the bastards' last stand

There are numerous iterations of a social media meme of how people present on different social media platforms. This, in a nutshell: I was reminded of how true this is after a response to my last post. A friend on Facebook questioned my description of Hillary's 2008 campaign as unapologetically white supremacist, which is understandable because that's not commonly how her campaign is depicted especially after her invocation of intersectionality and overt mention of institutional racism in her 2016 campaign. It can also come off as needlessly incendiary and definitely combative, which is where the meme comes in: this is probably a bit more accurate. I have spent a fair amount of time discussing electoral politics with centrists I encounter on Twitter. I initially said her campaign had racist undertones, matching the description of Ryan Cooper in The Week , (which I shared with my friend along with this Michelle Alexander piece ) that changed over time, admittedly

Another article , based on another study of the election has prompted people to declare once again that now there's definitive proof that Trump is president because of racism. The study looks at people who switched party voting affiliation, the article focuses specifically on Obama to Trump voters, or ~6% of voters, to draw its conclusions. I'm less interested in exploring the study and article, others have done that. I'm interested in the function they serve in the political discourse to essentially give cover to political elites. Matt Stoller points to this in his review of the article: Liberals love hearing that Trump won solely because of racism, which is an immutable unlearnable object of sin. This absolves them of any need to be introspective about the catastrophic failure of Democratic policy or the need to consider how America is part of global trends. — Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) October 21, 2018 @eshalegal looked at the methodology of the study and f

Recently Daniel Mitchell, former Cato Institute fellow, and Nathan Robinson, editor in chief of Current Affairs  came together to debate the merits of capitalism and socialism. Considering the recent UN report on climate change  one position seems pretty indefensible. Read about it   or watch it below. pt 1 pt 2 pt 3

Sometimes media consumption consists of series of YouTube video challenges: Fail Videos and important cultural touchstones

I'm fascinated by the constant attempts to revise recent history by stripping context while speaking of events in discrete, simplistic, almost dichotomous terms. The autopsies of Trump's election are a great example of this. There has been a back and forth over whether his win is the result of racism or economic anxiety as if either limited answer is sufficient to contain the full context-- the history of the candidates, voting trends, insecurity of our electoral system, voter disenfranchisement, voter apathy, etc. One could look solely at the people who voted for Trump, their racial attitudes, their economic situations, ask each individually why they voted for him and still not have a sufficient explanation for his win. It doesn't speak to why people didn't vote for HRC or why so many eligible voters didn't vote at all. Not to put too fine a point on it but before declaring Trump's win the result of racism one must first recognize that both candidates empl