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Spinner wrote: I don't see how it's a moralistic beatstick; it's true.
That's what everyone says about the beatstick they're wielding. But look I'm not going to engage in campaign trail arguments after the election is done. I have no interest in making a counterargument against why people should not vote for Trump. For one thing, if I wanted to do that I should have been in here from June through October. For another thing, I didn't vote for Trump. The only thing still relevant about the "voting for Trump is evil" arguments is that dejected HRC supporters are still making them, now to each other rather than to undecideds. I guess it's just early days. The next argument is simper, "Trump is evil." on a lighter note, I have already seen HRC supporter co-opting the upcoming Star Wars movie for this purpose. "I rebel."
I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to retroactively vote for Clinton; I don't have access to a time machine, and if I did, I'd use it for far more constructive activities (like bringing Teddy Roosevelt up here to give everyone a good talking-to). Mostly, I'm trying to make sense of it all, and talking through it helps with that.
I'm also trying to point out a few not-quite-watertight arguments I'm seeing here and remind everyone of exactly who's just taken the highest office in the nation. There's some weird and unpleasant days ahead.
This finally happened.
Working with Russia to crush ISIL is in both nations interest. The other bit should be ignored.
Why? The man is President-Elect; I think just maybe we should pay attention to what he says.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 09:16:51
Manchu wrote: Fair enough - I'll expand on the thought: Your posts ITT indicate to me that you are too comfortable with the notion of logging into this website to "explain things" rather than to discuss.
I actually come here because I learn plenty from other posters, sometimes from discussion but often just from reading their posts. I also spend a lot time not discussing but explaining things to people, that is true. But I don't do that all the time, only when a conversation reaches a point where another person needs to accept some fact in order for the conversation to continue (unforuntately, the internet being what it is those are the conversations that tend to go on the longest).
That isn't what I was doing with you.
I do also spend a lot of my di I think you would be better served in this thread by asking questions rather than delivering analysis. Your response to my post seemed like an entirely superficial re-packing of what I had just taken the time to unpack. By your own standard, this was not a constrcutive response.
Sorry if it came across that way. I think you made a good point about the impact being cultural, and rural vs urban. But there was also a part in there that was about resentment over race issues, being villified or patronised or whatever else, and I think the first part of that is calling it as race resentment.
I think possibly you've assumed that I'm doing that to write it off as racism and I don't know, claim that means I've won the argument or something. That's not my intent at all. I don't think racial resentment is automatically invalid, or necessarily wrong.
I think it needs to be discussed, and discussed in a way that so far neither the right or the left has managed. Too often it seems the left thinks the game is about catching a way to call the other side racist and thereby prove themselves superior, while the right thinks race begins and ends with avoiding certain bad words so that you can make sure you can't be called racist.
There's a hell of a lot more to unpack than just that.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
sebster - sorry if I am a bit raw/oversensitive on the racial issues, the rhetoric here along those lines is gruesome on all fronts right now ... I think something important snapped, maybe in 2012 or so, normalizing racially charged language, whether it be "ban Muslims" or "feth white people" and I think we are all just holding our breath hearing about white kids chant "build the wall" at hispanic kids or hispanic kids beating an old white guy with a Trump sticker on his car and on and on - the race rhetoric has really gotten away from us and I think the truth about this election result actully lies elsewhere, in a much less horrific but also less mesmerizing set of issues
It worries me greatly that America (and politics in general, and the noxious poison that is identity politics*) that there would be people who feel they have to hide who they vote for due to fear or retribution/ridicule. I doubt there were many shy Hillary voters.
Before you start march too far forward with that theory, note that there is no evidence of shy Trumpers at this point. In fact there's no real evidence of shy voters in any election, excepting this one time David Duke got way more votes than polls showed (and that might have been a failure in reaching enough rural people in polls).
It's much more likely that what we saw was a failure in likely voter screens. Because pollsters have to give some estimate of whether a Clinton or a Trump supporter will actually turn up to vote, and that has some professional judgement behind it but is still very subjective.
Remember, in 2012 Obama polled 2.7 points better than polls showed. No-one talked about shy Obamaites. Trump beats the polls by 2.8, and everyone concludes its because of shy Trumpers.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Before you start march too far forward with that theory, note that there is no evidence of shy Trumpers at this point. In fact there's no real evidence of shy voters in any election, excepting this one time David Duke got way more votes than polls showed (and that might have been a failure in reaching enough rural people in polls).
