Has any of these people ever met a "businessman"? Their faith in the class might be less armored if they had ever spent eight hours on a conference call with some dummy in charge of an industrial product manufacturer.
Active indifference to / contentment with racism is itself racist! (insert those handclap emoji between letters)
Wow, I am pwned. But the value I was going to add was "no, they haven't, because there's no money in Wisconsin." They voted for Walker and all the rest on the same grounds. Why, why are these people so fascinating to everyone? Is no one fucking capable of getting off the plane in Milwaukee and going to a poor neighborhood and asking people why they did or didn't vote for Hillary, or for anyone? Is it just fucking axiomatic that the only "silent" voices we get to hear in this election are white and right-wing? Not only does the Republican-driven voter suppression effort in Wisconsin prove to be a killer at the polls, but it also makes the voice of idiot rubes in Mosinee (I'm guessing) the voice of Wisconsin by common acclaim? Fuck this shit. It's infuriating, it's counterproductive, and it's pernicious.
I mean, prove me wrong! Show me the leverage we've gained over our political enemies with each round of potted-demographic puffery! Sure, it has done fuck-all for the last two years, but maybe that's just not long enough.
Why, why are these people so fascinating to everyone?
For the love of god, this.
This cat keeps batting around this electrical wiring and electrocuting itself! WE DO NOT YET UNDERSTAND WHY THE CAT WOULD BE SO DUMB, LET'S ANALYZE FOREVER.
I like the part of Wisconsin that puts sausages in mixed drinks. I've never been, but I've heard about it.
Well, one doesn't want to write people off as horrible or stupid. People generally have their reasons, and these people just gave us Donald Trump, and they're unfamiliar to a lot of us, so...interest.
3.1: I think my computer ate my recommendation of this, which has come up before.
6: Fish too, I think. Not live ones.
I think the whole lack of familiarity thing is way way overstated.
9: For ogged talking about himself? Maybe not.
7: I don't think it's a bad thing to post about! I'm just frustrated with their dumbness.
I mean, shit, we go up to Port Wing every year, but the people we hang with there are solid Midwestern liberals, of the kind that used to be all over these parts.
Here's the thing that was really eye-opening to me this morning. Eventually, we got around to discussing specific policies. I asked, "So what are you hoping he accomplishes in the next four years? In what ways do you think he's actually going to make your life better?" And they kind of looked at me. And they said, Well, probably nothing. Presidents don't do anything for people like us.
This is pretty coherent and true. Plus the ways in which Obama benefited them and Trump will make their lives worse are invisible if you're only listening to make-believe news.
I'll admit I've been kind of mesmerized by this genre (though even I'm starting to have enough, and I agree the complicity of the writers is loathsome and that fuck these people is basically the correct stance). Irrationality at this level is kind of fascinating! I would like to know what the necessary and sufficient conditions for it are, and the proportions of the ingredients -- how much of it is racism, how much sheer teevee-based ignorance (I mean, thinking Trump is a good businessman??), how much blissfully pure irresponsibility ('I vote CHANGE'!). None of these articles is actually any help, though -- I reckon extensive trepanning is needed.
13: What's that Yeats poem? "Ireland will be free and you will continue cutting stone" For the most part they are right about their lives not changing.
Self-reliance and independence are usually depicted as definitely virtuous. This group shows that there's such a thing as too much (granting them the benefit of the doubt on self-reliance, I know that their roads are subsidized).
Ideally there would be a way to communicate with them, but it seems that this academic has spent years learning how to speak single sentences to them. Looks like there's a pretty definite self-image that they're deeply invested in, this trait they have in common with lots of other people.
Well, one doesn't want to write people off as horrible or stupid. People generally have their reasons, and these people just gave us Donald Trump, and they're unfamiliar to a lot of us, so...interest.
I was contemplating posting something about all the anthropological pieces about understanding the valid concerns of rural Trump voters.
With all the necessary disclaimers about how I'm the out of touch elitist urban problem and so on, I don't think there's a productive conversation to be had about Trump voters that doesn't split them up into horrible and stupid -- I can be concerned for their real problems, and I can empathize with their emotional states, but I can't, or at least haven't, come up with a plausible thought process based on those problems and leading to voting for Trump that isn't either racist or sexist (horrible) or just idiotic. By 'idiotic', I mean whatever they want out of life (good jobs, mostly) they haven't got any sane reason at all to think that Trump will do that for them.
That doesn't mean giving up on appealing to Trump voters, but I think any discussion of how to appeal to them that treats their thought processes 'respectfully' is doomed to not making any sense at all.
Also, peripherally, this passage from the linked article made me grind my teeth:
There was a lot of focus on the liar thing, seeing her as very dishonest. In this group this morning, they talked a lot about the email stuff. They talked about how sketchy it was that there would be news that came out about all these emails on her private server, and then a few weeks later the news would just kind of evaporate. They saw that as something very fishy going on.
It is maddening -- I have no idea how she could have fought that. Once people are thinking that way about you, literally any mud will stick.
That doesn't mean giving up on appealing to Trump voters, but I think any discussion of how to appeal to them that treats their thought processes 'respectfully' is doomed to not making any sense at all.
There was a recent article on vox about how to have political conversations which build empathy rather than reinforcing disagreements. All of the suggestions make sense, but sound like an enormous amount of emotional work. As the author says, "Actually having these conversations will be incredibly difficult and time-consuming."
This was an interesting comment, however,
More broadly, people need to be shown that people of different races can live and thrive in diverse communities. Trump supporters are clearly worried, as the study I noted earlier found, that white Americans are losing status in the country. But there are plenty of examples -- in big, diverse cities like New York City, for example -- that show they don't have to look at race relations in a zero-sum manner in which white people lose and everyone else wins. The empirical research, after all, shows that more immigration can ultimately lift up the entire country's economy, benefiting everyone.
"There's an unfortunate lack of understanding that interactions across groups can be positive and enrich rather than divide," Godsil said. "That's what people who do live in pretty homogeneous parts of the country just don't know. They've never experienced it."
I also, appreciated the definition an example of "white fragility"
Robin DiAngelo, who studies race at Westfield State University, described this phenomenon as "white fragility" in a groundbreaking 2011 paper:White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium....
DiAngelo offered a telling example, from an anti-racism training session she facilitated:One of the white participants left the session and went back to her desk, upset at receiving (what appeared to the training team as) sensitive and diplomatic feedback on how some of her statements had impacted several people of color in the room. At break, several other white participants approached us (the trainers) and reported that they had talked to the woman at her desk, and she was very upset that her statements had been challenged. They wanted to alert us to the fact that she literally "might be having a heart-attack." Upon questioning from us, they clarified that they meant this literally. These co-workers were sincere in their fear that the young woman might actually physically die as a result of the feedback. Of course, when news of the woman's potentially fatal condition reached the rest of the participant group, all attention was immediately focused back onto her and away from the impact she had had on the people of color.This illustrates just how defensive people can get in the face of accusations of racism: Not only did the woman who faced the criticisms genuinely feel like she was having a heart attack, but the white people around her believed it was totally possible she was. This is the reality of trying to have a conversation about race in America.
Yeah, I'd believe that there's no way to shift those people other than by gently wooing them individually with soothing lute music in the background. But again, that's not respectfully engaging with their thought processes, it's doing what's necessary to keep them from doing damage.
The respectful way to engage with someone who thinks she's having a heart attack because her racial statements were challenged is to dump a pitcher of ice water over her head and tell her to grow up, no one ever died of hurt feelings. Gentle reassurance may be necessary to move forward, but it seems to be necessarily contemptuous.
I'm fine with that if it's what's necessary; I just don't think there's a respectful way to engage with Trump voters that isn't confrontational.
17: just does totally misinformed fall under "stupid"? Because I'm beginning to think that's a hugely underestimated factor. Everyone realizes right wing media is saturated with lies and propoganda, but I think few people who aren't immersed in it realize exactly how pervasive those lies are, or how solidly they block out other information streams for a lot of people. The occasional stories that bubble out to msm don't even begin to scratch the surface.
Eg, my father--who isn't actually stupid--has been genuinely worried for years that Obama wasn't going to step down at the end of his term, because of the constant Fox News stream of reports that he's a secret dictator looking to overthrow our democracy. He also now worries that Clinton--the most corrupt politician ever to run for office in any country in history-- is plotting to have the electoral college throw the election to her (by bribing/threatening electors (killing if necessary)), and then have her army of "brown shirts" (her supporters trained in organized violence) move to silence anyone who protests. Again all of this stuff is constantly being trumpeted in right wing media. A lot of people really believe that there wouldn't be (couldn't be!) so many "experts" on tv/radio saying all this stuff over and over if it weren't true.
Well, one doesn't want to write people off as horrible or stupid.
But that's what you did in your post! "Malevolently indifferent idiots"? And -- look, did you not hear about the right-wing takeover in Wisconsin from your Midwestern liberal friends? Of course you did. Did you think that was some kind of glitch? Were you curious? I admit I was a little bit curious about it. I could cobble together a reading list for you, given time. It's depressing as hell.
According to my cultural duties, I also need to give you shit about driving from the north shore to Port Wing and thereby reenacting the coasts-vs-flyover-states dynamic in miniature. That's almost NY->SF flight time, right, but in a car? Glorious. I've never been up there.
21: Pretty much? I mean, silly might be better than stupid -- it's possible to have a perfectly respectable capacity to reason in other contexts and refuse to use it for whatever reasons. But while I've never been immersed in right-wing propaganda myself, I cannot believe that a person being sensible wouldn't notice at some point that none of the extreme claims ever, you know, pan out in any really checkable way.
23: Oh cute, like a layover at O'Hare.
The truly comic part is that while liberals are terrified of hurting anybody's feefees, including those of the people who've just broken the country, and are all about empathy and understanding and seeing the other side, conservatives -- the object of that concern -- hate all that stuff anyway. They believe in having enemies, and confronting them! They respect anger! In fact if anything could get American conservatives to respect liberals/leftists, it would be the realization that we're as deeply angry at them as they are at us. As it is, they're going to think all this 'understanding' is just Condescension 2.0, and they'll be right. (Well, condescension mixed with opportunistic capitulation.)
In all honesty, rural white areas scare me. Indiana: terrifying.
21: Wouldn't your father at some point realize that, if these left-wing shock troops actually existed, you would certainly be one of them?
Comity on Indiana, although I don't have the heart to shit on anyone else's home state today. Homesickness is now 90% just sickness.
But seriously, if this shit can't get the hipsters who want to move to Detroit to up and do it... I don't even know. I wonder if I can interest my dad in a Milwaukee fixer-upper.
I once had some office help that truly believed Obama was going to suspend elections and make himself dictator or on other occasions, he was the antichrist. After hearing this repeatedly, I said something to the effect that she was nuts and should write down her predictions and we would revisit them in four years. She refused to do so but made the comment and I quote "What is wrong with all you smart educated people that you fall for all of the lies in the liberal media". I couldn't help but laugh and she never understood why I found her statement amusing. She no longer works for me but I am sure she voted for Trump.
One of the Real Housewives of NY just walked by! She probably also voted for Trump didn't she? I'm mentally cursing everyone at this airport.
One thing that's really hit home is how much of a liberal bubble I'm living and consuming media from. I'd assumed that it wasn't that one sided but every place I go people are in a mild to severe panic.
Tomorrow in Canada should be interesting.
31.3 is probably a Googlewhack, but I'm not going to check.
