When Donald Trump is not campaigning in a string of sundown towns, he’s rubbing elbows with Moms for Liberty. * The New York Times has the full story:
The Moms For Liberty can get a bit carried away — one of their local chapters once accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler (“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future”) and then issued an apology disavowing the Führer (“We should not have quoted him in our newsletter”) — but still, their summit on Friday made for a good case study. It was packed with the sort of voters Mr. Trump hopes can help him win in November: fired-up suburban women.
“He’s really thought this through and he is an incredibly twisted man,” Sam Seder tweeted in response to the JD Vance clip below.
Unearthed video: JD Vance attacks women “who can't have kids” because they “passed the biological period when it was possible” as “miserable” people who “have no real value system” and struggle to find “meaning” pic.twitter.com/IWFaHQFswJ
As if the prospect of this man being one heartbeat away from the presidency isn’t warped enough, our technology-fetishizing overlords want to put the electronic brains behind driverless cars in charge of defining reality for us.
You’ve noticed it too: “Google has rolled out generative AI to users of its search engine on at least four continents, placing AI-written responses above the usual list of links; as many as 1 billion people may encounter this feature by the end of the year.”
Yet AI chatbots and assistants, no matter how wonderfully they appear to answer even complex queries, are prone to confidently spoutingfalsehoods—and the problem is likely more pernicious than many people realize. A sizable body of research, alongside conversations I’ve recently had with several experts, suggests that the solicitous, authoritative tone that AI models take—combined with them being legitimately helpful and correct in many cases—could lead people to place too much trust in the technology. That credulity, in turn, could make chatbots a particularly effective tool for anyone seeking to manipulate the public through the subtle spread of misleading or slanted information. No one person, or even government, can tamper with every link displayed by Google or Bing. Engineering a chatbot to present a tweaked version of reality is a different story.
There’s evidence that interactions with AI distributing misleading information can create false memories in about a third of test subjects. Read the whole thing.
I’m struggling to get users of the computer database Democrats use for voter targeting not to take at face value information its algorithms spit out simply because it comes out of a computer. It presents data the way it wants you to see it: through a keyhole that obfuscates the bigger picture.
Darth Vader: Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.
Raise your glass to the hard-working people Let’s drink to the uncounted heads Let’s think of the wavering millions who need leaders but get gamblers instead
-“Salt of the Earth”, by Mick Jagger & Keith Richard (from the album Beggar’s Banquet)
“It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality, too, is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book.”
― Studs Terkel, from his book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
(Shame mode) Full disclosure. It had been so long since I had contemplated the true meaning of Labor Day, I had to refresh myself with a web search. Like many wage slaves (yes, I am still punching a clock at 68…Google “average 1 bedroom rent in Seattle” for further details), I view it as one of the 7 annual paid holidays offered by my employer (table scraps, really…relative to the other 254 weekdays I spend chained to a desk, slipping ever closer to the Abyss).
To paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android…I’m not getting you down, am I?
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
By the way, Labor Day isn’t the sole “creation of the labor movement”. Next time you’re in the break room, check out the posters with all that F.L.S.A. meta regarding workplace rights, minimum wage, et.al. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so flippant about my “table scraps”, eh?
I have curated a Top 20 list of films that inspire, enlighten, or just give food for thought in honor of this holiest of days for those who make an honest living (I know-we’re a dying breed). So put your feet up, cue up a movie, and raise a glass to yourself. You’ve earned it.
Blue Collar – Director Paul Schrader co-wrote this 1978 drama with his brother Leonard. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto portray Motor City auto worker buddies tired of getting the short end of the stick from both their employer and their union. In a fit of drunken pique, they pull an ill-advised caper that gets them in trouble with both parties, ultimately putting friendship and loyalty to the test.
Akin to Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, Schrader subverts the standard “union good guy, company bad guy” trope with shades of gray, reminding us the road to Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. Great score by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, with a memorable theme song featuring Captain Beefheart (“I’m jest a hard-woikin’, fucked-over man…”).
Bound for Glory – “This machine kills Fascists”. There’s only one man to whom Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen must kowtow-and that’s Woody Guthrie. You can almost taste the dust in director Hal Ashby’s leisurely, episodic 1976 biopic about the life of America’s premier protest songwriter/social activist. David Carradine gives one of his finest performances, and does a credible job with his own singing and playing. Haskell Wexler’s outstanding cinematography earned him a well-deserved Oscar. The film may feel a bit overlong and slow in spots if you aren’t particularly fascinated by Guthrie’s story; but I think it is just as much about the Depression itself, and perhaps more than any other film on this list, it succeeds as a “total immersion” back to that era.
