I have to disagree that this was a worthwhile wall of text to climb. What the poor guy is saying is just that he feels beat up by people like the mean liberal Yale 20 year old he describes. And he may very well be hearing a hateful message about his white privilege from some equally privileged (and equally obliviously so) jackasses.
But he’s not being beat up by his culture. He’s being told, gradually and by fits and starts, that he may no longer overtly act and speak the way white cisgendered heterosexual males used to be allowed by society. And it hurts because it feels like a condemnation of who he is, instead of an insistence that the other groups be allowed equal standards of respect.
So he becomes so desperate for validation as a person, he’ll vote for “an asshole” who he knows is lying about his policies just because that asshole tells him he’s not a bad person for kicking against society’s changing demands (which, by the way, is precisely how all assholes naturally think anyway). That’s a sad and dreadful way to live.
And I will add that I’ve never seen any of these “stop calling me a <bigot of a particular stripe> just because I have contrary opinions!” rants delivered by anyone who isn’t aggrieved because they’ve been called out for speech or actions that are actually, you know, bigoted in the particularly stripey way being described to them.
There are plenty examples of liberals that go beyond just “insistence that the other groups be allowed equal standards of respect” all the way over into “condemnation of who he is”.
Right. We knock on his door, during our daily condemnatory rounds (we take shifts y’know; one week on three weeks off) and read the script to him. Every white middle class male gets one ration of “you’re a racist yokel” every 16 hours when we’re fully staffed. We’re kind of proud of that productivity.
[/sarcasm]
Every social platform, particularly the anonymous internet ones, has its share of dipshits and trolls. I didn’t gather that this is what Wally Text was writing about.
Hmmph. I see people all the freaking time express “contrary opinions” that don’t get called bigoted, even political ones. You disagree on NAFTA? No ones calls you racist. Think the U.S. ought to keep control of the internet? Oddly enough, no one says you’re homophobic. But you agree with your friend calling the current First Lady “a ape in heels”, but oh no! I’m not racist! That’s a terrible thing to call me! The cop up in Michigan and his confederate flag that he was waving at black people, oh no, that’s not racist either! Fuck that.
I know perfectly well people say and act in racist and misogynistic and homophobic ways all the freaking time in their “safe” spaces. All these people in here say, “oh you bad liberals, you are calling us those terrible names just to get us in trouble…we should have the right to feel justified and even praised for anything we say. Us feeling bad is just wrong!”
I just looked at the last post in “now is not the time for Americans” and see an overblown, hyperbolic rant huffing out the same insults that conservatives have been throwing at progressives for years - but nobody seems to being saying to them, “befriend, empathize, listen, understand”. It’s terrible that the rural rate for teenage suicide is up - did you or they know or care that the black teen suicide rate has tripled? They complain that no one cares about them - from where I’m sitting, the only people they seem to care about is themselves as well. I’ve never seen them reach out to communicate either. Some 40 year old working at McDonald’s in a major metropolitan area voted for Hillary hoping that there was a chance the minimum wage would go up is apparently “a liberal elite” according to the poor, pitiful rurals and the apologists here and therefore deserves to be shit upon. Ha.
And how, exactly, do you know he ‘acts and speaks the way white cisgendered heterosexual males used to’?
You know nothing of this person except that wall of text yet you assume a whole lot about him.
He is complaining that if he holds a contrary position he is labeled racist/sexist/homophobe and what do you do? Call him a bigot for holding contrary positions when you don’t even know what he believes.
Guess what? For a whole lot of issues there are principled arguments on both sides. Yet a whole lot of liberals act as though disagreement on any issue is a sure sign that the person who disagrees is a bigot.
The ones that assured them that they COULD get laid "JUST AS YOU ARE - bad clothes, bad hair, dumber than a bag of rock - zits and all!
Just send $10 for a book with “101 Sure-Fire Pick Up Lines” - you’ll be rolling in pussy by Saturday!
That was the deal Trump promised - “All you know is digging coal? No Problem - I’ll bring coal back 100%!”
No awkward having to learn anything new - just elect me and you’ll be rolling in money by next week!
Enough shy, horny males sent in their $10 to keep those ads running for generations.
Enough poor, economically bypassed coal miners voted for Trump.
I’ve heard and read that same damn complaint literally hundreds of times since at least the 70’s, said almost the same way each time, with the same tears and the same insistence that no, I’m not a bad person!
Archie Bunker was an overdrawn, broad caricature, and so was Mike Stivic. But they’re both walking around in multiples nevertheless. The difference being that Mike, even though he’s an abrasive and smug jackass, tries not to be a bigot. And a lot of Mikes have just given up trying to talk to Archies, which you’ll please fucking note hasn’t prompted any Archie to start voting or thinking differently.
I feel for all of the Wally Texts out there, in all sincerity. It must be awful to believe as they do and to be so fucking fearful and disgusted so very much of the time. But if Wally keeps wanting validation but never gets it from the entire rest of society (according to his megagraphic post), maybe he should consider that the problem isn’t necessarily with the rest of society.
That the special flowers who spent the last 8 years calling Obama a secret Muslim Kenyan usurper and sneering about libtards have fee-fees also? Nope, only if you haven’t been paying attention.
I’m bumping this thread because a recent PPP poll (summarized here by Rachel Maddow) gives insight into the knowledge of Trump voters. It turns out that, contrary to what many assume, they are unusually poorly informed. It’s hard to understand where their ideas come from — even FoxNews isn’t as ignorant as them.
Under Obama, the stock market (DJIA) is up almost 150%. Most Americans are aware of this.
[ul][li] Among those who didn’t check “unsure”, 49% of Trump voters think the stock market dropped under Obama.[/ul][/li]
Unemployment is now barely half what it was when Obama took office.
[ul][li] By a whopping 67% to 20% margin, Trump voters say that unemployment increased during the Obama administration.[/ul][/li]
The results are so pathetically ignorant, one is tempted to model Trump voters as similar to rats who haven’t yet learned where the cheese is, checking Yes and No at random, and in roughly a 50-50 ratio. But no, the Trump voters are more ignorant than those rats:
[ul][li] Trump voters say, by a 73-6 margin, that George Soros is paying anti-Trump protestors![/ul][/li]
[ul][li] By a huuuge 60-18 margin (22% unsure), Trump voters think millions voted for Hillary illegally.[/ul][/li]yet still a solid majority of Trump voters think Trump won the popular vote. :eek:
One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that
[ul][li]Only 53% of Trump voters think that California’s votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote. 29% don’t think California’s votes should be allowed to count, and another 18% are unsure.[/ul][/li]
By significant margins, voters overall believe the NY Times and CHH are more credible than Donald Trump. But
[ul][li]Among Trump voters the Times has a 7/71 favorability spread[/li][li]CNN has an 11/76 favorability spread, and SNL has a 17/61 favorability spread.[/li][li]The musical Hamilton has an 11/45 favorability with Trump voters, compared to 61/3 with Clinton voters.[/ul][/li]
Next time someone tells you Trump voters are as smart as the average American but are just misunderstood, laugh at them.
A few Democrats voted for Trump. A few Republicans voted for Clinton. But the overlap between the set of Trump voters and the set of self-described Republicans is very large.
That speech from Clinton was one of the most amusing political moments I have seen. You could literally see her mind work in real time as she tried to walk back her initial statement.
I think it was reasonable for her opponents to take the quote out of context. The Gov’t and private sector have so far done a pretty poor job at ameliorating the economic & social costs of industrial decline. Clinton may indeed have wished to help these communities, but her opponents were correct to highlight the lost jobs. These communities rarely recover.