Blue Horseshoe

What Republicans Know (and Democrats Don’t) About the White Working Class ....There’s an important social and economic divide that drives working-class whites that progressive elites mostly miss — to their political peril......In his memoir, Vance pitted two groups of low-status whites against each other—those who work versus those who don’t. In academic circles, these two groups are sometimes labeled the “settled” working class versus the “hard living.” A broad and fuzzy line divides these two groups, but generally speaking, settled folks work consistently while the hard living do not. The latter are thus more likely to fall into destructive habits like substance abuse that lead to further destabilization and, importantly, to reliance on government benefits..... While elite progressives tend to see the white working class as monolithic...I have also lived it. I grew up working-class white, and I watched my truck driver father and teacher’s aide mother struggle mightily to stay on the “settled” side of the ledger. They worked to pay the bills, yes, but also because work set them apart from those in their community who were willing to accept public benefits. Work represented the moral high ground. Work was their religion.... Like Vance, settled white workers tend to see themselves living a version of the American dream grounded primarily — if not entirely — in their own agency. They believe they can survive, even thrive, if they just work hard enough. And some of them are doing just that. Because they lean into the grit of the individual, they tend to downplay structural obstacles to their quest to make a living, e.g., poor schools and even crummy job markets, just as they downplay structural benefits. They also discount “white privilege” because giving skin color credit for what they have achieved devalues the significance of their work. This mindset is also the reason that when Obama said in 2012, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” the remark landed so badly among the settled working class. They’re not accustomed to sharing credit for what they have — perhaps especially when they don’t have much..... — “suddenly, you’re a worker and anyone who is not a worker is a bad person....” ....Exit polls from 2016 also reflect this division, with the lowest-income voters supporting Clinton—and therefore safety-net programs associated with Democrats—by the greatest margin, 53 percent to 41 percent over Trump. It was folks earning $50,000 to $99,000, those who depending on region and family size might be considered settled working class, who preferred Trump by the greatest margin of all income brackets — 50 percent to 46 percent....As important as this divide is to understanding working-class whites — and in spite of national publicity by big-name scholars and journalists — coastal and urban progressives often seem oblivious to it. This may be because few have any meaningful interaction with either faction of the white working class. Outsiders struggle to grasp the significance of this class war that rages within our nation’s broader class war.... .....Whenever I talk about this settled working class mindset to folks in my coastal progressive world, I get two responses. The first is an assumption that these folks are simply racists whose sole motivation is to deny benefits to people of color. The second response is that they are irrational, even delusional, not to see that they are vulnerable — that they might someday need public benefits, too, given the way precarity has not only crept up the socioeconomic ladder, but also outward and into a growing number of communities left behind by the knowledge economy....First, going straight to allegations of racism is incendiary and infuriating to the folks being labeled “racist.” They tend to define that term narrowly, referring to people who say the n-word or explicitly endorse white nationalism.....Bias based on race and bias based on class are not mutually exclusive, and it can be easier to assume that racial animus is at work when in fact, it’s classist or cultural animus directed at those on a lower economic or social rung. As the late cultural critic Joe Bageant expressed it, “what middle America loathes … are poor and poorish people, especially the kind who look and sound like they just might live in a house trailer....” ...In July 2016, Senator Chuck Schumer suggested Democrats could ignore this constituency. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania,” he said, “we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”....Schumer’s strategy proved a notorious disaster for Democrats, and it’s not a gamble the party can afford to repeat in 2022 or 2024. If anything, white workers look more critical than ever to a winning Democratic coalition, as more Latinos drift into the Republican column....It thus behooves Ryan and other Democrats to consider carefully how to communicate with a voting bloc they once took for granted....President Biden talks more about jobs and the working class than President Obama did, but generic job talk may no longer be getting through to workers given the shifting image (and reality) of Democrats as the party of elites and intellectuals. The sad truth is that coastal progressive condescension toward workers has become second nature to many Democrats... When Trump said he “love[d] the poorly educated,” the credentialed class cringed. They assumed no one would want to be labeled as such and, indeed, that no one would want to be poorly educated (read to mean having little formal education). But folks without college degrees — even folks without high school diplomas — heard Trump’s comment as affirmation. He was happy to be associated with them, and Trump’s warm embrace was a salve on a deep, festering wound. Trump’s comment was also a rare one that did double duty in speaking to both settled and hard-living factions of the white working class.....But Trump also found a way to speak specifically to the settled working class, those with strong identities as workers. The “again” part of “Make America Great Again” brings to mind a time when their jobs provided greater economic security—as Papaw Vance’s steel mill job had—and also a time when blue-collar workers felt broadly respected. For workers displaced or fearing displacement, Trump named various external culprits (aka structural challenges)—unfair foreign imports, immigrants, regulation. He also offered solutions, e.g., tariffs, a border wall, less red tape, though he didn’t deliver on all of his promises. Trump didn’t save coal jobs, but the American steel industry did benefit from his tariffs.... Democratic solutions to worker travails will mostly differ from those proposed by Republicans, of course, but Democrats can fruitfully borrow a page from how Trump communicated with workers. First and foremost, tell workers that they and their labor are seen and appreciated. A key theme of 2016 election coverage was that many working-class white and rural voters felt overlooked. Tracie St. Martin, a union member and heavy construction worker who supported Trump, summed up the disgruntlement, “I wanted people like me to be cared about. People don’t realize there’s nothing without a blue-collar worker.....” The ongoing labor shortage is all the more reason Democrats should keep telling blue-collar workers of all races that they are valued—and all the more reason to mean it. Our nation badly needs carpenters, electricians, plumbers and the full array of blue-collar workers who are going to help us overcome our national housing shortage and actually reconstruct our infrastructure. Politicians like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) speak more often than most about job training for workers like these... others should follow her lead.....For them, the most important thing is simply to get to work. A close second is living in a country that values their work—along with a paycheck that reflects both that value and their dignity as workers.... https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/24/democrats-white-working-class-00041807

