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Don't you see how that platform is more patronizing than "I'll bring the jobs back home"? It's far more appealing to hear that your jobs were taken by cheap Chi

Don't you see how that platform is more patronizing than "I'll bring the jobs back home"? It's far more appealing to hear that your jobs were taken by cheap Chinese labor than to hear that your skills are out of date and you need training. It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right—as I said, they're wrong about the medicine—what matters is who understands the human beings who vote better. And Trump understood these people better than any member of the establishment in either party, which is why he was able to hijack one and defeat the other. Inventing stories about how half the country just wants the other half to hurt won't help win the midterms and the next presidency. We have to get past that and actually look at what Trump voters truly believe, then speak to them as real people, not strawmen.

masklinn 2y ago
[flagged]
- marcus0x62 2y ago
  Q.E.D
  - masklinn 2y ago
    What's QED exactly? The comment I'm replying to is saying that > It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right because the only thing that's important is whose claim is attractive to the population being pandered to, and that > I'll bring the jobs back home is amazing despite being completely nonsensical. And the're probably right, mind. A lot of the responses seem to agree, just couching it in nicer terms (if barely). I guess putting it in plain terms is not acceptable. As is usually the case.
llamaimperative 2y ago
We’re talking about the “fuck your feelings” crowd right?
- krapp 2y ago
  Fuck your feelings. Take their feelings very seriously.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Again, it doesn't really matter if you like them or think they're mature in their attitudes and approach, they've now proven that you can't win elections without them. Figure out how to appeal to them or watch us descend into decades of Trumpism.
    - krapp 2y ago
      ... but appealing to them would mean descending into decades of Trumpism, because that's what they want. They don't want to be appealed to, nor do they intend to compromise. They want to tear down everything I value, burn it to the ground, piss on the ashes and put me up against the wall. I know this because they've told me precisely that, and have been telling me that for nearly a decade. They've been very vocal and clear about what they want, and it isn't to be understood, or to meet anyone halfway. I'm tired of being told that I need to capitulate and surrender and understand why I deserve the bullet. Fuck that, and fuck them. Trumpism Delenda Est.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        See, this is exactly why I felt the need to speak up. Trumpism isn't what they want, it's just the closest thing to what they want that's been offered. And if you let Trump be the only person who speaks to them for the next 10 years, you might actually find they they begin to believe that it is in fact the real thing. The economic woes come first, and it's still not too late for a left-leaning populist to take charge of the Democrats and give the people what they need while protecting minorities and LGBT folks. The only way we get to the social justice disaster that people are predicting is if we all collectively throw up our hands and write off 50% of the voters as a lost cause.
        2y ago
dpkirchner 2y ago
"I'll bring the jobs back home" seems vastly more patronizing to me. That's just telling people they're stuck with their lot and shouldn't try to improve their situation because daddy GOP will take care of them.
- NeutralCrane 2y ago
  The reality is most people are stuck with their lot, and that’s the point. These people understand the reality a lot better than the people making promises of retraining.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    What? You think these people are literally incapable of learning to work on a solar farm instead of a coal mine? Why?
wrs 2y ago
I may be old fashioned, but it actually does matter who is right. Because reality is a thing. Being a leader means understanding the reality of a situation, developing a strategy, and understanding where people are so you can get them on board and all work together to improve things. It does not mean “understanding people” so you can pander to their misunderstandings and prejudices, and take all the power for yourself while making their situation even worse.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Before you can be a leader people have to follow you, and in democracies people have to vote for you. And the unfortunate reality is that reality doesn't matter for elections, only the perception of reality matters. So if you want to be a leader, you have to start by understanding people and, yes, pandering to them. There's a reason why too many of our powerful politicians have been essentially indistinguishable from sociopaths.
  - wrs 2y ago
    Yes, the question is what end are they devoting their sociopathic skills toward? And isn’t it the most “patronizing” thing of all to believe that people are too stupid to see that when they vote?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      So far Trump 2.0 has done exactly what he promised he would, and his supporters are quite happy. If his actions don't lead to the outcomes he promised that may change, as long as someone else who understands the needs can offer an alternative.
      - wrs 2y ago
        I think we did that experiment in November, and it doesn’t support your assertion that people suddenly turn into rational performance evaluators after the election (or in this case an entire first term). In any case, this time around the likelihood is Trump will be long dead (of natural causes, I mean) before the impact of this election is realized. The change happening right now is generational in scale. The voters’ children will be reading this chapter in their history book and asking what on earth they were thinking.
mindslight 2y ago
What you say meshes with my understanding. The crux is how do we even pull up from this? It has essentially been the Republican playbook for the past few decades - the politicians enact backdoored policies that make things even worse, while personally looting and maintaining support with identity politics. Trump's main differences are the lack of usual political decorum, the level to which he's doing it, and how much his actions are openly benefiting foreign powers. The tough nut to crack is that it is impossible to talk with red tribe voters about any of this! You can sit there and listen, of course. But as soon as you say anything that still addresses their frustration and pain, but yet diverges from their overly-simplistic party chorus, you're now part of the "other" that is eagerly responsible for their problems and will just be reflexively argued with. And the situation has gotten so bad that lighter touch individual-freedom-respecting solutions (that they could possibly agree with in theory) aren't likely to even work now. For example twenty years ago, stopping the profligate government spending and handouts to banks could have stopped rural economies from continuing to get hollowed out. Allowing deflation in consumer goods would have allowed main street to experience some of the gains from offshoring. Re-setting the definition of full time employment to 40 hours per household per week would have slowed down the financial grindstone. Instead these days we're basically down to direct government stimulus to create new jobs - directly at odds with the medicine they think they need. Or even worse, completely uninspiring answers like UBI.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>It's far more appealing to hear that your jobs were taken by cheap Chinese labor than to hear that your skills are out of date and you need training. Training for what? What if our population of working age people is far larger than our economy's ability to absorb whatever sort of service worker you imagine they should be training to become? Given a fixed total population, there's only room for x masseuses or y graphic artists. If we have n unemployed people needing training, and that number is higher than x and y combined (for any sort of x and y), telling them to retrain doesn't solve their problem. Some are going to lose out. The truth of the matter is that by offshoring manufacturing, we created an economy where there is a surplus of ultimately unemployable people. A message of training isn't just bullshit, it's transparent bullshit. Most people have an intuition that this is the case, after all. As for midterms, both the Republican and Democratic parties have a different strategy. They will simply import voters who will vote for them. H1Bs for the GOP, and the remainder of the naturalization pipeline for the Ds. It's slow, but they're willing to put in the longterm effort.
- nradov 2y ago
  Training for construction and manufacturing jobs. A lot of HN users don't seem to realize this but the USA is re-industrializing at an accelerating rate as the globalized system breaks down. The electric grid is growing fast due to higher demand including generation, transmission, and storage. The chemicals and plastics industries are booming due to cheap natural gas from fracking. Ocean shipping routes are getting slower, more hazardous, and more expensive. China's labor cost advantage is eroding due to demographic collapse and horrendous central planning policies (the USA has its own challenges in those areas but overall we're in better shape).
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Yes I too have read the Peter Zeihan worldview but let me present the alternative worldview just to provide another viewpoint: The Chinese are amazingly industrious and won't take this challenge lying down. The Musk supporters feel that universal automation is coming fast and I bet the Chinese being as industrious as they are will seize upon that to make up for their demographic issues. They are already he world leaders at renewables and nuclear and regardless, their ability to ramp up carbon based fuel sources is second to none. Meanwhile the US appears to have an okay demographic pyramid(especially compared to their peers) but birth rates are declining and all the ingredients to increasing birthrate are not in the upswing (good incomes, cheap real estate, stable governance). Now you are killing off the US's golden goose (immigration) it seems like you are repeating the mistakes of China.
rhubarbtree 2y ago
Ah, so it’s the fault of the _workers_ that the rich decided not to invest in them or their factories and instead exported their jobs overseas?

