This is off-topic, but how do people live on this? I get cost of living is cheaper, but standardized goods, cell/cable, travel, etc, are all the same price regardless of location. How does anyone these afford to go to Disneyland? We have Alberta oil salaries and people can hardly afford a day at the parks.
And that is median income, which means you've got a lot making a lot less than that.
Per capita income is: $20,758
Average household income is: $43,889
Reasonably large population: 51,208
98.23% white.
Probably don't really care if you culturally appropriate when dressing up as a geisha for halloween when the average person makes less than minimum wage.
And I also expect they don't like being told how easy it is being white.
All this pressure to be bright...
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The masses of humanity have always had to surf.
But white people are the ones who still hold the majority of the power and the wealth. Most of Congress is white men. Most of the House is white men. Only the Supreme Court has any real diversity (and much of that diversity comes from Obama appointees). The Forbes 500 is dominated by white people and men.
Sure, other races can be racist, but they don't hold the power to really do anything about that racism. On the other hand, racists in positions of power in the government can restrict minorities' access to voting, which minimizes their voice and further stymies their power in this democracy. They can unfairly punish minorities for crimes that whites often get a slap on the wrist for. They can pull over black drivers at an inordinate rate compared with whites.
That's the difference between white racists and others. White racists have power.
No, rich people hold the vast majority of power and wealth. These happen to be predominantly white, but it's obviously false to equate skin color with wealth or power. If they all died tomorrow and left their fortune to black people, would black people as a whole suddenly be responsible for ending racism? Of course not.
A tiny minority of the population that is very rich and happens to be mostly white and asian for historical reasons have the power; some of these people are racist.
The rest of the white people have no more real power than their black neighbours. The white man in wisconsin has no more sway over the powerful than the black woman in michigan. Both may be equally racist, and equally powerless.
The individuals with the power are responsible to do what they can, regardless of their race. The current breakdown of race of people in power favors white people, but were it different, the responsibility would remain with those with the ability to do something. Claiming that others are morally responsible and legitimate targets of discrimination because they share a skin color or some other trait with the majority of people in power is obviously wrong.
The argument that because the majority of rich people in America are white, therefore the poor white man in Georgia is somehow has more power and moral responsibility to fix racism is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard, common though it is. It's self-evidently false, but a perfect example of the problems with identity politics. When identity becomes more important than good policy, no-one wins.
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CNN stated on the night of the election that Hillary never went to Wisconsin during the entire campaign.
If I were a Wisconsinite(?) I sure as #### wouldn't have voted for her.
She played the numbers and tried fighting in battlegrounds where she thought she could make up ground. She ended up losing a pile of states she was expected to win, it's not like it was a personal vendetta against Wisconsin.
I don't know, you might feel differently if you lived here. I'm not nearly as left leaning as Witty, nor am I likely as quick to call racism, but I've heard enough comments over the last 8 years from random people to know there is a lot of truth in what Witty is saying. Trump's birth certificate thing fueled a lot of those fires too.
This might sound dramatic but it was for us, when we'd go visit my dad's family in the US. We were, and still are, quite regularly agog at the things that leave the mouths of people who consider themselves god fearing good christians.
There were a lot of things that my dad learned real quick when we came to Canada in 1971. One was how much of the US vernacular wasn't welcome to be uttered here. I recall quite vividly my dad talking about getting more than one strip torn off him for things he said - and my dad was a Pentecostal minister. I didn't get it until I was old enough to understand what racism was and to hear vile things come out of the mouth of your tiny little grandma who literally would not kill a fly and who may have been the most soft spoken, kind and gentle women I've ever known - it was a very strange thing to encounter.
I've heard some horrible things said about the Obamas, from people I'm related to. That I love. Then, the support they threw behind Trump. I'm not sure I will ever be able to speak to a lot of them, ever again.
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Now not everyone who voted Trump is an out and out Muslim hating, sexual assault advocating, race baiting hate monger. Thinking that would be silly. But it stands to reason that a large section of those who did vote Trump didn't find any of those things to be a big enough problem to guide their conscience somewhere else. There are other options of course. Perhaps they don't consider social issues to be important in the least in a vote for president, maybe they don't possess the capacity to understand the repurcussions of these ideas, or maybe they are kind of awful people. These are all options I'd think but that's part of my liberal elitism showing through and I'm ok with that.
What my rambling is saying is that tired and frustrated doesn't get to be the cop out argument for why you don't want to address it. That it makes you uncomfortable is a good thing, because that means you know it's crappy. Sure they have their own problems with poverty or loss of jobs and that sucks but it doesn't absolve them from the consequences of their vote.