It's much more likely that what we saw was a failure in likely voter screens. Because pollsters have to give some estimate of whether a Clinton or a Trump supporter will actually turn up to vote, and that has some professional judgement behind it but is still very subjective.
Remember, in 2012 Obama polled 2.7 points better than polls showed. No-one talked about shy Obamaites. Trump beats the polls by 2.8, and everyone concludes its because of shy Trumpers.
It could be argued there's some evidence for the "shy Trump" phenomenon. Pollsters missed a lot of the white vote; whether that's because their turnout model was wrong or because people told them they were voting for someone other than Trump and then voted Trump is the question, but it's certainly possible that it's a "shy Trump" voter thing. It's not something the pollsters doing mea culpas here are ruling out, either way.
The results basically come down to the Democratic coalition not turning out as it did for Obama and whites voting like a minority group. Both are significant. The former can be explained by low enthusiasm, the latter needs a little more work.
Manchu wrote: That kind of morally authoritarian argument (agree with me or be evil) gets a pass in the last precious moments of a hard campaign but it has, as Seaward noted above, been the drum folks on the left have been monotonously beating since before the primaries and are still beating now. And certainly now it must be clear that the opportunity to hit people over the heads with that tactic has come and gone; it was not a convincing argument. Well it is convincing to those who make it and now they sit in the ruins of the HRC campaign preaching it to one another.
It isn't about persuading people that they're wrong, it's about building energy and awareness among the base. When Ben Carson calls Clinton the devil it isn't so that Democrats will suddenly decide they better vote Republican, it's to work up the Republican base, make sure they get out and vote.
And yes, it is the problem. When conversations are all about how the other side is pure evil, then when an actually genuinely horrible candidate comes along people don't notice because they're so used to everyone being called evil all the time.
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Seaward wrote: Probably because "meanie Democrats" have held the White House for eight years, and have been extremely horrible on the issue of expanding federal power vis-a-vis the security state, which is, you know, what I was talking about? And are now the ones freaking out about Trump taking the reins of said security state?
Sure, and the 8 years before that Bush expanded federal and executive power, and then it was Democrats acting very concerned while Republicans insisted it was all very necessary. Both sides are okay when their guy has the power. This doesn't make it okay, but it does mean it naively partisan to start moaning about just Democrats on the issue.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: And you don't get world peace by backing regime change in Libya, wanting more more American intervention in Syria, and pressing for a No-Fly zone which could have resulted in Russian jets being shot down!
The US got involved in Libya when the alternative was mass slaughter by the government. US action in Syria has been similar, their original arguments for action in Syria were about Syrian govt atrocities against seperatists, which didn't actually manage to get up (Obama lost the sales pitch both domestically and internationally)... then later came in against ISIS, after the Iraqi debacle.
America is supposed to be at war with ISIL, and yet, the Clinton foundation took money from people with links to ISIL.
You bought in to that? Huh.
I can assure you that from day 1, Clinton would have been giving the green light to more drone strikes, and they've worked so well....
Trump might be a lot of things, but I'll take his foreign policy over a repeat of the last 15 years, which is what we would have got from Clinton.
Let's come back here in two years and discuss what's changed. There is something of a pattern of US presidents coming in with ideals that appeal to people like you, and then ending up doing the exact same stuff that all the Democrats and Republicans before them have done in that chair.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Working with Russia to crush ISIL is in both nations interest. The other bit should be ignored.
That assumes Russia has an interest in ISIS. If that were true, Russia would have spent the time they've already been in the air attacking ISIS. They haven't, because their interest is in maintaining their man Assad in power.
Thinking that Trump can turn up to the table and suddenly Russia will start working with the US against ISIS is goofy.
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Manchu wrote: sebster - sorry if I am a bit raw/oversensitive on the racial issues, the rhetoric here along those lines is gruesome on all fronts right now ... I think something important snapped, maybe in 2012 or so, normalizing racially charged language, whether it be "ban Muslims" or "feth white people" and I think we are all just holding our breath hearing about white kids chant "build the wall" at hispanic kids or hispanic kids beating an old white guy with a Trump sticker on his car and on and on - the race rhetoric has really gotten away from us and I think the truth about this election result actully lies elsewhere, in a much less horrific but also less mesmerizing set of issues
That's fair. Things have certainly gotten ugly. I think it's just one part of an increasingly ugly political culture, daemonising the other side isn't just allowed, you actually get excluded from your own side if you don't do it enough.
