**** Elections thread *****

[wufwugy]

Why would you want to favour the american worker?

The reason places lose industry and jobs etc is because they can't compete. If the places that America has lost a lot of jobs to are so behind America in so many things why is it that they can't compete?

Yeah that's it. The protectionist types on trade overestimate what a change in trade policies could do for them. Yet, there are still things that can be done. The most important is actually deregulating domestic policies, but Trump never used that messaging since it does not sell. People instinctively think "deregulation" is bad even when it's good. So instead Trump used protectionist rhetoric. People instinctively love that shit even when it's bad.

[Savy]

Yeah that's it. The protectionist types on trade overestimate what a change in trade policies could do for them. Yet, there are still things that can be done. The most important is actually deregulating domestic policies, but Trump never used that messaging since it does not sell. People instinctively think "deregulation" is bad even when it's good. So instead Trump used protectionist rhetoric. People instinctively love that shit even when it's bad.

I'm not so fussed on the selling of ideas more so just wanting to talk about ideas in of themselves really.

This issue is just one that annoys me. In the UK we have a really big "buy local", "local produce", "made in britain" and people saying all this rhetoric. No, you should buy the best products. Let's say I can buy tomatoes from a local place where they aren't that great or get some imported from somewhere else where they are nice at the same price point when you're an idiot not to get the nice ones. The question should be why can they get them for the same price whilst one is great and the other is shit. What are we doing wrong and they doing right?

Unfortunately due to more and more concerns about the environment they benefit from token greenism from the general public.

Not sure what you mean. If a factory can pay someone $10 a day to work in China and it costs $100 a day in the US, they're better off going to China.

Penalizing companies for leaving seems like kind of a weird solution. First, the companies that stay will either have to lower their wages dramatically, or go bankrupt. Second, it will discourage companies from coming to the US since they'll know there's a price to pay if they want to leave some day.

Yes but why does it cost $10 in one place and $100 in another? Baring in mind all the ballache of cultural difference, moving production to another place, being further behind in technologies etc (not so much now I'm talking years and years ago).

If you can't compete you ask why, if there are valid reasons that you never will be able to then tough shit that's life you can't do it. If there aren't or there are ways to improve then do them. Don't say we'll just stop the other people to everyone's detriment (something I'm aware you aren't arguing for).

[wufwugy]

I'm not so fussed on the selling of ideas more so just wanting to talk about ideas in of themselves really.

This issue is just one that annoys me. In the UK we have a really big "buy local", "local produce", "made in britain" and people saying all this rhetoric. No, you should buy the best products. Let's say I can buy tomatoes from a local place where they aren't that great or get some imported from somewhere else where they are nice at the same price point when you're an idiot not to get the nice ones. The question should be why can they get them for the same price whilst one is great and the other is shit. What are we doing wrong and they doing right?

Unfortunately due to more and more concerns about the environment they benefit from token greenism from the general public.

I certainly is an interesting problem to have.

I think the solutions come more from the production side. If a tech company can't simply hire Indian labor to replace its American labor to make greater profit by being able to lower prices and increase quantity output due to cheaper labor, it has to get a little more creative. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Also there are other effects that are not accounted for in productivity assessments. There are all sorts of ways that Americans working for American companies could benefit productivity over Indians working for American companies. One way is that the American probably has a greater sense of loyalty since if it fucks up, its his home fucking up; whereas the Indian, with loyalties and family and friends in India, might not do as well of a job in some ways.

[wufwugy]

My life has benefited greatly from Scott Adams working. His book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is one of the best things I've read and has helped me and many, many others be happier and more productive. Taxing incomes at ~40% or whatever then taxing estates later at ~60% or whatever goes a long way to discouraging people from producing the types of things that benefit others.

[wufwugy]

Here's a useful way of looking at it: triple everybody's income and it'll result in poverty eliminated and income inequality increased. Income inequality is a useless idea.

[OngBonga]

BTW, The US is also the UK's largest export market, so significant trade goes both ways.

I think this depends if we're considering the EU as a single market or a group of markets. Our exports to Germany and France alone surpass our exports to USA, according to the first page I clicked off a google search. That said, our exports to the EU are decreasing while to the rest of the world they are increasing.

[wufwugy]

Trump is not wrong when he says US gets killed on trade. It's not too much because of differentiation in tariffs (there doesn't seem to be as much of that), but is mostly about differentiation in regulation. This is one reason why I'm skeptical about Trump being able to really fix trade. Fixing trade would mean deregulating industry domestically. But maybe it can be done. RGDP growth would skyrocket.

[JimmyS1985]

Trump is not wrong when he says US gets killed on trade. It's not too much because of differentiation in tariffs (there doesn't seem to be as much of that), but is mostly about differentiation in regulation. This is one reason why I'm skeptical about Trump being able to really fix trade. Fixing trade would mean deregulating industry domestically. But maybe it can be done. RGDP growth would skyrocket.

There's a way to drastically increase the trade we do with other countries. Bring our costs down on what it costs to do trade with us, this is why I'm opposed to the tariff's, as Trump did in fact propose on the campaign trail, which is the only evidence we have at this moment on how he will govern.

But here's the other thing. We're at a crossroads in this country.

If we wanted to get much more trade, we can bring the cost down of goods in this country and therefore attracting countries to trade with us, by simply paying the American worker significantly less than they make now. We can choose to have American workers wages compete with the workers wages in say, France, Germany, Canada and The Netherlands, or we can have American workers wages compete with the workers wages of countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, and Sri Lanka.

[wufwugy]

All Brits are now Trump supporters. https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/sta...8665968642?=01

If you disagree, you want God to not save the queen.

[Savy]

Thank fuck I fall into that group.

[wufwugy]

Yeah but it's opposite day.

[OngBonga]

I really hate our faggoty national anthem.

[bigred]

After days of researching, reading articles from the other side, articles on why the DNC lost, etc, I am still struggling with a few things.

1) It's often been cited that Obama has ruined the economy and Trump is here to fix it but it seems like unemployment rates are low. We have the 6th highest GDP in the world and we're the second largest manufacturer. So when I read generalized statements that Trump is going to fix the economy, I'm scratching my head. Can someone clarify what he's going to fix? Can someone show me statistics to support this "declining economy" trump is going to fix?

2) I've tried. I really have tried...to understand the backlash against Hillary. I think she's a crook but so is Donald Trump. You don't get to these places of power by being honest. On top of being a crook, he's also a racist, xenophobe, and misogynist. Despite exploring avenues and going back and forth for days, I still come to the conclusion that a vote for Donald trump is a vote for racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. Whether you're directly one of those attributes (the Republican minority) or simply enabling it by ignoring it (the Republican majority, imo), you voted for it. Say what you want about voting out corruption, you're enabling racism, xenophobia, and misogyny (in my opinion). Can someone counter this argument? To me, voting for lower tax rates and more money in your pocket over the welfare of your fellow Americans (i.e. women, Muslims, and other minorities) is not American, short sighted, and unethical. Help me understand why Trump supporters are not racists. I've spent the last week researching it with the hypothesis that they're not, but I'm back to where I am. Whether it's direct racism or racism by enablement or indifference, it's still racism.

