Turning Purple

[LMNO]

Another problem I'm having.

There's a narrative that "the GOP gave the voters a solution to their problems, and the DNC didn't".

There's something wrong with that assessment, and one that was a main part of the election season.  The GOP's solutions were bullshit.  Debunked, disproven, shown to be faulty, and damaging.  The Democrats repeated this, the media repeated this, the speeches repeated this.  The Trump voters didn't care.  They apparently preferred to be lied to, to be comforted, to be pacified, to be pandered to.

Repeatedly, fingers pointed to basic math, simple global politics, elementary science, and the voters decided that irrationality was more comfortable.

"Trump offered a solution" is not the truth. Trump offered comfortable lies.  The Democrats offered a solution, but all people could talk about were bullshit email servers.  Their solution wasn't great, but it was plausible. 

There's a story being developed now, heading towards "lying to the public is the best way to win elections."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"It's a great campaign device"!

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

"Trump offered a solution" is not the truth. Trump offered comfortable lies.  The Democrats offered a solution, but all people could talk about were bullshit email servers.  Their solution wasn't great, but it was plausible. 

So, protecting Obamacare is the solution to Obamacare and "free trade and open borders"/TPP is the solution to outsourcing jobs?

[Junkenstein]

There's a story being developed now, heading towards "lying to the public is the best way to win elections."

This is a major problem in the UK and has been for years. You set out a manifesto of what you'll do with power and there's no mechanism to enforce any of it or punish any lack of implementation. I suspect you'll be dealing with boundary re-draws before this becomes an issue though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

— Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33

Good old Max. He was right about science, and it works the same way for social attitudes. A hundred years ago, women couldn't vote. Fifty years ago, there were laws in many states that blacks and whites couldn't marry. Redlining was common 30 years ago. 15 years ago, there were very few female PhDs in the physical sciences.

Attitudes are changing, but change is gradual, and requires people growing up with new, better ideas that form the framework for their behavior.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

— Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33

Good old Max. He was right about science, and it works the same way for social attitudes. A hundred years ago, women couldn't vote. Fifty years ago, there were laws in many states that blacks and whites couldn't marry. Redlining was common 30 years ago. 15 years ago, there were very few female PhDs in the physical sciences.

Attitudes are changing, but change is gradual, and requires people growing up with new, better ideas that form the framework for their behavior.

First time I wish I was unblocked. But its poetic. Telling yourself that the future is yours and you dont have to do anything to earn it while ignoring all voices that tell you otherwise. 2018 is gonna be AWESOME.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This was a pretty good opinion piece that calls out the massive hypocrisy and illogic of the belief that we just need to LISTEN to Trump supporters, and UNDERSTAND them: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/trigger-warning-trump-fans-this-column-calls-racists-racists/article32816606/

The media did very little to challenge the narrative that Donald Trump – a trust-fund baby turned real-estate mogul turned reality-TV star turned fraudulent-university huckster turned politician – is the working class's hero. And that he is a hero that the people had a right to turn to and to not be criticized for doing so.

It was taken as given, but I kept reading it, that Trump supporters were a demographic compelled, by forces entirely beyond their control, to hate and fear Hispanics and Muslims.

To report that story convincingly you have to ignore the fact that Mr. Trump's voters are relatively affluent. They have a median household income of $72,000 (U.S.), a full $10,000 above the average.

You also have to sweep a lot of lower-income, lower-skilled minorities (it's striking how people of colour seldom get the romanticized label "working class" bestowed upon them) under the rug. The plights of these people are much less likely to be poignantly illuminated in the press than those of my fellow white folks.

Trump supporters are the same people who have dominated the American perspective for our entire history. We can't get away from listening to and understanding them; history, literature, TV, movies, commercials, EVERYTHING is already about them. The exhortation that we have to "listen to and understand them" is nothing more than a device for continuing to avoid listening to or understanding the people who still just can't seem to get fucking heard.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

"Trump supporters hate and fear Mulsims, unlike Hillary supporters who merely want to 'kill a lot' of them"

illogic of the belief that we just need to LISTEN to Trump supporters, and UNDERSTAND them

Tfw no matter how shitty Trump is as a president were still going to win 18 and 20.

[LMNO]

This was a pretty good opinion piece that calls out the massive hypocrisy and illogic of the belief that we just need to LISTEN to Trump supporters, and UNDERSTAND them: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/trigger-warning-trump-fans-this-column-calls-racists-racists/article32816606/

The media did very little to challenge the narrative that Donald Trump – a trust-fund baby turned real-estate mogul turned reality-TV star turned fraudulent-university huckster turned politician – is the working class’s hero. And that he is a hero that the people had a right to turn to and to not be criticized for doing so.

