Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Bimbo Twins Destroy Right Wing Christian Values" and "He Sees The Death Angels"
Vance portrayed this group — 35% of Americans, by the way — as tragic victims of alcoholism, drug abuse, laziness and their own self-destructive moral failings. Journalists ran with that, bringing their own stereotypes to depict the working class as angry, uneducated white men driven by economic insecurity and racist nostalgia to support Trump’s retrogressive campaign.
This distortion, in turn, widened a real divide by alienating many Americans, fueling support for Trump and even veneration of Vance.
Lauded by David Brooks as the interpreter of some mythical “working-class honor code” that could illuminate the motivations of the core Trump voter, Vance was praised in reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post and a host of other publications, and he became the go-to guy on the working-class perspective. CNN hired him as a political pundit.
This was no better than the “parachute journalism” of upper-middle-class reporters who would visit an Appalachian tavern for one afternoon and then presume to tell the nation what the working class was thinking.
So who actually is the working class? Consistent data has shown that, in the words of the Center for American Progress, “Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color make up 45 percent of the working class, while non-Hispanic white workers comprise the remaining 55 percent. Nearly half of the working class is women, and 8 percent have disabilities.” Media portrayals that equate this group with uneducated white men elide most of the people who actually fit the definition.
A few contemporary reports called out Vance’s misrepresentations and the media’s fallacious thinking. In October 2016, writing for the Guardian, journalist Sarah Smarsh pointed out that exit polls and surveys showed that Trump supporters had a higher median income — $72,000 — than supporters of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Vance himself, she reported, had been raised in a middle-class household. By ignoring such realities, Smarsh argued, “media makers cast the white working class as a monolith and imply an old, treacherous story convenient to capitalism: that the poor are dangerous idiots.”
Vance, a contender for Trump’s choice of running mate, said in a social media post Saturday that the shooting was “not some isolated incident” and suggested President Joe Biden’s campaign was, at least in part, at fault.
Extremist rhetoric from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has helped “normalize violence” that led to this weekend’s assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, according to an expert on political violence.
“An awful lot of violence that has been unleashed by the MAGA faction has been unleashed against moderate Republicans,” Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently told Politico. “An attempted assassination on a presidential candidate was almost just a matter of time.”
“Sadly, I am not surprised — given the reality of a tenfold rise in threats against members of Congress, increases in violence and threats against everyone, from people running for school board to state legislators, the doubling of serious threats against judges,” Kleinfeld added.
Both Greene and Boebert have both run campaign ads with violent rhetoric.
In a January 3, 2021 ad, Boebert said she would “carry my Glock to Congress.” In a September 2020 Facebook post, Greene shared an image of herself holding a gun next to a picture of the four Democratic congresswomen of color, who made up the House’s progressive group known as “the Squad.”
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Focus on — I mean, there’s — there’s a whole range of things. Look, I’m not the guy that said (CLEARS THROAT) I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. I’m not the guy who said that wouldn’t accept the outcome of this election automatically. You can’t only love your country when you win. And so the focus was on what he’s saying and, I mean, the idea.
LESTER HOLT: But have — have you s — taken a step back and done a little soul searching on things that you may have said that could incite — people who are not balanced?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Well, I — I don’t think — look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything ’cause it may incite somebody? Look, I — I — I — I have not engaged in that rhetoric.
Now, my — my — my opponent has engaged in that rhetoric. Talks about there’d be a bloodbath if he loses. Talking about how he’s gonna forgive all the — actually, I guess, suspend the sentences of all those who were arrested and sentenced to go to jail because of what happened on — in the Capitol. I’m not out there making fun of — like, re — remember the picture of Donald Trump when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was hit with the hammer, going — talking about — joking about it.
LESTER HOLT: This doesn’t sound like you’re — you’re — you’re turning down the heat, though. You — you’ve talked about the —
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Oh, no, no, no, no. Look, what I’m turning down — we have to stop the whole notion that there are certain things that are contrary to our — our democracy that we’re for. The idea of saying that you — “I didn’t win the election” when every court in the land — every court in the land, 120 appeals said — and including this conservative Supreme Court said we won, the idea about having — a loyalty pledge from all the folks who are in the Republican MAGA — not all Republicans, the MAGA Republicans saying that, “No, we lost the election,” inflaming the people to say — I — you — I mean —
LESTER HOLT: So — so what — what — what can you and what will you do, at — at least things you can control, to lower down the temperature, the rhetoric out there?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Continue to talk about the things that matter to the American public. It matters whether or not you accept the outcome of elections. It matters whether or not you, for example, talk about how you’re gonna deal with the border instead of talking about people as being vermin and all — I mean, those things matter. That’s the kind of language that is inflammatory.