Apologies if this is all over the place, I was just trying to capture the spirit of the thing you know?
Perhaps they recognize that social issues are less important than providing the basic necessities and surviving.
There are many different groups of people that voted or Trump.
1. Evangelicals. These people voted for Trump because of social issues. It's not that they necessarily agree with Trump's treatment of women and minorities, but for them saving lives is more important than ensure people have comfortable lives. This is to say they voted for Trump for his appointments to the supreme court and in the hope of overturning Roe vs Wade.
2. People most strongly effected by the shift to Chinese manufacturing. These people came out in droves for both Bernie and Trump. Bernie Sanders would probably have won some of these states had he been the Democratic candidate. These people recognize that fighting over identity related social issues is a luxury for people with money, but putting food on the table and dealing with problems like mass drug addiction come first. These people don't care about Trump's sexism, racism, etc because they have bigger, more life threatening things to worry about. For these people trade, immigration, and corporatism were the biggest issues.
3. Sexists, Racists, etc. These people overwhelmingly endorsed trump because he's sexist, racist, etc.
So it comes down to priorities, who you trust, and how much you think congress will limit the president. Right now, there are enough people that are willing to let trump say sexist and racist things for a shot at fixing a broken political system, immigration reform, and better trade deals that he is President. And with good reason. Reduce corporatism, increase the influence of the common person, and fix the economy, and you end up with an America that works better for more of the country, especially for the bottom half economically. Short term pain for longer term gain is a rational position to take.
So yes, tired and frustrated isn't an argument. Tired and frustrated is an emotion. So is desperation. Emotion alerts us to things that are most strongly affecting us, and effects how we rank the important of things and drives motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.
Given this, it's not surprising that people will rationally choose to elect a bigot that promises to give them an actual voice and government representatives that actually work for the people they represent. Motivated reasoning will affect how much of a bigot that voter thinks Trump really is, causing this rationality to be applied to bad information, but doesn't mean that the voter is endorsing trump for those things.
So yes, these people are willing to tolerate intolerance in the short term for the hope of a better tomorrow. Realistically they will continue to do so until their economic standing improves. Not willing to tolerate intolerance? Then encourage your representatives to do what they can to improve the social safety nets, end the war on drugs, etc. Find ways to get people employed. Start calling out intolerant ideas and fight the modern callout culture that confuses bad ideas and bad people; do so with humility and tact.
Just like you can't teach a hungry man to fish, you won't substantially reduce intolerance, sexism, racism and so on without first solving the economic pressures that are fueling it.
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She played the numbers and tried fighting in battlegrounds where she thought she could make up ground. She ended up losing a pile of states she was expected to win, it's not like it was a personal vendetta against Wisconsin.
On reflection her campaign team did a absolutely horrible job and with what we've seen in the last few elections up here trusted polls that almost shouldn't be trusted.
I think they got victory fever and believed they were unbeatable and ended up looking stupid.
Its amazing with the amount of money that they spent on ads and travel and stumping that they got very poor value to the dollar.
Her message didn't resonate, people didn't believe her and in the end her campaign strategy busted worse then Patrick Stefan.
It will be interesting to see when all of the tell all books start rolling out from people on her side of the floor.
But it looks like the Democrats are going to go into a rebuild and probably toss out a lot of the old elite guard and probably start over as a more grass roots party.
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1. Evangelicals. These people voted for Trump because of social issues. It's not that they necessarily agree with Trump's treatment of women and minorities, but for them saving lives is more important than ensure people have comfortable lives. This is to say they voted for Trump for his appointments to the supreme court and in the hope of overturning Roe vs Wade.
Yeah that makes sense, if that one issue is all that matters. If it does, then fine, go ahead and vote for him. A single-issue vote counts just like the rest of 'em, as it should.
But it does seem a little loopy, and his laughable and remarkably coincidental conversion to Christianity can only believed by the most gullible among us.
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Originally Posted by sworkhard
2. People most strongly effected by the shift to Chinese manufacturing. These people came out in droves for both Bernie and Trump. Bernie Sanders would probably have won some of these states had he been the Democratic candidate. These people recognize that fighting over identity related social issues is a luxury for people with money, but putting food on the table and dealing with problems like mass drug addiction come first. These people don't care about Trump's sexism, racism, etc because they have bigger, more life threatening things to worry about. For these people trade, immigration, and corporatism were the biggest issues.
Again, that's fair, if they actually believe it. But who the hell would? He has his own name-branded goods manufactured in China. He sends his own manufacturing jobs overseas and then rails against others who do the same.
