On November 3rd, 2020, at the stroke of midnight, the residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, gathered in the township’s fabled “Ballot Room” and cast their vote for president.
The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever.
A good start to that is to encourage open discussion and dialogue, not just about and with positions you agree with, but with everyone.
So that’s a hard NO to censorship of things and opinions you don’t fancy, and a strong “yes” to getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with people you normally wouldn’t cross paths with.
One Small Step is an actual program that puts together people with allegedly incompatible views and steps back to see what happens.Great idea though I don’t think we need the choreography.
Myself and the regulars down at the pub go through that sort of exercise organically every night . Over a pint, especially one I just bought ya, we don’t seem like such bad people to each other.
From a long life of traveling and talking with people from all walks of life, I can honestly say that most people in the world, absent prodding from so-called experts in the elite who wants to cause trouble, want the same things: enough food and shelter to get by, a better life for their children, and some sort of break from the work cycle. Those things shouldn’t be hard to achieve if we find common cause and stop spending so much money and effort on fending off and protecting ourselves from the “other”.
"The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever."
Part of the shift I'm talking about is the extreme, borderline-psychotic discomfort with differing opinions. Discomfort with differing opinions isn't new, of course, but it feels so much more universal than it did. I'm constantly amazed at how often people will completely ignore or simply get mad at irrefutable evidence that they're wrong. The bubbles people live in are so impregnable in 2024. And it makes conversation impossible.
Agreed….which strengthens my belief that my roughly-speaking “libertarian” values might be useful here. For decades, I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat….you do you and let me do me. Just leave the children and animals and defenseless alone. Most problems can be solved at the hyper local level. I am in the extreme minority where I live (Detroit) with something like 90% Democratic Party registration and zero percent libertarian, but I get along just fine with every single one of my neighbors…..zero problems. It isn’t, at all, complicated. You just have to talk to each other, respect differences, help where needed, and stay out of other people’s business.
"I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat"
But you don't actually believe this hough, right? You do, in fact, want the government to keep you safe from criminals and you see the danger of cults. You understand, as in the case of Manson and...certain other people, that human beings can and do fall victim to cults of personality and behave in ways that are corrosive to society and dangerous to themselves and others.
"Loudly and publicly" proclaiming values that you know you'll never actually have to suffer the consequences of is exactly the same game the Abolish the Police lunatics played, for example. But they would absolutely care if suddenly there were no police around. Just as you would absolutely care if Charles Manson were your neighbour. It's okay to admit that it's not possible to solve every problem yourself.
No, I actually mean it. What I should have included it was that I don’t care what Munson and Company does as long as they stay on their side of the fence and let me do my thing on my. I thought that that was fairly obvious from the general thrust of my common, but, there it is.
I would vastly prefer being legally able to be responsible for my own protection and well-being. A second choice would be being able to rely on police protection.
Here in Detroit, I am legally forbidden to protect property and can’t shoot someone in the back, even if they’ve just raped my wife. so I’m neither allowed to defend myself or my property, and we have no police protection whatsoever unless you have connections in the administration.
I have an opinion about the Munson Carlton and the other cults, but I simply preferred to work on taking the plank out of my own eye before inspecting the spec in someone else’s. In any event, I have never, and would never advocate for government intervention in any situation where consenting adults are doing their thing as long as it’s on their property and there is “consent” and “adults” present.
I think that there is a place for the police, but the courts have declared that the police have no obligation to protect you. That is your job and when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Your police department might even be like the Uvalde police department.
There are several organizations that sell insurance for gun owners who use a firearm in self-defense because the courts "seem" more inclined to prosecute you for shooting the guy raping your 10-year-old daughter than him. Where the line between protect/prevent (OK) and revenge (Not OK) is placed varies by state.
Fifty years ago, a friend's wife took a defense class offered by the Sheriff's department in Macon Georgia. He told her, "If someone is breaking in, gather your children and lock yourselves in your bedroom (retreat) and call the police (pre-cellphones when people had landlines in their bedroom). Let him steal your TV, that's why you have insurance. If he breaks into the room with you, shoot him until he goes down and is no longer moving. There is not a court in Georgia that will press charges on a woman alone in that scenario."
Solid advice, but that may not still be true in some jurisdictions (shooting him until he is dead). And the victim's family can sue you for shooting their choir boy.
I honestly don't care if my next-door neighbor has an AR-15 or even an M-16. No victim, no crime. But I do care if they are a threat to society. Owning a firearm is not a threat to society and it is often difficult to determine a threat where no previous crimes have been committed.
I think that there is a place for the police too….in a best case scenario they would be well trained and respond appropriately to whatever the situation required without the perhaps excessive response from someone who is too close to the situation, whether victim, witness or whatever. The problem I have is that, at least here in Detroit, you are neither allowed to defend yourself nor can you rely on police protection. That is just fucked up, and a result of 50 years of one party rule here, and a clear, motivating factor for the exodus from the City. This isn’t, at all, racial, as more black people are fleeing than white people, and, to some degree black flight is partially compensated by white hipsters and artists and techies snatching up the generational wealth of the descendants of the great migration that is being practically abandoned by the grandchildren.
What is the generational wealth that artists and techies are snatching up, in concrete terms? Are you talking about buying and remodeling deteriorating buildings with low market value, or jazz clubs, or what?
Economically, generational wealth isn't wealth if its value has dropped too far. (There are other non-tangible forms of metaphoric wealth passed on from parent to child, but that is portable geographically).
Passion, gentrification is conducted by the government, not individuals.
When local governments engage in DIS-investment, the public sphere in neighborhoods declines. During the DIS-investement process, tax dollars are transferred out of some neighborhoods and into other neighborhoods.
In neighborhhoods hit by dis-investment, the public sphere enters severe decline, and drags property values down. In turn, homeowners turn homes into rentals, or sell them at a loss, and move out of the neighborhood. Once homes are no longer maintained, plumbing, electical, and roofing problems turn into structural damage. In turn, homes are abandoned, boarded up and owners join the long wait for a change in the market. Its a downward spiral for years.
Gentrification begins when local goverment begins investing in neighborhoods they drove into poverty. In urban planning we call this part of the process displacement - poor people, renters, etc. must be moved to another part of the city, to make room for people with money to move in and bring the housing stock back up to market value.
Obviously, we are talking about old homes in good city locations. In the suburbs and exurbs, homes are built so cheaply and shoddily, local governments usually bulldoze homes to make way for new developments.
Some local governments, especially those in rural areas, do not engage in dis-investment and the housing stock in these communities remains in good repair, and maintains its value.
I went through all that by way of saying, that dis-investment is one of many systemic tactics, designed to transfer generational wealth from the hands of 'some' Americans, into the hand of 'other' Americans.
Deteriorating homes and buildings are merely the symptom of neighborhoods targeted for dis-investment, and dis-placement, not the cause.
Are you an experience urban planner? Where have you worked? I'd like to learn some of your perspective.
So how do you and your planning colleagues choose which currently healthy neighborhoods to dis-invest in, so as to cause deterioration and decay, so that you can later displace the current inhabitants, re-invest in the neighborhood, and attract a different group of people? How long in advance do you need to plan this, like how generally how many years do you need to take their tax money and not invest in the neighborhood, in order to make it ready for eventual gentrification? Is it like 10 years or 35 years from the start of systemic disinvestment until gentrification? How do you sustain a policy focus across turnover in the planning department and political administrations?
Could you describe the disinvestment specifics that city planners accomplish? I mean from the beginning, whether there is a healthy neighborhood paying good taxes sufficient to pay for city services, but which the city wants to transfer away taxes and disinvest from. Like do you intentionally let streets fall into disrepair, streetlights to go out, sidewalks to crumble, storm sewers to become blocked to cause flooding, or what? Revoke the business licenses of otherwise healthy retail stores and restaurants so as to decrease the quality of life in the neighborhood? Reduce police presence to increase street crime, and refuse to answer police or fire calls? Reroute public transit to avoid the neighborhood? Allow/encourage water and electric utilities to fail? End garbage collection?
I'm trying to understand the specific tools you believe cities use in their strategy of disinvesting in a neighborhood in order to cause decay and deterioration. I look around my own city neighborhood, and I'm wondering what my city would do if they (presumably involving the city planning department) decided to dis-invest her to lead to eventual reinvestment and gentrification with different people. What would the signs be?
I'm not an urban planner, but to the untrained, this doesn't sound like a highly feasible strategy, and it's hard to see the payoff for the city (given the timescale between disinvestment and gentrification, and the burden on the city during the deterioration phase). Like "we want to degrade your generational wealth for a few decades, then help transfer what's left to people we haven't yet met some time in the future". So I'm happy to hear from a professional.
Hi, I think what happened is that people who are desperate, struggling to get by let alone make ends meet, who have poor quality work and even poorer pay, decided they'd had enough of being "talked down to" by a party they perceive as "elitist". They went all out at the polls and elected a person (and I use the term very loosely!) who projected that he "gets" what they need and made (most likely false and full of hot air) promises to "fix it" and provide what they need. As well, a tremendous dislike of government and authority in general was a contributing factor. My catch phrase to describe the "Trump Triumph" is "Let the wrecking ball swing."
I'd like to see someone draw up a cartoon of Trump swinging on a wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus (but please leave on his suit and red tie), and smashing it into a column topped by Constitution, then Rule of Law, Reproductive Rights, Environment Protection and Education, Anti-Racism, Transgender Protections and any others they would like to add. Because, within two years, the time of the next mid-term elections, these key elements will all be smashed to rubble.
Sign me a Canadian, grateful that I live here and not in your country.
Come back here after your next national election to crow at the poor Americans, please. There is a segment of the population here which thrives on being chastised.
For the majority of my life, I thought of Canada as similar to but superior to the US (as you still believe). When I was young, I thought it might be a refuge if the US went bad. But it's harder for an American to immigrate than for the majority of the world, the welcome mat is not out. And I think that, sadly, a lot of Canadians will be increasingly unhappy and far from smug as the healthcare deteriorates and the economy stagnates in coming decades. I don't know where I would want to go if I were to leave the US, but Canada seems like a poor choice now (even if they welcomed US citizens as part of the pro-immigraion policy).
Good luck, and may your nation prosper far more than I fear it actually will. That is, while I fear for your future even more than mine, I do not wish anything bad on our northern neighbors. Mostly I would like to see a bit less smugness, but that's a small thing, and will likely be self-correcting. (Like the Brits looking down on the US for the first Trump election, until they had their own Brexit and other chaos).
Canada's next federal election will be coming up soon. My healthcare has not deteriorated one bit. I have been under treatment for breast cancer for an entire year now. My biggest expense has been at the parking garage at the cancer centre attached to my city's hospital. Everything else - all my treatments, like chemotherapy and radiation, which I just finished - has been covered by my province's universal health insurance. I don't have any private insurance coverage, and I don't need any. I also just became eligible for a wide-ranging federal government-managed dental care policy which will also save me a fortune. Economically Canada is doing just fine. We used to travel to the United States to shop for a wide range of goods that formerly cost MUCH LESS than in Canada, even when correcting for the difference in exchange rate. Now the majority of those goods have a sticker price the SAME as those items in Canada. So, with the current exchange rate between the US dollar and Canadian dollar, they actually cost 40% MORE.
Your country has my condolences for what might happen between now and the first of February 2025, let alone the next four years. That's not being smug, that is being sympathetic.
Yes, regarding elections, so I hear. I also read the polls and keep up a bit with Canadian politics (but there is a LOT of interesting, or concerning, stuff going on politically around the world and I can't keep up with all of it). It looks like you too will have a shift in government, even if not to such an unpredictable wild card.
I'm glad to hear that you have had good success with your provincial health care and I hope it continues. The unscientific anecdotes I've heard indicate that some provinces are doing better than others, some populations are better served than others, and generally the results are mixed - and changing. Likewise, I have been generally very satisfied with my own HMO here in the US so far (16 years). My spouse went through chemo and while it wasn't free, it only cost us $10 copay per visit (a couple hundred USD total), and the parking was free (grin). This is not high end insurance, just Medicare and an HMO (same HMO and about the same plan as when we were working). I typically takes about a week to get an appointment for non-specialist non-critical health care. However, this is just one datapoint, and I am very aware that situations vary across the nation.
It's really cool that your goods can be produced and sold so much cheaper, and very interesting. A 40% difference is pretty major, I would expect that some Americans must be using the favorable exchange rate to buy things in Canada now. Is that already happening, to the best of your knowledge? What kind of goods did you formerly shop for in the US, and are the same goods now being shopped for in Canada by Americans? Like iPhones or like candy?
I've seen some analyses which indicate that Canada's economy is in trouble in coming years, but you seem quite sanguine and I hope you are right. I have no desire to see our neighbors suffer. The more we can cooperate the more we can mutually thrive.
I'm definitely concerned about the next four years, and beyond, here (on many, many fronts! There seem to be no end of crises of all sorts). What happens on or before Feb 1st that especially concerns you? Are you expecting riots or martial law or economic collapse or what?
There already seems to have been a spike in misogynistic/xenophobic/homophobic abuse. Similar to what happened in 2016. What a strange coincidence that these spikes seem to coincide with Trump victories.
Steve, where do you find objective stats on that? Genuine question.
I don't think we can rely upon media to present a balanced picture of such things, so the unconscious impression built by "frequency of news stories and the framing given by the reporters" could be unreliable. There are countless examples of selective coverage in our recent history.
So while I think it's entirely possible that there is a spike, I would want some objective evidence from a neutral source before buying into that narrative.
Fear, I feel is the root of so much of our demise as a nation and is evidenced in the outcome of this election. Fear of a woman in power, fear of anyone of colour in power (again!) and fear of explosive Maga inspired violence should either of the two, but particularly the latter occur. As you have often noted, social media has allowed people to spew their hatred, prejudice and ignorance without ever facing their assumed opponents. I suspect that more than a few reasonable and intelligent people let fear override any logical (or obvious) analysis when they voted.
"I suspect that more than a few reasonable and intelligent people let fear override any logical (or obvious) analysis when they voted."
Yep, I agree completely. I think this is the main reason why people were able to justify voting for someone who they loathe.
