WTF is wrong with this country?

[Ike Bana]

Following up on this from Dave...
http://politicalchat.org/showpost.ph...43&postcount=1

This is one of the opinions from: Politico - What Trump Showed Us About America

From Politico in the depths of the pandemic, opinions from 35 mostly university professors (which will generate immediate sniveling and puking from anybody on the right), on what the fuck is wrong with us.

POLITICO - ‘AMERICANS FEEL RIPPED OFF, AND THEY'RE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO BLAME.’

BY JOAN C. WILLIAMS

Joan C. Williams is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and author of White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America.

I lived in Venezuela growing up. Now, I have lived to see the Venezuelization of my own country. Venezuela had tremendous oil wealth, but at age 8, I was deeply shocked at the level of inequality. I still remember driving into Caracas for the first time and seeing people living in shanty towns, with little boys running around in only shirts. Our house there had high concrete walls topped with broken glass. This brought home to me that the white picket fence we think of here in America signals the social trust and peace possible only in a democracy that offers workers a stable, middle-class life.

Donald Trump represents what happens when the American dream dies. It is dying: Virtually all Americans of my generation did better than their parents, but only about half of those born in 1980 will. Americans feel ripped off, and they’re looking for someone to blame—that’s what Trump showed me. His election made me realize that I and other progressives had failed to clearly communicate to our fellow Americans the reason for the hollowing out of the middle class: a toxic brand of slash-and-burn capitalism where Big Men’s frantic performance of masculinity “requires” them to hoard outlandish wealth so they can win the masculinity contest that defines their lives—gutting workers’ futures in the process.

The left’s failure to explain this enabled Trump to blame immigrants for the disappearance of solid full-time jobs, and to convince many in the fragile and former middle class that they’ve been victimized because they’re white. Immigrants aren’t to blame; slash-and-burn capitalism is. We urgently need to draw that link, clearly and soon, or our democracy’s days may be numbered.

Ike's emphasis above.

And even if this is accurate, which I feel it is...goddamn white christian Americans have had it all over Americans of color and Americans of other religions since the founding...and they have certainly had it all over the citizens of countries that are sending refugees seeking a decent life to the borders of this country...people that they hate for no other reasons than the color of their skin and their religious beliefs.

If you can take the time...every one of these opinions is thoughtful, some of them stunningly pessimistic, but every one has been worth reading, IMHO.