Left-wing extremism linked to psychopathy and narcissism: study .....Left-wing extremism is linked to toxic, psychopathic tendencies and narcissism, according to a new study published to the peer-reviewed journal Current Psychology.....“Based on existing research, we expected individuals with higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism to also report higher levels of narcissism,” the authors wrote....As result of the new data....“According to this principle, individuals with dark personalities — such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits — are attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality...In particular, certain forms of activism might provide them with opportunities for positive self-presentation and displays of moral superiority, to gain social status, to dominate others, and to engage in social conflicts and aggression to satisfy their need for thrill seeking.” The study on left-wing authoritarianism also showed that many times they do not practice what they so loudly preach.....Social justice is often used as a guise for these activists to behave unhinged, the research noted.....“Based on existing research, we expected individuals with higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism to also report higher levels of narcissism......” ....Beyond using any means necessary, people of privileged backgrounds who are aligned ..... often use their narcissism to make activism solely about themselves instead of achieving social equality for struggling groups.....“Minority groups should be made aware of the narcissistic ‘enemies’ from within their activist movement, as these individuals could hijack the cause thereby reducing the success of the activism in many ways.....” https://nypost.com/2023/05/25/left-wing-extremism-linked-to-psychopathy-narcissism-study/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-023-04463-x

It is the FBI admitting that they did this, both in court documents released after the man's 2023 arrest and in a statement they released to The Daily Wire. "On December 2, 2020, an internet user with the screen name '[REDACTED]' messaged an undercover agent with the FBI’s Washington Field Office, who was posing as a father pimping out his 9-year-old son, and told him that he wanted to travel to D.C. to have sex with the boy. The man also sent the agent a video of 'a prepubescent minor male being anally penetrated by an adult male’s erect .' His IP address led the FBI to Brogan Welsh of Glenn Allen, Virginia." What appears to be a slam-dunk case against a child predator was abruptly abandoned just one month later.....'On January 6, 2021, FBI, Washington Field Office, [decided] this investigation was halted due to events that occurred at the United States Capitol Building that day,' court documents say. ( EDIT: I'm going to add that I don't agree with what Trump did with J6. Do I believe the 2020 general election was a "free and fair election"? No, I don't. I believe BOTH SIDES cheated as much as possible, it's just that Team Blue and the DNC control more of the major levers of power and impactful institutions like Hollywood, most of Big Social Media, Big Education, etc, etc. That being said, J6 didn't have to happen. It served no positive purpose for Conservatives and/or Republicans in this country. Now it's used as a blanket excuse to try to wipe out anything repugnant that Team Blue does in the open. Trump does what Trump always does - He makes it about himself. So he also, in part, is responsible for lost resources, manpower and assets needed to pursue other criminals, that were shifted out over J6. However, two wrongs don't make a right, Garland is still a partisan idiot and the FBI is still proven to be corrupt and simply now an enforcement arm for the DNC. Their own set of personal shock troopers paid by tax dollars. Just because Trump is an imbecile, that still doesn't mean it's OK to let child molesters walk and roam free to push some more Orange Man Bad through J6. "But Trump" is not enough here. Ignoring children under threat for more TDS is repugnant and indefensible. )