I thought I was in a total bubble, without even any Trumpites on Facebook, but I just remembered my aunt's long-term partner is a Republican and likes to spout off about the original sin of government in healthcare. OTOH, he's a doctor at a prestigious metropolitan hospital, so hopefully of the NeverTrump demographic. I've sent off an email to find just how awkward Thanksgiving will be.
Man, if only there were people who know how to report what's actually going on in the political world, and if those so-called "reporters" had the time to go meet with all these ignorant people who don't know how the president affects their lives. Those "reporters" would need some kind of "medium" to reach those people. I bet they could really do a good job of educating them, but I don't know how they'll find the time to visit those parts of the country.
I'm reminded of the (racist) Sam Kinison sketch where he's watching some lady on TV trying to raise money for the poor emaciated African kids standing behind her and he yells at the TV, "You're right there! You have food! Give it to the starving kids!"
The only set of Trump voters whom I care about are those who voted for Obama or have occasionally (in the last 10 years) voted for other Democrats. Chances are that their reasons for voting for Obama or other Democrats weren't very sound either, but it'd be nice to know them.
person being sensible wouldn't notice at some point that none of the extreme claims ever, you know, pan out in any really checkable way.
But they do pan out! Constantly! If you get all your information from right wing fake news. (Which a lot of people do, because they're convinced the msm is lying to them, because it's full of liberals.)
(I assume I don't need to mention that point is also constantly reinforced in right wing propoganda. Most news is lying to you. They are all democrats trying to control your worldview. Only we tell you the truth.)
This thread is making me hate humanity to a pretty unprecedented degree. Where's my gratitude journal?
If somebody finds it, do you need to add that to the journal?
Yeah, the notion that Trump is going to balance the books does not help convince me that his voters aren't idiots.
26 gets it exactly right.
In general, there's a fecklessness to many Democratic politicians. Why would you trust them to protect you? They won't even take their side in a fight. Get targeted by a ridiculously phony right wing scandal? Democrats will fire you or look the other way as your funding gets cut. Try and enforce the law against right wing organizations? Republicans will haul you in front of Congress and try to imprison you. How many Democrats will come to your defense? Democrats have to demonstrate that they can identify an enemy when it's tearing down society.
And as morbidly curious as I am about the motives of Republicans, don't do this in hopes of changing their votes. Fuck doing a damn thing to appeal to them. Do this because it may be the only way (aside from preternatural charisma) to energize young people and the base.
Malevolently indifferent idiots.
To me, this seems a little harsh. I know a few folx like that, and man, are they idiots. Not as much indifferent, though, as criminally uneducated and alienated from politicized aesthetics. I honestly feel like it might do some good to get troupes of actors and musicians and librarians and painters and dancers out there in the exurbs and rural areas. Not to mention more youth centers and public space for kids in the suburbs. And for kids in the ghetto, fixing the goddamn roof of the barely-maintained hellhole elementary schools would be a great start. Though that belongs to the world of never-will-be.
37: To be fair, those of us in the left wing media have a very similar line. Obviously, there's a meta-understanding there for some of us about critical thinking being applied universally and accurately, but there's a lot of true-believers too.
In general, there's a fecklessness to many Democratic politicians.
I recall there was a Congressman a few years back who was poising himself as the Democrat with balls, who was starting to build a national reputation for taking on Republican bullshit and not being feckless about it. Unfortunately, that Congressman was Anthony Weiner.
Chris Hedges blames the Democrats
I don't know, I looked up the Niemoller last night and started to think about the why of the order.
Y'all just want to bring back the courtiers and corporate whores that look like you and tell you you're pretty. You actually gave the country to fascists for the sake Clinton's self-actualization.
I am not willing to die to make Obama and Clinton (or Keith Ellison) multi-multi-millionaires and that is the only lasting result of the last 20 years of Democratic politics.
"But the elites were aided by a bankrupt liberal class. In presidential election after presidential election, especially after Nader's success in 2000, so-called progressives succumbed to the idiotic mantra of the least worst. Those who should have been the natural allies of third parties and dissident movements abjectly surrendered to the Democratic Party that, like the Republican Party, serves the beast of imperialism and makes war on the poor, the working class and the middle class. The cowardice of the liberal class meant it lost all credibility, much as Bernie Sanders did when he sold his soul to the Clinton campaign. The liberal class proved it would stand and fight for nothing. It mouthed words and ideas it did not truly believe. It bears significant responsibility for the phenomena that created Trump."
You won't fight. You won't protect anyone. Money's too good.
44- I thought you were going with Grayson.
39 made me laugh.
Russell's gratitude journal of all the gratitudes that don't involve themselves is written on a moebius strip.
I liked Grayson. Did he have any scandals, or was he just a buffoon?
After Michele declining, apparently the powers that wanna be are talking about a 2020 ticket of Warren/Winfrey.
Please, as just a slight nod to the left, as just a recognition of solidarity, an expression of intersectionality, can we pretty please not put a fucking billionaire on the ticket?
Just don't get it.
He was portrayed as the wild eyed craaaazy politician of the left equivalent to Bachman, Coulter, etc. because he was willing to call out emeacist assholes in the Tea Party. That equivalence was bullshit but there were some seemingly legit scandals around him- domestic violence accusation from his second wife (he's now on his third) and something about using his committee assignments to recruit clients for his hedge fund business. In other words minor league shit if he were the Republican candidate. Of course the "safe" establishment Dem for FL Senate lost to Marco "I've said 20000 times I'm not running for Senate again" Robot.
Perhaps autocorrect knows what emeacist means instead of racist.
I have been single-handedly battling these pieces on Facebook, but--it's no use. And I think the academics who write them are getting sucked into the media, becoming punditized.
Here's my nuanced analysis: ignorance, fear, hatred. You wanna quibble about the proportions, go ahead...
And I think the academics who write them are getting sucked into the media, becoming punditized.
My suspicion is that the academics who write these pieces don't actually do a whole lot of mixing and mingling at the local Walmart themselves. But maybe that's just me being cranky.
The best businesses are run by people who have no experience in business.
My suspicion is that the academics who write these pieces don't actually do a whole lot of mixing and mingling at the local Walmart themselves. But maybe that's just me being cranky.
I will admit that I was floored a while back by the thread where various academic types were so unfamiliar with Walmart that they were unsure if the customers there were any more diverse than those at Target. I've been to both Walmarts and Targets in both New Mexico and Alaska and I can assure you that at least in those states they are.
What I find fascinating about some of the advice on rhetoric and "empathy" is that it never concludes, after pointing out yet again that bringing facts to the argument won't work, that the strategy you should adopt is one of constant belittlement when your interlocutor start literally spouting off the dumbest fucking bullshit you've ever heard. But I guess they're imagining their ideal interlocutor, not the people who flood every article on fake news with variations on the comment: "you've left out the fakest news of all: you!"
Is it really that difficult to imagine how this group of people might think that a relatively better economic & debt situation might be better for their children & future local community, or that increasing white dispossession might be bad for them?
Are such beliefs irrational?
Is it difficult to imagine a productive conversation with someone who uses the phrase "white dispossession"? Yes, yes it is.
60 gets it exactly right. Hopefully just a driveby.
That's sort of the meta level point.
Sub "loss of political power" if "dispossession" has been deprecated for some reason.
Not a driveby, apparently. "Dispossesion" and "loss of political power" are essentially equivalent in this context. White people like me are experiencing both, and I understand that other white people are upset by that, but I'm not. We never deserved any of the power we had.
Try to be tolerant of those of us who don't keep up with the preferred lingo. I grew up with these people, so it isn't hard for me to imagine them not being in favor of that outcome. Is it actually that difficult to model that thought process though?
You've got a nice story of an intolerant comments section to tell in whatever community you usually comment in. Don't ruin it by keeping this up.
You might be surprised to know I've been intermittently lurking & commenting since pre-Ogged-sodus, but in any case I'm not sure what you think is going on or where the hostility is coming from.
Ok, then, I apologize. But I'll leave it for others to engage.
Well, what do you mean, then? It 100% sounds like you're talking about white people losing their privileged status relative to everyone else. Which, I can understand why some people would object to it, but we have no plans to help reverse it.
I'm a white person. And I am not going to apologize to anyone who thinks we need not apologize; because, best I can make out? we arseh*les just elected Trump.
[To clarify: apology limited to assuming a driveby. Void where prohibited.]
Of course. But it seems to have been phrased as "flyover country, impossible to understand their inscrutable reasoning" which is rather in contrast to "flyover country wants their children to enjoy political & economic power, which the Democratic party is opposed to". The latter is much closer to the underlying decision calculus (even without resort to race, actually).
Interestingly, if you look at a map of trump vote gain vs Romney, it coincides almost exactly with both maps of overdose deaths, and white population loss.
It's inscrutable because of the facts. In 2008 Obama was elected, and was able to expand the welfare state. In 2010, the Democrats lost Congress to the Republicans. Obama tried calling for more stimulus, but was ignored. The Republicans then insisted on economic policies that make white working class voters in flyover country worse off in order to just pass a budget, and endlessly tried to shrink the welfare state. They were rewarded for this by being given complete control of the government. No scrutability is to be found.
Trump won the primary by crushing the free trade / free labor migration wing of the GOP and at least claiming to offer a sustainable economic model, rather than (at best) politically contingent government benefits combined with a loss of political power. The Bush / Ryan faction was decimated in the presidential primaries & you can expect to see the remaining NeverTrump guys primary'd in their districts in 2018 (and Ryan removed from the speakership) if they don't get with the new program.
Regardless of whether you think that a) trump can deliver on his policies, or b) his policies will lead to that substantive outcome, it doesn't seem impossible to understand voting for the guy who at least claims to be playing to win.
Trump will deliver on nothing. He spouted populist rhetoric to get cheers at rallies, but now that he unexpectedly won he will turn over the reins to Pence, Priebus, and Ryan, who will take advantage of the opportunity to kill Medicare, and any other social program they think is within range. Trump may or may not resist. None of this is what Trump voters voted for; Trump may or may not notice or care, but Pence, Priebus, and Ryan absolutely do not. This is what they want to do, and have wanted to do for years, and they are going to do it unless anyone figures out a way to stop them. Changes to trade and immigration policies are mirages that no one, including Trump, will make any effort to implement.
Except for the fact that he's an obvious liar. I mean, I think everybody gets that.
And no one is bringing back factory or mining jobs in the Midwest, especially Trump. Most of those jobs were lost to robots rather than to immigration or trade, and the real story here is corporate greed rather than either of those. Trump's transition process so far is stacked with corporate insiders and offers no hope that he will change anything.
76 to 74.
75.first:You never know. He could prosecute Hillary. He could give her an ambassadorship. Depends on who he talked to last.
Is anyone here in favor of free trade, as it is currently constituted? But it seems clear that the level of misinformation is so high that it resonated by accident, because it fits a general pattern of resentment towards outsiders. It's not an accident that Trump combines anti-free-trade and xenophobia in a package.
The people in flyover states either a) voted for the current status quo, or b) didn't vote to stop it. The economic recovery was so slow because they didn't turn out in 2010, or turned out and voted the wrong way. They did it to themselves.
And I really wish people would just shut the fuck up about the factories and mines, frankly. Those jobs were lost primarily not to trade or immigration but to robots. The US still makes and extracts lots of stuff, but with way fewer people than it used to, which is great for corporate profits but sucks for blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt. The factories are partly in China and Mexico, but mostly right here in the US, in southern states with employer-friendly (and anti-union) labor laws, and much of the work is automated. The coal mines in Appalachia were killed not by environmental regulations but by giant, highly automated strip mines in Wyoming. And now coal is dying anyway, because fracking (also highly automated!) has made natural gas cheaper. Capital follows the money, and the money flows away from labor.