The Corporation – “To assess the ‘personality’ of the corporate ‘person’ a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social ‘personality’: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.”
While it’s not news to any thinking person that corporate greed and manipulation affects everyone’s life on this planet, co-directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott deliver the message in a unique and engrossing fashion. By applying a psychological profile to the rudiments of corporate think, Achbar and Abbott build a solid case; proving that if the “corporation” were corporeal, then “he” would be Norman Bates.
Mixing archival footage with observations from some of the expected talking heads (Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc.) the unexpected (CEOs actually sympathetic with the filmmakers’ point of view) along with the colorful (like a “corporate spy”), the film offers perspective not only from the watchdogs, but from the belly of the beast itself. Be warned: there are enough exposes trotted out here to keep conspiracy theorists, environmentalists and human rights activists tossing and turning in bed for nights on end.
The Crime of Monsieur Lange – With its central themes regarding exploited workers and the opportunistic, predatory habits of men in power, this rarely-presented 1936 film by the great Jean Renoir (La Grand Illusion, The Rules of the Game) plays like a prescient social justice revenge fantasy custom-tailored for our times. A struggling pulp western writer who works for a scuzzy, exploitative Harvey Weinstein-like publisher takes on his corrupt boss by forming a worker’s collective. While it is essentially a sociopolitical noir, the numerous romantic subplots, snappy pre-Code patter, busy multi-character shots and the restless camera presages His Girl Friday.
El Norte – Gregory Nava’s portrait of Guatemalan siblings who make their way to the U.S. after their father is killed by a government death squad will stay with you after credits roll. The two leads deliver naturalistic performances as a brother and sister who maintain optimism, despite fate and circumstance thwarting them at every turn. Claustrophobic viewers be warned: a harrowing scene featuring an encounter with a rat colony during an underground border crossing is nightmare fuel. Do not expect a Hollywood ending; this is an unblinking look at the shameful exploitation of undocumented workers.
The Grapes of Wrath – John Ford’s powerful 1940 drama (adapted from John Steinbeck’s novel) is the quintessential film about the struggle of America’s salt of the earth during the Great Depression. Perhaps we can take comfort in the possibility that no matter how bad things get, Henry Fonda’s unforgettable embodiment of Tom Joad will “…be there, all around, in the dark.” Ford followed up with the Oscar-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941) another drama about a working class family (set in a Welsh mining town).
Harlan County, USA – Barbara Kopple’s award-winning film is not only an extraordinary document about an acrimonious coal miner’s strike in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1973, but is one of the best American documentaries ever made. Kopple’s film has everything that you look for in any great work of cinema: drama, conflict, suspense, tragedy, and redemption. Kopple and crew are so deeply embedded that you may involuntarily duck during a harrowing scene where a company-hired thug fires a round directly toward the camera operator (it’s a wonder the filmmakers lived to tell this tale).
Last Train Home – This absorbing, beautifully photographed documentary by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan centers on the Zhang family: Changhua (dad), Suqin (mom), their 17 year old daughter Qin, and their young son. Changhua and Suqin are two of the 130 million migrant workers who crowd China’s train depots and bus stations every spring in a mass, lemming-like frenzy to get back to their rural villages in time for New Year’s holiday. And like many of those workers, these are the few precious days they have per year to see their children, who, due to the fact that their parents lack urban residency status, do not qualify to attend the public schools in the cities where they work.
Changhua and Suqin toil away their days in the city of Guangzhou, working in a factory. Early on in the film, a wordless sequence, wherein we watch the couple performing their evening ablutions before turning in for the night, speaks volumes about the joyless drudgery and quiet desperation of their daily life. They appear to be bunking in a closet-sized cubicle (with only a curtain for privacy) within some kind of communal flophouse (possibly adjacent to, or perhaps part of, their factory building-which is an even more depressing thought). One colorless day blends into the next.
The only break in the monotony comes when the New Year arrives, and the couple attempt to make their way home in time-and I have to say, this is as far from a madcap John Hughes romp starring Steve Martin and John Candy that you can possibly get.
The director was given an amazing degree of latitude by the family in filming their lives; to the point of feeling almost too close for comfort at times (especially during an intense family row that gets physical). As difficult as some of it is to watch, however, the end result is an engrossing portrait of what happens in a country like China, which has seen so much rapid industrialization and exponential economic growth in such a relatively short period of time that the infrastructure and social policies have fallen light years behind.
