Poor Man Survival
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A Digest of Urban
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Things have changed so much
that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.
This
was a sentiment I encountered at every Trump rally I attended in 2015 and 2016
and something many of my friends and I have spoken aloud over the past two
decades. Is it the typical sign of
getting old or are things really changing that quickly or both?
My
good friend Larry commented on the AI series I wrote last year and sudden move
by advertisers to incorporate robots into so many TV ads, especially for the
likes of Verizon and driverless vehicles…something we both find odd. In the case of driverless cars we each think
they will likely be geared to older folks who no longer drive and to millenials
who can’t afford a vehicle and might not have drivers license and often don’t
see car ownership as something they can afford [after all, vehicle ownership
isn’t pushed by Madison Avenue any longer-leasing is].
SIDEBAR: It is nearly impossible to traverse web news or popular media today without being assaulted by vast amounts of propaganda on artificial intelligence (AI). It is perhaps the fad to end all fads as it supposedly encompasses almost every aspect of human existence, from economics and security to thought and art. According to mainstream claims, AI can do almost everything and do it better than any human being. And the things AI can't do, it will be able to do eventually.
The
globalist establishment has long held AI as a kind of holy grail in
centralization technology. The United Nations has adopted numerous positions
and even summits in the issue, including the "AI For Good" summit in Geneva.
The
following is by Timothy Carney. It
appeared in the Feb. 19th issue of the Washington Examiner.
How the Collapse of
Communities Gave Us President Trump
“When
I was a kid,” 80-year-old Bob Garrett told me in Rock Hill, S.C., during the
2016 election, “it was really great to be an American, and it’s just
disintegrated over the years. … It’s not the same America.”
This
sense of alienation from one's own country turned out to be one of the best
predictors of Trump support.
Compared
to other white, working-class Americans, Trump’s working-class supporters were
3.5 times more likely to feel like a stranger in their own land, a survey by
pollster PRRI found. That’s an extraordinary correlation, stronger than almost
any other indicator PRRI could find. Even support for deporting illegal
immigrants was less correlated with Trump support.
It
tells us something not just about Trump supporters, but about what ails so much
of working-class America.
While
some old guys in MAGA hats complaining about cultural changes may have meant
something like “too much rap music on TV” or “women don’t know their place,”
there were also plenty more valid reasons to lament cultural shifts.
Marriage,
for instance, is retreating in the working class. Americans are increasingly
segregated by income and education. And the working class is increasingly
falling away from church and organized religion.
So
all those liberal critics who said Trump’s election was more about culture than
economics? They were right. More precisely, though, Trump support was
about cultural alienation. People turned to him to fill a void left
by the erosion of civil society.
Trump’s
base
“Trumpism,”
commentator Alex Wagner suggested after noticing how Trump rallies resembled
religious revivals, could be “endowing certain Americans with a sense of
solidarity and support that were once found in institutions like the church (or
marriage).”
This
is clear when we focus on the early GOP primaries to sort out who was
Trump’s early core support.
In
one poll taken midprimaries, when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was the last viable
challenger, Trump led among GOP voters by a margin of 37 to 31. But among GOP
voters who were “civically disengaged,” Trump led 50 to 24.
“Outside
of your family,” the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy asked
people in 2016, “who would you turn to first if you needed help with” child
care, finances, a ride to an appointment, advice on raising a family, and other
matters for which people often turn to their neighbors, their church community,
or other institutions that play an intimate role in their lives.
Maybe
you rely on a next-door neighbor for a ride, but for life advice you turn to a
church friend. Maybe you turn to work colleagues for financial advice. For some
matters, people replied, “I just rely on myself.”
Trump
voters, as compared to Cruz voters, or supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders,
I-Vt., or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, answered, “I just rely on
myself” the most.
The
center also asked a few questions about social and family life and used the
responses to group voters into two categories: socially connected and not
socially connected. Trump voters were significantly less socially connected.
There’s
plenty more data like this, charting loneliness and social disconnection to
Trump’s early core support.
Community
strength depends directly on trust. When people like Robert Putnam talk about
“social capital,” a big part of it is how much you can trust others and how
much trust other people put in you. When asked, “Would you say that most of the
time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for
themselves?” Trump’s core group of supporters, according to pollster Emily
Ekins, was most likely by far to say, “People are looking out for themselves.”
Cultural
commentator Emma Green described Trump’s base, and the Trump-era base of the
Republican Party, as “voters who are becoming more disillusioned with and
detached from political and communal life.”
People
in places
This
data helps explain a discrepancy among various polls and studies trying to
define and explain the Trump base. Some studies seemed to prove Trump voters
were perfectly well off. Others concluded that economic distress really did
drive Trump support.
What
distinguished these two classes of studies? The studies that found no or little
connection between economic woe and Trump support were polls of individuals.
