When you vote the way you do, is your decision based purely on the effectiveness of an argument?
Does the character of a candidate or the behaviours of aligned supporters play no part in your decision?
Would you accept that character and behaviour *will *influence voting choices?
Would you accept that a certain %age of floating voters will be influenced?
You make the mistake of thinking that this argument, in order to be valid, must hold true for all Trump voters and all on the left. That is not the case.
For it to be a problem, it only needs to affect enough people to tip the balance and for it to be something trivially easy to stop without changing the nature of our political point.
That’s conflating apples and orangutans. The character of a candidate definitely influences my vote, but “the behaviors of aligned supporters” are pretty much irrelevant unless they’re some kind of violent lawless mob.
You folks in other Anglophone countries where they spell “behavior” with a “u” and have different voting systems may end up choosing between candidates so fundamentally similar that non-specific zeitgeist stuff like “anti-PC ire” significantly influences your vote. But over here, it really makes no sense to say that a rational adult who would otherwise have voted for Hillary Clinton could get so upset about “PC” that they’d vote for Trump instead.
[QUOTE=Novelty Bobble]
For it to be a problem, it only needs to affect enough people to tip the balance and for it to be something trivially easy to stop without changing the nature of our political point.
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: I’m not arguing that it wouldn’t be a problem if it existed to any significant extent. I’m simply saying that I’ve seen no evidence that it exists.
There are a few conservatives assuring us, on the basis of no substantiating data, that oh yes, lots of other conservatives did go Trump because of this issue and aren’t we liberals sorry now, as well as a few liberals who also seem not to have noticed the lack of substantiating data.
But I still think the simplest and most reasonable explanation is that conservatives who voted for Trump in general did so because they wanted Trump as President, at least to the extent of thinking him the best candidate available. If they didn’t, and they voted for Trump anyway just to get back at liberals for bending their ear about “PC”, then that was pretty silly and dumb of them.
You are getting a bit shriek-ish there but I have come to expect that in the Elections forum. I said I believe the right will benefit with the aging of boomers but I quite openly gave room for doubt.
Yes, there are plenty of reasons the political climate may shift in the future. I simply gave the one I think most likely. The reasons you give for a political change(environment, Trump effect etc) may indeed happen, but I believe the pressure for political change which I highlighted certainly will happen. It all depends which pressure is greatest and in which direction. My money is on the US loosely mirroring Europe’s recent political shift. In fact with Trump’s election it is already following Europe’s lead. It is my own belief this will likely continue.
Candidates are vectors for the wishes of their supporters. If their supporters are crazy, candidates are more likely to do crazy things. Thus, the behaviour of supporters is relevant in so far as it gives you some indication of the direction in which a candidate might be pulled over the course of their term in office.
Imagine a hypothetical voter, Joe, considering a choice between two candidates. Joe is very passionate about freedom of speech. He thinks both candidates are just awful, but he notices that Candidate B is supported by people he considers anti free speech. These people do things like ‘No platform’ university speakers, infiltrate talks and shout speakers down, demand authorities censure people who wear the “wrong” Halloween costumes, and seem intolerant of opposing views. Joe worries that if Candidate B gets elected, these authoritarian supporters will be galvanised and may pressure Candidate B into passing legislation which restricts free speech in ways he isn’t happy with. Joe decides to vote for Candidate A instead, to try and put the supporters of Candidate B in their place and ensure they don’t get their way. As a bonus, he gets to enjoy hundreds of YouTube remixes of these authoritarian, anti free speech supporters throwing hilarious temper tantrums in public, which really is the gift that keeps on giving. How is this not rational?
Does Candidate A then restrict which news agencies he’ll take questions from, direct the National Park Service to shut down its Twitter feed, and institute a media blackout at the EPA, and how would Joe, mister passionate-about-free-speech, feel if he did?
Joe wouldn’t be happy at all. Indeed, he might feel a certain amount of buyer’s remorse. However, Joe would also argue that, since he didn’t have this information on election day, his was still a rational vote.
And what if it plays out pretty much exactly the way that was predicted by those who he dismissed, and looked forward to seeing upset?
Is it still a rational decision, if he did have the information on election day, he just chose not to believe it?