I'll acknowledge the DNC lost because it failed to appeal to the economic concerns of a major part of America. However, I feel that acknowledgement is somewhat in conflict with my #1. It also depresses me that economy seems to be a higher value than human rights. Maybe it's my liberal elitism because I've had so many amazing opportunities and I've never known what it's like to be be fiscally challenged.

I am truly trying to make sense of things. I don't want to hate on people who voted for Trump. Hate's a waste of my time. But I can't understand it. I really can't.

[Poopadoop]

1) If you think that Trump won because people were dissatisfied with the economy, you're probably asking the wrong people. Democratic pundits might use this as one excuse, but it really doesn't explain things for the reasons you mentioned. The main issues identifed by voters were immigration and terrorism.

2) I think the idea that America has voted for racism is appealing to those who are looking for an explanation, but it's also wrong. To accept that, you'd have to believe they weren't racist four or eight years ago when they elected Obama, but then something changed. Seems unlikely.

A better explanation might be that Trump was able to make color an issue in a way that Obama didn't and Obama's opponents couldn't for obvious reasons.

Research by Harvard political scientist Ryan Enos suggests that when confronted with different racial groups, even liberal white voters turn rightward. In one study, Enos sent pairs of native Spanish-speaking Latino men to ride commuter trains in Boston, surveyed their fellow riders' political views both before and after, and also surveyed riders on trains not used in the experiment as a control.

"The results were clear," Enos wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "After coming into contact, for just minutes each day, with two more Latinos than they would otherwise see or interact with, the riders, who were mostly white and liberal, were sharply more opposed to allowing more immigrants into the country and favored returning the children of illegal immigrants to their parents’ home country. It was a stark shift from their pre-experiment interviews, during which they expressed more neutral attitudes."

Enos’s commuter train experiment is Trump’s electoral strategy in a nutshell.

from: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...-did-trump-win

[a500lbgorilla]

[JimmyS1985]

After days of researching, reading articles from the other side, articles on why the DNC lost, etc, I am still struggling with a few things.

1) It's often been cited that Obama has ruined the economy and Trump is here to fix it but it seems like unemployment rates are low. We have the 6th highest GDP in the world and we're the second largest manufacturer. So when I read generalized statements that Trump is going to fix the economy, I'm scratching my head. Can someone clarify what he's going to fix? Can someone show me statistics to support this "declining economy" trump is going to fix?

2) I've tried. I really have tried...to understand the backlash against Hillary. I think she's a crook but so is Donald Trump. You don't get to these places of power by being honest. On top of being a crook, he's also a racist, xenophobe, and misogynist. Despite exploring avenues and going back and forth for days, I still come to the conclusion that a vote for Donald trump is a vote for racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. Whether you're directly one of those attributes (the Republican minority) or simply enabling it by ignoring it (the Republican majority, imo), you voted for it. Say what you want about voting out corruption, you're enabling racism, xenophobia, and misogyny (in my opinion). Can someone counter this argument? To me, voting for lower tax rates and more money in your pocket over the welfare of your fellow Americans (i.e. women, Muslims, and other minorities) is not American, short sighted, and unethical. Help me understand why Trump supporters are not racists. I've spent the last week researching it with the hypothesis that they're not, but I'm back to where I am. Whether it's direct racism or racism by enablement or indifference, it's still racism.

I'll acknowledge the DNC lost because it failed to appeal to the economic concerns of a major part of America. However, I feel that acknowledgement is somewhat in conflict with my #1. It also depresses me that economy seems to be a higher value than human rights. Maybe it's my liberal elitism because I've had so many amazing opportunities and I've never known what it's like to be be fiscally challenged.

I am truly trying to make sense of things. I don't want to hate on people who voted for Trump. Hate's a waste of my time. But I can't understand it. I really can't.

First I'd like to say that this election did in fact mostly have to do with race, more than economics. They'll play it off as an election over economics, because it's the least morally indefensible path to take on this matter.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I can answer the racial/misogynist/ethnicist aspect of it, as a White Male. When I grew up in school, while we had black classmates, and we were nice to them and all, I can say I did at least, engage in "soft-racism". Most White people can't even agree on what racism is exactly, unless it's extremely overt, and even then you'll get defenders of the racist. But they'll flat out deny anything is racist if it's not extremely overt.

One reason Whites teach their kids not to say "nigger" around Black people, isn't that we're trying to reduce racism in our society. It's because it plays our hand face up when it's that overt. "Soft racism is much harder to detect..

Most Whites, they'll be friendly to minorities to their faces, wave hi to their Muslim neighbors, and be nice to the parents of color who have children at the White parents school. But in the back of our heads I'm sure there is some sense of "I'm superior to you".

I use to be racist/misogynist/ethnicist and hated gays, but it was much more "soft" than outright visiting KKK websites and so on and so forth. I often engaged in soft-racism, and when no one was around, occasionally in overt-racism.

I remember when I was 14 my friend and I were eating at a Chinese restaurant, and he saw a Black man and White woman with each other, and he passively disagreed with their relationship. Bear in mind, this guy is not a KKK member, but he's also 18 at the time. And then he told me some words that have stuck with me my entire life, he said "Thank God, I'm White". There was a lot of wisdom in that statement based on how there is somewhat of a caste system in our society even if it's more difficult to see. The Whites being at the top of the caste system, we'll flatly deny that our society is racist at all, look at Michael Jordan, look at Lebron James, look at Oprah, they're all very successful Black people, ergo, we're not a racist society.

I eventually reformed, to the best of my ability, my former racist/misogynist/ethnicist/hatred of gays, ways of life. I'm much more Egalitarian than I use to be. I still haven't rooted it out entirely, I think deep down were all racist in some way or another. I at least guard against it, but some people embrace it. I like engaging in self-reflection and character development. Trump is a President, who seems to have never engaged in self-reflection or character development his entire life.

Also I have the advantage in that my Dad, was an Equal Employment Opportunity Arbitrator for the Corp of Engineers in Human Resources, He valued "fairness" far more than anything else at his job, so prejudices against people over their race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation, or even disability's, he could not have tainting his decisions, if he wanted to perform his job correctly and as fairly as possible.

[a500lbgorilla]

One reason Whites teach their kids not to say "nigger" around Black people, isn't that we're trying to reduce racism in our society. It's because it plays our hand face up when it's that overt.

When the fuck did I get this talk?

[JimmyS1985]

When the fuck did I get this talk?

Maybe we never got a specific talk about it, but I think there's a healthy dose of it being implied, even without being verbalized.

[a500lbgorilla]

Maybe we never got a specific talk about it, but I think there's a healthy dose of it being implied, even without being verbalized.

I've lived in whitesville during most of my upbringing and younger life, and we learned the sticks-and-stones side of things.

[a500lbgorilla]

I use to be racist/misogynist/ethnicist and hated gays, but it was much more "soft" than outright visiting KKK websites and so on and so forth. I often engaged in soft-racism, and when no one was around, occasionally in overt-racism.

