On Hispanics and the election – Linda Chavez in NYT:

‘Democrats are counting on Hispanics to help them win the White House on Nov. 3, but they may be in for a surprise. Though I’ve been a conservative most of my life, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and won’t this year either. But I understand why his brand of populism and appeal to religious voters has struck a chord not just with white voters and evangelicals but also with Hispanics, who will likely make up 13 percent of voters in November.
While a majority of Hispanics routinely vote Democratic, for nearly five decades a sizable minority have consistently voted for the Republican nominee in presidential elections. In 1972, about a third of Mexican-Americans voted for Richard Nixon. In 1984, an estimated 40 percent of Hispanics voted for Ronald Reagan, a level George W. Bush also achieved in his re-election bid in 2004.
In the 2016 campaign, 28 percent of Hispanics voted for Mr. Trump, despite his openly racist language, saying Mexico was sending rapists to the United States. Polls now suggest that he has not just largely maintained his support among Hispanics nationwide; it has actually increased in key states.’

(…)

‘We tend to think of Hispanics as a nonwhite minority group, but many don’t necessarily think of themselves in such terms. What’s more, growing numbers of Hispanics are Protestant or evangelical Christians, a group that, like their non-Hispanic coreligionists, is far more inclined toward Mr. Trump.’

‘Another factor that may help Mr. Trump among some Hispanic voters, especially in Florida, is his continuous effort to portray Democrats as soft on socialism. Slightly more than one-quarter of Florida’s residents are Hispanic, with a plurality who are of Cuban origin but also sizable populations of Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who fled autocratic regimes. When Mr. Trump tells voters that “Joe Biden is just a Trojan horse for socialism,” it raises real fear among those whose families have lived under Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro or Daniel Ortega.

Read the article here.

We might think of the other as a nonwhite minority group, but the other might think differently. How is that for some refreshing news.

And also, religion. If you want to understand the support for the current occupant of the White House economy will bring you only so far, humiliation might play a role, the bible, yes, above all the bible.

God put him there.

Sometimes sinners are prophets.

All things I have heard during my trip through the southwest of the US for a reportage on God in America in the spring of 2018.

Read the Book of Revelation and you will understand certain things in the US much better.

Whether these things are desirable or not – I would say absolutely not – is less interesting and less important as long as long as the power to change the status quo is fairly limited. (Violence will not change the status quo but cement the status quo.)