This is just as disingenuous as his "I told you so!!" was in 2016. Trump cheated last time, he's going to cheat this time too. He didn't outsmart anyone. DNC is a loaded word to get people to...
This is just as disingenuous as his "I told you so!!" was in 2016.
“Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?”
Trump cheated last time, he's going to cheat this time too. He didn't outsmart anyone. DNC is a loaded word to get people to think what they want, usually negative, about the Democratic Party.
“The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states – but not Michigan. Sound familiar?”
"HRC didn't go to Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania!!" they say, despite the fact that HRC campaigned in Pennsylvania a bunch and still lost there.
“I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,”
[citation needed]
“Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f*** you’ ever recorded in human history – and it will feel good,”
And I'm just gonna stop with this, because it shows that he cares more about his guy winning than stopping a wannabe dictator. It doesn't feel good to everyone who's been targeted by the things Trump says. It doesn't feel good to everyone who had a brain and saw that he would be varying degrees of awful for anyone who isn't himself. If your main electoral interest is spite then fuck you, I don't want you voting. That election might have killed this country.
“Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump,” Moore warned at that time.
Edit: I struck through a part that was inaccurate. I'm going to say a bit about this last quote I included instead: this is a pretty massive indictment of these beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiffs to say they're going to vote for a guy just because he says what they like even if it's obvious that he's not going to do any of that stuff.
This reminds me of his big recent climate change documentary on that ended up being almost entirely based on data from a decade before its release and riddled with inaccuracies that got widely...
This reminds me of his big recent climate change documentary on that ended up being almost entirely based on data from a decade before its release and riddled with inaccuracies that got widely condemned by environmentalist groups and experts.
Edit: link to a tildes thread from when the documentary came out, comments section is full of sources explaining why Moore’s documentary was wrong/bad/dangerous
I didn't think I'd defend Michael Moore when I woke up this morning but I don't see that. I read it as a "many voters feel disaffected by the political system and they want revenge". Trump did...
And I'm just gonna stop with this, because it shows that he cares more about his guy winning than stopping a wannabe dictator
I didn't think I'd defend Michael Moore when I woke up this morning but I don't see that. I read it as a "many voters feel disaffected by the political system and they want revenge". Trump did play hard for the "I am on your side against the political establishment" last time and I guess he'll do it again? Although how that will work I have no idea since technically that's him.
Am out of the loop with US internal politics though... buuuut if I was a betting man I would put a bet on Trump winning tbh.
Again I have as much insight in to US politics as I have with Thai politics.
That's fair. I went to find some context about that line of his and he is in fact talking about people who vote for Trump, so I struck out that section of my post. That said, I wish he and lots of...
That's fair. I went to find some context about that line of his and he is in fact talking about people who vote for Trump, so I struck out that section of my post. That said, I wish he and lots of other people would spend as much time being sympathetic to the people Trump is persecuting as they are for random white blue-collar people who voted for him.
Again, not trying to step to the plate for Moore (odd evening this) - but I think the logic is "all blue collar people" (or working class) with a non-existent interest in say LGBT, PoC, etc who...
Again, not trying to step to the plate for Moore (odd evening this) - but I think the logic is "all blue collar people" (or working class) with a non-existent interest in say LGBT, PoC, etc who are not working class.
BUT BUT just to have that said - this can be my ignorance showing since I may be equating him with left wing movements and commentaries here. So please take this one with a massive pinch of salt.
I'll admit that this sort of discussion about blue-collar, "hardworking Real Americans™" touches a nerve and I could always stand to be more clear about it. Ever since Trump won we've seen tons...
Again, not trying to step to the plate for Moore (odd evening this) - but I think the logic is "all blue collar people" (or working class) with a non-existent interest in say LGBT, PoC, etc who are not working class.
