“Designated Survivor” was the political drama conservatives needed to watch

After three seasons, the Kirkman administration has come to an end.

Late last month, Netflix confirmed the cancellation of Designated Survivor, a political drama starring Kiefer Sutherland as US president Tom Kirkman. The streaming giant had briefly revived the series after it was originally axed by ABC in May 2018.

At the outset, the show’s premise was straightforward, if sensational. When a terrorist attack kills the sitting president and his cabinet, Kirkman—the secretary of Housing and Urban Development—is the highest-ranking government official left alive. In an instant, he is thrust into the nation’s highest office, and drafted to rebuild a country crumbling before his bespectacled eyes.

On ABC, the show’s first season commanded a strong audience—the premiere even set a record with more than 17 million viewers in its first week. But as Variety explains, Designated Survivor dipped from an average of 12.1 million viewers during season one to 8.6 million during season two. (After all, it’s hard to top the first season’s opener: blowing up the US Capitol building.) ABC decided not to renew.

While ABC’s two seasons—43 episodes in total—wove together breathless conspiracy theories ripe for broadcast television, Netflix charted a new course with season three (10 episodes). Ahead of the third season’s release, showrunner Neal Bae said Designated Survivor would become “more cable-oriented,” meaning producers wouldn’t need to worry as much about offending viewers.

“When I pitched these [new] characters to ABC, they kind of looked at me like, ‘Whoa.’ And when I pitched to Netflix, they were like, ‘Oh, tell me more,'” Baer told TVLine. “You can go much further, deeper, darker, edgier, and be more realistic, and that was great for us.”

Though short, Netflix’s season three confronted issues that matter deeply to groups who are often underrepresented on screen. The show introduced Sasha, president Kirkman’s (previously unmentioned) sister-in-law, who is transgender. While Designated Survivor could be accused of making gender identity a spectacle, it did so by mirroring political theater. Sasha’s emergence—and the conservative backlash against her—was jarring, as it was in 2015 when the national spotlight fell on Gavin Grimm, a transgender student barred from using the boys’ bathroom at his high school. By making LGBTQ concerns White House concerns, and directly so, Designated Survivor 2.0 approached social divisions (and biases) with the seriousness they demand.

Throughout season three, the show exhibited a similar sensitivity toward Dontae Evans, a social media strategist on Kirkman’s campaign staff. The relationship (and specifically, a steamy sex scene) between Evans—an HIV-positive, gay black man—and Troy, a Secret Service agent, caught viewers off guard. But as Phillip Zonkel wrote for QVoiceNews, Designated Survivor became one of the first shows “to debunk the misinformation about what it means to be HIV positive and undetectable.”

By paying attention to the LGBTQ community, the show’s third season welcomed differences, and paid homage to human decency. Designated Survivor also acknowledged that many Americans are still wrestling with these issues. Asked by his sister-in-law about accepting her transition, Kirkman admits: “Honestly, I’d have to say that viscerally, I’m still a work in progress.”

Throughout season three, Kirkman’s social agenda demonstrates that what affirms people’s dignity isn’t necessarily politically palatable. In addition to addressing LGBTQ issues and racism, he contends with hot-button issues that include fake news, assisted suicide, opioid addiction, and immigration. In the season’s sixth episode, a Guatemalan family arrives illegally in the US in the hopes of securing a kidney transplant for their young son. The Kirkman administration carefully explores the ramifications of allowing the child medical care. Helping little Mateo is the right thing to do but, as Kirkman notes, allowing the family to remain in the US could signal a broader willingness to help anybody with medical problems who crosses the border.

Ultimately, Designated Survivor‘s greatest success (and perhaps a reason for its cancellation) is that it got too close to real politics. However brief, Netflix’s experiment helped give a voice to marginalized people—often of color—living under the presidency of a white man. In doing so, Designated Survivor nodded to America’s changing electorate, and it served as a powerful reminder that a president should serve all people.

https://qz.com/quartzy/1675121/conservatives-should-watch-netflixs-designated-survivor/

Wealth Distribution in the Pre-Civil War South

Wealth was not well distributed and most whites were poor. Nonetheless, there were minimal class tensions in the South among whites because they were united by racism. One source writes:

The South prospered, but its wealth was very unequally distributed. Upward social mobility did not exist for the millions of slaves who produced a good portion of the nation’s wealth, while poor southern whites envisioned a day when they might rise enough in the world to own slaves of their own. Because of the cotton boom, there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River Valley by 1860 than anywhere else in the United States. However, in that same year, only 3 percent of whites owned more than fifty slaves, and two-thirds of white households in the South did not own any slaves at all. Distribution of wealth in the South became less democratic over time; fewer whites owned slaves in 1860 than in 1840.

