I didn’t say you’re an idiot. But the idea that the membership here represents the leftist intelligentsia is ridiculous. Your assumption of how popular Sanders is here is fairly baseless. And even if those things were true it doesn’t take much away from the fact that Bernie is a lefty rabble rouser just less of a jerk than Trump.
Not sure how you read any sort of assumption being made of you.
Yes, what was yesterday can be tomorrow. My interest is the dangers of a demagogue thug pointing a crowd at the identified other is informed by the fact that I belong to a group that has been so identified itself many times in history, and I have no faith that such cannot happen again.
“Difficult to help” means politically. The group explicitly sets up an us vs them dynamic and I and those I am allied with belong to team “them.” No, there really is no such thing as generic investment in infrastructure and education. And no I do not believe that the best we can offer is tax and spend.
Shrooms grow best on bullshit.
And Napoleon, FTR, was 5’7" – which was average height for a European of his time. (Improved nutrition has raised that figure since.) The notion he was short was British propaganda based on confusing French inches with English inches, and on his nickname of “The Little Corporal” – an endearment based on Bonaparte’s habit, when he was an artillery lieutenant, of doing for himself corporal’s jobs like sighting the guns. Yes, he did have a “Napoleon complex” – but it was based not on a sense of physical inferiority but a sense of social inferiority – at his military academy he was a scholarship-boy of minor provincial nobility and many of his classmates were of the high nobility and he spent his whole life trying to prove he was better than they. Which, perhaps, he did.
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…and a terrific dancer…
Sage Rat, I went to the trouble of finding the “Who did you vote for?” poll done a little while ago in Elections. Of the Dopers who voted in Dem primaries, 19 voted Hillary and 8 voted Sanders. Maybe not the most scientific, but that’s worse than Bernie did in Florida.
And chose the wrong artistic field. If he had gone into acting instead of painting, he would have been the star of Broadwaystrasse or whatever they call the Vienna theater district, and no need to join the army or go into politics.
Teddy Roosevelt was no “fake action man.” His acts as a deputy sheriff, his conspicuous courage at The Battle of Kettle Hill, the boxing, the judo, etc. were all genuine T. Roosevelt. He might have had a giant ego and been no stranger to self-promotion, but that is a separate issue.
Hoist them on their own depressing, defeating circumstances. We pat ourselves on the back for welcoming gays, minorities, the disabled, etc., but mock poor rural whites as rednecks and white trash. I can see now why they haven’t taken their protest votes to the “all-inclusive” Democratic Party. Maybe Donald Trump is as much liberals’ fault as the Republicans’.
Absolutely, no doubt.
Esox,
It is human nature to beat on those who try to bully others, and the vocal/visible members of that group do just that.
Yes, we need to rise above that, not just for them but for us all. But it would be naive to think that such is easily accomplished. Many of the problems they face have no easy solutions, their self-appointed leaders want to reject the help that is offered, and we still need to condemn the hateful rhetoric they express and act upon along the way.
That said I appreciate the brainstorming offered, e.g. Exapno’s response.
No, we mock them as racist and homophobic and hateful. All things they ARE in spades.
There are lots of good ideas out there for improving the economic prospects of the average American including working-class whites. Some of them don’t require much money and and even have a certain amount of cross-ideological appeal.
A good example is this reviewby the centre-left Matt Yglesias of a book by the libertarian Tyler Cowen:
To be fair, mocking them is a centuries-old American tradition, going back to well before the Civil War, and the tradition lingers yet. Remember that it was possible for Snuffy Smith and The Beverly Hillbillies to seem funny long after Amos and Andy became an Old Shame, and even now we have Jeff Foxworthy. Is he a self-hating redneck?
We already have an historical precedent for the U-Haul solution that makes helping people where there are seem like the better idea.
That pretty clearly indicates an assumption that it is and has not been me.
The National Review article did not; NR did not care about racism, homophobia, or any Otherism, just that the people supporting Trump are not successful, and that the future of the GOP is in their grimy, shaky, broken-nailed (white trash) hands.
I don’t like or respect Trump supporters, but I don’t know that it matters. It is wrong to dehumanize The Other. Dehumanizing people leads denying them rights and opportunities.
Do we really want to behaved to our opponents in the manner that makes them our opponents?
How long have you been on this site? :dubious:
If there’s anyplace on the Internet that could be called the home of the liberal intelligentsia, the SDMB would have to be it. That’s not to say that everyone here is liberal, but the left is in the majority and its composed of people who actually know or try to know what they are talking about, are interested in facts and delve into real moral wrangling.
If there’s a better place to find intelligent liberals, I’m not aware of where it would be.
And who exactly goes to vote in a primaries election?
My statement was that Bernie would be more popular among the SDMB lefties than among the general populace lefties. The general populace does not go to vote on the primaries.
Does it? Didn’t the Okies who went to California do well for themselves eventually?
At the risk of ruining it, the comment section at Crooked Timber is surprisingly good. Not sure how they do it.
Then there’s the robust if arcane discussion on cabal-net. Fnord.