Enidigm
3666
I doubt the kind of people Strollen associates with are salivating at Orbán like opportunities. But ultimately most of the “upper end” support of the GOP today is simply naked self interest, information capture or single issue voters. It’s pretty easy to convince yourself about the importance of cutting capital gains taxes when capital gains are your primary source of income and you’re really sure what you do is far more valuable to the economy than almost anything else.
But that does mean that “liberal” values do tend to win outside of homogenous socialeconomic circles. This might be frustrating to conservative leaning people, but it’s really a case of “do better”, i think. Don’t support bad policies by default by refusing to support flawed policies. I suspect most capital driven people who aren’t blinkered don’t actually care that much about who wins the culture wars as long as regulation and taxes are off the conversation table.
I liked that segment too. Also enjoyed the one with Mark Shields and David Brooks on the PBS News Hour Friday evenings (or maybe it was still called The News Hour with Jim Lehrer then, who knows).
Of course, with regard to people like Brooks, who love to tut tut at Trumpism, it’s like they can’t figure out that their brand of Republicanism started making a Devil’s Bargain with those societal forces over 50 years ago with Nixon’s Southern+Law and Order+“anti-Hippies” strategies, and then double-downed on that stuff in the 90’s with Gingrich, DeLay and company and the Contract [on] America.
Yes, I understand that you believe this, but I don’t agree. I think a lot of people like authoritarianism, like putting the other guy down and keeping him down and like kicking him in the head while he’s down. I think that particular trait is not a rare thing among well-off people, to say nothing of middle class and poor people, and they’re going to like someone who takes that approach to governing, as long as it’s someone else’s head getting the boot. There’s a reason why their perennial complaint about Democrats is that they’re sissies, pussies, spineless apologizers.
Yup that’s pretty close, and while a couple of them are very much in the i’ve got mine, and fuck the rest. I’d say at least 1/2 are in the government is the problem category. When you live in one party state which is consistently one of the most business hostile in the country It is hard to blame them.
For instance, the Democrats pushed a rail system in Honolulu the price has almost tripled to 13 billion and it more than decade behind schedule. While I’m sure that many of proponents were sincere in reducing traffic. The reality it is been a boon to construction unions, and a number of politician and bunch of other Democrat consituents.
The price tag is ridiculous it is $100,000 per household on the island. For $100K we could have given every household two full self driving Tesla model 3, made a lane or two on the freeway for automated vehicles and spent the next 10 years working on automate vehicle driving technology which would have decreased traffic way more than the rail system will.
Despite what Scott says, while I know bigoted and Xenophobic Trump supporters, I have yet to meet anyone who liked Trump’s authoritarian. From what I can tell, this is pretty much limited to folks who go to MAGA even, In fact, watching hundreds of media interviews with Republicans over the last four years, the standard view was I like what Trump is doing but I don’t approve of his tone, and many of his methods.
Wealthy people who like Trump’s authoritarianism are unlikely to say so in interviews, unless their media savvy fails them and they have poor handlers. What they are going to do is keep funneling money into getting him and people like him elected.
There is a reason we are seeing a sudden flurry of pieces in conservative outlets praising people like Franco and Salazar and (now) Viktor Orban. These people want their privilege defended, no matter what that means. Russia is a model to them, not a dystopia.
This, despite the fact that the rule of law means nothing there or in China for that matter. If you piss off the important people enough, it’s a defenestration “accident”/getting shot in a stairwell by “hooligans”/or a nice cuppa Polonium tea for you. Or at minimum dispossession and a prison sentence.
Timex
3672
Dangerous windows in Russia.
Especially for critics of Putin for some reason.
CraigM
3674
Windows are very patriotic you know.
And now I’m hearing that Biden’s poll numbers on “handling the pandemic” are down like 12% since February. Because it’s totally his fault that QAnon Trumppalo “morans” won’t get a fucking vaccine when it’s free and readily available.
This country is doomed.
ZeTh1
3676
I’ve lived in several European countries, including a formerly communist one, and Brooks arguments resonate, to some extent. The highly qualified class probably exists and it does have a significant impact on society.
In Germany’s NRW state, progressivism rules and money flows(particularly in tech/industry), just like it does in US progressive strong holds. And then you have the ‘hicks’ in the east who support the AFD(the populist conservative party). The same thing is happening in Romania when comparing the capital or Cluj(Transylvania’s largest city) to the underdeveloped south or north east.
The public school that I attended is now considered an elite school, the real estate prices in its vecinity are ~25% higher because of the pressure from (highly skilled? Bobos?) parents who want to offer the best education for their kids. Despite being a public school, there are basically very few poor kids attending it because of the high real estate prices. The exact same type of segregation Brooks mentioned, on another continent, in a completely different culture.
My gut tells me he is on to something with his Bobo angle. There just aren’t enough racists, bigots, morons or religious fundamentalists to explain Trump’s or other Euro leaders’ tens of millions of votes.
This isn’t exactly an original insight pf Brooks. Young diagnosed it in the 50s:
RayRayK
3678
Just got done reading Rise of the Meritocracy. Fairly good critique of the idea that the smartest should be the governing class. Didn’t realize before that the book coined the term Meritocracy.
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.
(Anecdata: in Florida, there’s an imperial long fuckton of racists, bigots, morons, and religious fundamentalists.)
ETA: To expand, even if a significant percentage of those tens of millions aren’t themselves any of the above, the fact is Trump being every one of those things was not a deal breaker. Hence, those voters are, in fact, deplorable.
Biden offers Hong Kongers in US safe haven (msn.com)
This is good news. We need to step up more if we can, but at least we can do this.
Zylon
3682
Today I learned that people from Hong Kong really are just called Hongkongers.
138
3683
It’s so weird. It sounds like a slur. “Back off, Hongkonger!”
JoshL
3684
That’s because if they were called HongKongolese, they’d be confused with people from the Congo, called Congolese, who can’t be called Congoers, because they’d be confused with people who go to conventions.
It’s still not as bad as the fact that German people call themselves Dutch (Deutsch), and Dutch people call their country the Netherlands, or even sometimes Holland, but call them Hollars, and see how far it gets you.
You must be one of those bergers from the bürg under the berg with all the bürgers.