What does this mean? because it sounds like the original sin of white, straight maleness that Shanker Vidantham (not spelled right) keeps talking about.

[bigred]

First I'd like to say that this election did in fact mostly have to do with race, more than economics. They'll play it off as an election over economics, because it's the least morally indefensible path to take on this matter.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I can answer the racial/misogynist/ethnicist aspect of it, as a White Male. When I grew up in school, while we had black classmates, and we were nice to them and all, I can say I did at least, engage in "soft-racism". Most White people can't even agree on what racism is exactly, unless it's extremely overt, and even then you'll get defenders of the racist. But they'll flat out deny anything is racist if it's not extremely overt.

One reason Whites teach their kids not to say "nigger" around Black people, isn't that we're trying to reduce racism in our society. It's because it plays our hand face up when it's that overt. "Soft racism is much harder to detect..

Most Whites, they'll be friendly to minorities to their faces, wave hi to their Muslim neighbors, and be nice to the parents of color who have children at the White parents school. But in the back of our heads I'm sure there is some sense of "I'm superior to you".

I use to be racist/misogynist/ethnicist and hated gays, but it was much more "soft" than outright visiting KKK websites and so on and so forth. I often engaged in soft-racism, and when no one was around, occasionally in overt-racism.

.

I removed some of the quote for minimizing size.

I agree with your first paragraph. It has become clear to me in my last week's research (such as listening to the WSJ opinion podcasts and reading other slightly conservative news sources) that the definition of racism is not consistent across the country and there is a large part in America that only considers and/or understands overt racism. Anything less than calling someone the n-word or directly coming out and saying you hate a race is not racism and often a tool of the "biased media." It saddens me that people hear phrases from Trump like "I love the Hispanics. The Hispanics are going to get great jobs." and thinks it's not racist. When you add a modifier of the to groups, you're creating a divide. You're implying an us and a they and you're perpetuating less overt racism.

I struggle with many other points you make in this post. I was taught to treat all people equal regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. As a consequence, I was taught not to use the n-word because it treats a specific race as less than and has a lot of implied hatred.

I would encourage you to challenge the statement you made, " I still haven't rooted it out entirely, I think deep down were all racist in some way or another." To me this feels like a cop out. It feels you're making the statement, I've removed the overt racism and as much of the more subtle racism. Nothing left to do. I realize you're not directly saying this but it's implied.

I've learned through exposure, experience, and travel across the world that regardless of where you're from, your socioeconomic standing, your gender, etc, etc that people are generally good and they want the same things in life. They want to be treated fairly, pursue happiness, love and be loved, and provide these opportunities to future generations. However, typically through fear, they lash out when they feel these values are threatened. Until we can recognize we're the same, truly the same with no hint of an us vs a them, although I will acknowledge people are dealt different cards in life, we cannot progress as a society.

[JimmyS1985]

I removed some of the quote for minimizing size.

I agree with your first paragraph. It has become clear to me in my last week's research (such as listening to the WSJ opinion podcasts and reading other slightly conservative news sources) that the definition of racism is not consistent across the country and there is a large part in America that only considers and/or understands overt racism. Anything less than calling someone the n-word or directly coming out and saying you hate a race is not racism and often a tool of the "biased media." It saddens me that people hear phrases from Trump like "I love the Hispanics. The Hispanics are going to get great jobs." and thinks it's not racist. When you add a modifier of the to groups, you're creating a divide. You're implying an us and a they and you're perpetuating less overt racism.

I struggle with many other points you make in this post. I was taught to treat all people equal regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. As a consequence, I was taught not to use the n-word because it treats a specific race as less than and has a lot of implied hatred.

I would encourage you to challenge the statement you made, " I still haven't rooted it out entirely, I think deep down were all racist in some way or another." To me this feels like a cop out. It feels you're making the statement, I've removed the overt racism and as much of the more subtle racism. Nothing left to do. I realize you're not directly saying this but it's implied.

I've learned through exposure, experience, and travel across the world that regardless of where you're from, your socioeconomic standing, your gender, etc, etc that people are generally good and they want the same things in life. They want to be treated fairly, pursue happiness, love and be loved, and provide these opportunities to future generations. However, typically through fear, they lash out when they feel these values are threatened. Until we can recognize we're the same, truly the same with no hint of an us vs a them, although I will acknowledge people are dealt different cards in life, we cannot progress as a society.

I appreciate your input and think you have some, definitely valid points, on what I said earlier.

What made me self-reflect on my own racism in my past as a White, was just doing lots of research if you will, on the racist history of this country.

Two of the books in my personal library reflect this, "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander for one, which outlines a Criminal Justice system which may not be overtly racist and is thus more covert in it's very nature, but still extremely racist at it's very heart.

I love racist jokes, one racist joke I've told is "What did the Black guy do after sex? 15 to life" This is outlined in Michelle Alexander's book, that we have an inherently racist Criminal Justice system. Meanwhile we got White Brock Turner serving a mere 3 months in jail for the exact same crime, and Sam Dubose's killer, simply for the virtue of being a White cop, getting a mistrial in what is pretty much a cut and dry case of 1st degree murder at least for an ordinary civilian, and prosecutors are stymied to only charging him with manslaughter simply because he's White and a Police Officer.

The other book that influenced my belief system today is "Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse". I honestly would LIKE to believe that White Lawmakers had NOTHING but the NOBLEST of intentions when they passed Mass Incarceration laws over the past 2 generations of American History, but it wound up, at face value, being an extremely racist policy of mass incarcerating Blacks. The War on Drugs, based on who's been incarcerated, charged, and imprisoned under these policies, can easily be called "The War on Blacks".

Part of why I had such a hard time voting for HRC in the first place, as well as probably her lackluster performance among Blacks too in the election, was because of how inherently racist the 1994 Crime Bill was. That single bill destroyed probably over a million Black families, when much more productive ways to handle with substance abuse were at her husband's disposal in 1994, namely, legalizing illicit drugs.

Another book that influenced my thought on how I have contributed to the racism in this country, was a book in my library called "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces".

The people who have bore the brunt of this militarization, weren't the Al Queda terrorists who had started sleeper cells within our nation, but a major component was in fact the Black community.

I've tried to deal with my own racism, and actually study the racist history of this country. In light of Trump's victory, I read up on the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, it was a race riot in the wealthiest Black neighborhood in the entire country at the time. And I think it basically boiled down to the concept of Blacks having things as nice as Whites, Whites found deeply offensive and a privilege that should be relegated to Whites and Whites only. The Whites wanted to carry out a lynching in the wealthy Black neighborhood, regardless if they had very loose evidence, as by today's standards there is absolutely no evidence the Black teenager that sparked the riot, did in fact rape a White female teenager.

Because the Whites couldn't carry out their lynching without facing an armed uprising from the Blacks in Tulsa, they massacred them and destroyed their wealthy neighborhood in retaliation.

This country does in fact have a deeply racist, double standard history, in regards of Whites vs People of color, based on my readings.

[surviva316]

Anything less than calling someone the n-word or directly coming out and saying you hate a race is not racism and often a tool of the "biased media."