LESTER HOLT: Do you have — are you — are you — you have confidence in the Secret Service? Do you feel safe?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I feel safe with the Secret Service. But look, you saw the — what we did see was the Secret Service who responded risked their lives responding. They were ready to give their lives for the president. The question is should they have anticipated what happened. Should they have done what they needed to do to prevent this from happening? That’s the question that’s — that’s an open question.
LESTER HOLT: Is it acceptable that you have still not heard, at least publicly, from the Secret Service director?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Oh, I’ve heard from him. I — I’ve —
LESTER HOLT: But have you heard from her publicly?
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Israeli warplanes and drones continue to bombard areas across the Gaza Strip, killing over 80 Palestinians in the last 24 hours. The continued assault comes in the wake of Israel’s attack on Saturday on al-Mawasi, an area in Khan Younis designated as a safe zone, that killed at least 90 Palestinians, half of them women and children, and injured over 300 in one of the deadliest attacks in Gaza in weeks. The U.N. and several countries condemned the bombing, which targeted thousands of displaced Palestinians crowded in tents.
The Israeli military claimed, without evidence, that it was targeting Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif; however, Hamas denies that Deif was killed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised news conference Saturday it wasn’t clear whether he had been killed. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant nevertheless praised the attack, saying Hamas was losing its ability to organize, arm itself or care for the wounded.
Also on Saturday, the Israeli military struck a makeshift mosque during noon prayer in the Shati refugee camp in west Gaza City, killing at least 20 Palestinians. Then, on Sunday, Israeli airstrikes on a United Nations school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 22 and injured over a hundred people.
Meanwhile, rescue workers say they found at least 60 bodies under the rubble of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City following Israel’s withdrawal from the area last week, after leaving it in ruins.
This weekend, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told a donor’s conference for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, quote, “Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza — somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell,” he said.
For more, we go to Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, columnist for The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly in New York. He’s joining us from Copenhagen, Denmark.
Muhammad, welcome back to Democracy Now! First of all, talk about this safe zone that Israel struck on Saturday, killing 90, injuring hundreds of others.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.
Well, the first thing is that this is not the first time where they conduct such an atrocity, such a carnage, a bloodbath, with immense magnitude, and then claim there was a Hamas leader there, to cover it up. It was done dozens and dozens and dozens of times in Gaza. So, a few weeks ago — couple of weeks ago, Israel pounded an entire residential block in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City and claimed that Raed Saad, a commander of the Qassam Brigades, was there. We never heard any updates about that ever since, not even a confirmation or an allegation that he was killed. So, this has been done repeatedly.
The way the carnage unfolded is atrocious on every single level possible. So, Israel used what they call “fire belts,” which is almost like carpet bombing. They drop simultaneously about five bombs — each is about 2,000 pounds — on top of what they have designated themselves as Gaza’s only humanitarian safe zone. Now, they’ve been crowding hundreds of thousands of people there by force, and then bomb them to kill and wound over 400 people.
So, it didn’t stop even there. After the carnage unfolded, as soon as ambulances and firefighters came to the area, Israel started to bomb and target those, as well. They killed multiple firefighters and attacked ambulance crews to delay the rescue mission in that area.
What this reminds me of is, basically, if you remember in 2002, Israel assassinated Hamas’s top most wanted, most dangerous militant commander, Salah Shehade, the founder of the Qassam Brigades. Back then, the airstrike killed about 14 civilians. Seven of them were children. The Bush administration, George W. Bush, he came out and condemned Israel in unprecedented terms and said, “This is heavy-handed, and this impedes and prevents peace.” That was George Bush at the time. Now we are in a situation where it’s so insane that Biden was not only silent, dead silent, not a word on this, but he’s the one that provided all the weaponry, all the bombs that Israel very gladly obliged and rained down on the refugee humanitarian safe zone. You also had — at that time, you had about 27 Israeli pilots in 2002 that declared they will not participate anymore in reserve service in the IDF because of the human casualties, the high death toll — seven children. Only seven. At this point, what you have is near unanimity in the Israeli political and defense establishment of saying this was more than justified, this was a great operation, although they cannot until now confirm or provide any evidence that al-Deif, the commander of the Qassam Brigades, was even there.
