Author Topic: National Review Writer: Working-Class Communities ‘Deserve To Die’ - Donald Trump’s appeals to the white working class are “immoral”  (Read 417 times)

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HAPPY2BME

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National Review’s Kevin Williamson believes Donald Trump’s appeals to the white working class are “immoral” because that demographic’s way of life deserves to die out.

In a featured article for the prestigious conservative journal entitled “The Father-Fuhrer,” Williamson seeks to rebut criticism that he and other conservatives don’t articulate any policies that would appeal to Trump’s blue collar supporters.

Williamson, a long-time critic of The Donald, essentially agrees that he doesn’t support any policies or rhetoric directly tailored to the working-class — particularly about jobs being taken by outsourcing and immigration — because it would be wrong to do so.

“It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces,” the NR roving correspondent writes. “[N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

He then goes on to state that all the ills associated with downscale whites are a result of that class’s inherent depravity.

“If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that,” Williamson state.

He then goes on to make the conclusion that it’s great these communities are dying out because they have a warped morality and are a dead weight on the economy.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible,” the conservative writer says. “The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt [a blue-collar town in New York].”

This article isn’t the first time Williamson has harshly criticized trying to appeal to working-class whites. In one February article, he said that this class is made-up of “economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency.” He also claimed that their interests have no place in the “mainstream of American conservatism” and, in a follow-up post, said that the only message conservatives should give them is “get a job.”

While Williamson blames the people living in run-down white communities for their own woes, he does not apply the same principle to run-down minority communities. In his book and articles on the failures of Detroit, for instance, the National Review writer blames “progressivism” and unions for ruining the predominately African-American city.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/12/national-review-writer-working-class-communities-deserve-to-die/

HAPPY2BME

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The Demographic Not Wanted By The Conservative Establishment



There’s a good reason the video of 1400 factory workers learning of their dismissal is going viral.

Last week, several outlets began reposting a clip of hundreds of Carrier Air Conditioning workers in Indianapolis learning the bad news that their plant was going to be relocated to Monterrey, Mexico, over the next three years.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ttxGMQOrY

The pink-slipped employees evinced rage at the announcement and many began swearing and yelling at the company spokesman delivering the message, as should be expected in this kind of situation. But the messenger did little to allay these tensions in giving an impressively un-empathetic speech.

The unidentified company man scolded the hecklers about interrupting the “important” information he was trying to share and, “if you don’t want to hear it other people do, so let’s quiet down.”

That important information had little to do with the workers’ employment prospects and more to do with how the move will help the company maintain “competitive prices and continue to serve the extremely price sensitive market place.”

“Why would we care?” shouted one irate employee in response to the statement.

The “strictly business decision” went about as well with the Americans who read about it as it did with the workers who heard it first-hand. Donald Trump, not surprisingly, is now haranguing about the incident on social media and in stump speeches, making it likely that the Carrier announcement could be a key theme this election cycle.

With both Trump and Bernie Sanders harping on companies for cynically sending jobs overseas to increase profit and how generous trade deals hurt American workers, the Carrier plant video illustrates both talking points pretty well.

The most astute, and colorfully-worded, comment to come from the video is uttered by an enraged worker who upon learning his job is going to Mexico, yells, “That’s why you brought all those motherfuckers here!”

The “motherfuckers” are, of course, Mexican immigrants who have come here both legally and illegally on the premise that they would take lower wages and would do jobs “no American would do.”

Probably without the knowledge of that one worker, former Mexican president Carlos Salinas made a parallel point when he promised American audiences back in the early 1990s that NAFTA would curtail immigration from the Central American state by bringing jobs to Mexico.

That certainly didn’t happen after NAFTA passed as illegal immigration from Mexico skyrocketed while thousands of manufacturing jobs were sent across the border.

The anxiety many working-class workers feel over immigration and outsourcing was encapsulated in that one vulgar heckle. It’s why many within this demographic are embracing Trump.

Coupled with their rising mortality rates and declining political influence, this group is starting to feel resentful — a fact surprisingly acknowledged in the last Democratic debate.

But the (largely white) working class element that has found their man in The Donald has irked several conservatives as a loathsome development. These conservatives are more likely to justify Carrier’s move as one of absolute necessity and anyone who disagrees should, in the words of the company spokesman, “quiet down.” In the opinions of some of these right-wing critics, appealing to the interests of blue collar voters is rank demagoguery and these citizens don’t deserve special attention.

The most prominent writer voicing this criticism is National Review’s Kevin Williamson.

