Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Conal Tuohy,
Of course Trump is one of the wealthy elite himself, but there’s a difference in perception which is based on a real difference. Clinton is 100% an ‘establishment’ candidate in a way that Trump absolutely is not. She has been a senator for donkey’s years; a First Lady; a Secretary of State,
Clinton was a senator for two two terms, winning re-election with a big swing and taking 67% of the vote. She was Secretary of State for one term.
and she has long been seen to be in the pockets of Wall St
Since … ooooh, last year, when Bernie Sanders made it a campaign issue. There’s something odd and ahistorical about the the way the narrative has been completely rewritten. I had someone try and tell me she’d ditch Obamacare – they were quite surprised to learn that she’d been behind the first bid for healthcare reform as First Lady.
She’s a flawed candidate and a terrible campaigner, but her eight years in elected office were actually pretty successful. She’d have been New York senator for ever had she so chosen.
giving secret speeches for money and defending them from taking all the blame for the crash. Her financial wealth must be a fraction of Trump’s, but she acquired it by leveraging her political connections.
Do you ever wonder why she cops that out of all proportion to all the other former officeholders with speaking agencies – even Bill, who’s taken many more banking industry gigs than she has?
It’s the same mechanism behind Brexit.
It is in the sense that it’s the rejection of institutions. It is worthwhile thinking about why we have those institutions.
I guess the other thing to account for is the role of race. There have been polls this year that had black voter support for Trump at zero. And at his worst levels, after the DNC, he was winning in just one demographic: white men.
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New NBC/WSJ poll finds Clinton +7 nationally among likely voters.
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Up Front: I Never Been ta Borstal, in reply to Mark Graham,
Violence in men by women is treated as a joke. It’s not.
More than a decade ago, we got quite involved as a family in the relationship breakup of friends where he had been accused of violence and we knew – we’d even seen it – that the abuse ran the other way. There were complicating factors (drugs, on both sides).
Our house was the neutral ground for Barnardo’s-monitored visits with his children. We loaned him money to fund a review of a frankly disgraceful social worker's report (she didn't simply bother to follow up on anything he'd said, including trespass orders taken out by a school, which could have been verified in five minutes). I testified in Family Court and was accused of being a drug dealer, among other things, but the comments (“sincere and credible”) in the judge’s decision were gratifying. It went okay in the end.
Let me be clear: everything says that the vast majority of the abuse runs the other way. That’s just not in doubt. But Fiona and I did have a few conversations afterwards about the fact that our social circle wouldn’t have tolerated male-on-female abuse the way it was in this case.
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Thanks Steven. I know you've given us glimpses of your experience over the years and I'm grateful that you've chosen to share it here.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Emma Hart,
That's bracing.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Nik Dirga,
I agree with Joe, it’s depressing now being an American in NZ and trying to have to explain Trump and defend the many millions of Americans who deplore him and everything he stands for.
Oh, I know. All the Americans I actually know are like you guys. And I’m really aware of how American brilliance has improved my life and American popular culture has helped me define myself.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Kumara Republic,
For the same reasons, Bernie Sanders rode the same wave for those of a more reality-based persuasion
Some of the local Bernie fans I've interacted with are really not reality-based at all. The time I tried to point out to a couple of them that their ammunition-shortage conspiracy theory was just a lightly-adapted version of a long-running right-wing conspiracy theory was ... memorable.
The alt-left and the alt-right have been on the same page quite a lot lately.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Conal Tuohy,
Meanwhile the US ruling elite have been bailed out, given ‘get out of jail free’ cards, and paid themselves handsome bonuses. HRC is clearly one of them.
Not nearly as much as Trump is. As the NYT reported this week, his New work property business is built on nearly a billion dollars in subsidies and tax favours.
His foundation looks like a money-laundering operation. It doesn't even have a rating from CharityWatch, while the Clinton Foundation gets an "A" and has has played the principal role in nearly 11 million people getting access to HIV/AIDS medication. It has helped save lives on an extraordinary scale.
They pay her wads of cash for ‘speaking fees’
Goldman Sachs paid her the fee set by her speaking agency. Her fee is set high, but only compared with other women. It's crazy money, but that's what the market is. And she has so far given $17.6 million of her fees to charity. Trump, by comparison, gave other people's money on the pretence that it was his to give.
and she tells them what they want to hear, and will do their bidding as president.
Well, not if she keeps to her campaign platform. The Trump Republican platform, to be fair, does call for a return of the Glass-Steagal Act, but that's something that Trump has never spoken about. Not once.
This is the fundamental reason for Trump’s popularity, I think, rather than a sudden rise in ignorance and bigotry in the US population.
It is, in the sense that people have a completely fantastical idea of what's actually going on. The bigotry just reels them in.
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Because at the moment in our free education system we’ve got a situation where schools are having to fundraise in order to top up the special education funding they get from the Ministry of Education.
Or, as they do at the school where my friend teaches, have to explain to other parents why most of the money they raises at the annual fundraiser goes into resourcing the education of one or two autistic kids.
We had our battles when our boys were at school – and were badly let down by the system in the younger one's case – but things seem so much worse now. Had we not been granted ORRS funding (on appeal) for the older boy he would not be who he is now. I'm acutely aware that would never happen today.
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Access: The Paralympics and visibility, in reply to Hilary Stace,
But there are a couple of things that worry me about the Paralympics. A few years ago the Hallberg Trust decided to spot and nurture potential Paralympians. That has been a successful strategy, but it meant the Hallberg Trust no longer funded things like swimming lessons for young autistic or Down Syndrome kids. Many of them can access Special Olympics but not until they are older. SO still has a vision of including everyone and as a consequence the SO barely gets a mention in the media. Not much elite sporting stuff.
It’s deeply unfortunate that it’s a zero-sum game in that way. I feel good that I spent a lot of time when our boys were young getting them out on the street or round to the park to play with balls and frisbees. That helped ease the fact of them being (sometimes amusingly) unsuited to team sport.
The other aspect is disability as ‘inspiration porn’. Much media portrayal of Paralympians internationally has been as initially tragic, and then heroic when they win medals.
John Campbell, bless his heart, tipped over the line a bit in one interview with Sophie Pascoe. No one should deny the remarkable achievements of our Paralympians, but I’m wary of inspirational narratives about them overcoming their disabilities to excel.
As I wrote on Facebook that day:
But it’s useful to remember that, in general, people with disability have as much to do with Paralympians as any of us do with Olympians. And maybe sometimes the rest of us could ease up on the inspirational thing a bit. Because many – most – people with disability don’t have all that much use for inspirational role models and the overcoming narrative. They really just want the opportunity for a good life. A life where they’re included. An ordinary life, even.
But Paul’s making a different point in his post, really – a more nuanced point about visibility and the meanings of accessibility.
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