point pretty well without your first and last paragraphs. The other thing I learned courtesy of Rachel Maddow is TX no longer provides to the public information about chemical storage, known as a Tier II report.
There was a radio documentary a year after the West Texas disaster, the fire and explosion at a fertilizer plant where the firefighters died needlessly. They had no warning that there were explosive chemicals in the building. As soon as they decided to fight the fire with water hoses, they were dead men.
And a year later the town’s people still said they did not want “federal government regulations”, had not harsh words for the owners of the plant who, to me. clearly put profits ahead of safety, and all the citizens interviewed saw this event as an act of God and they prayed for the souls of the victims.
Chilling.
I agree with the other comments. You should take your own advice and drop your obsession with Confederate monuments.
I’m not obsessed with Confederate monuments, the professional class of the Democratic Party is. It allows them to ignore the working class because “blacks and women….”….
I really see no evidence that the Democratic Party has any such obsession.
In any case, the best way to change the subject away from Confederate monuments is to talk about something else.
If putting food on the table is more important that any monument… a hierarchy made explicit by you, here… what is to be said about a monument to a man who willingly, actively, aggressively and often murderously, worked to prevent a class of people from doing exactly that?
We’re talking about men, Confederate generals, who not only STOLE the labor of others, thus taking actual food and goods out of their actual handsand selling the fruits of others for their profit but who led others into BLOODY BATTLE on the principle that THIS WAS A GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS THING TO DO.. After they LOST this battle they turned their attention to actively denying people a table to put food upon.
So long as a monument to such a man stands, you can’t actually trust that your ability to put food on the table is all that secure.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would be a good thing for you and the guy from Somerville to review. I did not make this hierarchy.
You two want to make a point, blame the voters, and boost your self esteem…….that’s 4th in line.
More shit-stirring.
Funny how the only thing you care enough to comment on is your racist attempt to suppress reaction to white supremacists.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies to blacks, Hispanics, and women as well. But you don’t care about that even a little bit.
Not taking the bait Tom. Nope.
Anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance are the five stages of arguing with the willfully blind. I guess we’re at the ‘bargaining’ stage where you whip out what you think about Maslow and I try to negotiate you down, lest you hurt yourself (further.)
Acceptance is where I give you up as truly just another racist. I’m fighting it. I don’t want to accept it. You’re not making it easy.
You are understanding me even less than you understand Maslow. You placed ‘putting food upon the table’ as a more basic need than ‘monuments.’ That’s a hierarchy you devised and has fuck all to do with Maslow.
However, since you brought Maslow into this, I’ll use it as an example to show you what I mean.
The lower strata of Maslow’s hierarchy are existential: without them you are likely to die. Yes, ‘putting food upon the table’ places in this strata, but so, too, does, ‘safety and security.’ This is distinctly at odds with a memorial to a Confederate general who denied access to the lower strata of Maslows hierarchy for GENERATIONS of people: they ‘ENSLAVED and MURDERED people — that is to say they directly denied to generations of people the very things Maslow says are needed– and WENT TO WAR to protect the privilege.
So if you care about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (and aren’t just using it as stall tactic to put off the day you have to come to Jesus) and you care about putting food on the table, then you should care about tearing down monuments to men and to movements that served as a direct impediment to the fulfillment of those needs.
We’ve got working class citizens in the USA living from paycheck to paycheck, not getting a real raise in pay for decades, experiencing shorter life expectancy, in the midst of an opioid epidemic while the 1% is getting fatter and fatter……and you want them to get all focused on a monument to a Confederate soldier? Really? All so you and people like Tom from Somerville can fell self righteous in your defense of “blacks, women (and Tom just added Hispanics)” as you ignore the plight of the working class.
You realize that there are timestamps here….
It was 7 minutes from the time of my post ’til the posting of your reply.
7 minutes to ‘read’ what I wrote and compose your reply… which reply doesn’t even address what I said… leading me to conclude you didn’t really read it.
I’m trying. I’m really trying. I’m going to try one more time…
Your parade of horribles that beset ‘working class citizens’ is real. But it is also something Nathan Bedford Forest, Confederate General and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan actively, aggressively and murderously tried to DELIBERATELY enact against the population. It is also something some of this devoted followers might like to re-enact.
So while there are people in real hurt and real want because of the vagaries and imperfections of present day capitalism and our politics there are monuments to men who would applaud that real hurt and the real want and seek to make more hurt and more want, deliberately. As long as there are monuments to that kind of aggression, nobody, not even you, is safe in their access to the most basic needs.
