10 ms·

>When I see Trump rallies today full of angry people complaining their country has been 'taken from them' I can't help but think of that song. Give me a break.

>When I see Trump rallies today full of angry people complaining their country has been 'taken from them' I can't help but think of that song. Give me a break. "Taking our country back" is talking about wrestling power back from the political and cultural elite that has emerged in the last half-century. This elite formed when 1) all of the smart kids started going off to college together and forming their own social bubble, 2) they began invariably marrying people they went to college or work with (while in earlier times, the successful were typically married to very average middle-class people they grew up around), and 3) the economy shifted to highly rewarding intelligence while wages for lower-skill work collapsed. This has led to the splintering of American society. It has nothing to do with race. I recommend Charles Murray's book Coming Apart, which is a thorough sociological study of this phenomenon and its effects.

v64 10y ago
>This elite formed when all of the smart kids started going off to college together and forming their own social bubble. You say that as if it's a bad thing.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  It is if they run your country and you're outside the bubble.
  - v64 10y ago
    Who would you rather have running the country? The alternatives aren't even viable.
    - sbmassey 10y ago
      If that is the case, we should consider splitting the country up into more homogenous chunks
      - marcoperaza 10y ago
        Yes, some kind of federal system perhaps, with free movement between them, and a small national government to bind them together, so people can vote with both their ballots and feet. Too bad the progressive elite decided that system was too much of an obstacle to their agenda.
        sbmassey 10y ago
        It's not so much the "progressive elite" as a general fact of human politics that in Federal systems power inexorably moves to the center as anything going wrong in the provinces will be taken over by the centralised state, but never vice versa. Nationhood is the only thing that seems able to resist this tendency at the present time.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - BurningFrog 10y ago
      I would have people running their own lives.
      - v64 10y ago
        Humanity decided long ago that running our own lives as hunters and gatherers wasn't the best we could do, and we came together to form societies and governments. No matter how you feel about it, you live in a society and have benefited from its public services, and there has to be some group of people to administer those public services.
- dexterdog 10y ago
  It is. When a society is splintered and the elites try to rule as if they understand the masses, you will have greater strife.
  - v64 10y ago
    Can you blame them? A large portion of the masses have aligned themselves with a con man.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      The Republican Party failed to field a credible candidate that spoke to Middle America. They, too, were blinded by the elite bubble. Trump saw the weakness and jumped on it.
      - v64 10y ago
        The Republican Party has failed to field a credible candidate for quite some time. If you believe in science and equal rights for women and minorities, those damn "elites" are all we have.
        marcoperaza 10y ago
        Mitt Romney was a very good candidate, except for his ultimate lack of fight. If you really believe that women and minorities don't have equal rights, then I can only urge you to dig a little deeper. Gender wage discrimination is a made-up problem, the statistics that you hear don't control for career choice, hours-worked, positions-sought, etc. The problem with our police force is that it's not professionalized once you get below the federal level. Police are too aggressive and quick to use force, but it's not a racial issue. SJWism is a cancer on Western civilization and it's one of the most pressing problems we face, because it prevents us from having honest conversations about any other problem. Debates these days always devolve into accusations of racism/sexism/"ableism", or whatever the latest boogeyman "ism" is.
        10y ago
rdiddly 10y ago
To say it has nothing to do with race, you'd need to prove race has no effect on whether you go to college and become a member of the elite. Or am I misunderstanding the "it"? Do you mean "taking the country back" has nothing to do with race? For you, it sounds like that's true, so that's good. That's all I can conclude however. I can conclude nothing about Trump. Literally nobody has any idea what Trump's really about. He's juuuust incoherent enough that he never manages to actually, successfully say anything. In that way he succeeds at being all things to all people. Anyone can project anything onto him without fear of being contradicted. Including his opponents. You say he's about SOCIAL EQUALITY. His opponents say he's about RACISM. Who's right? Nobody knows. Edit: Same is true of Clinton, for different reasons. The words are more coherent, but they're so vague and full of platitudes you can't really say what she's about either.
- wyager 10y ago
  It's possible that incidental racial correlations exist. He obviously meant "race is not a driving factor". By your logic, it would also be anti-male, because fewer men go to college than women.
  - rdiddly 10y ago
    "Nothing to do with" means no correlation. Edit: And note that "by my logic" you cannot conclude any thing is anti- any other thing. That was your logic.
dclowd9901 10y ago
> Give me a break. "Taking our country back" is talking about wrestling power back from the political and cultural elite that has emerged in the last half-century. You mean people like Trump?
- cb18 10y ago
  No not really. Going back millennia, there has always been an elite within a society. The difference that is recent to emerge is that there is a growing disconnect between the interests of the elite and the societies to which they supposedly belong. Nationalist vs Globalist is a pretty good summarization. The globalists seem primarily interested in using their positions of power to enrich themselves and gratify their egos, and they perhaps feel they are doing something right in their policy prescriptions, but it is driven by complete lack of understanding of human nature. The nationalists understand that humans have concentric (genetic) loyalties, from self, to family, to nation/race. These are just facts of nature, fighting against them is a losing battle and arranging our societies along these natural lines will produce the best outcomes. The nationalists want the best for the whole world, not just a tiny trans-national elite. Trump is a nationalist. (Yes I know this seems antithetical to the experience of many in SV, elite universities, etc. What these supposedly smart people fail to understand is that they are among outliers of outliers. Exceptions to rules are not unknown, but basing our policy on exceptions is an invitation to disaster.)
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    >Yes I know this seems antithetical to the experience of many in SV, elite universities, etc. What these supposedly smart people fail to understand is that they are among outliers of outliers. Exceptions to rules are not unknown, but basing our policy on exceptions is an invitation to disaster. I think you're giving them too much credit even. Their world view is ultimately incoherent, based more in "niceness" than in any consistent belief system. Contemptuous of Middle America for valuing cultural unity[1], they viciously demand adherence to their own rigid moral precepts, while also seeking to import mass numbers from populations that don't share one bit in those precepts. [1] One of the wonderful aspects of American nationalism is that this unity is not racial, but cultural.
Aloha 10y ago
I too can wholeheartedly recommend Coming Apart. I think Mr. Murrays synopsis of why we've had a splintering post WWII is great and probably pretty accurate. I just wish I knew an easy solution to fix it. But there is definitely a loss of shared values among Americans. I'd also recommend Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam as a starter on this topic.
cylinder 10y ago
Agree. Good article on The Guardian about this[0] If this was about racism, then why Trump now? Why were Republican nominees so conventional the last 50+ years? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-bias-working-class-americans https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-...

