So far this site has been mostly politics-averse, but I am curious if I am alone as an MAGA/Trump voter/supporter in a sea of reddit mods
I've seen a few remarks here and there that have implied sort of matter-of-factly that places like /r/The_Donald have no redeeming value, the community members are awful (and undesirable to have here), their ideas are all reprehensible, etc. I assume that this is mostly just due to the demographic coming primarily from popular reddit mod teams where being anti-Trump is sort of an unspoken requirement - but I don't really know for certain.
It reminds me a little of this woman in a class i had once, who spoke to me about atheists, assumed I was christian just as a matter of course. It's kind of an awkward situation to find yourself in. I don't identify as an atheist, but if someone is mildly insulting atheists, it's uncomfortable. You have to be a covert conservative (or covert center-right, or even left-leaning Trump voter) or else you risk being blasted/flamed/mocked/etc. in places like reddit.
Part of what attracted me to Tildes was the sales pitch that it is to be a community for civil conversation, no hate-speech/bigotry. I think that's a perfect environment for political discussion - far more than shit-flinging and nuclear downvoting on /r/politics. So even if I'm the only MAGA person here, maybe there's a chance we can actually have civil conversations on topics we might initially disagree on...?
Edit: wow! Really happy to have these conversations with folks. Sad that i haven't encountered any fellow (public) Trump voters/supporters yet but very pleased that things have been civil as advertised. ;) Apologies for slow responses, trying to give proper thought and consideration to all the comments!
Edit2: gotta head to bed. sorry to anyone i haven't responded to questions from. feeling a bit like a novelty "And here's our token Trump voter. ha ha, he sure is a quirky one, isn't he, that crazy dictator-enabler!" xP. I'll try to answer any questions I've missed tomorrow. Sleep well, all (well, all who are going to sleep before I get back).
Edit3: Thanks for the open engagement, all you people who live in a different reality!
Still a bit bummed there aren't any MAGA friends here yet, but I've been blown away by how cordial most of you have been (i hope we can retain this culture into the future of the site). For those who are just coming in and don't want to read everything, I'd say a tl;dr of the conversations I've had below is:
- most people here want to engage with others on important topics without the shit flinging,
- some people express disbelief that someone can not be a bigot or racist and vote for Donald Trump,
- I've been repeating in various conversations the Laurel and Yanny thing is a great metaphor for the polarized camps experiencing different realities, seeing different movies on the same screen.
I'm continuing to try to reply to questions, and in the spirit of not provoking heated emotions I have been trying not to argue any of my political beliefs except that both sides are seeing different realities.
I don't care about differences in opinions. What matters is a difference in humanity. I fully enjoy discussing subjects like economic policies with conversatives, but once we get to the point where racism, sexism, religious discrimination, etc. are being thrown around, insults take the place of civil discussion, entire sections of arguments are being completely ignored (e.g. you cover a subject and then the person you replied to immediately starts going "but what about (subject)?!"), strawman arguments run rampant, and the request to avoid unreasonably broad generalizations results in a slew of "no true Scotsman!!11!!!1!" comments, that's where I can no longer tolerate the individual and refuse to continue any attempts at furthering discussion.
I've had some pretty good discussions with people who have differing viewpoints from my own. A rare few have managed to alter my viewpoint, and I've altered the viewpoints of a rare few myself, whereas most of the time there will be no budging but at least a good debate. I enjoy these discussions because even if there's no actual changing of minds, it's fun to challenge my argumentative skills as well.
Conservatism isn't a problem. Treating people like shit is. You can be a conservative and not treat people like shit. I don't see those two qualities as automatically going hand-in-hand. But there's certainly a trend between "Trumpism" and treating people like shit, in my experience. With that being said, those who state that they support Trump but enter the discussion with civility and the willingness to engage in discussion will never be viewed with disdain so readily, at least from me. I tailor my responses to people based on their character and their behavior, not on their beliefs.
tl;dr - If you're not a dick--and you don't seem like one right off the bat--I have absolutely zero problem engaging in a constructive, civil discussion with you.
I'm not sure I agree with there being a stronger association between trump supporting and treating people like shit than the same and being anti-trump, lol... but i am glad to hear that engagement with other humans is possible! :)
I have a friend who I chat with about gardening and such a lot, who has VERY strong political views counter to my own. I've sadly gotten to where i have to watch what I comment on in conversation or about the news because he immediately assumes the worst of what I'm saying and starts being rude. It's really frustrating. We didn't speak for like 6 months at one point because he insulted me so much over a complete misunderstanding, and wouldn't even listen to me trying to say it was a misunderstanding. :/
I could very well just be speaking from anecdotal experience. Whether or not this is the case, more than anything I believe this to be a product of our current political environment. At least for myself, I find myself becoming more bitter and toxic the more I see comments from self-proclaimed Trump supporters who do nothing but insult non- Trump supporters. I've noticed it from the people around me, too. People who were otherwise very civil and welcoming of alternative viewpoints are becoming less tolerant of the "other side" because of how they and the people they care about have been harmed, in some form, by them. Getting away from such toxic environments is a large part of why I'm transitioning away from reddit and focusing more on the community here.
Absolutely. Despite my strong feelings about Trump supporters, you're a member of this community and you're engaging in a polite discussion here. My mindset may be becoming more toxic, but I'm not about to lash out at someone who hasn't even done anything wrong :)
I'm sorry that your relationships with others have been strained. Those who oppose Trump generally see him as standing counter to the ideals of a just and civil society, and so when they see someone supporting him despite the things he's done, and combining that with the aforementioned political environment and lashing out, it's easy to see that support as supporting his wrongdoings as well, as an endorsement of them. Even indifference is generally seen as being just as bad if not worse, due to historical parallels with atrocities--many see history repeating itself, as though it's an obvious roadmap with a clear destination that we're heading toward, and are desperately trying to take the wheel and steer us away from that. Unfortunately, as a result, that desperation can also lead to tunnel vision and people forget to try to talk things out.
I sincerely hope that your relationships with the people you care about get better, and that our political environment starts becoming less of a raging shitstorm. This isn't fun for anyone.
I think that for a significant portion of people online, sadly, it is fun. That's the truly unfortunate part in all this and is the primary reason I personally see communities like T_D as such a huge problem. The vast majority of people active there seem to take great pleasure in causing everyone else in the community at large who disagrees with them pain, discomfort, frustration and anger. As a result the "other side" on the far left has started behaving in the exact same manner and that is why we are in this highly polarized mess. I have even heard countless times from my fellows on the moderate left of the political spectrum that "we need to beat them at their own game" and I disagree vehemently, as that just compounds the problems and leaves us with no means for achieving productive dialogue.
Here's hoping we can figure out how to provide that here... and I think /r/changemyview and /r/neutralpolitics are the perfect models for how to do it.
That's a fair assessment, though I wonder if it's truly enjoyment or if it's more a satisfaction after lashing out. In a way, thinking of it like the kid in class who acts out and generally has behavioral problems that stem from problems at home. This is part of why I brought up how those who are anti-Trump (such as myself) find themselves growing more toxic and lashing out.
Of course, that doesn't excuse that sort of behavior and, in my opinion, people like those from T_D and similar communities tend to be far more damaging and are greatly exacerbating the problem, but I have yet to meet a Trump supporter in person who wasn't miserable in some way.
Surveys, for what they're worth, have tended to show that Trump supporters voted more for keeping their status in our society than anything else. I see it the same way I see the folks who wanted Newt Gingrich to debate Hillary Clinton: they just wanted somebody who could out-do the other side regardless of the content of the debate. And many Trump supporters want somebody who can defend their status regardless of the content of what he does or how he does it. Sadly, they don't seem to understand credibility or how much of it they're going to lose by supporting Trump. There's always a little of that blindness going on, but we seem to have peaked at the moment.
Oh yeah, my friendship with my gardening friend is fine - I reached out periodically and he finally apologized. Seemed to want to brush it away and forget it. We chat about tea, mulch, and all sorts of nerdy gardening things again now. :P
I think you're right on point about the animosity being due to the political environment. I think there are people stoking the fires, fanning the flames, and tribalism is of course a thing. I don't like it one bit, but I'm not sure what to do other than try to engage with people openly and honestly, perhaps even empathetically. I know that I'm not perfect, and I know that like most people a good deal of what I think is true or likely true is potentially false. But if I don't try to at least engage in conversation, if nobody ever tried, the polarization would probably just get worse.
I think Scott Adams has expressed a good way of seeing the divide - two groups who are watching the same events unfolding and seeing completely different movies. Both sides believe their movie is the closest to reality, but in all likelihood neither has it exactly right. I suppose in a way the basic disagreement is at its root a good thing - perhaps better than everyone seeing the same, false, movie and never suspecting there might be more. :P
My hot take on the heightened hostility these days: heightened partisanship, poorly structured changes to our social networks, and a widely shared desire to tear down political norms, including those of civility.
We've known for a long time that politics was getting more and more partisan in the past few decades. Democrats and Republicans both have been self-sorting ideologically and the positions each party reflects have become much more coherent as a result. At the same time as this ideological sorting in parties has been happening, the right has abandoned much of the traditional news media in favor of Fox News and radio shows while the left has held the institutions that formerly granted some form of agreed upon truths basically alone. When it came to social media, the self-sorting was even more pronounced, but also had what seems clearly self-interested actors that were consistently attempting to drive even deeper wedges between already aggrieved camps.
These trends combined merged to mean that Democrats and Republicans more and more don't talk to one another about politics at all, and if they do talk, it usually devolved to insults immediately as common talking points and misunderstandings on each side drive the conversation.
If you introduce a flashpoint like a presidential candidate who makes a point to say things in a way that offends people who typically fall into his opposition, and you tell people consistently that he has no shot to win because you can't understand the polling evidence in front of you correctly, well ... You end up with a lot of betrayed, angry liberals who are out for blood.
Many of the people I campaigned with felt lied to by the narratives promoted by the "Traditional" media sources that conservatives had been saying for literally EONS are liberally biased. How could conservatives have been right all this time! (Truth is, news journalism has consistently been horrible at reading polling data and should never be taken to know anything about what polls suggest.)
I think the tone Trump and his supporters each missed (in different ways) when he initially took office was the key opportunity to seek rapprochement with this aggrieved opposition. There are some issues that both groups of people do care a lot about and could potentially even find common ground. A poorly executed travel ban on Muslims designed to outrage liberals was not one of those issues. Of course the people who were initially skeptical and willing to give him a chance decided to close their hearts and stop hoping for change. Of course they stopped bothering talking with trump supporters because the anger in their hearts and the grief they were living through was so near and unignorable.
When I think about where I am emotionally on this topic, I tend to be stoic. I was told to my face in several cases that if I didn't like the way this country was going, I should leave it. Of course that would only serve the people saying that. I was told that my friends (among whom are Muslim and people of color) aren't welcome in this country anymore. One of my friends' kids (who is latina) in rural Ohio asked to be homeschooled because she was getting bullied in her school by her peers telling her to get out of the country, despite being born to a family that's been in this part of the country legally for decades. It sucks.
I get a bit of where their actions were coming from, and why they reveled in saying that Hillary should go to jail for something that Jared Kushner has now also done. These were usually people who felt that their pain was being ignored in favor of women, people of color, religious minorities, especially Muslims, and other people who were potentially just gaming the system to get an advantage off of their backs. They were usually people who felt that the political elite were too separated from the common person, and that money in politics only made things worse, so it was better to support someone who could self-fund his own campaign, because then he isn't owned by anyone. They were people who often resonated with Bernie's message about how elected were bought by the 1%. Overall they have decided to fuck being nice to people who disagree with them because they believe they're getting fucked regardless.
Of course I didn't engage the people who were saying it, but I can't ignore the fact that they hurt me. I know I will never be apologized to by those people. They don't believe they have anything to apologize for. I will never be apologized to by the president, nor will any of my friends who feel like they have had targets put on their backs by the rhetoric he used. He believes that apologizing shows weakness.
The important thing here though is that you did not say any of these things. And it's important to recognize that key distinction. You didn't brag about grabbing anyone by their pussy. You didn't then apologize for potentially offending people by that comment only to turn around and question whether that was actually your voice on the video. These are hideously offensive things to have done, and you did not do them. I'm glad for that, truly. But the best way to earn my respect is not to deny that the president you support has intentionally offended people (though, true, some "offenses" are overblown and manufactured). The way to earn my respect is to recognize the divisions that Trump exacerbates and to speak to them, even if you believe overall that he is doing the country better than the offenses he has caused people.