I'll admit that this sort of discussion about blue-collar, "hardworking Real Americans™" touches a nerve and I could always stand to be more clear about it. Ever since Trump won we've seen tons and tons of articles about random white people in the Midwest (aka Real Americans™, which is a term they started using around the 2008 election if I recall correctly) who are down on their luck or otherwise hurting and probably voted for Obama at least once, so they're totally not racist, but voted for Trump in 2016. They always frame what they're talking about in terms of economics but betray that they're ignorant and/or racist. They talk about how growing up in that taught them to be the way they are; self-sufficient, hard-working, etc. My problem is that I've seen a number of these articles and I've never seen any about the people who grew up in the same places and had the same experiences but came to the opposite conclusions about things like not voting for the most obvious liar I've ever seen or not voting to sabotage your own community. They don't talk about how unwelcome people who aren't white, straight, and/or Christian feel living in these places, particularly since Trump's election.
My issue is that way more attention is given to these people than their neighbors who are also hurting. They aren't all racist, and they don't all vote for Trump, but the ones who vote for Trump are given most of the attention. They're given attention by the right because they're Q fodder and by the left because they're perceived to have given the election to Trump and so a lot of hand-wringing has been done about how to win them back. Michael Moore is right that the economic policy of the last four decades has hurt these people, but the implication in "every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump" is that he's talking about white people because no one else loves Trump. We don't ever think of the beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiffs who are black or Hispanic or Asian. It's similar to me to how a lot of people on the left prioritize economic justice over social justice or outright ignore social justice.
Again, US politics and me - its way outside of my comfort zone and my replies will invariably be marked by me translating it to local politics in my brain so if what I say sounds absolutely crazy...
Again, US politics and me - its way outside of my comfort zone and my replies will invariably be marked by me translating it to local politics in my brain so if what I say sounds absolutely crazy - you know why :)
We don't ever think of the beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiffs who are black or Hispanic or Asian.
Couldn't agree more (although I have to translate this in my brain a bit since our PoC is a bit of a wider gamut) THAT is the insidious nature of the counter-reformation like movement. They look at the waning economic inequality and equate it with the rising social equality movement -and sort of make the assumption that one is connected with the other. Work to include "The Others" is blended up with work to make [as an example] a random female CEO feel better in this world view and the logic tends to go in to "who cares about some CEO?"
Here they call the "Salt of the earth people", "People of the Reality" and implying, just like in your example that they magically are singularly white and straight (Christian is a so-so thing here, lets just say "non-muslim" which is the critical detail in this counterreformism).
Sidenote: is this a fascinating call back to Mussolini btw? Any Italian who is more read up on this that can weigh in btw (again sort of outside of my comfort zone) - that sort of economic egality movement that suddenly shifts in to a strong man, conservative movement? His... I think it was called "National Syndicalism" - or the fall of the Weimar republic? Where economic inequality, instability etc, makes people susceptible to anything that promotes stability - and a sense of "normalcy". A conservatism of desperation sort of?
Ok will have to stop before I go in to full Norse-Hegelian Mysticism here :D
But say that we can't stop it - how can we minimize it? I mean one way that worked before was marrying movements to each other. Thinking about the miners and LGBTQ movements in the UK in the 70's for example. The issue is that one needs to take the first step - and would that be possible now? Or is it too late? What "Salt of the Earth" movements can a Social Equality movement align itself with?
I apologize if I missed some of your points, I'm having kind of a hard time parsing what you're saying, men du talar Engelska mycket bättre än jag talar Svenska så jag kan inte säga någonting 😅 I...
I apologize if I missed some of your points, I'm having kind of a hard time parsing what you're saying, men du talar Engelska mycket bättre än jag talar Svenska så jag kan inte säga någonting 😅
I don't think people often connect rising social equality and rising wealth inequality here. For Republicans, a lot of them see social equality as a threat for a number of reasons and are sometimes for reducing wealth inequality, but only for them. There's a documented pattern of white people as a whole being less supportive of social safety nets if they're shown or told that that includes black people too. The Republican delegation is 98% Christian, something like 95% men, and 90% white. They're ok with Republican women and PoCs because they'll swear up and down that they're not racist or sexist and that one person is ok, and also they can use the "I can't be racist, I have a black friend!" defense.
