Here we go again: Trump supporters are "lonely"

Below is just the latest iteration of a repeated Leftist stratagem: An attempt to find something psychologically wrong with people who disagree with them.

It goes back at least as far as that great example of psychological projection by some Berkeley Marxists led by Theodore Adorno in 1950. The Berkeley authors claimed that conservatives were "authoritarian", despite the glaring fact that the great authoritarian regimes of the time were socialists -- Stalin's Communists, Hitler's National Socialists, China's Maoists etc etc. In that case it was clearly the Marxists who were pychologically warped.

Below is a small excerpt from a long and rambling article that is too long to reproduce in full here -- but I give the link for those who want to read it all. The article marshalls a long series of mostly anecdotal evidence in support of the author's contention that people flock to Trump to alleviate their loneliness.

I don't doubt that there are some people who fit that description. I remember some individuals like that from my studies of the extreme Right back in the '70s. But they were exceptions. The more central members of the extreme Right were in fact highly social and socially skilled. So the examples of lonely people described by the author below were probably accurately described. But the author's implicit claim that they were typical is the problem. It is the old argument from example fallacy. You can "prove" anything that way. She has no evidence that her interviewees represented any group. Only a randomly sampled social survey could show that

And I really do have to laugh at that point. The Left are so consistently crooked and selective when discussing evidence of any kind that I found what I expected when I looked up the survey evidence she does quote. She puts up an impressive-looking graph that is evidently supposed to support what she says. I looked up its source. It appears to come from here or some related site. It proves nothing whatever about how Trump supporters feel It is just about how Americans in general feel. What a hoax!

Leftists are great projectors so you can be sure that it is really Leftists who are lonely and need support from shared political activity. I observed something of that recently when Leftist demonstrators were active near where I often have breakfast. The demonstration was clearly a great social occasion for the central figures. They spent a lot of time chatting to one another and were clearly in a high and friendly mood.

That's just anecdote too but what is food for the goose is food for the gander.


Noreena Hertz

As early as 1992, researchers began to pick up on a correlation between social isolation and votes for the far-right Front National’s Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Across the Atlantic, a 2016 poll by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy revealed Donald Trump voters to be significantly more likely to report having fewer close friends, fewer acquaintances and to spend fewer hours a week with both than supporters of either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Similarly, in my conversations with far-right voters across the globe, isolation was a recurring theme. Eric in Paris told me of the loneliness of urban living, and of the joy he derives from his regular Wednesday Rassemblement National (RN, formerly the Front National) gatherings, of afterwards going out for group drinks, of handing out posters and flyers together. He’d checked out other political parties on the road to Le Pen, the populist left included, but found RN’s community particularly welcoming.

Giorgio in Milan shared how thankful he is to the League led by Matteo Salvini for the dinners and parties he had started going to: “They’re called committees, they’re like get-togethers for people in the party. And they’re very nice, actually. You can meet a lot of people. We sing, and there’s a really strong feeling of tradition.”

Think too about the success of Donald Trump’s election rallies in 2016 and you can see why he has been so desperate to get them going again for his 2020 campaign. The sea of red-clad folk, sporting matching “Make America Great Again” hats, badges and T-shirts — these are communal events that make people feel part of something bigger. They provide a sense of identity, a kind of kinship that many of his supporters find increasingly hard to get elsewhere.

Salvini uses similar tactics in Italy, invoking intimate words such as “mamma”, “papà” and “amici” (friends). It may be a cynical co-opting of family, but it’s successful. So too are the Belgian festivals sponsored by rightwing populist party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). Here, supporters split their time between anti-immigration speeches indoors and an outside festival that includes face-painting and bouncy castles.

But it’s not just their emphasis on nearly tribal experiences that explains why today’s rightwing populists have proven so successful at appealing to those for whom the traditional bonds of the workplace, religious institutions and the wider community have broken down.

Their success also lies in this: an appeal to the feeling of exclusion and marginalisation that many citizens have come to experience in recent years, a sense of being ignored, even abandoned, by those who hold political and economic power. Think of Trump’s rallying cry that “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer” or Marine Le Pen’s oath to serve “a forgotten France, a France abandoned by the self-appointed elite”. It’s an appeal that lands strongest with those who feel newly forgotten and abandoned.

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UK: 'Let us make our own minds up!': Those at high risk from coronavirus should decide for themselves if they shield

By DR ELLIE CANNON:

If we keep distancing, washing our hands, and wearing masks (I'm loath to say 'following the rules', as the rules are getting increasingly impossible to fathom), I am confident there will be no need to panic, let alone lock down the country again.

