A Nation of Tragedies: The Subway Killing, Our Worsening Crisis, and a Note of H

[Surly1]

This was written before the mass shooting in Texas by a fascist killer wearing Right Wing Death Squad insignia, and before an SUV driver in Brownsville plowed through a group of migrants, killing eight. "Home of the Brave™, etc.

A Nation of Tragedies: The Subway Killing, Our Worsening Crisis, and a Note of Hope

JARED YATES SEXTON
May 7



When I try and explain the horrors of Neoliberalism, sometimes I fall short. It's incredibly easy to get lost in the economics of it all. These explanations tend to wander into conversations about deregulation, attacks on organized labor, redistribution schemes, the kind of corruption that manifests in stories about Clarence Thomas and his billionaire benefactor. What goes missing, what falls by the wayside, as is so often the case with political discussions, are the people.

In pursuit of profits and power, the wealthy have relied on terror. This is what I detail in THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS. Beneath stories about "white replacement theory," QAnon absurdities, and a whole host of religious and capitalist lies, is a drive for the privileged to protect what they have while, according to the principles of hypercapitalism and neoliberalism, continually increasing their margins of profit. There comes a moment where the only thing to do is pay people less, expect them to do more, to accept worsening conditions and decreasing programs and benefits. And, to do so, they have to be so terrified of everything that that terrible deal seems somehow worth it.

By cutting social programs, by gutting out investment in efforts to make people feel safe in a largely uncaring world, the result is useful terror. Precarity is a hell of a motivator. If you believe you could end up on the street, if you believe that your fate is only as safe and sound as the next paycheck, if your health insurance and very life are tied to the job you have, if someone is coming to take what is yours and your only option is to kill or be killed, the world gets smaller and your ability to negotiate and possibly push back against the people using those very narrative and conspiracy theories becomes almost nonexistent.

After awhile, it suddenly looks a lot easier and in your interest to join with the powerful in exercising those authoritarian ideas and taking what you can get, all the while telling yourself that you are strong and capable and part of the elect.

When 30 year old Jordan Neely was killed on the New York City subway by a veteran named Daniel Penny who locked him in a chokehold, it's certain neither him nor the man who killed him were considering any of these things. Neely, it seems from reporting, was in the middle of a moment of desperation. He didn't have food, he didn't have water, and he lacked the resources to find any. His state was so desperate, he told passengers, that he was willing to be incarcerated if it meant getting help. Penny was both trained to kill and lived in a country where one of the main things that is piped through the culture is an unending fear that the only thing we can know, with any certainty, is that it is a kill or be killed world.

These things don't just happen.

The Republican Party and their partners in the evangelical world will assure you it's supernatural evil. As if a dearth of belief in God or scripture or a libertine culture, fueled by entertainment and selfishness and feminism and acceptance of gay and trans people, somehow opens a gate or allows the literal Devil into the world, or allows him more power over it, or, honestly, however this twisted logic manages to make "sense" of it all.

Meanwhile, the fearmongering that keeps the GOP in power despite having absolutely no solutions about how to make lives better or how to move forward other than cutting taxes for the wealthy and furthering the redistribution that caused things in the first place. Instead, this fearmongering convinces an increasingly alienated and isolated country of people to believe their only solution is to buy guns or be prepared to kill. That means if someone pulls into your driveway, knocks on your door, looks at you funny, or generally even exists within your vicinity.

The Democratic Party usually stays away from these things, instead focusing at times on things like the influence of hip hop or a need to invest strategically in law enforcement or defense, especially if that means scoring points with mythical voters who might believe Democrats are stronger than their GOP counterparts give them credit for. It never works to do much of anything besides increasing the influence of an army-like police force that continues to believe it is an occupying body, worsen the fear that is manufactured anyway, and steal funds and resources from programs that would actually help.

In this current system, both Neely and Penny have played their respective roles. Individuals like Penny, who live on the razor's edge of society where safety and resources are constantly in a state of flux, are there to remind us to keep our heads down and continue along our paths. There cannot be a remedy for his suffering, there cannot be programs that would alleviate that suffering in totality because to do so would be to fortify the ranks of people who are expected to accept the worsening deals with as little pushback as possible. Life in this world is dotted with brief, unpleasant interactions with people like Penny to remind us that their fate could be ours. And, their existence on the margins, serves as a hell of a reminder to those who have abundant resources that those unpleasant interactions, or even the fantasy of them, should be enough to push them toward more and more authoritarian measures and, eventually, violence as a remedy.

Veterans like Penny are most often recruited from the population of the working classes and trained to be defenders of the very people who exploit their families and loved ones. This is most often a quiet strategy, but was given a healthy dose of exposure last year when the topic of student loan forgiveness led to a whole host of Republicans saying the silent part outloud.