And the saddest (and most ironic) part is that the millions of working poor like the Zhangs, who made the country’s new prosperity possible, are in no position to benefit from it. Although…when you think about it, that scenario is not exclusive to China. (Full review)
Made in Bangladesh – “Repeat after me,” a union organizer directs a roomful of female garment workers in a key scene from writer-director Rubaiyat Hossain’s 2020 docu-drama: “Worker’s rights are human rights… [And] women’s rights are human rights.” Through a First World lens this dialog may appear a bit heavy-handed, but the sad fact remains there are still places in this world where these truths are not necessarily held to be self-evident.
The central character is a headstrong 23 year-old named Shimu (Rikita Nandini Shimu). To avoid a forced child marriage, she fled her home village when she was a pre-teen and now lives in Dhaka with her husband of choice Reza (Shatabdi Wadud). Like many young women in the capital, Shimu has found gainful employment in the garment industry. That is not to say she has a dream job; in point of fact she works in a sweatshop.
In addition to putting up with the low wages, long hours, unsafe conditions and spotty overtime compensation Shimu and her fellow workers regularly face sexual harassment, workplace intimidation, and all the other systemic maladies of a patriarchal society. Still, it’s a paycheck; with her husband chronically unemployed, somebody has to pay the rent.
After an explosion and fire kills a fellow employee, Shimu is approached by an investigative journalist, who after hearing her account of working conditions steers her to a local union organizer (Shahana Goswami). Shimu embarks on a mission to unionize her factory. With obstacles at every turn (including at home) she has her work cut out for her.
While it is a familiar narrative (especially if you have seen Norma Rae, a film the director has cited as an inspiration, along with the real-life story of a woman named Daliya Akhter who is a factory worker and union leader) Hossain offers us a 21st Century feminist heroine who challenges the stereotype of the subservient Muslim woman and reminds us that the final chapter in the struggle for worker’s rights is yet to be written.
Made in Dagenham – Based on a true story, this 2011 film (directed by Nigel Cole and written by William Ivory) stars Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady, a working mum employed at the Dagenham, England Ford plant in 1968. She worked in a run-down, segregated section of the plant where 187 female machinists toiled away for a fraction of what male employees were paid; the company justified the inequity by classifying female workers as “unskilled labor”.
Encouraged by her empathetic shop steward (Bob Hoskins), the initially reticent Rita finds her “voice” and surprises family, co-workers and herself with a formidable ability to rally the troops and affect real change. An engaging ensemble piece with a standout supporting performance by Miranda Richardson as a government minister.
Matewan – This well-acted, handsomely mounted drama by John Sayles serves as a sobering reminder that much blood was spilled to lay the foundation for the labor laws we take for granted in the modern workplace. Based on a true story, it is set during the 1920s, in West Virginia. Chris Cooper plays an outsider labor organizer who becomes embroiled in a conflict between coal company thugs and fed up miners trying to unionize.
Sayles delivers a compelling narrative, rich in characterizations and steeped in verisimilitude (beautifully shot by Haskell Wexler). Fine ensemble work from a top notch cast that includes David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones, Joe Grifasi, Jane Alexander, Gordon Clapp, and Will Oldham. The film is also notable for its well-curated Americana soundtrack.
Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece about man vs. automation has aged well. This probably has everything to do with his embodiment of the Everyman. Although referred to as his “last silent film”, it’s not 100% so. A bit of (sung) gibberish aside, there’s no dialogue, but Chaplin finds ingenious ways to work in lines (via technological devices). In fact, his use of sound effects in this film is unparalleled, particularly in a classic sequence where Chaplin, a hapless assembly line worker, literally ends up “part of the machine”. Paulette Goddard (then Mrs. Chaplin) is on board for the pathos. Brilliant, hilarious and prescient.
Next Sohee – Writer-director July Jung’s outstanding 2023 film is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s High and Low, not just in the sense that it is equal parts police procedural and social drama, but that it contains a meticulously layered narrative that has (to paraphrase something Stanley Kubrick once said of his own work) “…a slow start, the start that goes under the audience’s skin and involves them so that they can appreciate grace notes and soft tones and don’t have to be pounded over the head with plot points and suspense hooks.”
The first half of the film tells the story of a high school student who is placed into a mandatory “externship” at a call center by one of her teachers. Suffice it to say her workplace is a prime example as to why labor laws exist (they do have them in South Korea-but exploitative companies always find loopholes).
