Heaven for news junkies
Has there ever been a better time for consumers of news? In a single day, Trump will do three or four different things that are more bizarre or more appalling that Obama on his worst day in office:
1. I’ve argued for quite some time that Trump’s a banana republic-type leader, but now he doesn’t even seem to be hiding that fact. The President now describes convicted felons as “good people”, but only when they don’t cooperate with law enforcement. If they do cooperate with authorities, then they are bad people. The “no snitching” movement has moved from neighborhoods dominated by criminal gangs all the way to the White House.
2. Trump unleashes a non-stop torrent of insults at his Attorney General, but they refuses to fire him.
3. Trump campaigns on the idea that the US should not focus on namby-pamby issues such as human rights, rather we should focus on Making America Great Again, and cozy up to tyrants like Putin. Then Trump suddenly tells the Secretary of State to look into doing something about the treatment of South African farmers. Huh? Of all the hundreds of oppressed groups around the world, why would Trump suddenly care about South African farmers? After all, most of the South African farmers than are being murdered are black, and he’s never shown the slightest interest in the welfare of blacks. The Economist has a theory:
On August 23rd, after watching a Fox News segment, President Donald Trump tweeted about illegal “farm seizures”, which the ANC opposes, and the “large scale killing” of farmers, by which he presumably does not mean the black farm workers most likely to be victims of rural crime.
I wonder where the Economist got that idea?
[S]tories about the dastardly plot against white farmers (which, again, doesn’t actually exist) have shown up on alt-right, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi websites including AltRight.com (which is run by white nationalist Richard Spencer), VDare, American Renaissance, and Stormfront.
Lauren Southern with the European alt-right group Identity Evropa made a documentaryabout the subject. An alt-right podcast called White Rabbit Radio has an episode about it. So does American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor’s podcast. It’s also a hot topic on the pro-Trump Reddit forum r/TheDonald.
But the conspiracy theory quickly moved from the darker corners of the internet into the slightly-more-mainstream-but-still-pretty-seedy corners of the internet: As Wilson notes, Ann Coulter tweeted in June 2017 that the “only real refugees” are “White South African farmers facing genocide.” Breitbart has covered it extensively, as has the Russian government propaganda outlet RT. And, of course, so has Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.
Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that it would make its way to Trump sooner or later.
4. As if that’s not enough, yesterday we also discover that Trump’s friend Pecker (how do CNN anchors keep a straight face when reading the news?) has a safe at the National Enquirer full of stories they bought and then refused to publish in order to protect Trump. An actual, physical safe.
The crazy news stories are now coming so fast they pile up on each other, reducing the impact. Like Venezuelans under Chavez, we are becoming numb to the insanity.
Admittedly these examples are a hodgepodge. The 2nd and 4th examples are not important, merely weird. The first example shows that Trump’s got the ethics of a third world dictator, or a Mafia don. And the third story shows he’s a white nationalist, but we have dozens of other reasons to already believe that. In any case, following the news has become vastly more interesting than under Obama. And in politics, “interesting” generally does not end well.
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24. August 2018 at 15:51
Ya alt-right outlets like Newsweek. Of course they put their dishonest spin on it.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/2018/06/29/south-africa-cover-story-white-farmers-black-population-economic-collapse-985088.html%3famp=1
24. August 2018 at 16:30
“President Donald Trump tweeted about illegal “farm seizures”, which the ANC opposes”
Haha, this is cute, yes the ANC opposes “illegal” farm seizures, their solution is to make them legal by changing the constitution and by buying them “legally” for 10% of their value.
24. August 2018 at 16:38
“tyrants like Putin”
Lie. Putin is much less of a tyrant than Justice Kennedy or John McCain is.
If you were being spuriously investigated, Sumner, you’d do exactly the same thing.
Lie. Only a third are Black.
The Economist is not a reliable source. Unlike RT, which is simply a low-quality news outlet with diverse perspectives, it is genuinely a propaganda outlet.