Funny you should say that. I just read this article about mental models, which is all about that very subject. And it's made worse by media echo chambers, which is made worse by a few companies owning so much of the various media out there.
Synchronicity perhaps. Or just that it's a functional idea that more people are simply becoming aware of, and it spreads as good ideas do.
You're right about the media oligopoly though. People talk about Fox News as a conservative outlet, but it's owned by the same people who own left-wing outlets. It's one of the reasons that things like censorship on reddit and youtube cause me concern, and places that aren't beholden to ideology at the top like Tildes are extremely interesting to me.
One of the unique things that turned me off of /r/The_Donald was that for quite a while, one of the hobbies there was sending posts to /r/all with the title specifically tailored to mock and insult the readers of /r/all. Some of these were extremely vitriolic. There are instances of hate that can be found in other political communities, but I find that alt-right communities are much more prone to it.
The reason, from my perspective, is a cultural feedback loop gone wrong. It started with the opinion that political correctness had gone too far and that people should be able to express themselves beyond what was considered acceptable, resulting in a trend to say things that others would consider offensive in order to take a stance. That in and of itself is fair, as I think that the topic is a worthwhile discussion. But too many people joined who didn't really care to understand why people were saying offensive things, and the culture evolved from being offensive to make a point into being offensive just for the hell of it. I've seen that itself then spiral beyond simply being offensive and towards being outright awful to people.
And I say this as a liberal who posted from time to time on /r/The_Donald and considers many of them to be good people. Early in the presidential campaign, I had more than a few rational and productive conversations on there. It was great! That is unfortunately no longer the case, in my experience.
All of this being said, I judge an individual based on that individual's actions. I may have strong opinions against /r/The_Donald as a community, but community dynamics often emerge independently of their individual component parts. I will assume good intent until proven otherwise.
Glad to have your perspective represented here!
Off-topic note: So, why is this thread civil, while the ones on reddit are imploding? This site hasn't even got any actual 'moderators' yet, just one admin who's busy coding. Can we tap into this somehow? Or is it just a function of the self-selecting nature of the (geeky, hackernews/unhappy redditor) initial seed group?
I think it's a matter of the inherent nature of the seed group. This community was founded with (among other purposes) the express purpose of not devolving the way that reddit so often does, so it would make sense that people chosen for the seed group would be more willing to talk through things.
The key is whether the combination of changes to voting/ranking mechanics and the enforcement of this culture early on will allow it to be sustainable as the site grows. I think it's possible. It relies on us to represent the site's values so that it becomes a core part of the site's identity rather than just a set of rules, though.
Since the user base is limited right now, there are limited problems. The question is whether the tools the users are going to be given will allow them to deal with infinite problems. If the moderator system can scale with the user base, as stated in the mechanics section, I think it's got a chance. Heavy and consistent moderation of community guidelines are what maintain a community in my experience.
I'm betting I'm just good at being delicate with anti-trump people. ;)
kidding of course - mostly; It is possible that the way some of the OP text is phrased promotes more civility, but that wasn't really a conscious effort on my part. Just spitballing here, but I would guess at least a couple of influences might be: 1) small participant volume 2) invite-only [e.g. you fuck up, you're probably gone - also it isn't a performance for public consumption] 3) advertised as specifically for higher-quality conversations 4) OP is relatively non-threatening 5) no karma, no downvotes, no benefit to downvoting
Oooh. That's one I hadn't really considered before. Good catch. :)
Thanks!
I think part of the reason it's such a provocative subreddit is a sense of persecution on the site. I mean, it's almost Alinsky-ish in a way. The entire site administration, the major subreddits, etc. all of them are extremely opposed to the President and people who voted for and support him. The admins have (whether justified or not) specifically punished the subreddit, with spez even altering user's comments through the database. The subreddit regularly gets brigaded, has vote counts reset, subscriber counts altered to make them appear smaller, and has probably more bans than anywhere else specifically because of people trolling or trying to break the site-wide rules and get the subreddit banned (and of course those who are just there to denigrate and insult get banned because it's intended to be a pro-trump rally). These are folks who believe they are fighting a culture war (and I generally agree that there is one happening beyond just reddit, with several different factions attempting to gain influence over the two main opposed groups) so it's like, teasing people in power with a few jokes is justified in their minds.
I'm not saying that they're objectively justified. But I understand why, and I've probably even upvoted some of the teasing posts you have seen, if they were shortly after site changes made to punish the subreddit.
I would call that a persecution complex, personally. They claim to be haraassed by the admins but any other subreddit that did the things the_donald did and does would have been banned long ago. The use of bots to manipulate vote counts in that subreddit is flagrant. The algorithm was changed because the subreddit had been abusing the previous one to fill r/all with posts, practically for days at a time. That's not a punishment; a punishment would have been banning the sub. That's what happens to other subs that abuse the site. The "subscriber counts altered," claim was never true and even a cursory look into what actually happened makes that obvious. They have more bans than anywhere else because even a whisper of dissent against the god-emperor is grounds for a permanent one.
And yet they are actually the ones in power, since their president is in office and their party controls the Congress.
To me, it does seem that community has a persecution complex. I think that it's necessary for people in that community to be able to justify their actions to themselves. Well, at least the one's that are actual ordinary people, and not political operatives for some group or another.
I have to say, I think what the_donald does is not teasing. What they do at their best is harassment, and at their worst they peddle and deal in hate. If reddit had consistently enforced their rules and guidelines they would have been banned long ago. There were weeks of simply spam from them during 2016. It consistently covered r/all. Reddit changed their site and algorithm to deal with r/all being spammed. If any other community had put out spam to the point it required an overhaul of the site and the development of new features, they would have been banned. They got preferential treatment because they were, ostensibly, a political discussion sub.
That's partly because certain groups on every side of every isle have been working very hard to make sure the language we use itself becomes poisoned. You can't even hear the name of a political group or stance without instantly assuming ten different biases out of it that have been hammered into your brain over decades. The language we use to talk politics is, itself, broken.
I'm too cheerful, I know. :/ I'll even mark the loaded words for you...
I try to focus on people, not parties. I'd vote for people on both sides of the isle, and I'd like more aisles please. I consider myself a quasi-libertarian socialist. I love a free market, but I'm fully in favor of a strong social foundation (and UBI is my idea of how to do it right - but I could talk about that for years). I acknowledge the needs for basic regulations and safeguards on the free market, but am consistently disappointed by our (now business as usual) problems with regulatory capture. I support single payer universal health care. I find I agree with most conservatives about waste and taxation - and am disappointed when they inevitably create more of both after being elected. I find I agree with liberals on most social issues, though I've had just about enough 'safe spaces' and 'political correctness.' I don't think russians are evil, or that socialism is the end of the world, or that an unregulated free market represents anything other than base predatory capitalism.
The odds you were able to figure out my own political views from that text are pretty slim, because every italicized word has been corrupted to mean different things to different people, most of them things that will set any two people not on the same side off bickering with each other.
I agree with the sentiment about republicans/conservatives being elected and then doing little to reduce wasteful spending. It's amazing how incompetent they seem to be - that or the ones that get put in office aren't actually conservative or interested in fixing things. I can count on one hand the number of republicans in congress that I actually believe are sincere in wanting to reduce wasteful government spending. The rest I am either unsure or know for certain they are "RINO"s.
I really appreciate that you have your own beliefs and don't just go with whatever is popular in one group or the other. I have found the left-right spectrum, the "political compass", or "horseshoe theory" to be inadequate a lot of times in properly defining political ideology or positions, but it's easier to say I'm conservative or center-right most of the time - but I actually do think that a single-payer health care setup might be best - if it were done well and paired with other safeguards. And similarly I think a universal basic income may become necessary as automation advances and we transition to a post-scarcity society - but that is still some time in the future. I think government should be minimal though, generally speaking.
Styxhexenhammer666 had an interesting concept for "cone theory" to describe a 3d representation of political alignment with a primary focus on authoritarianism vs. liberty. Might be interesting. :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JlA59BFhpY
I think the health care angle is a moral obligation we owe as a society (up to and including assisted suicide). Our system right now is a joke. Single payer lets the market back into the room, to correct the mess we've made of that entire segment. That's also why the various industries at play here are scared to have it - it'll wreck their rigged systems. I get very, very nervous whenever the basic 'vote with your dollar' element is missing from any market segment. I can handle some regulations (like Glass-Steagall - don't place bets with other people's savings and pensions) but not that loss of competition and freedom of choice.
I could entertain full-on free universal health care - but I only say that because it seems to be working very, very well in a lot of developed nations. I think it's proven itself. I also don't think there's much chance the USA is going to get there, so single payer is the next best step.
I'm honestly not worried at all about the automation, because everyone's got it so very backwards. You always see the same two groups talking about it. Group A thinks we're all headed for unemployment nirvana/hell, Group B says it's all going to be fine because printing press. They are kinda both right. The future of work is you standing next to the robot, drinking coffee while you supervise it and give it directions.
Robots are amazing at precision, speed, tireless manual labor, databases of knowledge - and not much else. Humans, on the other hand, tend to suck at these things.. but they are good at problem solving, decision making, time management, creativity, and a host of other things we tend to just take for granted. Robots can't even do any of those tasks, and those aren't easy targets for code-automation, that's real AI territory, it's not happening for decades at best - maybe never.
This is the makings of an all-star team-up, not the collapse of capitalism. Almost every industry is aiming for the pairing, not replacement. Almost. I'm afraid drivers and simple retail workers are still in for a rough time, and we're still going to have to brace for that - I'd like to see a negative income tax implemented at around a 50% rate to make up the difference.
It's not basic income, but it's enough to give people time to retrain and partner with robots, and we can actually afford it - especially if we shut down most other forms of our broken welfare system and roll that into the NIT fund. That negative income tax can eventually be extended into a full basic income, by just raising the bar for the tax bracket until it covers almost everyone - assuming the automation can pay for it all like everyone's hoping. Even if it doesn't, that's another decent economic control lever, and we can take our time bumping it up, there's no rush. If it takes 30 years, that's what it takes.
I think my favorite aspect of a real UBI is the power it gives workers over their employers. If you're working in a bad job, for a bad boss, and you've got a UBI to rely on - you can walk off that job at the literal drop of a hat. That's going to make it wickedly difficult for workers to be exploited - especially the workers at the bottom of the wage bracket, where most of this exploitation takes place. Imagine Amazon's reaction when their workers don't strike - they all quit on the same day because they are sick of pissing in bottles. It's a big reversal of the power dynamic. That solves a lot of messy problems we've been struggling with for a long time.
With UBI we can get rid of the 'minimum wage' nonsense as well. It's like a giant reset button to undo all of these rube goldberg machines we've become trapped in. I like it for it's ability to phase in slowly over time as a NIT and in the process, untangle so many other problems.
Best part is the science shows people don't remain unemployed, which was the big fear - everywhere they try this, it's well over 95% and a hell of a lot of small business action. People with low money on a UBI are going to spend it like crazy on necessities - that's more velocity of money, which means more work getting done. I look at it as a shot-in-the-arm for capitalism.
My issue with capitalism is that it promotes short-term thinking (at least, in our current profit-madness mode) and it also has no ethics whatsoever. It's as brutal and merciless as natural selection itself, and I've got a problem with that. I think all we need to do is put a solid floor in there to keep people from crashing into the ground. That ablates the ruthlessness. As for the profit-madness, I look at that as a byproduct of failing to hold companies ethically and very legally accountable for the shit they get away with. Just look at GDPR - threaten Facebook with a 4% yearly revenue strike per infraction and they jump, just like everyone else. We need the rule of law to make a comeback. That'll help with the short-term thinking.
Aaand that's my political rant for the month, or so. :P
Excellent post.
I thoroughly agree with the part about needing the rule of law to make a comeback in order to kill our short-term thinking problem. It seems like a lot of our (I think this applies worldwide) regulations are mere suggestions and if you can make enough profit you can buy your way out of them.
Infraction punishments need to be significantly more punitive than any possible profit to be made form ignoring them so that accepting fines and violations can no longer be tolerated as a cost of doing business.
Would you say that UBI would reduce the need for unions too? If everyone can just quit whenever they want and have meaningful alternatives to do things that make them happy, do unions need to exist to correct any imbalance of negotiating power?
I'd like to hope so. It should also make it a bit harder for the unions to get to the point where they can easily force employees to join them, and start paying fees. I'm not generally against unions - some are good, some are yikes - but I'd like to see that entire class of problems go away.
