Is the "read more" screwing up for everyone? I have no idea how to fix that. They don't show you the cut-html on the back end - it's a separate text box.
It turns out that they didn't like having the blockquote tag straddle the two text boxes. All better.
Remember, for every article about the rural Trump yokel, you must have two about the utterly amoral suburban white-flight Trump voter despicable shithead.
I just want to highlight this and how much I wish that story would appear more often.
Also, I always read "Kliff" as "Kiff". I blame Futurama.
I always insert "violently" when facebook notifications tells me that someone reacted to my status.
Whenever I read "hung parliament", I think of the Blazing Saddles "They said you was hung"/"They was right" exchange.
"So I guess maybe I didn't put enough thought into what I would expect from a health care act."
Indeed, you fucking halfwit. You goddamn dim-witted nematode. Fuck you and your ignorance and tribalism.
3: I don't disagree with this, I wish that story were written more often as well. But "well-off white people are greedy and vote to screw people who are poor or different, and also their religion is shit" is not a very interesting story. There is no mystery about their voting behavior. The poor rural Trump voter gets all the attention not because they are the only Trump voters but because they are voting so demonstrably against their own very real economic interests. So reporters try to understand why.
"Well-off white people are greedy" isn't new. "Well-off white people were completely willing to undermine the domestic and global political order in which their prosperity is rooted in order to avoid having to pay for health insurance for poorer people" is new.
The local highway is named after him, and so is the water park.
This is bullshit. When I am in Congress, I am going to introduce the "No Federal Funds For Projects Named After Anyone Who Isn't Dead Yet Act." Unfortunately, I'm sure every other member of Congress will oppose.
Half a paragraph in and I'm clicking away to make this comment and then check whether it's true there were no protests in that region. I'm pretty sure some people from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth up here had gone down to support local actions in the southeast just based on what I saw on fb, but maybe I'm confused.
I also really hate the idea that it's wrong to vote against your own economic interests and it bothers me that it gets thrown around every time this comes up. I want everyone to do that to some extent and the rich to do it a hell of a lot
Is that water park as in slides and things or as in a nature park with a lake and gardens? If the former, why on earth has it got a politician's name on it at all?
I also have had the passing thought that I'd put up a lot of bullshit if I had a Democratic congress mostly pushing bills I like.
That's not really what they're describing, though. It's more an open endorsement of pork-barrel politics - screw the country as long as we get ours.
The rich aren't even being asked to vote against their economic interests. The white middle and upper middle class is the prime beneficiary of the current political order (or was, of the recently past order). This is especially true for the older white people who were able to get a start at wealth accumulation before China decided to try capitalism and OPEC decided to see how much oil was really worth. Free trade provides cheap consumer goods they (we) need while not much impacting the types of jobs that require advanced education, NATO keeps wars small enough that their sons don't have to worry about being drafted, 70 years of wide-spread stability have allowed nearly continuous capital accumulation, etc. It's one thing for somebody trying to keep health insurance when WalMart won't give them more than 30 hours a week to not understand Obamacare. It's a whole deeper level of delusion for somebody sitting in a half-million dollar house on five acres while still feeling oppressed.
They felt like they had picked a side, and now they were going to stick with it
"Victory or Death - Probably Both!"
8: No, they don't get stories because for some goddamned reason we have to pretend that they don't exist. Options for articles are: entitled millennial who is doing horrible things like making bacon and eggs for breakfast instead of eating Frosted Flakes like God intended, or rural yokel who hasn't had prospects but would if it were suddenly 1960 and the coal industry came back.
It's killing me this year, because of my familiarity with some of the exurb/suburbs that went for Trump, and amoral-but-what-about-aborting -Vince-Foster's-pizza-parlor-emails-and-that-black-Obama is what it's about. But if we write a story about southwestern PA, make sure it's about the small percentage of people who didn't notice that the steel industry crashed nearly 40 years ago (to be fair this includes the President who doesn't realize he lost Pittsburgh.)
Yes. I want to stab people over that.
The coal stuff is even worse. That died as a source of mass employment well before the steel industry. And the competition from (completely untaxed while we had a Republican governor) fracked natural gas was what caused the additional collapse during recent years.
"Well-off white people were completely willing to undermine the domestic and global political order in which their prosperity is rooted in order to avoid having to pay for health insurance for poorer people"
My gambit has been to start calling these people free loaders. They free load on the expectation of an orderly society and science and technical progress while not being willing to contribute appropriately to those things. And politicians like McConnell are the apotheosis of the concept. His is objectively a political terrorist who relies on the grudging taking-care-of-businessness" of others.