I think it started a long time before 2012. And I think it's got a lot worse to come.
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Seaward wrote: It could be argued there's some evidence for the "shy Trump" phenomenon. Pollsters missed a lot of the white vote; whether that's because their turnout model was wrong or because people told them they were voting for someone other than Trump and then voted Trump is the question, but it's certainly possible that it's a "shy Trump" voter thing. It's not something the pollsters doing mea culpas here are ruling out, either way.
The results basically come down to the Democratic coalition not turning out as it did for Obama and whites voting like a minority group. Both are significant. The former can be explained by low enthusiasm, the latter needs a little more work.
That's a pretty decent summary. It will be interesting to see what comes with future analysis.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2016/11/11 10:01:25
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
sebster wrote: Sure, and the 8 years before that Bush expanded federal and executive power, and then it was Democrats acting very concerned while Republicans insisted it was all very necessary. Both sides are okay when their guy has the power. This doesn't make it okay, but it does mean it naively partisan to start moaning about just Democrats on the issue.
Fortunately, I come pre-equipped with having voiced my dissent on the expansions to the security state that Bush put in place.
Tu quoque'ing over Republicans doesn't negate the fact that Democrats are doing it now.
That Clinton's celebration party was to be held in a building that is infamous for being built with mafia money, pretty much sums up the whole, rotten, corrupt mess of the Clinton campaign.
Equally risible is the idea that Clinton, backed by Wall Street, was going to ride to the rescue of the Rust Belt states and sweep them up.
Her war hawk foreign policy would have done nothing for average Americans except put them through the grief of watching their dead sons and daughters coming home from foreign war zones.
Trump may be worse, we don't know, and If I'm wrong, I'll be the first to put my hand up. I've done that before on dakka.
But Clinton would have been the continuation of 15 years of failed foreign adventures that done so much to damage the USA.
Iraq: Almost a trillion dollars spent, thousands of dead American trooops, and now Iraq is an Iranian satellite. Was that the grand plan? I sincerly hope not, otherwise, America is in more trouble than I thought it was.
Afghanistan: billions wasted, more dead American troops, and the country still a mess.
Libya, Syria, you could go on and on....
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
sebster wrote: Sure, and the 8 years before that Bush expanded federal and executive power, and then it was Democrats acting very concerned while Republicans insisted it was all very necessary. Both sides are okay when their guy has the power. This doesn't make it okay, but it does mean it naively partisan to start moaning about just Democrats on the issue.
Fortunately, I come pre-equipped with having voiced my dissent on the expansions to the security state that Bush put in place.
Tu quoque'ing over Republicans doesn't negate the fact that Democrats are doing it now.
I think many republican voting conservatives were unhappy with Bush's moves in that area so I don't reckon it's accurate to say people are okay with it simply because it's their guy doing it.
Her war hawk foreign policy would have done nothing for average Americans except put them through the grief of watching their dead sons and daughters coming home from foreign war zones.
....
Out of the two Trump is the one saying he will increase usa presence there. Trump is even bigger hawk so...
This is coming from a Libertarian and also someone who is not yet eligible to vote in the US elections
This election should serve as a cautionary tale about echo chambers and vilifying those who do not share your views. Anyone who disagreed with the Hilary Groupthink was subject to vitriol and accusations of racism/homophobia/sexism/etc. so this sizeable voting bloc remained ignored, their affect on the election only being evident when people started to count the votes. You don't convince people of the rightness of your views by constantly belitteling them, you alienate them.
Obama beat Hilary in 2008 because he was the outsider. He stood against Hilary and her Establishment connections and that resonated with the people. The people clearly signaled that they wanted an outsider, they wanted someone who was not establishment to stand up for their interests. When running for his second term Obama saw his support shrink in part because he was not giving the people the change that they had voted for, that was clear when the Republicans took control of the Senate again. Obama promised us that he heard the message loud and clear.
