Racists: They were there all along

 I live in a state that votes Republican governors. It goes about 60% Republicans, 40% Democrats. I live in a city, so we are closer to 50/50. That still means that one out of two neighbors will fully support a white supremacist candidate, if that is the Republican candidate.

We are giving Trump a bit too much credit, though his cult of personality also appealed to these voters.

This thing has been developing since Reagan, amplified by Fox news and the internet. Before that republicans had boring ideas: lower the taxes and support law enforcement. Which back then was white policemen.

The segment of our country now supporting this "white people are being hurt" idea now makes up 40-45% of voters, depending on who is president and what is going on in the world (Ukraine, etc.) and gas prices.

John Oliver covered the Fox news thing well:

Link:

https://youtu.be/XMGxxRRtmHc

And the "white working class"? They were racists too. They may have voted Democrat when they had a union job. Democrats are important in local elections for that and for other things. Once that union job was gone, there was no reason to vote Democrat anymore. In their racism, the working classes were barely tolerant of sexual minorities as well. Anything outside their white Christian bubble was alien.

Moving away from racism and jobs, the white working class also is not quite so liberal as college educated Democrats. It's easy for the GOP trolls and congressmen tot raise hell about parents' rights, gay teachers,  the masks and vaccination thing and all the local stuff dealing with school boards. Those are not items that congressmen and senators deal with, those are local issues. But the party has been well marked and labeled as "exrteme liberals" in matters that are quite trivial to the actual lives of these people.

Public health and the Pandemic

 I've been waiting for a book to explain the Covid pandemic in a sesnsible way for the USA. I like Michael Lewis's book that focused on public health administrators in California.

It covers the early pandemic well, and describes the thankless job of those with any authority. Our quarantine effort was pitiful. The CDC was pitiful. Only states functioned well. We do not have an effective federal program. As far as the pandemic, it only covers the start and going toward the peak.

I have seen a dozen health care professionals push some idea in a book. Not the pandemic in numbers, just some solutions. There are a few well written books on vaccinations.

The first book to give anyone a reasonable summary is by Kate Messner.

She has written a book for middle schoolers on pandemics. Pages 155-186 cover the covid pandemic in such a manner that it merely states the facts. Pick one up if you have grandkids or school age kids.

No trashing of Fauci and masks, although we still have a hard time measuring how much masks helped. The real problems vaccines might have are listed in a paragraph.

I won't summarize the book further, because I think it is such a good book all should read it. It explains infectious diseases well, including the discovery of germs and all that. Enjoy! Kids are not afraid of science, and pandemics will not end there.

Putin

 The war in Ukraine does not really affect our local politics much, other than most Republicans running for office seem to have dropped Trump as far as foreign policy goes.

Putin is the result of 30 years of corruption. The wealth in Russia comes from a small number of industries. They apparently do not even know how to deal with the technical aspects of oil drilling without American help. Rachel Maddow covered all this in her book Blowout. Anyway, the oligarchs all got wealthy by starting with something they knew a little about. They bought state industries after the Soviet Union collapsed. Once you got some chunk of it, you kept buying in that area, still at low prices compared to the world. Eventually a small number of people got very wealthy. Russia also has mining that brings in income, such as palladium and platinum, and other metals. Uranium was largely left in Kazakhstan.

The common people got jobs in the consumer markets that thrived as money flowed into Russia. Some are in the energy industry. Russia grows some food, but the best lands are actually in Ukraine. That side improved as well, with Ukraine exporting the food to neighboring Russia.

Things were fine. Then Putin started thinking about his legacy.

One must understand that it not only Putin that feels somehow the lesser leader and his country as someone who struggles compared to all of Europe and the USA. It is all of Russia that lacks self esteem. Trump was a quirk, and Putin felt comfortable next to him. He was not a real threat. Never mind what Putin had on Trump, he felt like the stronger man.

Now past Trump, Putin is back to the old routine of puffing up his chest and feeling OK as long as he flexes his muscle sometimes. Putin can only show strength in the face of neighbors. And there was only one that used to be part of Russia for most of the 1900s. Finland had been apart longer. Therefore Ukraine was the victim this time.

So, as I said, it was not just Putin. It is all of Russia that has been lacking self esteem for 30 years. Even with all the Western goods coming in, Russians did not feel like an equal just yet. Well off people in Moscow and St Petersburg have been approaching the West as far as freedoms and democracy goes. Most of Russia has also improved manyfold as far as material wealth and standard of living goes. But Russia is still big, some 150 million people. Nationalism is the thing that keeps it together. Putin has to make a show of it to impress the masses in Russia. Thousands of men, tens of thousands of men, tanks and weapons, those are irrelevant losses. Russia thinks the same way it always has. Big sacrifices, such as seen in WWII, are necessary for their self image.

Those not completely agreeing with Putin nevertheless are going along with this because of a lack of options. No election will make a big change. Also, they lived through the Yeltsin years, 91-99, and it was unstable. Conditions were barely better than in the Soviet Union. Putin brought stability, even if most people knew of all the corruption and had to maneuver that to get consumer goods.

Putin is where he is for a reason. There is no majority to rebel at this point. And I suspect that removing Putin would end up with some guy whos seems "reasonable" but turns into Putin again in 20 years.