The humanity of Jack Ciattarelli vs. Phil Murphy’s Wall Street ego.

By Rubashov

The grumblings on the ground, amongst the hundreds of grassroots doers who make up what could be the activist base of the Republican Party in New Jersey, are not filtering up, not making it to the ears of the Establishment media in this state. Apart from the astute Paul Mulshine, who ever calls them?

For most of the Establishment media, such people are simply examples of Hilary Clinton’s deplorables, unworthy of consideration. How stripping people of their common humanity – a humanity the Establishment media insists be granted to child rapists and serial killers – became a species of so-called “liberalism”, we cannot know. It is a feature of the new class war described by Michael Lind in a book by the same name (The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite), published last year.

Lind argues that Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision-making in politics, the economy, and culture. Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists and save democracy.” Now, before anyone goes assuming that Lind is some “right-wing extremist”, recall that he has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins and is a Professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. An author of more than a dozen books, Professor Lind was an editor or staff writer at the New Yorker, Harper’s, The New Republic, and The National Interest. Professor Lind also writes some very good poetry.

With regards to the gubernatorial race between the incumbent Democrat, Phil Murphy, and the Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, the usually hostile Establishment media is full of “well-meaning” advice for the challenger. This advice goes from “give-up, Murphy’s got this” to “there should be no clear-blue water between the GOP and the Democrats, all those issues are settled, your policies should mimic those of the Democrats.”

But the grumblings continue – fueled by those “settled policies” pushed on them or imposed directly by Governor Murphy and his ideological allies (many of whom he has made taxpayer-paid vendors to his administration). As the Establishment media doesn’t talk to people like this, they find ways to talk to each other – so a new, contained, kind of media is created in the hundreds of social media and internet-based groups, formal and informal, that have filled the void left by Establishment media.

This vibrant new media serves much the same purpose as the phenomenon of “little magazines” did during the last century – when political, cultural, and literary movements (pushed aside or ignored by the Establishment) created their own media to communicate through. The question is: Will the NJGOP and its candidates acknowledge and promote this new media? Will they harness its possibilities?

So far, New Jersey Republicans have been slow to recognize the opportunities offered by this new media, slow to adapt and engage. Most have remained hard-wired to the Establishment media who (a) are not their friends, and who (b) no longer talk to or engage with the voters who are their friends. We see evidence of this in every fresh missive from official party sources. The party recognizes and promotes the same sources as it has done for decades – only the newspapers are now on life-support and instead of PoliticsNJ it is now called New Jersey Globe.

The most notable departure from this has been the Republican nominee himself, Jack Ciattarelli. Whoever he was four or more years ago, informed by his background as a small business owner and an accountant, he has grown through engaging with people and listening to them.

Jack Ciattarelli is among the best listeners in politics we’ve come across. And it doesn’t matter who he’s talking with – a kid in Newark wondering about his future, a restaurant owner trying to stay in business, a single-mom facing foreclosure, or parents sick and tired of government butting-in between them and their children – Jack listens. He listens, he thinks about it, he takes what he has heard into his heart – and he changes and makes it part of his platform.

You cannot ask for more from anyone running for public office. It doesn’t get any better than a genuine, honest listener – open to learning from the people he wants to represent. And isn’t that what representative democracy is all about?

Jack’s opponent is Phil Murphy, the incumbent Governor, and one-time boss at Wall Street’s Goldman-Sachs. A self-proclaimed “Master-of-the-Universe”. They do not listen. They know.

They know what is best for you. And they know that it is better for everyone when the silly proles know their place and leave the world to be run by people like them. People who don’t let ideas like freedom or democracy get in the way of profit. Masters-of-the-Universe who know that you can’t get all sentimental and worry about young Asian girls being worked like slaves in unsafe environments for pennies an hour. Especially when an “ideal” like profit is at stake.

These people send their children to private boarding schools that cost as much as a working person earns in a year. They turn their kids over to an institution that daily takes their place. Institutions that act as Nanny to inculcate an Establishment ethos into their charges.

