Trump has been a racist at least since the Department of Justice found that the Trumps discriminated against African Americans in rentals in the 1970's.
69
I have two contrasting suggestions: 1) Stop using the term "White" and use "Caucasian" or the like - for white implies some sort of purity when it's just a melanin deficiency.
2) Credit must be given to the Caucasians who set up the governance systems that work in Western Europe, US, Canada, and Australia and New Zealand. This is also a function of general uprightness in the citizenry who set it up - credit to Christianity.
African societies are poorer and you don't see a queue of people to immigrate there - there is some justification for the racist POV particularly from the angle of governance and functioning societies.
12
What a great editorial! Of course people want to thrive if they can. The definition of racism is anyone who believes that someone might deliberately choose to be miserable because they are inferior. Of course, such an opinion might relieve Republicans of responsibility of caring about their fellow man, but it begs the question of who is really lazy?
26
It's well known in the K - 12 educational world: if you want children to improve their standardized test scores and overall performance, give their parents jobs. Other factors are secondary.
Krugman is right. Most people respond to opportunity. Wasn't that what the American Dream was all about? Equality of opportunity? The last reference I heard to any proposal in that direction was from Bernie Sanders: guaranteed jobs.
Don't we have plenty to do on our crumbling infrastructure alone? What a difference a WPA type program could make.
41
1989?
Surely you mean 1939!
25
"That’s a comfortable vision if you’re a racist who considers nonwhites inferior. But it’s completely wrong as a picture of America today.
For one thing, violent crime has fallen drastically since the early 1990s, especially in big cities."
I do not consider non-whites inferior. There is a problem however that exist mostly in lower economic mostly black communities. Crime is out of control. Whenever anyone cites that crime is down in big cities, What I believe they mean, is that as the cities become to expensive for black and minorities (gentrification) an they are forced to movve out. Crime does tend to drop, but in the most impoverished black communities it's crime as usual. East New York, Brownsville.. violent crime is out of control. Any non black speaking of it get's a called racist, but the problem is real. How do we really solve it. Many say jobs, but it's a violent mind set that too many in those in the communities have. That needs to be fixed.
11
Economic and personal advancement are based not only on external variables but also internal attributes: sacrifice, tenacity, and self-worth. Driven individuals are problem-solvers who overcome adversity and do not assign blame for setbacks. You are your destiny.
4
I see a number of articles denouncing Trump as a racist. Personally, I doubt that this man is capable of any real convictions that go beyond his own ego. In any case, it is irrelevant. He has done more to promote racism than a thousand garden-variety racists. During his years in office, he has done more harm to immigrants and minorities than the kkk. Whether or not he has done so purely for strategic purposes or whether he has also acted on personal, crude, racist beliefs simply does not matter at all. It doesn't even make a difference for how I would judge him.
26
It looks from here that the divide between right and left in US is unsurmountable, I wonder if only a civil war will resolve these differences.
7
I believe Donald Trump’s racism predates 1989, and is more akin to American racism the more distant past. Trump is known to have idolized his father, who was once arrested as a participant in a KKK March in NYC. He and his father excluded nonwhites from their rental housing until forced by a court to stop the practice. I am the same age as Trump, and I grew up in Queens, a mile away from his Jamaica Estates neighborhood. I never knew a contemporary whose views resembled Trump’s. To me, he’s a creation of his father, with views that predated the century he was born in, truly a throwback who had no critical thinking skills that would differentiate him from Fred Trump in his views on race.
35
Paul:
I think you’re adding 100 years, or more, to DT’s attitude towards non-white non-Christian Americans.
And the myth of the1890s they never existed until “today” and should never been allowed in.
2
Yes, Donald Trump is a racist. But so are many others to varying degree, but they may not show it, as racist behavior is considered crude & uncivilized.
For that matter, FDR was one of the greatest leaders of modern times. Still AOC criticized him on racist grounds, not without some justification. No one is perfect. He was imperfect too. We tend to look for perfections & not very tolerant of imperfections in others.
Perhaps, in this election season, it might be better not to attack Trump too much. Ever since he was elected, he was mercilessly attacked, pointing out his real shortcomings, with no effects in his behavior. Most people know who he is and how he would behave. Republicans cleverly managed to get what they wanted from him. Got the tax-cuts and a huge number of federal judges, in addition to Gorsuch & Kavanaugh, thanks to "Moscow Mitch."
Trump is not normal. Fortunately so far his mental imbalance hasn't caused any major problems. In fact, he did help to lessen the carnage in Syria caused by the inaction of Barack Obama, which indeed was a horrible policy, mostly as some say to get the Iran Nuclear deal, which was good but not at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Syrian lives & millions of displaced Syrians. (Of course Obama got ACA, saved GM & prevented the economy from going into another Great Depression)
4
Please shout this from the rooftops because Mr. Krugman is right on the money!
12
This has to ba among the top five socio-economic interpretations I have ever read. Period.
Dr. Krugman, I think that this should serve as the beginning research for a subject which will most likely guantee you a second Nobel Prize.
Keep the good work going Dr. Krugman!
17
Didn’t Trump just tell four women of color to leave the USA for criticizing? Isn’t this what he is doing while casting blame?
Should he leave and resign. He can come back you know after leaving. He should go back to his homeland if Germany and fix it first. They have a lot of socialists that want capitalists like him to shine a light on corruption.
14
Why do you guys keep writing about this guy. Of course he is a racist, deplorable, juvenile, stupid, etc. AND the worst President ever. We all know that. No reason to explain. He loves it when you write about him; so stop! That is the best remedy.
17
@Doug
Read the comments and you'll see that many people disagree with that.
And as long as many disagree, whereas among those who agree many don't vote, he might be reelected, remember?
So no, silencing or ignoring racism is never going to make it go away ... only a real, respectful public debate will.
8
No more like the Archie Bunker. When I hear him talk, my mind conjures Archie Bunker if he were rich. Funny, I have more empathy for Archie than I do donald who has managed to erode my abilities to give another the benefit of the doubt.
Archie, the character, not the actor who played him, is long dead. Is it wrong to wish that donald met the same fate and left us to the future that we happen to live in even if he does not?
10
The Orioles baseball team certainly isn't what it was back in the 60s and 70s. That is a genuine mess.
3
We need a Democratic candidate who posits remedies to help the poor and working classes in rural areas as well as cities. Here’s hoping one rises to the occasion in tonight’s debate. I have my popcorn really, and my bets are placed on 1. Bernie Sanders 2. Elizabeth Warren. Pundits are saying that” the air is going out of Bernie’s tires”- a view the media( which is not for Bernie, who is consistently painted by them as a “Scary Socialist”) constantly pushes. Wall Street is comfy with Warren, as she won’t upset their apple carts. Bernie is for sharing the wealth in a more fair way; Wall Street and the media resist this.
I just wish we had the League of Women Voters conducting these debates- they acted in a dignified fashion - no “ gotcha” questions.
10
"But the real irony is that if you ask which congressional districts really are “messes” in the sense of suffering from severe social problems, many — probably most — strongly supported Trump in 2016. And Trump is, of course, doing nothing to help those districts. All he has to offer is hate."
This paragraph sums up what I see as Trump's biggest failure regarding the white rural areas: The nothingness that is his presidency. Where are the concrete works--I mean that literally!--the repaired roads, the new bridges, universal preschool, health care that doesn't include soaring copays? What has he done for rural America lately that we can point to and say, "Hey, at least there's ________________."
He's an abstracted president pushing an abstract agenda: Hatred and racism.
19
@Cynthia I would argue that Trump is no president at all. He is exactly the same con man, mean, bigoted, racist cheat he's always been. These downtrodden people are thrilled with the hateful words he spouts. One wonders if it's ever going to dawn on them that that's all he has to offer and if you continue to heap hate and enmity on those who can help change that, why on earth would they come to you.
11
Do you know why Donald Trump was not indicted by the Mueller report?
Because he is such a lucky guy.
Just imagine if his first wife Ivana were a Russian model instead of Czech nationality.
Just imagine if his third wife Melania was born in Moscow instead in Novo Mesto (New Place), Slovenia.
Just imagine if the Russian banks were more stupid than the German ones, so he in the nineties borrowed from Sberbank instead of Duetsche Bank after the American financial institutions refused to lend him the money any longer…
Just imagine if this world were a smarter place so the businessmen all over the globe refused to pay a lot of money to put Trump name on their skyscrapers and he went bankrupt again, thus tarnishing his image of successful businessman…
Just imagine if the NBC didn’t sink so low to give him the primetime show called “Apprentice” and free advertisement over a full decade.
Just imagine if in 2016 Hillary Clinton wasn’t the chosen one and she had to fight through the crowded field of about 20 candidates…
From this perspective any accusations that portray Trump as being a xenophobe hating the foreigners would be out of place…
It’s the foreigners that made Trump great…
3
The fact is that there are two types of people in the world: those going somewhere and those going nowhere. In the red states, those going somewhere left a long time ago. The ones left are poorly educated, low skilled whites who believe that their economic failure is the fault of someone else, who by coincident is non "white." So she hate everyone who is not just like them. Trump cynically plays them, although there is ample proof that he is a racist and misogynist let alone a molester.
15
@Jeff Wonder if they will ever notice nothing good has changed for them with their "tough guy."
5
@jeff
Your remarks are bigoted. Don’t assign characteristics to a large swath of people and don’t look down on people who lack college education. These type of remarks benefit no one.
9
You don't have to go back to 1989 to find Republicans depending on racism to divert the resentment of white working people from economic issues. This has been Republican strategy since Nixon at least and the racism was intensified after Obama was elected and before Trump became prominent in politics. The growing inequality has affected all low-income people of whatever color in cities, suburbs and rural areas, but white racists who predominate outside cities are the ones susceptible to racist pandering. Do we have a war in this country between city and country (or suburbs)? Not really - what has been going on for 50+ years is two things: a class war which the rich have been winning; and a race war which Republicans have been using to draw attention away from the class war. It is strange that many Democrats think that denying the importance of the class war and concentrating on the race war - which is what Republicans have been using to win - would be a winning strategy.
13
Trump targets incompetent and corrupt legislators. He targets intellectual dishonesty.
Some of their legislators happen to be people of color. Yawn.
Meanwhile the media takes his words out of context and focuses on single words among thousands. Outside of the echo chambers of NY and California, voters see through this.
The intellectual dishonesty will ensure his win again, unfortunately.
Thank you media?
4
Yeah, right, Wrong Way Krugman......the Criminal Justice Reform hammers through by President Trump alone establishes that you again are full of anything but facts.
1
Get rid of the nincompoop!
5
Questions to be asked with every racist action on Trump's part: Is this what the Republican Party has become - a platform for hatred and bigotry? Do Republicans really want Trump use minorities as hate magnets the same way Adolph Hitler did with the Jews? Has the Republican Party sunk to this appalling level of disgrace and total disrespect for what America has fought and died for: Liberty and Justice for All.
Trump is who he is and always has been an overt and shameless racist. But what has indeed become of the Republican Party that stands with him?
11
@Jefflz Cadillac welfare queens and Willie Horton: sound familiar?
5
You mean all the Welfare Queens stuffing themselves with opioids in Appalachia?
6
@Charlotte
Following your logic, Fox News, Trump, The Daily Stormer, and other far right, white supremest supporting, so called news outlets, have contributed more to the racial unrest than The NY Times has. It’s typical for racists to hide behind the “what if a white person gets killed” mantra.
1
What on earth are you talking about, Krugman? Trump focuses on the problems of rural America ALL THE TIME! They're his base. He gives them tax cuts, while screwing residents of New York, New Jersey and other urban areas. He talks about bringing back the steel industry, he wants tariffs to protect rural American manufacturing from foreign competition. By contrast he almost never talks about the inner cities and their problems. When he says Make America Great Again, he's not talking about Baltimore, he's talking about the Rust Belt, the rural, white parts of America that have indeed declined since 1989, and he's keenly aware of that. So again, what are you talking about?
4
Sammy from NJ,
You make a lot of points about all the stuff the Donald is doing for rural voters, but there ain't much there there. Tax cuts? I live in rural Central NY, I am paying more in taxes after the tax cut. Big coal, or as he puts it, the "clean" coal jobs. Where are they? Tariffs, US businesses pay them, not the exporting country. Better, cheaper healthcare? No sign of that, so far. US citizens uniting? There are very fine people at the nearest neo Nazi rally --- very fine people? never have been, never will be. Yeah, I see it, the winning, the winning, the winnnning!
9
Great article.
4
Maybe Marianne Williamson will address the issue of racism in Baltimore with a message of love which is what seems to be happening in Jamaica in this essay picked up from Drudge report.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/latinamerica/top-stories/jamaica-wants-to-end-beatings-paddling-of-kids-saying-it-leads-to-later-violence/ar-AAENQ8b
I was curious if corporal punishment of children was still legal in Maryland and it appears from my first search result that it was as recently as 2014
https://www.marylanddivorcelawyer-blog.com/corporal-punishment-maryland-family-law/
The message of hate our President sends out may be causing us a lot more trouble than we realize from reading our iphones. Why should we individuals suffer damage while he luxuriates in 24 hr security service.
Go Marianne!!
2
In Trump's mind he is still a little child trying to get attention.
7
I find it curious how Trump had so much to say and felt so strongly about the Central Park 5 and the crime they ' did not commit ' in 1989 .
Fast forward to 2019 let us compare his lack of comment on the shooting that just happened in Gilroy Ca, where is the outrage, where is his call for retribution .
Could it possibly be that the lack of comment is attributed to the fact that the shooter was white, and apparently had ties to Neo Nazi's.
Perhaps his silence is deliberate, a silent dog whistle, like saying nothing says it all.
5
Yes, Trump is a "racist stuck in the past"
But, let me suggest Trump is also a RACY-IST stuck in the fast.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By racy-ist I mean he wins by racing ahead of everyone else.
For example, Trump was already planning re-election, in 2016.
Democrats, by contrast, seem to be so far behind Trump.
I suggest Democrats focus on a new democracy wave in 2020.
I wish Democrats get in the fast lane, by pushing democracy.
They might, for example, use the "Democracy" song, now.
Leonard Cohen, sang, "Democracy is coming to the USA."
Why can't Democrats (like Krugman) use the "Democracy" song?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is not 1989 but reenactment of 1861…
The Democrats are trying this time to be against the slavery because the last time they were on the wrong side of history.
It looks that this time the Dems are just trying to enslave the votes of the African Americans by being against the racism which only they have been able to detect and recognize.
If they were working hard enough, the Democrats might eventually persuade Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Michael Jackson, LeBron James, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powel, Serena Williams, Obama Barak, Jay-Z and Beyoncé that this country discriminated against them…
How great that group of people might have been if this society didn’t discriminate against them…
What is this, some parallel reality?!
If a single individual were able to succeed, then all of us had the equal chance!
Trump is not a racist.
But people like Obama, Holder, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Elijah Cummings are. They see everything, and judge everything through the lens of race. That is racist. Racism is not a white's-only disease.
Since when does calling Baltimore rat infested and a disaster racist? Don't white people live in Baltimore, too? He was speaking to the abysmal record of Democratic leaders of Baltimore, and what their policies have led to. And to the realities on the ground of the murder capital of the USA.
The idea that a white person cannot speak against a person of color in regards to policies and performance is not racist. But frankly, every time this happens, I promise you that a few thousand more Republicans get steely jawed in favor or Trump, and a few hundred more moderate Democrats decide not to go to the polls because their radical candidates in no way reflect their views.
8
As usual, Mr. Krugman is a genius.
5
Why wasn't Kushner's 9000 vermin filled Baltimore area apartments mentioned? And more than mentioned, focused on.
This is the basic problem with the Democrats. Always playing defense. Always the polite reasoned response.
How's that been working out so far?
The proper response for Cummings and the Dems to make is, "Yes. Mr. President, you are totally correct. Let me show you these pictures of maggots, rot and mold in the 9000 properties your Son in Law owns in Baltimore."
Spend a week on TV talking about slumlords connected to Trump. That is how to respond.
Please Democrats, grow a spine and stop taking good manners to a knife fight.
16
Trump is a racist, he always has been a racist, but his base either avert their eyes, or fall into the same category. Trump is the most vile president we’ve ever been subjected to, but his base ignores this fact. He is also the most inept, most corrupt, and most immoral president we’ve ever had, but he has his supporters. They may not agree with his moral values, his racism, and laugh at his ignorance, but they support him as president. Why? Because of the economy, the wealthy love his tax cuts and deregulation, the middle class enjoy a slightly higher income and his promises of better jobs, and the poorer supporters like his down home talk, even if it is all a show, a con, nothing but smoke and mirrors. Trump is a vile human being, but he knows how to put on a good show, he is a master grifter, and always has been.
8
If I could add something very important, Trump isn’t just the racist but the sexist too and everything else.
Not only had the president prevented the women from having the abortions but all the men too, regardless of their race, age or economic status.
If he is a racist for criticizing Representative Cummings who is black, then he hates the Caucasians too because he is equally, if not even more, critical of Nancy Pelosi and Nadler that happened to be white.
His trade sanctions against China are the proof that he hates the Asians too.
Since the Chinese people are the Buddhists, it means Trump is a religious zealot too.
It is well know that he hates the Muslims and the Islam although he hasn’t launched a single war against them like Bush and Obama did. George and Barack had much more guts and courage than Donald, meaning he is even a coward.
Not only that Trump is a Russian puppet, but he works for the Slovenian government too that planted their double agent Melania deep into his bedroom.
Being heavily dependent on the loans from Deutsche Bank in the nineties of the last century when nobody else wanted to lend him a single cent is the proof of his latent Nazism and being in their pockets.
There you go!
3
Hello world of Atlas Shrugged, where the cronies aren’t socialists, they are Republicans.
5
I still remember the time, many years ago, when I heard Rush Limbaugh say, “Democrats are not to be compromised with. They are to be defeated. They are to be destroyed.”
Those lines crystallized the purpose of his show, if you didn’t know already. Add in Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdock, Fox News, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glen Beck, Mark Levin, Jeanine Pirro, etc. etc. etc. and....voila!....a well established media empire of for-profit hate. Trump fits that world beautifully and gives special attention and access to Fox. The President of the USA, our President, conducts himself this way. The one glaring problem, though, is that’s like sawing off the branch you’re sitting on. The division you create will someday come around to threaten your own luxury gated lifestyle.
J.K. Rowling was right....”you tiny, tiny, tiny, little man.”
10
Race-cardist-Race-cardist-Race-cardist. That is the what the whole lot of columnists here and their Democrat surrogates are doing to Trump, to anyone who opposes them and recently to their Democrat opponents. It is a beautiful thing to see this shameful exercise in race-baiting extend to the entire Democrat side of the Congress and particularly to the hapless clowns in their presidential race.
If only Trump would shut up, the self-destruction would occur sooner.
The country saw the police in NYC being pelted with buckets of water and one officer being hit in the head with not just the water, but the bucket as well. The upshot of this will be that the police will stop enforcing and let the criminals terrorize the minority community, the way it is done in Chicago. Urban terror coming soon your way, courtesy of Comrade DeBlasio and the Democrats.
3
Trump is right. Look at London. Crime is mostly committed by coloured immigrants. Of course, saying that, i’ll probably be labelled a racist. Anyway, Krugman, your purifying, intolerant liberal conscience rejects anything Trump does or say.
2
You do know, of course, that it has been amply proven in multiple studies that immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — commit fewer crimes than do native-born Americans. You may want to believe differently, but you would be quite simply incorrect.
7
The US Senate is an antiquated quagmire where 16 states with 2/3rds of the American population have only 32 senators while 16 states with only 6% of the population also have 32 senators.
Add that to the related unfairness of the Electoral College, the real electors of the American president, and you see why the people do not elect the president, and the people are not represented fairly in the US Senate.
So, if you want to know why the American system of government is failing, and what its fundamental flaw really is, there you have it. CA, TX, NY and FL with only 8 senators? Taxation without representation! Tyranny of the minority! The only reason a Republican can win the presidency since Reagan. Goedel told Einstein the Constitution has a fundamental flaw. And, now we know exactly what it is. And, it's irreparable since states with small populations will never give up their excessive power suppressing the vast majority of the people.
We the people? Bull! The states are the "laboratories of democracy?" More like the laboratories of fascism!
7
@Lewis Waldman
Did you study anything about the American Government in school ? The USA is not a pure democracy, and was never intended to be.
The system is working exactly as the Founding Fathers had intended. The four states that you mentioned have a greater percentage of Representatives in the House, yet all states have exactly two Senators - it's called balance of power. The Electoral College prevents the four states previously mentioned from "drowning out" the smaller states.
The liberal media has poisoned your brain, young man.
4
@Jack
I think you mean "old man." Thank you for your federalist baloney. I know the constitution rather well. I just don't think it's fair. I know it is a democratic republic. And, I object to how the "republic" is formed. The House is essentially 1/6th of the government, so this is not a reasonable "balance of power," esp. since the unitary president picks federal judges and the unbalanced senate advises and consents or dissents. I believe I am entitled to my opinion. And, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who knew far more than you or I said exactly the same thing in 1995. You want to debate Moynihan about the US government and what Madison and Jefferson intended? I think not. In 1995, Moynihan said: "In the 21st century we will have to reconsider apportionment of the senate." So, don't lecture me on American government. I know the 7 articles of the constitution and all 27 amendments better than you and Ted Cruz ever could. And, I am a real conservative and you are not, just a pathetic indoctrinated autocrat, YOUNG MAN!!!!
7
So surprising, morning crew missed this. Once again:
No, Trump's not “in the past”, he's clearly in the present calling out the Cultural Marxist "of color" racist dogma and stomping the left is up to these days with hand-in-glove fellows in our Sovietized mass-media, NYT Opinion Kingdom being one. Krugman QED
1
C’mon, Ms. Restaurant; surely you could cram more unsupported clichés into your short posting if you really put your mind to it. After all, you completely ignored communism, Hillary’s emails, and the Deep State. Give it another shot, and put your heart into it.
4
First of all, yu've been relegated to the opinion section of the paper, for good reason. Trump owes those folks jack diddly...Nada, the big goose egg...They got their comeuppance, in the form of ten mil each...laughing all the way to the bank...They need to stop whining and go away...Second of all, Trump calls it like he sees it...Sure he lacks filter...like we all do..Or I do anyway....He's the president, will be for another four years, so get your pen out and start 'opining' your next few columns cause the next four will be a doozey!!...im my opinion...
1
“ ... the next four years”? Well, two, or — Deity help us— six, but not four. Check your Constitution.
1
REALITY: Krugman is a Trump hater i.e. zero political credibility
1
So intelligent (sarcasm).
8
The Great Racist. The Great Taunter. The Great Intimidator. The Great Misogynist. The Tyrant. Let us call this man what he is. One thing he will never be, and that is a Great President or decent human being.
4
If you hate Trump, any negative comment about a non-white is "racist."
Trump stated Baltimore is infested with rats, and Cummings is to blame
But Trump didn't say Baltimore was rat-infested because Cummings is black.
( note: it was Baltimore's female black mayor who stated, "you can smell the dead rats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2D4zoIODVo )
2
In fact, the congressional districts that turned to Trump in 2016 did so because Trump told them he alone knew the way to fix what had caused their socio-economic problems of unemployment, opioid addiction, lack of health care, and the "messes” in their communities deserted by industry.
Did Trump blame Republican policies that catered to Wall Street, the wealthy, big business, supply side economics? Of course not. He blamed immigrants, China, NAFTA, trade agreements, affirmative action, Obamacare. And that is how he intends to win in 2020.
1
Perfectly said. It's funny to me when Fox News watchers love to focus on the negatives in our big cities while ignoring the fact that the poorest states are pretty much all run by conservatives. Let's do a tour through the poorest parts of West Virginia and see how that goes...
9
Step one is vote Trump out of office...impeachment wont work because of Moscow Mitch...step two get the country back on track for a post-racial century with America on top because of the superior innovation capacity the country has always had.
4
More like 1789, when slavery was in vogue and George Washington's infantroopen ruled the airports.
4
@John Brown,
Speak for yourself, first off, you’re misusing the word bigot, the word you’re looking for is bias. As a white male that grew up in a mixed race family in the 1960s, I can tell you that you’re wrong. A rose by any other name is still a rose, conversely anyone spewing venom at a specific person based on color, is a bigot, a racist. Bigots like Trump like to try and hide their racism because they wrap themselves around this lie they call being a patriot, please spare me. If you chose to sidle up to these people, then you too will be labeled a racist, whether or not it’s true makes little difference.
In the show called Black Sails, the two lead captains, Flint, and Vane, are talking about the British and their imminent arrival on Nassau. Flint says to Vane, “When the British arrive here, they will view us all as pirates, they won’t know or care who took the pardons”. So it is with republican supporters, I’m sure there are some that aren’t bigots, racists, but how are people supposed to tell the difference, it’s guilt by association.
3
Trump might be correct, or incorrect, when he says Baltimore is impoverished and overrun with rats and crime, and noone wants to live there. But I'm not seeing where it's racist.
Frankly, my impression of Baltimore isn't that good. I've read it's not a very good place to live. And Fox News says that Democrats didn't care about Baltimore at all until Trump attacked it, and they still don't care if Baltimore is a decent place to live.
Mind, I was born more than 30 years before 1989, on planet Earth. Does that make me racist?
3
Trump’s comment that “no human being would want to live there” is just one more restatement of his obvious belief that only whites are human; that all people of color are less than human.
The bottom line is simple: Just as he was taught to be by his father, Donald Trump is absolutely TERRIFIED at the thought of being caught alone with a male person of color, especially a black person of color. And as is often the case, he compensates for this by being a bully; by trying to instill fear in those he fears.
Unfortunately, when he broadcast this position nationally during his 2016 campaign, a lot of people who felt the same way, but had been silent about it, suddenly felt that it was once again okay to display it openly again.
In an odd way, Trump has done the American public one favor: He has re-exposed the ugly underbelly of racism still rampant in our country. If we’re wise enough, we can now commence the very difficult discussions needed to actually make some progress toward resolving it.
6
1989? How about 1859.
5
You're too kind ... I was thinking more 1889. His mindset is more akin to 'social Darwinism' in that some people were inherently smarter, faster, better with money, etc. than others - God's gift, if you will. This also fed into the pervasive racism and sexism of the time.
He has pitched himself as a modern day Horatio Alger and the rags-to-riches' saga (more like riches to torches but I digress). Not only is that so obscene on its face, he has the audacity to say to working poor that your only impediment from becoming rich like me is to turn this country back around - into the white male dominated structure that built it up in the first place. It's pablum on steroids but supporters swill that Doc Johnson's Snake Oil potion down with gusto.
The most lamentable part of this moment in American history is that many who know better would rather ride this to the end than admit they got on the wrong bus.
2
@John R
Please, how long do you thing the Apprentice would have stayed on the air if Trump were to tell Amarosa to go back to her country on the air, the plug would have been pulled that night. What a sorry comparison, no Trumps no racist, his TV show proves it, geez.
This article unwittingly demonstrates the foolishness of superimposing foolish categories like race on humans.
On a federal level Trump is getting his wish fulfilled. Barr, his consigliere, is bringing back the death penalty for those convicted of federal crimes where it applies.
I can only hope that one of the crimes he will be convicted of will fit the bill LOL.
