😰👹👺🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮“DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN” — Nicole Narea @ Vox With A Glimpse Of Trump’s Second Term: American Apocalypse — Dark, Ugly, Hateful, Violent, Dishonest, Exclusionary, Stupid, Racist, Diminished, Yet Very White & Privileged — Are People Of Color & Their Allies Really Going To Stand By & Watch While Their Past & Our Future As A Strong, Creative, Tolerant, Diverse, Humane Nation Is Written Out Of History By A Racist GOP & Its Totally Wacko Yet Dangerously Evil Cult Leader?

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN pastedGraphic.png

Album version

Music & Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

Well, they’re still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

Now I hear she’s got a house up in Fairview

And a style she’s trying to maintain

Well, if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I’m easily found

Tell her there’s a spot out ‘neath Abram’s Bridge

And tell her there’s a darkness on the edge of town

There’s a darkness on the edge of town

Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something that they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

Well, now some folks are born into a good life

And other folks get it anyway anyhow

Well, I lost my money and I lost my wife

Them things don’t seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I’ll be on that hill ’cause I can’t stop

I’ll be on that hill with everything I’ve got

Well, lives on the line where dreams are found and lost

I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

——— Source: springsteenlyrics.com, click here for music: https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=darknessontheedgeoftown

Nicole Narea
Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://apple.news/AyEIE9zXYSTeZ-TvO2TLZAQ

Nicole writes at Vox:

. . . .

As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.

The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.

Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.

“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”

. . . .

Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.

It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.

“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.

But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.

“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”

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Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.

Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”

America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do. 

This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!

It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes. 

The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)

This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!

PWS

08-27-20

NYT: Tilting At Windmills — Trump’s Coal Mining Fantasyland — “Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back, To your hometown, To your hometown!”**

**Bruce Springtsteen — My Hometown

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/coal-jobs-trump-appalachia.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0

Hiroko Tabushi writes in the NY Tmes:

“In Decatur, Ill., far from the coal mines of Appalachia, Caterpillar engineers are working on the future of mining: mammoth haul trucks that drive themselves.

The trucks have no drivers, not even remote operators. Instead, the 850,000-pound vehicles rely on self-driving technology, the latest in an increasingly autonomous line of trucks and drills that are removing some of the human element from digging for coal.

When President Trump moved on Tuesday to dismantle the Obama administration’s climate change efforts, he promised it would bring coal-mining jobs back to America. But the jobs he alluded to — hardy miners in mazelike tunnels with picks and shovels — have steadily become vestiges of the past.

Pressured by cheap and abundant natural gas, coal is in a precipitous decline, now making up just a third of electricity generation in the United States. Renewables are fast becoming competitive with coal on price. Electricity sales are trending downward, and coal exports are falling.

All the while, the coal industry has been replacing workers with machines and explosives. Energy and labor specialists say that no one — including Mr. Trump — can bring them all back.

“People think of coal mining as some 1890s, colorful, populous frontier activity, but it’s much better to think of it as a high-tech industry with far fewer miners and more engineers and coders,” said Mark Muro, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

“The regulatory changes are entirely outweighed by these technological changes, not to mention the price of natural gas or renewables,” Mr. Muro said. “Even if you brought back demand for coal, you wouldn’t bring back the same number of workers.”

. . . .

“In 1980, the industry employed about 242,000 people. By 2015, that figure had plunged 60 percent, to fewer than 100,000, even as coal production edged up 8 percent. Helped by automation, worker productivity more than tripled over the same period, according to data from the federal Energy Information Administration and the Brookings Institution.

And a recent study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment predicted that automation was likely to replace 40 to 80 percent of workers at mines.

Automation makes mines more “safe, efficient and productive,” said Corrie Scott, a Caterpillar spokeswoman. “While mines would not need as many drivers, they will need more people who use and understand the latest technology,” she said.

“However way you spin it, gas and renewables are going to continue to replace coal,” said Nicolas Maennling, senior economics and policy researcher at Columbia University and an author of the automation study.

“And in order to stay competitive, coal will have to increase automation,” he said. “What Mr. Trump does will make little difference.”

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Yup,  I understand the President is a leader, not a technocrat. That’s why a good political leader surrounds him or herself with competent staff and also draws on the huge wealth of technical expertise available in the Federal Civil Service.

Surrounding yourself instead with idealogical know-nothings and sycophants like Bannon, Miller, and Priebus is pure political malpractice at the highest level.

(Note that I didn’t include Conway in the group. I think she’s probably the smartest of the bunch. She was the “brains” behind what has to go down as one of the most unexpected electoral triumphs in American political history, regardless of whether or not you like the result. And I wouldn’t accuse her of being a sycophant. But, she is totally loyal to a fault, and therefore keeps throwing herself on her sword over and over for The Leader. I also didn’t include Spicer. He has his bad days, for sure. But, he has the hardest job in Washington, and that includes The Leader himself. I actually doubt anyone could do it better. He won’t last too long. But, after he’s gone, not only Melissa McCarthy is likely to miss him.)

PWS

03/30/17