Tell you what, if the left has to police and defend any sort of speech by anyone on the left that those on the right may not like, is the right going to do the same for it’s fringies?
I’d link direcetly to it, but I am not sure how, but on our local facebook page, someone linked a story about the local islamic center’s open house. (Scroll down to the "second [really first] posting for it, and expand the comments.)A poster responded with “No thanks don’t wanna know” combined with a picture of a dog pooping, did you want to take a stand at defending that?
I can find examples all day long like that, of people expressing just purely hateful views, but what you are saying is that it is the people who do not appreciate and call out such hateful statements that are driving away the center?
I don’t think that PC by itself is the problem, but it’s in concert with other things. A blue collar white guy who’s struggling to work two jobs to stay off the welfare rolls or who just had his factory shut down comes home and turns on the TV to see a black president, left wing politicians, spineless “conservatives”, and political pundits seemingly fighting for the rights of undocumented immigrants and for gender-neutral bathrooms while saying little about the loss of white jobs. Now he’s told that he has to use terms like “undocumented immigrant” rather than “illegal immigrant”.
There’s a few things to unpack here. Firstly, it’s not rational to put much stock in what die-hards on either side say about the opposing party’s candidate. Hard leftists have made all kinds of dire predictions about what Trump would do once sworn in. Hard rightists made similarly alarmist predictions about what Hillary would have done, too.
Secondly, while it may not be rational to believe what the hardliners say the other guy will do, it is rational to believe what the hardliners say they themselves want to do. For instance, if, prior to election day, hardline leftists had circulated a meme saying that Trump will build a wall on the U.S.-Canadian border, it would be rational to laugh it off. But if hardline rightists had said “We want a wall on the U.S.-Canadian border and we will fight to make it happen”, it’s rational to take it seriously. The reverse is also true. If hardline rightists say Hillary will pass laws which make so-called “cultural appropriation” illegal, it’s rational to dismiss it, but if hardline leftists say that that’s something they actually want Hillary to do it’s rational to be concerned. These are obviously unrealistic examples, but I hope they illustrate the point.
What all this means is that Joe could reasonably argue that the hard left’s predictions about what Trump would do were short on credibility, and he was right not to grant them much weight. That they turned out to be correct is unfortunate but their claims, at the time they were made, were based on suspicion rather than evidence. In other words, I think Joe’s vote would still be considered rational despite the warnings, because the warnings came from a biased source with little credibility.
If you doubt this, consider the following thought experiment: Imagine a voter like Joe who is centrist/liberal on most things but who is also quite strongly pro gun rights. If he voted for Clinton and she won, and then Clinton - who has an F rating from the NRA - actually banned guns, would it be fair for hard rightists to say “Told you so.”? No. Because hard rightists fret about Democratic candidates banning guns in every election cycle, and always with little to no hard evidence to substantiate their fears. On this particular point, they have no credibility and it’s irrational to take their warnings seriously. This holds true even if their dire predictions subsequently come to pass.
I’m not sure there’s anything in my posts which, by extension, requires I defend Mr. Jones. His language was clearly inappropriate for an elected official and if a company wants to disassociate itself from him as a consequence then that’s their right.
I do think, however, that sensible commentators in both the centre left and centre right have an intellectual obligation to try and rein in the excesses of the hardliners on their respective sides. For instance, when the disgraceful “Birther” controversy was raging in 2011, I was appalled by what I perceived as the cowardly unwillingness of senior Republican figures to tell the conspiracists to take a reality check. Furthermore, I think it would be naive in the extreme to suppose that nobody switched from Romney to Obama because of their disgust with the Birthers. I also think that people who did thus switch made a rational choice, even though Romney himself never once doubted Obama’s legitimacy. After all, Romney would, if elected, have been at least partially beholden to the Birther crackpots, and may have found it expedient to pander to them if he’d won, and some people may rationally consider that a valid cause for concern.
Similarly, I think it’s important for sensible senior Democrat figures and credible centre left commentators to rein in the excesses of the hard left. For instance, I think it’s laudable that President Obama spoke out against “No platforming” on university campuses, but I think it’s troubling that so few other prominent members of the centre left followed suit.