A lot of people justify this by saying that waste is an unavoidable byproduct of large organisations, but I'd suggest there's enough lean corporations to disprove that. I think the problem is that politicians, in general, from the bottom to the top of the political ladder, are necessarily people who are good at getting elected - and not people who are necessarily the best at actually running the government. When the objective is to maximise profits and value for shareholders, waste is an evil to be crushed underfoot - but when the objective is to get elected, it's really not a pressing concern.
I feel much as you do, but with only two parties to choose from I find myself voting overwhelmingly for one of them. After enough elections I just up and joined their party so I could vote in their primaries and now I get their mail.
I don't even know who I am any more man SMH
I feel a lot of that language issue. I work in public affairs and used to be a military journalist. I'm fascinated by words and how we abuse them.
I also feel you on people not understanding what you mean when you say something that is nothing more than a label for them. I'm very much for education, and a lot of conservatives take me to task for it. But then I explain that one reason I'm pro-education (and free college) is that the country with the better-educated population with out-compete the other country over time, and I don't think we can risk that. Nor do the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Then -- for those still with me -- they start to listen and consider. But you lose most of them as soon as they see an opening to dash your dumbass liberal elitism.
Man, you nailed it with broken language. If everyone stopped for a second and truly thought about what all those words you used truly mean, I wonder how many people would share 90% of your views. I feel like a majority of the country would, but maybe I'm idealistic. (See what I did there? :-))
As the world grows, the problems we have get more complex. To solve those problems, we need to get more creative. Instead, it seems we do the inverse and use simple solutions that don't solve the problem in the first place. It's easy to get bogged down in the negativity. But then I come to ~ and find civil discourse, and I get hopeful again.
As someone clearly on the "other side of the aisle" from @Mumberthrax I'll confirm that A LOT of people were very dismissive of conservatives during the Obama admin.
Conservatives still feel that way too which I dismiss since they control all branches of government, a major cable network, much of local news, and most of the radio. That last comment is tongue-in-cheek BTW.
ugh, yeah technically the republican party "controls" the house, executive, and fox - but the people in congress by and large have not voted conservatively, and fox is only recently tolerable - hell, do they still have shepard smith? I hate that guy. the company is owned by the same people who own progressive outlets so its not like it's Mises TV or something. :P
Murdoch is extremely unpopular among social liberals and supported Brexit and conservatives in Australia, etc, etc. I don't see how this means that Fox ownership is in "liberal" hands.
Rupert Murdoch owns Fox and has weekly sit downs with Trump to plan their agenda.
BTW the comment you’re responding to was in jest :)
You hate the only host on Fox who actually presents issues in a fair, balanced, and fact-based manner? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
this is basically why people don't discuss politics or religions in the office or during business deals in order to keep things civil; there are a million+1 topics out there and people's opinions can be relevant and engaging and interesting on those...but when we come to core beliefs about running society...ugh, all hell breaks loose.
It's kind of bizarre isn't it? you'd think that of all things, we'd be able to find ways to come to mutual understandings and make sensible arguments with regard to something so important. Perhaps it harkens back to evolution, the law of the jungle, where if something isn't going your way, the best way to ensure your way survives is to get mad and punch the other guy in the face. xD
Those instincts are still in us. I would like to see some sort of educational or training program developed which helps people do better. Something like a video series or a cheap-to-host github.io page that people can do to learn how to get along with and engage meaningfully with others on contentious topics to find mutual understanding at least if not a closer model of the truth. edit: a book would work too - but it'd have to be just as engaging and useful, and probably permissively licensed so it could be shared digitally.
Ever notice that politics has somehow become identical to sports?
Head over to /r/nfl and read the smack talk threads - they can peel the paint off of walls, and yet, it's all in good fun... well, until a guy who lost a $400 bet meets the guy who won his $400, then it's clobberin' time (with a bonus inning for the riot that causes).
Still, you'll notice that the language and format of the sports conversation exactly mirrors the content of an out-of-control political flamewar. It's uncanny, not just the words, phrasing, and vitriol, but even right down to the pattern of the posts, jabs, comebacks, and replies.
When we discuss politics as a red vs blue issue, it's no longer politics. It's a drunken brawl between sports fans who have differing favorite teams. There's no thought at all, except how to score points by dunking the other side. It's no longer a conversation, it's a game... and boy, do we love playing that game - far more than we love any kind of civic duty.
Except trump supporters have way better memes than any sports fan ever would, of course. ;)
I think politics was for a long time something that people found boring, or alien and distant. I think too our culture has generally devolved a bit with video games, television, etc. Some of it is sophisticated, but take Skyrim for example. It's a beautiful and fun game - but there's no denying that it's wayyyy simplified compared to Morrowind. It's designed for casual players, the lowest common denominator, which sucks for people who enjoy something more challenging and immersive like the alien landscape of Vvardenfell in Morrowind, the journal which doesn't hold your hand or give you a waypoint, you actually have to use your noggin to solve puzzles rather than depend on a hint system. BUT, Bethesda makes a ton of money, and can continue to provide us with something that we generally find enjoyable, even if it isn't as good as we might prefer.
It's an imperfect analogy but that's ok. The point is, you're right, politics is now a sports game, and EVERYONE can join in... and maybe that higher engagement means that the lowest common denominator can now be slowly elevated up to where he might enjoy playing Morrowind.
It's past midnight. This comment is probably nonsensical. You have my apologies. xD
The irony of a trump voter and the_donald poster decrying the woes of "politics as sports," is just... I don't even know, man. We've descended into depths of parody heretofore uncharted. You realize that when you start worshiping a cult of personality and defending his every action, policy, and statement, calling him the god-emperor and going along with him while he demonizes the media and personally attacks those who oppose him, that you are participating in wholeheartedly and endorsing the very thing you're claiming to be against right now? And that's a general you, although if you still call yourself a "MAGA person" it probably applies to you too. But I don't jump to conclusions.
i don't know that i'm "decrying the woes" of politics as sports. You may have misread. there are bad things and there are good things - which specific things are which you and I probably have some agreements on.
edit: and I am a MAGA person, because i do want America to be great.
You haven't played my version of Skyrim. ;)
I do think Bethesda needs to get their shit sorted, because if ES6 is as lame as FO4, I'm done. I'll sell my soul to CDPR instead.
I used the main STEP guide twice previously on skyrim installations - was very nice, though the way i was doing it may not have been the most efficient because it was a major hassle getting all the mods and setting them up properly. I wish there was a one-click download for a modpack like twitch/curse has got. I remember there being some weirdness in the morrowind modding community about packs like that though, and everyone seemed to be kind of paranoid about legal stuff surrounding them.
Yours certainly looks interesting. o_o. If I get my graphics card working again, i will definitely try it out.
I know it's off topic, but can we talk about some of the weird ass world shit built into Morrowind? Like the guy who made like four female clones of himself and made them all his wives? Or the (male) god that became the sex slave of the daerdic king of rape and then ended up birthing a bunch of god-demon babies? Weird ass shit that doesn't fly in Skyrim.
I'm a little jaded about "Oh politics is SUDDENLY a sports game" like that's some new thing. I'm from Ohio. Worse than that, my family is based in Michigan, and as a result I was always the unhappy sole Michigan fan in a room full of out and proud Ohio fans. "Red vs Blue" became an unhappy part of my childhood upbringing. You can't fool me with this nonsense that politics is suddenly a sports game to people. In Ohio, it's been Red vs. Blue with politics too since I could remember anything about politics.
Maybe it's just now the rest of the nation is more aware about that intense partisan pressure? Politics isn't just a sports game for pundits and battleground states anymore. Now every state is a battleground state. 50-state strategy! Compete everywhere! Etc., Etc.
I have yet to have an IRL conversation with a Trump supporter that has not been couched in some sort of bigotry. I’m white and live in rural Georgia so MAGAs assume I’m one of them. So when I hear people claim that his support is not somehow related to bigotry I simply cannot believe it.
I have been a conservative since I was old enough to pay attention to politics but I can’t stand for what is being passed as conservatism these days. There’s no honor, dignity, or real ideas present.
I'm sorry to hear that about your offline interactions. I'm in Texas and I've met plenty of people who are trump supporters who are not bigoted or racist near as I can tell. What about online interactions? I mean, it's always possible that I'm secretly some awful racist but am just pretending that my support for trump is above-board... but have you interacted with anyone else online who at least appears to be just plain in love with the ideas of putting america's interests first, in securing our country against terrorism and criminal gangs, removing wasteful government spending, taking care of our veterans, making peace with other nations, improving trade with China, etc. etc.?
I’d like to point out that everything you listed are things that any politician would support.
Perhaps. There are certainly some prominent politicians who believe that putting America first is a bad thing, that America is a bad country and deserves to be knocked down a few pegs - how often have you seen people saying that "nationalism is dangerous, and leads to holocausts and other bad thing"?
I think most people are for those things. Most people who support Trump, I suspect, support him for those and similar reasons, not for bigotry or prejudicial reasons (though those who are bigoted probably support Trump because he isn't Hillary and has opposed illegal immigration) - whether he is actually better at achieving those things than those who would oppose him or not.
That's actually true. There's generally a distinct difference between patriotism and nationalism, despite the unhelpful dictionary definitions. Patriotism is a great thing, allowing people to take pride in their country, recognize its faults, and actively seek to make their country better. Nationalism, on the other hand, is more of a supremacist mindset, where you believe your country can do no wrong, has no faults, and holds dominion over all other countries.
Patriotic Americans will look at e.g. slavery and Japanese-American internment and readily state that what we did was wrong, whereas nationalist Americans will look at those same things and either see no wrong or will hesitate to speak out against them. Thus, nationalism naturally gives rise to greater levels of atrocity as the atrocities are consistently defended or swept under the rug.
It's kind of a tangential point, but one that I feel is important :)
Hmm. I'm not sure that I have the same definitions in my mind then. My understanding of patriotism and nationalism are that patriositm is like being a fan of your favorite football team. You wave the flag, are excited when they win, you buy the memorabilia and promote them and do what you can to help them succeed (you try to boost the local economy, do good things for your neighbors in your community, never engage in treason, etc.). Whereas nationalism is a belief that the nation-state is a superior model of governance than a monolithic global government, or a conglomerate of multinational corporations and trade deals superceding national sovereignty, or the belief that borders should be abolished and people should be free to go wherever they like and use whatever resources are available as "global citizens".
I think maybe you are talking about chauvinism? I mean, I would say that I'm a little bit of an American chauvinist, I do think that we are in many ways objectively superior to other countries - but I'm not a dick about it, and I don't think that its perfect or has never done wrong; most of my complaints about politics at this time are about american politicians and government actions, so... and I also admire some other countries like Iceland, Hungary, Poland, Japan.
Less and less every day, sadly. It's been a long, slow slide since the 50s, and while we've been largely sitting on our asses, the rest of the world has not. But let's table the vast majority of the differences and focus on the one single lapse we have that we should feel genuinely ashamed as Americans to lose... our constitution isn't even on the list of 'barely adequate' governing documents anymore, and boy, compared to the one at the top of the list we're not even in the same league.
I'd love to see a Constitution 2.0. That's a worthy political goal, and thanks to our Article V escape hatch, all you need is 38 states to ratify it - the Fed doesn't even get to be part of the process. That's the opportunity to build some proper bedrock to stand on, and correct so many of our mistakes. Only one simple rule - if we don't see at least 3/4 majority on an issue, it's off the list for being included, period.
Edit: Oh, one other rule in the spirit of the original, and GDPR - plain english only, no legalese allowed.
"Edit: Oh, one other rule in the spirit of the original, and GDPR - plain english only, no legalese allowed."
Be careful with that - the definition of "plain English" changes, because the language itself changes over time.
But, as far as Constitution 2.0, I'd love to see a section included that specifically refers to the fact that other than the rights section, which can only be added to, not reduced - The rest of the document should be updated every X years, because it's understood that sensibilities change, new things come, old things go, etc.
I would argue that the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments need to be modified, and in some cases very heavily.
I would assume part of what I think needs to be done would fall under some other people's "reducing rights".
Nope, definitely thinking of nationalism. It seems, however, that you're interpreting the term with reference to the opposing term "globalism", whereas I'm thinking of the opposing term "patriotism". The opposing term we have in mind alters the semantics of the term "nationalism". In other words, we're just arguing semantics at this point.
Personally, I don't believe "nationalism" should be used as an opposing term to "globalism" simply due to the historical roots and negative association that the term has. You're very, very likely to run into miscommunication issues like this otherwise. Unfortunately it seems that for some reason, people decided to adopt the "opposed to globalism" definition as a secondary use of the term.
