I imagine a lot of people imagined that.
Thank you for your kind words. Most people I talk to feel that things aren’t working now and they haven’t been for a very long time, 20 years at least. Not everyone was getting rich off the dotcom boom but when it went bust it sure seemed to smack all of us, so there’s not even any nostalgia for the good parts of the 1990s.
All of the rational methods that people have seen tried over the last 20-30 years have not worked for them. Any deal that gets made that might help Average Citizens is immediately co-opted by the wealthy and by business. The PPACA is a great example of that, IMO, and one of the reasons that people hate it: it isn’t the type of help that people wanted or needed.
No one was pissed that they couldn’t get health insurance, for fuck’s sake. People were pissed that health care cost a lot of money, more than it does in any other country, and they didn’t have enough money to get health care.
But here comes the PPACA, offering our tax dollars to health insurance companies and mandating that we give them money out of our pockets besides, and then we have to let them dole money out to our doctors. Who the fuck wanted that besides the people skimming money off it?
So the electorate decided to go with “fuck it”, since that isn’t (they think) going to be easily co-opted by anyone, at least not for profit (Malcolm McLaren was not a US citizen and is, fortunately, currently unable to capitalize on this particular opportunity).
Voting for the rational choice has gotten the World Trade Center blown up, seemingly ineffective healthcare reform, the Housing Bubble Collapse, stagnant or dropping middle class wages, a wider gap between the rich and the poor, more terrorism, etc. There’s not a lot of truly good policies that had major impacts on people’s lives in the last 30 years of government, and even the ones that did have good impacts had a lot of negatives as well.
Talk to them. Listen to them. Empathize with them (I can’t emphasize that enough, really). Then, through your actions, show them that you want to help them and that you can, with the help they want, not with what you think they need. If you think they need something, ask them. You can even tell them why you think it would a good idea. But if they don’t want it, don’t do it; that just creates stress and tension.
I admit being somewhat limited in my sympathy for people who have such poverty of imagination - certainly not all the methods tried compose all the methods, period - but the resistance to single-payer or similar ideas met with bizarrely stubborn and misguided resistance along the lines of it being Marxism, and Obama is a Marxist, hence Obamacare is Marxist, even among people who have no idea what Marxism actually is.
Further, are Americans who feel screwed over by the housing crisis and such not aware that shit like that happens when regulation is absent? And their apparent response is to elect people who promise even less regulation?
I’m not progress can be done in any reasonable timeframe until a lot of pointless preconceptions are jettisoned, but if I can demonstrate anything positive “through my actions”, all I have to do is remain a Canadian, living in a country with:
-single-payer health care, with admitted flaws here and there in its application
-lower crime rates than the U.S., and yet we enjoy freedom despite a general lack of carry-permits
-higher taxes, but we were not reduced to slavery as a result
-a stable banking system, and yet even with the regulations that keep it that way, Canadians can and do get rich
Americans could easily and probably more successfully adapt the best parts of these to their own system and be better off as a result but there are too many national myths stopping them, particularly the concept that they don’t need anything from anybody, including ideas.
Trump voter, ladies and gentlemen. Honestly, if you can’t figure out that the reason they threw a convicted bank fraudster and felon who violated his parole in prison by now, I really don’t know what could possibly convince you of… well, anything. You claim this board is an echo chamber, yet still see fit to repeat lies as blatantly dishonest as this.
I guess you can just be proud of holding roughly the same opinions as David Duke.
Imagine if Obama in 2008 had been a uniquely unqualified, offensive candidate whose proposed policy positions were almost universally either impossible or incredibly harmful. Imagine if Obama in 2008 had decided that the campaign trail was a good time to bring up a decade-old grudge against a celebrity. Imagine if Obama in 2008 had said, “Those Iranian ships taunting us in the Persian Gulf, we should blow 'em out of the water!” or “Check out her sex tape” or “Grab 'em by the pussy”. Imagine if Obama in 2008 had been the kind of man you could easily bait with a tweet.
If you change too many variables, the analogy stops working. Obama in 2008 was not a uniquely radical, unqualified, clueless president. His plans were not universally unworkable or terrible.