Then Hilary came along. An Establishment candidate to the core. Obama threw his weight behind her and shackled his legacy to her campaign. The man elected in 2008 as an outsider to bring hope and change to the people in the wake of one of this countries worst economic downturns supported the woman who was the polar opposite of this ideal.
So what did the people do? The people still wanted an outsider, someone who was not a part of the system that they felt was not representing them and their interests. So this year they had a choice of two; Sanders and Trump. Sanders was marginalized and written off by his own party to facilitate the nomination of their preferred candidate. Trump was not a Republican favorite, but does not appear to have suffered as much as Sanders did. So when it came down to the candidates from the major parties what did the people do? They voted for the outsider. If the primaries were not rigged we would have had President Sanders
Dreadclaw69 wrote: So what did the people do? The people still wanted an outsider, someone who was not a part of the system that they felt was not representing them and their interests. So this year they had a choice of two; Sanders and Trump. Sanders was marginalized and written off by his own party to facilitate the nomination of their preferred candidate. Trump was not a Republican favorite, but does not appear to have suffered as much as Sanders did. So when it came down to the candidates from the major parties what did the people do? They voted for the outsider. If the primaries were not rigged we would have had President Sanders
And the idea that Trump isn't part of the system is pretty much false from the get-go. Active in politics for decades and not even first go with the presidency...
But on unrelated note can anybody give rough estimate what's the LEAST amount of voters you would theoretically need to become president? Due to the way elections in USA work you don't need to have most votes(unlike in Finland. If you don't get more votes than others you don't get to be president). You just need to win enough states to get that 270 votes and states can be won by 1 vote. Rest of the states can be 0 votes.
No need to start calculating but if somebody would have some sort of ballmark?
Just idle curiosity.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 11:56:30
Dreadclaw69 wrote: So what did the people do? The people still wanted an outsider, someone who was not a part of the system that they felt was not representing them and their interests. So this year they had a choice of two; Sanders and Trump. Sanders was marginalized and written off by his own party to facilitate the nomination of their preferred candidate. Trump was not a Republican favorite, but does not appear to have suffered as much as Sanders did. So when it came down to the candidates from the major parties what did the people do? They voted for the outsider. If the primaries were not rigged we would have had President Sanders
And the idea that Trump isn't part of the system is pretty much false from the get-go. Active in politics for decades and not even first go with the presidency...
But on unrelated note can anybody give rough estimate what's the LEAST amount of voters you would theoretically need to become president? Due to the way elections in USA work you don't need to have most votes(unlike in Finland. If you don't get more votes than others you don't get to be president). You just need to win enough states to get that 270 votes and states can be won by 1 vote. Rest of the states can be 0 votes.
No need to start calculating but if somebody would have some sort of ballmark?
Just idle curiosity.
Depends how many people show up to vote and how many votes get stolen by independents.
Clinton won 1992 with only 45M votes, but a large chunk of the votes went to Ross Perot that year.
Clinton won in 1996 with only 47.4 million, Ross Perot got 8 million that year but even if all of Perot's votes went to Bob Dole, Clinton still would have won the popular vote.
Prior to that you have to back to the 70's to find presidents who got less votes than Bill Clinton.
Discussion doesn't work when people can get their information from places like Breitbart, Fox, and the Drudge Report, supplemented by Twitter and Facebook feeds, that say they're the only ones telling the truth and everyone else is lying to them. Discussion doesn't work when you live in a post-fact world, where there's so much information, and so little guarding of the gates through which that information flows, and the people who are supposed to be watching the gates are either heavily politicized or looking to make a quick buck.
Kilkrazy wrote: Clinton needed a positive slogan that would fit on a T shirt.
#ImWithHer
This slogan was intended to mean something along the lines of "I am with the forces of goodness and progress and inclusivity and generally the right side of history" where all of those things were supposedly embodied/personified by Hillary Clinton. (Arrow pointing forward = cross in the H.)
tneva82 wrote: But on unrelated note can anybody give rough estimate what's the LEAST amount of voters you would theoretically need to become president? Due to the way elections in USA work you don't need to have most votes(unlike in Finland. If you don't get more votes than others you don't get to be president). You just need to win enough states to get that 270 votes and states can be won by 1 vote. Rest of the states can be 0 votes.
No need to start calculating but if somebody would have some sort of ballmark?
Just idle curiosity.