Unfortunately, the Facebook post to which you refer in your second link appears to have been deleted so I’m unable to comment on that.
Again, there’s quite a bit to unpack here. Firstly, we must always bear in mind that whether a view is “hateful” is always a subjective value judgement, and that the people who espouse views deemed hateful rarely consider themselves to be hateful. Secondly, there’s a right way and a wrong way to “call someone out”, and it is perfectly possible to “call someone out” in a terribly obnoxious way. Indeed, it’s possible to be so obnoxious that you end up as the bad guy. Take, for example, the case of Justine Sacco. She was a PR manager with about 100 twitter followers who tweeted a racist joke. It was something along the lines of “Off to South Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white LOL” or something like that. Somehow, that tweet got sent to Gawker who made a huge deal about it and Justine Sacco got fired. Make no mistake, Gawker’s story completely ruined her life. She lost her house, her relationship, and it took her about two years to find another job.
Sacco didn’t think the tweet was hateful. She intended it to be an ironic, tongue-in-cheek gag in the vein of comedians like Sarah Silverman. And she only had 100 followers, so she wasn’t a celebrity. But someone got offended, someone else made a massive scandal out of it, and Sacco got her life ruined.
This is an example of how people “calling out” allegedly “hateful” statements can do so in a way that people in the centre (ie. people like me) find worrying and reprehensible. It’s not unreasonable to ask “What would people with priorities as skewed as this do if they got one of their own elected President?” The answer, I think, is probably “Quite a lot of bad, authoritarian stuff.” Thus, it is not irrational to take the behaviour of such people into account when considering who to vote for, particularly if you find both candidates repellant anyway.
I didn’t mean to upset you by bolding. I’ll watch that.
To me demographics, and the “reveal” of fin de siecle conservatism in the US, personified by donnie, are going to be more influential. The US is distinct in a lot of ways from Europe. We aren’t “white” for one thing. And the struggle to prove that isn’t happening in Europe.
It wasn’t the bolding that upset me. It was your immediate characterization of me as a partizan shrill. I can certainly be as partizan as the next guy at times, but I don’t believe anything in my post suggested it was partizan in manner. It was a simple statement of belief, a belief I admitted was open to doubt.
Your point about demographics is fair enough. I think you miss some very important points but i’ll agree to disagree and leave it at that.
I will draw the distinction in that you had to take hillary’s words out of context, and strectch some of the things she has said in the past in order to make those predictions. The same predictions were made of Obama as well.
In order to make the predictions about what Trump would do, you just had to listen to what he said that he would do.
There were those on the right who felt that he would not do what he said he would do, and that hillary would do what she didn’t say she would do.
I don’t see that as a rational choice.
I do not see the two as equivalent at all.
I agree that they are unrealistic examples of statements that hardliners on the left may have said, and agree that they are sentiments that hardliners on the right accused the left of wanting, but it wasn’t just hardliners on the right who wanted to build the wall with mexico. It wasn’t just hardliners to the right that wanted to enact protectionist trade and immigration policies.
It’s not just hardliners on the left pointing this out. These were platforms that were outlined in Trump’s campaign.
I’ll agree that the warnings came from a biased source with little credibility, but that source was the candidate himself that they voted for. So, either they didn’t believe him, and voted for someone they thought to be a liar, or they did believe him, and voted for the policies he stood for.
What doesn’t make any sense is to be against the policies that he stood for, and vote for him anyway.
You could also look at other historical examples of times that democrats have been in power, and how many times they took your guns away.
You could look at her statements, and see that, while she did have some level of gun control desires, nothing she ever said could be reasonably construed as wanting to take everyone’s guns away.
Trump very specifically outlined the things he would do in his administration. The only warning the left had to offer was that they thought he was serious about doing what he said he would do.
If you are going to make the left take responsibility for everything said by everyone on the left, then the right needs to take responsibility for everything said on the right.
If the left can simply say “He doesn’t speak for me.” or, “I have never heard of this person.”, or even “While I like this person, I disagree with them on this point.” and have that as the end of the discussion of the right’s attack on the left because of what some college student wrote in their blog, or even an actor saying something silly, then I will agree that you don’t have to defend Mr. Jone’s statements either.
