Yes, agreed. Both were intended as ‘red meat’ for party loyalists, not for public consumption.
But what got Romney was a hidden camera, right? By contrast, wasn’t the camera in plain sight when Hillary Clinton explained herself?
Goldwater, Nixon and even Reagan were loathed by many moderates and leftists (and I’m sure right-wingers loathed some popular Democrats) but I do not recall anything remotely approaching the invective against ordinary voters that we see and hear today. Am I misremembering?
Yes. One only has to look at the Dope. The Left are really not interested in interacting with the Not-Left and more interested in signalling to their own their own political moral superiority. I can’t speak about the reverse because there’s nothing like the Dope on the Right.
The SDMB is already very, very good at reaching out to the other side. At a site like Democratic Underground, by contrast, even liberals can get harassed or targeted if not “liberal enough.”
I’m a libertarian guy who sometimes venture in liberal women’s spaces. I don’t talk about my worldviews, however. I try to learn their ways so I can interact better with liberal women who I want to date. Republican women won’t date me, and libertarian women are harder to find than a needle in a haystack.
Maybe by comparison but in absolute terms it isn’t.
I would go farther than Quartz and say that Velocity’s “very very” is a huge exaggeration. In this and other threads, the “liberals” make wild accusations against “conservatives” and refuse to make any attempt at accommodation or understanding. (Obviously blame goes in the other direction as well.)
I am very dismayed. The GOP may lose coming elections, but I’m afraid the polarization and hatreds will only get worse.
America tends to lead the world. Are other nations following us and developing their own self-hatreds?
This is a great question but in my humble opinion there is a fallacy buried within it. Hard-core Trump supporters are by their own admission not Republicans (as we have known them), and many of them are not “conservatives” at least as we have understood the definition of “conservative” over the last 50 years.
The curiosity of liberals is in how Trump supporters think, not how traditional conservatives think. Before the Tea Party, when the splintering of the Republican party began, liberals and conservatives both understood one another pretty well.
I can’t speak for others, obviously, but I really, honestly want to understand and be able to relate/empathize with the conservative mindset. I do, if for nothing else, to be content with the state of this world. I just can’t. It’s like someone explaining to me that 2 + 2 = 5, and I grab two sets of two grapes and tell the guy to count them, they come up with 4, but still insist they believe 2 + 2 = 5. It’s just a different way of thinking I have no relation to or can’t comprehend, but I promise, it’s not from the lack of trying.
Maybe, but that’s for a separate thread. The title of this thread is clear, as is the text of the OP. Your attempt to divert the thread to Trump is actually stereotypical of how the Left refuses to talk to the Right.
That’s because by your very example you’re pre-judging them to be wrong. Instead, consider that both may be right from different perspectives.
Instead of Left vs Right, consider, for instance, a wind engineer and a naturalist when placing a wind farm. The former sees an ideal location for a wind farm; the latter sees all the birds that will be killed by the windmills. Both are correct.
Not at all. This goes right to the heart of the OP’s question which is a good one, even though it generalizes with abandon.
“Am I incorrect in my assumption that Blue Staters will often try to understand and initiate a dialog with the other side while Red Staters could care less? I really hope I my assumption is proven wrong.”
Because I am an old creaker, I am able to observe that this drive by the “Blue Staters” to initiate a dialog with “Red Staters” is a pretty recent one, and to some extent coincides with “our current Administration” if that’s a more acceptable way to describe it.
In fact the whole focus on “red states” and “blue states” is fairly recent, coming to prominence in the last 10-15 years. Before that we all had a pretty good notion of the agenda/beliefs/platform of liberals (if we were conservative) or of conservatives (if we were liberal). The emergence of more radical positions either Right or Left will naturally cause inquiring minds to seek answers to motivations and so on.
Here is the problem though, there is truth to those insults.
Authoritarianism - it is is connected with various forms of behavior that comes across as stupid. Dogmatism, a need for cognitive closure, a need for life to be black and white, etc. This can make authoritarians look stupid because they need the world to be simplistic and easy to understand even if it causes them to engage in a lot of doublethink, hypocrisy and willful ignorance. Authoritarianism is also connected with being right wing in the US.
Racist - I made several posts before showing you multiple studies showing in-group/out-group dynamics makes up a major part of Trump supporters motivations. I’m using the term 'in-group/out-group because it is much less inflammatory than using terms like bigotry, racism, sexism, nativism, white nationalism, etc. But its the same thing.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20628309&postcount=53
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20629996&postcount=57
Corruption - Trump is highly corrupt. Not just due to the connections with Russia, but the way he is keeping his businesses running despite them creating conflicts of interests for him, the way he is trying to turn the justice department into a tool to service his agenda, his contempt for a free press and independent judiciary. Or the way the GOP in congress refuse to act as a check on the executive branch. Or the way they keep attacking law enforcement because law enforcement is investigating their crimes.
You keep assuming just because something is insulting, that makes it false. It doesn’t. You’re basically asking ‘why won’t liberals ignore the bad stuff that is happening on the right, acknowledging reality is insulting’. Because it is there, and it is not only highly annoying but it is a threat to democracy at this point.
So much has to do with the messenger, as well as the message.
Where I live, the over $50,000 / year people were all Clintonites, even during the primaries. (Excluding the tradesmen – plumbers, electricians, people who had manual skills and were self-employed).