As a man once said, you don’t need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows.
I stand for with and for the working class. I do not stand with men, with women, with whites, with blacks, with any of that because it’s silly and dangerous to think that all men, women, blacks, white, etc think alike.
You and the dude from Somerville assume uniformity across the demographic categories and then opine on issues you see as “most important,” e.g., for women (or single women), for each minority group, for young people, and so on. In reality, issues are systemically related via moral worldviews, not the color of ones skin, etc.
Oh. I believe you. I just don’t think you’ve given quite enough thought to, exactly, what that means… and why.
If we had been having this conversation in 1855, we would have been exclusively talking about white men. If we could repeat the conversation a 100 years after that, in 1955 very little would have changed precisely because the men you want to dismiss as mere ‘Confederate Generals’ deliberately murdered people to prevent their access to the vaunted ‘working class’ you champion with such stalwart bravado. Now, over 150 years after 1855, and in the context of all that oppression preventing a lot of African Americans from gaining entree to the ‘working class’ you champion, we’re having only a very slightly different conversation.
But whatever the historical context, you don’t seem really gung-ho to welcome the heretofore dis-enfranchised into the realm of the ‘working class’
So are you standing for the working class, which should (by now) have come to include all the descendants of slaves, but which clearly has not? Or are you standing for the working class as you have experienced… and not, necessarily, how it should be?
You, I hope, can see where some might have a problem with your point of view, however earnestly you hold it, can you not?
Dismissing the commemorative statuary of the Confederacy as irrelevant is not defense of the working class, it is defense of the status quo… which quo only achieved such status at the hands of those self-same murderous and anti-working class Confederate generals who denied entree into the ‘working class’ for many and who would do so again if given even the ghost of a chance.
Memorializing that aggression is upholding that denial of all the working class benefits that the Generals were able to affect against a very large segment of the population.
Maybe so pal, but it’s 2017.
I stand with and stand for the working class.
I do not stand with women. I do not stand with men,
If I did stand with women, that would mean I stand with Kellyanne Conway and Michele Bachman, eh?
If I did stand with men, I would stand with Mike Pence.
If I stood with blacks, I would have to stand with Charles Payne, Walter Williams and Clarence Thomas Condoleezza Rice and Ben Carson.
I stand with the working class.
Then you should stand opposed to the things that are opposed to the working class. Monuments to Confederate Generals being high atop that list.
If you stand for a ‘living wage’ then any kind of slavery, indenture or economic oppression should be anathema to you and you should not stand by insisting it’s no big deal that large swathes of the country memorializes the support of slavery, indenture or economic oppression . If you are, in fact, not opposed to such monuments, then you are not really in support of any class besides ‘upper’. It’s really that simple.
The working class in Massachusetts is struggling and yet, we have no Monuments to Confederate Generals here…..
Sorry, the working class ain’t got time for your identity politics.
You are a fucking muppet. I have no idea who’s hand is up your backside, directing your mouth, but I do know that it is a feckless, conniving hand. How do I know this? You’re pathetic bait-n-switch by appeals to Massachusetts in a diary YOU have entitled “It’s Texas, stupid, just Texas.'”
I’m forced to conclude that you either possess a blistering stupidity or that you are a stone cold racist troll.
One more time. The impact of each thing you mention is about twice as pronounced for blacks as for whites. Wages and life expectancy are about twice as bad for blacks as for whites. The wealth and income gap for women crosses both racial and economic strata.
You choose to care about white men, and in doing so you ignore enormous segments of the working class.
A key issue in Texas (remember Texas — “It’s Texas, stupid, just Texas”) is flagrant bigotry of Mr. Trump and GOP towards Hispanics. The pardon of Mr. Arpaio is flagrant pandering to those who seek to destroy the lives of Hispanics. But you don’t care about Hispanics, whether in Texas or anywhere else. You don’t care about Mr. Trump actively celebrating a notorious anti-Hispanic bigot convicted of criminal contempt of court because he flagrantly ignored federal court orders to stop abusing Hispanics. You don’t care because you seem to care only about working class white men like yourself.
Once more you passionately refuse to admit that blacks, Hispanics and women are huge parts of the “working class”. If you actually cared about “working class” people, you wouldn’t be writing any of this.
It is clear, yet again, that the ONLY people you care about are working class WHITE MEN like yourself.
And that’s why I characterize your commentary as racist (and sexist).
Nope. Never said that.
Nope, never said that either.
You see Tom, I prefer to see a “Working Class” and I don’t really care, as you do, what the color of their skin is or their sexual identity.