masklinn 2y ago

[flagged]

marcus0x62 2y ago
Q.E.D
- masklinn 2y ago
  What's QED exactly? The comment I'm replying to is saying that > It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right because the only thing that's important is whose claim is attractive to the population being pandered to, and that > I'll bring the jobs back home is amazing despite being completely nonsensical. And the're probably right, mind. A lot of the responses seem to agree, just couching it in nicer terms (if barely). I guess putting it in plain terms is not acceptable. As is usually the case.

llamaimperative 2y ago

We’re talking about the “fuck your feelings” crowd right?

krapp 2y ago
Fuck your feelings. Take their feelings very seriously.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Again, it doesn't really matter if you like them or think they're mature in their attitudes and approach, they've now proven that you can't win elections without them. Figure out how to appeal to them or watch us descend into decades of Trumpism.
  - krapp 2y ago
    ... but appealing to them would mean descending into decades of Trumpism, because that's what they want. They don't want to be appealed to, nor do they intend to compromise. They want to tear down everything I value, burn it to the ground, piss on the ashes and put me up against the wall. I know this because they've told me precisely that, and have been telling me that for nearly a decade. They've been very vocal and clear about what they want, and it isn't to be understood, or to meet anyone halfway. I'm tired of being told that I need to capitulate and surrender and understand why I deserve the bullet. Fuck that, and fuck them. Trumpism Delenda Est.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      See, this is exactly why I felt the need to speak up. Trumpism isn't what they want, it's just the closest thing to what they want that's been offered. And if you let Trump be the only person who speaks to them for the next 10 years, you might actually find they they begin to believe that it is in fact the real thing. The economic woes come first, and it's still not too late for a left-leaning populist to take charge of the Democrats and give the people what they need while protecting minorities and LGBT folks. The only way we get to the social justice disaster that people are predicting is if we all collectively throw up our hands and write off 50% of the voters as a lost cause.
      - 2y ago

dpkirchner 2y ago

"I'll bring the jobs back home" seems vastly more patronizing to me. That's just telling people they're stuck with their lot and shouldn't try to improve their situation because daddy GOP will take care of them.