I would probably agree that nationalism is bad. Patrioitism’s great, but nationalism is awful. If you believe your country’s the best no matter what, then you never have the opportunity to keep it thay way.
I think of it this way - am I a better father and husband if I put another family's interests before my own wife and children? If I am in a negotiation with another company, should i give them what they want even though it would be better to be more assertive in negotiations? Maybe i don't know what anti-nationalist people mean when they use the word, but to me nationalism is believing that the nation-state is a superior model of governance than a monolithic global government or governance by international corporations and NGOs.
I think my state, Texas, is better than new Jersey, it's even better than Colorado, and that's patriotism. Do I think my state is better off with its independent energy grid? Yes - and if i had the option I'd encourage other states to set up their own rather than weaken ours by making it something owned by a collection of states.
Regarding your familial example, I believe many don't see it as a win/lose proposition between your family and the other family. Many believe that a synergistic common ground can be readily achieved that benefits both families more than one or the other. This surely isn't possible in every case, but perhaps in many (most?) cases.
Back to the sports analogy: everyone wants to finish undefeated, but you might learn something valuable about yourself via a loss or two. Ask the 2007 Patriots.
Exactly! This is precisely what Trump and America First is all about - each country doing their best for their own family, and making deals that benefit each mutually. This is far superior to borders disappearing, nations becoming serfs to a global authoritarian government or to multinational corporate conglomerates.
Okay, so this is an interesting take. I feel like Trump is way more divisive than that... "fire and fury" and all that. I feel like his rhetoric always puts America first and all other countries can be damned. Can you help me understand what policies he has or is pursuing that indicates mutual benefit for other countries?
Sorry for the late response. Been trying to go through my unread messages and respond to stuff...
The fire and fury thing was certainly provocative - that was a statement made about someone we are currently and have been at war with for a long time, who has threatened our country with nuclear annihilation more times than I know of. IMO it was the right move at the time - if you look at how President Trump has been interacting with Kim Jong Un since then, it has been respectful and serene. The unwritten rule seems to be that he doesn't criticize or poke at people who aren't being shitty in some fashion.
Right now though, we're on the verge of peace with North Korea. If they pull the football out at the last moment like Lucy on Peanuts, we'll have to put pressure on chinese banks or something I'm sure, but it's looking like North Korea, if they choose to, could be in for the most rapid prosperity increase any nation has ever experienced in history.
I think what might shed some light on the overall perception trump supporters like me have about the way "America First" is not "America Only" might be to watch Free to Choose, a video series by Milton Friedman. It doesn't answer your question precisely, but it should at the very least give you a sense of where half of the country is coming from psychologically. (mind you, friedman was for no regulations, no protectionism etc., but the basic ideas about the free market on a micro scale may be illustrative i hope)
Like the word 'republicanism' can refer to the reactionary neoliberal American Republicans of 2018, the more classical liberal American Republicans in the 1860s, or the libertarian socialists and anarchists of the Spanish civil war, nationalism has multiple uses.
Scottish nationalism, Irish nationalism, Welsh nationalism, Catalonian nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, Flemish nationalism, these are all examples of nationalism, where it refers to establishing a sovereign, antonymous nation and no longer being ruled by a government they consider foreign.
Ethnic nationalism', doesn't seek to shed a larger government and gain independence, but seeks to strengthen an existing national identity by shedding anything contrary to it. Often this takes the form of ethnic cleansing (genocide, genocidal rape, deportation, eugenics, and so on). Nazi Germany is obviously the best example of this, but there are many others, including the entire history of imperialism. Notably, ethnic nationalism was one of the excuses given by the modern Russian government over its annexation of Crimea - they claimed Crimea's ethnically Russian population as justification.
Civic nationalism is what you'll find most Americans agree with, and what most of the groups who consider themselves oppressed and seeking the establishment of their own sovereign state strive towards. Unlike ethnic nationalism it is inclusive. It includes personal freedom, equality, tolerance, and so on, and also includes a sense of national identity as an important concept. America has a long history of this.
Trump unfortunately believes in ethnic nationalism, not civic nationalism, as we have seen time and time again.
Lastly, patriotism is just an attachment to one's homeland. When you describe believing your state is better than another, you're describing extreme forms of patriotism, either chauvinism or jingoism.
Which "prominent politicians" are you speaking of? Because I can't think of one American politician that's ever said anything like that.
Due to my real world interactions I avoid having what I consider to be less productive online interactions regarding President Trump. I’ve literally lost count of the number of times I’ve been at parties, social gatherings, etc where people have assumed that my beliefs are the same as theirs and have made comments that have made my jaw drop. So I’m not talking about a couple of times. So you can say whatever it is that motivates your support, and I hope you’re being honest, but that’s simply not been my experience.
Trying to avoid being offensive here. I can understand and get behind a lot of the ideals you just mentioned. But Trump over the last 1.5 years has proven quite often to not be effective at any of those. How can you still support him when he's not living up to what he's promised?
To avoid sensitive topics, lets remove terrorism/gangs, due to Trump's loaded bias of what those are.
Do you see Trump living up to these promises?
When he said America First I know my Trump-supporting family/friends assumed that would mean putting us in front of his own interests, which is clearly not the case.
The truth is that Trump only exists because right-wing media has created an alternative reality in which the country was suffering under Obama and needed Trump to save us from the PC culture police.
He doesn't represent traditional conservative values one bit, he represents that angry and I'm not gonna take it no more mentality that you hear Rush Limbaugh scream about daily.
We need to find common ground, not common enemies, in order for us to actually move things forward. Regardless of the criminal investigations into Trump, voters have opened a Pandora's Box by not forcing him to abide by our established norms. No tax returns, no press conferences, no divesting of assets, no explanation of nepotism, etc.
I get that folks like Trump, and in that ultimately trust him, but what happens when it's the next guy who you don't trust?
I post political content here. I don't mind civil discussion either.
I wouldn't call r/the_donald civil or reasonable discussion though.
Yea it's a pretty gross sub culture when you really dig into it.
I'm glad to hear that. It's harder now i think than in times past where there's a lot of insularity in the two ostensibly-opposed factions. It doesn't help that it seems the people with the biggest megaphones are doing their best to ramp it up all the time. :P
I'm convinced most aren't even Americans. I find in my face-to-face conversations with people that we can almost always find common ground and agree on many of the problems, if not always on the solution.
Yeah, people talk about russian bots, but ignore that astroturf is nothing new - it even had formal evidence of specialized software and companies supplying it to governments with the HB Gary / lulzsec email scandal. Trump people talk about CTR/Shareblue - which are a real thing who even state openly that they astroturf, and anti-trump folks talk about russian troll farms. While the people who have been aware of this stuff for a while have called out Hasbara, Chinese click farms, JTRIG, and other countries engaged in political meddling online for years. :/
To be clear I don't like either, but they're not equatable. The difference is that it's American political groups doing the astroturfing rather than foreign governments meddling in another country's elections.
If we assume that CTR/Shareblue are the only ones, then yes that is technically true. And it would be very surprising if it were only these two groups, especially when we know that Hasbara, JTRIG, and chinese click farms exist. I'm certain other nations and organizations have a vested interest in influencing perceptions via social media astroturf. Heck, until a few years ago the State department had a mandate that prevented them from doing this sort of thing legally on US citizens (nothing about non-US citizens), but that was removed. IIRC there was a reddit blog post that was about the most "reddit-addicted city" and it turned out to be a US. Military base (this was several years ago). It's obvious that this is not a game that only one or two groups are playing.
For-profit companies are doing it too - though likely on smaller scales. /r/hailcorporate, while assuredly having many false-positives, has a preponderance of incidents documented on this sort of thing.
Totally agree. But I don’t think anyone else is going as big as the Russians
Indeed. This sounds like a wonderful class of permaban-worthy behavior for this website. The freedom that comes from leaving the profit-motive behind unties our hands. Let's find out how smart these guys really are.
So, I get it. I have family and close friends who voted for Trump. They're all perfectly fine people, as I'm sure you are, but I struggle to understand the why.
Why vote for someone who lies in every other sentence?
Why vote for someone who would rather spend time attacking his enemies than bringing people together?
Why vote for someone who mocks those with disabilities?
Why vote for someone who sexually assaults people and then brags about it?
Why vote for someone who shorts his contractors?
Why vote for someone who scams people out of their money?
Why vote for someone who needlessly pushed a conspiracy theory that our president wasn't a citizen?
Why, after all of these horrible things, would anyone still want Trump as their leader?
That's my issue with folks who voted for Trump. The fact that they voted for someone like that makes me question how they're able to overlook things that, to me, are morally beyond reproach. I don't doubt that there are Trump voters who are wonderful and kind and totally capable of having civil conversations about politics but there's just such a large and fundamental gap between what I believe is morally important and what Trump believes is morally important that it's nearly impossible for me to just 'agree to disagree'.
To sum it up: Yes, I think most, if not all of us are totally capable of civil conversation with Trump supporters. You will have to remember that a lot of us will be feeling this moral disconnect I've described, and that will be a significant source of friction.
I see Trump as the Republican take on Bill Clinton. Both were elected somewhat by surprise after a long period of a steadily popular if not wholly beloved president (looking at Reagan and Obama's approval numbers side by side is stunning). Both had very serious, difficult to reconcile personality problems, especially in how they treat women and how important the professional treatment of women is to their respective bases. But, because when they each happened, the difference in their respective treatment of political norms is massive. It's important to realize that while Clinton was a governor of a Southern state, Trump has never held elected office and cares nothing for political norms that might make other politicians more reasonable and civil.
There was an essay that Ben Shapiro wrote that one of my Trump supporting friends linked me recently about how millennial conservatives react to Trump versus how older conservatives react to Trump. Old conservatives, in his mind, seem to believe that the cultural battle over what values one should have as a politician was lost in the Clinton years resoundingly by conservatives. Millennial conservatives, in contrast, judge the older conservatives by their willingness to saddle up with the recurring moral outrage machine that is Donald Trump. They can't talk to their friends about having voted for Trump (because few in our generation believes that the political whataboutism is a valid defense against accepting the moral degradation of the presidency).
I don't know how much I buy Shapiro's reading of young vs. old conservatives. It seems to me to be the case that my young, conservative friends tend to enjoy spreading Trump memes as much as anyone else (more, really). Yet I got to say there's something appealing about the explanation that people who can remember the Clinton years are willing to accept a lower standard for their standard barer as a result of the bitter culture wars they experienced a little over two decades ago.
That's an interesting take to consider. I wasn't even born yet for most of the Clinton years, so I've really got no experience in how people reacted to him.
I'm a 55 yo white guy who's lived mostly in the South - and I'd consider Nixon to be that watershed. I'm liberal, and Clinton's behavior disgusted me as well.
Yeah I think it's fair to point to Nixon as a more important precursor, especially given how nakedly well-documented his doucle-sidedness was. Just another thing that age gaps can contribute to in our political memory, I suppose.
When you speak with your family and friends about these questions, do you ask them as genuine questions, or are they rhetorical?
Have you considered the possibility that your beliefs about each of (or any of) those items might be different from objective reality? Just like with the yanny and laurel thing, trump voters see a completely different movie playing on the same screen than you do. If you actually do want to understand why, I am curious what you have done to try to really understand. Have you argued with your trump-voting family members? Or maybe just listened? Have you visited /r/the_donald with an open mind (I'm not sure that's possible, but I am curious if you've tried)? Have you tried consuming media from the other side just to see what angle they're pitching on the things CNN is saying? (if you are curious, i can share the outlets I consume for my pro-trump propaganda - not all of them are created equal).
To be honest, it hasn't come up in conversation. I don't see these folks often and when I do, I'd rather not spend the short time I have with them discussing politics. I assure you that I would ask them as genuine questions — there wouldn't be any point otherwise.
That's the thing though, I have considered that and every one of those items I listed is based in objective fact. Things Trump has said on Twitter or live TV, things there's comprehensive and concrete evidence for. I'm watching the same movie as Trump voters, they just seem to be completely ignoring half the things happening on the screen. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't understand why people voted for Trump. I fully acknowledge that there are multiple legitimate reasons why someone might have been drawn to support Trump as a candidate. What I don't understand is why they decided they could overlook the things I've listed.
I'll source each of those items. I genuinely would like to know how any of them can be interpreted differently.
