War & PoliticsThe US Presidential Election 2016

 

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 From:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)  
 To:  milko     
41828.37 In reply to 41828.32 
I don't think most people who voted Trump are (actively) racist, sexist, etc. etc.. I think it's the same as Brexit - there's a huge proportion of the population who feel like they've been left behind by globalism and neoliberal economics.

Those people *should* be the left's core demographic but the left embraced neoliberalism and trickle-down bullshit along with the centre-right so those people are left with no compelling narrative to follow.

So when some (apparently in the eyes of some) charismatic character who "tells it like it is" and "talks tough", whether it be Trump or that UKIP cunt, comes along they jump on that shit. *Especially* uneducated white men who are *particularly* alienated since their self identification - their idea of what masculinity is - is now seen as offensive and they don't *really* get why (imagine a whole tangent here about the fact that, again, the left has failed to provide an alternate conception of masculinity - particularly *white* masculinity - so, surprise fucking surprise, we get a surge in superficial fascism, 'meninism' and the alt-right).

Sanders was able to speak to those people while *also* genuinely representing progressive ideas, albeit in a very incremental way. But the Democrats pulled out all the stops to get status-quo neoliberal Hillary Clinton the nomination instead of him.

So, like always, we get a lesser-of-two-evils election and it becomes entirely about turnout. Even those who dislike Trump found it hard to vote for Clinton and turnout was unsurprisingly extremely low - Trump got a *slightly* lower number of votes than GOP candidates in the last two elections and Clinton's was *far* **far** lower.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw1RUvqWgAATypw.jpg:large

Which is unsurprising when you've given two shitty options to vote for.

The left *really* needs to work on providing a counter-narrative to whatever Trump and UKIP represent and the alt-right. But I don't expect they actually will because they're fucking useless.

This tweet pretty much sums it all up for me: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/794204785742266368
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 From:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)  
 To:  milko     
41828.38 In reply to 41828.36 
Also I think the "post-fact" idea is overblown. There's *some* truth in it but we've been there for decades, it's just that it's ok when it's *our* bullshit that's being promulgated.

The people who voted for Brexit, for example, weren't voting on the economy. They don't give a shit about the economy because it has no perceptible bearing on their lives, at least relative to those in the middle classes who do *very much* benefit. It's not that they don't recognise facts it's that the facts we care about are irrelevant to them.
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 From:  Matt  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
41828.39 In reply to 41828.31 
I don't think the echo chamber / hyper-normalization affect is something that only people on the left of the political spectrum do and likewise I don't think it is a phenomenon found only on The Internet. I would bet it occurs also on the right and in the "real world" too.

Facebook, Twitter, et al have made it incredibly easy to slip into a state of hyper-normalization, especially when they seem to actively reinforce and encourage it by suggesting similar pages, groups and users to follow based on your existing subscriptions.

This here BBC 2 moving-picture-thing covers the topic and is a really good watch.

doohicky

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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)  
 To:  Matt     
41828.40 In reply to 41828.39 
But how many knuckle-dragging banjo players even heard of the internet?
Make America grate again.
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)  
 To:  ALL
41828.41 
He blames facebook.
Make America grate again.
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 From:  milko  
 To:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)     
41828.42 In reply to 41828.38 
Ehhhhh. I am glad you have weighed in, I wanted to know what you thought. I think I actually disagree with a good amount of it but I'm not really typing this on the right device to do it properly. *saves thoughts*
milko
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 From:  Harry (HARRYN)  
 To:  ALL
41828.43 
The part of the article that I am not so sure is correct is the assumption that Sander's followers were entirely "in" on the majority of his beliefs.  My perception is:
- Many of his followers were democrats and independents who simply didn't like Clinton's policies, history, and personality.  Not just men, but also many women.
- His biggest push was toward the 18-25 age group, which is really suffering from lack of jobs for educated, but non technically educated people carrying heavy college debt loads.  I suspect that many of these people reluctantly or never did vote for Clinton, simply avoiding to vote at all.
...
I actually donated to Sander's campaign (not a lot, but some) because if we were going to end up with a democrat as President, it would be better to have him than Clinton - for my own personal priorities of how I see life.  That doesn't mean I agree with him on everything, but more so than I did Clinton.  His tax and spend policies were far away from how I prefer, but I liked some of his social / individual rights positions, and he is exactly correct that we are over criminalizing trivial crimes, for example, being 20 years old and drinking a beer is a serious crime in many states - ridiculous.
...
I don't see people in the US fitting so neatly and cleanly into liberal / conservative boxes, but rather they hold a range of opinions on social funding, medical funding, religion, abortion, marriage, money management, military, rights of the individual, gun rights, trade deficit, police actions, etc.  Political campaigns spend a great deal of effort to slice and dice these preferences into getting people to vote for them, by talking to the ones with the highest priority for them individually.
...
No one in the US believes that Trump will actually follow through on more than 50% of what he spoke, similar to every politician.  What Mr. Trump successfully did, was clearly state that he would try to work on the correct set of priorities in order to get elected, and Mrs. Clinton and her financial backer, Bloomberg, picked the wrong ones, and not just a little bit, but the ones that aggravated people enough to go out and vote against her.
.....
Trump is a business man who has given donations to a wide range of politicians of every type in order to make pragmatic progress on business projects.  I would not worry about any particular social issue all that much.  Does anyone really think that a New York luxury property developer cares if someone is gay?  Most likely many of his customers in large cities are gay and their money is the same color as everyone else.
...
In simple terms, it is nearly impossible for a republican candidate to win California and New York, so there is no point in spending a lot of time supporting their issues during an election.  He had to win the midwest and Florida, so he figured out what their core issues are and talked to those.
......
Clinton has too much political history and ties to New York to reach the people in the midwest on their core challenges and concerns, especially on trade with China and ties to bankers.  The banks stiffed the taxpayers out of nearly $3 trillion during the last 10 years, so while popular in NY, that doesn't work well in Ohio and Indiana.



