Trump and ethnic cleansing

[Svartalf]

Hopefully he'll die from it.

I don't, he deserves something more fun, like cholera or yellow fever.

[laklak]

What they support is greatly reducing who can stay. What do you think all this public charge business is about, for example?

Trump’s ‘Public Charge’ Rule Would Radically Change Legal Immigration
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues ... migration/

When I got my Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK (their equivalent to a green card) it specifically said, stamped in my passport, "not eligible for public assistance". Meaning I didn't get NHS coverage (or any other public money), even though I paid taxes like any citizen. I wouldn't have access to public assistance unless and until I got citizenship, but Mrs. Lak and I decided to leave before I could do that. Probably should have waited and gotten citizenship but Florida beaches beckoned. Maybe it's different other places, but in all the countries I've lived that was normal.

[Animavore]

The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... iK2yT5mcpI

[Sean Hayden]

He never took it seriously. At least that was the narrative 5 minutes ago.

What's clear is that many of the protesters either don't take it as seriously as those staying home, or believe the risk is worth it.

What is more likely: that they believe they are less likely to become seriously ill because they are white, or that they've underestimated the risk due to a combination of factors like a lack of understanding the science, and our tendency in general to be poor risk assessors, and all the psychological baggage that entails?

This piece is horrible, just awful.

[Seabass]

He never took it seriously. At least that was the narrative 5 minutes ago.

What's clear is that many of the protesters either don't take it as seriously as those staying home, or believe the risk is worth it.

What is more likely: that they believe they are less likely to become seriously ill because they are white, or that they've underestimated the risk due to a combination of factors like a lack of understanding the science, and our tendency in general to be poor risk assessors, and all the psychological baggage that entails?

This piece is horrible, just awful.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Don't think of this in terms of an individual person sitting down and applying logic to a problem. Think of it in terms of how cultures and zeitgeists and political movements are shaped. Think of the effect that millions of Americans gulping down toxic sludge from Fox News and Limbaugh has on the conservative movement in America.

Consider the Colin Kaepernick situation. After the proliferation of the smartphone, we were bombarded with videos of cops brutally killing unarmed black men. Day, after day, after day, so many clips of cops shooting blacks in the back as they ran away, choking them to death for selling loose cigarettes, etc. Then a black athlete gets fed up and decides to kneel during the anthem to call attention to the situation. That's not terribly unreasonable, is it? And yet conservative, white America's reaction to it was to run that black "son of a bitch" straight out of the NFL because he was "disrespecting the troops". It's absurd. It's absurd on its face if you sit down and apply logic to it. Do you think each and every individual conservative in America is okay with black men being mowed down in the street day after day? I don't think so. Most of them aren't psychopaths. But the conservative movement is psychopathic. White, conservative America reacted that way because they were primed to accept that preposterous narrative after decades of swallowing insane Fox News narratives.

I had a couple problems with the article, but I think his analysis and description of the "racial contract" and how it shapes culture and politics and how various groups interact with each other is spot on.

[Seabass]

He never took it seriously. At least that was the narrative 5 minutes ago.

What's clear is that many of the protesters either don't take it as seriously as those staying home, or believe the risk is worth it.

What is more likely: that they believe they are less likely to become seriously ill because they are white, or that they've underestimated the risk due to a combination of factors like a lack of understanding the science, and our tendency in general to be poor risk assessors, and all the psychological baggage that entails?

This piece is horrible, just awful.

This is an excerpt from Eichmann In Jerusalem.