An exaggeration, but this is far more than anyone should lie. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9reO3QnUA
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-bills-specialrepor-idUSKCN0T214Q20151113
https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-business-plan-left-a-trail-of-unpaid-bills-1465504454 (Apologies for the paywall, but if you've got a subscription this is probably a good source.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/31/522199535/judge-approves-25-million-settlement-of-trump-university-lawsuit
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/what-donald-trumps-birther-investigators-will-find-in-hawaii/237198/
If you run into paywalls on the NYT articles, just open up an incognito tab and paste in the URL.
The movie trump supporters see:
NYT page is fake news and trump doing his normal exaggeration.
some people deserve to be called out for their bad behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Trump is an equal opportunity mocker - he has historically used the same hand movements when mocking other people
trump's got a very long history as a playboy, and locker room talk in a context which is assumed private is normal. he didn't assault anyone - the very phrase people are getting flustered over is him saying "they let you do it", which is the very definition of consent. Would you prefer we lived in a sterile world where we contract must be signed prior to sex? There's another reaction on this one which is kind of amusing because it is hypocritical, but I'll mention it nonetheless - it appears desperate and underhanded that his comments in a private conversation are being used in this manner. I say this reaction is hypocritical because of things like project veritas going undercover to record people in private conversations, which trump supporters applaud. Largely though for this one, tl;dr: it's consenting, unsurprising, and a nothingburger.
wait, do I understand correctly that the criticism of trump is that he doesn't pay for shoddy work? that it would be better if he didn't fight his hardest to get what he paid for?
the students claimed they paid for classes that weren't worth what was advertised... doesn't this sound like a perfect mirror of the last item on your list? :P Still, I haven't taken the classes, all I have is the word of the students who stand to gain a lot of money from saying what they're saying - so I have no way of knowing if they're telling the truth about the substance of the classes.
Do you think that Trump would ever leave any option to attack his enemies unused? If trump is facing an opponent, and there's a rock on the ground, is he just going to leave that rock where it is? No! He's going to grab anything he can to throw at the other guy. Just ask Ted Cruz. I actually was somewhat disappointed but not terribly surprised when he finally let the birth certificate stuff go, because I think there's definitely some unusual stuff there. When the white house published the certificate on their website, i downloaded it, and then performed basically the analysis that Joe Arpaio had performed[1],[2],[3] and came to one of the same conclusions that the document they published was not a scan of the original doc, that it was constructed digitally from multiple images. It confused me as to why they would use such a blatant forgery unless it was intentional bait. Obama's brother Malik is from Kenya (and he's muslim, and a really fun guy if his twitter is any indication), so it's not like the kenya thing came out of nowhere - nevermind that iirc Barack himself promoted that he was from Kenya when he was younger as part of a campaign he was involved in. tl;dr many trump supporters see the birther thing as valid, though largely not nearly as important as the other crap obama has done wrong.
I'm not trying to convince you in expressing the above that what trump supporters see is the truth - just trying to show how they see these situations in a different way than you do. I'm also probably not qualified to speak on behalf of all trump voters, but I think many at least would agree generally that what I've described above fits with their perceptions (though I'm certain many would be able to do it more eloquently than I have).
Do you believe Barack Obama is a natural-born US citizen? Yes or no.
As far as I'm aware, yes. Unless I am mistaken, his mother was a US citizen - therefore just like Ted Cruz he is a natural-born US citizen regardless of where he may have been born.
I don't know if it's a completely different movie entirely for some of my friends. It's certainly a vastly different movie playing for my dad, who bought entirely into that birther-ism nonsense no matter how many times and ways I tried to walk him through the birth certificate process in Hawaii.
In one sense I get the birther movement a bit, because every partisan hates the idea that the nation chose against their preferred guy. Liberals are not immune to that sort of whining (see also: Bush v. Gore, memes can't melt steel beams, etc.). But at another level, give it up if you want to seem reasonable to other people. You know? Maybe this is another one of those things that smells of the previous poisonous battles left in the water. I'm sure older people remember Bush v Gore bitterness like it was yesterday. I, however, barely remember 9/11. And people these days call me old.
So while I do think there is something experientially distinct going on, I think it's more correct to say a different arrangement of value priorities than a completely different movie.
Still, isn't it fair for people who don't remember the Clinton years (speaking as one of these young fools) to wonder about this seemingly near uncritical support for a man who, on a personal level, seems morally adrift and abhorrent? Isn't it fair to wonder why it's suddenly acceptable for one person to mishandle confidential information but for it's a jailable offense for his political opponent to mishandle confidential information?
I don't say this to be mean and jump "gotcha" at the quickest opportunity. I think that's a cheap and bad faith way to engage in political conversation. But surely you see a bit of where us lefties are coming from with our confusion, ya?
Indeed. Or at least I like to believe I can empathize.
I think that it's probable that the "different priorities/values" filter and the "different movies on the same screen" filter are neither perfect means of representing objective reality, and that its possible that there may be some truth in both (though I'm naturally biased to suspect the one I favor is closer to the truth).
If you're in one camp, the "trump voters aren't seeing different realities than we do, they just are actual racists so they're okay with his behavior" filter, then it's very difficult to imagine things could be any other way because the filter itself locks your ability to empathize down.
You and I both know that humans are extremely irrational, emotional creatures. We use lots of tricks to convince ourselves that we know what's going on, but none of us really does - we've evolved to operate well enough to survive and procreate. It works. We've made some strides as a society with the enlightenment in modeling something like objective reality, but it's still an incomplete picture - and the discipline of that process certainly isn't present in the average person as deeply as it would need to be to escape our brains' 'good enough' filling-in of the gaps in everyday situations like digesting news sound bites or articles written by humans every bit as fallible as we are.
Whether one side is right or wrong doesn't matter for the purposes of reducing the confusion - what matters is understanding how a normal middle-eastern man could become a suicide bomber killing his own countrymen. The people of the middle east are not inherently more evil than the people of iceland or mexico etc. But if you are seeing a different reality, then anything is possible - even things we might normally find incomprehensible.
Well said
Disappointed at the conversation in this thread, but not surprised given that many users come from subs that try to create 'neutral' discussion spaces.
I'm sorry, but being civil and not attacking people doesn't exclude you from the responsibility for what your beliefs support. (Well, on this site it does, but you know what I mean) Even if you're not throwing around the n word, spreading false information, or doing T_Dish things, you've given your support to a person who has deep problems and actively hurts various groups of people, and giving it a friendly face doesn't make that any better.
Of course, I'm not the one making the rules here. I'm just not a fan of this trend where we treat all ideas the same as long as it's kept civil.
I've had similar feelings while watching this thread develop.
I'm quite interested in politics and very interested in social justice stuff, but based on this thread I don't think I'll be posting on much political stuff here. Maybe that means I'm locking myself in an echo chamber and part of the problem, but there are issues I can't be polite about. Wanna debate my bodily autonomy in a place I can't express anger about not wanting to be an incubator? No thanks.
There's a difference between expressing anger and personally attacking people you disagree with. The distinction may seem like a subtle one - the difference between 'you are a fucking idiot' and 'that's a stupid fucking idea', but the value is simple. When you attack the person, you're both making each other more and more angry, which makes you close down and become irrational and defensive - there can be no rational thought and discussion between two angry people. If you attack the idea, you are instead asking the other person to justify that idea and explain it to you.
That's true, and I hope on ~ folks can find the proper balance.
In my experiences elsewhere, however, attacks on ideas often get taken personally as well. Most of us (myself included) define our identity in part through the beliefs we hold, after all. And some ideas, like discriminatory ones, attack people personally because of their identities.
Someone can "civilly" argue that trans folks shouldn't be covered under sex nondiscrimination rules/laws, but a trans person may take that as an attack on them personally (and on their ability to stay employed, access healthcare, etc). And I wouldn't blame them, personally.
Yep, I think it is totally fair for people to take policy positions that are overwhelmingly likely to negatively impact them hard. I think it would be fair for that aggrieved person to point why they are upset about that policy position (even including pointing out that it feels like a rejection of them as a person worthy of rights and being treated politely).
What wouldn't be great is if that aggrieved person then chose to launch into making a bunch of epithets at the person who holds policy positions that seem not to be concerned with their personhood. Not only because it wouldn't convince the person they're talking to, but because it ends any potential conversation about the value priorities underlying those upsetting beliefs. And since most online communities have to be about keeping lines of communication healthy and open, that would be harmful to the community more generally.
Yeah, if the object is healthy communication, responding with epithets doesn't do any good. And I don't think allowing that would work on ~. My thoughts on this are a bit all over the place, so what I say next may not be super consistent with what I've said before, and it probably rambles a lot, haha.
I put "civilly" in my previous comment in quotes because I think it's actually debatable whether certain opinions can truly be civil. They might be stated politely, but if their end result harms people it is already personal attack of sorts. It still doesn't help for others to respond in kind, but if they do outsiders usually consider them the ones that "started it," because the first person was polite even if their ideas were not. Simply the action of trying to debate certain things, such as people's humanity, is harmful. I don't know a lot about it, but moving the "Overton window" is a concept bandied about a lot these days.
Despite talking about anger, I don't really get angry and insult people on the internet. But it's still frustrating to watch discussions devolve when someone calmly proposes a horrific idea, people react with anger or shock, some with insults, and then the original person claims intellectual superiority because they say they aren't attacking anyone, just discussing ideas. Which of those people would lose trust here on ~?
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, since it seems to be moving beyond my initial points of "anger is sometimes reasonable" and "even attacks on ideas can feel like personal attacks." Sorry 'bout that.
I see your points, but especially here:
I think that this is the major shift, in the platform model and community, that need to happens.
Everyone (well, a lot) are thinking about how the trust system should work because the platforms, online right now, that lead the market relies on gamification of your experience and thus giving you point to do stuff.
I wish this platform to have a trust mechanism that is only visible to the developers and code as a way to implement features on top of it that are not crucial for you daily experience on this platform. To give you an example, given your trust, your tags have more weight. But never to burn down a comment by yourself alone.
What should be really important instead is the capabilities to promote content.
To go back to your example, a topic that advertise a bad idea should not get votes, and not being promoted is worst than getting negative replies.
Think about something extreme like if today we get a topic about Nazi propaganda.
If people start commenting about how horrible those ideas are, that topic jump straight up in activity. And what those projects that think that topic is horrible get? Their comments get votes sure, but at the price of giving the topic exposure and attracting like minded.
Even just one new aspiring Nazi finding someone like him will help foster their idea, maybe elsewhere, in their echo chamber.
It's an extreme example, but agreed, Nazi/white supremacist posts are the sort of thing that need to be accounted for. My hope is that ~ will simply delete that sort of content rather than having to rely on something like lack of votes and activity, but there are plenty of recruitment strategies that rely on subtler comments.
This is where the anonymity of the platform really should step in (and we're discussing it in other topics). If the platform do not store indefinitely every post as made by you, you could feel more comfortable in replying explaining why something make you so angry with a real example.
There is nothing more powerful in moving people closer than when you share your personal situation.
And it's something you cannot do on a platform that allow everyone to check your message years in the past.
To add to what @Amarok said, there is also a difference in modus operandi.
The fact that there isn't any downvote button and the community is formed by people that don't like flames nor trolling, allow this topic to get lots of votes and none of the comment to be hidden by negative downvotes. Even if the tag systemv was working, you can see that there are nearly any comment tagged here.
I can redirect your position of not wanting to post here but the reasons are nearly the opposite this platform has been built for.
I don't think all ideas should be treated with the same level of respect. If your agenda is actively hurting others with legislation, stripping rights, etc, that idea doesn't hold any merit with me, and it's based in something vile.
There's a huge difference between being conservative and being a racist. I can see someone supporting Trump for conservative reasons.
Though yeah, I'll agree that it's really difficult to imagine anyone supporting Trump without also buying into the racism and xenophobia that he promotes.
My issue with that is that even if someone doesn't buy into the racism and xenophobia he promotes, by supporting him on other issues they're sorta saying that the racism is an okay price to pay for enacting their favored conservative economic policy (for example).
I actually agree with you that you really can't support Trump without buying into the racism. However, I don't believe those who support him believe that. I'm pretty sure they've decided on the cognitive dissonance as a normal state. I don't agree with it, but I can at least understand it.
Yeah, I just don't get that myself. Are there racists who voted for trump, because they thought he was signalling to them that he was on their side (despite publicly repeatedly disavowing david duke etc., despite the fact that he had a black girlfriend, his ex-wife and daughter are jewish, he's been very friendly with israel, etc. etc.), probably. There are states that voted for trump which voted for Obama in the previous election. How can all trump voters be racist if that is true?
