7 ms·

I'll directly quote a comment by HN user thewarrior (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320), one of my fav

I'll directly quote a comment by HN user thewarrior (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907320), one of my favorite comments, here: --- It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is for economic reasons or just plain bigotry is something for the sociologists to study and not something I can pontificate on. Also people seem to care a LOT about immigration and preserving their culture. Instead of patronising these people it's time we tried to understand their concerns and try to assuage them. There is no genuine leftist alternative. It's a choice between center-right "left" that's sold out to the establishment and the far right.Economists need to stop acting like priests in the medieval ages who justified the existing order . The rural voter who lost his job doesn't care about the theory of comparitive advantage. If this trend holds this will soon take hold in France and other European nations. This is a return to the world of the 1920s. Not gloom and doom but a much more unstable global order with every country for itself. Not what we need when we face planet scale threats like global warming. Get out of your bubble. Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. The divide is bridged one person at a time. PS - Reposted my comment from another thread as it got flagged. Hope its OK with the mods. EDIT: His concession speech seems to indicate that he's beginning to appreciate what he's been entrusted with.

gthtjtkt 10y ago
Reminds me of Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject: > The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy. Also: > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... Worth a read for anyone who's still confused about how/why Brexit and Trump happened. The filter bubbles created by sites like Facebook, Google and Reddit seem to be much stronger than most people realize, and many still don't understand that they're trapped in a bubble at all. Or if you prefer a video, Russell Brand did a great job of explaining it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q To no one's surprise, neither of these items made it anywhere near the front page of Reddit.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. Two hundred years ago, this kind of behavior led to the French Revolution, and the end of many of those elites at the guillotine. Now they just get an election result they don't like (at least so far). That's genuine progress.
  - YZF 10y ago
    Who is they? I see some elites that like the results and some that don't. The "elite" seems just as divided as the rest of the people. Trump is elite. It's true that democrats generally got more support amongst college educated people but those guys aren't really elite in any sense and plenty of them still voted for Republicans. There are absolutely no parallels to the french revolution. So yeah, progress for sure.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Well, "they" in my context (and Glenn Greenwald's statement) are "opinion-making elites". They're the mainstream media, not the rich.
      - YZF 10y ago
        Well obviously the "opinion-making elites" in the "mainstream" media were not able to "make" the opinions of 50% of the people. So 50% is mainstream? Where do the other 50% get their opinions? EDIT: I'm not ignoring this narrative about the elites but I don't think it's actually true. Trump golfed with the Clintons. They came to his wedding. He was a TV persona. During the elections he intentionally took an adversarial position towards the media to support this narrative (esp. taking on Fox News). From where I'm sitting they are all elite in the same way. The same mainstream opinion making elites hurt the Clinton campaign by endlessly talking about the re-opening of the e-mail investigation. Media is definitely opinionated and doesn't offer a diversity of views (which I sometimes see as annoying) but there's some points where it's almost like you'd say that the mainstream elite in education teaches evolution while ignoring the non-mainstream view of creationism.
allemagne 10y ago
The majority of voters voted against Trump.
- b_emery 10y ago
  Exactly. So no need to fit a narrative to it.
- sremani 10y ago
  This was the exact explanation[1] given in India when the Left and INC were getting into a "unholy" alliance to form government. I find this hilarious, by the extension of the argument, majority of voters voted against every candidate. edit: [1]the argument was majority of voters voted against BJP.
- MK999 10y ago
  If you don't consider voter fraud.
elcct 10y ago
It is also that big entities like to reach deep into people pockets and spend their money on vanity projects and there is no responsibility whatsoever. It is especially visible in the EU. Sometimes it gets tragicomical - in IT for example, you can get government grants for supposedly innovative projects. So then you can get websites about cats (there was no website about cat like that, so it's an innovation!) and other non-sense out of tax payer pockets. That's just tip of the iceberg. I am not saying that in the smaller, self-governing entities could be any different, but it will be easier to spot who is responsible and no longer suitable for office. That's rather not possible in the EU. Bureaucrats are getting fatter and fatter, civil servants are getting more and more important with more and more powers and little liability. They tell you how you have to live and you must obey. If you do not, you are being labelled bigot, outsider, racist, fascist or whatever label works... and people just want freedom.
- blub 10y ago
  You will have to be more specific than "websites about cats", or I will have to call out your post for what it is - nonsense. Who tells you how to live? Examples please. Who must you obey and in what circumstances? What are the vanity projects?
lj3 10y ago
> Get out of your bubble. > Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. > The divide is bridged one person at a time. It's amazing to me how such seemingly smart people can see what's going on and completely miss the point. You still think it's just a matter of educating the dumb, racist rednecks that reside in the rural flyover areas. It's not. Those "idiots" understand your point of view. They reject it completely. It doesn't reflect any reality they recognize, which is why none of you saw it coming. You pay too much attention to ideology and how you wish things were instead of reality and how things actually are. You can reach out all you like. It won't "bridge the divide." It'll create more opposition. More divide. You need to start thinking hard about whether your positions are as accurate as you've always believed them to be.
- jackmott 10y ago
  Ok which position have I got wrong? Should we be putting gay people in jail? I know global warming is real, I've checked the math personally. Help me out.