What the media is very bad at is presenting nuance. They treat racism as an all-or-nothing proposition. Anyone who does anything that's racially insensitive is a racist, and racists are necessarily terrible people, and terrible people should be witch hunted.

First of all, this necessarily contradicts a central tenet of intersectionality, which is that anyone from a privileged perspective necessarily has blind spots in seeing things from an oppressed perspective, and being brought up in a society that systemically represents those people in negative light gives us a slanted perspective on them that we have to work to get past. Regardless of whether or not I'm a progressive or try my best to stand on the right side of history or virtue signal on social media, I am still not perfectly enlightened and am still somewhere on the spectrum of being ignorant on various nuances of various minority perspectives.

Of course, this is the "cop out" you were referring to. The fact that we are all ignorant shouldn't normalize ignorance to the point that we throw our hands up and say there's nothing to be done about it. But that's only if you go into it with the perspective that you only want to be non-racist-enough that you don't feel like a piece of shit. It's like learning poker (or any other self-improvement endeavor); no one who's interested in getting better finds a leak and is like, "Oh yeah, sure, I suck in that particular way, but everyone sucks some way or another, so I'm not going to try and plug that leak."

As for reacting to others who show less overt kinds of racism, I think the public response should be in proportion to the incident. When that football player's wife compared Richard Sherman to a steer that needed to be castrated, it was at the very very least racially insensitive. It should be pointed out that when you're talking about someone from a certain group that has been often dehumanized by society and who a few generations ago was actually bred and sired like cattle, you may potentially offend them in a very deep and visceral way, and any decent human should be sensitive to that. Also, it's possible that both your seething level of hatred and your givenness to compare him to an animal is racially motivated, but I'm not a psychologist so I'll leave you to investigate those feelings within yourself. ... and that's it. That should be the response.

People go so far to virtue signal and (ironically enough) illegitimize and dehumanize people they perceive to be "other" that they turn it into an Us vs Them and nobody learns anything. Often, the person who said the offensive thing just comes out of it feeling like, "Well, these people think that me not being choosy enough with my words makes me a shit smear, and I think I'm more than a shit smear, so they must just be wrong and overly sensitive." Again, this isn't to "defend" people who say insensitive things or to normalize not being self-reflective and honest enough to learn something from a shitstorm like that; I'm just saying that "We" could certainly do a much better job in honestly representing the complexities of racial relations.

Virtue signaling in the intellectual/academic realms can be extremely problematic as well. There is a central tenet in critical thinking that you have to give a certain level of credence to things you're not disposed to believing. I'll try to keep this brief, but basically there's a give-and-take that's necessary in intellectual debate that doesn't work when you're always trying to unilaterally move in one direction. You have to try out potentially dangerous ideas and not just prove them wrong, but really investigate what about it makes it wrong (and, actually very often, what subtleties within it actually prove to be accurate and rework that into the framework you've already built up from other investigations) in order to really learn anything.

If we just white-washed everything all the time, we'd all be like that joke Stephen Colbert always makes where he pretends he's totally blind to race. To get to a place where we recognize differences and explained why certain crimes are more prevalent in certain communities, etc, we had to get through some touchy investigations of issues.

[wufwugy]

What the media is very bad at is presenting nuance. They treat racism as an all-or-nothing proposition. Anyone who does anything that's racially insensitive is a racist, and racists are necessarily terrible people, and terrible people should be witch hunted.

First of all, this necessarily contradicts a central tenet of intersectionality, which is that anyone from a privileged perspective necessarily has blind spots in seeing things from an oppressed perspective, and being brought up in a society that systemically represents those people in negative light gives us a slanted perspective on them that we have to work to get past. Regardless of whether or not I'm a progressive or try my best to stand on the right side of history or virtue signal on social media, I am still not perfectly enlightened and am still somewhere on the spectrum of being ignorant on various nuances of various minority perspectives.

Of course, this is the "cop out" you were referring to. The fact that we are all ignorant shouldn't normalize ignorance to the point that we throw our hands up and say there's nothing to be done about it. But that's only if you go into it with the perspective that you only want to be non-racist-enough that you don't feel like a piece of shit. It's like learning poker (or any other self-improvement endeavor); no one who's interested in getting better finds a leak and is like, "Oh yeah, sure, I suck in that particular way, but everyone sucks some way or another, so I'm not going to try and plug that leak."

As for reacting to others who show less overt kinds of racism, I think the public response should be in proportion to the incident. When that football player's wife compared Richard Sherman to a steer that needed to be castrated, it was at the very very least racially insensitive. It should be pointed out that when you're talking about someone from a certain group that has been often dehumanized by society and who a few generations ago was actually bred and sired like cattle, you may potentially offend them in a very deep and visceral way, and any decent human should be sensitive to that. Also, it's possible that both your seething level of hatred and your givenness to compare him to an animal is racially motivated, but I'm not a psychologist so I'll leave you to investigate those feelings within yourself. ... and that's it. That should be the response.

People go so far to virtue signal and (ironically enough) illegitimize and dehumanize people they perceive to be "other" that they turn it into an Us vs Them and nobody learns anything. Often, the person who said the offensive thing just comes out of it feeling like, "Well, these people think that me not being choosy enough with my words makes me a shit smear, and I think I'm more than a shit smear, so they must just be wrong and overly sensitive." Again, this isn't to "defend" people who say insensitive things or to normalize not being self-reflective and honest enough to learn something from a shitstorm like that; I'm just saying that "We" could certainly do a much better job in honestly representing the complexities of racial relations.

Virtue signaling in the intellectual/academic realms can be extremely problematic as well. There is a central tenet in critical thinking that you have to give a certain level of credence to things you're not disposed to believing. I'll try to keep this brief, but basically there's a give-and-take that's necessary in intellectual debate that doesn't work when you're always trying to unilaterally move in one direction. You have to try out potentially dangerous ideas and not just prove them wrong, but really investigate what about it makes it wrong (and, actually very often, what subtleties within it actually prove to be accurate and rework that into the framework you've already built up from other investigations) in order to really learn anything.

If we just white-washed everything all the time, we'd all be like that joke Stephen Colbert always makes where he pretends he's totally blind to race. To get to a place where we recognize differences and explained why certain crimes are more prevalent in certain communities, etc, we had to get through some touchy investigations of issues.

Very good points.

The point about racial insensitivity should be well considered. Tons of what people call racism is really just insensitivity to peoples' feelings on ideas about race, not racism, not "a person of this color is a certain way because of his color".

To that, however, I'll add that I'm not the biggest fan of promoting the idea that being insensitive is wrong. If I got upset at people for being insensitive about things about me, it would make my life worse because I would be giving them power to harm me that I should not let them have. If I were to get up in arms over others' insensitivity, it would probably provoke them to become even more insensitive. I'm not prescribing a solution here, just perceiving things. I don't know the best way for people to react would be. It would probably be a balance between letting insensitive speech roll off our backs and penalizing it. But I really can't say how that could be achieved. The zeitgeist tends to sway like a pendulum, extreme on one end to extreme on the other end.