That is certainly plausible, although I think somewhat unlikely.
But just to belabor the point, voters choosing a possibility of sustainability vs candidates who ~ explicitly promised to screw them now or later is hardly inexplicable.
I mean, it seems like the "inexplicably" is driven more on the demand that the supply side. There do exist coherent explanations for voting trump that depend on different value systems rather than bizarre sets of facially untrue facts. "I don't want my children to be minorities in their own country" is exactly such an explanation regardless of whether you or I would personally subscribe to it.
One of the proposals to pay for infrastructure spending is literally a tax break to let multinationals bring their profits into the US. Way to stick it to the Man for shipping our jobs overseas!
None of that "different value system" crap. Trump's President now. The days of political correctness are over, and we can call things for what they are. It's called "bigotry". Yes, Trump supporters voted the way they did out of bigotry.
But, they are also woefully misinformed, which is why they could be fooled by an obvious con artist like Trump.
"I don't want my children to be minorities in their own country" is exactly such an explanation regardless of whether you or I would personally subscribe to it.
Okay, but that's just bigotry, like Walt said. I, personally, am 100% fine with being a minority in my own country. It's still my country, even if it also belongs to other people who are very different from me.
It's also an ahistorical notion of how the US works. The ancestors of Daughters of the American Revolution are now a minority in their own country. And you know, DAR members are doing okay.
Yes, the Democratic Party has been pretty clear that any discussion of immigration other than "wonderful, more please" is bigoted, also immigration is totally anodyne, also god help you when we turn State X sufficiently Hispanic that the GOP never wins an election there again and we can run it like California, also don't you love ethnic food & cheap produce.
Oddly enough this rhetorical strategy did not seem to be effective in the 2016 election, for either flyover whites, or hispanics, at least on the margin.
It's very important to have at least one party speaking out against white ethnic self-interest though, so I'm happy they're taking the stance even if it costs them elections.
Wasn't the 4% thing a Jeb! talking point?
87: Oh, so you're motivated by ethnic resentment. Good to know.
Not sure where you're getting that from. I'm mostly curious about the extent to which the substantive policy goal of punishing white bigotry needs to be expressed in this sort of ineffective rhetoric, vs being a sub rasa policy goal masked by universalism (kind of like the GOP does when they cite MLK to argue against affirmative action).
And it demonstrates the power of misinformation. The actual real world Democratic Party under Obama deported people like crazy, way more than the Bush administration ever did. But the Democratic party considers Hispanic citizens to be citizens, whose votes count just like everyone else, which is the real unforgivable sin.
91: I got it from the actual words you used in 87? I have no alternative sources of information here.
That's a funny interpretation of expressing a desire for the democrats to advocate against white ethnic-based self interest. I would think most here would be more or less on board with that.
There do exist coherent explanations for voting trump that depend on different value systems rather than bizarre sets of facially untrue facts.
This is definitely true. It's just that a lot of those different value systems are despicable. (But at least it's an ethos!)
If you value your own place at the top of the hierarchy more than your actual objective wellbeing, then, yes, you'd vote Trump, because he promised to keep the negroes down, the Mexicans out and the women indoors, and I think it's reasonable to assume that he would do it, or at least would be more likely to do it than Clinton. That doesn't rely on your being delusional or misinformed or irrational; it's a strategy that a reasonable person would choose given the objective facts and that particular set of preferences.
There are excellent empirical reasons for believing whites would be objectively worse off given sufficient immigration levels (sheer labor competition keeping wages low is an easy one). I'm not sure we should be worried about that though since as evidenced by this election they are majority bigots who don't want that to happen.
That's exactly what we mean by being misinformed. The level of immigration you're talking about was simply not on the table.
Anyway, black people, and people living in cities generally, also face wage competition from immigrants. And yet they are somehow immune to the siren song of Trump. Why is that?
What, like the levels of immigration that would drop labor prices for meatpacking, or field work, or fast food service, or motel management, or nursing, or sysadmin work? That's off the table?
People in cities consistently vote more democratic than other areas regardless of candidate and there are books' worth of reasons from migration based selection effects (eg young people moving in & old out) to industry mix (eg lots of govt jobs) to psychological impact of density and so on.
And yet voters in the lowest income categories, who are the only ones who would plausibly face wage competition from immigrants, went heavily for Clinton, because they're not stupid, and know that any possible ill effects from wage competition (which in practice are very small) would be swamped by the other policy differences between them.
Trump didn't win people who lost meatpacking jobs. He won higher income white people.
Also, you know what the change in the undocumented immigrant population has been in the last decade or so? Pretty much zero. Anyone attributing their personal hardships to competition from undocumented immigrants is living in a fantasy world.
This is not complicated.
Who was the commentator (Ezra? Kevin Drum?) who went knocking on doors a few presidental cycles ago? And he found that when he tried to talk about health care or overtime pay or some such, that the residents could not even see that as a political issue. Does anybody recall what I am talking about?
On the other hand, those who make a point of listening to hate speech on their box think stopping Planned Parenthood from spending a massive amount of their government subsidized budget on abortions. By attacking this non-issue, based on lies and nonsense, the lives of women can be made nastry, brutish, and short.
Overarchingly, Trump didn't, and doesn't, have any coherent plan to bring back manufacturing jobs or make anyone's life better. The most he did was say things that he wanted to happen, without any mechanisms for bringing them about, to a much greater extent than conventional politicians do.
It's not inexplicable that anyone should want more high-paying jobs. It is inexplicable that they should believe Trump is going to make that happen.
100. If you confuse Trumpites with facts, they think you're insulting their intelligence, is my guess. Example (sample of 1 and re. Brexit rather than this because this hadn't happened yet): My BiL was waxing lyrical about the prospects of Brexit, and Mrs y mentioned that she knew a guy who was involved in the negotiations to stop Nissan fucking off to Poland and she was looking forward to getting his view of what was really on the table. BiL leaped up and ran out of the house, screaming that he was tired of people calling him stupid because he did his own research. Hasn't picked up the phone since. tl;dr: challenging their world view is interpreted as challenging their human value.
Overarchingly, Trump didn't, and doesn't, have any coherent plan to bring back manufacturing jobs or make anyone's life better.
Trump doesn't seem to have any coherent plans at all. Set aside one's position on cultural and socioeconomic issues, how does he pass the "this guy has the basic competence, knowledge, experience, and temperament to be placed in charge of the free world" test?
Or are competence, knowledge, experience, and temperament an elitist thing?
101: That was Chris Hayes, in the 2004 election, and it was really an illuminative piece. It had never occurred to me before that the problem was actually much worse than a lot of people having the wrong politics; rather there are huge swathes of the US population that do not have any understanding of what politics actually are.
104.1 seems increasingly key. I'm beginning to wonder if they'll end up hiring Obama to keep on running the government while they stomp around the country being gratuitously obnoxious to impress their base.
Piketty. As ever, in favour of good and opposed to evil, but with no concrete suggestions as to how we get from here to there.
I think that's not at all likely to happen and that it would be a real disaster for him and future Democrats if it did.
And I really wish people would just shut the fuck up about the factories
Part of it is automation but offshoring those jobs is still a big factor. Hey look, a liberal think tank noticed.
100: I realize maybe you aren't seeing that competition in lawyering but come on, drive past a construction site or something.
There aren't any more undocumented immigrants in the country now than there were a decade ago. That doesn't mean there are none, it means that undocumented immigrants flooding into the country is a paranoid fantasy.
Low wage competition is a problem? Great, vote for the party with a better record on enforcing labor laws, rather than the party that wants them all off the books, and the man who's made a career of development relying on low-wage labor.
My father's worked in the building trades all his life. I know that any jobsite that isn't union is all undocumented workers. The problem there isn't the undocumented workers.
I'm reliably informed that Obama deported more immigrants than any other president.
110: That party, my party, hasn't been all that great on these issues and we put up a candidate who's had a multi decade love affair with free trade agreements. And the last eight years have offered what, the health care exchange and expanded food stamps? Not much of a sales pitch.
There's also a major revision of the FLSA that forced raises or overtime pay for million of lower level "managers", blocking very extensive cuts to the EITC, a very large stimulus package (much focused on building trades) back when Democrats ran Congress. And I think the health care exchange was a huge advance. Tens of millions of people got covered.
A raised minimum wage for federal contractors should be in there somewhere.
Hasn't been all that great is well deserved. But not recognizing that the Democrats have been much better than the Republicans on labor issues consistently is delusional. As an explanation for being depressed and staying home "Democrats haven't protected workers" is perfectly sane. As an explanation for voting for any Republican, and a million times more as an explanation for voting for Trump, it requires a complete divorce from reality.
Killed bin Laden. Killed Gaddafi. (I wonder if he shouldn't have bragged about that. Instead of everybody acting all angsty about another middle east war that didn't deliver what was promised, he could have just said, "Reagan tried but couldn't kill him. I did, you weak on terrorism fucks.")
Something I haven't seen much discussion of: Clinton outspent Trump by a huge margin, more than 2:1. I'm inclined to see that as positive overall: sheer wealth doesn't ensure victory. Whole article here.
119 I knew there was a silver lining in this massive shitpile somewhere! Thanks, Mossy!
Great. Open racism and Russian operatives can beat money.
120: A pony. That's what you find in shitpiles. Silver linings are for clouds.
Alternative conclusion: no amount of money can save a dumster fire candidate?
The same fact is extra damning for Clinton and the DNC. The extent to which business-as-usual failed is remarkable. Also, from the same chart, what the hell happened with Nixon?
Welcome to our dumster. Notice there's no 'p' in our dumster. Please keep it that way.
125.last: Nixon was riding really high in 1972. He was breaking into Watergate because he was a paranoid asshole and a psychological disaster, but because he needed it order to win.
124: Alternative explanation: No amount of money can put out a dumpster fire when there's so much flammable material around.
If you confuse Trumpites with facts, they think you're insulting their intelligence, is my guess.
The reason they'll get confused is that your "facts" will bear no resemblance to their perceived reality. With no common understanding of facts it is extremely difficult to have a productive conversation--you sense the difficulty when you talk to them, and so do they. No progress will be made.
I was dead serious with 21/36--this misinformation gap is deeper and more important than seems to be appreciated. As one example, if you read msm you know that Trump has staffed his transition team with cronies. If you read Fox News, you think the campaign is busy making good on their promise to "drain the swamp" and get rid of lobbyist influence.
But really I hate to highlight one example like that, because doing so creates the impression the this information gap is limited to the highlighted examples plus maybe other similar misleading stories that could also be individually called out, when in reality the disconnect is far deeper than that. There are whole sets of background assumptions that have been built up over time by story after story after story (on both sides) through which any current story is interpreted. And those background assumptions are just completely at odds with one another.
129: We've gotten to the point where we couldn't even agree about the weather.
I think urple has this right. This is the "Fox News effect" again, right? We're living in different fact universes, which was a deliberate strategy from the right (we were talking about it here a dozen years ago) and they pulled it off, and yup, the effects are as bad as we thought they'd be.
Since this seems to be the designated thread for ill tempered grumbling, I might as well add mine.