19: right, they want to live on government hand-outs of "free" security and order and civilization while they themselves contribute NOTHING to the system. There's no such thing as a free lunch, pal.
17: I can imagine I'd be so much more pissed off all the time if I still lived there. The Millennial/boomer city/suburb dynamic is as you might guess completely live in my extended family. (Makes for some hilarious Facebook passive aggression toward boomers/grandparents from my millennial cousin, at least.) So I hear here from people telling me I just need to read hillbilly elegy and I can't get past Upper St. Lily White. I know these people! They have big houses! They're not downtrodden. They're afraid to go to dangerous places like Shadyside! They just hate Clinton and as it turns out the answer to how far you can push "but what about abortion?" is electing Trump.
Somehow spending an hour on the Parkway every day is "safe" and walking through Shadyside after dark is dangerous. It's just total denial of reality.
Version around my place is
1) Won't go to Home Depot in E. Liberty, although it is very convenient. Rather go miles out of their way. (Actually I have been thinking of withdrawing Home Depot patronage because of the asswipe owner...try to use a local HW in Etna when possible.)
2)A few extreme cases will not go to the freaking Waterworks Giant Eagle.
I was at that Home Depot on Tuesday. Took forever to find somebody who could turn on the computer to get me what I ordered.
I'm afraid to park in East Liberty. If you don't get back soon enough, somebody will rent you car out as an apartment.
No one should ever shop at Home Depot. Asswipe is right.
That's not a nice thing to call Stormcrow.
23: I'm always surprised by the tiny number of white people at my local Home Depot. Based on some people in my life who I love dearly but have major race/class blind spots, I'm going to say it's straight-up racism. It's by far the most convenient HD and yet...pretty much all African-American customers (and even many employees!) in what is a fairly mixed area (say 3 mi radius).
"Well-off white people are greedy" isn't new. "Well-off white people were completely willing to undermine the domestic and global political order in which their prosperity is rooted in order to avoid having to pay for health insurance for poorer people" is new.
To be fair, some of them felt qualms about it.
I agree with the criticism about the lack of articles about either well-off suburbs voting Republican or cross-class urban support for Democrats. I have, lately been thinking that the contemporary coverage of politics does an incredibly poor job of addressing or even discussing what I would think of as core political disagreements and, instead, mostly devolves into coverage of "culture" issues which end up being insulting to one or both sides.
That said, there are two reasons for this article to exist as it does.
1) It isn't trying to answer the question, "who supports Trumpcare?" It's trying to answer, "how do Republicans who will directly lose coverage under Trumpcare feel about it?"
2) Even though the majority of Republican voters are wealthier than average, if you look at changes from previous elections to 2016 the biggest predictor was education. People with less education were more likely to switch Dem --> Rep and people with more education were more likely to switch Rep --> Dem.
17: Makes me very stabby, too.
19: That's excellent. Will have to start doing that, too.
21-23: What the serious fuck? I mean, I'll admit, I won't walk around Homewood much after dark*, but Shadyside? And not go to the East Liberty Home Depot? Because...there's PoC there? My god, fuck the suburbs. My only problem with that HD is that it's not quite convenient enough to the 64 line, so I end up driving there more than I'd prefer for little things I could take on the bus.
* I think that's reasonable, but it's probably being informed by deep-set racism, so LMK if I'm wrong on that.
Rep and people with more education were more likely to switch Rep --> Dem.
Yes. That's very easy to see on Facebook if you were me during the election. I hid so many people that I don't know what is happening now.
Well, Lowe's is much closer to our end of town.
If I were on your side of the Hill, I might consider Lowe's. But getting a bus back from the Waterfront can be a pain. And it's completely out of the question to pop by there on the way home from work.
And that's why for months I haven't replaced a three-way switch that only works on one of the two paths. And because I'm not handy in the slightest.
When I need stuff at Home Depot or Lowe's, it's nearly always too big to carry on the bus.
Or too suspicious. (Lime, drain cleaner, shovels, disposable rags, etc.)
And a sign reading "Buried cable. Do not dig here."
I also really hate the idea that it's wrong to vote against your own economic interests and it bothers me that it gets thrown around every time this comes up.
I think you're oversimplifying what's getting thrown around. If the people who are "the matter with Kansas" were talking either about how "Sure, Republicans are screwing us economically, but abortion and keeping trans people from peeing are important enough to make it worth it," that wouldn't be inconsistent, and it'd be a mirror image of how you want middle- and upper-class people to vote. Or even if they were saying "Republican policies are redistributing income from me to the 1%, and I think that's a good thing -- morally, it's good for me to get by with less so that the people who keep the engines of the world turning can enjoy an additional yacht." I'd disagree with that, but I wouldn't call it incoherent.
