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I know this post will probably get flagged because it is so political. Still, I think this article is something everyone needs to read, especially in the curren

I know this post will probably get flagged because it is so political. Still, I think this article is something everyone needs to read, especially in the current political climate where identity politics and group think have pitted groups of people against one another and spurred them to violence all over the western world. This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress.

lukeqsee 9y ago
I disagree with it being strictly political anymore than any human story is political. Having grown up in the south, it is indeed a powerful and necessary story.
goodcanadian 9y ago
I didn't find it the least bit political, but it was indeed flagged and dead when I came to it. I vouched for it.
Mikeb85 9y ago
> This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress. Values which are disappearing on the "left". I recently lost a friend (extreme lefty) for saying that Trump was elected because of the socio-economic situation of poor white voters in the US. He just railed on about how I was racist for daring to say that the Trump phenomenon is anything more than Americans being a bunch of Klansmen... Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. Edit - deleted the first edit.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  > Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. THIS. Grew up in the midwest, could've told the coastal liberals that their nonstop (and unnecessary) attacks on everything even slightly valued by the flyover states was going to cost them someday. They didn't want to hear it.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Well you sure showed us, with this brilliant act of communal decapitation. Never mind that the people who feel hurt the most are hurting themselves the most, you're making a point or something... Seriously, if your narrative for political change is little more than hurt feelings, maybe the "other" isn't the problem. This article should have at least showed you that putting aside the petty can have real impacts on both parties.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      Firstly I'm not a supporter of this Nationalist America First agenda, though the fact that simply because I'm willing to non-judgmentally listen to their side and hear their complaints and say yeah, those things are a problem causes you to react with hostility kind of shows my point well, so thanks. Secondly, this is not "hurt feelings," not that something -just- being emotionally abusive and nothing else should be an excuse for pretending it isn't a problem, but we'll go with that anyways. No, this is the fact that the middle state's economies have been struggling for years, and that was before the 2008 housing crash, which the cities and coasts have recovered fairly well from, but has left everyone else largely in the cold. Now, it's true that a lot of those issues can be fairly directly traced to the local governments and their bad decisions; some cities, for example Chattanooga, have done extremely well at modernizing. But to pretend that the constant drumbeat of the culture that being in the flyover states (itself a term of derision) is terrible, that everything they believe is dumb, that they're uneducated prudes and all the rest of it has caused an incredible cultural scar between the rural and urban portions of the nation. And successes like Chattanooga are in spite of, not because of, that divide.
      - Mikeb85 9y ago
        > Firstly I'm not a supporter of this Nationalist America First agenda What a world we live in, where a government putting their own people first is considered a bad or controversial thing...
  - grizzles 9y ago
    You are otherizing. Who are THEY? What are the things that are valued? Please explain how did the coastal liberals attack you.
- grey-area 9y ago
  Many Trump and brexit voters were not poor. Brexit was not mainly about poverty but fear of immigrants (esp Muslim) and antipathy to the eu. While it is comforting to come up with a narrative which explains complex events in one neat moral parable about neglecting your own poor or extremism shutting down debate (insert personal bugbear here), it’s not helpful. Perhaps that’s what your erstwhile friend objected to.
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    The white working class in both the UK and US are those who have been hit hardest by working class wages going down due to immigration and outsourcing. Conservative parties always attract the rich vote. Once again, if you ignore the root causes, you'll always get results like Brexit. Exiting the EU won't curb immigration from Pakistan, India, etc..., but it will stop workers coming from poorer EU countries (Poland, Romania, etc... BTW these countries aren't Muslim. Brexit does nothing to limit Muslim immigrants).
    - michaelmrose 9y ago
      Can you please show that immigration is the cause of wage stagnation
      - Mikeb85 9y ago
        Tall order considering that entire papers are written on the subject, but here's some reading for you: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=effects+of+immigration+wages&hl=fr&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1_tXNmdDWAhVJ52MKHQSMDcgQgQMIJTAA https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=effects+of+immigration+w... Keep in mind I did a degree in economics, so I studied things like this for thousands of hours... That being said, it's a pretty basic concept that increasing the labour pool will contract wages, especially in the short run. Long term effects are generally positive, but it can take a generation or two, and for those people who are affected by the negative consequences, it's not always of much solace.
        9y ago
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please not break the HN guidelines by going on about downvotes? Nothing justifies further downvotes more. The problem with your comment is that it takes the thread in both a more generic and a more partisan direction. A bad combination for HN (which is not to say that you're wrong).

lukeqsee 9y ago

I disagree with it being strictly political anymore than any human story is political. Having grown up in the south, it is indeed a powerful and necessary story.

goodcanadian 9y ago

I didn't find it the least bit political, but it was indeed flagged and dead when I came to it. I vouched for it.