He has verbally, and has acted against the welfare of Blacks much less than against that of Russians and Iranians.
Sitting on stories is far from unheard of in the American fake news.
Lie. Did you not hear him complain about the plight of the Bengali Muslims in Burma just recently?
Sumner, your political analysis is always godawful. You should stick to economic analysis.
24. August 2018 at 16:57
I love the TDS posts. Keep them coming.
24. August 2018 at 18:46
I see in Sumnerland that Trump has been demoted from a Hitler to a Banana-Republic tinpot or even Mafia don.
But given the Omarosa Affair or the Sessions tweet-storm, I think the “TV reality-show host” is the best comparison for Trump.
And remember: President Bush Jr. got the US into two interminable, counterproductive, and fantastically expensive wars.
Trump, like Clinton appears to want to avoid such debacles.
Bush Jr. will be remembered for his costly failed wars of occupation. That is his signature policy.
Trump might be remembered for corporate tax cuts, his lone accomplishment to date (although the GOP Congress might’ve passed the tax cuts regardless of who was president).
Trump is the vulgarian, a carnival-barker outside his show.
Bush Jr. wore war military costumes.
Of the pair, who can say Trump is worse?
24. August 2018 at 19:17
“Exclusive: Ex-Trump World Tower doorman releases ‘catch-and-kill’ contract about alleged Trump affair”
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/24/politics/trump-tower-doorman-contract-ami/index.html?__twitter_impression=true
25. August 2018 at 07:55
My favourite part is when prof Sumner fancies himself some sort of iconoclastic thinker.
When, as we can plainly see above, he is 100% on board with the official agenda.
Just another mouthpiece for the Cathedral.
Which doesn’t even exist.
The mainstream media are all running the same stories and the same viewpoints ?
Just a coincidence.
25. August 2018 at 08:03
And the part which makes me feel literal, physical disgust is how this poor excuse for a human being (yes Scotty, that’s you) just handwaves away the atrocity currently going on in South Africa.
Do you honestly think you’ll always be safe in your segregated community ?
Do you think there will always be thick walls between you and those who would prey on you ?
Or are you so autistic you can’t even fathom their existence ?
25. August 2018 at 08:17
Ben, He’s got a LOT of similarities to Hitler. Both are right wing nationalists who frequently engage in the big lie and demonize minorities and foreigners.
As far as all of those commenters who want to talk about the plight of white people in distant countries, that’s not what this post is about.
25. August 2018 at 10:51
We must not talk about the white genocide currently ongoing in South Africa
Equally, we must not talk about the Left going all-out with population replacement in North America and Western Europe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/magazine/naomi-osakas-breakthrough-game.html
Now they’re trying to force it on Japan, too.
But no, we must not mention any of these things.
What’s important is that one must NOT care about one’s own people.
We must all be atomized cogs.
For that is what capitalism requires.
25. August 2018 at 16:59
Scott, the video is only one minute long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ARDJ3X-z0 Julius Malema the South African leader of EFF and the Land grab movement “we are not calling for the genocide of whites, at least for now, but if things keep going as they are now i can’t guarantee we wont in the future”
Yet South Africa isn’t discriminating against whites and Trump has similar traits to Hitler? every reference South Africans make about the “land reform” is taking lands from Whites. they don’t go to parliament and mention how they will take land from blacks also. If discrimination is not the reason, then why wouldn’t they say blacks as well? It’s very Dishonest to say Racism doesn’t exist in South Africa against whites in this situation, yet saying Trump is similar to Hitler for being against illegal Immigration without any mention of a particular Race, everyone from Illegal africans, hispanics and even a filipino and cambodians have been deported under the Trump Administration.
25. August 2018 at 19:29
@ssumner
Yes; an Israeli puppet has “got a LOT of similarities to Hitler”. One thing you have to realize about Hitler is that unlike many, he took on the Jews.
