How Are Americans Expressing Their Economic Anxiety Today?

Subject-verb agreement are the least of your problems

Looks like America is well on the way to being Made Great Again, at least if the number of reports of acts of economic anxiety against minorities and women since the election have anything to do with it. In fact, one might almost think some of these incidents may have had more to do with racism or sexism or homophobia, but it's so hard to tell. There are really far too many incidents to list them all -- RawStory put the count at 87 by Thursday afternoon -- so we'll go with some of the more notorious acts of economic anxiety without attempting to be comprehensive. We have a feeling this won't be our last roundup on this topic.

• Our header image up there comes to us courtesy of WNCNin Durham, North Carolina, where some economically anxious wag celebrated Donald Trump's election early Wednesday by spray-painting "Black lives don’t matter and neither does your vote" on two walls about a quarter mile from each other; one was next to a soul food restaurant called "JC's Kitchen," (the "JC" stands for Jesus Christ, who would say to forgive. WEAK). By Thursday, volunteers in the community had removed both messages, so there's your "Love trumps Hate" portion of the story.

• Also in North Carolina, the "Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan," which had endorsed the election of the president-elect, announced it would hold a "victory parade" somewhere in the state on December 3, although an exact time and location haven't yet been announced, either because the KKK is still working on details, or because the idiot racist fuckers (we can definitely call the KKK racist, no matter how much economic anxiety they may be feeling. We're not restrained by your Political Correctness!) know they'll be out-organized and outnumbered by counter-protesters if they put out the details too far in advance.

• In York, Pennsylvania, three students were suspended after some very pleased-with-themselves young men marched through the halls of York County School of Technology carrying a Trump campaign yard sign and shouting "White Power!" Several students reported the boys had spat in the faces of minority students; one girl said she'd witnessed fights in the cafeteria and white students -- probably out of economic distress -- yelling they would "deport Mexicans back to Mexico and blacks back to Africa." The girl, who is black, said when another student told her she should be sent "back to Africa," she replied she isn't from Africa, which probably makes her the real troublemaker. Dozens of students called their parents to come and take them home early because of the threats and potential violence. Don't worry, though. It was probably all the fault of protesters paid by George Soros to make Trump look bad.

• At Texas State University, fliers appeared around campuscalling for "tar & feather VIGILANTE SQUADS" to be organized, so they can assuage some economic anxieties as vigorously as possible:

  

  The text of the flier includes some hilarious jokes about what real diversity might mean, like dredging the Rio Grande and refilling it as a moat and stocking it with "gators, snakes and piranhas ( DIVERSITY is the number of species of predators in the moat)." and looking forward to all the money to be made on "gladiator spectacles" as "illegal messicans try to rush the wall only to get snatched and eaten" -- adding that such measures are needed since once in the USA, those people "breed like roaches and have no natural predators to cull their numbers." University police are investigating, and the University's Office of Student Diversity warns students who encounter anyone distributing the flier to call 911.

• Hillary Clinton's alma mater, Wellesley College, was treated to a Trump victory party by two young men who visited the campus in a late-model pickup flying a "Trump" flag. The enthusiastic but economically anxious young men in their new pickup shouted "White Power" as they roared around campus and eventually parked in front of a campus center for African-American students, where a student said they jeered at students, and screamed "Trump!" and "Make America Great Again!" When a student asked them to leave, they reportedly spat on her.

  The Boston Globe reports the young men have been expelled by their fraternity at Babson College, a private business school in Wellesley where annual tuition runs $45,120 -- we can see why they felt economically anxious!

• In western New York, a dugout at a privately owned softball field in Wellsville was spray-paintedwith "Make America White Again" and a swastika:

  

  And at Canisius College in Buffalo, a black doll with a noose around its neck was found in an elevator in a freshman dorm:

  

  In a statement to students, faculty, and staff, Canisius President John Hurley promised whoever left the doll would be held responsible and said, "I cannot condemn this act strongly enough [...] This cannot and will not be tolerated on the Canisius campus."

• This image from Maple Grove High School in Maple Grove, Minnesota, was tweeted by a student Thursday; the vandalism reportedly occurred Wednesday:

  

We should be cautious and note that it is quite possible some incidents being reported online may turn out to be hoaxes; already, police in Lafayette, Louisiana, say a woman at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette made up a report of having been assaulted by two men, one wearing a "TRUMP" hat, who she said had stolen her wallet and hijab. The woman admitted during the investigation she had fabricated the story.

Needless to say, like the fake story of the guy who claimed a chain store bakery had written "FAG" on a cake he'd ordered, rightwing mediaare all over the Louisiana story today as "proof" that all reports of hate crimes in the wake of the election are false, which seems improbable -- unless somehow liberal infiltrators convinced those Babson College guys to go to Wellesley so they could be kicked out of their fraternity, and also convinced the boys on video at the high school in York that they should get themselves suspended for walking around yelling "White Power!" Hatred is real enough, as our Deleted Comments queue demonstrates, so we have to wonder what the hell is wrong with people who feel the need to make up a story of being victimized. Please cut that out, mmmkay? Trump is going to be bad enough without people handing his frothing supporters an excuse to declare all hate crimes fake. (But what if they ARE???????) 

Also, several black people assaulted a white guy after a traffic accident in Chicago, yelled he was a Trump supporter, and drove off in his car, which we want to note is terrible and inexcusable. All violence is. This doesn't mean we can simply dismiss the many reports of threats and attacks on minorities with a shrug and "Both sides do it," though of course that's exactly what will happen.

In conclusion, we guess a lot of whites sure are feeling deep economic anxiety, and we should try to understand where they're coming from. Except, of course, for the ones who are going to jail for vandalism or assault.

[ Reuters / RawStory / WNCN / Durham Voice / News & Observer / PennLive / Pennlive again / KVUE / Boston Globe / Common Dreams / HuffPo / Daily Advertiser / WaPo ]