 
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 From:  milko  
 To:  ALL
41828.44 
https://twitter.com/i/moments/796417517157830656

As in post-Brexit UK, people are emboldened by the implicit endorsement of views and actions like these. Cast a vote for people expressing such views and you back them up. I don't, personally, give a fuck if you're not actively doing it. You are a part of it.

Man, the Democrats messed up this election so badly in just about every way possible. Not many signs of them realising why, either. And here we are with Clinton's nice concession speech, lots of conciliatory gestures, yep it's all fine, well played sir, your campaign of lies and hate was a worthy winner, lets be nice and move on. Definitely that'll discourage the bad people and make things better. Shake the KKK-endorsed next-Prez's hand, Barack! Lovely. I wonder if secretly wiped his hand straight after.

And yeah, there we go, post-fact thinking again ^ described by Harry (I don't know who Harry actually voted for here or what his thinking may have been so I shall make clear I don't necessarily ascribe it to him) . Xen, I know full well the people voting Brexit weren't voting so because of the economy, they were mainly being racist and scapegoating the 'other'. 

Apparently nobody really believed the NHS was in line for £350m now we're leaving the EU. So that's no big deal. Of course we'll pay millions to keep the likes of Nissan manufacturing here, it's definitely fine to be hugely worse off as a country in pursuit of some nebulous idea of "sovereignty" that nobody can actually explain. Nobody thinks Trump will do half what he said he would. So sure, let's vote for it anyway! Brilliant plan. Say any old horseshit, add a lot of dogwhistle racism or actually just make it overt, blah blah blah, victory.

I also have no idea how Trump has somehow managed to find himself portrayed as any less in hock to the bankers than Clinton. I mean, he's a blatant tax crook as well as all the other obvious stuff, but ...I dunno, I seem to lack the cognitive dissonance required to take the next step in thinking. 

Have I got an analogy before bedtime? I'll give it a crack. The USA got to choose between a shit sandwich and a... no I haven't. Can't think of anything to represent the actual winner in this one that works. Anyway, society is broken, I'm off to sleep and try and figure out what I can personally do about it. Beyond attempting to bring 1 kid up right I've not had many ideas so far, which is pathetic and depressing. He's mixed-race but basically British so it's probably alright or else I'm being a frog in a pan of slowly heating water. Maybe we'll just kill the planet before things get that bad, those temperature charts a month or two ago looked very scary.

This has been a bit of a rant so it's probably got some holes in it, soz.
milko
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 From:  Manthorp  
 To:  milko     
41828.45 In reply to 41828.44 
There's not a lot we can do through the established democratic channels because - well - they're not democratic.

I'm putting my time into delivering for my local foodbank (despite faith issues) and banging on about the progressive alliance for PR, which will mean fuck all until (& if) Labour chooses to endorse.

But there's a great deal of good in bringing up your kids as best you can.  Mine make the world a better place, better than I could do or have done.

"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
 
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 From:  Harry (HARRYN)  
 To:  milko     
41828.46 In reply to 41828.44 
Milko, if you really want to know how I voted, and frankly if it matters at all, read post 18.  California always votes its very large block of electoral delegates to the democrats, so actually no one's vote here matters at all, regardless of how you vote. 

The Presidential primary elections are typically decided long before the CA primary election, so there is no federal level influence.