v64 10y ago

>This elite formed when all of the smart kids started going off to college together and forming their own social bubble. You say that as if it's a bad thing.

BurningFrog 10y ago
It is if they run your country and you're outside the bubble.
- v64 10y ago
  Who would you rather have running the country? The alternatives aren't even viable.
  - sbmassey 10y ago
    If that is the case, we should consider splitting the country up into more homogenous chunks
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      Yes, some kind of federal system perhaps, with free movement between them, and a small national government to bind them together, so people can vote with both their ballots and feet. Too bad the progressive elite decided that system was too much of an obstacle to their agenda.
      - sbmassey 10y ago
        It's not so much the "progressive elite" as a general fact of human politics that in Federal systems power inexorably moves to the center as anything going wrong in the provinces will be taken over by the centralised state, but never vice versa. Nationhood is the only thing that seems able to resist this tendency at the present time.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    I would have people running their own lives.
    - v64 10y ago
      Humanity decided long ago that running our own lives as hunters and gatherers wasn't the best we could do, and we came together to form societies and governments. No matter how you feel about it, you live in a society and have benefited from its public services, and there has to be some group of people to administer those public services.
dexterdog 10y ago
It is. When a society is splintered and the elites try to rule as if they understand the masses, you will have greater strife.
- v64 10y ago
  Can you blame them? A large portion of the masses have aligned themselves with a con man.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    The Republican Party failed to field a credible candidate that spoke to Middle America. They, too, were blinded by the elite bubble. Trump saw the weakness and jumped on it.
    - v64 10y ago
      The Republican Party has failed to field a credible candidate for quite some time. If you believe in science and equal rights for women and minorities, those damn "elites" are all we have.
      - marcoperaza 10y ago
        Mitt Romney was a very good candidate, except for his ultimate lack of fight. If you really believe that women and minorities don't have equal rights, then I can only urge you to dig a little deeper. Gender wage discrimination is a made-up problem, the statistics that you hear don't control for career choice, hours-worked, positions-sought, etc. The problem with our police force is that it's not professionalized once you get below the federal level. Police are too aggressive and quick to use force, but it's not a racial issue. SJWism is a cancer on Western civilization and it's one of the most pressing problems we face, because it prevents us from having honest conversations about any other problem. Debates these days always devolve into accusations of racism/sexism/"ableism", or whatever the latest boogeyman "ism" is.
        10y ago