But, the disgraceful birther controversy was largely promoted by the very person that was then voted in as president, so Trump is far more beholden to those crackpots (himself being one), than romney would have been.
I don’t know that I entirely agree with no “no platforming”, as there is nothing that says that universities have to give a voice to hate speech. I think it is overused, and that there are some speakers who are disinvited simply because they are controversial, not because they are hate speakers, but there is no reason why a university should be required to give David Duke a voice, and if one were to, there is no reason why students (and everyone) should not protest that decision.
Do you feel that universities should be required to give David Duke and the KKK a platform? Do you feel that students should let them?
Just random hate speech. Happens to be in my neck of the woods, so I happened to notice, but yeah, this person is a prolific poster on the neighborhood facebook page posting things life dogs taking a shit in response to invitations to attend an event at the Islamic Center, or posting pictures with an arrow pointing to a pig’s anus with an arrow and a label “Islam”, you know stuff like that.
I find this far more hateful than when someone on the left asks someone to not be hateful towards other groups.
Well, this is the sort of thing that makes social media dangerous. If she had said that to her friends, then nothing would have come of it, except maybe her friends thinking less of her (or more of her, depending on their bent), so saying hateful things now has more consequences.
She may not have been thinking she was being hateful, just funny, but that is because she is not the sort of person who thinks about other people at all.
I find what she said to be unacceptable, and if it had been an employee, I’d have fired them, if it had been a friend, I would have not been friends anymore, if it were a boss, I’d be looking for a new job.
I mean, speech has consequences. Hate speech (even if you just think it’s funny) can have severe consequences. I am not sorry that her actions cause those around her to distance themselves from her.
Now, I do remember this story from a while back, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I don’t know if she apologized, and if she did if it was one of those “I am sorry if anyone was offended” non-apologies.
Now, if she had apologized in a way that tells me that she had a “teachable moment”, then that’s forgivable.
I am pretty sure that if I said something like that on my facebook page or twitter feed, I would lose pretty much all my clients overnight (and the ones I didn’t lose would be those who agree with such a statement, so I don’t know that I would want them).
Just don’t say hateful things, and if you do say hateful things, don’t say them on social media where they can then be used to paint you as someone who says the sorts of things that you said.
I am sure there is some idiot on the left somewhere who has said that such speech ought to be illegal, so I won’t make the claim that no one has said that.
But I will make the claim that no one on the left with any prominence or influence has said that such speech ought to be illegal. To think that those on the left who are offended when you (royal you) makes racist or otherwise bigoted remarks want to use the power of the state to silence you is a conspiracy theory.
Now, if you are upset that people use social pressure to try to eliminate such hateful rhetoric, that’s a completely different issue, but voting in a anti-PC govt isn’t going to change society. Having 45 as president doesn’t mean that your speech comes without social consequence, the same as having Clinton as president wouldn’t have caused there to be legal consequence.
That’s hilarious coming from the side that wouldn’t even hold hearings on a SC Justice. And sneaked in voting measures just before a court ruling would prevent them from doing so, with studies in hand that showed their new policies would disproportionately affect Dem voters. And tried to solve a problem that doesn’t exist with discriminatory bathroom laws. And steadfastly and intransigently refused to act on any piece of legislation put forward by the previous administration. And that seems bound and determined to buy into every blatant lie Trump speaks. Give me a break. Project much?
‘Afflicted?’ Really? Sorry if you can’t allow for a rational point of view. So remind me, which candidate got more of the popular vote?
The rest of this is just smoke and mirrors. Conservatives voted for Trump because a) they wanted power at any cost, b) they live under the misapprehension that Hillary was the antichrist when they CLEARLY chose the worse candidate, and c) in their heart of hearts they’re perfectly alright with authoritarianism, as long as it’s their authoritarianism.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The primary differences between conservatives and liberals are these: Liberals want to regulate business and deregulate people, and conservatives want to deregulate business and regulate people. Nevermind that that last action is literal anathema to democracy, conservatives couldn’t care less. They think they know what’s best for you, and will try to force you to do it (or not do it) for ‘your own good.’
Spare me how liberals shut down dissent. You’ve been doing it for decades.