Moderate Democrats tend to be on board with some level of increasing both social equality and wealth equality, seeing neither at odds with each other. People on the "left", which I use here to include both social democrats and capitalism of that flavor as well as anti-capitalists, are sometimes completely on board with addressing both social equality and wealth equality at the same time but sometimes either ignore social equality or outright say that things like racism and sexism come from economic inequality and that we can solve those by solving economic inequality.
I don't know enough about Mussolini to comment on that, but people on the left who are dedicated to hating Biden here do sometimes use the same arguments as Republicans do. I don't think that results in those people wrapping back around to being conservative, but I do think that it shows that there are white people everywhere on the spectrum who don't care about social issues and put their entire focus on economic issues. One easy way to tell who they are is if they use the phrase "identity politics" and imply that it's a bad thing.
I don't know what we do about it besides continue to emphasize that there are other types of pain besides financial. If class was everything, LeBron James wouldn't have had the gate to his house vandalized with racial slurs. There are lots of middle class and poor people who are discriminated against based on their race or gender or sexuality and we need to convince people that those things happen separately of economics, but that doesn't mean we can't still band together to make a better life.
Hey Swedish is a tiny language so learning it is a bit like learning Klingon - no worries (or "Qor" according to the English to Klingon translator). And to be frank I tend to check Tildes once a...
Hey Swedish is a tiny language so learning it is a bit like learning Klingon - no worries (or "Qor" according to the English to Klingon translator). And to be frank I tend to check Tildes once a day: early mornings over my first coffee so if I sound a bit "stroke-victimy" that's to be expected. :D
See ok - first off the bat I think economic and social inequality are directly linked. Although not in the way you describe I should mention. Just that without actual change - attitudes don't change. So as long as women are paid less on the whole, or forced in to economically unequal relationships with men (romantic or platonic) etc attitudes don't shift. I'm not saying that people can't think differently unless there is an outwards force backed by a national economic system there to push them in to it - just that on the whole it will shift everyones attitudes and permanently if there is.
Just that persuading people over and over that "these people you've never met, and which insidious people tell you over and over and over are evil, or bad or genetically criminal - are just like you" is incredibly complex, to the point of being impossible in comparison with either an economic push for those people to be practically equal OR a practical push - where you actually meet these people over and over in a close setting. So in work, or school.
(oh btw these are my mind-farts and its not like I'm a sociologist or anything so I am saying this from a position of humble "I may be talking out of my arse")
At the same time poverty creates fear - and as a species we seem enamored with finding a simplistic, human, solution. We don't want pandemics or global warming, we want a bad guy - who's defeat, as long as we physically fight them, will guarantee a solution to whatever the problem might be.
My point in this is that racist old white dudes aren't the issue, the popular movement these racist old white dudes are part of is and even if going to each of these old racist white dudes one at a time to persuade them differently - for many the situation they are in, and the situation the people they fear/hate are in (PoC) means that the second we turn our back that former racist old white dude - will be shifted back to being the same racist old white dude as when we first met him
Ideas aren't free floating, the effort needed to keep them going when you are proven daily that they are incorrect either by working closely with Bob, a PoC, or having beers with Anique, a woman, as a platonic eye-to-eye relationship, is too great.
Social equality - is not a bad thing, just that on its own its just trying to persuade people to be nicer. At best it can help shift some attitude, create safe areas for those otherwise affected, at worst it becomes an academic fiddling with words. Economic equality is more permanent in comparison.
At the same time, this may also be you and me talking around each other I now realize... :/
I mean whats "social equality" without the economic effects of it, and whats "economic equality" without the social effects of it?
I agree with most of what you've said. The two aren't completely separate and if you alleviate people's economic pain it will probably help some on the social front. It does take a lot of...
I agree with most of what you've said. The two aren't completely separate and if you alleviate people's economic pain it will probably help some on the social front. It does take a lot of commitment to reach to people, especially when they're surrounded by people and TV and radio shows and web sites that tell them that everyone who isn't them is the enemy. On the flip side, I've heard people talk about how their parents calmed down within even a month of not watching Fox anymore.
On its own social equality is persuading people to care about others, but so is economic equality. And economic equality is far from permanent - even barring individual people losing what they have, economic safety nets can be torn down as we saw in the United States 40-ish years ago, and it's far from a guaranteed cure for social inequality. There are still lots of racist rich people and rich people who are victims of discrimination.