The state and local primaries are designed so that the only candidates in November are "The two that received the most votes in the primary election".  Usually this means that in most offices, there is a choice between two democrats, and all other parties are excluded from the main election.

Regardless of which party you support, imagine if nearly all of the offices on the ballot were two candidates from the same political party.    That is the so-called democracy we have here.  Of course, America has never been structured as a democracy and would be an even bigger mess if it were, but nearly all candidates from one party is a bit - limiting.

 
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 From:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)  
 To:  milko     
41828.47 In reply to 41828.44 
>Cast a vote for people expressing such views and you back them up. I don't, personally, give a fuck if you're not actively doing it. You are a part of it.

I agree. And similarly if you cast a vote for the other you're part of our treatment of the middle east which really set the stage for the current batch of racists, mass unwarranted surveillance, sweat shops, the increasing wealth-gap etc. etc.

>Xen, I know full well the people voting Brexit weren't voting so because of the economy, they were mainly being racist and scapegoating the 'other'.

I absolutely disagree on this. I believe they are being used to push through a racist agenda and, of course, some are racist, just as some labour/tory/lib dem/whatever voters are - we are a racist society.

I'm not even arguing that they wouldn't espouse some views that we'd find racist. But, again, this didn't come out of nowhere - in the climate of post 9/11 jingoism politicians on the right decided they could win votes with an anti-immigration stance and they could do so without losing votes from the centre if they contextualised it economically. Which is fine (by which I mean unsurprising), it's the centre right being the centre right.

The problem is that, seeing what a populist issue this was, the left (I mean centre left, labour, lib dems) accepted that contextualisation, as did the largely liberal popular media. We've had over a decade of this validation of racist views to which *everyone* is subject - all mainstream parties, the media and people in general have moved to the right in this regard and literally no one in the mainstream has offered an alternative formulation.

A labour politician, for example, will express this stuff with more sophistication and subtlety than your average brexit voter but, really, they're expressing the exact same things.

People voted brexit over the bullshit issue of sovereignty (which, again, the left didn't have the balls to actually argue *against*) and alienation from neoliberalism in general and austerity in particular (which, again, the left didn't meaningfully oppose). The racist stuff is context, not substance, for most.

I want to be clear that I'm not arguing for Trump or Brexit nor that they should be acceptable to *anyone*.

I'm saying that the left has entirely failed. On post 9/11 stuff, on immigration, on the EU and on austerity. The left *should* be offering the disenfranchised many an alternative formulation of what our problems are but they're too shitscared of losing all the middle class votes they won by going the 'third way'. So we've got two parties:

One who favours neoliberal economics and globalism, largely in the pocket of big business, historical record of continuing to widen the wealth gap and is pro-austerity.

And one who favours neoliberal economics and globalism, largely in the pocket of big business, historical record of continuing to widen the wealth gap and is pro-austerity.

All of which either actively hurts or does not meaningfully apply to anyone but business owners and the middle class.

We (you and I and most people here) are privileged as all fuck. We've benefited from (most of) this stuff. Not as much as the super wealthy but enough that we can see it. Some people haven't benefited, or have benefited so little as for it to be insulting. Why *the fuck* should they care that one option is slightly better than the other when that betterness doesn't even meaningfully apply to them? To keep you and I content while we continue to fuck the poor both here and in the rest of the world?

Brexit and Trump offered an opportunity to vote against *that*. Against the whole system. To reject it all. It's not *effective*, of course, because Trump and the brexiteers are just as deep in that bullshit as are the mainstream politicians. They have been sold a false narrative and that was possible because the left abandoned them.

We need fundamental change - you mentioned climate change and that's a prime example - and *no* mainstream party or candidate will deliver that.

I agree with Manthorp. Because the left has failed there's no democratic path to the change we need. We have one ideology to vote for and that ideology is incapable of meaningful progress. We're not even really capable, as a society, of actual political discourse because we've all validated the same context. There *is* (aside from Corbyn who is being fucked by the neoliberals in his own party) no mainstream anti-austerity argument, no pro-Europe critique of the EU, no discussion of the wealth gap, no rational discussion of immigration, no rational discussion of security issues and surveillance and certainly no intent to do anything effectual about climate change.

I do think there's some hope in that people like Yanis Varoufakis and Paul Mason seem to get what's actually going on and are talking about it to anyone who will listen and movements are forming around their ideas - a good example being DiEM25, with whom I don't agree entirely but for whom I'd be *more* than happy to vote unlike any of our current parties.

Not much hope though. I think, if we don't make the planet inhospitable making it all moot and the left doesn't get its shit together and offer a workable interpretation of that alienation and disenfranchisement, we're heading for something like the 1930s again with something at least superficially like fascism on the rise and, this time, without anything like communism to stand in opposition to it.







