Let’s have a literacy or IQ test to vote then?
I’ll be generous and spot them the letters “I” and “Q”.
To be serious, both Logic and Ethics need to be required classes at an early age in our public schools to help people recognize con jobs.
Nah. We’re willing to give the right a fighting chance.
As an aside, if we did have such a test, which party do you think might come out ahead?
Donald Trump knows a lot about self-respect; he has self-respect in droves.
I think you miss the point of up_the_junction’s post tho, which seems to me to be that people voted in a way that they could respect themselves, because they voted to stop the system that’s been, in their view, out of control and unresponsive for decades now.
Hillary Clinton is easily the most hated woman in America. She has been for the past 25 years, easily eclipsing other notables like Tila Tequila, Snookie and that lady in New Jersey who tans too much.
And the system is hated even more. 8 fucking years of economic recovery, and there has been recovery, but damned little if any is showing up in the average person’s bank account. Most people went from “prolly gonna lose the house” to “prolly gonna keep the house for at least a couple more months”, and frankly, that’s a shitty level of improvement for 8 fucking years.
That alone would have been enough for any competent GOP candidate to take the White House. Couple that with Hillary’s unfavorability and people’s hatred of her and we get where we are now.
The self-respect and dignity that utj mentions, IMO, comes from people making a meaningful choice rather than rubber-stamping the Same Old Thing.
Of the people I talk to, very few expect Mr. Trump to keep any of his promises. They don’t care. What they want is to disrupt a system that they feel doesn’t do anything positive for them. If the system can change and start doing things for them, they’ll prolly suddenly fall in love with the system and want to keep it. If it doesn’t change and instead withers dies, well, they already didn’t like the system so “fuck it”.
BAM! Nailed it.
Excellent job insulting 50% of the population by proxy, Czarcasm. I’m sure that will win those people’s votes!
Seriously: what are you goals now? Do you want your side to win the next election?
Don’t these idiots realize they are part of the system they are trying to destroy?
This is the equivalent of people rioting and destroying their own neighborhoods in protest-they are fucking themselves over along with everyone else. A better system just doesn’t pop into place magically when you destroy the old one.
This is where Democrats (and really all establishment politicians) are faltering. I keep bringing it up:
Listen. Understand. Empathize.
Seriously, can you answer the question?
I never said anything about the science of climate change. The post I quoted said nothing on the science of climate change.
Budget Player Cadet, whom I quoted, makes a couple assumptions. Those are what I am questioning.
Budget Player Cadet assumes that a) those who don’t agree with him are stupid b) that Clinton knows what the problems and concerns of these people are and c) that Clinton would/could fix them.
My theory is that Budget Player Cadet, along with Clinton and the rest of the Democrats in Washington, are the ones who are working from a place of ignorance and that none of them understand that.
There are two options. The one **BPC **is working from, that everyone who voted for Trump is stupid, is shortsighted and quite frankly, ignorant. The other option, that BPC and Clinton do not understand the problems and concerns of those who voted for Trump and that the policies that Clinton advocated for do not address the concerns of the Trump voters, is much more likely.
Plus, the whole “We are SO SMART!!!” bit is old on top of being wrong.
Slee
When HRC announced that she would fight to raise the minimum wage for all, which of the three above did she fail to do?
You aren’t going to find much common ground if you keep referring to 50% of our population as “idiots”.
To borrow an analogy from another thread: People have been forced to eat liver for decades. They are sick of eating liver. Why should they give a fuck if they burn down the cafeteria? People know there is other food. They might not know where it is, or what it looks like, but they are pretty sure there is other food. But they KNOW they don’t want liver anymore.
Feelings of powerlessness are an important factor here, too. Voting is the one chance people have to exercise some power and control over a system that they feel is too big, non-responsive and out of control. Mr. Trump played to those feelings; Mrs. Clinton did not.
Considering that right wing media has promoted that mindset for at least 30 years, it shouldn’t be surprising that a large portion of the population believes it, and it’s not like there’s a lack of evidence supporting that view, no matter what your values.
But remember: what is your goal? How is calling 50% of the country “idiots” going to further that goal?
There are, simplistically put, three methods of persuading people to change their behavior (voting, buying, discriminating against others, etc.). Well, actually, there are only two, plus coercion.
You can “sell” your proposals, convincing people on their merits, or on some emotional appeal which resonates with them. You can “convert” people to your way of thinking, if you can shift their paradigmatic mental structures juuust enough to “click” over to yours. Or you can “compel” them through institutional, physical or moral authority. These approaches all have pluses and minuses, but they are NOT equally applicable in all circumstances.
“Selling” is something every politician or political movement knows how to do. It requires moderate to high rhetorical skills and an emotional or rational connection between the persuader and the audience in terms of goals, preferences or precepts. If that connection doesn’t exist or cannot be made, even the most skillful salesman will fail to persuade. A successful sale pitch will last until a better pitch (or a better salesman) comes along.