It seems that fighting the pandemic brought most functioning countries together, so we do still have some hope in using external threats to unite people. Hopefully climate change can be made the same way.
The Senate Intelligence committee said as much. The campaign worked with Russia both directly and indirectly to win him the election. Russia did this because they want to destabilize our country...
Exemplary
The Senate Intelligence committee said as much. The campaign worked with Russia both directly and indirectly to win him the election. Russia did this because they want to destabilize our country and have leverage over everyone involved, the campaign did this because they wanted to win no matter the cost. There are also some suspicious links between Trump and Russia from before the campaign, but I'm not going to get into those.
The campaign met with Russian agents in the Trump Tower in 2016 about sanctions on the Russian government, particularly the Magnitsky Act, and to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr., Trump Senior's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and National Security Advisor-to-be Michael Flynn met with Rob Goldstone, the publicist of a Russian oligarch's son, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, and lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin. Don Jr. at the very least knew the real purpose of this meeting, and two days before the meeting Don Sr. said he would give a speech about "all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons", which never ended up happening.
His right-hand man Rick Gates was convicted of lying to investigators about his contacts with agents of the Russian government.
Advisor Roger Stone was a go-between between the campaign and WikiLeaks and was involved in WikiLeaks releasing John Podesta's emails (stolen by Russia) only half an hour after the Access Hollywood tape was released. He was sentenced to three years in jail for obstructing Congress's investigation into Russia's election interference.
Foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos was also convicted of lying to investigators about meetings with agents of the Russian government.
Then a sitting Senator, Jeff Sessions lied to Congress about meeting with Ambassador Kislyak during the campaign in his role as Trump's foreign policy guy.
Warlord Erik Prince, brother to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, met with an unnamed Putin representative to establish a back channel between Trump and Putin. The Washington Post also has a nice graphic of all the connections between Trump associates and the Russian government.
We saw Trump ask Russia to hack into the Clinton campaign and release their data and emails on national television. After the fact, we know how subservient Trump is toward Putin. At the meeting in Helsinki he openly trusted Putin's word over our own intelligence community's. Regardless of what you think of our intelligence community, they're certainly more trustworthy than Russia is.
This isn't even getting into Republicans' history of cheating and sabotage, of which there's evidence in the presidential elections in 1968, 1972, 1980, 2000, and 2004, Wisconsin's state Supreme Court election in 2011, Georgia's governor election in 2018, voter suppression across the country this past decade, and doubtless other instances of election fraud that I don't remember off the top of my head. They're also trying to cheat November's election by slowing down the USPS, sending unmarked federal officers to Portland, Chicago, and DC, among other things.
The only time anyone talks about Trump outsmarting anyone is to say "ha ha, the stupid Democrats lost to Donald Trump!!" The guy is not a genius. He's been a national figure for five years now and...
The only time anyone talks about Trump outsmarting anyone is to say "ha ha, the stupid Democrats lost to Donald Trump!!" The guy is not a genius. He's been a national figure for five years now and people still keep trying to say that all the dumb stuff he says is just a distraction when it's obvious by now that he's insecure and impulsive and says whatever happens to be on his mind whenever it comes to his mind. In a literal sense, yes, getting away with cheating is outsmarting, but based on the context I don't think Moore is implying cheating, he's implying that Democrats are incompetent. There's plenty of criticism to be made of Democrats of every stripe, but Moore's not doing it in good faith. He's right to question people who think Trump has no chance of winning, and I think anyone who thinks that is naive, but he's coming at it from the completely wrong point of view.
While I agree that his intellect is very much wysiwyg, i think it is important to note that he is highly effective at getting attention, inciting actionable anger, and generating chaos. You...
While I agree that his intellect is very much wysiwyg, i think it is important to note that he is highly effective at getting attention, inciting actionable anger, and generating chaos.
You objections to Moore may not be wrong, but they sound personal. His message that the DNC has been ineffective with dealing with Trump and his supporters is also not wrong, however, and those of us who wish for better political leadership would do well To pay attention.
