1666

I think what you’re saying it absolutely true, and ties directly together with what John Scalzi said on his blog about the Cinemax Theory of Racism as applied to those who voted for Trump. The TL;DR: You might not have wanted Cinemax, but if you subscribed to it in a package to get HBO, well, guess what? You’re a Cinemax subscriber. Now substitute in Racism for Cinemax, and Trump for HBO.

1667

Their media isn’t, it panders like a motherfucker to them. Ignore actual policy. Look how they talk to them.

That said, I’m more in the Timex camp, even with all the talk I’ve given otherwise. At the end of the day, you voted for a racist who sexually assaults women because he’s powerful and knows they wont dare fight back. A man who literally doesn’t understand how any of this works and has no plans to follow through on any of it. You elected Newt, McConnell and Pence. With the added bonus of Bannon. And maybe Alex Jones if we’re “lucky.”

1668

If you do share it, I’d edit the last paragraph to make it address all readers, not just specifically the man who Timex was addressing. The last paragraph, if addressed to all readers, makes it sound like bravery is an especially male characteristic. Again, that wasn’t Timex’s intent, but when I think about sharing his essay, that issue sticks out to me.

Also, I predict that zero humans will read it and think, “You know what? I do own that I am racist and misogynistic.” Its harsh. I’m not saying it isn’t true. It’s just too brutal to convince anyone. My guess is that people who feel targeted by that will tell Timex to go fuck himself.

1669

You’re likely right, but that doesn’t wanna stop me from being active and posting stuff like this.

1670

I’ve been thinking about this, too, and it really reminds me of discussions about the causes of the civil war.

  1. It was about slavery.
  2. Actually, it’s more complicated than that. It was about agrarian vs urban economics and states’ rights…
  3. …which were basically defined by slavery.
1671

@Timex amen.

And it’s particularly strong coming from someone like you, who I think of as a centrist.

Just, is denouncing Trump a racist the best way to win in 2018/2020? Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it just needs to be said, again and again and again. And let the cards fall as they may.

1672
1673

Reading the responses… how can NO ONE get the joke here?

Jesus fucking Christ, no wonder Trump is going to be our president.

1674

You are 100% correct about the split in the Democratic party. It’s going to be very difficult to convince people who have seen the conservative propaganda campaign of the past decade come to fruition in the Trump Presidency that in order to have any chance at winning anything anytime soon they need to stop associating “Conservative” with “Racist/Misogynist/Homophobic/Stupid/Uneducated/Christian” and actually attempt to reach out to and understand people that voted Trump for reasons other than a hatred of non-whites.

It’s important to realize that nobody is saying there are NOT racists, misogynists, homophobes and plenty of ignorant people associated with Trump’s rise, or that he DIDN’T run a campaign that practically catered to those fringe groups. But to simply dismiss ALL Trump voters as being those things even if, as the Scalzi HBO-Cinemax example illustrates, their vote implies consent, is to essentially write off too much of America to EVER get the vote back on our side. Simply put, Democrats NEED to appeal to WWC Middle America again. The majority of those folks are going to be disenfranchised yet again when Trump’s Administration fails to bring back good paying blue collar jobs and revitalize small towns everywhere, and this time there won’t be a black man in the White House to pin it on. The Democrats should be strategizing RIGHT NOW what they can do to take advantage of that disenfranchisement and swing that base back over to blue. They’re going to need a combination of an attractive centrist candidate along with a plan for jobs creation that doesn’t involve asking Middle America to move to either coast.

Most importantly, they’re going to need to COMMUNICATE this to America, and in a way that does not appear to be elitist. The conservatives didn’t win hearts and minds with their media machine by going on-air and telling the masses how stupid they were and how much better minds than theirs had determined that Obamacare sucks and Clinton was a crook, so jump on board 'cause we know what’s good for you. No, they spent years carefully crafting a strategy of feeding their conservative base misinformation and opinion labeled as fact, then let their base come to their own conclusions (with plenty of subtle help). One example, I have conservative friends that have zero clue that the Kermit the Frog memes they post are racist. When I call them out on it, they claim “What?! That’s ridiculous. These are everywhere! They’re just a cute and funny way to quote facts you don’t want to listen to. Why do you libtards think everything is racist?!” You’re not going to convince someone like that that they are backing the wrong horse by calling them stupid and racist.

