Ta-Nehisi Coates: How Breitbart Conquered the Media
This is what Andrew Breitbart, and his progeny, ultimately understood. What Shirley Sherrod did or did not do really didn’t matter. White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers. It is very difficult to imagine, for instance, a 9/11 truther, who happened to be black, becoming even a governor. And yet we live in an era in which the country’s leading birther might well be president. This fact certainly horrifies some of the same journalists who attacked Clinton this weekend. But what they have yet to come to grips with is that Donald Trump is a democratic phenomenon, and that there are actual people–not trolls under a bridge–whom he, and his prejudices against Latinos, Muslims, and blacks, represent.
And how to deal with that is one of the political decisions that will be implicitly made this election season. And at the moment we look like we are lapsing into polite Coolidgism, with the media leading the way. That’s regardless or who wins the Presidency.
Weel, I’d say the ignoring of poor white die-off is pretty common, too. A few scientific papers and some editorial justification for it being their own damn fault is what I’ve seen. The last minority it is permissible to abuse.
Who’s ignoring poor white die-off? I mean, there is one political Party and movement which created and supports the ACA and its Medicaid expansion, and another political Party and movement which has attempted to repeal the Law and blockade that Medicaid expansion, and have done so in many States. The differences are incredibly stark.
The Parties are not the same. Progressives who pretend the Parties are the same are part of the problem in suppressing voter turnout. We’re all responsible for creating cultural conditions which support voter turnout, and we have excellent reasons and great need to create that turnout.
You know there is a brand new diary over here that actual says DO NOT VOTE. No need for you to project there. Why don’t you go talk to them?
Well, you responded to my policy discussion and its outcomes with a display of personal animus, didn’t you?
Policy discussion? No. Moralizing scolding is what I objected to.
As far as the ACA making a difference, it does not seem to be doing so and is really hardly pertinent. The problem is die-off, which has little to do with access to doctors. I posted a link that discussed the phenomena as it was recognized in Russia after the break-up.
Coming from you, criticism of “moralizing scolding” is very rich.
You persistently claim against evidence that the recent fuller implementations of the ACA have not improved health care outcomes. Here’s a recent summary of 61 separate studies between January 2014 and May 2016 which paint a persuasive picture in whole:
http://kff.org/report-section/the-effects-of-medicaid-expansion-under-the-aca-findings-from-a-litera
ture-review-issue-brief/
The headline findings:
“States expanding their Medicaid programs under the ACA have seen large increases in Medicaid enrollment…
Many studies show that Medicaid expansion states experienced large reductions in uninsured rates that significantly exceed those in non-expansion states…
Community health centers in Medicaid expansion states have seen gains in coverage among their patients…
Research suggests that the Medicaid expansion is associated with reductions in coverage disparities…
Several studies find larger improvements in measures of access to care in expansion states compared to non-expansion states…
Research suggests that Medicaid expansion improves the affordability of care and financial security among the low-income population…
Studies also find changes in utilization following the Medicaid expansion…
Several studies have examined access and utilization among enrollees in Arkansas where the Medicaid expansion was implemented through a waiver…
Research shows that providers have experienced increases in Medicaid patient volume following the expansion, and results are mixed with regard to provider capacity to meet increased demands for care…
Research suggests that improved access and utilization may be contributing to increased diagnoses of some chronic conditions…
More research is needed to fully determine the impact of state Medicaid expansions on health outcomes for the low-income population…
States expanding Medicaid under the ACA have realized budget savings, revenue gains, and overall economic growth…
Despite Medicaid enrollment growth initially exceeding projections in many states, studies indicate that Medicaid spending per capita has been relatively low for the newly eligible expansion population and state general fund spending growth for Medicaid has been slower in expansion states compared to non-expansion states…
State Medicaid expansions resulted in changes in the payer mix for hospitals and clinics…
Most studies show that the Medicaid expansion had a positive effect or no negative effects on employment and the labor market…
And the conclusion:
Despite the need for continued research in these and other areas, the beneficial effects of expansion documented in studies to date suggest that ACA Medicaid expansion presents a valuable opportunity for the 19 remaining non-expansion states to improve coverage, access to care and utilization, and a range of economic outcomes.”
I’d like you to engage this summary of studies and these real-world outcomes, rather than hold to your usual anti-ACA talking points.
I want to repeat a point I’ve made before: in order to get what we both want, which is a well-constructed, well-administered Federal public health insurance plan, the ACA must be seen by the public as succeeding. When liberals slag the ACA against evidence, they move us all further away from the day we can reduce or eliminate the harmful health and budgetary effects of profit-taking from private health insurance.
