It's easy to be dyspeptic, as Neal Gabler puts it in Farewell America: “so many professed to hate both candidates. (But it turned out to be the hate election because, and let’s not mince words, of the hatefulness of the electorate…. This country has survived a civil war, two world wars, and a great depression. Many say we will survive this, too. Maybe, but not unscathed. We know too much about each other to heal.”
Yipe! No, I won’t dive down that hole. Nor will I (this time) tally up the list of cartoon characters that each day Mr. Trump is seen packing into the new government of the United States. As I predicted, they are almost all former Bushite factotums. (Though at the crazy wing.) Despite DT's professed spite toward that clan, this is shaping up to be Bush III.
Meanwhile, he hints that he’ll be living in Trump Tower, not the White House. Think about what that...
No. No. We’ll stay on-topic and continue post-morteming why the recent gut-punch just happened. So let’s resume by going back to the conservative punditocracy.
Some of them take Donald Trump at his word. That he intends to aggressively reverse the only successful international order the world has ever seen, in which a (mostly) benign American pax oversaw and protected a mostly-calm world. The first world order since Sumeria in which most nations could peacefully develop without pouring half their wealth into armies.
Meanwhile, he hints that he’ll be living in Trump Tower, not the White House. Think about what that...
No. No. We’ll stay on-topic and continue post-morteming why the recent gut-punch just happened. So let’s resume by going back to the conservative punditocracy.
Some of them take Donald Trump at his word. That he intends to aggressively reverse the only successful international order the world has ever seen, in which a (mostly) benign American pax oversaw and protected a mostly-calm world. The first world order since Sumeria in which most nations could peacefully develop without pouring half their wealth into armies.
Okay fire away, you mavens of the right. Explain this.
== Maybe it was tactics? ==
Among the most important (non-rigging) factors deciding this race was turnout.
“Democrats have worried about the problem that has dogged them throughout the Age of Obama: Unless Obama is on the ballot himself, Democrats have trouble turning out their voters. This hurt Clinton in all of the Rust Belt states she lost to Trump. The Obama political machine turns out to be non-transferrable…. Yes, she enjoyed a 54 percent-42 percent advantage over Trump among female voters, but this “gender gap” was about the same as Barack Obama’s advantage over John McCain and Mitt Romney. Hillary’s candidacy didn’t alter the equation.”
“Democrats have worried about the problem that has dogged them throughout the Age of Obama: Unless Obama is on the ballot himself, Democrats have trouble turning out their voters. This hurt Clinton in all of the Rust Belt states she lost to Trump. The Obama political machine turns out to be non-transferrable…. Yes, she enjoyed a 54 percent-42 percent advantage over Trump among female voters, but this “gender gap” was about the same as Barack Obama’s advantage over John McCain and Mitt Romney. Hillary’s candidacy didn’t alter the equation.”
Oh, there’s plenty of blame to go around. If Beyonce and Michelle and Obama weren't enough to get the black vote out, then self-interest should have. But I heard a lot of "why bother?" and “They’re all the same!” bullshit from quite a number of African-Americans, interviewed on the air. Anecdotal, sure. But it prompts thoughts.
Others point to tactical mistakes. Mark Anderson writes: “If there was a fatal flaw to the Clinton campaign, it was this strategy: she sold it as the chance to put the first woman in the White House. And while most women loved this, it turns out that this group (women for Clinton) comprises less than half of the country. Hillary's decision to make this about one gender over another had a predictable effect: it worked, leading to a gender-centric fight with Trump. It was a fight that, going simply by the numbers, she could not possibly win."
Also, she thought that ads portraying DT's outrageous craziness and falsehoods would sway those less-educated white male aging boomers, but I saw the reactions of many. They laughed out loud, delighted by the effrontery and how it galled their college-grad, smartypants kids & cousins. It just made Trump look "strong."
Also, she thought that ads portraying DT's outrageous craziness and falsehoods would sway those less-educated white male aging boomers, but I saw the reactions of many. They laughed out loud, delighted by the effrontery and how it galled their college-grad, smartypants kids & cousins. It just made Trump look "strong."
Me? You know I offered the dems dozens of polemical riffs that could have made a difference. Like challenging Donald Trump to name august Republican members of a bipartisan commission to:
-- investigate his accusations of rigging…
-- provide a neutral, accepted fact-checking service…
-- sift his tax records - confidentially - and assure us nothing much is there…
-- vet his “secret plans” to defeat ISIS and replace Obamacare and verify at least the plans aren’t smoke…
-- did I mention a fact-checking service?
Here's the point I tried to make. You do not corner good-old-boys and their wives with facts or rebuttals. What works is dares! Challenges, wagers that only a wuss would refuse. In this case, if he balked, it would have looked terrible. Whiney and cowardly. ("What, you can't find any smart and respectable republicans to appoint?")
If he accepted, he’d risk ‘betrayal’ by his appointees. A lose-lose situation for him. The very thing that DT did to her. It’s called judo, Hillary. And, clearly, we need politicians who know some. As Putin does.
If he accepted, he’d risk ‘betrayal’ by his appointees. A lose-lose situation for him. The very thing that DT did to her. It’s called judo, Hillary. And, clearly, we need politicians who know some. As Putin does.
The dems' best judo move for 2018? Nominate 250 retired colonels to run in every single "safe" Republican district. More on this, soon
== More unforced errors ==
In other words, if people perceive an insanely stupid false equivalency, then it can still be effective.
On Mannon’s list is one that I think plumbs toward the core truth… “Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions,” says alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. “That’s a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is.” Trump is "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness.”
Yes, we are getting closer now, to the heart of it. Talk to any member of the Fox Public and you will get this refrain. Resentment of patronization and blue guilt-tripping. The endless nagging that they feel – whether intended or not – from those city-university folks.
And sure, much of this is utter hype, since statistically the middle class always does better in every way, across the span of democratic administrations than republican ones. Yet, bragging about that could have opposite effects, giving an impression you do not feel Middle America's very real pain.
== The ‘gut’ of the matter ==
“The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest….. As anybody who has gone through a particularly nasty breakup knows, disdain cultivated in the aftermath of a divide quickly exceeds the original grievance… Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The problem with this Rensin assertion is that he cites no examples. We all know that he could, if he tried. For example, radio raconteur Garrison Keillor recently opined: “So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president.”
Keillor seems to justify Rensin: “We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant.”
Staring at the fervid, Trumpist rallies, Keillor comments: “It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.”
Keillor fails to mention also scientists, teachers, doctors, economists, journalists, civil servants and every other American profession that deals in strange, mystical things called “knowledge and facts.” We have a right to be angry that Fox & Friends have waged war on all knowledge “elites” for decades, while never against the ripoff oligarchy.
And yet, just by saying all that, am I, in turn, pushing our Trumpist brethren against a wall?
And yet, just by saying all that, am I, in turn, pushing our Trumpist brethren against a wall?
No. Rensin’s guilt trip – while pointing to a region where much work must be done – is intrinsically bullshit. Quoting one of the regular commenters, under this blog: “If someone claims the moon landings were a hoax, and then gets angry when someone who knows different acts smug to them, what's to be done about it?”
(I've said the same thing about fanatics who believe - and fervently pray - that the world is about to end, in a spectacularly gruesome and sadistic revenge festival-apocalypse, in which nearly all of their neighbors, fellow citizens and their children will suffer eternal damnation and torture. Folks fervently desiring an end to all human freedom, ambition, accomplishment, diversity... and the United States of America. Sure, it is their right to wish all that. But the world needs for us to keep their hands off The Bomb.)
Keillor concludes: “America is still the land where the waitress’s kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night. Whooping it up for the candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids.”
Oh, but is this anything new? Indeed, one can feel for the rural(ish) trauma that happens every June, when the local High School -- center of all life in most towns -- holds graduation. The teens who are the pride of their community hug and cry... whereupon the best and brightest then streak out of town as fast as their legs can carry them, heading toward city lights and university strongholds of The Enemy. That implicit rebuke happens every single year and it must wear on the souls of those who stay behind, who thereupon create a mythology of the city-as-Mordor. A cesspit of iniquity, lacking all the wholesomeness of small town America...
...despite the real truth about which America has higher rates of teen sex, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, divorce, STDs, unwed mothers, dropouts... and if you leave out a few truly dismal cities, higher crime rates.
No. There must be real outreach! And hence, I'll soon expand upon my suggestion that the Dems recruit several hundred retired colonels and Navy captains to run in every GOP gerrymandered "safe" district down to the state assembly level. (Watch how many more members of the awesomely mature and responsible US military officer corps retire, during the Trump years.)
That is how to "reach out" to those aging, bitter, non-college white male boomers. Not by emulating Foxite pandering, but by sending them folks they will respect enough to listen-to.
Send them adults.
No. There must be real outreach! And hence, I'll soon expand upon my suggestion that the Dems recruit several hundred retired colonels and Navy captains to run in every GOP gerrymandered "safe" district down to the state assembly level. (Watch how many more members of the awesomely mature and responsible US military officer corps retire, during the Trump years.)
That is how to "reach out" to those aging, bitter, non-college white male boomers. Not by emulating Foxite pandering, but by sending them folks they will respect enough to listen-to.
Send them adults.
DB:
ReplyDeleteYou once wrote about the media's long campaign championing Otherness and inclusion.
What the heck happened to that? Is it still going on, just overwhelmed by counter-memes encouraging paranoia and fear ("24")?
* * *
One thing we really, really, really need right now is civics education content aimed at young people. A teen / twenty something version of Schoolhouse Rock, emphasizing the stakes and what is in it for them. Skip the Founding Fathers nostalgia memes; it has to be about them, for them.
* * *
In the same vein:
Ruben Bolling's next installment of "Tom the Dancing Bug" -- due to be posted in BoingBoing in a few days -- is a great spin on the "How a Bill Becomes a Law" cartoon. It is about the Electoral College, and includes a quote from Hamilton on the need for the a fit chief executive:
This is reflected in his later fears about the types of people who could potentially become president. He worries that corrupted individuals could, particularly those who are either more directly associated with a foreign state, or individuals who do not have the capacity to run the country. The former is covered by Article II, Section 1, v of the United States Constitution, while the latter is covered by Hamilton in Federalist 68, where he notes that the person who will become president will have to be a person who possesses the faculties necessary to be a president, stating that,
"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._68#Hamilton.27s_understanding_of_the_Electoral_College
The current situation screams for Hamilton's interpretation.
DB:
ReplyDeleteOne thing entirely entirely unaddressed in your post -- I had to go back and look -- is the very real problem of making a decent living in "deindustrialized" areas. The financial and emotional stresses of underemployment could go a long way to explain just why those rural-red areas have so many social problems.
Trump provided simple, appealing, "solutions" which, while totally unfeasible, blamed the problem on big government (trade deals) and foreigners (stealing our factories!). His solutions won't work, but the appeal did. Now that he's in, who cares? He can blame his failures on the modern version of the Kulaks.
Democrats are going to need to offer real, smart solutions to this problem. Not just retraining; some kind of investment. We're talking industrial socialism here. What industries would be involved, I'm not sure. CO2 scrubbers, and prefab seawall modules to protect cities from rising seas, maybe.
I'd say, Dr. Brin, that the attitude of resentment born of watching youngsters leave... the knowledge that opportunity is elsewhere... that powers the sore-winner syndrome seen here, where it's not enough to win, but that ritual humiliation must be achieved to receive peace. There's more to it, including the tie-in to the sin/penance structure of certain sects of Christanity, but that's the main thrust.
ReplyDeleteThe question from an economic standpoint is how much distribution of jobs and wealth is required for domestic tranquility. Piling all the wealth in a few places is not healthy -- not for the cities (have you tried to rent an apartment anywhere in the Bay Area?) and not for the countryside. Blue islands can be found in nearly every red state; why not make it policy to encourage their growth? Re-create that sense that the best of each bright period in American history, that each of these communities are links in a chain that bind and strengthen them all, rather than the sense that they die on the vine.
And then the kids aren't "leaving". They're in the local big city, a couple hours' drive away. Sure, they're mixing with all sorts of funny-looking and weird-sounding people there... but they're in touch. And who knows? Maybe they'll see a play... I can name a good one about the Founding Fathers... and have their mind a little broadened.
See, there used to be this little thing called "middlebrow culture". It was a meeting place where smartypants and dumb hicks could meet and agree to like certain things in common. It might also be a good idea.
It won't work for everyone. There will still be Confederate holdouts all over the place. But if it's enough, if it's a consensus.... we could build our Fourth America.
But it starts with rejecting what America shouldn't be, in favor of respect and honor and duty and tradition: things our estranged fellow citizens deeply value... and which Trump and his collection of Bushites and Jacobins won't care a fig for.
"...which Trump and his collection of Bushites and Jacobins won't care a fig for."
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah.
The one group which Trump could insult, and not get away with it, is the rank-and-file military. He has already ignorantly smeared generals and one prominent POW. One hot-mike incident and his popularity -- already low -- will plummet to "any excuse to impeach" levels.
ReplyDeleteDavid gets things completely backwards when he states that "the most important (non-rigging) factors deciding this race was turnout" since, the truth be told, the most important factors deciding this turnout were race (1) , followed shortly thereafter by economics (2) and equality (3).
(1) The prominence of race was self-evident. Fancying themselves the pro-diversity party from the get-go, the US Democrats positioned themselves as minority representatives for blacks, hispanics, the LBGTQ & a few 'good whites' who were properly ashamed of their historical privilege. By the process of exclusion & default then, this implied that the US Republicans were the de facto representatives of the remaining majority. And, as always, majorities wins elections.
(2) The second factor was economics. Even though, statistically speaking, the middle class always does better across the span of democratic administrations than republican ones, this is 'old news' which does not consider how thoroughly the US Middle Class has been gutted by the globalist agenda, making this an irrelevant observation in regards to this election in specific. The middle class is now moribund & nearly dead.
(3) Ironically, the third factor only comes into play because of the many successes of multiculturalism. Years of indoctrination have taught us that everyone (and I mean 'everyone') is equal, meaning that blacks are equal to whites, professionals are interchangeable with amateurs, bigots are interchangeable with multiculturalists, the ignorant are the equal of the educated, and the rural are the EQUAL of the urban.
And, 1 + 2 = 3.
Unfortunately, many who live in the past cannot accept the inevitability of this new math. Like my parents. Even though I explain these historical documents to them as if they were children. Especially when those thought long silenced, disenfranchised & virtually extinct raise their hate-filled voices & their extended arms in archaic salute.
"But, some of those Trump supporters are Nazis," they exclaim in panic, while I do my best to comfort them, by explaining how those Nazis are the new disenfranchised minority who have an equal right to free speech & self-empowerment in our Age of Cultural Relativism.
Best
Stefan Jones: the Otherness campaign is still here. Moana being the latest installment of demonstrating Otherness to our youth. It even makes fun of the very genre it's a part of!
ReplyDeletelocum's argument on the prime factors of the election result is slightly dented by the fact that, despite all the truthiness spun from the President-Elect on down, the Trump coalition is not a majority. Twenty or so years ago, they would have been... which is why the Clinton running twenty years ago did pander strongly to the race factor during elections. And then turned around and ran so many progressive programs that he was considered, for the time, an effectively 'black' president.
ReplyDeleteEconomics was the driver for the 'swing' voters, the ones that delivered the Rust Belt. Race first came into it as the scapegoat explanation: "it's THEIR fault", THEM and the hateable lords of finance and globalization that enabled them. (Never mind that automation is the main job-killer of the early 21st century.) It was then boosted by the effect locum mentions, that the swing vote block felt excluded from the coalition by the emphasis on identity politics... that didn't mention *their* identity anymore. (It used to! And can again!)
As for the third factor, locum is peddling pure bunkum. Multiculturalism does not equal idiocracy, though it actually does (if followed through) say that urbanites and rural folks should be equal before the law and in culture. As I understood it, multiculturalism was meant precisely to make sure that the spigots feeding the melting pot were open, not that we were abolishing the melting pot for a series of separate Mason jars.
Though I have seen extremists on all sides call for just that! As they have throughout American history. The alt-right neo-Nazis are among them, as were the black-homeland enthusiasts and the Back-to-Africa crowd, whose only achievement in all these years was the tiny and now disempowered tribe of the Old Elite of Liberia. I do not truck with such. The first half of a hyphenated identity is what you bring to the table; the second is the table you share it with.
I do not wish to consider myself "white", though our society presently demands I do so. But Scottish-American? That I embrace with pride.
The Loco Weed ignores:
ReplyDelete* Gerrymandering to weaken the voting power of minorities
* Selectively closing polling places
* Restricting early voting
* Arbitrary purging of voting rolls
* Voter ID laws, specifically formulated to restrict turnout of minority voters.
A little of the above here and there and your party has a lock on things.
Demographics will doom all of their efforts eventually, and We. Will. Remember. what they did.
Locum, you are practicing what was at one time called The Big Lie, wherein a whole-cloth falsehood is strengthened by leavening it with some facts. Yes, for example, blacks should be equal to whites (and why not?) but the rest of that sentence only makes any sense in an Orwellian, Animal-Farm, "Some animals are more equal than others" way.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to imply that, because Democrats "fancy themselves the pro-diversity party" that no self-respecting straight white person would have anything to do with them, and this manufactured the Republicans as the majority. I have serious doubts about your math here.
Yes, the American middle class is in trouble, but don't call them down for the count.
Vote for Al Franken '20
ReplyDeleteWhere's the racial split? Plenty of blacks voted for Trump. The "why" is identical.
ReplyDeleteStefan… look up Richard Dreyfuss’s core campaign to get “civics” back into the schools. Good Federalist quote.
