2 ms·
> However, I find your insult to Trump voters gratuitous and unnecessary. I read it without placing the emphasis on the colon and I'm sure it's less barbed and
by dpwm 9y ago
> However, I find your insult to Trump voters gratuitous and unnecessary.
I read it without placing the emphasis on the colon and I'm sure it's less barbed and strengthens the point:
They are like [the] Trump voters willing to throw their lot in with whomever tells them "it will be okay", regardless of how unscrupulous and incompetent those promise-makers are.
That there were some, not all, trump voters who were actually quite vulnerable and were manipulated. Just as there were some Clinton, Johnson and abstaining voters who were vulnerable and manipulated.
The key difference was that Trump dropped a shockingly honest hint about the desire to exploit the manipulable: "we love the poorly educated," arguably has a hint of suckering about it. I suspect this is something some Trump supporters are uneasy about by appealing to symmetry (i.e. if the other side had done this).
I found the analogy I misread quite useful as it linked two phenomena that I had previously believed to be disparate. It would be a shame for that to be lost for the sake of a missing word and a superfluous colon.
- throwanem 9y agoTrump was "shockingly honest" - and it was shocking! - about a lot of things about which Nice People Don't Speak, all throughout the election cycle. His bombshell about buying politicians in the first GOP debate is a sterling example - roughly from memory: "I know you guys are for sale because I buy you all the time!" Shocking indeed. But not on substance - no one familiar with modern US politics would seriously doubt that most politicians are absolutely for sale, although probably not thinking of it in those terms, or that the two meaningful parties do absolutely sucker rubes into voting for cynically promised outcomes which often aren't even plausible and are the rest of the time rarely pursued. Obama was the best I've seen in my lifetime, in terms of trying hard to live up to his campaign promises and also being competent to pursue them, and even he only passes if we grade on a real generous curve. No, what's shocking is that anyone would say it, at least where the rubes might hear. And, again, that is shocking! One does not expect to hear the inchoate doubts shared among much of the electorate confirmed outright by a major-party candidate. And I suppose if one confidently expects to get screwed either way, it might make some sense to vote for the guy who's at least honest about it.
- killjoywashere 9y agoAs OP, I would like to hereby adopt your reading, but it's beyond the edit window to fix directly. Alas, I hereby leave this as my mea culpa.