You can’t. But you can have a dialogue with ‘habitual republicans.’ If someone thinks 'liberals hate God," I think that conversation is over. If they voted for Trump because they always vote Republican, and maybe hate Hillary, then a conversation about whether their values match the current GOP might bear fruit.
We both live in red states, so I’m sure we’ve both encountered the full gamut of what used to be called conservatives.
I think most of the low hanging fruit is already gone. (And yes, in this metaphor, Timex and Strollen are fruit. No insult is intended.)
The talk radio / Breitbart right is so vehement that it has now pushed out everyone who is not either a)a true believer in the American Church of Limbaugh or b)OK with the racially resentful, anti-science, anti-fact view of the current GOP. The last straw for many former GOP people was the election of Trump.
The people who are still identifying as GOP are largely supportive of Trump and I don’t think there’s much headway to be made there in terms of flipping votes. Reducing voter enthusiasm among Trump supporters is possible, but changing their opinions is not.
Oh, I agree totally. I’m just saying that the attitudes of many on the other side have encouraged and abetted such disengagement. Working in academia for the past twenty years, I can say from my own experience that I see this every day, among people who I otherwise respect and enjoy working with. Not all, by any means, but enough to make me have a bit of an appreciation for how some folks feel. No one likes being talked down to.
But yeah, the whole evidence doesn’t matter it’s how I feel stuff is dangerous.
Probably accurate. The real trauma for these folks is not that the laws changed so much as that attitudes changed. They can no longer find fairly large and wide-spread circles of affinity where they can indulge in their casual racism, homophobia, and misogyny with large numbers of like-thinking people. Hence the cries of political correctness every time they’re reminded that, no, it’s not ok to refer to black men in general as “Toby,” or to call any woman you work with “honey” against their will.
Everyone in Idaho who ever voted Republican is unabashedly and very seriously in the former camp. If my family is any indication, every bullshit meme saying something like “they let guns in schools because we don’t let God in” is met with solemn nods and amens.
I live in fear of the day those Bastard greeks try to impose their alphabet, or other disgusting notions. …
Yea, now they get called out on it. And while I have never heard anyone use the term “Toby” I have had strangers call me honey and I hate that. Women use that term often as men. But I guess when they do it it is a nicety.
I’m not offended, because in this regard they are as you say.
From a philosophical perspective, it’s not really symmetric, though, because historically men have been in a more powerful or privileged position, and thus when they use diminutive forms of address it comes from that position of power and whether intentional or not tends to marginalize the person being addressed. When a woman does the same thing, she isn’t doing the same thing, because there isn’t that top-down power dynamic at work.
Now, in day to day life, I think it’s all contextual. Hell, I’m from the South, where everyone gets called “hon” or the like, and it seems to be culturally more accepted. In general, though, I think it’s unwise for anyone of any gender to address people who aren’t your close friends or family like that, until you know whether it will be ok.
Posted by a dude who did so much shit when he was younger that he’d be dead or in prison if he wasn’t white.
“Oh no. My decent wage welding job is giving me overtime. Someone save me.”
People like that would be bitching if they DIDN’T get overtime. I know the type.
It’s pretty understandable why the concept of white privilege is toxic to so many people. It’s something of a philosophical abstraction referencing historical asymmetries of power on a collective level, yet it gets bandied about in casual conversation as if it’s about individuals. It’s not at all surprising that an individual white dude might think, “say what? Look at my life, you call this privileged?” Concepts like white privilege or systemic, institutionalized racial discrimination aren’t meant to apply to specific individuals, though. You have plenty of black millionaires and plenty of poor white people, but the existence of neither category disproves those concepts.
Where the left went wrong many years ago was in abandoning classical class-based arguments, IMO. Regardless of ethnicity, region, or gender, the working and middle class masses of people have more in common with each other than they do with the 1%. When the left ditched this line of attack–for a lot of reasons, including the Red Scare, greed, American exceptionalism, and sheer moral cowardice–they made it easier for the elite to use their traditional tactics of divide and conquer. One could even argue that the otherwise cogent critiques of society that gave us ideas like white privilege have themselves been co-opted to further aid in dividing people against themselves, because these ideas are then used not to unify people but to divide them further. A bunch of bi-coastal economically advanced intellectual elites who live lives radically divergent from the bulk of the country are not likely to gain much of a following, particularly if they can’t be bothered to reframe their analyses to actually highlight the real bad guys, instead of making Joe Welder feel bad about himself.
Yes, some people are dumb, and some are hypocrites; often, they’re both. But that doesn’t change the fact that the intellectual left in this country has done a piss-poor job of actually reaching the people as a whole. Hence, we have what we have today.
I agree 100%. Their terminology sucks as well.
White Privilege as a term should have died in academia when someone pointed out that it was fucking stupid and counter productive. Instead it went mainstream and everyone is worse off for it.
All that said, the dude that posted that is a fucking racist anyway. He also measures his life by how many hours he works for whatever reason. I mean a strong work ethic is a good thing, but he’s not living the high life. He’s barely getting by last I knew. I guess he missed out on that whole “work smarter not harder” thing. But you know, gotta blame the black people that he’s making shit wages and working 60 hours a week. Not his boss’s boss who is pulling in 7 figures while spending half his “work day” on the gold course.
Cops are like that. Many police forces operate based on the overtime principle.
I totally agree. The left went on the attack years ago in a way that has alienated not only those they targeted but also many who agree with their basic tenants. You can’t listen to a conservative talk radio guy who doesn’t use the lefts own phrases against them now. Whether the original argument was right doesn’t matter because the terms carry so much weight on their own.
And this frustrates me to no end, because I am an intellectual (well, of a sort, kind of an educated chimpanzee mostly), generally consider myself to be on the left (though really I’m more of a John Stuart Mill variety of libertarian, tempered by modern realities), and yet find myself thoroughly disgusted with both the mainstream so-called left and the idiots who have bastardized true libertarianism in the name of Randian Positivist social Darwinist bullshit.
Mill’s idea was that the only thing that should limit our freedom and liberty is the stricture that we do not harm others. This opens up a lot of mixed government, where regulation and oversight can be seen not as impinging on liberty but on preventing harm to others and thus actually opening up society for more personal freedom within broad parameters. Too often today the choice seems to be between right-wing authoritarianism (Putin worshippers), leftist elitism (bi-coastal techno-hipsters and neo-liberal globalists), or nihilistic individualism under the guise of libertarian thought. Yuck.
Lots of technical stuff I haven’t got my head around yet.
But…
Tenets, not tenants, @Scuzz.
Anyway Facebook is horrible and I’m glad I ditched it.
I can’t speak much about the situation in the US, and you guys are doing a good job anyway, so all I can offer is an uninformed perspective from the outside and, with that caveat,
I think I’m with @TheWombat here.
Damn, I plead guilty of writing faster than I can think. :)
That’s the name of my Talking Heads cover band.