ReplyDeletelocumranch was SO on his meds, this time that he gets his full name. His offerings are cogent and - while mostly wrong - offer genuine insight into the subjective roar that propel’s angry red America. And yet, we are left with the plain and simple fact that the more people know, and use facts, the more repelled they are by these “truthy” assertions.
He also gave us a glimpse of his background - young enough to still have parents. Parents with whom we can all sympathize, with sighs. But they do love him. So should we.
When will you cover #pizzagate?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaM3GIEX0yU
This is to sweep under the rug the equally dubious Trump statutory rape reports, right? LOOK! SQUIRREL!
ReplyDeleteHere are a few questions
ReplyDelete1. Do we need an industrial version of the Agricultural Adjustment Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act ? Remember that when he took over, automation was driving radicalism within the rural states. This act didn't stop automation, but it did tamp down on the radicalism enough to gave the market time enough to act. After WWII, most developed nations adopted a version of this act.
2. Retiring boomers will play merry havoc with the electoral college. Heck, it's possible that it won't be until 2028 that a President wins both the popular vote AND the Electoral College (when this phenomenon exhausts itself).
In the interests of clarity, is your evidence of "almost certain electoral rigging" that the vote count and the exit polls diverged? Because if so I have laid down a few markers, with requests for more data, that have been ignored.
ReplyDeleteI posit that exit polls, heck, polls in general, undercount Conservatives because said folks are less likely to participate. What with, you know, being maligned and all. I might not be right. But perhaps could this rather plausible theory be actually discussed? You do not need to invoke Russkies and Diebold trickery to explain the surprising electoral results. Just a lots of average citizens deciding they won't interact with the pollsters. I sure didn't.
Tacitus
Catfish N Cod:
ReplyDeleteAnd who knows? Maybe they'll see a play... I can name a good one about the Founding Fathers... and have their mind a little broadened.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Name your cabinet position in the new State of Hamilton. Treasury or State, maybe?
locumranch:
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, many who live in the past cannot accept the inevitability of this new math. Like my parents. Even though I explain these historical documents to them as if they were children.
Your parents are wise not to believe anything you tell them. They probably know you well enough to understand that you are a liar.
They probably still love you, though. So there's that. So much disappointment, though.
Back when I was a tot--when the earth was still cooling in the 1960s--you could still see World War II in the rear view mirror. No self-respecting American right-winger of that day (John Birchers, the KKK, George Wallace, even Barry Goldwater) would have proudly proclaimed affiliation, let alone membership, with Nazism. A more likely response would have been a variation on the line by that guy in the "Rocketeer" movie (or The Joker in John Byrne's 1993 Batman/Captain America team up) : "I may be a criminal, but I'm an American criminal!"
ReplyDeleteUnalloyed good news:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wral.com/federal-court-orders-new-nc-legislative-elections-in-2017/16289906/
"Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina lawmakers must redraw their legislative districts by March 15 and hold new elections by the end of next year, a federal court ruled Tuesday.
That order follows up on a ruling from this summer that found lawmakers had unconstitutionally relied on race when they drew 28 state House and Senate districts."
Do that in every state that Gerrymanders, and suddenly Republicans have to give a damn about minorities.
Imagine.
Stefan Jones: re the "media's long campaign championing Otherness and inclusion" -
ReplyDelete"What the heck happened to that? Is it still going on, just overwhelmed by counter-memes encouraging paranoia and fear ("24")?"
It never stopped, BUT the two always ran together, and the story of 'inclusion' was always strictly nuanced.
Consider "Walking Dead," a show with at least 3 mixed race couples, including one led by a Pizza boy turned badass (a counter-trope Asian character, neither a Bruce Lee knock-off nor a smart-nerd rehash). Yet few shows have ever produced so much generalized paranoia (how many companies are selling 'zombie apocalypse survival' gear?).
Nobody watching such shows believes they influence their outlook, just as nobody believes they are influenced by advertising. Yet the numbers say otherwise, which is why advertising exists.
So it goes with Hillary: nobody believes they were influenced by the media machinery that launched a $20+ billion negative campaign against her for about 24 years. She spent a couple billion dollars to try to shift some of that toward Trump. She was outspent, not by the Trump campaign itself, but by an overarching system that goes back decades and utterly squelched the effect.
Tacitus2:
ReplyDeleteIn the interests of clarity, is your evidence of "almost certain electoral rigging" that the vote count and the exit polls diverged?
Your party's winning candidate himself asserts that the election was rigged. Who are we losers to argue?
I know, you didn't vote for the guy. Ok, for my part, exit polls are just one piece of evidence for something I know in my gut to be true. The fact that I can't prove it legally or scientifically means that I don't demand legal satisfaction. I stipulate that the game played out as it did. It doesn't change my conviction that we were robbed.
I posit that exit polls, heck, polls in general, undercount Conservatives because said folks are less likely to participate. What with, you know, being maligned and all.
There'd be no embarrassment to vocally acknowledging voting for Hillary?
I might not be right. But perhaps could this rather plausible theory be actually discussed? You do not need to invoke Russkies and Diebold trickery to explain the surprising electoral results. Just a lots of average citizens deciding they won't interact with the pollsters. I sure didn't.
...
I have laid down a few markers, with requests for more data, that have been ignored.
With all due respect, and you know I love ya', I have also laid down a marker that you also ignore. What theory explains that the exit polling is off in areas using untraceable, proprietary voting machines, but more accurate in other locations? Wouldn't conservative obstinateness or Trump embarrassment be more uniform across locations?
Stefan Jones:
ReplyDeleteUnalloyed good news:
Maybe not so unalloyed...
"Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina lawmakers must redraw their legislative districts by March 15 and hold new elections by the end of next year, a federal court ruled Tuesday.
The new Supreme Court could overturn that.
Locum: I'm chuckling here... "And, as always, majorities wins elections."
ReplyDeleteUm, not always. Indeed, they didn't win this time.
But your broader point remains. Yes, race was crucial. And while Hillary had endorsements and supports, she remains a 'white girl made good' - rather than a champion for group. That 'made good' story existed in a universe where every thing she did to make good was parsed and depicted as corruption. When Trump did far clearer acts of corruption, nobody cared (indeed, it was deemed 'smart').
"the US Republicans were the de facto representatives of the remaining majority."
As they have been for most of the last 22 years, at least, the geographic majority. And real estate, it turns out, really is everything.
"how thoroughly the US Middle Class has been gutted by the globalist agenda...The middle class is now moribund & nearly dead."
Many people in the working middle class have been squeezed, certainly - but the fact that they believe it's some 'globalist agenda' that is squeezing them while shopping at Wal-Mart and serving the agenda they claim to disdain illustrates the problem. This is a group that MUST oppose 'facts' because the fact is they buy what makes them feel uncomfortable for want of options and are compelled to resist that fact.
As for the "new disenfranchised minority" - they've NEVER been disenfranchised. People like me would never allow it, the 'majority' of the liberals who would hate what they say BUT defend their right to say it even so. At the end of the day, liberals will always listen - but they will not endorse. The 'feeling' of disenfranchisement you assert, despite a reality of full enfranchisement, is the basis for fear: people motivated by delusions are dangerous.
donzelion:
ReplyDeleteLocum: I'm chuckling here... "And, as always, majorities wins elections."
Um, not always. Indeed, they didn't win this time.
In all fairness, that sentence may not be a typo. Note that he didn't assert "The majority wins elections." Trump won the election by winning "majorities"--plural--within the states he needed.
A stopped clock is right twice a day.
And real estate, it turns out, really is everything.
Location, location, and location.
Many people in the working middle class have been squeezed, certainly - but the fact that they believe it's some 'globalist agenda' that is squeezing them while shopping at Wal-Mart and serving the agenda they claim to disdain illustrates the problem.
As does the bizarre fantasy that Republicans will do something to change the globalist agenda. Sure, President Obama wanted TPP, but who gave him the fast track authority and who opposed it? Y'know, I was always leery of TPP (because of the corporate end-runs around local law rather than because of jobs), but now, I hope the GOP congress gets it done so their supporters can see what they have wrought.
LarryH
ReplyDeletewe are getting closer to actually having the same conversation.
1. I submit that prior to the election, yes, it was more socially acceptable to admit support for HRC.
2. What I am looking for is some kind of, well, facts. Which precincts were sampled by exit polls? Which ones had the widest divergence between exit polls and recorded votes? What was the non response rate in divergent precincts? What criteria were used su extrapolate the affiliation of non responders? Historically have these been precincts more inclined to vote D or R? And, yes, is there a difference in use of paper vs electronic methods in districts that vote predominantly one way or the other? You could imagine that larger cities might be more inclined to make the capital investment in machines. Also that they vote more D. But do you have the data?
Hey, I have little to no problem with a recount if it is done in good faith. If it uncovers massive fraud I will be more surprised than you but equally indignant. Perhaps more so. But much as I respect your gut feelings....am I out of line to suggest that actual numbers should also be considered? If reality is not how you envisioned it, I am willing to consider the possibility - although I deem it small - that reality is being manipulated in nefarious ways. But having been wrong more than a few times, I also consider the possibility that the world is not exactly as you, or frankly I, imagined it to be.
Tacitus
Donzelion: As for the "new disenfranchised minority" - they've NEVER been disenfranchised. People like me would never allow it, the 'majority' of the liberals who would hate what they say BUT defend their right to say it even so. At the end of the day, liberals will always listen - but they will not endorse.
ReplyDeleteBut without at least partial endorsement.... they feel disenfranchised. There's the problem. It's an assumption that if their values are not being reflected back at them, they are being ignored. Buried within that is a deeper assumption: the self-evident universality of their memes. You listened, but didn't agree. But everyone should agree, so you must not really have listened.
That's the reason for the disconnect in how "threatened" they are by cultural shifts. Democrats stay mystified at how gay marriage "threatens" traditional marriage. What it really threatens is the assumption that no other ways exist -- or, at least, should exist -- in their interactions with society. It's a rejection of Otherness.
Actually, I think Tacitus is onto something there. People who would probably have voted for Trump I surmise to be conservative enough to walk away from exit pollsters, being of the generation (or mindset) where you don't discuss your income or how you voted, the 'none-of-your-business' group.
ReplyDeleteThe best example of the "Otherness" meme Down Under at present is the series "Cleverman", which investigates aboriginal mythos and melds it with immigrant hysteria in an interesting way: the objects of derision are *not* aborigines, but a co-existing race of "hairy" men which have just come to light, and are being kept in an inner Sydney enclave called "The Zone".*
ReplyDeleteWe also get a smattering of Dreamtime mythos leaking into reality, like the predatory Namorrodor. Pacing, continuity, and production values left a little to be desired in the first series, but the acting wasn't bad. I await the second season with interest.
* The police state premise had a lot more going for it before Immigration Minister Dutton pulled a ridiculous stunt of announcing spot street Visa checks... in *MELBOURNE*!!?? He got very short shrift from the populace (and the police), so I don't see people rolling over for establishing something like the Zone. Anyway...
Tacitus does raise an interesting point. One that the exit poll statistics I can find neither support nor reject.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see how the exit poll participating numbers have varied over time, How many were actually asked, and how many declined to answer.
What the CNN polling did indicate (from a national sample of 24558):
- Most low income voters voted for Clinton. Middle earners went Trump, but the high end veered back to Clinton.
- The only white demographic that predominately voted Clinton were college educated women
- ~40% of voters only made up their mind in the last week. This group split slightly more Trump's way than Clinton's. Thank you, Mr. Comey.
NB: these were national results. State results would be more interesting.
Tacitus2:
ReplyDeleteI submit that prior to the election, yes, it was more socially acceptable to admit support for HRC.
I'll grant you maybe this much--that it has become more common to vote for someone that you are embarrassed to admit voting for. I'm sure it was socially unacceptable to admit voting for Barry Goldwater back then too, but more people who found him to be unqualified for the position actually didn't vote for him because of that. Now, they're ashamed to admit that they voted for an unqualified candidate, but it doesn't stop them from doing it.
If the exit polls suddenly skewed Republican this election, I'd be more inclined to accept that explanation. But did the same voter embarrassment apply to Romney, McCain, and W? And the discrepancy between exit polls and vote totals, which is new in this century, just happens to always skew toward one party? That's why I'm inclined to believe the problem initiates with untraceable, proprietary voting machines.
Hey, I have little to no problem with a recount if it is done in good faith. If it uncovers massive fraud I will be more surprised than you but equally indignant. Perhaps more so.
The thing is, a recount of votes cast will not show how many voters were illegally denied their vote, either by purging from the voter rolls or by underserving of polling places. That's another kind of "rigging" that won't show up by looking at ballots cast.
Yes, I'm moving the goal posts, but then your conversation was really not with me. I chimed in to say I felt the election was stolen. The discrepancy with exit polls is confirmation evidence, but it's not the source of my sense of unfairness.
But much as I respect your gut feelings....am I out of line to suggest that actual numbers should also be considered? If reality is not how you envisioned it, I am willing to consider the possibility - although I deem it small - that reality is being manipulated in nefarious ways. But having been wrong more than a few times, I also consider the possibility that the world is not exactly as you, or frankly I, imagined it to be.
I also acknowledge that I may be misperceiving reality. That's why I'm not making a claim for action that anyone else is required to respond to. But I think I have at least as much right to the sense that "something is not right" as Donald Trump did when he thought he was going to lose and insisted that the election was rigged.
Re - Recount
ReplyDeleteI check a piece of damaged equipment before I throw it out or cannibalize it.
I also recheck a result if it seems unusual or not what I was expecting
Surely an election is important enough to warrant a re-check
SECOND attempt. I do not see first; please delete if first TOOK:
ReplyDeleteI don't see this in Carl Cannon comments nor in the above. This does take stringing together a couple of themes, but it seems as plausible as many.
The Democratic party did not know what was happening because they had had no one on the ground.
Much of what a party knows about regions comes from the local party, which is most active where there are actual members (in this case Democratic members) elected to office. I live in an area represented a Democratic House member. I get emails, I get invited to phone "conference" which is mainly the Representative talking about how issues relate to local area. I suspect the republicans do the same. Outside of elections I get little from the other parties (my party affiliation has been "decline to state" for several years now).
In 2010, many of these state districts were re-apportioned by Republican state government. You, David, have spoke to that. Districts were formed around cities with high concentration of Dems, which voted Dem or, like Utah, the cities were divided into minority regions and no Dems at all in the House for that state.
Now the Dems will get word of how the district is doing from the party Reps (Democratic party reps) who are in government and scant information where they do not have reps and where they have have little, have transient (just at election time), or not ground game. Yes much of the country was aware of economic problems, but not what the people were thinking or feeling (solution suggested was retrain so that people can move to where jobs are -- only the people did not want to move from culture they grew up and friend the knew [or even the other way around -- people they grew up with and culture they knew]). The Republican machine was aware of this, but these were usually Dem voters, so why pursue -- and the Repub machine failed to win enough of the primary (most of Trump with were plurality).
Enough has been covered on why the former Dem voters went to Trumps wild campaign. That is explained well elsewhere.
If the Dems are going to recover, I think they need to put permanent teams in the areas whether the have reps or not. This is not for campaigning, though if someone needs some help, the party should see what can be done just like a Rep. offers to help out. I am not knowledgeable to say how this is done or how it is paid for. But parties (all of them) need people, agents listening (and helping where it is with the philosophy or plank of the party).
What the Dems lost may be due to no one was paying attention because no Democratic Congress person felt need to keep contact. in an area that was not represented by a Dem.
LarryHart: Fair point re Locum's 'majorities.'
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm still curious how to set you at ease re the TPP. Let me try a different argument.
"Y'know, I was always leery of TPP (because of the corporate end-runs around local law rather than because of jobs),"
Fair enough, BUT do bear in mind how most local laws get made. America's not the only country with lobbyists after all. Corporations already shape local laws in most countries - but when they do, they do it with an eye toward self-interest, not local constituency interests. One purpose of the TPP (which is now probably as debt as it will get) would be to prevent some of those 'local' interests from operating to discriminate against foreigners.
Think what would happen if a cascade of countries respond to the Trump plan to "tax companies that leave the U.S." - and other countries reciprocate/retaliate against American firms with offices there. The corporations get squeezed, BUT they know quite well how to squeeze back - and who to hit at first (almost always their competitors).
The precise way that a barrier gets raised (whether it's the 'Trump Wall' or any other tariff barrier) matters. A lot. It matters to the companies, sure, who are about the only entities capable of studying and utilizing the laws effectively to their own advantage. More importantly, it matters to local constituents - powerbrokers who exploit these rules to lock out rivals.
Catfish: "But without at least partial endorsement.... they feel disenfranchised."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it's remarkable. I think of Anne Coulter's book, "Treason," and her general ouvre of referring to liberals as traitors. Balance that against Hillary's 'basket of deplorables.' They laugh at the first (and bought the book). They seethe at the second.
Probably a continuation of general hypocrisy: a Wal-Mart shopper hates globalization but likes a good value. A Christian hates Bill Clinton's philandering, but embraces Trump.
Since the inherent hypocrisy spreads through the workplace, and the rest of life, there is a sense of 'threat' in every fact they come across - it could prick the comfortable delusion. Hence, those dealing in facts are the source of threat.
Perhaps it's not a 'cultural shift' that threatens them - so much as an inherent identity under siege - which requires externalization. If an ISIS terrorist kills you, you're 10x as dead as if an ordinary gunman kills you - because 'they're foreign.' If a gay couple lives together, and your own marriage sucks, then it must be THEIR fault. Perhaps it's less "no other way exists" - and more 'my way sucks, but at least you suck even more so I'm doing something right' - followed by simple, cowardly displays of patriotism (but never backed by action or cost to look after actual patriots like veterans - because doing that would again threaten their own identity and echo their own failings).