Mikeb85 9y ago

> This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress. Values which are disappearing on the "left". I recently lost a friend (extreme lefty) for saying that Trump was elected because of the socio-economic situation of poor white voters in the US. He just railed on about how I was racist for daring to say that the Trump phenomenon is anything more than Americans being a bunch of Klansmen... Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. Edit - deleted the first edit.

FussyZeus 9y ago
> Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. THIS. Grew up in the midwest, could've told the coastal liberals that their nonstop (and unnecessary) attacks on everything even slightly valued by the flyover states was going to cost them someday. They didn't want to hear it.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Well you sure showed us, with this brilliant act of communal decapitation. Never mind that the people who feel hurt the most are hurting themselves the most, you're making a point or something... Seriously, if your narrative for political change is little more than hurt feelings, maybe the "other" isn't the problem. This article should have at least showed you that putting aside the petty can have real impacts on both parties.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    Firstly I'm not a supporter of this Nationalist America First agenda, though the fact that simply because I'm willing to non-judgmentally listen to their side and hear their complaints and say yeah, those things are a problem causes you to react with hostility kind of shows my point well, so thanks. Secondly, this is not "hurt feelings," not that something -just- being emotionally abusive and nothing else should be an excuse for pretending it isn't a problem, but we'll go with that anyways. No, this is the fact that the middle state's economies have been struggling for years, and that was before the 2008 housing crash, which the cities and coasts have recovered fairly well from, but has left everyone else largely in the cold. Now, it's true that a lot of those issues can be fairly directly traced to the local governments and their bad decisions; some cities, for example Chattanooga, have done extremely well at modernizing. But to pretend that the constant drumbeat of the culture that being in the flyover states (itself a term of derision) is terrible, that everything they believe is dumb, that they're uneducated prudes and all the rest of it has caused an incredible cultural scar between the rural and urban portions of the nation. And successes like Chattanooga are in spite of, not because of, that divide.
    - Mikeb85 9y ago
      > Firstly I'm not a supporter of this Nationalist America First agenda What a world we live in, where a government putting their own people first is considered a bad or controversial thing...
- grizzles 9y ago
  You are otherizing. Who are THEY? What are the things that are valued? Please explain how did the coastal liberals attack you.
grey-area 9y ago
Many Trump and brexit voters were not poor. Brexit was not mainly about poverty but fear of immigrants (esp Muslim) and antipathy to the eu. While it is comforting to come up with a narrative which explains complex events in one neat moral parable about neglecting your own poor or extremism shutting down debate (insert personal bugbear here), it’s not helpful. Perhaps that’s what your erstwhile friend objected to.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  The white working class in both the UK and US are those who have been hit hardest by working class wages going down due to immigration and outsourcing. Conservative parties always attract the rich vote. Once again, if you ignore the root causes, you'll always get results like Brexit. Exiting the EU won't curb immigration from Pakistan, India, etc..., but it will stop workers coming from poorer EU countries (Poland, Romania, etc... BTW these countries aren't Muslim. Brexit does nothing to limit Muslim immigrants).
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Can you please show that immigration is the cause of wage stagnation
    - Mikeb85 9y ago
      Tall order considering that entire papers are written on the subject, but here's some reading for you: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=effects+of+immigration+wages&hl=fr&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1_tXNmdDWAhVJ52MKHQSMDcgQgQMIJTAA https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=effects+of+immigration+w... Keep in mind I did a degree in economics, so I studied things like this for thousands of hours... That being said, it's a pretty basic concept that increasing the labour pool will contract wages, especially in the short run. Long term effects are generally positive, but it can take a generation or two, and for those people who are affected by the negative consequences, it's not always of much solace.
      - 9y ago
dang 9y ago
Would you please not break the HN guidelines by going on about downvotes? Nothing justifies further downvotes more. The problem with your comment is that it takes the thread in both a more generic and a more partisan direction. A bad combination for HN (which is not to say that you're wrong).