When the outgoing and headstrong young woman commits suicide, a female police detective is assigned to the case. The trajectory of her investigation takes up the second half of the film. The deeper she digs, the more insidious the implications…and this begins to step on lot of toes, including her superiors in the department. Jung draws parallels between the stories of the student and the detective investigating her death; both are assertive, principled women with the odds stacked against them. Ultimately, they’re tilting at windmills in a society driven by systemic corruption, predatory capitalism, and a patriarchal hierarchy.
Norma Rae – Martin Ritt’s 1979 film about a minimum-wage textile worker (Sally Field) turned union activist helped launch what I refer to as the “Whistle-blowing Working Mom” genre (Silkwood, Erin Brockovich, etc).
Field gives an outstanding performance (and deservedly picked up a Best Actress Oscar) as the eponymous heroine who gets fired up by a passionate labor organizer from NYC (Ron Leibman, in his best role). Inspiring and empowering, bolstered by a fine screenplay (by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.) and a great supporting cast that includes Beau Bridges, Pat Hingle and Barbara Baxley.
The Old Oak – The bookend of a triptych of working-class dramas set in Northeast England (preceded by I, Daniel Blake in 2016 and Sorry We Missed You! in 2019), Ken Loach’s 2024 drama marks the 87-year-old director’s 28th film.
The story (scripted by Paul Laverty) is set in 2016, in an unnamed “pit town” on the Northeast coast of England, and centers on TJ (Dave Turner), who is barely making ends meet as the owner and proprietor of The Old Oak pub. He inherited the pub from his late mother, who had invested in the property with the settlement money she had received after TJ’s father died in a mining accident. TJ himself began working in the local mine just before a major strike in the mid-80s. After the mine closed, he threw himself into community organizing. Depressed over a broken marriage, he’s become more withdrawn in recent years.
TJ was born and raised in the village, so he’s known the pub’s hardcore regulars since his school days. Many of them worked alongside TJ in the mine, and are suffering similar economic hardships, living off modest pensions or on the dole. You get the impression daily life for the town’s residents has become predictably drab; a reliable disappointment. In addition to providing a cozy space where they can toss back a pint or two and forget their problems, The Old Oak has become the de facto community center.
One day, a busload of Syrian refugees appears and disembarks in the center of town. Unfortunately, not all the locals appear willing to roll out the welcome wagon. When xenophobic catcalling escalates into a scuffle that results in a young Syrian woman’s camera getting damaged, TJ intervenes and defuses the situation. TJ learns that Yara (Ebla Mari) has picked up her English skills from working as a volunteer in a refugee camp in Jordan. The camera is her most prized possession, as it was given to her by her father, who is imprisoned back in Syria. TJ and Yara strike up a friendship that fuels the heart of the narrative.
The Old Oak is rife with Loach’s trademarks; not the least of which is giving his cast plenty of room to breathe. The entire ensemble (which ranges from first-time film actors to veteran players) delivers relatable, naturalistic performances. Hovering somewhere between Do the Right Thing and Ikuru, The Old Oak is raw, uncompromising, and genuinely moving (so rare at the multiplex nowadays), with an uplifting message of hope and reconciliation. If this is indeed its director’s swan song-what a lovely, compassionate note to go out on. (Full review)
On the Waterfront – “It wuz you, Chahlee.” The betrayal! And the pain. It’s all there on Marlon Brando’s face as he delivers one of the most oft-quoted monologues in cinema history. Brando leads an exemplary cast that includes Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint in this absorbing portrait of a New York dock worker who takes a virtual one-man stand against a powerful and corrupt union official. The trifecta of Brando’s iconic performance, Elia Kazan’s direction, and Budd Schulberg’s well-constructed screenplay adds up to one of the finest American social dramas of the 1950s.
Roger and Me – While our favorite lib’rul agitprop director has made a number of films addressing the travails of wage slaves and ever-appalling indifference of the corporate masters who grow fat off their labors, Michael Moore’s low-budget 1989 debut film remains his best (and is on the list of the top 25 highest-grossing docs of all time).
Moore may have not been the only resident of Flint, Michigan scratching his head over GM’s local plant shutdown in the midst of record profits for the company, but he was the one with the chutzpah (and a camera crew) to make a beeline straight to the top to demand an explanation. His target? GM’s chairman, Roger Smith. Does he bag him? Watch it and find out. An insightful portrait of working class America that, like most of his subsequent films, can be at once harrowing and hilarious, yet hopeful and humanistic.