ReplyDeleteTacitus, should exit polls just happen to be conservative reticent in states with pushy-radical Republican state governments, where control of the state legislature is already out of whack from popular vote? Hm Conicidence! Just so we know, will you state in advance that - in the hypothetical event that the exit polls are borne out by the actual paper ballots… and or there’s a Reichstag fire … are you willing to say now that you won’t normalize such things, but will actually get mad? Hypothetically, of course.
—
Tony, your “Hairy Men” Aussie tale reminds me of Richard Chamberlain’s 1970s sci fi flick THE LAST WAVE!
—
Ol Roger very good points! You are welcome in this community.
Ol Roger: "If the Dems are going to recover, I think they need to put permanent teams in the areas whether the have reps or not. This is not for campaigning, though if someone needs some help, the party should see what can be done just like a Rep."
ReplyDeleteConsidering how many billions were spent on the election for television time, I could see that as a far better allocation of resources and expenses.
Compare who the Republicans have 'on the ground' in rural areas: church-based, local organizations that are general self-sufficient, tax advantaged, and generally quite active in responding to actual local needs. Elderly widow in the area? The church is a first line of 'friends' who will come to aid her. How do the majority of those churches operate politically? Look to the red zones, and you'll see the answer.
Democrats cannot create a "church" that can operate on the grassroots in the same manner as the Republican 'ground game' institution. Universities, to some extent, can replace that operation in some areas, but they're nowhere near as prolific, responsive, or connected, even in 'college towns.'
ReplyDeleteThe bulk of my assertions were semantic rather than literal:
Instead of arguing that the "Trump coalition" represented a majority, I was arguing that US Democrats decision to self-designate as the minority party IMPLIED that their Republican opposition represented the non-minority majority.
Likewise, I was arguing that the subgenus 'multiculturalism', genus 'cultural relativism', presumes 'equality' between various ethnicities, individual abilities, races & cultures, meaning that no ethnicity, individual ability, race or culture can be considered more 'meritorious' or superior to any other, because terms like worse, better, inferiority & merit must necessarily presume inequality.
Of course, the English language is terribly imprecise (as are all human languages), allowing for all sorts of big & little lies to qualify as lexically valid.
For instance, raw demographic data tells us that the white identity group makes up in excess of 65% of the current US electorate, meaning that this identity group represents the de facto majority, yet it is equally true (though politically incorrect) to assert that white males represent a minority, making up less than 30% of that same electorate.
And, then there are those huge outright lies that our false society considers expedient:
(1) That the 'majority' designator indicates unearned wealth & privilege;
(2) That the 'minority' designator indicates undeserved stigma & 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed';
(3) That the identity group 'white males' indicates both unearned privilege & majority status; and
(4) That the identity group 'women' indicates a minority subject to undeserved oppression even when this so-called minority actually represent 53% of the human population.
Best
____
Are the 'Hairy Men' made super by virtue of their oppression? Or, are they oppressed because they're super?
Heard from my mother-in-law in Stone Mountain, GA, this evening.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, she tells me that when she voted (via machine) for Clinton, she had to press the selection four times, because the first three times it tried to register her vote for Trump.
Now, admittedly, she is in her late 70s (my wife is ten years younger than I am), and not technologically sophisticated, but it still seems unlikely to me that she made the same mistake three times in a row while voting - she may not be highly educated, but she's not stupid. One wonders how many others in the area simply pressed the button and went on their way without double-checking - and there would be no possible way to audit that, because there's no way to tell whether someone's actual intent was recorded or not...
Hi Jonathan
ReplyDeleteYour MIL had to hit the button four times
I wonder if that went into the record as 1 vote for Hillary and three for Trump?
You can call me The Health Warrior. I was messing around with maps tonight and I found some evidence to support a hunch. Munch on this.
ReplyDeleteClinton Winning States with Percentage of Obese Adult Population under 29% = CO, HI, CA, NV, WA, OR, WA, NM, MN, IL, VA, MA, MD RI, CT, NJ, VT, NH, ME, NY, DC.
Clinton Winning States with Percentage of Obese Adult Population over 29% Thank you Delaware.
Trump Winning States with Percentage of Obese Adult Population over 29% = TX, OK, KS, NE, SD, ND, IA, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, GA, SC, NC, TN, KY, OH, IN, PA, WV.
That’s 230 Electoral Votes just counting the most obese states. Now mix in...
Trump Winning States with Percentage of Obese Adult Population under 29%
FL and AZ clinch the win and UT, MT, ID, WY, AK are the Crisco icing.
(this is all pretty easy to see when you overlap the obesity map with the election map...)
As for my takeaway. We can’t disregard epigenetic, outliers and accidents. But most of us don’t have excuses. Most of us have earned the body we live in through our dietary choices and physical activity. We are animals. And our brains are part of our bodies. Sick people tend to make poorer choices and pass them on to their off spring. Animals on a poor diet lose the ability to reproduce after several generations without medical intervention.
I've got more to say on how this relates to Television...
Health Warrior here, finishing up my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteSo we’ve got some physical evidence of what’s going on. Now it’s time to talk about dreams. And commercials. Serious bullshit and conjecture. Have you watched commercials the last decade? (I watch football and mute the sound during adds when I’m too lazy to get up...And shut up DVR boy. Just shut up. You’re a tool, too.) Back to the commercials. Who has been the emerging male protagonist more than not? It’s a pudgy soft guy, age 25-35 with greasy skin, who would have been called fat when I was a kid, but not now. Now he’s got a beard or a two-day stubble. We all know that in reality, he’s not going to get laid tonight because he doesn’t know who David Brin is and he eats fast food and wears tight tee shirts and baggy jeans that don’t hide his flabby ass and skinny legs. He’s maxed out his credit to drive a big ass truck with plastic grills and bumpers that they have to sell you as "tough" with big dumb graphics that drop on the screen like Manny Moe and your Fat Mamma. Ha ha ha. Yeah, so funny. Whatever. And he’s got the best women. The swimsuit model that slips out of the beer cooler. This playful dumb degenerate is the male American dream. People love him. Especially the women. Beautiful women. The best women. Starting to sound familiar? Who is this man? I’ll give you a hint. He was born in a humble television packed full of braying asses, chickens and sheep. Betrayed and abandoned by his most loyal disciple (NBC) and left to die in the media until he was picked up by FOX and resurrected from the dead by an election night errrrr miracle—to become the most—I can’t say it--man in the world? Do you see the branding at work? The marketing? DT embodies the core elements of the “chubby dude with all the chicks” fantasy that’s been fermenting in the commercials the last decade. So what about the women, you ask? What’s in it for them? Why might they have voted for him? Go back to the commercials. Viagra. Cialis. You get the converse without the chubby dude...or a least a male model with some silver highlights. The beautiful woman beckons alluringly to the off screen man. They hold hands and go on cruises and walk on the beach... Give him the pill and close your eyes. Fantasy. Like the Bachelor. Why do people love to watch a house full of degenerates compete for a pre-selected alpha male? Logically you can argue that they're motivated to behave this way due to SAG cards, hormones and financial incentive at play. But that’s not what makes it work with the viewers. It’s Emotion. Sex. Enthusiasm. Entertainment. Fantasy. Soft trans fatty fluffy stuff that's hard to verify with science.
Meanwhile, the Democrats using more brains and less glands, gave this—we’ll call it the fantasy/over 29% Obese--demographic a mediocre media event. HC came off like a JC Penny manikin in a pantsuit. And how many assholes have you heard this from: “oh, I just can’t stand her voice.” She was qualified. But she wasn’t fantasy television dream fulfillment qualified like Oprah Winfrey or Dolly Patron.
Ask a teenager if they'd rather watch commercials all day or get an education. And make sure your beef is grass fed 100%
I haven't seen "The Last Wave" but gather that 'hairy men' are a well established part of aboriginal folklore. "Cleverman" depicts them as being somewhat stronger, tougher, and faster than normal humans. I put their 'super' abilities down to a bit of neanderthal in the mix rather than oppression. They certainly are oppressed, though, as much by aborigines as whites. The scene is set when the hero is seen getting paid to smuggle a family of hairies out of the Zone, and promptly dobbing them in for the reward. (Hero? Well, let's say some boot is heavily applied to bum over the course of the season. He's getting there by the end)
ReplyDelete"The Zone" was set up by the Containment Authority in some haste since the Hairies were only recognised about six months prior to the start of the story. It encompasses a poorer suburb with a fairly high aboriginal population, not unlike Redfern. Normals cohabit with Hairies in the Zone, but may come and go through the checkpoints. The perimeter is actually quite porous. Overall, it's a fairly obvious take on the vile illegal immigrant policy put in place by Howard, perpetrated by subsequent governments, and pushed to new extremes by Abbott and his merry band of sociopaths. You Americans are in for some fun times.
Can these Liberal sheeps ever learn to think beyond themselves?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NsvBFN8wxM
"...in the hypothetical event that the exit polls are borne out by the actual paper ballots… and or there’s a Reichstag fire … are you willing to say now that you won’t normalize such things, but will actually get mad?"
ReplyDeleteYes.
So far I have seen much more to support the notion that elevating Nate Silver and his kindred into a Priestly Caste was not wise. And that this election had many aspects that surprised us all. And that issues and rhetoric both count in political life. They will btw continue to do so.
But this does not blind me to the reality that evil still exists. People often cheat when they have sufficient motivation and think they can get away with it or that the cost is worth the punishment. This can come in the form of "soft" but legal cheating such as gerrymandering. I have said for the record that I do not approve of same. Voter registration issues clearly tiptoe a bit closer to the line. Stuffing the ballot box is clearly way over it.
Some opine that there are other motives operative in the recount push. I suppose if we are having a frank discussion they can be mentioned. Is Jill Stein doing it for publicity and to generate a swell mailing list? It seems to me she is rather a long shot to be elected President this time around.
Or is it a large and expensive PR stunt, aimed at reducing the legitimacy of this electoral outcome? Gracious losers of close elections who wish their rivals well and perhaps say "see ya next time" are to be lauded. They are becoming rare.
Tacitus
A small bone to pick, the ghastly stats of the old confederacy have a lot more to do with deindustrialization than with the inmate character of the inhabitants, made worse by the obsession with immediate profit and will increasingly need to be dealt with as more blue collar occupations are automated out of existence. Ideally, Democratic politicians will work harder on this, but the GOP was once the bleeding heart party, while it seems unthinkable that they might regain their liberal mojo, if they do they could establish a dominance that Reagan could only dream of.
ReplyDeleteReading my last posting it occurs to me that a bit of elaboration is in order. There seems to be a continuing thread here, a disbelief that the psychology of voters could be a more valid explanation for surprising results that an elaborate and nefarious conspiracy. Much has been bruited about regards the possible mechanics of a conspiracy. But perhaps we can spare a moment to discuss the psychology of voting, as seen from a Conservative perspective. (Of which I am Sole Purveyor to the Court of Brin).
ReplyDeleteWhen I said above that both issues and rhetoric mattered, and will continue to do so, I meant it.
I have been wandering in and out of these conversations for over a decade. Sometimes I visit often, sometimes I am gone for many months.
I will share with you that I have deleted Contrary Brin from my "favorites" list of frequently visited sites at least a half dozen times. And of course wandered back in just as often.
I usually Absent myself after I have been on the receiving end of some especially vitriolic stuff. Oh, I know the role you play is one you don't think of as bullying, rather that of the impassioned debater. But I have been offended at times by being considered either a member of a Traitor Class or as being too timid or dim to condemn same. This often manifests itself in variants of the invocation "You Know this is True". When I take a break it is not me stomping off in a Huff, it is just a resigned sense of ConBrin not being worth my time, a commodity which in the end is always limited for each of us.
I realize that there is no malice behind this sort of talk. But it is the kind of rhetoric that deeply offends Conservatives. Ever wonder why so few of the more thoughtful Conservative voices that turn up here go silent so quickly? Leaving us with strident Trollery masquerading as Conservatism.
Now, I am a reasonable chap. My life is good. I don't struggle with health issues, or employment woes. My kids are doing great.
Imagine how much more miffed a Conservative would be if they had additional layers of angst, say they live in a crumbling rust town or had a child who saw no future...
Basket of Deplorables. Beyond Redemption. Racist, Homophobic, etc. You have thrown these terms to the winds without thinking of their impact.
A good share of the electorate listens and ponders. And they stop posting on facebook or ConBrin. They look at caller ID and see what looks like another damn pollster/campaign call (and there is often no difference)and just let it ring; if an exit poller actually turns up they politely say, no thanks.
Food for thought on a Wednesday morning.
Tacitus
"Basket of Deplorables. Beyond Redemption. Racist, Homophobic, etc. You have thrown these terms to the winds without thinking of their impact.."
ReplyDeleteA good point, but it cuts both ways. I have no animosity towards small town life or someone practicing the religion of their choice or even being conservative. But I hate, hate, hate, with the heat of a billion suns, willful ignorance and the attack on science. There are anti-science nut jobs on the far left, but the majority of it is currently coming from the right. Those terms you cite can hurt people's feelings. Undermining science can do some real damage. If they are going to insist on crazy conspiracy theories, I'm not going to coddle their delicate little feelings by not telling them that they are wrong.
These people have their own version of elitism too, with the whole "WE are the real America" narritive.
#pizzagate
ReplyDeleteSeriously, What is with all these pedophiles running the world?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-are-sexually-assaulting-young-staff-members-in-parliament-mp-claims-a7445971.html
Flypusher
ReplyDeleteIt most certainly does cut both ways. I strive for a level of courtesy that few have taken issue with over my tenure here. Other posters, not so much. The point of my musings was simply to say that the notion that perhaps polling might play differently among Conservatives was worth discussing.
Obviously I do a bit of coddling regards what I consider crazy conspiracy theories.
Tacitus
Dr. Brin,
ReplyDeleteYou point out that Clinton was campaigning for the women's vote, the other thing I saw was Obama encouraging folks to vote for Clinton as an endorsement of his legacy. I think that did energize some of his supporters, but I also think it energized the folks that hated him. Another 4 years of Obama's slow-but-steady success would have been a good thing by any measure, but giving the finger to that was a big part of most Republican's campaigns.
Focusing on the historic legacy and social progress might have felt good, but it made it easier to ignore the real, sober progress and convince people to gamble on irresponsible, dramatic change. To follow through on his promises, like to offset his tax cuts with winningest, beautiful growth, Trump will going to need to do impossibles, such as at least doubling employment (not just halving unemployment from 4.9% to 2.5%), doubling median income, or doubling GDP. There is a long way to down from where we are, and radical changes do not guarantee improvement. In fact, if history is any indication, radical Bush style changes are a recipe for damage.
#pizzagate
ReplyDeleteHey Brin,
Why does Nancy Pelosi own a creepy little Pizza Joint? Prices are bit high?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kolLu3MW2bk
Tacitus, I'm a newbie here, so I haven't read a lot of the past discussion. I'm happy to have an adult conversion with anyone from any political stripe. I've started posting here because there is an acceptable ratio of intelligent commentary to trolling. I lurk on many on online forum, but I can count on my fingers the ones I think are worth my time to comment on.
ReplyDeleteHey folks,
ReplyDeleteStay tune for Live Wikileaks Press Conference! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=947fP6QTmBo
Sorry, wrong address. I think it's tomorrow. :)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLqu0WQpJLY
David, related to your writings about hidden money abroad:
ReplyDeleteHow to Hide $400 Million, in today's New York Times Magazine.
Looks like someone hacked a PEDO SERVER.... =P
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra0VsApx4J0
Obama was Bush III (drone strikes? check! addicted to oil? check! big subsidies for big corporations? check!); Trump|Hilary would be Bush IV, mainstream corporate or outsider corporate, take your pick (hence: many voters voted by not voting). Perhaps the dems should have not attempted to coronate a fatally weak candidate?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:
ReplyDeleteObama was Bush III (drone strikes? check! addicted to oil? check! big subsidies for big corporations? check!);
It's probably more accurate to lay those items at the feet of the Republican congress and the Republican Supreme Court.
Trump|Hilary would be Bush IV, mainstream corporate or outsider corporate, take your pick (hence: many voters voted by not voting).
But when it came to congress, and therefore the Supreme Court, you had a choice between vastly different agendas. And you chose to keep the ones who have favored all of the things you dislike. So congratulations on the Pyrrhic victory of making your opponents feel sad. Meanwhile, how's that drainy-swampy thing working for ya?
Perhaps the dems should have not attempted to coronate a fatally weak candidate?
Because that only works for Republicans?
For everyone on the liberal side who complains that President Obama and President-popular-elect Hillary are just like Republicans, does it ever occur to you to wonder why Republicans don't vote for them? In fact, why they're the Republicans' most hated politicians ever?
ReplyDeleteTacitus2:
ReplyDeleteI strive for a level of courtesy that few have taken issue with over my tenure here.
Likewise, I hope. (Except toward those who slander me personally)
The point of my musings was simply to say that the notion that perhaps polling might play differently among Conservatives was worth discussing.
I thought at least that I was discussing it. You seem to think I'm dismissing you out of hand. You've put forth an alternative theory to explain why exit polling accuracy has dropped precipitously in this century and always in one party's direction. By stating that I don't think your theory accounts for the past few elections prior to 2016, I thought I was discussing it.
