Shot in the Dark

Berg’s 8th Law

Since the 2020 election, where blacks and Latinos voted GOP in numbers we haven’t seen in decades, Berg’s Eighth Law has been getting a workout:

American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.

I think the law may well have come about from an earlier wave of utterly racist prate and gabble about Justice Clarence Thomas, from people who aren’t intellectually fit to carry his gym bag.

Seems everything that’s old is new again:

“Nobody that I’m aware of feels that opposing Clyburn’s nomination would be the wise thing to do,” he said. “If you know that a person has been vetted by Jim Clyburn, you know that person won’t go to the court and end up being a Clarence Thomas,” referring to the Black justice whose rulings often resemble the thinking of White conservatives.

Josh Blackman:

The Washington Post wrote the emphasized portion. You know, Justice Thomas, the black justice who thinks like a white person. The Washington Post called Justice Thomas an Oreo. And that statement isn’t even accurate! The Court’s white conservatives issue rulings that often resemble those of Justice Thomas. Thomas is the intellectual leader of the Court’s conservative wing. And he has been for decades. Gorsuch, Alito, and the rest are just trying to keep up with CT. But once again, we get the racist trope that Thomas is Scalia’s clone. Just the opposite. Scalia often remarked that Thomas pushed him to the right. What lazy writing from the Post.

While the WaPo removed the statement, it was more out of political optics than decency.

I’m wondering what’ll happen first: Blacks realizing that they are just votes on the hoof for the Democrats, or Republicans figuring out how to get that message across?

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Mitch Berg

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6 responses to “Berg’s 8th Law”

  1. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    I can’t help being struck by the irony of a justice maintaining rigid adherence to the original interpretation of a document written when his ancestors were considered chattel by most of its authors.

  2. mjb003 Avatar
    mjb003

    I know many Black, Hispanic, and a couple Native Americans who fervently supported Trump and still do, and will be supporting the next Republican candidate. Their reasons? Because of fiscal conservatory, gun rights, the rights of the unborn, and general freedom. These are reasons they tell me, and these are reasons they post on Facebook publicly. Just like my friends who are White and conservative.

    To Mitch’s question, I think many have figured out that they are votes on the hooves for Democrats. Republicans may be *starting* to figure out how to get the message across. But I, for one, am looking forward to the day when the Democrats allow racism to be over by allowing BIPOC people to have dissenting opinions and differing political identities just as they currently acknowledge White people have different opinions, different political identities.

  3. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    ^ Trump is just the weapon that a large part of American society chose to wield against the establishment. The real story here is the RNC and their failure to engage with working class economic issues, and the resulting hostile takeover they’ve suffered.

    Trump himself was and is (in my opinion) mostly an opportunistic empty vessel. He won in 2016 because he surfed the wave of economic nationalist and anti-establishment sentiment — his campaign had more in common with Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. He did have some small credibility on some of the issues — since the 80s he’d been complaining about trade policy and foreign wars (genuinely or not). So with a lot of help from Steve Bannon, the amoral commercial media, and Hillary Clinton (the “pied piper” strategy), he was able to morph himself into an appealing candidate for tens of millions of working class people who are uninterested in politics but felt abused and left behind by the past decades of globalization.

    The problem now is that the underlying grievances are still there, and people are still angry. The RNC is realizing “the MAGA movement” is an actual thing independent of Trump, and even if he disappears they will have to find a way to surf that wave or become irrelevant.

  4. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    Reprobates love to say “X is voting against their own interests”. It’s the kind of nitwit statement rAT might make when he’s riffing rather than plagiarizing, when it’s directed at White conservatives, but not so much when used on blacks.

    All races have their own IQ bell curves. The curve for sub-Saharan blacks and their descendants looks more like a wave just before it breaks than a bell.

    When a black votes for a reprobate of any race, they’re voting for gibs. That’s not my opinion, it comes directly from their own mouths; and it’s gibs they won’t get if they vote Red.

    So sure, there are blacks out there on the breaking edge, succeeding on their own, and they’ll vote Red to protect what they’ve earned like anyone else. But the GOP will never, ever gain anything close to a majority so long as the federal treasury had paper to write IOU’s on.

  5. mjb003 Avatar
    mjb003

    “his campaign had more in common with Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio”

    Yes, it was clear in the caucuses and primaries maps that Trump and Bernie won many of the same counties. Those areas liked the populist messages.

    My BIPOC friends were Republican pre-Trump, and remained Republican, AND fervent Trump supporters despite the messaging that Trump was racist. They either didn’t buy it or overlooked it in favor of what they believed would be a continuation of Republican policies that they support.

    On a slightly different, funny to me note- I personally know some white Iowans whose support for Obama increased after Oprah endorsed him. Those same Iowans became excited about and supported Trump because of his TV persona. They were fans of his reality show. People making choices because of tv personas are the people I most worry about who are at risk of voting against their interests.

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