Glenn Beck: Hey, If You Opposed Obama But Support Trump, You're a Racist

Nuanced.

You can always count on your opponents to play the racism card on you, eventually.

The hysterics continue to grow in hysteria -- possibly partly because they're very shocked they're not as important as influencers as they thought they were.

Beck’s comments came as part of a discussion of Trump’s rally in Texas yesterday before a sold-out crowd of 20,000. Beck stated, "The media's making this look like [Trump’s supporters are] Tea Party people. I don't think these are Tea Party people who are following him. Some of them may be, but I think these -- I mean, you can't -- if you were a Tea Party person, then you were lying. You were lying. It was about Barack Obama being black. It was about him being a Democrat, because this guy is offering you many of the same things, as shallow as the same way. If you said to me that it bothered you about his past, you said to me, 'Hey, what about his relationship with Jeremiah Wright? What about what he’s done here, here, and here?' You’re not bothered by this guy, and it’s exactly the same thing."

There are other possible explanations, of course, but rodeo clowns gonna rodeo clown.

[Political and economic] institutions have been sluggish to respond to [discontent about immigration] because two (sometimes overlapping) factions of our political and economic elite strongly support high levels of immigration -- or at least oppose doing very much to stop it.

One of the factions -- the business class and its neoliberal champions in government, think tanks, and NGOs -- believes in a free-flowing international labor market that treats borders as superfluous.

The other faction -- liberal lawyers, activists, intellectuals, journalists, academics, members of the clergy, and (once again) NGO staffers -- has a deep-seated moral suspicion of nations and political boundaries in general. Why should an American count for more than a Mexican who crosses the border into the United States? Shouldn't a refugee fleeing violence in North Africa enjoy full political rights upon setting foot in the European Union? Don't all human beings deserve to be treated equally under the law? Isn't opposition to such equality an example of bald-faced racism?

Both of these factions make deeply anti-political assumptions, denying the legitimacy of particularistic [that is, nationalistic rather than universalistic] affiliations and dismissing the intuition that citizenship in a particular political community is a distinction that should not be open to all comers. The first faction denies these fundamentally political distinctions in the name of economic universalism; the second denies them in the name of moral universalism....

The combination of a porous border and abundant jobs is what keeps attracting immigrants to risk crossing into the United States. Then once they're here, the moralists deny the legitimacy of finding and deporting them. That creates something close to an open-border policy.

A majority of American citizens may support a generally liberal immigration policy -- I certainly do -- but there's no evidence they think the border should be effectively abolished. Those for whom this is an important issue are not wrong to see our drift in that direction as, in part, a failure of democratic representation.

As Allahpundit notes, a big part of this is simply appreciation for a breat of fresh air in the form of nationalism without apology.

Almost all of our discourse is had on a unversalistic plane -- we're supposed to put ourselves out of the equation entirely and only think about "What is the best for the most number of undifferentiated, generic people, whether American or not?"

While we are forced by our dysfunctional and dishonest media culture into talking like this, very few of us actually think like this (including the self-declared univeralsts, who are very, very proud and partisan particularists for their own sects and cults -- listen to Obama's obvious tribal pride in yammering on about his own cult).

One thing that has people excited about Trump is that he is talking about what is in our own interest, rather than talking about what is universally better for a generic group of non-denominational people.

Nationalism has its pitfalls, obviously, but people are fucking sick and tired of being told they cannot take their own side in an argument of tremendous importance.

For many of us, this is a very important point -- in fact, for some of us, this is the single-most important point of all. Without establishing that the people of the United States have the right to make policy for the benefit of we ourselves -- what the hell is the point of the rest of it?

Talk, by the way, is very cheap for many self-declared universalists, because their wealth permits them to establish their own sovereign borders in the form of exclusive country clubs and gated communities.

But here is a problem with Europe’s decision-makers, and it connects to decision-makers in America.

Damning "the elites" is often a mindless, phony and manipulative game. Malice and delusion combine to produce the refrains: "Those fancy people in their Georgetown cocktail parties," "Those left-wing poseurs in their apartments in Brussels." This is social resentment parading as insight, envy posing as authenticity.

But in this crisis talk of "the elites" is pertinent. The gap between those who run governments and those who are governed has now grown huge and portends nothing good.

Rules on immigration and refugees are made by safe people. These are the people who help run countries, who have nice homes in nice neighborhoods and are protected by their status. Those who live with the effects of immigration and asylum law are those who are less safe, who see a less beautiful face in it because they are daily confronted with a less beautiful reality--normal human roughness, human tensions. Decision-makers fear things like harsh words from the writers of editorials; normal human beings fear things like street crime. Decision-makers have the luxury of seeing life in the abstract. Normal people feel the implications of their decisions in the particular.

The decision-makers feel disdain for the anxieties of normal people, and ascribe them to small-minded bigotries, often religious and racial, and ignorant antagonisms. But normal people prize order because they can't buy their way out of disorder.

Or, of course, you can just call them "racist" for being the people who will ultimately deal with the disorder and inevitable tensions that you yourself are perfectly immunized by wealth from having to experience.

Incidentally, wealth does tend to breed generosity, and a lack of wealth tends to breed the opposite.

The country has been in a relatively impoverished state for a while now.

So the people who are calling for unlimited sacrifices on the part of Americans -- who are feeling pretty lean in the wallet -- for the less fortunate of the world are doing so at a particularly bad time for it.*

One could take that into account, too. Or, again, one could just resort to the Cudgel of the Clown, calling people who disagree with you "racist."

* One can see this in the reactions of Germany to the migrant crisis as contrasted with the reactions of, say, Hungary, Slovenia, or even Great Britain.

Germany's faring pretty well during this global depression -- their unemployment is at a pretty decent 4.5%.

On the other hand, most other countries have much higher unemployment -- France's is 10%, for example -- and are not quite as blithe about letting in tens or even hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers who have no obvious point of entry into the productive economy.

Many commentators in countries other than Germany are praising Germany for being so brave and big-hearted... while not exactly demanding their own countries follow Germany's example.

posted by Ace at 06:50 PM

| Access Comments