Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

Honestly I defended the text because it pretty accurately highlighted what I don't like about Trump. You're right there are swathes of British people most likely who don't see it the same way. I completely failed to take all of them into account, which is ironically the exact mentality that made Brexit happen and got Trump into power.

I thought I hated people, but I dont travel enough. Maybe I hate Americans. Im not joking here.

Not to get all defensive, but Americans can’t really be generalized like people from much smaller, more homogeneous countries. But by all means, generalize people by state. It’s what we do here and it’s just way more accurate. 

The comical piece has a massive blind spot. We have a PM who people think have wit but has never actually said anything funny, he just has silly hair. We are masters of irony yet the masses not seem to notice the hypocrisy of clapping for the NHS whilst voting for a party that have gut it and are looking for the first opportunity to sell it. The reality is in recent years we have just been slightly behind the US in terms of making stupid choices, but we soon manage it. 

  On 5/14/2020 at 10:30 AM, Candiru said:

Not to get all defensive, but Americans can’t really be generalized like people from much smaller, more homogeneous countries. But by all means, generalize people by state. It’s what we do here and it’s just way more accurate. 

Yes you can.

The lack of take up in that boris thread made me think people didn't see him as in the same league as trump or bolsonaro etc 

Now I guess it's obvious to anyone he  most definitly is. 

  On 5/14/2020 at 11:14 AM, rhmilo said:

Yes you can.

Go ahead then. 

  On 5/14/2020 at 11:28 AM, Candiru said:

Go ahead then. 

I do it all the time.

  On 5/14/2020 at 9:28 AM, goDel said:

Must be a bit of Lost in Translation going on here, I'm guessing. A typical Brit might think it's a rather amusing piece of text. Others think it's a load of BS which looks like it wants to put itself on an unreasonable high white horse.
If you want to understand that other side, think of how people would typically think of British tourists. Are they little trolling bullies like Trump? Or are they these civilised creatures that never bully, hate trolling, and love David over Goliath? The Brits may not like Trump for the same reasons people don't like British tourists.

  On 5/14/2020 at 10:30 AM, Candiru said:

Not to get all defensive, but Americans can’t really be generalized like people from much smaller, more homogeneous countries. But by all means, generalize people by state. It’s what we do here and it’s just way more accurate. 

The UK is pretty diverse for its size with different cultures & peoples in it. The multitude of different dialects/accents speaks for itself. Brits are similar to Germans, just more polite and passive-aggressive, also more talkative & less serious, by tendency, and different historical & political baggage. But individual differences always outweigh cultural ones.

I wish to see more of the US. Next time I cross the Atlantic I wanna see New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle, maybe some of the countryside, too. I really liked New York. It was fun interacting with the people there but I know it's a left-liberal stronghold and is by no means representative of the whole US with 330 million people living in different climate and time zones.

Maybe the national differences are generally less important than urban/rural differences, meaning British people in rural areas have more in common with American people in rural areas than with their respective countrymen in cities? Or a farmer from Louisiana has more in common with a farmer in Washington than with people living in the capitals of these places. Not sure about that, though. Also, rural in the US is different from rural in places like the UK or also Germany, where the population density is relatively high. In the US there really is vast no-man's-land. Who knows what sort of hillbillies hide there and occasionally vote?

Also, let's not forget projective identification.

All across the U.S., rural areas tend toward red and urban areas tend more toward blue.  It's really interesting to think about why the "swing states" are swing states (Florida, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania) and why they have such a more or less equal mix of ideologies.

Taking my home state of Ohio, the northern and eastern parts of the state were traditionally very industrial and have a bunch of New England transplants (around the year 1800) and European immigrants from the early 1900s that tend to go toward blue, Columbus and Cincinnati go blue, but the parts near West Virginia and Kentucky are so hillbilly it's not even funny, and the western part of the state is almost pure farmland that's very sparsely populated.

  On 5/14/2020 at 4:49 PM, randomsummer said:

All across the U.S., rural areas tend toward red and urban areas tend more toward blue.  It's really interesting to think about why the "swing states" are swing states (Florida, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania) and why they have such a more or less equal mix of ideologies.

