Until the conservative elite have paid for their costly mistakes such as Iraq, lack of proper health care, jobs and wages, the reasons for the rise of Trump will continue to be misunderstood! https://t.co/WbdB2L7fhO via @nypost

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was reportedly a Trump supporter sick of the failures of the US’s ruling establishment of past presidents who barely addressed the many problems that affected the daily lives of ordinary American citizens whether they were black or white.
It’s ironic that this officer is now being hailed a hero by the very elite who failed him and countless other fellow Americans. It is also ironic that the common grievances shared by poor black & white US citizens that should have been directed at those in charge became polarised
Instead of being united in solidarity against the corruption on Capital Hill they became the tools of fascists like Donald Trump and white middle class ruling elites whose interests in maintaining wealth, power and the status quo at the political centre have spanned generations.
The lesson here is to beware of false narratives being written by the likes of Trumps, Bush’s, Clintons and the Bidens of this American dream that its citizens have and will prosper much better under their leadership. That is perhaps why it is just that, a very American dream!
Perhaps it’s not any surprise that a white police officer like Brian Sicknick struggled to make sense if a corrupt political system that was loaded heavily against both ordinary black and white Americans ever achieving a tiny piece of that American dream.
In that context, it’s should be no no surprise that there were no clear lines as to who followed which demagogue who spoke to their sense of injustice and anger. Trump supporters were both white and even black or Latino as were Obama’s and now Biden.
That’s because as BBC’s North American correspondent, John Sopel eloquently put it - nothing is clear cut in US politics. Decades of reporting on this great nation led him to see the glaring contradictions that stretch from east to west of this vast and complicated landscape.
From shiny sea to sea the US presents onlookers with a mish mash of obvious inconsistencies and shades of grey that challenge any neat comparison or naive perception of where the truth and the lies exist behind the moral high ground in US politics.
It is in this breeding ground that demagogues both subtle and obvious exist. Loud, divisive and infectiously angry ones like Trump who feed into the oversimplified narrative that the only ruling elite is the one running against him in an election.
Others parade under a more moderate tone presenting themselves as being a bandaid for the sharp divisions caused by the likes of a Trump whilst presenting empty slogans like we can do it if we just come together and work together as a nation.
Meanwhile there is no adequate central government role in reducing the huge poverty, unemployment and lack of proper healthcare that ravages America and affects both the black and white poorer classes, maybe not proportionately so but nonetheless detrimentally.
America is a nation in crisis and Trump vocalised that crisis in the worst possible way. It’s no surprise either that some US politicians view Britain as a socialist state despite decades of Tory destruction of our NHS and social benefits system. Yes it’s that bad and really sad!
No one wants to pay taxes in the US and so nothing really gets done and that includes maintaining vital infrastructure like roads and bridges. The French motorways and German autobahns would put a wealthy America to shame. That’s because Europeans on the whole pay their taxes.
Population demographics are even significantly affected by particularly younger more mobile age groups moving home to other states that offer lower levels of taxation and that has a knock-on affect on funding for older deprived and higher taxation areas.
And so America is in a constant flux of competing tensions between simple economics and social justice and this is the angry stuff that rich demagogues can tap into for their own agenda.
Watching over an increasingly disillusioned America, The Statue of Liberty is meanwhile blushing at the disgraceful behaviour of its ruling elite in manipulating and mistreating its teeming poor who have come to its shores in search of that American dream! 🤷‍♂️
The US is in a bad way at present and only real initiatives at levelling up the quality of life of those ordinary hard working American families and unemployed will restore a sense of healing, trust and respect that will end this malaise at the heart of a once great nation. 🇺🇸
@threadreaderapp please #unroll thanks

More from Government

Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!
This article by Jim Spellar for @LabourList misses the point about why Labour needs to think seriously about constitutional reform - and have a programme for it ready for government.


The state of our constitution is a bit like the state of the neglected electric wiring in an old house. If you are moving into the house, sorting it out is a bit tedious. Couldn’t you spend the time and money on a new sound system?

But if you ignore the wiring, you’ll find that you can’t safely install the new sound system. And your house may well catch fire.

Any programme for social democratic government requires a state with capacity, and a state that has clear mechanisms of accountability, for all the big and all the small decisions that in takes, in which people have confidence.

That is not a description of the modern UK state.

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