Posted on 02/28/2016 4:15:57 AM PST by VitacoreVision
Two of my favorite television shows are about what I think it's fair to call the "New America." In Master of None, on Netflix, Indian-American comedian Aziz Ansari plays a struggling actor in a very real and diverse New York. His best friend is the son of Chinese immigrants. His girlfriend is white. And the plots have revolved, pointedly but never heavy-handedly, around the portrayal of minorities in mainstream media, and the struggles of immigrants chasing the American dream.
In Transparent, on Amazon, an alarmingly and hilariously dysfunctional Los Angeles family comes to terms with their father's late-life realization that he (she) is transgender. Jeffrey Tambor plays Maura Pfefferman, the aging Jewish college professor who ditches a lonely suburban life for one in which gender and sexuality are fluid. Both of his daughters enter into same-sex relationships, and the question of whether they are gay, bi-, or adventurous seems to be left intentionally ambiguous. A son, Josh, is straight, promiscuous, and desperate for love.
Both shows represent a multicultural, urban America in which differences of all kinds are not just tolerated but celebrated. The immigrant characters in Master don't need to prove themselves to the American "mainstream," whatever that is, and don't apologize for expecting America to live up to its promises. The LGBTQ characters in Transparent don't suffer for their natures or their choices -- at least when it comes to gender and sex (the Jewish characters mostly suffer from one another, but that's an old story).
This is an America completely at odds with the one that has made Donald Trump the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Consider these stats, from political journalist Thomas B. Edsall:
Poll data from the Pew Research Center shows how much Trump depends on the politically restive white working class. His backing from voters with a high school degree or less is twice as high as it is from those with college degrees; the percentage of men lining up behind him is eight points higher than the percentage of women; voters from households making $40,000 or less are 12 points more likely to cast a Trump ballot than those from households making more than $75,000.
In other words, Trump's base tends to be white, male, undereducated, and struggling financially. But that doesn't necessarily explain Trump's appeal. After all, if economic self-interest were their only motivation, such voters might well support Bernie Sanders, who blames big business and crony capitalism for the inequality that has suppressed wages and decimated the working class.
But put it all together, and you get a chunk of the electorate for whom the New America is hardly America at all. If you were to create a composite from the Pew stats, you'd have a white guy who has almost nothing in common with the kinds of characters in Master or Transparent -- that is, brown, Jewish, nontraditional, college-educated, pluralistic. These shows don't represent to him what's new about America, but what's wrong with America. And worse, the seeming success of these characters, he feels, comes at the expense of "real" Americans like him.
Trump's real ideology is murky, but his targets are clear: Immigrants bring problems and take away jobs. Muslims represent the worst kind of threat: an internal one. America is corrupt and fallen, and by opening its doors to foreigners, tolerating difference, and insisting upon "political correctness," it has suppressed the very people -- that is, middle-class white families -- who once made the country great.
(Perhaps to his credit, Trump hasn't put opposition to gay rights at the center of his "traditional" agenda, unlike Cruz or Rubio, although he has been a consistent opponent of marriage equality.)
I don't know how much Trump actually believes this stuff. As a developer from New York, he has lived among, socialized with, and made billions from and with the kinds of people portrayed in both of the shows above. But that doesn't matter to his followers. Like McCarthy before him, he appeals to their suspicion that America is rotting from within, too weak or too tolerant or too deluded to remember that it was at its strongest before women, minorities, immigrants, and gays demanded a piece of a now-shrinking pie.
And now various polls are suggesting, as Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at U.C.L.A., puts it, that Trump has built "a significant part of his coalition of voters on people who are responsive to religious, social and racial intolerance":
Nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump's voters disagreed with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Southern states during the Civil War. Only 5 percent of Mr. Rubio's voters share this view.
Mr. Trump's popularity with white, working-class voters who are more likely than other Republicans to believe that whites are a supreme race and who long for the Confederacy may make him unpopular among leaders in his party. But it's worth noting that he isn't persuading voters to hold these beliefs. The beliefs were there -- and have been for some time.