In these scenarios, the working class is cultivated for individuals looking to escape into the middle class with hopes, like all, of climbing even further. The price is simple. Be prepared at any moment to use lethal force on enemies domestic and abroad, including anyone who challenges America's imperialistic system or anyone here, on our streets, or in our subways, who might trouble the peace. These individuals join the military and the police, which have the same goals but on different scales and with parallel mythologies.

When times are "good" the enemies seem to be distant and located in far off locations, including the caves and caverns of our nightmares. We can begin operations that confront those fears while, conveniently, carrying out the agendas of the corporations and financial systems that under-gird the entire structure. When times are bad, and when globalism and hypercapitalism require tightening of budgets and continually worsening strategies, the enemies are among us. Hiding behind every corner. Coming for our children. Participating in QAnon-style child abuse or, in a throwback to the 1980's, a Satanic Panic where everyone and anyone is carrying out evil as a matter of their own twisted religion. The police are looking into every traffic stop as a potentially lethal situation. Protests in the streets start to look like war zones. Every social interaction carries with it the weight of do or die.

The enemy is everywhere. And they must be subdued at any cost.

America is now a nation of tragedies, a battleground that is both undefined and omnipresent. To prepare us for a brutal grind and wind down of our liberties and expectations and standard of living, we have been plunged into an irregular war that is punctuated with disturbing bloodshed and moments of odd quiet. We are told that everything is fine, that these fears and worries are irrational, all while the consequences of this transformation mount and worsen.

America is now a nation of tragedies, a battleground that is both undefined and omnipresent. To prepare us for a brutal grind and wind down of our liberties and expectations and standard of living, we have been plunged into an irregular war that is punctuated with disturbing bloodshed and moments of odd quiet. We are told that everything is fine, that these fears and worries are irrational, all while the consequences of this transformation mount and worsen.
There are no given legislative fixes. No route by which our elected leaders can even begin addressing any of this. It doesn't matter if a gunman storms into a mall in Texas and massacres scores of people. It doesn't matter if every corner of every street is yet another site of a tragedy. The only escape is to make more money, to work harder, to accept these conditions and pay more to get away from them. Pay for your child to escape the schools where the education is getting worse and another gunman might make an appearance. Pay for a home away from the squalor of the city and lock a gate to keep the madness at bay.

Because, as always, the incentive here is to stay above the rising waters. To not be either of the individuals on the subway that day. The man being choked or the man choking him. To never be on the subway in the first place. To be far away from any of this and have the privilege to never think about it, save for it to be a worrying fear that keeps you going and consuming and hoarding resources. And meanwhile, we are all being sorted into our categories.

The man being choked.

The man choking him.

But it is important to remember that this is not all there is. We can move beyond these terrible paradigms once we understand them and their consequences. This is not a problem of Good and Evil or supernatural forces. There are not esoteric reasonings or machinations. This is about seizing the power that is supposed to be ours and taking back control over this system and no longer gifting it to the same unelected and unaccountable people and corporations. We do not have to operate like belligerents on a battlefield motivated by fear and terror and white supremacy and the most base-level, dangerous instincts and beliefs.

And what's more, we cannot afford to keep doing so.

[AGelbert]

Hi Surly,
I'm glad to see you are still fighting for justice and mercy. God Bless you and yours, bro.

My new home is Sober Thinking , where I will be happy to make you a fellow administrator if you so desire.

Here is an old post of yours at the Renewable Revolution that is important to anyone who wishes to understand what is going on in this country.

Agelbert NOTE: This important population demographics data, originally posted by Surly on May 16, 2019, has been moved to this topic (i.e. The American Dream) because it has greater relevance here. The information provided is even more pertinent now than it was two years ago.

Snapping the Spine of Uncle Cracker

The furious white nationalism of the Trumpist right in this country is the attempt to forestall demographic destiny, which is unlikely, as the article demonstrates. Various schemes for voter suppression, census intimidation, near-random execution. of nonwhites by uniformed police (as a matter of state-sponsored terror sanctioned by a nod, a wink and almost never any consequences for killer cops), will shore up white dominance for a generation, but won't do it forever.

If the Republiconfederates thought about it, they would be attempting to insure that this was a nation of laws rather than men so that their descendants would be treated equitably. But no one in this country engages in thinking about anything except making the quarter, so it is probably unfair to single outright wingers for being guilty of short-term thinking. Instead, they line up in unthinking support of El Jefe, because they are terrified of opposing him, the getting primaried from the right.