But the behavior that Novelty Bobble, Starving Artist, and other proponents of the “PC-liberals-made-me-do-it” Trump-vote exegesis seem to be talking about is basically a bunch of dustups on social media about what constitutes “cultural appropriation” or whether telling strange women to smile is sexist, etc.
I find it very hard to believe that significant numbers of conservatives really felt threatened enough by that kind of pop-culture buzz to vote for Trump on account of it if they were otherwise opposed to Trump. That would be a ridiculously extreme overreaction.
If conservatives don’t like “PC” liberals expressing disapproval about some stuff that some conservatives say, fine, that’s up to them. But pretending that these kinds of arguments are in any way “repressing free speech” is silly.
Nobody’s being arrested for culturally appropriating a hairstyle or opining that fat women are ugly or saying that feminism is cancer or what have you. Maybe they’re being scolded and disparaged by busybodies on social media, but to regard that as any kind of serious threat to civil liberties—much less such a drastic threat that they need to resort to voting for Trump when they otherwise didn’t want to—is absurd.
If significant numbers of conservatives really do sincerely consider such etiquette disputes to be a genuine threat to their civil liberties, all that shows is that they’ve forgotten what real threats to civil liberties look like.
Fortunately [?], the current Administration has kindly undertaken to refresh our memories about that. :dubious:
Nobody, especially me, is saying PC liberals “made them” vote for Trump. :rolleyes:
What has happened is that a huge number of people in this country have gotten fed up to the teeth with political correctness and its many, many ridiculosities and were faunching at the bit to vote for a candidate who wasn’t fearful of the consequences of running afoul of it. Thus when presented with a candidate who was as contemptuous of it as they were and who in effect told the forces of it to go pound sand, they couldn’t wait to jump on board.
What’s that old saying, give the people what they want and they’ll beat a path to your door? People weren’t ‘made’ to vote for Trump because of political correctness, the reality is they couldn’t wait to.
:dubious: You are still painting an extremely unflattering picture of these alleged conservatives.
According to you, these are folks who were so cheesed off about celebrity “controversies” and Twitter flame wars and campus arguments about cultural appropriation and the like, even though none of it was actually infringing anybody’s civil liberties, that they “jumped on board” to vote for Trump despite the fact that they disliked everything substantive about him.
Or else, more realistically, they didn’t dislike everything substantive about him, and would probably have voted for him anyway even if they weren’t all triggered in their “anti-PC ire”.
So, Starving Artist, take your pick. Either:
conservatives voted for Trump because they sincerely approved of Trump’s positions (which is how rational adult voters are supposed to decide on a candidate), or else
conservatives voted for Trump even though they disapproved of his positions, simply because they got such a gleeful hard-on for his “anti-PC” campaign persona.
In the former case, I’ve got no quarrel per se with people who vote their consciences based on serious consideration of important issues.
In the latter case, I’ve got nothing but well-deserved contempt and mockery for any voter who would abandon serious consideration of important issues to obsess over pop-culture froth like “political correctness” controversies.
Fortunately [?], the current Administration seems to be shaping up to give any such voters a salutary reminder of why it’s not a good idea to squander your vote on trivialities and personal resentments.
After having posted the comments above I clicked over to Yahoo to see what was up there, and lo and behold I came upon an article that personifies at least one aspect of political correctness that people find so objectionable, which is that it is ever increasingly becoming the case that people are not free to speak their own mind, to think their own thoughts, or to have their own friends. To violate any of the precepts is to draw the social media ire of the left, as has been happening to Tom Brady in regard to his friendship with Donald Trump.
Since the lead up to the election Brady has been peppered with questions about whether he supported Trump for the presidency, and the more he has tried to deflect attention away from the issue the more insistent the media has become in trying to ferret out an answer, the purpose of which is obvious: either he gives in and publicly disavows his friendship (and presumed support for) Donald Trump, or his refusal to do so will become the basis for never ending press and social media vilification.
