4 ms·

intellectual dishonesty. if you think that trump has been talking about illegal immigration only, I would like to point you to the term "dog whistle politics".

intellectual dishonesty. if you think that trump has been talking about illegal immigration only, I would like to point you to the term "dog whistle politics". Do you think that the white supremacists that have come out in support of him are only referring to illegal immigrants when they talk about the threat posed to "our" culture? Lee Atwater once explained in a speech that because of changes in social moirés you couldn't call black people "n*" anymore. Instead you could refer to racial issues in terms of tax cuts and school busing. Tax cuts keep your hard earned money from benefiting "those"" people and school busing...they were going to make your kids schools worse by bringing "them" in. Are there issues with the US immigration system. Yes. Has that been at issue in this election? Not really. That's just not what's going on here. The issue of immigration is a surrogate for a perceived loss of power by one population relative to another.

kristopolous 10y ago
there's more to it. The disenfranchised poor white didn't have a political voice. I know many out-of-work ex-democrat ex-liberal 50+ white males that are supporters of trump. Just last weekend, I was talking to an avid environmentalist in an interracial marriage who supports trump. To say "well some ignorant people are just racist" misses the true thing that's going on.
- croon 10y ago
  No, it's every kind of populist blame politics. What's unfortunate is that Trumps platform is based purely on emotion, and zero solutions.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    If you'd like to know more about how it's different, Robert Reich talked about it recently at the Commonwealth Club https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2016-09-27/robert-reich-oddest-presidential-election-living-memory https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2016-09-27/robert-re... and UC Berkeley Sociologist Arlie Hochshchild spent 5 years researching it (https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning-ebook/dp/B01EEQ9BSW/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning-ebo...), here's a Mother Jones article about it http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue-collar-supporters http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue....
    - croon 10y ago
      You've edited your original post too many times since I responded it's now unclear what I was protesting, but with this post I think we're actually arguing the same thing. I agree that the Trump campaign is giving voice to populations previously unheard, but that's also what Bernie Sanders did. And while Sanders was obviously somewhat of a moonshot candidate, he had firm beliefs and some plans. Trump is a purely speculative candidate who has flip-flopped on every issue too many times for anyone to count, in an attempt to speak for as wide an audience as possible, uniting them against common enemies. What he does not have is any realistic plans of doing anything good. The subtitle to the motherjones article is literally: "How Donald Trump took a narrative of unfairness and twisted it to his advantage."
      - kristopolous 10y ago
        Well sure ... I just seek to understand these things. I'm not throwing in my hat of support to any candidate. In practice, I've heard the line "I know trump's awful but ..." coming from quite a few surprising places. I can't say "this reality doesn't exist because I choose not to believe in it". If I want to honestly understand the world, I need to be open to ideas I currently do not understand.
- Scarblac 10y ago
  But if there really is a large group that does have real problems so that they need fundamental change in politics -- why then do they need a fact-free, intimidating, racist, conspiracy-addicted non-politician like Trump to fight for their cause? Do they vote for a guy like that because they feel the system must crash, and this is the only way to do it?
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    I don't know. But I can't dismiss observations just because I don't have a rationality for it.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    Why do they need a politician like Trump to fight for their cause? Because both parties have abandoned them, and class politics, in favor of identity politics. Why do so many politicians, activists, journalists, and other leaders ignore (or demonize) their cause?
- youdontknowtho 10y ago
  Look, I know black people that support trump. That doesn't change the fact that Republican politics have been building to this point for 40 years. The use of racial imagery and the stoking of racial fears has been a deliberate strategy. Of course, the class based view of this is that the capital owning class have disenfranchised the rest of the country. It's impossible to talk about class in America without including race. The poor and working poor whites have had more in common with their black neighbors than they have had with the capital owning class since the end of the civil war. That doesn't change the structure of the issue. So, no, I was not saying that it is as simple as race. Ex-Democrat, I can see, but ex-liberal...what, is this person now a mercantilist monarchist or something? I'm assuming that they still support the ideal of democracy and some kind of quasi-market capitalist society? There are some on the "far left" that take the view that Trump is exactly what this country deserves and that if we went "full retard" that it might mean real reform sooner rather than later because of the damage he would do. I don't agree. The American president is clothed in tremendous power and is capable of terrible things. I don't think that the avid environmentalist is actually an avid environmentalist if they think that Trump would be good for the environment after attacking the EPA and the limited good that they do now as choking the lifeblood out of business. EDIT: What I'm trying to say here is that in the American class system the middle class whites who struck a deal with elites for privilege over the poor and people of color are afraid that the deal has changed. They are right. There's no economic advantage to the capital owning class to respect prior social compacts and they have removed all the levers of power that the middle and lower classes had to stop them. They were allowed to remove those levers in the name of maintaining racial privilege for a large group.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    people are complex creatures and I can't honestly get on board with such a "no true scotsman" argument that conveniently simplifies things.
    - youdontknowtho 10y ago
      im sorry, but how did you read that and come away with simple and no true scotsman? my point is that something can be happening in the macro even while there is anecdotal evidence to the contrary in the micro. i mean, you know that, at this point, things like the southern strategy have been well documented including very literal explanations by the people that came up with it, right? ron reagan announcing his campaign in a town were civil rights workers were murdered? was it just the thing about the environmentalist? and thats going to kill my whole point for you? fine. you met a unicorn. unicorns are real. that doesnt change the meat of my argument. EDIT: yes, i was being snarky about the ex-liberal andbthe environmentalist. i thought the bit about an ex-liberal being a monarchist was funny. classical liberalism joke. sue me.
tdb7893 10y ago
isn't illegal immigration the lowest it's been since like the 80's? Why is it such a big deal now?