1
@KMW
You’re right, Obama didn’t have the success that Trumps had, he had more, but it’s because Trump has had no successes, Trump has NEVER been successful in any business he’s attempted, all, have gone bankrupt. So unless taking your money and giving it to himself and his ilk, is a success, then I guess Trump is, umm, so called successful.
You sit back and pretend that one, Bush didn’t crash the economy, and two, that Obama didn’t fix said economy that the Republican Party destroyed. You sit back and pretend that your life was miserable mess that Trump has fixed, yet, you’re no better off today, than you were two years ago, but you would never admit that, because that would be a tacit admission that Trump did con YOU.
6
What's the difference between Donald Trump 1989 and Donald Trump 2019.? Nothing. He's the same racist he was 30 years ago. His staff cannot contain his virulent race baiting, so they make a laughable attempt to debunk charges of racism claiming he is opposed to slavery. How noble of him (if it's true).
2
@Kelly McKee
So basically your saying that people of color haven’t socially developed, what kind of Stupidity is that. What you’re saying has as much merit, as what the generals of the Army Air Corp in WWII that asserted that black men couldn’t fly aircraft because they weren’t developed enough, meaning smart enough. Now that was true when Anglos landed on the shores of this country, many of the Indian tribes hadn’t progressed as far as others, for example, the Comanche Indians, were by far the most undeveloped peoples. But that was 200 years ago, so contrary to your assertion people of color are developed.
@mystery lits
Sorry but show me the tweet where Trump is, according to you “critiquing” people. Funny how racists always find a way to try to hide their racism, behind some twisted logic, like calling it “critiquing”, please, that might work on uneducated republicans, but not me, and clearly many other people posting to this article.
The president is right about Baltimore. Are Democrats really prepared to defend failure?
James S. Robbins, Opinion columnist
Baltimore is one of the least livable, most dangerous cities in America. It's not racist to point that out.
1
Trump is a very insecure man . Below all the bluster there is a deep sense of inferiority probably related to the fact that , in spite of all his money , he is not that smart . His anger makes him connect with those that are having a hard time in life . He feels authentic to his followers because he is really angry . Hate is a very powerful emotion . It is easier to hate than to try to solve your problems in a rational way . That hate makes him very dangerous .
5
Noteworthy is how Trump is the catch-all for racist attitudes in our country. 51% say that he's racist. (Takes one to know one.) 49%say he is not. (Birds of a feather flock together.)
1
As an aside, no one is mentioning that Baltimore and St. Louis are the only big independent cities and have the worst crime statistics in part because of this. The richer, safer county suburbs have been annexed by other cities, or the cities and counties have merged. Not possible in Baltimore and St. Louis.
I often disagree with Paul Krugman, but he's spot on here, and he cites what I think is one of the most important works of the 2nd half of the 20th Century, "When Work Disappears," in which Wilson cites the experience of the South Side of Chicago. When the steel mills shut down, men, who were largely unskilled but had provided good incomes for their families, suffered real trauma, their families broke down, home values fell, crime and drug use rose, and the organizations that held the community together collapsed, too. We're seeing the same "anomie" now in the deindustrialized Midwest and Appalachia; it's taking different forms but many of the symptoms are similar. Also read Robert Putnam's "Our Kids" about his hometown in Ohio and what happened to it. It's such a disgrace that hucksters like Trump use racism to divide people who sadly have more in common than they think.
7
This is a very pertinent analysis, and unfortunately, it has always been the case that those who are unable to find jobs that will support them and their families are at risk of many aspects of social dysfunction. And importantly, it works in the other direction as well. When African Americans and other nonwhites who had been excluded from jobs are given the opportunity to get a good education and employment that supports their families, they have used it well and created vibrant middle class communities. The current dysfunction in the communities of rural and other white communities when there are no jobs that support families has contributed significantly to both social problems and anger. But their anger should be directed against the Republican Party which has undermined the role of government and support for social policies that support education, health care, and employment, not against those who are of a different skin color or who come from other countries and are contributing to our economy and helping boost the life situation for all of us.
4
Yes, it starts with jobs. Paul, you've hit it out of the park. Go back to the terrible thirties and the turmoil, anger and plain hate boiled to the surface , spilling across borders.You can spell it: out J O B S.
Today trump brags about our great economy. With the minimum wage stagnating for decades, the gig economy proliferating with no benefits, and a shrinking safety net -rural hospital closing, attacks on ACA, deteriorating infrastructure, and on and on- rural America is slipping deeper into a morass of drugs and booze. Meanwhile large urban area residents hang on by their finger nails.Housing, transportation and a federal tax system that caps deductions at 10k for middle class citizens with jobs can't save for retirement or their kids education.
Sure the few are doing great. But both urban and rural citizens are either in the pits or hanging on. Time for a Scandanavian type system to keep us from the woes of the thirties?
8
I'm with you Charles, but let's clear up the obvious gap in the logic here. Rural whites are experiencing cultural dysfunction because the jobs have left. Urban blacks are experiencing cultural dysfunction because of racism that creates barriers to the workplace. The jobs are there, at least right now.
Trump supporters will never accept this fact. For them, white privilege is a myth, whites are suffering because of affirmative action. What to do?
Step one, get Trump out of there. Step two, pour money into schools in distressed neighborhoods. Step three, go after the companies that profited from the opioid epidemic to pay for restorative programs in hard hit rural areas.
Lets keep our messaging accurate as we go.
6
@Johnny
Except Charles Blow, didn’t write this opinion, the Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman wrote this amazing piece.
3
Trump racism tells us everything we need to know about his voters, especially his evangelical loyalist.
Their defense "but the economy is doing great" is quite revealing as to their hearts and souls.
8
@Foxrepublican
But the economy really is doing great. What would you expect them to say? How is it revealing of their souls?
@Foxrepublican
Especially knowing that "he didn't build that", when it comes to the economy ...
1
@Samuel Russell The economy has been growing for over 10 years . We have had to endure 'Him" for less than two and a half. He has had little to do with the economy 'doing great'. It was doing just fine before he decided it was his job to MAGA. "God Help Us'.
2
We are all preaching to the choir ~ people who need to see the truth do not read newspapers or watch tv that stretches their minds and help them think. Lets hope that their sense of discernment and basic moral judgement will be there when the election in 2020 is here.
Every time Trump opens his mouth its a lie ~ he knows that those that do not read will believe him. Remember what he said "I love the uneducated". They will fill his pockets with money because that is his god.
5
I am very impressed by the angle of this article, and I am relieved to see in print the very ideas I have held for a long time. Indeed, every race of human is vulnerable to economic and social stresses. In the middle east, it's the cause of radical Islam. In the U.S., it has resulted in the radicalization of Christianity and the rise in racism and mysogyny that already lay barely hidden in our society. Everywhere economic suffering exists, there is social disintegration. The author has laid bare what should be obvious, but what too few want to believe is the real cause of strife everywhere. It's the lack of opportunity. Someday, if we survive our stupidity, we may pass on this wisdom to every generation and teach them that having everything you want, is no way to live.
5
If all Trump offers is hate, it's because:
1) he's Trump, not a politician. He's a brand and so he has to remain true to his ingredients list;
2) hate is the distilled by product of the real Conservative platform, fear. They can't say they're afraid. All they can do is attack, and for that, hate is required. Trump does it well.
3) hate is fun. The GOP has been trying to modulate its shamelessness for decades, as Lee Atwater explained. Trump spotted their impatience, and being himself utterly shameless, he took all the shame off their gleeful candid hatred. He made hate fun again.
It's more than his office that Trump has debased. He has branded the GOP as a party of shameless hate. His successor Republicans are going to have to pay homage to that lest they be expunged as RINOs, meaning that the party will only get smaller and purer for a generation. The Democrats need only show a little imagination to take advantage of this. Let's see if they have it.
3
This is definitely the best op-ed about Trump's racism that I've read in recent days, thank you so much, Dr. Krugman.
So now, let's take this a step further.
Ethnological studies show that bonobos (with whom we have 99% of our DNA in common) manage to live peacefully together ... as long as resources are abundant. Conflicts do arise once in a while, of course, but most of th time having sex with many others allows a community to calm down again and overall remain peaceful.
Only when resources become scarce, however, does violence go up, which can result in a real "civil war".
The exact same thing clearly goes for America, as this op-ed shows.
So it's BECAUSE so many white rural communities see their resources disappear that their hatred against "others" increases. And the GOP, who isn't interested in solving those people's problems AT ALL (if not they wouldn't have tried to pass Ryancare, for instance), discovered that to get their vote anyhow, all that they have to do is to create a fake news propaganda machine, that constantly cultivates racism, and then to work with a "leader" who copy-pastes their most controversial lines of the day into tweets 24/7, and then at least they don'f feel judged for their violent reaction anymore ...
7
racism plain and simple. he's always been one.. like father like son
5
If President Trump is such a racist, why are blacks experiencing some of their best financial and economic gains ever. Obama did not have the success that President Trump has had and he was the one to divide the country along racial lines. We had Black Lives Matter and remember the slogan pigs In a blanket dry like bacon. There were race riots and looting in Baltimore and a few other cities that devastated their communities.
President Trump has made the lives of blacks far better than anyone could have imagined. It is the liberals who are fueling this racial hate which will not bode well for the Democrats. If you were to ask minorities were you better off before President Trump took office many would say no. Let the good times roll and keep on rolling.
4
@KMW Must state that, the current ‘boom’ is probably just an extension of already a strong economic picture in many places from before Trump ever took office.
Imagine what things might look like if we were actually in alignment to the Combined Ideal Vision of the Founding Fathers, which would be mixed capitalism properly managed. It would be our adversaries worst nightmare in terms of our economic prosperity and growth.
5
@KMW
Just take no matter what economical graph, and you'll see NO Trump dent AT ALL. Nothing.
Why?
Because he didn't pass any economical bill at all.
So this is merely the continuation of the Obama economy, humming along.
By the way, IF Trump's presidency would have improved this as massively as you claim, for African-Americans, then why do cities like Baltimore still exist, you think?
And yes, refusing to engage in a real, respectful debate about the conditions at the border with a black lawmaker, and instead telling America that his black city of Baltimore is "rat-infested", is obviously racist. If this isn't racism in your eyes, than how would you define racism in the first place ... ?
4
@KMW
While property was destroyed, the riots in Baltimore and other cities did Not devastate their communities. These were not riots resulting from anything that President Obama did or said. Those riots were in response to deaths of individuals at the hands of police.
If you listen to the speeches Obama gave and the work that he did he was attempting to stop the cycle of violence and hatred that had been encouraged by Trump and his supporters.
Then, listen to Trump's speeches. His speeches have been welcomed by the KKK and the neo-nazis. They believe they have a friend in the White House. Trump's speeches are what divides us.
But, to your point of how much trump has done for African Americans: What exactly has Trump done that would benefit African Americans? There have been a large number of Presidentials Proclamations, but the new legislation he has signed has been pretty meager.
He did get the $1.5 trillion tax cut thru. The main beneficiaries of that being the wealthy and corporations. But, what has he actually done that benefits African Americans?
The answer is: nothing.
Trump-the-racist brags about things he has never done. He was not helping out at Ground Zero on 9/11 and he has done nothing for African Americans. Even this far into his term, African Americans still see more benefits from Obama than they will eer see from Trump.
2
Dear Mr. Blow, as always I enjoy your writing, but you missed the obvious point. Trump supporters couldn't care less if Trump is racist. In fact, his ignorance, hate, sadism, misogyny,racism, and more, is exactly why they wanting be president for life. We are facing destruction of the coral reefs, loss of most insects, bees, birds, fish, the Amazon, yet here we are being baited by a stupid bigot. What is the bigger issue? I find the mortality police nearly as nauseating.
5
@EWS
Blow didn’t write this opinion, the Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman, awesome piece isn’t it.
1
President Pinocchio protected by Moscow Mitch delivers division and social stiff daily.
4
I wish all the Democratic candidates had the nerve when they're asked about Trump, "That racist idiot in the White House? He'll be gone soon. Next question?" The opposite of love is indifference and ignoring Trump and sweeping him aside and making him irrelevant would put him over the edge.
5
1862
1
"Nature is cruel, therefore we, too, may be cruel. ... I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin!" - Adolf Hitler
In 20 years a new generation will look back on today's events and ask those who lived through this regime, "What did you do to resist?"
12
To some degree, you make the somewhat traditional liberal point in this column; but to some degree, that is very important right now.
I think that Trump’s message from the start has been a ‘white race first’ message on economics, rather than a ‘make American great again’ one; that is only a disguise. His policies have been, to be certain, leadership in the direction of withdrawing our (white) tax moneys from this nation. He won many of the former confederate states, where race divisions are still deepest, and has captured new rural states, where white dissatisfaction with the system is greatest.
Sociology is, however, a large topic as it applies to this democracy. There are many aspects of it for which research funding has gone non-existent in this current timeframe. What should be studied much further is that the races are in fact different enough, that this project needs to be understood on the basis of the long-term evolution of racial groups to modern democracy. This would help bring the subject of sociology into consistency with anthropology, which has catalogued the differences between peoples of the earth, in their “equal and independent station” in places where they came from.
But it would also help us to understand the democratic republic system of government much better. Many of today’s political divide questions could only best be addressed this way.
Sociology HAS shown what American history shows, that various races can work together most productively.
1
-----1949
If Trump was a real leader, he'd invest in education and work training and job creation in places that need it, to bring people there up out of poverty--so that they could contribute to the economic life of America. Instead, he does the most vile, juvenile name-calling when someone hurts his feelings by pointing out
the truth.
I continue to shake my head, many times a day, when I think that
anyone can support, overtly or tacitly, this pathetic, horrible
creature.
8
@John Arthur Feesey
Wait. I'm pretty sure Trump said his corporate tax cut was an investment in education and work training and job creation in places that need it.
1
@smoores
He also said that the had the biggest inauguration crowd ever, remember?
He only lives in Fox News' "alternative facts" bubble.
In the meanwhile, his tax cuts for the wealthiest doubled the deficit, whereas economical graphs show NO Trump dent at all ...
4
@Ana Luisa
It was sarcasm.
1
or the 1700's.... or 1930 in Germany
2
when i read paul krugman or charles blow, i'm reminded of how far out of touch certain segments of the nyt hierarchy really is. trump is a queens brawler, an impolite big mouth. he is not a racist, and has never been. ask all the athletes and entertainers he socialized with prior to his political career.
as i mentioned on blow's latest column, the frequency with which the left tosses around "racist" is now seriously diminishing the impact of the word. a disservice to victims of actual racism, in practice.
propagandizing has its consequences.
5
@dutch
It’s common for like thinking people to assert that Trumps not a racist, in fact most racist would say that they aren’t racist, in fact those who align with the white supremacy movement deny their affiliation when alone in public. Anyone that listens to Trump then make the assertion that he’s not a racist, must themselves be of that ilk.
2
@dutch
You seem to ignore that the Nazis had Jewish friends, and that some of them even were Jewish themselves?
Racism isn't about avoiding ALL people of a certain creed or color of skin. Racists are opportunists, first of all. They'll sell their own mother if they believe that they'll earn more money or fame by doing so.
The reason why Trump is behaving in a racist way - and why America's greatness is inherently linked to denouncing and fighting against racism as soon as you see its ugly head - is because when a black lawmaker criticize his border policies and asks him to prove his criticism wrong, he radically refuses to engage in a real, respectful debate, and instead tells him to shut up as long as there still are African countries or African-American pockets with high crime rates. THAT is racist, and unconstitutional, and morally reprehensible, you see?
2
Trump is a provocateur or to put it in common American vernacular, he is a “cage rattler”. It serves no purpose to become a Trump whisperer. To debate he is he is a racist who glories in his hate is futile and unimportant. To create counterarguments to his absurd claims is to pea into the wind of his own creation. He is incapable of reasoned argument and insists facts are fake.
The strategy to deal with Trump and his Republican Sancho Panzas is to ignore him. Denying him a fight, devalues him in a way he cannot abide. If his enemies cannot be provoked, it reduces this temporary president to irrelevance. That is one weapon his megalomania cannot endure.
Mohammad Ali had it right. When your opponent is bigger and stronger, and has a longer reach ,you “rope-a-dope him until when enraged he makes a mistake.
5
Krugman: Shame on you, because his recent targets have been attacking him with vile hatred, for quite awhile, Elijah Cummings for 2.5 yrs now. Nothing racist about Trump's recent comments. Baltimore has been ruined BY DEMOCRATS. I live in a suburb, thankfully, but the Democrats' policies have been VERY SOFT on crime, drugs, illegal aliens (sanctuary state!), and the inner-city poor have been RUINED by those policies! And Trump cannot fix those DESTRUCTIVE local policies ! Illegals are working in and around Baltimore, pushing wages down and taking jobs from OUR OWN CITIZENS. Shame on you Krugman, you're wrong and out of touch with reality. Trump is pointing out the obvious -- voting for Democrats has RUINED Baltimore (probably true with 50 other cities! )
3
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
2
"All he [the POTUS] has to offer is hate."
Unfortunately, in my personal experience over the last two plus yeas the only thing true Trump supporters want is hate; desperate undereducated whites, male and female, looking for someone, anyone, to hate and blame.
4
Why: Trump went after Cummings because his committee has subpoenaed Invanka and Jared. She's been using a private email server in her role as a WH advisor; he "What's App" in his role as a Middle East mediator.
Funny, didn't he think this was catastrophic when Hillary did it??!
How: He opted for his optimal method - divide, divide, divide.
It's up to us to prevent him from conquering.
9
Sorry, professor, but Trump’s attitudes more accurately predate the entire 20th century.
3
1989? Trump is mired somewhere in 1969.
3
My “theory” regarding developing countries is that since governments often are unable to deliver what the people want or need, “burying heads in the sand” cults of personality and calls to division can gain preeminence.
With poor whites in America, that seems to be the case as well. For decades, Republicans have failed to deliver anything useful to them, yet often won their support by appealing to their most depraved impulses and fantasy “entitlements” to superiority of any kind.
Trump merely is the worst manifestation of this Republican rot and poor whites’ delusion.
Any short term measure to take?
“Dump the Chump.”
4
Worth reading, the republicans don’t seem to get the fact that their states comprise a majority of welfare benefits, social security, SNAP benefits etc.
https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/9/280/files/2016/09/Lacy_Moochers_March_2015.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/business/economy/harlan-county-republican-welfare.html
3
This opinion starts with a glaring fallacy...it assumes the current POTUS has a mind. He does not.
5
Well said Paul Krugman. You got it right.
2
News Flash
The people of Baltimore are President Trump’s constituents as well as Representative Cummings. Our Leader wants to avoid this fact.
1
I disagree. I think Trump is stuck in 1959. He really wants to bring back the Rat Pack, so he can hang out in Vegas with Frank and Dino. Women are just treats he can have when he wants, people of color are all servants, and nobody else matters.
2
The idea of the Welfare Queen, a woman invariably black or Hispanic, was created in the Reagan era a few years before 1989. Never mind that she was given about 300 dollars a month and some food stamps to feed a family of three, received no training or child support and lived in a barely livable apartment. The term was rarely applied to the rural white poor but never mind. Trump's concepts of race and the poor were formed then, criminals stalking every alley or ripping off the system. This idea held by so many fuels the vision of Trump and those who support him as evidenced by his comments about Baltimore or criminal immigrants. Trump is a racist born in the old school of ignorance.
1
The collapse of black society was instituted after slaves were freed. Black Americans were restricted to menial employment in the American — read white — employment sector. Not only did white society institute work restrictions, it instituted educational restrictions by providing black elementary and secondary public schools with out-of-date educational materials and poor school facilities. With few prospects in the American work force, many black children saw no reason to struggle for excellence during their elementary and secondary education.
Black entrepreneurs were restricted from access to money to pursue their ideas in all fields. Access to college, university, or other advanced education was limited as was financial support for black businesses. Venture capital and the limited access to bank loans meant black societies creation of its own economic advancement was next to impossible.
The overturning of separate but equal, instead of providing advantages for black students, destroyed the hard fought for black educational process. Black educators lost their employment to whites. It wasn’t and isn’t a matter of qualifications unless white skin privileges on Group over another.
Today, things are not much different. White skin still privileges that group of people. Segregation based on “race” — the word’s history subsumes the D
2
Krugman...I'm sure it FEELS like racism when we treat everyone equally because it means we can critique EVERYONE based upon a STANDARD set of principles that we would apply to ALL humans regardless of skin color/gender/creed. Unless you think that there are groups which can not be critiqued because of an immutable characteristic, but that might be (by definition), well,.... racist.
1
@Mystery Lits
Utter nonsense. The president could have disagreed with Cummings actions instead of attacking a whole community. His actions and words show he is a racist. He isn’t actually seeking a dialog but is casting blame to degrade the community.
It is obvious.
2
@Mystery Lits
No.
If a black man criticizes a US president's policies, and instead of engaging in a real, respectful debate about those policies, the president tells him that as long as there still are African countries or African-American communities with a high crime rate, he doesn't have the right to speak for his constituents and should shut up, then that president is behaving in a reprehensibly racist way, you see?
There's just no other word for it.
And wanting to criticize an entire group of people, who only have a color of skin in common, is racist too.
How come you guys lost your moral compass?
3
I'm not sure this matters. Racism is alive and well in the country, as it was in 1989; urban poverty has only been supplemented with rural poverty. The underbelly of violent racism is more apparent to white people; that is the only difference.
3
No. What is wrong with this man is even worse than racism, as horrible, vile and despicable as that is. He hates all of us equally and has nothing but contempt for this country. He even hates himself but confuses that with the adoration he has for his image. He likes the company and benefits of hanging with the ultra rich but he doesn't love them either. He loves no one and nothing. He is very sick and will go to any extreme to protect the image he has of himself. I know without a doubt he will attempt to destroy anyone who he perceives as a threat to that image, perhaps even up to and including himself. And this is the most powerful man on earth.
8
Go to the Nextdoor app in affluent areas. You’d think they lived among rodents and a crime wave. Nope.
1
This comparison of social collapse in inner-cities in the 80s and in rural American now rings very true. I love when a writer points out something that I knew intuitively but hadn't quite been able to articulate, and this column does that.
Also, I just want to say that I've learned so much from Paul Krugman's columns over the years. Whatever he's writing about, he's always worth reading. Thank you, Mr. Krugman!
4
@Paria
The decline of the inner cities started under Reagan, one of his first acts as President was to take money away from the inner cities, where as Reagan and other republicans seemed to think only poor people of color lived. It isn’t.
1
My West PA working class family and neighbors illustrate the point. Post WW2 jobs buoyed incomes, hopes dreams and acceptance. There was little crime and other dramatic social ills. Everyone had their struggles, but it mostly stayed in their places and not in the streets and larger neighborhoods. When the steel jobs and connected industries left and times got hard, crime, drugs, drinking, and overt racism came out in the open and changed the area form cautious optimism to despair in a few short years.
7
"Trump debasing his office", what a unique situation for 45 to cause! He hasn't caused that in, what, 7 minutes?
Throw this clown out!
10
Folks, everyone knows that Donald J Trump is a racist. He has made some racist comments in the past and present. He and his father’s rental business were sued for not allowing Blacks to rent from them. And there’s the big example of racism in his BIRTHER-ISM crusade against President Obama.
Trump’s demand that President Obama prove his citizenship was and IS racism. Trump’s disgusting and those who support him are just as bad as he is!
8
Check your calendar. Paul, because you are off by two centuries. Try 1789.
2
In 1976, Trump-owned housing in Maryland was so deplorable that Trump's father was arrested as written in Daily Kos. Trump was in charge of the Trump organization at that time.
The eastern heartland could be working if they would move to where the jobs are located. There are jobs paying $20 an hour or more that they can't fill due to lack of workers here in Iowa and other states. Wind farms are looking for technicians since more windmills are being put up so all the electricity in the state will be generated from wind by 2021.
8
Democrats need to focus on election reform first and then deal with the other issues such as legislation and racism. If it is delayed much longer, the election in 2020 will be totally crooked. The Russians have probed voting machines in all 50 states. A recent NYT video by a Michigan professor demonstrated how easy it is to hack our antiquated voting machines. Moscow Mitch has bottled up all the election legislation in the Senate. Putin pal Trump has a "what me worry? " philosophy about the upcoming election.
Where is the political pressure? Does anybody care?
4
It’s hard to believe that only a dozen or so years ago we had a Republican president who, despite all his faults, said such things as “I’m a uniter, not a divider,” “Islam is peace,” and “In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.”
Trump and Moscow Mitch make it painfully clear that so-called “compassionate conservativism” is dead.
415
@Anthony
Yet George W Bush despite all his lofty ideals and everything his admin did to prevent the world from descending into a much darker place after 9/11 is considered (and probably rightly so) one of our nations worst presidents.
Bush 43 failed, like many others because he was extremely naive and lacking in both experience, common sense.
An example you mentioned, "Islam is a religion of peace". Islam is not a religion of peace, neither is Christianity of Buddhism or any other religion.
Religion is a tool for manipulation and control and frankly, Islam is often used for the organization of violence.
I am agnostic and believe in secularism I dislike organized religion in all its forms. The culture surrounding Islam at this point in history is particularly dangerous. According to a pew research poll, around 20 percent of Muslims worldwide believe terrorism is acceptable and between 50-70 percent believe in Islamic Law.
The crown prince of the UAE said that Islam in its current form is incompatible with democracy and if a holy man in mecha sounded the call 80 percent of his army would desert. Egypt, Iraq, and Pakistan are all examples.
American and Western naivete is dangerous and makes for terrible policy, calling Islam a religion of peace because that's the world view we would like to believe is dishonest and dangerous. Clearly, there are many peaceful Muslims, that doesn't change the overall level of radicalism in the culture.
25
Amen brother, I think all religious organizations from Catholic Hospitals to Churches should be taxed. This allows the Joel Osteen’s of the world to have mega churches in Texas, making millions of dollars, by telling YOU that YOU should live the word of god and give, give till it hurts, they say, while he goes back to his multimillion dollar home. The Jimmy Swaggarts of the world will have you give your last $100.00 because they have God’s ear, only they can get you into heaven, but it will cost you today.
33
@2-6 Of course, you could say much the same thing about evangelical Christianity or ultra-orthodox Judaism.
12
He thinks it's 1989? No thinks it's 1889.
3
It's long been clear that the reason that poorly educated, underemployed white people vote for Trump--and vote Republican in general and therefore vote against their own best interests--is racism.
11
"What Wilson argued, however, was that social dysfunction was an effect, not a cause. ...“When Work Disappears,” made the case that declining job opportunities for urban workers, rather than some underlying cultural or racial disposition, explained the decline in prime-age employment, the decline of the traditional family, and more."
Wilson was right in many ways, but the African-American economist and Hoover Institute fellow Thomas Sowell has argued (in his book Black Rednecks, White Liberals) that the dysfunction in inner city neighborhoods is a consequence of a largely similar rural, southern culture between many African-Americans in places like Baltimore and Detroit, and whites residing in Kentucky.
One real problem with this entire discussion however is that in our industrial heartland, we've seen communities collapse over the past 10-15 years when factories closed, leading to the loss of factory jobs, jobs in related businesses serving those factories (and workers) and the loss of property values for homeowners in places where there are no longer jobs.