Because you see in this day and age no one is permitted to use non-PC approved words, or to have non-PC approved thoughts, or to have friendships with non-PC approved people. To risk any of these things is to risk a high-tech social media lynching. Thankfully things haven’t yet gotten to the point where Brady will face demands that he be fired from his job should he admit he continues to be friends with Trump, but I’m sure it’s in the heads of the media attack dogs that should Brady do so, they can whip up such a frenzy of hate among the country’s lefties that it will lead to the destruction of his career, for it has become increasing the case over the last few decades that any behavior by a public figure that flouts liberal orthodoxy must immediately be followed either by groveling apology and a promise to seek ‘therapy’, or the person must be fired (and hopefully lose everything), for no penalty is too severe when somebody does something the left doesn’t like.
So hang in there Tom! Maybe even take a page from Trump’s book and say “Yeah, I’m friends with Donald Trump. What are you gonna do about it?” Its doubtful he’ll take this approach because he won’t want to upset the Patriot organization’s apple cart, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the media has no intention of letting the issue drop and he’s going to be hounded about it ad infinitum until he makes a declaration one way or the other. I just hope when the time comes he won’t give in to this kind of bullying from the left and will tell them to go pound sand just like his buddy Trump does.
You mean like voting for Trump because some random columnist got on Steve Martin’s case for a rather unfortunate eulogy of Carrie Fischer, which went again things she held up as important in her life? It’s trivially easy to pick nuts on either side. For example, here’s a randomly-chosen right-wing lunatic saying something stupid, hateful, offensive, and bullying:
“Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE!”
Just some random right-wing asshole on social media being a dick.
Or here’s another random righty, calling to suppress free speech:
“One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
Now, some people might say, “BPC, that’s not fair, Starving Artist pointed to a bunch of anonymous nobodies, while you pointed to the person Starving Artist and many like him voted into the most powerful office on the planet!” To which I would say: “Yeah. No shit.” :mad:
Really, all I can say here is go back to my response to you back on page 2 - you never got around to replying to it. It’s not just the liberals doing it. In fact, I’m not convinced that it’s mostly the liberals doing it. I think if you want to look at where the truly nasty rhetoric is coming from, where the “bullying” is coming from, where the people “shutting down discourse” are coming from, maybe you should look in your own camp, where “lock her up” was a mantra and the popular merchandise included things like “Trump that Bitch” and “Clinton sucks, just not like Monica”. The people who reflexively use “PC” as a shield whenever anyone tries to call them on their hateful, misogynist, racist crap. People like your president.
No. It isn’t. One New Yorker columnist wrote a nuanced column about why it might be a bad idea to refer to Carrie Fisher, a woman who fought against being seen as a sex symbol for much of her career, as “beautiful” first and foremost. It was in poor taste - chastising someone for eulogizing a friend is pretty much never a good idea, particularly when you’re not on friendly terms with either of them - but it made a lot of sense, and your representation is simply not accurate. It’s not the only misrepresentation here. So the problem isn’t just the right blowing these issues horribly out of proportion, it’s also the right taking an issue and distorting it to make it seem worse than it actually is.
Bill Maher has literally always pushed back against political correctness. You might as well cite Christopher Hitchens. Meanwhile, do I have to explain why portraying this as “Us, the supermajority, against political correctness” is problematic? Only 30% of Americans identify as liberal, but the vast majority of Americans are, at least on paper, against sexism and racism. The vast majority support gay and trans rights. And yet, you want to claim that described self-identification which runs directly contrary to numbers like that is a far better indicator of who has “had enough of this shit”?
Also, “afflicted with”. Nice touch.
Yeah, those die-hard leftists who predicted Trump would try to build a useless, expensive border wall, ban Muslims from entering the country, start a trade war, and shred the EPA. Totally baseless predictions; all they had to go on was what Trump himself said and promised. Man, those guys sure have egg on their faces! :rolleyes:
There is really no comparison. Right-wing hysteria about Clinton was baseless, the same crap we got about Obama that never fucking happened. Left-wing hysteria about Trump was based entirely on what he said he would do, and lo and behold, he’s doing exactly what he said he would do.
and have different voting systems may end up choosing between candidates so fundamentally similar that non-specific zeitgeist stuff like “anti-PC ire” significantly influences your vote. But over here, it really makes no sense to say that a rational adult who would otherwise have voted for Hillary Clinton could get so upset about “PC” that they’d vote for Trump instead.