I have never disagreed that we need better political leadership, nor that there's valid criticism of the Democratic party. I also explained what part of what he said touched a nerve in another...
I have never disagreed that we need better political leadership, nor that there's valid criticism of the Democratic party. I also explained what part of what he said touched a nerve in another part of this thread and that's far from my only issue with what he's saying."The DNC" is a loaded phrase used only by people who aren't interested in talking about the party in good faith. He could just as easily say "The Democrats need to do such-and-such things to fight back against Trump," but he's not. There's no honest criticism in what he's saying.
If I could tangent, I get the impression that we are in for a reconning no matter how this election turns out, be it Republicans falling in line, or Biden being pantsed during a debate, or just...
If I could tangent, I get the impression that we are in for a reconning no matter how this election turns out, be it Republicans falling in line, or Biden being pantsed during a debate, or just some trauma hangover from 2016 when we were in a similar situation and the law of narrative continuity saying we summoned the demon, we don't get to just dismiss him when we realized we made a mistake. I get my feelings are entirely in my head and polls rise and fall, but I have no reason to believe this is over even after all the votes are counted.
As far as the DNC paying for their ignorance, I much rather that happen at a local level, until we can actually run someone who isn't a technocratic moderate who aligns with party interests.
Technocrat probably isn't really the right word upon review. I'm more annoyed about the trend that successful Democratic candidates as of late know how to play the game to the DNC, presumably...
Technocrat probably isn't really the right word upon review. I'm more annoyed about the trend that successful Democratic candidates as of late know how to play the game to the DNC, presumably because they don't want their party to have the populist revolt that the Republicans had and rather be in charge of the resistance then be subsumed by the revolution. So maybe "coronated moderate" is a better choice of words?
This is just as disingenuous as his "I told you so!!" was in 2016.
Trump cheated last time, he's going to cheat this time too. He didn't outsmart anyone. DNC is a loaded word to get people to think what they want, usually negative, about the Democratic Party.
"HRC didn't go to Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania!!" they say, despite the fact that HRC campaigned in Pennsylvania a bunch and still lost there.
[citation needed]
And I'm just gonna stop with this, because it shows that he cares more about his guy winning than stopping a wannabe dictator. It doesn't feel good to everyone who's been targeted by the things Trump says. It doesn't feel good to everyone who had a brain and saw that he would be varying degrees of awful for anyone who isn't himself. If your main electoral interest is spite then fuck you, I don't want you voting. That election might have killed this country.Edit: I struck through a part that was inaccurate. I'm going to say a bit about this last quote I included instead: this is a pretty massive indictment of these beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiffs to say they're going to vote for a guy just because he says what they like even if it's obvious that he's not going to do any of that stuff.
This reminds me of his big recent climate change documentary on that ended up being almost entirely based on data from a decade before its release and riddled with inaccuracies that got widely condemned by environmentalist groups and experts.
Edit: link to a tildes thread from when the documentary came out, comments section is full of sources explaining why Moore’s documentary was wrong/bad/dangerous
I didn't think I'd defend Michael Moore when I woke up this morning but I don't see that. I read it as a "many voters feel disaffected by the political system and they want revenge". Trump did play hard for the "I am on your side against the political establishment" last time and I guess he'll do it again? Although how that will work I have no idea since technically that's him.
Am out of the loop with US internal politics though... buuuut if I was a betting man I would put a bet on Trump winning tbh.
Again I have as much insight in to US politics as I have with Thai politics.
That's fair. I went to find some context about that line of his and he is in fact talking about people who vote for Trump, so I struck out that section of my post. That said, I wish he and lots of other people would spend as much time being sympathetic to the people Trump is persecuting as they are for random white blue-collar people who voted for him.
Again, not trying to step to the plate for Moore (odd evening this) - but I think the logic is "all blue collar people" (or working class) with a non-existent interest in say LGBT, PoC, etc who are not working class.
BUT BUT just to have that said - this can be my ignorance showing since I may be equating him with left wing movements and commentaries here. So please take this one with a massive pinch of salt.
