Tweeter-in-Chief is not the real America(Barf Alert)

The Times ^ | August 14th 2019 | Justin Webb

[Ennis85]

Two great inventions sum up the allure of America. The first is valet parking. Go to the most modest downtown restaurant and a guy outside will park your car for ten bucks. It'll be brought back when you leave. You should tip him America is the home of easy. Of service with a smile Of oiled wheels.

The second invention, as you drive home, and turn off the main road, is the four-way stop. These are crossroads with stop signs in which i cars take it in turns to move on. The first person to arrive gets to go first I and others wait their turn. Sometimes extreme politeness gums up the works (after you. no. after you) but generally they work well and have done so for generations Countless Americans enjoy a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness - they live in pleasant places and they behave decently towards one another. Yes,. even now. It is easy to forget just how deeply entrenched are America’s fundamental strengths. The US can seem so meretricious, so gaudy and unthinking, so unable to come up with political leaders fit for the limes, so violent, deranged even. These, though, arc by-products of a ^ system that encourages lives filled with striving and purpose. They are I exhaust fumes pumping from a great endeavour. Too often we notice the fumes, not the engine. Americans strength — and weakness — is their general belief t that they can change things, mould I the world as they see fit It's tough on , the poor who internalise the sense that they are simply not striving hard I enough.. Its tough on the rich, too: lives of proper indolence are difficult to enjoy in the US: the amazing thing . about Jeffrey Epstein is not how any lived like him. but how few did. and do. given the wealth of so many Americans. But the upside is the hum of activity, the intellectual endeavour that makes its universities so fine, the drive that makes its businesses so successful. You have to take a step away from politics to see America, and in particular a stop away from political Twitter The coarseness of the arguments, led by the tweeter in the Oval Office, blind as to the real lives being lived around the nation. A good example was the recent furore over the governor of Virginia. Ralph Northam. he is a Democrat in a state becoming more strongly Democrat with every election. He was riding high. Then a photo surfaced from the pages of a 1984 medical school yearbook, showing a picture of a man who had blacked up his lace standing next to another man wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. It seems that one of the men was Northam. And even if it wasn't, the governor admitted that he had, on another occasion, painted his lace black for a party Twitter went mad. And after a millisecond for reflection, so did Democratic Party leaders around the nation, including presidential candidates. Northam was toast, should go: should never be heard from again. And then something odd happened The governor apologized but said that it was a long time ago and he had changed. And in poll after poll Virginia voters backed him. including, wait for it. black voters Typical was a Quinnipiac University poll in which about a quarter of black voters surveyed in Virginia, 24 per cent, said Northam was racist, but a 63 per cent majority said he was not.

What’s going on here? Most commentators, embarrassed by their hot-take predictions of North arm demise, suggested that black Virginians were giving him the benefit of the doubt because* he was a decent governor and had made promises to them to do more for black folks in the future. Maybe some felt like that. I suspect there’s a simpler explanation. I doubt many of them thought much about it. There is no election due in Virginia. Most Americans, most of the time, have other things on their minds. They have no time to be watching Twitter all day. They tune in and out mostly out. And this is a sign not of unsophistication but of the exact opposite: they can judge when stuff is getting truly crunchy and when it's just noise. They decided the Northam affair was noise. You see it too with the boiling rage about immigration that the president I has helped to stoke. In a poll for the prestigious and non-partisan Pew organisation back in 1994.63 per cent of Americans said immigrants burdened the country and 31 per cent said they strengthened it. This was in the Clinton years, w hen all was hunky-dory, according to many of today's gloom merchants. The years of a centrist president, booming Stocks, Russia quiet and vaguely friendly, and the news dominated mostly by shark attacks. But Americans said they didn’t like immigration. And now? In years dominated by talk of a new nuclear arms race, of white nationalism on the march, of the wall being buit (or not) on the southern border, the position has been neatly reversed. According to Pew; ' This year, as in all recent years, a majority (62 per cent) say immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work I and talents. Just 28 per cent say immigrants are a burden on the country because they take jobs, housing and healthcare.* This is Trumps America. Only, of course, it's not Trumps America, any more than it was Clinton's in 1994. The real America is the four-way stop and valet parking. It’s not ; perfect, in fact, it's often ghastly But it's the biggest social experiment the world has seen, and it ain’t done yet.

[Ennis85]

All his talk about outrage towards Ralph Northam and not once does he mention the infanticide part.

[rktman]

Ellie /’princess running beaver’ Warren?

[bgill]

Tip him so he doesn’t scratch your car the next time you’re at the restaurant. Sounds like buying protection from the mob. No thanks.

[GaryCrow]

Forgiveness is awarded by the media that decides what the national outrage of the moment should be. Forgiveeness for racial gaffes seems to come a lot easier for democrats than republicans. Anyone remember Robert “The conscience of the senate” Byrd?

[kiryandil]

I’m just wondering why Justin Webb insists on sexually molesting small children...