It is their choice to do so. But they do not extend to others the same choice when they try to impose an ideological curriculum on their children. Phil and Tammy Murphy (herself an alumnus and board member of one of these private boarding schools) want to place their ideas about how your children should be raised between you and your own kids! And its not just the curriculum that they are messing with. Murphy’s Democrats wanted to make it a crime for the police to tell parents when the cops caught their kids using drugs.

Phil Murphy doesn’t respect the family. He doesn’t care about that special space that joins parents and children. He wants to break it all to pieces – just so he can hand a fat plum to his political allies at Garden State Equality. They want something. They need money. Mandating a new curriculum delivers on that. His allies get theirs. They endorse Murphy. Murphy profits – just like in the old days.

There is no doubt that the grumblings of the nascent new media will continue – even as it grows, knits itself together, and builds a following of people looking to read something by someone who doesn’t call them names. There are millions upon millions of such people – and they grow every time someone tells them that skin color marks some people as “bad” or that their country is something to be ashamed of.

And while the NJGOP and its allied organizations throughout the state may not get it, some do and, most importantly, Jack does. Jack Ciattarelli is a listener who has listened and who has taken crap from the Establishment media because he has listened… and he did not back down.
 
If there is to be a reckoning within the GOP, now is not the moment. All people – Republican, Democrat, Undeclared, Independent – who value individual liberty and personal freedom, who value the family and the small community, have in Jack Ciattarelli a champion who will listen. And that’s how it begins – with listening. How refreshingly different from the “shut up and know your place… or I’ll call you a bad word” of Phil Murphy and his unctuous crew.
 
Jack is listening. He needs your help. Focus your energies between now and November 2nd accordingly.

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

Robert Heinlein

For Democracy to work requires humility

by Rubashov

For Democracy to work requires humility. 
 
But we are not humble.  We are exceptional.  So exceptional that we can legislate away chromosomes, change someone’s sex with a piece of paper.  Just because we say it is so.  This is not humility.  It is playing God. 
 
And so it follows that we cannot accept the mere outcome of an election.  Why would that surprise anyone?
 
To understand how we got here requires more than what it is generally on offer this morning.  You need to go back and read the warnings. 
 
American authors as diverse as George Packer of the New Yorker (The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America) to Charles Murray (Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010) to Chris Hedges (Days of Destruction Days of Revolt and America: The Farewell Tour) have predicted where we are today. 
 
If there is one book to read, we suggest Michael Lind’s newest (2020) book:  The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite.  Lind is a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.  Lind argues that “Western democracies must incorporate working-class majorities of all races, ethnicities, and creeds into decision-making in politics, the economy, and culture.  Only this class compromise can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists, and save democracy.”
 

In his book, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, Duke University's Nick Carnes points out that while upwards of 65 percent of citizens are "working class" and 54 percent are employed in a blue-collar occupation, just 2 percent of the members of Congress and 3 percent of state legislators held blue-collar jobs at the time of their election. Professor Carnes makes a strong argument for class diversity.

Tucker Carlson provided this thoughtful monologue on yesterday’s events…

But the video you must watch is this pointed warning from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges. Chris is a New Jersey native and active man-of-the-Left. He was recently ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church.

This video was made in 2018. We often disagree with Chris Hedges, but his analysis is always worth considering. He sees more clearly than most.

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

N.B. We welcome a conversation on this and all topics raised on this website. Jersey Conservative is entirely open to your ideas and opinions. To submit a column for publication, please contact Marianna at Marianna@JerseyConservative.org.

Sussex County’s Charlie Hebdo moment

By Rubashov

Charlie Hebdo (French pronunciation: ​[ʃaʁli ɛbdo]; French for Charlie Weekly) is a French satirical weekly magazine,[3] featuring cartoons,[4] reports, polemics, and jokes. Irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, the publication describes itself as above all secular, skeptic,[5] and atheist,[6] far-left-wing,[7][8] and anti-racist[9] publishing articles about the extreme right (especially the French nationalist National Front party),[10] religion (Catholicism, Islam, Judaism), politics and culture.

