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Some of y'all are still confused as to why it seems that Silicon Valley billionaires are "turning to Trump." That's because you don't listen to Black people, you disrespect poor white people, and you ignore obvious statistics that have been staring you in the face for decades.
Silicon. Valley. Billionaires. Have. Always. Supported. Trump.
Not because they like the tax breaks. Because they are more likely to be racist, and racism is the greatest predictor of Trump support.
1/N
There's a statistical lie that the US tells itself:
"Poor white people are more racist than rich white people!"
This is objectively, demonstrably, false. It's been shown over and over. But we still cling to it. We use lies like: "college educated white people are less likely to vote GOP!"
First of all there's not a 1:1 correlation between racism and GOP. Second, business owners are richer than employees, and most US business owners *didn't* go to college.
2/N
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io1. The most accurate indicator of Trump support, is racism. The 2nd most accurate, is sexism. Not "economic anxiety." The only anxiety that they have, is that Black people might have some money.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112509146141942999
2. Most Trump voters, were not working class.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109876824739991841
3. Most Jan 6 participants, were rich.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109880485930219870
4. Venture Capital, is the most racist part of the US financial/capital allocation system, by far.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109982115166606787
3/N
Most of the *people* in Silicon Valley, vote Dem.
But most of the *money* in Silicon Valley, votes GOP.
Some of these VCs sit around in online chat rooms with alt-right reactionaries and real life nazis. Some of them hold little public meetings, where they talk about ending democracy and great replacement theory. Some of them write books on why diversity is bad, and should be avoided. Most of them cheer on Elon's anti-woke, fashy push.
And y''all are surprised that they support Trump?
4/N
When you hear "college educated white folk," picture:
* A barista at a Starbucks in Portland
* Pam and Jim from The Office
* Military officers
* Teachers
None of these people are making bank.
They're slightly pro-Trump or pro-Biden, depending on the region.
When you hear "non college educated white folk," picture:
* Tech startup founders that drop out of college
* Trades business owners (plumber, electrician, etc)
* 70% of real estate agents
* 77% of sheriffs
Rich. Very Trumpy, everywhere.
Shout out to all the people just now learning that a US Sheriff, whose job is statistically safer than being a gardener, carpenter, or taxi driver, and that barely graduated high school, and whose job is mainly harassing and beating unarmed Black and Brown people... gets paid between 3X and 6X the salary of an active duty Navy Seal with 2 Masters degrees, on deployment in an active war zone.
6X. Not a typo.
Many of those sheriffs took time off of work to go act out at Jan 6. No SEALs did.
@mekkaokereke
In the old days we would put our psychopaths in the army.
Now we make them billionaires.
@mekkaokereke I don't suppose this thread is insipired by a certain sheriff from Riverside County, CA, who posted a video from his cruiser (where else do these guys post from?) stating that it was "time we put a felon in the White House"?
@klausfiend Oh, I didn't see that!
But it doesn't surprise me.
@mekkaokereke It just crossed my transom a day or two ago. In uniform, no less. The sheer chutzpah of this jerk could move a mountain.
@klausfiend @mekkaokereke MAGA Jesus and his Parable of The Mustard Seed, eh?
If they want people to show respect for the uniform, they could start with some respect and professionalism themselves.
Seriously, anyone who promotes personal views from the authority of their uniform and cruiser should be booted from the force post-haste.
@DavidM_yeg @mekkaokereke But that's not what they want.
For guys like this, the uniform is a shield from accountability, and a cudgel with which to "share" their opinions forcefully, because at heart they don't _really_ believe in the rule of law, they're social darwinists who see themselves as apex individuals.
@DavidM_yeg @mekkaokereke @klausfiend here in Canada, ( you know, the "nice apartment above the meth lab") the Vancouver Police Department violated a century of staying out of elections, and endorsed the now-ruling party, which overspent its limits by millions. That government raised property taxes by 10% to give more money to the cops. If they don't like a government, the cops now use their taxpayer-funded p.r. department to defeat them. We live in what is functionally a police state. Not much happens here if the police don't think it ought to. So they're all "guys like that" here.
@IveyJanette @mekkaokereke @klausfiend Can't we put him in the Big House instead?
@andytiedye @mekkaokereke @klausfiend Put his ass in the county jail.
