There’s also the issue that after the moon landing we didn’t really improve that much and much of the knowledge faded

Saying immigrants bring ‘bad genes’ echoes Trump’s history — and the and the world’s

With a mishmash of false claims about crime and ridiculous race science, Trump makes explicit the racism at the heart of his politics.

Former president Donald Trump has long espoused a worldview in which genes are the determinative factor in someone’s life. In 1988, for example, he told Oprah Winfrey that success requires luck — and that “you have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”

In a 1990 interview, he said that he would not have followed in his father’s footsteps had he been born into a coal-mining family rather than a rent-mining one.

“The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son,” he said. “If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines.” This, he said, was because he, unlike those poor coal miners, had the “ability to become an entrepreneur, a great athlete, a great writer. You’re either born with it or you’re not.”

Trump has previously raised this theory of genetics on the campaign trail. In 2020, for example, he praised the “good genes” of people in Minnesota. He then offered a warning to those robust-gened Minnesotans: his opponent in his bid for reelection, Joe Biden, planned to “flood your state with an influx of refugees from Somalia.” The transition did not escape the notice of observers.

In an interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday morning, Trump’s suggestion that non-White immigrants are genetically inferior was made explicit.

The comment came as Trump was disparaging his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“How about allowing people to come through an open border,” he said, “13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person and they’re now happily living in the United States?”

This is a false claim — “outrageously false,” in the wording of The Washington Post Fact Checker — based on a misrepresentation of numbers released by the government. That data indicated that there were about 13,000 immigrants who had committed murder but were not in custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many, though, are in custody elsewhere, including at the state level. Nor were they all immigrants who arrived during the Biden administration; many were here under Trump, too.

Unchallenged by Hewitt, Trump continued on the subject.

“You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes,” he said. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” Reinforcing that he was talking about the “bad genes” of immigrants, Trump offered up more false claims based on the ICE data.

Hewitt, rather than contesting Trump’s genetic argument, shifted the conversation with no apparent irony to the federal criminal charges Trump himself faces. These, of course, are not a function of criminal genes, in Trump’s estimation, but instead of the political whims of Biden. (In reality, they are a function of Trump’s actions.)

Trump has a track record of dehumanizing immigrants, repeatedly referring to immigrants who commit crimes as “animals,” for example. He also has a record of disparaging immigrants in sweeping terms, aggregating them by nationality as a rationale for declaring them unwanted.

He does this with other nonimmigrant groups as well. Speaking to Hewitt, for example, Trump appeared to conflate “Jewish Americans” with “Israel” — as he has in the past.

“I think Israel has to do one thing: They have to get smart about Trump,” he said in the interview. “Because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not a reciprocal, as they say. Not reciprocal.”

Here Hewitt did push back: His numbers, in Hewitt’s estimation, were improving among Jewish voters. But Trump replied that they “should be 100 percent.”

This inability to see nuance in cultural and national groups of which he isn’t a member is one thing. His claim that America was being flooded with “bad genes” thanks to new arrivals to the country is another thing entirely. It’s also one that might evoke unsettling historic parallels for some Jewish observers.

Beyond the racism of such claims, it’s also striking how self-serving Trump’s deployment of genetics is. Immigrants to the United States — like the Haitian immigrants now living legally in Ohio who were the target of lies by Trump and his running mate last month — are the ones who escaped the cycle of suffering that Trump referenced with his coal miner example. They are the ones who, in the face of natural disaster and political unrest, pulled up stakes and sought a new, better life. They are, according to Trump’s 1990 calculus, the winners of the same genetic lottery as him. Except that, unlike him, they haven’t been convicted of crimes.

But such inconsistencies aren’t important to Trump because the “genetics” thing isn’t based on evidence or science. It’s just a way for him (and by extension, some of his supporters) to view themselves as superior to the immigrants he’s scapegoating. This has always been the subtext to Trump’s politics. He’s just making it more explicit.

since English isn’t something you’re comfortable reading

I’m having a hard time figuring out what they said that merited this level of hostility. They weren’t even arguing with you!?

Here’s their list, if you’re curious.

I post this not to endorse Jill Stein, but rather because I wanted to see the info for myself so that I could understand what they consider an “elected position”.

These are the criteria they use to decide who counts.

I hope you’ll at least consider putting in some legwork toward leftist praxis, as well. The things you’re complaining about are not going to change if that’s your only plan of action.

As a friend of mine liked to say… “Your passport to complaining is your willingness to do something about it.”

If you’re interested, I can point you to a number of local and national US-based leftist organizations that are working both inside and outside the electoral system. They would love to have more volunteers, or even coworkers (depending on how much free time you have). If you’re already involved with direct leftist action, that’s awesome! Please share them with others when you can, so that people can find ways to work toward effecting real change.

