I’ve said elsewhere that the Dems need a concerted effort to combat the half-truths, distortions and outright lies that these folks suck up with mothers milk these days. If that meets your definition of re-education, so be it.
well, one step would be if you encounter someone who says they voted for $_CANDIDATE, a good way to start would to just ask why. because if you go in with this attitude:
then you start out with “how the hell could you vote for _CANDIDATE?!!? Don't you know only _BAD_PEOPLE vote for $_CANDIDATE?!?! What’s wrong with you?” after which you trot back to your safe haven and complain how they won’t listen to you.
The fact is that blue-collar manufacturing is probably never coming back. And that coal mining is a job with only a past and no future. What is a politician to say to the (former) workers in those areas? You can tell them the truth, and offer those areas help to change their economies to some other basis that includes good-paying jobs. Or you can promise to get all those old jobs back, without any reference to reality. Which one works? The second one works because no-one wants to hear or think about the fact that their livelihood has been yanked out from under them and that they have to probably go back into training or serious schooling for something else. Because “it’s not fair” trumps* “this is what happened and this is what we can do about it” and “the world has moved on, you need to move on with it or get left behind.” In this sense, these areas are just as irrationally faith-based as the ones in the article, it’s just what they believe in that’s different.
*Seriously, we’re going to have to find some other metaphor for this relationship; for some reason “trump” doesn’t work for me any more. Any ideas?
eta: I’ve been wondering why this thread is in the pit? Shouldn’t it be in Great Debates or something?
For someone who spouts the fence-sitter’s refrain of “You are both the same-you won’t listen to each other!”, it doesn’t seem like you actually read the link provided in the OP. Just this once, why don’t you stop sneering, and actually listen?
I am, at least half seriously, going to blame it on the death of the Fairness Doctrine back during the Reagan years.
The Fairness Doctrine required that if a TV or radio station was going to discuss an issue of controversy, it had to give time to persons on both sides of the issue. (Not equal time, incidentally. That’s a separate thing having to do with political campaigns. But you couldn’t completely shut out one side of the debate.)
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Rush Limbaugh became a household name within a few years of the demise of the Fairness Doctrine. He took advantage of an environment where he could spout off whatever wingnut nonsense he wanted to, without being challenged. A ‘safe space,’ in today’s lingo. And he was followed by a multitude of wingnut radio jocks, and of course Fox News.
And so now we’re in a world where nearly equal parts of the population hear totally different views of reality itself.
The Fairness Doctrine is not coming back. And absent that, I really don’t know what can be done about the divide.
But they won’t listen, because they are genuinely not rational, pretending otherwise is self destructive.
You are just using the standard false equivalency rhetoric used by people who try to defend the Right. The Right is genuinely malignant, bigoted and irrational; and pretending they aren’t won’t change them.
it’s not even that. I’d say it’s that at least Trump is saying he’s going to do something. I’d wager the thinking is “well, we probably can’t bring those jobs back but maybe we can keep more from leaving.” The problem with the Dems is that they basically ignored these regions until they realized they were in trouble (seriously, Debbie Dingell was raising alarm bells for a while to no avail.
Czarcasm wrote: “But the link provided in the OP shows why that approach just doesn’t work.”
Then, as your teacher used to say, you do it again and again until you get it right.
There’s an old saying that some learn by being told, some learn by seeing, and others just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. Well, this country just took a giant whiz on a high-voltage special and is going to see themselves that what they’ve been told in one case isn’t true and just maybe they’'ll be more receptive to learning it about other cases.
oh for fuck’s sake. you can’t honestly tell me that a good chunk of people who gladly voted for Obama twice just suddenly became bigoted and racist overnight.
look, I work in the Rust Belt, in a building with a good chunk of union-represented employees. I know a number of them who voted for Trump this time around, after having voted Obama twice. They are not stupid, bigoted, or irrational.
But go ahead and pat yourself on the back for how much better you are. I just hope you’re OK with being on the losing side of many elections to come.
sigh
if you think complex problems boil down to simple, soundbite answers, I can’t help you.
No; the Democrats *have *tried to help for decades, and been totally ignored by the local people while the Republicans do their best to wreck everything there. These people just voted their own enemies into power.
Yep. That’s exactly right. And how it’s not obvious is beyond me. Those voters the article is talking about have not been potential Democratic voters for some time.
that’s ok, they just want to call them stupid and pat themselves on the back. “Hey, we told them how stupid they are! It’s their fault for not listening!”
This is one way to frame what just happened in the election. It’s not the only way, but it’s one way. Unprovable opinion. Maybe it’s correct.
But, even if it is, so what? How do we want to solve the “problem” that stupid people are allowed to vote?
Oh, I see . . . the solution, whatever it is, isn’t my responsibility (phew).
Ultimately, if we want a majority of people to support the Democratic party and its platform, then our job is to figure out how to talk to the people who currently don’t support it and try to show them how it can work for them and their community in ways the Republican platform cannot.
If they don’t believe us, or don’t understand, well, then we’ve got to try different methods.
I mean, this is how ‘changing opinions’ works. It’s not complicated.
Sitting around and saying, “the problem isn’t my message, the problem is that you don’t know how to listen” is essentially giving up on communication completely. It might make you feel good knowing you’re right, but if you want change, it’s a sure-fire way to not achieve it.
And, so, I wish people would stop obsessing about how dumb Republicans are, and instead start working on how to communicate with them in positive and constructive ways. Because they’re certainly not going to solve the ‘problem’ for us.
And the article discussed exactly why they couldn’t be reached(and those weren’t the reasons, btw). Once again, did you actually read the article, or did you knee-jerk your response from the tread title?