@mekkaokereke
The elite co-opted all the main political parties long ago.
I mean, the elites are brazenly running an interference candidate towards Biden, in the form of (white, fash) RFK.
It's 99% class warfare, fundamentally.
But it is also white supremacy.
The best case scenario is we have an elitist, white supremacist, literally genocidal President in the form of Joe Biden. And, I don't know, that sounds "quite bad", especially given we have complete ecological collapse on our doorstep, representing the most important crisis humanity has ever experienced in our 300k years' species history.
Kinda seems like the "bad guys" won, maybe all the way back in the 70s
@Shivviness @mekkaokereke 
Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
@Shivviness @mekkaokereke biden may or may not be all or any of those things, but he nevertheless appointed someone like Deb Haaland
@mekkaokereke I did not realize Sheriffs made so much. I did know military officers make comparatively little.
@heathborders @mekkaokereke google sheriff pay raise for a long list of self dealing in the last two years! Making out quite well
@heathborders @mekkaokereke Here in Minnesota, Ramsey County pays about $170k/year to a sheriff who once livestreamed himself driving past a dead human body in the street.
He also had a side venture where he tried to run a charter school, for which he and a group of his friends would have gotten more public money.
So. Yeah.
(It happens that Bob Fletcher does have a bachelor's degree; but the point here is the pay rate - which is considerably more than the governor of Minnesota gets paid.)
@heathborders @mekkaokereke The current Sheriff of San Bernardino County, Shannon Dicus, made something like $700,000 in 2021. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/san-bernardino-county/shannon-d-dicus/
@mekkaokereke and just to drive the point home, here's a news article from yesterday about a scandal-ridden far-right sheriff endorsing Donald Trump.
https://ktla.com/news/california/its-time-we-put-a-felon-in-the-white-house-california-sheriff-says/
Looks like he has a bachelors degree, but it's from a for-profit online degree mill. I can't tell if that was before or after he joined the Oathkeepers.
@mekkaokereke It seems to me that the institution of "sheriff" is amazingly even *more* rotten than the police.
@mekkaokereke Well, it's because they're the final arbiter of the Constitution in this country!
Or something....
@mekkaokereke I believe most of them are white nationalist
@mekkaokereke Other enactment of privileged white racism can be seen in the movie American Fiction.
Religion also plays a role in propagating our current GOP candidates. Found posted by a pastor on FB:
@mekkaokereke This thread though 
(The Seal/Sheriff stat is crazy)
@mekkaokereke
God damn mic drop post.
@mekkaokereke It is amazing how these doofuses drop out of college, make a jillion dollars by having the right resources in the right place at the right time, and are treated as supergeniuses. Jack Dorsey nearly finished college and yet for some unfathomable reason dropped out. He is an obvious doofus, too. Yet here we are.
@chemoelectric @mekkaokereke I mean when college is seen chiefly as proof of preexisting economic privilege (to not need to go immediately to work and support your family of birth) rather than anything really to do with education, it becomes a natural decision to drop out if you have alternative proof of access to capital, akin to the "MRS degree" (especially white) women were encouraged to seek eighty years ago.
@cwicseolfor @mekkaokereke That would not explain Silicon Valley dudebros. Presumably they dropped out because they personally, as a matter of their own self-worth, did not value sitting in class.
@chemoelectric @mekkaokereke What am I missing? Sure it would. Attending college isn't, for them, a pursuit of education so much as connections, or, in the failure state, a degree, from the right (prestigious) kind of university, to demonstrate that ability to afford nonworking time at significant expense, which is inherently a class signifier (I am deserving of money, because I came from money.) This was fairly reliably true when THAT generation was attending (and dropping out of) school.
@mekkaokereke who would you bet on in a combat situation?
@mekkaokereke Excellent rant. A small epilogue;
People told me that homeless people are drug addicts or crazy or both. I sought out homeless people to see for myself. The unhoused are a *population* with people who are addicts to people who work in office buildings 9 to 5. The VISIBLE and IN YOUR FACE unhoused often have issues, but *most* of the population is just getting along as best they can not bothering anyone. My understanding was flawed by the a subset of that population.
@ChuckMcManis also that homelessness can be an inciting incident to the visible and in your face, with subsequent addictions, rather than vice-versa.