When most people think of fear, they think of terror. And because they aren't feeling terror, they dismiss the accusation. But fear takes many forms. One of the main reason that people get so emotional when their views are challenged is that the fear lurking beneath gets activated.
I am sorry, Ruth and Steve, but blaming the votes of those we disagree with is a very popular tactic that just isn't ringing true for me. I see a lot of people saying they voted for Trump for positive/optimistic reasons and not for fear of the other tribe. I hope we don't reduce others to something we can easily look down upon.
When looking at recent democrats with the same lense of fear versus optimism, Obama was the last democrat to breed optimism. Joe was a milk toast choice for VP to hedge Obama's appeal, to get votes Obama did not already have. As a head-to-head against Trump, he was thought of more as the antidote to fear of Trump than he was on his own merits. Biden was elected by fear of Trump.
In 2019, Harris was chosen as VP right as her presidential bid was failing badly. In a crowded field of potential nominees, many other democrats were more popular and gained nominee votes than her. Despite her unpopularity, Biden chose her just as Obama had chosen him, to hedge Biden's appeal. Given her unpopularity, Harris was a terrible but convenient choice with Biden's untimely mental collapse only months ago.
Fast forward to election day. I am sure some voted for Trump out of fear, but that is too easy a dismissal. Harris was unappealing, again less appealing than many other democrats, let alone Trump. Why should independents like me or republicans be swayed to Harris when even democrats didn't like her only six months or five years ago? You don't have to fear Harris. She wasn't a great candidate by the most basic of measure and history within her own party.
"I see a lot of people saying they voted for Trump for positive/optimistic reasons"
We must move in very different circles. And you must also not have been paying much attention to the RNC or spend much time watching Fox News. The fear-mongering at these events, the claims that Democrats will drag people from their homes and arrest them or that immigrants will rape people's daughters or, of course, that they'd "tAke AwAy ThEiR GuNs" is absolutely constant. Fear is a lever that both parties pull. No doubt. But it's wild to claim that fear isn't a huge driver for what the Republican Party has become. That and disgust.
The closest thing to optimism I can see, other than some version of the belief that Emperor Trump will "make America great again" (whatever that means), is that "the left" will be defeated. But this isn't a policy position, nor an optimistic view, nor even a realistic view. It's just tribalism.
As I wrote recently, when you take the names away and ask Americans which policies they prefer, Harris' policies are significantly more popular than Trump's. Some of Trump's are actually quite unpopular. I'm not saying Harris was a great candidate, she absolutely wasn't, the Democrats have to take plenty of blame for this loss, but yes, one of the key tools Trump used was fear. I'll write more about this soon.
Trump is going to got be president for four years. He'll do some good things and some bad things. But the Democratic Party will still be there in four years. There will still be illegal immigrants, trans people will still be around, most if not all of the poor people who voted for him will still be poor.
I think a large percentage of Trump voters have been sold a lie. And I think that because I've seen the lies with my own eyes, flooding social media, infecting the most trivial conversations. I've seen how many people believe them without the slightest bit of critical thought, as we've discussed.
I'm not here to tell you how you should have been swayed, again, I agree that Harris was unappealing, but Harris didn't sit in the Oval Office sipping Coke while the Capitol building burned. I don't think you'll ever get me to understand how this alone wasn't permanently disqualifying for all those people who claim to be "America-loving patriots."
Since I'm still registered as a lifelong Democrat, who voted for Harris, and have contributed a lot of money to Democrats and liberal causes over time, I get LOTS of campaign literature, in fact it's the majority of my email AND postal mail. Literal piles every day, and it takes lot of time to sort. And 80-90% of that has been fear mongering from Democrats. Fear, fear, fear, fear.
(It turns out that they pretty much saturated that market, and Democratic focus groups were telling them that, but...)
I don't doubt that Republicans may have been deluged with something similar from their party, but I think that if you focus selectively ONLY on the influence of fearmongering from the right, only nominally acknowledging that both sides do it, I think you are missing the core point which is not partisan.
It's like "Republicans are doing 800% more fear mongering than would occur in a healthy society, but Democrats are doing only 750% more, so let's focus on the Republicans as the problem, rather than centralizing the common fearmongering itself as the core problem for society".
Let's be clear that I did not and would never vote for Trump. But I've talked to reasonable people who did, and they did not fit your stereotypes. Yes, many were afraid of what a Harris presidency would produce, but every single Democrat I knew was in a near panic of fear before the election, so that's not a difference.
I think we need to beware of comforting narratives which allow us to disparage the election results as being mainly due to racism, misogyny, ignorance, credulity, and propaganda. Internal message: "we are superior to the voters and have nothing serious to learn, no uncomfortable questioning of our assumptions and stereotypes is needed"
By the way, among the Democrats I live among, very few mention Harris' policies, and in fact few are aware of any of her policies other than on abortion; they did not choose her for her policies. They chose her because they were afraid of trump, every last one of them centers that. The only ones who DID care about something other than abortion, are those who hate her for supporting what they believed as genocide in Gaza.
By contrast, the Trump voters DO mention a lot of policy issues.
Both sides mention items which I believe to be factually false; perhaps more so on the Trump side, but far from exclusively so.
Steve, your last paragraph is interesting. First you say you are not telling them how their vote should have been swayed, then you proceed to tell them exactly that. But then there is:
> Harris didn't sit in the Oval Office sipping Coke while the Capitol building burned. I don't think you'll ever get me to understand how this alone wasn't permanently disqualifying for all those people who claim to be "America-loving patriots."
So who exactly sat in the Oval office while the Capital building burned? Will the US be rebuilding the Capitol soon? I seem to have missed that arson. I thought the massive arson amounting to billions of dollars occurred in the summer of 2020. Are you sure you are not conflating two types of events?
I hope you can take that at gentle ribbing, not a viscous attack. But it illustrates my point - a LOT of Democrats would have passed by your asserting about the burning of the Capitol without knowing - or caring - to fact check it, because it fits the narrative. They would focus in the word "disqualify" and ignore the justification. Because their critical minds have been shut down in fear. Not from Republicans in that case, though.
(Remember, I preferred Harris and thought that Trump's role in the Capitol riots was only one of many things proving he should never be president again, so don't waste time trying to convince me; my points are about the dysfunctions of our society, not about Trump vs Harris per se, I'm already in the choir about Trump, and the election is over. We need to move from persuasion of voters to assessing why the Dems lost and what can be done about that.)
Ah, what a difference 8 years can bring. Ironically, I am now even more concerned about a Trump presidency than I was in 2016, but also feel a lot less smugly superior to those who voted for him than I did then. When I took off my "I only watch liberal news" filters, the world grew a lot more textured and complex.
I don’t think anyone can say definitively why anyone voted for any particular candidate without asking each person individually, but I can tell you and those reading why I voted for Trump.
Quick background: My first Presidential vote was for Reagan. After that I voted, and supported with get out the vote efforts, (small) financial contributions, jawboning friends etc , every Democratic candidate until 2016. The George Bush/Cheney Presidency and the devastation of the. Idle East and bankrupting of the USA was the low point (and still is) of my political life. Like the rest of America, we breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when Barack came to power. ANYBODY was better than Bush/Cheney. I couldn’t stomach the later Obama years, with the bailout of the banks while huge swaths of American lost their homes after they fell behind on payments. So 2016 I voted Libertarian, which is where most of my heart and mind is when it comes down to it.
I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited. I have that same opinion of him, today, but it wasn’t even a close call when it came to picking him vs. Harris. There are probably 50-60 really, really good reasons why, but here are a few, in no particular order:
1. Harris openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys, who have more blood on their hands than probably any other American family. Dick Cheney is a war criminal, and should be in prison for life. His daughter is cut from the same cloth. How the De o ratio nominee thinks that buddying up to a vicious war criminal is going to win any votes is beyond me, but it does show how close the establishment will go if both parties is.
2.Kevin Cooper. A black California man on death row, who is still on death row, because Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris refused to allow DNA tests which would definitively rule out Kevin as a suspect. The only eyewitness saw a white man……but Harris and Brown (“progressive liberals”) will back the system even when it is obviously, egregiously wrong, literally when an innocent man’s life is at stake. No thanks.
3. Despite what the policy wonks from the Fed say, the ACTUAL COST OF LIVING has skyrocketed since Harris & co.took control of the White House. This isn’t a “feeling” or “fear” this is 100% real. Everything that people actually need to live and work has gone up from 25% to 200% since they took over. This isn’t political. This is fact. Go ask the people on the food bank lines snaking around the corner here in Detroit if you trust the Fed over the people on the street.
4. The COMBINATION of generally Democratic policies, at state local and federal levels make it extremely difficult for small businesses, such as mine. Here in Detroit, you have on the one hand ridiculous levels of property (and violent) crime, which is shrugged off as “That’s the D, man….” and “no resources”…, yet I receive a stern warning from the Police Department for a truck illegally parked in a residential area. When it was parked legally, in a parking lot I owned, and the catalytic converter was cut off, toolboxes r smashed, door windows smashed, and a homeless person pissing in my cab, ….”no resources”……when my $25,000 skid steer was stolen, and I attempted to make a police report at the precinct house, I was turned away because it wasn’t valuable “enough” according to the sergeant who blocked my way into the station house.
Then you have the pool of workers who are paid to stay home, collect some benefit or another so that even at $25 an hour, cash, starting pay, I have NO takers who aren’t addicted to some substance or a cellphone…they can make more on the dole, or through easy crime….so no work. Then we have the pandemic “two weeks to flatten the curve” nonsense, which lasted for months, in which my little tree service was shit down by the state goons, while all the weed stores, liquor stores and lottery sellers were wide, wide wide open (“essential services”). I think you get the point….
5. While MSM twisted and lied about Trump’s poorly worded attack on Liz Cheney, his point that all of the chicken hawks, Dems and Reps alike, gout song a different song if they ever had to face down the barrel of a gun was dead on, and resonated with a huge amount of people, including former military like myself. Probably the single biggest reason to vote FOR Trump is that, for four straight years, we had NO WARS. Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Harris/Biden experience has been a shitshow at best, and a catastrophic abomination at worst for four long years. I, as an ex Marine, my brother in law, as a Marine with a brutal combat tour in Nam, and all the rest of my family voted Trump JUST FOR THAT REASON. Those who opine from the safety of their college dorms or corner offices with their goat milk lattes have no fucking clue how much that means to families like mine, whose mother grew up in France under German occupation, who was highly decorated for service for the French and American armies, and who abhorred war, and rumors of war, that she immigrated (legally) to the USA after her service to get away from the hatred and recrimination that enveloped Europe after the war.
6. It is unconscionable that, according to Mayorkas, Biden/Harris’s homeland security chief, some 300,000 children that they allowed into the country (illegally) are unaccounted for. Let that fucking sink in. On that issue alone, I would vote AGAINST the monsters who allowed that to happen. Taking all partisan politics out of it, the fact that they can’t even keep records of minor children in their charge, without even imputing bad motives, is proof enough that they, the entire administration is morally, ethically, and administratively unfit to wield any power. Let them start with running a lemonade stand, and then move on…
7. Vaccine mandates. I am 100% for allowing people to put whatever they want into their body, and 100% against government coercion. Take whatever you want whether it is weed, heroin, Botox or vaxxes, but leave the rest of us alone. It simply should NEVER be the prerogative of any government, at any level to mandate medical treatment. Biden way overstepped his authority with his mandates, and for that reason alone, we would never vote for Harris, since she never disavowed his policies.
8. Censorship. The Democratic Party of my youth and most of my life was strongly pro- freedom of speech, (real) diversity, tolerance, anti-corporate, “ big tent”, anti war, pro family, pro small business/working class. That is why I and millions of others faithfully supported and voted for their candidates, as imperfect as they (and all of us) were. The Biden/Harris regime, and the current iteration of the Democratic Party, has completely flipped on all of those issues, and now aligns itself with the worst elements of the corporatist neo-con Republicans/Establishment. I haven’t changed my positions one bit, but now I Ron’s myself squished over to “right wing” because someone moved the goal posts and yard lines.
9. There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters i know. Many are not white, many are, many are women, many are men. NONE of them admires Trump as an ideal candidate, and none of them are under any illusion that he is in it for anything more than glory for himself, and more money for his family. Having said that, ALL of us are choosing him over the alternative, because we feel that we will have a slightly better chance at survival, that there is a better chance that we will not go to war and send hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the slaughter overseas, that at least some of that money might be left in our pockets or at least spent helping the less fortunate here.
It isn’t complicated, at all. Anyone who is surprised by the huge swings in working class votes towards the Republicans should step out of his echo chamber for a few minutes and mix with those of us who take a shower after work. It ain’t about race, it ain’t about women, it’s about the pocketbook, the safety of the streets, it’s say out the wars, it’s about freedom.
"I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited"
I read this whole thing with interest, but I actually think you nailed it with this line. I think that many of the people who voted for Trump are in the same boat. Or, if they did know, they've joined millions of people in grading him on this insane curve where they condemn the Democrats for something but have nothing to say when he does the same or worse.
Case in point, your list:
1. You're the second person to say something along these lines, but what do you mean by "openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys?" Harris received Dick Cheney's endorsement, but never sought it as far as I'm aware.
Nor did she seek Liz Cheney's. She received it, and Liz joined her on the campaign trail, but I'm not really seeing the issue there (please feel free to clarify). Liz Cheney is one of very few Republicans who took and maintained a principled stance against Trump. Even though it cost her power. Agree or disagree with that stance, I think she showed integrity.
Links to stories about two of several controversial executions of black men carried out under the Trump administration. I'm not arguing that Trump is uniquely bad because of this, but how Kevin Cooper's case moved the needle for you is beyond me.
3. Yes, the cost of living has increased since Biden took office. Not just in America, but all over the world. In fact, the US economy has, according to reports I admittedly haven't read in depth, performed better than other nations over the past four years. As for *why* the cost of living has increased, do you think it's as simple as Biden taking office and not, y'know, the global pandemic? Or Russia's war in Ukraine affecting energy prices? Or greedy corporations trying to recoup their losses after COVID?