It's frustrating for me, because I know that I'm not racist. So when people say that all trump voters must be racist or xenophobic, it's like, to believe that you must believe you are able to read my mind more clearly than I know my own thoughts... which is a bit silly. :P
I can believe that you're not bigoted. But clearly Trump is. Just so obviously. Having a black girlfriend or having jewish friends doesn't mean you're not bigoted.
I mean the dude:
Look man, I believe you can support Trump and not be bigoted (it's kinda insane to me, but I'll believe it), but that's gotta come with an acknowledgement that the dude is WAYYY more openly bigoted than most politicians, even on the right.
P.S. I myself am hebrew (jewish family but don't personally practice Judaism). Supporting Israel doesn't give you a free pass on antisemitism.
I'm not going to quibble much about the rest of them, but there is some question about how much of Elizabeth Warren's ancestry is native. While you and I might give her the benefit of the doubt, a Republican not giving that benefit of the doubt is entirely fitting with the current partisan climate.
I think the bigger point here was when he proudly repeated his nickname for her while he was honoring native american leaders. (helps your point, IMO)
I am presenting ideas that I think Trump supporters would have here.
There is a pamphlet from Obama's literary agent that said he was born in Kenya. This was spread all across breitbart.
Supporters believe this is true to an extent, so it wouldn't be bigoted to them.
Seeing lots of Muslim terrorism and rape around the world, supporters believe that they are a threat and should be kept out.
As mental health is worse and overall needs are greater among transgenders, supporters would argue that this is a good thing.
Supporters would say that race here is irrelevant and that the countries are indeed way behind. Many did say that shithole was too harsh.
That judge's parents were illegals, so supporters would say that he wants to maintain this flow.
I've nothing here.
It's exaggeration to make his point... idk
(He said that they wouldn't go back to their huts after seeing America) More exaggeration to further that America is being brought down by poor immigrants.
They would dispute that the people were bad white nationalists and say that one retweet doesn't endorse the whole account.
Since a lot of the prisoners were illegals, supporters would argue that it's justified since illegals don't have American rights.
They claim that this isn't racist because Warren was lying about her heritage.
I've nothing for this. I can't find full context.
Once again, nothing.
This was mostly a personal exercise, but I think some of the reasonings are alright for expressing a pro-Trump view.
Gee, lets pass laws (bathroom bills) and support injustice (trans panic defense) making trans people's life hell then say because they need more mental health services they're obviously not fit for the military.
I'm not sure if you were explaining a viewpoint or stating your beliefs, but this one also hits the "does not compute" buzzer.
I was using an always Trump supporter view.
Name a person who explicitly states that they are bigoted and does not claim that they support discriminatory policies for other reasons. People will claim they aren't racist, they are just "race realists" who think the facts show that some races are inferior and that guides their policy choices. When you just treat everyone's personal interpretation (or denial of) facts, you just wind up enabling shit ideas to thrive. Explicitly having to state that one is bigoted is a ridiculously high standard for assessing who is probably bigoted.
I think every one of those is another laurel/yanny thing. People who voted for/support trump see those instances as something completely different - whether they are objectively right or not. Though i haven't heard about the death penalty thing for black and latino children who committed no crimes so i don't know what that's about. It does sound like fake news to me, but it's probably another instance where I'll see it as something completely different than you might.
Whether that is cognitive dissonance or some other phenomenon (which if it is then that might be something to explore for persuading trump voters to change their minds), it's a perspective that does not require a person to have a racist bone in their body to vote for or support him or his platform, imo.
oh and the Israel thing, i didn't mean to suggest that those things alone specifically meant he was not racist, but that the hypothetical racists who we suppose might support him would themselves have to deal with those things, like him having a Jewish daughter and son-in-law, for instance, while also believing he's /theirguy/.
That's the thing though, some people may see those instances as completely different. But you don't have to. You can realize that most black, latino, gay, jewish, women whatever have all seen this as clearly bigoted and you should realize this. You seem like a reasonable person.
Here ya go. He took out a full page ad in the paper and signed his name on it.
Ultimately, if you don't believe that Trump is bigoted, then why does he himself claim to be not "politically correct" and "saying things noone else will"? Why would over half the country really truly believe he's saying awful things? How is it that every single time he says something there's an excuse?
Most media doesn't even write any commentary. They just publish his words. The headline is never "Trump is racist" it's always:
They're always just literally quoting him. It's not spin. It's just literally saying his words.
I've been thinking about one of your previous comments, where you discuss the ways you see the media making up stuff about Trump. Specifically the "all Mexicans are rapists hoax." I couldn't remember the quote exactly, so I looked it up.
So yeah, "they're rapists" is lazy exaggeration on his part, and when followed with "some, I assume, are good people" probably doesn't mean that he thinks all Mexicans are rapists. If the media said he called all Mexicans rapists, they were exaggerating, too. But there's still a lot of dehumanizing language there. There's this idea that undocumented immigrants are not the best or the right people. There's the very specific way he sets them apart from the audience. (These people are not like you.)
This language of Mexico sending people, as if it is a deliberate action on the part of the government instead of a consequence of people fleeing violence, seeking better economic opportunities, or reuniting with their families, could be taken as just a turn of phrase. But in a climate where some people associated with him believe that "illegal" immigration is a "soft invasion," it's hard not to think he means it seriously, and it erases people's individual, very human reasons for coming here and replaces those with a threat.
There's also the connection being made between undocumented immigrants and crime. Some of them are good people, he says, but this is more of an aside than anything since it is surrounded on both sides by talk of crime and how they are "not the right people." Yet it's been shown that most are good people, at least if you're looking at crime statistics. (Looks like @BuckeyeSundae and @flaque beat me to this part~)
So taken all together, the "rapist" comment is only a small part of what makes this quote deeply troubling. And I am one of those people who thinks it is racist, dehumanizing, etc. You don't see it that way, based on your beliefs and outlook, but in the mind of someone like me, that doesn't absolve you. This sort of language has been shown to hurt people and lead to further dehumanization, and not seeing racism (and thus letting it go by) has the same result as knowingly supporting it.
Edit: fixing link
I'm not exactly sure how your comment follows on from mine, since I didn't call Trump a dictator or anything like that? Nor do I think most Trump supporters are fascists.
Suffice to say I doubt we'll have much common ground for discussion, haha. While I agree that government shouldn't ruin the lives of minorities, I also think it should have the power to improve their lives by doing things like legislating against discrimination. It seems like one of the consistent aims of this administration has been to remove (or attempt to remove) regulations and rules intended to protect groups of people (or everyone, in the case of environmental regulations). I guess that can be said for most Republican presidencies.
"Leaving each other alone" seems impossible to me in a social species. A lot of the discussions here on the development of ~ have focused on how to create moderation systems that make sure ~ doesn't turn into another voat. Positive interactions have to be fostered, and negative ones discouraged.
Yes, my main issue with this administration and Republicans in general is that they actively seek to hurt the less fortunate or marginalized with their policies and legislation. When people start trying to strip others of their human rights I take extreme issue with it.
When we have to continuously debate about who 'deserves' human rights with a group of people I think it's stomach turning. I don't think rights are up for debate, and I don't know how anyone could support a person or a group who believe some people deserve certain inalienable rights and others don't. It's disgusting plain and simple.
Exactly
Passing by that conservative economic policies in many cases disproportionately harm non-white people, there's still a problem with what you're saying here.
Someone's reasons don't really matter that much, speaking broadly. Like even if you support Trump because you value work done in space and he showed some support for that during the election, something we can all probably agree is either good or at least harmless, you're supporting and giving power to the same person as the one who supports him for being anti-Muslim or whatever. There isn't a hint of difference in the end result.
I'll definitely agree with you there; I do believe a lot of conservative policies hurt a lot of people, white and non-white. But I don't believe that many conservatives agree. That's kinda the idea. I'll take the views with an assumption of common morals. I'm pretty sure that they do believe that lower taxes will actually make up for not getting healthcare or that illegal or legal immigration really is destroying the country. Again, I vehemently disagree, but I can at least acknowledge that they believe themselves to be morally good.
I agree! That's why I didn't vote for Trump. That's why I support a lot of democrats and the occasional moderate republican.
But I don't agree that that we should ignore the reasons of the other person entirely. We can never win others to our side if we don't understand their reasons. Noone's saying you have to like their reasoning or agree with it, but at least acknowledge that they believe themselves to be a good person, even if it's just so ridiculously clear they're doing something awful.
Establishing that someone believes themselves to be doing right and working from there is definitely something to keep in mind.
It's not like I'm actively against debate, and allowing debate with viewpoints like that certainly has its place. My problem is more when I see people welcoming others with open arms as long as they provide their viewpoints civilly, especially when it comes with the implication that people who are angry about these things are wrong for not giving a civil debate 100% of the time.
Or at least co-signing it heavily and then dancing around it. Which imo is almost worse in a way.
I agree that some topics shouldn't be treated equally, examples that come to mind are posts that support child pornography, terrorism and other illegal activities. But I think politics is a less extreme topic. It is one of the elephants in the room, and I would like it talked about occasionally. Half of America voted for Trump, and I want to know why.
It's also totally possible to have a heated but civil discussion. There are plenty of ways to show anger and disapproval without resorting to name calling and personal insults. The important thing here is to separate ideas from people. You can diss ideas all you want as long as you have a good argument, but leave the people alone.
It actually wasn't half of America. My feeling as to why is that his campaign played on people's fears and resentments.
They don't. It's the behaviour that matters and the behaviour is a whole sub-reddit that focuses on low-effort content and has groupthink. The same shit happens with late-stage capitalism (try something even remotely nice about Elon Musk).
I've met some Trump/MAGA supporters, and most of them do have underlying racist beliefs; they've always been there and now they just feel like it's okay to have those beliefs out there in public. Some of those beliefs infringe on the freedom of others and encourage behaviours that lead to less freedom (and usually to violence).
That's the issue; I've talked to many conservatives and liberals in my lifetime and most aren't racist and most don't lower themselves to only slogans and derogatory ad hominem attacks.
If there's real ideas (for example working class Americans being screwed over) being discussed, I'm alright with T_D and other places. But usually, that's lacking and it's just a foaming at the mouth free for all (like a lot of other sub-reddits; fluff and aww's version of that is a groupthink that only allows positive/cute comments to show up ;P)
edit: btw, thanks for creating this thread, it's quite important to discuss politics at some point, especially when it can influence how the future of Tildes goes.
I'd definitely agree with the sentiment that /r/The_Donald is not primarily a place for dissertations and intellectual conversation - not that those do not happen there. but if you've not spent much time on it, its main appearance is memes and pro-trump propaganda. It is, essentially, a 24/7 Trump Rally.
I was really turned off by it at first, even when i thought I might vote for Trump. I thought it was crude, and I didn't trust the guy who made it, since i had very bad interactions with him in the past. I'm still not 100% sure what group is actually in control of that subreddit, but i would be willing to bet you it's further west than moscow :P
In any case, the people there are playful, energetic, and I'd say generally more open as funny as that sounds than the rest of the political areas on reddit. Being a MAGA populist is basically being what used to be the political center, in my opinion, and having a sense of humor. Sometimes the jokes about "libtards" do go a little far, in my opinion. I think classical liberalism for example is generally a good thing, but the label of "liberal" seems to be easier for people to mock than "progressive" to refer to the same sort of ideology.
Anyway, nothing about us having a civil conversation means we have to agree about r/The_Donald xD. but I'm glad you felt comfortable enough sharing your thoughts here on it. :)
This is a fairly disingenuous description of The_Donald.
That's a very low bar. Discussing politics on reddit is about as fun as smashing my face repeatedly with a wooden bat. I get about as much accomplished too.