Now and then, the comedy breaks into the horror itself, and results in stories, presumably true
enough, whose macabre humor easily surpasses that of any Surrealist invention. Such was the
story told by Eichmann during the police examination about the unlucky Kommerzialrat Storfer of
Vienna, one of the representatives of the Jewish community. Eichmann had received a telegram
from Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, telling him that Storfer had arrived and had
urgently requested to see Eichmann. "I said to myself: O.K., this man has always behaved well,
that is worth my while . . . I'll go there myself and see what is the matter with him. And I go to
Ebner [chief of the Gestapo in Vienna], and Ebner says - I remember it only vaguely - If only he
had not been so clumsy; he went into hiding and tried to escape,' something of the sort. And the
police arrested him and sent him to the concentration camp, and, according to the orders of the
Reichsführer (Himmler], no one could get out once he was in. Nothing could be done, neither Dr.
Ebner nor I nor anybody else could do anything about it. I went to Auschwitz and asked Höss to
see Storfer. `Yes, yes [Höss said], he is in one of the labor gangs.' With Storfer afterward, well, it
was normal and human, we had a normal, human encounter. He told me all his grief and sorrow: I
said: `Well, my dear old friend [Ja, mein lieber guter Storfer], we certainly got it! What rotten luck!'
And I also said: `Look, I really cannot help you, because according to orders from the
Reichsführer nobody can get out. I can't get you out. Dr. Ebner can't get you out. I hear you made
a mistake, that you went into hiding or wanted to bolt, which, after all, you did not need to do.'
[Eichmann meant that Storfer, as a Jewish functionary, had immunity from deportation.] I forget
what his reply to this was. And then I asked him how he was. And he said, yes, he wondered if he
couldn't be let off work, it was heavy work. And then I said to Höss: 'Work-Storfer won't have to
work!' But Höss said: `Everyone works here.' So I said: 'O.K.,' I said, `I'll make out a chit to the
effect that Storfer has to keep the gravel paths in order with a broom,' there were little gravel
paths there, `and that he has the right to sit down with his broom on one of the benches.' [To
Storfer] I said: `Will that be all right, Mr. Storfer? Will that suit you?' Whereupon he was very
pleased, and we shook hands, and then he was given the broom and sat down on his bench. It
was a great inner joy to me that I could at least see the man with whom I had worked for so many
long years, and that we could speak with each other." Six weeks after this normal human
encounter, Storfer was dead - not gassed, apparently, but shot.
Is this a textbook case of bad faith, of lying self-deception combined with outrageous stupidity? Or
is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries
that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man who
would admit that he had done wrong) who cannot afford to face reality because his crime has
become part and parcel of it? Yet Eichmann's case is different from that of the ordinary criminal,
who can shield himself effectively against the reality of a non-criminal world only within the narrow
limits of his gang. Eichmann needed only to recall the past in order to feel assured that he was
not lying and that he was not deceiving himself, for he and the world he lived in had once been in
perfect harmony. And that German society of eighty million people had been shielded against
reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that
had now become ingrained in Eichmann's mentality. These lies changed from year to year, and
they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the
various branches of the party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self deception
had become so common, almost a moral prerequisite for survival, that even now, eighteen years
after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been
forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the
German national character. During the war, the lie most effective with the whole of the German
people was the slogan of "the battle of destiny for the German people" [der Schicksalskampf des
deutschen Volkes], coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, which made self-deception easier on
three counts: it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny
and not by Germany; and, third, that it' was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must
annihilate their enemies or be annihilated.
Eichmann's astounding willingness, in Argentina as well as in, Jerusalem, to admit his crimes was
due less to his own criminal capacity for self-deception than to the aura of systematic mendacity
that had constituted the general, and generally accepted, atmosphere of the Third Reich. "Of
course" he had played a role in the extermination of the Jews; of course if he "had not transported
them, they would not have been delivered to the butcher."
"What," he asked, "is there to `admit'?"

[Sean Hayden]

He never took it seriously. At least that was the narrative 5 minutes ago.

What's clear is that many of the protesters either don't take it as seriously as those staying home, or believe the risk is worth it.

What is more likely: that they believe they are less likely to become seriously ill because they are white, or that they've underestimated the risk due to a combination of factors like a lack of understanding the science, and our tendency in general to be poor risk assessors, and all the psychological baggage that entails?