[wufwugy]

I'm very happy you're investigating with an open mind and asking these great questions.

1) It's often been cited that Obama has ruined the economy and Trump is here to fix it but it seems like unemployment rates are low. We have the 6th highest GDP in the world and we're the second largest manufacturer. So when I read generalized statements that Trump is going to fix the economy, I'm scratching my head. Can someone clarify what he's going to fix? Can someone show me statistics to support this "declining economy" trump is going to fix?

The economy is significantly weaker at this point in the business cycle than it has been in other recoveries. Even with low unemployment, inflation is still low. Interest rates are still near bottom, and every attempt the Fed makes at raising them lowers growth expectations. If the business cycle were to down slope, which happens every ~10 years or so, the ability for the Fed to respond is far weaker than it has been in memory and even in 2008. The employment gains the economy has made are proportioned more towards part-time work than usual.

Obama's recovery has been a bad one because it has been weaker than typical recoveries. The recovery has happened despite what he's done, not because of it. His fiscal policies have only hurt us, and the growth we've had can be almost entirely summed up by expansive monetary policy and expanded fracking. The Midwest is particularly upset because they see the infrastructure of bad economic policies. Even though they partly misdiagnose the reason why manufacturing has changed, they are not wrong in that government policies have caused a good deal of harm in the area. As a side note, the short on manufacturing is that, yeah, it may be have high output today, but that's because capital is replacing labor. This benefits investors and the world, but hurts the laborers. What has not been done, yet needs to be done, is deregulate labor and industry so that capital is not so attractive relative to labor. That's not necessarily on Obama, though. Unions and voters in those states favor big regulation without realizing it's the primary factor they can affect that changes the quantity demanded of their labor.

2) I've tried. I really have tried...to understand the backlash against Hillary. I think she's a crook but so is Donald Trump. You don't get to these places of power by being honest.

If Trump is a crook, we don't know it. He might be, but we just do not know so. With Hillary, we know so. Comey's testimony revealed her criminality. He recommended not prosecuting for what is best described as political purposes. Generals have been prosecuted for much less than what she did. Her husband is also a confirmed sexual predator.

On top of being a crook, he's also a racist, xenophobe, and misogynist.

I was one of the many who heard what he said, heard what others said about it, and agreed that he was indeed racist and sexist. But I was wrong. We can examine what he said and find that he was never discussing race nor disparaging women. He never attacked citizens. By contrast, Hillary attacked citizens quite a bit.

I'm not sure what to recommend. It took me about a month of reading Scott Adams to shift from the view that Trump was the most bigoted person to run for president, and I was only open to the idea because I was interested in understanding Trump since I knew I was going to vote Republican or nobody. You've expressed that you do not like Adams, so I'm not sure what specifically I can say. Of those who discuss Trump in a positive light, he is just about the most palatable.

One thing I will say is that as the months roll by, keep this in mind. I think you'll see that Trump doesn't do any of the bigoted stuff he has been accused of.

[JimmyS1985]

I can't even listen to Trump speak on the radio or on tv. I'm going to do a whole lot less tv watching these next 4 years, the guy speaks on like a 3rd or 4th grade level. And politifact ranks 85% of his statements are at best a half truth, and at worst, mostly false, false, and liar liar pants on fire.

If 85% of what the President of the United States says is practically a lie if not an outright lie, I just won't listen to him.

He reminds me of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, which was funny watching his State of the Union speech, but when it's reality, it quickly loses it's humor and can become scary.

I just hope when the wealthy receive their tax cuts, they'll start creating jobs, raising workers wages, and creating businesses here. Didn't really happen under Bush considering he only created like 2 million jobs in his 8 years, hopefully this time Trump won't fail us.

[wufwugy]

I can't even listen to Trump speak on the radio or on tv. I'm going to do a whole lot less tv watching these next 4 years, the guy speaks on like a 3rd or 4th grade level. And politifact ranks 85% of his statements are at best a half truth, and at worst, mostly false, false, and liar liar pants on fire.

Politifact is biased. I've seen it rate something Sanders has said as true and when Trump said the same thing it was rated as false.

I just hope when the wealthy receive their tax cuts, they'll start creating jobs, raising workers wages, and creating businesses here. Didn't really happen under Bush considering he only created like 2 million jobs in his 8 years, hopefully this time Trump won't fail us.

Allow me to ask for caution on this issue. That tax policies of Republicans benefit the wealthy and hurt the non-wealthy is a myth. "Trickle down" was a hoax, but it's a part of our common vernacular because the media ran with it.

[bigred]

I'm very happy you're investigating with an open mind and asking these great questions.



The economy is significantly weaker at this point in the business cycle than it has been in other recoveries. Even with low unemployment, inflation is still low. Interest rates are still near bottom, and every attempt the Fed makes at raising them lowers growth expectations. If the business cycle were to down slope, which happens every ~10 years or so, the ability for the Fed to respond is far weaker than it has been in memory and even in 2008. The employment gains the economy has made are proportioned more towards part-time work than usual.

Obama's recovery has been a bad one because it has been weaker than typical recoveries. The recovery has happened despite what he's done, not because of it. His fiscal policies have only hurt us, and the growth we've had can be almost entirely summed up by expansive monetary policy and expanded fracking. The Midwest is particularly upset because they see the infrastructure of bad economic policies. Even though they partly misdiagnose the reason why manufacturing has changed, they are not wrong in that government policies have caused a good deal of harm in the area. As a side note, the short on manufacturing is that, yeah, it may be have high output today, but that's because capital is replacing labor. This benefits investors and the world, but hurts the laborers. What has not been done, yet needs to be done, is deregulate labor and industry so that capital is not so attractive relative to labor. That's not necessarily on Obama, though. Unions and voters in those states favor big regulation without realizing it's the primary factor they can affect that changes the quantity demanded of their labor.



If Trump is a crook, we don't know it. He might be, but we just do not know so. With Hillary, we know so. Comey's testimony revealed her criminality. He recommended not prosecuting for what is best described as political purposes. Generals have been prosecuted for much less than what she did. Her husband is also a confirmed sexual predator.



I was one of the many who heard what he said, heard what others said about it, and agreed that he was indeed racist and sexist. But I was wrong. We can examine what he said and find that he was never discussing race nor disparaging women. He never attacked citizens. By contrast, Hillary attacked citizens quite a bit.

I'm not sure what to recommend. It took me about a month of reading Scott Adams to shift from the view that Trump was the most bigoted person to run for president, and I was only open to the idea because I was interested in understanding Trump since I knew I was going to vote Republican or nobody. You've expressed that you do not like Adams, so I'm not sure what specifically I can say. Of those who discuss Trump in a positive light, he is just about the most palatable.

One thing I will say is that as the months roll by, keep this in mind. I think you'll see that Trump doesn't do any of the bigoted stuff he has been accused of.

After some research, I can't disagree on the economy part. I still want to continue to research this but I've seen a lot of blame put on the Dodd-Frank regulations in 2010. However, I do want to acknowledge that much of this is speculative given changing global parameters so comparing business cycles historically feels not quite apples to oranges but maybe green apples to fuji apples? I think you get my point.

