• Notserious@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    The only thing that’s shocks me is the thinks people say to defend him. My sister told me angels told her god sent him. She used to be so normal. It was quite disturbing.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      I mean, his grandfather was an immigrant that came here, and made his way through organized crime, namely human trafficking.

  • LengAwaits@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Saying immigrants bring ‘bad genes’ echoes Trump’s history — and the and the world’s

    With a mishmash of false claims about crime and ridiculous race science, Trump makes explicit the racism at the heart of his politics.

    Former president Donald Trump has long espoused a worldview in which genes are the determinative factor in someone’s life. In 1988, for example, he told Oprah Winfrey that success requires luck — and that “you have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”

    In a 1990 interview, he said that he would not have followed in his father’s footsteps had he been born into a coal-mining family rather than a rent-mining one.

    “The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son,” he said. “If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines.” This, he said, was because he, unlike those poor coal miners, had the “ability to become an entrepreneur, a great athlete, a great writer. You’re either born with it or you’re not.”

    Trump has previously raised this theory of genetics on the campaign trail. In 2020, for example, he praised the “good genes” of people in Minnesota. He then offered a warning to those robust-gened Minnesotans: his opponent in his bid for reelection, Joe Biden, planned to “flood your state with an influx of refugees from Somalia.” The transition did not escape the notice of observers.

    In an interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday morning, Trump’s suggestion that non-White immigrants are genetically inferior was made explicit.

    The comment came as Trump was disparaging his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

    “How about allowing people to come through an open border,” he said, “13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person and they’re now happily living in the United States?”

    This is a false claim — “outrageously false,” in the wording of The Washington Post Fact Checker — based on a misrepresentation of numbers released by the government. That data indicated that there were about 13,000 immigrants who had committed murder but were not in custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many, though, are in custody elsewhere, including at the state level. Nor were they all immigrants who arrived during the Biden administration; many were here under Trump, too.

    Unchallenged by Hewitt, Trump continued on the subject.

    “You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes,” he said. “And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” Reinforcing that he was talking about the “bad genes” of immigrants, Trump offered up more false claims based on the ICE data.

    Hewitt, rather than contesting Trump’s genetic argument, shifted the conversation with no apparent irony to the federal criminal charges Trump himself faces. These, of course, are not a function of criminal genes, in Trump’s estimation, but instead of the political whims of Biden. (In reality, they are a function of Trump’s actions.)

    Trump has a track record of dehumanizing immigrants, repeatedly referring to immigrants who commit crimes as “animals,” for example. He also has a record of disparaging immigrants in sweeping terms, aggregating them by nationality as a rationale for declaring them unwanted.

    He does this with other nonimmigrant groups as well. Speaking to Hewitt, for example, Trump appeared to conflate “Jewish Americans” with “Israel” — as he has in the past.

    “I think Israel has to do one thing: They have to get smart about Trump,” he said in the interview. “Because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not a reciprocal, as they say. Not reciprocal.”

    Here Hewitt did push back: His numbers, in Hewitt’s estimation, were improving among Jewish voters. But Trump replied that they “should be 100 percent.”

    This inability to see nuance in cultural and national groups of which he isn’t a member is one thing. His claim that America was being flooded with “bad genes” thanks to new arrivals to the country is another thing entirely. It’s also one that might evoke unsettling historic parallels for some Jewish observers.

    Beyond the racism of such claims, it’s also striking how self-serving Trump’s deployment of genetics is. Immigrants to the United States — like the Haitian immigrants now living legally in Ohio who were the target of lies by Trump and his running mate last month — are the ones who escaped the cycle of suffering that Trump referenced with his coal miner example. They are the ones who, in the face of natural disaster and political unrest, pulled up stakes and sought a new, better life. They are, according to Trump’s 1990 calculus, the winners of the same genetic lottery as him. Except that, unlike him, they haven’t been convicted of crimes.

    But such inconsistencies aren’t important to Trump because the “genetics” thing isn’t based on evidence or science. It’s just a way for him (and by extension, some of his supporters) to view themselves as superior to the immigrants he’s scapegoating. This has always been the subtext to Trump’s politics. He’s just making it more explicit.

  • uebquauntbez@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    I think he’s thinking of an member of his own stage diving crew (the X, formerly known as South African tax avoider)

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    I remember in the very early 2000s online when people were talking about the superiority of the west and how the west had problems, but due to the west’s unique ability to debate and have introspection (no joke, some believed that no other culture does that) they solved those issues forever.

    And those were not just wrong. They were wrong in the most embarrassing ways imaginable, and also probably Trump voters now.

