Charlottesville
On what transpired in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A group comprised of Neo-nazis, white supremacists, and Klan’s men held a march in Charlottesville to protest what they see as the degradation of the American value. Near the conclusion of the parade, one member mowed down counter-protesters and in doing so, he killed a woman. What happened after this was as surreal as Trump’s presidency, but you can read the news on that, many days over. Basically, every single person condemned this as a terror attack, except Trump, who placed even blames on the protesters and the counter-protesters. But no one seems to want to look deeper into the reason behind this demonstration of pure hatred.
The disenfranchisement of the white Americans
Just today, I read in the Hillary Clinton’s interview promoting her book, she attributed her loss to this exact observation, white men and women feel disenfranchised. Because I am not white, I cannot pretend to understand the sense of loss of privilege as experienced by whites. I never had that privilege to begin with. I think the disenfranchisement comes from two simple observations, 1) workers in traditional industries are being laid off, 2) minorities participate more and more in the workforce. A simple, yet completely erroneous conclusion to draw from this is to say 2) caused 1). The first observation is caused by automation of manufacturing processes, outsourcing of low tech jobs, and regulation of coal mining (and other industries that have dramatic negative externalities). The first two reasons is purely capitalism talking, and the third is a governmental decision. These have nothing to do with the second observation, which is simply mathematics. For example, the unemployment rate of Hispanics is at 6.6% of the Hispanic workforce (which is higher than whites by the way), this means the rest are either working or not looking for jobs. As the Hispanic population grows, more jobs are created, and more jobs are taken by the growing population.
Even if we accept the wrong conclusion that 2) causes 1), unless the whites are exceedingly lazy, the replacement is one to one, i.e. one minority can replace one white at any given job. On the other hand, a study concludes one robot can replace on average 5.6 human workers. Each robot can reduce the wage of 1000 human workers by 0.25 to 0.5%. The installation of robots is happening at an exponential rate.
The contortion of and complete disregard for history
Apparently, as I recently learnt, native Americans are getting paid to take pictures with tourists at the Grand Canyon. They’ve got to make some money, and we are just so bloody dumb that we can’t see the stupidity in this. That is like promoting a tourist attraction in Poland called “photos with a holocaust Jew descendant.” (For full disclosure, I went to the Grand Canyon and paid the money. I declined the photographic opportunity.)
The colonizers invaded the Americas, killed the natives, and took over their land. We do not own this place. There is no divine proclamation that we have the deeds of the land. I do not place blame on the European colonizers for the invasion, it was their job. They plundered, murdered, raped, just like all of our ancestors did at some point. The moral code dictated that they see the native Americans as indigence species to be wiped out. This history is made shameful by the further development of humanity, and it is a heavy burden we must carry going forward. I.e., we accept that we took this land from the Native Americans, we install museums to remind us never to repeat this atrocity, we do our best to treat the remaining tribes with dignity while enhancing the livelihood of all citizens.
A similar case can be made for slavery. The slave trade was the norm of the time. The blacks and other slaves were commodities to be traded on a legal market. At the time, the moral code was not developed to a point where our ancestors recognized that as wrong (there are debates on this point). It took many factors such as the abolitionists, the civil war, and Lincoln to gradually end slavery in United States. As we should do with the natives, we must treat the descendants of slaves with dignity, and because that is a much larger portion of the society, install programs in an attempt to fix our wrongs. This should be an ongoing progress, and maybe Obama was a result of that, historians will tell.
The encouragement from the president
We all know by this point that if Donald weren’t born into money, he would have never amounted to anything. Even with this money to begin with, in all of his life, he did less well than the market. That is like saying a guy starting a game of Monopoly with a hundred times as much money as the rest, yet played just as well as the rest.
What money did afford him was an insulation from criticism and negative reinforcement. As the guy with all the money, everyone he dealt with was at a position of the payee. As a payee, we think twice before crossing the guy who is paying us. This is generally how capitalism works, everything has a price, including one’s dignity. To see Republicans bending over backward is like saying that money lubricates everything, as in, the guy with the money can lubricate your orifices before putting something there.
Final thoughts
Judging by the overwhelming denunciation of this atrocity, I would say that this minnow of a movement will be in time eliminated completely. But I think there is also another factor contributing to its demise. The disenfranchisement of whites won’t stop, if all whites do is bitch about it. It is not that the other races are taking over jobs, we are all getting disenfranchised by vast automation.
What I see is a potential danger is the courting of young whites into this movement, and expansion of this into a domestic terrorist organization much like the KKK. The danger is that, if you are in a terror organization, you can get fed just by causing terror, which eliminates the need to be trained at a job or making money. This is a positive feedback loop that may snowball.