Man Of Jackistan: Reason and Truth's Time and Place

The Fate of "Trumpism" Rant #18  ( Opinion ) March 23, 2020 The future of what reluctantly gets the label of 'Trumpism' has increasingly represented a topic of much speculation among those who spend their time thinking about politics. I have a few tentative thoughts on that, based mostly on sheer guesswork. Many have argued that after leaving office, the Republican Party will 'snap out' of its Trump-induced spell; politicians will write off their former support for him in one way or another to avoid association with that trainwreck. While that sounds like an appetizing outcome to me, that is very unlikely, in my opinion. The man has amassed too much popularity for him to just step off the stage and fade into the background. The vicious and aggressive tweeting he does will in and of itself continue to effect the public discourse and news cycles long after leaving office. If Trump loses in November, after a lengthy dispute about the integrity of the...

Black People and Conspiracy Theories, Plus Speculation About Biden's VP Pick and the Future of Trumpism Rant #17 ( Opinion ) Originally March 22, 2020; Posted March 23, 2020 Lately, I've thought a lot about something that confuses me. It seems that a lot of Black people  believe in conspiracy theories like New World Order, Illuminati, population control--a whole bunch of them.  Maybe that's a coincidence, and only overwhelmingly endemic among the Black people that I know. But it makes sense. As a White man, I can only speculate. On the one hand, I can totally see the roots of skepticism and distrust in the system: slavery, "separate but equal" segregation, Blacks being denied mortgages and credit through red-lining, the Tuskegee experiment, police profiling; there is a long history of this government and its elites quite literally conspiring to make life difficult for Blacks. What boggles my mind more than just a proclivity for belief in conspiracy theori...

More Red Flags Than A Chinese Communist Party Parade Rant #13 ( Opinion ) Originally March 17, 2020 Not to say I told you so, to those who either bought that this president had the skills to effectively manage a crisis, or the many who bet that the country would not face something seriously threatening for 4 or 8 years...without gloating or anything, please don't say nobody raised concerns about his ability to lead. Of the many, many, many warning sides in a sequence of more red flags than a Chinese Communist Party parade: When trump used a sharpie to draw obviously altered lines over a map to show (falsely) that a hurricane would hit Alabama--in line with an earlier, incorrect statement--his more cognizant supporters wrote it off as clearly not true, but insignificant (whereas his die-hard base adjusted their understanding of that hurricane's path, trusting trump over NOAA, the nation's premier meteorological agency).  Instead of admitting wro...

"Psychoactive Substances' Presence In Narcissistic Nationalist Politicians" Rant #11 ( Opinion ) Originally March 13, 2020  Today, the president declared a national emergency in response to the spreading coronavirus, COVID-19. During the announcement , Trump gave his usual brash presentation. And yet, the way he spoke sounded a lot lower and slower than the way he usually speaks. Perhaps my observation here is a bit slanted: I only heard the address on the radio, so I don't know what he actually looked like during this. Also, I may be uniquely keen on noticing the effects of drugs on someone. So, was Trump on drugs?  The slurring, that weird draggy low voice: I don't know if you could go so far to say that there exists an 'opioid accent,' but the way he sounded reminded me of how many men tend to talk while on dope. Stringing together words has never been a challenge for this president. Those words might not make any sense at all, bu...

Trump's Faithful Evangelical Flock Rant #8 ( Opinion ) Originally March 1, 2020; Posted March 10, 2020 It will shock no one to hear that White evangelical Christians in the United States overwhelmingly back Donald Trump's presidency; victory without them would have simply not occurred. Somewhere between 25%  and 41%  of Americans identify as evangelical or "born again" Christians, meaning that they consider Jesus Christ their lord and personal savior. They constitute a bloc of voters worth roughly 1/4 of the American electorate; in 2016, a full 26% of voters in an exit poll identified as evangelical. This article tries to downplay this group's intense attachment with Trump--if I considered myself evangelical, I would too! The author makes the argument that not every single White evangelical showed up to vote,  that statistic doesn't differentiate between White and minority evangelicals, not all of those who consider themselves evangelical go to ch...

Can Bernie Take Texas? My Take  ( Opinion ) Originally February 28, 2020 Could Bernie pull off a win in Texas? No, not on Super Tuesday. I don't mean next week; I mean in November. Conventional wisdom would quickly assert 'no'-- but that dynamic might be changing. A new poll by the University of Houston in association with Univision and "Latino Decisions" shows some surprising results. Among the 1,004 registered voters they surveyed, 45% said if the election were tomorrow, they would vote for Bernie Sanders--equal to the percentage of respondents who said they would vote for Donald Trump. This leaves 10% undecided, but still. The idea that a Democrat--let alone one regarded as so far left--could do well in Texas comes as a surprise to many Americans. After all, this is the state of George W. Bush. A conservative powerhouse and in some ways an emblem of the right done 'right.' How could this happen? If you regularly read The Man of Jackist...