I'll admit that this sort of discussion about blue-collar, "hardworking Real Americans™" touches a nerve and I could always stand to be more clear about it. Ever since Trump won we've seen tons and tons of articles about random white people in the Midwest (aka Real Americans™, which is a term they started using around the 2008 election if I recall correctly) who are down on their luck or otherwise hurting and probably voted for Obama at least once, so they're totally not racist, but voted for Trump in 2016. They always frame what they're talking about in terms of economics but betray that they're ignorant and/or racist. They talk about how growing up in that taught them to be the way they are; self-sufficient, hard-working, etc. My problem is that I've seen a number of these articles and I've never seen any about the people who grew up in the same places and had the same experiences but came to the opposite conclusions about things like not voting for the most obvious liar I've ever seen or not voting to sabotage your own community. They don't talk about how unwelcome people who aren't white, straight, and/or Christian feel living in these places, particularly since Trump's election.
My issue is that way more attention is given to these people than their neighbors who are also hurting. They aren't all racist, and they don't all vote for Trump, but the ones who vote for Trump are given most of the attention. They're given attention by the right because they're Q fodder and by the left because they're perceived to have given the election to Trump and so a lot of hand-wringing has been done about how to win them back. Michael Moore is right that the economic policy of the last four decades has hurt these people, but the implication in "every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump" is that he's talking about white people because no one else loves Trump. We don't ever think of the beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiffs who are black or Hispanic or Asian. It's similar to me to how a lot of people on the left prioritize economic justice over social justice or outright ignore social justice.
Again, US politics and me - its way outside of my comfort zone and my replies will invariably be marked by me translating it to local politics in my brain so if what I say sounds absolutely crazy - you know why :)
Couldn't agree more (although I have to translate this in my brain a bit since our PoC is a bit of a wider gamut) THAT is the insidious nature of the counter-reformation like movement. They look at the waning economic inequality and equate it with the rising social equality movement -and sort of make the assumption that one is connected with the other. Work to include "The Others" is blended up with work to make [as an example] a random female CEO feel better in this world view and the logic tends to go in to "who cares about some CEO?"
Here they call the "Salt of the earth people", "People of the Reality" and implying, just like in your example that they magically are singularly white and straight (Christian is a so-so thing here, lets just say "non-muslim" which is the critical detail in this counterreformism).
Sidenote: is this a fascinating call back to Mussolini btw? Any Italian who is more read up on this that can weigh in btw (again sort of outside of my comfort zone) - that sort of economic egality movement that suddenly shifts in to a strong man, conservative movement? His... I think it was called "National Syndicalism" - or the fall of the Weimar republic? Where economic inequality, instability etc, makes people susceptible to anything that promotes stability - and a sense of "normalcy". A conservatism of desperation sort of?
Ok will have to stop before I go in to full Norse-Hegelian Mysticism here :D
But say that we can't stop it - how can we minimize it? I mean one way that worked before was marrying movements to each other. Thinking about the miners and LGBTQ movements in the UK in the 70's for example. The issue is that one needs to take the first step - and would that be possible now? Or is it too late? What "Salt of the Earth" movements can a Social Equality movement align itself with?
I apologize if I missed some of your points, I'm having kind of a hard time parsing what you're saying, men du talar Engelska mycket bättre än jag talar Svenska så jag kan inte säga någonting 😅
I don't think people often connect rising social equality and rising wealth inequality here. For Republicans, a lot of them see social equality as a threat for a number of reasons and are sometimes for reducing wealth inequality, but only for them. There's a documented pattern of white people as a whole being less supportive of social safety nets if they're shown or told that that includes black people too. The Republican delegation is 98% Christian, something like 95% men, and 90% white. They're ok with Republican women and PoCs because they'll swear up and down that they're not racist or sexist and that one person is ok, and also they can use the "I can't be racist, I have a black friend!" defense.
Moderate Democrats tend to be on board with some level of increasing both social equality and wealth equality, seeing neither at odds with each other. People on the "left", which I use here to include both social democrats and capitalism of that flavor as well as anti-capitalists, are sometimes completely on board with addressing both social equality and wealth equality at the same time but sometimes either ignore social equality or outright say that things like racism and sexism come from economic inequality and that we can solve those by solving economic inequality.