The magazine has been the target of two terrorist attacks, in 2011 and 2015. Both were presumed to be in response to a number of controversial Muhammad cartoons it published. In the second of these attacks, 12 people were killed, including publishing director Charb and several other prominent cartoonists. (Wikipedia)

Well apparently they don’t get satire in Phil Murphy’s New Jersey either…

As in the case of Charlie Hebdo, a group of cultural terrorists have demanded that an image they deem “offensive” be removed and the “perpetrators” – in this case, it was merely “re-tweeted” – be punished.  On the one hand, we hope the so-called “perpetrators” will stand up for freedom of expression; while on the other, we hope that nobody gets murdered.  There are a lot of crazies out there, and these things do have a way of escalating.

You do remember satire, don’t you?  Yes, it has something to do with comedy…

Satire (noun) the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

On Tuesday night, the Board of Trustees meeting of the Sussex County Community College was invaded by a group of cultural terrorists.  We call them “terrorists” somewhat whimsically, in that (1) they use threats of various kinds to get their way, and (2) they have no sense of humor.  They are the stick-up-the-arse crowd.  And before you enquire why we use “arse” instead of the familiar English term, we feel arse is the more appropriate, owing to its rusticated and unwashed nature.

So the Board of Trustees meeting of the Sussex County Community College was invaded by a troop of unwashed arses – the stick-up… well, you get the picture. 

The sad thing is… a couple of the Trustees themselves elected to join the troop and agree to go unwashed as well.  What these people are doing as Trustees on a Board of higher learning is beyond us.  It is not the place of colleges to ban forms of expression – in this case, satire – but to study and understand.  What would these idiots make of Jonathan Swift?  Would they ban him too, as a cannibal out to eat up all the children of Ireland?

For some people, washed and unwashed, that stick is thrust so firmly up… that nothing can pry it out.  You simply have to start over.  So best be off with them.

Oh… and in an act directly paralleling the Charlie Hebdo case, newspapers were too afraid to print the “offensive” image for fear of an unwashed fatwa. 

Instead, they simply described the “offensive” image, in the prescribed manner, in the language issued to them, as “racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic…

… arachnophobic, ailurophobic, atelophobic, batrachophobic, chiroptophobic, coulrophobic, demonophobic, emetophobic,  globophobic, herpetophobic, ichthyophobic, necrophobic, ophidiophobic, panphobic, porphyrophobic, triskaidekaphobic, venustraphobic xanthophobic – and poo-poo-headed”

One rather bloated knucklehead, identified as an official with the Sussex County Democrat Party, actually said these words:  “Whether or not he posted it himself, he is the person whose name is at the top of that (private Twitter account) page – it is unconscionable that nothing happens going forward based on those (tweets), and I would hope you can see them as offensive as I see them.” 

Wow, Robespierre himself couldn’t have said that any better.  And the speaker of those words would indeed make a most perfect Robespierre… if, of course, Robespierre was shaped like a busted bale of hay.

One wonders where this Robespierre was – or, indeed, the entire Democrat Party was, when the institution of the Sussex County Community College was so corrupt that it was allowing Trustees to vote on vendors from which they derived income?  Not a word from the Sussex County Democrats… nobody ever bothered to show up to a meeting to fight corruption. 

It was a sad moment and a very tragic story for the Sussex County Community College.  We remember it… very, very well.  No Democrats were around when it counted… but they show up for this?

Now we don’t know if we are taking our lives in our hands, but we’ll show you the “offensive” image.  Are you ready?

Behold the “offensive” image that was re-tweeted.

Did the world just end?  Should we be worried about death threats for posting that image?