Voting for this guy thinking he shares your Evangelical Christian beliefs and is concerned about manufacturing jobs for "the little guy" is to ignore what he has said and done for decades.
If I were an Evangelical Christian or an unemployed coal miner, of course I'd vote for someone who shares my beliefs and/or was going to get me my job back, despite their other flaws.
I just don't see how anyone can believe he shares those beliefs or cares about getting that job back. He has proudly been the exact opposite of a devout Christian and an enemy of the working class for his entire life.
Not to start this argument again, that's where the "these people are dumb" sentiment comes from.
It's not nice to say, not helpful, and apparently counterproductive, but if I vote for someone who blatantly mocks my most sacred beliefs and doesn't care about me or my job, then I'm pretty goddamned dumb too.
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On reflection her campaign team did a absolutely horrible job and with what we've seen in the last few elections up here trusted polls that almost shouldn't be trusted.
I think they got victory fever and believed they were unbeatable and ended up looking stupid.
Yeah. Especially when you're banking on Jay-Z and Beyonce to save you in Pennsylvania while the midwest gears up to overwhelmingly vote Trump. It was the epitome of fail on many levels, but I'm not sure it could have been predicted that so many democratic strongholds would come crashing down. No doubt polling will be handled with much more caution going forward. What was concern at 4 points is now a toss up at 7 points.
^except they will get those jobs back, temporarily, if he spends 100 trillion on infrastructure. The American economy will boom. Unemployment will be at an all time low. America will be great again, until it collapses under more massive new debt - but someone else can worry about that, because there is your one term president who did the important things he said he would.
Trump is pretty much the opposite of Trudeau, yet exactly the same. Spend hundreds of billions or trillions that we don't have and never plan to pay back, and spproval rating goes through the roof. Trumps biggest problem will be convincing the ultra conservatives in his own party to get on board it.
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Have you ever tried using facts and reason with an American conservative Fox News viewer?
They could not possibly care less about facts and logic. Their "feelings" about what's really happening in America are what they look at, no matter how much data, how many statistics you show them.
Ideally that's a wonderful option, but I just had this exact discussion with a Trump voter last week. Despite every single thing I mentioned about the flaws in his campaign her response was "well I just feel like he's right about..." "well I just feel like that's not true..."
Fox News has made "feelings" fact and ofacts irrelevant. So if we can't have a reasoned discussion, if these people won't listen to fact and reality and actual science, what's the answer?
Really now?
How many American Trump supporters from the heartland have you interacted with lately?
I deal with these people every single day. Just Friday I had a woman in our salon raving about how Trump was going to bring back coal, and how we had to go back to manufacturing and Trump was going to fix it, because those damn elites have totally forgotten about those small towns.
This isn't a caricature, these are actual people that I interact with on a daily basis. I think that's where this goes sideways, I actually deal with these small town, coal miners' daughters and sons on a daily basis. My mother's family is from Appalachia, they all worked on the railroad. My mom's family literally came from those small town, coal mining communities. I'm not looking at these people in the abstract, I actually know these people.
If you're going to accuse me of using caricatures, I'm going to need you to stop doing the same. By and large the left is not saying "you're evil awful people and everything you do is wrong." The left is saying that gay people are also people and deserve equal rights, that blacks are still being discriminated against, that Muslims are not inherently bad, that women are still treated as secondary to men, and that perhaps conservatives need to look at themselves and their worldview and see if they're exacerbating the problem.
I think that tens of millions of Americans cannot possibly grasp what a gay latino male immigrant is feeling. I think that tens of millions of Americans have no idea what it's like to be a black woman with sons whose lives she's worried about on a daily basis. I think that tens of millions of Americans can't possibly imagine themselves being denied a job or an apartment or a damn wedding cake because of discrimination.
It's not that they're bad people, it's that they just don't care enough to worry aboothers. Inherent selfishness, inherent victim complex. Basic human reactions, we all care about ourselves first, we all feel like we're the good guy in our own story. Life is hard for them, and that's all they can see, regardless of who else might have it worse. I never said it made them bad, but it does make them careless, and it shows a lack of empathy.
I have to say that witty's posts are an accurate description of what I've seen at my workplace.
A few of us have tried to reason with Trump supporters over various issues and have been essentially met with bullying, yelling and screaming when we have stated our points calmly and in context.
The group I'm thinking of had been lifelong outspoken Democrats.
I'm not sure how they feel "unheard".
We are paid very well for sticking mail in a mailbox. Of course it's harder than that, but jeez.
It's true that postal workers aren't considered the "intellectual elite", but when did that become their concern?