I wouldn't dream of denying that people are struggling. I'm saying a deeper level of analysis is required than looking at who's in the White House.
4. You just got done telling me that "most problems can be solved at the hyper local level" and then you're telling me that you voted for Trump because of a "stern warning" you received from a local police officer? Or because of petty theft? Do you think Trump is going to change that? Or that any president would? Do you not see this contradiction?
The pandemic was poorly handled in many ways by both Trump and Biden. But I don't understand how so many people forget that the "two weeks to flatten the curve" was under TRUMP!!! I've seen Trump voters sneer out this line so many times and it's like, WHAT??!! Are you crazy??!
But yes, the pandemic was mishandled by almost every nation I paid any attention to.
5. "Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan,"
Come on man, Did Biden start the war in Ukraine? Did Biden force Hamas to attack on Oct 7th? Like, what is this? Presidents are responsible for everything that happens in the world while they're in office? Well then, Trump is responsible for COVID, no?
And yes, Trump started the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I bet you blame Biden entirely for what a disaster it was, right? And for any instability that comes out of the region now that the Taliban are back in power?
If your mother grew up under German occupation you understand the importance of fighting for freedom, right? Not withdrawing from the world and saying, unless it's directly affecting America right now, we'll just back away and let it play out. Can you imagine what would have happened if America had done that in WWII? Please, pick a lane here.
Your initial claim to have known nothing about Trump rings truer and truer.
7. Hmm, yeah the whole vaccine thing is tricky. First, I see no reason to believe that Trump wouldn't have implemented mandates if he were in power during the rollout. Given what was known at the time, there was an argument to be made that leaving people unvaccinated was a significant risk. But I completely share yours and every sane person's very strong aversion to pressuring people to take vaccines.
COVID was an insane and unprecedented situation. If you feel strongly enough about how Biden handled his part of it to vote against him, that's fair. But I'll remind you, Harris wasn't president during COVID, and Trump was the one telling everybody it was a "Democrat hoax" instead of ordering vaccine supply and PPE gear as early as possible and encouraging people to stay safe.
8. There's no denying that the Democratic Party and the Left in general has changed. If it were any other Republican candidate, we wouldn't be having this conversation. In fact there are many universes where I'd have supported a Republican candidate over Harris/Biden.
But that would be to ignore how dramatically the Republican party has also changed. Far more than the Democrats. As I wrote recently, there was a time when the Republicans would have stormed the Capitol to keep a candidate like Trump *out* of the White House.
This is a man who was caught on tape trying to strong-arm the Georgi governor into "finding him some votes." A man who publicly undermined American intelligence agencies (even privately I could understand, but publicly???!!!), by taking Vladimir fu**ing Putin's word over theirs. A man who satin the Oval Office sipping Coke while his supporters Stormed the White House and called to hang his vice President. If you can turn a blind eye to all of this, you can't tell me you "haven't changed one bit."
9. "There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters I know"
This is just a dumb thing to say. Trump got what, 74 million votes? Not a single racist or misogynist among them? Really? Yes, actually there are a great many racists and misogynists among his supporters. I've spoken to many of them and seen countless more spreading that racism on social media. I've seen them in the spike in hate crimes that *oh-so coincidentally* accompanied Trump's election in 2016 and again now.
But I've been saying for well over four years that this is a simplistic, worthless way of analysing why people voted for Trump. Obviously many of the people who voted for Trump aren't racist or misogynists. And I'm sure plenty of racists voted for Obama too. Because they thought there was something in it for them. And this, ultimately, is why most people vote the way they do.
But as this response has hopefully illustrated, it IS complicated. It's complicated to understand why people who voted for Trump know so little about him and his policies. It's complicated to understand why the Democrats did SOOO catastrophically (I have lots of thoughts on this coming). It's complicated to understand to what degree people think or want a presidential election to change their lives at the local level.
Economics are complicated, foreign and national policy is complicated, global pandemics are complicated, wars are complicated. The big issue here is that so many voters are convinced they can bypass all of this complexity by going on vibes.
No 9…..Please pay a bit closer attention to what I said: “in any of the Trump voters I KNOW”….i obviously can not and will not speak about the motives or inclinations of people o have never met or interacted with. I can speak for myself and my wife and what my family has told me: my wife, black African, “I don’t like Trump but the alternative is so much worse” or my friends from the bar, one white of Eastern Europe background, one black, black “native Detroiter” in local parlance who came down to the bar to celebrate Trumps victory…or my 30 something year old daughter-born and raised liberal who to,d me “I just went MAGA”….come on, just stop with the race bullshit. People who do this for a living have charted the movement of people like myself who voted for Barack Obama and 8 years later (12 in my case) went for Trump. Believe your eyes, Steve, believe what people are telling you.
8. “Undermining American intelligence agencies publicly “ is a bad thing in your world ?????? This is the most mendacious, bloodthirsty, anti democratic cruel and evil grouping in society, and undermining them is a character flaw? Have you forgotten any of the lies they spin to keep us in endless wars, to take away our freedoms, to spend our treasure to spread misery throughout the planet? Does Julian Assange or Edward Snowden ring a bell?
6. I’m not taking about separating children at the border. I’m talking about children going missing, unaccounted for, after having come here on the invitation of Biden/Harris, entering our system and then having vanished from the bureaucracy…..if the bureaucrats can’t keep track of the children in their care, do,you want to give them another four years with the nuclear weapons, with yet more children? Seriously? Hopefully this is just a paperwork SNAFU, but whatever it is, it should be unacceptable to all people from all walks of life anywhere on the political spectrum.
5. Ukraine/Russia was and is solvable in days or hours, and it is to our eternal discredit that instead of pushing the parties towards peace we nudged Ukraine towards war. Russia will not accept NATO missiles that close to Moscow, just like we wouldn’t accept similar armaments pointing at Washington got. If they were in Montreal. So yes, Biden is responsible for the Ukraine Russia war as are all the neocons of both parties (Lindsay Graham, McConnell, Mike Johnson, the Cheneys on the Republican side…and more).
4. I,put the word “COMBINATION” in ALL CAPS just so you wouldn’t miss it, but somehow you did……I will try the word “aggregate effect” o see if that catches your attention.
I live in Detroit, Michigan which has been ruled by the Democratic Party for 50 years. The entirety of the state apparatus is run by Democrats. So they own the mess they created….my point was, and I thought I fairly obvious, if you add up all the ill effects on society from the skewed, myopic policies of the current Democratic Party elites, even though possibly just mildly irritating and relatively easily surmountable individually, the NET EFFECT on a regular, working class person is devastating……NET CUMULATIVE EFFECT. There is MUCH LESS, not non existent, but MUCH LESS of this nonsense in areas controlled by Republicans these days which is why I and tens of millions of others have walked across the aisle. It isn’t even remotely complicated. It is called “quality of life”. And quality of life issues have gotten drastically worse under successive Democratic administrations at the local, state and national level because the Party has become obsessed with pronouns, micro aggressions, safe spaces, “democracy”, Putin etc….anything but the working class people and values they claim to (and used to) represent.
3. Obviously it isn’t just Biden Harris who are responsible for the cost of living, but dumping trillions of fake dollars into an already overheated economy, combined with for: workers who didn’t take their fucking vaccine, plus paying people to stay home, demonizing us who were “non-essential” puts a fair share of the blame on their shoulders. Trump’s populist bullshit of sending out fake “stimulus” dollars is also, obviously, part of the problem, but Biden Harris put that on steroids, and then made it much worse by their subsequent policy decisions.
2. Kevin Cooper’s case shows that, when given the opportunity to do the right thing, to save an innocent man’s life, Harris will choose what is politically expedient and let him suffer. This is a woman with no moral compass, no convictions, no lodestar besides power, all the “progressive “ rhetoric notwithstanding……..I know I know “Trump bad. Trump bad.”
1. Cheney: I don’t know who made the first call, fairly obviously, but Harris and Cheney appeared on stage together. At a bare, bare minimum, Harris accepted,,publicly the endorsement of a mass murderer and appeared with his daughter, a blood thirsty neo con…..and you don’t see the problem, because, once again “Trump bad. Trump bad”???
Steve, I think you are one of the most gifted and thoughtful writers on race and trans issues, but it really seems as though there is a blind spot when it comes to the whole Trump thing….
Please ask yourself WHY people like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and myself, and millions and millions of others who were previously very favorably inclined towards Democratic Party values, just said “Fuck it” and abandoned the party they had always supported and been a part of?
You might dislike every one of those people, including me, but, in the interest of getting to the bottom of why so many people just shifted “right”, it might be worthwhile to listen….just listen….
Steve, I don't know that our circles have to be different if we use our filters in a similar manner. I agree that the negative/fearful voices that are anti-Biden/Harris are plentiful. Would you also agree that anti-Trump voices (re: constant chants of Hitler, facism, etc.) are plentiful? Were Harris voters motivated solely by fear? I hope not, but nearly everything looks that way on the surface. It would be easy to conclude by the sheer volume of the loudest of opinions that nobody is voting for anyone except for fear. Fortunately we know that isn't true, that the loudest most frequent voices are not the whole story.
When avoiding the loudest, you will find an actual optimism, probably for both sides.
What can I say? As an optimist thats seeks first the good in others, I suppose my glasses are rose-colored. I believe that everyone else is selective too. I am sorry that I just turned this into a lived 'Sociology 101'.
I'm from Canada, where we had our first female Prime Minister 30 years ago. Your country will NOT elect a female president until they are absolutely forced to: both main parties would have to have chosen women candidates for President and VP. Even then a huge "write-in" vote might scuttle the whole deal.
I am 66 years old now, with at least another 30 years to live, and I don't expect to see a female "Commander-in-Chief" in the USA in my lifetime. I will be pleasantly surprised if it happens sooner.
What evidence do you have to back up your opinion.
I am dismayed at people who can look at lists of 40 reasons the Harris campaign lost, and boil it all down to "she's a woman". There have been a great number of polls over the years on a number of issues, as well as focus groups to explore issues in greater depth than a poll can, asking what factors motivate voters. The sex of the candidate is never, a major factor. Two women have run for President of the US on a major party platform - one won the popular vote, the other was fairly close. Women, both conservative and liberal, are routinely elected at many levels of government.
Yet some people think that the sex of the presidential candidate is actually the determining factor. As best I can tell, that belief is free from objective evidence, based entirely on their "intuitive" beliefs about the psyche of voters.
The idea that even if a majority of both parties chose a female candidate, the country as a whole might vote instead for some write-in (male) candidate instead, does not seem to me to be grounded in rational assessment.
Once upon a time I would have celebrated a female President. Today, the sex of the President doesn't matter seriously to me, because it's just empty symbolism to pander to irrational biases.
I'm 100% open to a female president, and I have voted twice now for them BECAUSE I thought them the better candidate rather than because they were famle. But I would not vote for the worse candidate (in my estimation, obviously) just because she was female. Is that what you are advocating for?
(OK, searching myself, I would feel a small thrill if a female president whom I considered the best candidate were to win, but it's small side dish compared to the thrill of having what I considered the best candidate win). I didn't get either in this election, of course.
The odds are that 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 people voted for and/or against VP Harris because of race and/or gender. Some vote along party lines. Some for specific issues. Some to give the finger to people who insulted them. Who knows what else? In the aftermath of the election, I'm seeing many people saying that the outcome was from one or more of those, especially pertaining to race and/or gender.
It might have been just dandy for VP Harris to win to shut up the America haters, but it probably wouldn't have. Electing President Obama didn't stop the "America is a racist country" crowd so electing VP Harris probably wouldn't have tempered the PaTrIaRcHy tribe. Some day one of the parties will run a woman with the charisma of Barack Obama and she will be elected.
When I think about how politicians influence our lives it is mostly about their ability to send people off to war or support proxy wars. There is no idiot with a gun, knife or vile of acid that can compare as a mass murderer to politicians. Without the ability of viewing dual reality, we cannot know if Trump or Harris would bring us more of the violence and death than the other.
We've made strides in the systemic (laws) level about things that affect equality, but people don't change because a law was passed. People and their attitudes were not going to change because of who won the election. It just changes who reacts and how and that is generally the people who didn't get their way. The winners are generally not the ones who riot, loot and commit arson.
Quoting the late internet curmudgeon Fred Reed, "Anything that might help is politically impossible, and anything politically possible won’t help. So, after the riots: Social division will worsen after the riots."
I believe that the only thing that can help is communication free of screaming insults and creating strawmen to avoid understanding anything other than what we already believe. It seems to be an impossibility, but it is my hope. The politicians can't fix that.
My political concerns are so uncommon, they tend to invite long, serious and productive conversations with people from all walks of life and political persuasions. My biggest political concern is corporations and their impact on rural and urban development - land-use, lifestyles, housing, jobs, etc.
Interestingly enough, rural, urban, suburban, rich, poor, middle-class, young, old, middle-aged, black, brown, white, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, college educated and high school drop-outs, agree that corporations have too much power. When we swap knoweldge, experience and history on the subject of corporations our political views align.
All these so-called culture issues, and culture war stuff was a billionaire funded campaign to lead us into the exact situation we are right now.
Stick to real issues, and conversations are welcomed and easy.
On Nate Silver's blog about election forecasting, as a footnote to his article about election modelling, he noted the following (Nate was a Harris supporter by the way, but he works with people on all sides):
> Even though our forecast was near 50/50 for almost the whole race, there were certainly periods that were relatively better and worse for Harris and Trump. Our narrative content followed accordingly, with about an even mix of newsletters that presented optimistic cases for Harris and Trump. (That was not true when Joe Biden was running, but that’s because Biden was way behind in the polls.) So I essentially got to perform a randomized control trial on how partisans in both camps reacted to good and bad news.
> And there was an asymmetry. Republicans are generally happy when you agree with them partway or half the time. Admittedly, the sorts of Republicans who encounter our work are not a representative sample, probably being on the moderate side — though you can find plenty of Trump supporters in the Silver Bulletin comments section.
> Democrats, however — and here, I’m not referring so much to Silver Bulletin subscribers but in the broader universe online — often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.