In theory you just need a handful of votes in the whole nation to win (assuming no-one votes for any other candidate)
If only one person in each of the largest states votes for you and no-one else shows up in them, you get your 270 electors. I'm not sure how many states you'd need at a minimum but I'd guess about 15 or so. And then millions of people can vote against you in the other states, so In theory I estimate you could win the electorate with about 15 votes for you against a hundred or so million votes for somebody else (alternatively around 35 votes for you and two hundred million for someone else if you win the smaller states with one vote against zero and lose the big ones unanimously). It's of course a meaningless number as it's not realistic in any way.
I could realistically see someone losing the popular vote by a few million people though and still win the presidency. Maybe in the ballpark of 45% winning over 55% or so would probably be the worst realistic discrepancy.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/11 12:54:50
Not way for me to put hard numbers to it, but the deep south will go Republican, the NorthEast and West will go Democrat, so you just need the minimum votes for Florida, Ohio, PA, and WI or MI.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 12:54:14
Discussion doesn't work when people can get their information from places like Breitbart, Fox, and the Drudge Report, supplemented by Twitter and Facebook feeds, that say they're the only ones telling the truth and everyone else is lying to them. Discussion doesn't work when you live in a post-fact world, where there's so much information, and so little guarding of the gates through which that information flows, and the people who are supposed to be watching the gates are either heavily politicized or looking to make a quick buck.
'There is only one way to see, and that is through the knowledge of one's own eyes, looking straight ahead.' -- Rogal Dorn, principles of sound defence.
or to put it another way, just because you have information, doesn't make you informed
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 13:08:08
Some people find the idea that other people can be happy offensive, and will prefer causing harm to self improvement.
Discussion doesn't work when people can get their information from places like Breitbart, Fox, and the Drudge Report, supplemented by Twitter and Facebook feeds, that say they're the only ones telling the truth and everyone else is lying to them. Discussion doesn't work when you live in a post-fact world, where there's so much information, and so little guarding of the gates through which that information flows, and the people who are supposed to be watching the gates are either heavily politicized or looking to make a quick buck.
Well, make sure to call 'em stupid when you're pointing that out. Better yet, make sure the traditional media heavily implies it in everything they write.
If there anyone who seriously still argues that the "mainstream" media doesn't have a center-left bias? The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc.? Do they report non-factual information? (Sometimes, yes, but not intentionally in most cases.) Can their biases influence how they report factual information? Absolutely.
Would people on the right have abandoned them if that bias didn't exist and wasn't obvious? I doubt it.
Alternatively, right-wing ideas (or maybe just the ones put forward recently) are generally rubbish and so get criticised and many people cannot differentiate between criticism of an idea they like and personally attacking them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 13:14:02
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
But on unrelated note can anybody give rough estimate what's the LEAST amount of voters you would theoretically need to become president.
1.
If that's 100% of the votes you'll win.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
A Town Called Malus wrote: Alternatively, right-wing ideas (or maybe just the ones put forward recently) are generally rubbish and so get criticised.
Typically they're not articulated by people with both natural ability and proper schooling in persuasion, whereas the leftist position is generally embraced by the personality types that succeed in careers which require such abilities.
One notable exception was Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore in the 60s-80s
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 13:15:42
Some people find the idea that other people can be happy offensive, and will prefer causing harm to self improvement.
Zywus wrote: In theory you just need a handful of votes in the whole nation to win (assuming no-one votes for any other candidate)
If only one person in each of the largest states votes for you and no-one else shows up in them, you get your 270 electors. I'm not sure how many states you'd need at a minimum but I'd guess about 15 or so. And then millions of people can vote against you in the other states, so In theory I estimate you could win the electorate with about 15 votes for you against a hundred or so million votes for somebody else (alternatively around 35 votes for you and two hundred million for someone else if you win the smaller states with one vote against zero and lose the big ones unanimously). It's of course a meaningless number as it's not realistic in any way.
I could realistically see someone losing the popular vote by a few million people though and still win the presidency. Maybe in the ballpark of 45% winning over 55% or so would probably be the worst realistic discrepancy.
