Diamond Joe keeps winning.
Biden is always the best. (Well second best to the Islamic Shock, but still)
I think this is a fiction spread by people who don't want to acknowledge that America was literally founded on racism and people loved it so much they tried to found a second country out of America because they were afraid their freedom of racism was going to be restricted. Like, this theory imagines that American white nationalism sprang up sui generis in the last eight years rather than being so powerful that it literally took over half the country 150 years ago.
I have more on this but I'm on my phone.
However I understand why Hillary doesn't necessarily want to mount that argument right now. I can see Cybit's pivot towards whiteness happening, though.
A) Don't be so sure about the "founded on racism" bit - it was founded on oppression, but not just of slaves. (Basically, like almost every other country ever freaking founded). This has been going on since they started sending people over to North America in the 1600s. (The context of who was sent in that era to the US makes people complaining about America taking refugees from other countries sound even more hypocritical)
Book Review below from the Atlantic goes into further detail
EDIT: Well, that didn't work. Folks can read the article about the explanation of the oppression bit.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/the-original-underclass/492731/
Isenbergs history is a bracing reminder of the persistent contempt for the white underclass, but you will have to look elsewhere for insights into why the condition of this class has taken a turn for the worseand what its members think of themselves, and of the elites who have trashed them for so long.
Conclusion of the article is a pretty interesting bit
Except they are now further out of sight than ever. As Isenberg documents, the lower classes have been disregarded and shunted off for as long as the United States has existed. But the separation has grown considerably in recent years. The elite economy is more concentrated than ever in a handful of winner-take-all citiesas Phillip Longman recently noted in the Washington Monthly, the per capita income of Washington, D.C., in 1980 was 29 percent above the average for Americans as a whole; in 2013, that figure was 68 percent. In the Bay Area, per capita income jumped from 50 percent to 88 percent above average over that period; in New York, from 80 percent to 172 percent. As these gaps have grown, the highly educated have become far more likely than those lower down the ladder to move in search of better-paying jobs.
The clustering is intensifying within regions, too. Since 1980, the share of upper-income households living in census tracts that are majority upper-income, rather than scattered throughout more mixed-income neighborhoods, has doubled. The upper echelon has increasingly sought comfort in prosperous insularity, withdrawing its abundant social capital from communities that relied on that capitals overflow, and consolidating it in oversaturated enclaves.
So why are white Americans in downwardly mobile areas feeling a despair that appears to be driving stark increases in substance abuse and suicide? In my own reporting in Vances home ground of southwestern Ohio and ancestral territory of eastern Kentucky, I have encountered racial anxiety and antagonism, for sure. But far more striking is the general aura of decline that hangs over towns in which medical-supply stores and pawn shops dominate decrepit main streets, and Victorians stand crumbling, unoccupied. Talk with those still sticking it out, the body-shop worker and the dollar-store clerk and the unemployed miner, and the fatalism is clear: Things were much better in an earlier time, and no future awaits in places that have been left behind by polished people in gleaming cities. The most painful comparison is not with supposedly ascendant minoritiesits with the fortunes of ones own parents or, by now, grandparents. The demoralizing effect of decay enveloping the place you live cannot be underestimated. And the bitternessthe primal scornthat Donald Trump has tapped into among white Americans in struggling areas is aimed not just at those of foreign extraction. It is directed toward fellow countrymen who have become foreigners of a different sort, looking down on the natives, if they bother to look at all.
As for "pivoting towards whiteness"; I'm not even sure what that really means, but I guess I'll point out that I grew up in the middle of nowhere Midwest - so I've never generally had the "typical" Asian views that someone who grew up on the coasts or even in a large city would have. It's kind of what attracted me to the Democrats - the acceptance of diversity in all forms. To most of the people I've met in Seattle; I'm a hick.
If it means that I'm bearish on trying to shame other people as a first option out of self-righteousness and laziness, and that I'd rather choose empathy over scorn as a first option, then I'll happily join POTUS on the "pivot towards whiteness".
I mean, I get what you're saying. But, at the same time, there's something to be said for not alienating people...even if they deserve it. Like, yes, if you are supporting Trump you're either for white nationalism or you're ambivalent towards it. Neither is morally acceptable, and both deserve condemnation. And, ya, these people should be called out on it.
But, at the same time, I think there's something to be said for taking a tactful, thoughtful approach in explaining to these people why it's not okay to blame "the other" for their problem. Immediately throwing words like racist/sexist/homophobic/bigot no matter how well they earned them, no matter how accurate they are, no matter how much they deserve them...is not the way to win an election.
Should it be the way? ABSOLUTELY. Do I find it uncomfortable that we have to toe this line? ABSOLUTELY.