Silkwood– The tagline for this 1983 film was intriguing: “On November 13th, 1974, Karen Silkwood, an employee of a nuclear facility, left to meet with a reporter from the New York Times. She never got there.” One might expect a riveting conspiracy thriller to ensue; however what director Mike Nichols and screenwriters Nora Ephron and Alice Arden do deliver is an absorbing character study of an ordinary working-class woman who performed an act of extraordinary courage which may have led to her untimely demise.
Meryl Streep delivers a typically masterful performance as Silkwood, who worked as a chemical tech at an Oklahoma facility that manufactured plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods. On behalf of her union (and based on her own observations) Silkwood testified before the AEC in 1974, blowing the whistle on health and safety issues at her plant. Shortly afterwards, she tested positive for an unusually high level of plutonium contamination. Silkwood alleged malicious payback from her employers, while they countered that she had engineered the scenario herself.
Later that year, on the last night of her life, she was in fact on her way to meeting with a Times reporter, armed with documentation to back her claims, when she was killed after her car ran off the road. Nichols stays neutral on the conspiratorial whispers; but still delivers the goods, thanks in no small part to his exemplary cast, including Kurt Russell (as Silkwood’s husband), and Cher (who garnered critical raves and a Golden Globe) as their housemate.
Sullivan’s Travels — A deft mash-up of romantic screwball comedy, Hollywood satire, road movie and class warfare drama from writer-director Preston Sturges.
Joel McCrea is pitch-perfect as a director of goofy populist comedies who yearns to make a “meaningful” film. Racked with guilt about the comfortable bubble his Hollywood success has afforded him and determined to learn firsthand how the other half lives, he hits the road with no money in his pocket and masquerades as a railroad tramp (to the chagrin of his handlers).
He is joined along the way by an aspiring actress (Veronica Lake, in one of her best comic performances). His voluntary crash-course in “social realism” turns into much more than he had originally bargained for. Lake and McCrea have wonderful chemistry. Many decades later, the Coen Brothers co-opted the title of the fictional “film within the film” here: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Working Man – Even during “normal” times, losing a job can be traumatic; especially for career employees in traditional blue-collar manufacturing jobs who get blindsided by unexpected factory shutdowns. Such is the lot of the Every Man protagonist in writer-director Robert Jury’s 2020 drama.
His name is Allery Parkes (Peter Gerety). Allery has been working at the same factory most of his adult life, living quietly with his devoted wife Iola (Talia Shire) in a small (unidentified) rust belt town (maybe in Illinois). As the film opens, Allery wearily un-crumples himself from his bed in the manner that weary elderly folks do. He goes through his morning ablutions, slaps together a Braunschweiger sandwich on white bread (no condiments), nods goodbye to his wife and dutifully sets off on his morning walk to work, replete with thermos and lunch pail.
Not unlike Allery himself, who not so much walks as waddles due to his time-worn hips, this is a town obviously on its last legs. Abandoned buildings abound, many adorned with “for lease by owner” signs. Allery works at a factory that manufactures plastic…widgets?
Sadly, the factory is closing, and this is to be the last shift for Allery and his co-workers. They are instructed to knock off early, line up for final paychecks, then sent off on their (not so) merry way. However, Allery is determined to finish out his full shift, to the chagrin of his supervisor-who nonetheless understands the gesture and lets Allery exit the stage with dignity intact.
Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that while the factory has shut down, Allery is not ready to rest on his laurels. One day (to the puzzlement and concern of his wife and neighbors) Allery sets off as he has for decades, thermos and lunch pail in hand.
What’s he up to? As this was the last operating factory in town…where is Allery headed?
For that matter, with 90 minutes more to fill-where is this story headed? I’m not telling.
For those who may currently find themselves in a situation like Allery’s, the film may deliver a shot in the arm that they could use right about now; perhaps a glimmer of hope that all is not lost, that this too shall soon pass …or at the very least, an affirmation of the dignity of work.
What’s interesting is how fully formed this philosophy is. He’s not riffing – this is very much what he thinks about unmarried people and those without children. https://t.co/gtzXwHMrDL
This is beyond your standard natalism. He seems to not only believe that the only use for women is bearing and caring for children, he believes that those who do not bear children, or are past the age when they can, are directly responsible for the ills of society.
He’s obsessed and it’s beyond weird now. It’s sick.
The Guardian has the whole story. I suggest you read the whole thing if you have time. It’s disturbing to say the least. This guy tried to say he was joking about the childless cat ladies. He wasn’t.
Here’s an excerpt.
Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.
The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.
Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.
