I’m troubled by this; I’m not sure a newspaper piece where you go out and talk to six or eight people in a restaurant can really plumb the soul of a region well enough to judge them that way. We’ve gone from a majority-farming nation to a majority other-stuff one in a dizzyingly short amount of time. It’s reasonable for the ones left to feel threatened, left behind, disparaged. And yet they raise our food. I was reasonably successful as a writer and editor, 30 years ago, and then technological change upended the industry and life got a hell of a lot harder. I have some empathy for those people. I wish they hadn’t voted for Trump, and resent their lack of civic responsibility. But wishing they would die out, I’m not there yet. Many are dysfunctional and need help. Others aren’t. I’ve met a lot of them over the years. They understand interdependence in a way city people don’t, always. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the season. Just saying.
This McGurk fascist is just another American war criminal. This is the first good thing Trump has done, maybe his entire life: pulling the USA Nazis out of Syria and Afghanistan, as starters. Serves this b.s. coalition right for confusion and their overwhelming immigration problem they created for themselves. The immigration problem is the same cause as the USA’s coming Central American refugees: installing fascist dictators in these countries by the USA and causing overwhelming tragedy and grief for most peasants and middle classes there too.
Well. Gosh. Nothing new to see here.
Unfortunately, the bar for what Trump does NOT know is embarrassingly low.
Actually, he does know who McGurk is because Erdogan has been trying to get him fired for over a year now. Just another lie.
And I just want to point out, as many have already done, that insinuating something is wrong with the guy simply because he was appointed by Obama is a flawed and unacceptable premise.
To some extent, I think there is a fair point here, and yet even their sense of independence is reliant on others. Very few people, even in rural areas, can really supply all of their own needs, and at the very least they rely on the idea that their neighbors will act in responsible ways. (And for many people, the idea that they are really independent is mostly an ego-feeding fantasy.) I think much of the problem becomes admitting the inter-dependency in the open, and in having laws and regulations that force the idea into law. No one, it seems, likes to be told to do something, even if it is something they agree is a good thing to do and might have done anyway. If I may be forgiven a literary reference, it is a political version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Imp of the Perverse.”
Edit: I think I did not phrase my reply quite as directly as I should have. I think they see “interdependent” in the same way they view the United States of America, with individual states being essentially autonomous and sovereign, except perhaps for a few responsibilities that they are willing to cede to the Federal government, such as national defense. In other words, they are like a bad manager at work, willing to share responsibility but not power or credit for things that go well.
Looks like you read “interdependence” as “independence.” What I mean is they help each other because they understand you can’t survive if you don’t.
…and here we have once again Donnie INSISTING DAMMIT that he does not KNOW ‘these people’ and ‘NEVER did he hear the criticism of his policies’ or lack thereof.
Yeah it’s nothing a little re-education in a nice re-education camp can’t cure.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
I don’t think they would admit interdependence, as the word actually implies, perhaps even on a very minor scale. To the degree that they might use the word, it would be in a sense that feeds their claims of independence. (For example, a business needs customers, but it is the business that is strong and the customer is a kind of dependent. The customer is to be valued only to the extent that the business owner chooses in his or her largess, and never to cause undue sacrifice of profits.) Their primary sacred unit is the individual, and their most hated opponent is society. (This is why the very word “socialism,” even when it is used inappropriately, mobilizes them into fits of terror.) Their idea of the individual, of course, cannot actually exist without the society they despise (which is why Libertarianism is at its very core an utter fraud). It reminds me a bit of some people I knew in college who were happy to accept my assistance on various matters, and secretly resentful that I was able and willing to provide it without any demands for personal gain.
Don the Con probably has met him dozens of times.
I worked in the least densely populated county this side of Alaska for a few now distant years and found the people to be quite helpful. Flat tire 40 miles back in the woods? First person to come by stopped and asked if I was having some trouble, and stayed to get me going again. Stuck in the ditch after rain turned the adobe clay road into snot? All the locals had 4X4 pickups and tow chains. At the same time they were anti-government as a way to express independence. Never mind the grazing on federal lands and logging sales. I was accepted there even with my democratic viewpoint. The conservative viewpoint they still have strikes me as part of the environment the community generates. The community has ways of enforcing behavior. Cross one person and you have crossed them all. Once the help of the community is lost, life there gets hard.
Perhaps because they knew you were seriously outnumbered, and thus not really a threat.
Brett McGurk, who I do not know…
This is another one of Trump’s tells, he claims not to know people who work for him, well for us. OTOH look at what nice things he’s said about people hired, and then had someone else fire.
Yeah. An amusing college kid.
Well, for the record, there are lots of accounts here, both in the responses to the article as well as from commentors. I too was a reasonably successful writer and editor for over 25 years, and, yes, things have gotten a lot harder (for example, the cost of “per word” payment has plummeted, as you undoubtedly know). I too have empathy for many of these people, but unfortunately, I think the percentage who have hardened and grown hateful has grown, thanks to Fox News among other scourges. Plus, city life is, for MANY people, no great shakes indeed and often a necessary evil. There are many in the piece who lament the turn of events. Interesting reading.
Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has resigned in protest over President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.
“Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015.”
Because he takes fighting terrorism so seriously, Trump doesn’t know the guy who’s fighting terrorism … because, Obama appointed him, and he can’t know anything or anyone having to do with Obama, and may not have known the anti-ISIS coalition even exists.
“When I became President, ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated."
Because of McGurk and others like him who take fighting terrorism seriously … unlike you.
Fucking moron.
Hey dotard, with your claim that ISIS is now defeated how will you justify the Muslim Ban? Wasn’t that all about keeping the “terrorists” out?
What Trump doesn’t realize as he is trying to out do Nixon is that most of Nixon’s appointees are dead or retired, and those still alive don’t want to revisit that past.
So which pool of people does Trump have to go to? He hates the Bushies, he won’t touch an Obama person, and only really wants people he knows. So he susses out his own kind, cons and grifters. People with little to no experience in governing.
Good point about FOX propagandizing some of them.
Nothing new here. We’ve seen this schtick before.