NeutralCrane 2y ago
The reality is most people are stuck with their lot, and that’s the point. These people understand the reality a lot better than the people making promises of retraining.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  What? You think these people are literally incapable of learning to work on a solar farm instead of a coal mine? Why?

wrs 2y ago

I may be old fashioned, but it actually does matter who is right. Because reality is a thing. Being a leader means understanding the reality of a situation, developing a strategy, and understanding where people are so you can get them on board and all work together to improve things. It does not mean “understanding people” so you can pander to their misunderstandings and prejudices, and take all the power for yourself while making their situation even worse.

lolinder 2y ago
Before you can be a leader people have to follow you, and in democracies people have to vote for you. And the unfortunate reality is that reality doesn't matter for elections, only the perception of reality matters. So if you want to be a leader, you have to start by understanding people and, yes, pandering to them. There's a reason why too many of our powerful politicians have been essentially indistinguishable from sociopaths.
- wrs 2y ago
  Yes, the question is what end are they devoting their sociopathic skills toward? And isn’t it the most “patronizing” thing of all to believe that people are too stupid to see that when they vote?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    So far Trump 2.0 has done exactly what he promised he would, and his supporters are quite happy. If his actions don't lead to the outcomes he promised that may change, as long as someone else who understands the needs can offer an alternative.
    - wrs 2y ago
      I think we did that experiment in November, and it doesn’t support your assertion that people suddenly turn into rational performance evaluators after the election (or in this case an entire first term). In any case, this time around the likelihood is Trump will be long dead (of natural causes, I mean) before the impact of this election is realized. The change happening right now is generational in scale. The voters’ children will be reading this chapter in their history book and asking what on earth they were thinking.

mindslight 2y ago

What you say meshes with my understanding. The crux is how do we even pull up from this? It has essentially been the Republican playbook for the past few decades - the politicians enact backdoored policies that make things even worse, while personally looting and maintaining support with identity politics. Trump's main differences are the lack of usual political decorum, the level to which he's doing it, and how much his actions are openly benefiting foreign powers. The tough nut to crack is that it is impossible to talk with red tribe voters about any of this! You can sit there and listen, of course. But as soon as you say anything that still addresses their frustration and pain, but yet diverges from their overly-simplistic party chorus, you're now part of the "other" that is eagerly responsible for their problems and will just be reflexively argued with. And the situation has gotten so bad that lighter touch individual-freedom-respecting solutions (that they could possibly agree with in theory) aren't likely to even work now. For example twenty years ago, stopping the profligate government spending and handouts to banks could have stopped rural economies from continuing to get hollowed out. Allowing deflation in consumer goods would have allowed main street to experience some of the gains from offshoring. Re-setting the definition of full time employment to 40 hours per household per week would have slowed down the financial grindstone. Instead these days we're basically down to direct government stimulus to create new jobs - directly at odds with the medicine they think they need. Or even worse, completely uninspiring answers like UBI.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

>It's far more appealing to hear that your jobs were taken by cheap Chinese labor than to hear that your skills are out of date and you need training. Training for what? What if our population of working age people is far larger than our economy's ability to absorb whatever sort of service worker you imagine they should be training to become? Given a fixed total population, there's only room for x masseuses or y graphic artists. If we have n unemployed people needing training, and that number is higher than x and y combined (for any sort of x and y), telling them to retrain doesn't solve their problem. Some are going to lose out. The truth of the matter is that by offshoring manufacturing, we created an economy where there is a surplus of ultimately unemployable people. A message of training isn't just bullshit, it's transparent bullshit. Most people have an intuition that this is the case, after all. As for midterms, both the Republican and Democratic parties have a different strategy. They will simply import voters who will vote for them. H1Bs for the GOP, and the remainder of the naturalization pipeline for the Ds. It's slow, but they're willing to put in the longterm effort.

nradov 2y ago
Training for construction and manufacturing jobs. A lot of HN users don't seem to realize this but the USA is re-industrializing at an accelerating rate as the globalized system breaks down. The electric grid is growing fast due to higher demand including generation, transmission, and storage. The chemicals and plastics industries are booming due to cheap natural gas from fracking. Ocean shipping routes are getting slower, more hazardous, and more expensive. China's labor cost advantage is eroding due to demographic collapse and horrendous central planning policies (the USA has its own challenges in those areas but overall we're in better shape).
- nebula8804 2y ago
  Yes I too have read the Peter Zeihan worldview but let me present the alternative worldview just to provide another viewpoint: The Chinese are amazingly industrious and won't take this challenge lying down. The Musk supporters feel that universal automation is coming fast and I bet the Chinese being as industrious as they are will seize upon that to make up for their demographic issues. They are already he world leaders at renewables and nuclear and regardless, their ability to ramp up carbon based fuel sources is second to none. Meanwhile the US appears to have an okay demographic pyramid(especially compared to their peers) but birth rates are declining and all the ingredients to increasing birthrate are not in the upswing (good incomes, cheap real estate, stable governance). Now you are killing off the US's golden goose (immigration) it seems like you are repeating the mistakes of China.

rhubarbtree 2y ago

Ah, so it’s the fault of the _workers_ that the rich decided not to invest in them or their factories and instead exported their jobs overseas?