I've also seen research which indicated that liberals are substantially more likely to cut all ties with conservative family or friends, than vice versa. And on a more anecdotal level, I do not recall seeing tiktok and other social media filled with so many posts advocating "cutting off" anybody who voted for the winning side in 2020 as I'm seeing currently in 2024.
So yes, I agree that we have an across the board problem with, as you say, "extreme, borderline-psychotic discomfort with differing opinions.", but it's not evenly distributed across the spectrum.
And Nate's comment is more about being hostile to relatively objective information which only partly agrees with one's preferred reality, not about actual opposing subjective opinion. I think the hostility towards even objective facts which don't fit completely into one's preferred narrative which is surging on the left, is not unconnected to the hostility towards people with even slightly divergent opinions, like fellow Democrats who partially dissent but are then considered apostates.
I have come to the conclusion that on the whole (ie: not focusing on the extremes on either side), the left in the US has become more dogmatic and ideologically blinded than the right, a reversal since my youth.
The "people, and facts, must completely follow our prescriptions, not just provide partial support" mental dynamic can manifest in this way:
apostate: "I support LGBT civil rights like nondiscrimination in employment, transportation, housing, education, and financial dealings, and certainly I completely support safety. I support same sex marriage. I think adults should be able to transition without interference. I would never use a slur against LGB or T people. I enjoy my friends who are LGB or T. But I think that having anybody who subjectively identifies as a girl or women being allowed to compete in sports leagues built by and for biological women is going too far."
faithful: "You are a transphobic bigot and we need to destroy you if we can, for hating us and wanting us to die or kill ourselves"
Yes, that derives more on the full-on progressive side of the left rather than center left, but it also permeates and intimidates and is actively or passively accepted by a broad spectrum within the left in the US. A center left person in good standing might not INITIATE the response above, but they might stand by without objecting, look aside, or even join the mob supporting the "faithful" side above so as not to raise questions about themselves.
I moved from a lifelong progressive liberal and sometimes activist on many issues, to the independent middle (not wanting to join the opposite cult), but I would love to move back if sanity can be restored. That's not possible while strategies (like CRT or queer theory) are treated like sacred cows which cannot be questioned, even by people who share some of the nominal goals or values.
Trump has built a multi-racial multi-ethnic working class coalition which is not going to be "cancelled" by shaming and shunning. The Dems need to respond with something much stronger than calling 75 million voters misogynist and racist bigots to be cut off from contact with the righteous.
Hi, Steve! I did not vote for Trump in 2016; I voted for the Libertarian candidate. I spent the next four years marveling at how the media and it's many manipulated sycophants were consistently misrepresenting Trump, to the tune of outright lying about him. I did vote for him in 2020, but then he lost all my support with his unrelenting insistence that the Democrats stole the election.
What followed were accusations and hearings and trials and convictions. And yet through it all, as of today, I am an unapologetic, huge fan of this man. I'd rather someone else be president, as both parties offered more qualified candidates in the primaries, but they all lost. Vivek was my man!
Throughout this past year, Trump offered real solutions to our national problems. Throughout this past year, Trump was relatable, accessible, and empathetic. Biden and Harris, by stark contrast, were revealed as unapologetic liars residing in an alternate reality.
And I recently read a Time Magazine article from February, 2021 (The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election), that stopped short of claiming the election was fixed but makes the case that the Democratic Party did everything it could to assure that Biden would win. This article was written by an unapologetic Leftist in an unapologetic Leftist publication.
Our two-party system is an unnavigable mess. The electoral college serves no one. So yes, we need a shift. More than the one that just got voted into office. (Is that a mixed metaphor? Apologies.)
"A shift away from this divisive, reality-denying tribalism, a shift away from identifying ourselves and each other with our political opinions, a shift away from a world where vitriol and outrage and attempted insurrections are our only means of communication."
This statement is so laced with inherent contradictions.
You suggest a "shift" but only on your terms.
If you judge it as "reality-denying tribalism", its not a shift.
If you judge it as an "insurrection" its not a shift.
The shift starts with you. Can you just listen and empathize with someone you judge as "reality-denying tribalism". Can you listen and not judge someone who doesn't feel 1/6 was an "insurrection".
I'm really not sure. Because you seem to want me to write articles in which I express nothing at all. You act as if words like "insurrection" or "tribalism" or even "reality-denial" (and what was it last time? "Illegal" and "independence"?) are these wholly subjective concepts that I think I'm the master of.
Okay, so then what am I ever supposed to say about anything?? I can't see how anything would satisfy you other than:
"Some people think that storming the capitol and beating cops with the American flag and shouting 'hang Mike Pence' in front of the gallows they erected was a bad thing.
But who am I to say? They obviously thought it was great! So if I criticise them, I'm trying to define acceptable behaviour on 'my terms.'
Forget the rule of law, forget the will of the people, forget any semblance of respect for the constitution or the principles of a democracy, the most important thing is that I 'both-sides' everything to the point of meaninglessness."
I don't care whether you call it an insurrection or a coup or a riot. I've written several times about the dangers of getting hung up on particular words. As long as you acknowledge the facts of what happened and what it was designed to do and that what it was designed to do was bad. It was bad even though it failed.
If you can't acknowledge the facts of what happened despite all the video evidence, that's reality-denial. If you would lose your mind if the Democrats did this but make excuses for the Republicans, that's tribalism. What exactly are you struggling with here?
I am able to maintain friendship with people having a wide spread of beliefs. Even when I disagree in a big way, it lets me understand them. see their humanity and not see them as monsters. They are just misguided, or maybe it's me that is. But if you see others as demons, you cannot know them, you only know your own thoughts about them. It's an imperfect world and I can't change that. At best, I can hope to be a positive influence withing my small circle of influence.
"I am able to maintain friendship with people having a wide spread of beliefs."
Me too. But I think a lot of people nowadays talk about this as if it's always a virtue. And it's not. We could reach for extreme examples like the Nazis or the KKK, obviously there are some questions to ask if you maintain a friendship with somebody while knowing they hold views like these, but I saw a tweet recently that presented a far simpler case:
"Ended a 13 year friendship today because he voted for Trump. When I pointed out all of the reasons anyone with a moral compass wouldn’t vote for him, he said 'none of that impacts me or my son so I don’t care.' My last words for him were 'thank God you didn’t have a daughter."
I'm biased towards discomfort when people end friendships over politics, but where s the line between politics and values. If you know that somebody's worldview is essentially, "if it doesn't impact me or my son, I don't care who else gets hurt," how deep can your trust go with that person? How much can you respect them? And without trust or respect, what is your friendship based on?
I think a lot of people are feeling that way about Trump's supporters right now. And I'm looking for ways to bridge the divide despite getting that, not because I *don't* get it or think they're being wholly unreasonble.
p.s. I will also always reject any message that boils down to, "the situation we have is the best we can do." There have been people saying this at every inflection point in history, slavery, segregation, women's rights, gay marriage, you name it. They've been wrong every single time. And made it harder to achieve this progress.
I think it is probably typical for people to care about their own more than about society at large, although most won’t come out and say it.
Take the soft racism of low expectations of people of other races. It is so typical that we would have an extremely small set of friends and that is not unique to any demographic. Most of my friends keep it in check, but I am always disappointed when they express it. Fortunately, I don’t have any friends who would put on a hood and burn a cross in your yard or push an old white lady in front of a bus. If thought becomes harmful action, I would not be able to maintain that friendship. We all have limits. I just don’t get too worked up over people’s political views because I don’t think that the politicians will provide the solutions. They can pass laws and enact programs, but the only change of heart they bring is for the worse.
You may have read the link I put to the WSJ article “Trump’s Promises and Threats: A Guide to What’s Possible.” That is very disturbing. I thought that the separation of powers could do more to prevent it. My MAGA friend goes on and on about RINOs, the Republicans who are not MAGA, and won’t go along with some of the things that require Congressional approval. Are there enough of them who won’t go along with his worst goals?
I don’t know if either the Democrats or Republicans will acquire some inclination to introspection about their fringe. It seems possible to me that Trump’s excesses and policies that are not exactly a great idea (to say the least) will send some toward a more moderate middle. The thing working against that is will the Democrats do the same?
While I think honest communication without angry condemnation is key, it’s probably not going to happen while emotion is as high as it is today. When the all people can afford imports become unaffordable thanks to tariffs there will be some buyer’s remorse. Excesses of the left pushed a lot of people right. Trump might end up pushing them back. Time will tell.
This has been a slow shift that you didn't notice. One of the points that I clearly could not make understandable in my responses to your last post. So, hear are some additional voices analyzing the election. Maybe they will give you more insight.
"One of the points that I clearly could not make understandable in my responses to your last post."
Haha, you were actually one of the people I was thinking of as I wrote this. We've had a few conversations over the years. I think we're aligned ideologically and politically in quite a few ways. Indeed, most of your criticism of the Democratic Party are my criticisms too. And one of the reasons I started writing about politics and race is that I saw how the extreme negative rhetoric coming from the left was slowly radicalising people. So far so good.
But the switch I missed was how ostensibly reasonable people like yourself would get to a point where you'd say "so what?" about right-wing influencers being paid by Russia to spread propaganda to the American people. Where you'd claim, without evidence, that the Democrats are calling Trump, Hitler, but be unmoved by the fact that his own vice-president elect did the same thing.
It's also the different standards by which you judge Left and Right. I wonder, for example, if you can express what the issue with Hunter Biden's laptop was, or why the story has so enraged people. I bet almost everybody talking about the suppression of the story (where, again, we are able to agree the suppression is bad with neither of us saying, "so what?") has no real idea what was ON the laptop or whether it was criminal or really much of anything other than DEMS BAD.
So the shift I'm talking about in that case of people like yourself is that you're mostly the same as you've always been in the case of your criticism of the Democrats, maybe a little more hyperbolic, but you are willing to give a near-unlimited pass to Trump and his cronies. And I say "near-unlimited" not because I've seen any evidence that there *is* a limit, but because if I don't tell myself that there is a limit somewhere, I'll give up all hope.
Though honestly, where that limit could lie if Jan 6th wasn't enough is a mystery to me.
I used to laugh at the videos of Trump's supporters being asked "what could Trump do to lose your vote," and see them admit that there was basally nothing. But that seems to be becoming a majority view.
I certainly did miss that shift.
p.s. thanks for the links, I’m knee deep in analysis of the election and will add these to the list. Curiosity really is my overriding feeling.
Hi, Steve, thanks for keeping that link to UnHerd, column written by David Samuels. I have just subscribed. If you haven't read it, his take on Barack Obama as an "eminence grise" or Shadow President is the term he used, behind Kamala Harris's presidential bid is an eye-opener.
"his take on Barack Obama as an "eminence grise" or Shadow President is the term he used, behind Kamala Harris's presidential bid is an eye-opener."
I might be losing my mind here, but could you point to a single line in his piece where he actually makes the case that Obama was the "shadow president"? I read this one first as you singled it out, and I've now read it twice, and I'm reeling that it ever got past the scrutiny of a halfway decent editor.
Where is the evidence that Obama "ordered" Biden out? As the article claims repeatedly. Where is the evidence that Obama was running the government Biden was too senile to run? Samuels openly admits that the "$500 million to $1 billion" estimates of Obama's wealth are unfounded rumours, but then hangs some kind of conspiracy about Obama "having it both ways" on this rumour.
Then there's the paradox of accusing a man whose catchphrase during the election cycle was literally "Don't boo, vote," of wanting to "protect democracy from American voters." Especially in defence of a man, the only man in history, who tried to forcibly overturn a democratic American election.
Even the idea that it's "strange" that Obama stayed in Washington after his presidency was over ignores the crucial detail his daughter was still in school in Washington after the end of his term, so it made sense for the family to stay in the city they'd been living in for eight years.
I'm asking sincerely, could you tell me what you found compelling about this take on Obama?
Nice to stay in touch with distant friends but they bring out the worst in people. Free speech means unchallenged lies. Factionalism is soaring. The very worst pecan now find millions like them
Yes, the worst pecan now find millions. You mention "Unchallenged lies". The opposite of that is challenged/censored truths. Both cause harm. Where do you see the right mix and should it be centrally controlled? We all want truth, and does someone get to be the one authority on truth?
If you agree with the decider, then calling it an evasion is convenient as it doesn't impact you. All other scenarios, especially where you vehemently disagree with the decider, and it is never just evasion. My point is self-evident.
Yet people complain that Musk decided to reduce censorship on twitter when he bought it. They see a difference in policy pertaining to censorship based upon who would be the decider, Harris or Trump. It is very widely viewed as a BFD.
I am interested in the reason why you think it is evasion. Not to argue or try to change your mind, but to understand that thought. i view you as an intelligent man so I don't dismiss your view just because it is different from mine.
I have to respectfully dissent. "Who gets to decide" is the CORE issue about managed information (ie: censorship).
It's like saying "we could save a lot of trouble by just immediately jailing all criminals without the expense of trials". The key problem is "who gets to decide which people get immediately jailed, absent the give and take of testing competing narratives and evidence provided by a trial?".
In a system using democratic voting, control of information is control of government, period.
I do agree about social media sometimes bringing out the worst in people. Alas, I think elections today also do that.
If the Trump administration tries to impose "truth filtering" onto legacy media or social media, will you find value in free speech again? Will the question of "who controls it" seem more central, and less like just an evasion, then?
The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever.
A good start to that is to encourage open discussion and dialogue, not just about and with positions you agree with, but with everyone.
So that’s a hard NO to censorship of things and opinions you don’t fancy, and a strong “yes” to getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with people you normally wouldn’t cross paths with.
One Small Step is an actual program that puts together people with allegedly incompatible views and steps back to see what happens.Great idea though I don’t think we need the choreography.
Myself and the regulars down at the pub go through that sort of exercise organically every night . Over a pint, especially one I just bought ya, we don’t seem like such bad people to each other.
From a long life of traveling and talking with people from all walks of life, I can honestly say that most people in the world, absent prodding from so-called experts in the elite who wants to cause trouble, want the same things: enough food and shelter to get by, a better life for their children, and some sort of break from the work cycle. Those things shouldn’t be hard to achieve if we find common cause and stop spending so much money and effort on fending off and protecting ourselves from the “other”.
"The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever."