1675

Feel free.

I think that things like racism are a big deal. I’m perhaps not always as quick to condemn things as racism as some, but when something’s obviously racist, it serves no useful purpose to pretend that its not. What I learned this cycle is that when it comes down to choosing party vs principles, I choose my principles. I will not compromise myself by pretending that racism isn’t what it is. If shit’s going to go down that road, I can at least say I fought against it.

I was not a fan of Clinton on many topics, but those things I disagreed with her on, I did not find morally reprehensible. Trump was different. He said things which were morally reprehensible, mixed with things that simply made no sense. I felt no desire, whatsoever, to be associated with that.

This actually occurred to me, but I decided to go with terminology like, “act like a man” because I felt that such a phrase would resonate with someone who voted for Trump. Even women who did, as they’ve essentially internalized that perspective.

Yeah, it’s perhaps not the most politically advantageous approach. But I think it’s wrong to allow someone to act on such beliefs, and not even have it called out as the bigotry it is.

I’m not saying that those people who supported Trump have no legitimate grievances. They do. And those grievances should be considered. But at the end of the day, they chose the oppression of others, in order to try and save themselves. Not only is this ultimately futile, as they won’t be saved by this, but it represents the ultimate compromise of their own humanity.

Their miserable situation (for those actually in misery… many of Trump’s supporters were just rich old white folks, who feared losing some trivial slice of their relatively large accumulated wealth) is largely due to others not caring about them, and regarding them as less important and deserving of respect. And as a result, they chose to do exactly the same to another, different group. When faced with the repercussions of being de-humanized, they chose to de-humanize others. It won’t help them climb the ladder, but it at least throws someone else back to the bottom, giving the illusion that they’ve made progress. And isn’t this how bigotry always functions as a means of control?

Honestly, I alternate between pity and anger at some of these folks. Because they have indeed been left behind as the world has moved on, and it’s easy to condemn them from my loft of relative economic security. So I think that my anger is misguided, thought I am forced to acknowledge its reality. I do not want these people to suffer. As they say, we are punished by our anger, not for it.

There are no doubt some folks who voted for Trump with an absolutely clear conscience. That’s fine. If you honestly believe that what he stands for is good, and just, then voting for him was the correct choice.

But if you know that what he stood for was wrong, you don’t get to pretend like you didn’t vote for it. That you only voted for the good parts. No, you voted for everything that comes down the pike. And if that makes you ashamed, to have it laid bare for you like that? Then that means you made a mistake, and you should look at what led you to that result, and figure out how to improve your decision making process in the future.

1676

@Timex is the type of Republican I can and have voted for. It’s really a damn shame that the party doesn’t welcome people like him anymore.

We need to have a sane conservative party that can sit down and hash out legislation with the Left. I was really hoping that Trump would be soundly defeated and a crushing loss would lead to a scenario where non-extremists could do just that.

As others have said, I’m worried that a Trump victory will embolden the extremists and racists in the party and that will give rise to a Tea Party movement on the Left, which is just going to further polarize the country.

I’m deeply worried about the future.

1677

Part of what needs to happen, even with Trump, is that policies need to be discussed as policies, and not as “spawn from the demons on the other side of the aisle.”

A republican like me is someone like Kasich. Now, he’s more religious than me, but he is an extremely reasonable man. And yet, on these very forums, he was attacked not only based on policy decisions, but as though he himself was some kind of monster. And he is not a monster, by any stretch of the imagination.

Those on the left should look at Kasich the way I looked at Clinton. He is a competent leader, who knows his shit, and while you may disagree with various elements of his policy those things aren’t abhorrent. And if there ARE parts you think are abhorrent, then you should investigate them in detail, to be absolutely sure that you aren’t being tricked by partisans trying to demonize him, just like partisans tricked so many into demonizing clinton and Obama. Because make no mistake, this happens on both sides.

There was, and perhaps IS, this misguided idea that we must demonize our political opponents, and reject them in their entirety, because otherwise they might win. But that’s why we have the parties we have now. And yes, the GOP bears much, if not most, of the blame, as they absolutely fell into the rut of trying to stop government in order to prevent Obama from succeeding.

But nothing good comes from that. Even if it has resulted in the GOP seizing power, I feel like that victory is going to be short lived. And it’s certainly not the right behavior for the democrats to emulate, because it merely ensures that government will NEVER function again.