[…]
Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.
Now this latest recording raises renewed questions about Vance’s contribution to the Republican ticket, which is trailing behind Kamala Harris and her bid to be America’s first woman of color president.
In the 2021 interview Vance also claimed men and boys in the US were “suppressed” in their masculinity and made racially charged remarks about American cities and his political opponents.
This is interesting:
Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.
“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”
“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.
Patriarchy is the world’s oldest organizing principle. I guess it was never very realistic to think the church and powerful men wouldn’t fight very hard to preserve it.
On the other hand, Vance depicted men and boys as “suppressed”, saying 52 minutes in that “one of the weird things about elite society is it’s deeply uncomfortable with masculinity”.
Warming to the theme, Vance said: “This is one weird thing that conservatives don’t talk about enough … We don’t talk enough about the fact that traditional masculine traits are now actively suppressed from childhood all the way through adulthood.”
Assessing his young son’s habit of fighting imaginary monsters, Vance said: “There’s something deeply cultural and biological, spiritual about this desire to defend his home and his family.”
He connected this with a hypothetical invasion: “If the Chinese invade us in 10 years, they’re going to be beaten back by boys like you who practice fighting the monsters who become proud men who defend their homes.”
By contrast, for Vance, “They’re not going to be defended by the soy boys who want to feed the monsters.”
He is marinated in right wing online extremism. The language he uses makes that obvious. The philosophy comes from his association with right wing Christians, tech-bros and online incel discussion groups.
The man has changed his name four times as an adult. He started off as a Never Trumper who is now even gone beyond “traditional” Trumpism. His identity has been fluid throughout his like in ways that are strange and unknowable. He’s not a normal person and we should beware of him going forward whether Trump wins or not. There’s something very twisted going on here.
DeSantis pulled back a contentious plan this week to add golf courses and hotels at some Florida state parks. The governor acted after his administration’s “Great Outdoors Initiative” faced a withering blast of criticism from across the political spectrum, including from one-time GOP allies who may run for governor when he’s out of office.
Local school board candidates he backed underperformed in the Aug. 20 primary. He is feuding with the lone Jewish Republican in the Legislature after that lawmaker called out DeSantis for recently traveling to Ireland — which has recognized Palestine as a country.
And two initiatives on the November ballot on abortion access and recreational marijuana appear poised to pass despite the governor’s opposition.
[…]
“I don’t think the backlash about parks was about him being a lame duck,” said Jamie Miller, a veteran political consultant who once worked for the Republican Party of Florida. “But I also do think that when the governor was tone-deaf in the past, people would go along with it. And now they’re positioning themselves for their political futures and you won’t see them do that.”
[…]
The potential passage of the two amendments on abortion and marijuana could also affect the governor’s legacy. DeSantis has been very vocal about the two measures and his chief of staff is running two political committees aimed at defeating them. DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis will hold a donor retreat next week at a golf resort in north Georgia to raise money for their opposition to the initiatives.
[…]
The recent events stand in stark contrast to most of DeSantis’ first five years as governor, including when he achieved a nearly 20-point reelection victory in 2022. DeSantis became a conservative star due to his handling of Covid-19 where he reopened schools faster than other states and fought against mask and vaccine mandates. He also waded into policy including a much-publicized battle with Disney after the company objected to a state law over classroom instruction of gender and sexual identity.
In the lead-up to his presidential run, DeSantis had continuous cooperation with the Florida Legislature on a series of laws about guns and abortion and other conservative touchpoints that he touted on the campaign trail. Many Republicans who disagreed with the governor rarely challenged him, and those who did said they were punished for doing so.
As one of his critics said, “You’ve got to be nice to people on the way up because there is going to come a time when you are on the way down,” Sadly for Ron, he’s just not capable of it.
This arrogant jerk did a lot of damage in his “anti-woke” campaign to destroy the Florida education system, torture ex-felons, alienate the state’s largest employer and treat migrants like political prey. Let’s hope his career has gone the way of a previous Great Whitebread Hope, Scott Walker, and we will never have to hear from him again. When your presidential campaign crashes as badly as his did it’s very hard to come back.
Trump at Moms For Liberty on Friday, the group that just can’t stop losing elections:
“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] fifteen years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’ It’s incredible.”
“But uh the transgender thing is an incredible thing… your kid goes to school & comes home a few days later with an operation the school decides what’s going to happen with your child & you many of these childs 15 years later say “what the hell happened who did this to me?”
— Jennifer Jenkins Brevard (@JenkinsBrevard) August 31, 2024
What the ever loving fuck is he talking about?
