So essentially you’re asking, “Ignoring the giant elephant sitting on our collective chests, why can’t we breathe?”
“Disregarding the arsonist, why is the house on fire?”
“Without discussing the murders, why did so many people die violently?”
“Other than that hurricane, why did our town flood?”
Etc.
Personally I think that Hillary was just a very bad candidate. A lot of people in this country want to see change. In no way could Hillary be seen as an agent of change, she has been working in the government for too long, a vote for Hillary was a vote for the status quo. The fact that the DNC refused to allow Bernie Sanders a shot at the nomination probably ensured that many Sanders supporters either sat this one out or voted 3rd party. Th contempt that Hillary and many of her supporters had and expressed for Trump supporters virtually ensured that she was not going to pick up any Trump voters. Trump is a wild card Trump is a very rare thing in Presidential politics, a genuine outsider who was not vetted by the party apparatchiks. Obviously his populist message resonated with a lot of Americans who feel that they are being ignored by our power structure. And while Trump is almost a cartoon villain, he does represent change, and he is unpredictable. So I think a lot of people just figured they would roll the dice on Trump, he couldn’t be any worse than what they had
Boy, he sure showed them a thing or two, didn’t he?
Or, as Yudkowsky put it: Trump supporters are optimists.
So something is going wrong. Something must be making life in Alabama worse than it used to be a couple of decades earlier. Some malevolent force is pushing life in Alabama away from its natural default state of goodness.
Then it would be wise to do something, anything, differently. Like whacking your malfunctioning microwave with your hand, in hopes that you shake loose whatever component is in a rare state of malfunctioning, and the microwave goes back to its default state of working correctly.
…Of course, he then goes on to point out that this perspective is, to put it bluntly, impossibly irresponsible.
Venezuela used to be an up-and-coming country with one of the fastest-growing economies in South America. And then they elected an impulsive populist leader who made a few decisions he probably didn’t think were that bad at the time, and now Venezuela is on the verge of being a failed state.
The good things are fragile. It takes hard work to preserve them, and even people who try to do that sometimes fail. The countries we read about in history books are the rare countries that were competent enough to make it on to the world stage at all. The United States is currently enjoying an unusual position of dominance in world affairs; the US wasn’t the center of the world one century earlier. (And yes, that does come with trade privileges and a lot of foreign investment, it does make a difference to your personal standard of living.)
[…]
Being President means standing on a shaky platform over a pit of radioactive lava, on which platform also happens to rest the United States and often the rest of the world. You can only select among other desirable qualities of a Presidental candidate, such as punching you in the nose less often, if both candidates seem aware that their desired job will entail taking calculated steps on a shaky platform over a pit of radioactive lava. Your disagreeing with a step they calculated–if you imagine yourself sufficiently expert in international affairs to have an opinion–is qualitatively different from one of the candidates being LEEEEROY JENKINS.
As much as you may not be happy with the current situation, it is a tiny slice of relatively less bad outcomes, perched above a much larger space of worse outcomes. Pumping up the entropy doesn’t shatter a fragile malevolent thingy and let us go back to the normal good days. It obliterates the careful moves that barely manage to achieve the meh results you see around you, and dumps us into the boiling lava underneath. That’s what happened to Venezuela when they elected a more likeable leader who wasn’t much of a policy wonk but at least wasn’t part of the old machine.
Underneath that viewpoint lies a deeper truth that may be known better, on statistical average, to the people who are not white or not male.
The whole thing, and the post it links to that it’s a follow-up to, are both worth reading.
Je’s the NRA’s bitch so that makes him pro-gun.
I think this is very insightful, and really we can’t call Trump a conservative because in the sense of classical liberalism (what they call Liberal in Europe, for instance) he isn’t. We do have the clash between the individual liberty folks who traditionally have disdained strongmen, and the collectivist folks (the left) who love strongmen to implement their redistributive policies good and hard (somehow continually forgetting that centralized planning never works, and all you get is North Korea or Venezuela: the wages of intellectuals supporting collectivist strongmen are to be killed off at the first purge). With Trump we see many idealizing the counter-institutional “break all the windows” type aligning with the “I’m tired of the other guy winning by degrees, so let’s pull things the other way for a change” sort. And indeed, the commitment to
the idea that we all have our own opinions, that the way to work these out in practice is to agree to a set of “rights” that we’ll preserve and we’ll negotiate (and renegotiate) the rest civilly has eroded, but really that’s been a long process - it didn’t start with the last election but can be traced back to some earlier bad supreme court decisions like Helvering v. Davis which suddenly invented unlimited power for congress so long as they mention “welfare”.