Where is the evidence that Trump won by bringing in some exotic new "Trump voter" demographic? Everything I've seen says that the people who voted for Trump are the same core GOP voters who have voted for the republican candidate in every election for the last 30 years. And Trump got fewer of those than milquetoast candidate Romney.
How did "core GOP voters vote for GOP" suddenly become a mystery requiring dozens of think pieces to explain it? What was the expectation here, that the GOP would just conveniently step aside in 2016 and spare everyone the trouble of an election? Why would anyone think that?
The thing is: we don't know if the Democrats are great on the economy or not. They have had a free hand for exactly 4 years out of the last 24.
Because Trump is really different from the run-of-the-mill GOP candidate. I thought (wrongly, but I did) that Trump's actual support was going to be down at the 27% crazification factor, and that the portion of the Republican party that was remotely sane would either switch, go third-party, or at least be so freaked-out and depressed that their turnout would plummet.
I was wrong, but that was my expectation.
The perception of Hillary Clinton is a great example of this. She's obviously the most corrupt person on earth. The fucking US Congress and the FBI have been out to get her for literally decades, and haven't found anything to charge her with. How many of the people you know, let alone anyone rich and powerful, do you think could pass this test?
129: I'm going to stick with calling them silly, though. Their universe has to touch reality at some points, and at those points it does make sense. I mean, dumb stuff like Hillary having people killed -- they can't possibly have a coherent explanation for why the claim is all over the place in the media, but she's never been prosecuted for it. Hillary controls all the law enforcement in the country, but can't have the right wing media killed too?
That last was me, crossing with Ogged, and making the same point, sort of.
136: "Silly" is far too generous.
Hillary controls all the law enforcement in the country, but can't have the right wing media killed too?
The devil has a lot of power, but even his power does have limits.
And I will just make the comment again that the lack of any appreciation of the massive role of misogyny in the framing of this whole fucking election is just tearing me up. Yet I will admit I cannot find a way of constructively injecting it into the discussion.
I hate everybody and everything.
136: what you're missing is that there are answers to all of these questions. If I google "why has Hillary never been prosecuted", these 3 links are among the top 5 results:
http://www.infowars.com/hillary-clinton-will-never-be-prosecuted-for-email-scandal/
But they thought she was a criminal back in the Bush administration. They think she's had people killed. At some point, a sane person would notice that the lack of law enforcement doesn't make any sense.
I mean, for real, a sane person would notice that they had no idea what the problem was related to Benghazi. The email thing makes slightly more sense than Benghazi: thinking that was a huge deal is wrong, but not inexplicably wrong. Benghazi, there's no coherent story of what they think she did that was bad.
136: Yglesias had an article about that -- about how all the Clinton investigations have turned into fishing expeditions - the investigation into Whitewater somehow became a chance to trap Bill into lying about an affair, and the Benghazi probe turned into a probe into Clinton's email security practices. But for people who assume guilt each of these things is yet another scandal that proves how totally corrupt she is.
I get the Alex Jones is the new Goebbels. I think you just have to set up a machine to repeatedly counter everything that comes from him and his repeaters. You won't reach most of the people who read infowars, but you might stop the transmission from them repeating shit to other people.
140: But white women voted for Trump!
The idea that loyalty to race supersedes loyalty to sex, brought back troubling memories of discussions of the OJ verdict.
Quite a lot of my family voted for Trump. Some are alt-right types who don't like Obama and think Clinton is more of the same and love promises to deport all the immigrants. But the rest seem to be a mix of single-issue voters operating with a different set of facts. Obamacare has made everyone's premiums double and no one has better coverage. Clinton is a corrupt liar and the e-mails prove it. If Clinton is elected, we're going to see aborted full-term babies for Prom Dress Reasons (tm.) She's also a horrid bitch who has had people murdered and her husband rapes children. Trump is boorish and loud but surely doesn't mean everything that he says, that's just for show.
And in at least one case, someone cast a vote for Trump thinking he'd be a lousy President, but that Clinton would probably win so it was a safe protest vote.
In Pennsylvania.
Sure, the verdict divided America. But the low-speed chase had brought us all together.
145.1: Right, people deeply embedded in the misogynistic system. But too obvious to even bring up. See also media, mainstream.
shiv observed that if Hillary is really as corrupt as everyone related to me believes, and if she's been that good at covering it up, then she is exactly the bitch we need.
we're going to see aborted full-term babies for Prom Dress Reasons (tm.)
The solution is more crossdressing. If the girls wore tuxes to prom, their babies wouldn't show so often.
she is exactly the bitch we need.
RuPaul made that argument.
And let me just say this: If you're a politician -- not just in Washington but in business and industry, you have to be a politician -- there are a lot of things that you have to do that you're not proud of. There are a lot of compromises you have to make because it means that you can get this other thing over here. And if you think that you can go to fucking Washington and be rainbows and butterflies the whole time, you're living in a fucking fantasy world. So now, having said that, think about what a female has to do with that: All of those compromises, all of that shit, double it by ten. And you get to understand who this woman is and how powerful, persuasive, brilliant, and resilient she is. Any female executive, anybody who has been put to the side -- women, blacks, gays -- for them to succeed in a white-male-dominated culture is an act of brilliance. Of resilience, of grit, of everything you can imagine. So, what do I think of Hillary? I think she's fucking awesome. Is she in bed with Wall Street? Goddammit, I should hope so! You've got to dance with the devil. So which of the horrible people do you want? That's more of the question. Do you want a pompous braggart who doesn't know anything about diplomacy? Or do you want a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done?
131: The Democrats need to figure out a way to destroy this misinformation nexus. Bring back the Fairness Doctrine for radio? I don't know what to do about Fox News. Cruise missile?
142: I'm not saying these stories hold up under close scrutiny. I don't think it's a coincidence that college-educated people are more likely to see through them. I'm just trying to redirect the focus of the idea that these voters are "stupid". In some sense it's true, but what's important is not that they are stupid but that they're misinformed. And the point I'm trying to stress is that they are being deliberately misinformed. And waving that off as "stupid" is not helpful. This is literally a very professional, very well financed, multi-decade propaganda effort aimed at creating a false reality.
153: To go ahead and Godwin the thread, I recall William Shirer writing about how he was surprised when he realized that even he had started to believe some of the Nazi propaganda during the years he lived in Germany.
How did "core GOP voters vote for GOP" suddenly become a mystery requiring dozens of think pieces to explain it?
In part I think the misplaced optimism LB describes, but also I think to avoid confronting the reason you lost: Democrats didn't care enough their own party to vote, against the most alienating possible candidate. Figuring out why that happened, and how to deal with it, demands some very uncomfortable self-examination.
but also I think to avoid confronting the reason you lost: Democrats didn't care enough their own party to vote, against the most alienating possible candidate. Figuring out why that happened, and how to deal with it, demands some very uncomfortable self-examination.
Bingo.
153: Now, here's something that I'm completely unsure about. What's the underlying impetus behind the "very professional, very well financed, multi-decade propaganda effort". I keep on getting the impression that it's not actually fundamentally a political conspiracy, that it's mostly a moneymaking media enterprise -- they've figured out that this system of lies gets them an exploitable audience. I don't know that worrying about this specifically gets me anywhere, but it's weird.
This is literally a very professional, very well financed, multi-decade propaganda effort aimed at creating a false reality.
True, but if you consider this sentence in isolation, it clearly resembles in many ways precisely the kind of paranoid conspiracy theory dear to many on the right. So.
dumster fire candidate
the most alienating possible candidate
Just to be clear, in both cases we're talking about Clinton, rather than Trump? I don't say this very often, but fuck you.
Clinton has (and had) significant problems but I think that concedes too much. To say that the problem was that Clinton was a uniquely poor candidate validates decades of mis-information and reinforces a pattern in which the next candidate that the Democrats nominate will, shockingly, turn out to look uniquely bad after the right starts attacking them.
Again, there's a conversation to be had about Clinton's weaknesses. But, particularly in contrast to Trump, can we agree that Clinton was a mainstream candidate who ran a fairly good campaign?
157/158: I completely agree it developed for ratings and dollars, not as a conscious effort to create a population that can be controlled for political ends.
can we agree that Clinton was a mainstream candidate who ran a fairly good campaign?
We can agree about that, while still noting that the 25 year disinformation campaign about her had an important effect, and maybe we should have understood that to be disqualifying from the outset. Again, I was wrong, I thought the only people who believed that shit were down in the 27% who will believe anything.
can we agree that Clinton was a mainstream candidate who ran a fairly good campaign?
Yes, we can. My criticism went to the party (and its intelligentsia), not only to Clinton herself. My 'uniquely alienating candidate' referred to Trump. My point is, decisive numbers of D voters were indifferent to their party in the face of a fascist clown.
Got it. I misread 155, and agree with it now that I understand it correctly.
So the response to "Hillary is a crook?" is "She hasn't been indicted yet?"
Her friends write the laws. That includes Trump and Bush II, incidentally, pictures of her hugging and laughing it up with them.
Otherwise, why isn't it "There is no way to get that rich except corruption, either personal or systemic, usually both, i.e., take advantage of current bad laws."
Should getting 6-figures from G-S for giving a speech be illegal?
Goldman-Sachs should be illegal.
Am I supposed to give Rowling a break because I-P made her rich? Do we buy all the way into Uncle Miltie marketism and say she deserved it because she wrote populism books? Do we say that as long as the system is as it is, it is morally fine to ignore its victims and get while the getting it good? Do we try the long explanation of why rents are inefficient?
Or just say "Rowling and Clinton are fucking crooks" because maybe, for analogy, keeping your head down in apartheid South Africa might be forgivable, making millions off the apartheid system isn't.
Dean Baker has made his latest book available for free download. Not that I read him.
161 is reflective of what I thought.
At some level, Fox News viewers are deliberately misinforming themselves. I'm trying to understand the impulse. So what's comparable to Fox News? What flatters and inflames my prejudices? Is that what does it?
Let's fight the real enemy: wizards.
Speaking of corruption, this is a fairly minor story about Trump, but not one that I'd seen during the campaign.
And if Trump requests Secret Service protection for [family], he will probably get it. And when Secret Service agents fly alongside a protectee, they use their budget to pay airfare. Which in the case of a flight on the Trump jet would mean paying Trump for the seats on his plane.
...
[D]uring the campaign, [Trump billed] the federal government $6 million for granting Secret Service agents the right to fly on his plane. The reason we know that is because it was a political campaign, so all the financial details were filed with the Federal Election Commission. With the campaign over, however, the plane just becomes part of Trump's opaque web of privately held companies, so the amount of money he is funneling from the federal government into his pocket won't be disclosed on that end.
Man, Bob, normally I manage to drift by your comments without reading them, but I have to admit that "Rowling" drew me. We're worried about J.K. Rowling, who got rich writing children's books and writes editorials about being delighted to pay taxes because the welfare state was there when she needed it, now?
Well done you.
Otoh, I know one Trump voter who says politicians are usually just all words, but this is how Trump "earned" his vote. He just couldn't imagine someone this "impressive" being a bad president. (Obviously this clip is from years ago--not during the campaign--but he has vividly remembered the moment ever since.)
I thought this was a joke at first, but the guy was dead serious.
(For those who can't watch video, that clip is titled "Donald Trump bodyslams, beats and shaves Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania XXIII".)
We can agree about that, while still noting that the 25 year disinformation campaign about her had an important effect, and maybe we should have understood that to be disqualifying from the outset. Again, I was wrong, I thought the only people who believed that shit were down in the 27% who will believe anything.
