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I wasn't trying to degrade anyone with that description, just present the point of view that I think is driving these sorts of articles in such quantity and pro

by ashark 9y ago

I wasn't trying to degrade anyone with that description, just present the point of view that I think is driving these sorts of articles in such quantity and prominence. I think it's fair to say that Trump's winning the nomination, let alone the election itself, was seen as an alarmingly insane thing to have happened by many (liberals and conservatives) and, by those who've taken it as a sign there are issues that need to be addressed, is seen as more than a little similar to an individual, very public display of desperate lunacy of the sort warrants intervention and assistance. Like, "whoa, that seemed like an OK thing to do? Oh man, you must need some help, let's figure out what's gone so wrong in your life and try to fix it." I doubt his voters see it that way, though, hence the "involuntary" part. I don't think they were attempting to get across quite that impression with their vote, though the effect of having some of their problems addressed may be the same in the end. Certainly many were expecting Trump himself to be the agent of change in their lives, not a bunch of liberals and "RINO"s who now want to (metaphorically, but also kind of literally) help them sober up, get some counseling, and maybe get signed up for public assistance and job training.

throwanem 9y ago
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but - and I've said this before on HN, actually, to no more effect than I expect it to have this time - I voted for Trump precisely in order to scare the everloving bejesus out of the US progressive left. Because, from where I sit, either that happens, or something a hell of a lot worse. Because if you guys don't get your shit together and start looking after even those people who don't agree with your politics, and believe things you think are contemptible, and live lives that you don't understand and don't want to - we're going to end up seeing the kind of enormities which will make history forget Hitler's genocide, just as Hitler made history forget what the Turks did to the Armenians. A nation which once sought to be - which once was - a bastion of hope for a better world, a beacon for downtrodden people the world over, will instead collapse into the kind of ruin that poisons the world for decades to follow, that taints the very ideas in which it originated. Every hope that anyone has ever invested in this nation - uncounted millions of immigrants, including your ancestors and mine - will become worth less than nothing. Also, you and everyone you care about will almost certainly suffer and die, and just as likely so will I and everyone I care about, and so will more millions than in any such atrocity before, because - as with so many things - every time we go this route of horror, we get that much better at it. So there's that. Maybe I sound like I'm scared shitless. If so, it's only because I am, all the time now. If you're not, why in God's name aren't you? Because we're both sitting on the same pile of sweating dynamite and gunpowder. If it goes off, I doubt either of us will find much consolation in the fact that the other one's also just been blown sky high. I'm not asking for a bomb squad to swoop in and save us all like something out of the last act of an episode of 24. It's just that I sure think it'd be nice if people would stop playing with all these goddam matches and do something constructive for a change.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I voted for Trump precisely in order to scare the everloving bejesus out of the US progressive left. That much seems to have worked, but... > Because if you guys don't get your shit together and start looking after even those people who don't agree with your politics, and believe things you think are contemptible, and live lives that you don't understand and don't want to - we're going to end up seeing the kind of enormities which will make history forget Hitler's genocide, just as Hitler made history forget what the Turks did to the Armenians. I'd say mutual hatred across the political divide got much worse, not better, as a result of Trump, so on that ground your effort seems to have backfired. I'm not sure why you thought that voting for the leading merchant of that kind of political contempt would mitigate it.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    "Thought" isn't really the word. I hoped that progressives would draw a salutary lesson from such a reverse, instead of doubling down on the rhetoric and behavior that's brought us to such a pretty pass. You're not wrong that it was a rather forlorn hope. It was the best I had in any case, so I went with it. But maybe it hasn't completely failed - we here discuss an article in which one of the long-standing and most highly-respected collective biens-pensants of the left tries, in its characteristically subtle fashion, to convince its audience that such people are human, not mere homunculi - worthy of compassion, not mere contempt. What is that, if not at least tenuous cause for hope? And in any case, it's easy to criticize. Let's see you suggest something constructive of your own - serious question, now: the DNC having ruined Sanders, what have you got that's better?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > In any case, the DNC having ruined Sanders, what have you got that's better? The DNC didn't "ruin" Sanders; he's still the most popular politician in the country, and the faction of the party that looks to him as a major leader is stronger than any time (and the neoliberal faction, while still more powerful, weaker than at any time) since Bill Clinton and his "Third Way" swept the neoliberals to dominance in the 1990s. (It's also weird that you'd target "progressives" for your complaints; even insofar as the problem you complain about exists in the Democratic Party, it's about partisan tribalism which cuts across the ideological divides in the party, and, tomthe extent it ties to ideology at all, typically—particularly in the most recent cycle—morr associated with the strongly partisan members of the neoliberal faction rather than the progressive faction. (In fact, the ignoring a large part of the country has been a key complaint by the progressive faction against the neoliberal faction since the latter became prominent.)
DougN7 9y ago
IMHO Trump won because Hillary was the alternative. There is probably no one else in America that he could have beat.