I don't have mounds of facts and statistics, and as I'm still looking for work, I have other priorities than gathering such stats. But tell me if I'm wrong here--in 2004, the exit polling in Ohio had Kerry leading by a high enough margin that he thought he was the next president. In 2004, then-president W was riding high in approval ratings, "liberal" was a dirty word, and Hillary had voted for the Iraq War because she thought not doing so was political suicide. Ohio had a Republican governor and a Republican secretary of state. Bush's reelection was the only time since Poppy in 1998 that a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote. Do you really mean to say that Republicans who voted for Bush felt too put-upon or were too ashamed to admit it?
I'm not saying that you are insane, or even provably wrong. I put forth a theory that explains the facts that I observe. That doesn't prove my theory is right. But my theory has the benefit that it accounts for the correlation to Diebold-type machines and to the one-sidedness of the inaccuracy of the exit polls. Your proposed alternative does not. To convince me, you'd have to either show that I'm mistaken about the observations (about timing, about machines, about the fact that exit polling is generally reliable) or else that the observations are more plausibly explained by a different theory. So far, you haven't done so. That's not because I'm ignoring you or refusing discussion.
Do I absolutely believe that the elections were rigged? That's a tough question. I feel that they were. I don't know that they were. I'd prefer not to believe it, and I actually do hope you can convince me. But as Dave Sim once said about some of his more controversial musings on gender politics (and I'm paraphrasing) : "The part of my brain which doesn't accept that idea has yet to convince the part of my brain that does believe it that he is mistaken."
Another article about Millennials losing faith in Democracy
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/18/catherine-rampell-millennials-less-wedded-to-democ/
Donzelion wrote: "Perhaps it's not a 'cultural shift' that threatens them - so much as an inherent identity under siege - which requires externalization."
ReplyDeleteThe 'Real American' identity, to be specific, which arises from a combination of (usually Protestant) evangelical Christianity [especially the work ethic], the American Dream mythos, remnants of the New Deal consensus mythos, and the Confederacy (whence comes the semi-optional racial component). "Whitebread" America, if you will. These were indeed the people targeted under the New Deal, and the underpinnings of their portion of society -- the agricultural towns, the coal mines, the Rust Belt formerly the heart of industrial America, the hearty blue-collar worker providing for his family -- have been crumbling.
At the same time, the people shortchanged by the New Deal (primarily African-Americans and women, but with new groups piling on all the time) were getting catch-up assistance. One team going down, the other up. It doesn't take a huge amount of math to figure that this equation is unbalanced from their point of view.
Appeals to Democrats went nowhere as the Bill Clinton DLC consensus shifted to a fully urban focus and the establishment interconnected with the elites. Appeals to mainstream Republicans resulted in further screwage as the aristocracy controlling that party went on its own merry way enriching itself. Hence the Tea Party, but attempts to use 20% of the House to control the House largely failed.... hence, Trump: any port in a storm.
As long as you live in a Red bubble, this makes perfect sense. As long as you live in a Blue bubble, it makes no sense, because from that perspective all you can see is the damage Trump has done, is doing, and will do to liberal democracy, the very concept of Western civilization, the rules that have kept our country one of the most effective in history... on and on.
The fundamental equation at this point in the socio-economic portion of the Culture Wars: The Reds/Confederates have more people suffering, while the Blues/Unionists have people suffering more.
Most of the propaganda on either side is devoted to finding reasons that one side or the other is undeserving of sympathy: endless accusations of privilege, unconscious discrimination, etc. by the one side; endless slanders of all seven deadly sins, disloyalty and inherent criminality, and so on by the other. It would be an even match were it not for the utter abandonment, about twenty years ago, of a tradition of respect for intellectuals... leading to the loss of the Goldwater-Buckley deep thinkers, the conversion of right-wing think-tanks to propaganda ministries, and the shift of all educated castes towards the Blue Team.
The truly revolutionary move would be what Sanders (I believe) said, what Jesse Jackson said, what the Wilmington, NC, government of 1898 said: I don't care about the divides. All these people are suffering. All these people should get help.
But watch out, for the moment you do that, the aristocrats will *really* get scared. Look at what happened to Wilmington.
------------------------------------------
Tacitus:
"So far I have seen much more to support the notion that elevating Nate Silver and his kindred into a Priestly Caste was not wise."
No. Kidding.
Catfish N. Cod:
ReplyDeleteThe fundamental equation at this point in the socio-economic portion of the Culture Wars: The Reds/Confederates have more people suffering, while the Blues/Unionists have people suffering more.
Good way to put it.
The truly revolutionary move would be what Sanders (I believe) said, what Jesse Jackson said, what the Wilmington, NC, government of 1898 said: I don't care about the divides. All these people are suffering. All these people should get help.
But watch out, for the moment you do that, the aristocrats will *really* get scared. Look at what happened to Wilmington.
Which is evidence against the notion that Sanders would easily have withstood the political barrage that would have been leveled at him in the general election, and that he was a shoe-in to beat Trump.
The PBS article on Wilmington that I read indicates that blacks took political power in 1896 and that white Democrats (then the party of Jim Crow) found that so intolerable that they took power back "by any means necessary" in 1898, including literally stuffing ballot boxes. Given the current white nationalist backlash against a black president mimicking the first part of that story, is an analogue of the second part really so implausible?
Larry
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure I understand your perspective. It is rather like my nagging sense that public pension debt is way, way bigger than advertised. You can find people who will reassure you that everything is ducky. You can look at numbers (percentage funded, annual rate of projected return) and do the math. But I, and perhaps you, still get that nagging sense that the games are rigged.
Means, Motive, Opportunity. I would give almost all political operatives no benefit of the doubt on Motivation to cheat. The Opportunity comes up with every election. Its the Means that is tricky and I see why Diebold is central to this world view.
I could toss out numbers (declining response rates to polls over time, increasing early voting, etc), but don't think that would help. No doubt post mortems are being prepared by the pollsters themselves, but I find their various offerings on recent elections are always a bit thin....gotta protect that proprietary data.
Good luck with the job hunt.
Tacitus
I keep seeing people putting Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight.com down as though they did something unethical. They were pretty accurate from what I've read there, and they WERE telling people that Clinton's lead was precarious before the election. They were as surprised as anyone by the results, of course, but they don't do the polls themselves they just try to figure out what all the polls are actually saying. And the polls were wrong but not by as much as everyone thinks. They had tightened DRAMATICALLY the week before the election.
ReplyDeleteAnd since it's a topic in this thread Silver is also 'for a recount' though he prefers to just call it what it really is an audit, because he (and I) doubt the recount will actually change the outcome, but it won't hurt if every state checked it's processes to make sure they aren't being tampered with.
Here in NZ a new party has been formed - still creating it's manifesto but the intention is "Evidence Based Policies"
ReplyDeleteI have put an input about "that proprietary data"
I have asked for an "Eminent Domain" system for information/data -
If a company owns data/information that is important for public policy-making then the government should be able to purchase that information - with the courts setting a fair value
So a voting machine company would be able to cry "proprietary data" but would still have to hand over the code - but would be paid for any financial loss due to the action
LarryHart:
ReplyDeleteThe PBS article on Wilmington that I read indicates that blacks took political power in 1896 and that white Democrats (then the party of Jim Crow) found that so intolerable that they took power back "by any means necessary" in 1898, including literally stuffing ballot boxes.
The PBS article was woefully, almost criminally, incomplete. From Wikipedia:
"Two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, two-thirds of whose members were white, Democratic Party white supremacists seized power and overturned the elected government."
(Remember, those keeping score at home, the parties were reversed at this time: Republicans were the party of blacks and the Northeastern liberals; Democrats were the party of the South and segregation.)
Fusionist is the key: a joint Populist (think Progressive/Bull Moose) and Republican (black) ticket had taken control of the city. They had also been the main power in the state government in Raleigh, putting a Republican in the governor's mansion and a majority in the legislature, expanding the franchise, reducing requirements (property, at that time) so that more blacks and poor whites could vote. The Democrats had retaken the state legislature in the 1898 elections, but Wilmington had repudiated the majority of the state in becoming even more Fusionist.
Clearly Something Had To Be Done.
Alfred Waddell, a former congressman who lost his seat to the Governor, led the mob. At eight AM, they burned down the (black-owned) newspaper. He then lost control of said mob. It was open season on anyone with dark skin. Black residents fled in droves, many never to return. The Governor called out the National Guard, but the local commander was a Redshirt (local Klan equivalent) and shot more blacks while quelling the riot. President McKinley said his hands were tied and refused to intervene.
Meanwhile, the leadership was hunting down the mayor and city council, forcing them at gunpoint to resign. At four PM, Waddell was "elected" mayor of Wilmington.
Twenty-one hundred residents fled. The previous day, Wilmington's population was majority black; now it was majority white. The new state legislature promptly installed a much harsher series of Jim Crow laws.
Just in case there was any doubt, this was "Mayor" Waddell's instructions to "poll observers" on Election Eve, 1900:
You are Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and prepared and you will do your duty…Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns.
And, of course, they did.
Catfish N. Cod:
ReplyDeleteThe PBS article was woefully, almost criminally, incomplete. From Wikipedia:
"Two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, two-thirds of whose members were white, Democratic Party white supremacists seized power and overturned the elected government."
So maybe that's what we would have been in for had Hillary won?
LarryHart:
ReplyDeleteThe possibility crossed my mind.
ReplyDeleteCatfish N. Cod & Larry_H sum up our current crisis of Identity Politics quite eloquently:
Whether red, white, blue, black, scientist, ignoramus, climate denier or climate apologist, we can all now lay claim to victimhood and use the ever-popular 'Superior Virtue of the Oppressed' fallacy to justify any & all atrocities against each other.
We shall surely hang separately if we do not hang together.
Best
The problem with the 2016 election was the wrong candidate won the Democratic Primary.
ReplyDeleteDr. Brin, you have poopooed my statements in the past about the absolute hatred of a number of voters for Hillary Clinton. Well, my parents voted for Donald Trump. And do you want to know why?
Because they absolutely positively detest Hillary Clinton.
They stated outright if Bernie Sanders had won? They'd have voted for him instead of Trump!
The entire reason the Democrats lost to a fascist is because the Democrats decided to go Old Boy Network and allow Clinton to have all the advantages. The DNC were complete and utter idiots not to safeguard their servers. The moment those hacks started coming to light they should have revealed EVERYTHING themselves. Every last e-mail. Every last memo. Total transparency.
It would have cost Hillary the Primary in all likelihood. Because a lot of voters who were going Hillary because "Bernie can't win the general election" would have had second thoughts. But if she DID somehow squeak out a win? Then the honesty and transparency of the DNC would have lessened the sense of alienation.
Well, right now people in the LGBT community are killing themselves. And the fucking American Nazi Party who like to claim the title Alt-Right are cheering this on. They are talking about ways to talk transsexuals into killing themselves. They are openly and blatantly doing Heils and Nazi salutes and stating Jews are not human. And I lay this on the Democratic Party's doorstep because they fucked up and they will fuck up again by appeasing the Republicans and hoping if they play nice you will see things not be as bad.
Things are going to get far worse, Dr. Brin. Far worse. Because people like you went and blinded yourselves to the absolute hatred of the Clintons and believing that common sense would prevail. And you were wrong.
You are posting the wrong thing now. What you should be posting is stuff on how we protest. On how we fight. Because we will need to be visible and in the spotlight constantly. Because it will start in North Dakota when the tribes are violently dispersed by the military under Trump. And then it will be various protestors rounded up and never heard from again. And Trump will silence each voice that doesn't remain completely visible.
Of course, it probably is too late. Because the news media is already subverted. They are ignoring North Dakota. And they will ignore demonstrations against Trump in fear of the New Reich. And finally there will not be a knock on your own door. But the sound of crashing wood and jackboots.
Rob H.
ReplyDelete"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
'The War Prayer,' by Mark Twain
Robert,
ReplyDeleteYour parents are idiots if they did what you said. Hillary didn't squeak out a win, she won by a significant margin. The only reason it was as close as it was is because of the anti-democratic caucus systems that favored Sanders. If Sanders had wanted to win he needed to figure out how to appeal to a broader swath of Democratic votes, not just young white voters.
He also was going to have to figure out how to get some of the more than 50% of voters who said they would never vote for a socialist to vote for a self described socialist. I am skeptical that he would have succeeded.
Hillary, nor the DNC, is to blame for your parents low information voting decision.
Go ahead and delude yourself. It was not low information voting.
ReplyDeleteIt was hate.
There is a huge amount of hatred for Hillary Clinton. Even now.
If Donald Trump illegally has the Clintons arrested and put on a show trial you will see his fanbase and millions of people who voted for him just because they hate the Clintons cheer him on no matter HOW falsified the charges. They don't care. They hate the Clintons.
And the Democratic Party failed to realize this. Dr. Brin ignored this.
Trump won because of hatred, and the arrogance of a politican who felt that hatred would not keep her out of the White House. Pure and simple.
Rob H.
And I do not want to hear you refer to my parents as idiots ever again.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with them on their voting decision. But it was their right to vote for whichever candidate they did choose. Further, they live in a deeply Blue state so essentially their vote was wasted.
But if you refer to them as idiots, then I will become hostile.
Rob H.
Robert:
ReplyDeleteTrump won because of hatred, and the arrogance of a politican who felt that hatred would not keep her out of the White House. Pure and simple.
Well, your street cred has certainly gone up after your prediction came to pass.
I wonder why it doesn't work against Trump, though. Millions hated him as well.
Seems like knuckling under to blackmail to ask a candidate to step aside because of this.
ReplyDelete@locumranch,
ReplyDeleteIn response to the North Carolina 1898 story, I honestly don't see where you're going with the whole "righteousness of the victim" shtick. Are you saying that just because white racists used deadly force to suppress the vote, that doesn't make the black people (and white liberals) they threatened and killed the good guys? I mean, maybe not, but that's hardly the point. That kind of activity should be opposed as anti-democratic, anti-American, and just not right. It's not a question of whether the victims are perfect angels.
I'm not at all sure I'm reading your point correctly, but that was the interpretation that made the most sense I could think of.
Jumper:
ReplyDeleteSeems like knuckling under to blackmail to ask a candidate to step aside because of this.
I was going to make the same point. But it also seems to be sadly true that ginning up unfounded hatred is a winning strategy for the Republican Party. If Robert's assertion is correct that they managed to make Hillary unelectable, then the choice was between making her drop out or losing.
So what's a good counter strategy? We can't gin up the same kind of hatred against their candidates because if that was going to work, it would have worked against Trump. The rational side of me says we have to counter their attacks with the truth, but that sounds like a sick joke. So what can be done to prevent swift-boating from being a permanent winning strategy?
LarryHart: I think he was referring to comments further upstream, where I pointed out obliquely that the white working-class (WWC) population that switched to Trump were effectively carrying out an identity politics of their own.
ReplyDeleteLocum interprets this as a means to shrug off responsibility. I propose that once we can all agree that we have identities, rather than try to shove everyone into the flawed mold of the Third American Consensus, we can begin anew to find the commonalities we share and the goals we aspire to, to build a Fourth American Consensus that we can jointly be responsible for.
(The First American Consensus was built by the Founders and lasted through at least the Era of Good Feelings. The Second American Consensus was imposed by the force of the Union Army. The Third was constructed through the New Deal and the Second World War, and was sealed by its acceptance under the Eisenhower Administration. They served well in their times, but are impermanent. The time for a Fourth Consensus has arrived.
Confederates think they should have the ability to write it themselves and shove it down others' throats. Once this was in revenge for the bloody Second Consensus -- but no more. Now it is revenge for the Third Consensus they seek, that FDR 'imposed' on them and LBJ further tightened the screws upon. Hence the obsessions over Social Security, Medicare, and regulatory agencies.
But they want these things due to feelings. And their opponents have the facts. Feelings may be more powerful in social interactions, for ephemeral purposes, but facts are hard as stone and stubborn as the sea.)
Hey, so someone reminded me of the crazy Roman Emperor Caligula, whose actual name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.
ReplyDeleteCaligula was just his popular nickname, which in Latin means 'Little Boot'.
Now we have a wanna-be Emperor with little hands. In Latin, that is Manicula. I'll be using that a lot from now on, since it also has 'manic' and a hint of Dracula. Couldn't have asked for more.
All hail Emperor Manicula!
Catfish N. Cod:
ReplyDeleteI think he was referring to comments further upstream, where I pointed out obliquely that the white working-class (WWC) population that switched to Trump were effectively carrying out an identity politics of their own.
Locum interprets this as a means to shrug off responsibility.
loc asserts that the inevitable consequence of defending the rights of oppressed groups is that the oppressors get to assert their rights under the same logic. It doesn't work. Identity-politics movements to assert the rights of blacks, Jews, Latinos, gays, Muslims, women, and on and on are all about the same thing: "These people deserve the same rights of citizenship that you have."
The backlash white supremacist or Christianist movements claim they're following the same logic when they assert their right to disenfranchise and dehumanize the other groups. I know it's a cliche with me by now, but "that's a different thing; in fact the opposite thing."
TCB:
ReplyDeleteNow we have a wanna-be Emperor with little hands
I had a fantasy recently of Trump living out the arc of the Grinch in the Dr Seuss book. In my version, the Trumpster's small hands grew three sizes that day.
This is probably for the best for you guys. The natural M.O. of liberals is to subvert a conservative order and fight “oppression”. If you become the Establishment, you're no longer in your element, you no longer have a clear enemy, so you start manufacturing them (those dreaded homophobic Russian hackers in KKK robes who stole the election and threaten our freedoms, etc.). Conservatives like the the shows of authority, the patriotism, the hierarchy, the traditions, the symbols, the military, the religion – i.e. everything associated with maintaining a strong civilization intact, rather than dismantling, inverting and subverting it. So watch and enjoy, because I expect Trump is going to bring an age of grand conservative spectacle the likes of which we've never seen in American history.