  - lj3 10y ago
    > Help me out. Where's my incentive to "help you out"? You ask, but you don't really want to know. You've already made up your mind. That much is obvious in how you phrased your question.
  - jerf 10y ago
    You're falling victim to the bubble again, thinking that the only difference is that they thing "gay people should be in jail". You'd be far better off thinking about questions like, how come when places are run under the policies that Democrats seem to favor, African Americans aren't making any economic progress? Why does my 25 year old child have to still live with me? Why am I paying for a college that seems more interested in indoctrinating my child than educating them? Why are several demographics seeing significant rises in suicide rates? Why does the government count me as no longer unemployed because I haven't been able to find a job in some number of years? Why did my mandatory health care cut its benefits and go up in price by 50% this year? Why is it when I raise these concerns people just mock me for wanting to put gay people in jail? Why is it that the response to my every concern is to be called racist? Something I think the HN crowd needs to remember is that while we are not really in the "elite", we are at least in the low elite. We make money and stock options. When someone comes into our industry making $60K a year we ask them what they're doing wrong to make merely 50% over the median wage. Thinking that all this cultural conflict is over whether gay people are sent to prison is just another way of distancing yourself from the real problems, and ensuring that this electoral result keeps happening. Many of these people are making less in a year than I keep in my bank account as my rainy day fund. Many things matter to them that you or I would just spend our way around. I'll also suggest that it doesn't do much good to say something like "Well, sure, the people I elected may be in charge but I don't actually agree with what they're doing" or some dodge like that. I said "policies that Democrats seem to favor" up above carefully, because it may be the case that you don't favor them yourself, but it doesn't matter, because you (collectively) are voting for people who do. I see HN frequently disagreeing with what you might call the establishment liberal consensus on things like surveillance, but that's not terribly relevant to understanding what's actually going on out there in the world because the SV liberal deviations are not electorally significant.
f_allwein 10y ago
don't agree with the comment you quote. What I like about the Economist article (discussed here) is that it does not need terms like "bunch of elites" or "attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail" to explain the phenomenon of nationalism. Instead, it points (far down, in the 'Nations once again' section) to factors like pessimism in industrialized countries, nationalism as "a cheap and easy way to generate enthusiasm for the state, and to deflect blame for what is wrong" and the role of social media. Moreover, I like that there's a sort-of positive bit at the end as it points out that young people are still overwhelmingly globalists, so the current trend towards nationalism could be reversed soon.
- tomp 10y ago
  I found the article pretty lacking. It failed to even mention what is in my opinion the most important, and the most significant reason for Trump/Brexit/Le Pen: that the elites might be wrong. Why is diversity good? Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Why would immigration, especially uncontrollable immigration, be beneficial? What if some cultures are better? And even if they're not, why is it bad for Westerners to like their own culture? Why should we respect foreign cultures if they don't respect our own? Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Why is racism against whites and sexism against men acceptable? In the recent years, these questions weren't being asked and the "right" answer was just assumed by the elites. What's more, it was forbidden to even ask questions like these!
  - drewrv 10y ago
    It's not that most of these questions are assumed, or that they're forbidden to talk about, it's that they're so obvious it's not even interesting to discuss. > Why is diversity good? If I need heart surgery, I want the most qualified heart surgeon. Not the most qualified white person born within N miles of me. > Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Free speech is doing quite well, it has never been easier to express yourself to a huge audience. > Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Many people would rather find a new job than work with jerks. Companies are trying to protect the bottom line and it's easier to replace one person than many.
YZF 10y ago
The more I think about the results of the US elections the more my conclusion is that it doesn't yield itself to simple explanations. This is not about some dude who lost his factory job and feels he is being patronized. I'm not denying this dude's existence or his feeling but there are a lot of people here with different feelings. For sure the lines of communication need to remain open to deal with the divide and as you say, this is a one person at a time thing. Another part is communication from the top which we haven't seen enough, both words and actions. I would say the overall trend though is still towards a more unified humanity. Yes, there are bumps on the road, but if you look at the world today people are a lot closer than they ever were in history. The consume the same products. The cultural gap is much smaller. Racism and xenophobia were always there. I think these are weaker forces today then they were historically. The world economy is changing but that is only partly due to globalization and more due to changes in technology, demographics, global warming and other factors. This change is certainly impacting individuals who need solutions. This is a complicated problem that needs complex solutions. Neither candidate in the recent US elections offered any. Some of the problems in the US, e.g. racial tensions and inequality go back more than 100 years. Some of the economic problems go back more than 20 years. There's been a lot of kicking the can down the road and eventually things catch up with you.
- rhizome 10y ago
  To be fair, portraying global unity as an unalloyed good is an ideological stance.
  - YZF 10y ago
    It needs to be a rational discussion. If we don't have unity then what do we get instead? If different nations aren't equal partners than what are they? I do realize though how difficult it is for people to agree on these things, partly because of their beliefs that at times seem to override any rational argument. That's partly where we need more and better leadership to demonstrate that things can actually work out and be win-win.
    - rhizome 10y ago