This piece is horrible, just awful.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Don't think of this in terms of an individual person sitting down and applying logic to a problem. Think of it in terms of how cultures and zeitgeists and political movements are shaped. Think of the effect that millions of Americans gulping down toxic sludge from Fox News and Limbaugh has on the conservative movement in America.

But how we are, what we are, and how it influences our cultural "shaping" is a big part of what makes the piece so bad. It is claiming that racism is the reason for not taking the virus seriously. Specifically, it claims that knowing the virus impacts blacks disproportionately has caused us to take it less seriously. But as you say, that level of granularity doesn't enter the picture. I only know what the approximate difference is between the numbers of blacks vs whites who are seriously ill because I looked into it. It is not even so great a difference in the majority of cases that knowing the specifics would cause one to reevaluate their risk. More importantly, the difference is not part of our consciousness, it has not informed our decision making. If you want to claim that it is an unconscious motivator, fine. But you will need to accept that as an unconscious motivator it is competing with much more visible and better understood human faults.

The "racial contract" is just worthless as an explanation in this case. There are plenty of highly visible, easily testable, proven reasons for our failure to perform well in a crisis. Unfortunately, none of them can be applied to only some other group of people. They are human, they are the same for the racist, and the less racist.

[Seabass]

He never took it seriously. At least that was the narrative 5 minutes ago.

What's clear is that many of the protesters either don't take it as seriously as those staying home, or believe the risk is worth it.

What is more likely: that they believe they are less likely to become seriously ill because they are white, or that they've underestimated the risk due to a combination of factors like a lack of understanding the science, and our tendency in general to be poor risk assessors, and all the psychological baggage that entails?

This piece is horrible, just awful.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Don't think of this in terms of an individual person sitting down and applying logic to a problem. Think of it in terms of how cultures and zeitgeists and political movements are shaped. Think of the effect that millions of Americans gulping down toxic sludge from Fox News and Limbaugh has on the conservative movement in America.

But how we are, what we are, and how it influences our cultural "shaping" is a big part of what makes the piece so bad. It is claiming that racism is the reason for not taking the virus seriously. Specifically, it claims that knowing the virus impacts blacks disproportionately has caused us to take it less seriously. But as you say, that level of granularity doesn't enter the picture. I only know what the approximate difference is between the numbers of blacks vs whites who are seriously ill because I looked into it. It is not even so great a difference in the majority of cases that knowing the specifics would cause one to reevaluate their risk. More importantly, the difference is not part of our consciousness, it has not informed our decision making. If you want to claim that it is an unconscious motivator, fine. But you will need to accept that as an unconscious motivator it is competing with much more visible and better understood human faults.

The "racial contract" is just worthless as an explanation in this case. There are plenty of highly visible, easily testable, proven reasons for our failure to perform well in a crisis. Unfortunately, none of them can be applied to only some other group of people. They are human, they are the same for the racist, and the less racist.

Do you think that if the Koch and DeVos families were getting hit as hard by this pandemic as the poors who work in meat packing facilities or live in densely packed urban areas, Republicans would be so lackadaisical about it? Racism isn't the only issue; it dovetails with all the others. It's just one part of the internal calculus that takes place within the conservative movement, whether consciously or unconsciously (probably consciously in case of Stephen Miller types).

[Sean Hayden]

Dovetail-shmovetail, the piece made specific claims that don't appear to stand up to closer inspection.

[JimC]

Do you think that if the Koch and DeVos families were getting hit as hard by this pandemic as the poors who work in meat packing facilities or live in densely packed urban areas, Republicans would be so lackadaisical about it? Racism isn't the only issue; it dovetails with all the others. It's just one part of the internal calculus that takes place within the conservative movement, whether consciously or unconsciously (probably consciously in case of Stephen Miller types).

I think there has to be some truth in this. How major an effect it is would be hard to tease out from the other factors also at work. However, in thinly populated rural states with lots of Republican voters, there seems to have always been dislike and contempt for people in big cities, some of which probably conflates with racism. The ones protesting any form of lockdown in their own regions seem quite content to let the urban poor die...