@Snowboarder Bo this is the problem I have with your analysis. The problem is that we were able to open up that burrito, and see that inside was razor blades, used needles, strychnine, and nobody gave a shit. That’s disturbing.
It’s not a poverty imagination that is the problem; most people aren’t knowledgable enough to create a viable national health care policy. It shouldn’t be surprise or a demerit that a corn farmer from Iowa isn’t also promoting his National Health Care Program that he wrote in between harvests or that a mechanic is downtown Schenectady isn’t. They’ve been told all their lives that we elect representatives and they do that kind of thing on our behalf. They’ve also seen far too many of those same people, and the bureaucrats who work with them, fuck it all up with seemingly every issue by caving to special interests or simply by crafting bad laws. They’ve seen these same people lie to and cheat and steal from their constituency. There isn’t a lot of trust between the citizens and three reps right now in America (yes, Fox News and the GOP rhetoric about government are partly responsible for that, arguably even largely responsible).
You touched on the key to this in a bit-
I agree that the US has too many national myths, as you say, regarding socialism, taxes, FREEDOM!, etc. including the ever-popular Self-Reliance and Personal Responsibility myths and ideals, and that they are holding us back, but it’s questionable right now whether or not most Americans even want to be part of an actual society, let alone a Great Society (yes, I’m partly invoking LBJ; it’s relevant).
No, that’s what you saw. Others saw a burrito with hot sauce and some kind of unknown orange goo that may or may not be cheese and bunch of crazy hot-ass looking peppers and some ‘stuff’ that is prolly some kind of meat but may just be dirt… No one is sure what it’s gonna taste like, exactly, but by Og it isn’t liver.
I understand where you’re coming from, but you need to start thinking: how bad must those people’s lives be that Donald Trump, with all his detriments, still sounded like a better idea than any of the alternatives?
If you can’t ask that question, listen to the answer, understand it and empathize with the people answering, then be prepared to lose more elections.
Being dismissive of other’s lives, needs, wants, desires is not how votes and elections are won.
Stop thinking of Trump supporters as idiots and morons and start thinking of them as desperate people taking what they see as the only choice that wasn’t a variation on “the same old thing”.
I was starting to feel a tad sympathetic, but Bo’s follow-up makes me feel inclined to return to holding the rubes in contempt.
Let’s not pretend that it takes some great feat of intellect to see that the burrito is full of bullshit. All you’d have to do is listen to literally any of the expert analysis, or have any knowledge yourself. Granted, I realize that this is clearly too much to ask of many people… But that doesn’t mean it isn’t their damn fault when they take a nice big bite and come away bleeding. So when you say this:
No. I’m sorry. They are idiots and morons. Some of them are racists and bigots too. “Let’s smash the system” is the easy part. The hard part is rebuilding it better afterwards. That’s why this kind of shit almost never works.
My grandmother voted for Trump. She has a cushy little home in the woods in Maine with a family who she loves and who loves her, all the comforts of life, and a sizeable retirement fund. Her life is, for all intents and purposes, great. She has to deal with one grandson less sending her Christmas cards for the rest of her life, but even considering that, not only is her life pretty good, but much of what’s good about it is stuff Trump and the republican party has promised to blow up - social security and medicare, for example.
Obviously, that’s not everyone, but let’s not pretend that the average Trump Voter is an impoverished, destitute person whose lives have been destroyed by Obamacare or some shit like that. Those people exist, and I feel bad for them, but for a whole lot of Trump voters, their lives ain’t all that bad. The basket of deplorables is real, whether it’s helpful to admit that or not.
It certainly is nice to see all the conservatives coming out of the woodwork to tell all the lib-tards how obviously wrong they are about everything. I look forward to most of them shutting up and/or sputtering when forced to defend the metric ass-load of stupid shit bound to come out of a Trump administration.
I’m confident someone will start a “Stupid Trump Idea of the Day” thread, which will run the entire length of his term and have thousands of posts.
And someone else will start a parallel “Stupid Hillary Idea of the Day”, which will consist of occasional posts by Clothahump trying (for example) to explain how Hillary briefly stammering at a speaking engagement proves she could never have been president, matched by twenty or more posts from people telling Clothahump that he is an ass.
I’ve found your thoughts on this illuminating and I confess, as much as I think Trump is a terrible, terrible choice I do understand the mindset that brought it to pass.