But for the two million Britons with high-risk health problems who were advised to shield from March to August, I know the figures are more alarming.

A few weeks back, I asked people who fall within this group – who adhered to the strictest of lockdowns, not venturing out of the house at all – to get in touch.

Many of my own patients had been asking if they need to isolate again, if it is too dangerous to return to life as they knew it.

And, of course, some never stopped shielding, despite the official advice saying it was safe to go out again.

Having seen calls from fellow medics for shielding to start again, I wanted to hear how you were feeling and what you thought should happen as we deal with the continuing threat from Covid-19.

I've since received hundreds of emails – and the verdict was, almost universally, that people want to be able to make up their own minds.

One wrote: 'Having type 2 diabetes and heart failure, I shielded till August. But I won't do it again.'

Rather than get another letter instructing them to lock the doors and not venture out for the foreseeable future, most said that they were happier making their own risk assessments.

The 12 weeks in total isolation had been incredibly challenging, was the general consensus – but at least finite.

Now, rather than simply trying to stay alive by avoiding the virus, people were thinking about what made their life worth living.

One wrote: 'The thought of another period of shielding fills me with total dread. 'I have two granddaughters and drop them off at school two days a week. This time is so precious to me and I can't bear the thought of not being able to see them again.'

This sentiment was particularly acute in those with life-shortening illnesses. One, who lives with muscle-wasting motor neurone disease, said: 'I understand the reason behind shielding but I want the chance to enjoy what time I have. I feel risking my health should be my choice.'

Of course, shielding was always voluntary. If vulnerable people had wanted to follow normal lockdown rules – even going back to work when everyone else did – they could have.

And from the letters I received, it seemed many did, taking exercise at safe times of day. 'I was advised to shield but I continued to go out for walks with my wife, usually later in the afternoon or evening to avoid crowds,' explained one man.

'People should take responsibility for their own health. I fully accept that some people may feel that they need to stay indoors but I am not one of them.'

There was also a sizeable group who said they'd keep on shielding regardless of what health chiefs recommended – that they'd carry on until there was a vaccine, or longer if needed. One such reader wrote: 'I've had cancer treatment this year. Prior to this I was active – shopping, walking the dog, looking after my grandchildren.

'Now I go nowhere. My only outings are hospital visits. I don't feel confident with the thought of going out and I can't see this changing any time soon, although I do miss my old life desperately.'

We GPs will keep doing everything we can to support this kind of choice – our huge, collective shift toward remote and digital services means we can keep in touch with patients, even with those who are staying at home. But I worry when reading these emails that tell of patients' crippling fear of the outside world, that something may have gone awry.

Public health campaigns need to get across risk but they shouldn't be terrifying. It's no good saving people from infection, only to send them spiralling into a pit of depression because they're scared to leave the house.

This is a serious problem. Last week, University College London published a study of 5,800 Britons aged 70. Shockingly, a third of those who'd been shielding were suffering symptoms of depression and anxiety – double the number found in non-shielders.

They were far less physically active, which is also increasingly damaging as we age, increasing the risk of some of the UK's biggest killers.

The study author, Professor Andrew Steptoe, pointed out: 'The advice [to shield] saved lives… but it came at a cost.'

More broadly I feel, as this goes on, fewer and fewer people will be told what to do. Instead, they'll be left to inform themselves of the risks and make their minds up about whether they want to take that risk, themselves.

It's like the boy who cried wolf: if you keep piling on rules that, scientifically speaking, are perhaps not necessary, you lose trust. Then, when you ask them to do something that really is vital… well, we all know how that story goes.

We know that, in England, at least eight in ten people don't isolate fully when told to.

Patients have told me they're unable or unwilling to keep small children inside the entire time.

Other countries' governments have said, even when instructed to quarantine, that their children are allowed to go outside to exercise if they stay away from others.

A reasoned, or subjective, approach by the Government could make us more likely to stick to the rules, and therefore could even be safer for everyone.

To doctors calling for a return to mass shielding, I'd suggest a better approach would be a personalised risk assessment. A patient's age, sex, background health and other factors are important.

We do this daily in general practice with heart health and it would be an easy computer program for someone to develop quickly.

It would give people what they need to make an informed choice – rather than putting in place a blanket policy that seems unlikely to work again anyway.

SOURCE

It’s remarkable how much the so-called ideology of “anti-racism” itself sounds racist

At one time, racism was generally defined as hatred or bigotry toward people of other races. Now, to hear the woke tell it, providing children of a different race and nationality a loving adoptive home is the real racism, and just another example of colonizing and stripping people of their humanity.