It was taken as given, but I kept reading it, that Trump supporters were a demographic compelled, by forces entirely beyond their control, to hate and fear Hispanics and Muslims.

To report that story convincingly you have to ignore the fact that Mr. Trump’s voters are relatively affluent. They have a median household income of $72,000 (U.S.), a full $10,000 above the average.

You also have to sweep a lot of lower-income, lower-skilled minorities (it’s striking how people of colour seldom get the romanticized label “working class” bestowed upon them) under the rug. The plights of these people are much less likely to be poignantly illuminated in the press than those of my fellow white folks.

Trump supporters are the same people who have dominated the American perspective for our entire history. We can't get away from listening to and understanding them; history, literature, TV, movies, commercials, EVERYTHING is already about them. The exhortation that we have to "listen to and understand them" is nothing more than a device for continuing to avoid listening to or understanding the people who still just can't seem to get fucking heard.

Good point.  "Working/middle class people who feel ignored voted for Trump" is not the case.  "Working/middle class WHITE people who feel ignored voted for Trump" fits the final voting numbers.

[Junkenstein]

Relevant quotes:

We were to understand that "real America" is found at a Trump rally. Those rallies were somehow more authentically American than, say, a Black Lives Matter protest, a college classroom, a gay pride parade, or even a state fair. A man shouting "Jew-S-A!" was to be taken as some kind of white working-class sphinx, asking us to solve the riddle of his true feelings.

That man's life just had to be given enough context, apparently, and then his anti-Semitism and the raging sexism of the man shouting "Trump that bitch!" next to him, would become benign. Assign their anger a source – and never question the legitimacy of that emotion

That these people are adults who are accountable for their choices was largely taken as an unduly harsh sentiment in this election. But there is no parent's note for bigotry. No teacher would accept "Little Timmy can't help but hate Mexicans today because he had a dentist appointment."

Please don't tell me that lots of Trump supporters voted on issues other than race. Studies show that – while the belief that women are nasty was a strong indicator of support – attitudes toward race, the belief that black people are more violent than whites, or that Barack Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya etc. were the key predictors of whether someone planned to vote for Donald Trump.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

So youre all really doubling down on this? Just rolling out the red carpet for a 2020 curbstomping.

[Junkenstein]

So youre all really doubling down on this? Just rolling out the red carpet for a 2020 curbstomping.

With control of all three branches, if you can't guarantee a one party country by the end of February you're dealing with incompetence beyond reckoning.

[LMNO]

Requesting threadsplit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I thought you also might find this opinion piece interesting: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-racism/

Let's say you want HBO. So you go to your local cable provider to get HBO and the only way they'll let you get HBO is to sign up for a premium channel package, which includes HBO but also includes Cinemax. Now, maybe you don't want Cinemax, and you don't care about Cinemax, and maybe never personally plan to ever watch Cinemax, but the deal is: If you want HBO, you have to sign on to Cinemax too. You have to be a Cinemax subscriber to get HBO. And you go ahead and sign up for the premium channel package.

Pop quiz: In this scenario, did you just subscribe to Cinemax?

[Junkenstein]

Appreciate the links nigel, here's some nice numbers from that earlier source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-election/the-real-reason-donald-trump-got-elected-we-have-a-white-extremism-problem/article32817625/

His election was the work, almost entirely, of white people. More than 90 per cent of Americans who voted for Mr. Trump were white, and most white U.S. voters, both men and women, cast a ballot for him (even though his opponent got more votes over all). And at least 90 per cent of non-white Americans did not vote for him. This was a white riot – an angry, rejectionist turn by a deeply pessimistic majority within the white population against the far more hopeful and inclusive politics of the rest of the country.

If poverty, gender and region don't draw white people into extremism, what does? One factor is size of community: Americans who live in cities of 50,000 or more overwhelmingly voted for Ms. Clinton, by a margin of 59 to 35 per cent. But "small city or rural" residents voted for Mr. Trump by almost the same margin (62 to 34), with the suburbs almost equally split between the two. And the other big predictor, as the scholars noted, was education: White people without post-secondary education voted for Mr. Trump to a huge degree (70 per cent to 30); he also got the most votes from white people with degrees, but only by 4 per cent. And military service is a big predictor: Six veterans and soldiers in every 10 voted Trump (but this has always been true for Republicans).

Indeed, one of the strongest indicators of Trump support (and support for far-right movements elsewhere) is a belief that things were better in the past. A much-discussed survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 72 per cent of Trump voters felt that life and culture had been better in the 1950s – a time before civil rights and racial equality. Conversely, 70 per cent of Clinton voters felt things had improved since then. Those results were borne out on election night: Exit polls showed that 90 per cent of Clinton voters felt the country had gone in "generally the right direction"; only 8 per cent of Trump voters did.

There's a theme here.