gthtjtkt 10y ago

Reminds me of Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject: > The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy. Also: > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... Worth a read for anyone who's still confused about how/why Brexit and Trump happened. The filter bubbles created by sites like Facebook, Google and Reddit seem to be much stronger than most people realize, and many still don't understand that they're trapped in a bubble at all. Or if you prefer a video, Russell Brand did a great job of explaining it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Ou5uFFn8Q To no one's surprise, neither of these items made it anywhere near the front page of Reddit.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> > opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior. Two hundred years ago, this kind of behavior led to the French Revolution, and the end of many of those elites at the guillotine. Now they just get an election result they don't like (at least so far). That's genuine progress.
- YZF 10y ago
  Who is they? I see some elites that like the results and some that don't. The "elite" seems just as divided as the rest of the people. Trump is elite. It's true that democrats generally got more support amongst college educated people but those guys aren't really elite in any sense and plenty of them still voted for Republicans. There are absolutely no parallels to the french revolution. So yeah, progress for sure.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Well, "they" in my context (and Glenn Greenwald's statement) are "opinion-making elites". They're the mainstream media, not the rich.
    - YZF 10y ago
      Well obviously the "opinion-making elites" in the "mainstream" media were not able to "make" the opinions of 50% of the people. So 50% is mainstream? Where do the other 50% get their opinions? EDIT: I'm not ignoring this narrative about the elites but I don't think it's actually true. Trump golfed with the Clintons. They came to his wedding. He was a TV persona. During the elections he intentionally took an adversarial position towards the media to support this narrative (esp. taking on Fox News). From where I'm sitting they are all elite in the same way. The same mainstream opinion making elites hurt the Clinton campaign by endlessly talking about the re-opening of the e-mail investigation. Media is definitely opinionated and doesn't offer a diversity of views (which I sometimes see as annoying) but there's some points where it's almost like you'd say that the mainstream elite in education teaches evolution while ignoring the non-mainstream view of creationism.

