Where does “viable” enter into that?
Already covered in the post I was responding to.
Is there any way to explain to *you *you’re wrong without *you *being able to dismiss it as condescending, and blaming the messenger etc.? Perhaps you too need to review what leadership is.
You have to be willing to discuss, respectfully and in neutral terms, the pros and cons of sticking one’s arm into a threshing machine, and— acknowledging that they and others may have very valid reasons for wanting to do so, and making a real effort to understand their perspective on the matter— provide a list of reasons (while not talking down to them!) why not sticking their arm into the threshing machine might be the better overall option, in terms of what they want and the benefits they expect in return.
And that’s a stupid way to vote. Sanders’ and independent voters who believe that everything’s a government conspiracy can decide to take offense to my condescension all they want. What exactly am I supposed to say to make them feel better about their own deluded naivete and stupidity anyway? It seems like they’re a sensitive bunch. The fact is most American voters are morons and that’s why we have a president who’s a moron. How the fuck did this guy get into office? Answer that question honestly and then people can get offended at me if they want.
I’m qualified to judge their stupidity, regardless of whether or not they believe they’re voting in their own interests or not.
Well you know what? You win the election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you want. So stop whining.
That’s what I get for not reviewing the thread but just picking up where I left off.
A leader, and we’ve had many in our history, helps educate and elevate the electorate, by showing how much better we would be together if we acted that way. A leader, a statesperson, does not pander to the lowest of the electorate’s feelings; that’s what a pol, a demagogue, does.
That the concept is so rarely even understood, much less respected, now shows how serious a problem we have.
No statesman, no matter how great, can make stupid people smart; he or she can convince them to do the smart thing, at least for a short while, but actually making them smarter takes decades, and is beyond the ability of any one person.
To them, the pro is that they aren’t sticking their arm in the threshing machine, they are sticking our arm in the threshing machine, the arm that belongs to all of us.
And so, big deal that it is destroyed and they can no longer use it, but they dance in glee that they managed to hurt the rest of the country in the process.
Well. You are pretty close in your assessment. ~50% of the US population has an IQ at or less than 100. A tremendous amount have large gaps in education. They vote. Therefore, communication style needs to appeal to emotion.
Why do you think these so-called political memes seem to work?
This is actually a reasonable observation.
But many of those ‘at or below 100 in IQ’ voters would be able to understand presentations that highlight the way in which they’re being manipulated—if such were well-crafted enough.
Doesn’t matter how smart they are: people don’t like being manipulated.
(And Facebook is currently running scared, because it’s become clear even to the less-well-educated that with the help of the Facebook business model, they were manipulated. By a foreign adversary. Facebook is furiously working to say ‘it wasn’t our fault’ but their actions reveal their anxiety over being held accountable.)
Of course it was a factor. How critical of a factor is the question.
Yes, and that is a very cogent criticism of Clinton- the polls showed her as a shoe-in and she therefore ran a poor campaign. That criticism is well deserved. But she is unlikely to repeat that mistake, eh?
To quote Colin Powell (that trash talking political hack)
She “screws up every thing she touches with her hubris”
Has Hillary shown some actual personal awareness since the election or has she blamed EVERY body but herself for her loss?
I’m a conservative…please Hillary…run again.
It’s not Facebook’s or Twitter’s fault. The fault is self-inflicted to a degree by the portion of the population that doesn’t work to improve education and critical thinking skills. The other group at fault are the politicians and educators that accept if not promote that state. Facebook and such are being used as scapegoats.
I didn’t say that it was Facebook’s or Twitter’s fault. I said that with the help of Facebook’s business model*, people were manipulated.
My larger point, of course, was that it would be useful to put in the effort to let people see just how easily they were manipulated. As one account put it:
Facebook's Russian-Linked Ads Targeted Muslims, Gun Owners, BLM | Fortune
People tend to believe they can’t be influenced. A weakness of our species is our stubborn conviction that we are too smart to be manipulated.
If that were true, though, would there be such a thing as advertising? If that were true, would the idea of ‘the bandwagon’ ever have been conceived?
This isn’t the thread to argue basic human psychology. But it’s, you know, an actual thing. Claims that Facebook had no effect are shaky at best.
*Taking ad buys about Black Lives Matter in rubles, to give but one example.
I didn’t say you did and I agree that social media makes it easy to amplify differences.
I’ve been saying that rhetoric is as important as logic in debate for awhile. I also cautioned about the glee that many had with the success of Trump in the early primaries. Funny how so many smart people are now coming around to the power of rhetoric and emotion.
Going forward, I think we’ll see a further exploitation of division with these social media/mass media tools. The solution isn’t just critical thinking. It’s also genuine tolerance of divergent political views. My time on this board doesn’t give me any hope with this though.
Huntsman would have been great.
Because he was running against Hillary.
A third time.
But people absolutely *hate *admitting that they’ve *been *manipulated. Even to themselves. Admitting it to others who were *not *manipulated, especially those who pleaded with them to see it all along, well, that’s almost impossible for most. It’s much more comfortable to keep the bubble inflated.
That’s got to be a large part of the reason for the continued vituperation of Clinton, with its intensity seemingly inversely proportional to respect for mere facts. It’s the very human need to avoid accepting a very uncomfortable responsibility.
Yes, Sanders would have been the target of a lot of attacks, had he been the nominee, or even looked close to becoming the nominee. And some of them might have stuck. I still say he would have fared better than Clinton in the general, and only a little bit better would have been enough to win.
The key is to realize that a big chunk of Trump’s voters weren’t voting for Trump because they wanted Trump. They were voting for “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Any More”, and Trump was the Mad-as-Hell Candidate. Clinton can’t appeal to the Mad-as-Hell voters, but Sanders could. It doesn’t matter that their policies are exactly opposite, because that kind of voter isn’t looking at policies.
HILL-A-RY!
HILL-A-RY!
HILL-A-RY!
Please Hillary, you can DO IT.
2020 will be meaningless without your campaigning for POTUS, or your running the DNC.