Given the gutter politics employed by the left in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle in 2018, we shouldn’t be surprised that President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court is being attacked with personal and malicious smears.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, was nominated Sept. 26 by Trump for elevation to the Supreme Court. It didn’t take long for progressive detractors to attack her Catholic faith, of course.

We got a preview of that in her circuit court confirmation hearings back in 2017.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said to Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you”—as though it’s problematic for a person to be a serious Catholic and still serve on the Supreme Court.

But now Barrett’s children are coming under attack, and she is being called a “racist.” She is the mother of seven children, two of them adopted and originally from Haiti.

Haiti has struggled through political turmoil and poverty for much of its history. Despite immense amounts of foreign aid, it’s still the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Starvation is common in Haiti, and many children suffer under deplorable conditions virtually unheard of in the United States. Child slavery continues to be a huge problem as desperate mothers sell their children to survive.

But a white mother adopting two Haitian children is problematic, according to Ibram X. Kendi.

Kendi is the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and the author of “How to Be an Antiracist.”

He’s been elevated by the media, especially in the past year, as a leading intellectual of the “anti-racist” movement. Fairfax County, Virginia, schools in August paid Kendi $20,000 to have him speak for an hour via teleconference to school leaders and administrators.

Kendi said this of Barrett on Twitter:

It should perhaps come as no surprise that Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, agrees with Kendi.

“This is where racial identitarianism gets you,” wrote conservative columnist Rod Dreher for The American Conservative, adding:

The fact that Richard Spencer, the white supremacist who advocates for a white ethnostate, agrees with Ibram Kendi tells you something important about the malign roots of Kendi’s ‘anti-racist’ philosophy.

These guys are two sides of the same coin—except one is a pariah, and the other runs an endowed center at Boston University and has become the most influential public intellectual in American life today.

Kendi’s ideology—not Barrett’s adoptions—is what strips people of their humanity.

As I wrote in a review of Kendi’s book, the anti-racist movement isn’t really about eliminating racism. It’s about redefining it. It’s about making every issue in American life boil down to racial identity. It’s about solving “inequity” through discrimination.

Every issue is to be viewed through the lens of racism or anti-racism, and there’s no room for nuance or even debate.

Kendi’s ideas, like those of white nationalists, stand in opposition to the principles of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” His policy proposals would utterly destroy liberty and self-government under the Constitution, and would put the country under the yoke of absolute tyranny.

Yet, despite the malignancy of those views and their radical conclusions, they are being elevated by corporate titans and media giants, such as Twitter.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Kendi’s center at Boston University to “fuel needed and overdue policy change.”

What sort of “policy change” can we expect from a man who lambastes mixed-race adoption and supports creating an unaccountable federal agency with the power to disenfranchise our representatives (which is what his proposed anti-racist constitutional amendment would do)?

Still, it’s unsurprising that Barrett is facing the most vile and malignant attacks, given the importance of the now vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

While many of the assaults on Barrett’s faith and character will be nothing more than personal mudslinging for political purposes, it’s important to understand the deeper ideology behind the attacks by Kendi and others.

Our most powerful media and cultural institutions have facilitated the rise of a minority of radical left-wing intellectuals to create the moral framework for how Americans are judged in the public square.

That, among other things, is why the culture war has become so intense in 2020, and why it’s unlikely to calm down anytime soon.

It’s not just about a single Supreme Court seat. It’s a conflict over how to define the very nature of America and the future of our society and institutions.

SOURCE

Trump is fighting the culture wars

The US president has exposed the racket of racism

By James Allan, a Canadian who has made aliyah to Australia

Earlier this month the president of Princeton one Christopher Eisgruber, a former constitutional law professor of exquisite progressive lefty sensibilities, published a declaration saying that racism was embedded in the structures of the university he led – Princeton being perhaps, student-for-student, the greatest of the Ivy League American universities and one-time home of Albert Einstein.

Eisgruber’s declaration included the claim that ‘anti-black racism has a visible bearing upon Princeton’s campus make-up’. This is just the sort of thing you expect from the virtue-signalling ‘wokerati’ who infest the upper echelons of virtually all Anglosphere universities (most definitely including here in Australia too). And in Britain, Canada and here that sort of bumper sticker moralising declaration would be allowed to pass uncontested. Certainly no Coalition government would do anything about it. Nor would Boris in Britain.