Fair point, lol. The binary voting system is responsible for a lot of the polarization on the site, i think. It's nice for cleaning out spam and obvious flaming, but tends to amplify extremes and normalizes them. I'm going to speak beyond my qualifications here so bear with me, but i think the extreme isolation of /r/the_donald from the rest of reddit has been a boon to them in a way - it has produced extreme homogeneity of thought - PLUS they are motivated to convert people to their way of seeing things, meaning they've had to evolve their position on lots of different contentious topics to be the most persuasive and have a semblance of integrity (at least from an internal perspective), whereas the rest of reddit is kind of an average of views. Part of that A/B testing has been the ability to feel superior to their opponents at their own game, which is inclusiveness - MAGA people on /r/the_donald have settled on the strategy (with trump's guidance) that it doesn't matter if you're black, white, gay, straight, trans, latino, jewish, whatever - as long as you want to make america great you're welcome to the party - even if you were or are a left-leaning person, if you're at least civil and can take a joke or two, you can get voted up to the very top of the page. Now whether that is sincere or just virtue signalling isn't important, because it sets a tone that filters through the userbase's subconscious. Hell, they even have Muslims they celebrate like Malik Obama, and that based australian imam Tawhidi.
contrast this with /r/politics, and if you are a white male, especially a white male who says something positive about trump, yer fuckd m8. It's a really strange situation though, because psychologically speaking, people who are left-leaning tend to be more open, while conservatives tend to be less so. I suspect it is because the MAGA populists largely are centrist on a traditional political compass, and being open is a functional strategy right now.
Oh I've seen my fair share of bernie supporters getting from page as while men. It may be /r/politics, but it is still reddit.
My favorite "political" subreddit is /r/dankmemes, which while it doesn't sound like a political subreddit, it very much is. And they have some golden gems there too. Just look at this #2 post right now. Look at it. It's hilarious! It's political! It's irreverent and a good display of what is possible when you're not so attached to one particular political point of view or another that you can't deliver some dank jokes.
Deservedly or not, I have no real motivation to go to any explicitly political subreddit, T_D or otherwise. They almost always seem full of the same personality of people, and I have no interest in dealing with that sort of environment.
Any isolation was intentional, TD flaunted all rules and norms, much as the candidate did.
how does anyone know the color of your skin on reddit?
people dig through users posting history if they sound mildly pro-trump. They have lists of users who post there too and use them with RES to mass-tag people.
That is interesting, do you have any sources for this type of behavior?
Assuming that is the case and they go through your history, unless you reference your skin color or speak about skin color positively or negatively, I find it hard to imagine how someone could know what your is.
I don't want to make broad assumptions here, but if people are speaking about skin color, theirs or others, they are probably racists, because, ya know.. skin color really doesn't matter.
here's an archived copy of one such list i found with a quick search: http://archive.is/UZoRI
People post photographs on reddit.
edit: a post: https://archive.is/nV8Vw
Try saying anything positive about Clinton on /r/sandersforpresident or even that being pro-sanders doesn't mean you are anti-clinton. It was beginning to make me think that the majority of people have these 'us vs them' mentalities where everyone loses. That Americans are so divided and then sub-divided that our country was really and truly screwed and there was no way back from where we are. Then I realized it was just the internet and is probably just noise, but I may be self-deluding myself.
I want to link to this earlier thread here, since it was a good, relevant discussion (and a lot of people might have missed it since it was from before most people joined): https://tildes.net/~tildes/4v/thoughts_on_handling_political_content_on_tildes
Nice. Thank you for sharing that - extremely relevant. I'll need to re-read it I think and digest what's there more fully.
Common Sense was written in civil language though, was it not? I don't think Paine called anyone a cunt in that pamphlet. That's the difference - personal attacks, not language. There's also a certain level of intellectual rigor present in Common Sense that, frankly, puts 98% of posts on the internet to shame.
I think everyone would agree it's perfectly fine here, and since we have no advertisers, that's not likely to change.
Reddit doesn't care about anything but $$$ at this point. Price of taking all that lovely venture capital.
That's a mistake we're forever free from, so we don't have to do what reddit does and censor adult discussion. The kind of behavior that has to be censored is the behavior that undermines discussion itself, and that's almost universally classed as either uncivil, or childish. I think that's where we plan to focus, and beyond that, the tags should help with further ambiguities. There will be plenty of tolerance for mistakes too - absolutism is also dangerous.
Full disclosure out the gate: not only did I vote for Hillary in the primaries, I also worked as a organizer in rural America to try to help get her elected. I have rarely had a problem with any Trump supporter I came across as an organizer or as a regular person. If you treat people with respect, odds are they return the favor. This is true regardless of political stripes.
I watched in D.C. on a train from a protest the day after Trump was inaugurated as liberal activists asked two Trump supporters who were just on the train because they were in town for the inauguration why they voted for Trump. At first it was a good conversation. One of the guys said he voted for Trump because he was from a union town in Pennsylvania and trusted Trump's economic policy more than Hillary's, especially because her husband was so closely associated with NAFTA and she's been known to take a "sometimes" view to free trade agreements. I thought that was a pretty fair point, but as soon as the topic moved to cultural issues (as the other guy preferred Trump's rhetoric on cultural issues), the train grew outraged and used one of their chants to shout down the two guys who were speaking conversationally and civilly the entire time. When I apologized directly to them for the way the mob just treated them, one of the activists turned on me and accused me of being insufficiently supportive of her truth.
Yet I understood the dynamics of what just happened. These two guys were just trying to enjoy their trip to the capital of their country, having just recently come to see their preferred candidate take the oath of office. This was their time of celebration, not some apocalypse that had to be reacted to violently and with utmost disdain. I am convinced that no one in the history of humanity has been convinced by someone who was yelling at them to believe something. Yet here we were. Yelling.
I emphatically don't believe that the issues that divide most of us are so deep that we can't speak civilly about our differences. I don't believe we need to stoop to the worst examples of our peers to have meaningful discussions about politics. I have friends who voted for Trump. I have friends who voted for Jill Stein (though somehow that pains me more). I have friends who supported bernie and reacted with horror and disgust when I told them I planned on supporting Hillary. They are still my friends. They are my friends, and I feel confident about being able to talk with you about policy differences, because at the end of the day I realize we have more in common than what separates us. We share the belief that people who kill people without cause should be punished. We share the belief that, generally, war isn't a great way to resolve differences and should be avoided if possible. We might disagree about other, smaller details to get to our shared end goals, but it's important not to miss the forest for the trees.
I think this is my favorite comment I've read so far here. Thank you so much for sharing your story, and your perspective. <3
I'm not sure what else to say, except that I strongly agree with the sentiment you've expressed. If you'd been Hillary's speechwriter I might have even been able to settle on her before I did for Don. xP
Anytime you need another trump-er friend to engage with in the name of humanity and comity, hit me up. :)
One of the unending truths about politics anywhere is that everyone is biased, always and forever, to believe that the current election is the most important election in history. It is never as important as people believe it to be in the moment.
I do think that 2016 is an inflection point of sorts, but I have no idea how it'll shake out. Clearly we have a lot to learn as a country if we want to begin repairing the divisions we have in part caused ourselves the past few years. Listening to people's stories can't be a one-way thing. I need to be willing to listen to your story as much as you've been willing to listen to mine. We need more people able to de-escalate conflicts. We need more media structured in a way to give people the benefit of any doubt in a story, rather than to find the angle most likely to get the most clicks (incidentally, I don't think it's any secret why more conservatives are starting to listen to and trust NPR, given what I just said).
My point is that I don't think (and haven't thought, but for a few fleeting moments) that Donald Trump means the end of the world as we know it. I think he plans on doing what he said he wants to do, and he will do what he can to do it. That's how most politicians work, and he seems to believe he should be held to his supporters' most important priorities too. That's pretty good, and better than I was expecting in some ways. In terms of foreign policy, which was the area I was always most concerned about, I don't think he's messing up so badly that we'll be in a major war before the end of his term. Our standing in the world might be diminished, but maybe that's a good thing for international stability. Most of the bloodiest international conflicts arise out of a dominant power's reluctance to accept new de-facto power dynamics. If Donald Trump leads us into a bi-polar or tri-polar world order, and that order is reasonably stable, then fine. Good job, Donald.
I am literally attending a Bystander Intervention Training course tomorrow.
How did your course go? What did you learn?
I had the dates mixed up. It's May 31. I will gladly share what I've learned after the fact, if you're curious!
ok spill the beans, bud. :D
Bystander intervention training - (Nutshell version)
-Decide whether it's safe/appropriate to intervene yourself - "Hey, leave them alone", online this usually means calling out harassers
-Provide a distraction - pretend to be lost, accidentally/on purpose spill something (not on anyone - just make a non-threatening scene)
-If able, involve others - police (if necessary and safe to call), store manager, teacher
-If you witness an incident but are unable to intervene, approach the victim and ask if you can help them, or if you can provide a witness account if they need (often incidents are brief)
-Document - if safe, film landmarks, state time and date, keep camera steady and ask the victim what they would like you to do with the film. Write down what you witnessed as soon as possible if unable to film, and again, ask the victim what they would like you to do with the info
-Make sure to share what happened after the fact
Neat! These sound like they would be applicable in the instance of an interpersonal conflict, and some sound like general good habits when there's just a generic emergency.
Did you guys do any like play-acting practicing to train yourself to employ these habits?
There were some scenarios, yes. Not my favorite thing (shy around people I don't know until I see some unfairness going down), but I understand the need. These situations don't tend to be comfortable and practice always helps.
I’m from a deep red state and went to a catholic school, so I’ve had my fair share of political differences over the years. I’ve had plenty of good conversations with conservatives. I’ve even been pretty convinced on many parts of the guns issue.
But I can’t think of any point in which I’ve had a good conversation about Trump. I think the issue is that his fundamental difference over his establishment counter parts is that he does not promote civil discourse. Trump is famous specifically because he says outlandish or racist things, avoids compromise, and says things that are “politically incorrect.” That’s his MO and his competitive advantage.
Many conservative folks believe themselves to be censored and Trump does a great job at being a reactionary to this belief. I can empathize with their feeling, though I worry it creates a winner take all culture. It asks people on both sides to demonize each other and pushes its members to say whatever they can to “trigger” liberal. It encourages fighint without purpose.
A civil discourse is only really possible by assuming that the other person is human and has thought through their beliefs just as much as you have. And I don’t think Trumpism does a great job at promoting that.
That said, I can imagine you likely feel the same when talking to liberal folks as well. Its just a spiral.
Well, aren't there some assholes on both sides? People are more inclined to see what they dislike among the people they don't identify with than they are to see it among their counterparts. I am too.
I don't think we're very good about cleaning up the shit from our own parties. Too few of us are ready to reckon with the fact that Bernie Sanders promotes a very similar style of politics as Donald Trump. Too few of us are willing to acknowledge our role in creating an environment that made the traits that made Trump so attractive to people: from his isolation from the political elite, from his 'straight-forward' and frankly offensive way of relating to the same political elite, from his naked selfishness that couldn't possibly be hidden by anyone ever (so most people could tell how he would act, and trusted in it), to his willingness to be a cultural warrior for the right in what many believed was a war that had become dominated by left-leaning voices.
We helped create a culture of isolation for people who were skeptical about the cultural changes we want to happen. By people who claim that you can't be racist against white people (because they are the dominant group), without having the patience to explain the important power dynamic at work, or bothering to assure people that sometimes a racist action isn't intentional. By people who argue that your speech can be compelled if you work in an art industry and someone asks you to make material that you religiously object to (such as custom cakes for a gay wedding). People who argue that nuclear energy should be a thing of the past at the same time as they argue that we need to kill the coal industry because it pollutes the environment.
The left is arrogant and elitist and far too prone to looking down on people who disagree with them. These traits made Trump a popular candidate, and these trends are not new.
I always hated how on Reddit when someone says there is problems on both sides people would comment "LE BOTH SIDES" as if it completely invalidates an argument. I think the two parties have the same problem of becoming detached from their voter base and only paying lip service to their promises.
I personally have grown quite alienated with most politicians, and I had a bit of a dilemma with who to vote for during the election. Even now I constantly question my beliefs. I feel like I don't belong to either party and even any of the smaller parties. I dread to see how 2020 is going to be.
Oh 100%. I fully agree that this assholery is not unique to Trump. I'm just saying he's example of it. Though I don't know if Sanders really went as far as the people who supported Sanders. I never really heard him promote too much infighting, but I have heard a lot of his supporters causing the same sort of issues on the left as the /r/the_donald folks do.
I've heard this before, though I get the impression this is mostly a strawman. Not to say that some people aren't arrogant or elitist or look down on folks. I just haven't seen that out of most democratic politicians. I've seen that out of some people on twitter, but not so much out of left-leaning party policy.
Though I can see the "medicaid for all" sorts of proposals being seen as looking down on someone from a more conservative perspective, so you could argue that there's the existence of elitism within the policy positions as well.
When people talk about "the left" or "the right," usually we're talking about the voters, not the politicians. Most politicians try to be civil. They try to be model representatives for their cause because most of the time, they won't get elected if they aren't (but see: partisanship).