We think it funny for two reasons.  (1) It is a grotesque and therefore ridiculous.  It achieves as much as it defeats.  Like this famous New Yorker cover…

You remember the New Yorker?  Yes, that haunt of racists, misogynists, and whatever else the unwashed brigades like to call those they disagree with.

Seems like, just yesterday, we had a sense of humor.

Now apparently, satire – like everything else these days – is a form of “racism”.

And (2) because they are politicians.  This so-called “Jihad Squad” is composed of four powerful members of Congress: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.  A couple of them have made some very obnoxious anti-Semitic statements and none of them much like the Jewish state.  One member of Congress – Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (D-Minnesota) – actually mocks Jewish people by calling them “Benjamins”.  Another, Rashida Harbi Tlaib (D-Michigan), holds rallies under the banners of the PLO – a terrorist group.  They have power over us and it is always good for a chuckle when the powerful are brought down to earth. 

Here in America, we never needed to be afraid of pissing on politicians.  Until now.  It is not a “change” for the better or one that we will thank anybody for come the future.   

And one final note.  If we are going to do this to one citizen member of a public board, let’s make sure we do it to every citizen member of every public board.  Where will it end?  Who hasn’t offended somebody?  Who hasn’t done a thing that someone will think bad?

Robespierre and company spend their days going through your private social media looking for things to offend themselves with.  It is like that great scene from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio when a puritan spies on a woman privately praying, naked, in her own bedroom.  The puritan doesn’t see his sin, but rather he sees the woman’s nakedness as the sin.  Just wait until these people start using drones…

And now… let’s end with more comedy.  And please don’t be offended… but if you are, too bad.

Andy Kim GUILTY? Was it a case of Depraved Indifference to Human Life?

The other day we came across this political commercial put out by congressional candidate Andy Kim…

Hand on his heart, Andy Kim assures us that he “listened and worked together to save lives.”  But it’s not true.  And according to the New Yorker magazine, it’s some of the worst bullshit imaginable.

Nobody listened.  Lives were lost.  Some shot to death or butchered with knives, other burnt alive, some buried alive in the desert.  Thousands of women and girls raped… over and over again.  Women and children sold like cattle.  Modern day slavery – all while Andy Kim was safe… in that “situation room.”

According to his own statements made in November 2016 at William & Mary College, Andy Kim comfortably watched as a genocide unfolded on the TV screens and monitors in that “situation room.”  Andy Kim has tried to play that down – calling it a “potential genocide” – but the United Nations disagrees with him and so do the community of people who suffered that genocide.  Andy Kim has lied throughout his campaign about this:

“…when ISIS threatened genocide on the Yazidi people sheltering on Sinjar Mountain in Iraq, Andy worked with the U.S. military to coordinate a rescue mission.”

(Andy Kim for Congress Facebook, www.facebook.com/pg/AndyKimNJ/about/)

But there was no “rescue mission” by the Obama administration worthy of the name.  In the end, the Yazidi people were rescued by a Kurdish militia group labeled as “terrorists” by Vice President Joe Biden, in order to appease the Islamist regime in Turkey.   

We know that Yazidi expats resident in the United States pleaded with the Obama administration – and directly with Andy Kim – and that Kim’s response was weak and insufficient to prevent what President Obama himself has called “genocide” (Washington Post, August 8, 2014).

And it is very clear, from the Yazidis’ story, that they believed that genocide was about to happen and that, afterwards, it was allowed to happen.  If the administration had listened to these Yazidi expats – all of whom had formerly worked for the United States military – the Obama administration’s response could have been more precise and robust and lives could have been saved. 

This small immigrant community – a repressed religious minority in their homeland (and so genuine refugees from violence) – came up against an elitist administration that wouldn’t listen to them because they weren’t “experts” like Andy Kim thought he was.   The fact that Andy Kim is trying to now portray his weak response to this genocide in a “positive” way – as a recommendation for higher office – is sickening when the real record is examined… the killings, the rapes, and the slavery that did happen to the Yazidis’ community and to their family members because Andy Kim and others like him in the Obama administration were too “smart” to take the common sense advice from those who understood what was actually going on.

