Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

@Reelya: I'll agree that the Vox piece you linked is pretty shitty, for pretty much the reasons you cited. It's also a new argument to me, but one that doesn't rise quite to the level of "you're lying, it's only upper-middle class people who support Trump. It's all lies!"

At best, they're saying "Yes, working-class whites voted for Trump, but we can't lay the blame for Trump at the feet of Skeeter and Jethro." Which is itself a disingenuous reading of the Sep 2016 Atlantic article they cite.

[EnigmaticHat]

Honestly tho, "Trump supporters all upper/middle class" is a non-sequitor to the discussions the left was having during the 2016 elections.  I'm not sure how to even talk about this, how does one prove something wasn't widely discussed?

[wierd]

The bar is not "widely discussed" though, the bar is at "was a majority opinion in XYZ thread at TIME", which can be disproven with a good trolling of the old thread.

I distinctly remember both Misko and Mainiac basically beating my balls about it though, saying it made no sense, and thus it was an absurd observation and could be discounted without further consideration, despite my assertion that doing so was a serious mistake.

It was one of the reasons I took a very long sabbatical from the thread, especially during the primaries.  I was all but promised that trump could never win, because of how absurd the position I pointed out was.

[Reelya]

@Reelya: I'll agree that the Vox piece you linked is pretty shitty, for pretty much the reasons you cited. It's also a new argument to me, but one that doesn't rise quite to the level of "you're lying, it's only upper-middle class people who support Trump. It's all lies!"

That's an argument about tone, not content.

When I paraphrased the argument I was thinking of the general hostility to even bringing up the topic of Trump even having working-class support in the prev. Ameripol thread. A number of people didn't want to believe it was true so they shot the messenger(s).

Think about why people wanted to do that? They wanted to have a simplistic bogeyman of the "stupid trump voter" and basically any sort of detailed analysis that suggested this blind hatred was too simplistic was going to be met with scowls of derision. People didn't want to think any deeper about it than blindly despising the other side. Both sides do this.

[Quarque]

LOL @ the dr Strangelove quote

political boundaries are shifting away from the traditional labor/capital divide and towards other distinctions, e.g. the international cosmpolitans vs localist/nationalists.

So ... the moral of that story is to think outside the box of traditional models if you want to understand modern politics.

This is an interesting point. I'm not American, but we have are own batshit crazy nationalist politician here, as many countries around the world do nowadays. Someone in my family supports him enthusiastically (and quite loudly, at every party). I tried to figure out what drives him. It really was all about scare of Islam and foreigners. He loves that politician because the guy will loudly shout out how bad foreigners are. Everything else basically doesn't matter - he could indeed shoot someone and still get votes.

Now that's very anecdotal, but it's the only explanation I have for what is happening.

[wierd]

Reelya, the horse is pretty dead.  Water under bridges, spilled milk on the floor.

It happened. Now we have two potential choices to pick from.

1) Learn from this mistake, and be more open to people giving honest observations, even when they dont conform to your internal models, especially when they can show you pictures.

2) Headplant your head in the sand, and deny, deny, deny, while moving the goalpost on people mentioning the historicity of the errors this has caused prior, to avoid having to come to the conclusion that you should choose option #1.


Me, I prefer not to indulge in self-deception, so I will take option #1. It would please me greatly if this absurd chapter in american history serves to roust an intellectually lazy demographic off their chaise lounges and away from their double shot mocha late`s, and back into real critical thinking territory again--- but I wont get my hopes up.

[SaberToothTiger]

if you want to re-establish intelectualism in america i have to disappoint you, as there was no time in the history of the us during which anti-intelectualism WASN'T the dominant way of thought

[wierd]

if you want to re-establish intelectualism in america i have to disappoint you, as there was no time in the history of the us during which anti-intelectualism WASN'T the dominant way of thought

--- but I wont get my hopes up.

Word bro.

[SaberToothTiger]

I was more perplexed by the "again".

and back into real critical thinking territory again--- but I wont get my hopes up.

[wierd]

The "double shot mocha" group is typically aligned to the American Left, which is historically aligned with liberalism and post-enlightenment movements toward reason over superstition, and thought over bias.

Thus, "Again", in a historical sense.  When this group favors internal models over observation (Bias vs data, et al)-- then this group is no longer acting as part of the enlightenment.

[SaberToothTiger]

ah, in this case the misunderstanding is cleared and all may return to the usual order of things

[misko27]

The "double shot mocha" group is typically aligned to the American Left,

I read this as 'double-shot mecha' and my disappointment with the reality is too great to put into words.

Has there been any discussion of the Tom Price scandal? It seems to be getting worse.

[smjjames]

Reelya, the horse is pretty dead.  Water under bridges, spilled milk on the floor.

It happened. Now we have two potential choices to pick from.

1) Learn from this mistake, and be more open to people giving honest observations, even when they dont conform to your internal models, especially when they can show you pictures.

2) Headplant your head in the sand, and deny, deny, deny, while moving the goalpost on people mentioning the historicity of the errors this has caused prior, to avoid having to come to the conclusion that you should choose option #1.


Me, I prefer not to indulge in self-deception, so I will take option #1. It would please me greatly if this absurd chapter in american history serves to roust an intellectually lazy demographic off their chaise lounges and away from their double shot mocha late`s, and back into real critical thinking territory again--- but I wont get my hopes up.

Agreed, we can debate the causes and whys and becauses all we want, but we can't change history. There are things we can learn and debate about the whole campaign of 2015-2016, sure, but at some point, we're going to have to reconcile with it and move on.

Option 2 is what Clinton is pretty much doing since she isn't reconcilling with it, and Democrats are kind of stuck between options 1 and 2 because they're trying to learn from it and move on while at the same time having trouble reconcilling. Mainly because they don't want to shift out of 'Trump hate boner' mode because base while trying to move past that. The GOP needs to do their own reconcillation with healthcare though....

As for learning from it, there have been all kinds of analysises, serious ones even, and on both wings. What lessons the Democrats learn from it remain to be seen. We are not lacking for data, but liberals are struggling to make complete sense of it.

Ya, the old marxist dichotomy and others is breaking down. Their too simple to explain whats going on. Everything as a billion factors now.

Exactly. As much as Clinton wants to chant "Emails Emails! Comey Comey!" there are so many factors that it's challenging to give a simple explaination. For example, yes, there was the urban/rural divide, but Obama faced that as well, so can't lay blame as the only reason.

IMO, the simplest explaination is that they were both very shittty candidates and Trump was liked slightly more than Clinton or was disliked slightly less. Comes down to the lesser of two evils for many people.

[Frumple]

Except that's outright and explicitly fucking wrong, smj. Trump lost the popular vote by millions. He was very much disliked by more people than clinton was. The primary reasons he's in office are the EC (I.e. voter placement, not numbers), however many tens of thousands of voters the GOP's bullshit has disenfranchised, and shit like, you know, foreign intervention. What happened damn sure didn't happen because trump was somehow the more liked of the two, because just about goddamn everything we know at this point says otherwise.

Clinton's also been fairly damn forthright about ways she and the democrat party fucked up. There actually has been reconciling from her front, regardless of how much certain segments of our population are set on ignoring or intentionally misinterpreting it.

[Helgoland]

Thanks, Frumps - glad somebody's got the energy left to keep up the good fight. Personally I don't, it's just easier to let people keep barking up imaginary trees.