kristopolous 10y ago

there's more to it. The disenfranchised poor white didn't have a political voice. I know many out-of-work ex-democrat ex-liberal 50+ white males that are supporters of trump. Just last weekend, I was talking to an avid environmentalist in an interracial marriage who supports trump. To say "well some ignorant people are just racist" misses the true thing that's going on.

croon 10y ago
No, it's every kind of populist blame politics. What's unfortunate is that Trumps platform is based purely on emotion, and zero solutions.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  If you'd like to know more about how it's different, Robert Reich talked about it recently at the Commonwealth Club https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2016-09-27/robert-reich-oddest-presidential-election-living-memory https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2016-09-27/robert-re... and UC Berkeley Sociologist Arlie Hochshchild spent 5 years researching it (https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning-ebook/dp/B01EEQ9BSW/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning-ebo...), here's a Mother Jones article about it http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue-collar-supporters http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue....
  - croon 10y ago
    You've edited your original post too many times since I responded it's now unclear what I was protesting, but with this post I think we're actually arguing the same thing. I agree that the Trump campaign is giving voice to populations previously unheard, but that's also what Bernie Sanders did. And while Sanders was obviously somewhat of a moonshot candidate, he had firm beliefs and some plans. Trump is a purely speculative candidate who has flip-flopped on every issue too many times for anyone to count, in an attempt to speak for as wide an audience as possible, uniting them against common enemies. What he does not have is any realistic plans of doing anything good. The subtitle to the motherjones article is literally: "How Donald Trump took a narrative of unfairness and twisted it to his advantage."
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      Well sure ... I just seek to understand these things. I'm not throwing in my hat of support to any candidate. In practice, I've heard the line "I know trump's awful but ..." coming from quite a few surprising places. I can't say "this reality doesn't exist because I choose not to believe in it". If I want to honestly understand the world, I need to be open to ideas I currently do not understand.
Scarblac 10y ago
But if there really is a large group that does have real problems so that they need fundamental change in politics -- why then do they need a fact-free, intimidating, racist, conspiracy-addicted non-politician like Trump to fight for their cause? Do they vote for a guy like that because they feel the system must crash, and this is the only way to do it?
- kristopolous 10y ago
  I don't know. But I can't dismiss observations just because I don't have a rationality for it.
- leereeves 10y ago
  Why do they need a politician like Trump to fight for their cause? Because both parties have abandoned them, and class politics, in favor of identity politics. Why do so many politicians, activists, journalists, and other leaders ignore (or demonize) their cause?
youdontknowtho 10y ago
Look, I know black people that support trump. That doesn't change the fact that Republican politics have been building to this point for 40 years. The use of racial imagery and the stoking of racial fears has been a deliberate strategy. Of course, the class based view of this is that the capital owning class have disenfranchised the rest of the country. It's impossible to talk about class in America without including race. The poor and working poor whites have had more in common with their black neighbors than they have had with the capital owning class since the end of the civil war. That doesn't change the structure of the issue. So, no, I was not saying that it is as simple as race. Ex-Democrat, I can see, but ex-liberal...what, is this person now a mercantilist monarchist or something? I'm assuming that they still support the ideal of democracy and some kind of quasi-market capitalist society? There are some on the "far left" that take the view that Trump is exactly what this country deserves and that if we went "full retard" that it might mean real reform sooner rather than later because of the damage he would do. I don't agree. The American president is clothed in tremendous power and is capable of terrible things. I don't think that the avid environmentalist is actually an avid environmentalist if they think that Trump would be good for the environment after attacking the EPA and the limited good that they do now as choking the lifeblood out of business. EDIT: What I'm trying to say here is that in the American class system the middle class whites who struck a deal with elites for privilege over the poor and people of color are afraid that the deal has changed. They are right. There's no economic advantage to the capital owning class to respect prior social compacts and they have removed all the levers of power that the middle and lower classes had to stop them. They were allowed to remove those levers in the name of maintaining racial privilege for a large group.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  people are complex creatures and I can't honestly get on board with such a "no true scotsman" argument that conveniently simplifies things.
  - youdontknowtho 10y ago
    im sorry, but how did you read that and come away with simple and no true scotsman? my point is that something can be happening in the macro even while there is anecdotal evidence to the contrary in the micro. i mean, you know that, at this point, things like the southern strategy have been well documented including very literal explanations by the people that came up with it, right? ron reagan announcing his campaign in a town were civil rights workers were murdered? was it just the thing about the environmentalist? and thats going to kill my whole point for you? fine. you met a unicorn. unicorns are real. that doesnt change the meat of my argument. EDIT: yes, i was being snarky about the ex-liberal andbthe environmentalist. i thought the bit about an ex-liberal being a monarchist was funny. classical liberalism joke. sue me.

tdb7893 10y ago

isn't illegal immigration the lowest it's been since like the 80's? Why is it such a big deal now?