100% agreed. This is essentially the first thing I wrote after Biden's election - https://medium.com/illumination-curated/joe-bidens-most-important-job-is-to-de-simplify-america-f89c7467b2c7
Part of the shift I'm talking about is the extreme, borderline-psychotic discomfort with differing opinions. Discomfort with differing opinions isn't new, of course, but it feels so much more universal than it did. I'm constantly amazed at how often people will completely ignore or simply get mad at irrefutable evidence that they're wrong. The bubbles people live in are so impregnable in 2024. And it makes conversation impossible.
Agreed….which strengthens my belief that my roughly-speaking “libertarian” values might be useful here. For decades, I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat….you do you and let me do me. Just leave the children and animals and defenseless alone. Most problems can be solved at the hyper local level. I am in the extreme minority where I live (Detroit) with something like 90% Democratic Party registration and zero percent libertarian, but I get along just fine with every single one of my neighbors…..zero problems. It isn’t, at all, complicated. You just have to talk to each other, respect differences, help where needed, and stay out of other people’s business.
"I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat"
But you don't actually believe this hough, right? You do, in fact, want the government to keep you safe from criminals and you see the danger of cults. You understand, as in the case of Manson and...certain other people, that human beings can and do fall victim to cults of personality and behave in ways that are corrosive to society and dangerous to themselves and others.
"Loudly and publicly" proclaiming values that you know you'll never actually have to suffer the consequences of is exactly the same game the Abolish the Police lunatics played, for example. But they would absolutely care if suddenly there were no police around. Just as you would absolutely care if Charles Manson were your neighbour. It's okay to admit that it's not possible to solve every problem yourself.
No, I actually mean it. What I should have included it was that I don’t care what Munson and Company does as long as they stay on their side of the fence and let me do my thing on my. I thought that that was fairly obvious from the general thrust of my common, but, there it is.
I would vastly prefer being legally able to be responsible for my own protection and well-being. A second choice would be being able to rely on police protection.
Here in Detroit, I am legally forbidden to protect property and can’t shoot someone in the back, even if they’ve just raped my wife. so I’m neither allowed to defend myself or my property, and we have no police protection whatsoever unless you have connections in the administration.
I have an opinion about the Munson Carlton and the other cults, but I simply preferred to work on taking the plank out of my own eye before inspecting the spec in someone else’s. In any event, I have never, and would never advocate for government intervention in any situation where consenting adults are doing their thing as long as it’s on their property and there is “consent” and “adults” present.
I think that there is a place for the police, but the courts have declared that the police have no obligation to protect you. That is your job and when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Your police department might even be like the Uvalde police department.
There are several organizations that sell insurance for gun owners who use a firearm in self-defense because the courts "seem" more inclined to prosecute you for shooting the guy raping your 10-year-old daughter than him. Where the line between protect/prevent (OK) and revenge (Not OK) is placed varies by state.
https://www.concealedcarry.com/self-defense-gun-owner-insurance-programs-compared/
Fifty years ago, a friend's wife took a defense class offered by the Sheriff's department in Macon Georgia. He told her, "If someone is breaking in, gather your children and lock yourselves in your bedroom (retreat) and call the police (pre-cellphones when people had landlines in their bedroom). Let him steal your TV, that's why you have insurance. If he breaks into the room with you, shoot him until he goes down and is no longer moving. There is not a court in Georgia that will press charges on a woman alone in that scenario."
Solid advice, but that may not still be true in some jurisdictions (shooting him until he is dead). And the victim's family can sue you for shooting their choir boy.
I honestly don't care if my next-door neighbor has an AR-15 or even an M-16. No victim, no crime. But I do care if they are a threat to society. Owning a firearm is not a threat to society and it is often difficult to determine a threat where no previous crimes have been committed.
I think that there is a place for the police too….in a best case scenario they would be well trained and respond appropriately to whatever the situation required without the perhaps excessive response from someone who is too close to the situation, whether victim, witness or whatever. The problem I have is that, at least here in Detroit, you are neither allowed to defend yourself nor can you rely on police protection. That is just fucked up, and a result of 50 years of one party rule here, and a clear, motivating factor for the exodus from the City. This isn’t, at all, racial, as more black people are fleeing than white people, and, to some degree black flight is partially compensated by white hipsters and artists and techies snatching up the generational wealth of the descendants of the great migration that is being practically abandoned by the grandchildren.
What is the generational wealth that artists and techies are snatching up, in concrete terms? Are you talking about buying and remodeling deteriorating buildings with low market value, or jazz clubs, or what?
Economically, generational wealth isn't wealth if its value has dropped too far. (There are other non-tangible forms of metaphoric wealth passed on from parent to child, but that is portable geographically).
Passion, gentrification is conducted by the government, not individuals.
When local governments engage in DIS-investment, the public sphere in neighborhoods declines. During the DIS-investement process, tax dollars are transferred out of some neighborhoods and into other neighborhoods.
In neighborhhoods hit by dis-investment, the public sphere enters severe decline, and drags property values down. In turn, homeowners turn homes into rentals, or sell them at a loss, and move out of the neighborhood. Once homes are no longer maintained, plumbing, electical, and roofing problems turn into structural damage. In turn, homes are abandoned, boarded up and owners join the long wait for a change in the market. Its a downward spiral for years.
Gentrification begins when local goverment begins investing in neighborhoods they drove into poverty. In urban planning we call this part of the process displacement - poor people, renters, etc. must be moved to another part of the city, to make room for people with money to move in and bring the housing stock back up to market value.
Obviously, we are talking about old homes in good city locations. In the suburbs and exurbs, homes are built so cheaply and shoddily, local governments usually bulldoze homes to make way for new developments.
Some local governments, especially those in rural areas, do not engage in dis-investment and the housing stock in these communities remains in good repair, and maintains its value.
I went through all that by way of saying, that dis-investment is one of many systemic tactics, designed to transfer generational wealth from the hands of 'some' Americans, into the hand of 'other' Americans.
Deteriorating homes and buildings are merely the symptom of neighborhoods targeted for dis-investment, and dis-placement, not the cause.
> In urban planning we call this
Are you an experience urban planner? Where have you worked? I'd like to learn some of your perspective.
So how do you and your planning colleagues choose which currently healthy neighborhoods to dis-invest in, so as to cause deterioration and decay, so that you can later displace the current inhabitants, re-invest in the neighborhood, and attract a different group of people? How long in advance do you need to plan this, like how generally how many years do you need to take their tax money and not invest in the neighborhood, in order to make it ready for eventual gentrification? Is it like 10 years or 35 years from the start of systemic disinvestment until gentrification? How do you sustain a policy focus across turnover in the planning department and political administrations?
Could you describe the disinvestment specifics that city planners accomplish? I mean from the beginning, whether there is a healthy neighborhood paying good taxes sufficient to pay for city services, but which the city wants to transfer away taxes and disinvest from. Like do you intentionally let streets fall into disrepair, streetlights to go out, sidewalks to crumble, storm sewers to become blocked to cause flooding, or what? Revoke the business licenses of otherwise healthy retail stores and restaurants so as to decrease the quality of life in the neighborhood? Reduce police presence to increase street crime, and refuse to answer police or fire calls? Reroute public transit to avoid the neighborhood? Allow/encourage water and electric utilities to fail? End garbage collection?
I'm trying to understand the specific tools you believe cities use in their strategy of disinvesting in a neighborhood in order to cause decay and deterioration. I look around my own city neighborhood, and I'm wondering what my city would do if they (presumably involving the city planning department) decided to dis-invest her to lead to eventual reinvestment and gentrification with different people. What would the signs be?
I'm not an urban planner, but to the untrained, this doesn't sound like a highly feasible strategy, and it's hard to see the payoff for the city (given the timescale between disinvestment and gentrification, and the burden on the city during the deterioration phase). Like "we want to degrade your generational wealth for a few decades, then help transfer what's left to people we haven't yet met some time in the future". So I'm happy to hear from a professional.
Housing, for the most part, that was acquired through lots of pain and suffering and sweat.
Hi, I think what happened is that people who are desperate, struggling to get by let alone make ends meet, who have poor quality work and even poorer pay, decided they'd had enough of being "talked down to" by a party they perceive as "elitist". They went all out at the polls and elected a person (and I use the term very loosely!) who projected that he "gets" what they need and made (most likely false and full of hot air) promises to "fix it" and provide what they need. As well, a tremendous dislike of government and authority in general was a contributing factor. My catch phrase to describe the "Trump Triumph" is "Let the wrecking ball swing."
I'd like to see someone draw up a cartoon of Trump swinging on a wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus (but please leave on his suit and red tie), and smashing it into a column topped by Constitution, then Rule of Law, Reproductive Rights, Environment Protection and Education, Anti-Racism, Transgender Protections and any others they would like to add. Because, within two years, the time of the next mid-term elections, these key elements will all be smashed to rubble.
Sign me a Canadian, grateful that I live here and not in your country.
Come back here after your next national election to crow at the poor Americans, please. There is a segment of the population here which thrives on being chastised.
For the majority of my life, I thought of Canada as similar to but superior to the US (as you still believe). When I was young, I thought it might be a refuge if the US went bad. But it's harder for an American to immigrate than for the majority of the world, the welcome mat is not out. And I think that, sadly, a lot of Canadians will be increasingly unhappy and far from smug as the healthcare deteriorates and the economy stagnates in coming decades. I don't know where I would want to go if I were to leave the US, but Canada seems like a poor choice now (even if they welcomed US citizens as part of the pro-immigraion policy).
Good luck, and may your nation prosper far more than I fear it actually will. That is, while I fear for your future even more than mine, I do not wish anything bad on our northern neighbors. Mostly I would like to see a bit less smugness, but that's a small thing, and will likely be self-correcting. (Like the Brits looking down on the US for the first Trump election, until they had their own Brexit and other chaos).
Canada's next federal election will be coming up soon. My healthcare has not deteriorated one bit. I have been under treatment for breast cancer for an entire year now. My biggest expense has been at the parking garage at the cancer centre attached to my city's hospital. Everything else - all my treatments, like chemotherapy and radiation, which I just finished - has been covered by my province's universal health insurance. I don't have any private insurance coverage, and I don't need any. I also just became eligible for a wide-ranging federal government-managed dental care policy which will also save me a fortune. Economically Canada is doing just fine. We used to travel to the United States to shop for a wide range of goods that formerly cost MUCH LESS than in Canada, even when correcting for the difference in exchange rate. Now the majority of those goods have a sticker price the SAME as those items in Canada. So, with the current exchange rate between the US dollar and Canadian dollar, they actually cost 40% MORE.
Your country has my condolences for what might happen between now and the first of February 2025, let alone the next four years. That's not being smug, that is being sympathetic.
Yes, regarding elections, so I hear. I also read the polls and keep up a bit with Canadian politics (but there is a LOT of interesting, or concerning, stuff going on politically around the world and I can't keep up with all of it). It looks like you too will have a shift in government, even if not to such an unpredictable wild card.
I'm glad to hear that you have had good success with your provincial health care and I hope it continues. The unscientific anecdotes I've heard indicate that some provinces are doing better than others, some populations are better served than others, and generally the results are mixed - and changing. Likewise, I have been generally very satisfied with my own HMO here in the US so far (16 years). My spouse went through chemo and while it wasn't free, it only cost us $10 copay per visit (a couple hundred USD total), and the parking was free (grin). This is not high end insurance, just Medicare and an HMO (same HMO and about the same plan as when we were working). I typically takes about a week to get an appointment for non-specialist non-critical health care. However, this is just one datapoint, and I am very aware that situations vary across the nation.
It's really cool that your goods can be produced and sold so much cheaper, and very interesting. A 40% difference is pretty major, I would expect that some Americans must be using the favorable exchange rate to buy things in Canada now. Is that already happening, to the best of your knowledge? What kind of goods did you formerly shop for in the US, and are the same goods now being shopped for in Canada by Americans? Like iPhones or like candy?
I've seen some analyses which indicate that Canada's economy is in trouble in coming years, but you seem quite sanguine and I hope you are right. I have no desire to see our neighbors suffer. The more we can cooperate the more we can mutually thrive.
I'm definitely concerned about the next four years, and beyond, here (on many, many fronts! There seem to be no end of crises of all sorts). What happens on or before Feb 1st that especially concerns you? Are you expecting riots or martial law or economic collapse or what?
After the horrid one takes office. Keep your kids home is few weeks. The beards feel it’s open season on us.
"The beards feel it’s open season on us."
There already seems to have been a spike in misogynistic/xenophobic/homophobic abuse. Similar to what happened in 2016. What a strange coincidence that these spikes seem to coincide with Trump victories.
Steve, where do you find objective stats on that? Genuine question.
I don't think we can rely upon media to present a balanced picture of such things, so the unconscious impression built by "frequency of news stories and the framing given by the reporters" could be unreliable. There are countless examples of selective coverage in our recent history.
So while I think it's entirely possible that there is a spike, I would want some objective evidence from a neutral source before buying into that narrative.
Fear, I feel is the root of so much of our demise as a nation and is evidenced in the outcome of this election. Fear of a woman in power, fear of anyone of colour in power (again!) and fear of explosive Maga inspired violence should either of the two, but particularly the latter occur. As you have often noted, social media has allowed people to spew their hatred, prejudice and ignorance without ever facing their assumed opponents. I suspect that more than a few reasonable and intelligent people let fear override any logical (or obvious) analysis when they voted.
"I suspect that more than a few reasonable and intelligent people let fear override any logical (or obvious) analysis when they voted."
Yep, I agree completely. I think this is the main reason why people were able to justify voting for someone who they loathe.
When most people think of fear, they think of terror. And because they aren't feeling terror, they dismiss the accusation. But fear takes many forms. One of the main reason that people get so emotional when their views are challenged is that the fear lurking beneath gets activated.
I am sorry, Ruth and Steve, but blaming the votes of those we disagree with is a very popular tactic that just isn't ringing true for me. I see a lot of people saying they voted for Trump for positive/optimistic reasons and not for fear of the other tribe. I hope we don't reduce others to something we can easily look down upon.