[Sean Hayden]

All problems have the same answer. I think you guys are stuck in a cul-de-sac.

[JimC]

All problems have the same answer. I think you guys are stuck in a cul-de-sac.

So, you don't think that racist attitudes could be even one factor among many in the response of some white conservatives to Covid-19?

[Svartalf]

racist attitudes? in the West and the 21st century? come on, are you calling the US retrograde degenerates?

[Seabass]

Dovetail-shmovetail, the piece made specific claims that don't appear to stand up to closer inspection.

In Nazi Germany in the months leading up to extermination, most Nazis didn't actually discuss the matter in terms of extermination. Nazis in the top brass knew they were going to liquidate the Jews, but in communications meant for the rank and file, they used euphemisms like "relocation", "resettlement", and of course the "final solution". High ranking Nazis kept the plans for extermination secret because if you are about to do something so morally repugnant as genocide, you don't want to let the whole world know about it beforehand, for obvious reasons. Many German civilians, and even many rank and file Nazis, not to mention the world outside of Germany would have probably felt that full blown genocide would be a bridge too far and may have acted to put a stop to it.

But here's the thing: I don't doubt that a lot of the Nazis in the lower ranks actually believed that Jews were simply being "resettled". But it is simply inconceivable that many of them didn't know damn well that they and their fellow Germans were gearing up for a genocide. But it was the lie—the lie made it okay because that gave them at least a sort of plausible deniability about the whole thing. "How did I know they were going to be liquidated? I thought they were merely being resettled!"

This is why I posted the excerpt from Eichmann in Jerusalem about self-deception. We all tell ourselves stories so that we can live with ourselves. We do this as individuals, and we also do this as societies as well. We come up with all sorts of rationalizations to justify our terrible behavior. It's a coping mechanism.

And so we come back to our pandemic. Now, I don't think that most Republicans are ok with allowing this disease to simply run its course because it's more likely to kill poor and brown people than middle class white people. Things are obviously more complicated than that. But here's what I do think: I don't doubt for one second that your more thoughtful racists—your Stephen Millers and Chris Kobachs, for example—the kind of racists who actually read racist literature and stay up late at night fleshing out their racist worldviews—I don't doubt for a second that they've done the math in their heads and come to the conclusion that if you think about this in terms of attrition, the pandemic is probably going to remove more likely Democratic voters from the board than likely Republican voters, thus resulting in a net gain for Republicans in future elections.

And of course, Trump is too stupid and shallow to put this much thought into anything, but all that is required is for Stephen Miller to present him with a plausible enough lie—"It will disappear... like a miracle... when the warm months come..." And once Trump puts that out onto the airwaves, his adoring fans lap it up and accept it as truth.

[Sean Hayden]

All problems have the same answer. I think you guys are stuck in a cul-de-sac.

So, you don't think that racist attitudes could be even one factor among many in the response of some white conservatives to Covid-19?

If you want to defend the claims in the piece Seabass posted then please do so. But merely supposing that racism is at play in anything in US life is rather useless, and hardly comparable to what is being argued there.

--//--

The role of racism in American life is well established. Even our CDC will inform the curious why blacks and other minorities suffer disproportionately during a pandemic. The racism and its consequences is an environment of sorts in which we all operate. But it is only like an environment. It doesn't possess the physical properties necessary to mold us as a regular environment in the physical world could. We are not pooled into neat little puddles by this environment. You can't point at some human phenomenon like our failure to respond to the pandemic despite having the ability to do so, and then to the environment, and say, oh, that is why their failure looks like it does, those mountains over there, and this valley here. It is not that kind of environment. Our relationship to it is vastly different.

For the reasons I gave earlier, I think a "racial contract" is a terrible explanation for either our failure to handle this outbreak adequately, or many peoples --world wide-- refusal to take it seriously.