To muddle our analysis by insisting that fascism is already here, or that the Democratic party is fascist, or that liberals are fascists or the midwives of fascism, or that Democratic party voters are voting for fascism, is to disarm ourselves against the fascist threat. It is defeatism to shrug our shoulders saying that both parties are fascist, and a disservice to the many antifascist militants in our own country who have been killed, injured, and locked away in prison while struggling against this extremely serious threat. To assume that January 6th was a hyped-up myth, or to belittle its gravity, is a dereliction of our most solemn duty as Communists and workers in the belly of the beast.

https://www.cpusa.org/article/the-united-states-is-not-a-fascist-country/

What next?

Supposing that were true, what should we do about it?

Be that as it may, I’ll still use my vote strategically to ensure that the slide toward fascism is as slow as possible, personally. I am not an accelerationist. I feel that I can more effectively perform direct actions, agitate, and educate others in service of leftist ideology during that time. Ideals without sound strategy are little more than masturbatory.

You don’t have to have be a democrat to vote against fascists.

I’m not a democrat, but I plan to use my vote strategically, since fascists have a propensity toward murdering their ideological opponents. You can call the DNC fascist all you want, many do, but I’m less inclined to believe that they’ll try to murder leftists vs the US right wing.

Your ideological purity will not save you from a fascist’s bullet.

Never mind, this just isn’t worth my time.

We’re talking about these sorts of Democrats.

I was trying to be funny and use some hyperbole. I guess I failed, as I so often do. Sometimes exaggerations can help to illustrate a point, and I admit I’ve gotten so used to seeing people on here talk about how voting for dems in 2024 is foolish if you’re a leftist that I just automatically lumped you in with them. I apologize for that.

I don’t consider myself a particularly virtuous person, if we go by the dictionary definition. I didn’t intend to claim that my actions made me virtuous. The subjective nature of morality would make that rather pointless, anyhow. My discussion of virtue signaling in this case was more about acknowledging that on some level most people engage in performative acts meant to ingratiate themselves to their preferred social group.

I’ve got nothing to prove here, and I think I’ve made my point as much as I can before we both just start repeating ourselves; That strategy extends beyond the voting booth. I’m going to continue to do what I can in public digital spaces to keep people excited to vote and prevent a second Trump presidency, even if that means I have to tone down my online critique of democrats for a few months. I will continue to critique them in spaces where I can be sure that said critique doesn’t chill voter turnout, though.

I’ve had a good time discussing this stuff with you, thank you for the interesting conversation, and sorry if I came off as a jerk! I’m going to try to get off of social media for the night, but I’ll probably be on again tomorrow or later in the week if you want to continue to discuss/debate how online discourse can shape elections!

I hope you get a chance to see BR sometime soon, too! Always a pleasure to find another fan online!

We’ll have to agree to disagree. In this instance I think anti-dem chatter on lemmy is more likely to chill youth turnout than it is to push the Democratic party leftward. I would prefer you didn’t assume me to be a liberal, if that was meant to be an insinuation. We leftists do an awful lot of fighting and virtue signaling within our in-group and I am now and have been guilty of it myself… plenty.

For what it’s worth, my vote in US “democracy” is and always has been a function of strategy. My life, on the other hand, is and has been dedicated to radicalizing myself and as many people as possible through dialectic, praxis, and building / maintaining / participating in alternative living systems within the US. You can dig into my post history if you’re curious. I don’t want to virtue signal at you.

Fantastic song! I really enjoyed Age Of Unreason as a whole.

Unfortunately, they’ve cancelled all dates for this current tour, citing “unforeseen family circumstances.” I’m really hoping that this isn’t something band-ending. I’ve been afraid of them calling it quits for years now, and I want to see them live again. I’ve taken every opportunity (when I had the financial ability). That’s only been 2004 and 2016 (with Against Me!, great show), plus seeing Greg do his solo thing in 2017 when he toured for the release of Millport.

https://youtu.be/pi1VkYNMafY?t=453

No one. I just thought it was a fun story. If you’d like I can add a part where the left-hand-raiser fearmongers to the abstainers about how awful it is to be kicked in the genitals, though.

Ranting about the awfulness of the democratic party during a contentious election cycle, on a post about third party options, and with so much on the line for marginalized folx… It just seems like a poor strategy to me. The work is in the streets, not in virtue signaling your leftist moral superiority on Lemmy. For now I’m choosing to feign unity and enthusiasm until such time as I can drop the facade and continue with whatever praxis I can muster.

What do I know, though. I definitely don’t have The Answer.

“Okay kids, today we’re going to take a vote! Raise your left hand if you want everyone to be kicked in the genitals. Raise your right hand if you’d like everyone to be irreversibly sterilized! You can also choose to abstain from voting by not raising either hand.”

Two out of the five kids present raise their right hand. One out of the five kids present raises their left hand. Two of the kids abstain.

As the children are being taken to the sterilization room the kid who raised their left hand turns to the two kids who abstained and asks “Why didn’t you vote!? Now we’re all going to be sterilized!”

One of the two replies, “Well neither of us wanted to be kicked in the genitals!”

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-afd-on-tiktok-the-political-battle-for-the-youth/a-68690661

Everything old is new again!

That doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about strawmen to dispute it.