“Conversion” is something every religion and every school of political theory understands. (As do cults, of course.) It requires a lot of ground work, both to explicate an existing ideological or theological structure which supports your proposals in such a way that it can be grasped by prospective converts (personality cults can largely skip this, the charismatic individual is the structure), and to provide opportunities for entry into that structure. It requires of the prospect at minimum the willingness and ability to consider their own beliefs to the extent that they can look at them from an altered perspective. If that malleability does not exist or cannot be facilitated by the persuader, then conversion can’t happen without other agency --epiphanies do occur, but we’re talking about induced conversion here so they’re irrelevant to the political discussion. This method requires both the highest level of skill and the most work. It also produces the most committed adherents.
“Compulsion” is dictatorial, and is what military structures, situational leadership figures (cops, teachers, etc.), bureaucrats and schoolyard bullies use to control those subject to their authority. It’s also how electoral majorities exert influence over legislatures and executive offices. Compulsion requires no skill, but does require the persuader to possess positional or moral authority. Its effects last only as long as the authority exists and can be exerted, and produces no new adherents to your ideas.
So, preamble over, I want to respond to the “sell the broccoli” suggestion.
I think, as mentioned by me and several others, selling non-Trump approaches or candidates to a Trump voter would require the salesperson to make and/or exploit the points of connection between their respective concerns, their preferred outcomes or their emotional responses. If we consider HRC for POTUS as the product, I think the real failure of the pitch in this election was not that the connections weren’t attempted; on the contrary I think the available rational connections about preferred outcomes were acknowledged and addressed, but those arguments weren’t heard or weren’t considered important by the ‘buyers’. The important considerations gave no shared points of agreement on outcomes (reject Muslims, deport undocumented visitors, kill ACA because to the Trump voter those proposed solutions seem to be the desired outcomes) or allowed no strong emotional agreement (“Islam is scary” versus “terrorism is scary”, “homsexuality is yucky” versus “individual liberty is great”, “abortion is murder” versus “reproductive decisions are difficult, painful and private”, etc.)
It’s easy to try and sell broccoli but some people won’t eat it, and if you dip it in the chocolate sauce those consumers prefer, you’ve defeated every ‘healthy eating’ argument you’ve ever made on behalf of cruciferous vegetables. And if ‘healthy eating’ is the cornerstone of your ideological structure, you can’t really make the chocolate sauce proposal and remain a Broccoli Party.
So we’re left with conversion efforts; if we’re trying to get these folks to vote differently we have to get them to think differently. I’m not going to dive into all the challenges here, except to mention that self-doubt and examination of one’s own prejudices aren’t highly valued activities for you if you’re full of moral certitude. This isn’t a dig at Trump voters, it’s an observation about ‘gut level’ political convictions. (We could all name posters of any political stripe that can never be convinced of -or respond to complaints of- flaws in their own arguments.) The only thing that makes this aspect of human nature particularly vexing in the conversion efforts we’re discussing is that IMO ‘gut level’ convictions are a large part of conservative voting preferences, and are particularly associated with the Trump phenomenon.
So I think conversion of Trump voters away from Orange side of the force is unlikely to succeed on any scale large enough to make a blip on the voting preferences of that general group.
Which leads me back to my argument for compulsion. If enough of the rest of us vote -and historically and definitely last Tuesday, that didn’t happen- then our inability or unwillingness to validate their fears and hatreds won’t matter.
I don’t recall that announcement. As such, I can’t really comment on it.
But let me ask: do you think that people in the Rust Belt are worried about the minimum wage and want it to be higher? If so, I would have thought that would have helped Mrs. Clinton garner votes there. Did it? No? Then she really wasn’t listening to those people, was she?
I would be happy to try, but you’ve asked a lot of them. Which one did you mean?
538(who got closer to the uncertainty of the election) reported the levels of coolness or dislike Trump supporters had from research by Jason McDaniel and Sean McElwee:
So, regarding blacks and Hispanics the numbers were actually 40-30% of Trump supporters disliking them. For all other groups their disapproval of them was higher than 50%. Particularly Feminists and Muslims.
Aye; this is good advice here. Good post, Bricker.
This is why Hillary lost. The non-big city liberals are tired of being talked to and treated like assholes. All the anti-Trump threads in the Pitt are a perfect example of the type of rhetoric they are tired of hearing about themselves.
I am head of security at a trucking firm, and probably the only person here who voted for Clinton. They think Hannity and Limbaugh are news reporters, and that the only reason that Muslim Atheist HUSSIEN Obama got elected was through voter fraud. I have been listening to them for the last eight years, and I understand that they have been taught that it is o.k. to hate, to blame, to accuse without an ounce of evidence. They have no interest in “empathy”. I know this because I have gone this route. There is agreement, and there is “So you think Crooked Hillary should get away with murder?” People In Positions Of Media Power have given them targets to aim their hatred at.
I have neither the funds to launch a media campaign to equal the ones that created this mess, and even if I did, my morals and ethics would stop me from stooping so low and resorting to the same dirty tricks that they have used over the years. Instead, I am going to have to go to my ever-more-hostile work environment every day while trying to figure out what I’m going to do for me and My Beloved when the insurance goes away.
Hey, here’s a question for all of you that won this little game: How much empathy and understanding are you going to have for the rest of us?