I don't know enough about Mussolini to comment on that, but people on the left who are dedicated to hating Biden here do sometimes use the same arguments as Republicans do. I don't think that results in those people wrapping back around to being conservative, but I do think that it shows that there are white people everywhere on the spectrum who don't care about social issues and put their entire focus on economic issues. One easy way to tell who they are is if they use the phrase "identity politics" and imply that it's a bad thing.
I don't know what we do about it besides continue to emphasize that there are other types of pain besides financial. If class was everything, LeBron James wouldn't have had the gate to his house vandalized with racial slurs. There are lots of middle class and poor people who are discriminated against based on their race or gender or sexuality and we need to convince people that those things happen separately of economics, but that doesn't mean we can't still band together to make a better life.
Hey Swedish is a tiny language so learning it is a bit like learning Klingon - no worries (or "Qor" according to the English to Klingon translator). And to be frank I tend to check Tildes once a day: early mornings over my first coffee so if I sound a bit "stroke-victimy" that's to be expected. :D
See ok - first off the bat I think economic and social inequality are directly linked. Although not in the way you describe I should mention. Just that without actual change - attitudes don't change. So as long as women are paid less on the whole, or forced in to economically unequal relationships with men (romantic or platonic) etc attitudes don't shift. I'm not saying that people can't think differently unless there is an outwards force backed by a national economic system there to push them in to it - just that on the whole it will shift everyones attitudes and permanently if there is.
Just that persuading people over and over that "these people you've never met, and which insidious people tell you over and over and over are evil, or bad or genetically criminal - are just like you" is incredibly complex, to the point of being impossible in comparison with either an economic push for those people to be practically equal OR a practical push - where you actually meet these people over and over in a close setting. So in work, or school.
(oh btw these are my mind-farts and its not like I'm a sociologist or anything so I am saying this from a position of humble "I may be talking out of my arse")
At the same time poverty creates fear - and as a species we seem enamored with finding a simplistic, human, solution. We don't want pandemics or global warming, we want a bad guy - who's defeat, as long as we physically fight them, will guarantee a solution to whatever the problem might be.
My point in this is that racist old white dudes aren't the issue, the popular movement these racist old white dudes are part of is and even if going to each of these old racist white dudes one at a time to persuade them differently - for many the situation they are in, and the situation the people they fear/hate are in (PoC) means that the second we turn our back that former racist old white dude - will be shifted back to being the same racist old white dude as when we first met him
Ideas aren't free floating, the effort needed to keep them going when you are proven daily that they are incorrect either by working closely with Bob, a PoC, or having beers with Anique, a woman, as a platonic eye-to-eye relationship, is too great.
Social equality - is not a bad thing, just that on its own its just trying to persuade people to be nicer. At best it can help shift some attitude, create safe areas for those otherwise affected, at worst it becomes an academic fiddling with words. Economic equality is more permanent in comparison.
At the same time, this may also be you and me talking around each other I now realize... :/
I mean whats "social equality" without the economic effects of it, and whats "economic equality" without the social effects of it?
I agree with most of what you've said. The two aren't completely separate and if you alleviate people's economic pain it will probably help some on the social front. It does take a lot of commitment to reach to people, especially when they're surrounded by people and TV and radio shows and web sites that tell them that everyone who isn't them is the enemy. On the flip side, I've heard people talk about how their parents calmed down within even a month of not watching Fox anymore.
On its own social equality is persuading people to care about others, but so is economic equality. And economic equality is far from permanent - even barring individual people losing what they have, economic safety nets can be torn down as we saw in the United States 40-ish years ago, and it's far from a guaranteed cure for social inequality. There are still lots of racist rich people and rich people who are victims of discrimination.
It seems that fighting the pandemic brought most functioning countries together, so we do still have some hope in using external threats to unite people. Hopefully climate change can be made the same way.
They're certainly related, but I see people say that social justice boils down to economic justice and I disagree with that.
