29 Aug 2016

Ice Cube on Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders

Trump 19 Comments

This interview was posted back in April, but I just saw a clip on Twitter yesterday. Look at Ice Cube–writer and performer on such songs as “F*** tha Police”–discussing Trump and Clinton:

(In case you don’t get the reference, Hillary Clinton in 1996 referred to “superpredators” whom the authorities had to “bring to heel.”)

What’s my point in posting this? Simply this: If your theory of Donald Trump’s support is that “there are more racists in America than I previously realized,” you are wrong. Sure, racists do support Trump, but that doesn’t explain why Trump is so popular.

Or, do you think Bill Kristol and Scott Sumner need to explain to Ice Cube the plight of minorities in America, and how he shouldn’t trust a white man spouting lies?

P.S. Remember kids, I do not like Donald Trump. But when people make asinine, smug criticisms of him–like saying Sean Hannity is the only person in America who supports Trump–then I must speak up. Yes, a Trump Administration would be awful (in an absolute sense), but a lot of the “big guns” opposing him right now don’t understand what it is that his supporters like.

19 Responses to “Ice Cube on Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders”

  1. RL Styne says:

    The problem with the hacks to whom you have to pander with your constant “I don’t like Trump” lines is that they have very little intellectual curiosity. They have such hatred for a candidate that they ignore basic logic (e.g. that libertarians generally don’t support politicians in general, and authoritarian ones like Trump and Hillary in specific) in favor of perpetuating a hysterical narrative.

    Sad really.

  2. Khodge says:

    I do not like hearing liberals talking about how afraid of black men they are (Hillary’s black men in hoodies, as just one example, another I’ve seen floating around the internet is some white guy calling in and asking a black woman on the radio how to get over his fear), thus allowing liberals and the press to generalize their fears to the rest of us. I find black men to be among the nicest people I encounter and I do not cross the road to avoid them. (Seriously, a hoodie is just a comfortable sweatshirt.)

  3. Andrew_FL says:

    My theory is that Republicans are more shallow and racist than I realized, and that’s obviously true.

    But as for Americans in general I don’t really need a theory to explain why Trump can’t seem to poll above 40% even with a Big Fat R after his name, do I?

    • Andrew_FL says:

      To clarify, the fallacy in your argument Bob is that Trump is *not* popular so racism doesn’t need to be used to explain a level of popularity which does not exist.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        Give me a break Andrew. If the same number of people who currently support Trump, decided next week to become anarcho-capitalists, you don’t think I could jump for joy at its newfound popularity? Or would you say, “It’s not popular Bob, what are you talking about?”

        • Andrew_FL says:

          Popular is relative. He’s got a Big Fat R after his name, which is good for a solid floor of ~36%. He’s not far above that in the polls.

          But yes, I expect you would jump for joy if an actual Anarcho-capitalist were polling at just under 40%

          • Bob Murphy says:

            *sigh* Andrew, your argument would make sense if the Republican nominee were determined by a national lottery. But Trump beat out the other contenders. He got more primary votes than any Republican in history (see my twitter link). Now there is some nuance to that factoid, but it’s still true.

            There are a sizable group of people who LIKE TRUMP, not because he’s the Republican nominee. In fact, there are a bunch of establishment Republicans who are flipping out that he’s the Republican nominee.

            If you’re just quibbling over whether it’s a lot or a little, fine, I don’t care. But there is definitely a phenomenon here. It wouldn’t make sense for people to keep warning about the next Hitler, for someone who had no public support.

            • Andrew_FL says:

              “But Trump beat out the other contenders. He got more primary votes than any Republican in history”

              He got he lowest percentage of the overall, total primary vote of any Republican candidate to win the nomination since Nationwide Primary-caucus system started in 1976 (For Republicans). Lower even than John McCain, who previously held the record. If you were to adjust for trend growth in primary voting, he’d be ranked for vote total just above Dole. His vote total from the primary amounts to just under 11% of the total *2012* electorate.

              People who *like* Trump represent a *minority* of America’s *smaller* political party. His level of support is not some huge phenomenon we need to explain or grapple with.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Right, I didn’t say that he did. (However the tweet I saw about this video, erroneously said he had endorsed Trump.) But in the video he says, “That’s his appeal to me,” or something like that, which is why I wrote the post as I did.

  4. Adrian Gabriel says:

    Dr Murphy, I’m not sure the majority of his supporters believe what Ice Cube does, seeing as though Ice Cube is one of a very few number of minorities that are supporting him.