The US white majority will soon disappear forever

April 30, 2019 6.45am EDT

The non-Hispanic white population is not growing as quickly as other groups in the U.S. Lightfield Studios/shutterstock.com

Authors
Dudley Poston, Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University

Rogelio Sáenz, Professor of Demography, The University of Texas at San Antonio

*****

Since the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the start of the Colonial period, the U.S. has been predominantly white.

But the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping, from a little under 90% in 1950 to 60% in 2018. It will likely drop below 50% in another 25 years.

White nationalists want America to be white again. But this will never happen. America is on its way to becoming predominantly nonwhite.

Who is white?
The U.S. federal government uses two questions to measure a person's race and ethnicity. One asks if the person is of Hispanic origin, and the other asks about the person's race.

A person is defined as white if he or she identifies as being only white and non-Hispanic. A minority, or nonwhite, person is anyone who is not solely non-Hispanic white.

A planned question for the 2020 census. U.S. Census Bureau
Whites were not the first people to settle in what is now the U.S. The first immigrants were a people known today as American Indians and Alaskan natives, also commonly referred to as Native Americans. They arrived in North America around 14,000 years ago.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492, there were around 10 million American Indians living in the lands north of Mexico. But by the 1800s their numbers had dwindled to about 1 million. They are now the smallest race group in the U.S.

The first sizable stream of immigrants to what is now the U.S. were whites from England. Their arrival at Plymouth in 1620 in search of religious freedom marked the start of large waves of whites coming to this land.

When the U.S. was established as a country in 1776, whites comprised roughly 80% of the population. The white share rose to 90% in 1920, where it stayed until 1950.

Declining numbers
The proportion of whites in the U.S. population started to decline in 1950. It fell to gradually over the years, eventually reaching just over 60% in 2018 – the lowest percentage ever recorded.

Although the majority of the U.S. population today is still white, nonwhites account for more than half of the populations of Hawaii, the District of Columbia, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. And, in the next 10 to 15 years, these half dozen "majority-minority" states will likely be joined by as many as eight other states where whites now make up less than 60% of the population.

Census Bureau projections show that the U.S. population will be "majority-minority"sometime between 2040 and 2050. Our research suggests that this will happen around 2044. Indeed, in 2020, there are projected to be more nonwhite children than white children in the U.S.

The nonwhite population is growing more rapidly than the white population. Minorities accounted for 92% of the U.S. population growth between 2010 and 2018, with Latinos comprising just under half of the nation's overall growth.

Behind the trends
Why are the numbers of white people declining, and why are nonwhite numbers increasing? The answer is basic demography: births, deaths and immigration.

White women have an average of 1.7 children over their lifetimes, while Latina women average 2.2. The total fertility rates of blacks, Asians and American Indians are in between. So whites have fewer births than all nonwhite groups.

There are also big differences in age structure. Sixty-two percent of Latinas 15 years of age or older are of childbearing age. Only 42% of white women fall into this group. Latinos also have lower mortality rates than whites. Demographers call this the "epidemiological paradox."



In 2015, for the first time, there were more white deaths in the U.S. than white births. Indeed, as of 2016, in 26 states, whites were dying faster than they were being born. The states with more white deaths than white births include California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

How about immigration to the U.S.? Of the more than 43 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. in 2015, 82% originated in Latin America and Asia. Only 11% were born in Europe. So whites don't increase their representation in the U.S. via immigration.



The future of whiteness
The aging white population, alongside a more youthful minority population, especially in the case of Latinos, will result in the U.S. becoming a majority-minority country in around 2044.

The demographic shift in the U.S. has resulted in many whites proclaiming that they are losing their country, and that they already are or will soon become a minority group.

In her research on working-class whites in rural Louisiana, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild observes that many whites feel frustrated and betrayed, like they are now strangers in their own land. In Trump, they saw a white man who brought them together to take their country back. Hochschild points out that at a Trump campaign rally, whites held signs with slogans such as "TRUMP: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" and "SILENT MAJORITY STANDS WITH TRUMP."

The decline of the white share of the U.S. population could result in the shifting of racial boundaries to assign whiteness to some people of color so as to bolster the white numbers.

This has happened before. Groups that were initially seen as very different from whites, such as the Irish and Italians, once sought to distance themselves from blacks, and eventually were accepted as white.

In addition, although persons of Mexican origin largely identified racially as white, in the 1930 census "Mexican" was used as a racial category, at a time when there was heightened hostility against Mexicans due to their growing population size and the Great Depression.

But any future changes cannot override demography. The U.S. will never be a white country again.

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[Surly1]

Hi AG, good to see you! This place really reminds of the Diner's look and feel. K-Dog did a great job.