So, we’ve got to a situation where Israel is being told, “You can do whatever you want, anything you want at all.” That’s basically the message they’re getting from the Biden administration and from the European Union, as well, from European member states. The only red line that Biden is implementing — and that’s something that I keep hearing from sources close to the White House — is that, just don’t engage in a regional conflict that involves Iran and Lebanon and bogs the United States down into that war; otherwise, carry on with whatever you want. We heard a lot of red lines about Rafah from Biden in May. And as soon as Israel went in, turned Rafah into what humanitarian workers are now calling a wasteland — nothing is left there. Almost virtually nothing is standing. They burned, destroyed homes on their way systematically, left dozens of bodies to rot and decompose and get eaten by dogs and cats on the street, and sometimes they scoop it with bulldozers and bury it with the rubble, if there’s a humanitarian mission coming in. We saw unimaginable, unique, unprecedented ugliness that violate every norm not only of international law, but of common humanity. And Biden is unwilling to put down a foot and say, “You violated any of my red lines.”
It’s the same message they’re getting from Europe. So, I was recently at a meeting with a top European official. He gave us his tablet, circled it around the table and showed us satellite imagery of Gaza before and after, the EU has been gathering. And he said, “Look at this. What Israel is doing, they are wiping out the place.” And he said, quote, “Their goal is to make Gaza unlivable, uninhabitable, so if the war ends, nobody can live there anymore. People have to leave” — so, in other words, to finish the Gaza question, take it out of the equation completely. So, those European officials, they know. But the same official said that he doesn’t have much to — that he’s incapable of doing much, because about 80% of European governments just want Israel to carry on and do whatever they want, without sort of stopping them or challenging this atrocity or genocide that’s unfolding. The only thing that they’ve been asking for — so, for instance, the German foreign minister went to Tel Aviv or Israel about eight times. The only thing she asked for was: Continue the killing, just kill fewer people. Spread the killing across time so it does not look spectacular. Occasionally, Israel violates that and kills over a hundred people. But as long as they keep it about a hundred people per day — again, I cannot imagine that this number is acceptable. A hundred people per day, this is OK for European and capitals in Western governments.
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, we’re here in Milwaukee covering the Republican National Convention. Can you talk about President Trump’s policy when it comes to Israel? Talk about his relationship with Netanyahu. Talk about what happened during the Great March of Return, moving the embassy, etc.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, basically, Trump is — his second term is a nightmare for people in Gaza, because he’s been very clear during the Biden-Trump debate, the presidential debate, that Israel wants to carry on and continue this war indefinitely, and he’s willing to indulge in that, to let them finish the job, as he said. That is basically — when I talk to people in Gaza, they react with immense fear about a second term for [inaudible] for sure is that he’s going to empower every fundamentalist lunatic, extremist right-wing hawk, to put them in charge of Middle East peace, as he did during his first term. He put a messianic Israeli American settler, David Friedman, from Bet El — he put him as the American ambassador to Israel to take what was termed at the time the sledgehammer policy: destroy everything that would be there to enable a Palestinian state to be established, expand settlements, recognize settlements as not necessarily illegal under international law, remove the labeling of settlement products, recognize Jerusalem as —
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad, we have 10 seconds.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: — and defund hospitals. But the problem is that Biden administration hasn’t been any better in many ways. The last three years have been the deadliest there is in Palestinian-Israeli relations since records began in 2005.
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, I want to thank you for being with us, writer and analyst from Gaza, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, columnist for The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly in New York.
That does it for our broadcast. We have a job opening of development director, in charge of fundraising at Democracy Now!. Go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting from Milwaukee.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 284 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll climbs to 38,713 with 89,166 injured" Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
Israel's war on Gaza has killed more than 9,100 Palestinian students since October, Gaza's Education Ministry said on Tuesday.
About 9,138 students have been killed and 14,671 wounded in Gaza, with another 103 killed in the occupied West Bank.
Almost 500 teachers have been killed and 3,426 wounded.
About 353 schools and university buildings have been bombed, with 93 completely destroyed by the Israeli army.
Sixty-five UN-run schools have been bombed, it added.
More than 620,000 school students and 88,000 university students have been able to return to classes since the war began.
This includes 39,000 students who were unable to take their final high-school exams.
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