One of the more interesting points I heard about the unhoused was that *all* their bad days were in public as a consequence of their being unhoused. We don’t see most people’s bad days.
To be face to face with a houseless individual who has come in from -20C weather, moaning with pain as their frostbitten hands and feet warm up, unable to find a spot at a shelter except the same one at which they were assaulted the week before, is to be face to face with the realities that make houselessness a cause of addictions as much as the other way around.
@ChuckMcManis @mekkaokereke yep, I have had several family members who dealt with being homeless and the stereotypenus just a stereotype.
If you use meal delivery apps, then you've had food delivered by a homeless person. You ate the food, and it was fine.
You may not have recognized them as homeless, because they were clean, showered, and did not suffer from severe addiction or mental illness.
Bad reaction:
"Ew! Why do they let homeless people deliver food?!"
Human reaction:
"How do we make rent affordable?"
https://www.tiktok.com/@greatestlovejourney2/video/7376597139926879531
https://www.tiktok.com/@thehomemoreproject/video/7174502167162817838
https://www.tiktok.com/@thestephseries/video/7138906643135221038
@ChuckMcManis @mekkaokereke I volunteer with an organization that helps families with children experiencing houselessness, and the vast majority of our client families have at least one adult working full time. Many people see a person with mental health issues (which are often caused by/exacerbated by being unhoused) and/or on drugs (often self-medicating; remember that when cops clear encampments they throw away prescription meds) and assume that's everyone who's unhoused.
@pooserville @mekkaokereke This has been my experience as well. This is one reason I try to remind myself to ignore stereotypes. Listening to their stories of how they went from housed to unhoused also reminds me that "there but for the grace of God ..." many things in my life could have put me on the other side of our conversation.
I suspect that most of the homeless with drug, alcohol or mental health issues needn't have become homeless if they'd had help before they became homeless.
Whatever their problems were, homelessness only made them worse, and with time, intractable.
Pretty much any problem is cheaper and easier to solve earlier than later.
@mekkaokereke Taking time off from law enforcement for a little weekend light treason tells us all we need to know about the feudal landlord we call the sheriff. 
Interesting tidbit for fellow history fans who might not know, it's short for the Reeve of the Shire and ask any historian or fan of sword and sorcery fiction how much anyone will trust the Reeve in a story (i.e. worse than the High Priest or Grand Vizier)
@chriswho @mekkaokereke there's a reason Robin Hood's nemesis was a sheriff.
@mekkaokereke Still love the Sarah Silverman joke.
"Do you know why I pulled you over, ma'am?"
"Because you got straight Ds in high school?"
@mekkaokereke i knew the whole sheriff office thing you have going on the states is rotten to the core, but i didn't know they got that kind of money
@mekkaokereke And anyone who owns a "family business" they inherited from their parents: car dealer, flooring store, collection of McDonald's franchises
@q_aurelius @mekkaokereke They are the sort who inherit the family business and run it into the ground.
@mekkaokereke So archetypally American that apparently level of education anti-correlates with level of wealth.
@mekkaokereke
Is there a digital social avenue to use to help rural Americans to move away from the GOP / Trump?
Asking for me, myself & I.
Thanks
Bill
@OhMrBill @mekkaokereke as someone with family in pro-Trump rural 'Murica, this is a pretty tough nut to crack. Almost any intervention seems doomed to failure. We're talking about folks that have saturated themselves in pro-Trump traditional and social media every waking moment of their lives, continually reinforced through their church and social groups. Any deviation from the party line is an unforgivable sin leading to ostracization. We rightfully criticize China for their social credit system, but they've got nothing on small town and rural America.
@DaveMWilburn @OhMrBill @mekkaokereke small towns... I grew up in one, the social pressure is a real thing. Being different is bad.
@Sablebadger @OhMrBill @mekkaokereke yep, and if anything goes wrong you're basically stuck without any social support network. You can't just reinvent yourself and build a new social network in a small town like you can in a city with more options.
Republicans complain constantly about American cities being full of minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ, etc. Our cities are diverse for many reasons, not the least of which is because Republicans have worked hard to make sure those groups are persecuted and made to feel unwelcome anywhere else.
@DaveMWilburn @OhMrBill @mekkaokereke
There have been small towns like that for centuries. Different flavors of absolutism, but fundamentally the same.