We really need to start talking about the serious problem with our society. It’s one thing to have fringe freaks out there who say stuff like this. That’s always been true. Nothing you can do about that, it’s a free country. But never has one of them mesmerized almost half the country into voting for him for president. Something’s gone very wrong.
And here’s one reason why. Check out the headline from the LA Times:
No, that is not an adequate way of describing what Trump said. That headline should say “Trump says public schools are performing transgender surgeries on students.” That’s what he said. And it should be the top story in America. But it isn’t. In fact, if it’s mentioned it’s only in passing.
They have normalized this freak show and I don’t know what it’s going to take to restore society to a place where someone who says something this insane is no longer someone that almost half the country respects enough to put into the most important job in the world.
Simon Rosenberg on the “Trump underperforming the polls” thing:
[Y]ou often hear commentators talk about Trump overperforming public polling in 2016 and 2020 which means we need to be up by 3-4-5 points or more in the polls to win. That may have been true in 2016 and 2020, but it is core to our understanding here that everything in American politics changed with Dobbs, it was a before and after moment, and that:
Republicans have underperforming public polls in races of all kinds all across the country since Dobbs. We’ve been overperforming public polls not them.
Trump underperformed – not overperformed – public polls in his primary elections, sometimes by a big number
The fascists underperformed public polls in the recent European and French elections, and the right got blown out in the UK.
Every election is unique, not like any other. I think comparisons to 2016 and 2020 are unhelpful, for Trump 2024 is now an insurrectionist, a rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon, and the man who stripped the rights and freedoms away from the women of America. He is far more degraded, diminished and extreme. Just as I wrote in what became a very prescient 2021 essay, 3 Reasons Why 2022 Will Not Be 2010, I believe, deeply, that 2024 will not be 2020 or 2016. I think it is far more likely that Trump underperforms than overperforms public polling, and that we end up kicking his ass this November.
The common rebuttal is that Trump hasn’t been on the ballot since Dobbs so we don’t know if he’s still got those hidden voters or not. But Rosenberg brings up one data point that refutes that: the primaries. Trump did underperform rather substantially and did so long after his rivals had already flamed out or dropped out.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump is personally weaker now than he was in the previous two presidential elections. He doesn’t have the swagger or the energy he once had and his campaign has not been able to adapt to changing circumstances, largely because he just doesn’t have any resilience anymore. He’s old, he’s exposed as a criminal and facing very, very serious legal jeopardy and he really has no business being in the race at all.
And yet even under Rosenberg’s rosy scenario this race is much closer than it should be under those circumstances. I would not take anything for granted.
“It Was a Setup,” “Could have been the parents” Trump tries to blame Gold Star families for the Arlington incident pic.twitter.com/7eO9CZ3tag
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 31, 2024
I can see why he said this was a horrible interview. He was asked about the Florida abortion ban and royally screwed himself with that answer. And now this. It’s amazing what a couple of straightforward questions can elicit. More people should try it.
“A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area and was eventually subdued by the police with a Taser and arrested.” https://x.com/MelodyZare/status/1829732863090077778
“Are we in La La Land?” asks Colbert I. King in the Washington Post.
“He’s on our side,” Donald Trump told a rally crowd on Friday as police hauled off a supporter for attempting to assault reporters.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke Friday but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued with a Taser.
The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.
The man made it over a bicycle rack ringing the media area, and began climbing the back side of a riser where television reporters and cameras were stationed, according to a video of the incident posted to social media by a reporter for CBS News. People near him tried to pull him off the riser and were quickly joined by police officers.
The crowd cheered as a pack of police led the man away, prompting Trump to declare, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”
Yes, at Harris-Walz victory party, numbnuts.
🚨🇺🇸 MAN SUBDUED AT TRUMP RALLY AFTER STORMING PRESS AREA
During a Trump rally in Johnstown, PA, a man stormed the press area but was quickly subdued by police with a Taser. The incident followed Trump’s criticism of major media outlets.
It’s a measure of the gangrenous rot Trump has spread across the country that even after the January 6 insurrection he fomented, after his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, after the threats he’s inspired against election workers, after his repeated dishonoring of veterans, and after 34 felony convictions, Trump glibly keeps inspiring followers to violence and his cultish followers keep being inspired to act out on his behalf. It’s who he is. He will not change. He has no conscience. He never had a moral compass. Whether he has a soul is beyond my discernment.