When looking at recent democrats with the same lense of fear versus optimism, Obama was the last democrat to breed optimism. Joe was a milk toast choice for VP to hedge Obama's appeal, to get votes Obama did not already have. As a head-to-head against Trump, he was thought of more as the antidote to fear of Trump than he was on his own merits. Biden was elected by fear of Trump.
In 2019, Harris was chosen as VP right as her presidential bid was failing badly. In a crowded field of potential nominees, many other democrats were more popular and gained nominee votes than her. Despite her unpopularity, Biden chose her just as Obama had chosen him, to hedge Biden's appeal. Given her unpopularity, Harris was a terrible but convenient choice with Biden's untimely mental collapse only months ago.
Fast forward to election day. I am sure some voted for Trump out of fear, but that is too easy a dismissal. Harris was unappealing, again less appealing than many other democrats, let alone Trump. Why should independents like me or republicans be swayed to Harris when even democrats didn't like her only six months or five years ago? You don't have to fear Harris. She wasn't a great candidate by the most basic of measure and history within her own party.
"I see a lot of people saying they voted for Trump for positive/optimistic reasons"
We must move in very different circles. And you must also not have been paying much attention to the RNC or spend much time watching Fox News. The fear-mongering at these events, the claims that Democrats will drag people from their homes and arrest them or that immigrants will rape people's daughters or, of course, that they'd "tAke AwAy ThEiR GuNs" is absolutely constant. Fear is a lever that both parties pull. No doubt. But it's wild to claim that fear isn't a huge driver for what the Republican Party has become. That and disgust.
The closest thing to optimism I can see, other than some version of the belief that Emperor Trump will "make America great again" (whatever that means), is that "the left" will be defeated. But this isn't a policy position, nor an optimistic view, nor even a realistic view. It's just tribalism.
As I wrote recently, when you take the names away and ask Americans which policies they prefer, Harris' policies are significantly more popular than Trump's. Some of Trump's are actually quite unpopular. I'm not saying Harris was a great candidate, she absolutely wasn't, the Democrats have to take plenty of blame for this loss, but yes, one of the key tools Trump used was fear. I'll write more about this soon.
Trump is going to got be president for four years. He'll do some good things and some bad things. But the Democratic Party will still be there in four years. There will still be illegal immigrants, trans people will still be around, most if not all of the poor people who voted for him will still be poor.
I think a large percentage of Trump voters have been sold a lie. And I think that because I've seen the lies with my own eyes, flooding social media, infecting the most trivial conversations. I've seen how many people believe them without the slightest bit of critical thought, as we've discussed.
I'm not here to tell you how you should have been swayed, again, I agree that Harris was unappealing, but Harris didn't sit in the Oval Office sipping Coke while the Capitol building burned. I don't think you'll ever get me to understand how this alone wasn't permanently disqualifying for all those people who claim to be "America-loving patriots."
Since I'm still registered as a lifelong Democrat, who voted for Harris, and have contributed a lot of money to Democrats and liberal causes over time, I get LOTS of campaign literature, in fact it's the majority of my email AND postal mail. Literal piles every day, and it takes lot of time to sort. And 80-90% of that has been fear mongering from Democrats. Fear, fear, fear, fear.
(It turns out that they pretty much saturated that market, and Democratic focus groups were telling them that, but...)
I don't doubt that Republicans may have been deluged with something similar from their party, but I think that if you focus selectively ONLY on the influence of fearmongering from the right, only nominally acknowledging that both sides do it, I think you are missing the core point which is not partisan.
It's like "Republicans are doing 800% more fear mongering than would occur in a healthy society, but Democrats are doing only 750% more, so let's focus on the Republicans as the problem, rather than centralizing the common fearmongering itself as the core problem for society".
Let's be clear that I did not and would never vote for Trump. But I've talked to reasonable people who did, and they did not fit your stereotypes. Yes, many were afraid of what a Harris presidency would produce, but every single Democrat I knew was in a near panic of fear before the election, so that's not a difference.
I think we need to beware of comforting narratives which allow us to disparage the election results as being mainly due to racism, misogyny, ignorance, credulity, and propaganda. Internal message: "we are superior to the voters and have nothing serious to learn, no uncomfortable questioning of our assumptions and stereotypes is needed"
By the way, among the Democrats I live among, very few mention Harris' policies, and in fact few are aware of any of her policies other than on abortion; they did not choose her for her policies. They chose her because they were afraid of trump, every last one of them centers that. The only ones who DID care about something other than abortion, are those who hate her for supporting what they believed as genocide in Gaza.
By contrast, the Trump voters DO mention a lot of policy issues.
Both sides mention items which I believe to be factually false; perhaps more so on the Trump side, but far from exclusively so.
Steve, your last paragraph is interesting. First you say you are not telling them how their vote should have been swayed, then you proceed to tell them exactly that. But then there is:
> Harris didn't sit in the Oval Office sipping Coke while the Capitol building burned. I don't think you'll ever get me to understand how this alone wasn't permanently disqualifying for all those people who claim to be "America-loving patriots."
So who exactly sat in the Oval office while the Capital building burned? Will the US be rebuilding the Capitol soon? I seem to have missed that arson. I thought the massive arson amounting to billions of dollars occurred in the summer of 2020. Are you sure you are not conflating two types of events?
I hope you can take that at gentle ribbing, not a viscous attack. But it illustrates my point - a LOT of Democrats would have passed by your asserting about the burning of the Capitol without knowing - or caring - to fact check it, because it fits the narrative. They would focus in the word "disqualify" and ignore the justification. Because their critical minds have been shut down in fear. Not from Republicans in that case, though.
(Remember, I preferred Harris and thought that Trump's role in the Capitol riots was only one of many things proving he should never be president again, so don't waste time trying to convince me; my points are about the dysfunctions of our society, not about Trump vs Harris per se, I'm already in the choir about Trump, and the election is over. We need to move from persuasion of voters to assessing why the Dems lost and what can be done about that.)
Ah, what a difference 8 years can bring. Ironically, I am now even more concerned about a Trump presidency than I was in 2016, but also feel a lot less smugly superior to those who voted for him than I did then. When I took off my "I only watch liberal news" filters, the world grew a lot more textured and complex.
I don’t think anyone can say definitively why anyone voted for any particular candidate without asking each person individually, but I can tell you and those reading why I voted for Trump.
Quick background: My first Presidential vote was for Reagan. After that I voted, and supported with get out the vote efforts, (small) financial contributions, jawboning friends etc , every Democratic candidate until 2016. The George Bush/Cheney Presidency and the devastation of the. Idle East and bankrupting of the USA was the low point (and still is) of my political life. Like the rest of America, we breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when Barack came to power. ANYBODY was better than Bush/Cheney. I couldn’t stomach the later Obama years, with the bailout of the banks while huge swaths of American lost their homes after they fell behind on payments. So 2016 I voted Libertarian, which is where most of my heart and mind is when it comes down to it.
I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited. I have that same opinion of him, today, but it wasn’t even a close call when it came to picking him vs. Harris. There are probably 50-60 really, really good reasons why, but here are a few, in no particular order:
1. Harris openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys, who have more blood on their hands than probably any other American family. Dick Cheney is a war criminal, and should be in prison for life. His daughter is cut from the same cloth. How the De o ratio nominee thinks that buddying up to a vicious war criminal is going to win any votes is beyond me, but it does show how close the establishment will go if both parties is.
2.Kevin Cooper. A black California man on death row, who is still on death row, because Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris refused to allow DNA tests which would definitively rule out Kevin as a suspect. The only eyewitness saw a white man……but Harris and Brown (“progressive liberals”) will back the system even when it is obviously, egregiously wrong, literally when an innocent man’s life is at stake. No thanks.
3. Despite what the policy wonks from the Fed say, the ACTUAL COST OF LIVING has skyrocketed since Harris & co.took control of the White House. This isn’t a “feeling” or “fear” this is 100% real. Everything that people actually need to live and work has gone up from 25% to 200% since they took over. This isn’t political. This is fact. Go ask the people on the food bank lines snaking around the corner here in Detroit if you trust the Fed over the people on the street.
4. The COMBINATION of generally Democratic policies, at state local and federal levels make it extremely difficult for small businesses, such as mine. Here in Detroit, you have on the one hand ridiculous levels of property (and violent) crime, which is shrugged off as “That’s the D, man….” and “no resources”…, yet I receive a stern warning from the Police Department for a truck illegally parked in a residential area. When it was parked legally, in a parking lot I owned, and the catalytic converter was cut off, toolboxes r smashed, door windows smashed, and a homeless person pissing in my cab, ….”no resources”……when my $25,000 skid steer was stolen, and I attempted to make a police report at the precinct house, I was turned away because it wasn’t valuable “enough” according to the sergeant who blocked my way into the station house.
Then you have the pool of workers who are paid to stay home, collect some benefit or another so that even at $25 an hour, cash, starting pay, I have NO takers who aren’t addicted to some substance or a cellphone…they can make more on the dole, or through easy crime….so no work. Then we have the pandemic “two weeks to flatten the curve” nonsense, which lasted for months, in which my little tree service was shit down by the state goons, while all the weed stores, liquor stores and lottery sellers were wide, wide wide open (“essential services”). I think you get the point….
5. While MSM twisted and lied about Trump’s poorly worded attack on Liz Cheney, his point that all of the chicken hawks, Dems and Reps alike, gout song a different song if they ever had to face down the barrel of a gun was dead on, and resonated with a huge amount of people, including former military like myself. Probably the single biggest reason to vote FOR Trump is that, for four straight years, we had NO WARS. Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Harris/Biden experience has been a shitshow at best, and a catastrophic abomination at worst for four long years. I, as an ex Marine, my brother in law, as a Marine with a brutal combat tour in Nam, and all the rest of my family voted Trump JUST FOR THAT REASON. Those who opine from the safety of their college dorms or corner offices with their goat milk lattes have no fucking clue how much that means to families like mine, whose mother grew up in France under German occupation, who was highly decorated for service for the French and American armies, and who abhorred war, and rumors of war, that she immigrated (legally) to the USA after her service to get away from the hatred and recrimination that enveloped Europe after the war.
6. It is unconscionable that, according to Mayorkas, Biden/Harris’s homeland security chief, some 300,000 children that they allowed into the country (illegally) are unaccounted for. Let that fucking sink in. On that issue alone, I would vote AGAINST the monsters who allowed that to happen. Taking all partisan politics out of it, the fact that they can’t even keep records of minor children in their charge, without even imputing bad motives, is proof enough that they, the entire administration is morally, ethically, and administratively unfit to wield any power. Let them start with running a lemonade stand, and then move on…
7. Vaccine mandates. I am 100% for allowing people to put whatever they want into their body, and 100% against government coercion. Take whatever you want whether it is weed, heroin, Botox or vaxxes, but leave the rest of us alone. It simply should NEVER be the prerogative of any government, at any level to mandate medical treatment. Biden way overstepped his authority with his mandates, and for that reason alone, we would never vote for Harris, since she never disavowed his policies.
8. Censorship. The Democratic Party of my youth and most of my life was strongly pro- freedom of speech, (real) diversity, tolerance, anti-corporate, “ big tent”, anti war, pro family, pro small business/working class. That is why I and millions of others faithfully supported and voted for their candidates, as imperfect as they (and all of us) were. The Biden/Harris regime, and the current iteration of the Democratic Party, has completely flipped on all of those issues, and now aligns itself with the worst elements of the corporatist neo-con Republicans/Establishment. I haven’t changed my positions one bit, but now I Ron’s myself squished over to “right wing” because someone moved the goal posts and yard lines.
9. There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters i know. Many are not white, many are, many are women, many are men. NONE of them admires Trump as an ideal candidate, and none of them are under any illusion that he is in it for anything more than glory for himself, and more money for his family. Having said that, ALL of us are choosing him over the alternative, because we feel that we will have a slightly better chance at survival, that there is a better chance that we will not go to war and send hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the slaughter overseas, that at least some of that money might be left in our pockets or at least spent helping the less fortunate here.
It isn’t complicated, at all. Anyone who is surprised by the huge swings in working class votes towards the Republicans should step out of his echo chamber for a few minutes and mix with those of us who take a shower after work. It ain’t about race, it ain’t about women, it’s about the pocketbook, the safety of the streets, it’s say out the wars, it’s about freedom.
"I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited"
I read this whole thing with interest, but I actually think you nailed it with this line. I think that many of the people who voted for Trump are in the same boat. Or, if they did know, they've joined millions of people in grading him on this insane curve where they condemn the Democrats for something but have nothing to say when he does the same or worse.
Case in point, your list:
1. You're the second person to say something along these lines, but what do you mean by "openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys?" Harris received Dick Cheney's endorsement, but never sought it as far as I'm aware.
Nor did she seek Liz Cheney's. She received it, and Liz joined her on the campaign trail, but I'm not really seeing the issue there (please feel free to clarify). Liz Cheney is one of very few Republicans who took and maintained a principled stance against Trump. Even though it cost her power. Agree or disagree with that stance, I think she showed integrity.
2. https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234447/dustin-higgs-execution-death-penalty-trump-administration
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/10/trump-administration-justice-department-federal-executions
Links to stories about two of several controversial executions of black men carried out under the Trump administration. I'm not arguing that Trump is uniquely bad because of this, but how Kevin Cooper's case moved the needle for you is beyond me.
3. Yes, the cost of living has increased since Biden took office. Not just in America, but all over the world. In fact, the US economy has, according to reports I admittedly haven't read in depth, performed better than other nations over the past four years. As for *why* the cost of living has increased, do you think it's as simple as Biden taking office and not, y'know, the global pandemic? Or Russia's war in Ukraine affecting energy prices? Or greedy corporations trying to recoup their losses after COVID?
I wouldn't dream of denying that people are struggling. I'm saying a deeper level of analysis is required than looking at who's in the White House.
4. You just got done telling me that "most problems can be solved at the hyper local level" and then you're telling me that you voted for Trump because of a "stern warning" you received from a local police officer? Or because of petty theft? Do you think Trump is going to change that? Or that any president would? Do you not see this contradiction?