How'd he cheat last time?
The Senate Intelligence committee said as much. The campaign worked with Russia both directly and indirectly to win him the election. Russia did this because they want to destabilize our country and have leverage over everyone involved, the campaign did this because they wanted to win no matter the cost. There are also some suspicious links between Trump and Russia from before the campaign, but I'm not going to get into those.
The campaign met with Russian agents in the Trump Tower in 2016 about sanctions on the Russian government, particularly the Magnitsky Act, and to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr., Trump Senior's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and National Security Advisor-to-be Michael Flynn met with Rob Goldstone, the publicist of a Russian oligarch's son, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, and lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin. Don Jr. at the very least knew the real purpose of this meeting, and two days before the meeting Don Sr. said he would give a speech about "all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons", which never ended up happening.
Kushner and Flynn later met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the expulsion of 35 people suspected of being Russia spies from the country.
We saw Trump ask Russia to hack into the Clinton campaign and release their data and emails on national television. After the fact, we know how subservient Trump is toward Putin. At the meeting in Helsinki he openly trusted Putin's word over our own intelligence community's. Regardless of what you think of our intelligence community, they're certainly more trustworthy than Russia is.
This isn't even getting into Republicans' history of cheating and sabotage, of which there's evidence in the presidential elections in 1968, 1972, 1980, 2000, and 2004, Wisconsin's state Supreme Court election in 2011, Georgia's governor election in 2018, voter suppression across the country this past decade, and doubtless other instances of election fraud that I don't remember off the top of my head. They're also trying to cheat November's election by slowing down the USPS, sending unmarked federal officers to Portland, Chicago, and DC, among other things.
Getting away with cheating is a kind of outsmarting.
I get your objections to Moore, but that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong here.
The only time anyone talks about Trump outsmarting anyone is to say "ha ha, the stupid Democrats lost to Donald Trump!!" The guy is not a genius. He's been a national figure for five years now and people still keep trying to say that all the dumb stuff he says is just a distraction when it's obvious by now that he's insecure and impulsive and says whatever happens to be on his mind whenever it comes to his mind. In a literal sense, yes, getting away with cheating is outsmarting, but based on the context I don't think Moore is implying cheating, he's implying that Democrats are incompetent. There's plenty of criticism to be made of Democrats of every stripe, but Moore's not doing it in good faith. He's right to question people who think Trump has no chance of winning, and I think anyone who thinks that is naive, but he's coming at it from the completely wrong point of view.
While I agree that his intellect is very much wysiwyg, i think it is important to note that he is highly effective at getting attention, inciting actionable anger, and generating chaos.
You objections to Moore may not be wrong, but they sound personal. His message that the DNC has been ineffective with dealing with Trump and his supporters is also not wrong, however, and those of us who wish for better political leadership would do well To pay attention.
I have never disagreed that we need better political leadership, nor that there's valid criticism of the Democratic party. I also explained what part of what he said touched a nerve in another part of this thread and that's far from my only issue with what he's saying."The DNC" is a loaded phrase used only by people who aren't interested in talking about the party in good faith. He could just as easily say "The Democrats need to do such-and-such things to fight back against Trump," but he's not. There's no honest criticism in what he's saying.
Fair point.
If I could tangent, I get the impression that we are in for a reconning no matter how this election turns out, be it Republicans falling in line, or Biden being pantsed during a debate, or just some trauma hangover from 2016 when we were in a similar situation and the law of narrative continuity saying we summoned the demon, we don't get to just dismiss him when we realized we made a mistake. I get my feelings are entirely in my head and polls rise and fall, but I have no reason to believe this is over even after all the votes are counted.
As far as the DNC paying for their ignorance, I much rather that happen at a local level, until we can actually run someone who isn't a technocratic moderate who aligns with party interests.
Technocrat probably isn't really the right word upon review. I'm more annoyed about the trend that successful Democratic candidates as of late know how to play the game to the DNC, presumably because they don't want their party to have the populist revolt that the Republicans had and rather be in charge of the resistance then be subsumed by the revolution. So maybe "coronated moderate" is a better choice of words?