I was even more naive than you. I thought that the campaign itself would provide a chance to push back against and clear away some of the random innuendo. That it would provide an opportunity for people to re-assess (some people, of course, not everybody, but enough to make a difference). Boy was that wrong.
170: False: While Rowling has indeed spoken in defense of paying taxes and the welfare state, she has never paid a dime of United States income tax.
The propaganda effort is succeeding because it's telling people what the want to hear. The ultimate problem is fucked up values. And stupidity plays a role, definitely.
I get pretty annoyed by claims that Dems haven't delivered much, because this completely ignores the value of blocking the really bad things the Republicans want to do. Including, apparently, destroy life on earth. And lesser things like stop investigating local police shootings, or further restrict voting rights for poor and minority voters.
100
Regardless of your estimation of Pew's ability to sample groups that don't necessarily want to be sampled, or the relative merits of considering their research paper vs doing something like taking a walk, or considering nationwide vs state-by-state flows - looking at the number of totally legal h1b visas granted would be extremely bigoted, since by first principles I know they cannot exist and be competing with US citizens for jobs. It is also impossible there might be problems from, eg, legally plunking a few thousand Somali refugees into, say, St Cloud, since considering problems from immigration is ipso facto bigoted. Mentioning any potential problems is evidence those communities need more exposure to diversity.
175: False: Comment 174 was one of a series of hack comments from the same commenter and not nearly as good as Opinionated Soviet Tank Commander/Lactation Consultant.
177: It would be entirely possible to do all of those things without being bigoted. In fact, people have done so. The issue is that everybody voted for the guy who did it with bigotry.
Hard to re-assess when the media, not just Fox News, goes all in on the disinformation.
What you are really saying is "Since I can't win a political contest without bigotry, I'm going to side with bigotry and somehow delude myself that this makes me anything but a bigot."
I could have used Tom Cruise or anybody, but I like to use examples that a) discomfit my audience, b) show that rapacious capitalism is not completely raced of gendered.
I could have used Epipen that would be popular here.
Boils down to you don't mind assholes getting filthy rich from predatory finance capitalism as long as they are your assholes, people like you.
Had to check Rowling's ideology to see if her billions were just and fair. Right?
People like you.
Welcome to your mirror world. Caliban seeing his reflection.
I could have used Epipen that would be popular here.
I personally would enjoy the thought of you being stung by a series of hornets.
Hard to re-assess when the media, not just Fox News, goes all in on the disinformation.
Yes, that's part of it. But I also feel like this was the first real "Facebook election" and I'm still not quite sure how that played out.
I do hope there's some additional studies/coverage of how social media affected the election (both primaries and general).
(For those who can't watch video, that clip is titled "Donald Trump bodyslams, beats and shaves Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania XXIII".)
I wonder if the sex tape destroys any chance Hulk Hogan has for the Dem nomination in 2020. We could probably convince people that he's the sort of strong leader this country needs.
179 is totally false, it is historically the case that mentioning, eg, Mexico's use of the US border as a social pressure relief valve is agreed to be bigoted. I guess you must mean, "unless followed by the caveat that that's a good thing".
I'm seeing "After Donald Trump, why the fuck not?" as a winning campaign slogan for Hogan.
mentioning, eg, Mexico's use of the US border as a social pressure relief valve is agreed to be bigoted.
We're losing track of the the fact that they aren't? That net immigration from Mexico over recent years is zero?
HB1 visas are a separate issue, but again not one that it makes any sense to expect Republicans to improve on.
And the bullshit about social problems is just that. If you look at Trump's popularity geographically, the people who are terrified of immigration aren't the ones who live near immigrants. In areas where there's actually a significant immigrant population, so where these social problems exist to the extent they do at all, Clinton won.
177: These same voters couldn't be arsed to vote in 2010 when the Republicans set out to prevent the recovery. And yet, by a weird coincidence as soon as a candidate shows up promising to smash non-white people in the mouth, they find a way to vote.
151--so, what if old-school gay men actually have the best practical concept of a woman President? run a diva next time! less techocrat, more Joan Crawford!
Don't fuck with me fellas. This ain't my first time at the rodeo.
177 is a good example of what's going on here: there are people who will simply refuse to be persuaded by any means at all, because, like Socrates' friends, they'll simply refuse to listen. There is literally no evidence you could present to Hurl that would make her change her mind about this. Independent surveys are faulty. Official government figures are lies. She just knows that swarthy immigrants are flooding into the country and will soon be making her children a minority in a country that's rightfully theirs to inherit. Theirs and other white people's.
How about buying Fox? Facebook alone could afford it, and squash most of the viral fake news, if it wanted. And Zuck might have the inclination.
They might not want to sell. How about just finding a bunch of perky blond women and some grumpy older men and having them read less stupid news?
197:That would be amusing. But change it very gradually, so as not to spook anyone. If I were a billionaire, I might buy Fox and try to make all of its acolytes fear Dagon.
Here is a pretty good treatment of the menace of pervasive misinformation. (I will say that the non-MSM variety of this si something I probably underestimated.)
Confusion is an authoritarian tool; life under a strongman means not simply being lied to but being beset by contradiction and uncertainty until the line between truth and falsehood blurs and a kind of exhaustion settles over questions of fact. Politically speaking, precision is freedom. It's telling, in that regard, that Trump supporters, the voters most furiously suspicious of journalism, also proved to be the most receptive audience for fictions that looked journalism-like. Authoritarianism doesn't really want to convince its supporters that their fantasies are true, because truth claims are subject to verification, and thus to the possible discrediting of authority. Authoritarianism wants to convince its supporters that nothing is true, that the whole machinery of truth is an intolerable imposition on their psyches, and thus that they might as well give free rein to their fantasies.
196 is spot on; for instance some more unreasonable voters might take that same Pew report at face value and conclude that there is significant net migration into Pennsylvania even if they simultaneously conclude there is net migration out of California. It's important to tell Pennsylvanians that their concerns about their actual area are bigoted, even if you lose Pennsylvania as a result.
191 is likewise excellent; not just Obama but also Jorge Casraneda (former Mexican foreign minister) and several left-wing academics have voiced similar concerns. However, when a white candidate indicates he might act on those concerns, or worse phrases them in a rhetorically effective way, that's understandably terrifying and needs to be maximally suppressed.
196 is somewhat unfair but . . . Herl could you either make an argument or ask a question? Your last couple of comments feel like they're gesturing in the direction of something but it's unclear what it is.
For example, as you asking, "why do [you, unfogged commenters] find it implausible that anybody would believe [x]?" or are you asking, "why do [you, unfogged commenters] disagree with [x]?" Or are you making an argument, "I, Herl, believe [x] and here is why."
196 was completely fair in light of 201.
Yeah, this is not really addressed to Herl, who looks very clearly to me to be trolling ("Prove me wrong, children. Prove me wrong,") but something everyone should think about, rhetorically, when talking to people they disagree with, is that sarcasm and similar rhetorical indirectness gets not just annoying, but next thing to incomprehensible, once you're talking to someone who doesn't come very close to sharing all of your assumptions.
Herl-- I'm not expecting this to get anywhere with you, but I've been wrong before. If you want to talk productively about this, much less convince anyone here of anything, you're going to have to drop back to simple declarative statements. "I think that voters [someplace] believe [something] and they are reasonable to do so because of [some reason]."
Even many Republican candidates voiced similar concerns without anybody trying to suppress them. If effective rhetoric for the people you are trying to reach requires calling immigrants "rapists", I think you can reasonable assume the definition of "effective" is "effective at reaching bigots."
I will say that I'm having a warm and fuzzy burst of nostalgia from having Herl show up. It's like the Bush administration again! We haven't had a good troll for ages, barring Bob.
And bob has been off his game lately.
can we agree that Clinton was a mainstream candidate who ran a fairly good campaign?
First thing, sure, second thing, no, and you're a moron for even suggesting that, and finally, fuck you, too.
I see that this thread has gotten no less depressing and misanthropy-inducing since I left last night. I was thinking over the hurt feelings/irrationality of conversation theme, and the way people (on all points in the spectrum) like to portray themselves as adults talking to the children who are their political opponents, and wondering if there was any real insight into tactics to be gained from looking more closely at child development. This may or may not have been inspired by conversations with my daughter this morning (not about the election, unless "being able to throw away the existing breakfast and make Mom make you a new, different breakfast" was a major campaign promise I missed).
There's no reason for kids to pay much attention to adults who aren't their parents, and I suppose that's something like the disregard most conservatives give to most meddling liberals. (Whereas, for liberals, it's much more "run away from the scary man yelling at us and see if Mom can find us an alternate route to school.")
This all makes me want to turn conversations with Trump voters into a party game where we see if we can agree on anything at all. "Okay, let's see. Donald Trump is a man." "What's your point?" "Do you agree that he's a man?" "I'm very suspicious of this line of reasoning."
208: Huh? That seems a little uncalled for. Spell out what you're so heated about?
207: cut him some slack. He's displacing like a boss.
204.1: There seem to be a lot of still-in-denial folks who need to learn this lesson.
It's just bizarre to see so many people who seem to genuinely believe that being snarky on twitter should be enough to win elections.
And bob has been off his game lately.
Are you kidding? Turns out bob has been right about everything, all along.
Piece on FB fake news. It points out, correctly, that FB censoring fake news would create a very dangerous precedent, but doesn't offer any answers. I think the conclusion, anyway, is nothing but faith:
But the solution is not the reimposition of gatekeepers done in by the Internet; whatever fixes this problem must spring from the power of the Internet, and the fact that each of us, if we choose, has access to more information and sources of truth than ever before, and more ways to reach out and understand and persuade those with whom we disagree.I think fake news isn't just random stuff, it's a public hazard the same way anti-vaxxers are. But hell if I know how to censor it effectively.
I mean, snarky is great when you're talking to your own people, but when you're trying to make contact outside whatever your personal bubble is, it just gets hard to follow. Simple declarative statements can sound painfully naive, but sometimes it's the only way to make a point.
213: His troll game is off; his Cassandra game has improved markedly.
I'm on board with the notion that Hillary ran a shitty campaign. Like, maybe she should have visited Wisconsin at some point?
My high level point is that trump voters are acting rationally with respect to their policy preferences in light of available, credible evidence. They found a candidate who at least was willing to advocate for those policy preferences and more meta-ly their right to have subjective policy preferences, and supported him over a collection of candidates who did not.
Unfortunately those policy preferences amount to the continuation of their people and culture as the dominant demographic and cultural group in their areas, so we simply have to ruthlessly advocate against them, even if we lose elections. Calling Pennsylvanians bigoted is just too important.
RE: talking to your own people
I wonder if this is something that social media has inadvertently magnified. Social media doesn't allow you to have multiple "faces", so you choose the one that appeals to the most of your followers. This usually means snarky dismissal of those who disagree with you, increasing the level of partisan segregation.
Unfortunately those policy preferences amount to the continuation of their people and culture as the dominant demographic and cultural group in their areas
That is, straighforwardly, bigotry. If people are voting on the basis of bigotry, which I think you're absolutely right, they are, it's not obvious to me what the most effective tactics are for talking them out of it. But it is clear that there's no way to develop effective tactics if we're not talking about what's going on.
210: oh come on, re-read the original comment I was addressing. It was just responding in kind.
215: Sure, circles of people being sarcastic and snarky about there opponents has its place as a morale booster, but it might not be the most healthy activity to go all-in for when you've just lost and election that was (I still believe) eminently winnable. It certainly doesn't facilitate the "uncomfortable self-examination" that was mentioned earlier in this thread.