Not so in the US where President Trump seems to understand that ultimately everything is downstream of the culture and that fighting the culture wars is by far the biggest battle that matters. So in response to the president of Princeton the federal Department of Education said, in effect, ‘if that’s true, then Princeton has been receiving tens of millions of dollars of federal funding in violation of the Race Discrimination Act.’ The department also announced it is opening an investigation of Eisgruber and of Princeton. It has sent a formal records request, which means the president and all his top people will have to produce every single email and communication they’ve sent. Ouch! The Princeton president and other head honchos will likewise have to give evidence under oath. And what the Department of Education will be looking for is what, if any, evidence there was that Princeton relied on to claim the university is racist.

It has also demanded a spreadsheet identifying each person who has, on the ground of race, colour or national origin, been excluded or discriminated against as regards any program or activity at Princeton. Oh, and Princeton must also respond to all written questions regarding the basis for claiming that racism is embedded in the university.

To quote the Bard in Hamlet, Eisgruber has been hoist with his own petard. All sentient beings know that there is no racism on any university campus, at least none against the usual minority groups portrayed as victims. (There may well be some against Asian Americans who require much higher marks to get into top US universities than blacks, but that is patently not what Eisgruber meant as these are university-imposed roadblocks.) But there is no way Eisgruber can now come out and say ‘Nothing to see here folks. Just kidding. A little bit of harmless virtue-signalling on my part.’ Nor can he admit there is real, actual racism. This is just wonderful. And from what I’m hearing behind the scenes some of the (extremely) large Princeton donors are fuming mad at Eisgruber and threatening to withhold the big bucks. The only palatable play Eisgruber has is to try to run out the clock in the hope of a Biden win when he, and everyone else, knows that this will be quickly dropped.

But notice what happened here. Trump adopted the street fighting tactics of the Left and fought back. This is basically unheard of amongst right-of-centre politicians around the rest of the Anglosphere.

Seven years of Coalition governments have not fought back on a single front of the culture wars – not on free speech, not on the universities, not on the ABC, not on appointing a few real conservatives to important posts. Nada, nothing, zippo, zero. Sure, with Trump you’re buying a brawler who’s a vulgarian. But you know what? For a long time now I’ve been ready for anyone who’ll fight back. Give me a brawler any day! Lord knows there is not a scintilla of evidence of any fight in the dog in any Coalition party (federal or state) in this country.

Or take appointments to the top court in the US. No other right-of-centre anglosphere leader would have stood by Brett Kavanaugh, the man Trump nominated for the Supreme Court and who the Left then attempted to destroy based on, well, zero evidence. Or take the Supreme Court vacancy that has just come up with the death of Ruth Ginsburg. All the Vichy Never-Trumpers urged the president to wait to make a nomination. Nope, Trump said he’ll make a nomination and he expects the Senate, controlled by the Republicans, to confirm the nominee before the election. This puts incredible pressure on these Republican senators, most of whom need the Republican base much more than they need a few inner- city Christopher Pyne type voters.

It gets better. Trump opted to nominate Amy Coney Barrett, the person most hated by the left wing of the Democrats because she is solidly interpretively conservative, a practising, devout Catholic (with seven kids, five her own and two adopted from Haiti). There were others on the shortlist less inflammatory to the Left. Trump went for the most inflammatory pick. He did this in direct response to what the Democrats shamelessly did to Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. Now we have two High Court of Australia openings coming up here. In the aftermath of the woeful Love judgment, where Coalition Brandis appointees were way to the left of Labor appointees, who is confident that A-G Porter and Mr Morrison will make two solid, not-inner-Melbourne-progressive type picks? Not me, I can tell you.

Last point worth making. You won’t hear this on the ABC or any mainstream US media. Ginsburg, darling of the Left who insulted candidate Trump before the 2016 election, spent 27 years on the Supreme Court. Each US top justice hires about five top law student law clerks each year. So that’s about 150 clerks hired by Ginsburg over the years. How many blacks did this darling of the Left hire during all that time? If you guessed ‘one’ (and zero in her 13 years as a federal appeals court judge before that), you’re a winner.

Now don’t get me wrong. If Ginsburg hired based solely on what she saw as merit I applaud that. I am stridently opposed to affirmative action. The trouble is that in her judicial decision-making Ginsburg consistently voted to uphold affirmative action type requirements that stopped all sorts of others from doing what she did. One out of 150 would be deemed, by her (not me), to constitute solid evidence of systemic racism.

What’s the word I’m searching for in describing that sort of behaviour? Ah yes, ‘hypocrisy’.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. Email me (John Ray) here.
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