Wednesday, October 31, 2018

How Socialist Action Helps Republicans in 2018

My friends over at Socialist Action (SA) claim to oppose the Democrats, but they sure are good at spouting Dem talking points. Two recent articles on their webpage make the case.

John Leslie pens a piece entitled The rise of right-wing violence in Trump's America. While I'll agree with him that there is right-wing violence, it's not at all clear to me that it's "rising." If anything, it seems to me that racial violence, at least, is declining under Trump. Recall that under Obama we had the Ferguson riots, Dylann Roof's massacre of Black churchgoers, along with the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Here are the results of a relevant Google search from 2013 - 2016. At the top of the list is a piece by Steve Chapman, written in July, 2016, about how pundits thought race relations had worsened under President Obama. By comparison things seem better today.

Of course Mr. Leslie omits left-wing violence--antifa, BLM-inspired murders of cops, strong-arm tactics on campus to prevent free speech, and left-wing antisemitism, often but not always disguised as a plea for Palestinian rights.

My own view is that violence on both sides--while still existent--has declined under Trump. Obama was infuriatingly preachy, all but daring right-wing fanatics to do something stupid & evil, while at the same time winking at racial violence from the left. Trump is neither preachy nor winking. For him violence comes from both sides in roughly equal measure.

The second Democratic talking point comes from Autumn Rain and Erwin Freed entitled Trump administration attacks trans rights. The article is a mess, claiming that Trump is somehow stepping on fundamental human rights.

The lede sentence:
The New York Times reported on Oct. 21 that the Trump administration is “considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a government effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.”
I partially agree with Rain and Freed that the new definition is too restrictive--genitalia at birth may not actually be the most relevant criterion. But I strongly object to transgender people becoming a protected class under civil rights law.

For all the initials, LGBTQI, only the first two or three account for any significant portion of the population--perhaps 5%. The remainder comprise much less than 1%--perhaps as few as 0.1%. They are not a big enough community to deserve special civil rights treatment.

We don't accord such privileges to blind or deaf people, even though we try very hard to be accommodating,  They have to fit in with the rest of society as best as possible. Why should trans people be treated any differently?

Rain & Freed make some completely ridiculous claims.
A popular “common sense” notion is that genetics are rigidly sex-specific. Men and women are said to only have XY and XX chromosomes respectively. Over the last couple of years the renowned journal Nature has published many articles that put to bed the idea that human bodies exist as either purely male or female at any level.
Our authors cite no references from Nature, and I seriously doubt the truth of their assertion. It is long known in genetics that the female gamete contains an X chromosome, while the male gamete contains either an X or Y chromosome. Yes, there are times when it goes wrong, e.g., hermaphrodites, or people with XXY chromosomes. But these circumstances are very rare, and to my mind represent a kind of birth defect. Courtesy and accommodation are in order; a complete rearrangement of social customs is not.

Then there's this:
Not only do people come in all different shapes, sizes, and anatomical make-ups but so do their genes! A person who was assigned female at birth, identifies as a woman, and easily is seen as one may have XY chromosomes in her bladder, or even internal testes.
People come in all different shapes and sizes because (in large part) their genes are different. And the number of individuals with XX chromosomes who have XY chromosomes in their bladder must be vanishingly small. Indeed, I doubt such folks exist at all.

For this we're supposed to change English grammar and invent a bunch of new pronouns. Nor is it reason to let men, however disguised, use women's washrooms. Separate toilets protect women (real ones) from male predators. Though I'd change Trump's standard: if you have a penis, you can't use women's lavatories. Doesn't matter what you had at birth.

So why does this auger a Republican victory in 2018?

If SA were simply a voice in the wilderness, a tiny little grouplet with silly ideas all its own, then it would make no difference at all. Unfortunately their opinions reflect the left-wing of the Democratic party. I know they reject that assessment--they think they're "radicals" who advocate something completely different from the Dems.

But they're wrong. Be it on race, class or gender, along with immigration and environmental issues, their opinion dovetails perfectly with progressive Democrats. There is nothing original in anything they write. The problem with this progressive vision of the world is that it appeals only to about 20% of the population--disproportionately from the upper middle class.

The rest of us call it political correctness, a widely unpopular imposition on American discourse. Deviate even slightly from the correct terminology and you're dubbed a racist, sexist, homophobic, white-supremacist. Through the Obama years this trick worked--any slightly contrary opinion was excised from polite society simply because the language wasn't up to snuff.

Trump ran and won on opposing political correctness. For SA and their Democrat friends, this means he must be a racist, sexist, homophobic white supremacist. He's none of those things, however lewd, rude & crude he may be.

Mr. Trump stands on an anti-PC, cultural platform.

  • Traditional mores have value, and they should not be overturned on a lark.
  • Immigration is fine, but we should only admit people who love us. Which, contrary to SA, is not restricted to white people.
  • We do not need to accept large numbers of indigent, illiterate refugees from failed states such as Honduras, however miserable they may be.
  • The US does not have to keep the world safe for democracy. Nor (now that we're energy independent) do we have to defend the Persian Gulf or world trade routes.
  • We need to reduce our dependence on China, not for economic reasons, but rather for security.
  • Progressive values are an attempt to remake society in some idealistic image--call it socialism. This effort will always fail--see Venezuela for a recent example.
  • The wolf at our door is not climate change or some other phony-baloney progressive boogeyman. Instead it's poverty. We're not guaranteed to be a rich country. That means we need to let productive people (e.g., frackers) go about their business with as little red tape and taxes as possible.
Political correctness is resoundingly unpopular in this country--opposed by 75% of the population. Socialist Action, by trumpeting the PC banner, helps in its own small way to get Republican voters to the polls.