At the top of southern white society stood the planter elite, which comprised two groups. In the Upper South, an aristocratic gentry, generation upon generation of whom had grown up with slavery, held a privileged place. In the Deep South, an elite group of slaveholders gained new wealth from cotton. Some members of this group hailed from established families in the eastern states (Virginia and the Carolinas), while others came from humbler backgrounds. South Carolinian Nathaniel Heyward, a wealthy rice planter and member of the aristocratic gentry, came from an established family and sat atop the pyramid of southern slaveholders. He amassed an enormous estate; in 1850, he owned more than eighteen hundred slaves. When he died in 1851, he left an estate worth more than $2 million (approximately $63 million in 2014 dollars).

Wealthy plantation owners like Edward Lloyd came close to forming an American ruling class in the years before the Civil War. They helped shape foreign and domestic policy with one goal in view: to expand the power and reach of the cotton kingdom of the South. Socially, they cultivated a refined manner and believed whites, especially members of their class, should not perform manual labor. Rather, they created an identity for themselves based on a world of leisure in which horse racing and entertainment mattered greatly, and where the enslavement of others was the bedrock of civilization.

Below the wealthy planters were the yeoman farmers, or small landowners. Below yeomen were poor, landless whites, who made up the majority of whites in the South. These landless white men dreamed of owning land and slaves and served as slave overseers, drivers, and traders in the southern economy. In fact, owning land and slaves provided one of the only opportunities for upward social and economic mobility. In the South, living the American dream meant possessing slaves, producing cotton, and owning land.

Despite this unequal distribution of wealth, non-slaveholding whites shared with white planters a common set of values, most notably a belief in white supremacy. Whites, whether rich or poor, were bound together by racism. Slavery defused class tensions among them, because no matter how poor they were, white southerners had race in common with the mighty plantation owners. Non-slaveholders accepted the rule of the planters as defenders of their shared interest in maintaining a racial hierarchy. Significantly, all whites were also bound together by the constant, prevailing fear of slave uprisings.

Because race bound all whites together as members of the master race, non-slaveholding whites took part in civil duties. They served on juries and voted. They also engaged in the daily rounds of maintaining slavery by serving on neighborhood patrols to ensure that slaves did not escape and that rebellions did not occur. The practical consequence of such activities was that the institution of slavery, and its perpetuation, became a source of commonality among different economic and social tiers that otherwise were separated by a gulf of difference.

Southern planters exerted a powerful influence on the federal government. Seven of the first eleven presidents owned slaves, and more than half of the Supreme Court justices who served on the court from its inception to the Civil War came from slaveholding states. However, southern white yeoman farmers generally did not support an active federal government. They were suspicious of the state bank and supported President Jackson’s dismantling of the Second Bank of the United States. They also did not support taxes to create internal improvements such as canals and railroads; to them, government involvement in the economic life of the nation disrupted what they perceived as the natural workings of the economy. They also feared a strong national government might tamper with slavery.

With the rise of democracy during the Jacksonian era in the 1830s, slaveholders worried about the power of the majority. If political power went to a majority that was hostile to slavery, the South—and the honor of white southerners—would be imperiled. White southerners keen on preserving the institution of slavery bristled at what they perceived to be northern attempts to deprive them of their livelihood. Powerful southerners like South Carolinian John C. Calhoun highlighted laws like the Tariff of 1828 as evidence of the North’s desire to destroy the southern economy and, by extension, its culture. Such a tariff, he and others concluded, would disproportionately harm the South, which relied heavily on imports, and benefit the North, which would receive protections for its manufacturing centers. The tariff appeared to open the door for other federal initiatives, including the abolition of slavery. Because of this perceived threat to southern society, Calhoun argued that states could nullify federal laws. This belief illustrated the importance of the states’ rights argument to the southern states. It also showed slaveholders’ willingness to unite against the federal government when they believed it acted unjustly against their interests.

Although slavery is gone, remnants of the old elitist mindset are still common. For example, many people in the South still fear and strongly oppose a strong national government and its defense of civil liberties. They prefer authoritarian autocrats to exert power and shape society. The unequal wealth distribution of the pre-war South looks rather like the wealth distribution of today. Some things just don't seem to change much.