So don’t waste time demonizing those in the GOP, even Trump. Talk about the policies themselves, and fight against the bad ones. Otherwise you’re just gonna be regarded like you regarded those folks who rejected everything about Obama, based on his being the guy promoting them. You’ll be able to be ignored as being a hopeless obstructionist.

And simply saying, “But they did it first!” isn’t a legitimate argument, because it doesn’t matter. It won’t make things better. Even if they did it first, that doesn’t change what’s right. Ironically, we have many christians on the right, who are using this same argument to justify whatever happens. Hell, that Klaatu guy said exactly this. Reveling in some misguided notion of revenge. From a psychological view, the idea of punishment and this form of justice is generally a hallmark of conservative beliefs. But a good Christian should know that this isn’t what Jesus taught. An eye for an eye is apparently Trump’s favorite passage from the bible, but it’s also the one part of the old testament that Jesus specifically denounced as wrong.

At some point, if you want the government to work, you need to be willing to just accept that the other side were dickheads to you, and that you will move forward without trying to repeat their sins in some attempt to make them pay for it.

1678

Thus WSJ

During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.

After meeting with Mr. Trump, the only person to be elected president without having held a government or military position, Mr. Obama realized the Republican needs more guidance. He plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do, people familiar with the matter said.

I find the idea of the Socialist Kenyan Muslim tactfully explaining the finer points of the presidency to Trump kinda funny.

1679

WHAT THE FLYING FUCK is this article?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/heres-why-obama-likely-wont-pardon-clinton/ar-AAkhwXy?li=BBmkt5R

Why in hell isn’t the answer “because she was never fucking convicted of a god damned thing”

1680

You seem to think these words are descriptive rather than pejorative. Some of them used to have a definition – racism and sexism meant the belief that members of a certain race or sex are intrinsically more worthy than non-members. There are people who believe that, but you cannot accurately describe them anymore, having conflated this idea with all kinds of other ideas, such as a subconscious (or conscious) preference for one’s own race, or ascribing certain general tendencies to races.

The neologisms formed with “-phobia”, on the other hand, never had meaning to begin with. They are tools used to ascribe motivations to your enemy, as if “fear” were the only possible reason for any rejection or criticism. These pejoratives reveal only the motivations of those who employ them.

Authoritarian is the most interesting word. It seems to refer more to the office than to a candidate, in the sense that the authoritarian desires to invest more authority into the office, making him a kind of monarchist. But is that really part of the ideological conflict that we are witnessing? It’s not like the progressivists advocate restraint of executive power, they just want to use it for different purposes.

Speaking of “progressivism” – that’s the kind of word you’re looking for. Both its proponents and its opponents can usually agree with it, which is the sign of an apt description. Personally, I tend to go with Nicolás Gómez Dávila, who regarded it as a badge of honor to be called a reactionary, but there is room for more precision.

1681

This is indeed exactly how I am using those terms. This is exactly what trump supporters are.

A good portion of Trump’s support hinges upon authoritarian tendencies. The idea that a strongman can solve all of our problems. Much of what he has advocated suggest a dramatically more intrusive government, significantly infringing upon our constitutional rights.

You are correct that this is not at odds with progressives. Indeed, many of Trump’s supporters are exactly the same people who were terrified that Obama would do the kinds of things trump has campaigned on.

1682

The executive branch has been arrogating more power onto itself for decades. My fear, and that of others who believe Trump is at least temperamentally a fascist (his ideas are too incoherent to make him an ideological one), is that Trump will accelerate the process radically, possibly to the point of breaking the Republic.

This is a worst-case scenario, but one ought to vote with worst-case scenarios in mind, IMO.

1683

This: http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/14/election-marks-end-americas-racial-detente/

The clearest example is the Judge Gonzalo Curiel drama. By the rules of the détente, saying a judge cannot fulfill his duties because of his race or nationality counted as a firing offense. Indeed leaders on both the Left and Right assumed Trump could not overcome it.

But not only did many white voters break the rule of disqualifying a person based on a racist statement, they broke the second rule too. They began to ask why Trump couldn’t say a Mexican judge might be unfair, when we hear all the time about the danger of all white juries and white police officers. The white acceptance of legitimate racial double standards had dissipated, and without it the détente could not stand.