In an Playboy-published excerpt from his book “The Case Against Trump,” Williamson gleefully recounts how this downwardly mobile class is basically composed of sexually frustrated bigots who buy into the “fantasy” that they once had stable employment. Williamson implies that there really isn’t a place for these troglodytes in 21st century America and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

He developed this argument further in a February National Review article declaring this class “Buchanan’s Boys.” Insinuating there’s rancorous white nationalism lurking underneath both Trumpism and Pat Buchanan’s past appeal, Williamson puts forth the notion that the free enterprise dogmas of the conservative movement is the only message the working class should receive from the Republican Party. Anything else amounts to “white identity politics” and “welfare statism.”

Considering how well talk of burdensome regulations and cost efficiency went over with the soon-to-be laid-off Carrier workers, that doesn’t seem to be a winning strategy.

After receiving criticism for appearing to show contempt for the white working-class in that article, Williamson clarified his position and said conservatives should tell this group to “get a job.”

Williamson isn’t alone in this sentiment as numerous conservatives and libertarians have repeated the famous “South Park” line of “Dey Took ERRR Jerbs!” to skewer the supposed ignorance of The Donald’s fanbase, along with several other pleasantries.

While all these anti-Trump conservatives are quick to say that Republicans should still try to woo over disenchanted blue collar folk, the common line is that it should be done with typical conservative messages about limited government and how awesome the free market is.

That hasn’t worked in the past and seeing how the economic measures championed by leading conservatives — from increasing immigration to international trade deals — has come at the cost of reducing opportunities for low-skilled Americans to find gainful employment, it’s a fool’s hope to think doubling down on conservative orthodoxy will win over this demographic.

It’s also a bit hypocritical for some conservatives to condemn appealing to the interests of the white working-class while, at the same time, support outright pandering to the interests of various minority groups.

Republicans are told to embrace criminal justice reform, regardless of its consequences, in order to make in-roads with the black community. Similarly, Republicans are told to push through amnesty and start speaking Spanish for the sole purpose of winning over the Latino vote.

These ideas all constitute a form of identity politics as they are articulated not with making America a better country, but in the hope that the measures will go over well with a specified group. Ironically, the same conservatives who sneer at the white working-class and get on bended knee before minority groups describe their philosophy as “compassionate conservatism.” Apparently, it’s only compassionate towards some people.

Conservatives seem more willing to entertain the minority outreach proposals because they don’t come with the price of altering free trade shibboleths.

While some on the Right may hope that sacrifices on social policy and none on economic policy will result in more minorities voting Republican, that’s about as likely to happen as appealing to the white working-class with the promise to eliminate the capital gains tax. Minorities, like everybody else, primarily vote based on economic concerns and polls show the Republican agenda on that matter doesn’t appeal to them.

On the other hand, it appears many otherwise disengaged working-class voters are willing to vote Republican — if given the right message. Sadly, Republican elites would prefer this class not sully their party with their odious presence and are not willing to tailor a message that would bring them to the Republican fold.

If Republicans would rather take the side of Carrier in its decision to leave for Mexico and tell its fired workers, “tough luck,” they probably deserve to continue to lose national elections.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/15/the-demographic-not-wanted-by-the-conservative-establishment/
« Last Edit: March 15, 2016, 08:59:41 pm by HAPPY2BME »

Offline Carling

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This GOProg meltdown worsens by the day.

Hey, at least the GOProgs are admitting that they don't give one shit about their working-class voters.

A stunning article.  This guy just ripped off his mask and showed himself to the world as a puppet to the DC and Wall Street elites.  All that's missing is calling us Bitter Clingers and I'd think someone to the left of Obama wrote this tripe.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2016, 09:01:48 pm by Carling »
Trump has created a cult and looks more and more like Hitler every day.
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HAPPY2BME

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This GOProg meltdown worsens by the day.

Hey, at least the GOProgs are admitting that they don't give one shit about their working-class voters.

A stunning article.  This guy just ripped off his mask and showed himself to the world as a puppet to the DC and Wall Street elites.  All that's missing is calling us Bitter Clingers and I'd think someone to the left of Obama wrote this tripe.

===========================

Don't forget - Donald Trump is satan and he wants to destroy EVERYTHING.

Offline sinkspur

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Working-Class Whites Have Moral Responsibilities -- In Defense of Kevin Williamson

 by DAVID FRENCH   

March 14, 2016 6:09 PM  This weekend, my colleague Kevin Williamson kicked up quite the hornet’s nest with his magazine piece (subscription required) that strikes directly at the idea that the white working-class (the heart of Trump’s support) is a victim class. Citizens of the world’s most prosperous nation, they face challenges — of course — but no true calamities.