Sorry, if your main activity outside of work is worrying about "the game" or going to the casino, what do you expect?
In a sad way I do mean this to somewhat humorous.
I remember a few months ago I was talking about Christopher Hitchens, and only one person besides me, out of a group of 40+
people knew who he was.
Does that make me an elitist in my workplace?
How hard is it to know who he was?
My take on this particular group of people is that they are bitter about not having done something "better" with their lives, and it issomehow everybody else's fault.
When I see how people with far fewer advantages than I've had do glorious things with their lives, I feel a huge amount of self loathing. Freedom comes in realizing it was my fault.
Yet I see it happening every day. Middle aged people who went back to school in their 30's and 40's to better themselves. Starting at the community college and then transferring to a four year institution. Some of these people continue to graduate degrees as well, because they know they need that education to get ahead. People don't give up if you can show them value in achieving their goal. That is the problem right now. The narrative is that education doesn't have the value it once had and that student debt is crippling. It is just another way to make sure that those people who need to improve their lot in life have yet another excuse to not do the things they need to do.
Thank you for this.
This is why I hate myself for giving up. It's out there.
Also, the blue-collar mentality ( just speaking of my personal experience and surroundings) can be " oh, yeah, you wanna be somebody, who's going to hire you, they're going to hire some young kid" .
I've met many who started over and didn't give up writing code, working as IT consultants etc etc.
For awhile I took public transportation to work.
I met a single black woman with 3 daughters. She works, goes to college and raises her girls.
Yes, she lives in Section 8 housing and her schooling is virtually paid for.
She made me feel like a whiny loser.
Hang in there, lady.
So at work I'll here how my coworkers don't want to be stuck at the post office forever, yet getting an education is somehow too much effort for them.
I guess you have to be really hungry to make the jump.
The argument that because the majority of rich people in America are white, therefore the poor white man in Georgia is somehow has more power and moral responsibility to fix racism is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard, common though it is. It's self-evidently false, but a perfect example of the problems with identity politics. When identity becomes more important than good policy, no-one wins.
It comes down to how the mind works. How it categorizes and sorts. Basically, it makes a block called 'men'. And another called 'women.' And others called 'white', 'black', etc. Then, if you're concerning yourself with power, it stacks those blocks. Men higher than women if you're thinking terms of gender. White higher than black or Asian if you're thinking about race. The fact that one of those blocks represents hundreds of millions of people of diverse situations complicates the matter. Most people recoil from complication - especially those who seek the comfort of dogma (the whole point of which is to comfort with simplicity).
If you're concerning yourself with race, gender, and class, a better, more accurate conceptual tool is to imagine society as an enormous jar full of sand. Each grain of sand in that jar has a color to match its identity. So for example, if men are blue grains of sand, and women are red, the very top layer of sand will be almost all blue. The greater part making up the middle will be purple - a mix of blue and red. And the bottom layer will be blue-ish purple, as most of the people at the very bottom of society (the homeless, those in prison, those with no social connections at all) are men.
But again, this introduces a degree of nuance that many people aren't interested in recognizing, especially the highly dogmatic and partisan types who dominate politics at both ends of the spectrum.
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Because "racism" tends to be treated as if it's only the KKK, it's only David Duke, it's only guys in white hoods leading a mob to lynch someone. But racism happens in a million tiny way too. Obama faced a whole lot of backlash that I don't think he would have faced if he were white. If he was a white man from Hawaii, he wouldn't have spent half of his presidency fighting off claims that he's not American.
Michelle Obama has been everything you'd want from a First Lady--intelligent, eloquent, graceful, funny, down-to-earth, determined to make the country better--and yet listening to these people talk, you'd think she'd made a mockery of her role as First Lady, with how much they can't wait to see her gone. And I doubt there would be so much distaste for her if she wasn't a black woman.
Right on the money. Racism isn't always overt. But you need to deal with it, and as you said in another post, it is tiring. What is even more tiring is dealing with the people who think that it is defensible and you're wrong for calling them out on their behavior.
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Originally Posted by Enoch Root
No one (that I'm aware of) is denying that there is rampant, blatant, and despicable racism in the US (as there always has been).
The contention that we're trying to convey is that it is possible to be sick of the preaching from the left without being a racist.
So we should just shut up and accept their racist attitudes? That may be the dumbest thing I've heard. I guess MLK wasted his time. I guess all those people who said racism ended with Obama's election were right. We're just being over sensitive when Obama is called the "porch money in-chief." That's okay, and we should celebrate the diversity of these ignorant folk expressing their views. It's just good old fashioned colloquial language from their region of the country, so that makes it okay.