But hey, if you want to keep putting words in my mouth in order to boost your self-esteem, carry on!
Buzzards guts, man ! Can’t you just give it a rest ? Enough already.
Why do you insist on fragmenting the working class into opposing factions? Oh, I know, so that you and your banking pals (yeah the money HAS to come from somewhere) can maintain the status quo….
The only “fragmenting” of the working class being done is by you — by your attempt to impose your biases and prejudices on an entire party.
Here’s an example:
Your circle of white working class men in Franklin perhaps don’t have time for that discussion.
Blacks across the south, including Texas, have a very different view. But you don’t care about them. Not wanting to be lynched is not a “luxury” to a black in Texas or anywhere else in the deep south. But you don’t care about that.
You titled this bait-and-switch rubbish “It’s Texas, stupid, just Texas”. Funny how quickly it becomes clear that you don’t care even a tiny bit about anybody in Texas.
I think “stone cold racist troll” is pretty much right on target.
I wrote:
You wrote
Again, you insist on inserting race and gender into the argument fragmenting the working class into opposing factions.
Why? Why most you define people by their skin color and gender?
Sure, on this pass. It’s called a lie by omission. Only a few days ago, you were much more explicit:
Your commentary here makes it crystal clear that what you MEAN when you say “ordinary working class American” is “white working class voters “. That’s who you describe hanging out with. Those are the men who don’t care about Nazis, white supremacists, or — for that matter — cops terrorizing blacks (note that we still are waiting for the FIRST conviction, after years of high-profile police killings of black men).
When you demand that we ignore issues that affect specific demographics — such as these recent threads about white supremacists, or when you steadfastly opposed recently-passed Massachusetts legislation aimed at ending gender-based wage discrimination here in MA — you insert race and gender into the argument.
Yup, white working class voters did vote for Trump or against Clinton. And back working class voters, in large numbers, stayed home and did not vote for Clinton.
At the root of this is one thing and only one thing: working class.
Sadly, over the years, our party has been taken over by the professional class, people like you, who believe in the meritocracy and the panacea of education. You really don’t give a damn about ordinary working class people and you celebrate the reality that people like you, with a college degree, earn twice as much as those without.
You adored the Clintons, as they attacked the working class.
And because of this, we you and yours to thank for Trump in the White House and Baker as our governor. We don’t believe your smoke screen that it’s because of “misogynist and racists”. It’s the economy that you have supported, You own this.
“You own this.”
Right. That must be some really good weed you’re smoking.
It’s history. The monuments you refer to are of people long dead. Neither their corpses or statues hurt anyone.
Right. Just like “guns don’t kill people”.
Tell the family of Heather Heyer that neither monuments nor statues hurt anyone. Why is the swastika banned in Germany? Swastikas don’t hurt anyone. The confederate flag doesn’t hurt anyone either. Tell that to the nine people murdered by Dylann Roof.
These monuments were erected by white supremacists to commemorate lies about the Confederacy. The first wave was erected while the Jim Crow laws were being passed, and the second wave while those laws were being forcibly repealed.
It is certainly true that the statues don’t come to life, jump off their pedestals, and barrel through crowds killing people.
It’s the white supremacists, Nazis, and KKK sympathizers who do that — inspired by these statutes, and motivated by their removal.
I would in fact tell those things. No statue made someone hate so much to mow down protestors or shoot up a Bible study. The statues and flags are not themselves weapons so the guns don’t kill people analogy fails. The more appropriate comparison might be to whether violent video games and movies cause real life violence. I know the history of many of the statues, but I don’t think we have an absolute right to not be discomforted by another generation’s narrative. I’m much more interested in the history they describe rather than the context of their erection anyway. I don’t care why the swastika is banned in Germany and I’m actually not sure it should be on free speech principles, but you know I hate that comparison anyway.
First of all, please don’t swear at me like you did in your last line. I am aware of Forrest’s legacy and would agree he is most widely known for the KKK, but he was also a military leader and we can’t expect statues to be full length biographies. That said, I think each statue needs to be considered case by case, and the preponderance of the notoriety should be a key factor in how to address each.
The way to kill a man, a nation or an idea is to kill the dream that inspired it. The racist dream was, and is, to perpetuate white supremacy as memorialized in Confederate statues.
We cannot call ourselves human beings, let alone Americans, if we allow the hate dream of the KKK and Nazis to destroy the dream of our Founders that ‘all men are created equal.’
Strongly disagree with the premise implied by your first paragraph, but am completely with you on your second.