Consider the Brexit vote in the UK. That came due to pent-up frustration with a constant one-way ratcheting up of European integration without anyone being asked if that was the direction they wanted to go in. The rumblings have been there for years, the pollsters and powers that be contented themselves with thinking that important reform and hard questions could be safety avoided as such a vote could never happen and flawed polling backed up that false confidence. Of course outside the London media bubble that simply wasn’t true.
Brexit could have been prevented by any of the previous governments lancing and tending the boil over the previous decades and being willing to have a real discussion and intervene to moderate the project and mould a different Europe. There was no-one, not in the UK nor in Europe that was willing to do so. Shit, even the bald in/out option of the referendum spoke of an unwillingness to consider different and better options. It was never the question that should have been asked.
So the status quo continued, the question wasn’t asked, the issues weren’t addressed, better options were not considered and the ruling elite carried on regardless. So of course eventually the dam burst. Those disenfranchised and dissatisfied were able to vent and exercise their limited power. They didn’t know what they were truly voting for other than it was the opposite to the current situation and that suited them fine.
And this may well be part of pattern. The UK election in 2015, the labour leadership race, the brexit referendum, Trump being elected…all have eerie echoes of the same, seemingly perverse voting against the objectively “better” options and rejections of convention. We now have a year that sees further major European elections and the potential for further evidence of this. Will Frau Merkel et al learn from the UK and USA?
Bolding is mine, are you saying that you are the one that’ll be cutting her off? That seems incredibly petty and it pretty much justifies her voting choice in her own mind.
I think she was right to vote Trump because Cadet said “one grandson less” when it should have been “one grandson fewer.”
Trump will fix those slovenly grammar hippies! Just you watch!
I don’t want the kind of person willing to vote for Trump in my life. I don’t want to have to pretend to respect these people, their intelligence, or their morality. Because I don’t, can’t, and won’t. You wanna know why?
The first transgender friend of mine who had to go on suicide watch because they were terrified of what the future held for their hormone replacement therapy and health insurance, as well as the violence and justification this gives to transphobic bigots, made my mind quite clear. I spend a lot of time in the hypnosis scene, and I know and have befriended a great many LGBT individuals. They are distraught over this, because many of the protections and freedoms they have gained will be wiped away by this. I am LGBT myself, although as a bisexual man in a committed heterosexual relationship it’s not like I have a target painted on my back. They do though.
I’m sure she has other grandchildren who are either less awful than me (not that petty) or more awful than me (also voted Trump) who would love to spend time with her. But my response would have been the same had it been my grandmother, my cousin, my SO, or my father. I’m not going to act like this is just politics as usual. I don’t respect Trump voters. No matter who they are. They have failed a very basic test of either their intelligence or their morality, and I don’t need evil idiots in my life.
But they didn’t have the bad taste to say it on this board.
Wait a minute, you cut your grandmother off because you didn’t like the way she voted?
Classy.
It’s not inconceivable to me that somebody expressed views along those lines, even if it was in the form of a coy “Second Amendment Solution” metaphor.
In any case, I’m pretty sure the death of Trump would accomplish nothing - the bigger concern is the bizarre fantasy world many Americans must be living in to think it was a good idea to vote for him in the first place.
I know there’s been a mod note but FTR I find this horrifying.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Their voting is not necessarily the sum total of their character. By voting for Trump they don’t become Trump.
People vote for terrible candidates for all sorts of reasons. If they are genuinely ignorant of the consequences of their action then the only way to counteract that is through discussion and debate. You can get through to people and change hearts and minds but flouncing off in a huff won’t accomplish that. You just end up confirming their decision.
Now if your grandmother is genuinely behind all of those terrible things you mention and wants them to happen then right there is your reason for cutting her off and I’d back you all the way.
I wouldn’t. I think we got a little foretaste of things to come in one of Orange-man groupie a “Black” Conservative’s earlier comments.
If it does, it won’t be because of Trump.
[/quote]
There you have it. Just as the election was forecast as “Trump wins or the election was rigged,” anything positive that happens during Trump’s presidency will be all his doing, while every misstep, fuckup and disaster will be the other side’s fault.