What if We’re the Bad Guys Here? .....Donald Trump seems to get indicted on a weekly basis. Yet he is utterly dominating his Republican rivals in the polls, and he is tied with Joe Biden in the general election surveys. Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020. What’s going on here? Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s done?....In this story we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians. Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that’s what matters to them most....I partly agree with this story; but it’s also a monument to elite self-satisfaction. So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.... ....This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam, but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston, but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where they themselves lived....The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves... .....The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.....Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win....” ....The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his presidency Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid. Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.... .....Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas: San Francisco, D.C., Austin and so on. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Once we find our cliques, we don’t get out much. In the book “Social Class in the 21st Century,” sociologist Mike Savage and his co-researchers found that the members of the highly educated class tend to be the most insular, measured by how often we have contact with those who have jobs unlike our own.....Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.... .....We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom......“Sixty percent of births to women with only a high school certificate occur out of wedlock, compared with only 10 percent to women with a university degree.” That matters, Wooldridge continues, because “The rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility in the country.”..... Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject...It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Trump understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class.....Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison..... We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html ARCHIVE VERSION

Three Years of Death – and Finger-Pointing More than 1.1 million Americans have died from COVID-19. Some activists want a national memorial day to recognize the lives lost. Others still just want to know how it started...The U.S. reports the highest COVID-19 death toll of any country at over 1.1 million. While deaths have declined as immunity across the population increased, more than 300 Americans are still dying from the coronavirus each day. https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2023-03-10/three-years-into-the-pandemic-who-is-dying-from-covid-19-now

Pretend to have a gun in a loaded Big Box store to run a "prank" to monetize some social media videos? Get No Bailed. Have a real gun to defend your family? Get your weapon stripped from you. Obviously these things usually have more context to them, but on the surface, this is pretty damaging to Team Blue and the DNC. The total overall negative narrative about the lack of pure civil order is unsettling working class people. No one is going to vote for you if they believe you, as the elected official, are going to let them get massacred for "equity"

A man caused 'mass panic' at Walmart staging violent fight for social media, police say ....A Pennslyvania man was arrested for causing "mass panic" at a Walmart in New York last year when he and a group of men staged a fight inside the store for a social media prank video, police said. Marcquis Graham, 24, of Philadelphia, was taken into custody in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, on Thursday and charged with riot, unlawful assembly, criminal nuisance, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. Suffolk County police said that on Dec. 2, 2018, Graham and four other men "staged a violent altercation" inside a Walmart in Commack. The men "yelled about a shooting" while filming the video...The fake fight caused "mass panic throughout the store," ... adding that the prank video was going to be posted online for "shock value."...At the time, shoppers said they heard what sounded like gunshots and someone yelling about a gun..... Panicked customers scrambled to leave and some called 911 to report a possible shooter.... ....Electronic court records show Marcquis Graham of Philadelphia was released without bail after being arraigned on riot, reckless endangerment and other misdemeanor charges in the incident a year ago. ....The phone rang unanswered Friday night at the Legal Aid Society office that is representing him, and no phone number could immediately be found for his home....The Suffolk County Police Department says the 24-year-old was arrested Thursday in Ronkonkoma.... “People were absolutely terrified,” police Chief of Department Stuart Cameron told Newsday on Friday. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-caused-mass-panic-walmart-staging-violent-fight-social-media-n1097621 https://apnews.com/article/363603c01ac472cceaf3b3fe1cedf5e4 Philly Police Athletic League Volunteer Accused in Girl's Rape ....A PAL coach in the Strawberry Mansion section of Philadelphia has been charged with raping a 15-year-old, police said Friday. NBC10 reporter Danny Freeman found that the suspect previously pleaded guilty to robbery.....A volunteer for the Police Athletic League of Philadelphia is charged with raping a 15-year-old girl after offering her a ride to work....The girl told police that she was walking to work after leaving a Strawberry Mansion PAL center she regularly attends on the 3100 block of Ridge Avenue when .... Graham, a PAL volunteer coach, offered her a ride...The girl accepted and, once inside the vehicle, Graham sexually assaulted her....The alleged attack happened March 9 and Graham was finally arrested this Thursday by a U.S. marshal as he hid in the basement of a home on the 100 block of West Nevada Street....Graham, 26, is charged with rape, sexual assault, corruption of minors, indecent assault and related charges....He is being represented by a public defender.... https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/philly-police-athletic-league-volunteer-accused-in-girls-rape/3195258/ ****** George Soros financially supported current Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) has enabled crime in Philly. So some wannabe social media "influencers" built around terrifying the public with "pranks", including one where they pretend to have a gun and imply there would be an immediate shooting/mass shooting in a crowded Walmart. You can literally hear a mother frantically searching for her child in the melee. What happens? The perpetrator is arrested, then immediately released with "no bail" Then, spurred by realizing there is no accountability, what happens next? The "influencer" ends up allegedly raping a 15 year old girl. Krasner is a current member of the Democratic Party. The current Mayor of Philadelphia is Jim Kenney, who is also a member of the Democratic Party.