(For a list of other really bad SCOTUS decisions that really should be retried, see https://fee.org/articles/15-supreme-court-decisions-that-shredded-the-constitution/)
So in the face of continual erosion of our “social contract” - that which we agreed we would never negotiate because it was part of who we thought we are as a nation, is it really surprising that we get so many rejecting reality, polite society, and principle – embracing more traditional tried and false approaches like despotism, collectivism, and oligarchy? Republics can only hold when the voting populous is educated (understand history), motivated (to maintain order) and disciplined (to be informed and engaged). We have none of those qualities today, allowing all kinds of demagogues to run roughshod over the vox populi. We know from neuroscience that free will is an illusion, so maybe we are in for even more obvious and subtle forms of manipulation in the future, but sometimes the fantasies we tell ourselves (e.g. that we have free will) are important both in allowing us to seek meaning even when we have the power to create it for ourselves, and to care about outcomes even when we have less control than we think over them. This loss (of the free will illusion) may be one reason we’re seeing such an uptick in suicides too. We can’t have a nanny state giving us cradle-to-grave support without many of us realizing we’ve been infantilized with no way to assert our autonomy. That’s a really depressing thing and bound to cause adverse reactions. Veterinary health care may have been the last straw.
Never underestimate Donald Trump!
I wanted to read a bit from the posters. Okay, I’ll give you 10 reasons why I think Trump won the election.
1 ) He converted many of the industrial-era Democratic voters in the Midwest by not only talking about jobs, and cooperate tax cuts, but also about bringing back manufacturing and blue collar type of jobs back to the USA. According to a CBS news article in May 2018, +304,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under Trump. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/manufacturing-jobs-24000-april-304000-trump-took-office
2 ) He did not let the media define his positions. He used Social media to make sure his voice was heard and proved to be a very good speaker at live events, drawing massive crowds.
3 ) Boarder security. Not just a wall to stop illegal immigration and the crime they commit, but also to stop hard core drugs, human trafficking, and weapons trafficking.
4 ) Hillary Clinton. Yes she was a lousy candidate on many levels. Too bad the DNC submarined Bernie Sanders.
5 ) He was a celebrity with plenty of experience on Television, capable of making headlines or mocking his opponents with great effect.
6 ) Trump is actually a very focused person, and perhaps the most successful person win the presidency from a business perspective. He was greatly under estimated, and still is to this day. To be underestimated in politics is an advantage.
7 ) Barrack Obama. Obama’s lousy economy despite putting in billions for a stimulus package saw the labor rate go down. As Bill Clinton campaign strategist once said, “ it’s the economy stupid “ Obama had the highest amount of debt accumulated, more than all the other presidents combined, and his top legislative win has some mis truths in it ( You can keep your doctor, and the average family of four will save $2,500 ). During Obama’s tenure Democrats lost 1,000 seats on the federal, state and local levels.
8 ) A very catchy slogan, “ Make America Great Again “
9 ) He brought out his base. According to some stuff I’ve read Trump polls as high as any Republican in history with his base. A loyal base is a politician’s greatest asset.
10 ) He’s nearly bullet proof to media framing and his own past words. The stuff that would take down a normal politician does not seem to phase Trump. In this department, he defines political gravity.
**With a roaring economy, and record low un-employment for both African American’s and Latino’s, it would not surprise me at all if Trump chipped away at these two Democratic Strong hold in a similar fashion to the way he converted the
Industrial workers vote in 2020. **
If Obama could have run again in 2016, do you think he would have won?
Hard to say. A toss up. Trump for sure would not be afraid to go after Obama’s record which is the key to beating him. McCain ran away from this and so did Romney for the most part.
I checked Trump had more votes in FL In 2018 than Obama did in 2012 by a wide margin.
How PA and OH voted, probably would decide the winner. I think due to the climate, Trump would have edged him in 2018. Like I said there was a shift to the right in many of the mid western states.
Has Silver Lining figured out why apples fall from trees?
Let’s stay away from the gravity topic.
Well, this scene from another campaign with similar dynamics (albeit in a somewhat exaggerated variation) may provide a clue.
When you have to use comedy to avoid the subject material…
Hopefully what I’m talking about is not to heavy for you, figuratively speaking of course.