Do you have specific Scott Adams posts that point out how Trump is not divisive when it comes to race, anti-Muslim, misogyny, etc? It seems very clear that while Trump hasn't come out and said I hate Muslims or I hate black people (overt racism), the language he uses (e.g.: the Hispanics love me), the desire to build a registry of Muslims, spews subversive hatred and divisiveness. I'm going to stop using racism as a term, and instead use divisive, given that my concerns are larger than race. It is a blatant disregard for many different groups of people spanning religion, gender, and race.

[wufwugy]

To me, voting for lower tax rates and more money in your pocket over the welfare of your fellow Americans (i.e. women, Muslims, and other minorities) is not American, short sighted, and unethical.

It also depresses me that economy seems to be a higher value than human rights. Maybe it's my liberal elitism because I've had so many amazing opportunities and I've never known what it's like to be be fiscally challenged.

I forgot to respond to this earlier.

Human rights are more than the perceived oppression of a particular group. The smallest "minority," after all, is the individual. Taxation is an important issue when it comes to human rights. Economics is one of the most important, as one of the things that most empowers the powerless is a growing economy with more opportunities to succeed.

If Republicans were trying to oppress groups of people, that would be a big problem. But we're not. The media tells everybody we are, but the media is not telling the truth. In fact, one of the drivers of the Trump movement was that the left and the media have become over the last few years a bastion of suppression of free speech. Free speech is about as human rights as it gets. Back in the 00's, we all experienced what it was like having some basic freedoms subverted by the Religious Right (*cough* poker *cough*), but today it's the Regressive Left telling men that we're complicit in the made up idea of "rape culture", telling whites that things can only be racist if it's whites doing them, telling women that all their problems are because of men and society, and telling everybody that illegal behavior and terrorism pose no threat to the western way of life. The Regressive Left got so ridiculous over these few years that Caitlin Jenner went from hero to bastard the moment she voiced support for Cruz, and Peter Thiel is "not a gay man" because he supports Trump.

The Trump coalition is the coalition of people the Regressive Left proclaimed monsters.

[Savy]

It's also important to realise no one actually knows why, if they did they'd win every election going.

We're at a time pretty much world wide where immigration is being used as the excuse for lots of things and as a result people are moving more towards the right in their voting. It isn't just an America thing it's happening in the vast majority of places. To try and then assign all the reasons on relatively localised issues and get a correct answer is always going to throw up a lot of falseness.

Another thing is people aren't all that logical about issues and don't put in the research to determine how true things are. If you keep repeating something you're more likely to believe it's true (part of the explanation as to my first point) whether it is or is not true. How people feel is much more important than the actual truth & those feelings need to be explained. It's much easier to blame smaller groups of people than yourself or those running the show.

That and Clinton is awful.

[Poopadoop]

We're at a time pretty much world wide where immigration is being used as the excuse for lots of things and as a result people are moving more towards the right in their voting. It isn't just an America thing it's happening in the vast majority of places.

Funny that Canada seems to have gone the other way than the rest of the Western world on that count. Don't know why that is though.

That and Clinton is awful.

This plus a million. Imagine if Obama had been allowed to run again.

[wufwugy]

A note on racism, sexism, and your garden variety bigotry: our society out to lunch on what those things are. Racism is when you think somebody is a certain way because of his race. It is not even about making an observation that associates with race, even though probably 99.9999% of people (including me) tend to think it is. The "out to lunch" goes far beyond this. Things have gotten so ridiculous that it has become instinctive to equate national identity with race (only some of them), religion with race (only some of them), and to keep double standards the name of the game.

In one of the cases with Trump, he discussed Mexico. Mexico is not a race; it's a nation-state. He discussed it in the context of illegal migration. At other times he discussed how he loves Mexicans (which the hoaxing media called a racist dog whistle) and how he thinks a judge with Mexican heritage might have a conflict of interest when ruling over a case with Trump (which is true). The hoaxing media lied and said Trump thinks being Mexican means you can't be a good judge.

One of the reasons for Trump supporters' enthusiasm is that we're tired of being told we're bigots when we're not. Our society has gotten to the point that accusations of bigotry almost always define bigotry incorrectly and almost always come from a source of virtue signalling and professional victimhood. I've been called a bigot on this very forum for those reasons. We want to discuss the issues. All of us want this. But it can't happen when having an opinion elicits an immediate response of bigotry.

Clinton supporters are smart and well-meaning people. They're not ones who get this wrong. The hoaxing media is the one that gets this wrong. They lie and push an agenda of divisiveness. They do everything they possibly can to explain everything through the lens of righteous good guys and bigoted bad guys. Our culture is reaping the consequences of their hoaxes.

[wufwugy]

[Poopadoop]

“We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign,” the letter reads. “You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.”

That's about as far from an apology as it gets. Trump's pants are on fire again. Time to change the password.

[Poopadoop]

My guess is that Trump's way of healing and uniting the country will be to continually tell everyone how great he is and how they should all get behind him.

[wufwugy]

Trump has done more in 4 days to unite the country than Obama did in 7+ years. Under budget, ahead of schedule.

[Poopadoop]

Trump has done more in 4 days to unite the country than Obama did in 7+ years. Under budget, ahead of schedule.

Lol ya i can tell. All those rioters are people who love Trump.

[wufwugy]

Lol ya i can tell. All those rioters are people who love Trump.

The country is not yet more united, but it will be.

[Poopadoop]

If he wants to unite people, he should start sending positive messages about something besides himself.

[wufwugy]

If he wants to unite people, he should start sending positive messages about something besides himself.

He does. You're not seeing it on account of cognitive dissonance.

[wufwugy]

It's also that the media doesn't show it. Trump spent a good deal of time trying to be the uniter, but the media only showed anything that can be construed as divisive.

[wufwugy]

There's something called the "fake because". It's when somebody comes to a decision "because" some reason, yet they were already pre-suaded in that direction in the first place and were subconsciously looking for a reason to make the decision. One of the ways I experienced this with myself is when I was asking members of this forum for input on a new laptop. There was a point where I knew that my line of questioning for MMM was pre-suading myself to go with his recommendation, and it was one particular reason he made that was my "fake because" for when I finally decided to buy the one he recommended.

Anyways, Scott Adams had a great line on this. A month or so ago he endorsed Trump for the first time. His expressed rationale for why was because Clinton favored a very high estate tax that Adams felt would wrongfully take from what he had already paid taxes on. On his periscope, somebody asked him, "was this your fake because?" and he replied "have you learned nothing from me? Everything is a fake because."

[Poopadoop]

I'll see your fake because and raise you a hard determinism.

If you accept that the mind and brain are the same thing, everything you do is ultimately the result of patterns of neural firing in your brain. Therefore you have no more control over your decisions than you have over which neurons fire when. IOW, free will, including the freedom to make up your own mind, is an illusion.

Gazzaniga did some interesting experiments on split-brain patients in the 60s (70s?) that showed that when you disconnect the two halves of the brain and get the side without language (generally the right hemisphere) to do something while hiding it from the side with language, you can ask the person after why they did it and the side with language will just make up some random bullshit story.