Based on 2010 survey data

Footnote:
Recent research suggests (summarized here) that the standard of living for most whites was higher than previous accounts from some writers who visited the Antebellum South in the 1840s through the pre-war 1860s. One observer wrote in 1863 that “for all practical purposes we may still regard Southern society as consisting of aristocratic planters and ‘white trash’”.

States With No Legal Protections for LGBT: Our National Experiment

The AP reports that another local government employee has been fired after undergoing male to female gender transition. In this case, a local fire chief was fired for and alleged “lack of performance.” The firing occurred about 18 months after the transition was complete and the chief was openly working as a woman.

Twenty-eight U.S. states have no laws to prohibit workplace discrimination against LGBT employees. A few cities and counties offer protection, leaving Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as the only possible source of protection against discrimination for most affected people.

The Supreme Court is considering whether the Civil Rights Act cover sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination complaints. AP comments:

Only 21 states have their own laws prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Wisconsin outlaws discrimination because of sexual orientation but doesn’t protect transgender workers. And fewer than 300 cities and counties have local ordinances protecting LGBT workers, according to an advocacy group.

“If the Supreme Court sides against LGBT employees, it means they have to be really cautious and careful about living their lives openly and proudly,” said Jillian Weiss, a New York attorney who focuses on LGBT discrimination cases. “They may encounter a lot of discrimination, and there may not be anything they can do about it.”

The fired fire chief's life has spiraled down. AP writes:

Mosby said being jobless left her in financial straits. The public humiliation of her firing further strained relationships with her family, already stressed following her transition. “I’ve lost my family, I’ve lost my house,” Mosby said. “Now I’m living with friends that keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach, so I’m not having to live in my car. It’s been utterly devastating.”

INSIDE THE MINDS OF HARDCORE TRUMP SUPPORTERS

New research finds the president's earliest and strongest followers embody a particularly belligerent strain of authoritarian thinking.

https://psmag.com/news/inside-the-minds-of-hardcore-trump-supporters

Given the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, and the ill-defined phenomenon known as Trumpism, it's vital that we understand the psychology that attracted Americans to the real estate mogul in the first place. Research suggests such voters are driven by a combination of racial resentment and authoritarianism.

Sociologist David Norman Smith cited both in a just-published paper, in which he argues hardcore Trump supporters "target minorities and women" and "favor domineering and intolerant leaders who are uninhibited about their biases."

And yet, there's something puzzling about that equation. If authoritarians, by definition, revere authority, why would they support an anti-establishment candidate like Trump? And why are they OK with his administration slandering bedrock American institutions as the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

A second recently published study provides an answer: There are different strains of authoritarian thinking. And support for Trump is associated with what is arguably the most toxic type: authoritarian aggression.

The study suggests the bulk of his supporters, at least in the Republican primaries, were not old-fashioned conservatives who preach obedience and respect for authority. Rather, they were people who take a belligerent, combative approach toward people they find threatening.

The notion that there are different types of authoritarians was proposed in the 1980s by University of Manitoba psychologist Robert Altemeyer, and refined in 2010 by a research team led by John Duckitt of the University of Auckland. In the journal Political Psychology, that team defined right-wing authoritarianism as "a set of three related ideological attitude dimensions."

They are:

• "Conventionalism," a.k.a. "traditionalism," which is defined as "favoring traditional, old-fashioned social norms, values, and morality."
• Authoritarian submission," defined as "favoring uncritical, respectful, obedient, submissive support for existing authorities and institutions."
• "Authoritarian aggression," defined as "favoring the use of strict, tough, harsh, punitive, coercive social control."

Duckitt and his colleagues created a survey designed to measure each of these three facets. It was measured by participants' responses to statements such as "The old-fashioned ways, and old-fashioned values, still show the best way to live" (traditionalism); "Our country would be great if we show respect for authority and obey our leaders" (submission); and "The way things are going in this country, it's going to take a lot of 'strong medicine' to straighten out the troublemakers, criminals, and perverts" (aggression).

A research team led by psychologist Steven Ludeke of the University of Southern Denmark used those scales to try to tease out why some studies link Trump support to authoritarianism, while others do not.

It discovered the problem with the latter is they tend to either heavily or exclusively focus on the "submission" dimension, which has traditionally been studied in the context of child-rearing (as in, "Do you expect your children to unquestioningly obey their elders?").