By contrast, NYC, Philadelphia and other larger, east coast urban cities saw a net influx of African-Americans from places like the Carolinas, Arkansas and Georgia in the 1960s and 70s when those big cities no longer had factory jobs. In many cases it was quite simply that it was better to be poor and dependent on government benefits in New York than it was to be poor and at the mercy of the state of Alabama.
2
What is the problem, exactly? Sounds like what people do to survive. And sounds a lot like the behavior of refugees...
4
Dr Krugman
On the day the next white person gets murdered for being white, try and consider the possibility that the endless 'RACISM' polyphonic motet to which you, and others in this publication have mightily contributed, could have contributed to the crime.
4
Most of the mass murders committed in American history have being committed by white supremacists. Blacks are in far greater danger from white racists than whites are from blacks.
3
@me
I’ll make sure to post my response to all your what-about-isms documenting all the lefts response to topics not under discussion not related so your alt right types can find another excuse.
I don’t spoze you’d have a recent example of this, by any chance? ‘Cause I got several of, oh, black people, muslims and Jews—and doctors, and nurses, and white liberal kids at a summer camp—being shot down for the sake of far-right political correctness.
1
Of course, Donald is stuck in 1989. He does not read history. He does not read at all while in the WH. Instead, this dude watches TV all the time like a middle school kid without parent's supervision. He should be doing his homework.
5
The short version: When times are tough, people behave badly. The social ills of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and you name it, all bubble up when the simmering economic pot reveals it has been cooking limited job opportunities, a society & government run by corporate oligarchs, a shrinking social safety net, unequal justice, etc. He can try to rationalize, but only a racist would use the words he has used, and thus he adds fuel to the fire instead of working to improve the lot of working Americans. He offers the historic low unemployment rate for African-Americans as proof he is not racist! Next he will claim the sunrise proves his support for farmers & agriculture.
5
This is all so 1989? Funny, because in many ways the biases and bigotries seem very 2019 tome, unfortunately. I think one of the main things that Trump's election has shown us is that the United States really hasn't come a long way since 1989, or arguably has come any way at all. Yes, the factors that drove dysfunction in the African American community are driving dysfunction now in rural white America, but unfortunately, the deep seated racist attitudes will prevent from most Americans from ever seeing any commonalities, because they rare if ever are willing to see commonalities with all Americans. That at least, it seems hasn't change. The past, indeed, isn't even past.
5
@Doug K
That’s the point of the article, however society has made great strides but not enough. When a 70 something year old bigot can reach the highest office in the land, by weaponizing people of color as the ones to blame for their place in society, sorry but that is so, 1980s, well 1880s thinking. What’s really driving it, is the statistical fact that whites, specifically white males, will be a minority within the the next 25-30 years. In the next 5 years, whites under the age of 18 will be a minority, sorry. But they see the writing on the wall, no minority can stay in the majority for long, as the republicans are about to learn.
This Jim Crow way of thinking is what relegated the Republican Party to the minority for over 40 years, it will be that way again, starting in 2020.
1
What's really changed in poorer rural areas is that people seeking education and careers continue to move to better economies in other areas of the country and there isn't a viable economy left to sustain growth. In America, people move to where the jobs and education are. Just go to any town in America and everyone is from everywhere. Arguably, whether the ghetto or the boonies, when the best and brightest leave, those remaining have a tougher go of it.
2
No, no, no what these folks need is supply-side tax cuts.
Way to go, Pauly!
4
@AGS, funniest comment yet. I laughed out loud.
2
One difference between the decline of the urban core that occurred following the declining economic opportunities in the past and the decline of white working class (WWC) and rural America today is that the latter hold views that preceded their decline and which inhibit their recovery. They tend to be resistant to immigrants and immigration, diversity, are cultural conservatism, and lack of enthusiasm for higher education. Those views are part of the reason new industries, which thrive in high immigration, diverse, educated communities (Mr. Krugman highlighted an article contrasting booming Toronto to nearby stagnant Buffalo) are not located in rural America.
In addition, the WWC vote for Republican politicians based on social issues, while those same politicians enact policies that benefit the wealthy, not the working class.
5
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
LBJ had Trump's number, all right.
12
Chuck D of Public Enemy announced another notable chapter in American race relations 30 years ago: "1989 -- the number, another summer..." Those words from "Fight the Power kicked off Spike Lee's landmark "Do the Right Thing," a film in which small acts of frustration chafe against one another and ignite in an explosion of violence. The image of Malcolm X with Martin Luther King, Jr., goes up in flames.
One of the movie's striking themes is that the characters are blind to their own prejudices. They don't think they ARE racist (after all, they're fans of Prince!). They're just standing up for their own people!
Every time I hear somebody defend some hateful, destructive statement by saying "I'm not a racist," I'm reminded of "DTRT" and how delusional that claim is. Nobody emerges from the womb "a racist." There's no such thing as "a" racist. There are only racist thoughts, words, and deeds, and the people who express them. Nobody can defend those things with character references who claim, "I've known him for decades and he doesn't have a racist bone in his body!" That is utterly meaningless. It merely deflects attention from real, manifest behavior to imaginary motives. But you can't see what's in someone's heart. You can only witness what they say and do.
The patterns of racial fear and loathing exhibited by Donald Trump remain invisible to some Americans -- or so they say. But those patterns speak volumes.
261
@jim emerson Well said. Thank you, Jim.
15
@jim emerson
thing is jim, it's actually not up to you to decide. but your arrogance seeps through. you believe you know what is in the hearts and minds of others, and if that isn't arrogant, i don't know what is.
1
Trump may be a bigot,
but we are all bigots,
some in large ways and some in small ways,
that does not make Trump a Racist.
If you do not have a job, have no prospect of
getting a job and desperately need a job or
the income a job would bring in,
then trouble is looking for you
and, most likely, are looking for trouble.
The Failure of the Inner City Schools,
the failure of their parents to bring about
a fulfilling desire to learn in their children,
and the density of poverty ridden families
in huge multi-block low income housing units
only made and make the problems worse.
Parts of Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland are War Zones
when will that ever change ?
3
FYI, the highest rates of violent crime in the US are in Alaska, Nevada and New Mexico. And if i were looking at Idaho’s drug, uninsured, and poverty rates, I’d hold off on the bragging awhile.
You sure got a lot of nazis, too. Why is that?
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/03/where-hate-groups-are-concentrated-in-the-us/555689/
3
He’s been ego-tripping since his divisive hate attack on the Central Park Five was buoyed by private approvals and massive loans. He learned that if he gives people someone to look down on, an outlet for their ego, he can rob them blind.
7
I disagree with the notion that the racist mindset is driven primarily by uneducated, lower class Americans. True they are a key segment for Trump, but if you also look at exit polls on upper middle class white households, and having talked personally with these folks, even in the northeast, you frequently come across the same tired right wing tropes, and a significant portion of Trump's base,. Among these upper middle class white households, you get the same scapegoating of immigrants, the same Muslim bashing, the same scapegoating of "welfare queens" leeching off the systems (read minorities), the same bashing of cities (read minorities), etc.
On the other hand, you do get some upper middle class white households who say things like "Yeah, I don't like any of that stuff Trump says, but he cut my taxes by $1,200 and Democrats just want to take it away, and the stock market is great" which to me is just as evil, since it implies failed leadership can simply be bought for a few pennies...and realistically, your costs of health care, education, and other items likely swallowed up your tax cut.
The interesting question to ponder is. If the stock market stays at the current high levels, how far does Trump have to go before these upper middle class white households come to their senses and denounce him? I've often wondered the same about corporations as well. If stocks are good, are we saying a little racism is okay?
6
I suggest he is not even in the 20th century.
Can’t we send him back where he belongs?
4
My economic response to Trumps bigotry is why doesn’t he stop giving foreign investors over 70 billion a year —thru his tax cut—that we tax payers (which we believe he is not) will have to cover and instead invest in our rat infested inner cities? I’m sure the black ministers he claims to respect will welcome the assistance rather than his shameless attacking innocent American citizens trying to survive. Can someone please remind him, he supposed to be playing president of all America in this episode of the Apprentice.
4
@EPMD, agree. Why don't Trump supporters know that a sizeable portion of that $1.9 trillion 2017 tax cut went to foreign investors, and that middle-class Americans will have to cover that loss? His whole America First schtick is one big con.
3
Do we really need to make a case that people of every color have ability? Isn’t history replete with examples of amazing cultures constructed by people of every hue?
Paul, we don’t need a modern study to show this, and we cannot pretend that racism is born of a merely mistaken belief in inadequacy of those with different skin color or even with different culture.
The basis of racism is the ancient reptilian subterranean tribal urges in the brain that can be triggered by propaganda to submerge reason and fact. As is deliberately done today by Trump and by the GOP brainwashing apparatus of Fox, talk radio, bible thumpers, YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and paranoid media outlets.
Humankind has witnessed the power of propaganda for millennia, and today we see it again.
2
Perhaps Trump is in 1989 insofar as the death penalty is concerned, but most of the time he seems to be in the 1950s or earlier, in the deep south where I grew up. He's working hard to bring us back to those days when speaking while black was as dangerous as driving while black is now.
But fallout from Trump's racist tweets won't be limited to blacks. Anyone who is a minority is at risk, be it religious, racial or creed. And that's just plain wrong.
5
My sister lives in one of those "crime-infested" cities (Atlanta) and her dubious neighbors are Emory University and the Center for Disease Control, among other pockets of affluence. Her US Representative is John Lewis. Funny how the Chief Rat, that is Trump, never sees the poverty in his Vice President's state, Indiana, where I live, or the rampant poverty in Mitch McConnell's state, Kentucky, just across the river from me.
6
If Trump's supporters are happy with Trump, despite his not helping their economics, then alas that is their choice. Then for the rest of us, the best defense is to shrink the federal government to minimize its danger. Each state can decide how big a role the government should play within its border.
Forcing a union that wants to divide is a losing exercise. Perhaps blue states can do better by lowering the cost of housing. Not only does that benefit their own people, it gives an option to those in the red states who want to leave.
50
@William Fang So the Blue states should work on lowering their housing costs, I am all for that , the solution as you know being a resident of California is to build more housing. However to your point on lower housing costs to make it easier for Red State residents to leave , wouldn't that result in the Blue States becoming Red.
Speaking from experience my state turning Red from Blue in 2016 that is something I would not wish on my worst enemy.
26
So lemme get thus straight...to defend ourselves against people who want to drown the Federal government in a bathtub and go back to what the South fought for in 1861, we should drown the Federal government in a bathtub and go back to what the South fought for in 1861.
Okay, sure. Nifty, fine. Excellent. Good call.
40
@William Fang, so you propose that we reduce federal regulations and safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security in order to reduce the damage Trump does?
That doesn't compute. Trump is already decimating federal agencies like the EPA, USDA, and State Department. You would do his work for him.
States don't have the resources to do what the federal government does.
33
In his book "Coming Apart", Charles Murray also makes the argument that the troubles afflicting so many inner city black areas also occur in white areas when they adopt a self-defeating culture. How is it that so many poor Asians do well after coming to this country? Their culture is different. Poor immigrant Koreans established multiple successful businesses in the same areas of Brooklyn where poor whites and blacks failed. So lack of jobs does not explain social collapse, but absense of the values that make cultures successful; hard work, close family, self-sacrifice, valuing education (attending school and doing the homework), personal responsibility and virtuous behavior. Any ethnic group that has those attributes in their culture does well. The Somalis in Minneapolis have those values and have done magnificently, refuting the idea that racism will prevent blacks from succeeding. Those pushing diversity and multi-culturalism refuse to acknowledge that some cultures do better than others, and prefer to blame racism and lack of government action as the cause of some people's troubles. A more effective solution would be to encourage all to adopt the values of successful cultures.
165
@Dr B
Nice try. Charles Murray's theory is half-baked at best. It's problematic to compare the descendants of slaves to those who immigrated by choice, black, Asian or other. Generally, the more motivated self-select and immigrate to the US and have very likely not been subjected to the centuries of systemic oppression and discrimination that American blacks have.
79
Racism is real and palpable. Yes, certain cultures and certain individuals have strong work ethics. But the group's you mention were not stigmatized by issues of race before they came here.
What you point out is that a person's race does not make a person inferior. It also points out that experiences of hatred do have a lasting legacy.
Many Jews, who survived Nazi Germany went on to live productive lives after the war, but, previous to this, many had lived productive lives before Hitler's rise.
I am pointing out that racism is the unnecessary hurdle or barrier to leading a productive life. The effects of racism are felt over time, daily, in small ways and, sometimes, in large momentous ways. Your argument points out how evil racism really is and that, if unencumbered by it, most people would lead productive lives.
29
@Dr B The schools are being starved in rural areas. There is not enough money to have vo-tech which would give the students skills that would enable them to start their own businesses or enough money to fund university prep academics. Instead, the funding is going to security, ENL, remedial, and special needs. The students who do not have skilled parents have no chance, other than scouting or 4H, to learn skills. There simply is no other opportunity to learn skills until they become old enough to enlist.
13
Superb article and one the dems should take seriously. Start talking about the decline of rural America. For example what has Mitch McConnell done for his Kentucky constituents? How have Trump policies hurt his base? Many talking points there.
364
@AJD
Exactly. The NY Times ought to send a team of reporters to Kentucky pronto, to put together a series of stories from McConnell-land about what ol' Mitch has (and mostly has not) done for the residents of that state. And bring along some reporters from the Louisville Courier-Journal. And then advertise the story on billboards and TV across the state to raise awareness. Especially try to buy ad time on Faux News in Kentucky, to reach THAT demographic as well.
48
@AJD
I think the only answer is to speak their language. Trump's followers believe that he was sent from God to be the president. To attack him is to literally attack God. In order to reach this audience talk like the Bible and appeal to them on a spiritual-emotional level
9
@John Yes! This!!
5
I can personally confirm 100 percent of what Mr. Krugman writes here. I grew up in a small mining town in the Adirondacks. Some of the highest quality iron ore on the planet was mined there. The town was vibrant and alive. There was an IGA, my Grandfather worked at the mines and my Grandmother ran a diner. Republic Steel ran the mining operations, the work was hard and dangerous but they paid very good salaries which enabled my Grandparents to afford a house in town and a summer camp on a lake a few miles away. The town was quite quaint with small but well kept homes. In 1967 the mines shut down. When you drive through today over half of the houses are in severe disrepair or uninhabitable and the population is one quarter of what it was. Drugs are rampant, my nephew died of an opiate overdose when he was 17. The town that I remember from my childhood in the early 60s died a long time ago. Anyone who disagrees with Mr. Krugman 's analysis should take a drive through one of these towns, the evidence is right in front of you.
491
@Charles Stockwell
I see the same thing every time I drive to the Finger Lakes area. Trailers in severe disrepair, homes barely held together. I don't see the economy helping these folks much.
63
@Charles Stockwell And this is among a population with its culture intact over generations, never suffering the effects of slavery and the aftermaths experienced in the US - a population I suspect is hardly diverse. Imagine layering those deficits on top of the people in that town. Institutionalized racism. Potential implicit bias from anyone you meet, if not explicit, in your own town. For generations.
Many white people have learned only a part of what it has meant to be black for most black people in the US for a long time, and it didn't take them long to find their version of "crack". Yes, we all have MUCH more in common than we are different. Truly, the differences are ultimately way less important. It just seems to be human nature to dwell on the differences and infuse them with more power to affect our lives than they deserve.
26
@Karen Blame democrats...they are focused on Queens and Staten Island...........
Makes sense. Trump is the great white hope to the rural enclaves of struggling, poor, under-educated, white populations in certain pockets of America, which include a great portion of the South, the Midwest, the “Rust Belt” and Appalachia. Convince enough of the same demographic in swing states, and you build a coalition that can win the Electoral College. If anything, it was an ingenious campaign and election strategy for Donald Trump. It was certainly a successful response, by conducting a MAGA (pardon me for borrowing that acronym, it just happens to fit) campaign strategy on the heels of eight years of the first black President, who was seen by his opposition as being the great hope of inner-city America. I’m not convinced that Trump’s “base” actually believes or supports his policies and his overblown rhetoric as much as they want something that is the polar opposite of what they had for the 8 years prior. It’s a sad state of affairs that people are willing to surrender their values and ignore reality only to be told what they want to hear.
2
Don't want to mention the name of any current individual, but somebody around national politics reminds me more and more of an Austrian author and dictator who made life impossible for too many innocent people.
As was said in the poem about the man who wasn’t there, "I wish that he would go away."
1
Thanks at least for saying that the convictions were vacated, that does not mean they were innocent, despite the narratives out there.
1
Another person confessed to the crime.
10
@cirincis, right. And the confessed rapist's DNA matched the DNA found at the scene.
The boys were innocent.
3
@Somebody
What were they guilty of-being black?
Good column as always –
I honestly don’t know what else to say or comment about Trump.
I have friends and relatives who are Trump supporters and they categorically say that he is the best president ever.
I try to make sense out of that but I can’t.
3
Maybe instead of being stuck in the past, Trump is actually living in a world where African Americans are treated the same way as everyone else, for better or for worse. Which means they are no longer treated with kid gloves from a political correctness standpoint. And, Trump will not back down from criticizing people based on color.
8
@james
That would be nice, except that Trump doesn't treat African Americans like he treats everyone else. He has been a racist all his life, and by extension, people who vote for him, given that his racism is overt, are also racist.
4
Treated with kid gloves?!? Where? In the media? Certainly not by police not by the courts nor the criminal justice system at large. Blacks are locked up higher rates than whites for the same crimes and sentenced for longer. How insulting.
3
Trump isn't the only person stuck in 1989, the entire Democratic Leadership is stuck there too. Excitedly thinking that bi-partisanship will save us all. It's like they didn't learn anything from the failure of the Obama years and the way the GOP treated him.
Also it's important to understand what a political base wants and thinks. Trump is the complete manifestation of their will. Listening to any amount of talk radio in the 2000's and up to 2015 and you realize that nothing Trump said was new to the GOP base. The NYT and other papers are very interested in rehabilitating the GOP and keeping it separate from Trump. There's this real belief that if everything he actually does it the same but just uses more polite words it would be fine. I feel like absolutely nobody represents me or many of the other people who routinely don't vote.
Calling out Baltimore is actually pretty smart on his part. Not because he's fully correct but places like San Francisco and New York has nothing but complete domination by Democrats and yet the problems they have are no different then what we would consider red state issues. Massive inequality, broken infrastructure, crushing austerity, racist policing etc.
He's nothing trying to win an argument, he's merely demoralizing his opponents base and doing a good job too.
Many in these poor rural, very white, areas don't have the same diversity as is found in more urban areas. To many, the Democratic focus on social and economic justice for minorities and BlackLivesMatter etc -all of which is totally valid and good- does not speak to their experience and many feel ignored/overlooked.
If Democrats started speaking more forcefully as the champions of rural poverty it would really chip away at the allure of those institutions (FauxNews/GOP) and people (Trump) that feed off of, and shamelessly exploit, the sense many poor rural voters have of being ignored in the national discussion.
Tell rural america what we can do to make their lives better too!
3
When Trump is no longer President what will happen to cable news, internet media sites and twitter when they lose over half their audience?
1
Racists tend not to be very bright.
3
@rk
How about stable geniuses?
2
1989 would put him generations ahead of those in GOP who would seek to return to the economic and social condition circa 1910.
1
If the Democratic Party didn’t sell out the economic interests of the middle class and the poor to the global corporations, there would be no Trump in the White House.
Trust me, he wouldn’t even bother to run for the president.
It means Trump is just a consequence of the problem and not its cause.
If you want to rid of Trump, fix our political parties by not giving them a blank check! Don’t trust them! They are addicted to the cash donations and political power in the same way the junkies are craving for the drugs…
4
Yes trump is America's dark side , racist side etc.
But McConnell is another dimension in this murky swamp.
Republican party has long been astray, People either died or passed away ( McCain) to left behind GOP.
GOP lost its soul entirely. I cannot imagine any political person today is able bring this party where G.H. Bush was President. This is near impossible.
3
I would like to see Mr. Krugman take more time to discuss the inequality due to capital growth rates.
This is important given the Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic views.
Mr Krugman, through one of his articles, introduced me to Thomas Picketty's Capitalism in the Twenty First Century. An excellent book.
And I am a 70 year old women with no formal economic education.
It takes money to make money. R>g. A poor low skilled mover I used one time understood this.
Please don't dumb down. Tell it and explain it like it is.
2
Far too many people here give Trump credit for being able to think, to plan, to evaluate, to scrutinize and to see the future. He cannot do any of those things.
Like all narcissists, he thinks only in the present moment and only of himself. He doesn't notice much outside his own image. He equates strength with bullying, power with aggression, leadership with belligerence, and prestige with money. He has no ability to appreciate someone else's attitude, culture, social norms, or to "update" his philosophy, and no motivation to change. He absorbed early and well the disgusting lessons passed to him by his dad and taught by Roy Cohn. He has progressed in life by all manner of nasty, albeit not really illegal, action. Men like Trump think they are a gift to the world at all times in any circumstance. He equates flattery with friendship, and thinks that putting others down makes him look good. So much of what he writes and does is clearly the output of a true fool.
FOX, however, uses him well to make money on its advertising. McConnell uses him quite handily to execute "conservative" plans that are ruinous to the country at large. Others manipulate him into whatever doctrine is "hip and cool" today, using minimal information and simple explanations he can comprehend, telling him his "greatness" requires him to say or do "this and that" which he is incapable of questioning.
Stop giving him credit, Dr. Krugman, for capacities he does not have. He is mentally incapacitated.
1
Far be it from me to questions, much less correct, Dr. Krugman, but its 1889 to which Trump is closest in spirit, not 1989...
2
It took until 2019 for an op-ed to finally realize that Trump's frame of reference is the 1980s?
The first tip was his comments about "Mexico is not sending us their best." For anyone who recalls the Mariel boatlift in the late 70s and early 80s, in which FIdel Castro admitted opening his prisons and psychiatric hospitals so that convicts and the mentally ill would go to Florida, it was quite obvious that Trump was conflating Mexico and Cuba.
That said, the press and the Democratic party will only further undermine their own credibility if they reflexively deny and condemn every critical comment Trump makes about a person or group of people, whether it's Sweden, Baltimore, Puerto Rico or Al Sharpton. A democrat can beat Trump in 2020, but it will require acknowledging that not everything he says is automatically racist or incorrect. Will any Democrat win anything by defending Al Sharpton, best known in NYC for the Tawana Brawley faked hate crime, and for fomenting violence against the Hasidic community in Crown Heights? Would the press become more trustworthy by denying that Puerto Rico's leadership is corrupt and incompetent? Does anyone look credible and reliable when describing the hundreds of thousands of people crossing our southern border each month as "asylum seekers" when it's quite clear that they are seeking higher wages more than anything else?
2
Ao lemme get this straight...you’re telling us that Trump doesn’t know the diff between Cuba and Mexico, thinks it’s now 35 years ago...so therefore everything on this loon’s laundry list of crazinesses is altogether true and correct?
Oh, my. Look at that.
1
In Trump's mind, it's still 1959.
4
I don't know about Trump's mind being back in 1989, because 1877 seems so much closer to it since that's the year the Reconstruction Era ended, and with it any pretense of establishing racial equality in a vanquished South determined to regain its former glory on the backs of enslaved Black people.
And upon closer look at this administration with its over- representation of folks from below the Mason-Dixon line, not too much has changed in this regard.
It's not really news anymore that this president is a unrepentant racist and white nationalist, even though many Americans who willingly voted for him might like to think so.
But it doesn't come as a surprise to just about everyone in here New York City, where' we've seen him up close and personal for years.
That's the main reason why we overwhelmingly didn't vote for him and why his taunts against people of color comes as no surprise, be they members of Congress or entire countries with large non-white populations, in Donald Trump's mind they're all rat-infested, crime-ridden areas -- even it it's not true.
And we're now at a time when ALL Americans, regardless of their political affiliation to take a good long look at who we are as a nation, and what we're about to become.
7
I just finished reading Cry, The Beloved Country. The issues we face today are very similar to the issues faced by South Africa in the 1940s. They created dysfunction by breaking up Black families (men often couldn't bring their families to where the jobs were) and then paying extremely low wages.
You'd think we'd learn, but racism is a powerful drug. It is used to justify treating Black people horribly, and then again to paper over the horrible treatment of poor White people.
3
No, no, when white Americans fall into social dysfunction, it's the fault of greedy pharmaceutical companies and globalization. If it's non-whites, then the answer is obviously some inherent failure on their part.
The racists will never go away and they always have an argument to claim they're correct.
8
And let's not forget that his son-in-law is a Baltimore slumlord.
This neither contributes to nor detracts from your arguments. I just think it worth reminding your readers that his son-in-law is a Baltimore slumlord.
11
Trump is a reflection of everything the GOP was and is. Without this current GOP there would be no Trump, with them, there will be more Trumps and perhaps far worse. We need to put the party of plutocrats back to the nefarious hole they belong.
4
Interesting idea offered my Hunter Thompson in the thought that these Trump supporters in those "messes"; places were the lack of employment, the impossibility of seeing a better future, etc. are the ones who just want to blow up society because. if they can't have it no one will, and they see a nihilist partner in Trump and his ilk.
2
Yes, Dr. K. - reviewing maps of the counties which went for this Republican President in '16, overlaid with the counties experiencing the opioid plague, what would really help matters in 2020 would be requiring voters to submit to a drug test before their vote, then not counting any ballots cast until results of said drug tests were reviewed: no 'voting while under the influence.'
In addition to 45*'s son-in-law slum-lord myopia of not remembering that Kushner properties in Baltimore - in the same zip codes Elijah Cummings represents - have been cited hundreds upon hundreds of times for the very vermin and pestilence the White House deplores, there's something else.
Which is, that a person who has always been as insulated as this Republican President - having never been in the military or held public office where he was held to his campaign promises - has no concept of what America is about, or that his perception(s) of reality are distorted.
Worse yet, his views of the outside world, and any idea of how the rest of the world lives, are apparently all filtered through the Rightist Media.
This Republican President's 2020 battle plan of 'racism all the time' may win him some states in the Electoral College, but Dems should be able to grab back the Senate and keep the House.
4
You are way off. In Trump's mind it is always the mid-60s of his college days when he was fuming over LBJ's civil rights act, voting rights act, fair housing act and immigration act of 1965. Trump even hated LBJ for his grand failure-Vietnam. Trump is the same snot-nosed kid he was then.
3
If Trump is still in office in November 2020, then Putin will again decide who the president of the USA will be. Thus, the Democrats best hope would be to hold off on enacting any articles of impeachment until the court battles are over. Just proving collusion and obstruction of justice won't sway any Republican senators, defying the Supreme court might convince some.
Trump famously said "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes". That has now been replaced by "Trump could be caught handing America’s top military secrets to Russia and still not have any Republican votes for impeachment".
Whatever evidence and proof of criminal acts that Mueller could have come up with, it is certain that such evidence and proof could not be as powerful an indication of wrongdoing as the evidence in the public record that Bret Kavanaugh was lying in the senate hearings relating to his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice.
