[lbo-talk] Roseanne in context

[J.B. Nicholson]

Marv Gandall wrote:
> As this commentary observes, Roseanne was a media vehicle for softening 
> the image of the most backward stratum of the multi-hued US working 
> class.
> 
> The show's idealized portrait of Trump's white racist supporters has 
> been more widely promoted by hopeful leftists and liberals refusing to 
> accept that they are for the most part politically irredeemable.
I'm not convinced it's fair or likely to provoke change to describe Trump 
supporters as that article does. Even xenophobic racists deserve Medicare 
for All, potable water piped into their lead paint-free home, a national 
jobs program funded in part by reallocating trillions from warmaking toward 
programs of public benefit, and more. They don't deserve the economic 
military draft either.

https://www.thenation.com/article/new-study-communities-most-affected-by-war-turned-to-trump-in-2016/ 
references a critical study which says if three states -- Pennsylvania, 
Michigan, and Wisconsin -- "had suffered even a modestly lower casualty 
rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary 
Clinton to the White House" 
(https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2989040). This 
explanation doesn't rely on namecalling or suggesting that people deserve 
any less because someone disagrees with their politics. War is clearly 
hugely significant and the Democrats are just as cravenly pro-war as the 
Republicans.