Trump has already changed everything

boing
41

Oh, ferpetesake, this has to happen now?

8 Likes
42

The problem is that the “real” reason someone might vote for Trump starts from a staggering number of unproven assumptions and positions grounded in pure FUD.

When I (or anyone else) expresses condemnation for Trump supporters it isn’t rooted in ad hominem attacks; instead, I feel it comes from a rather good understanding of their concerns (which are ignorant, lacking nuance, and ultimately incredibly naive).

14 Likes
43

but have no links to the likes of David Duke

I don’t know anything about what you’re even writing about with this David Duke fellow. So I don’t know. Did he do something of note, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke.

4 Likes
44

“The clan,” you say? What kind of clan? Who’s this guy, coming in here talking about “clans” and stuff.

5 Likes
45

A third party is a death knell to that side of the political argument.

Symetrical popular alt-party candidates? I want bernie and trump to run, and both to get more popular votes than the party candidates.

1 Like
46

That’s a great counter-meme, that I plan to use the next time I run into a Trump supporter. Thanks!

I’m hoping to eventually amass persuasive counters to all the Trump lures.

6 Likes
47

The chart is inaccurate - Hillary Clinton is not that far to the left. I’d put her right of center.

13 Likes
48

Wrong revolution. Also she doesn’t have to worry…

It won’t be in her streets. And in her kids schools.

49

It sounds as if it was written by a PR person. Perhaps Trump has woken up to the benefits of an astroturf campaign.

5 Likes
50

You’ve misread the situation. One of the elements contributing to Trump’s success is that he is quite deliberately avoiding the extreme small government rhetoric (welfare is evil, government healthcare is communism, etc.). In this he is following in the footsteps of Mike Huckabee, who also distanced himself from the more severe Ayn-Rand-inspired Republicans of earlier primaries. I expect that there are enough poor whites collecting SSDI, food stamps, social security and so on that that rhetoric no longer goes over as well as it once did. Of course there is the occasional goofball who has no problem with this cognitive dissonance (‘keep government’s hands off my Medicare’), but most people are smart enough to figure out which side their bread is buttered on.
tl;dr Trump is a populist, not the small government guy you’re looking for.

51

this, i believe, is susan sarandon’s position in a nutshell. i prefer that we don’t reach that point. i’m a bernie supporter, but i’m as pragmatic as i think he comes across. i don’t believe he wants his supporters to NOT vote if it ends up that he isn’t the nominee – that would ensure a GOP victory, and as he said, “on her worst day, hillary clinton is far better than anyone on the GOP slate.”

i’m hoping that he addresses this “bernie or nobody” idea soon, because it’s just as crazy and dangerous as anything the republican candidates have been espousing.

1 Like
52

I don’t really understand this response at all.

The article listed numerous incidents that actually happened involving Trump supporters being bullying and sometimes violent racists. Trump really does dehumanize Mexicans, Muslims, and African-Americans and deliberately foments animosity towards these groups, and his supporters are responding in kind.

The reality is that there are a huge number of Trump supporters out there working diligently to paint themselves unambiguously as racists, so many that it’s impossible not to notice, and they seem to be responding this way because of Trump dropping endless coded racists hints (dog-whistles) along with the occasional openly racist bomb. It’s not just racism, it’s animosity to some races, to women, to gay people, to the press, to Muslims, etc. The majority of Trump’s message is that there are a bunch of people out there that you should really fear and hate and who need to be put back in their place.

Not all Trump supporters are unreconstructed racists, but so many of them are, and are not only unashamed of it, but want to make this fact abundantly clear, that it’s hard to even notice the rest. They might be marginalized by PC culture in some contexts that shames them for their bigotry, but online they’re able to be openly racist and there’s millions of examples out there of it. Hop on Twitter and take a look at what the vocal Trump supporters are actually saying.

I do agree that we should listen to what they’re saying, but having read a whole lot of it and listened to some IRL, it’s hard to see as anything but a whole lot of rubes being told a lot of things they want to hear from a con-man.

15 Likes
53

Unfortunately your ‘rather good understanding’ is really mostly designed to flatter yourself about how much better you are than Trump supporters. I will be voting for Sanders, but I know one biotech CTO and another guy who retired from a successful software sales job who are Trump supporters. They’re neither stupid, nor redneck, nor racist.

54

13 Likes
55

Oh, really. So what are their intelligent arguments for supporting Trump?

11 Likes
56

They might not be stupid or “redneck” but if they’re backing Trump they’re backing an openly racist demagogue and are some shade of racist.

11 Likes
57

Isn’t it the Bernie supporters getting beaten up at Trump rallies? If so I can understand them not voting for Trump.

58

Government needs to be run like a podiatrists office.

And Goldman Sachs needs to be run more like the town pool.

Business already runs government anyway - who are we kidding.

3 Likes
59

I think that article is extremely flawed. They are talking about demographics and how demographics behave, but Bernie’s biggest support comes from people under thirty - many of whom won’t have voted before (less than 30% voter turnout for those under 25) and who are looking at this from a totally different perspective. The analysis is about hardline right vs. hardline left. But this isn’t about people shifting from left (Sanders) to right (Trump) it is about people who don’t give a shit about Democrats or Republicans.

Some Sanders supporters would go Trump instead. I think how many depends on how Clinton and Trump perform on the campaign (if it comes to that).

3 Likes
60

I’ll give you two out of three, if by stupid we mean “do not really think very deeply about politics and the sort of society we want to live in”.
It may just be my experience, but too many tech people seem to be so busy with their jobs that they don’t have time to see the bigger picture, and the nearest thing they read to general news is something like The Economist. They tend to pick up their ideas from the people around them (especially sales people.) I know one very successful sales guy who is an immediate sucker for conspiracy theories; he isn’t stupid, it’s just that the brain he engages on work doesn’t get engaged in “does this actually make sense?”

6 Likes