allemagne 10y ago

The majority of voters voted against Trump.

b_emery 10y ago
Exactly. So no need to fit a narrative to it.
sremani 10y ago
This was the exact explanation[1] given in India when the Left and INC were getting into a "unholy" alliance to form government. I find this hilarious, by the extension of the argument, majority of voters voted against every candidate. edit: [1]the argument was majority of voters voted against BJP.
MK999 10y ago
If you don't consider voter fraud.

elcct 10y ago

It is also that big entities like to reach deep into people pockets and spend their money on vanity projects and there is no responsibility whatsoever. It is especially visible in the EU. Sometimes it gets tragicomical - in IT for example, you can get government grants for supposedly innovative projects. So then you can get websites about cats (there was no website about cat like that, so it's an innovation!) and other non-sense out of tax payer pockets. That's just tip of the iceberg. I am not saying that in the smaller, self-governing entities could be any different, but it will be easier to spot who is responsible and no longer suitable for office. That's rather not possible in the EU. Bureaucrats are getting fatter and fatter, civil servants are getting more and more important with more and more powers and little liability. They tell you how you have to live and you must obey. If you do not, you are being labelled bigot, outsider, racist, fascist or whatever label works... and people just want freedom.

blub 10y ago
You will have to be more specific than "websites about cats", or I will have to call out your post for what it is - nonsense. Who tells you how to live? Examples please. Who must you obey and in what circumstances? What are the vanity projects?

lj3 10y ago

> Get out of your bubble. > Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with. > The divide is bridged one person at a time. It's amazing to me how such seemingly smart people can see what's going on and completely miss the point. You still think it's just a matter of educating the dumb, racist rednecks that reside in the rural flyover areas. It's not. Those "idiots" understand your point of view. They reject it completely. It doesn't reflect any reality they recognize, which is why none of you saw it coming. You pay too much attention to ideology and how you wish things were instead of reality and how things actually are. You can reach out all you like. It won't "bridge the divide." It'll create more opposition. More divide. You need to start thinking hard about whether your positions are as accurate as you've always believed them to be.

jackmott 10y ago
Ok which position have I got wrong? Should we be putting gay people in jail? I know global warming is real, I've checked the math personally. Help me out.
- lj3 10y ago
  > Help me out. Where's my incentive to "help you out"? You ask, but you don't really want to know. You've already made up your mind. That much is obvious in how you phrased your question.
- jerf 10y ago
  You're falling victim to the bubble again, thinking that the only difference is that they thing "gay people should be in jail". You'd be far better off thinking about questions like, how come when places are run under the policies that Democrats seem to favor, African Americans aren't making any economic progress? Why does my 25 year old child have to still live with me? Why am I paying for a college that seems more interested in indoctrinating my child than educating them? Why are several demographics seeing significant rises in suicide rates? Why does the government count me as no longer unemployed because I haven't been able to find a job in some number of years? Why did my mandatory health care cut its benefits and go up in price by 50% this year? Why is it when I raise these concerns people just mock me for wanting to put gay people in jail? Why is it that the response to my every concern is to be called racist? Something I think the HN crowd needs to remember is that while we are not really in the "elite", we are at least in the low elite. We make money and stock options. When someone comes into our industry making $60K a year we ask them what they're doing wrong to make merely 50% over the median wage. Thinking that all this cultural conflict is over whether gay people are sent to prison is just another way of distancing yourself from the real problems, and ensuring that this electoral result keeps happening. Many of these people are making less in a year than I keep in my bank account as my rainy day fund. Many things matter to them that you or I would just spend our way around. I'll also suggest that it doesn't do much good to say something like "Well, sure, the people I elected may be in charge but I don't actually agree with what they're doing" or some dodge like that. I said "policies that Democrats seem to favor" up above carefully, because it may be the case that you don't favor them yourself, but it doesn't matter, because you (collectively) are voting for people who do. I see HN frequently disagreeing with what you might call the establishment liberal consensus on things like surveillance, but that's not terribly relevant to understanding what's actually going on out there in the world because the SV liberal deviations are not electorally significant.

