I worked in reality TV for years. The way he ran his campaign sort of reminded me of how we would edit shows. Create whatever scenario would bring the biggest emotional response, even when most of it was contrived. He won the election like a reality show villain
Again I’d like to refute the “safe spaces” comment. I regret even using that word. I simply meant that it seemed that here, as opposed to a place like reddit, I would get actual conversation and not be called names. I can’t see the correlation that you do. I can’t compare Trump to anyone, much less Obama. He’s a completely different animal.
Accept the sobering truth about where liberalism and the democratic party stands today: while we won the popular vote, we won 50 out of 3100 counties in the entire country. Even if we want to convince ourselves that more people support a progressive agenda, that support is confined to a few communities that are densely populated and don’t reflect the values of the diverse country as a whole.
On that note, we need to stop seeing things from a purely epistemic point of view and try to relate to Trumpists in more philosophical and deointic terms. I’m not saying it’s an easy proposition or that we’re going to change attitudes, but at least try to have those conversations.
And on THAT note, find a way to preserve our multicultural values but stop trying to win the game of demography politics – that was an overplayed strategy and it backfired big time. We need to stop being hypersensitive and stop worrying about safe spaces and socio-political discourse landmines and just have frank conversations with people.
Let people experience Trump for themselves. The honeymoon period will end. When it does, remind people why you voted against Trump without telling them that they were stupid for voting for him. Many of those who voted for Trump or simply didn’t vote at all out of disgust are probably not that far apart politically and otherwise.
It’s those white voters who “whimpered that the sky was falling” (and worse) after Obama’s election who are now feeling that they’ve “taken their country back” with Trump.
Yep, looks like I got gagged well on that one. I saw reports of it on one of the links on Google News while I was traveling in the Caribbean – I thought it was legit. But Snopes is calling b.s. on it.
Even so, losing all but 200-300 counties out of 3000+ is still a pretty bad drubbing and indicative of a problem with rural and suburban outreach. I don’t think it really changes the final analysis.
:dubious: Well, I’m not necessarily convinced. (And by the way, how did you get from Tom’s Google-sourced number of nearly 500 down to “200-300”? )
See, “counties” is largely just a fancy way of saying “units of area”, given that most US counties are within about the same order of magnitude size-wise but can differ much more greatly population-wise. If Trump took a little more than five times as many counties than Clinton but 2-3 million fewer actual votes, that just says he won a lot more geographical area in much more sparsely populated regions, which we already knew.
It doesn’t tell us anything about the pros and cons of Clinton’s “outreach” in rural and suburban areas. In fact, it may well be that her best outreach strategy would have been to pull more votes in more densely populated counties that she already won, in order to swing a majority of the total votes in a state.
There is nothing ipso facto impressive about winning comparatively few votes spread out over a comparatively large area, so don’t be fooled by the superficially striking 5-to-1 or thereabouts area ratio.
Just out of curiosity, if you had not made that claim here, and been called on it, how long do you think you would have continued believing that?
How many of your peers do you think believe that? How long do you think they will hold to that belief? Do you think that belief will be shaken as easily as yours was, simply upon exposure to the facts, or do you think it may require more work?
Even though you are now aware, you still equivocate your error, by rounding close to 500 down to 200-300, was that because you were splitting the difference between what you used to believe, and the new information that has come to light, or is there another reason you chose to use those numbers?
I suppose arguing the number of counties won is a good indicator of support is related to arguing that winning the electoral college is a good indicator of support - it values geography more than population.
Heck, there are single counties won by Clinton in New York and California that have populations greater than many whole states. L.A. County alone, if treated as a state, would be in the top ten by population.
If the California legislature wanted to, they could assign electors by county, and give the winner of LA county the 14 or 15 that their population merits, making them the equivalent of North Carolina.
Everybody save the link to this thread. HurricaneDitka is now on record saying that the faintest whisper of noise invalidates the entire signal. He doesn’t get any tap backs on that when it (as it inevitably will) makes his future statements false by his own declared standards.
Without wanting to pick on the individual, I do agree that this mental process deserves examination–not least because as humans, we’re all vulnerable to it.
The person also rounded Trump’s number substantially UP–from the actual 2,626 to “3000+.”
So as you note, upon exposure to the facts, the person acknowledged having posted something incorrect…which is a hopeful sign. Worth noting: Trump himself and his staunch defenders would NOT do so under any circumstances.
But then we see the apparent reluctance to give full commitment to the facts, by means of a fudging of the numbers that tends to support the original position–basically, that it’s significant that Trump won more counties. To argue that position, it would appear, the facts cannot be used without distorting them first.
I’m going into this at length because we are about to be subjected to a President and Administration and Congress that have virtually no allegiance to truth.
Lies will be piled on top of lies. Only rarely will factual information be presented and logical conclusions drawn. The constant barrage of lies will be challenging to deal with. We need to work at remaining aware of the way the human brain twists and disfigures facts in furtherance of its goal of persuading others that an argument has merit.
I think you’ve misunderstood, at least on this point. Tom Terrific said the counties went 487 for Clinton and 2,626 for Trump. Add those together, and you get a total of 3,113 counties, or in asahi’s parlance, “3000+”. The line you highlighted was “out of 3000+”. That, to me, quite plainly means “out of the total of 3000+ counties”. I don’t think asahi was trying to claim Trump won more than 3,000 counties, at least not there. Go ahead though, wax poetic about the truth again. It’s very entertaining.
Not a very big point but there you go. Baby steps.
Listen, on the bright side of this whole thing maybe after all these years reparations will be in the cards for people who were blacklisted over russian connections.
And now you can point to the difference between a mistake, which I am sure that will be corrected and apologized for as soon as he sees how he messed up his math, and fake news, which not only is made up out of whole cloth, rather than being a mistake, but has no accountability, and there is no apology for.
Now, if Sherred does not either apologize for his arithmetic error, or points to what you and I missed and shows that his math is in fact correct, then I will agree that he can fall under the same sort of heading as those who make these sorts of claims in the first place. Or at least, if he continues to make that claim, I have no idea if he plans on ever revisiting this thread, or if he cares to contribute further, but if he does, a clarification on that point would be in good faith.
Even asashi, when called on his belief in the fake news article, changed his tune, mostly, to reflect reality, but I doubt you will see any sort of retraction or clarification from his source.
I think you’re right about the “3000+” even if you do express yourself in your habitual manner. (Do you realize that you overlooked the chance to earn a few points for class, with at least a few readers?)
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