Clinton seemed like the worst of a good lot… but she got the nod for the Dems. And on paper, by my calculations, ahead of Trump due to her experience. A hardened, selfish neoliberal opposed to a faux-populist wild card. A nose-holding no-brainer, for me. Just another typical Democratic candidate.
So the apocalypse, the shock and horror here in town when she misplayed the electoral math and lost. “How can so many people disagree with us – people with doctorates? We’re linguists, sociologists, digital archivists! What makes them think their opinions are as good as ours?”
Me, I’m used to picking Democrats and losing. I’m used to skulling out my picks through research and historical memory. I’m used to choosing the candidate who best fits my vision of what the future ought be (loosely, in many cases), and being horrified by my sheltered, entitled, elitist and cronyist bedfellows. Push on through and vote against the evil of two lessers.
And we lost this time. Trump scares a lot of people of color, a lot of lgbt people, a lot of women and the working poor. I’m sorry for that. We did what we could, and we lost. But he also scares the shit out of my bosses, and I won’t surrender that schadenfreude as the consolation prize.
And the guy who comes by to fix my wiring, with the Nobama bumper sticker? He does things right, for a fair price. That’s part of the social contract I think the paper-shuffling component of the Left has neglected for a while. And I can’t quite bring myself to hate him, even though my betters believe that I ought.
First, facts are facts; the Right doesn’t get their own separate reality with its own facts. The Jews do not secretly run the world, blacks and women are not subhuman, climate change and evolution are real; virtually everything the Right believes in is simply factually untrue.
And second, the Right is full of people who want to hurt everyone else. Why should some gay guy who fear being put in a Christian torture camp to “convert” him consider the other side to be just as valid as his desire to remain untortured? Why should women who fear being raped shrug off the Right’s support of sexual predators like Trump and Moore?
You may be too generous. In backlash rhetoric, “liberal elites” are academics, celebrities, journalists, and teachers. Soros, Buffet, and Gates are about the only wealthy people they castigate on a regular basis, at least from what I’ve seen. They certainly don’t want to damage actual bastions of coastal liberalism, like Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
The way American conservatives have successfully co-opted aspects of class rhetoric from socialists to beat down the less powerful has been wildly effective from a memetic point of view. It’s interesting to see this double-think in poor conservatives as they repeat capitalist talking points while complaining about deindustrialization, losing their pension, not being able to afford healthcare, and the like.
Which is why conservatives are such outspoken anti-imperialists, as well as fighting tirelessly to combat wage theft, asset forfeiture, and union busting.
Short version: Hierarchy is good because the people at the top are better than those at the bottom, and so they deserve more resources. Tradition is good because it worked in the past and changing it may cause damage.
It’s easy to dismiss as transparent defense of the status quo by those who benefit the most – the same logic used for monarchs, landed gentry, and robber barons – but a lot of people seem to find this romantic harmonious society, just world idea appealing, even as they wear the yoke. Liberals have similar ideas about meritocratic hierarchy, but they have more process complaints, e.g. give the poor more scholarships. A more accurate political chart might be whether you think Elon Musk is here to save humanity or if he should be guillotined.
As I said, they know where their bread is buttered. They may not consciously be bashing rich people, but if it has never crossed their minds that it’s the end result of the tirades against “the elites,” I have to applaud the discipline they apply to doublethink.
Not sure if that’s a fair test - for every Musk who at least makes an effort to impact humanity in a positive way, there’s 20 Jeff Bezos billionaires intentionally running businesses at a loss so they can crush their smaller competitors and then buy out their locations, and parking ambulances outside their distribution centers because it’s cheaper than running air conditioning to prevent heat strokes.
Musk isn’t perfect, certainly not a philanthropist only interested in charity, and hardly a perfect example of meritocracy - his family was *already upper-middle class when they immigrated from South Africa - but it seems to me when a CEO makes an effort not to be a complete ass-hat, we should try to reward that with a kudos or two so as not to discourage the trend.
Communism (classless society, forced equality, central planning)
Capitalism (some get rich, so what, their money doesn’t hurt you and its produce provides us with vastly better lives in innumerable ways)
I’ll take capitalism please, with a healthy side order of conservatism…because conservatism realizes that without capitalism we ain’t got shit, and forcing everybody to live the same kind of life isn’t worth it. Not even close.
I suggest you take a closer look at how people’s lives are improved by the industry of Bezos and Musk and other wealthy captains of industry, and stop whinging over the fact they have the money to make it happen. They don’t have to be charitable (though many are) and they don’t have to be humanitarian (though many are). The fact is that populations thrive and life happier and healthier and more enjoyable lives under capitalism than has ever been the case under socialism or communism, and its the money of the wealthy that makes it possible.
Bolding mine. As much as you post here, I hope you realize that no one has argued that we should all live the same kind of life. As a liberal, I want a strong safety net that furnishes the needs of those that don’t have an income, for whatever reason. I also support strong incentives for those who are able to work, to work. And that the incentive to work MUST BE MUCH GREATER THAN the incentive to not work. So, I don’t think anyone here, but please prove me wrong, is in favor of communism or socialism (in the classic sense), but they may want the government in step in when free markets (which we all agree are moral-free) are actually harming us as a society (tragedy of the commons, monopolies, inelastic supply/demand curves, etc., basically everything that has been discovered to be a hindrance to a free market). That’s when liberals want the gov’t to step in. They don’t believe the free market “works itself out” because it doesn’t. Any anyone who has studied it is convinced of that pretty early on.