The pandemic was poorly handled in many ways by both Trump and Biden. But I don't understand how so many people forget that the "two weeks to flatten the curve" was under TRUMP!!! I've seen Trump voters sneer out this line so many times and it's like, WHAT??!! Are you crazy??!
But yes, the pandemic was mishandled by almost every nation I paid any attention to.
5. "Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan,"
Come on man, Did Biden start the war in Ukraine? Did Biden force Hamas to attack on Oct 7th? Like, what is this? Presidents are responsible for everything that happens in the world while they're in office? Well then, Trump is responsible for COVID, no?
And yes, Trump started the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I bet you blame Biden entirely for what a disaster it was, right? And for any instability that comes out of the region now that the Taliban are back in power?
If your mother grew up under German occupation you understand the importance of fighting for freedom, right? Not withdrawing from the world and saying, unless it's directly affecting America right now, we'll just back away and let it play out. Can you imagine what would have happened if America had done that in WWII? Please, pick a lane here.
6. Yes, separating of children at the border from their parents IS unconscionable. But do you know who started the policy in 2017-18? That's right!! Trump! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_family_separation_policy)
Your initial claim to have known nothing about Trump rings truer and truer.
7. Hmm, yeah the whole vaccine thing is tricky. First, I see no reason to believe that Trump wouldn't have implemented mandates if he were in power during the rollout. Given what was known at the time, there was an argument to be made that leaving people unvaccinated was a significant risk. But I completely share yours and every sane person's very strong aversion to pressuring people to take vaccines.
COVID was an insane and unprecedented situation. If you feel strongly enough about how Biden handled his part of it to vote against him, that's fair. But I'll remind you, Harris wasn't president during COVID, and Trump was the one telling everybody it was a "Democrat hoax" instead of ordering vaccine supply and PPE gear as early as possible and encouraging people to stay safe.
8. There's no denying that the Democratic Party and the Left in general has changed. If it were any other Republican candidate, we wouldn't be having this conversation. In fact there are many universes where I'd have supported a Republican candidate over Harris/Biden.
But that would be to ignore how dramatically the Republican party has also changed. Far more than the Democrats. As I wrote recently, there was a time when the Republicans would have stormed the Capitol to keep a candidate like Trump *out* of the White House.
This is a man who was caught on tape trying to strong-arm the Georgi governor into "finding him some votes." A man who publicly undermined American intelligence agencies (even privately I could understand, but publicly???!!!), by taking Vladimir fu**ing Putin's word over theirs. A man who satin the Oval Office sipping Coke while his supporters Stormed the White House and called to hang his vice President. If you can turn a blind eye to all of this, you can't tell me you "haven't changed one bit."
9. "There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters I know"
This is just a dumb thing to say. Trump got what, 74 million votes? Not a single racist or misogynist among them? Really? Yes, actually there are a great many racists and misogynists among his supporters. I've spoken to many of them and seen countless more spreading that racism on social media. I've seen them in the spike in hate crimes that *oh-so coincidentally* accompanied Trump's election in 2016 and again now.
But I've been saying for well over four years that this is a simplistic, worthless way of analysing why people voted for Trump. Obviously many of the people who voted for Trump aren't racist or misogynists. And I'm sure plenty of racists voted for Obama too. Because they thought there was something in it for them. And this, ultimately, is why most people vote the way they do.
But as this response has hopefully illustrated, it IS complicated. It's complicated to understand why people who voted for Trump know so little about him and his policies. It's complicated to understand why the Democrats did SOOO catastrophically (I have lots of thoughts on this coming). It's complicated to understand to what degree people think or want a presidential election to change their lives at the local level.
Economics are complicated, foreign and national policy is complicated, global pandemics are complicated, wars are complicated. The big issue here is that so many voters are convinced they can bypass all of this complexity by going on vibes.
No 9…..Please pay a bit closer attention to what I said: “in any of the Trump voters I KNOW”….i obviously can not and will not speak about the motives or inclinations of people o have never met or interacted with. I can speak for myself and my wife and what my family has told me: my wife, black African, “I don’t like Trump but the alternative is so much worse” or my friends from the bar, one white of Eastern Europe background, one black, black “native Detroiter” in local parlance who came down to the bar to celebrate Trumps victory…or my 30 something year old daughter-born and raised liberal who to,d me “I just went MAGA”….come on, just stop with the race bullshit. People who do this for a living have charted the movement of people like myself who voted for Barack Obama and 8 years later (12 in my case) went for Trump. Believe your eyes, Steve, believe what people are telling you.
8. “Undermining American intelligence agencies publicly “ is a bad thing in your world ?????? This is the most mendacious, bloodthirsty, anti democratic cruel and evil grouping in society, and undermining them is a character flaw? Have you forgotten any of the lies they spin to keep us in endless wars, to take away our freedoms, to spend our treasure to spread misery throughout the planet? Does Julian Assange or Edward Snowden ring a bell?
6. I’m not taking about separating children at the border. I’m talking about children going missing, unaccounted for, after having come here on the invitation of Biden/Harris, entering our system and then having vanished from the bureaucracy…..if the bureaucrats can’t keep track of the children in their care, do,you want to give them another four years with the nuclear weapons, with yet more children? Seriously? Hopefully this is just a paperwork SNAFU, but whatever it is, it should be unacceptable to all people from all walks of life anywhere on the political spectrum.
5. Ukraine/Russia was and is solvable in days or hours, and it is to our eternal discredit that instead of pushing the parties towards peace we nudged Ukraine towards war. Russia will not accept NATO missiles that close to Moscow, just like we wouldn’t accept similar armaments pointing at Washington got. If they were in Montreal. So yes, Biden is responsible for the Ukraine Russia war as are all the neocons of both parties (Lindsay Graham, McConnell, Mike Johnson, the Cheneys on the Republican side…and more).
4. I,put the word “COMBINATION” in ALL CAPS just so you wouldn’t miss it, but somehow you did……I will try the word “aggregate effect” o see if that catches your attention.
I live in Detroit, Michigan which has been ruled by the Democratic Party for 50 years. The entirety of the state apparatus is run by Democrats. So they own the mess they created….my point was, and I thought I fairly obvious, if you add up all the ill effects on society from the skewed, myopic policies of the current Democratic Party elites, even though possibly just mildly irritating and relatively easily surmountable individually, the NET EFFECT on a regular, working class person is devastating……NET CUMULATIVE EFFECT. There is MUCH LESS, not non existent, but MUCH LESS of this nonsense in areas controlled by Republicans these days which is why I and tens of millions of others have walked across the aisle. It isn’t even remotely complicated. It is called “quality of life”. And quality of life issues have gotten drastically worse under successive Democratic administrations at the local, state and national level because the Party has become obsessed with pronouns, micro aggressions, safe spaces, “democracy”, Putin etc….anything but the working class people and values they claim to (and used to) represent.
3. Obviously it isn’t just Biden Harris who are responsible for the cost of living, but dumping trillions of fake dollars into an already overheated economy, combined with for: workers who didn’t take their fucking vaccine, plus paying people to stay home, demonizing us who were “non-essential” puts a fair share of the blame on their shoulders. Trump’s populist bullshit of sending out fake “stimulus” dollars is also, obviously, part of the problem, but Biden Harris put that on steroids, and then made it much worse by their subsequent policy decisions.
2. Kevin Cooper’s case shows that, when given the opportunity to do the right thing, to save an innocent man’s life, Harris will choose what is politically expedient and let him suffer. This is a woman with no moral compass, no convictions, no lodestar besides power, all the “progressive “ rhetoric notwithstanding……..I know I know “Trump bad. Trump bad.”
1. Cheney: I don’t know who made the first call, fairly obviously, but Harris and Cheney appeared on stage together. At a bare, bare minimum, Harris accepted,,publicly the endorsement of a mass murderer and appeared with his daughter, a blood thirsty neo con…..and you don’t see the problem, because, once again “Trump bad. Trump bad”???
Steve, I think you are one of the most gifted and thoughtful writers on race and trans issues, but it really seems as though there is a blind spot when it comes to the whole Trump thing….
Please ask yourself WHY people like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and myself, and millions and millions of others who were previously very favorably inclined towards Democratic Party values, just said “Fuck it” and abandoned the party they had always supported and been a part of?
You might dislike every one of those people, including me, but, in the interest of getting to the bottom of why so many people just shifted “right”, it might be worthwhile to listen….just listen….
Steve, I don't know that our circles have to be different if we use our filters in a similar manner. I agree that the negative/fearful voices that are anti-Biden/Harris are plentiful. Would you also agree that anti-Trump voices (re: constant chants of Hitler, facism, etc.) are plentiful? Were Harris voters motivated solely by fear? I hope not, but nearly everything looks that way on the surface. It would be easy to conclude by the sheer volume of the loudest of opinions that nobody is voting for anyone except for fear. Fortunately we know that isn't true, that the loudest most frequent voices are not the whole story.
When avoiding the loudest, you will find an actual optimism, probably for both sides.
What can I say? As an optimist thats seeks first the good in others, I suppose my glasses are rose-colored. I believe that everyone else is selective too. I am sorry that I just turned this into a lived 'Sociology 101'.
Thank you, Steve.
I'm from Canada, where we had our first female Prime Minister 30 years ago. Your country will NOT elect a female president until they are absolutely forced to: both main parties would have to have chosen women candidates for President and VP. Even then a huge "write-in" vote might scuttle the whole deal.
I am 66 years old now, with at least another 30 years to live, and I don't expect to see a female "Commander-in-Chief" in the USA in my lifetime. I will be pleasantly surprised if it happens sooner.
What evidence do you have to back up your opinion.
I am dismayed at people who can look at lists of 40 reasons the Harris campaign lost, and boil it all down to "she's a woman". There have been a great number of polls over the years on a number of issues, as well as focus groups to explore issues in greater depth than a poll can, asking what factors motivate voters. The sex of the candidate is never, a major factor. Two women have run for President of the US on a major party platform - one won the popular vote, the other was fairly close. Women, both conservative and liberal, are routinely elected at many levels of government.
Yet some people think that the sex of the presidential candidate is actually the determining factor. As best I can tell, that belief is free from objective evidence, based entirely on their "intuitive" beliefs about the psyche of voters.
The idea that even if a majority of both parties chose a female candidate, the country as a whole might vote instead for some write-in (male) candidate instead, does not seem to me to be grounded in rational assessment.
Once upon a time I would have celebrated a female President. Today, the sex of the President doesn't matter seriously to me, because it's just empty symbolism to pander to irrational biases.
I'm 100% open to a female president, and I have voted twice now for them BECAUSE I thought them the better candidate rather than because they were famle. But I would not vote for the worse candidate (in my estimation, obviously) just because she was female. Is that what you are advocating for?
(OK, searching myself, I would feel a small thrill if a female president whom I considered the best candidate were to win, but it's small side dish compared to the thrill of having what I considered the best candidate win). I didn't get either in this election, of course.
The odds are that 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 people voted for and/or against VP Harris because of race and/or gender. Some vote along party lines. Some for specific issues. Some to give the finger to people who insulted them. Who knows what else? In the aftermath of the election, I'm seeing many people saying that the outcome was from one or more of those, especially pertaining to race and/or gender.
It might have been just dandy for VP Harris to win to shut up the America haters, but it probably wouldn't have. Electing President Obama didn't stop the "America is a racist country" crowd so electing VP Harris probably wouldn't have tempered the PaTrIaRcHy tribe. Some day one of the parties will run a woman with the charisma of Barack Obama and she will be elected.
Nailed it.
When I think about how politicians influence our lives it is mostly about their ability to send people off to war or support proxy wars. There is no idiot with a gun, knife or vile of acid that can compare as a mass murderer to politicians. Without the ability of viewing dual reality, we cannot know if Trump or Harris would bring us more of the violence and death than the other.
We've made strides in the systemic (laws) level about things that affect equality, but people don't change because a law was passed. People and their attitudes were not going to change because of who won the election. It just changes who reacts and how and that is generally the people who didn't get their way. The winners are generally not the ones who riot, loot and commit arson.
Quoting the late internet curmudgeon Fred Reed, "Anything that might help is politically impossible, and anything politically possible won’t help. So, after the riots: Social division will worsen after the riots."
I believe that the only thing that can help is communication free of screaming insults and creating strawmen to avoid understanding anything other than what we already believe. It seems to be an impossibility, but it is my hope. The politicians can't fix that.
My political concerns are so uncommon, they tend to invite long, serious and productive conversations with people from all walks of life and political persuasions. My biggest political concern is corporations and their impact on rural and urban development - land-use, lifestyles, housing, jobs, etc.
Interestingly enough, rural, urban, suburban, rich, poor, middle-class, young, old, middle-aged, black, brown, white, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, college educated and high school drop-outs, agree that corporations have too much power. When we swap knoweldge, experience and history on the subject of corporations our political views align.
All these so-called culture issues, and culture war stuff was a billionaire funded campaign to lead us into the exact situation we are right now.
Stick to real issues, and conversations are welcomed and easy.
On Nate Silver's blog about election forecasting, as a footnote to his article about election modelling, he noted the following (Nate was a Harris supporter by the way, but he works with people on all sides):
> Even though our forecast was near 50/50 for almost the whole race, there were certainly periods that were relatively better and worse for Harris and Trump. Our narrative content followed accordingly, with about an even mix of newsletters that presented optimistic cases for Harris and Trump. (That was not true when Joe Biden was running, but that’s because Biden was way behind in the polls.) So I essentially got to perform a randomized control trial on how partisans in both camps reacted to good and bad news.
> And there was an asymmetry. Republicans are generally happy when you agree with them partway or half the time. Admittedly, the sorts of Republicans who encounter our work are not a representative sample, probably being on the moderate side — though you can find plenty of Trump supporters in the Silver Bulletin comments section.
> Democrats, however — and here, I’m not referring so much to Silver Bulletin subscribers but in the broader universe online — often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.
I've also seen research which indicated that liberals are substantially more likely to cut all ties with conservative family or friends, than vice versa. And on a more anecdotal level, I do not recall seeing tiktok and other social media filled with so many posts advocating "cutting off" anybody who voted for the winning side in 2020 as I'm seeing currently in 2024.