[wufwugy]

It's crazy.

[Poopadoop]

I know. I love it

Not exactly what I was talking about, but still pretty cool:

[Poopadoop]

LOL

[Savy]

Brilliant by Trump.

Instead of deporting illegals he's going to jail a tonne of them which means that instead of the below minimum wage level of earnings they'd usually get they'll get a solid 11c a day.

Shame about the supreme court nonsense you seem to have going on in your country, surely person views shouldn't really come that into it. Both in terms of who is getting put in there and those who are in the supreme court.

[wufwugy]

Brilliant by Trump.

Instead of deporting illegals he's going to jail a tonne of them which means that instead of the below minimum wage level of earnings they'd usually get they'll get a solid 11c a day.

The funny thing is that his "dealing with illegals" is really just going to be about not obstructing existing law. Also, it will hopefully include penalizing sanctuary cities by way of withholding funds. Regarding the deportation and jailing, it will just be of those who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration, and they will be treated according to the law. Probably those with dependent families will be jailed and those without will be deported.

Shame about the supreme court nonsense you seem to have going on in your country, surely person views shouldn't really come that into it. Both in terms of who is getting put in there and those who are in the supreme court.

What do you mean?

BTW Ginsburg definitely should step down. Her comments on Trump have shown partiality. Can't have it.

[Poopadoop]

Regarding the deportation and jailing, it will just be of those who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration, and they will be treated according to the law. Probably those with dependent families will be jailed and those without will be deported

I don't follow this. What do they now when they catch an illegal robbing a gas station, set him free?

IOW, how is Trump's plan different from what happens currently?

[wufwugy]

I don't follow this. What do they now when they catch an illegal robbing a gas station, set him free?

One example is that there are laws or common practices in sanctuary cities that don't consider immigration status relevant, so illegal alien criminals don't get identified and deported. These cities can be penalized for breaking federal law.

[Poopadoop]

One example is that there are laws or common practices in sanctuary cities that don't consider immigration status relevant, so illegal alien criminals don't get identified and deported. These cities can be penalized for breaking federal law.

That doesn't answer my question. What do they do with an illegal alien caught committing a crime?

[Poopadoop]

BTW Ginsburg definitely should step down. Her comments on Trump have shown partiality. Can't have it.

Baloney. She's a SCJ, you can't make her resign because she didn't like your guy.

[Renton]

Baloney. She's a SCJ, you can't make her resign because she didn't like your guy.

I'm pretty sure wuf would say the same thing if ginsburg was shown to be partial to Trump.

[Poopadoop]

I'm pretty sure wuf would say the same thing if ginsburg was shown to be partial to Trump.

And I'd still say you can't if someone wanted to sack her for it. If you want to make her resign for having a political bias, you have to make them all resign.

[wufwugy]

Baloney. She's a SCJ, you can't make her resign because she didn't like your guy.

Can't make her resign. But the view that jurists should present no political opinions is highly respected by scholars. The law is meant to be interpreted based on constitutional and legal principles, period. Ginsburg did something widely considered very, very bad by stepping outside of those bounds.

It's not her fault (sarcasm). She was just following the message she was getting from her political alignment and from her party, that it's okay to break the rules as long as you're fighting against Literal Hitler.

[Renton]

Shame about the supreme court nonsense you seem to have going on in your country, surely person views shouldn't really come that into it.

Well, the tricky thing is that a supreme court justice can be completely impartial, but it's still his/her job to interpret the law and that justice's entire legal philosophy can coincidentally align with a left or right agenda. It's unavoidable.

[Savy]

I'm aware it's unavoidable it's just a shame it is that way.

[JKDS]

Hey, arguments over judicial interpretation are the backbone of america. Get off my lawn

[Savy]

Hey, arguments over judicial interpretation are the backbone of america. Get off my lawn

It isn't having the argument that's the shame. That is very important. The issue is that the winner of the argument is basically predetermined by the people chosen to take part in the argument.

The funny thing is that his "dealing with illegals" is really just going to be about not obstructing existing law. Also, it will hopefully include penalizing sanctuary cities by way of withholding funds. Regarding the deportation and jailing, it will just be of those who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration, and they will be treated according to the law. Probably those with dependent families will be jailed and those without will be deported.

But those existing laws aren't necessarily good things in the first place hence why they somewhat get ignored.

[wufwugy]

But those existing laws aren't necessarily good things in the first place hence why they somewhat get ignored.

The laws are ignored for political reasons, in part because people think they are not good laws like you suggest. This shouldn't be confused with whether or not they are actually good.

[wufwugy]

Here's to hoping he disbands the White House Press Corps. And to hoping that he never again goes on any of the shows that shilled for the DNC. And to hoping the only debates he agrees to in 2020 are online and on non-shill networks. Wallace can moderate one.

If we are to stand a chance against the virus of identity politics, it will take a strong stance against media corruption.

[wufwugy]

Apparently there's more going on with the "lobbyists in his transition team" thing than it seems. A whole bunch have been purged. It appears even Christie has been dumped. Good riddance. Here's to hoping it's true.

[wufwugy]

I'm putting Sanders at a smallish favorite to take the nomination next cycle. Then lose the general. He could have won this time, but next time Trump will have so much credibility on some of Sanders' key issues and the media shills won't be as pronounced and a ton of moderate and values-conservatives who normally vote Republican but didnt this time will be swayed to Trump. It would take somebody like Warren or Booker to beat Trump. You know, because of how they can get the "identity politics" vote.

[BankItDrew]

I'm putting Sanders at a smallish favorite to take the nomination next cycle. Then lose the general. He could have won this time, but next time Trump will have so much credibility on some of Sanders' key issues and the media shills won't be as pronounced and a ton of moderate and values-conservatives who normally vote Republican but didnt this time will be swayed to Trump. It would take somebody like Warren or Booker to beat Trump. You know, because of how they can get the "identity politics" vote.

I'd wager Trump is out after 4 years.

Wager?

[Poopadoop]

I'd wager Trump is out after 4 years.

Wager?

He's not exactly strong on keeping any of his promises so far.

Another possibility though is that he has some success by bombing ISIS or limiting immigration and he uses that to ride to re-election. Also quite possible the Ds nominate another dud.

All too far away to really speculate about imo. Lots can happen in four years.

[wufwugy]

I'd wager Trump is out after 4 years.

Wager?

I suspect you'll think that in 3 years time, so I'll wait till then to wager.

[surviva316]

I'd wager Trump is out after 4 years.

Wager?

I might take you up on this at 1.5:1 odds.

Of course, I don't think Trump has a good chance to be reelected because he's going to be awesome like wuf thinks, I just think we're kidding ourselves when we just assume that he's already lost his reelection. Have we already forgotten the lessons we should have learned from the election that took place just a week ago?

[wufwugy]

I might take you up on this at 1.5:1 odds.

Of course, I don't think Trump has a good chance to be reelected because he's going to be awesome like wuf thinks, I just think we're kidding ourselves when we just assume that he's already lost his reelection. Have we already forgotten the lessons we should have learned from the election that took place just a week ago?