Taking my home state of Ohio, the northern and eastern parts of the state were traditionally very industrial and have a bunch of New England transplants (around the year 1800) and European immigrants from the early 1900s that tend to go toward blue, Columbus and Cincinnati go blue, but the parts near West Virginia and Kentucky are so hillbilly it's not even funny, and the western part of the state is almost pure farmland that's very sparsely populated.

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florida for example.. the west coast of florida (venice, tampa, naples) are republican strongholds full of rich wankers. also, old people everywhere in florida and parts of florida are super poor and religious or retired living on fixed income.. then you have south florida.. ft lauderdale, miami, coconut grove, south beach.. which are mostly left leaning but also full of retired people, super rich people, conservative cubans etc.. and the disparity in wealth is so evident in parts of miami.. it's crazy.  super rich coastal neighborhoods in coconut grove and 3 blocks out towards US1 and there's car jackings at intersections and public housing and super poor people living in slum lord housing. 

i'd argue that parts of florida cannot be understood.  there are plenty of trump idiots, reclusive racists who live in small towns with no neighbors nearby because they're scared of something.  then towards the coast it's super chill and beach like laid back people who are more outgoing and inclusive. 

once you get out of central miami and north miami beach and south miami.. it gets dizzying with all the cognitive dissonance.  

trying to make this post make sense is a challenge because my brain is jumping all over the place.

Yeah, if you try to make sense of Florida your gonna have a bad time.

My home state (Rhode Island) is predominantly left-leaning, sprinkled with some conservative pockets in - wait for it - the rural fringe communities.  Our state legislature has a Democratic hypermajority, which from afar might look seem interesting and perhaps even promising, but - wait for it - the establishment here is a corrupt cesspool of cronyism and incompetence.  Recently, when a sizeable contingent of progressive female reps had established a caucus within the party to advance things like good government reforms (in the vein of Katie Porter & AOC), the RI democrats basically rewrote their bylaws to ban them from doing so.  Ironically we're still considered a "union" state, i.e., you need to get/stay in the good graces of labor unions to stay in office.

The democratic party on the whole is shite.  Maybe not as bad as the repubs, but that's a fucking low bar these days.

Also, our electoral college votes haven't gone to a non-democrat in like 60 years (Mondale even got us lol), yet another one of the many reasons the electoral college sucks.

the democrats are just politicians that don't focus on catering to the rich at the expense of doing things to help the country. this is the fault line that forms the parties. "low taxes" is dog whistle for "hey rich people." sure, lower income people like the idea of low taxes too, and therein lies the rub. double whammy: you get a constituency base, AND you attract the big donors. all you need to do is placate the base while pandering to the donors. the rich are magnetized toward the right. they're folks like us all, mostly casual observers without an appetite to sort out all minutae. because of this gravitation of big funding, there's a natural tendency for the party that inhabits that niche to creep toward corruption and disingenuousness. the other partisan issues are more happenstance, shit sliding downward into puddles from the ridge formed at the fault line. i.e., the wedge issues of the needed consituency to exploit.

some generalization brain droppings for you guys. but it can be strange to try to understand the nature of the parties and i've found that concept helpful.

dems/repubs is just a power struggle shifting one way or the other. it's always about obtaining or holding on to power.  there's plenty of corruption to go around. on a national level the republicans in congress under mcconnel are particularly savage and ruthless and have no trouble throwing away the rules to get their way. 

state/local governments often have a similar dynamic but there's always exceptions to the rule and level headed people trying to do stuff for the common good.

there's always going to be a right. it's hard to imagine the metric of more vs less taxes not being the dominant dimension, because it is the simplest psychological concept, the lowest common denominator. i don't take issue with the concept of the right, and generally just seek to show rightists how they have been misled by those they follow. i think the establishment gop, in its current iteration, is quite deceptive. i think it's a result of that tendency for the party catering to the rich to slide toward corruption. the pbs documentary the divided states of america illustrates how the gop under obama decided on a game plan of identity politics and stonewalling, because they were on the ropes in 2008, after wallstreet deregulation precipitated a global economic collapse and bush sat on his hands for months as markets were in freefall, waiting for his term to be up. they lost both chambers and the white house. the iraq war was a horrible disaster. '09 is when mcconnell became GOP leader in the senate, and he has gleefully quarterbacked this deceptive practice ever since.

btw, November 3, 2020 will be the last chance for Kentucky to do something about mcconnell for 6 years. running against him is amy mcgrath. she's a former fighter pilot and she is dope af.