My point has nothing to do with health care. It is population die-off. Often self-inflicted at root, even if unconscious.
The Dying Russians (http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/09/02/dying-russians/)
“Why are Russians dying in numbers, and at ages, and of causes never seen in any other country that is not, by any standard definition, at war?
In the seventeen years between 1992 and 2009, the Russian population declined by almost seven million people, or nearly 5 percent–a rate of loss unheard of in Europe since World War II. Moreover, much of this appears to be caused by rising mortality.”
A lot of similarity with:
Dead, White and Blue: The Great Die-Off of America’s Blue-Collar Whites (http://billmoyers.com/2015/12/02/dead-white-and-blue-the-great-die-off-of-americas-blue-collar-white
s/)
“While there is no medical evidence that racism is toxic to those who express it — after all, generations of wealthy slave owners survived quite nicely — the combination of downward mobility and racial resentment may be a potent invitation to the kind of despair that leads to suicide in one form or another, whether by gunshots or drugs. You can’t break a glass ceiling if you’re standing on ice.
It’s easy for the liberal intelligentsia to feel righteous in their disgust for lower-class white racism, but the college-educated elite that produces the intelligentsia is in trouble, too, with diminishing prospects and an ever-slipperier slope for the young. Whole professions have fallen on hard times, from college teaching to journalism and the law. One of the worst mistakes this relative elite could make is to try to pump up its own pride by hating on those — of any color or ethnicity — who are falling even faster.”
Population die-off has nothing to do with health care? Well, I don’t agree with that proposal at all.
For example, in the Ehrenreich piece you link here, she writes of many areas which touch on health care, including poorly treated mental illnesses which lead to suicide and over-prescription of opiates which lead to drug addiction.
An even stronger link to Ehrenreich’s writing can be found in the ACA’s link to “…black ascendency…”. The ACA is one of the policies moved under Obama’s Presidency which could be seen to provide more vital benefit to the whole of African-Americans than it has for the whole of white Americans. We have seen that many white people are infuriated and frightened with the belief that their health care access is being undermined in favor of giving that access to black and brown people. That is a despicable lie, but it’s a lie many white people choose to believe.
We sure do talk past each other a lot.
Count me among those who agree with Greg Sargent’s take this Morning Plum:
Link
Plus, it’ll get us off the health topic, and Trump’s own team wants to talk about “deplorables” rather than her health. I think there is a way to thread this needle if it’s done right. I’m less confident Clinton is capable of doing it, but the more we talk about this and force the media to talk about it, the more times we’ll see the Republicans backed into this corner:
Mike Pence Refuses To Call David Duke `Deplorable’
With Trump on the ballot, I’m less interested in what they believe and more interested in that they not vote for Trump and do so massively and such a way that ripples down the ticket so as to massively move the Senate and the House and legislatures.
The ironic thing about my selfishness is that the country might turn out better for everybody.
Sarah Kendzior, Globe and Mail: Hillary Clinton’s Redemption Problem
I think she does a very good job of explaining the gut reaction of revulsion to that language in that place. Thanks for the link.
“But what they have yet to come to grips with is that Donald Trump is a democratic phenomenon, and that there are actual people–not trolls under a bridge–whom he, and his prejudices against Latinos, Muslims, and blacks, represent.”
There are regular commenters on this blog who say that Trump is a “huckster” or “carnival barker” who doesn’t actually mean the crazy stuff that he says…and that those of us who take Trump at face value are “delusional”.
Indeed there are. Are you thinking every Trump supporter likewise has ALL those prejudices? Did you read the comment on “dehumanizing” that I commended to you on the original post of Martin’s?
I don’t see how your second paragraph contradicts your first one at all.
He is a huckster, a con man, a carnival barker.
It is not that he doesn’t mean what he says when he says it but he is so inconsistent that as a politician he is completely unserious about politics.
You are delusional if you take his commitments at face value.
But it is clear that he is committed to bigotry and so was his old man.
And that has an audience of about 20% of the populationn, according to Hillary Clinton.
But we can’t say that because we don’t know what another person actually thinks and no one is unredeemable.
Even though we don’t know who they are, there are some people who by their own stubborness and bigotry will remain unredeemable for their entire life and will die that way.
But there are enough redeemable people around that if you call them unredeemable it might freeze them there.
It is tactically uunwise for a candidate to assert that potential voters are unredeemable. Those who might be redeemable can be the first to take offense.
Capiche?