Once Ford’s account included three people she said were there AND his calendar had them all at Tim Gaudette’s house on July 1, 1982, AND Ford’s description of the interior of Gaudette’s house in Rockville, MD exactly matches that of the actual house, which still exists: the only way that Kavanaugh was not lying is either: Ford somehow obtained access to his 1982 diary/calendar, or Ford has a time machine or Ford stalked Kavanaugh in 1982 and planned for this if he was nominated to the Supreme Court..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4216597
2
Beg to differ. Try 1859.
3
Two books that may help explain how the U.S. got to this sad state of affairs (and it didn't happen overnight) are "Democracy in Chains" by Nancy MacLean and "White Trash" by Nancy Isenberg. The first book is particularly frightening as it indicates just how far certain groups will go to achieve control and make sure their own interests supersede those of anyone else, no matter what the cost. Now they are aided and abetted by people like Mitch McConnell, the conservative judges on the Supreme Court and Trump's ability to promote every scoundrel who will willingly lick his boots for a chance to enrich themselves via this administration. Then we have the angry, deluded people who either support him or are too apathetic to actually speak out. It's appalling.
3
Trump may be all the things he’s accused of being but he’s definitely who he has to be at the moment to maintain control. We got trouble my friends, trouble right here in Potomac City, with a capital T, that rhymes with DC and that stands for Trump. Everybody is giving him waaaaa too much credit. He’s not that deep.
2
In 1989, Trump was 42 years old. His media consumption would have consisted of "Baywatch", "Miami Vice", "Kojak" and "Dallas". His entire world view outside of Queens and Manhattan came from the TV. His entire association with others was with middle class, white New Yorkers, with just a soupcon of Eastern European emigres and American Jews. He had no connexions to the intellectual life, nothing to enlarge his mind, suggest other lives outside of Queens. Black people were seen on the Arsenio Hall show or during sporting events, or as rioters and drug dealers. His is the narrowest, most perpetually narrowed viewpoint imaginable. He is utterly frozen in time, perhaps because of his own inclination, perhaps because of some disability, but in Trump's world it's always 1989 and he is always 42 years old. Anyone saying otherwise is out to get him. Anyone acting outside of his 'understanding' of the way the world works is a revolutionary - out to get him. When we are now told that Trump's actions are 'just the way he is' - this is what he is. Frozen.
5
This guy is using race to for his position and to keep it even after 2020
1
More like, his mind is stuck in *1929*
1
This is why Trump will win again. The left just cant stop. I believe that TDS is an actual thing now. The other day my toddler daughter asked me if she was racist, when I asked her about that she told me she hears people on TV calling each other racist all the time. She said little kids are calling each other racist on the playground. Let's evaluate the definition.
Racist: A person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.
Is Donald Trump a racist. NO
Bigot: A person who is intolerant toward those holding a different opinion.
Is Donald Trump a Bigot YES.
So there a huge difference between the two. In fact all of us commenting here, even the author have some form of bigotry in our life but if that bigotry is directed to someone other than your race it does not necessarily make you a racist. The word racist seems to be a dog whistle to liberals for some reason and it certainly a cash cow for others like Al Sharpton. Please don't even get me started on White Privilege.
Definition,
White Privilege: My job was given to someone with half of my credentials because my skin tone was too light.
Trump is not fueling anyone with racism. He is simply calling it out for what it really means. Oh and by the way there is nothing illegal with a bigotry. Lack of bigotry = nice. We don't need a nice president we need a fighter. Trump 2020
4
Yes, Paul, like Nadler and Schiff, we know you passionately hate Trump with every bone in your body. Many liberals seem to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is a racist. Trump lacks sensitivity, is anything but politically correct, does not carefully weigh his words and how they might be perceived, and reacts with angry knee-jerk reactions to what he sees are personal attacks on him by Dems. I don't think this makes him a racist per se. Most people I know have absolutely no use for The Squad and their views irrespective of their gender and ethnicity, the thought of being anywhere in Baltimore but the heavily patrolled Inner Harbor scares the heck out of many people and many view Al Sharpton as an opportunist and rabble-rouser. So in my mind, Trump is not a racist but rather simply a jerk at times as are many Dem politicians and as are you. As for the Central Park 5 and the other cases you mentioned, Trump did not opine on their guilt or innocence, but rather the penalty to be applied given that a jury found them guilty. Personally, I have always felt that life in prison without possibility of release, ever, is preferable to capital punishment but only because mistaken verdicts are sometimes rendered that can't be rectified post-execution. You are also off base judging Trump's 1989 statement by 2019 mores which is misleading and really is yellow journalism. In 1989, many people supported the death penalty.
3
I agree on Krugsman statement 100%
"Yes, Donald Trump is a vile racist"
I also consider for that You just do not need to look only America.
If you imprison any society for economical deprivation or not let them show their free will, Human's eventually employs their most violent side, Criminal work.
Some says in the past people all were deprived and jobless and etc.
That argument default wrong.
Increasing population, decreasing economic viability means that catastrophe.
21st century we will be seeing this particular problem festering all around the world.
This particular problem creates a unique opportunity Trump like racists take advantage and hijack any democracy.
2
Here's a statistic: 4,484 killings of women as victims of what are called "intimate partner violence" last year in the US. That means, these women were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. In half of these cases, women were killed by guns, and in most of these cases gun-related cases, the women were killed by white men.
Who is the most dangerous predator in our society? What is the skin color of almost all the perpetrators in mass shootings?
If the President is looking to name and quell the sources of violence in the US, perhaps he needs to look in the mirror.
12
this is absurd: none of this was acceptable in 1989 or 1979 or 1969
3
And notice it’s all a National emergency when rural whites are struggling due to loss of jobs and opportunities, but when it’s the urban African American community that struggles due to the very same set of reasons, it’s somehow their fault and it's “pull yourself up by your bootstraps" "personal responsibility. time. The opioid crisis only got people’s attention because it’s largely a rural/white person problem. When the crack epidemic hit the black urban communities in the 1980s', however, it was all their fault. Due to Personal failings only. Now that it's white people, it's a disease through very little fault of their own.
3
"All he has to offer is hate." Professor Krugman, the last sentence of your column characterizes Trump perfectly. Definitely since 1989--and probably since the 1970's or earlier.
7
All the things that Trump is, and everyone is missing the crucial truth: that Putin is the greater threat. Trump is there because of Putin: let that sink in. We are at war with Russia and we don't ever realize it, let alone are we doing anything about it.
Trump's racism is nothing. It's not important. He might, or might not be racist. But it's a smokescreen for what he's really doing to America, and until Americans get past that, we have no hope.
3
While I agree with most of what Mr. Krugman writes here I read his assertion that "no American politician would dare suggest such a thing" in regards to inhabitants of eastern Kentucky (or any rural, majority white area) and shook my head.
Hillary Clinton did just that when she made the decision to describe half of Trump's supporters as deserving of spots in "a basket of deplorable."
Her comment insulted and infuriated millions of Americans, many of whom already felt like Hillary's campaign was representative of an establishment that looked down on the nation's rural, less-educated population. For some, it was enough to push them over to Trump's side, or at least stop them from giving Hillary their vote.
Trumps' campaign, his approach to politics and his entire identity have shaken up this country in too many ways to count. One of those changes is the complete loss of any modicum of decency in politics, the absence of which makes "deplorable" seem like an appropriate choice of words for a liberal presidential candidate to describe conservatives.
Hillary tried to play Trump's game and lost. Other liberal politicians have been adopting the same style. If we truly hope to take back the White House and repair the damage done to this country, we need to remind ourselves that Trump has an uncanny ability to pull people down to his pathetic level, and that staying above his petty cruelty is really the only way to restore our government and still be able to look in the mirror.
1
Well Paul, I think you’re stuck in 1989 or there abouts also.
After all, what is your solution? Borrow and spend during the bad times and then “pay down the debt” during the good times?
That type of thinking is over, along with the pseudo science of mainstream economics you represent.
People don’t need vague assurances of “opportunities”. They need jobs.
And the only people who have a plan to make sure everyone has a job are the MMT crowd.
We propose a Job Guarantee. We guarantee a low wage job for everyone willing and able to work. This will allow them to avoid the stigma of being unemployed, thus allowing them to be rehired by the private sector. Do you have anything comparable to that?
And please don’t embarrass yourself by asking “how are we going to pay for it”. You know better by now.
The unemployed are used as a buffer stock. The problem is that the unemployed “go bad” after a while. No one wants to hire someone who has been unemployed for over a year. That’s a fact. Do you have a solution to that?
We do.
1
Republicans, Fox News, and MAGAts on Twitter love to hype the fiction that blue cities and states are weak, effete economic basket cases that must be supported financially by the rugged pioneers of the red states.
As with so much else, conservatives want not only their own opinions, but also their own facts.
4
We are talking about a man who lives in his own fantasy world, so, please, don’t expect rationality. Will never happen.
3
“The rich aren’t like you or I... they wreck other people’s lives w/ their careless ways then retreat into the vastness of their money & leave it to others to clean up their messes.” - F. Scott (paraphrased)
From 1945 to 72 GNP went up 100% & the median (meaning everyone’s) wage in lockstep w/ it. The median wage hasn’t gone up since 72 (47+ years) despite the fact that GNP has is up 150%. All that growth has gone to the <1%
See graph #2 at bit.ly/EPI-study
As some workers wages have gone up (tech/health) & some in decent unions (7%) have floated we know the vast majority of the working class have experienced 48 years of declining prospects. This is a economy that has grown 150%!
Most working class don’t know why this is happened only that its happened & they react to it with anger &/or self destructive characteristics.
Trump stokes the racism to convince working class it’s minorities fault.
Hillary & Dems played into this wi/ minority identity politics campaign that triggered a reaction from a majority simmering from declining econ. She lost the rust belt.
I’m sick of seeing Elite Dems emphasize race when the issue is econ. They’re just doing the <1% work.
If wages kept up with GNP the median worker (you) would be making 150% more than you do. Would people be worried about racism if they made 150% than they now do? We aren’t a perfect society, but we did elect a black president. The main issue then is econ. Race is a red herring promoted by <1% elites on both sides.
3
What's happening to whites in rural America and small towns has been happening to people in the former Soviet Union since its collapse. Their experience adds to the data base that poverty and unemployment are bad for human beings, no matter what the color of their skin happens to be.
3
1989 superficially. In depth, more like 1889.
1
Paul Krugman..election night.Markets up 40% since then...not exactly never. It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?
Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.
Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
If Trump would get off Twitter and halt his nonstop viewing of Fox News, and then focus his attention on his responsibility to advance the public good, so all but a well-heeled few could flourish, then perhaps the nation could be united in the solidarity required to "lift all boats." His "Make America Great Again" mantra will never become possible with his current chaotic leadership.
Dividing the nation with his racism advances nothing more than division within the nation, putting us in the morass the nation suffered prior to the Civil War. Enough is enough. Stop it!
8
Trump is a mentally illl, tortured, damaged old insecure, miserable man. He simply can't do what you wished he did. He needs chaos in order to silence the nightmare inside his head, that inner dialog that tells him how nobody loves him because he is worthless. As despicable and repulsive I find Trump to be, he is truly a sad pathetic man who will never find inner peace. We can tune him out. He can't get never get away from himself. SAD!
3
No, rather he is confused being a king or dictator versus being President. You, we, can slam Trump all we want, but we also must recognize he was elected even if it was wi th h the help of Putin.
Trump will go away long before the riff that exist in this country. Working class whites are disinchanted with the view that our government paid way too much attention to blacks.at the expense of the white working class and they had enough.
lt does not matter to them that Trump lacks a moral compass. All they know is the good paying jobs that did not require a college degree are no longer here. For many it does not even matter that he has done nothing to fix the problem.
What they do know is the jobs are gone and they don't like it.
2
The "carnage" is in BOTH rural white America and pockets of our inner cities. Trump's genius (as with past fascists) is to convince the white victims to blame the black and brown for their woes, rather than acknowledge that both populations are being harmed by neoliberalist policies, corporate ownership of our federal government, and so-called "trade agreements" (which are really investors' rights agreements). Look back at American history and you'll see times when workers were able to see who was really victimizing them and act on it. This has largely disappeared from the American consciousness. It's due to emotional appeals from people like Trump, but also to intensive 24-hour media propaganda.
6
I'd say go back a little further. Trump loves America as it was previous to Brown vs. Board of Education. Everything since then is carnage - he hates America 2019 (except for the tax rates - that's one change that makes him stand up and sing God Bless America!)
3
It is difficult to have sympathy for the rural and rust belt whites as they struggle with despair associated with loss of factories and jobs which leads to the suicides, drug overdoses and broken fabric of their previous society because I can remember when it was they that had no sympathy for the plight of the urban residents in the 80s and 90s when they were struggling with the job flight out of the cities, no jobs and drug problems. They told them that they were lazy, deserved their plight and needed to get religion and work harder. Now the shoe is on the other foot and for many of the same reasons.
Now these rural and rust belt whites want to be made great again which is an admission that trickle down did not make them great because it was just a ruse to get their vote by big business. Then Capital and big business take their vote and continue to enrich themselves by hiring low cost labor and sending more factories to low cost labor pool overseas.
And yet these people vote for the party of Capital/Big Business over and over to get their hot button issues ie people intolerance, guns, religious extremism and so it is hard to have sympathy.
8
Trump brought the past with him and he's trying to impose it on all of us. Trump's father was also racist as we've learned about how the Trump organization tried to keep blacks from Trump properties. The racism is bred into Donald's DNA.
Hopefully in 2020 we'll be able to elect a Democratic candidate and restore normalcy to our nation. In the meantime blacks, whites, hispanics and every disparaged race and minority who has felt Trump's wrath needs to make an effort to help defeat him. The next Supreme Court Justice that he nominates will also undo all the social, economic and political gains of minorities across the nation. If that happens we'll all be living in the dark days of rampant racism, white nationalism and social injustice that most of us left behind decades ago.
6
An astute piece Mr. Krugman. I would also like to note how when we acknowledge these problems in white rural America we treat it differently and think about it differently than similar problems occurring in non-white inner city communities. Our reaction to the crack epidemic was to build more jails and put more people in them. They were as addicted to crack as the unemployed white man in West Virginia is addicted to opioids. But in the minds of white Americans the blacks were criminal addicts trying to support their habit. The whites are "victims" of pharmaceutical companies.
12
Within the context of the recent mass shootings in Gilroy, CA your article rings so true - a disenfranchised young white male spewing the hatred of white supremacy about ridding the world of mixed race peoples. It isn't a coincidence that young white males have taken on the mantel of hatred that djt spews. And the seeds are well planted in communities and states that remove their opportunities for economic advancement while spilling forth hateful rhetoric from their politicians. It seems these mass murderers are trump's real army, or should we be calling his minions a junta?
What is happening in this nation with trump at the helm is an atrocity - a president who slimes up anything unfitting to his purist model of race, an entire republican senate that chimes with him without thought, and 32% of the nation who use this as their fodder. The only thing saving my sanity is to know that Paul Krugman and the majority of our country agree trump is our ruin. It is time for this majority to rise up and rid our nation of this scourge debasing us in the White House and senate.
6
The crime is not all in Baltimore. It is all over the USA .
The social and economic pressures in the US , the lack of security, the prejudice against some minorities, are the reasons for the highest violent crime rate and highest incarceration rate in the world. Both about 8 times per capita more than the European average.
You have 8 time more risk to be raped, attacked ,murdered in the USA than in Europe . And almost 1 % of the US population is in jail. Both the high incarceration and the death penalty are creators of violence and more crime.
In Europe, England, where is the highest inequality and insecurity has the highest incarceration rate . About 50 % more than in France. health care , free education, culture, are the means to lower the crime. Everything that does not exist in the USA.
4
There's a pecking order aspect to the current situation. Humans seem to want a group under theirs so they don't have to see themselves as the lowest of the low. I remembeer when Puerto Ricans first started coming to New York City in large enough numbers to notice,Some Blacks disparaged them. Neither group was or should have been the lowest of the low. But it happened to waves of immigrants.
But Blacks have a more serious problem. The history if racism is long in the US and the roots have a tangled, tight grip on the country's soul. If only, if only we could have a national history course on the shared history of Blacks and Whites going back to the sixteen hundreds. Not a traditional course, but a vivid, living course with lots of room for questions and discussion.
3
Paul Krugram is one of the best columnists that I will never stop reading his analysis, view about the issues going on around the world consigning trade talks, economy and other several issues.
It is very obvious that POTUS is still living in his past, unfit to hold a political office but then, I personally do ask myself this question, How did the USA get themselves into this mess? You can perceive it already that this administration is spreading hatred, segregation, bigotry, generalization, cliche, racism, are already at their peaks? Is another civil war approaching?
4
I disagree that all Trump has to offer is hate. He also has false promises, lots of them, offered to that very same constituency he professes to want to help.
7
It's so simple, the reality that social dysfunction is an effect, not a cause. It's also true that any type of success (in work, happiness, love) is an effect of support, love and hope. We need healthcare for all, cheaper education, free mental health and addiction clinics, jobs programs for both rural and urban America. Defeat DJT in 2020, for starters.
7
This clear, specific, data driven vision which is as close as we can get to a controlled experiment showing situation not skin color, geography or creed has defined our most urgent social problems for decades is incredibly powerful. Its also uncomfortable for both parties - highlighting that benefits are a band aid to the distress of Democrats and that unregulated opportunity has an unacceptable cost to the chagrin of Republicans.
Now, lets have a generalized solution; benefits as a bridge to opportunity. Any good ideas about how to bring part II of that prescription to Rural America? Write them on a postcard and send them to your favorite Presidential candidate.
Here in Portland Oregon, throughout Old Town, extending along the freeway system that courses through the city, evidence of homelessness is everywhere; tents, camping gear, human waste, half eaten food and, of course, the homeless themselves.
I would estimate that 95% of the homeless population is caucasian with the remainder split among black and native American.
I'm going to take a leap here and say that homelessness is a rural problem that naturally migrants to urban areas. Lack of support resources, more availability of both drugs and alcohol and, most importantly I think, the anonymity afforded by living in a large city all are reasons for the presence of mostly caucasian people living in most desperate circumstance.
10
@Charles Ross - "HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) 2/19/19- The number of people traveling to Oahu and then ending up homeless is growing, according to the state’s largest homeless service provider. The Institute for Human Services says 209 people from across the mainland showed up at one of its shelters last year looking for help. That’s up from 165 people in 2017. The vast majority were single men, many of whom had been on the island less than three months.
One of them was XXXXX. He arrived in Hawaii aboard a cruise ship that he’d been working on. He had savings when he came to the islands but it soon disappeared and he was on the streets. He says he had about $4,000 in savings — what he thought was enough to find a place to live and carry him through until he could line up a new job. He wasn’t expecting for everything to be so expensive. For the first time, the 46-year-old was homeless. After a few months on the street, he checked into an IHS shelter. His story isn’t uncommon. IHS spokesman Kimo Carvalho. He says about 10 percent of the state’s homeless population recently traveled to Hawaii from somewhere else. “Our relocation program assists homeless individuals who are currently stuck here in Hawaii with relocating back to the mainland or where ever they are from.” Last year, a total of 128 people took advantage of the program. Last year the majority of people wound up returning to their home states on the West Coast. The next most popular were the South and Midwest."
5
Trump is going to win reelection with an Electoral College majority despite losing the popular vote by a couple of million more votes than he lost it by in 2016. He will gin up the racist vote of the many rural and voters and less-affluent white suburbanites, particularly those without four years of college.
But by attacking America's largest cities, which are nearly all liberal, racially and ethnically mixed, and contain both pockets of great affluence and struggling neighborhoods, Trump will have made the U.S. ungovernable in his second term.
It's hard to get thousands of people to demonstrations on short notice in rural or suburban areas, but in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco or any of the other urban areas Trump has attacked, it's easy.
We see what's happening in San Juan and Hong Kong. That's what will bring down Trump in the middle of his second term. Democrats should probably wait, make sure they keep the House and try to make Senate gains, and impeachment will succeed in Trump's second term.
The world will then stop its momentary spin backwards and return to sanity and civility to a greater degree at least.
4
This has been said before but it's worth saying again:
Trump is baiting people, democrats and his followers alike, by creating chaos and conflict based purely on identity politics.
He says racist things but in reality he's a "transactionalist" rather than a racist because he's purely transactional, which means it's only about what serves him best (or what he perceives serves him best) at a particular moment.
It suited him in 2005 to invite the Clintons to his wedding, and it's suited him in the past to be friendly with Al Sharpton. Now, it serves him politically to vilify them so that's what he does.
This goes back to my unshakeable belief regarding another of his racist incidents:
If the (mostly Black) NFL players had been kneeling to protest abortion while wearing MAGA hats, he would have made heroes out of them. There would have been no talk about kneeling players disrespecting the flag and vets.
385
@Chris Manjaro Interesting theory. I would like to see proof. Trump can be transactional AND racist-- which is what I think he is. he does not seem "purely" transactional.
56
@Potter
You got it mostly right. Individual 1 is transactional first and foremost. Racismand other traits are merely tools in his being transactional.
16
@Chris Manjaro
It really doesn't matter whether Trump is racist or merely transactional, doers it? His language and policies divide the country between those who feel threatened by an increase in the number of people of color and those who don't, and his language and policies support and encourage racists. Whatever the underlying motivation, the effects are horrible, and they need to end.
24
It's nice PK puts on his sociological hat for us, and forgets his forte is basically all about numbers, however one doesn't need educational degrees to know you take a kid who lives in the ghetto, like Baltimore, and regardless of his race, his attitude is far more negative than say the kid living a few miles away in Georgetown. But tell me PK, why did that kid in poor districts vote for Trump. What made him think the GOP was his answer to leave the ghetto. Did I miss that. Trump is a liar, a racist, and has as his only major concern to financially enrich the wealthy. What do the sociologists say about that. Why did millions of Americans cross the street to vote for Trump. I don't recall him standing there during the candidates debates and talking about our social problems and him showing a devoted interest in correcting them.
2
Yes this is about the economic hollowing out of ex-urban white American. Yet the blame for this does not lie with Democrats.!f you look where Democrats spend money when they get into office you will notice that the spend it on social programs, things to support working and poor Americans. Labor unions have been a core component of the Democratic Party supporting fair trade. When Republicans give money away they give tax cuts to wealth poeple (job creators) and corporations. Union busting, cheap migrant labor. Trickledown. Well how has that worked out.
So what steps in to drive the Republican Party. White Christian culture wars. Racism. Whites against the others. Rural Christian whites against urban non-Christian non-whites.
Fox News is also the elephant in the room. They have been driving this narratively unrelentingly. One of my many Fox News watching neighbors bought a gun because he said Hillary Clinton was going to take all the guns away. He was afraid to go San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city. Another neighbor railed against Obama deficits. How has that working out for him. He changed parties after his daughter got married - to another woman. Oops.
No republican speaks out against Trump because they know Fox News will destroy them. Oh the monsters we create. Also they love Trump’s “policies!.” (White Christian nationalism- just like Putin, their new friend. And he has a lot of money.
1
Great article Mr. Krugman.
You point to 1989. I point to the late 1960's.
A time of great social strife also but we had Ali.
Outside of Afghanistan's Malala today - there is no else standing up to this one trick pony of pitting colour against each other.
4
Trump and his GOP cohorts keep telling us to "...Get over the fact that Hillary lost..."
It just now dawned on me that the GOP needs to "...Get over the fact that FDR made our nation a better place, more equally prosperous for all..."
Get over it GOP. We will prevail and will celebrate our diversity which makes our nation stronger and a vibrant democracy.
3rd generation Norwegian here.
7
It's not just Trump, the issues are world-wide. Trump illustrates the problem with the modern world - it's been a long time since we had a good human as president, in recent years I don't think that anyone has faced up to reality as Harry Truman did. Truman didn't always do the right thing but he faced that fact and did the best that he could when faced with the worlds problems. Who does that today?
1
"Trump, nevertheless, has refused to apologize or admit that he was wrong."
Of course he will not admit he was wrong, because he knows better than the generals, and the economists, and the scientists who study global warming, and ... every expert in the world.
The "very stable genius" was an ordinary student at UPenn as an undergraduate, after transferring in from Fordham between his second and third years.
No MBA for Wharton (although he tries to imply that he is a Wharton MBA grad). Getting into UPenn as a transfer is not very hard, especially when your older brother is buddies with an admissions officer, right Donnie?
What a poor, needy, sick sad sack of an individual who has to be stroked to keep up his confidence.
Pathetic.
"Trump is a clear and present danger to our country." - Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 23, 2016
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/09/23/enquirer-endorses-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/90728344/
3
Working poor, unite! Restore fully-integrated unions, unions for all workers!
And by working poor, I mean all the recent college graduates struggling to pay back student debt while pouring lattes; folks flipping burgers in chain fast-food outlets; part-time security workers; everyone working two or more part-time jobs in an effort to make ends meet; contract temp workers; adjunct college faculty; domestic laborers; seasonal field workers; restaurant workers; folks trapped in the so-called "day-wage economy" -- every laborer who lacks a voice because they don't see, and are unable to communicate with, one another.
7
That a person from Queens makes these statements attributed to Mr. Trump does not surprise me. All that has happened over the last 50+ years is that the bigotry went underground. Had the country not focused on political correctness, these latent feelings would have been addressed and we would have moved forward. Instead we came up with quotas for EEOC. We established minimum minority percentages of employees that had to be incorporated in government contracted work, and I can go on. What it created was the impression that reverse discrimination is acceptable, not that we have an obligation to make sure that opportunities for education of all classes equally exists. Hence the multitudes that now angrily vote solely for one party because it recognizes that they exist. And they also have their own set of facts, much to the dismay of Sen. Patrick Moynihan.
I asked my Congressman, Francis Rooney, to speak out about Trump’s comments. Instead of doing so, he responded with divisive language of his own, asserting that while Trump’s “phraseology may be controversial, his point about these 4 Congresswomen's dislike for our country is well documented.” Disagreement does not mean dislike.
6
One would think it would be smart politics for Trump and the Republicans to do something that would help his base economically. If no the Democratic candidate can tell them the same thing Trump told poor Blacks in 2016. “Vote for me what have you got to lose” that’ll work unless having Trump as thei president is worth sacrificing their own economic interests even further
2
@AVIEL
Except that Trump's real base is the 1% and the only goals are lower taxes, fewer regulations, and less government. Fixing anything else, especially inner cities, is just not in the plan.
3
Trump is not a racist. He insults and calls names both black and white. The problem is with the accusers especially the far-left demos. Every time Trump lashes out at t a person of color the response is "he is racist" The accusers are racists in the way they spin Trump anger, right or wrong, as a race issue
6
Yeah, sure. He’s vile and a demagogue.
12
@lieberma
Trump is a racist. Of that there is no doubt. He has proven it with his words, actions, and twitter thumbs. While the Good Ole White Men's Club (GOP) keeps silent on all things Trump, they still agree with much of what he says and does. The difference is they don't have the guts to say what they think, while Trump says without thinking.
2
@lieberma He doesn't insult white people in general, when he insults white individuals he uses different language -"infestation" and "vermin" are used when he talks about black and brown people. You are right - he is hateful toward everyone, but he is hateful in a certain way when it involves people of color. That is racist. And anyone who is not themselves racist can see it.
1
It would be helpful if the far left and especially the POC left acknowledges the truth of Krugman's point in terms of the ways things have improved.
