“millions of illegal people” WTF? What is an illegal person?
Go home America. You are fucked up.
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Deplorable
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Understatement of the year! I agree totally and it seems to be rampant across the Democrats and Republicans (I don’t know enough third party folks to have an opinion).
People have all these shallow explanations for why Trump is our next President when the simple truth is that he is effective and his team is filled with equally effective people. Trump hired Cambridge Analytica (the psy ops company) ferchrissakes. The US public didn’t stand a chance.
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But that’s different! It’s in the name of JAYSUS!!! so it’s okay!
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She means people that are in the country illegally.
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You’re talking about someone who presents 3 convicted cases of voter fraud in one of the most meticulously detailed recount in the nation’s history as proof that there is widespread voter fraud. This comes from the 2008 Franken senate race where the maximum possible cases of voter fraud comes to a total 110 votes.
Or about how 3 people in Tennessee were caught and the results reversed for a state senate race in 2005 accounting for a total of 35 votes, Or the sheriff and county clerk of Lincoln county WV (population 21K) stuffing a ballot box to win a primary in the state.
These two have been pushing drivel and stoking a fire against immigrants and Democrats based on manipulating data and pointing at the system working properly as examples that we need extreme authoritarian policies on voting.
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I wouldn’t mind living in California, but it’s so expensive now…
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Probably because all those illegals are voting. Drives up prices, or so trump told me.
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If you want to make pre-war America your baseline for more literate and numerate citizens, sure. My own benchmark is based on averages across modern-day industrialised and developed Western nation-states. For example, see this key pull quote from a 2013 OECD survey on the topic:
Larger proportions of adults in the United States than in other countries have poor literacy and numeracy skills, and the proportion of adults with poor skills in problem solving in technology-rich environments is slightly larger than the average, despite the relatively high educational attainment among adults in the United States.
A similar problem regarding computers was also discussed the other day on this site.
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Everything reinforces what they already believe.
People repeating what Trump said: Trump is right.
People refuting what Trump said: Trump is right.
Trump denying what he said: Trump is right.
My letter carrier communicating to me by means of the height of his socks: Trump is right.
Or maybe we’re all this messed up, no matter what side of anything we’re on.
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I hate to tell you this, but the shift to the right and the rise of authoritarianism isn’t a US-only problem. Education has very little to do with it except that rising levels of education seem to be correlated with the shift to the right. I don’t think there’s any substantial link though.
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Further listening, great episode:
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The Righteous Mind is an excellent book on the subject too.
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Yeah, shit, don’t listen to those inarticulate mouthbreathers repeating completely and utterly discredited lies, listen to articulate racists repeating completely and utterly discredited lies! Jesus fucking Christ, dude. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
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Big difference. This is what happens when you cut humanities and make them seem like a luxury instead of a part of being a whole human being.
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You’re correct that it isn’t a U.S.-only problem – stating that is certainly one of my hobbyhorses around here. The shift to right-wing populism in Europe is being driven by different factors than those in the U.S. (e.g. deep-seated ethnic nationalism, geographic proximity to conflict zones), even if the underlying issues that prompted it (e.g. citizens left behind by neoliberal globalism) are the same.
That’s a derail, however, best left for another thread. The key point here is that credentialed != educated, and that we need to set higher bars for literacy and numeracy than America ca. 1933. It’s 2016 and most American K-12 public schools still don’t emphasise critical thinking, media literacy, financial literacy, or civics. The GOP has positioned itself to take advantage of graduates of that system and, as you noted, hired very sophisticated analytics firms to further slice and dice their demographics and psychographics.
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And she puts it in an incredibly dehumanizing way.
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Now you’re just being ridiculous! It was never funny!
We’re beyond satire. And irony. We’re in the Trump Era. All the best humor is about punching down now.
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at my school in texas, a 4-6 intermediate, some delightful child has been putting notes into the lockers of their hispanic classmates saying trump will be sending them back to mexico.
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And then there are the republicans who whine about having their health insurance cut after they voted (wait for it) a republican who promised to cut health care!
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