220
Right. I think there's actually a deontological imperative to make sure they know your preferred outcome is to destroy their cultural / economic / demographic position and make their children strangers in their country. Pretending to accommodate their desire to continue to exist seems to only increase the net amount of bigotry in the country.
153: This is literally a very professional, very well financed, multi-decade propaganda effort aimed at creating a false reality.
I haven't read the thread very fully (kind of downward/forward, and then upward/backward), but this really can't be emphasized enough. The fake news low information voters have been inbibing has reached a fever pitch: it's deeply concerning that Steven Bannon seeks to take Breitbart international.
It's equally concerning that in the absence of actual professionals in either the Trump transition team or its currently constituted advisory team, more and more members of crank think tanks and such are taking center stage. Delightful to hear that Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is transition advisor for environmental appointments, right? (The CEI are a bunch of fucking cranks.)
219: Social media and the spiral of silence.
At any rate, I actually stopped in to speak to this portion of the quotation in the OP:
But at least he's going to balance the books and stop spending money that we don't have.
Now, see, actually he's not going to do that at all. Far, far from it. He's going to explode the deficit. As far as I could see, the Washington Post piece didn't think that notion counted as a case of hoodwinking.
Going back to NickS's Vox article about the unbelievably exhausting conversations, would that even work with some of these folks?
If urple swears to his dad that, in all his leftiness, he's never come across one trained ClintonCorps thug, would his dad think he was lying? I sure hope not. I was arguing with a guy this week about the electoral college (heaven help me) and he just refused to believe my repeated insistence that, had Clinton won with the current scenario, I would be pushing the same line for NPV. In fact, it would've been a blessing since "one person = one vote" wouldn't be a "partisan" issue and something might actually get done. If he thinks I'm lying to his face, why even engage at all?
The bottom line seems that you can disagree with someone's opinion about anything EXCEPT their own emotional reality or lived experience. I'm willing to believe Trump voters when they say how they feel and how they see the world, but that has to earn me a return of the favor. I'm willing to be the only Democrat these folks meet, outside of a Fox News stereotype, to proactively "ruin Thanksgiving" if it will weaken these walls, but it has to make some difference.
(I'm through with "decent" urban/suburban Republicans though who, as LB noted above, did know better and showed who they really are this year.)
220: the question seems to boil down to whether one thinks elected Democrats have been fighting bigotry in the general population too hard/too fast. I.e., you've got to fight it, but you can't get too far in front of your voting population, or you'll just create backlash (and pragmatically, that means more harm than good will result from the fight). Maybe more hearts and minds have to be won over first, before politicians consolidate the gains. LBJ thought he was going to lose the south for a generation, but that was wrong--it's been several generations, and more than just the south was lost.
I don't think this is actually the right way to think about things, but I think that's the argument being advanced.
if urple swears to his dad that, in all his leftiness, he's never come across one trained ClintonCorps thug,
To be clear, the trained thugs my dad thinks Clinton has at her command are more or less the people currently protesting Trump's election. Who he thinks are ready to turn violent as soon as the signal is given.
Considering that Clinton couldn't get many millions of people even to vote, why would anyone think her able to motivate them to, e.g., acquire weapons, travel to Nowheresville, Trumpistan, and start shooting local small business owners?
219: Facebook does have some limited support for posts that can only be seen by subsets of your friends, but it seems like too much of a PITA to set up.
deontological imperative
I've been affiliated with one university or another continuously (shut up June 1996 through January 1997) since 1989 and I've literally never heard anybody use that phrase except ironically.
Putting a more leftist spin on 228 would be something like "you can't fight bigotry in the general population unless you're simultaneously working hard to also make life better for the bigots (alongside everybody else)". You want to fight bigotry in the population in times of a rising tide that is lifting all boats. In good times prejudices recede, and over time disappear, but in times of economic hardship they tend to spring up and grow stronger. When people's lives are getting harder, pushing them to abandon prejudices will just backfire.
Formulated that way, I'm less sure it's wrong.
218: My high level point is that trump voters are acting rationally with respect to their policy preferences in light of available, credible evidence.
No, they're not. As noted in 226, for example, Trump is not going to balance the books. There's plenty of available, credible evidence that he's not going to do so.
But I hadn't read the thread fully enough until now to see that Herl is trolling and/or a troll who has been here before, so perhaps it's silly of me to engage. I see now that his/her first comment here, at 59, already supposed that Trump voters were right to think that said leader would usher in "a relatively better economic & debt situation."
Unfortunately those policy preferences amount to the continuation of their people and culture as the dominant demographic and cultural group in their areas, so we simply have to ruthlessly advocate against them, even if we lose elections. Calling Pennsylvanians bigoted is just too important.
If we're talking about cultural dominance, the one thing this campaign revealed to me is that even though I saw a genetic background, a hometown, a religion, and a language with the bulk of the Trump voters, I'm now part of another group just because I don't think they people coming into the country today should be treated worse than my grandparents.
make their children strangers in their country.
They don't have to be. Mine are right at home where they are.
Anyway, my policy toward Pennsylvanians who voted from Trump to protect their cultural dominance is to tell them to go fuck themselves. They can't even keep the portion of their own kids that score well on the ACT from getting out of the area where they culturally dominate as soon as they turn 18. There's a reason for that and it ain't Mexicans.
Some of it is jobs, of course. But much of it is wanting to get away from the people who voted Trump. The kids of these people are more common where I live than either immigrants or retired mill workers.
should be treated worse than my grandparents.
Who came back when the borders were pretty much open as long as you weren't Asian (assuming they came when mine did). None of that pesky waiting their turn.
234, "acting rationally" does not mean "agrees with you". A decision process whereby they decide to side with the candidate who (even perhaps non credibly!) purports to address the problem rather than the opposite is not insane. Likewise voting on pure cultural affiliation, not insane. If you don't posit that somehow >50% of the country acted *randomly* then there is a decision process there (maybe even one that involves limited information, rational ignorance, etc) and affecting disbelief that this could be the case does not make you better at predicting the future. Although it is effective at building cameraderie.
I don't think anyone here wants to alienate white people from America. Some of my best friends are white people.
Although it is effective at building cameraderie.
You really haven't lurked here long, have you?
"Purports to address the problem rather than the opposite" is also screwy. With respect to any economic plan, they're both rah rah for prosperity and good jobs -- they're both purporting to address the problem. To get down to a level where you can say they're saying the opposite, you have to look at concrete policy proposals, at which point his make no sense.
237: Moby, you failed a Pennsylvanian shibboleth: We mostly use the SAT test here.
239: The white side of my family came very much before any restrictions (just before the Civil War), but the Italian side came at various points in the 1920s.
240: You speak in a very convoluted manner.
A decision process whereby they decide to side with the candidate who (even perhaps non credibly!)
Okay, but you said in 218 that they were acting in light of "in light of available, credible evidence"
If you don't posit that somehow >50% of the country acted *randomly* then there is a decision process there
I hope you're not saying that you believe that over 50% of the country voted for Trump.
245 was me.
Also, I grew up in Nebraska, which is even Trumpier than here.
affecting disbelief that this could be the case does not make you better at predicting the future.
Examples? I'm fairly sure that most of the time that people say, "how could anybody think this" is it mostly a rhetorical flourish. That's different, of course, from saying "anybody who thinks this is wrong" but you're talking about "affecting disbelief."
246, a random vote does not imply a trump vote, therefore far >50% would be necessary.
Rationality is really not a high bar, and I'm not sure why it's a sticking point when it was eminently possible before the fact to predict that at a minimum >40% of the vote share would go trump, & attribute who those core voters would be with pretty high accuracy, & accurately relate their self-described reasoning, & use that reasoning to infer their position on other elections and political positions.
Rationality is really not a high bar
I can see that you believe this.
It's his deontological imperative.
237, it's very important to publicize positions like this & solicit support for it. Take out billboards if you have to, they're actually pretty cheap. Rhetorically condemning people who wish to preserve their children's patrimony is literally the most effective thing we can do to reduce bigotry, since any accommodation of their desires simply plays into the frame of justifying their preference to continue to exist.
You want me to go to Johnstown and buy a billboard telling people to go fuck themselves? They might not like that I go hiking out there.
Sacrifices must be made to dismantle whiteness.
Dismantling whiteness isn't my fight. Defining whiteness as "economically fucked and borderline literate" is offensive to me as a practicing whitey.
it was eminently possible before the fact to predict that at a minimum >40% of the vote share would go trump
Let the record show that I said months ago that Charles Manson would get at least 40% of the vote in a general election if he were either major party's nominee.
"their children's patrimony" is doing a lot of work.
I'm not sure why it's a sticking point when it was eminently possible before the fact to predict that at a minimum >40% of the vote share would go trump, & attribute who those core voters would be with pretty high accuracy, & accurately relate their self-described reasoning, & use that reasoning to infer their position on other elections and political positions.
Again, can you find people arguing that it is a sticking point? LB references the 27% crazification factor, but she wasn't literally predicting that Trump would only get 27% of the vote (and, I'll again mention Holbo's comment that I quoted earlier, "Cognitive dissonance, man. It's a killer." -- I can say for myself that I occasionally thought that Trump, in a fair world, should get only 27% of the vote, but that wasn't a prediction).
to preserve their children's patrimony
Just checking: 'patrimony' here doesn't mean material well-being, it means their right to live in a society without significant other ethnic groups?
256: He's a Californian. I don't think either party would nominate him because California's electoral college votes really aren't competitive.
Today's weird factoid re: nonstop vilification of Hilary Clinton. A postdoc in my lab who is here on a visa from China and is currently applying for a green card was shocked when I told her on election day that I voted for Clinton. Apparently it's the consensus among all her (also mainland Chinese) friends that Hilary Clinton is Satan, or at least hangs out and drinks beer with Satan in her spare time.
How on Earth did that happen? I'm pretty sure she doesn't watch Fox News.
260: Can't rule him out. Trump and Clinton bother from New York that isn't a competitive state.
262: -er. How the hell did that happen?
261: Sinica, a podcast about Chinese current affairs, had a great episode on this. It's important to remember, though, that China is a big country with a lot of opinions.
at least hangs out and drinks beer with Satan in her spare time
Well, that 's actually true. I've had a few beers with the two of them myself. Good times.
264: Right. I'm not concluding that everyone in China hates Clinton. I'm just surprised by the reach of the propaganda machine. This person has no particular interest in US politics as far as I know.
249: a random vote does not imply a trump vote, therefore far >50% would be necessary.
WTF does this mean?
Eh, it seems clear that Herl is most dedicated to validating the fear of certain white folks that they're endangered. I ... honestly don't know what to say about that. Assuring them that they're not doesn't seem quite the right course. Assuring them that they have nothing to fear is obviously not going to do the job. It would appear that Herl is explaining to us that we must bow down to white nationalism. Huh.
Am I getting this wrong?
And bob has been off his game lately.
I'm starting to ration my remaining Colorado pot. Probably out by Christmas.
Now whoever pulls your name out of the hat at Christmas will know what to get you.
Let the record show that I said months ago that Charles Manson would get at least 40% of the vote in a general election if he were either major party's nominee
This I never doubted. However, I thought they would be more vocal about the fact that they were supporting Manson only because he was better than the alternative. That they really didn't agree with him. And I had hoped that once Manson won, his party would stick to that position--"we only supported you because you were better than the alternative, but make no mistake, we know you're a dangerous lunatic and if you try to do anything stupid, we'll oppose you." Maybe that's where we will ultimately end up, but that's not been the message from Ryan or anyone else so far. I know that Republicans are all now worried about pissing off the Mason voters--but huge numbers of Manson voters were themselves only supporting him because they thought he wa better than the alternative. People who actually proudly support Manson are still a minority. Most voters--includes lots who voted for him--think he is unqualified and dangerous.