It’s all there, in the New Yorker magazine.  Not a right-wing anything but the jewel in the crown of literary liberalism.  Go read it for yourself and prepare to weep and feel the disgrace of it.  Of the failure that was Andy Kim and the Obama administration.  Of the genocide that candidate Andy Kim now tries to turn into a qualification for Congress.

The long article begins…

New Yorker

Annals of War

February 26, 2018 Issue

The Daring Plan to Save a Religious Minority from ISIS

When the terrorist group attacked the Yazidis, a small group of American immigrants knew they could do something.

By Jenna Krajeski

ISIS intended to wipe out the Yazidi religion in Iraq. Yazidis in America had a plan, so they started driving to Washington…

…After 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, Pir and Ismael, like many Yazidi men, took jobs as interpreters for the U.S. military. Because they were a targeted religious minority, there was little opportunity outside the Army, and they were unlikely to join the Iraqi insurgency. In the military, they befriended another Yazidi, named Haider Elias, who, in spite of his poor background, spoke nearly perfect English, with a TV-made American accent.

The three men worked with the U.S. for years, often with the Special Forces…

In the course of a few days, the Yazidis met with organizations such as U.S.A.I.D. and the Institute for International Law and Human Rights. They went to the White House to meet with the deputy national-security adviser, Ben Rhodes, and the adviser on Iraq, Andy Kim, in the Roosevelt Room. “That was as emotional a meeting as I think I had,” Rhodes told me. “Given the role we played in invading and occupying and being present in Iraq for so many years, we had to care about what was happening to the Yazidis.”

To be continued…

Bill Maher takes down Jersey City’s political class

Last week, some self-described “liberal” politicos in Jersey City called for the removal from office of a fellow “liberal” politico because he posted a humorous photograph of a well-tanned, middle-aged, fat white man.  True, the man is wearing high-heels, but does it necessarily follow that he enjoys sex with other men? 

The town of New Hope, in Pennsylvania, holds a yearly “drag race” in which participants of all sexes and sexual orientations race downhill wearing high heels and a vast array of other garments and accessories.  It doesn’t mean that the runners embrace same-sex marriage or are transvestites.  Likewise, the crowd cheering them on come from all walks of life and points of view.  It isn’t serious… it’s fun.

Like this guy…

Okay, different footwear, but is it really all about the shoes?  Do we need to check out the footwear before making a joke?

The Jersey City politicos channeled some serious neo-Victorian outrage, topped with neo-Puritan calls for public shaming and worse.  One of the pair, Mr. Michael Billy (of the LGBT Hudson Pride Center) claimed the fat man in the high heels was “transphobic, homophobic and misogynistic…”  That’s a mouthful.  We wonder if he could say that after he’s had a few?  Of course, he added this appeal for more taxpayers’ money… It is “a stark reminder of the ‘work’ still left for us to achieve.”

Mr. Billy added:  “Jersey City is the most diverse city in the nation with the largest LGBTQ+ population in the state," Billy said. "This post doesn't reflect our welcoming spirit.”

Naah, Jersey City is just an up-tight, stick-up-its-ass, kind of place – filled with a lot of modern day Mrs. Grundys.  It hasn’t  been all that LGBT long enough to be comfortable with it… the way so many, more mature towns, are.  Jersey City isn’t comfortable, so it isn’t cool… too prickly and looking to be offended to kick back and have a good time.  Too damned political to have a sense of humor.

Mr. Billy even let his armband show a bit when he suggested to the Jersey Journal that the politico who posted the picture of the fat man be made to “apologize and participate in cultural competency training.”  “Cultural competency training”??? Does Mr. Billy or his group get taxpayers’ dough to do that bullshit?  In a corrupt town like Jersey City, everybody who is anybody has got their own scam.

