Sorry, NDGT, I don’t want engineers writing laws any more than I want lawyers writing code. Politics is a law job, not some cross-disciplinary panel. I want people trained in the subject, not “maverick outsiders” who make crazy promises because they have no idea how anything works.
(Now, a Beltway outsider is one thing, but that’s about being outside the tangle of obligations and debts and favors in that clique, not being outside the legal profession.)
the thing is - especially for americans - the more you tell someone they’re wrong, the more they cling to their belief or choice.
people identify being “right” with their sense of self. they can’t lose face, and they can’t be wrong - otherwise their personhood is wrong.
combine that with the inclination of the right in the us to judge by personality, not facts or position, and certain candidates become almost like a virus.
Was he just saying random stuff? I haven’t heard anything about the team behind him - does he not have the advisors and focus groups and consultants that candidates usually have? It seems too good to be true that he’s just accidentally hitting the bulleye all the time. Is he really just peddling the same personal brand crap that is behind his business ventures?
I suppose the question is, is there competence in there somewhere?
the nuance between correct/incorrect vs.right/wrong vs good/bad is indeed lost these days.
Tell someone here that they are factually incorrect and you’ve basically just dug up their great grandmother and had your way with the corpse.
Do that, and, in short “you’re fired”
he is right twice a day not because HE is a stopped clock, but because his supporters are.
Laws written by lawyers is how we got DMCA. This is a great example of a law that could’ve been written approximately 1000x better by people who understand how computers work.
the thing is - especially for americans - the more you tell someone
they’re wrong, the more they cling to their belief or choice.
It’s a little more complicated than that.
I recommend reading A Righteous Mind. Before I read that book, my politics were probably pretty close to Bernie Sanders. After, I’m still left-leaning, but to the right of Sanders and I have a lot more respect for the Republican platform and believe the left-right tension is super-important to America.
It’s a well written book that’s pretty easy to read. Definitely worth a read.
Considering how half the representative don’t even appear to fully READ the laws that are written, I am not sure that is needed.
I think having more cross-pollination of skill sets I think is important. Someone who actually codes and understand how the internet works could be part of the committee writing internet laws. An engineer would provide valuable insight in laws about rebuilding our infrastructure.
Knowing quite a few lawyers, honestly, I don’t think it takes a lot to be one. You have to be smart, yes. You have to remember a lot of things. You have to be even better at research and looking up what you don’t directly know, and digest the legalese.
But, come one, you have seen some of the STUPID questions asked by congress members. Like the guy who was afraid Guam would tip over from being to heavy on one side from a military base.
And THAT’s because we elect representatives who refuse to learn basic science.
Oh, I didn’t say he was saying random stuff. He knows exactly what he’s saying, even if it just popped into his head five seconds prior. From everything I’ve read, he has “advisors”, but they’re more of a group of yes-men who might occasionally put a thought in his ear, rather than speechwriters or show runners. This is Trump’s musical, and he’s writing the book and the libretto.
There’s competence in there, but it’s still unclear where he’s steering this ship. His past politics have been so scattered and erratic that I’m unsure what his goal is. Personal gain? The triumph of the Trump brand? Remaking the GOP in his image? Nobody knows, and that’s why the RNC is terrified of their frontrunner.
His past politics have been so scattered and erratic that I’m unsure what his goal is. Personal gain? The triumph of the Trump brand? Remaking the GOP in his image?
I think he’s already remade the GOP, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if, now that it’s dawned on him that he actually has a shot at the White House, remaking it in his image will become a goal. My strong sense is that he’s a flaming narcissist who loves money and attention mainly because they both supposedly confirm how great he supposedly is. I keep noticing how often he claims that this or that group love HIM – instead of his policies, or his movement.
One thing about narcissists, though, is that they usually think and act that way because deep inside, they suspect they’re not even one tenth of what they crack themselves up to be. And unfortunately, that seething internal pool of insecurity makes them very dangerous.
[quote=“Papasan, post:5, topic:74492, full:true”]
Tyrion doing the “Trump Shuffle”.
[/quote]
Bastard. Any breaking down of Game of Thrones fourth-wall is unacceptable. I don’t need that image arriving unbidden as I am wallowing in the despair, nihilism, and gore of a Game of Thrones episode. It’s bad enough that the television show actors have now replaced my imagined representations from the books, and that I will be unable to read the upcoming sixth book without imagining the actors as the characters. Now YOU are insidiously weaseling GOOD FEELINGS AND HAPPINESS into it. Asshole!
to be fair, the scientific mindset and the political mindset… the venn diagram shows very little overlap.
Have a Great Day!