And that, ultimately, is why I see Trump as a threat, not just in what his candidacy means for America as a whole, but what it means for us as Jews. His message -- of distrusting the foreign, of rejecting the new, of abhorring pluralism -- is directly opposed to our history in this country and our best interests as a minority. And it is empowering people who reject the very notion of racial and ethnic diversity.
It's not immaterial that Transparent is immersed in a deeply Jewish environment. The Pfeffermans stock up for the Yom Kippur break-fast at Canter's Deli, Josh falls in love and impregnates his mother's rabbi, a daughter is haunted by a grandmother's youth in Weimar Berlin. The sexual and gender journeys taken by its characters are on a continuum with the social and religious upheavals experienced by their forebears. Jews flourished in this country because we had the freedom to shed the burdens of the past and embrace a future of opportunity.
It's the kind of freedom and opportunity that makes Trump's base extremely angry -- just as their anger makes me extremely afraid.
And the belief in this kind of nonsense is why a majority of Jews keep voting Democrat—even when some Democrats publicly profess anti-Jew sentiments, and it is difficult to find any Republicans or conservatives who speak against Jews
I know there is unhappiness among Dem Jews with Obama, but they won’t give GOP the satisfaction of saying it while in office.
The RJC Republican Jewish Coalition will embrace Trump and hopefully his staunch history of backing Jewish causes here in the USA and his friendship with Netanyahu will open up some enlightened Jews to give him their vote.
They all in their hearts know Hillary harbors anti Jew feelings. Her Secy. of State tenure was bad for Israel.
“A den of liars and thieves?” For lacking the ability to stop the 0bama agenda? Politics is the art of the possible.
Trump supports most of the people, and the worst ideas, that you presumably oppose. You are being conned.
I remember when Boehner took the Speaker's chair, proclaimed he would NOT change Nancy's rules... The GOP establishment is not opposed to Obama's agenda they are writing his checks.
How come this person doesn’t advocate that Israel tear down the wall that we paid for, and allow their county to be overrun with the diverse hoards that they demand for us?
Who are the biggest lobbyists in DC? Who fears most the ‘correcting’ of American history, so our children and grandchildren actually learn true American history, not fables written by lobbyists, beginning with ALL Americans learning the truth of the USS Liberty, and giving those military men still alive today, the proper honor they deserve?
“In other words, Trump’s base tends to be white, male, undereducated, and struggling financially.”
If you replace white with black, it certainly SOUNDS LIKE the bunch that New York Jews claimed to be supporting when they stirred up racial riots in the South.
Yes, letting in millions of Muslim immigrants with their lunatic brand of virulent anti-semitism is far less dangerous to Jews.
How could Donald Trump’s America possibly be wise than Barack Obama’s? Obama is openly hostile to Israel and anti-Semitic.
Ivanka is a modern Orthodox Jew.
The multiculturalism eating away at Europe is a far greater to Jews than Trump’s bid to stop it from taking root here.
Trump is a one-issue candidate when it comes to immigration and Americans by and large share his view something needs to be done about it.
Of course his wall in all likelihood will never be built but he believes (and knows) people want it so its his signature opener in his stump speech.
I am not at all skeptical about Trump and his wall. In fact, I think that building the wall between the US and Mexico, with Mexico footing the bill, is the least of the difficult tasks that await the Trump presidency. Trump has already won the battle of forcing a recognition by this nation’s citizens that such a barrier is necessary for Americas continued existence as an independent Republic. Mexico can pay for that wall in a number of ways, such as being billed for the overdue cost of US welfare that continues to support millions of their free loading citizens.
I would include the obvious need to deal similarly with all other aspects of illegal immigration from other sources and nations as well. Americans must reclaim their right to be the first consideration of their government. It is beyond reason and common sense that those whom voters have elected have reserved that consideration for themselves while being crazily generous with money from tax payers who actually work for their money.
What a colossal waste of bandwidth.
This is the Liberal Jew. The Jew that’s *always* on the wrong side of *every* issue.
The Orthodox Jews are almost universally conservative. I’m not Orthodox, but I stand with them.
Yes, delusional is the better description. The writer is nuts.
Stop being a retarded Nazi infesting this cite with silly lies, that makes you a useful idiot for the cultural marxists you claim to oppose.
Anyone using "anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews" has lost their mind and soul. Grow up, boy
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