As it turns out, that's the facet of authoritarianism that has the least to do with support for Trump.

Ludeke's study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, featured 1,444 participants recruited online in April of 2016. They responded to 18 authoritarianism-focused statements—six for each facet—and indicated who, among the presidential candidates remaining in the race at that point, they supported.

"Consistent with Trump's representation of the world as a dangerous place requiring harsh treatment of deviant minorities," they write, "Trump supporters were high on authoritarian aggression."

Strong support for conventionalism/traditionalism was also linked to support for Trump, but high scores on the submission category—that is, respect for authority, and obedience to superiors—was not.

Smith's analysis of data from the American National Election Study reaches a similar conclusion. He reports "enthusiastic Trump voters are also enthusiastic about domineering leaders, and that they are not especially enthusiastic about respectful children."

Authoritarianism in the Trump era "is not the wish to follow any and every authority but, rather, the wish to support a strong and determined authority who will 'crush evil and take us back to our true path,'" Smith and his co-author, Eric Hanley, conclude.

Participants in Ludeke's study also completed surveys measuring Social Dominance Orientation—the belief that one group has the right to dominate others. Replicating previous research, they found this philosophy, which often accompanies authoritarianism, correlated with support for Trump.

So the very things a majority of Americans find disconcerting, if not disqualifying, about Trump—his need to dominate, his thinly veiled white supremacism, and his blunt, bullying language—is precisely what appeals to his hardcore fans. They are very likely stand to by their man, whatever scandals might emerge.

That said, these results suggest Democrats have a decent chance of peeling away a different slice of the Republican-leaning electorate—if they can defend liberal policies while embodying a more traditional respect for authority. Those "submission"-oriented voters don't have a natural affinity for Trump. They may prefer candidates who embody a traditional sense of dignity—people they can feel comfortable looking up to.

That possibility aside, the picture painted in both of these studies is pretty bleak from a progressive perspective. Smith's paper, the lead article in the March 2018 issue of Critical Sociology, concludes this way:

Most Trump voters cast their ballots for him with their eyes open, not despite his prejudices but because of them. Their partisanship, whether positive (toward Trump and the Republicans) or negative (against Clinton and the Democrats), is intense. This partisanship is anchored in anger and resentment among mild as well as strong Trump voters.

Anger, not fear, was the emotional key to the Tea Party, and that seems to be true for Trumpism as well. If so, the challenge for progressives is greater than many people have imagined. Hostility to minorities and women cannot be wished away; nor can the wish for domineering leaders.

BY

 TOM JACOBS

Tom Jacobs is a senior staff writer at Pacific Standard, where he specializes in social science, culture, and learning. He is a veteran journalist and former staff writer for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press.

The President's False & Misleading Claim Count: 13,435

The Washington Post fact checker keeps track of the president’s false and misleading claims. As of October 9, day 993 in office, the president has made 13,435 false and misleading claims to the public. Some are lies (intentional deceit) and some are BS (complete non-concern for truth), but all are false or misleading. WaPo comments:

“As of Oct. 9, his 993rd day in office, he had made 13,435 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of almost 22 claims a day since our last update 65 days ago. 

One big reason for the uptick: The uproar over Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25 — in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival — and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. We’ve added a new category of claims, Ukraine probe, and in just a few weeks it has topped 250 entries.”

Normalized sleaze

At least for people who support the president, lies and BS are now fully normalized and acceptable when it comes from their own side. So is blatant double standard hypocrisy. Lies and false statements by political opponents are usually exaggerated and then ferociously attacked as evidence of the opponent’s untrustworthiness and immoral or corrupt character. None of that moral indignation and concern for pristine truth applies to the president’s lies and BS.

Most of the president’s supporters dismiss fact checkers as not believable, so information like this is ignored. On occasional instances when a supporter is exposed to this unpleasant sort of truth it is rejected as lies. For the few who do understand that the president lies chronically and considers truth to be irrelevant, they try but fail to justify the president's immorality by arguing that it’s no big deal and/or Obama lied, HRC lied, etc.

'Biggest Crisis No One Is Talking About': Quarter of Humanity Faces 'Extremely High Water Stress' Intensified by Climate Emergency

"A new generation of solutions is emerging, but nowhere near fast enough."

by

Jessica Corbett, staff writer

WORTH READING:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/06/biggest-crisis-no-one-talking-about-quarter-humanity-faces-extremely-high-water