    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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      12 hours ago

      The 1990s were so heavily propagandized, it’s a wonder every single millennial didn’t sign for the armed forces after 9/11

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          That’s uh… No. Campaign/War Service Medals mean you were serving at the time of a campaign. It does not mean you signed up after the war started. Although anyone who signed up afterwards did get it. They also got the National Defense Service Ribbon and the Army Service Ribbon. But literally everyone in the Army on or after 9/11 got the GWOT Service Medal. Soldiers also think this is ridiculous but the brass is addicted to shiny shit.

  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’ll never understand this “behold the master race” type bullshit. Take Trump for example, he started off in life with every conceivable advantage and turned out to be phenomenally stupid, lazy, and amoral.

    Meanwhile there are people with darker skin who came to the US with nothing and have worked their asses off to get ahead. They pay their taxes, don’t commit crimes, and are a net positive to the US - all the while being demonized by Trump and his dumbfuck fanbase.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      10 hours ago

      The whole idea that whites are the master race is insane from the start.

      If anything, are the middlest race in just about all ways. I guess you could say that we’re well-rounded, if you wanted to say something.

      We’re pretty good about northern latitudes, too.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Because we’re chimps. Tribalism is in our DNA. And unfortunately, education and socialization doesn’t simply solve the problem.

      There will always be a battle against those who feed the primitive ape brain for their own selfish purposes.

      That is human nature in a nutshell.

      • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        I feel like you’re downplaying the part about it being amplified for profit, and overemphasizing the part about it being genetic.

        “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.”

        That describes a large part of our entire society for the past 50 years. As we’ve noticed our pockets being picked, they’ve had to up the distractions.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Did I?

          those who feed the primitive ape brain for their own selfish purposes.

          I wasn’t talking about your home grown racist. I was talking about the ones feeding that division for their own power and profit.

          My point is that our ape brains have an inclination towards Us vs Them. Education and socialization combats this base instinct, but there will always be people who aim to counteract those efforts so they can easily manipulate the chimp brains for their own gain.

          • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            The Amygdaloids, you mean: the 30% or so that seems to be a human constant of fearful, somewhat self-centred, and comfortably authoritarian. Combined with the sociopaths, you get fascist behaviour.

            Homo Narratus is particularly susceptible to stories that direct behaviour. Not just propaganda, but ideology. We need to justify our participation in our own oppression.

            It’s both genetics and a ploy.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Grinding my teeth as I’m peddling uphill

        The fight against ape-hood is fate versus free will

        We think we’ve advanced but there’s nowhere to go

        Mammals stay captive to animal actions

        So slowly we climb up this DNA brick wall

        Addicted to emptiness, anger and pitfalls

        Desire for space, territory, or lust

        We’ll eventually turn this whole planet to dust

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      To be fair Trump is orange maybe orange people are dumb and inferior, we don’t know haven’t met any orange people. But his kids are all just as dumb so it definitely in the genes with them. The rest of us are human and come in all shades and intelligences.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    2 days ago

    Can he just legally change his name to Hitler so we can get this over with? Yes we know you’re all ok with voting for literal Hitler, Magoos. Can you just take the stupid mask off? You hated masks when it was about public safety so why wear the mask to cover your Hitler now?

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      You’d think a name with that history would disuade voters but Id wager it wouldn’t. Mussolini’s still win seats in Italy and Marcos wins in the Philippines. My hope in the average persons ability to stand up to fascism has never been lower.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Even if he did that, and people called him out for it, the response would be “Haha get triggered libtard”, “You commies can’t take a joke”, and so on. There is nothing he can do wrong in their eyes.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The man who can’t even stand up straight and apparently smell like shit warmed over is going to tell immigrants they’re the ones with bad genes. Sure, Maggat.

  • Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Ok, surely we have to be in a media bubble by this point right? I know Lemmy leans left, but still. Where are the articles quoting non-fabricated stuff Democrats have said that makes them look bad? It can’t be that I only see atricles quoting Republican politicians because only they say the dumbest, brain-worm hot takes out loud, right?

  • SoJB@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Ironically, actual peer reviewed science has stated, in almost complete agreement across the world, that conservatives are literally mentally inferior to non-conservatives.

    Every accusation from liberals and their pals the right wingers is a confession. Weird how the rule holds true even now.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      As a result of not being smart enough to properly interpret some scientific research, a dumb person thinks they are smart because of their political beliefs. lol It’s a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I bet he means his wife and parents.
    Melania is fundamentally an illegal emigrant, as she was allowed on false pretense on an Einstein Visa.
    I wonder what corruption was behind that?

    The MAGA crowd has chosen what they despise as their leader. The parallels to Hitler are endless.

  • nifty@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Anyone who thinks they’re the “good” immigrant who Trump wouldn’t think of like this, I have a bridge to sell you…