The Beginning of The End
There is a misconception that political correctness was responsible for the breakdown of the racial détente. This is incorrect. Political correctness, as loose a term as it is, was the means by which we continually renegotiated the terms of the deal. After all, the primary rules for whites had exactly to do with what was acceptable to say.

Privilege theory and the concept of systemic racism dealt the death blow to the détente. In embracing these theories, minorities and progressives broke their essential rule, which was to not run around calling everyone a racist. As these theories took hold, every white person became a racist who must confess that racism and actively make amends. Yet if the white woman who teaches gender studies at Barnard with the Ben Shahn drawings in her office is a racist, what chance do the rest of have?

Within the past few years, as privilege theory took hold, many whites began to think that no matter what they did they would be called racist, because, in fact, that was happening. Previously there were rules. They shifted at times, but if adhered to they largely protected one from the charge of racism. It’s like the Morrissey lyric: “is evil just something you are, or something you do.” Under the détente, racism was something you did; under privilege theory it is something you are.

That shift, from carefully directed accusations of racism for direct actions to more general charges of unconscious racism, took away the carrot for whites. Worse, it led to a defensiveness and feeling of victimization that make today’s whites in many ways much more tribal than they were 30 years ago. White people are constantly told to examine their whiteness, not to think of themselves as racially neutral. That they did, but the result was not introspection that led to reconciliation, it was a decision that white people have just as much right to think of themselves as a special interest group as anyone else.

1684

I have no doubt that media was largely responsible for the rise of Trump. While the inept opposition research of the Republican candidates this year also needs to be faulted, the press failure to point out his many flaws and corrupt practice earlier in the primaries was awful. Several people pointed out the during the election the more media focused on one of the very unpopular candidates after the convention they worse they seemed to do. Hillary had many issues, the email was just the easy for the press to focus on. I’d argue that press under-reported the WikiLeaks stories, with only Fox taking the time to give any moderately in-depth analysis. Clinton is largely responsible for the coverage of the email, her natural instinct to fight like a lawyer to suppress any evidence damaging to her case (POTUS) slowed the media, FBI, Congress investigation down and resulted in coverage to drag on so damn long.

I don’t know if the Comey letter made a difference, it certainly may have, but we will never know. Let’s acknowledge in our post-election analysis phase that our favorite tool 'polls" is a classic example of relying on a blind man measurements when cutting a diamond. I’m a bit more inclined to believe exit polls since the measure who did what instead of trying to predict.

A couple of days ago the NY Times gave a breakdown of state polls. IRRC 19 out of 24 were outside the 3% margin some by double digits. Statistically, we should expect 8 or 9 of these polls to be off. Now this has been a pet peeve of mine for many years. How come polls are so often outside the margin of error? While looking for the NY Times article I found this terrific articlehttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/upshot/when-you-hear-the-margin-of-error-is-plus-or-minus-3-percent-think-7-instead.html about exactly this subject. It turns out in an analysis of polls vs election results the real margin of error is between 6 and 7% or twice what we’ve been led to believe. So that even if Hillary was leading by 5 points in a state she could still lose the election within in the margin of error Moreover aggregating a bunch of polls doesn’t really make much of a difference. A point Nate Silver made in defending why 538 gave Trump a decent chance of winning. I think this article should be mandatory reading for all political reporters and pundits.

So I’m going to push back on any analysis that tries to explain a 1 or 2% movement by citing a poll. We know that the polling/analysis industry essentially failed this election, and in other elections, this year and failed to capture the “fuck our ruler’s sentiment” in an accurate quantifiable way. The qualitative data (aka anecdata) was all around us, huge Trump crowds, seething anger in small towns in Britain.
So contrary to NY Times polls aren’t hard data, instead, they give us the false illusion of data but all we are really seeing is noise.

Now my working hypothesis is that LA Times survey methodology is better, but we really won’t know until 2020.

1685

I’m sure some are, but your argument says that Trump himself is. You have failed to demonstrate that, because all of his statements allow for weaker interpretations which don’t meet the strict definition.

For example, the Mexican judge. To meet the definition you have accepted, Trump would have to mean that Mexicans are per se less qualified to judge, i.e. a white judge in an equivalent situation (facing a Mexican politician) would be less biased than the Mexican judge, because of his superior white intellect. Do you think Trump believes that?