On the show "Lucifer" they established that Trump is going to hell when he dies. There was no comment on Clinton's eventual destination.
261: Many Chinese-Americans hate affirmative action very much, see it as a D initiative. They write about the US in Chinese.
Separately, Here is a description of PRC Trump supporters
How on Earth did that happen? I'm pretty sure she doesn't watch Fox News.
This is very weird to me. All of the media portrayed Clinton in a falsely negative light.
267, if I'm flipping coins and want to end with >50 heads, you need ~100 coins.
I'm actually arguing the opposite WRT "bowing down to white nationalism". We must make clear that we think any even implicit advocacy of white interests is terrible.
I thought they would be more vocal about the fact that they were supporting Manson only because he was better than the alternative
Did any of the Family members try that defense at the trial? If so, it didn't do them much good.
Their problem is that they went to court instead of running for office. Trying to start a race war as a means to power doesn't work, but it sure gets votes.
270: At this point everyone is still hoping they can get Manson to do what they want. And they all think the way to do that is abject flattery.
My boyfriend and I turned off the news this morning, realizing that we're in for infinity many stories about what Trump said and what that might mean. I just can't. Nothing he said had any meaning that lasted more than a few hours, so why analyze it? What'll he do? Grift and chaos for other people. That's what he does.
Apparently that helps white people.
I suppose Trump can't pardon Manson and bring him into the cabinet, can he? Only the governor of California could issue the pardon. Is that right?
266: I didn't meant to imply you thought everyone felt the same, it's just that my exposure to Chinese opinions on this are just all over the map relative to American ones. They're coming to the same conclusions in different ways--what's good for China may or may not be good for America. So on the pro-Trump/anti-Clinton side, we have:
Pro-Trump:
Trump has made vaguely isolationist noises w/ respect to foreign policy; good for them on Taiwan, South China Sea, etc.
He reinforces the values of the traditional majority/commonfolk
He's dumb and will make America weak
Anti-Hillary:
Sexism with Chinese characteristics
Usual Clintons can't be trusted stuff
Foreign policy hawk
Here's the episode if you want to listen.
If Trump wanted somebody better than Steve Bannon, he could pardon any of the thousands of prisoners in California who are more suited than Bannon.
283: It's not that I didn't expect her and her friends to have opinions about Clinton, given that there's a presidential election going on. It's that I suppose I didn't expect them to have strong opinions about Clinton personally, and for those opinions to be so close to what I would expect from a US citizen who has been stewing in anti-Clinton conspiracy rhetoric for the last 25 years.
That's funny, just because the chance that Trump runs with a maximally anti-China foreign policy are not small.
286. His clear statements about making allies pay for their defence is pro-China about Taiwan. He will happily sell Taiwan to Beijing just as he will sell the Baltics to Russia. For Beijing, Taiwan is much more important than US trade policy.
On 274: We're back to sarcasm, I hope?
I've had minor success with by restating people's positions defending their Trump vote along the following lines: "You voted for Trump because you really wanted to beat Hillary, or restore the Republican party to power after 8 years of Obama (etc.) You weren't voting to deliberately harm minorities... they were just collateral damage from accomplishing what you felt was most important, right?"
I've gotten weak assents to that formulation. I suspect that part of the problem is the belief that Racism is deliberate, personal actions (like calling people names), but not participating or taking advantage of opportunities that are offered due to... "historical circumstances".
I suspect that, per previous conversations here, we need a less charged word for institutional racism--because at "racism" conversation dies. Moving to the new word could be seen as the progression of words for dumb -> retarded -> stupid as each word in turn took on too many bad associations.
286: Honestly, I have no clue what he'll do. Economic protectionism will hurt China, yes. But he also wants to move away from the world's policeman role, giving China a vacuum to occupy. That whole Japan-should-have-nukes thing was about us cutting Japan and South Korea loose (and I've heard he may have anti-Japan views due to his businesses?), not about making them stronger. And he does love autocrats. Who knows!
274: We must make clear that we think any even implicit advocacy of white interests is terrible.
It depends on what you think white interests are, IMO. A lot of stuff that I file under "basic human rights" is regarded as cultural imperialism by many members of other cultures, for example. I'm perfectly happy in that instance to advocate for certain "white interests." In general I have issues with the way liberals approach culture though, so maybe I'm just a racist and lacking self awareness. I should check my closet for a white sheet and hood just in case.
I think just the hood. Unless it has a hole for a head cut in it, white sheets have very poor specificity.
And if you find a hole, double check its size and whether there's another. You might just be a ghost.
287: They think that now, but when Trump pushes China into its first recession since Mao died, they may reconsider.
If you believe what you read, China has been dancing on the edge of that for several years now. Maybe they want a trade war so they can blame whitey.
A lot of stuff that I file under "basic human rights" is regarded as cultural imperialism by many members of other cultures, for example.
A lot of the stuff you file under "basic human rights" is regarded as cultural imperialism by many members of white American culture.
First thing, sure, second thing, no, and you're a moron for even suggesting that, and finally, fuck you, too.
Coming back to this for a second. Here's my questions for people taking the position that (paraphrasing), "the problem was obviously Clinton as a candidate -- once she was nominated it created too big a hole to dig out of."
Clinton won the popular vote by a significant margin (at least 1M, likely close to 2M votes). She did unexpectedly badly in the midwest, but based on my reading of the campaign it would be more accurate to say that Trump was unexpectedly strong in the midwest (he did well there in the primaries) than to say that Clinton was unexpectedly weak. So, what would your expectation be for "generic Democrat vs Donald Trump?"
I feel like there are two ways to think about that question. First that this campaign proved that, in the current state of political polarization, candidates have a relatively small effect on the outcome -- by and large Republicans will vote for the Republican candidate and Democrats will vote for the Democratic candidate, and you're talking about small shifts past that point. The other option is to think that Trump, running against a generic Democrat would have gotten crushed and that the only reason the election was close was that Clinton was so strongly disliked.
Personally, I find the first answer far more plausible than the second. I also find it more depressing, but that's a separate note. But I'd be curious to know why you disagree with that?
Herl, did you bring pastries for the group? It's customary.
296.2: My uneducated guess is that another Democrat who studiously avoided populism to the degree that Clinton did might also have lost.
Well, we're on hour 23 of this week's meeting and I think we've gotten through most of the agenda. Steps going forward? Should we schedule another meeting? Any action items? Remind me, who offered to write up the minutes and circulate them to the rest of the organization?
Also, this is just a nitpicky request, but can you remember to specify who's responsible for following up on each point? Thanks so much.
Finally, I'll be circulating a brief survey to see if people like these marathon group strategy sessions or if there's anything we could do to make them quicker, less frequent, more productive, etc. It should only take 3 days or so to fill out. There are only about 1500 questions, so it won't be like last time. That's all! See you all in a bit! Grab a donut on your way out!
I say this in a spirit of love. And punchiness.
...and you're talking about small shifts past that point.
The Cold Cold Math We'll Need to Survive the Next Twenty Years somebody called Ferrett Steinmetz
bullet points
1) Minority voters are not going to save America.
2) We're going to have to find ways to reach uneducated white voters.
3) We're going to have to find ways to understand the concerns of people who hate us, or get used to losing more.
I used to reference Carl Schmitt, and god knows I am no expert, but Politics is Making a Deal With People Who Want You Dead
No, this is not advice for Schumer. I, along with BLM, want Schumer to resign his power positions and attack Trump at the Inaugural. In the Land of Opportunity, people with advantages will make their deals at the expense of people at the bottom or middle. It is nations and tribes that must make deals, oppositional grassroots have to join against the top. If you allow elites confidence that the trogs won't rise, they will fuck you.
Link found via Archdruid Report
Druid's Bulletpoints
1. The Risk of War.
2. The Obamacare Disaster.
3. Bringing Back Jobs.
4. Punishing the Democratic Party. (Sanders voters, young and idealistic and bitter about DNC corruption)
PS:I know who John McWhorter is, but his essay at Vox is still worth reading on race
295: A lot of the stuff I file under basic human rights is directly at odds with white interests as perceived by the likes of Bannon but at the same time the exact same things (I'm thinking in particular of women's rights, but there's more to it than that) are perceived as white interests by a lot of non-white people.
I guess I'm willing to go along with Herl's suggestion if we define white interests as "white interests as understood by white people as being in opposition to the interests of non-white people."
But of course we don't have twenty years, because the mitigation costs of global warming will hit advanced complex fragile political economies long before the food disappears.
And once capitalism goes into reverse, Americans are not going to put at the top of their agenda.
My advice is: Get moving. A few million African-Americans could turn Mississippi into a Black State.
Consider it solidarity with the global refugees.
Safe Spaces are gone, old indifferent morality is gone, we are all refugees from a conquered and ruined land.
I want some fucking cheap state with pot to move to. Disappointed in Arkansas.
I like to think that "Disappointed in Arkansas" is bob's new handle.
Dear Disappointed,
Nevada is nice.
Sincerely,
Ann Landers
304: We're in the process of implementing medical now, if that'll suffice. The Appalachian portions of the state are cheap. Winters, though.
296
"She did unexpectedly badly in the midwest, but based on my reading of the campaign it would be more accurate to say that Trump was unexpectedly strong in the midwest (he did well there in the primaries) than to say that Clinton was unexpectedly weak."
This is exactly backwards. Turnout for Trump in the key Midwest states was nearly exactly the same as for Romney. You may say that's unexpectedly good for Trump given Democrats' opinion of him versus Romney, I guess. Turnout in those same states for Clinton was ~15% less than for Obama in 2012.
I take away from this discussion that the bubbles must be much more impermeable in America than they are here: I worked with people who might well have voted for Trump in the right context for decades, and they (apart from the actual neo-Nazis) seem perfectly familiar and not at all mysterious. Why all the soul searching?
307: I mentioned this a couple days ago, but I think people missed it: in this quasi-Midwest-but-definitely-key state, Clinton had 60k fewer votes than Obama in 2012 but Trump had 300k more than Romney. Looking for turnout stats, but population growth has been minimal so it really does look like it was more Trump doing better than Clinton doing worse.
I'm not seeing the mystery either.
The election was very close. We don't have to 'win back' huge swaths of blue collar white men to win again. We have to get enough of the folks who voted Obama in 2012 and stayed home in 2016 to come out. Presuming that the bloom will be off the rose of the businessman draining the swamp narrative by 2020 (and maybe even by 2018), this would be doable with a reasonably charismatic Dem following what amounts of Obamism. Left of Obamism, but no so far as to scare too many people off.
308. Unusually segregated americans comment here, maybe? When I lived in Ohio I worked with conservatives, but I basically do not where I am now.
Since a lot of the economic growth has been in big cities, people who relocate for their careers wind up there if they can afford the move. City people doing well are the audience for these pieces of writing. Pittsburghers here don't need much explaining for example.
I'm as segregated as anyone gets, and I know people who plausibly might have voted for Trump (although kudos to my rural FB connections, if they did, they're at least not bragging about it). I don't think that it's total lack of contact with them, it's that they surprised us -- Trump seemed bad enough that he should have turned them off, but he didn't.