So yes, I agree that we have an across the board problem with, as you say, "extreme, borderline-psychotic discomfort with differing opinions.", but it's not evenly distributed across the spectrum.
And Nate's comment is more about being hostile to relatively objective information which only partly agrees with one's preferred reality, not about actual opposing subjective opinion. I think the hostility towards even objective facts which don't fit completely into one's preferred narrative which is surging on the left, is not unconnected to the hostility towards people with even slightly divergent opinions, like fellow Democrats who partially dissent but are then considered apostates.
I have come to the conclusion that on the whole (ie: not focusing on the extremes on either side), the left in the US has become more dogmatic and ideologically blinded than the right, a reversal since my youth.
The "people, and facts, must completely follow our prescriptions, not just provide partial support" mental dynamic can manifest in this way:
apostate: "I support LGBT civil rights like nondiscrimination in employment, transportation, housing, education, and financial dealings, and certainly I completely support safety. I support same sex marriage. I think adults should be able to transition without interference. I would never use a slur against LGB or T people. I enjoy my friends who are LGB or T. But I think that having anybody who subjectively identifies as a girl or women being allowed to compete in sports leagues built by and for biological women is going too far."
faithful: "You are a transphobic bigot and we need to destroy you if we can, for hating us and wanting us to die or kill ourselves"
Yes, that derives more on the full-on progressive side of the left rather than center left, but it also permeates and intimidates and is actively or passively accepted by a broad spectrum within the left in the US. A center left person in good standing might not INITIATE the response above, but they might stand by without objecting, look aside, or even join the mob supporting the "faithful" side above so as not to raise questions about themselves.
I moved from a lifelong progressive liberal and sometimes activist on many issues, to the independent middle (not wanting to join the opposite cult), but I would love to move back if sanity can be restored. That's not possible while strategies (like CRT or queer theory) are treated like sacred cows which cannot be questioned, even by people who share some of the nominal goals or values.
Trump has built a multi-racial multi-ethnic working class coalition which is not going to be "cancelled" by shaming and shunning. The Dems need to respond with something much stronger than calling 75 million voters misogynist and racist bigots to be cut off from contact with the righteous.
Hi, Steve! I did not vote for Trump in 2016; I voted for the Libertarian candidate. I spent the next four years marveling at how the media and it's many manipulated sycophants were consistently misrepresenting Trump, to the tune of outright lying about him. I did vote for him in 2020, but then he lost all my support with his unrelenting insistence that the Democrats stole the election.
What followed were accusations and hearings and trials and convictions. And yet through it all, as of today, I am an unapologetic, huge fan of this man. I'd rather someone else be president, as both parties offered more qualified candidates in the primaries, but they all lost. Vivek was my man!
Throughout this past year, Trump offered real solutions to our national problems. Throughout this past year, Trump was relatable, accessible, and empathetic. Biden and Harris, by stark contrast, were revealed as unapologetic liars residing in an alternate reality.
And I recently read a Time Magazine article from February, 2021 (The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election), that stopped short of claiming the election was fixed but makes the case that the Democratic Party did everything it could to assure that Biden would win. This article was written by an unapologetic Leftist in an unapologetic Leftist publication.
Our two-party system is an unnavigable mess. The electoral college serves no one. So yes, we need a shift. More than the one that just got voted into office. (Is that a mixed metaphor? Apologies.)
Here's to us untiringly working toward that end.
Trump’s Promises and Threats: A Guide to What’s Possible
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-president-campaign-promises-immigration-economy-climate-9468426a?st=f1dYLX&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
"A shift away from this divisive, reality-denying tribalism, a shift away from identifying ourselves and each other with our political opinions, a shift away from a world where vitriol and outrage and attempted insurrections are our only means of communication."
This statement is so laced with inherent contradictions.
You suggest a "shift" but only on your terms.
If you judge it as "reality-denying tribalism", its not a shift.
If you judge it as an "insurrection" its not a shift.
The shift starts with you. Can you just listen and empathize with someone you judge as "reality-denying tribalism". Can you listen and not judge someone who doesn't feel 1/6 was an "insurrection".
Can you and I have a non divisive interaction?
"Can you and I have a non divisive interaction?"
I'm really not sure. Because you seem to want me to write articles in which I express nothing at all. You act as if words like "insurrection" or "tribalism" or even "reality-denial" (and what was it last time? "Illegal" and "independence"?) are these wholly subjective concepts that I think I'm the master of.
Okay, so then what am I ever supposed to say about anything?? I can't see how anything would satisfy you other than:
"Some people think that storming the capitol and beating cops with the American flag and shouting 'hang Mike Pence' in front of the gallows they erected was a bad thing.
But who am I to say? They obviously thought it was great! So if I criticise them, I'm trying to define acceptable behaviour on 'my terms.'
Forget the rule of law, forget the will of the people, forget any semblance of respect for the constitution or the principles of a democracy, the most important thing is that I 'both-sides' everything to the point of meaninglessness."
I don't care whether you call it an insurrection or a coup or a riot. I've written several times about the dangers of getting hung up on particular words. As long as you acknowledge the facts of what happened and what it was designed to do and that what it was designed to do was bad. It was bad even though it failed.
If you can't acknowledge the facts of what happened despite all the video evidence, that's reality-denial. If you would lose your mind if the Democrats did this but make excuses for the Republicans, that's tribalism. What exactly are you struggling with here?
I am able to maintain friendship with people having a wide spread of beliefs. Even when I disagree in a big way, it lets me understand them. see their humanity and not see them as monsters. They are just misguided, or maybe it's me that is. But if you see others as demons, you cannot know them, you only know your own thoughts about them. It's an imperfect world and I can't change that. At best, I can hope to be a positive influence withing my small circle of influence.
A bunch of people feeling this today.
https://youtu.be/qucvehojtJM?si=X4DvyO6B_yS4onNk
"I am able to maintain friendship with people having a wide spread of beliefs."
Me too. But I think a lot of people nowadays talk about this as if it's always a virtue. And it's not. We could reach for extreme examples like the Nazis or the KKK, obviously there are some questions to ask if you maintain a friendship with somebody while knowing they hold views like these, but I saw a tweet recently that presented a far simpler case:
"Ended a 13 year friendship today because he voted for Trump. When I pointed out all of the reasons anyone with a moral compass wouldn’t vote for him, he said 'none of that impacts me or my son so I don’t care.' My last words for him were 'thank God you didn’t have a daughter."
I'm biased towards discomfort when people end friendships over politics, but where s the line between politics and values. If you know that somebody's worldview is essentially, "if it doesn't impact me or my son, I don't care who else gets hurt," how deep can your trust go with that person? How much can you respect them? And without trust or respect, what is your friendship based on?
I think a lot of people are feeling that way about Trump's supporters right now. And I'm looking for ways to bridge the divide despite getting that, not because I *don't* get it or think they're being wholly unreasonble.
p.s. I will also always reject any message that boils down to, "the situation we have is the best we can do." There have been people saying this at every inflection point in history, slavery, segregation, women's rights, gay marriage, you name it. They've been wrong every single time. And made it harder to achieve this progress.
I think it is probably typical for people to care about their own more than about society at large, although most won’t come out and say it.
Take the soft racism of low expectations of people of other races. It is so typical that we would have an extremely small set of friends and that is not unique to any demographic. Most of my friends keep it in check, but I am always disappointed when they express it. Fortunately, I don’t have any friends who would put on a hood and burn a cross in your yard or push an old white lady in front of a bus. If thought becomes harmful action, I would not be able to maintain that friendship. We all have limits. I just don’t get too worked up over people’s political views because I don’t think that the politicians will provide the solutions. They can pass laws and enact programs, but the only change of heart they bring is for the worse.
You may have read the link I put to the WSJ article “Trump’s Promises and Threats: A Guide to What’s Possible.” That is very disturbing. I thought that the separation of powers could do more to prevent it. My MAGA friend goes on and on about RINOs, the Republicans who are not MAGA, and won’t go along with some of the things that require Congressional approval. Are there enough of them who won’t go along with his worst goals?
I don’t know if either the Democrats or Republicans will acquire some inclination to introspection about their fringe. It seems possible to me that Trump’s excesses and policies that are not exactly a great idea (to say the least) will send some toward a more moderate middle. The thing working against that is will the Democrats do the same?
While I think honest communication without angry condemnation is key, it’s probably not going to happen while emotion is as high as it is today. When the all people can afford imports become unaffordable thanks to tariffs there will be some buyer’s remorse. Excesses of the left pushed a lot of people right. Trump might end up pushing them back. Time will tell.
This has been a slow shift that you didn't notice. One of the points that I clearly could not make understandable in my responses to your last post. So, hear are some additional voices analyzing the election. Maybe they will give you more insight.
Glenn Greenwald and Lee Fang at System Update
https://rumble.com/v5mlcdh-system-update-show-363.html
David Samuels at Unherd
https://unherd.com/2024/11/how-trump-crushed-obamas-legacy/
Breaking Points
https://youtu.be/1LKBuqXjpJA?si=UvOPlZ1qQBv-kcfK
Michael Tracy
https://open.substack.com/pub/mtracey/p/liberal-anguish-over-trump-was-never?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=bjkrf
"One of the points that I clearly could not make understandable in my responses to your last post."
Haha, you were actually one of the people I was thinking of as I wrote this. We've had a few conversations over the years. I think we're aligned ideologically and politically in quite a few ways. Indeed, most of your criticism of the Democratic Party are my criticisms too. And one of the reasons I started writing about politics and race is that I saw how the extreme negative rhetoric coming from the left was slowly radicalising people. So far so good.
But the switch I missed was how ostensibly reasonable people like yourself would get to a point where you'd say "so what?" about right-wing influencers being paid by Russia to spread propaganda to the American people. Where you'd claim, without evidence, that the Democrats are calling Trump, Hitler, but be unmoved by the fact that his own vice-president elect did the same thing.
It's also the different standards by which you judge Left and Right. I wonder, for example, if you can express what the issue with Hunter Biden's laptop was, or why the story has so enraged people. I bet almost everybody talking about the suppression of the story (where, again, we are able to agree the suppression is bad with neither of us saying, "so what?") has no real idea what was ON the laptop or whether it was criminal or really much of anything other than DEMS BAD.
So the shift I'm talking about in that case of people like yourself is that you're mostly the same as you've always been in the case of your criticism of the Democrats, maybe a little more hyperbolic, but you are willing to give a near-unlimited pass to Trump and his cronies. And I say "near-unlimited" not because I've seen any evidence that there *is* a limit, but because if I don't tell myself that there is a limit somewhere, I'll give up all hope.
Though honestly, where that limit could lie if Jan 6th wasn't enough is a mystery to me.
I used to laugh at the videos of Trump's supporters being asked "what could Trump do to lose your vote," and see them admit that there was basally nothing. But that seems to be becoming a majority view.
I certainly did miss that shift.
p.s. thanks for the links, I’m knee deep in analysis of the election and will add these to the list. Curiosity really is my overriding feeling.
Hi, Steve, thanks for keeping that link to UnHerd, column written by David Samuels. I have just subscribed. If you haven't read it, his take on Barack Obama as an "eminence grise" or Shadow President is the term he used, behind Kamala Harris's presidential bid is an eye-opener.
"his take on Barack Obama as an "eminence grise" or Shadow President is the term he used, behind Kamala Harris's presidential bid is an eye-opener."
I might be losing my mind here, but could you point to a single line in his piece where he actually makes the case that Obama was the "shadow president"? I read this one first as you singled it out, and I've now read it twice, and I'm reeling that it ever got past the scrutiny of a halfway decent editor.
Where is the evidence that Obama "ordered" Biden out? As the article claims repeatedly. Where is the evidence that Obama was running the government Biden was too senile to run? Samuels openly admits that the "$500 million to $1 billion" estimates of Obama's wealth are unfounded rumours, but then hangs some kind of conspiracy about Obama "having it both ways" on this rumour.
Then there's the paradox of accusing a man whose catchphrase during the election cycle was literally "Don't boo, vote," of wanting to "protect democracy from American voters." Especially in defence of a man, the only man in history, who tried to forcibly overturn a democratic American election.
Even the idea that it's "strange" that Obama stayed in Washington after his presidency was over ignores the crucial detail his daughter was still in school in Washington after the end of his term, so it made sense for the family to stay in the city they'd been living in for eight years.
I'm asking sincerely, could you tell me what you found compelling about this take on Obama?
Social media are toxic.
Nice to stay in touch with distant friends but they bring out the worst in people. Free speech means unchallenged lies. Factionalism is soaring. The very worst pecan now find millions like them
“Stay and fight “ is folly
Free speech means you can challenge EVERY lie and have completely open, and often deeply uncomfortable, discussions and maybe try and get to a truth.
You’re dreaming
Yes, the worst pecan now find millions. You mention "Unchallenged lies". The opposite of that is challenged/censored truths. Both cause harm. Where do you see the right mix and should it be centrally controlled? We all want truth, and does someone get to be the one authority on truth?
“Who gets to decide” isn’t an argument, it’s an evasion
If you agree with the decider, then calling it an evasion is convenient as it doesn't impact you. All other scenarios, especially where you vehemently disagree with the decider, and it is never just evasion. My point is self-evident.
Yet people complain that Musk decided to reduce censorship on twitter when he bought it. They see a difference in policy pertaining to censorship based upon who would be the decider, Harris or Trump. It is very widely viewed as a BFD.
I am interested in the reason why you think it is evasion. Not to argue or try to change your mind, but to understand that thought. i view you as an intelligent man so I don't dismiss your view just because it is different from mine.
I have to respectfully dissent. "Who gets to decide" is the CORE issue about managed information (ie: censorship).
It's like saying "we could save a lot of trouble by just immediately jailing all criminals without the expense of trials". The key problem is "who gets to decide which people get immediately jailed, absent the give and take of testing competing narratives and evidence provided by a trial?".
In a system using democratic voting, control of information is control of government, period.
I do agree about social media sometimes bringing out the worst in people. Alas, I think elections today also do that.
If the Trump administration tries to impose "truth filtering" onto legacy media or social media, will you find value in free speech again? Will the question of "who controls it" seem more central, and less like just an evasion, then?