ReplyDeleteTacitus I read every single word and paid attention. More than that I’ll not say… beyond the fact that crumbling rust belt towns get nothing from republicans and those rust belt folks who vote republican are not doing so for reasons of self-interest.
ReplyDeleteYou suggest I and my ilk are the ones waging culture war. This is counterfactual. As is your assertion that I have used terms like “Basket of Deplorables. Beyond Redemption. Racist, Homophobic.” Please show me where.
What I HAVE used is “confederate,” And that correlates with everything. Including the culture war being waged against all knowledge castes for 25 years. And if you don’t know THAT — anti-intellectualism - is the center and pivot of anger among aging white-male-ill-educated boomers, then you have not actually talked to them. (I have.)
drf5n… in fact, the black turnout was tepid and I am of a mind to listen less to racialist-based guilt trips, after that let-down. Call me ever-so-slightly locum’d on that narrow miff.
anonymous is cherry picking. Even re drone strikes, it only reflects the stunningly diametric-opposite difference in the ways that democrats and republicans wage war.
See: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-democrats-and-republicans-wage-war.html
In other words, than anonymous is a moron.
I could tell at a glance that dizzy-locum was back. I am getting good at just glancing and moving on.
Liar:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsH5_nUFS70
You're part of the problem, Brin.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-reads-book-kids-mirrors-fund-raising-probe-article-1.2620104
No amount of your lies can erase the Truth. Hillary and Podesta have killed over 100 people.
ReplyDelete#bodycount
Andrew Breitbart's tweet, from shortly before he died:
AndrewBreitbart–Verified account @AndrewBreitbart
How prog-guru John Podesta isn't household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me. 1:21 PM - 4 Feb 2011
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3499637/posts
James Alefantis interview. If this creep is so innocent, why isn't he suing people?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCumMmqb214
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDeleteYou are what is refereed to here as a fucking idiot!
Get yourself out of your mum's basement and see what is happening in the real world
WikiLeaks Julian ASSANGE The TIME Has COME !
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mXbTJ7lQb4
Hey Brin, Why don't you go over to that creepy Pizza place. Check out the tunnel and see where it leads??? What are you afraid of???
ReplyDeletehttps://www.periscope.tv/JackPosobiec/1MnxnXNmpVeGO
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteNo one is reading a word the troll is posting. Let's give it a little while, then vote whether to make this moderated. We had a great run as the least moderated and least trolled site on the web.
ReplyDeleteOh, but talk about the sore-winner phenomenon. It was never about politics or victory. It is hate, pure and simple. They will not be satisfied till we are all against walls.
Bye BRIN. WE ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
ReplyDeleteEND TIMES! AFTER SCHOOL SATAN OFFICIALLY OPENS! SATANISTS TARGETING YOUR KIDS SCHOOLS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmO_86cMnTU
Now sorely whining by -2.5 million votes.
ReplyDeleteWhen are those recounts scheduled?
I still stay in touch with Jimmy Fingers who didn't know anything about these pizza nuts and now he's interested. Enough to hack them, anyway. Soon we'll know more.
ReplyDeleteTreebeard:
ReplyDelete...you become the Establishment, you're no longer in your element, you no longer have a clear enemy, so you start manufacturing them (those dreaded homophobic Russian hackers in KKK robes who stole the election and threaten our freedoms, etc.). Conservatives like the the shows of authority, the patriotism, the hierarchy, the traditions, the symbols, the military, the religion – i.e. everything associated with maintaining a strong civilization intact, rather than dismantling, inverting and subverting it.
That's probably all true, except you left out the part that the right also likes to manufacture enemies, and Orwell's Two-Minutes Hate is an essential part of that spectacle you rave about. The difference is that lefties like to rage about "fighting the power!", whereas fascists are more into official bullying of those least able to resist.
So watch and enjoy, because I expect Trump is going to bring an age of grand conservative spectacle the likes of which we've never seen in American history.
We've seen it often enough in un-American history. Didn't we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here?
I see that Trump goes out to get another worship fix today, with his "victory tour". That ought to get all the sore winners quite frothed up.
ReplyDeleteI love this analogy to who voted for Trump. Found his twitter rant which got extended.
ReplyDelete"The revolt of the back row kids"
https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/the-revolt-of-the-back-row-kids-1fbd0a0be2aa#.m5iytkcs5
I like that analogy, Joel. I attempted to suggest similar by posting Iggy Pop's "Dum Dum Boys" on here, a song about the odd fascination we guys have about the poor students in school whom we yet somehow want to be accepted by, and maybe even emulate. It's a common enough trope, especially in the South where it's seen as the height of cunning: be smart but make others think you're slow. I'm just a poor ol' country doctor, Jim! I'm just an ol' country lawyer. I'm just the sheriff of Mayberry... I'm just the governor of Arkansas...
ReplyDeleteIt has been rumored that HIllary curses like a sailor, as the saying goes, among close confidantes. I thought it would not have hurt her in the slightest to cut loose with some "what in hell"s and "damn fool" and "bullshit"s in public.
I expect the Republicans to roll back examination of secret offshore accounts worldwide, especially because of Trump. Which also suggests Putin's strong interest in our election, as the truth about his own ill-gotten wealth has recently been trickling out.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder why Obama fired the head of the NSA so suddenly.
by “us,” I mean librarians,... people who make their own pasta,
ReplyDeleteLOL, I'm a librarian and I make my own pasta, so I'm an horrible liberal élitist...
coming to serious issues, but letting someone post on your blog stuff like "Hillary and Podesta killed 100 people" can be something making the blogger liable?
I'm not American and I'm not a lawyer, but I'd deleted those posts and ask a lawyer wether such stuff is permissible. On Stross' blog (another common law country) a poster putting innuendos about involvement of a cruise shipping company in sexual trafficking was stomped hard as the blogmaster could have bben held liable for libel, slander or defamation .
Re: Treebeard,s rant: pure, unadulterated and unalloyed Fascism.
shows of authority, the patriotism, the hierarchy, the traditions, the symbols, the military, the religion – i.e. everything associated with maintaining a strong civilization intact
go tell Germans or Italians (like my mother who survived a USAAF bombing in 1943) how "strong and intact" was theuir civilization after all that show...
Treebeard says: "Conservatives like the the shows of authority, the patriotism, the hierarchy, the traditions, the symbols, the military, the religion – i.e. everything associated with maintaining a strong civilization intact, rather than dismantling, inverting and subverting it."
ReplyDeleteLet's unpack that, shall we?
Shows of authority -- That depends on what you mean. They seem to like inaugurations, ceremonial ribbon-cutting, and so forth. They like a strong leader standing up against injustice, against tyranny at home and abroad, against chaos and despair.
You know what they don't like? The show of force as justification of authority. The sense of might making right. The seeking of order for its own sake, not for the benefits that order provides. The imposition of majority rule, especially when the majority is only so in limited location(s). These are tyrant's tools, and are recognized as such.
The patriotism -- again, what do you mean by patriotism? The patriotism of dissent, of critical thought, of Loyal Opposition, of adherence to the principles of the nation regardless of popularity? Or the patriotism of conformity, of obedience, of adherence to the wishes of the leadership? I may have disagreed strongly with, say, the Tea Party's ideology... but I never, ever thought them to be unpatriotic. They're fierce patriots; they just see their duty differently.
The traditions, the symbols... whose traditions? If you want a country where all the traditions are the same for everyone, you'd best find another place to live, bub. We gave up on even trying to have that when we decided being one United States was better than thirteen easily manipulated sovereignties. We have common traditions, like December being a time for tree-trimming and gift-giving regardless of the name attached, like lighting fireworks and having parades on the Fourth of July, like (a newer one, but a very real one) respecting our military service members regardless of our beliefs about any particular war's merit.
And then we have traditions that smaller groups follow, by class and creed and ethnicity and national origin and hobby and musical preference and what have you. It was always thus: the Virginians were making merry while the Puritans detested the same, and the Marylanders held solemn Mass while the Friends in Pennsylvania held Meetings without prayers at all. Expecting us to march in lockstep is delusional, aside from being antithetical to first principles. E pluribus unum requires the pluribus no less and no more than the unum.
As for the military and the religion, the former is rather well, thank you very much, and the latter... to think that a state or common religion is always a strength in a nation is to ignore the last five centuries of European history. It can be, or it can be a detriment. So too can pluralism, the strength of the ancient Persian Empire and the fatal weakness of the Holy Roman Empire. It's all what we make of it.
Locumranch wrote: "... the many successes of multiculturalism. Years of indoctrination have taught us that everyone (and I mean 'everyone') is equal, meaning that blacks are equal to whites, professionals are interchangeable with amateurs, bigots are interchangeable with multiculturalists, the ignorant are the equal of the educated, and the rural are the EQUAL of the urban."
ReplyDeleteSome are equal and some are not, but the tendency to conflate unequal things in the name of egalitarianism long predates multiculturalism. Doctor Asimov was complaining that democracy meant uninformed opinions were held as being equal to facts clear back in the 1940s, and Jefferson opined that ignorance could pose as knowledge and thus be a threat to democracy back in the 1780s.
Zepp Jamieson:
ReplyDeleteJefferson opined that ignorance could pose as knowledge and thus be a threat to democracy back in the 1780s.
Democracy, even as a theory, rests upon the assumption that "You can't fool all of the people all of the time," and that in aggregate, more people than not will agree on the best way to go forward on a particular course of action.
Democracy works best when broad consensus is achieved. The recent trend toward elections being won or lost by a smaller percentage than the margin of error doesn't speak well for the functioning of that system. If 70% (for example) agree on a certain issue, then common wisdom is pointing clearly in that direction, no matter the outliers on either side. If 50.1% vote "yea" and 49.9% vote "nay", that doesn't really indicate how "the people have spoken," except to say that the people don't really agree on either option.
ReplyDeleteZepp summarises Isaac Asimov's argument with some accuracy.
If David bothered to read the 'War Prayer' excerpt I provided, then he would see that Tacitus is quite correct about David's contributions to this new civil war. So sure is David that he is 'right' about all things -- from urban superiority to climate change -- that he feels entitled to don his Union Kepi in order to shove his belief system down everyone else's throat by any uncivil means necessary, including force of arms.
That the social contract is broken, that rural interests have been relegated to the past, that urban demands for historical reparations are insatiable, this does not matter to him because he cares only about the interests of his uniformly blue teammates, as demonstrated by his ideological desire to enforce every harmful aspect of this non-consensual contract upon the backs of the dwindling red majority.
And, like the Union Federalists before him, he forbids any & all attempts at renegotiation:
He will not allow the confederates to 'Go Their Own Way' (nor will he allow them to lead) because he believes that the blue way is the only way; he will not allow the rural resource providers to profit directly from their own resources because this would disadvantage blue urbanite consumers; and he will not allow for balkanisation, nullification or State's Rights since this would allow for all-of-the-above, except in those (rare?) instances that directly benefit the blue agenda.
With his prayers for eternal Blue Hegemony, he wishes for the complete subjugation, pacification, extinction & extermination of rural red self-interest in perpetuity and, assuming that these (his many wishes) are correct, then these are neither the desires nor the actions of a peacemaker.
Best
locumranch:
ReplyDeleteSo sure is David that he is 'right' about all things
Looked in a mirror, lately?
-- from urban superiority
I don't get how you continually equate "Enlightenment" with "urban". Thomas Jefferson was as rural, red-state as you can get, lamenting even the fact that cities existed. And yet, he was practically the embodiment of the Enlightenment in his day.
to climate change---- that he feels entitled to don his Union Kepi in order to shove his belief system down everyone else's throat
Acknowledging that facts are real is not a "belief system", nor does anyone have to shove reality down your throat to make it real. Conservatives used to be the ones who insisted that we take reality into account. When did that become a bad thing?
The only way to stop the Enlightenment is to go pure illiterate, bring back alchemy, magical thinking, and divination of the future by way of chicken entrails. This seems locumranch and Treebeard's dream. Oh, and witch hunts. Gotta have the witch hunts.
ReplyDeleteCould we go back to science a little? I am afraid that we are turning into a political blog and a mediocre one at that. I miss bouncing ideas off one another and the intellectual stimulation it gave. Too much politics attract simple minds and it shows.
ReplyDeleteOther than unthinking conformity, and an complete misunderstanding of science and how it works, what does 'the right' offer women, gays, minorities, artists, teachers, the list goes on.
ReplyDeleteAsk yourself WHY those 'others' you dislike so much, disagree so vehemently with you?
MOSTLY it's not because they want YOU to change(though I'm sure they'd love that), they just want you to STOP trying to make THEM fit your square peg and let them exist EQUALLY with you. Stop complaining about what 'the urbans' are doing for a bit and ask WHAT ARE YOU OFFERING THEM?
I'd still like Robert above to ask his parents what in god's green earth they thought they were going to GET with their votes. What is it that they thought Clinton was going to do that isn't going to be WORSE with the candidates they chose? What is going to be done that Clinton WASN'T going to try and do, because from EVERYTHING I'm seeing from this Republican congress and the choices being made by Trump, we're ALL about to get the shit end of the Mencken quote, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard"
Well, locum is at least being consistent. That was a well-rounded description of the red-state grievance platform: the sense that the Establishment was marching to Blue Hegemony, with a grand conspiracy leading to cultural suppression/oppression of rural interests.
ReplyDeleteThis would be more sympathetic were so many of the self-righteous Confederates, drunk on a narrow national victory and a broader set of local victories (many built on gerrymandering), not clearly out to establish a Red Hegemony and enact a revenge of cultural suppression/oppression of urban interests. This is indeed, as Gracious Host points out, cognate to the 1850's, when the Republican Party's birth was powered primarily by a sense in the North that Southern Hegemony was coming to impose its will upon them, and that it was *Northern* States' Rights that were being violated.
Red Hegemony and Blue Hegemony are not the only two solutions to our national crisis, of course. For instance, a Purple Compromise could in theory be established, a new set of norms for a new age. But that would require two things:
(1) That both sides, leadership and rank'n'file alike, believed compromise was better than continued Culture War; and
(2) Both sides agreeing on the facts, structure of reality, and meta-narrative to underpin a system of cooperation and competition.
Both these items are currently missing. They could appear if the Bull set to become China Shop Manager smashes enough crockery to sufficiently frighten the staff; but this is a medicine only barely worth the cure.
Locum advocates for a possible fourth solution, and blasts "Unionism" for denying States' Rights; or, to be more generous and precise, that a "federalist" solution where Blue States can be Blue and Red States Red and leave each other alone would be desirable (and is only blocked by Unionist action). This leaves out several highly important details:
(1) Most of the Blue territory consists of cities, and in states where the countryside dominates, Confederates show no interest at all in continuing the "federalization" concept. Indeed, the trend is strongly in favor of the countryside imposing its preferences on the cities. The most dramatic example seen lately was in North Carolina, where Charlotte was not allowed to make such laws as Charlotteans deemed appropriate.
(2) Even were this to be done, the issues of resources remain. Two-thirds of the wealth generated in the United States resides in those counties marked in Blue, only one-third in Red. Yet the Red counties are those in which the primary industries of agriculture and mining reside, without which the Blue counties cannot survive. Each side has no choice but to support the other: the one with wealth and services, the other with resources. Even a 'live and let live' policy must confront the necessity of managing the flow between the zones.
(3) This political geography is not static, and has shifted with demographic changes. So the Culture Wars are not ended by this maneuver; they only shift to the borders... the evenly balanced states, and within each and every state, the line between the inner and outer suburbs of the cities. It is merely retrenchment; it is not a solution.
I reject the conceit that we have not read "The War Prayer". It has been a favorite of mine for over twenty years. And it should make the fifth and sixth options, Partition and Civil War, anathema to us all --
Except --
There is another great old poem that I commend to the attention of all, but especially to locum. It speaks equally to his fears of Blue Hegemony and mine of Red Hegemony, though the latter looms larger at the present time. Read Kipling's "The Old Issue", and know that each side now feels it to adequately express their fears of the other.
A house divided cannot stand. Either we compromise and cooperate, on the basis of reality and not sentiment... or terrible consequence will ensue.
ReplyDeleteWhat is political correctness besides a witch-hunt. Project much?
Of course, Larry_H & Jumper would neither confuse illiteracy with rurality, nor literacy with urban credentialism, if they truly were literate.
Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Michel Delon, page 636:
"Nature, which Enlightenment thinkers invoked as a guarantee of happiness, thus appears as both primal and dynamic, as a stable model and an ideal that prods human beings toward endless self-transformation. The pastoral ideal was seen by some as an embodiment of maternal nature that provides humanity with the elements of its happiness, while others looked toward the future for a guarantee that social inequalities and injustice would be overcome through technical advances and the rationalization of collective life."
Like Jefferson, Washington & I, many Enlightenment Scholars were PASTORALISTS. Unlike Larry_H & Jumper who confuse confinement in urban pens of darkness with enlightenment. I can only guess where David stands on this issue.
To Berial and other urban resource hogs, I add: "Ask not what your country (folk) can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country (folk)."
How have you made OUR rural lives better?
Best
locumranch:
ReplyDeleteLike Jefferson, Washington & I, many Enlightenment Scholars were PASTORALISTS. Unlike Larry_H & Jumper who confuse confinement in urban pens of darkness with enlightenment
What did I myself just post about Jefferson a few lines above? Sheesh!
How have you made OUR rural lives better?
The aqueduct.
And sanitation!
Oh yes... sanitation, Reg, you remember what the city used to be like.
All right, I'll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done...
And the roads...
Well yes obviously the roads... the roads go without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads...
Irrigation...
Medicine... Education... Health...
And the wine...
Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if the Romans left, Reg.
Public baths!
And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now.
Yes, they certainly know how to keep order... (general nodding)... let's face it, they're the only ones who could in a place like this.
All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
Brought peace!
Oh... (scornfully) Peace, yes... shut up!
I am of two minds.
ReplyDeleteYes, it would be nice to get back to non politics again.
Although this is what seems to be on the minds of many.
Regards Science I do see today that we have four new elements!
Please welcome to the periodic table: Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson.
Tacitus
Non-politics would be nice... but, dammit Jim! We have a basilisk to stare down.
ReplyDelete(ditto climate action)
Things are getting interesting on the recount front, with some counties in Wisconsin reportedly refusing access to the machines, and Trump filing an objection in Michigan. (As I said earlier, if shenanigans were in play, my dark side would have blatantly stuffed the ballot side for the Democrats in, say, New Hampshire, so I could file a recount of my own to reveal... O.M.G! So shameful!! ...Maybe I overplayed the Machiavellian DM in my youth?)
...OK. Science! The current edition of Scientific American discusses the medical possibilities of a rare mutation in gene ISG15 that confers improved virus fighting abilities to those who have it (it causes a muted inflammation response). By 'rare', I mean 1 in 10 million. My immediate question is how come such an apparently stellar mutation is so rare? (Yes, I do have hypotheses aka guesses. I shall be writing...)
Sometimes you have to step back and see if what you are doing is still useful to what you what to do. When it comes to general politics, I think we have reached the point of diminishing returns here.
ReplyDeleteTacitus2:
ReplyDeleteam of two minds.
Yes, it would be nice to get back to non politics again.
Although this is what seems to be on the minds of many.
Couldn't agree more on both counts. I think some (many) of us are trying to sort out what reality looks like now. Which I suppose is a kind of science. In any case, as you say, that's foremost on my mind. Even job hunting, as important as that is, takes sloppy seconds.
But ok, I do have a question which I suppose is a kinda/sorta science-y question, and I'm honestly looking for an answer that I don't already know. What is it about the human brain which sometimes takes in a written phrase such as reCatchPa's "Select all squares with street signs", and somehow would swear that it said "Select all squares without street signs"? That kind of happens to me on a semi-regular basis. What is that?
@LarryHart said:
ReplyDelete"What is it about the human brain which sometimes takes in a written phrase such as reCatchPa's "Select all squares with street signs", and somehow would swear that it said "Select all squares without street signs"? That kind of happens to me on a semi-regular basis. What is that?"
Maybe it's a form of dyslexia? I know I almost always screw up my 'b's and 'p's when hand writing and for some reason EVERY-TIME I write 'think' when I meant to write 'thing' and vice versa. I catch it every-time but I can't stop the error when typing quickly.
A few comments above, Catfish N. Cod wrote:
ReplyDelete"This would be more sympathetic were so many of the self-righteous Confederates, drunk on a narrow national victory and a broader set of local victories (many built on gerrymandering), not clearly out to establish a Red Hegemony and enact a revenge of cultural suppression/oppression of urban interests. This is indeed, as Gracious Host points out, cognate to the 1850's, when the Republican Party's birth was powered primarily by a sense in the North that Southern Hegemony was coming to impose its will upon them, and that it was *Northern* States' Rights that were being violated."
Now, I am from North Carolina and live there now (Asheville, Cesspool of Sin!). But for many years I lived in Massachusetts. A couple times I took my family sightseeing in Salem, that historic town of seafarers and witch hunts. In that city is the House of the Seven Gables, a real house built in 1668 and made famous in the Hawthorne book of the same name. It is much larger now than when first built; it has 17 rooms and secret passages.
The main secret passage is a staircase hidden inside one of the two huge fireplaces in the kitchen (only the other one works as a fireplace, obviously). THis stair goes all the way to a concealed door into a top-floor bedroom.
Why was this passage built?
To hide escaped slaves.
The House of the Seven Gables, all the way up there in the North Shore of Massachusetts, was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and needed a place to hide fugitives from the Southern bounty hunters, empowered by law to search the homes of Northern citizens who dared help the victims of human slavery.
But please, tell us again how the Blue forced its brutish will upon the long-suffering knights and damsels of Southern chivalry.
@LarryHart Pattern matching for threats rather than reality?
ReplyDelete...actually, I just read that the Underground Railroad story (which they told us on the tour) is now known to be apocryphal as were suggestions that it was a shelter against Indian attack... Now nobody is sure why that staircase is there, except it was built after 1908.
ReplyDeleteAw, crap. Why do all the good stories go poof?
Interesting summary of what the recounts will be looking for. Pretty balanced.
ReplyDeleteBerial:
ReplyDeleteEVERY-TIME I write 'think' when I meant to write 'thing' and vice versa. I catch it every-time but I can't stop the error when typing quickly.
That's Microsoft Office typing what it thinks you meant instead of what you actually told it to. Kidding on the square--maybe. I've found that with the latest versions of Windows, the letters don't always reach the screen in the same order I think I'm typing them.
Oh, and if I meant "click", I would have actually clicked, darn it! Hovering does not mean "I really want to click on this, but I'm to lazy to press the mouse button."
TCB:
ReplyDeleteAw, crap. Why do all the good stories go poof?
Dave Sim would say (or rather, would quote Alan Moore as saying) "All stories are true."
In any case, that house's involvement notwithstanding, the Underground Railroad and the Fugitive Slave Act are all factual. Your point stands.
TCB:
ReplyDeleteNow nobody is sure why that staircase is there, except it was built after 1908.
It must have had something to do with the Cubs not winning the World Series.
:)
BTW, every time since 1900 that the Cubs won the World Series in a presidential election year, a Republican won the subsequent election. 100% correlation! All two of the times.
You want science? I'll give you some science!
ReplyDeleteI always loved a physics professor's pet theory back in college:
Imagine that matter and anti-matter are popping into existence from nothing then colliding and eliminating themselves so fast you can't detect it. Nothing looks to be going on but then imagine the universe itself expands suddenly so fast the particles and anti-particles can't collide to annihilate each other. POOF! Stuff exists! He called it the 'ultimate free lunch theory'.
Hey he never said it was a 'good theory'. :)
locum, I'ma gonna try again, and please do remember that I have red-state roots when you post...
ReplyDeleteWhat is political correctness besides a witch-hunt. Project much?
That's not what the current movement labeled by that term started out as; it was supposed to be extensions of politeness -- trying not to inadvertently cause insult. Alone, that is of little concern. It is no skin off my nose if someone prefers "black", or "African-American", or "person of color". It was rhetorical tolerance of self-identification.
In fact, originally "politically correct" was rhetorical used by the Left to try and restrain overuse of the concept... since the prior usage was of Stalinist over-control, and obviously that would be Bad. After the fall of Communism, the sting of the term evaporated, and Confederates started using it unironically to imply that the control had failed and the Unionists had become exactly the over-controllers they had mocked.
Now have there been extremist people who have used the language of "P.C." to conduct witch-hunts? You bet there have. Have Unionists been too lax in restraining such? There's a good case to be made there. People should not lose their jobs for having political opinions. (But they *should* for indicating that they will discriminate in their jobs, or for misrepresenting their organization. The one is rhetoric; the other is factual threats and losses. Remember, sports fans, always make clear when you are expressing a personal and not professional opinion... you could, say, use a pseudonym.)
Of course with Putin's completion of his shiny new fake-news disinformatizia campaign and encouragement of a network of allied providers of pravda ranging from RT to Breitbart, the original usage of "politically correct" can come back now as well. Is it now politically incorrect to assert that Muslims do frequently condemn ISIS? Or that in-person voting fraud happens in much less than one in a million votes? Or that climate change has empiric evidence behind it, and Miami Beach is already sinking? We are assured by our new Rural-Supported betters that we should not believe our own eyes and instruments about such things.
Because one can make all the rhetorical equivalences or even condemnations desired of a rock's solidity, but when I kick it, it still hurts.
Imagine the universe if it had the same shape only smaller. I imagine one about a hundred meters in "diameter" for my purposes. That is, if you go a hundred meters in any direction, you arrive back where you started. There are several simple topologies the simplest being the sphere. Cosmologists seem to insist that's the one our universe started out as. Of course now inflation has carried much of it beyond our possibility to ever catch, but that's a different story. I think.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm working through these simple topologies and start a thought experiment: this small universe is made of iron, full of tunnels I can travel through. Is it possible to magnetize the whole universe to have a unidirectional field? The answer is no, not if it's spherical! If it's toroidal, you betcha. So I discover all this is at the heart of some mighty complicated stuff I thought I couldn't understand, but now I'm starting to. The topology of point vectors is weird. You get into the "hairy ball theory" only in 3-d, not two as on the surface of a ball. And you get into 3-d analogs of the four-color map theory. (which is 7 on the surface of a torus, but only 6 on the surface of a Klein bottle.)
Anyway, the early universe had no magnetic fields. However, were there any other vector fields which were also impossible, and did this impossibility demand inflation occur?
Yes. Science soon.
ReplyDelete---
Catfish, there is a simpler answer to Treebeard (and I use his name because his crazy comment was at least cogently expressed and non-offensive, though cockeyed.) The right’s ‘patriotism’ is skin deep an ONLY about symbolism. Flag waving but not investment in the talent the next generation will need developed, in order for us to stay on top.
I’ve mentioned before how obsessive the Republicans are, about say naming aircraft carriers. And it is a sign of how differently liberals think, that probably not one of them even realized that conservatives actually thought they were winning actual battles, in an actually important culture war, struggle, each time they chortled and named another ship after a blatantly awful GOP president or a dixiecrat segregationist.
Likewise, repealing Obamacare will bring hosannahs of joy! And no one will comment that mostly, the “repeal” will be changing all the nomenclature, leaving in place what had been their own damn plan all along.
But we saw how “patriotic” they got, under Obama. The talk of hatred toward their own, freely elected government.
Oh, and dems are far better at war. They listen to the generals. See http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-democrats-and-republicans-wage-war.html
Trump has been *avoiding security briefings!* Can you believe that? He cannot focus. Oh, what will liberals make of it, when the officer corps goes democratic?
—
The fellow is back in utter-imbecile, outright evil-liar mode with: “And, like the Union Federalists before him, he forbids any & all attempts at renegotiation.”
You stunning hypocrite moron. Every democratic congress negotiates with republican presidents and seeks common ground. When they are a majority, they tussle with him but use his budget as the basis for negotiation and always pass a budget and confirm 90% of nominees. Pelosi just put out such offers, yesterday.
Gopper Congresses, except for one year under Gingrich, never negotiate even slightly with democratic presidents. At all. Ever. Over anything. They pass no budgets and almost no legislation and hold no hearings that aren’t grudge vendettas.
Oh, the supernova of hypocrisy. DP presidents always appoint some business and conservative types to their cabinet, for balance and outreach. How us how there is ONE voice in the DT white house who will speak for the interests of the MAJORITY of Americans who voted against their cult?
Blue kepi? Hell yes. We need to wake up. You cult is so bitterly full of hate that it cannot even win graciously. It has poured hate at all the smart people — and other diverse americans — for so long that you think it is the norm, and that our rising sense of getting fed-up is some how aggression on OUR parts?
The Ship Naming Obsession:
ReplyDeletehttp://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-politics-of-naming-aircraft.html
One among many. Symbolism is why they voted for Trump, even knowing his policies would hurt them.
Jumper,
ReplyDeleteThe way I was taught E&M had both electric and magnetic fields intertwined as one anti-symmetric field tensor in 4-D. You get magnetic fields for an observer if they are moving relative to a source making their world-lines non-parallel. What looks like a 3-vector B field must loop around on itself as a result if there are no monopoles and that’s how most think of it. For an entire universe to be magnetized you’d have to have a net current density flowing somewhere even if it is just forward in time, but some observers are going to see it as strictly an electric field. All they have to do is move with the flow of charge.
I get the hairy ball thing, but time isn’t just another dimension. It is time-like and the others are space-like. Beware of drawn analogies in 3+1 dimensions because asking if the universe can be magnetized is similar to asking if it can be electrified. Two sides of the same coin. 8)
Dr Brin:
ReplyDelete[S]how us how there is ONE voice in the DT white house who will speak for the interests of the MAJORITY of Americans who voted against their cult?
Heck, there's not one voice in Trump's cabinet who will speak for the interests of the Americans who voted for him. All I see are Wall St billionaires and corporate billionaires who still insist that tax cuts will unleash fountains of wonderfulness in the economy. Where are the pastoral old-time conservatives from red states?
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteasking if the universe can be magnetized is similar to asking if it can be electrified.
It can if you believe it can!
:)
Heck, there's not one voice in Trump's cabinet who will speak for the interests of the Americans who voted for him. All I see are Wall St billionaires and corporate billionaires who still insist that tax cuts will unleash fountains of wonderfulness in the economy. Where are the pastoral old-time conservatives from red states?
ReplyDeleteThe latest consideration being Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State. Tillerson is currently CEO of ExxonMobil...
Or,
ReplyDelete"asking if the universe can be magnetized is similar to asking if it can be electrified." "Not as long as there's a Republican Congress!"
Seriously, I had to learn some of this stuff when I worked with 3-phase transformers. Most of my above was a thought experiment about manifolds, which model the first few seconds of the big bang, which my iron universe is obviously not like, but the shape does forbid magnetizing this whole little universe in the same direction. I read an article from someone smarter than me explaining how there were no early magnetic fields; something to do with the heat (and we're not even close to talking about the Curie phase change, a different beast.) It was too hot for even plasma to exist, or so they say. Quark gluon soup, which is another way of saying "magic stew" as far as I can comprehend. (my loss, obviously). Astronomy does reveal disjointed random huge fields, but the reading strongly suggests they aren't big bang remnants, but arise later for other reasons.
However, your mention of more than 3 or 4 dimensions is valuable. Extending the "four color map" solutions for varying increasing numbers of dimensions turns out almost trivial. There are no 4-d knots.
An iron universe would be at the end of its time, not its beginning.
ReplyDeleteA couple of anecdotes from the election, I heard from a retired teacher the day after the election "Well, we beat the old bat", and on another comment thread, someone mentioned an older relative having to select HRC multiple times before the touchscreen would admit she didn't want Trump, given the quality of non-Apple touchscreens, that may not have been hacking...
ReplyDeleteTim H:
ReplyDeleteon another comment thread, someone mentioned an older relative having to select HRC multiple times before the touchscreen would admit she didn't want Trump, given the quality of non-Apple touchscreens, that may not have been hacking...
And yet, somehow those stories always go in the same political direction.
Larry & Berial,
ReplyDeleteOn brains and linguistic reversals, I remember from a psychology class I had ages ago learning about how these kinds of mistakes are quite common under conditions that stress the brain. The number one factor, of course, is aging, but insufficient sleep or other stressors can have the same affects. I don't remember if there was a special name for this, but scientists love to make taxonomies, so I'm sure there must have been. With aging, loss of myelin in the frontal lobes would be a mechanism to suspect, and under stress the same lobes tend to switch off due to their higher power consumption. I'm not sure if there is a concomitant loss of myelin in the temporal lobes. As I understand it, the frontal lobes are usually the first to go as we age, but other regions of the brain demyelinate as well.
Either way, what you are experiencing (me too) is very normal, even if it is new for you. Being normal, though, does not mean it is good.
I have been too busy/sleepy to keep up recently, but I have wanted to check up with Larry on the job hunt. Hope all is well and the "vacation" is just long enough to be relaxing, not long enough to become misery. Been there, done that! (after 9/11) Sorry about going poit for awhile.
Heh. I've seen electrified audiences, but not once have I believed their jobs could be saved. 8)
ReplyDeleteJumper,
ReplyDeleteOh. I see where you are going now. I missed the distinction between magnetization and magnetic field. My bad. 8)
I was taught to think about magnets as little current loops. The magnet is the axis of the loop. Only spatial directions need apply, so the topology doesn't have to cope with light cones.
Reminds me of an old question. Can the entire universe rotate? 8)
Berial,
ReplyDeleteHeh. Another way to look at those loops, though, is that the stuff has always been there and happens to be looping in time. Every collision with a photon causes the 'thing' to reverse in time. With an inflationary burp, some loops break because the path along with they might travel becomes too large too fast. Poof. Things seem to appear, but they were always there.
A poll response asymmetry is about as plausible as a talk-radio listener-ship asymmetry as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteI avoided pollsters after dealing with some that were obviously partisan. I don't mind helping journalists know what is going on, but I don't know who is who when they call.
Hi Guys
ReplyDeleteYour polling systems are just TOOOO buggy
With the number of faults that you seem to have you need to do something major
When we have an election the "spoiled ballots" are in the teens - for 50,000 votes cast
At that level it is easy for each instance to be investigated - you seem to be happy with massive discrepancies at every part of the process
You won't get a decent reliable system until you actively move for zero errors - not within 1% is OK!
go tell Germans or Italians (like my mother who survived a USAAF bombing in 1943) how "strong and intact" was their civilization after all that show...
ReplyDeleteWell those nations didn't bomb themselves to rubble, now did they? Like I said, liberals are good at making war on "oppressors" (i.e. anyone with non-liberal values), but not so good at building cohesive nations that last. Which is why when liberalism wins, it loses.
Both. As has been pointed out, the Marshall plan and its Japanese counterpart worked just fine. So well the neocons thought it would work everywhere with 5% of the formerly expected budget.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Is_the_Universe_finite_or_infinite_An_interview_with_Joseph_Silk
ReplyDeleteOn flatness, topology and infinite-ness of the universe.