25. August 2018 at 20:19
Scott:
I don’t know if anybody is still reading in this post, which is old by blog standards.
I find Trump’s dog-whistling on race or ethnicity offensive. Leaders should always err on the side of defusing tensions, not exacerbating tensions. See Iraq.
But then, we have feminists writing columns for the New York Times that is okay to hate men, and many women who publicly declared that they were voting for Hillary as she was a woman. This was very believable as Hillary had no decipherable policy positions on anything. Minority groups routinely support like candidates for office.
If identity politics rules, then we cannot be surprised that identity politics rules.
Moreover, by importing cheap labor and snubbing the rule of law—even sometimes openly and contemptuously dismissing rule of law—the upper classes have done as much to promote xenophobia as anybody. It is easy to embrace cheap illegal labor if one is a skilled white-collar professional.
To this day, construction industry leaders in Texas complain about higher wages and say they need “unauthorized labor.”
Egads, I regard higher wages as a positive and the solution to “labor shortages.”
As for Trump=Hitler comparisons, perhaps they cheapen the sentiment.
If A=B, then B=A.
Then Hitler=Trump. Then Hitler was not that bad after all, just another unsavory and foul political character.
Trump is not even a Xi or Putin, and they are bad enough.
26. August 2018 at 11:00
LOL at people who thought I was defending the South African government. Do they not know the underlying cause of the Zimbabwe hyperinflation?
26. August 2018 at 18:57
@E Harding:
Hitler “took on” the Jews? Oh man you’re going to Hell for sure.
I guess that’s what the blacks in S. Africa are doing, “taking on” the rich whites who used to treat them like quasi-slaves.
The Burmese are “taking on” the Rohingya.
The Hutus “took on” the Tutsis
The Serbs “took on” the Bosnians
Hell the Americans “took on” the Native Americans and did a great job!
LOL you are a pig.
26. August 2018 at 22:27
@msgkings
Read what I said in context. I was criticizing Sumner’s claim Trump has “got a LOT of similarities to Hitler”. If Trump was taking on the Jews in any way whatsoever, I could grant Sumner some slack about this idiocy. But he’s not, so I don’t. Obviously Hitler’s moves against the Jews went beyond mere “taking them on”. That should be blindingly obvious.
27. August 2018 at 04:41
Trump campaigns on the idea that the US should not focus on namby-pamby issues such as human rights, rather we should focus on Making America Great Again, and cozy up to tyrants like Putin.
umm….the opposite actually. Trump has put heavy sanctions on Turkey and sanctions on Russia.
27. August 2018 at 07:15
@E. Harding: there’s plenty blindingly obvious about you, but curiously you don’t seem to have any idea what that is.
27. August 2018 at 09:09
@grey enlightenment
Sumner said “campaigns on”, so I’m excusing that.
27. August 2018 at 09:18
@ssumner: Hear that? E. Harding is excusing you LOL.
28. August 2018 at 05:48
Recently Sumner said he writes these posts to rub it in to the Trumpistas until they admit that they are wrong. Skimming the comments, he seems to have almost the opposite effect.
Sumner quotes Vox bashing “propaganda” and demagoguery from the white-identity side, Vox is obviously propaganda and demagoguery from the opposing side. Vox is the home of Sarah Jeong.
Even the left-leaning Tyler Cowen affiliated with this site, expressed a view more closely aligned with Trump than with Vox on this: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/03/south-africa-update.html
I don’t see Sumner, Tyler Cowen, or Vox making big noise about the horrible violence seen in many African and South+Central American nations. I don’t think they don’t care, but there isn’t a clear answer or policy initiative for that problem. It’s easy and worthwhile to criticize blatant institutional racism like South African racial land reform or working with the Guptas to deliberately incite racial tensions.
29. August 2018 at 09:26
You’re getting to be quite a humorist Scott. Great post. I can only imagine the hornets’ nest of Trumpist rebuttals in the comments that I’m certainly not going to read.