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Originally Posted by CaramonLS
You can sigh all you want Flash, but it doesn't make anything that I said less true. The fact is the Rebel continues to gain followers because there is a perceived echo chamber on the left not reporting the issues they feel are important to them.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by station
Overseas jobs are just one piece though. Most of the jobs have gone due to automation and a changing energy industry. Are the nationalists going to completely put the breaks on progress and technology?
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There are two kind of connected points that I wanted to bring up, after all the "disconnected elite" accusations after this election. Here is my question--you have a huge group of people, these rust belt former steel workers/coal miners, other blue collar workers from the rust belt and midwest, and yes, they're worried for their jobs and wellbeings. They want manufacturing jobs back that were eaten up by the move of progress and automation. They want coal jobs back that were eaten up by cheaper/safer forms of energy that we're unlikely to regress back to.
But they're also terrified of the country suddenly becoming far more black, more brown, more Asian, more Latino, more gay, more trans, etc. They're afraid of change that is completely inevitable.
These people are worried, and I get that they're worried. But by the same token, they refuse to see what is plainly in front of them. Progress moves forward. America is getting less and less white and
no government can legislate against that diversity.
Their best call is to broaden their horizons--realize that these incoming immigrants and refugees have the same concerns, that they just want to put food on the table for their families and have job security. To realize that gay Americans just want to marry the person they love the same as anyone else. That these people who are different from them aren't
out to get them. That success is not a zero sum game in this country. They need help with access to information, they live in communities that need better infrastructure, they are going bankrupt from health problems and they need the ACA to be
expanded, not repealed.
These people consistently vote against their own best interests, and attempting to persuade them with facts and logic and statistics just puts their guard up against the "elites." Insulting them just makes them even more rigid.
Calm reasoning doesn't work. Shaming doesn't work. Discussion doesn't work.
So what is the answer? How do you respond to people who will actively vote against their own best interests and flat out refuse any kind of dissension, no matter how valid and fact-based it is?
I'm not attempting to argue, this is an honest request, because I am absolutely surrounded by people exactly like this and I want to effect some kind of change, but I honestly have no idea how we're supposed to handle this.