Another politico – Mr. Michael Maddalena – said the fat man was “homophobic and transphobic”.  He apparently forgot the “misogynistic”.  He demanded an apology or a resignation.  Ouch. 

Other, cooler places, places that have been “LGBT” since before there was anything called “LGBT” (back when it was just “gay” or “eccentric”), those places where everyone rubs along together and thinks of each other as dear neighbors and friends, those places don’t have all these hysterics.  That’s for the uncool and the uncomfortable… those who have something to prove and need to prove it every day.

The great New Yorker writer Joe Mitchell very lovingly wrote of Greenwich Village – back when it was poor and genuinely eccentric – that it was filled with all types of people, some outwardly quite ordinary, but that in its collective soul, “we are all freaks together.”  Jersey City, which subsidizes its rich at the expense of the state’s poor and middle class, will never get it.

But maybe this will help, courtesy of that genuine liberal, Bill Maher…

NY Times writer leads PAC that attacks suburban Republicans

A group from Amherst, Massachusetts, the only town in America that flies the UN flag in front of its town hall, is coming to New Jersey's 3rd District, home of one of America's largest military bases and a large population of serving and retired military personnel.

The group, Swing Left, was founded by a New York Times travel writer from Amherst, Massachusetts, a solidly Left-Democrat area.  He told the New Yorker magazine that where he lived there was "no immediate opportunities to flip or meaningfully defend a congressional district." 

“No Republican ran for office around here—they didn’t even bother—and a lot of progressives live in districts like that,” he said. So he went home and perused CNN’s Web site to find the closest district where the margin of victory was close. It was New York’s 19th Congressional District...  “I was getting ready to post on Facebook, to say that I would commit my time and energy to flipping N.Y. 19 in 2018,” he said. “But then I wondered, Why did I just have to do that? Why doesn’t a tool for finding your nearest swing district already exist?”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/swing-left-and-the-post-election-surge-of-progressive-activism

So bubbleland comes to suburbia.  Not to live here, of course, but to choose our elected officials, so that they can inflict on suburbia the kind of fashion statements that bubbleland demands.

We asked some Swinging Lefties why they didn't just move to places they consider uncool and boring -- like most of New Jersey -- there was a uniform gasp, followed by "no way!"  Perish the thought!

Swing Left isn't looking to become your neighbor.  They just want to choose your Member of Congress.

And it's not just the 3rd District they're coming for.  Democrat Andy Kim may be their latest love interest, but they are also playing for Democrat incumbent Josh Gottheimer -- and for the eventual Democrat nominees in the 2nd, 7th, and 11th districts.

The presence of the U.N. flag in front of the Amherst town hall is important, because the U.N. has a very particular record regarding Israel:

"As of 2013, Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by United Nations Human Rights Council. Since its creation in 2006—the Council had resolved almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined. The 45 resolutions comprised almost half (45.9%) of all country-specific resolutions passed by the Council, not counting those under Agenda Item 10 (countries requiring technical assistance)."

Some call this anti-Semitic. 

The flag has stirred up a lot of controversy.

They say timing is everything. But for indoctrinated college students, timing, along with respect, apparently doesn’t matter much as long as their narrative is heard.

On the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, unidentified students at Amherst College in Massachusetts hung a banner outside a campus dining hall shaming the U.S. for its “war on terror.”

Here’s the banner in question:

The banner reads, “There is no place large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. In honor of those killed and displaced by America’s so-called ‘war on terror.’”

Al Doblin is speaking from "The Bubble"

Alfred P. Doblin is the Editorial Editor of the Record of Bergen and the surrounding counties.  His writing is strong, with few of the over-the-top emotions that are often on display over at the Star-Ledger.  He appears to try for balance, for persuasion instead of name-calling.      

But we fear he is trapped, as so many others are trapped, in a perception that is based more on geography and on class than on ideology or party identity. 

In his recent column -- "GOP at the crossroads" -- Mr. Doblin falls back on the tired values of an old religion.  Using terms like "mainstream right... extreme right... hard-line conservatives... social issues," we feel that he misses the lessons of the 2016 presidential election.