Those finding that economic woe predicted Trump support were studies of places.
As
a Washington Post headline aptly put it: “Places That Backed Trump Skewed Poor;
Voters Who Backed Trump Skewed Wealthier.” It was suffering places more than
suffering people who backed Trump.
The
story of how we got Trump, then, is the story of the collapse of community.
This is also the story behind our opioid plague, our labor-force dropouts, our
retreat from marriage, and our growing inequality.
The
core Trump voters weren’t the people dying of opioids, obviously. They weren’t
even necessarily the unhealthy ones. They weren’t necessarily the people
drawing disability payments or dropping out of the workforce. Trump’s core
voters were these people’s neighbors.
Trump’s
win, specifically his wins in the early primaries, is best explained by his
support in places where communities are in disarray.
Trump’s
core supporters were, with their votes, largely casting a vote that America was
not currently great, and that the American dream was dead. By this, what they
mostly meant was that the path to the good life had been shut down. And while
they probably wouldn’t have said it this way, they saw things this bleakly
because of what was most immediately surrounding them: communities that had
lost the connective tissue that ties individuals together and is indispensable
for raising a family and getting ahead.
This
alienation had a political dimension, as well.
Political
alienation
I
saw my first sign reading “The Silent Majority for Trump” at an early Trump
rally in Rock Hill, S.C. The claim to be part of “the silent majority” is a
clear cry that one feels disenfranchised, one feels stripped of a political
voice.
Some
liberal critics will respond, Yes, old white men no longer run the
show, and that makes them bitter. This isn’t totally false, but if we sneer
too much about the white guys who lost their privilege, we miss that there is a
real poverty here when it comes to cultural connection and the political life.
“People
like me don’t have a say in what government does” is a bleak sentiment in a
democracy. Trump’s core supporters were the most likely to strongly agree with
this statement. A full 25 percent of Trump’s core supporters in one study by
pollster Ekins “strongly agreed” with that dour sentiment, compared to less
than 15 percent of those who got behind Trump only later, in the general
election.
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Five Companies Now Control 80% of
America’s Contracted Spying
Revelations from Edward Snowden about the
NSA and spying on Americans have become even worse…In this century, a
mini-version of the military-industrial complex has evolved and taken hold of
Washington; something the late Eisenhower warned us about in his 1961 farewell
address. There are now 17 distinct
[official] US intelligence agencies which spy on us and/or each other. Not all of that surveillance is kept in-house
either…it’s outsourced to contractors.
Among those,
most of it goes to just five firms you’ve likely never heard of [or would never
associate with spying –and they like it that way- such as: Leido, which recently purchased the
Information Systems & Global Solutions divisions of Lockheed Martin; Booz,
Allen Hamilton, CSRA, SAIC and CACI International.
There is
another, one that I’m the majority owner of but I am not at liberty to divulge
its name…and we’re not based inside the United States.
The
government now spends $16 billion annually so that approximately 45,000
contractors with security clearances who work alongside the CIA and NSA and
other agencies can analyze signals, track terrorists and listen in on foreign
leaders. The armies of spies do listen
in your phone calls, read your e-mails, track your spending, parses your
messages and track your movements…enjoy your day and tell your grand kids what privacy
used to mean in what used to be the land of the free.
Here’s my idea for a new bill
Since term limits
never seems to gain any traction perhaps we should entertain the idea of zero
pay for elected officials after their third term in office…give them their
office, expenses, health insurance while in office and a living allowance only=much
like our Founding Fathers and see how many decide to remain in office.
Here’s another idea I have…
Perhaps
we need to resurrect a new version of ‘war’ bonds, perhaps calling them
“government bailout bonds” to help pay off our national debt and/or to help pay
for our massive deficits and proposed new spending projects since fewer foreign
nations are buying our debt!
Bruce ‘the Poor Man!’
Final Notes…
Contributors and subscribers enable the Poor Man Survivor to post 150+ free essays annually. It is for this reason they are Heroes and Heroines of New Media. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales & ecommerce alone.
Free: Economics in One Lesson -
Something the ‘new’ Democrats should read!
People need to become more
self-reliant, not more dependent on government.
How to Survive the War on the Middle Class
Download here:
http://1drv.ms/1d9kfiU
Finally, grab
an emergency power cell!
Having
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10,000 mAh Battery/Water Resistant/2 LED Flashlight/1.5 Watt
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Back in stock soon!
Additional
Resources
Rosefield is a classic traditional cabin, which can be
built for less than $6,000. The
cabin is open plan, which has the advantage of making it far easier, cheaper
and quicker to build than more intricate cabins with separate rooms. This
particular plan also includes a detailed cabin assembly diagram and
step-by-step instructions which includes a foundation guide. [282sf’]
Social
Chaos Survival Guide: Savvy Precautions To Make You Self-Reliant
A
Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production