A lot of American conservatives were polite about the racism in public, and it was easy to think they meant it.
Back to the earlier point I keep harping on, I assume everyone has seen this or similar stories? Fake news more prominent than real news in the election.
My recent amazement has been how much of the right wing media is now just completely and totally fake. 10-15 years ago it was all real news that was just heavily slanted with conservative spin. Now a huge chunk is just totally fake.
308, 311: Nobody is surprised that Trump types exist, and I assume that, like me, everyone here knows some. The fact that they are so numerous is what threw us off.
I know a fair number of conservative types who disavowed Trump - and that may be where I'm in a bubble. Turns out, there were very few of those -- just the Bushes, the staff of the National Review and the few people that I personally know, apparently.
A lot of American conservatives were polite about the racism in public, and it was easy to think they meant it.
And my guess is that the majority still do, in their own terms. Say there are 120 million American adults who identify as conservative. 5% of them could create a hell of a lot of unpleasantness.
314. People who have always voted R mostly continued to vote R. Is that surprising. The details of Clinton's programme might well have been attractive to them, but who the fuck reads the details of political programmes? As a campaign, the only thing that was offered them was Clinton as not-Trump. If there's one thing harder than proving a negative it's campaigning on one.
Fake news more prominent than real news in the election.
Have you verified that? It would be pretty funny if the report was fake.
309: When I got beyond the inner ring suburbs in October, the density of Trump signs was, literally, horrifying. As I've said (maybe here?), the rural areas I basically get--their world really is kind of shitty, and Trump's the first guy who sounded like he got that in forever, plus, yeah, they're pretty much racists*--but the wealthy exurbs... fuck those assholes. They have not a concern in the world in their McMansion bubbles, but Trump appealed to their prejudices and their desire to stick it to cosmopolitans, and everything wrong with him didn't matter, because voting for him would feel good for a minute or a week, and that was enough.
*I bet they never batted an eyelash at his fantasyworld descriptions of the inner city
Read 317 and moved my cursor to click 'like'. Bed time.
As a campaign, the only thing that was offered them was Clinton as not-Trump. If there's one thing harder than proving a negative it's campaigning on one.
There was a significant attempt to offer more, but nothing got through the media filter (and near the end I think the campaign got all fucked up and just tried to rely too much on the "don;t elect the obnoxious pig man" theme. I will note that times with clear Clinton leads were right after the convention and during the debate period*--times when there was some relatively unfiltered exposure to Clinton.
*Although this did overlap to a larege extent with the "pussy grab" period.
There was a significant attempt to offer more, but nothing got through the media filter
I would add that she was explicitly running on the idea of continuity -- not of doing things exactly the same as Obama but in the same vein and towards similar goals. I think that made sense but it was another reason, along with Clinton's basic temperament, was why she wasn't trying to present herself as the standard-bearer for a new policy world, even if her policy goals were more substantial than many people thought.
318 really deserves more emphasis. It wasn't the WWC that elected Trump, it was them plus all the assholes in the suburbs.
They were already on my list anyway.
Help - a few days ago, a meme showed up all over my facebook feed. For the life of me, I can't find it and I want to use it.
It was a "definition of irony" one, with a bunch of people waving confederate flags, and the caption said "Irony: telling the other side to just get over it, you lost." or something like that. Anyone locate it?
I take it back. I don't feel like engaging with the person who deserves it.
I never got the chance to tell Justice Scalia that I would get over Bush v. Gore exactly 27 years after he gets over Roe v. Wade.
To 320 and others, I'd say that the substantive Clinton agenda was absolutely there, and anyone even remotely interested in the substance of her program could very very easily have learned about it.
I'm sorry that a not in significant number of African-American voters in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina don't think further Republican efforts to restrict voting are sufficient cause to get out and vote now. I don't think pandering to rural white Pennsylvanians and their fantasies of white genocide is a reasonable response to this.
To 320 and others, I'd say that the substantive Clinton agenda was absolutely there, and anyone even remotely interested in the substance of her program could very very easily have learned about it.
I'm sorry that a not in significant number of African-American voters in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina don't think further Republican efforts to restrict voting are sufficient cause to get out and vote now. I don't think pandering to rural white Pennsylvanians and their fantasies of white genocide is a reasonable response to this.
I don't either. I'm thinking of starting a crusade against letting fearful kvetching and lashing out become a defining characteristic of "whiteness." I'd call it "white pride" except I'm too late.
Seriously though, have some fucking self-respect people.
I'm not only a minority in my state but a minority in my own house. And yet somehow I managed not to vote for Trump.
324: I haven't seen the photo but there's are several tweets circulating widely on twitter that are variations of:
"Just accept it, you lost, now get over it" said the person waving a confederate flag
I'm a minority in my state. But not in my own house.
And I'm not a minority in the voter turn-out demographics.
On the one hand, sure, Clinton had a lot of policy proposals that were great for big swaths of the country and would have been a substantial improvement over the status quo.
On the other hand, come on. Voters in general elections are motivated mainly by pithy slogans, vague emotional hunches and the charisma of the candidate, not by white papers and technical policy details. This has been true and well known since forever, and Clinton, who has been in and around big time politics for decades surely knows this.
But she was running against the worst major-party presidential candidate in living memory. That apparently didn't count for shit, which is worrisome.
It doesn't when you're the second-most unpopular one.
Except that the core reason for her being so unpopular is that she's been a prominent D, and therefore a target of the R noise machine, for a long time. Future D nominees are likely to be closer to her level of starting popularity than Obama's.
And there's a difference in kind, not just in degree, between an unpopular mainstream politician and Trump.
She absolutely has been a target for a long time, but it hurts with swing voters, whether it's fair or not. And I think 338.last is a little too pessimistic. It all depends on who the candidate is.
I think we should have a primary next time with an obvious winner who, by prior secret agreement, drops out after the bulk of the attacks have gone at him or her.
But that's the thing: who the candidate is matters less than what people believe he/she is. Hillary Clinton is not not actually devious and corrupt, but reality didn't matter. And Trump was the sort of candidate that a well-functioning system would not let anywhere close to actual power: not just a racist, misogynist jerk, but utterly ignorant, unprepared, and temperamentally unsuited for the job.
Unfortunately the conclusion that follows from that is that we're doomed.
Hillary Clinton is not not actually devious and corrupt ...Of course she is. She is just your crook, sharing bling, just a little, with you.
Simply titled "Us" (that means not me) linked to the comment thread, which I read. If you are going anecdote and personal impressions rather than Big Data, you need hundreds of people-sources. Big problem I have with anthropology and sociology.
1st comment
"I think it is uncomfortable to admit that women are driven by class concerns, and that feminists left the factory and only began hanging out in boardrooms, ivory towers, and school boards. Women who could leave looked to college as their salvation, leaving their mothers and sisters high and dry on the factory floor. Once they left the unions, they didn't look back. If you don't have an advocate who can truly best your oppressor, then you find someone who can. I believe these women found Trump."
Well, fuck, that's by a guy. Not so useful.
Wait, just because the name is "Lars" can I assume it is a guy?
346 is clumsy and offensive
I am thinking of trans men, white, who might be welcomed as sisters to feminists.
Course, not being absolutely comfortable and clear about this makes me Hitler.
No, Bob. That's not what makes you Hitler.
You know who else wasn't made Hitler because of his views on transsexuality?
To 320 and others, I'd say that the substantive Clinton agenda was absolutely there, and anyone even remotely interested in the substance of her program could very very easily have learned about it.
My point, in 321, which isn't something that I've thought about much, is that her campaign was almost the opposite of, "only I can fix this." She had policy proposals but the tone wasn't, "I have a unique visions" it was, "we have a broadly shared vision of what it means to make things better, and I plan to do so."
I think gender/sexism is a big reason why she took that tone -- I don't think it would have been accepted if she'd tried that claim, I also think it was indicative of her personality (and thinking about politics) and that she was steered in that direction by her desire to want to tie herself as closely to Obama as possible. So that tone did not exist in a vacuum. But it does seem unusual in a presidential campaign.
Based on absolutely nothing at all I will believe that Herl is Hector St. Clare until proved otherwise.
That subthread went about how I expected.
Yeah, Hector didn't strike me as the sock-puppeting type. (Actually, the one time he tried posting here, he went away politely once enough people told him he was annoying). I'd believe I've met Herl under another name before, but I'm not specifically placing them.
I'm still upset that "white people" is supposed to mean dumb fucks and that I somehow don't count because liberal or urban or whatever.
I work with my head, not my hands, but I'm only paid for my own labor and not for managing others or living on rents. But it's still not "work" to a bunch of retired shitheels living on Social Security and who take as much of my salary for their Medicare as I spend on my own health insurance.
Anyway, I'm thinking of trying to restart the culture war.
Or just insulting people who voted for Trump.
357. I didn't know it had been paused.
Well then I'm thinking of opening a new front.
353: I do think it's fair to say you called that one.
I am always impressed by LB's patience when engaging suspected trolls (not to detract from anyone else who engaged, I just remember seeing LB do this more than once). There were a couple of moments where I wanted to jump in and say guys, stop feeding it. But I know how it feels to be misunderstood in good-faith online conversations, so giving it a good try is the work of angels for people with the patience to do it.
On the other hand, there comes a point when good faith doesn't matter b/c failure to communicate it spoils the conversation for everyone, best intentions aside. I was and am pretty sure Herl was a deliberate troll, but at this point I wouldn't care if given dispositive evidence to the contrary.
I really wanted to yell at somebody.
WHITEWATER, MONICA
SCHIAVO'S CATATONIC-A
SCALIA, HANGING CHAD
EVER FELT YOU'VE BEEN HAD?
WE DIDN'T START THE CULTURE WAR...
I am always impressed by LB's patience when engaging suspected trolls
Wait, that looked patient? I thought I was being insulting from the outset. I must get ruder.
364: Oh, is this the online dating thread?
One of these days it's finally going to be the underwater sex thread.
I thought I was being insulting from the outset.
Hm, maybe I'm giving you undue credit based on past performance. Maybe I should read back through.... ha ha. Of course I'm not going to do that.
I'll take your word for it.
I actually looked back, and you were right, it took me a while to start saying 'troll'.
But watching Ellickson flay Yglesias, I was most struck by the fact that Yglesias was completely unfazed. Far from being ashamed at his humiliating defeat, Yglesias did not even seem to acknowledge that he was even being defeated or humiliated. He didn't attempt to defend himself. He just... kept talking, as if the numerous arguments that had been made proving him wrong simply didn't exist.
Huh, sounds like Trump.
Studying style more than substance, form over content, the Marxist looks for the material causes of subjective factors finding the base in the superstructure. Persuasion is a technology.
The whole article, about broad assertion pretending to be fact in the service of promoting while disguising ideology is worth reading.
I always look toward Marxism for the promotion of facts over ideology, but a lot of people seem to point out that Marxism's record at predicting the future by looking a material causes is really remarkably shitty.
In general predictin' ain't been doin so well lately.
This was predicted by Marxism.
You thought I was kidding. I was.
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Antonio Gramsci
313: Yeah, I read the same thing, thought it was interesting, and nearly linked to it here in one of the threads about what the "real" problem was. Either as the problem itself, or as part of the post-fact, reality-cynosure media environment thing to blame.
317: Heh, good one. But in case you're serious, yes, I did. It's hard to be sure because Google's ranking would have changed by the time I personally read the news article about the fake news and stuff, but it was indeed up there.