  On 5/14/2020 at 10:27 AM, marf said:

I thought I hated people, but I dont travel enough. Maybe I hate Americans. Im not joking here.

 

  On 5/14/2020 at 9:46 PM, very honest said:

btw, November 3, 2020 will be the last chance for Kentucky to do something about mcconnell for 6 years. running against him is amy mcgrath. she's a former fighter pilot and she is dope af.

 

would love to see that turtle fuck mcconnell put out to pasture. way past his time. can't believe he's been in congress since 1984. he went totally off the rails during the Obama years, and there's no sign he is ever going to have a sane point of view ever again.

  On 5/14/2020 at 10:34 PM, zero said:

would love to see that turtle fuck mcconnell put out to pasture. way past his time. can't believe he's been in congress since 1984. he went totally off the rails during the Obama years, and there's no sign he is ever going to have a sane point of view ever again.

he's one of these soulless dudes who is beyond the pale, yes. mcgrath is polling competitively, and closing the gap.

graham is also up in 2020, and feeling some heat from opponent jaime harrison, in south carolina.

  On 5/14/2020 at 9:46 PM, very honest said:

btw, November 3, 2020 will be the last chance for Kentucky to do something about mcconnell for 6 years. running against him is amy mcgrath. she's a former fighter pilot and she is dope af.

 

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i sent $20 to her campaign months ago.  she was within margin of error for a while. gonna be tough to defeat the turtle though. 

  On 5/14/2020 at 11:14 AM, rhmilo said:

Yes you can.

Whooosh

you can generalize any group negatively and people will love it

  On 5/15/2020 at 2:00 AM, very honest said:

you can generalize any group negatively and people will love it

There usually are negative aspects about any group. Pointing them out can sometimes be helpful and/or insightful, other times not.

  On 5/15/2020 at 2:20 AM, dingformung said:

There usually are negative aspects about any group. Pointing them out can sometimes be helpful and/or insightful, other times not.

 

sure. i just like to point out the distinct human phenomenon for profound suffering to result from generalizing groups negatively, and how it is something that people often enjoy participating in. the holocaust, slavery, all kinds of genocide and oppression entail this behavior of painting individuals with a derisive generality. in private friend groups it's commonly lauded as amusing. i know i don't need to tell you about that, dingformung, but you prompted me to post some thoughts on this thing that i find relevant, these days.

it kind of seems like we evolved an instinct for this harmful behavior as warring tribes, and don't even realize when we are engaging in it. some people don't want to let go of using the word "faggot." it's not worth the trade-off, to them, to contribute to fighting against this strange tendency that, as many know, causes severe suffering. offenders enjoy it too much to let it go, or don't realize that they're contributing to a strange phenomenon that manifests insanely harmful consequences.

this ties in with the rise of trump. he tapped into the pent-up energy of people who feel censored by increasing social norms of sensitivity. this crevice in society was targetted by cambridge analytica, it's a psychological attack vector to exploit. people are annoyed by political correctness. sometimes you have to walk them through the logic behind the social norms of sensitivity, and point out how generalizing groups negatively is the exact thing that the nazis used to rationalize their genocide, and that slave owners used to justify their offenses, and that contributed to african americans suffering profound racism in the 20th century. they don't get the cause for caution and sensitivity.

the other piece that people miss is that it's about not setting the example for idiots. maybe you think its harmless to engage in amusing generalizations in a private friend group, but setting the example perpetuates the culture from which malignant instances of the behavior emerge. there are traceable lineages of influence branching out from observed example, that's just sociology.

sounding pretty preachy, but i'm more coming from a place of finding it an interesting and signficant thing.