I think the distinction that people aren’t putting into words is that Trump’s support has gone past the point where we can plausibly dismiss it as support from single-issue racism voters. I’m happy to describe all of his supporters as racist, but it’s not like Cruz and Rubio aren’t racist, and the majority of Americans wouldn’t vote for someone just to get racism even if that person was otherwise objectionable to them (they are racist, but pro-racism isn’t a ballot issue).
I appreciate nuance and empathy at all times (even when I would just rather smash everything) but in a way it’s just an interesting, “Would you look at that” piece (I like the insight that the goal of Republican politics has been to destroy trust). If you personally know someone who is supporting Trump, I think you’ll get farther with empathy than condemnation (since that’s almost universally true on any subject) but if you don’t personally know someone who is supporting Trump then your ability to influence Trump voters is pretty much nil, ,regardless of the approach you take.
So while I have empathy for Trump supporters, I sure as hell understand where you are coming from here. Sure, many of them have been spoon fed Republican efforts to destroy trust, but now they are old and with rare exception nothing is ever going to change their minds, so the only thing to do is point out that, whatever the reason, they function as racist assholes that are going to destroy the country and that young people who don’t like that need to vote.
If you want to stop being alcoholic you need to stop drinking. 
I don’t mean this facetiously at all. If we could move all of Trump’s supporters in to Rat Park I’d wager heavily the majority would stop voting for people who hurt them.
I would probably do this (though I have pills for that).
The ratio is 11 to 3 for the U.S. to the whole world? Holy shit, we really need to get our “defense” spending under control.
This is 1 reason (of many) why I never wanted to demonize GOP voters.
They need a route back. Hard enough w/o encountering contempt.
A route back to where? To being a real legitimate party? Why should we make it easy for them?
You shouldn’t demonize GOP voters because… well, because they’re not demons… but, on the other hand, they are fucking terrible. They’re the ones who did this to themselves. And they have an unfortunate tendency to demonize anyone that isn’t them.
After 30 years, the Lee Atwater Republicans are finally destroying the party. We always thought it would happen, didn’t we? They’ll drag the rest of us with them on their descent into xenophobic fascism, unless we vote. So let’s vote this time, okay?
Well said. I tend to use those pithy cultural touchstones from Shakespeare and the Bible because they are unequivocally understood in my native culture, but it’s kind of chauvinistic of me to assume that everyone on the global Internet will want to absorb my culture. Sorry, typical Ugly American behavior.
I guess that well’s been poisoned, then. It happens. There’s lots of perfectly good ancient symbols we can’t use without referencing modern evils, for example.
OK, so howzabout this: I’ll say (staying on topic as per Falcor) that if people engage with Trump supporters in meatspace the way that they do here on bOINGbOING, they are doing Trump’s work for him.
And surely we can all recognize that the media - including bOINGbOING - built Trump’s campaign, by relentlessly covering his every pronouncement, giving him free media coverage far beyond what his opponents could possibly afford to match. He who spends more on media coverage generally wins elections, but Trump gets his coverage for free.
And it doesn’t matter that the coverage is negative - all publicity is good publicity, and personally every time I see one of those “Michele Monkey Face Obama” shoops that the right wing has been passing around for years, it makes me want to go do something that Michele would approve of. (And I voted for Cynthia McKinney in 2008, I’m no fan of President Obama.)
I don’t feel I have the right to tell other people what to do. "An’ it harm no other, do Ah, crap. Um, you can do whatever you want, as long as you don’t do it upstream.
Trump voters have real concerns and real issues. Empathy would serve us all better than mockery. Trump is confirmed to be the enemy of mockers, haters, elitists, and overprivileged eggheads when Trump’s opponents gleefully adopt the traits Trump voters associate with those groups, right or wrong. That confirmation in turn decreases the likelihood of anyone persuading them that Trump is not their best choice.
Washington resident here. You know what’s awesome? No state taxes!
You know what’s not awesome? Insane sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, and the list goes on and on.
Also if you’re a small business owner, God help you. Washington is incredibly hostile to small business owners.
I realize it’s easy to say “state taxes? fuck that!” during election times but look at the big picture – you’re paying out of the nose for just about every other kind of tax.
This I definitely agree with. But I also think that one of the points being made in the article is that mass media messages roll right off of Trump supporter’s backs. If you know a Trump supporter, try very hard to ask kindly what they see in Trump and tell them kindly how Trump makes you feel.
But on an internet message board where there are more Sanders backers than Clinton ones and Trump backers are nowhere to be seen (you appear to the be the only person around who even knows any), the only thing that will change whether or not Trump gets elected is whether people think they have to vote for Clinton to stop Trump or whether they think they should just stay home because it’s not Bernie. So pointing out that Trump might become the führer or the Fourth Reich is right on message for those who would rather not see Trump in power.
But I think @FunkDaddy put it near the beginning of the thread:
Most of us are actually really nice.