But you get those people talking explicitly about how they believe Republicans are going to make their lives economically better. At which point, they haven't made an ethical decision to value some political goal over their economic self-interest. At least from what they've said, they're trying to be selfish. They're just really bad at it, which is what's maddening.
If ... "Sure, Republicans are screwing us economically, but abortion and keeping trans people from peeing are important enough to make it worth it,"
I thought that was the original "What's The Matter With Kansas" formulation.
In fact, backlash leaders systematically downplay the politics of economics. The movement's basic premise is that culture outweighs economics as a matter of public concern-that Values Matter Most, as one backlash title has it. On those grounds it rallies citizens who would once have been reliable partisans of the New Deal to the standard of conservatism. Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country's return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution. Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working-class people.
...
Their grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.
I also really hate the idea that it's wrong to vote against your own economic interests... I want everyone to do that to some extent and the rich to do it a hell of a lot
If everybody voted in a way that actually served their economic interests, then it wouldn't matter that the rich did it too.
And a further thought: I don't know if it's *wrong* to vote against your economic interests, but it *is* stupid. Allocation of resources is what politics is about. If you don't try to get yours, you're misusing your democracy.
Allocation of resources is what politics is about. If you don't try to get yours, you're misusing your democracy.
But I don't want more resources allocated to me. I'd rather they go to somebody else.
Yeah, I'm not as hardcore as the warzone Christians by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm definitely not doing democracy right if that's the goal.
And I definitely don't see why everyone voting selfishly is better than everyone voting unselfishly.
Update: 58% of Californians are freeloaders.
That's not what anyone means by "voting against their own interests". Of course it's fine to believe/vote that more resources should go to the needy. The bafflement/frustration about "voting against interests" arises when it's the needy who are voting that more resources should go to the rich.
Everyone should vote according to their Rawlsian self-interest.
Why should I worry about what Lou Rawls gets?
Sorry, I'm a giant grump today. Lee is coming back to the country tomorrow and I'm afraid I'll need a third round of antibiotics for strep and hating everyone won't actually solve any of my problems or make me happier.
You'll never find
As long as you look
Someone to care for your economic self-interest
The way that you do
I was going for pithy above, b/c multitasking at work, and overshot into simpleminded and unclear.
All I mean is that in a social insurance sense, informed voting for self-interest results in improved resources for others. I want there to be benefits available to the needy because even if I'm not needy now I always could be, etc. I especially want the non-rich to vote for their self interests because there's more of them/us than there are rich people. Quantity of votes is what you have to influence collective decisions about resource allocation with when you don't have quantity of monies.
I don't actually think there's anything *wrong* with voting altruistically, I just think it's a really hard thing to convince lots of people to do, while if you could get them to vote in their *actual* self-interest the results would be pretty nearly the same.
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Kevin Drum highlights Claire McCaskill doing an excellent bit of grandstanding on the Senate process for handling Health Care.
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Re Qatar, I now think there is a chance of at least 50% that Trump's flapping mouth creates an entirely accidental war somewhere.
All I mean is that in a social insurance sense, informed voting for self-interest results in improved resources for others./i>
Two thoughts. (1) I agree but, at that point self-interest becomes a bit slippery. What you're talking about is, "vote for the concept of society that most appeals to you" and many Republicans are doing that. (2) Even from a social safety next perspective, I remember a post from a couple of years ago (that I've been unable to find since) which made the point that there are a lot of people for whom the local church is a meaningful safety net, and does provide assistance to church members who are struggling. Personally I think that's a poor alternative to a public safety net, for obvious reasons, but it helped me understand why somebody would vote against a safety net, but with the community that they feel supported by.
60 The Rose Garden statement is horrific. I'm utterly appalled and in shock. On a personal note I think it may be many months before I get to see Chani.
Anyway, Trump is deliberately risking regional conflict to meet some goal he has. It doesn't matter what the goal is (pissing off the State Department?), any war that results can't be said to be accidental.
It occurs to me that what we could use, among other things, are some stories about white working class straight men who voted for Democrats - positive role models, if you will.
My dad's cousin married this guy, rather late in life, and he looks like the archetypical good ol' boy from the northern part of the South. He's not exactly working class in the sense that the small town hierarchy doesn't map neatly onto the city job/class hierarchy, but he's very much an affluent boomer who does not have a professional class job. And he's a really strong Democrat and a huge Obama fan! I did not know this for years and kind of avoided talking politics to him.