rdiddly 10y ago

To say it has nothing to do with race, you'd need to prove race has no effect on whether you go to college and become a member of the elite. Or am I misunderstanding the "it"? Do you mean "taking the country back" has nothing to do with race? For you, it sounds like that's true, so that's good. That's all I can conclude however. I can conclude nothing about Trump. Literally nobody has any idea what Trump's really about. He's juuuust incoherent enough that he never manages to actually, successfully say anything. In that way he succeeds at being all things to all people. Anyone can project anything onto him without fear of being contradicted. Including his opponents. You say he's about SOCIAL EQUALITY. His opponents say he's about RACISM. Who's right? Nobody knows. Edit: Same is true of Clinton, for different reasons. The words are more coherent, but they're so vague and full of platitudes you can't really say what she's about either.

wyager 10y ago
It's possible that incidental racial correlations exist. He obviously meant "race is not a driving factor". By your logic, it would also be anti-male, because fewer men go to college than women.
- rdiddly 10y ago
  "Nothing to do with" means no correlation. Edit: And note that "by my logic" you cannot conclude any thing is anti- any other thing. That was your logic.

dclowd9901 10y ago

> Give me a break. "Taking our country back" is talking about wrestling power back from the political and cultural elite that has emerged in the last half-century. You mean people like Trump?

cb18 10y ago
No not really. Going back millennia, there has always been an elite within a society. The difference that is recent to emerge is that there is a growing disconnect between the interests of the elite and the societies to which they supposedly belong. Nationalist vs Globalist is a pretty good summarization. The globalists seem primarily interested in using their positions of power to enrich themselves and gratify their egos, and they perhaps feel they are doing something right in their policy prescriptions, but it is driven by complete lack of understanding of human nature. The nationalists understand that humans have concentric (genetic) loyalties, from self, to family, to nation/race. These are just facts of nature, fighting against them is a losing battle and arranging our societies along these natural lines will produce the best outcomes. The nationalists want the best for the whole world, not just a tiny trans-national elite. Trump is a nationalist. (Yes I know this seems antithetical to the experience of many in SV, elite universities, etc. What these supposedly smart people fail to understand is that they are among outliers of outliers. Exceptions to rules are not unknown, but basing our policy on exceptions is an invitation to disaster.)
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  >Yes I know this seems antithetical to the experience of many in SV, elite universities, etc. What these supposedly smart people fail to understand is that they are among outliers of outliers. Exceptions to rules are not unknown, but basing our policy on exceptions is an invitation to disaster. I think you're giving them too much credit even. Their world view is ultimately incoherent, based more in "niceness" than in any consistent belief system. Contemptuous of Middle America for valuing cultural unity[1], they viciously demand adherence to their own rigid moral precepts, while also seeking to import mass numbers from populations that don't share one bit in those precepts. [1] One of the wonderful aspects of American nationalism is that this unity is not racial, but cultural.

Aloha 10y ago

I too can wholeheartedly recommend Coming Apart. I think Mr. Murrays synopsis of why we've had a splintering post WWII is great and probably pretty accurate. I just wish I knew an easy solution to fix it. But there is definitely a loss of shared values among Americans. I'd also recommend Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam as a starter on this topic.

cylinder 10y ago

Agree. Good article on The Guardian about this[0] If this was about racism, then why Trump now? Why were Republican nominees so conventional the last 50+ years? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-bias-working-class-americans https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-...