I saw the replies and gave my 10 reasons. You may debate any of the points I made:
1 ) He converted many of the industrial-era Democratic voters in the Midwest by not only talking about jobs, and cooperate tax cuts, but also about bringing back manufacturing and blue collar type of jobs back to the USA. According to a CBS news article in May 2018, +304,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under Trump. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article...mp-took-office
2 ) He did not let the media define his positions. He used Social media to make sure his voice was heard and proved to be a very good speaker at live events, drawing massive crowds.
3 ) Boarder security. Not just a wall to stop illegal immigration and the crime they commit, but also to stop hard core drugs, human trafficking, and weapons trafficking.
4 ) Hillary Clinton. Yes she was a lousy candidate on many levels. Too bad the DNC submarined Bernie Sanders.
5 ) He was a celebrity with plenty of experience on Television, capable of making headlines or mocking his opponents with great effect.
6 ) Trump is actually a very focused person, and perhaps the most successful person win the presidency from a business perspective. He was greatly under estimated, and still is to this day. To be underestimated in politics is an advantage.
7 ) Barrack Obama. Obama’s lousy economy despite putting in billions for a stimulus package saw the labor rate go down. As Bill Clinton campaign strategist once said, “ it’s the economy stupid “ Obama had the highest amount of debt accumulated, more than all the other presidents combined, and his top legislative win has some mis truths in it ( You can keep your doctor, and the average family of four will save $2,500 ). During Obama’s tenure Democrats lost 1,000 seats on the federal, state and local levels.
8 ) A very catchy slogan, “ Make America Great Again “
9 ) He brought out his base. According to some stuff I’ve read Trump polls as high as any Republican in history with his base. A loyal base is a politician’s greatest asset.
10 ) He’s nearly bullet proof to media framing and his own past words. The stuff that would take down a normal politician does not seem to phase Trump. In this department, he defines political gravity.
You’re quoting CNS, a joke of a right wing “news” source, not CBS, a respected legitimate news organization.
He used Kremlin-sourced lies in social media and was as incoherent and rambling in front of his addle-pated supporters in his rallies as he is now.
I’m such a nice guy I won’t jump on your misspelling of “border”. What he did was capitalize on the enormous power of racism to appeal to his KKK base.
I don’t entirely disagree with this but Bernie would not have won the nomination even without the DNC’s thumb on the scale.
Not sure why television is capitalized, but he appeals to people who look up to bullies, as witnessed by his classless mocking of a disabled reporter. The fact that his supporters failed to be appalled by this behavior reveals what worthless pieces of shit they are.
Oh Christ, you forget about the bankruptcies, the fraud of T***p University, settling on his racial bias in renting apartments, etc. A “focused person”? What planet do you live on? He can’t even read a one page briefing. He spends half the fucking day watching Fox and Friends and the other half tweeting. That is when he’s not bilking the taxpayers to rent golf carts from him.
The economy went from free fall to recovery thanks in part to the stimulus that Republicans tried desperately to sabotage. I’ve already debunked the silly “if you like your doctor” “lie” that is often brought up by the Cult Of Donald.
Printed on hats made in China and worn by simpletons across the country.
Also by suppressing the Democratic base with the help of voter ID laws and by proliferation of Kremlin-sourced lies all over social media.
Only due to the fact that his cult members do not possess multiple brain cells. Hitler’s supporters overlooked his flaws, too.
I rather doubt that condemning African-American athletes who protest the murders of blacks by police is going to win him many black votes, nor will his appointment of racist pigs like Sessions resonate well. Latinos (note my proper non-use of apostrophes, which are not used to indicate plurals) are not going to be sympathetic to the jackbooted thugs who rip families apart.
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I would put this one much higher – at least #2, possibly even #1. It’s the root from which most of the others spring.
I have better things to do with my time than address Silver Lining’s wall o’ crap point by point, but these did stand out:
Yeah, well, according to some other stuff I’ve read, that middle assertion is not quite true.
If you have factual info to dispute Politifact’s findings, have at it.
Faze. Just sayin’.
Why is that, do you think, and in what way is that a good thing? Why do so many Trump supporters, and you, specifically, seem to find it impossible to accept criticism of Trump on any point? Does his constant lying not trouble you in the slightest? I do hope you have a more compelling answer than “they all do it”, because they manifestly do NOT all do it (lie) to the degree that Trump does.
So Obama, who had a 56% approval rating in November, would have had trouble beating a guy with a 36% approval rating?
Huh.
Or, to put it in terms of the sort of math taught at Trump University, he spends half his time watching Fox and Friends, half his time tweeting, and half his time playing golf.
And trolls. He’s entertained by interpersonal conflict and deliberately creates conflict so he can be entertained.
He can, but won’t unless every other word is his name. 