Here's my prediction: Trump is going to be very presidential, moderated, and normal for 3 years as president. He will have eliminated all doubt that he has bad temperament or is unfit. The "values conservatives" evangelical NeverTrumpers will get on his side and the "barely conservative" Republicans will too. If he had these folks he would have won Minnesota, New Hampshire, and probably Virginia. He'll probably get more women and Hispanics too, since it will become clear that non-violent illegals are not being targeted.

And when the election cycle comes around, he's gonna return to the gutter. Yet this time it won't provoke people into thinking he's unhinged. They'll just say "that's how Trump campaigns; it even seems to work." If this comes to pass, the Democrat opponent will have a much harder time than Clinton did. He would still be beatable by Warren or Booker, but to be honest, I don't think they would run. Trump punishes and demoralizes his opposition. They probably won't want to be subject to that and will wait til 2024. Trump, Christie, and Bush all had the grounds to run in 2012 but waited for 2016 for similar reasons.

[surviva316]

The "values conservatives" evangelical NeverTrumpers will get on his side and the "barely conservative" Republicans will too. If he had these folks he would have won Minnesota, New Hampshire, and probably Virginia.

Trump didn't underperform in these areas. He won Conservatives and Republicans by similar margins that 2000 Bush did and 2012 Romney did (went with one for a comparable election cycle, and the other for the most recent one), and these are according to exit polls which proved to skew heavily toward Clinton.

But again, I don't really disagree that whoever runs against him will have an uphill battle. His awfulness is going to be most apparent to people who already voted against him, and while some other will be worse off, it won't be immediately apparent why especially in the first 4 years. Any regression we experience on the international stage will (historically speaking) only make it harder for the incumbent to be unseated.

I also don't have full faith in the man who refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power when he was some nobody candidate is going to run things perfectly straight up when he has executive powers. Not trying to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but for those who like to throw around that Trump is literally Hitler, you should actually be the ones who are most concerned.

This probably isn't a post worth clicking "Post" on, but whatever, I'll probably just self-ban from whatever replies I get :P

[wufwugy]

If the White House Press Corps is kept, the Press Secretary should be a tag team of Katrina Pierson and Sheriff Clarke.

I'd watch Sheriff Clarke stomp the media over new episodes of Game of Thrones any day (kidding).

[bigred]

Ugh. This thread is like werewolf. I don't have enough time or internet access to keep up. Bigred posts incoming. Recognize I won't be available to quick responses.

[bigred]

Wuf,

What's your thoughts on Steve Bannon?

Thoughts on Muslim registry?

[wufwugy]

It saddens me that people hear phrases from Trump like "I love the Hispanics. The Hispanics are going to get great jobs." and thinks it's not racist.

Racism is when you say "I love Hispanics because they're Hispanic."

Trump's statement reflects the type of thing people say normally. How many millions of white men have said "I love Asians" or "Asians are so hot"? When they say this, they're not being racist and nobody gives them a hard time for it. It's when the reason you "love Asians" is "because they're Asian" that you're being racist. I'll continue this below...

When you add a modifier of the to groups, you're creating a divide.

This is correct, and it is different than racism. Divisiveness is bad news, and sometimes creating divides is more negative than positive. I would not argue that saying "I love Hispanics" is the bad kind, but saying what he said about tracking Muslims is. There's more to that though, which I'll address below...

Thoughts on Muslim registry?

It's a bad idea and I don't disagree that his words could have some negative impact. I disagree with what he said (as I think he does too), and I don't fault anybody for pointing out why it was a bad idea. The reason I think he said it is the "pacing and leading" thing. It's a persuasion tactic he has used many times. He paces the group of people who really don't like Muslims, which gets that group of people to say "hey I like this guy, he agrees with me", and then at a later point Trump "evolves" to a less extreme position and those people he paced say "well, he's got a good point." He did this with the Muslim thing. He started with a registry and total ban on Muslim immigration, and then within a few weeks or so, he shifted to "extreme vetting." By the end, this tactic can be argued to making things less divisive because the leading portion tracks people away from their previously divisive stance.

Adversaries of Trump may say he does this is because he's dumb and knows nothing or because his innate hate got him in trouble with the public so he had to backtrack. Advocates of Trump say it's a negotiation tactic he's used many times in the past and that the evidence suggests he used it again here.

Do you have specific Scott Adams posts that point out how Trump is not divisive when it comes to race, anti-Muslim, misogyny, etc?.

There isn't a perfect piece he's put together, but this is a good place to start.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1461570...d-anti-trumper

What's your thoughts on Steve Bannon?

I have very little opinion on him. I know he's been getting smeared as "alt-right" and "white nationalist" lately, which are both on the order of absurd. "Alt-right" is more or less a useless label. Not that many people identify as alt-right. Most of what we hear about "alt-right" is the media applying a label to Trump supporters ex post facto.

The "white nationalist" thing smells too much of race-baiting to me. As somebody who hangs out in pro-Trump, pro-Bannon circles, let me tell you that these people don't give a flying fuck about race. They care about culture and law and patriotism. What they don't like is how illegal immigration undermines these.





Total side point, off the beaten path, different topic: "whiteness" didn't always mean skin color. Historically, it has been integrated with culture. To be "white" was to embrace particular ethics, like the work ethic, nuclear family ethic, and the respectable-ness ethic. This used to be something "non-whites" aspired to. These "non-whites" included the Irish, Italian, Jews, Greeks, and other European immigrants. Some, like the Irish, were even considered worse than negro on the race scale. Each of the groups mentioned all "became" white by adopting "white" ethics, and today we think of them as racially white even though 150 years ago they were not.

So when we think of "white nationalism", it's important to acknowledge the ethic components. Even though there is a race component, that isn't the only part of the story. A lot of people who denounce the race component and embrace the ethic component still get labeled as racist.

[OngBonga]

Until we can recognize we're the same, truly the same with no hint of an us vs a them, although I will acknowledge people are dealt different cards in life, we cannot progress as a society.

But we're not all the same. I'm not the same as a Muslim, or hispanic, or Chineseman. I'm also not the same as my white British next door neighbour. He's gay for a start. He also doesn't have long hair. He's older than me. I really don't tink there's another person on the planet that I'm the same as. I'm fucking special, me.

Until we recognise that we are ALL DIFFERENT, in spite of race, gender, dick size, hair colour, smoking habits etc, we cannot progress as a society.

[Poopadoop]

But we're not all the same. I'm not the same as a Muslim, or hispanic, or Chineseman. I'm also not the same as my white British next door neighbour. He's gay for a start. He also doesn't have long hair. He's older than me. I really don't tink there's another person on the planet that I'm the same as. I'm fucking special, me.

Until we recognise that we are ALL DIFFERENT, in spite of race, gender, dick size, hair colour, smoking habits etc, we cannot progress as a society.

The problem is this isn't being done. People are being lumped into groups based on one category (e.g., religion, race) which is divisive. Talking about how there's often a greater overall difference between you and your white neighbour than between you and a random Muslim who lives in a different town would be unifying. But that's not the language being used.