If I didn’t know better, I might conclude that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, was merely the act of exuberant “patriots” voicing their displeasure with Joe Biden’s victory — and that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. What else to think, based on the media’s treatment of the twice-impeached former president and felon and his campaign to return to the White House?
Trump is being covered by the press as if Jan. 6 were old news.
A fifth grand jury indicted Trump this week in the stolen government documents case against Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith filed the charges even as a large fraction of addled people in this country seem torn between which party’s presidential ticket to choose in November. La La Land, indeed.
King goes on:
Imagine a president singling out his own vice president for the scorn of a bloodthirsty mob and sitting back as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect him and his family. Imagine a president receiving reports of members of Congress fleeing the Capitol for their lives and not immediately sending reinforcements to the Hill. Imagine a president leaving it to a D.C. mayor and her police force to rescue U.S. Capitol Police.
We don’t have to imagine it. We watched it. We’ve lived it. Trump’s voters don’t have to imagine it either. It’s what they voted for in 2016 and in 2020. It’s what people like the man arrested in Johnstown, and those convicted and jailed over Jan. 6, and those still awaiting trial and sentencing for it will vote for in 2024. All the while calling themselves American patriots.
We want our leaders to be inspiring. But this is not what we imagined getting.
Kamala Harris is driving Donald Trump crazy by shrugging off his racist and misogynist attacks, Karen Tumulty believes:
The standout moment in Kamala Harris’s first interview as Democratic presidential nominee consisted of a mere seven words: “Same old tired playbook. Next question, please.”
That was her answer when CNN’s Dana Bash brought up Donald Trump’s recent outrageous suggestion that the vice president, who is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican parents, “happened to turn Black” as a matter of political expediency.
David Cohen, friend, cartoonist and drummer extraordinaire, crafted an even pithier rejoinder that would have elicited cheers and fist pumps from Democrats had Harris thought of it: “When did he decide to be orange?”
Harris and her team have generally refused to take the bait from Trump. “Why would we step in this man’s way?” said one campaign official.
Trump’s live and online rants have become even more outrageous and insane lately than those to which we are sadly accustomed. Running against a woman, a Black woman, and this Black woman have thrown him completely off his game. He’ll face the rest of his life in jail or in court if he loses this November. His flailing, however, disproves the old saw about a hanging in the morning focusing the mind.
As for Harris, Tumulty suggests:
Harris, not known as a particularly deft politician, is also walking a thin line. Although she declares herself proud of what the Biden-Harris administration has achieved, she is portraying herself as a candidate of change who will “turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.”
We are back to Salena Zito’s formulation in The Atlantic eight years ago. When Trump says bonkers things, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously,” she wrote, while “his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
That thin line Harris must walk lies somewhere in between. She must brush off his crude attempts to “get her goat” with what he says (to borrow an ancient phrase). At the same time, she must take seriously what he does.
Trump’s antics this week at Arlington National Cemetery were clownish and boorish, but also illegal behavior to be taken seriously. Trump clearly thought with the cemetery visit he could repair the self-inflicted wounds his campaign recently incurred when he equated civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom winners with veterans who’d earned the Congressional Medal of Honor with their blood.
The Medal of Freedom is actually better, he quipped, because the latter goes to soldiers “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” When he gave it to his friend and donor, Miriam Adelson, she was still “a healthy, beautiful woman.”
The Arlington visit Trump thought might help repair his image with veterans simply made it worse (CNN):
The US Army issued a stark rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign over the incident on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, saying in a statement on Thursday that participants in the ceremony “were made aware of federal laws” regarding political activity at the cemetery, and “abruptly pushed aside” an employee of the cemetery.
“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army spokesperson said in the statement on Thursday. Section 60 is an area in the cemetery largely reserved for the graves of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is Trump behavior to take seriously. It reinforces, writes Michael Tomasky, “the view—potentially deadly to him—that he has contempt for veterans and soldiers who died serving the country.”
It reveals, adds Greg Sargent, “a level of contempt for the law and public service that’s incompatible with democracy.”
Democrats should get to the bottom of the Arlington fiasco. At issue is the casual designation of public servants as the enemy, the blithe treatment of public procedures as thoroughly dispensable, and the contempt for the ideal of an independent military—all hitched to the passing whims and needs of Trump and his movement. They’re all incompatible with maintaining a healthy democratic public sphere, and the question once again is whether Trump will be allowed to get away with all of it.
Trump desperately want to be taken seriously. He just wants to dictate which of his behaviors and comments get treated that way and to claim victimhood when backlash comes down on his head.