Alfred Differ:
ReplyDeleteReminds me of an old question. Can the entire universe rotate? 8)
Heh. I remember thinking about that back in early physics courses. Imagine a universe in which only two objects (planets? atoms? not sure it matters) exist. Gravity should pull the two objects together, but if they are rotating around a common center, they could theoretically remain at the same distance from each other forever.
A hypothetical conscious observer would have to be awfully creative to figure out that the objects are in tension between rotational motion and gravity, rather than to just observe that the entire system is stationary.
A poll response asymmetry is about as plausible as a talk-radio listener-ship asymmetry as far as I'm concerned.
I avoided pollsters after dealing with some that were obviously partisan. I don't mind helping journalists know what is going on, but I don't know who is who when they call.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but exit polling isn't conducted over the phone, is it? I was under the impression they were catching voters actually leaving the polling places.
I'm not sure what you're responding to here. We have certainly discussed exit polling becoming unreliable in one direction, but my most recent comment that this seems related to was about touch screens acting differently from what the voter intended, and how those stories always seem to be about someone intending to vote Democratic, but the Republican's name being marked on the screen. That's nothing to do with polling.
My understanding of that sort of thing is that it's not hacking per se. Rather, the way the machines are set up, the area of the screen that registers a touch (a click) for a particular candidate is independent of the actual visible "button" that the voter sees. So what you can have is a very thin area in the middle of the "Hillary Clinton" button that registers a touch for Hillary, and a very wide area around the "Donald Trump" button which extends into the visible buttons around it, but registers the touch for Trump. The unwary voter who doesn't carefully check the result ends up voting for the wrong candidate. Add that to the methods of cheating which won't show up on a recount.
Duncan Cairncross:
ReplyDeleteyou seem to be happy with massive discrepancies at every part of the process
The problem is that the winners are happy with it, and they control the process.
With your solution, I would love to hear your analysis of the race between Issa and Applegate. It's our neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteTreebeard:
ReplyDeleteWell those nations didn't bomb themselves to rubble, now did they? Like I said, liberals are good at making war on "oppressors" (i.e. anyone with non-liberal values), but not so good at building cohesive nations that last. Which is why when liberalism wins, it loses.
First of all, do you really put mental scare-quotes around "oppressors" when referring to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy? As if that characterization is just liberal propaganda? I mean, the Geico commercial might as well say "If you're a Nazi, you oppress people. That's what you do."
More to the point, though, if tolerant liberal societies don't hold together so well, they do have the benefit of not creating enemies who want to bomb them to rubble. The fact that Hitler and Mussolini were defeated in WWII may be external to their respective countries, but it's not mere coincidence. Fascist nationalism necessarily makes enemies because it puts everybody else in the position of having to fight an existential war with them. That's a feature, not a bug, of the design.
Just came across this Rand Corporation paper (pdf):
ReplyDeleteThe Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model
Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It
In short, Putin's Russia uses a new approach to propaganda:
"Distinctive Features of the Contemporary Model
for Russian Propaganda
1. High-volume and multichannel
2. Rapid, continuous, and repetitive
3. Lacks commitment to objective reality
4. Lacks commitment to consistency."
I.e. a blizzard of propaganda over as many channels as possible, repetitive, but willing to change its story at the drop of a hat, overwhelming in volume any opposition or disproof. Not worried about being proven false, because there are twenty more lies where that one came from.
Sound like any recent winners of the electoral college? Maybe somebody with weird hair and a hotel chain?
Recommendations including getting the truth out there first, forewarning people about the firehose of propaganda, countering the aims rather than the propaganda itself, and competing with your own.
Unrelated, but also informative:
The Rules for Rulers, a great video explaining some details (which I had never understood) of how dictators and democrats alike REALLY work. Notice there is an isomorphism between pyramid/diamond shaped societies and the continuum between dictatorship and democracy.
On Donald Trump as Asimov's "Mule" :
ReplyDeleteThe idea that Trump somehow clandestinely altered people's minds and feelings to subvert the election, while it "explains" the facts, is of course pure sci-fi/fantasy speculation.
However, in one way, Donald Trump really was The Mule. He was the individual who upended the game to the point that psychohistory was unable to predict the course of human events because of the way he personally affected them--an outlier who had enough leverage to move the world.
In the final analysis, that's what The Mule was. The specifics of his super-powers are not as important as the fact that he by himself up-ended Hari Seldon's methodology of predicting the course of history for an entire galaxy.
For those who are following such matters:
ReplyDelete"The first results in Thursday evening were from Menominee County. Trump lost two votes compared to the initial count and Democrat Hillary Clinton lost one. Stein gained 17 votes and Libertarian Gary Johnson picked up 12 — a discrepancy the state Elections Commission reported was due to “human error” in which their vote totals from certain wards were omitted from the initial tally."
It is a sparsly populated county that went for HRC by 1003 to 269.
Updates over the next few days.
Tacitus
Paul SB:
ReplyDeleteEither way, what you are experiencing (me too) is very normal, even if it is new for you. Being normal, though, does not mean it is good.
The thing is, it's not new to me. It doesn't happen every day, but frequently enough to notice.
Back when I was a mere lad of 25, I applied for a job which required a security clearance, and part of the screening process was a psychological test where you have to answer a slew of questions with almost no time to think about them. The idea is that they get your quick first response rather than giving you time to think about gaming the test.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this is still true, but back then, if you had any history of drug use or homosexual encounters, that was an automatic disqualification--the theory being that you would be subject to blackmail. With that in mind, one of the questions was something to the effect of "I would be interested in having a homosexual encounter" (check yes or no). Only I would have sworn to God that it said "heterosexual encounter", so I first checked yes. Somehow, I did manage to check my work and change the response, but you really weren't supposed to have time to do that. That was the first time I noticed my perception being altered that way, but it certainly wasn't the last. And I wasn't old back then.
I have been too busy/sleepy to keep up recently, but I have wanted to check up with Larry on the job hunt. Hope all is well and the "vacation" is just long enough to be relaxing, not long enough to become misery.
Currently interviewing and drawing severance pay. I don't interview well, so having to do so is the low point of the experience. But as my previous job had a lot of stress, I'm enjoying the forced vacation as much as I can (lie back and enjoy it). One thing I have confirmed about myself is that I'm not my dad. When he faced a layoff, it crushed his spirit, as he was of the generation of men whose identity was tied up in their jobs. Me, I want to be able to provide for my wife and child, but for a temporary period, not-working is fun too.
By the way, CGP Grey has a bunch of other great videos on Youtube. Not a bad way to get a quick and painless primer on politics and civics.
ReplyDelete@TCB I agree that CGP is a great youtube channel. I've been subscribed for years. I LOVED the one about London being 'a city, in a city, in a country, in a country'.
ReplyDeleteAs for the theory that Russian Propaganda affected our election I'd say sure it did but probably not as much as they are getting credit for. The really interesting thing about all that 'fake news' that should more properly be labeled as 'propaganda' is that it's basically an example of democratic capitalism eating itself. The people putting that stuff out were ECONOMICALLY ENCOURAGED to do so. I think I saw one of them say in an interview that he was making $3000 a month from doing it and was unlikely to stop until that ad revenue dries up.
I figure we can lay that monetary driver at the feet of things like Rush Limbaugh and even Fox News too. Sure they were set up to push an agenda, but the people they want to push are a GREAT source of ad revenue because of the way they are wired. They won't question their source if it keeps telling them things they already believe to be true. Not only that but they TRUST that source completely when they are told other sources are lying to them. It makes for an advertisers DREAM audience.
If this worked the same for more liberal agenda's I think we'd see the same sort of networks but for some reason the current generation of liberals tend to wander too much to be good for advertisers in the current model of how it works.
ReplyDelete"More to the point, though, if tolerant liberal societies don't hold together so well, they do have the benefit of not creating enemies who want to bomb them to rubble (whereas) Fascist nationalism necessarily makes enemies because it puts everybody else in the position of having to fight an existential war with them" [LH].
Wow. In his attempt to refute Treebeard's indictment of progressive liberalism, a delusional Larry_H as much as says that tolerant liberal societies don't need to defend themselves because they don't create enemies, implying that all those tolerant minority, homosexual, gypsy & jewish victims of WW2 must have somehow DESERVED extermination by virtue of having enemies.
I hear this kind of progressive unreason about 'deservingness' every day:
Those who were born into a particular identity group don't deserve to be disenfranchised or hated, yet those who are surrounded by enemies must somehow DESERVE to be hated & disenfranchised, especially if they were born in a particular identity group known as privileged white males.
Larry_H fails to realise that the Nazis made this exact same assertion as they rose to power. Believing themselves VICTIMS, the national socialists argued that the german people had been victimised & betrayed by a secret cabal of fascists, elitists & financiers as evidenced by the Treaty of Versailles; hence national SOCIALISM.
The truth is that DESERVING has nothing to do with victimisation, progressivism, the human condition or anything.
Best
+++++++
Repeat after me:
Those evil (insert designation of choice) don't DESERVE to win; their undeserved success has VICTIMISED my identity group. Ergo, my VICTIMISED status makes my identity group more meritorious & DESERVING than that other evil cheating identity group, so let's all form an organization of VICTIMS, don brown shirts & break some windows in protest! A few V2 rockets & IEDs will right all those wrongs against us!
And so it goes.
“What works is dares! Challenges, wagers that only a wuss would refuse.”
ReplyDeleteFair enough, but claiming that facts don't work may be more of that smug patronizing thing.
It’s time to have a conversation about “political correctness”. Trump supporters use it to mean “a truth that cannot be spoken”. Challenge them to articulate those “truths” themselves. Than provide real evidence that the implied “truths” simply are not true.
Going on a facts-based-offensive would also work to counter the Benghazi nonsense:
Talk about the second Beirut attack under Reagan. The Benghazi accusers are cranked-up about the time lag between when the Benghazi attacks began and when they climaxed later that same night. Was that enough time to respond? No. On the other hand, after the October 1983 Beirut bombings that killed 241 U.S. peacekeepers Reagan had the better part of a YEAR to secure the U.S. embassy before the September 1984 Beirut bombings killed another 24 embassy staff. The Reagan government just hadn’t got round to implementing the security recommendations.
Talking about Reagan, Trump sells his supply-side “Voodoo” plans by talking about how Reagan’s tax cuts paid for themselves. Only they didn’t. The deficit exploded under the Reagan administration. Facts, man. Go with facts.
TCB: Shorter Rand Corporation: Russia and Trump are DDoSing civil society. Which begs the question of how to build firewalls against rapid-fire lies, and place them in front of critical facts (such as: the vote counting in the United States is verifiable as fair enough to ensure correct results).
ReplyDeleteThe White House will no longer be of aid in this effort as they have taken the technique up themselves. While still able, some government employees may still attempt this as the Office of Gov't Ethics did on Twitter recently. Civil society, media, and (yes, I'm gonna say it) corporations must learn to do it. Silicon Valley in particular may be of major import. The libertarian ethos that rules our communications systems has been telling themselves and everyone else for decades that they were to be keepers of our freedom. Time to prove it.
******************************
locum, your logic has holes a first-year student could drive a truck through. Just because liberalism has historically not created enemies doesn't mean they have no enemies. On the contrary, liberalism fights the ancient tendency of all societies, to return to the lowest common denominator: hierarchical aristocratic autocracy. And reactionary "conservatives" since the Renaissance have tried to argue that since it is the natural tendency of societies, that makes it the correct form of society. As late as 1918 there were major world powers arguing this case openly, despite being outperformed by "weak" liberal societies. Meanwhile, actually weak liberal societies (French Second Republic, Weimar Republic, the "Whites" of the February Revolution, the Young Turks, etc.) quickly displayed their weakness by sliding back into autocracy.
I don't give a damn about anyone deserving anything but the opportunity to make the maximum contribution to society they can. I have no interest in trying to litigate what was wrong in the past, only what can be right in the future. And if our choices are to support white victimization or to support minority victimization, the system needs an overhaul before we Make America A Great Failed State Again.
Fortunate then, isn't it, that there are versions of liberalism and conservatism that don't involve victimization at all?
Tired of hearing suggestions that Nazism is a left ideology because socialism. There were some socialist elements in the early NSDAP but these were purged in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. After that the Nazi party was a fully far-right coalition of big business, racial purists, militarists and aristocrats.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can see, 'socialism' was a positive buzzword in the early 20th Century, just like 'organic', 'natural' and 'wholesome' are now. A fast-food chain can say its burgers are 'free of artificial ingredients' while still using beef that's been fed lots of corn, hormones and antibiotics. It's not quite a lie, but not really telling the truth either.
If you were a "one percenter" and not Jewish, and remembered who was in charge, they let you live your life of luxury. You didn't even have to join the Party. If you were a communist, liberal, labor unionist, etc. the Nazi government would send you to the camps.
And usually they'd find a 'crime' to justify that repression.
Richard L. Miller: Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust tells how the Nazis created a legal structure for identification, ostracism, confiscation, concentration and finally destruction of the Jews, parallel to his writing in another book, Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State.
Since millions of Americans lost their right to vote because of the GOP/Nixon War on Drugs, and because important elections were decided (in favor of the GOP, especially but not solely in Florida in 2000) by this loss of franchise, this is not an innocent coincidence.
locumranch:
ReplyDelete"More to the point, though, if tolerant liberal societies don't hold together so well, they do have the benefit of not creating enemies who want to bomb them to rubble (whereas) Fascist nationalism necessarily makes enemies because it puts everybody else in the position of having to fight an existential war with them" [LH].
Wow. In his attempt to refute Treebeard's indictment of progressive liberalism, a delusional Larry_H as much as says that tolerant liberal societies don't need to defend themselves because they don't create enemies,
No, I didn't say "don't need to defend themselves." In fact, I specifically claimed that the necessity of defending themselves against fascist enemies is what causes those fascist reichs to have a limited lifespan. The whole business model of fascism requires dehumanizing other people, and those other people tend to wage war in return. Liberal societies tend not to go to war unless provoked, which is not the same thing as "not defending themselves." In fact, the opposite thing.
Fascists start wars. Liberals end them.
implying that all those tolerant minority, homosexual, gypsy & jewish victims of WW2 must have somehow DESERVED extermination by virtue of having enemies.
Now, who is raving delusional? I didn't say liberals don't have enemies. I said they don't force outsiders to be their enemies by making the choice "Defend yourselves or die."
Best!
locumranch:
ReplyDeleteThe truth is that DESERVING has nothing to do with victimisation, progressivism, the human condition or anything.
I don't entirely disagree, but that's really irrelevant.
Referees and umpires enforce the rules of a game. When they call a penalty or declare a runner to be out, it's not because the other team is more angelic--more "deserving" in the sense you mean it. It's because the play went against one team fair and square. Both teams and in fact the entire sport "deserves" to be called fairly.
Likewise, members of society deserve to be fairly judged and fairly treated as equal citizens. Victims of extra-legal social practices deserve to be made whole in that sense--not because they are "better" but because they have been wronged.
How else can you defend law and order at all? A murder victim wasn't necessarily good just because he happened to get killed? A robbery victim might beat his wife or shoot puppies on the weekend, so why should his property get special protection from the robber? Etc.
Susan Watson:
ReplyDeleteTalking about Reagan, Trump sells his supply-side “Voodoo” plans by talking about how Reagan’s tax cuts paid for themselves. Only they didn’t. The deficit exploded under the Reagan administration. Facts, man. Go with facts.
Unfortunately, your example shows the flaw in what you argue for. If facts mattered, Supply Side would have already been discredited after 2008, if not after 2001. The fact that Republicans can still successfully run on that program, and the fact that voters actually believe that the Reagan and Bush tax cuts paid for themselves means that facts simply don't matter.
TAcitus, we breathlessly await reports. While part of me wishes to find a huge, smoking gun, and reverse enough electors so that the remaining electors of conscience might do something historic...
ReplyDeleteI am willing to adjust my categories:
REDUCE my impression-guess that Scott Walker's already-proved corrupt-cheating administration cheated via voting machine fraud.
INCREASE the smaller hypothesis... that they knew this day was coming and supplements machine fraud with old fashioned box-stuffing etc.
Naturally, that pushes me farther toward Wing-nut territory and I am thus somewhat deterred, except to hope that lavish whistleblower (henchmen) rewards might shine transparency on the entire thing, someday.
WHat I do expect is that more red states will eliminate paper ballots. Watch. Let's make that a bet. As a "reform."
I have repeatedly made clear that I know there definitely exist PC-Bullies and elements on the FAR left who are -- at heart -- as hateful and prejudiced as anyone. We are human, and that personality type will seek avenues to engage in sanctioned bullying: stunning, self-righteous indignation against perceived enemies. The left is a tool for such behaviors. Those who would spill such bile at white males do exist and I have made clear that I despise them.
ReplyDeleteBut locum and his ilk never seek to make or prove a case that lefty, PC-bullying is more than an irritant, anywhere outside of college campuses. (Where it can rise to major irritant and even -- anecdotally -- really mess up a few lives.) The existence of massive white privilege - historical and present day - is overwhelming. In contrast, locum's ilk gather no statistics on how vastly their kind of people have been harmed or persecuted. And the reason is simple...
....because all they have is anecdotes and personal impressions Some of those are valid and injustices should be addressed! But it all merges swiftly into the far larger motivation... wish fantasies that their kind could be on-top again without having to earn it. As a birthright, not a slight born-advantage.
Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. That is what the rage of little white-boy whiners mostly boil down to.
Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings. Anecdotes, assertions and ravings.
Some of the anecdotes are valid reasons for some specific attention... though women and minorities can offer vastly more, and you deserve our compassion for your anecdotal plaints only if you are willing to also nod at theirs.
Assertions? Make a smaller fraction of them bilious made-up trollery crap! That would offer something called "credibility." look up the word. C... R.... E.....
