I agree with Edsall of The New York Times:
Donald Trump is trying to create a race war in America, Blacks versus whites, as a way to avoid a class war, as a way to avoid taxing corporations and the ultra rich. He is doing this to impress Putin.
Someone pulled a gun on Black people in St. Louis and instead of shaming them, the Repulicans let them speak at their Convention??
I’m also thinking of my fellow Dartmouth alum, Harmeet Dhillon of San Francisco, who is a Republican party leader here in California and is Sikh, and even did a prayer in Punjabi at a big event. Seems like a kind of confused person. I remember than I worked for Rebecca Morgan running for State office here in 1988 even though I was a Democrat and I was surprised to meet a Vietnamese guy volunteering and he said that his reference point was that the Communists in VN were bad, so he is a Republican.
Also, Greg Zlotnick whose mother was treasurer of Becky’s campaigns, worked for Pete Wilson then switched to Dem. He is a water expert, now living in Sacramento area. (We talk mostly about football, our pool of guys, since 1980 or so).
I am not a Socialist but I think everyone deserves health care, education and housing. And if we taxed the wealthiest and corporations, we’d have enough for that. All of our need, none of our greed.
I am excited for Kamala meanwhile. And Joe Biden. The rest of Edsall’s lead:
The center-right political coalition in America — the Republican Party as it stands today — can be described as holding two overarching goals: First, deregulation and reductions in corporate and other tax liabilities — each clearly stated on the White House website — and second, but packing a bigger punch, the preservation of the status quo by stemming the erosion of the privileged status of white Christian America.
For those who want confirmation of Republican accomplishments along economic lines, the Brookings Institution has provided a helpful deregulatory tracker. And The Times has published a thorough examination of Trump’s achievements in cutting taxes for the rich — not only the “big, beautiful” tax bill of 2017, but also this year’s “Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package.”
The most important issue driving Trump’s ascendance, however, has not been the economy but race.
Last week, I argued that for Democrats the importance of ethnicity and race has grown, not diminished, since the mid-1960s. The same thing is true for Republicans — and many of the least obvious, or least comprehensible, aspects of Republican political strategy have to do with the party’s desire to cloak or veil the frank racism of the contemporary Republican agenda.
Patricia McCloskey, who with her husband Mark was charged with “unlawful use of a weapon” after they wielded guns when Black Lives Matter protesters walked by their St. Louis home, played a crucial role setting the stage for the entire convention. Patricia McCloskey told viewers: “What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country,” before adding, “Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”
As a plastic digression, I enjoyed chatting with my fellow Dartmouthian Chris Knipp of Berkeley – although he transferred out after only one week in 1960 and went to Amherst instead, who is a linguist about the difference between turbans of various groups of Muslims and Sikhs. Harmeet had a comment on turbans that I thought was a cognitive dissonance. My take is that Sikh headwraps do not have interior plastic shells. Just hair. There is also, weirdly, a way to surve fish called Turban — stuffed fish. Plus a turbot.
Also, Geoffrey Nunberg z”l, wrote a brief about the harm caused by the nickname of the Washington football team.
Let’s hope Donald Trump does not go new uke you leer.
Harmeet I am not baiting you, I think as fellow Dartmouth people there is some commonality. I’m curious your take on the turban thing, and that it is not frivolous. I buy my New York Times (and often the Chron and the Merc) each a.m. at Mac’s Smoke Shop from a Sikh. Actually there was a guy named Hari in my dorm who is Sikh.
back on point or background:
Felony charges have been filed against a St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters marching past their home last month in an episode that was captured on video and drew the attention of a divided nation, including President Trump.
The couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, were charged on Monday by the Circuit Attorney’s Office in St. Louis with unlawful use of a weapon, for exhibiting a semiautomatic rifle “in an angry or threatening manner,” according to the complaint. The charge is a Class E felony that carries a possible penalty of up to four years in prison.
The circuit attorney in St. Louis, Kimberly M. Gardner, said the couple created a dangerous situation involving “peaceful, unarmed protesters.”
“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner at those participating in nonviolent protest,” she said in a statement.
and1: Anita Fellicelli who is Indian wrote about a Native whodunit in the Chron today. Yurok, Anitia.
edit to add, the next day, or Friday:
Tim Egan:
On one night, the convention trotted out a pair of gun-toting white suburbanites to scare people into taking up arms against protesters. One night later, a white teenager with a semiautomatic rifle was arrested on a charge of gunning down several protesters.
At the same time, California is burning and the South is underwater. If you play the sucker, you won’t notice that this confederacy of con men has been unable to gaslight the seasonal rage of climate change. Nor would you care.
Also: I still want to speak my “peace” or “piece” about the City’s grafitti abatement applied to Palo Alto Art Protest posters on University Avenue — if the closing of the street is a perk for landlords, they should try to or we should preserve the streets as a common for ideas; why the rush to eliminate the messages which were well done?
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 