‘UK laws are weak’: TikTok ‘prankster’ who terrorised members of the public let off with £365 fine .....A TikTok “prankster” who sparked outrage over a series of “abhorrent” videos has mocked the UK’s “weak” laws after being let off with a fine.....A TikTok “prankster” who terrorised and harassed members of the public in a series of viral videos has mocked the UK’s “weak” laws after being given a slap on the wrist and set free despite widespread public outrage....Bacari-Bronze O’Garro, 18, who goes by the name “Mizzy” on social media, was given a £365 ($690) fine and slapped with a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO) after turning himself into police on Monday. “The UK laws are weak, simple as — that’s not my fault,” he said in an interview with TalkTV host Piers Morgan on Wednesday. The teen from Hackney in East London had been arrested by Metropolitan Police on “suspicion of causing a public nuisance” after he filmed himself “walking into random houses”, asking young women if they “want to die” and stealing a dog in the park. He shot to notoriety earlier this month after the video of him and two accomplices entering a home in Islington went viral. “Walking into random houses, let’s go,” he says in the video....The young men then walk past a woman in the garden of the townhouse into the open front door, as she urgently calls for her partner inside. O’Garro films himself lounging on the family’s couch as the man confronts the group and attempts to usher them outside, pleading that “we’ve got kids, man”..... prompting calls for police to intervene. ...O’Garro appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court where he pleaded guilty to failing to comply with a Community Protection Notice....The two-year CBO prohibits him from “trespassing into any private property, including residential homes, business properties, school and retail outlets”, and uploading any videos to social media “without prior documented consent of the people in that content”. ....Speaking to Morgan, O’Garro suggested he was only being criticised “because I’m black”. “Because you’re black? I don’t give a damn about your skin colour,” Morgan said. “I think you’re an idiot for what you’ve been doing, I also think you’re an idiot for playing the race card. I don’t care about your skin colour, I care about the fact you’ve been terrorising all these people for a sustained period of time. I also care about the fact you’ve only got a tiny fine today, no deterrent to you whatsoever, you don’t show any real remorse — you don’t really care, do you?” In one video captioned “Mizzy gets a new dog”, O’Garro approaches an elderly woman sitting on a park bench, telling her “you’ve got a nice dog”, before picking it up and running away laughing with the animal under his arm. Other videos showed O’Garro harassing women in parks and on public transport. One shows O’Garro approaching three young women sitting at a train station asking them if they “want to die” and repeatedly touching the hair of one. “Do you want to die, yes or no? Speak, I’m talking to you, bro,” he says. Another video showed O’Garro entering a random car and pretending “this is my Uber”, sparking a heated confrontation with the driver. Yet another shows O’Garro entering a public library and tearing up a book before pushing his way into a back room and harassing staff. “If I can get books out of the library why can’t I rip pages out of the books as well?” he asks. “Because then other people can’t use them,” the employee says. “Who gives a f**k about other people,” O’Garro responds. O’Garro had previously been arrested after filming himself harassing and assaulting Orthodox Jews. ....Speaking to The Independent this week, O’Garro claimed the negative reaction to his videos was partly due to him being black and that “people are trying to slander me”. “I’m a black male doing these things and that’s why there’s such an uproar on the internet,” he told the newspaper....“I don’t fake my pranks, but I always make sure to sort out the situation after if I feel like I went too overboard, but none of my pranks have malicious intentions behind them .....”...O’Garro said it was “unfair” that his accounts were banned. “All my social media accounts are gone right now, my Instagram got taken down this morning so did my YouTube,” he said. “I ain’t really bothered about TikTok because I’ve been banned over 20 times so it’s nothing new to me. But for YouTube and Instagram to ban me despite not posting videos that go against their community guidelines but due to public uproar is unfair. There’s been so many other creators that have done what I’ve done or even worse and still have a platform. Just seems suspicious....” https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/tiktoker-arrested-after-walking-into-random-houses-harassing-people-on-the-street-in-abhorrent-videos/news-story

Gardner is married to Abrams sister Leslie Abrams Gardner, a judge on the bench of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia since 2014 when she was appointed by then President Barack Obama. Tampa Police say they arrested the 57-year-old Gardner Friday 'for allegedly attempting to engage in sexual acts with a 16-year-old girl' .... This isn't Gardner's first run-in with the law on these types of matters; in 2016.....a rape conviction that had seen him imprisoned for the previous 27 years. Two years after his exoneration Gardner married Judge Abrams and began a career as a 'motivational speaker and emotional intelligence trainer for students and people who were formerly incarcerated'.