 
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 From:  milko  
 To:  Harry (HARRYN)     
41828.48 In reply to 41828.46 
Hi Harry, I don't much want to know how you voted, I just wanted to be clear I wasn't personally attacking you with my post; it seemed as I wrote that it could easily be read that way. I think our own so-called democracy has much the same problem as yours at the moment, as Xen describes.
milko
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  Harry (HARRYN)     
41828.49 In reply to 41828.46 
It is only this year that I realised that was the case for the primaries in California, very odd system.
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 From:  milko  
 To:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)     
41828.50 In reply to 41828.47 
Ok, we agree on plenty there. I'm not so forgiving of people of people being taken along in the mainstream/allowing themselves to be used to push that agenda, at the moment.
milko
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)     
41828.51 In reply to 41828.47 
I think the view that racists voted for Brexit/Trump but not all of Brexit/Trump voters are racist holds true. By voting for those things you are at fault for legitimising them, much like we would be continuing to vote for a neoliberal left.

I don't think this is necessarily the case for Trump (based on the income demographic break downs I've seen, unless I've read them wrong), but for Brexit it was heavily backed by the traditional working class low income people who feel "left behind" or totally unrepresented by the current mainstream parties. In a lot of people's eyes things can't get any worse so why not vote for an alternative new option, a vote for change and hope it works. I suppose many people with literally no money can't see how it's possible to have less (it definitely is possible when austerity bites even more, but they already feel like they have no hope).

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 From:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)  
 To:  milko     
41828.52 In reply to 41828.50 
More or less forgiving than of us continuing to vote for these parties who favour an economic system which relies on working poor people elsewhere, including children, to death so we can have cheap stuff; bombing civilians if it looks like it might be vaguely maybe possibly in our economic interests; systematically alienating and at times brutalising minorities; destroying the economies of entire nations to prevent our currency from losing a few % of value etc. etc..

We've been voting for this shit for *years* and because they offered us the exact same lie: "we'll make it all better and keep you safe, we promise".

 
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 From:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
41828.53 In reply to 41828.51 
Exactly, yeah, and yeah it applies to Trump too.
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 From:  milko  
 To:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)     
41828.54 In reply to 41828.52 
Well indeed, I don't try to excuse us of that. I'm just not sure voting to make everything universally worse for all (except, somewhat ironically, the elite top few % generally) is a good answer. To blame things like migrants from places that the aforementioned system has caused to fail (or simply blown it up). I struggle even with applying 'understandable' to it, honestly, and I don't actually see much value in this thing I'm seeing all over the place post-Trump and saw a lot of post-Brexit where we must try to understand and sympathise. That seems to be being done in really shit ways, like putting Le Pen on telly for a soft interview, giving Farage a bit more air time, an opinion column from some white middle-classer saying Trump might not be so bad really, that sort of thing. Fuck it!

I don't buy it at all. People should be grouping together for better change more inclusively, not falling for this fascist shit yet again.
milko
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 From:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)  
 To:  milko     
41828.55 In reply to 41828.54 
Nobody's making that argument though. No one's saying that all of this means that voting Trump/Brexit is in any way good.

It's just not fundamentally worse than what we've been doing for decades. People voting in what they mistakenly perceive to be their own self-interest and/or wilfully ignoring the damage the ideology they're validating does to others.

Neoliberal policy has done immense damage to the world, including but definitely not limited to paving the way for Brexit and Trump. We swallowed it because we believed we were getting incremental progress, but we weren't really, not meaningfully. It was ok for us, we were comfortable, but everyone else (besides the wealthy, who were benefiting disproportionately more than us) was getting fucked.

We don't get to be angry at the people who voted Trump/Brexit for being tricked in exactly the same way we've been tricked for the last 60 years just because their racism is slightly less sophisticated than ours (and is really given life by our own complacent acceptance of a decade of racist rhetoric).

We should be angry at the centre-left - labour and the lib dems, for abandoning the only possible counter-narrative. At the media for happily stirring the shit so long as they made money and reducing political discourse to inane, artificially polarised superficial drivel because it made their work easier. At the political class in general for deserting democracy.

And that anger should be directed at the actual enemy, the ones who actually caused all this and who benefit no matter who's in power because all politicians are selling their ideology - the wealthy and big business. If we fight amongst ourselves, they're fucking laughing.





 
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 From:  milko  
 To:  Drew (X3N0PH0N)     
41828.56 In reply to 41828.55 
I AM angry at the centre left! I'm angry with all of it and all of them! But I'm not persuaded that means I should be less pissed off with people going along with it. I don't believe that they're that easily ignorant of what's happening here.
milko
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