The reality is that it isn't okay. And their economic condition is not an excuse for being an ignorant hick. We expect the black and brown components of our society to pick themselves up by the boostraps and better themseleves, but we don't extend that same expectation to the people, because a bunch of rich industrialists offshored their jobs? You say that these people get tired of their condition, and their behaviors extend from that condition, then when are they going to do something about improving their own condition. Or is that the left's fault as well?
I recently spent 10 days in Louisiana at a government facility for training weapons specialists. I had opportunity to speak, at length, with the locals about their situation and how the local economy was doing. They went on and on about the n*gger in the White House taking away their jobs, that the oil treatment plants were shutting down because they were antiquated and it cost too much to produce fuel, and that the whole region was depressed. They could pay their bills and they could power or heat/cool their homes because everything in that area runs on oil. I ignored the racial epitaph and instead focused on their economic woes, asking them if they had investigated alternative means to making money and generating power. This was a site where you could see the Mississippi River so I asked about power generation from the river. I asked about starting up a company that would build vertical impeller turbines that could use the continual flow of one of the largest rivers in the world to generate clean renewable energy. They looked at me like I had three heads. I was told that wouldn't work because the people didn't have the education nor the money. When I suggested they approach the government and look for development monies I was again given an excuse and then accused of being a Yankee who just didn't understand Louisiana, they were better off being on welfare than asking for help!?!?
So how do you deal with woeful ignorance when they won't listen to reason? When they won't think? When they won't innovate (innovation isn't only a quality owned by the left)? When they won't help themselves get into the 21st century? Are we just to accept that these folks are everything they call blacks and Mexicans (lazy, unmotivated and cheating the system)? We just accept them and their bad (nee racist) behaviors because that's the way they are? I really hope you Albertans are so accepting the next time Quebec starts squawking about what a raw deal they are getting, how they need to be treated differently, and you f'n Anglophones don't get them.
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Yeah, it's a very sharp edge that needs to be walked.
On the one hand, dismissing a large segment of the population as ignorant hicks without any valuable input just seems to put wind in their sails. On the other hand, ignoring potentially dangerous language and behavior or even tacitly supporting it (just give him a chance) can lead to something even worse. There have been plenty of instances in history where otherwise reasonable people didn't speak out against the ignorant, incendiary and sometimes hateful rhetoric of democratically elected populist leaders and as far as I know it's never lead to anything good.
Yeah, it's a very sharp edge that needs to be walked.
On the one hand, dismissing a large segment of the population as ignorant hicks without any valuable input just seems to put wind in their sails. On the other hand, ignoring potentially dangerous language and behavior or even tacitly supporting it (just give him a chance) can lead to something even worse. There have been plenty of instances in history where otherwise reasonable people didn't speak out against the ignorant, incendiary and sometimes hateful rhetoric of democratically elected populist leaders and as far as I know it's never lead to anything good.
So we should just shut up and accept their racist attitudes? That may be the dumbest thing I've heard. I guess MLK wasted his time.
Actually, it's radicals on the left who have turned away from MLK's approach to combating racism. They've turned their backs on aspiring to a colour-blind society.
You won't win over those racists you're talking about. But you need to win the fight for liberals. People who aren't racist but who also don't get hysterical over sombreros. Racists are against Black Lives Matter. But a lot of people who aren't racist have a problem with them kicking out police from a gay pride parade. Telling them to shut their mouths only drives them away.
People who aspire to a color-blind, individualistic society that values free speech and open exchange of ideas are being alienated from the left. You can condemn racism while still trying to stem the flow of liberals out of your camp. And most importantly, you can recognize how shutting out debate on a whole range of issues is alienating more and more people. Or you are going to continue losing pro-choice, educated, irrelgious, pro-gay marriage voters who have decided they'll join the camp that tells them to shut up less often. The one that feels less like a religious movement.
Here's a quote from the comments of the video I posted. It's sad that you find more pointed commentary about the state of politics today on a frickin' Youtube comment than you do in the mainstream media.
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I thought I was the only liberal that felt this way. Trump didn't win my vote, the left lost mine. And by the looks of it, my vote wasn't the only one they lost.
For the first time in my life as a liberal, I feel like my side no longer has the moral high ground. We fought for so long to become the majority and once we did, we went and did the same #### that we accused the right of doing. We demonized, lied, bullied, and belittled the other side because we could, and because it was our turn to dish out the pain.
We became the left's moral majority, the left's religious right, the left's tea party. In short we became hypocrites.
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