(I add that I think there's an interesting set of stories to tell about random anti-racist white people in substantially racist areas - they do exist, and there's usually some kind of interesting religious, personal or political genealogy there. )
Honestly, I think we need more stories about white straight people who would normally be expected to be right wing and are not - not because #notallwhitepeople, but because I think we need to normalize the idea that you can be both anti-racist and, like, a white southerner who likes golf and fried things.
67 reminds me of some advertisements we had a few years ago around here where they'd have a picture of someone (usually or always white) and describe them in ways that made them sound fun and interesting. It'd end with something to the effect of "Surprise! They're Mormon! Mormons: not necessarily weird or boring!"
I agree, though.
Honestly, I think we need more stories about white straight people who would normally be expected to be right wing and are not
Trae Crowder is good for that.
(I add that I think there's an interesting set of stories to tell about random anti-racist white people in substantially racist areas - they do exist, and there's usually some kind of interesting religious, personal or political genealogy there. )
There are quite a lot of them! Having insufficient numbers to vote in good politicians doesn't mean that they're rare.
Anyway, Trump is deliberately risking regional conflict to meet some goal he has. It doesn't matter what the goal is (pissing off the State Department?), any war that results can't be said to be accidental.
I don't know that he thinks war is a true possibility. There's depraved indifference, at a minimum, but lots of stupid leaders over the generations have run off their mouths in confidence it always comes out fine in the end.
Aslan called Trump a "piece of shit" and "an embarrassment to humankind." He was nicer even to Edmund.
72: That's not defensible for him. For years, he's been openly and eagerly calling for more use of force against terrorism. Now, he's pointing at Qatar saying "look terrorists"*. That's way past indifference.
*While Saudi Arabia and others are pressing for goals that include many things not at all related to terrorism.
I add that I think there's an interesting set of stories to tell about random anti-racist white people in substantially racist areas - they do exist, and there's usually some kind of interesting religious, personal or political genealogy there.
I actually pay really close attention to this, and have for going on 20 years now. It is remarkable to me that it's not actually "usually" -- in my experience, it is true 100% of the time that there is an interesting personal, religious, or political genealogy. I'm perpetually fascinated with how it comes to be, because I keep hoping there are mechanisms we can foster in wider society, but it's an odd alchemy of identity+life experience+internal narrative for explaining said experience, and it's really hard to figure out how to replicate that.
I agree with all the rest of 67 too.
Yeah, I feel like Trump actively wants this Qatar thing to end in war, which would be a "win" for him.
It also seems plausible that he still doesn't realize the US has a giant military base in Qatar.
Which seems bizarre, but, well, here we are.
Trump becomes president every time he orders weapons to be used. That and the electoral college are the only things that give him joy in life.
Remember the good ol' days, when only anthrax was weaponized, and "memes" were some goofy idea in a Douglas Rushkoff book?
One of the nice things from the international women's march was an older white lady who'd retired to some smaller city or large town in rural MN. And she was a proud liberal/progressive and even if it was just her, she was going to march. And then like 20 or 30 people showed up. I think there are those catalyst people who are, unfortunately, often the ones who wind up suicides or addicted because of the frustrations of never seeing anything change. And then of course there's my New England relatives, who range from super-rural conservatives to several anarchists-in-all-but-name.
Rushkoff's "Media Virus" was a big popularizer. I don't think he claimed to have invented all the concepts.
Trump shares the flaws of the genre (extreme right wing Republican), and is also independently not good.
The word was coined in The Selfish bloody Gene, a silly book that influenced millions of people who wouldn't know evolutionary theory if it bit them in the arse and made the unspeakable Dawkins an unspeakable amount of money.
87 is so true. Here was my takeaway from that book in my college course circa 1997:
1. Guys, guys, it's very important for you to realize that there is no consciousness directing evolution. No one is making evolutionary choices. There are only three or four main mechanisms that shape how things grow and evolve over time. But none of them are anthropomorphized little people doing things. Got it? Very important.
2. Okay, there are these things called memes, and they want to LIVE! and THRIVE! and they make CHOICES in order to perpetuate themselves! They're basically little people and there's absolutely nothing wrong with anthropomorphizing them.
All your base are belong to us.
It makes me really happy that meme now means a thematically related group of jokes, usually in the form of a captioned picture. The Dawkins meaning is completely overwritten.
58: Respectfully, you don't understand anything about people or politics.