But, at the end of the day, I want to win. I think acknowledging people's pain (when it's actual pain and not just bigotry) and explaining to them how "Yes, you have fallen through the cracks. But blaming women, Muslims, and Immigrants is NOT the way to solve it" is a preferable path to saying "You feel this way? You're a white nationalist. Go away."
More or less this. I guess watching Obama in '04 when he was going through Southern IL (home to many of those who might vote Trump now); I saw what even just a basic level of empathy, understanding, and willingness to remind each other that we're all in this together can accomplish. (I think we got something like 15% of the white nationalist vote in southern IL. It was kind of funny)
You don't toe the line just because you want to win though; you toe the line because all of us, 40 years from now, are probably going to be the ignorant, racist, conservative old geese that we make fun of now who don't understand the modern world. We toe the line because, flipping the situation, we'd want someone to hear us out.
No one is talking about accepting it. That's not even close to what anyone is saying.
What a lot of us are arguing is that you'll only get so far with shame based attacks or critiques. If someone is supporting Trump because they feel the economy has left them behind, what we need to do is show them that, while this may be the case, blaming it on the brown people, women, and Immigrants is not the answer. Simply jumping from that to "Well you support a white nationalist" is not the way to win these people over.
...
We can simultaneously say "The hateful rhetoric of Trump is unacceptable and indefensible" while also recognizing and attempting to address some of the underlying causes.
This doesn't require us to accept, tolerate or validate hateful rhetoric, white nationalism or anything else. It requires us to engage in a different way. To try to explain that while their concerns may be justified, their reactions to these concerns are not.
that would be great if we didn't have countless studies that show appealing to reason in politics changes no one's mind.
A) You can also appeal to emotion in a personal way - relationships tend to be how people actually change their minds.
B) Jury is still out on that, to be perfectly honest. The technological shift in communication means that many of the older studies might not fully apply to a generation that has been communicating with other people worldwide ever since they were born (though, disappointingly enough, it may have made things worse).
Then why bother participating in a discussion forum about it at all? Is it just intellectual masturbation? Seems like a waste of time to dismiss contrary opinions with a blanket statement of "well, we weren't going to change anyone's mind anyway."
It's moral masturbation more than anything if you are engaging about this under the belief that it is all really useless. You can have low expectations, sure, but under the belief that it is all pointless? Then it's moral / intellectual masturbation IMO.
Which may very well be true. I'm not disputing that. I don't have those numbers, but it doesn't surprise me that it is true.
What I'm saying is we have to make our argument better than whatever bull shit Trump is spewing. Can we do that for everyone? No. We can't. But should we try without immediately throwing labels back at them (even if they rightfully deserve them?) I think we should.
This was the argument Hillary was making today. The type of rhetoric Trump is spewing is not okay. It's not who we are. It's now what we're about. It's never okay. However, the fundamental pain and uncertainty that is often the root cause IS something we need to address and understand.
If the only way to deal with this anger is to deport every Muslim, ever immigrant and every gay from the country? Then too bad. Your pain means nothing, and you are a terrible person. (Universal you, obviously, not directed to anyone). But, if you're scared because you're working two jobs and making less than you were at the coal mine, if you haven't got a raise in a decade, if you're afraid for your families economic security...then let us lay out a plan to help you that doesn't belittle or demean other people.
It's the crux of her campaign "Stronger together." And I think we're well served to take that approach when trying to win over persuadable people.
Now people who are in it for the racism, misogyny, Islamophobia and all the rest? No. We do not and should not entertain those people. They deserve derision and shame.
Adam for the win again.
Dirty secret - there are way more persuadable people when it comes to certain areas. Enten showed back in 2014 that even if you had voter turnout in 2010 exactly match voter turnout in 2012; the Democrats still get their asses kicked up and down Congress.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...-so-different-from-presidential-year-turnout/
Its not that the demographic splits of voter turnout dont matter. They worked in Republicans favor in 2010 and in Democrats favor in 2012; demographics just werent the reason either party won.
What really mattered was that voters changed their minds about which party they wanted to vote for. Look at the voting patterns of each group. Republican congressional candidates won white voters who were at least 30 years old by 25.9 points in 2010, but Mitt Romney won them by only 20.2 points in the presidential race in 2012. Obamas margin among black voters 30 and older was 89.4 points in 2012, while House Democrats margin for this group was 79.1 points in 2010.
The part that people don't like to admit is that they don't really care about winning over folks to their side. They don't want to admit that there are persuadable people. It's a lot easier to go "my people perfect, other people terrible" and leave it at that. Maybe that's what people want. But the thing that has always stuck out about America to me is that its' ability to have such divergent views, people, ways of life, everything, and still be able to come together and function as a working country. Look at how much of a struggle the EU is going through. So it is important to me that we keep working on staying together and reminding ourselves of our empathy as well as our common goals and common beliefs - as hard as it may seem to find sometimes.
TL;DR - Wheaton's Law still applies, even in political conversations.