    What do you believe about the NY Times video that recorded first hand the racial slurs of many of his other supporters? If you were to watch that video would you say the same thing as you did about viewing this Ice Cube video? I know you don’t like Trump, and will not vote, this is why I admire you. Yet as a minority myself I get a bit irked at how some of us ancaps such as Rockwell and Block, try to play off the fact that Trump’s discourse riles up racial tensions in the US, and compromise on his lies about bringing the troops home.

    I am completely on the side of Ron Paul, as he was the one that was warning America about his authoritarianism from the beginning. Ron Paul is a good Christian man and it seems he is sticking to his guns on this one. He does not like Trump at all, nor will he defend him from the mainstream media’s animosity toward him.

    Have you seen that NY Times video? I know it is part of the mainstream media, yet I get the sense that many of his followers are on his side due to reasons of national hatred, not necessarily national pride. He would be very dangerous for America because of the language he uses and the reasons he describes America is falling apart. He is pointing the finger at the wrong culprits. It is very bad economics, regardless of his promises about bringing troops home or lowering taxes. We are witnessing what we saw in 2008 with the Democrats. Complete naive over-optimism.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      I didn’t see the video Adrian. I fully admit that if you’re a racist you will almost certainly prefer Trump to Clinton (unless you’re a racist against whites). But that’s not the same as saying Trump won the GOP nomination because America (or the GOP) is chock full of racists.

      • Andrew_FL says:

        This makes me think I should clarify my position again: I don’t think Trump proves there are way more racists in America than I thought. His level of support is completely consistent with ~5% of Americans being white supremacists, which is a number I wouldn’t have found ridiculous before Trump. What caught me off guard is the percentage of the white supremacists active in Republican primary politics.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Andrew_FL wrote:

          What caught me off guard is the percentage of the white supremacists active in Republican primary politics.

          OK, but you know better now, because you have actually documented just how many white supremacists are involved? Or, since Trump won the nomination, the only explanation is that there were white supremacists running the GOP–since the only way a person could support Trump is to be a white supremacist?

          • Andrew_FL says:

            On the contrary all that is necessary to win the Republican nomination is an early plurality of the vote, and given that my previous assumption was that the participation by white supremacists in Republican primaries was negligible, I don’t actually need to know how many it is to know it’s significantly more than I thought it was.

            Let me be clear here. 90% of people supporting Donald Trump are people who would vote for a trained monkey for President over Hillary Clinton, if the trained monkey had the sanction of the Republican party. They’re not racists. But they’re more shallow than I thought, which I also said.

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Andrew_FL wrote:

              On the contrary all that is necessary to win the Republican nomination is an early plurality of the vote, and given that my previous assumption was that the participation by white supremacists in Republican primaries was negligible, I don’t actually need to know how many it is to know it’s significantly more than I thought it was.

              OK. The only way I can make sense of the above, is if you think only white supremacists really like Donald Trump. Yet you keep saying that’s NOT what you mean.

              E.g. why aren’t you saying, “Before, I thought a negligible number of Republican primary voters lumped smug neocons in with the liberal establishment, but now that Trump won the nomination I realize it’s significantly more than I thought it was.” ?

              Yet that’s not what you’re saying. You keep saying Trump’s success is causing you to update your estimate of white supremacists in America, and I’m asking why. The fact that Ice Cube said nice things about Trump, while trashing Clinton and Sanders, seems to bounce off of you.

              • Andrew_FL says:

                Okay I see what the sticking point is. The fact that he won the nomination is not *the* piece of information which forced me to update my estimate of the number of white supremacists *active in Republican primary politics*-to be clear my estimate of the number of white supremacists in the entire population is basically unchanged-rather, the piece of information that has made me aware of this is the vocal, prominent support I see from white supremacists for Trump. Comments sections at ostensibly right wing websites and blogs that have basically become the Stormfront forums, people tweeting parentheses at Jews and cartoons and memes of their political enemies being sent to the gas chamber, the fact that David Duke suddenly thinks he’s relevant again-or that he ever was!-the fact that prominent “conservative” commentators openly embraced conspiracy theories about their birth right citizenship of two thoroughly mainstream right wing conservatives…And it’s not just that these things exist, but that they’ve entered the mainstream, that the people doing and saying these things are not ashamed or afraid to do them at all. These are what made me update my priors on white supremacists prominence in Republican primary politics.

                My updating of priors on the shallowness of the entire GOP electorate is something I updated on the basis of the fact that Trump did as well as he did in the primary, and that, at that point, 85% of the Republican party rallied around him-which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                OK Andrew_FL, I at least get what you’re saying now, thanks.

Leave a Reply to Bob Murphy

Cancel Reply