Right forgot the scenario where some states have zero voters for opponent And yes meaningless at the extreme cases but idle curiosity sparked again. I find the USA election system quite weird as it works so differently so started to wonder some possibilities. I like some random musings
That 45%-55% would be pretty damn huge difference but that I could see(obviously some 10%-90% silliness ain't going to happen. In theory yes. In practice no. Odds are so slim humans are more likely to be extinct by the time that 0.000000...n...1% chance happens).
A Town Called Malus wrote: Alternatively, right-wing ideas (or maybe just the ones put forward recently) are generally rubbish and so get criticised and many people cannot differentiate between criticism of an idea they like and personally attacking them.
I keep forgetting whether we're claiming Obamacare is based on Romneycare and the product of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and thus a terrible idea, or the signature legacy of the current US president, Barrack Obama, and thus a great idea.
It seems to be Schroedinger's Legislation, its origin, implementation, and overall "goodness" at any given period of time depending entirely on who's talking about it and what point they're trying to make.
Interestingly, the right-wing idea of, "Hey, perhaps we should have a competent military large enough to at least take on the average football hooligan gang with a moderate chance of success," is starting to pick up steam in Europe with Trump signalling his desire to pull back from NATO. Rubbish!
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The right wing ideas are growing in Europe atm.
Have a look at all these stupid people like Farrage, Le Pen, Wilders, Urban, and the German stupidity party AFD.
Former moderator 40kOnline
Lanchester's square law - please obey in list building!
Illumini: "And thank you for not finishing your post with a "" I'm sorry, but after 7200 's that has to be the most annoying sign-off ever."
The smug style plays out in private too, of course. If you haven't started one yourself, you've surely seen the Facebook threads: Ten or 20 of Brooklyn's finest gather to say how exasperated they are, these days, by the stupidity of the American public.
"I just don't know what to do about these people," one posts. "I think we have to accept that a lot of people are just misinformed!" replies another. "Like, I think they actually don't want to know anything that would undermine their worldview."
They tend to do it in the comment section, under an article about how conservatives are difficult to persuade because they isolate themselves in mutually reinforcing information bubbles.
Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the feth happened?
Nothing is more confounding to the smug style than the fact that the average Republican is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average Democrat. That for every overpowered study finding superior liberal open-mindedness and intellect and knowledge, there is one to suggest that Republicans have the better of these qualities.
Most damning, perhaps, to the fancy liberal self-conception: Republicans score higher in susceptibility to persuasion. They are willing to change their minds more often.
The Republican coalition tends toward the center: educated enough, smart enough, informed enough.
It is central to the liberal self-conception that what separates them from reactionaries is a desire to help people, a desire to create a fairer and more just world. Liberals still want, or believe they still want, to make a more perfect union.
Whether you believe they are deluded or not, whether you believe this project is worthwhile in any form or not, what I am trying to tell you is that the smug style has fundamentally undermined even the aspiration, that it has made American liberalism into the worst version of itself.
It is impossible, in the long run, to cleave the desire to help people from the duty to respect them. It becomes all at once too easy to decide you know best, to never hear, much less ignore, protest to the contrary.
It's worth a read if you think it's mastery of the facts and isolationist fact-free bubbles that are the problem.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/11 13:54:24
BigWaaagh wrote: It would appear that the POTUS-elect has wrested control of his social media accounts back from his handlers.
From an article covering the protests: "Thousands have been gathering in cities across the nation to voice opposition to Trump's election. Trump was on Twitter on Thursday, calling the demonstrators "professional protesters, incited by the media."
Also of note...
From an article covering his DC visit: "But early signs suggest Trump is willing to break protocol when it comes to press access and transparency."
Wow, one whole day after the "let's come together" speech and he's back to blaming and limiting access for the media. There's that dodgey, thin-skinned little...well, you know. How very POTUS-like.
And less than 12 hours later, the back tracking...
I post these because as much as there's a desire, and need, to come together, to try to overlook his deplorable comments during the election and give Trump a chance, but it's been 48 hours since winning the election...only 10 or so hours since the initial comments being referenced...and he's already back tracking to appear more POTUS-ey. His emotional maturity and absolute lack thereof is already showing again and he's not even in office yet having to make decisions facing real opposition, not some scattered bands of domestic protesters,
Backpeddling a twitter comment is one thing, but some actions wielded with the power of the Presidency just don't come undone that easily. That's one of the main reasons why people are still nervous.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2016/11/11 14:00:20
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