2
Mr. Krugman, this was a fine editorial. It's goes all the way back to our fundamental human template. People are people.
4
This country is still fighting the civil war. Many on the side who lost are still angry and vindictive. They have managed to also spread their hatred throughout the country. DT is the ghost of vengeance for them and if this means destroying the country again, they will do it. But Obama was right. We have better angels within and those ghost can only take into hell those who refuse to accept that we are all the same species, and more than that, that we are connected to the earth and all of her creatures.
271
@Maria Rodriguez
Krugman writes that "no American politician would dare suggest such a thing."
You just did.
This is a real problem for Democrats. They don't hear themselves when they say such things.
4
@Mark Thomason
I think she's not a politician? The point is that Democrats running for office are not the mirror image of the racist Republicans who say things like that about Baltimore. When Ed Koch did a mild version of this, running for governor of NY, his campaign ended almost the next day.
16
@Maria Rodriguez Not the civil war Maria, the War of Northern Aggression. Its still our fault they can't have segregation and slaves.
15
Thank you, Dr. Krugman, for telling the truth. But 1989? I'm not sure Trump's thinking has made it that far. 1889, more like, if you ask me.
6
Is "1989" a typo? Should it not have rather been "1889"?
7
Trump is the master at exploiting white nationalism, especially in uneducated rural America.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Lyndon B. Johnson
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-white-man/
24
@Mike
Lyndon B. Johnson was true southern democrat in the age of Jim Crow.
When he stated this fact, he is 100% sure that what Today's Trump supporters mind.
This definition fits timelessly, any geography and Nation.
I can Use this in any country in the world defining the racist people and it perfectly describes their soul.
L.B.J was great politician when it comes to analyzing America.
4
In Trump's mind...what he says works...so he goes with it! Why has what he has said and done...since the Primaries...that we all know is wrong...how did that not make him...Unelectable ? He was going to be more Presidential...when ?? How has his divisive brash ranting become so well accepted in our society that there is a Fox Nation of us condoning ,excusing and..even..supporting this chaotic nd dysfunctional President ?? Cohen testified Trump was a Racist,a Con,and a Cheat...Mueller said Trump...generally...lies !! Can there be that many of us who Vote...who are not so appalled and shocked by this President that we can't seem to give up our support of him? Trump support is simply UNAMERICAN AND UNPATRIOTIC !! The Archie Bunker show has got to be cancelled !! It's not who we are supposed to be...is it ??
6
When white people suffer, conservatives say it is because of someone else’s fault. However, when black people suffer, it is their own fault.
21
Exactly, that’s who Republicans are.
3
If we are honest, we can't just say the Trump Is a racist, which clearly he is.
He is an admitted molester, accused of rape by 22 women.
He is a con man, and always has been.
He is a tax cheat, confirmed by his attorney, which is why he won't let the public see his taxes.
He serially bankrupted 6 companies, yet managed to increase his wealth, better known as fraudulent conveyance.
He is a well known and documented money launderer. When you work in real estate, separating real estate value from bribe from money laundering is a difficult task.
He is a bum, skipping out on bills from contractors, creditors, and even common hotel stays.
He works with international organized crime in the casino and construction business.
He is so feeble-minded, his lawyer threatened elementary, high schools and colleges to withhold his grades at threat of legal peril.
He has paid off porn starts and other adulterous affairs in violation of election laws.
His jailed campaign manager Paul Manafort shared American polling data with the Kremlin to win enough swing state votes to cheat the American public via the Electoral College.
The causes of action for obstruction of justice are fully described in the Special Prosecutor report.
He is above all a traitor to his nation, the nation who gave his immigrant father and immigrant wife so much.
He is the lowest of any American in America.
His name will be struck from any edifice left standing upon his arrest and conviction and disgrace.
25
Thanks! You just succinctly described him. That should be shouted out in nonstop ads throughout the campaign.
3
From Adam Serwer's Twitter account today:
"When white people are poor or struggle with problems like addiction, they are “forgotten” or “left behind,” politicians have failed them and have a moral obligation to do something. When black people have those problems, it’s our fault and proof that white people are superior.'
https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1156171409569275904
6
The death penalty is Premeditated murder! Shameful and disgusting much like your president. Thinking of those killings turns my stomach.
I will never understand why Americans are not marching in the streets as they did to end the Vietnam war. We get the government we deserve.
Vote, vote vote and get your neighbours to vote! Please!!
5
As always Paul, thank you for your clear, fact - based analysis of our current social problems, their roots, and how our doofus in chief in wrong on everything.
6
Krugman #nailedit again!
4
Trump appears to hate America and has no desire to Fox the poverty issues with actual policy. Tax cuts won’t change things.
I think he should leave and go back to Germany and fix the country he came from. I don’t want him here as he isn’t solving problems but is only creating more. I’m tired if him playing to the white victim card and assisting people who don’t see each other as peers.
While he packs his baggage’s take Fox News with him. It’s a network of poison and propaganda. Having a black lady do the attack on Cummings is Fox playbook all the way. Is such obvious propaganda it’s disgusting.
6
you say "all he has to offer is hate" but he is offering something even more powerful: a scapegoat. Far from turning a blind eye to the sufferings of his base, His Excellency revels in creating a narrative that excuses personal responsibility and justifies anger, resentment, and rage, all by claiming it's THEIR fault. It's proven an effective means of maintaining power...for Hitler, Lenin, and countless others over the centuries
7
You can get an idea as to how the county by county vote and wealth correlate by looking at these two maps.
The first is just the 2016 presidential election winner county by county. The second is the NY Times map of the best/worst counties to live in.
https://brilliantmaps.com/2016-county-election-map/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/upshot/where-are-the-hardest-places-to-live-in-the-us.html
1
Dear Paul, I remember it vividly. This is exactly how the Stable Genius rose to fame; soon after he was Oprah Winfrey. That is how he became the demagogue in chief. Let us admit it... racism... xenophobia... are being weaponized on purpose... because there is market for them. That is why.
That is how much backwards we have traveled without noticing.. Welcome to the new normal Paul. Soon his supporters will accept the charge of racism laid against him.. and will tell us: So what ... they are all racists
7
Correction:
A racist stuck in the past, the present & the future.
3
spot on and important to read vs normal NYT coverage about "Democrats being torn..." and other contrived narratives - focused on the superficial rather than the substantive - attempting to heighten tensions in order to attract eyeballs.
3
Guess the whole Russian collusion thing didn't stick. Back to calling Trump racist I see.
2
Nonsense.
In the 2008 election McCain/Palin won 57% of the white voting majority.
In the 2012 election Romney/Ryan won 59% of the white voting majority.
In the 2016 election Trump / Pence won 58% of the white voting majority.
Trump didn't run a covert stealth subtle campaign.
Trump ran against black African Americans and brown Mexican Americans in and out of America. Trump ran against Arabs and Muslims. Trump ran against women who were not like his wives and mistresses.
Every American knew who Donald Trump was and was not and voted accordingly.
That is the real America regarding color aka race aka ethnicity aka national origin in 2019.
While race is not an evolutionary fit DNA genetic fact, racism is the reality expression of socioeconomic political educational demographic white power and privilege in 2019 America.
5
Mr. Trump's evil genius is a return to 1989 and pre-1989 with a racist policy designed to give the least of his supporters the illusion of their inevitable success in an America made "great again".
He follows in the footsteps of many before who have exploited this human weakness to surpass others even to the detriment of the vanquished.
Although he championed civil rights at the apex of his career, LBJ famously encapsulated this understanding when he said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
I remain hopeful in the statement attributed to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln (but actually suggested about 180 years earlier by Jacques Abbadie): "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Americans left foundering in Trump's wake just need to wake up and stop trying to get ahead by putting others down. As Booker T. Washington said, "You can't hold a man down without staying down with him."
A polity which has a zero-sum view of the world ultimately fails. If one man is "up" by putting another man "down", the average of all is unchanged. We need to lift every man (and woman) up to the best of our ability and not by heeding Trump's siren calls.
5
Why do underprivileged whites support Trump? Perhaps looking at the phenomenon of poor whites fighting for the cause, the way of life, inherent in the antebellum South, even if they did not own slaves, can give us some useful insights. In the days leading up to secession, community leaders, politicians, religious leaders furiously wrote and spoke constantly of upholding the way of life which gave all white people a sense of nobility. One John Townsend of South Carolina spoke to this and it seems oddly resonant today: Abolition's consequences: “It will be to the non-slaveholder, equally with the largest slaveholder, the obliteration of caste and the deprivation of important privileges. The color of the white man is now, in the South, a title of nobility in his relations as to the negro... In the Southern slaveholding States, where menial and degrading offices are turned over to be performed exclusively by the Negro slave, the status and color of the black race becomes the badge of inferiority, and the poorest non-slaveholder may rejoice with the richest of his brethren of the white race, in the distinction of his color. He may be poor, it is true; but there is no point upon which he is so justly proud and sensitive as his privilege of caste; and there is nothing which he would resent with more fierce indignation than the attempt of the Abolitionist to emancipate the slaves and elevate the Negroes to an equality with himself and his family.”
4
Ben Carson -- where is your voice?
3
It seems more like 1949 to me. Or perhaps more like the Seinfeld episode where George wanted to prove that he had African American friends so invited Jerry's exterminator over to get in a picture with him.
3
Even in 1989 Trump was retrograde, and so were the GOP. They were simply more coy about it all then.
Trump has been cycling upwards since the Goldwater days.
In fact he's much more '20s style racist, where the KKK is accepted into polite society and marches in 4th of July parades.
3
1989? You mean 1949 don't you? That was a time when Jim Crow was in full swing. It was also a time when most non-WASP immigrants and the first generation born here, were met with Archie Bunker like platitudes. It was a time where Jews, though just learning more details of the Shoah, were still called "Christ Killers". If you returned, from the war, if your surname did not meet the WASP standards, you worked flipping burgers, and met with a recession. Oh yeah, to keep this intact was the KKK.
While Trump has not gone after the Jews yet, he has done just about everything else to bring us back to before the civil rights movement, and to make anyone who is descended from the wrong white Anglo blood, uneasy or starting to know what their ancestors went through.
5
Krugman:"..a nation whose principal social problem is inner-city violence, perpetrated by nonwhites. That’s a comfortable vision if you’re a racist."
You need not be a comfortable "racist" when you simply evaluate FACTS: Though black men constitute about 7 percent of the population, they accounted for 45 percent of America’s 15,129 homicide victims in 2017, FBI numbers show. A BJS study of homicides committed from 1980 to 2008 found that the victimization rate of blacks was six times that of whites. (REF: City Journal)
1
I'd go further back than 1989, to the time Donald learned his racism from his father as they redlined their apartment tenants. Donald learned from his father.
6
Make America Hate... and then!?
What MAGA really means.
It does not make any difference what racist Trump spews. This nation is becoming a majority of minorities. Nothing can or should change that. I was a landlord for many years. I can definitely tell you that a person's skin color does not make them a better or worse tennant.
2
Most of the death row up are white.
1
@northlander So are most serial killers and people who commit the most heinous crimes. There's got to be a correlation...
1
A racist? It seems likely, but he thinks he is not, just a realist. But what we all know he is is a constant race-baiter, willing and interested in using race to make points, to score points, to win elections. He is a divider not a leader, a constantly angry victim with gold faucets, a small man. He is our very own Governor George Corley Wallace, bless his bigoted tiny heart.
One thing Trump fails to mention in his continuing Baltimore diatribe is that the Kushners figure prominently among the city's slumlords.
5
Trump's not a racist, Paul, just because you say he is.
3
Where have you been? Mr. Krugman is not a lone voice in the woods.
1
@smacc1
No. He's a racist because he does and says observably racist things.
1
With the economy doing well for most people and black unemployment at historic lows, Trump must be polling well among black voters hence the ‘Trump is racist’ campaign out of the Democrat Media Complex.
2
Branding Trump’s Tweeter assault on Rep. Elijah Cummings as racist is absurd.
Cummings uses his position as chairman of the Houser Oversight Committee to harass the president and his family with subpoenas. He clamors for the president’s impeachment and accuses the administration of caging children in inhumane conditions in border detention facilities.
When Baltimore activist Kimberly Klacik—who is black—posted a posted a video of blight and trash in West Baltimore on her Tweeter homepage and then went on Fox News to blame the problem on Democratic leadership, Trump saw his chance to retaliate. After watch her appearance on Fix, Trump tweeted: “Cummings’ District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. He added “"no human being would want to live there.”
That is not racism; it’s politics.
3
I find myself longing for the day when we will no longer have to respond to the unending filth that spews from this man's mouth. Once he is no longer President, on or about January 21, 2021, this despicable bigot can be given his due, which is to be ignored, shunned, and consigned to the dustbin of history- his only legacy being an example of what not to be as a human being. The 2018 elections served as the dress rehearsal. Let the final act be an ignominious defeat, taking his deplorable, gutless, Republican party with him, leaving the rest of us to try and salvage our damaged self-respect as a nation. If we stand united, we will win, for there are more of us than there are of his supporters. Vote as if your way of life is at stake, for it is.
4
The obvious dissonance is the President of the United States is the President of all of America including where black people live, including Baltimore and Puerto Rico, and Chicago. When people say; "he's not my President", that is a literally true statement. Instead we have a twitter troll for a President.
1
You meant 1889, Paul, right?
3
Hey, fellah, that white rural America problem? It's a productof your beloved "free" trade. Your ignorance of basic economic theory blinded you to the primacy of unlevel playing fields in determining the outcome of the policies you advocated. Yet here you are, still preaching away!
2
I think Maureen Dowd was more accurate when she compared Trump to someone who walked out of a Las Vegas steam bath in 1959.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/opinion/sunday/dowd-giuliani-ukraine.html
1
Donald Trump is a political televangelist.
He has combined the slimy emotion of Jimmy Swaggert with the racist cons of George Wallace.
This toxic mixture , with a need for cash always underneath, appeals to poor white lost souls looking for hope.
4
“Dr Krugman, you won the Nobel Prize? For what?” asks a stone-faced me.
4
DJT regularly avers that he ".....doesn't have a racist bone in his body....."
If it looks like a rose, and it smells like a rose,......
2
If you're not part of the soloution you're part of the PROBLEM .
Anybody come to mind ?
2
White silence is consent. Just look at the old photo's of lynchings. Racist people want to keep their monuments but frown about knowing about the lynchings and how white mobs roamed the south murdering people of color. They just want to remember their good memories.
1
This is just another step toward Nazism, we've already elected republican fascists, now we get to listen to their racism overt or hidden on Sunday talk show. This is the kaki-kleptocracy we've been warned about.
The climate is exploding and the administration is helping criminals to the land for exploitation at the worst possible time.
How did this happen? Well, SCOTUS and the Roberts' courts extreme radical conservativist rulings for Citizens United, and the Voting Rights act. That was a direct attack on the citizens of the U.S. in order to aid the uber wealthy. The Federalist, Heritage, Cato Societies should be taxed out of existence for their betrayal of the United States citizens.
2
The democratic candidates should go to these places and offer some help. One way is infrastructure jobs which Trump never did. Another is health insurance. Be constructive.
1
I wish Prof. Krugman had included a simple, colorful chart quantifying this information. And even though numbers may not tell the whole story and need some source qualification, if I were a voter in say, KY or SC, and had a stalwart Trump enabler as my Senator (McConnell for 34 years, Graham 16 years) I might take notice, wonder why my state is often at the bottom of the state barrel, and start doing something about it: KY: 38 in education, 42 in GDP per capita Income; SC: 43 in education, 46 in GDP per capita Income.....and that's just scratching the rankings surface.
3
"people are pretty much the same," whatever the targetted characteristics is misleading and can be irrelevant to the thesis being raised. Semantically, one can also state that people are diverse, ranging, for example, in types, levels, and qualities of available and accessible internal and external resources which are critical for developing and sustaining achievable goals. Ranges of timely opportunities are additional critical factors. Existing, or not, in time and place (blocked by diverse human and nonhuman barriers; enabled by types of "bridges), their availability and accessibility for a specific person, or targeted group, opportunities, equitable as well as not, operate wiothin a dynamic, interacting reality of uncertainties. Unpredictabilities. Randomness. Lack of total control notwithstanding efforts made. Timely ones or not. When one moves from this "basic" reality which is a daily challenge for all additional considerations merit interest. The American reality, from its beginnings, operates within a toxic WE-THEY culture which, by legacy, laws, regulation, myths, historical revisionism, beliefs, "faiths." (sacramental and secular), enables, and even fosters, the creation, selection. and targeting of "the other." To be violated by words and deeds in a range of ways. Inequitable opportunities generally, joblessness more specifically, are examples. Trump did not introduce personal unaccountability into American policymaking.He exploits what ordinary folk enable.
1
Racism/being a racist is a bad thing, but there are many citizens who either do not recognize racism or do not care that racism is wrong and hurtful. The Republican party is keeping publicly quiet about the misanthropy spewed by the president. Behind the scenes, we are told, many of them are appalled. Afraid of the Trump's wrath or being defeated in the next election, they remain quiet. Trump clearly believes that promoting racial division is a winning strategy. So, here's the bigger question we must ask ourselves: what if this strategy does win him and his silent partners/enablers re-election? What must we then admit about who we are as nation and a member of the global community?
8
@SNA "...but there are many citizens who either do not recognize racism or do not care that racism is wrong..."
I disagree. Everyone knows what racism is. Everyone has a different (this is diversity) level of intensity.
When someone calls every differing opinion racist, it does where off the shame. Maybe I'm a racist. Maybe I'm not. Either way, I don't care.
If "RACIST" is the only charge you can hurl, at everything you disagree with, you may want to up your vocabulary.
if this piece is correct, which I believe it is, one conclusion should be that Trump will not be re-elected. If rural whites vote their pocketbooks in states like mine which Trump so narrowly won, and non-white voters, turned off /repulsed by Trump's racist rhetoric, turn out in rates higher than they did in 2016, then Trump should lose. Yes, I am assuming there is a non-racist white vote in states like mine, which would make sense since Obama won here, twice. Ideally, these whites are also turned off/repulsed by Trump's racist rhetoric. Or am I missing something?
10
The suggestion that Trump is doing his racist thing out of some clever, planned political motive is nonsense. The man is far too impulsive, thin skinned, and unfiltered to be planning things in a wonderfully politically savvy scheme. Rather the pattern is that he is riled or feels victimized or insulted. Then he lashes out with whatever comes to mind (whatever comes to mind is often fed to him by Fox "News").
15
For some people hate and anger are enough to keep them going. It has always fascinated me that a few too many conservatives seem to walk around with a perpetual chip on their shoulders, trying to play the resolute and independant tough guy while simultaneously playing victim.
16
In Rahm Emmanuel's mind it is also still 1989.
3
Trump has delivered a great gift to the American people: he has placed the issue of racism front and center in our national discourse. Racism, with all of its complex manifestations, will simply no longer be ignored. Finally!
As a virulent and overt racist, the President has not only appealed to that small rotten hard core that holds with the same outlook, but has relied on the utter apathy of millions of other supporters-- so-called culture warriors-- for whom racism may be an issue, but certainly not a priority. These are the people that "stand by and watch" which is the most upsetting aspect of the entire Trump presidency. They are somewhat indignant at being labeled racists, since most don't recognize the subtle forms racism can take and therefore don't see passivity, itself, as a complicity in racism; and, furthermore, would see attempts to point this out to them as an imposition of "political correctness" (a defensive term that probably goes back to around 1989, but still resonates with them).
The Democrats must learn how to respond to race-baiting effectively-- that is, in a manner that will win elections. To do so, we must take a very close look at what racism looks like at all points along its spectrum.
As the antithesis of American greatness-- the anti-MLK, the anti-Lincoln-- Trump is nevertheless succeeding in exposing the fact that racism was merely in remission and must now be excised.
8
Trump's appeal, starting with the "birther" calumny, has consistently been to White Supremacists and xenophobes. His platform has been to incite hatred and fear. He projects rage and gives voice and legitimacy to the worst in his followers. Division and conflict in America suit his agenda and Putin's. The Republican Party, by now a right-wing insurgency serving the new American oligarchs, is behind him. When have Republicans denounced Trump's message of hate?
7
If impoverished districts vote for Trump they deserve what they get. Seems simple, vote hope or vote hate.
8
Ah but Ms Clinton unfortunately did just that, when she called the Trump followers, "Deplorables"...
The great mystery remains what is been since the 1890s... why can't progressives unify the downtrodden of both races to throw the plutocrats out?
5
@MR The conservatives - since slave days - have pitted poor white people and poor people of color against one another. Which keeps the poor white people voting for the plutocrats. Remember the LBJ quote?
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
If black and white ever joined forces the top would crumble. Which is why so much effort is given to keeping us divided. Black against white against immigrant against union against city against old against young against women against Muslim ....
Any reasonable reading of world history will reveal that the overwhelming portion of humans lived in dreadful conditions until the last hundred and fifty or so years. This included the ancestors of the overwhelming numbers of whites presently living in the United States. It was not so long ago that Italians and Irish in this country were vilified for being filthy and vulgar. Yes, the children, grandchildren, etc from these so-called awful immigrants became mostly successful and productive citizens over time but, lest we forget, most of us came from very, very humble backgrounds. We need to reflect on the barriers that we may have put up to make some involuntary immigrants remain in poor conditions,
5
@WSF Are you talking about the Chinese who built the railroads as slave labor and now are becoming the most successful group in the U.S.?
What would my work ethic be if the last ten generations of the fathers in my family had often be unemployed, held the lowest paying and demeaning jobs, and were always the first to be let go when their employer had economic problems? Thank you Mr. Krugman, for the superior quality of your articles.
5
Too many rural folks sit around a table and talk themselves into despair. It's a social disease that is being empowered by the Trumplicans who easily take advantage of rural thinking.
Blaming others for their problems is a hallmark of grumpy old rural white guys. Economic problems have always been a component of rural America but people differ in how they choose to deal with it. Hate is the easy way out but it only compounds the problem. And looking backwards always makes the past seem better than it was - or not as bad as the haters thought at the time.
It is time top stop the endless cycle of hating and chewing on anger. Cowboy up and ride the horse you're on!
7
Quote: "In Trump’s mind, it’s still 1989..."
I've been registered to vote / voting X's 44 years; I've NEVER considered a Republican!
I am NOT considering any Republicans for any office in 2020, and 'Moscow' Mitch / 'Grand Wizard' Trump / various offers to 'pay to send U.S. citizens to other countries' are beyond...
absurd!
Lest I forget, due to chronic embarrassment: I'm caucasoid!
5
Trump is a vile racist--has been since the 1970s since he and his father were sued for not renting to people of color, and Dr. Krugman has outlined 1989--followed by birtherism, and all the rest. But it also needs to be pointed out that he voices the racism when he deems it necessary to distract: children are still being separated from their parents at the border and are housed under deplorable conditions. Where is that wonderful healthcare better than Obamacare? How about further GM plant closings when all the jobs were coming back? and so on. Better to focus on Baltimore where 8000 housing units are owned by Kushner Companies, cited for innumerable violations,
13
I believe that the biggest myth that the current scenario has exploded is the myth of basic American decency. The myth is based upon the assumption that there are some things that dedicated, patriotic leaders simply will not do. What the myth does not allow for is naked bias, unfettered greed, and a complete lack of concern for the rest of humanity; and all of these are being wildly propagated by Mitch McConnell (a direct political descendant of Roger Ailes) and his corrupt compadres.
5
Trump's disdain for people of color was taught to him at an early stage of his life. Post WWll his father helped develop some of the earliest white flight suburban communities with government subsidies. The then legal ability to create basically white only communities taught Donald that renting or selling to non whites was bad business. Daddy and sonny were later fined in court for trying to continue this racist practices in some of their later developments. President Trump has just shifted his real estate practices to politics.
9
Let's not forget the biggest lawsuit brought by the Justice Department for housing discrimination against black people. Trump management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals 'because of race and color'. They were sued for violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
16
Trump’s relationship with the truth, and its spread to those Americans looking for someone to blame for their own economic and social unease, makes a non-negotiable modern myth of the way everyone thought things “used to be”: the virtuous, white, hardworking, earnest, Christian heartland vs. the dark, crime-ridden, “infested,” non-human inner cities. Just as with the Central Park Five, Donald Trump cares not a whit for the way things really are; what matters is what conveniently explains the world as it exists in his own mind. (In his mind, the Five were guilty and deserved to die. They were black and they were accused; it fit perfectly with the his view of the world, and no facts were ever going to shake what he had decided was true. I’m sure he still believes that because they were black and accused, they should have been executed even if they were completely innocent.)
Once facts no longer have any impact on your opinions or your decisions, your will is all that matters, and everyone knows that Trump’s will is all that has ever mattered to Trump, and now that attitude has been intractably planted in his supporters.
1
I love going to the beach. And when I go there I always notice this about the little (and some big) kids at the beach. They don’t swim much. They work. They dig holes, make piles, haul buckets of sand and water about; focused, and content. The beach I go to is racially diverse. All the kids work.
Working is as essential to humans as it is to bees. Of course there is a percentage of misfits who get by while doing no work. We managed to elect one to the office of president. But work is essential to us, and when there is none, a warping sets in and a host of predictable symptoms follows: addiction, suicide, murder, but by far the prevalent symptom is despair.
It is an unwritten law that we must work. This law is fundamental, like the laws of physics. We must have work to do, or to varying degrees, we go nuts.
Yet the unstoppable imperative of our society is to eliminate work. Robot teachers, self-driving cars, ever expanding automation in all the workplaces – this deaf, eyeless juggernaut needs serious examination on a large scale. Even George Jetson went to work every day.
World War II put a whole nation to work. Now, the enemy isn’t a county in Europe gone insane, it is climate change. Vote out those grifters in Washington, starting with he-who-shall-not-be-named along with that devil in Kentucky and face up to the climate change reality with the same force and urgency that happened during World War II.
5
I'm in rural, white Appalachia. There is a cultural dysfunction here not connected to the despair so widespread throughout Appalachia and the Heartland. I believe that if you offer jobs, education, economic opportunities and social programs that the suicides, addiction and domestic violence goes way down. The clannishness, however, does not. Unfortunately, the same extended familial closeness that allows people to scrape by in places where there is great beauty and elbow-room but limited financial security, has a flip-side of pettiness.
You know how we liberals are always so slack-jawed at the poor voting against self-interest--with the predictable result of them being less well-off (or "great")? The clannishness is why--they would rather see someone outside their circle "get what they deserve" (i.e.--nothing, nada, no help whatsoever), than to do well themselves.
They are not entirely bad people. When I came here 20 years ago, they welcomed me. But they did genealogical backflips convincing themselves I was related to them to justify liking me so much. In a land of no opportunity where one's children must escape to do better, schadenfreude is king.
4
A critical and pertinent sentence in your column:
“Give them opportunities, and they will thrive; deprive them of these opportunities, and they won’t”
It underscores a “sociological” theory that you support with related data.
The alternative approach, practiced by Republicans since Reagan (and before), has been based on Psychological hypotheses, namely “get inside the mindset of the voter and you win”. In particular, exploit human fear conditioning (e.g., “rapist”, “welfare queens”, “taking my jobs”) that Trump perfected to achieve his electoral victory. He is relying on this same strategy to win in 2020. George Lakoff best described this phenomena in his seminal book “The Political Mind”.
