Racist dick or just a dick?
Why couldnt it just be in their narrowly defined self-interest? Were you voting against your self-interest?
Maybe they just noticed their standard of living had been declining for a number of years and wanted someone to focus on that issue? Not that I know of course but it is my working hypothesis. There are alternative hypotheses but I dismissed them as less likely.
I hear ya. Do what ya gotta do to get through this time in history.
Two partial explanations:
Wanting the entire area to fight each other to a point of mutual destruction (genocide the easy way);
Hoping for Armageddon (no, not kidding).
More than 100, but I’m not going to bother coming up with an exact count.
And yeah, they’re all racist, sexist, and in general bigoted against the “other”…some more subtly than others, but when you know people for decades you’ve seen them in enough situations to figure it out.
Most of them are also very polite to your face. You wouldn’t know the fear and hatred that lurks beneath if you only met them in a meeting, or party, or public venue.
Then it’s understandable, especially considering you just said you “think that was the kind of language Trump supporters used. Whether it was true or not.” [it isn’t true, of course]. If you’d been clear that it wasn’t the kind of comment that you yourself would use you’d have gotten a less adverse response.
There are some excellent ways to combat wage reduction for low-skilled jobs: minimum wage laws and harsh enforcement on employers (like the President-elect) who use undocumented labour or who abuse systems like H1B. I doubt either of those will be priorities for the new administration.
No-one is pretending that immigration doesn’t suppress domestic wages for unskilled jobs absent those measures. The only intellectually dishonest discussion going on is the one that claims there’s a great surge of demand among American citizens to get paid peanuts for work like stoop agricultural labour, doing (literally) back-breaking manual labour that endangers life and limb, and cleaning up the poop of the very old or very young. Those kinds of jobs, and not manufacturing or corporate jobs, are the ones that new immigrants to the U.S. have been doing since the 19th century.
Not necessarily. Why do you think that’s a thought experiment I need based on that comment? Do you believe that saying “open racists were more likely to vote for him” = “everyone who voted for him was a racist”? If so you might need a remedial course in reading comprehension.
I know plenty of people who are personally very friendly with POC, yet voted Trump. I don’t consider them actively racist in their behaviour toward others. But I do think that they place far too little importance on the damage that racism and sexism does. Of course stopping rape is important, but it has to get to the back of the line. Stopping Muslims from entering the country? Well, I’m not personally for it, but when you balance it against other issues like abortion, that’s not the hill I’m going to die on.
There’s also the weighting of your own interests over those of others. Of course many black people are in fear for their lives and they suffer discrimination, violence, destruction of their communities and so on. But white Americans are hurting. They’re angry right now, and I think we should all stop what we’re doing and listen to them.
It also depends upon where that low-skill immigration is, of course, and what it is doing. I mean, for instance, there’s a lot of low-skill immigration in California but that didn’t seem to make California rush to vote for Trump. In the UK EU referendum, there was a lot of talk about immigration but it was mainly in areas that didn’t really have much immigration; those areas that did were not so inclined to be against it. Meanwhile there’s also lots of talk about how it is “changing the nature of the community” as if (a) that had never happened before, and (b) the numbers were so vast that it was irresistible. This is the human problem with big numbers. Tell someone that 100,000 immigrants are arriving in the country every year and it is natural to imagine them all moving into your street. When, in fact, if one of these new immigrants moved into your street, that would be statistically highly unusual.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your argument - the fact that the electorate of some states voted to increase the minimum wage suggests that they understand quite well that the problem is with the employers, not the employees. Low wage are a demonstration of the weakness of the capitalist system when supply and demand is applied to people as though they were just assets. It’s particularly egregious when the same argument is used both ways at either end of the system: we have to cut taxes for people at the top more/pay people at the bottom less in order to incentivise them.
First off…no, man, we’re not living in the 1960s anymore.
Second: the number of African-American Democratic voters didn’t drop off that much. The big surprise was how many Latin@s and white women voted for Trump. Inexplicable, really: even taking into account the negative propaganda against Hillary for decades (and against women in general for eons), why in the world would Latin@s vote for an entire country of Arpaio wannabes harassing them on every corner?
Yes. Just as the women who voted for him are sexist.
It’s a common malady. No one is fully immune.
Michael Moore’s views:
I’m sorry, but he does say “Fellow Americans”.
I went through the phase with Brexit where I looked around me hatin’. Then I thought - live with it, change it, or leave. Bit harsh on myself.
…
This one is weird. 51% of white woman. Virtually no black / latino. Reasoning - potentially they swallowed his lies that he would rebuild their broken communities. WIllingness to put up with sexism to get back the important things in life.
I’m totally weirded on this.
Quoting because we’re pretty far down in the thread and not everyone will have read every word…this needs to be emphasized more.
I think it would be particularly appropriate for INS to deport Melania, since it’s been shown that she worked and received multiple paychecks for modeling prior to Trump arranging for her to get a work visa.
The lady I’ve talked about a few times received this explanation: “Women shouldn’t be in power.” This was the first time in her life someone has said this to her, and it came from the older Honduran citizens that could vote.
Because Trump promised to do things to help them or fight for the things they valued, and Hillary didn’t.
A large number (rightly) disbelieved him, another chunk simply weren’t the ones he was targeting so he didn’t promise them anything, but it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that some people chose something over nothing, and for a good chunk of them he really honestly 100% will serve them better than Hillary would.
There’s nothing particularly inexplicable about voting in your self interest.
Another side realization from a conversation with my fiancee:
less legal options… well Trump, being the bully that he is, already has “enemy lists” drawn up. what he plans on doing with those… well… I can’t say, but given his promise to have his political opposition imprisoned on trumped up charges… oy. I just realized that in a hundred years, that’ll be a popular folk etymology for the phrase “Trumped up charges”, and people will be surprised to learn that the term preceded him.
Indeed but the wages on their own are not the sole problem. White American blue collar labor is stuck in Ohio or Indiana or Upstate New York. If they to come to NYC to wipe my poopy old black ass they will have to sell their worthless real estate - settle their mortgage with cash they dont have - and travel to a high rent location and get non-existent social housing which they can share with their meth addict kids.
Unsurprisingly they think they are owed more. Specially since they (and us urban ethnic minorities) volunteer to fight Americas stupid pointless neocon wars etc.
I can tell you think they are not owed anything. I can understand that. Modern western societies cant really protect their citizens from the implications of free trade if they accept free trade. It comes with the turf. Both the good (cheap imports) and the bad (Chinese wages).
However cos they think they are owed more, they choose to vote for the Nativist who implied he could give them back their union wages from the 70s and pull their house prices back up. And get their kids off of heroin and the benefits packages with pensions that they used to have etc.
Trump cant deliver. But the Dems could definitely have considered these peoples situation and tried to include their concerns.
Racist dick. When you choose an action, you are culpable for the consequences of that action. And they voted for a racist fascist who threw in a few platitudes about focusing on the economy. The options are either that they were completely unconcerned about the racism and sexism, which in itself is a bad thing, or found it acceptable to their own worldviews.
As for my own self-interest, I and my family, and most of my ethnicity currently in the country are currently activating contingency plans for getting the hell out of here for when the 4th Reich starts assembling itself. Not if. When.
Potentially, white women care less about sexism than mainstream political correctness leads you to believe (either because they’re used to it or because they don’t think it will ever change). At that point, they split naturally between the two parties, with minimal margins.