f_allwein 10y ago

don't agree with the comment you quote. What I like about the Economist article (discussed here) is that it does not need terms like "bunch of elites" or "attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail" to explain the phenomenon of nationalism. Instead, it points (far down, in the 'Nations once again' section) to factors like pessimism in industrialized countries, nationalism as "a cheap and easy way to generate enthusiasm for the state, and to deflect blame for what is wrong" and the role of social media. Moreover, I like that there's a sort-of positive bit at the end as it points out that young people are still overwhelmingly globalists, so the current trend towards nationalism could be reversed soon.

tomp 10y ago
I found the article pretty lacking. It failed to even mention what is in my opinion the most important, and the most significant reason for Trump/Brexit/Le Pen: that the elites might be wrong. Why is diversity good? Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Why would immigration, especially uncontrollable immigration, be beneficial? What if some cultures are better? And even if they're not, why is it bad for Westerners to like their own culture? Why should we respect foreign cultures if they don't respect our own? Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Why is racism against whites and sexism against men acceptable? In the recent years, these questions weren't being asked and the "right" answer was just assumed by the elites. What's more, it was forbidden to even ask questions like these!
- drewrv 10y ago
  It's not that most of these questions are assumed, or that they're forbidden to talk about, it's that they're so obvious it's not even interesting to discuss. > Why is diversity good? If I need heart surgery, I want the most qualified heart surgeon. Not the most qualified white person born within N miles of me. > Why is it better to not offend people rather than preserve free speech? Free speech is doing quite well, it has never been easier to express yourself to a huge audience. > Why should you lose your job if you make a joke in public that some people deem offensive? Many people would rather find a new job than work with jerks. Companies are trying to protect the bottom line and it's easier to replace one person than many.

YZF 10y ago

The more I think about the results of the US elections the more my conclusion is that it doesn't yield itself to simple explanations. This is not about some dude who lost his factory job and feels he is being patronized. I'm not denying this dude's existence or his feeling but there are a lot of people here with different feelings. For sure the lines of communication need to remain open to deal with the divide and as you say, this is a one person at a time thing. Another part is communication from the top which we haven't seen enough, both words and actions. I would say the overall trend though is still towards a more unified humanity. Yes, there are bumps on the road, but if you look at the world today people are a lot closer than they ever were in history. The consume the same products. The cultural gap is much smaller. Racism and xenophobia were always there. I think these are weaker forces today then they were historically. The world economy is changing but that is only partly due to globalization and more due to changes in technology, demographics, global warming and other factors. This change is certainly impacting individuals who need solutions. This is a complicated problem that needs complex solutions. Neither candidate in the recent US elections offered any. Some of the problems in the US, e.g. racial tensions and inequality go back more than 100 years. Some of the economic problems go back more than 20 years. There's been a lot of kicking the can down the road and eventually things catch up with you.

rhizome 10y ago
To be fair, portraying global unity as an unalloyed good is an ideological stance.
- YZF 10y ago
  It needs to be a rational discussion. If we don't have unity then what do we get instead? If different nations aren't equal partners than what are they? I do realize though how difficult it is for people to agree on these things, partly because of their beliefs that at times seem to override any rational argument. That's partly where we need more and better leadership to demonstrate that things can actually work out and be win-win.
  - rhizome 10y ago