And who are the people Mr. Doblin turns to in his column to illuminate his argument?  All members of the ruling class:  former Governor Christie Whitman, global lobbyist Mike DuHaime, and Senator Kevin O'Toole Esq.

From them we get the same, tired prescriptions we get after every presidential election -- win or lose:  “(Republicans) can no longer be defined both statewide and nationally as the older white man’s party and expect to succeed (even though they just did)... (Republicans) have to do a lot more to attract females, to attract African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics. We have to be far more diverse than we have in the past.” 

The perspective of these people is one of class.  They are far, far more richer and more prosperous than the average American or the average Republican. When they speak of diversity it is the false diversity of gender, color, ethnicity, or sexual identity.  What is studiously ignored is class. 

In his book, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making, Duke University's Nick Carnes points out that while upwards of 65 percent of citizens are "working class" and 54 percent are employed in a blue-collar occupation, just 2 percent of the members of Congress and 3 percent of state legislators held blue-collar jobs at the time of their election.  How about some diversity?

Donald Trump's campaign saw through the false political divide of Democrat and Republican to the vast economic and social divide that is the truer measure of America today.  Authors as diverse as George Packer of the New Yorker (The  Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America) to Charles Murray (Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010) to Chris Hedges (Days of Destruction Days of Revolt) to David Brooks (BoBos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There) have written about this, with Brooks actually employing Donald Trump as an example of what the "new upper class" finds unfashionable.  In a prescient piece of writing, Ralph Nader gave an outline of what was coming when his book (Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State) was released in the summer of 2014.

On election night, MSNBC's Chris Matthews came closest to the mark, with this surprising exchange:

Of course, the ruling class will try to fit what happened back into the perception that they are most comfortable with -- and so we get the familiar postscripts about "old white men" and "diversity" of the surface variety.  It is an exercise in virtue signaling, whereby one member of the ruling class assures his "goodness" to another.

White collar America spends its time concerned about issues like the availability of condoms to Ivy Leaguers.  Such concerns are the marks of privilege. Blue collar America, working class America, worries about foreclosure, about housing, about having a job, about getting out of debt, about having enough to give their children the life that they've enjoyed.  With the greatest respect to Christie Whitman and Mike DuHaime and Kevin O'Toole, they don't have those problems.  So relieved of such pressing concerns, they can float above the mass and think sweet thoughts, reaffirming their "goodness" to one another.

The lack of shared experience places much of our ruling class, and those who aspire to it, into a kind of "bubble" -- secure and apart from the mass. Senator O'Toole's statement to Editor Doblin that what he regretted most was not voting for same-sex marriage is a symptom of that "bubble."  The Senator is a wise and judicious man and surely, if he thought about it a bit, he would have said that his greatest regret was not being able to cut property taxes down to a sane level.  For it is property taxes, a major driver of foreclosure and of homelessness, that is the greatest concern to the greatest many.

The idea that some Americans exist in "bubble" communities that vastly outstrip neighboring zip codes in status, wealth, cultural influence, and corporate/political power is not new.  Although now it seems to be going mainstream, filtering into "pop" culture.  Consider this recent skit from Saturday Night Live:

Wealthy professionals, like Al Doblin, should be aware of their class bias.  As a journalist, great care should be taken to seek out and include the opinions of genuine members of the working class for balance -- and not just members of the ruling class who happen to be labeled "diverse" for whatever reason

Of Rat Finks and Know-Nothings

In Sunday's Bergen Record, columnist Charles Stile wrote touchingly about how the patricians of an earlier incarnation of the GOP used to put down internal dissent.  Yes indeed, that class of folks well described in Tad Friend's memoir, Friendly Money, who in politics are epitomized by former Governor Christie Todd Whitman, certainly did dominate the Republican Party before the likes of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich came along.  They also lost pretty consistently and were responsible for that long dry spell without power in Congress. 