Here’s the passage that’s gaining the most attention:

 It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

 These are strong words, but they are fundamentally true and important to say. My childhood was different from Kevin’s, but I grew up in Kentucky, live in a rural county in Tennessee, and have seen the challenges of the white working-class first-hand. Simply put, Americans are killing themselves and destroying their families at an alarming rate. No one is making them do it. The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand. Immigrants aren’t making them cheat on their wives or snort OxyContin. Obama isn’t walking them into the lawyer’s office to force them to file a bogus disability claim.

For generations, conservatives have rightly railed against deterministic progressive notions that put human choices at the mercy of race, class, history, or economics. Those factors can create additional challenges, but they do not relieve any human being of the moral obligation to do their best. 

Yet millions of Americans aren’t doing their best. Indeed, they’re barely trying. As I’ve related before, my church in Kentucky made a determined attempt to reach kids and families that were falling between the cracks, and it was consistently astounding how little effort most parents and their teen children made to improve their lives. If they couldn’t find a job in a few days — or perhaps even as little as a few hours — they’d stop looking. If they got angry at teachers or coaches, they’d drop out of school. If they fought with their wife, they had sex with a neighbor. And always — always — there was a sense of entitlement.

And that’s where disability or other government programs kicked in. They were there, beckoning, giving men and women alternatives to gainful employment. You don’t have to do any work (your disability lawyer does all the heavy lifting), you make money, and you get drugs. At our local regional hospital, it’s become a bitter joke the extent to which the community is hooked on “Xanatab” — the Xanax and Lortab prescriptions that lead to drug dependence.

 Of course we should have compassion even as we call on people to do better. I have compassion for kids who often see the worst behavior modeled at home. I have compassion for families facing economic uncertainty. But compassion can’t excuse or enable self-destructive moral failures.

 Nor does a focus on personal responsibility mean that the government or cultural elite are blameless. Far from it, and I’ve written at length about the role of progressive culture and progressive policies in cultural decline. I loathe the progressive welfare state and the elitist sexual revolutionaries who do all they can to create a culture that it simultaneously dependent and self-indulgent. I hate the mockery that poor and working-class people of all races endure, but we live in a nation of mutual responsibilities, and the failure of the government does not require the failure of the citizen.

 Kevin is right. If getting a job means renting a U-Haul, rent the U-Haul. You have nothing to lose but your government check.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432796/working-class-whites-have-moral-responsibilities-defense-kevin-williamson
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Offline sinkspur

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This GOProg meltdown worsens by the day.

Hey, at least the GOProgs are admitting that they don't give one shit about their working-class voters.

A stunning article.  This guy just ripped off his mask and showed himself to the world as a puppet to the DC and Wall Street elites.  All that's missing is calling us Bitter Clingers and I'd think someone to the left of Obama wrote this tripe.

You read HAPPY2BEME's hysterics over the article.  Read the article.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Offline Carling

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You read HAPPY2BEME's hysterics over the article.  Read the article.

I read the article.  You GOProgs are having an epic meltdown.  I happen to be upper middle-class and support Trump, but I find Williamson's elitist and clueless piece to be about the most insulting thing I've read.

As I said, all that's missing is Bitter Clingers from it.
Trump has created a cult and looks more and more like Hitler every day.
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Offline Chosen Daughter

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Wow!  What an inflated windbag.  This is what I have known is wrong with my party.  They are disconnected from the people that pay the bills.
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Offline Fishrrman

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"National Review’s Kevin Williamson believes Donald Trump’s appeals to the white working class are “immoral” because that demographic’s way of life deserves to die out."

What about the Mexican immigrant "working class", Mr. Williamson?

What about the black "working class", Mr. Williamson?

Do -they- deserve to "die out", too?

Just where do you expect these people to go, when there's no work for them?

Be certain of this:
The democrats know where they should go!

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  This guy just ripped off his mask and showed himself to the world as a puppet to the DC and Wall Street elites.
Bernie, is that you?
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Wow. What ignorance. What total stereotyping. What utter lack of respect for my kind. For the record, I've never done drugs, I don't take anything from the government and the only reason I don't have a family of my own is a lack of a willing and suitable partner.

And for the record, I do not support Donald Trump AT ALL, as anyone here will attest.

So basically his answer is abandon your home? For where? Williamson's screed sounds eerily like Rick Perry: "Your hometown sucks. Move to Texas!" Instead of trying to fix our problems, Williamson would basically be fine if the Iranians decided to use us as nuclear target practice. This is the kind of inside-politics elitism that gives rise to false demagogues like Trump.
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