The Democrats have serious problems, namely how to overcome such strategies. Logical, economic arguments will have a very difficult time dislodging “fear” from Trump’s core supporters. And, as has been repeatedly noted, he can win with even greater electoral margins and worse numerical deficits.
3
Under the Trump Administration blacks and latinos have had the lowest unemployment rate in decades. That is how he is helping the people in those districts.
1
I’m pretty sure that was an unintended.
To me and for the future of America, the saddest part of Trump's appeal to his supporters, is his lack of education and sophistication. He was excluded from polite society in New York because he was an uncouth lout, with a loud and brassy wife. He has hoped for revenge ever since. He didn't plot his revenge. That would need a degree of self-awareness he simply doesn't possess.
As a candidate and now as president, he positively revels in his lying, racism and rabble-rousing. The low information "rally" crowd cheers him on. He uses racist code words they understand and identify with; shame on every one of them.
Could you ever imagine this fraud of a man riding down Pennsylvania Avenue in a golf cart and talking to the public, as Obama did? No, neither can I. Only scripted events, with adoring audiences are allowed for this presidency. He is a paper tiger.
So here we are, saddled with a large, dullard of a bully. He was raised very poorly and has an entitled silver spoon mentality. This is coupled with extreme insecurity, because he knows many people laugh at his ignorance and lack of taste, behind his back. This causes him to lash out mindlessly. Tragically, he has now gotten extreme power. The end result is our current horror show, masquerading as a US administration.
2
The difference seems to be in one's hope. Obama created hope that a people would be lifted up. Trump feeds hope that a people will be decimated.
3
I have always considered myself an agnostic but I suppose things are starting to change. How else can I account for the fact that every day I pray that Trump not be re-elected? And sometimes worse I am asking everyone who is as upset over Trump as I am to pray, pray every day, that this nightmare will come to an end. I fear that when I come in contact with a POC, that they will look at me and think I am a racist Trump supporter. I have never felt this way in my life. This is truly a nightmare that we are living in.
2
I can't argue against Trump being racist. His behavior is clear. I think it comes from further back in his life. The consent decree he signed in 1975 when he finally agreed that the Fair Housing Act did apply to him was an eye opener.
Current data indicates that Wilson's argument in "When Work Disappears" was correct and we should use broad brushstrokes at the Federal level to increase meaningful work opportunities.
1
Voting for Trump today or a number of cynical politicians in the past is a means of evading any responsibility for anything. 2020 might well be a election based on acceptance of state bigotry or a rejection of it. Mr. Trump might be defeated not by anti bigots but by millions who are bigoted but embarrassed by the severity of Mr. Trumps behaviour.
2
The one consistent characteristic of Trump's supporters are they deny reality. The most obvious example of course is climate change. The evidence that climate change is mainly being caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human sources is about as strong as the evidence that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around although there were many deniers of this scientific fact for a long time. Despite all of Trump's racist comments and actions during several decades Trump's supporters deny he is a racist and deny they are racists. The changes in America that has occurred during the last several decades described here by Paul Krugman seem to be denied by Trump and his supporters. Trump and his supporters cling to stereotypes and disregard facts. This results in racism rather than problem solving and ultimately is leading to a lot of anger and frustration, particularly but not exclusively in rural areas of America. Hate has replaced rational thought. And this path will eventually lead to the destruction of US democracy without effective counter measures.
4
Totally agree, the statistics and new stories over the years have been pointing this out quite well. Problem is, how does one get the people he should really be talking about, his base, to understand this and to not follow Trump like a bunch of sheep?
If anything, this argument bolsters the progressive case -- the so-called "pragmatist" wing of the Democratic Party (the Blue Dogs and the defunct DLC) turned their backs on the 50-state strategy of progressives, and left the rural areas to the moonshine ministrations of the GOP's hate mongers. That failure of the Democratic pragmatists made the GOP's job easier.
Democrats need to speak to a plan for both urban and rural areas, and leave Trump et al. fuming without offering any solutions.
What should we expect of an improperly socialized, not-very-smart spoiled rich kid? that he is wary of new people, suspicious of every transaction and afraid of being cheated.
In my experience, Trump supporters will excuse or overlook everything he does that doesn't fit their irrational image of him.
How do you explain to cult members that they gave all their money to a charlatan? They won't admit it.
I am not sure Trump is racist in terms of hating and hurting all people not white.There is evidence Trump has consorted with prominent black leaders in the past for personal and economic gain, but he has pilloried and harmed working-class people in general, including working-class blacks, as a part of his elite, supremacist male drive. Thus, I think he is definitely elitist and like many supremacists (of any race or gender) he is his own raison d'etre. However, Mr. Krugman's description of the conditions in pre-1990 inner cities that are now duplicated in the white heartland is consistent with intuitive and empirical evidence that the loss of jobs and opportunity are the causes of the social dysfunction seen in each of these settings, not some putative genetic superiority of white people.
1
Hope the Democratic candidates read this column and incorporate the ideas into their debate and platform. Of course are cities are in trouble when money spent in bigger and bigger military and building a fence or paying corporations huge amounts to incarcerate children on our border. Shame
As a society we need to come to terms with the fact that we elected a racist to the highest office in the land. We knew what we were getting with Trump and we did not care.
Trump has a serious personality disorder and our society (not Trump) suffers the consequences. We deserve the suffering.
About one-third of our society continue to believe that Trump is the greatest president in the history of our country. They are content to be lied to - day after day - and they actually enjoy all of the drama. Where did the rest of us go wrong?
“On the other hand, the social state of rural America — white rural America — is deteriorating. To the extent that there really is such a thing as American carnage — and we are in fact seeing rising age-adjusted mortality and declining life expectancy — it’s concentrated among less-educated whites, especially in rural areas, who are suffering from a surge in “deaths of despair” from opioids, suicide and alcohol that has pushed their mortality rates above those of African-Americans.”
The reason might be too much Krugman columns… Those are really hard to cope with…
He conveniently blames RACE for the despair, opioids, suicide and alcohol.
Of course, the rural America was WHITE a century ago, so we cannot blame race for the surge of depression.
What has changed in the meantime?
The mass media outlets have invaded our living rooms, our dining tables, our bedrooms…
Mr. Krugman is a part of the problem…
The rise of the opioid abuse certainly is directly connected to the open borders, the drug cartels and the gangs roaming freely our streets…
TV shows heavily promote the opioid usage. The street criminals alleviate the drug abuse.
Our media outlets had no idea that the outrageous movies and songs are poisoning the minds of our youth.
I was warning about that a couple of decades ago, but nobody was listening…
Now it’s ten times harder to solve the problems…
1
@Kenan Porobic
Read the column again. Krugman explicitly states job opportunities, not race, is the problem in the "inner cities" as well as white rural America.
As to the opioid problem, most of it was pushed by big pharma and the medical establishment, much of it comes in the mail from China, and some comes across checkpoints at the border.
And freely roaming gangs? Maybe in your imagination.
2
@MT
The street dealers are the part of the gangs or that's just my imagination?
Krugman stated white rural America and inner cities.
If race has nothing to do with drug abuse, why to use unnecassary adjectives?
Does he claim there is no drug abuse in the suburbs?
Does he claim that having a job makes you drug-free?
What about all those junkie celebrities and athletes?
So what do you think Paul? Should we go with “the safe choice “ or is the country due for a massive reset? You’re a world renowned economist yet nowhere in this piece do you position Trump’s targeted racism correlated to a predatory economy where those above the line are above the law and everyone below the line is subjugated to something akin to a seemingly corporate-fascism that uses the Fed and Treasury as it’s backstop. Mr. Kaufman, do we function as a democracy where the integrity of law and separation of powers is vibrant? If not, what are we exactly and how does that impact the subject of this piece?
Those people who voted for Trump and suffer from severe social problems in their districts will probably vote for Trump again because of his message of hate.
Hate doesn't change or fix anything.
It is still 1860 except there are planes in the sky since the revolutionary war.
2
As evidenced by this piece, liberals really do talk out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to race and class.
It's too tiring to point out the gaps in logic here, but let me just ask this pointed question: is the solution to Appalachian white poverty implementing state sanctioned affirmative action for all whites?
2
Krugman writes: "American carnage ... concentrated among less-educated whites .. rural areas ... “deaths of despair” ... pushed their mortality rates above those of African-Americans."
The Republicans are doing nothing to solve this most crucial issue. It is beyond the scope of their reality to even think about it.
Democrats MUST make this issue ONE. If that means they become a suicide prevention hot line, then that is what they must do.
Forget all the other identity politics mini-issues.
Solve this problem and bring America out of its dark ages.
1
Why can't we get as upset with greedy billionaire bad guys?
I am intolerant of billionaires. I believe inequality is destroying America - far more than racism. No bipedal hominid should be allowed such wealth. It is very dangerous.
4
1989, are you sure that's back far enough? Seems like trump and company are shooting for, say, 1849.
The genesis of Trump’s Baltimore tweet was a squalor and trash video posted by black Baltimore activist Kimberly Klacik, who blames West Baltimore’s decay on Democratic leaders. Trump posted his tweet suggesting Rep. Elijah Cummings should pay more attention to his district than the Texas border after watching Klacik show her video on Fox News. The assertion the tweet was racist is absurd. It was politics, not racism.
Yes there a connection between poverty and crime, such that there's greater crime where there is more poverty, but what liberals too often fail to realize is that connection exists in the other direction too--- those who commit crime, are more likely to end up impoverished...or even homeless.
If you start people out with the same opportunities -- they live in the same city, they go to the same school, and in fact, they live in a very liberal city which hamstrings its teachers police out of fear of being "racist" , so that those who fall afoul of the law in their early years do not see heavy consequences for this.... what would you expect, in terms of black achievement relative to all other races? You'd expect things to be better. But in Berkeley, CA, that hasn't happened. You've got equal treatment and even many programs and policies intended to help blacks, but instead of success, what has resulted is that a group which comprises 8% of the city's population, commits about 80% of its crime, eg blacks in the city commit crime at a rate 36 times higher than everyone else combined.
And "homeless" people in the city of Berkeley commit crime at a rate 38 times higher than all others. Hmmm..
When this happens and liberals fail to address social dysfunction that contributes to crime, that's where Trump wins because he gets to be in the seat of power speaking, however clumsily and crudely and with mean spirit, to truths that liberals are in too much denial about.
1
What is it about Republicans (those who still remain in the party) that allows them to reject objective reality?
Climate change—deny it.
The president is a obvious liar and criminal, not exonerated, ample evidence of collusion.—deny it.
Russians hacked the 2016 election-deny/ignore it.
1989? More like 1915, when the movie Birth of a Nation played on all the fears of white people that minorities were going to go on a rape/murder rampage. In other parts of the nation people associated the tenements (often filled with poor immigrants) with crime, rodent infestation ... Of course in these scenarios you need a White Savior. In 1915 it was the KKK. In 2019 it's Donald Trump. Trump is associating diverse cities with crime and rodent infestation. He is even bringing up the oldest charge in the book, one often leveled at progressives in 1915 -- that they were communists or "revolutionaries." None of this is new. The only difference is that in the past this sort of attitude was in the background, and only intermittently brought to the bullhorn by people like George Wallace or David Duke. Now this attitude is being given a loud bullhorn every day by the POTUS.
Keep up the good fight Mr. Krugman. Although at times it appears that any attention, positive or negative, given to that soulless entity only bolsters his followers and lackeys to be more profane.
Oh how well he follows the evil precepts of his mentor, Roy Cohn! There is now a level of crudeness that even Cohn might find impressive.
Yes, Mr. Krugman, please keep delivering your scathing pieces. But, until the Republicans grow souls nothing will change.
Trump criticized every Republican on the debate stage in 2015-16. The press loved it, by the way.
He criticized Pelosi, Shummer, and anybody apposed to him.
Why is it now called racism?
Who really is playing the race card?
The voters know the answer.
This will help him in 2020.
2
Mr. Trump seems to want a New York City closer to 1729 when one in three free New Yorkers owned slaves, almost 20% of the people in the City were slaves, and slaves made up the single largest group of workers in the city. But he wouldn't want to rent or sell an apartment to any slave who succeeded to obtain manumission.
5
Where is the coverage about Rep. Cummings release of his Committee's report yesterday that shows Trump colluding with the Saudis? Trump knew this report was in the works and, per usual, tried to create distractions. He is a vile racist.
But, the media plays along with it, and the coverage is all about him, which is exactly what he wants.
Let's have an article on Trump's treasonous collaboration with the Saudis, and the Cummings report!
1
Stupid Trump knows no other way to get re-elected except using racism. However, every person who voted for Obama will vote against him and so will the many decent ex-republicans and Independents. Trump underestimates the intelligence of the American people. REJECT TRUMP ~LANDSLIDE.
No one is spared. Trump criticizes people of all colors. Skin color should not be a shield or sword.
2
It's not news that Trump is racist. I'll repeat that: it's not news that Trump is a racist. It's also not news that he lies. So, please NYT and all media don't continue focus on it. It's horribly clear. What we should be focusing on is what all of America needs to function better: better paying jobs, infrastructure, a real immigration policy, etc. Part of that process is holding Trump accountable. It's not polarizing, but it works. If every Dem tonight holds Trump to account for what he promised to do: bring back manufacturing, erase the deficit, erase the Federal debt, etc., we will do what Congress, as presently aligned, cannot: hold him accountable.
1
But hate is so much easier then addressing their problems.
1
Given that Mr Trump is an extremely flawed human being, Mr Krugman’s thoughtful article reminded me of comments long ago, from a brilliant group analyst. The case was of a man, hell bent on suicide, provoking increasing attempts by those involved in his care, prison officials, social workers, psychiatrists etc to stop his self destructive behaviour. Finally the Victorian State Parliament passed a law to allow special types of restraint on the man to try to stop his self destruction. He still managed to kill himself. The analyst, drawing on large group dynamic theory, said that the man may not have been behaving solely as an individual, but unconsciously doing it for the larger group, all of Australian society. Is Trump’s behaviour, something being propelled at the large group level by all of American society? What purpose does he fulfill for all of us. It’s a very radical thought, and I don’t know how one would stop it if it’s true. The thought is Mr Trump is just as helpless as all us in the process he’s caught up in.
Paul Krugman takes Trump to task for implying “American Carnage” is a social problem principally “perpetrated by nonwhites,” but FBI data backs up Trump. The most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report shows blacks, who make up 13.4 percent of the population, made up 53.1 percent of those arrested for murder and manslaughter in 2017.
Although African Americans are disproportionally poor, more than four times as many whites as blacks live below the poverty threshold. So poverty alone does not explain why blacks commit the majority of murders. Krugman knows this, but he can’t resist taking a racist swipe at rural whites by noting that the mortality rate of rural middle-age non-Hispanic whites with a high school degree or less is 30 percent higher than the mortality rate for blacks due to opioids and suicides.
In doing so, he equates white victims with black murderers.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/tables/table-43
Fairness Doctrine kept people from lying on TV or the press. GOP claims free speech allows you this freedom to lie, if you decide. Hello FOX and the Rush limbo's of the world. GOP argued in front of the Supreme Court that the right to lie supersedes the right of truth. What could go wrong!!
5
The Central Park Five's racial composition: black and Hispanic.
The ethnicity of the man who actually raped the female jogger (Matias Reyes): Puerto Rican.
So this whole outrage about the fact that people believed the rapist(s) were either black or brown makes no sense - because he was brown.
1
The highest opium OD death rates in the country? West Virginia and Ohio.
The highest opiate prescription rates? Alabama and Arkansas. They don’t even keep good stats on deaths.
The highest murder rates? Louisiana and St. Louis.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-summaries-by-state
A question occurs, Trumpists: why ain’t you yelling at, say, West Virginia?
Charles Murray's book, Coming Apart, illustrates what happens when work disappears from white communities.
1
OK, Trump is a 'racist'. Got it. We only hear that every minute of every day. It's common knowledge at this point. Everybody within shouting distance of this planet knows it. But here's the deal. A lot of people in this country don't care. A lot of people are so sick of hearing it that you're pushing them into Trump's arms. Give it a rest already. Try selling something positive that your side has to offer. If you settle in for a mud slinging contest with those who enjoy it, you will lose. Again. And you'll deserve it.
2
NYT opinion columnist's have enjoyed a veritable firehouse of guaranteed material with the President's every utterance or tweet. Can we have some diversity in topics? As a long time reader I am numb to the endless dissection of Trump. Is it cynical to say that the humiliation following Trump's election after dismissing his candidacy in every way possible has resulted in this obsessive focus? NYT readers are very well informed and do not need it appreciate the daily OpEd on the latest Trump tweet. It demeans the NYT and readers. Move on...
1
Leaders stoke the flames of racism and hatred amongst citizens who feel angry about their economic uncertainty and instability. It's a leader's way to quickly gain control of the population in order to expedite a nationalistic revolution. Nazi Germany is just one example of this, but history shows there are many.
Would a racist invite Tiger Woods to the White House and give him a medal? No. Would a racist keep bragging about how under Trump, black unemployment is at record lows? No. Trump is NOT a racist.
2
This presidency tells us more about America than the individual Trump.
365
@Leeroy Paul Klugman ends his piece saying of Trump "All he offers is hate." Sadly, for too many in our country that is enough.
31
@Leeroy
All the best people include his slumlord son-in-law who just happens to own rat infested housing projects in Baltimore.
Well well well.
9
One of your best, Paul.
5
Trump is a vile predator who perpetrates verbal outrages because he knows it turns on his base. As has been reported Trump doesn't seem interested in expanding his popularity. The stock market and the economic boom that primarily goes to the richest are going to be Trump's calling card. The Democrats could be doing their jobs and working for a clear alternative to the plutocrat joy ride going on. But they continue to slavishly chase after the Russian interference delusion.
1
So I guess I should consider myself lucky that I live in one of these 'prospering' urban areas. I can find work, but it's temporary, and pays less than I was making in my career 10 or 20 years ago, especially after adjusting for inflation.
This isn't a rural vs. urban or even a minority vs. white phenomenon - **everyone** outside of the 1% is on the losing side. And the sooner that ~35% of the other 99% realize that the vile swamp creature occupying the White House never intended to 'fix it all by himself' is only ever going to make it even worse, the better.
3
This is why I subscribe to the NYTimes. Quite frequently it lifts me out of ignorance - and Mr. Krugman's article is doing more to dissuade me from one of my prior biases than anything else I ever read. Keep doing what you are doing - perhaps we may save ourselves and our planet if we can just choose to do the right things. Providing jobs and distributing wealth is one of them.
10
As much as I hate Krugman and question his degree in economics, he's probably right.
The 80s were when racial stereotypes were 'OK', greed was good, but also saw some encroachment from Asia on trade, ie Japan, China, Taiwan that he thought was unfair.
Trump really IS stuck in 1989 time capsule. Psychiatrists have said that he is in a state of arrested emotional development. Perhaps that is why his view of the world has not changed since 1989. He is lived in a bubble, morever, up in his hermetically sealed Trump Tower for decades with barely any visits to other communities, apart from his golf properties and Mar-a-Lago.
Maybe he needs to get out and see the real world a little more.
Scanned some of the top comments before posting this. "Work not Welfare" remains today a popular sentiment among blue collar conservatives. This column suggests that these folks understood all along something that others need to see in a book first, that welfare without work requirements can breed multi-generational dependency on government support. Would love to see Prof. Krugman address this in a future column.
The only people Trump won't vilify are those who can make him money, regardless of how ill gotten it is or those to whom he is beholden, and they just happen to be America's most formidable sworn enemies. It's his greed, his narcissism and his insecurity that fuels his hatred, no matter who or what his target du jour happens to be.
Vote.
Good column as always –
I honestly don’t know what else to say or comment about Trump. I admire your persistence and creativity.
I have friends and relatives who are Trump supporters and they categorically say that he is the best president ever. I try to make sense out of that but I can’t.
Keep writing. Don’t give up. You there can’t do what we did here in Puerto Rico.
4
And let's not stray too far from what gave rise to this inane brouhaha in the first place.
It was Cummings's anger at the way people were being detained at the border.
There is one thing that everyone seems to neglect in this discussion; the detained "aliens" are IN CUSTODY. While the causes and remedies of joblessness and despair are myriad and can be complex, the causes of inadequate treatment of those in custody is not.
When somebody is detained, that person's care is almost COMPLETELY the responsibility of the government. So, unfortunately, people have fallen for Trump's misdirection again. Whatever is happening in Baltimore or rural America is not comparable to what's happening in the detention centers.
Trump and his minions are completely responsible for the horrific conditions at the detention centers.
Not only is Trump inhumane, and completely lacking in empathy, but his actions have squandered our moral authority as a country and diminished our leadership role in the world.
3
MT - the border conditions you and I deplore are part and parcel of the snakeoil Trump is selling to his supporters. they LIKE being mean to fleeing refugees, they are PROUD Trump is standing up for them, and they are GLAD he is a megaphone for their angry hate. that's why Americans who are not themselves rich (but follow the lives of the rich and obnoxious on reality tv and believe what they see) think Trump is the greatest thing since Wonderbread, even if his lamebrained policies make ther lives worse.
1
"How might one test Wilson’s hypothesis? Well, you could destroy job opportunities for a number of white people, and see if they experienced a decline in propensity to work, stopped forming stable families, and so on. And sure enough, that’s exactly what has happened to parts of nonmetropolitan America..."
Is that ever true. I've had an opportunity to compare in depth the hipster coastal city--awash in yuppie cash--with another rural town just 40 miles south of the Canadian border. That experiment produced the predicted result.
However, there are two adjacent laboratories. Across that Canadian border, there are several similar-size towns. The small businesses are numerous and thriving in comparison. There is less opioid addiction. Consumer spending is apparently higher.
Trump and the Republicans dominating the southern side label all of this communist and claim Canadians are miserable, pining for "reform" and lifesaving medical care and modern convenience, perhaps what Sonny Perdue would bring instead of Marie-Claude Bibeau. Yet few here can name either the British Columbia Premier or explain how features of Canadian politics work. They just know it's communist. And that Canadians hate Canada.
Perhaps if it were a commie running dog, then Trump would admire it more.
I'm sure it would be possible to do an intriguing academic study of towns across that border. From what I can see it would reveal Trump's just one more American cracker.
5
Thank you for this clear representation. The cause and effect are so obvious when elucidated this way.
4
America needs to start identifying who specifically comprise the Trump support base and the population they represent in this country. These were substantially white Americans who comprised the core support base of the traditional Democratic Party, the American worker/wage earner. What happened over the last 40 some years is that the Democrats sidelined their progressive domestic policy legacy to become the Party of identity politics and as Thomas Frank has identified them, the Party of the liberal affluent business and professional classes. American workers feeling abandoned by the Democrats went over to Trump in 2016. It was a protest vote against the status quo, a shout out by desperate Americans in chronic job and income crisis and insecurity corphaned by both their political parties.
1
@Rose
it was a protest vote that led them to elect and empower the very forces that causing the so-called traditional American earner to slip lower down the socioeconomic ladder.
And how is it that the Democrats are the party of identity politics when they are diverse group of people while the GOP which is also homogeneous in race and religion is not?
1
Trump is stuck in the past all right --and it's 1860. Instead of Lincoln, however, we have Jefferson Davis Trump seeking to restore blacks to second class citizenship. And he's counting on his white supremacist base located largely in the Old Confederacy to overturn the results in the second Civil War he's unleashed. Fortunately, despite Voter ID laws and ethnic cleansing of the voter rolls African -Americapns now have the vote,and they must turnout in record nu.bers, as they did for Obsma, to defeat Trump and save the Union and it's Constitution.
4
Mr. Krugman, Trump never admits when he is wrong and he is most of the times always wrong.
4
So well said. Thank you.
3
America has its share of bigots and hardline racists. If those bigots and hardline racists in congress didn't support anything and everything Trump did he would be just another rich kid in NYC and not sitting in the White House. The same with Trump's base. You would have to be vile bigot and hardline racist to support Trump. And they are therefore the problem.
3
Who would vote for Trump if he o she was not a racist? And when he wants to rev up the base, what does he do? He spews some insults at black or brown people and his base cheers
In what passes for Trump's "mind" it's 1859.
1
Trump was not yet born in 1859; therefore he was not yet a promiment person amd nothing revolved around him; therefore, in the mind of Trump, there was no 1859, and if they were, it didn't matter because it was not about him.
Racism? Stuck in the past you say?
I believe that is a technical description
of conservative ideology, is it not?
4
Trump is not only living in the wrong decade; he is in the wrong country. He is so busy these days telling others where “to go” it’s time to tell him where he belongs. Trump is not representing or encouraging the diverse nation America is. Trump needs to relocate to Russia. Russia is mainly white, there is no free press, there are few lawyers - none to harass politicians!, there are no environmental laws, there are no free elections, any homosexuals keep themselves “out of sight / out of mind”, the rich rule and have no restrictions, etc. Yes, Russia sounds like where Trump needs to go!
7
and think of all those statuesque blondes to abuse!
Krugman falls back on a typical liberal trope of setting up a straw man to represent one side, which he declares is racist and the other side, his, which isn't.
Who are these commentators that "hinted - or in some cases declared openly - that there was something about being nonwhite that predisposed people toward antisocial behavior."
I'll tell you where they are - nowhere, unless you go to some white supremacist website that no one takes seriously and that does not represent conservative views.
This is why the country is divided, because media figures like Krugman divide us into camps and then misrepresents one side as evil so they can be a heroes to "their" side. It's disgusting and the entire media, FOX included, may be making more money than ever, but they're tearing this country apart.
2
It’s an opinion, which obviously many agree with. Don’t read it.
3
@WSNJ
Where do you live?
All Trump is saying is that there is something wrong with black and brown people. Just listen to him or read his tweets, from Mexicans are rapist to rat infested black neighborhoods.
3
@WSNJ
Right, Trump's comments about crime infested "inner cities" are not dog whistles identifying black and brown people.
Just like his comments about rapists and drug dealers flowing across the border were not racially tinged.
And the white supremacists in VA who were really "fine people?" Race had nothing to do with that comment.
Remember how Trump excoriated all the white foreigners who came to the US on visas and stayed after they expired? Neither do I.
2
Anyone remember Talk Radio’s Bob Grant? How about Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo? Both were race-baiters, insult experts and popular figures for the white nationalism they espoused. Clearly Trump watched and listened to both of them very carefully in the 70s and beyond.
2
On target. You're the best, Paul.
4
H.L. Mencken, the great newspaperman and social critic, was born in Baltimore and lived there throughout his entire life. He frequently traveled to New York on business, but always made it a point to get out of the place and return to Baltimore as soon as he could. He wrote about Baltimore with great affection, charm and humor.
Donald Trump, the clown, the bozo, the know-nothing, was born in Queens. He is not known for ever saying anything kind, memorable or favorable about Queens. His minimal ties to Queens today suggest that he is actually ashamed of having been born there.
New Yorkers returned the favor in 2016 by presenting Hillary Clinton with a landslide victory there.
His intellectual horizons do not extend beyond Trump Tower,
Mar-a-Lago and his golf clubs, and render his present criticisms of Baltimore, San Francisco and Los Angeles pathetic and laughable.
Baltimore will survive him.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower and the golf clubs will not.
5
Trump- ever the Civl War II agitator--taking us back to 1859. Gets people worked up by "us vs them" strategy. It's secession all right--but this time imposed not declared. Whatever it takes to separate. Ridiculous if another 4 years of insipid leadership--General Jefferson Davis-representing the "white" faction.
Imagine the swearing and hate-filled rants that take place in the privacy of the White House. Trump is Archie Bunker on steroids.
1
Archie Bunker was a humanitarian compared to trump
Part of Trump’s strategy is in melding his lifelong racism with white workers displaced by globalization. These whites live a mythology in which they are convinced that their suffering is made worse by undeserving blacks who are afforded largess like the ACA or SNAP. In most cases these whites are eligible for relief that exists to help them in bad economic times.
Unable to face the reality that their jobs are never going to return they turn to a culture of opioid (and cheaper fentanyl) fueled aggrievement. Their adulation for Trump as a leader who will reap vengeance upon a government that “stabbed them in the back” and restore them to the top of a social ladder that in fact is alive and well.
The question is whether they can see that Trump has done nothing to bring back good jobs, that tax breaks for billionaires do nothing to improve their lot and that they are blaming the wrong people for their misfortune.
Personally, I doubt it. Confirmation bias and fascist mythology is a hard thing to overcome.
being a stuck in the 80’s racist
3
I work here in rural Georgia near the Alabama state line. I’m helping to set up free medical clinics as the governors of these two states refused Medicaid funding w the ACA.
These towns are 100% white and became destitute after the textile mill closed 3 decades ago. Walmart and Dollar General now provide most of the jobs (temp and part-time for the most part) and have replaced a beautiful mall of stores now going out of business across America. Yet loss of retail workers has never been “tweeted about” by DJT.
I have only met one married couple and they are in their 80s and are from Montana. They have health insurance through the VA. Everyone else I have met are not married, yet cohabitate and have 2 to 3 children by the mom’s 21st BD. And Medicaid REFUSES to do tubal ligations before age 21 and these loosely strung together families are destitute.
Most folks over 30 have are on disability and it destroys the human spirit.
They have no reason to keep going so they sit at home with 50” plasma TV on 24/7. The neighborhoods look like post apocalyptic scenarios. No children out playing or folks having barbecues--the streets are mostly empty except for YUGE pickup trucks w confederate flags that will soon be repossessed for lack of payment.
I blame NONE of these undereducated folks. They’ve been fed lies since “The Lost Cause.” Fox & GOP pols tell them that immigrants and POC have caused their problems. 50% of kids drop out by 9th grade.
The Donor Class is to blame.
8
we should have let them secede. now they are a burden and an embarassment. maybe we could solve this with a beautiful wall at the Mason Dixon line.
The world would be a much different place if the crack epidemic in the 80s that affected the black population had been treated like the mostly white opioid epidemic is now, that is as a public health crisis and not as a sudden wave of criminality.
1
More like 1889.
1
Is Trump even the LEAST bit aware that he is supposed to be the POTUS and NOT the president of the Confederate States of America??? Given his past gaffes regarding US history he might not realize which side won in 1865.
Yes! So much of what we see is blowback from the Jim Crow era. Take away jobs, red-line neighborhoods, segregate schools as a result and you have a multi-generational recipe for a blow up. Trump is a racist but his current activity is aimed at goading congress to impeach him because torturing foreigners at the border didn’t work AND a spineless SCOTUS gave his $2.5 billion. Trump thinks he can be exonerated in the Senate and coast to re-election. He might too but not before a trial in the middle of the primaries forces 22 GOP senators to go on record with their own racism.
In Trump's mind, it's still 1949!
Trump's mind is anywhere but on this earth.
Trump is sitting on a throne of white male privilege defined sometime between 1955 and 1975. His feminine ideal was formed by Hugh Hefner in magazines kept under his mattress at military school. Locked in that military school, he probably was unaware of the civil rights struggles in the South. (The black people working in the kitchen didn’t raise a fuss.) He bought his way out of Vietnam and never gave it another thought. His personal style evolved in the 70’s - hair, slang (“bigly” = “big league”), fast food - but his idea of the good life became tennis or golf at an exclusive club in the morning and big breasted women at night.
No events forced Trump to re-access the values he had formed by age 16. Troughs in the cultural waves like the late 80’s gave him permission to spew his long held racist beliefs. Trump has always been and still is an emotionally and intellectually stunted teenager.
1
Trump is a man filled w hatred and bile, in many, and random forms. And his pathology is making all americans, indeed the world, sick and anxious.
He needs to be removed
1
Hate, like religion, soothes the ignorant. Helps them to believe they are not masters of their destiny. This is why both racists and evangelicals support him.
2
Not just 1989...1889!
3
Yeah, that “Trump is a racist” meme is really working.
Internal polling shows that Trump will get 30% or more of the “Black vote”.
The Dems are desperate. They know they’re doomed if Trump makes inroads with their most reliable bloc vote.
1
Trump is a racist. A bigot and misogynist. Additional facts: Evolution isn’t a theory, the Bible is a fairy tale, and the earth isn’t flat. Nice try.
4
Vote for the Democrats or the Republicans!
Why?
They are going to solve your problems!
What problems?
Those they have created over the last several decades!
Indeed, who is better positioned to solve the chronic crises than the political parties creating them with their own greed, hubris, ego, conceit and corruption.
If you see nothing wrong with this logic, just keep voting in the same way you have been doing.
Staying on the same course implies that we are happy with it.
If so, why to change anything?
This logic reminds me of those monks who regularly whip their bared backs to repent their sins.
Allegedly, that’s the only way to redemption.
I guess the Democratic and Republicans parties are God-sent to punish us here on the Earth for our sins so we go up their purified and clean…
Allegedly, they are doing God’s work although our Constitution mandates separation of the government and the religion.
This crazy explanation is just trying to mimic our voting habits…
Prof Krugman loses all respect when he states that Trump is using dehumanizing language against non-whites. He uses the same language against whites. Terrible behavior for a President? Yes. Racist? No. If a black man (or a white man) commits a murder, am I a racist for calling them a terrible person? No. Race wasn't implicated.
Here we have a Nobel Laureate falling prey and fanning the flames of identity politics. There is so much legitimate garbage to go after Trump over... why stoop to false accusations of racism? You energize Trump's base as well as your own when you do this.
2
"All he has to offer is hate". Perfect.
1
Krugman should run for president.
1
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
--Bob Dylan
7
“Violent crime has fallen since the 1990s” yet St. Louis and New Orleans both have higher murder rates that San Salvador and several other cities in the feeder nations for the caravans that are assaulting our southern border. If they only knew....
Ah, false equivalency and cognitive dissonance.
2
@Iain. Some people never learn.
1
So, he wants federal death penalty reinstated. Then let the first people on the block be the Fat Cats of Wall Street who Robbed the World in 2008. Dick Fuld, for instance, the former chief of Lehman Brothers, he who was never charged, never punished, and continues to make millions in his company Matrix Capital.
4
Great, another, ANOTHER, op-ed about how Trump is a racist. It's stupefying. Calling Trump a racist is not going to convince one single Trump supporter to change sides. And that's who you should be targeting. I guess the NYT Editorial board is stuck in the past as well.
Mr Krugman says in his last paragraph....”All he has to offer is hate”
And hate is what will send them rushing in droves to vote for him.
Mr Trump knows that and he’s betting on it.
3
Corrupt and racist is the “leader” of the free world. An enthused merchant of hate. Those who’ve thrown in with him heed the call of a dark side which dehumanizes the “other”. No other explanation IMO.
2
So what if violent street crime in urban areas is disproportionately perpetrated by black men. Does that make the black race worse than anyone else? Of course not. Who disproportionately commits financial crimes? Who nearly brought down the global economy? Which race has instigated the Iraq War and flooded this country with pain killers?
I think clowns like Trump and Fox News propagandists ought to take a look in the mirror before criticizing anyone else.
2
I don’t think republicans are ignoring suffering whites. I think democrats are.
This entire campaign so far on the democrat side has been about calling people racist and saying how much money they will invest in black communities.
It is democrats that are ignoring “whites in despair” just like they did in 2016.
The amazing thing for me is that so many in America support Trump even now. They must be racists also which makes a mockery of the so called America. “ democracy”.
1
Thanks, Paul.
A racist stuck in the past ? Maybe. But he is certainly reaping dividends in the present. We can accuse him of racism as POTUS but we cant ignore the fact that he is also POTUS because he was racist as a candidate. He certainly didn't put forward his foot as a follower of social equity. [ Even Sharpton is pointing out that Trump never hired any 'blacks' in his businesses, even back then. ]
From this vantage point, it is very interesting to see my fellow Americans cower in fear in the face of the racist trump.
Why aren’t you storming the White House with placards demanding that trump resign?
Other communities like Hong Kong and Puerto Rico have fought hard for resignation.
WHY HAVEN’T YOU?
2
What Trump is engaging in is racial scapegoating, a tactic employed by National Socialists to a horrifying end.
1
Trump’s pre-existing bigotry, indeed! It may even have been learned on his father's knee. After all, he is the son of the Fred Trump who was arrested at a KKK rally in 1927 (and reported by the Times).
2
Perhaps even worse than Trump’s own, long standing racism, is his reinforcing racism in others; providing cover for both his constituents and the likes of white nationalist Richard Spencer and KKK leader David Duke who called the 2016 election “A turning point”. He appears to conveniently forget that - as president - he is accountable to all Americans, not only those who voted for him. His inability to comprehend that Baltimore is his city too marks a new, unprecedented low point in an administration full of them.
1
No, in Traitor Trump's mind it's still 1953: the year before Brown v. Board of Education.
1
Trump talks like my parents. (80's) They refuse anything new. Complain daily about not wanting to have to keep up. Wanting the world to stop and go back to when people cared for each other. FOX news has them has they repeat it line by line. Just like the pres. If it doesn't appear on FOX it didn't happen. Welcome to rural America. Thank God they have Rush on their radidio. sarc
your best column ever - thank you
1
You mean 1789, right?
1
Can someone please fact check his latest lie about the thousands of positive phone calls the White House is receiving from the residence of Baltimore.
This must be easy enough to prove and he should be called out on every lie.
1
All of that was way more thinking than your Trump loving Fox news watcher will be interested in. Too bad, they need it most.
A common enemy is way easier...
Trump yearns to return to American where black Americans ‘knew their place’, where Hispanic Americans were seen, but never heard, and woman appeared comfortable in a subservient political, economic and sexual role. That’s not 1989, it’s 1959. Or 1859. Or it never actually existed, except in the privileged and sheltered world that he has always inhabited.
2
I finally get it.
Mr. Krugman claims if Donald Trump wasn’t in the White House, there would be no racism in America.
Had the NYT ever accused the Obama Administration of the blatant racism or anything wrong in America?
No Trump, no racism!
Only the biased people have the simple solutions to every problem…
@Kenan Porobic Straw man fallacy, 20 yard penalty!
As unfortunate as it may be in many respects, Trump is not stuck in the past.
Most people in the so-called "urban elite" (a term which really does have little relevance and is quite inaccurate) have failed to see the changing tides.
Far-right and far-left political forces are gaining ground everywhere because the center failed on both economic and political fronts for decades. Data manipulation, obfuscation, and political correctness are the only things that have saved a ridiculous notion of progress they believe is embedded in our society.
The left-leaning political members of our society termed themselves "progressives" thereby indoctrinating themselves with this idea that they are part of a greater whole which is creating a better (utopian) world against all relevant evidence.
If incumbents and moderates want any chance of turning this around they need to take drastic action as well as a long hard look at their many failures.
Why do we vote in Citizens United and privatize our public money and then act so surprised things have gone awry? We put ourselves here. We can get ourselves out but it will mean changing and we have to stop the 2 party system. It is divisive. That's its goal, to divide America conquer it and steal its public money and lands and anything else it can take and send to the top 1 percent. Racism is about money and when we give our money to people who already have plenty, we support racism.
1
Thank you for writing this. I remember a few years back, I was speaking with a white grad student from Idaho, and she told me she was afraid to go to black neighborhoods. I told her that not all majority-black neighborhoods were bad, that in fact most were perfectly safe, and she rolled her eyes at me like I had said the moon was made of cheese.
2
The president of the Baltimore city council had the best response: The president is the president of all of the US, including Baltimore. If he believes the conditions there are so dire, he should be working to improve them. (Spoiler: he is not.)
6
The other thing Trump inherited from his father was his attitudes. Unfortunately they weren't stuck in 1989, but 1959
3
I'm mostly on board with the sentiment, but there's a nuance that's lost, as to why Trump's tactics are so effective, and the way to beat Trump in 2020.
Trump's 'observations' bear an odor of familiarity, its a stench that on some level, rings true, to at least some degree. Its just not being real to deny it.
For anyone who lived in New York city during this time, Al Sharpton was a 'troublemaker'. His role in the Tawana Brawley
hoax was utterly shameless, and had a devastating effect on the life of the falsely accused prosecutor Steven Pagonas. Sharpton has expressed no remorse, ever.
During the Crown Heights riots, Al Sharpton went in with a bullhorn and stirred up a riot that had the immediate effect of inciting the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, committed by Limrick Nelson.
Al Sharpton didn't personally stab Yankel Rosenbaum, but you would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know Sharpton bears direct responsibility for that death - and the police were reportedly reviewing videos of Sharpton's antics to see if he merited being charged.
Today Sharpton is regularly referred to as a 'civil rights' leader. Seriously?
The history of this country is overwhelmingly a contributor to the social evolution of the groups within. Slavery was and remains a devastating cultural influence, across the entire culture. The poverty of the Appalachians is similarly historical. These conditions don't vanish because our social philosophy evolves. To win 2020 - Ignore Trump's distractions.
I'm not sure about the racism, but Trump does reflect NY politics in the 1980s or earlier. Then again, so does Paul Krugman. Maybe we need a third way?
1
There is no kindness in Trump. He is a mean person who is woefully lacking in empathy. The evidence supporting this conclusion is based on his statements,and actions. Out of the 330 plus million people in our beautiful nation this is the person we chose to lead our country?
4
Paul, thank you for articulating so well what I have long believed to be the hard cold truth.
2
yep, yep and yep. of course trump supporters would read this analysis as though it were written in a foreign language.
3
thank you once more for putting these times in perspective.
1
Why doesn't Trump travel to rural America himself -- not to the big convention centers he packs with supporters, but to dying small towns, like those in Wisconsin or Ohio. Why not go to Janesville, WI, and talk about the decaying small town and who's to blame for that? Hint: it is GOP leadership at the state and local level, who give tax breaks to big box stores (who run smaller businesses out) and then pull out themselves.
7
Good moralistic family values and a strong social safety net is the paramount issues our nation at this time. Anyone of any color can and will succeed as a productive member of our society if the two boxes are checked and they have a strong family unit. The deterioration of a family unit is the cornerstone of our demise.
I am not advocating for the so called traditional marriage, christian values blah blah but instead something that promotes stability, longevity, civil society, and inclusiveness.
The "us" against "them" mentality would dissolve along with the constant use of the "R" word in every other commentary related to our national problems.
3
@Nature Voter
I think you missed the point of the article. Strong families don't lead to economic opportunities; economic opportunities lead to strong families.
4
A poster wrote:
"I think the magic door to hate-for-profit was opened by Ronald Reagan".
Indeed it was, but never forget that it was General Electric that put a past his prime actor in that easy chair on TV to spout big businesses' propaganda about how wealth will trickle down if only we let them become even wealthier and control the government.
The same forces are at work $ backing $ Trump and McConnell and racism is just another of their side shows.
17
Trump's appeal to red-state America is to blame the economic decline of his non-college white Christian male voters on people of color. He promulgates myths, such as the idea that "those people" are getting "stuff" from the government, while the white population languishes. I recommend Hoon Song's excellent study of white communities in Eastern Pennsylvania, *Pigeon Trouble* which shows the immense resentment that has been built up among these white small-town and rural individuals as their economic condition declines, and they can't figure out why. The tendency is to blame "government" and attribute the decline to an encroaching non-white population. It is an utterly false mythology, but it is the mythology that Trump is addressing. How to counter this false narrative is a serious challenge for Democrats or even Republicans who want to see progress in these areas of the country. One thing is clear: the non-white population will continue to increase in the United States. Younger generations embrace this change. The older voters that support Trump are shocked and panicked as much as they themselves shocked their parents during the 1960s peace movement when they grew their hair long and embraced flower power. Memories are short.
9
Trump longs for the America of the mid 20th century,
pre-civil rights
states rights
no consequences for attacks violent or otherwise on non-Whites etc...
etc...
His goal is a 21st century racial and cultural civil war. He has to be defeated or the nation may cease to exist.
9
Americans would vote for Democrats if they would stop showing contempt for their fellow Americans not living in NYC and California as well as stop being hypocrites and acknowledge Democrat failure in Urban America, which they govern all alone without any GOP representation. Admit the failure in education, Union freebies costing tax payers billions and making cities insolvent. Get rid of this and we Dems win
1
@greg
Stop listening to Fox News. Democrats do not show contempt for voters. Read the article, Trump shows contempt for anyone that didn’t vote for him.
2
@greg, Union “freebies” like the 40-hour week, at least 1-week vacation, fighting for OSHA, for better pay, health care? Umm. I don’t know, but people from all over the world travel to San Francisco, Miami, New York City, Los Angeles so I wouldn’t call them failed cities; and last time I read, the coastal elites contribute more tax dollars to the federal government than the fly-over states. Rather, they suck at the federal government teat, that government which they hate, always want to make smaller, but when it comes to needing its benefits, they put on blinders and stretch out their begging hands.
1
At a certain point, liberals will have to stand up and stop coddling rural, white America where we send so much of our tax dollars and get mostly vitriol and attempts to undermine the rights of our suburban neighbors; women, people of color and sexual orientations. We are predisposed to want to help those less fortunate than us but enough is enough; they need to start helping themselves if all they want to do is bring us down with them.
8
Let us pray and let us work fervently for this end: that this national nightmare ends on January 20, 2021. Vote blue, no matter who.
11
Another column guaranteeing that Trump will win. Instead of calling them white rural voters why doesn’t he simplify by using the phrase from the last election cycle, the ”deplorables”.
2
@Rich Murphy Really, you think there are people out there saying I wanted to vote for Elizabeth Warren, as I believe her policy proposals would help me, but Paul Krugman's column has driven me to vote for Trump! You really think that? And whose fault is that?
4
“I alone can fix it,” trump assured his swooning, ecstatic crowds. So why isn’t every U.S. city the Garden of Eden, Paradise, Camelot, or the Magic Kingdom? “Promises made, promises kept,” right?
6
In 1989 there were 2,246 murders in New York City. In 2018 there were 289 murders.
This decline occurred under Mayors Dinkins (Black Democrat), Guiliani (White Republican), Blumberg (White Republican / Independent), and DeBlasio (White Democrat). It was truly a bipartisan effort from both ends of the political spectrum.
So NYC must have done something right, without the Donald's help.
10
When "inner cities" are struggling you will hear conservatives talk about personal responsibility and boot straps. But when it's rural American that suffers its always someone else's fault, like the government, immigrants, or liberals.
21
Trump has paraded his 'quirks' for decades. Always the showboat, always the center of his universe, always scheming for his own benefit.
It's easy to point out his flaws but what really frosts my windshield is the concept of TENS OF MILLIONS of people agreeing with him. Holding him up as a role model. Following his lead without thinking. Enabling him.
Have we learned nothing about racial civility in the past ~200 years?
If bigotry against anyone is acceptable, bigotry against everyone is acceptable and Karma really is a female dog. You can't build yourself up by tearing other people down... You'll only advertise your own insecurity.
BTW: Rep Ilhan Omar is a slender woman of modest stature. The optics of Trump bullying her are beyond reprehensible. It's one thing to disagree on policy, but quite another for a POTUS to abuse the woman via Tweet or campaign rally. Can we fall any lower than this?
10
1989? With Trump and his views towards minorities, I think it’s more like 1889..
7
Trump just nominated Ratcliffe following his "Rats" insults hurled at a Black Congressman of a black city. That should both alarm the public and the authorities whose responsibility it is to keep the peace in America.
For many years, the Republicans appeared to be working to spark a revolt in an effort to institute martial law amid the chaos they created for the same purpose.
Now we are beyond Impeachment, which everyone should know, Trump intends to answer with a Coup. So everyone should brainstorm ways of removing Trump, peacefully, and non-criminally, in order to keep the peace and preserve our now fragile democracy.
I don't write this lightly. Heed my warning to all. Don't allow Trump and Republicans to victimize the national black population as an excuse for his attempting a power grab. You should all also think about who helped elect him and consider them hostile as well as Putin's military gaining a foothold in Venezuela and possibly Cuba after Trump sabotaged Obama's friendship there.
8
@SHAKINSPEAR - I do not think the Republican party lurches toward a second civil war by design, but as a byproduct of their own identity politics and is being quickened by Donald Trump's malicious manipulations.
Who knows what will happen? Hopefully, post-Trump, the nation can try to heal. I am, however, reminded of Thomas Jefferson's letter to William Stephens Smith, wherein he wrote, "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure."
Interesting that conditions and mortality rates for rural white Americans are deteriorating to an extent worse than those of African-Americans.
One could say vile things about the leaders who run Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, which for decades have been mired in poverty and substandard education and healthcare.
But Trump is always praising and endorsing these politicians. Just tonight he’s tweeted: “Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith is doing a GREAT JOB for the people of Mississippi and fully supports our #MAGA Agenda.”
No disgusting mess down there President Trump?
10
Rural America id dying and the MSM would do well
to remember that. Without Medicaid, Rural Hospitals
will fold.
the best civil rights program is a job. word
3
The most rooted racism, that directed against Blacks, has been, for the most part, driven underground by the cultural changes (good) and unconstitutional speech restrictions (tyrannical) of the last half-century. It thrives there, albeit weakened by three generations' struggle against it.
In the open, the one remaining acceptable racism is Russophobia. Its leading practitioners are in The Resistance. These are those without sin, whose horrified reproach of Trump's Red State voters is that they are moved by racism, alone.
That is, by unacceptable racism.
Look in the mirror.
I'm not a St. Petersburg troll, and it is a sample of anti-Russian racism that I have to plea for a hearing with such a denial.
I'm (Ethnic) Russian-American, 100% of each.
And Russian-bashers of The Resistance are hypocritical bigots.
2
@alyosha Criticism is not an "unconstitutional speech restriction."
1
@April
You're right. We need criticism like we need air. That's why dictators denounce "divisiveness", while it is prized here (well, until Russiagate). Think Civil Rights and Vietnam War struggles and cleavages.
On the other hand, unconstitutional speech restrictions include, especially, the laws on "hate speech" and "hate crimes", which deal with words, not acts (note that the "hate" part of a hate crime is what one says, one's words; the "crime" part is the act: murder, vandalism, etc.)
Trump’s narcissism forces him to love only himself and to hate everything else. His hatred is his principal motivator. It provokes his anger, which he wields as a sword. Everything comes from the center of his narcissism. Nothing is real. He is just a neglected, insecure man-child yelling “look at me” all the time.
4
By 1989 Trump was broke. 1982 might be more apt.
1
All Racists are mired in the past, not just Trump.
Something is wired in Racists brains that makes them pursue the belief that if some "other" gets a better position than them, then it is taking away from their being able to better themselves. Or the "I have got mine and you are not getting any of it". It is a lazy and dangerous way of thinking.
Police brutality of Blacks have shown this thinking as well, only they can take care of their Racist attitudes by using their weapons in a deadly manner. remember Ferguson or any number of towns and cities who shoot first and maybe ask questions later, or cover up the crime as in Chicago.
This country cannot afford to have Racists running it. From Trump to McConnell and all those Republicans in Congress who have not spoken out against Trump's continuing tweets are condoning and supporting Racism not just against Blacks, but Muslims, American Indians, and other groups they deem "less than"
It is time for Americans to get rid of all of these so called leaders and put in their place people who actually believe in voting Rights for All, treating Immigrants in a humane way, stop trying to take away women's Rights to control over their bodies and stop letting Religious beliefs impose on our Freedoms. Put Separation of Church and State back where it belongs.
Stop trying to take away SNAP, CHIP. ACA and any other programs that would help children and the less fortunate.
Fire all Republicans, they do not deserve to lead anymore.
5
he may be stuck in the past, but he's looking toward the future - and his objective may be, for lack of a better term - ethnic cleansing. trump is already far down the road to this end.
trump has classified the categories he thinks we should hate - and who his supporters learn from this behavior. it divides the nation and polarizes portions of society against those he hates.
he adds symbols that people grasp - things like infested, rats, vermin
using these symbols, trump dehumanizes them - they become objects of disdain
his supporters are organized and republicans in congress are helping to accomplish this.
with the border disaster, part of which congress is responsible for, he is already separating people in detention facilities - some of his opponents have called them, rightly or wrongly, concentration camps. i think it's hard to argue against that - inhumane conditions, lack of food and basic needs. and worse. people have died in confinement.
at the same, he is denying these acts. lies!
what's next? extermination?
this has been scary and it's getting worse.
5
Actually, the more the NYT shouts that Trump is a racist, the less convincing it becomes. Sure, Trump is white. And makes insensitive statements for effect. His strategy now is to separate black voters from their elected representatives who have failed them. And it will work.
2
@DeKay Yeah, he started denying black people housing back in the 70s as part of his electoral strategy, totally not because of racism.
That’s all fine and good Paul, but why does Chicago have more murders than NY and LA combined? I think it’s fair to say that there is a crisis in Chicago of “deaths of despair” as well. Why has Cook County been a Democratic Machine for over 50 years? What are Democrats doing so horribly wrong in Cook County?
1
@Peter You know this isn't about teams, right? It's about improving the lives of people in the US. Different places are different and will need different solutions, but the point is that all of us are deserving of dignity and opportunity.
1
I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate because you know for sure this is probably verbatim what Trump is going to get around to saying again at some point. It’s not all of Cook County or Baltimore, which Paul points out but we need to be ready for Orange Julius’s attacks. Kamala Harris will benefit most from these racist attacks for obvious reasons and the stark contrast they paint.
I got one for you: why do you keep promulgating the lie that Baltimore is the most dangerous city in this country?
https://www.forbes.com/pictures/mlj45jggj/7-baltimore/#1d62c1535487
It’s seventh. Mobile, Alabama, and St. Louis Missouri and other Red State cities beat it.
Oddly, there seems to be no yelling at them.
Huh.
1
Well done. Enlightening.
1
Perhaps NYT is spying on my online communications! I stand corrected, as I forget about the Central Park Five and Fred Trump's behavior when they were Queens land (slum?) lords. How does one explain (is it Diamond and Silk?) two opportunistic black ladies advertised on Fox, Ben Carson, and that other black candidate who ran for presidential office whose name escapes me? Trump is attacking the congress people who have subpoenaed information on he and his family's communications, financial records, etc. He is acting like a cornered animal. It's actually more scary than funny, considering the revolving door of top positions in DC. But watching a bully being bullied is a guilty pleasure.
2
Paul makes a very persuasive case based upon provable facts.Trump the racist in chief creates his own facts or selects his facts to support his racist theories that black and brown skinned Americans are not true Americans. If Trump had his way the USA model would be South Africa before Mandela. In Trump’s America only a white person is worthy of citizenship.With the occasional exception like Don King.
2
It’s interesting reading comments on Kruger’s take on Trump and “racism.” The majority of these letters, and this article, are calling everybody who voted for trump, and all republicans, “deplorable” , “uneducated”and “racists!” Isn’t this language in itself intolerant of not-likeminded individuals and actually,racist? Cummings has indeed been a great rep for the wealthy, but what has he actually done for the slums of baltimore? By the looks of it...nothing! In baltimore, his money and career is with the affluent. And what about the ethics charges agsinst his wife, who is 30 years younger than Elijah?
1
@Pvbeachbum Your argument only makes sense if you think there is no difference between judging people based on their skin color and judging people based on their actions.
1
@April
I only judge people based on their actions, not their color. The left seems to believe that if there is ANY criticism on any person of color, then that person is a “racist” and is criticized only because of the person’s color.
1
What is horrible about Trump is that there are millions of Americans that like his racist stance...Trump is making it AOK to hate in the open.
2
Given the gilded-age corporate cronyism that is coupled to Trump's particular form of racism, I would say "1889" is more apropot.
3
As always Mr.Krugman nails. Truly wish the next Democrat President brought him aboard. The man in an Ivory Tower who truly gets it...adore your columns but we need you directing policy.
2
Ah, that liberal trope about those young “innocent” teenagers in Central Park the night the Central Park jogger was raped and left for dead. Apparently the law is not the law and politics has stepped in after the teenagers spent many years in prison. Yes, Reyes’s DNA was found, but that doesn’t absolve the assaults and mayhem that led the jogger to her life-long night of horror.
1
"I’m not saying that there’s something wrong or inferior about the inhabitants of, say, eastern Kentucky ..."
Actually, why not say it? For decades they've been voting against their economic interests ... either because they're racists or ignoramuses (or both). In 2016, they voted against their very lives. Suicide by ballot.
4
"In Trump’s mind, it’s still 1989." Sorry, man, more like 1959.
2
Not just Trump, the Republican Party (since the Nixon's Southern Strategy) has become the racist Dixiecrats (Democrats) that segregated schools, neighborhoods, buses and everything else they could control for generations of the past century. Today's GOP is the racist leadership of the 21st Century.
1
IOW, Trump is an ignorant, opinionated, authoritarian bigot who is SO insecure he cannot stand to be questioned, challenged, or worse, PROVEN to be totally wrong. He's happy to let 10,000 families be destroyed at the border, millions lose their life savings, and the world to be poisoned beyond repair rather than admit, even once, that he's wrong.
That 40% of the voting public are HAPPY to have such a monster in control means they simply don't believe the obvious: He's going to take them, and us along with them, over the cliff.
2
I largely agree. The problem is we have an amoral President who is more than willing to use the situation to his advantage by giving someone to blame. For those who think Trump is some sort of genius I say no, he is instead someone who has spent his entire life taking advantage of people. This is reflexive to him, like a reptile darting his tongue to claim his prey.
Yes it is racism. But it is more. He shows us daily there is no dark depth he is unwilling to sink to if it satisfies his needs be it racism, misogyny, fraud, taking help from Russia, filling the government with flunkies, or sexual kinkiness.
The headline in the Baltimore Sun was right, he is a rat. Let’s hope enough people who see it clearly vote in 2020 to insure he’s tossed to the rubbishy pile where he belongs.
4
How about some investigation of the causes of the social dysfunction in families such as Fred Trump and his spawn? The Trumps made providing "job opportunities" for racists into a lucrative business. More generally, why didn't Wilson and his ilk think exploration of what causes and sustains racism was worth investigating?
1
Excellent opinion, and each post has its own remedies.what is
The answer? How many times do we have to see or live what we have in our country, growing anger and hatred .
Racist leadership makes hate for it grow ,and support for it grow,and at the same time.
We are all products of the ideas we were fed as children.We feed those ideas and they grow, or we discard them as ignorance .We have the choice, to fill ourselves with hate or change.If we
Accept responsibility for our own thoughts and actions, guided
by the concepts written in the Constitution and the Bill of rights
Then we believe in equality, and the leadership promoting fascist ,racist , misogynistic, separatist behavior will die and not have
Space to grow as it is doing now.
1
How did we go from 8 years with a Black President who was a model for dignity, respect, intelligence and hard work, a President who ably navigated us out of the Great Recession, who brought us closer to our allies and neighbors and who made us proud to be Americans, to what we have now just 2.5 years later? America is experiencing its greatest existential threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We better right this horrific nightmare in 2020 and throw this ignorant, racist bully and all his enablers to the curb. America’s ideals and wellbeing are hanging in the balance.
7
"Make America Great Again" was always a dog whistle and nothing else.
4
It's very easy to say what people want to hear. Trump has been doing that for decades. The hateful ads he took out in 1989 were a sign of how cruel he could be and how comfortable he was manipulating public opinion or reflecting it back in the worst ways possible. One could argue that he helped to create the environment that convicted the Central Park 5 rather than creating one where the police and the DA would do a thorough investigation.
We can see Trump engaging in the same processes now. He stalked Hillary Clinton onstage during the debates. He had no substantial discussion points of his own so he indulged in rabble rousing during the campaign when it came to the emails, Benghazi, and the chant of "Lock her up". He enjoys feeding people's fears about all immigrants, all Muslims, all minorities in America, and anyone who disagrees with him. Trump is the master of the big lie.
He has not improved life for most of us. He has worked against our interests in the world and here at home. Those tariffs he says are not being paid for by us are. That border wall he wants to build will not keep anyone out. In the meantime we have a health care crisis, an unemployment rate that is higher than publicly stated, and a great many Americans who cannot afford to miss a single paycheck combined with those who are not getting a paycheck. What is he doing about this? Attacking his "enemies".
7/29/2019 11:17pm
5
As far as racism is concerned, in Trump's mind it's closer to 1889 than 1989.
1
Who are Trump's base? How many people get off on racial slurs and stripping people of their healthcare and voting rights? What's the count of people who appreciate a mangled foreign policy delivered in mangled English? What's the over and under on people wanting kids in cages? Where are the people who were dying for trade wars, race wars and wars in the middle east? Why is he trying so hard to appeal to people who wouldn't vote for a democrat if their soy beans depended on it? Hasn't he done enough to prove his deplorable bona fides? His base is just that.
3
If he hasn't seen it, Trump should watch the 1983 movie "Trading Places" with Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy.
1
Basically, just see the film "Trading Places". Race doesnt matter - its circumstances.
Lets all not forget that the man with the answers for the Palestinians is the same man who is a slumlord in Baltimore. Jared Kushner is trying to get the Palestinians to follow the Trump doctrine "What have You Got to Lose". And the Palestinians are being criticized for not being reasonable. Now you know why they are reluctant to sign on to Jared's plan to bring rat infested neighborhoods to their cities. Look what it has done for Baltimore. It certainly has made Kushner a very wealthy man.
3
@Walking Man - Nor should we forget it was Jared who met multiple times in the early morning hours with MbS shortly before his consolidation of power. Did he share intelligence with MbS? What did he know about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?
Fortress Investment Group loaned Jared Kushner's company $57 million dollars and his property was in turn bailed out by SoftFund (a Saudi investment firm) purchasing F. I. G. Was this a payment for an enemies list, AKA espionage? The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the felonious tree.
Remember the last time trump trashed Cummings and his district and people living in very nice neighborhoods/houses in the district posted photos? Guess trump didn't see those.
PS. If you want to see rats and other vermin, take a walk in the poor areas of the South. Nasty. And now there are roaming packs of feral dogs attacking people. No place is without poverty and what comes with it. Except in trump's mind, of course.
1
So it turns out that Cummings district got $16 BILLION in aid last year. Perhaps Paul can tell us what they did with it since he’s the “economist”.
what did the red states get? we subsidize every one of them.
2
What ? Trump refused to apologize or admit he was wrong ? Oh no. say it isn't so.
I would wager that Trump has never in his life for any reason apologized or admitted he made a mistake. It just does not fit his personality ( if you can call it such) to ever back down. In his own demented mind he is a genius, so how could he be wrong ?
Racist? Is there any doubt ?
2
Yet, another outstanding article. Why do the chickens keep voting for Colonel Sanders?
4
"All he has to offer is hate." Actually, what he offers is a hateful, racially biased nostalgia. Making America great again has meant turning the clock back to a time when blacks and other minorities "knew their place." If polls are correct, it looks like the Democrats will offer nostalgia, as well: the rose-colored-glasses, can't-we-all-just-get-along nostalgia of Joe Biden. Unfortunately, backward looking nostalgia, whether hateful or rosy, is no way to move forward.
2
Don't let Rupert Murdoch off the hook; Fox and Friends did a hit piece on Baltimore because Elijah Cummings is a powerful threat. Trump saw the show and then tweeted about it.
6
@Sherry
TYT review of it
https://youtu.be/-6DYhDhb4ek
@Sherry, thank you very much for pointing this out!
That Donald Trump is a vile racist is true, Dr. Paul. That he's our 45th president is also true. These facts don't bely the dystopian reality of our democracy. Since 1989, and Trump's demand (in this newspaper of record) to bring back the death penalty for the Centreal Park Five, black and Latino teenagers of color, who were innocent of the Central Park Jogger rape, Trump has been against people of color in America. Vicious behaviour by our president should be cause enough for his impeachment. But it isn't. Social collapse is happening throughout both white and black communities. This collapse along with undeniable climate-warming, will bring about the American carnage we are all afraid of. Who could imagine being afraid of Donald Trump back in the 1990s? It takes so long -- years of social media attacks -- for a hate-filled man to become our president. What is, is.
1
“All he has to offer is hate”! So sad but so true.
3
Yes, Dr. K. - reviewing maps of the counties which went for this Republican President in '16, overlaid with the counties experiencing the opioid plague, what would really help matters in 2020 would be requiring voters to submit to a drug test before their vote, then not counting any ballots cast until results of said drug tests were reviewed: no 'voting while under the influence.'
In addition to 45*'s son-in-law slum-lord myopia of not remembering that Kushner properties in Baltimore - in the same zip codes Elijah Cummings represents - have been cited hundreds upon hundreds of times for the very vermin and pestilence the White House deplores, there's something else.
Which is, that a person who has always been as insulated as this Republican President - having never been in the military or held public office where he was held to his campaign promises - has no concept of what America is about, or that his perception(s) of reality are distorted.
Worse yet, his views of the outside world, and any idea of how the rest of the world lives, are apparently all filtered through the Rightist Media.
This Repbulican President's 2020 battle plan of 'racism all the time' may win him some states in the Electoral College, but Dems should be able to grab back the Senate and keep the House.
2
@R. Law
His battle plan will be whatever Fox News sets up for him.
After the Italians got rid of Mussolini, there continued to be a swathe of the population that believed, and were not embarrassed to declare, that he was a great leader. “ He got the trains to run on time”
In the next US presidential election, converted Trump voters cannot be counted on.
So stop messing around Democrats. Present a viable middle of the road candidate and win! Explain to the hard left that “some is better than nothing !”
2
In Trump's mind, it's still 1789.
3
Considering the basic rationality of people, the president is giving economically struggling whites something. Aided by right wing radio, F and friends, the racist in chief, satisfies basic human needs for recognition, validation and vindication. “I see your struggle, I know the cause (non-whites), and have the solution, walls and separation.". He also appeals to a more basic, instinctual, us versus them pre-disposition in humans.
1
Trump's still stuck in '89?? True. But, many of the Dems are still stuck in '69!!
I have just returned from visiting my dying Dad in Tampa. I saw many gorgeous black people going forward with vitality. Beautiful children, young people full of life and many open hearts. It made me very happy to know that despite the hatefulness on full display in the White House, there is hope. If that makes white people angry, they must look deeply inside themselves and free themselves of the racism. It is a cancer that kills the spirit. Peace.
6
The idea that Trump must be racist simply because he offended someone who is African American is absurd.
First of all, most African Americans have been conditioned to interpret (or misinterpret) anything that a white person says as somehow revealing hidden racism. Despite constant claims by members of the media, the large majority of whites are not closet racists.
Secondly, Donald trump offends EVERYONE! For every black person that he offends, there are many more who aren't black. If he hasn't insulted someone yet, just wait!
Donald Trump is rude and obnoxious, but he is not racist.
This column is spot-on, and presents what DT so clearly lacks (and what his Republican lackeys have discarded) : a moral imagination. Thanks.
1
The problem Democrats have is that if one were to recognize Dr Krugman’s
point and say “Hey, white people are really getting hammered by economic change and we need to help them!” the Democratic response would not be, ”Yes, let’s help them!” or “Yes, let’s help all similarly situated Americans, regardless of their race, sex, or ethnicity!”
Instead, Democrats would respond “White privilege! Stop patriarchy! Let’s only propose programs that help women and minorities!”
Donald Trump isn’t the only one trapped in 1989.
@Objectively Subjective
Nonsense. Warren has proposed many programs to help.
Any time we propose policy Fox News and Trump scream socialists!
Trump knows that the racist double whammy of redlining--the illegal practice of denying loans to people of color--and the destruction of the tax base of the central city of metropolitan areas by white flight to the suburbs, are at the root of the decay of urban America.
But, he's not going to blurt out the truth because that would ruin his character assassination of minorites and could cost him votes with his base of deplorables.
1
And old white people will continue to ignore Trump's vile racism and pretend that he is fabulous as long as he keeps telling them how they are the greatest and the past was the greatest. The votes of the "greatest generation" have shown their true colors.
1
“Why 1989? That was the year he demanded bringing back the death penalty”
The biased and prejudiced individuals shouldn’t be allowed to work as the columnists.
If Trump asked for return of the death penalty, it had nothing to do with a rape. Would you sentence to death the shooter from the Las Vegas hotel targeting the innocent concert goers?
Why should Trump apologize for the wrongful conviction of the five teenagers accused of the rape in the Central Park in 1989?
Shouldn’t the detectives, the prosecutor, the judge and the jurors apologize to the victims?!
If the evidence was cooked, somebody should have been jailed for it…
How do you prove without reasonable doubt that somebody was guilty of the crime they didn’t commit?
The evidence should have been cooked or somebody committed a perjury as a witness…
And the columnist thinks Trump should have apologized for the sins of the other people?!
By the way, how come that such alleged notorious racist was hanging with the Clintons at the lavish donor parties, or being personal friend with the Democratic elite?
Why would the NBC give a reality show called “The Apprentice” to the racist?
Why doesn’t the columnist criticize the NBC for providing the platform for the sexist and xenophobe?
The columnist is obviously aware that he would be personally sued for falsely accusing a corporation of the blatant racism…
If Trump loses in 2020 and refuses to leave office he could start a civil war and since he faces jail if he loses he has nothing to lose hence the tanks at his July 4th rally.
1
Social collapse of white societies plays into Trump's plan to rouse the racists though. He may just not want to acknowledge that policies he favors generate a new wave of desperate people willing to blame someone else for taking jobs. For him it's all good.
1
I'm reminded of a book I read a few years ago, ''The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas. It tells the story about immigration, murderous hatred, dead-ended white lives and healing through the lives of a victim of hate-inspired gun violence and the perpetrator.
We all wish it was. Should closed the border to all but the very elite.
It's all part of the MAGA theme Dr. K.
Reachback to those good old days of Bush I and Regan.
Never mind that neither one of them would have anything to do with Trump or the majority of his policies (whatever they are).
Who knows if that is his world view or not - about the only thing we really know about this POTUS is he would be Machiavelli if he could be.
2
Sir,
Pointing out what we already know is a waste of your talent. It seems to me that the major point you are making is that work and economic opportunity is the most important element in elevating people. Not free housing, free college, free medical care, free food etc, all the things being promised/promoted by the left/progressives. Why not call out this fact, promote more economic development and lightened regulation and lower taxes on work and success. This will lift everyone as you argue in your column. Once everyone is enjoying the outcomes, let the left/progressives roll through and fix the inequities that will result. That day will come, but it’s not here yet.
3
Krugman ignores the effect of the minimum wage law, which black economist Thomas Sowell says: "Back in 1948, the unemployment rate for 17-year-old black males was just under 10 percent, and no higher than the unemployment rate among white male 17-year-olds."
"Among the effects of a minimum wage law, when it is effective, is that many unskilled and inexperienced workers are priced out of a job, when employers do not find them worth what the law specifies. Another effect of a minimum wage law is that it can lead to a chronic surplus of job applicants."
2
@Bob Just guessing, but in 1948 those 17 year old black males were probably mostly a good deal for employers because they paid them half what they would a white person, and the jobs they got were the lowest paid ones which were reserved for them while they were shut out of higher paid positions.
Federal minimum wage started in 1938.
@Bob If that were the case, a $7.25/hour minimum wage would be a great test--it's less than half what most people would require just to have a home, clothing and food and probably not healthcare.
The reality is that our country is more segregate and bigoted than ever. A white felon has a better chance at a job than a black man with no criminal record.
DJT, his administration and Majority Leader McConnell and the Republican Senate have mastered distraction and obfuscation. As careful and sharp as Dr. Krugman's analysis is their success in controlling the narrative is readily apparent in coffee shops, newsrooms and the Democratic candidate debates both in the questions asked and the candidate answers.
5
Back in 1990 when I was visiting my dad in eastern Nebraska, he made a comment to me that now reminds me of your op-ed.
His comment was that he noticed all the women were working but the men were not. There were serious problems with alcohol and drugs even back then. The town, Columbus, is a hub for different kinds of manufacturing and so, Midwest prosperous but the men weren't working in the factories, it was the women.
I remember my dad was concerned. I believe he was noticing the first part of rural white collapse.
17
"Give them reasonable opportunities for economic and personal advancement, and they will thrive; deprive them of those opportunities, and they won’t."
Where would right-wing Trumpism be without our surging economic inequality? U.S. ranks high on the GDP, but relatively low on measures of economic equality, especially in relation to those so-called "advanced" democratic socialist countries in Scandinavia and Europe.
Important to understanding Trumpism, is the downward mobility hypothesis in sociology, which says that people who perceive themselves as losing in class and status position are often easily drawn to right-wing movements, This losing situation for them is magnified if they believe other groups are rising in the social hierarchy at their expense (relative-deprivation hypothesis). Voila! Trump's winning campaign message to amplify the losing and aggrieved status of white Americans.
Whose fault is it? Is it the domination of corporatism and utopian capitalism taking jobs abroad and controlling politics, or is it those "other" groups such as people of color, women/feminists, and snotty educated people in a high tech society taking all the good jobs?
There is a principle in social psychology that often the easiest way to change people's behavior is to change their situation.
One political party wants to change the economic situation for working people; the other party does not. Why not? Because how else can the GOP win?
Trumpism is as cynical as it gets.
24
Thank you, thank you, this is a key insight; so far, as I know, never yet made by any of our various pundits. And it reminds me of years ago when cities were considered, pretty much by everyone, to be socially "disorganized," or even worse. Then a couple of sociologists--at the moment I don't even remember their names--actually studied social organization in cities and found that there were, indeed, integrated and relatively stable communities, even in cities. I'm guessing that, if one were interested, one would find relatively stable communities right there where all of the alleged rats and vermin are found. As has been said, it's better to live with rats and vermin, than to be one, eh?
3
All sound arguments. But there is a catch - the people who need to understand this don't read the NYTimes. In fact, I'll bet that many of them don't read anything at all outside the captions on YouTube or the ads outside the supermarket. All of which makes it easier for the unscrupulous (and guess who that might be) to lead them up the garden path, as we used to say when I was a kid in England. If you could look at the hidden "influencers" behind Trump, you'd probably find the same shadowy figures who produced the British vote to leave the European Union.
Trump has little to offer the great American poor except hate. Any Democrat who can get that message across to them is on a roll to Pennsylvania Avenue.
13
William Julius Wilson was right. Loss of meaningful employment brings on social dysfunction. And it also awakens the beast, racism. Progress on race equality began in the middle of the last century has now slowed and is backsliding in many regions. Those regions are also backsliding economically. It is all part of the same, and it is all coming undone.
To survive we must reverse the trend, and to di that we need to unite again, become a single nation that shares its resources and its needs. Our leaders are setting us one against the other to secure power for themselves. We have to pick a government in 2020 that will unite us.
716
@Charles Tiege
We have been making huge strides towards racial equality in the last few decades. Most white Americans opposed interracial marriage until the 90s, but now that’s a fringe view. Younger whites are moving back into the urban neighborhoods with minorities that their parents abandoned in the 80s and 90s. Just walking around the neighborhood, I can see many more mixed-race friends and couples.
Also, I would not excuse racism by pointing to economic pressures. Many poor people are not racist. Moreover, racial conservatism is frequently the cause of economic pressure. In today’s world, people often have career or business opportunities that require dealing with different cultures and ethnicities. People who don’t like other cultures or ethnicities are more likely to miss those opportunities.
31
@Charles Tiege,
The good news is that a campaign focused on providing job opportunities for all is a campaign that unites voters in common cause!
24
@Amy Let's see if the tariff issues continue, what the jobs' situation will be. The government is borrowing the money that it would have collected before the tax reduction (for some). This is a developing story, it seems to me.
19
I am not American, and only lived in the US for 5 years as a grad student in early 2000s. So I don’t know most of the details you talked about. What many in the world, however, would love to understand is how a modern and sophisticated political system would succumb to this level of unprecedented unravelling of everything US stood and fought for over the past 200 years. Is this the end of the American dream as we know it? How come one person, singlehandedly, is capable of doing all of this with impunity? Where are the checks and balances?
1879
I ask that question every day. The supposed “checks and balances”, ie: Congress, is/are complicit.
275
The problem is is that people are voting for it and supporting it. White fear seems to have come out in an unprecedented way.
169
@Ali
Why did those things "unravel"? Because enough people disagreed with them and felt they weren't working. As for this being the "end of the American dream", quite the contrary. America's strength has always been its ability to self-correct. -- that is, to swing the pendulum back when it has advanced too far in either direction. And make no mistake about it, this is a self-correction. Enough Americans felt it was time.
22
Trump is stuck in 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson legalized segregation. Trump’s great discovery was that open racism plays as well in rural Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as it does in Mississippi and Alabama. The decline of rural American manufacturing and family farming is economic, but Trump’s racist solution of blaming immigrants and blacks is historic, America’s original sin of white supremacy. The whiter the district, the more they vote for Trump, showing voter racism is not based on personal negative experiences with immigrants and blacks, but on racial stereotypes. Queens, the most multi-ethnic district in the country, voted for AOC. Trump has elevated racism from a problem facing minority communities to an existential crisis for America.
8
@Bruce Shigeura Less we forget, Hitler the role model for us & some of Trump's advisors. So violent racism simply jumped across the Atlantic Ocean at a time of rapid economic change, did it not?
My only disagreement with Mr. Krugman's analysis is any reference to Trump "thinking". By now, it should be apparent to everyone that he is plain and simple a vicious racist with a closed mind that allows only the vitriol of Fox News to enter into it. His constituents who continue to support him, even though he has done nothing for them, are only too happy to have the blame for their woes placed on someone other than themselves.
8
@Sledge They are getting their information and opinions from the same source that Trump does: Fox News and similar sources. It's a closed system.
1
None of what Paul or the other NYT columnists say about Trump matters any more.
We have to get rid of him. He is the worst thing for this country since the civil war.
I don't see any value in any additional assessment of Trump's mind or motivations. This is digging into a empty hole. There is nothing there of any value.
Additional information about Trump's disorders and behavior problems is not useful or interesting information.
11
Trump's messages of racial division and hate may resonate with some Americans. But I don't know any. So, he is preaching to a very specific person and, in effect, trying to give them hope. A predatory ignoramus trying to give people hope by invoking racial stereotypes...trying to incite them to vote for him. But he already has them "locked up". He has laid a foundation of hate that insures they would never abandon him. How this brings on new voters, that he needs to win re election, is truly a mystery. He is preaching to the choir and it won't work. For good reason. I ave faith that most Americans, today, are better than that.
7
I would think anyone who has been paying attention would conclude that poverty, not ethnicity, is the common denominator here. And the longer a community lives in poverty, the more difficult it is for individuals to escape.
Businesses won't build there, schools lack funding, local services, such as fire, police, road maintenance, even garbage collection suffer as well. People with no income, can't afford to maintain their homes and property. And whether the victims are whites living in rural counties, or people of color in cities, the rest of the country just ignores them and moves on.
When Trump was elected, I was shocked; dismayed that my fellow Americans would vote for such a vile man. I thought I was fairly politically savvy, but I've come to realize that I have not been paying enough attention over the years. Now that I've educated myself as to the problems outside of my bubble, I'm not surprised that non-whites stayed home in 2016, while uneducated, poor whites voted for Trump.
4
@Patty O.
I didn’t realize how racists this country still was. But I live in a diverse community and feel out of place when I travel and am surrounded by one skin color even if it is my own. It feels creepy to me.
I had hoped that the generation or two after mine racism would be a thing of the past and we could focus on the human situation together and move forward.
Trump is a retrograde with a massive bomb attached. I just hope we can disarm it.
1
Apparently, hate works. His base is sticking with him. Which begs the point that perhaps his appeal was hate for the other all along.
4
Trump and his ilk think in shallow, one-liner, self serving terms. The consequences of this are significant because decisions this group makes have great consequences because of their positions of power. But while what they do will have lasting impacts, these times are their last hurrah as the power of demographics will inevitably take root. Perhaps the Democratic candidates should start out their speeches with a quote from our founders, "We hold these truths to be self evident...." And also stop putting up with the shallow, one-liner definitions of who we should be by this sad parody of a responsible political party, the present version of the GOP.
2
Your last paragraphs are the most important. It will not win elections to call Trump a racist. So, just say it once and move on now please. What may win elections is showing some persuadable part of his voters that he hasn't done what he promised and then give them a vision of a government that will help their troubled lives. FDR, LBJ, and RFK knew how to do that.
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@terence
I couldn't disagree more. If we elevate practicality above principle then it looks to all the world as if some people are immune from the rules that apply to the rest of us. Once Trump is allowed to get away with speech that would get anyone else arrested, then that only emboldens others to do the same. Before long there are so many people saying vile things that they can't all be arrested. Doing the right thing matters, even if it doesn't always get the result you hope for. There is virtue, and value, in the effort. Isn't that what we teach our children? Why not apply the lesson to ourselves?
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@terence The fallacy here is the implied assumption that things have to be either/or. Pointing out Trump's racism may not win any elections by itself, but it will help. Stuff adds and multiplies, you can never stand on just one factor. Over and over we engage with lies built on false assumptions and don't realize we have engaged with the wrong windmill and let the monster in the gate with the assumption the fight was built on. "Which kind of birth identity should guarantee success?" assumes the validity of birthrights. "How can you call for public charity when you don't practice private charity?" assumes individualism rather than collectivism. "Which one factor will win the election?"...
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@terence "help their troubled lives"? Yeah, like when did the Republicans ever care about other people?
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Let's not let Trump's race baiting frame this election. He's a racist and we know it. It's not news. His remarks are meant to keep him spotlight on him and make his base believe he is a tough guy.
But he's not a capable guy. The media needs to focus on issues that affect real people--healthcare, minimum wage, economic opportunity and growing income disparity.
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