The decline of the GOP's dominance by its patrician class tracks what Friend, a staff writer at the New Yorker, calls "the last days of WASP splendor."  And while we can understand how Stile may long for those days of certainty -- for there is a kind of comfort in knowing who is who and where you stand in relation  -- we think that such a class system, one where the leadership is based on inherited status and wealth, ultimately fails.  In fact, one of the great concerns about this presidential cycle is that the role of unlimited money has led to a new order based on such a system -- where family name (Bush, Clinton) is half the battle.

It's an old debate here in America:  Should a Republic have an aristocracy and, if so, what is the selection process?

Writing in the Spring edition of the Hedgehog Review, the University of Virginia's quarterly on culture, Johann Neem makes a few points about presidential candidate Donald Trump, the voters he has energized, and the 19th century political party they are sometimes compared with.  Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture of the University of Virginia. 

In contrast to Stile, Neem makes the case for some serious soul-searching to understand how the GOP -- and the country -- got to where the Trump candidacy "dismissed initially as a joke" became the phenomenon it is.  Neem makes some points worth considering:

"To many Americans facing a changing world and fearing that globalization is depriving them of a fair shot at the good life, not to mention basic security, Trump's promise to do something makes him stand apart from a political establishment, right and left, that seems clueless and adrift."

"The (anti-immigration) Know-Nothings displaced the Whigs as the Democrats' primary opposition in parts of the nation, and elected seventy-five representatives to Congress."

"As the historian Tyler Anbinder makes clear in his book, Nativisim and Slavery (1992), many supporters of the upstart party voted out of frustration and disgust with the political system.  As Trump would do 175 years later, the Know-Nothings promised to do something.  They appealed in particular to antislavery voters who felt that neither the Whigs or Democrats were willing to address what they considered America's most pressing problem."

"But if Know-Nothings focused on immigrants as the main cause of America's ills, they gained a broad following because they tackled problems and concerns that went well beyond the immigrant question.  In Massachusetts, Know-Nothing legislators who sought to encourage unity among Americans mandated racial integration in the same schools in which they had imposed Protestant Bibles.  They passed laws to protect people from creditors and, in Massachusetts, abolished imprisonment for debt and passed child labor legislation.  In Connecticut, they passed a law stating that ten hours was the de facto workday."

"Know-Nothings also pushed for greater regulation of banks, railroads, and other corporations.  Whether successfully or not,  Know-Nothings brought working people's concerns to the legislative floor.  They also sought to render government more accountable to voters by making more offices elective, increasing punishment for corruption, and promising to curb patronage."

"Know-Nothing legislators came through with their promise to back U.S. Senators who opposed slavery's expansion. . . In Massachusetts, Know-Nothing legislators passed resolutions calling for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise (to prevent slavery's expansion) and repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act."

In the presidential election of 1856, "most Know-Nothings sided with the new Republican party's candidate John C. Fremont because they considered the issue of slavery more pressing" than the issue of immigration.  Essentially, the Know-Nothings helped destroy the old Whig Party, so that a new Republican Party could emerge.

Neem ends with this salutary warning:

"To the extent that Trump's supporters represent a new Know-Nothing movement, the lesson is clear.  Globalization has resulted in significant cultural and economic changes that many Americans feel have been hurtful not only to themselves but also to the nation as a whole.  Those same voters feel betrayed by a political elite that seems, in their view, more committed to cosmopolitanism and the international order than to national self-interest. "

"The loss of jobs and even of whole industries, drug use, violent crime, the spread of terrorism, and the challenges of an increasingly diverse society -- all of these can be connected with some of the disruptive and dislocating effects of globalization.   Trump's brand of nativism shifts all the blame for these and other problems to people and nations beyond our borders.  But it would be wrong to see his supporters' attraction to such nativism as simple xenophobia, though of course it can easily become that.  Above all, Trump's supporters want someone who will do something, almost anything, about problems they think are growing worse."