Ravings? Ah... that is nearly all you do, man; so again, look up that "c" word.
Fox News tries for equivalence by coining the term "alt-left." http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/02/liberals-get-hysterical-over-alt-right-but-are-living-in-their-alt-left-world.html
ReplyDeleteWI updates as they come along. That first county report was so prompt because almost nobody lives there.
ReplyDeleteDown ticket a ways...
"Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, says a recount has upheld her victory over Republican Dan Kapanke in the 32nd SD.
Shilling said she hoped to "put this election behind us and continue moving forward on the issues that working families are concerned about. It’s time to get to work strengthening our schools, investing in infrastructure and expanding economic opportunities in our state."
Kapanke, who lost a 2011 recall election to Shilling, congratulated his Dem opponent, saying she will "represent all of the voters in the 32nd" when she returns to Madison.
"I requested this recount to ensure that each and every vote that was cast was recorded correctly and fairly. This recount has ensured that," Kapanke said."
Tacitus
I've noticed that when the far right want to complain about being brutally assaulted by the government they always mention Waco and Ruby Ridge. When they want to complain about super-wealthy backers of left-of-center politics, it's always George Soros.
ReplyDeleteWhy always the same examples? Because if they had more examples they'd mention those too!
Let's face it, when the government (local or federal) uses needless brutally on some political activists, it's usually the hippies and black activists, anti-corporate Occupy, and so on. Just look at how the people are being treated at Standing Rock, compared with the militia at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The militia got pretty kid-glove treatment. One managed to get himself killed, but he really had to provoke the cops to do it. Had he surrendered, he'd have gone free like the rest.
Also note that Menominee County is nearly completely a reservation, with a very large majority of the population being, well, Menominee. Only important if you're considering the makeup of the counties when looking at the recount or original results.
ReplyDeleteHi Larry
ReplyDeleteRe the hereto/homo thing - and others
My understanding is that the brain operates "ahead" of it's data stream
Have you ever seen aircraft - you can see what it is - count the engines - then it comes closer and it's a seagull?
Your/our visual processing grinds until it gets a solution and then moves on - sometimes the solution is wrong
This is because if it waited for full data the saber-tooth would get us before we decided to dodge
Saying that it does seem to be worse now than it was when I was younger
TCB:
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that when the far right want to complain about being brutally assaulted by the government they always mention Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Apparently, those are exceptions to the rule they otherwise hold to for how the forces of "law and order" should deal with armed terrorists. Or even un-armed protestors.
@treebeard: Like I said, liberals are good at making war on...
ReplyDeleteNations with no McDonalds franchise. Get with the times dude. 8)
Seriously, though, nationalism is what you are describing and history shows it tends to lead to wars. If two roughly equal nations butt heads that way, pretty much everyone gets stomped into the dirt and grave stones are erected later if we can find them. It is generally a bad idea as it willingly surrenders a powerful, first level tool of foreign policy. Soft, economic power.
Avoiding nationalism doesn't mean we have to avoid basic patriotism or love of country and community. It means we shouldn't be overly prejudiced about it.
When it comes to the Germans, they certainly didn't bomb themselves to rubble. They DID try to use hard power on potentially two front wars both times in the 20th century, though. We might accept the argument that they were ignorant of the consequences the first time, but not the second time. Many see the two world wars as one war with a pause, so we might shrug our shoulders and say it was a tough lesson to learn. They learned it well, though.
When it comes to Americans, the case can be made that we haven't yet learned what the Germans learned. Our Civil War stopped in 1865, but was never really resolved. The subcultures involved still exist, still disagree, and still claim to be the best definition of what it means to be American. We can agree to disagree as we often do, but that becomes difficult when anyone is willing to tell another to change their way of life. What we have to decide for now is which of our differences is worth a fight.
@LarryHart
ReplyDeleteI think what you are looking for is 'one of us'. Ruby Ridge and Waco had 'victims' that looked mainstream white or conservative. THOSE sorts of people aren't to be treated the same way as that trash other group.
The way hippies and minorities are treated doesn't even enter the conservative psyche except as an example of 'jerks getting what they deserve by upstanding authority'.
But let it be a group of white conservative leaning men and watch their outrage meter peg out. ESPECIALLY if they can make it an 'abuse of authority' by Democrats as proof that dems are illegitimate authority.
I wonder if Timothy McVeigh is still a secret lefty in their circles?
TCB: Again, it's the treatment that differentiates. While the Bundy family themselves appear to be bull-headed grifters, any frank discussion with people in that part of the country frequently turns to how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), being the primary landowner in the area, has arbitrary and near-dictatorial control over nearly everything outside city limits in that part of the country. And since primary economy (farm/ranch/forest/mine/etc) is king out in that area, that means the usual rhetoric about the Heavy Hand of Unrepresentative Federal Interference is more than just hooey. It's still trivial compared to many grievances, but just because it's a minor grievance doesn't mean it's not real.
ReplyDeleteAs for donors, what's really amusing is that Soros isn't even the biggest giver to Democratic causes. But you really have to hunt to find the people complaining about Tom Steyer.
@Larry Hart, 11:12AM
ReplyDeleteA murder victim wasn't necessarily good just because he happened to get killed?
I think I know where locum has that 'victims are/must be angelic or they aren't victims' idea: it's a theme in society, for instance in murder investigation shows like Investigation Discovery channel. In the intro the victim is almost always described as bright, beautiful, the soul of the family, just starting life etc etc, especially when the victim is female. So the horror of her murder is thrown in stark clair-obscur and we will have more sympathy for her and her family. Very formulaic.
locum then runs to extremes with this idea, in his last posts far into bizarro land.
And now that I'm here, I'm going to ask this question again:
Donzelion, and Dr Brin if you have time, what is your opinion on this
article about police bodycams with facial recognition?
If I read it correctly it's not yet a thing, but would you think the main result would be a chilling effect on the trust of citizens, or could the net effect still be positive?
My first gut reaction is "hmm, not sure if I'd be happy with it" because I'd wonder about its implementation. It could lead to a greater imbalance of power, when implemented with that aim in mind, instead of leading to greater transparence of a good (not nosy) kind.
Twominds
@Alfred Diller: I'd be careful saying just nationalism. Nationalism by itself is merely attachment to the concept of one's country and that its sovereignty should be assured. For all the 20th century, nationalism was a necessary thing as European imperalism collapsed, first in Europe itself and then across the world. Most Americans were nationalists of some sort during that period, too, as we asserted ourselves and our identity against the tides of Anarchism, Bolshevism, Fascism Mark One, Stalinism, and Maoism. From 1980 to 2000 no one seemed to be coming up with any of these new -isms, and we thought we could relax, for the favored -isms of America -- Liberalism and Capitalism -- seemed to be doing well. Even when one new -ism arose, Jihadism, we did not think our self-identity and security were threatened seriously; Jihadism could strike us here (and did) but was primarily something that happened Over There. A measured nationalism, and a recognition that it required tempering, served us and many other nations well.
ReplyDeleteBut we let our guard down, and now Putinism is biting at the entrails of all the Western powers even as Mandarism (for lack of a better term) arises in the East. If Putinism succeeds, there will still be the diplomatic concept of a West, but it will mean something completely different: a Russian-led coalition of angry klepto-fascist populists striving to extinguish this horrible Otherness in all its collective midsts. Such a West deserts any efforts to lead or influence the world to nurse its own self-inflicted internal wounds, and leaves China to inherit leadership of the rest of the planet. (India could one day challenge that; but it would only be after they could tear its attention away from the death grip with their cousins in the Indus Valley.) I predict in such a nightmare that Germany would be the last to go down; and it would not go down easily.
For you see, nationalism taken too far becomes chauvinism; and chauvinism sometimes becomes jingoism, and leads to fields of poppies; and chauvinism frustrated becomes xenophobia, and soon the former nation is a Festung with searchlights on the borders and internal checks for undesirables and dark, secret places where those undesirables disappear and mass graves where they reappear.
And Germans have seen and done far too much of that; and they know they can do better.
So can we; but we must choose for it not to happen. locum, we hear your nightmares. Now see ours. Maybe it sounds ridiculous to you, but then see how we see yours, and be -- shall I say it? -- enlightened.
ReplyDeleteOnce there was a fluffy bunny who was harmless, honest, inclusive, tolerant & completely incapable of making any enemies whatsoever, yet all manner of predatory animals hunted, maimed, devoured & thrived upon this fluffy bunny's misfortune. Did this qualify as victimisation? Did this bunny DESERVE to be eaten? Ought it merit special protections? No, no, a thousand times no.
Relative 'deserving-ness' is completely irrational, irrelevant & non-empiric in regards to this circumstance & many others.
Yet, this question of 'deserving-ness' is exactly what David, Catfish N. Cod & Larry_H obsess over:
David insists that (1) scientists, experts & professionals deserve to be obeyed, (2) the US Democrat party deserves political hegemony and (3) GOP climate deniers deserve utter defeat; Larry_H argues that fascists deserve defeat (because 'bad' = undeserving?) & liberal progressives deserve victory (because 'good'= deserving?); and Catfish N. Cod doesn't "give a damn about anyone deserving anything but the opportunity to make the maximum contribution to society" (implying that society 'deserves' that maximum contribution).
This is a thoroughly childish, non-empiric & un-scientific indulgence, this retreat into the Magical Thinking of Should-ism, Ought-ism & Deserving-ness, which gives rise to the irrational circular logic that I cite (and Catfish rightfully dismisses above) about how the 'Superior Virtue of the Oppressed' fallacy gives rise to an unending cycle of victim empowerment, predation & victimisation.
Liberals make fascists; Fascists start wars; and Liberals end them (sometimes), making more fascists.
Best
_______
Nobody can be said to deserve anything, Catfish, since what we call 'deserving-ness' represents a transaction at best, ending & beginning with personal benefit.
ReplyDelete"David insists that (1) scientists, experts & professionals deserve to be obeyed, (2) the US Democrat party deserves political hegemony and (3) GOP climate deniers deserve utter defeat;"
1 = Liar.
2= Outright, strawmanning look in the mirror asshole liar, attributing to others the only way HE can imagine power and that he seeks.
3 - Absolutely. Stunning traitors to our children who manipulate armies of gullible morons who hate people who know stuff out of puerile, 3rd grade playground resentment of teachers' pets who actually know stuff.
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Twominds.... in The Transparent Society and elsewhere I keep explaining... *Nothing that outraged activists do will prevent the police from seeing you!* If you gain temporary victories, all you'll do is drive the powers into secret corners. The very notion that facial recog won't be as trivial as breathing, available in 10,000 ways, ten years from now is proof of lack of imagination bordering on self-lobotomization.
The trick will be always to have these powers ourselves. To make police less needed and thus fewer! To recognize police and hold them accountable. And to easily catch the voyeurs and peeping toms who would violate our privacy by judgmentally peering at us.
It is a long shot... but it is our only shot.
@Catfish N. Cod: If you parse Treebeard carefully, he appears to be using the darker sense of nationalism. That attitude among roughly equal powers has led to megadeaths. One doesn't have to give up the concept of nation and sovereignty to avoid that danger except in the minds of people who can't imagine anything other than false dichotomies.
ReplyDeleteTreebeard is essentially accusing enlightenment thinkers of being nationalists (dark sense) where we self-identify with each other no matter what borders our relationships cross. Our way is better than theirs and we are willing to fight them to force our institutions upon them. Those are strong words, so I think they meet the darker meaning in nationalism.
He happens to be mistaken. Enlightenment thinkers ARE willing to do battle with the feudalists, but it usually requires provocation. In simply existing, we pose a threat to feudalist institutions. History shows this. However, this doesn't mean we bring violence and war to them simply by existing. That usually comes later when they constrain us somehow and run up against our 'Sovereign Unto Ourselves' attitudes. True Aristocrats expect to rule. Peasants expect to be ruled. The Bourgeoisie expects to be let alone mostly so they can trade or not, relate or not, love or not, and think or not. It’s not hard to see how most Americans are bourgeois.
I'll admit old school liberals hold some old grudges against the oldest forms of power that we fought for a few centuries. There is a reason Americans have a visceral response to even discussions of social strata. The petite bourgeois looks upon the educated clerisy and sees the snobbiest upturned noses. The clerisy looks back upon them and sees peasants too willing to suck up to the haute bourgeois oligarch wanna-bees. They look upon the petite as a source of labor from which they can profit and the clerisy as a source of boffins and wild cannons. However, we are ALL bourgeois. The US doesn’t have aristocrats in any real sense of the term. When one tries to surface, many of us start taking shots at them. Look up the life and times of Huey Long and note how he died. As for church power, don’t get me started. 8)
Confederate foot soldiers fought for the last of the American bourgeoisie who tried to live as aristocrats. The plantation owners found a way to motivate them to fight and die for a system with which they identified, but one that did not serve them in any higher fashion than as members of the petite clade. No doubt some of them were distant cousins of mine as the Scots and Irishmen can be found thick through Appalachia. I get loyalty to clan, but I’m too educated now to put up with what my so-called masters would have of me. I will not accept being returned to the peasantry and have higher aspirations than as a member of the petite clade. I’d rather my distant cousins had higher expectations of themselves too, but I won’t go to war with them to force them to water they can drink. I’d rather wait for them to get thirsty first.
Treebeard isn’t thirsty yet, but he does appear to be suffering the symptoms of dehydration. I tell my progressive friends to wait patiently for him and his friends, but help make sure they don’t burn the place down while we wait them out.
onward... to space! (Tacitus... time for science!!!
ReplyDeleteonward
@locumranch: Liberals make fascists
ReplyDeleteGarbage history as well as David’s recognition of the lies.
Liberals in the oldest sense didn’t appear on the seen until the English went Dutch. Your fascists display ancient behaviors. The Fascists of the 20th century were a kind of counter-reaction, but their roots go far back into history before liberals ever appeared.
Arguing that liberals make fascists is like arguing that adding water to dirt containing compostable material makes worms. Sure looks like it, but it ain’t so.
locumranch:
ReplyDeleteOnce there was a fluffy bunny ... Did this bunny DESERVE to be eaten? Ought it merit special protections? No, no, a thousand times no.
If our founding document read "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all living creatures are created equal," then you'd have a point.
David insists that (1) scientists, experts & professionals deserve to be obeyed,
You're confusing roles. It's not about what the scientists, experts, and professionals deserve. It makes sense to take their advice because they know stuff. You are correct that you have as much right to ignore advice of people who know stuff as others do to pay attention to it. But when reality doesn't work the way you require it to, it's not because the scientists, experts, and professionals have harmed you.
(2) the US Democrat party ...
excuse to stop reading right there.
Larry_H argues that fascists deserve defeat (because 'bad' = undeserving?) & liberal progressives deserve victory (because 'good'= deserving?);
Fascists deserve defeat because they necessarily make war on the rest of civilization. Civilization's implicit compact is to live and let live, but the ones who refuse to "let live" thereby void their own rights, including the "live" part. Society must protect the law-abiding from the lawbreakers, or else it makes no sense at all. By the rules of war, of course, fascists have the right to try to win, but over the long term, it never happens. I'm articulating the law of psychohistory which explains this fact.
You obsess over the word "deserve" when the rest of us are arguing that humanity has performed many experiments of how societies can be structured, and that one which respects the rights and dignity of its citizens works better than the others. Yes, "works better" is subjective, and you can argue that a Holnist America would be more to your liking than what we currently have. Just understand that that is what we're arguing. "Deserve" doesn't come into it. Also understand that I personally believe that you are incorrect in your belief that you'd be happier, more contented, whatever measurement you want to use, if your dream ever came true.
And in that case, yes, I'd think you deserved to be miserable.
Best!
Clinton lost for many valid reasons. Until the leftists (Democrats) take a very close look in the mirror, they will still have no clue as to why she lost. This is not taunting, trolling, or an attempt to get a rise out of the generally leftist folks commenting on this site. But think of the irony - the "blue" Democratic party is blaming working class guys for losing the election. The question is: who are the Dems a party of now?
ReplyDelete" The question is: who are the Dems a party of now?"
ReplyDeleteEveryone except white aging-boomer, angry, non-educated males WABANEMs and their browbeaten wives. All the people who either went to college seriously wanting to learn, or who went into professions that required a facility for facts.
Sure there is a caste or class component. The REAL proletariat knows that the DP fights for them, the way that almost all members of the Greatest Generation adored FDR above all living humans. The WABANEMS claim to admire The Greatest Generation while spewing venom at everything they stood for.
" The question is: who are the Dems a party of now?"
The United States of America... the Union in this ongoing Civil War. A nation that believes that science and facts matter and have helped us spectacularly and will help us more, tomorrow.
BTW the WABANEMs were outnumbered at the polls. By 2.5 million and rising and probably vastly more, since the pop[ular vote was tweaked in every red state where voting machines have no audit capability.
What are WAMANEMs? Look up the term "lumpenproletariat." The same clade who fought against their own class interests for the plantation owners. Oh, be proud of the confederacy's victory.
It won't last.
onward
ReplyDeleteI won't be back here.
onward
And that's exactly my point. There is no self reflection, just indignant bitterness. Unfortunately, I know what lummpen proletariat is, having to have studied Das Kapital while still in my teens. The inner city food-stamp demographic (which Clinton has openly called upon to support her) is it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Union is not in a Civil War yet, thankfully. If it gets to that point, the "North" will no longer have the Iowa, Kansas and any other heartland regiments. And I wouldn't count on Air BnB programmers to fill the ranks, either.
What's really interesting is that the self-appointed intellectuals refuse to even consider the possibility of having been wrong in something. I thought open-mindedness was a virtue, diversity and all.