by ashark 9y ago

throwanem 9y ago

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but - and I've said this before on HN, actually, to no more effect than I expect it to have this time - I voted for Trump precisely in order to scare the everloving bejesus out of the US progressive left. Because, from where I sit, either that happens, or something a hell of a lot worse. Because if you guys don't get your shit together and start looking after even those people who don't agree with your politics, and believe things you think are contemptible, and live lives that you don't understand and don't want to - we're going to end up seeing the kind of enormities which will make history forget Hitler's genocide, just as Hitler made history forget what the Turks did to the Armenians. A nation which once sought to be - which once was - a bastion of hope for a better world, a beacon for downtrodden people the world over, will instead collapse into the kind of ruin that poisons the world for decades to follow, that taints the very ideas in which it originated. Every hope that anyone has ever invested in this nation - uncounted millions of immigrants, including your ancestors and mine - will become worth less than nothing. Also, you and everyone you care about will almost certainly suffer and die, and just as likely so will I and everyone I care about, and so will more millions than in any such atrocity before, because - as with so many things - every time we go this route of horror, we get that much better at it. So there's that. Maybe I sound like I'm scared shitless. If so, it's only because I am, all the time now. If you're not, why in God's name aren't you? Because we're both sitting on the same pile of sweating dynamite and gunpowder. If it goes off, I doubt either of us will find much consolation in the fact that the other one's also just been blown sky high. I'm not asking for a bomb squad to swoop in and save us all like something out of the last act of an episode of 24. It's just that I sure think it'd be nice if people would stop playing with all these goddam matches and do something constructive for a change.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> I voted for Trump precisely in order to scare the everloving bejesus out of the US progressive left. That much seems to have worked, but... > Because if you guys don't get your shit together and start looking after even those people who don't agree with your politics, and believe things you think are contemptible, and live lives that you don't understand and don't want to - we're going to end up seeing the kind of enormities which will make history forget Hitler's genocide, just as Hitler made history forget what the Turks did to the Armenians. I'd say mutual hatred across the political divide got much worse, not better, as a result of Trump, so on that ground your effort seems to have backfired. I'm not sure why you thought that voting for the leading merchant of that kind of political contempt would mitigate it.
- throwanem 9y ago
  "Thought" isn't really the word. I hoped that progressives would draw a salutary lesson from such a reverse, instead of doubling down on the rhetoric and behavior that's brought us to such a pretty pass. You're not wrong that it was a rather forlorn hope. It was the best I had in any case, so I went with it. But maybe it hasn't completely failed - we here discuss an article in which one of the long-standing and most highly-respected collective biens-pensants of the left tries, in its characteristically subtle fashion, to convince its audience that such people are human, not mere homunculi - worthy of compassion, not mere contempt. What is that, if not at least tenuous cause for hope? And in any case, it's easy to criticize. Let's see you suggest something constructive of your own - serious question, now: the DNC having ruined Sanders, what have you got that's better?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > In any case, the DNC having ruined Sanders, what have you got that's better? The DNC didn't "ruin" Sanders; he's still the most popular politician in the country, and the faction of the party that looks to him as a major leader is stronger than any time (and the neoliberal faction, while still more powerful, weaker than at any time) since Bill Clinton and his "Third Way" swept the neoliberals to dominance in the 1990s. (It's also weird that you'd target "progressives" for your complaints; even insofar as the problem you complain about exists in the Democratic Party, it's about partisan tribalism which cuts across the ideological divides in the party, and, tomthe extent it ties to ideology at all, typically—particularly in the most recent cycle—morr associated with the strongly partisan members of the neoliberal faction rather than the progressive faction. (In fact, the ignoring a large part of the country has been a key complaint by the progressive faction against the neoliberal faction since the latter became prominent.)

DougN7 9y ago

IMHO Trump won because Hillary was the alternative. There is probably no one else in America that he could have beat.