Thank you!

Further Reading:

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?

Trump's response was "Who cares?" Which is roughly what I also think. But there's more to the story, and believe it or not, I don't think Elizabeth Warren cares about her Indian ancestry, either.

For those of you living under a rock (or not from the USA), the president has nicknamed Senator Warren "Pocahontas", after an Indian woman who materially helped the early English colonists at Jamestown back in the 17th Century. Pocahontas is generally regarded as a heroic figure.

Trump, however, is using the name as a synonym for "hypocrite" because Ms. Warren claimed herself to be "Native American" (the PC phrase for Indian), identifying herself as such in a directory list of law professors, among other places. When pressed she could produce no evidence beyond family lore that she had any Indian ancestry at all. Further, she made it look like she'd gotten her job in part because of affirmative action programs for Native Americans.

The label must have stung. She has now responded with a nearly six minute long video supposedly establishing her Indian heritage. She reveals a DNA test suggesting she is somewhere between 0.1% and 2% Native American, assuming you take the results as definitive. 

She can't escape the hypocrisy label, either. Her video presents testimony from several high-ranking academics, claiming they never, ever considered her ethnicity in hiring her--not even a little bit. In this age of affirmative action that's pretty hard to take seriously--unless said professors did not themselves believe Ms. Warren's claim to native ancestry.

So all in all, I think Trump will continue to call her "Pocahontas," or perhaps "the lady who doesn't like being called Pocahontas." Elizabeth Warren is still a hypocrite, and she isn't an Indian.

But she is Scots-Irish. I believe she intended to make precisely that point, and if so the video is a stroke of political genius. Its essential purpose is to win support from her kin.

Ms. Warren grew up in Oklahoma. The state was Indian Territory until 1889--the Cherokees and Choctaws had been exiled there from the southeastern United States. Warren's family was among those early white settlers, and it surely isn't shocking that there'd be some ethnic mixing. Likely most longstanding Oklahoma families can claim Indian blood.

The Scots-Irish (a misnomer since there's nothing Irish about them--they're Lowlander Scots) arrived in North America before the Revolution and settled in the "back country", today known as Appalachia. From there they expanded westward, populating Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and even Southern California. In demographic terms they have been very successful--they are today the largest single ethnic group in the United States, perhaps 60 million strong.

I'm informed on this by three books: J.D. Vance's well-known and excellent book, Hillbilly Elegy (my review here), Colin Woodard's American Nations (review here), and finally, the magisterial Albion's Seed, by David Hackett Fischer.

Senator Warren plays on numerous Scots-Irish themes during the video. For example (according to Mr. Vance), the surest route to a fistfight is to insult a hillbilly's mother. No surprise, then, when Ms. Warren proclaims "Now, the president likes to call my mom a liar," a phrase calculated to win sympathy.

Though sympathy is not exactly what Ms. Warren is after. Scots-Irish (reports Mr. Fischer) raise girls to become strong, self-reliant women, and boys to become warriors. Sarah Palin (another Scots-Irish politician) described herself as "Mama Bear." Ms. Warren shows herself in the same light--she's no victim; instead she's a cow-punchin', pistol-packin' mama. You don't mess with her!

She doesn't want your sympathy. Instead, you'll cheer her on!

Though when push comes to shove a Hillbilly gal can't be expected to go it alone--that's where the warriors come in. Ms. Warren has three older brothers, all of whom spent their youth in the military. You insult a girl's honor and you can expect a posse of brothers, sons, and uncles to start coming after you.  To emphasize the point family photos depict them in uniform and flying fighter jets. And sure enough, the now elderly brothers, despite being Republicans, rise strongly to their sister's defense. Their genuine loyalty surely trumps the fake protestations of academics.

Finally, Scots-Irish--and not just those in Oklahoma--have long claimed Indian blood. They're very proud of it. So the Senator's family lore is hardly surprising or unusual--I doubt Liz is lying about that. For a Scots-Irish audience, impugning Ms. Warren's Native ancestry is indirectly an insult to the whole clan.

So I think the goal of this video was (at least in major part) to rouse support from the Scots-Irish for one of their own daughters. And in that sense it's a smashing success.

Ms. Warren wants to be President of the United States. Her current base--progressive liberals--might be large enough to get her into the Senate from Massachusetts, but it's nowhere near a big enough base to win a national election. She needs to expand her base.

Authors Woodard and Hackett describe the peoples that settled colonial America from Britain. In addition to the Scots-Irish, these include the Yankees (about 20 million strong), and the "Midlanders" (aka, "Middle America"), people loosely descended from the Quaker culture in the Delaware Valley.

Obama was a Yankee politician through and through (“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”), but he put together a coalition including Midlanders and African-Americans. His people so despised the Scots-Irish that they took to calling them "deplorables."

Trump's coalition, conversely, has Scots-Irish at its core, but also includes Midlanders (they're the folks who voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016). The Yankees and African-Americans were not able to carry the day for the Dems.

Ms. Warren now has the very difficult task of forming a coalition including Yankees and Scots-Irish. If she can pull it off she becomes president in a landslide. But since those two groups royally hate each other, this is not gonna be an easy trick. She'll have to win Scots-Irish votes (by supporting gun rights and opposing immigration), while at the same time winning Progressive votes in the primaries.

That odd coalition is much harder now given the insults they've been throwing at each other. But it was Bill Clinton's coalition, and also that of both presidents Bush. The latter combined a New England, blue-blood family with Texas sensibilities.

If Elizabeth Warren wants to be president, she needs to carry Oklahoma and Texas. That's what her video was all about. It's got nothing to do with Native Americans.

Further Reading: