Comments

1
old seattle was just 24/7 dad jokes. it was magic.
2
Maybe it is a good thing that the agriculture industry is losing its wage slaves. Perhaps it will cause them to hire people and give them acceptable pay and working conditions.

Instead of you know, treating people like slaves because being illegal immigrants, they have little to no legal recourse when an industry treats them like slaves.
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@2 Yes, all you said is true(ish), but the Ag industry just transfers costs to consumers. We really like our veggies, fruit and meat cheap. That is to say, we are all complicit in the wage slavery.
5
Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party
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@3: No doubt we are all complicit, and of course the prices of produce will rise if the Ag industry loses its slaves. But, much like the $15/hour campaign, we all just have to absorb that cost for the greater good of everyone.

This is the dark side of globalism that no one really likes to think about. The phone in your pocket was put together by child slaves because it is cheaper that way. Your socks were stitched by children in a sweatshop because it is cheaper that way.

This is globalism too. This is what free trade is as well. We all share in the shame that we essentially support this system through our willingness to turn the other way for cheap(er) consumer goods. Slavery never went away. It is perhaps worse than ever before, especially in Africa and the Middle East/SE Asia:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl…
8
I think Connelly's playfulness is also reminscent of old weird journalism, like Liebling or Russell Baker.
9
I'd guess that a lot of rural poor types who voted for Trump did so not because they thought he would help them, but because they don't believe anyone will help them and voting for the man-child felt like hitting the self-destruct button. They know they're dying and they want to take everyone down with them.
11
The President's budget is evil and will fail in even the House.

Ironic that so many of us right-of-center back in 2008 shuddered when Obama said he wanted to fundamentally transform the United States of America.
12
Nobody really knew what would happen if Trump was elected, save Steve Bannon. As a chameleon and an empty vessel, Trump remains uncharted territory for his supporters' dreams and detractors' nightmares.
13
@2: hire WHAT people? white americans that left the labor force in 2008? there are 96 million of them, according to *.

I'm trying to picture suburban 55, 60 year olds picking cherries all day and sleeping in tiny huts in the sagebrush at night, for minimum wage.
14
In taking to Trump voters, mostly rich and urban, the themes I've noticed are:

1) It's time for a shakeup! Anything is better than the status quo.

2) You guys had eight years, it's our turn.

3) KILLary is way more corrupt! Trump has our best interests at heart! Give him a chance.

None of this backed up by any deeper thought or analysis. Just presented as gospel, or first principles.
15
They voted Trump for many different reasons. Confirmation bias will protect Trump from ever being blamed for his failure.
16
@13: I am unsure how you read my comment but somehow missed about 80% of the words.

Those Americans will not do physical labor for slave wages and slave accommodations. But there are many Americans willing to do physical labor for a decent wage and decent treatment.

Are people really unaware that lots of white Americans do hard physical labor everyday? They will do it, just not for slave wages. Not all white people are CEOs. Besides, not only older white folks are unemployed, you know.

In unrelated news:
***********TRIGGER WARNING: SPORTS!**********TRIGGER WARNING: SPORTS!*****************

According to league sources, the Seahawks are open to trading Richard Sherman for the right offer. But he has a pretty hefty cap hit the next couple years, so I doubt there will be any movement there.
17
I have a hunch that poor Trump voters are thinking along similar lines. There's no deeper motives, thinking or strategy here. It's just playing poker without having read the rules. Unfortunately, everyone's hands will be shown a good 10-15 years from now, when nobody remembers what they did in the first place. There will be no learning, because the results will be far enough removed from the action that nobody will be able to make the connection. Nobody that matters anyway.

The smart people will, for sure, but this last election, and many previous elections have shown that people want entertainers like Reagan, or someone unthreatening, like Bush I or II. (or III, providing there's nobody more entertaining)
18
@12, More than half the country knew what Trump was going to do. He's been blaring everything he's done from loudspeakers for his entire campaign. That's what's frustrating. The only people who are surprised by Trump are conservatives, and the reason they're surprised is because they are unquestioningly loyal.

ASK MORE QUESTIONS you fucking idiots. Obedience isn't a virtue in civic life!
19
Let's see...an occasional chuckle or incessant WTFs? Which do you prefer in your journalism, folks? Operators are standing by to take your vote!
20
I still don't think KOMO got it right. Unless it was one of those new-fangled autonomous cars, it's "Pedestrian hit and killed by driver in Silverdale." The car didn't kill him, the person driving it did. Let's put the burden where it belongs and that's not on the inanimate object.
21
@18: Yes, but remember the tired refrain "Trump supporters took him figuratively but not seriously, but the press and others took him seriously but not figuratively" -- stupid as that is, it is what happened to some degree.
22
Charles Mudede is an idiot. White rural voters voted for Trump to steal what exactly? The Chinese or Mexican restaurant at the end of main street? If there are "brown people" living in small rural America, they don't own anything. They rent a shabby house maybe while cooking at the restaurant. So many polls have concluded Trump voters wanted an outsider and the Democratic Party, especially Debbie Wasserman Schultz, only gave them only one outsider to choose from: Donald Trump. They wanted Rome to burn but were too dumb or uninterested in politics to realize their house would burn down in the same fire.
23
Charles calling 50% of America racist has ridiculous. You are guilty of the same bull that the president spills. I have almost completely turned off any recognition of what the president says, and I will simply stop reading the Stranger. You wont miss me. I'm sure you affectively anger and activate the audience you are after. Which I argue is predominantly white. Stupid headlines to get people worked up are simply that. You don't use facts, you use feelings. It is not wrong to call out racism where it exists, but it is wrong to call everyone racist. You harm your own causes and you harm the country.
24
@22: You do realize that "small town rural America" includes the south as well, right? Where 55% of the entire black population of the USA lives? Kind of racist to assume they don't own anything and just fry catfish all day.
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@24: No it's not. Yes, I can imagine there are many small rural towns in the South where African Americans own things of value. But the South is not America as a whole, and the typical white Trump supporters in the rural South did not. by themselves. elect Trump. And the fact you thought, then said "just fry catfish all day" is by itself racist. I would have never assumed to stereotype a group of people that would fry catfish all day nor even think it. OK, maybe Cajuns.
27
@12:

Yeah, nobody really knew what would happen - for sure, for sure...
28
@21 It was "supporters took him seriously but not literally while elites took him literally but not seriously". Peter Thiel (noted libertarian futurist vampire) originated this epigram, for what that's worth.
29
@26: Um, you were the one who said rural black people don't own anything and just cook. I honestly do not even know what the hell you are trying to say at this point, to be honest.
30
@German Sausage. You are the reader Charles is after. You can soak up the article to fuel you hate but you are simply the minority. Minority not in racial sense, but minority because most people are not absolute hate filled clowns like yourself. I didn't vote for Trump because I think he must have gone to the same school you did Sausage. Now go crawl back under your bridge where you belong. We will all hold our breath for the next time you step out into the sunlight to put others down with pointless, useless, and fact less claims sprinkled with just the right amount of obscenities so that the world knows how smart you really are.

We all know the electoral college argument. It is old. Go find something else and let the adults talk.
31
Sargon @ 7
Despite my ongoing criticism of Israeli policies one should acknowledge that Israelis and Palestinians fought/fight for the same land. Jews on the other hand never posed a threat to Germany.
32
You kids provide quite an entertaining show.
33
"What these plaques make clear is that the removal of Jews from their homes was an act of robbery. Nothing more, and nothing less."

That's got to be the stupidest thing you've ever written, Mudede. Or maybe it just shows that your only objective is to shore up a clumsy philosophical structure by forcing non-facts into it, which is worse than stupidity.
34
Dling 57- Looks like GS hit the nail on the head, no wonder he got you so mad.
36
There are many reasons that many people made such a horrible choice. Not just one. It was the perfect storm, if we are to believe it is a legitimate election at all. Our difficult task now is to understand each of them. Only then can we move forward for a brighter more hopeful future. After avoiding the trump voters' opinions by shutting them out it has become increasingly clear to me that they had reasons, some of which we may share. Unfortunately, their solution is 'one the' most horrible things to happen in our country and yet may become 'the' most horrible. But we do need to try to understand what their lives and world views are like and why they were compelled to vote for destructions instead of construction. Things were far from perfect before and we must recognize that if we are to move forward to try to rebuild a Just and Fair society. Let me be clear. Trump and his cronies are absolutely HORRIBLE. My gut wrenches when I think of it. My reactions are visceral. It is horrible. But it's time to move forward and understand what the hell the rest of the fucking country was thinking. Then we can make reparations and try and save our open society.
37
Ms. 91- What do you know, we are in the same boat.
I think Mudede eluded to economic fears and hopes that often fuel racism, yet defining the Holocaust as “nothing but a robbery” was indeed clumsy, inconsiderate, and misleading.

I also think your arguments are likely to be much more effective if you take the time to touch on why this or that are “the stupidest thing.”
38
@7 Israelis and Palestinians at war over a piece of land is the same as the Holocaust?
39
@27 - Then explain why so many were hoping for a pivot?
41
@16: i got it all, but i believe you are overly optimistic about what growers can provide.

still, what is a decent wage for ag work? $15/hr.? what are the living accommodations that should be provided?
42
@36: they weren't "thinking", they were feeling. and they were feeling scared & angry. *'s con-man technique appealed directly to the reptile brains of less-educated white people.

it wasn't a rational decision. they got conned.
43
Based upon the anti wetback racism I've experienced as a wetback living in Capitol Hill - and the experience of a black female friend who was spit on by a white man, also in Capitol Hill - plenty of two-faced, racist voters in Seattle also helped elect Donald Trump. You'd do well to remember that the racists are also your neighbors, not just the folks outside of Seattle whom you believe are less woke than you are.
44
The GOP is the cracker party in all but name, this much is true. There are two kinds of Trump voters: a very small number of wealthy industrialists most often specializing in natural resource extraction and hoping for full deregulation, plus a much larger (albeit declining, percentage-wise) number of white tribalists whose loathing of "the other" is what primarily animates them.
45
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While the Democrats are of POC tribalists whose loathing of "the other" is what animates them and white tribalists animated by loathing of self.
Much better.

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