A Left Defence of Halloween

This is fun, as Miéville usually is.

Choice

The Clinton campaign actively abetted Trump at every stage of the primaries, even though it meant unleashing dangerous reactionary forces across the country, because he was the enemy they wanted. Whether he knows it or not, his function was to be so vulgar that an impotent public would unite around Clinton, to make America congratulate itself on the morning after Election Day for not having chosen the worst candidate imaginable. He’s there to make it look like everything is at stake, when the worst has already happened, and nothing is at stake whatsoever.

Sam Kriss again, delivering another kicking to lesser-evilism, this time via a skewering of the empty pseudo-activism of hashtag merchandising. You should read the whole thing, if only to enjoy his description of Marco Rubio as "the depthless hologram that still manages to leave a trail of slime in its wake" - well, I guess you just did, but reading the whole thing would allow you to enjoy it in context.

Judgment

“Our first priority on every episode like that was to reverse-engineer the show to make it look like his judgment had some basis in reality. Sometimes it would be very hard to do, because the person he chose did nothing. We had to figure out how to edit the show to make it work, to show the people he chose to fire as looking bad — even if they had done a great job.”

Reality television, folks.

Civility

Just to be clear, this demonstrates one of two things about mainsteam Democratic Party supporters:

Despite months of hysterical rhetoric, they never genuinely believed Dogtrumpet* is a fascist.

or

If fascism ever comes to America, they'll roll over for it like a spaniel wanting its tummy rubbed.

(*Because he's too stupid to dogwhistle like his GOP colleagues. And a few Dems, for that matter.)

Character

Sarah Smarsh in The Guardian:

Based on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and available data, it appears that most of his voters this November will be people who are getting by well enough but who think of themselves as victims.

One thing the media misses is that a great portion of the white working class would align with any sense before victimhood. Right now they are clocking in and out of work, sorting their grocery coupons, raising their children to respect others, and avoiding political news coverage.

...

To be sure, one discouraging distillation – the caricature of the hate-spewing white male Trump voter with grease on his jeans – is a real person of sorts. There were one or two in my town: the good ol’ boy who menaces those with less power than himself – running people of color out of town with the threat of violence, denigrating women, shooting BB guns at stray cats for fun. They are who Trump would be if he’d been born where I was.

Media fascination with the hateful white Trump voter fuels the theory, now in fashion, that bigotry is the only explanation for supporting him. Certainly, financial struggle does not predict a soft spot for Trump, as cash-strapped people of color – who face the threat of his racism and xenophobia, and who resoundingly reject him, by all available measures – can attest. However, one imagines that elite white liberals who maintain an air of ethical grandness this election season would have a harder time thinking globally about trade and immigration if it were their factory job that was lost and their community that was decimated.

Affluent analysts who oppose Trump, though, have a way of taking a systemic view when examining social woes but viewing their place on the political continuum as a triumph of individual character. Most of them presumably inherited their political bent, just like most of those in “red” America did. If you were handed liberalism, give yourself no pats on the back for your vote against Trump.

Spare, too, the condescending argument that disaffected Democrats who joined Republican ranks in recent decades are “voting against their own best interests,” undemocratic in its implication that a large swath of America isn’t mentally fit to cast a ballot.

Whoever remains on Trump’s side as stories concerning his treatment of women, racism and other dangers continue to unfurl gets no pass from me for any reason. They are capable of voting, and they own their decisions. Let’s be aware of our class biases, though, as we discern who “they” are.

I mention in passing this article cites a Gallup poll which, among other points, notes that “[p]eople living in zip codes with greater exposure to capital income sources rather than wage and salary income are less likely to support Trump”, which counts, a bit, against my theory that Trump supporters are more likely to be petit bourgeois than working class.