But I can't count the number of times that a left-leaning friend of mine has said to me, "Why don't people just know this is a great idea?" As though the truth of some matter should be written ipso-facto for all to see without any application of value judgment. Or how often someone will tell me, "Conservatives wouldn't be conservative if they were educated." OK, meanwhile conservatives are off talking about how these institutions you're saying would make them liberals are left-leaning propaganda farms that don't value their input anyway and some are even completely discarding the value in the institution you hold dear as the tool for ideological conversion.
I also can't count how often I've come across liberals who insist that there should be a litmus test for someone to call themselves "a progressive" because they don't like someone who calls themself a progressive. Or people who say something to the effect of "If you don't care about X, then you're not paying attention!!!"
All of this culminates when you have an ideology that often advocates for top-down government-to-people solutions to various problems in society. Income inequality is a problem? Okay, let's raise the federal minimum wage a bunch (despite economic theory that says that minimum wage does little except both reduce available jobs at low-wages and increase inflation)! That'll make it better (except it won't)! Oh, and by the way, anyone who says we shouldn't raise the minimum wage hates poor people and supports corporations. GOTTEM.
indeed. It's tough because from the perspective of people who support the President, he's constantly being smeared and attacked unjustly by the media, by the establishment swamp, and because they have the biggest voices, everyone who isn't wise to their game is susceptible to the propaganda and lies. I mean, it's trivial to find instances of it - just look at the way they went off about his comments about MS-13 gang members being "animals", portraying it as him saying Mexican immigrants are animals. and THEN when they were caught, trying to spin it as "well they might be brutal criminal gang members, but he still shouldn't use that kind of language to talk about them. it isn't decent" - and people just eat that stuff right up.
It's very frustrating for people like me. I've been called a russian bot, alt-right, a racist, white supremacist, nazi, kkk, fascist, etc. etc. just for saying I think he's doing a good job, when i'm none of those things.
Can you say which things you believe are "propaganda and lies" by the way? I'll agree the "animals" thing was taken out of context. But I get the impression that most people's understanding of Trump comes straight from him or his twitter account. It's pretty easy to get a primary source for a lot of people's impressions.
I'm sorry about that. I really do apologize for any of those whole hold similar beliefs to myself who've called you that.
You aren't responsible for the actions of others, so you don't need to apologize. I guess if it is important to you, you could use your power as someone who isn't a trump supporter (therefore will not be ignored entirely on principle) to encourage less of the name-calling and accusations of racism/bigotry/russian-bot/etc, stuff, but I'm not really asking anyone to feel obligated to do that.
I could probably spend a few days going back through WAPO/NYT articles and CNN videos pulling out examples, but I'm not sure that's best right now. I guess I'll use a few highlights as examples of how they spin things -
NB: this might come across kind of ranty - I'm not trying to be particularly emotional, but when I list out incidents with some detail it's difficult to not sound a little sycophantic. I hope you give me some slack in this regard.
(I mentioned it elsewhere in these comments, but i think the yanny/laurel and "green needle"/brainstorm phenomena are something to keep in mind - how people can encounter the exact same thing, and come away having completely different experiences of what the reality of the situation was/is. The brainstorm/green needle one is cool because you can intentionally change what you hear through expectation.
The trump stuff is similar, like people watching two different movies on the same screen.)
There's the MS-13 "animals" thing, where it is obvious that the news media intentionally lied, claiming he was talking about immigrants. He wasn't - these are like the sort of people from Breaking Bad that Tuco was connected to. It was not an accidental mis-reporting, it was plainly intentional.
There was the charlottesville hoax, where the media portrayed Trump as saying the people carrying Tiki torches chanting anti-jewish slogans we fine people - but that didn't happen. The event was about people for confederate statues, and people against confederate statues. within the event, there were also antifa and the tiki torch people. So when he said there were fine people on "both sides", he was obviously talking about the people on both sides of the confederate statue issue. If you believed he meant the racist anti-jewish people were fine people, why doesn't Israel have a problem with him?
The judge Curiel thing, where Trump called him a Mexican, so he must be racist! except that's how people talk about themselves - i have extended family whose grandparents were from vietnam and they call themselves vietnamese. I have friends and neighbors who call themselves mexican despite never having been to mexico. The case with the judge was the suggestion that the judge's heritage might cause him to rule with bias, which is a perfectly reasonable legal strategy if you are in a court case and want to win, and think there's a possibility of bias.
Trump mocking the NYT reporter with a bad arm by flailing his own hands around - obviously he's being a bully making fun of the guy for his arm... except that's the way he mocks people all the time. You can look up videos of him mocking people long before this NYT guy, and he does the same hand movements. But of course it was spun in the worst possible light in the media.
The Mccain "I prefer people who didn't get caught" joke... was a joke. Maybe it fell a little flat, but it was a joke - not only that, but he was candidate trump at the time in the middle of an insult contest where everyone was insulting their political opponents, when he was himself considered a joke by all the press (and was being called a racist, which... i hope is becoming clear is not true), and mccain was probably one of his most powerful critics. Also, chris rock told the same joke in 2008... Buutt... the media spun this as him being disrespectful to veterans.
The mexican "rapist" hoax, where trump was speaking publicly saying "they're sending their rapists, criminals" etc., and the media said he was calling all mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. Do you think he was calling babies being brought over "rapists"? Or their mothers who are carrying the babies? No, he wasn't. Nor is it even slightly reasonable to imagine he was saying all of the men were rapists. Some of them are rapists, some are not, and he was using hyperbole in order to make a point about securing the border, as he always does.
The Russia Hoax. "Crossfire Hurricane", the operation to overthrow the United States from the inside, by Brennan and Clapper, Comey, Strzok, and associates, is barely being reported on recently. (Both brennan and clapper are literally being paid by major news networks right now) The group appear to have agreed to use semi-legal methods with hoaxes together to try to get rid of a sitting president. This american coup is basically the biggest story in recent history, and is being largely ignored by the major media outlets.
Hope this didn't come off as too ranty. It's nothing like an exhaustive list of media lies and distortion. I'm certain that every thing that I've listed here has an alternative interpretation by many people here (possibly including yourself) but i hope it at least gives a glimpse into what the MAGA populists are seeing - this is our laurel to the other side's yanny.
I don't think any folks really thought that there weren't two sides. Just one rammed a car into a crowd of people and the other one didn't. That's what people were mad about.
This reaaallly seems racist though. Like his whole argument for it not being just racist is "Mexicans don't like me! Therefore this judge must be biased." I don't think that's particularly better though, because the reasons Mexicans don't like him is because he's said a lot of racist stuff in the past.
Doing it all the time doesn't make it better; it makes it worse.
Everyone realized it was a joke, but it was still a dick thing to say.
I don't think that's a hoax. He literally said it. It's on tape.
It's also just false. He gave a bunch of people the impression that Mexicans are rapists. Illegal immigrants commit less crime on average; since they frequently are trying to lay low. The issue people complained about here is often the opposite is a more significant issue. Americans are far more likely to be purchasers of sex trafficking.
Woah boy. Dude. Again. How do you actually believe this is a hoax. Like 20 people have been arrested. People have admitted shit to the public. There's public records. What. is. your. life.
I also don't mean to come across as ranty, but you just fascinate me. I'm pretty moderate and I've lived with conservatives all my life. But your brain is just crazy dude.
It would be disingenuous to believe that Trump is the only person who gets his soundbites taken out of context. We might spend days talking about Al Gore's "Black Box" or G.H.W.Bush's fascination with a credit card machine at a grocery store, each of which dominated narratives of their respective campaigns for much longer than any particular quote about Trump has dominated a narrative (outside of "grabbed by the pussy" which is simply undeniable).
Yes, for the "they're sending their rapists, criminals, murderers; some are good people" comment, he wasn't calling literally all Mexicans rapists and criminals, but he was making a generalization about the type of people that come over from Mexico and calling the good people the minority of illegal immigrants. The opposite is true. Study after study shows that illegal immigrants, once here, engage in less criminal activity than the general population. Almost like they don't want to get caught and deported or something. We would be much better off seeing this class of people as exploited by the unaddressed ills of NAFTA (something that I can sympathize with Trump's position on a good deal more than his position in immigrants).
For someone who complains his guy gets taken in bad faith all the time, you seem to be employing the exact same tactic here. The evidence does seem to indicate, from a wide variety of sources outside of the intelligence community as well as within it, that Russia took an active, and highly interventionalist interest in the 2016 election, becoming one of the most impactful outside organizations attempting to manipulate the electorate for their own ends. Clapper, Comey, Brennan, and even Sally Yates each have testified under oath to what they know, and much of that information is public record.
Now you can still believe that Trump was the better candidate while acknowledging the role that other countries, most notably Russia, played in deepening existing divisions within the American electorate in 2016. No one should be saying you can't think Trump was the better candidate while interacting with this body of evidence. But you can't just wipe away the evidence by saying that all the people within the intelligence community who lead various agencies are trying to depose your preferred candidate. That dog don't hunt. You won't convince a sole skeptic of your position that way.
I would say that makes him, generally, a bully. Just because he is an equal opportunity bully doesn't make him not a bully.
And if that's the type of leader you want running the country, fine. I'm not here to judge about that. I think there is an argument to be made that, at least when dealing with strong-men in countries like Iran or Syria or North Korea, having a strong man yourself enables your country to replicate some of the stratgeies that allow those countries;' leader to get away with murder (pun intended). I don't happen to agree with that argument, but I think you can make a decent case there anyway.
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the effort to list out the bigger, egregious mischaracterizations of insults in your mind. I think it does help those of us who are less familiar with what you're talking about.
If I've helped to any degree in that regard at all, then I consider this a worthwhile investment of time and energy. We need mutual understanding (which does not necessarily imply mutual agreement) now more than ever.
To me, the really bad part of that bit wasn't necessarily calling anyone animals, although it does betray a lack of decorum, it was the bit just before it about how they're "not people". I was really surprised that wasn't much larger in the reaction, because it's hard to get more into dehumanization than literally saying that some set of human beings "aren't people". That kind of talk is extremely dangerous, especially when it comes from the lips of the leader of the single most powerful country in the world.
I'm not sure I have a huge issue with it. I've seen the sort of things MS-13 do, and it is inhuman.
Your last paragraph resonates so strongly with me. When I start political chats with my extended family, their immediate defense is to start insulting Democrats, Obama, Hillary, “the left”, etc. etc. - I didn’t vote for a Democrat for the first time until 2016. So I end up spending ages just overcoming the misdirected whataboutism to get to the core issue if I ever do, and often times, I find myself defending Obama from misinformed insults even though I never voted for him.
I once bet my uncle a sleeve of his favorite golf balls that he couldn’t make an argument (over some specific policy) without mentioning anything about the left. He was physically unable to uncouple the issue from the people he detests. No golf balls for him.
He's no Ron Paul, but he's done more to energize the MAGA populists against global authoritarian structures than anyone else has. I don't condone the air strikes on syria over the phony chemical weapons hoax, and that move still likely had an influence on his intimidation of Kim Jong Un into even engaging in negotiations for peace and denuclearization. That said, my choices were "Crooked" Hillary and a reality TV Star, one of which promised to fix the economy, and he seems to have done so.
I guess I've gotten to where I assume that if he did the things I find ideal, he'd be assassinated. That's probably mostly the propaganda at play, but I strongly suspect that it takes more than an election to stop entrenched authoritarian cabals that have had decades to set up shop. Maybe it's just a coping mechanism on my part. :P
This is a rather disturbing claim.
disturbing, yes. claim, no. Just a suspicion/perception which may or may not be grounded in objective reality.
One of the most unsettling things I heard from a volunteer came on the eve of the election. She was this thoroughly bostonian older woman who loved her dogs and grandkids and traveling and all the things I assume all older people in the midwest love. One evening I was stressed out because how can you not be when you're working about 16 hour days, 7 days a week, and your last day off was a month and a half prior. She told me not to worry about the outcome of the election because even if Trump won, she knew he'd be assassinated.
I was frozen in my tracks. I'm sure I must has stood there gaping for a half a minute before I responded. She filled the silence with how she knew, which was of course, "I have this feeling." I then told her that I really hoped she was wrong, because that would be the doomsday scenario for the left (as counter-reaction would take over and stomp out much electoral hope for near-term success) and then Mike Pence would be president, and that, to me, was much worse.
But the conversation stuck with me.
There was a time that I worried about it more than I do now, and pence being scarier to left-leaning people than trump was what allayed my fears. Then i realized that paul ryan would be next if both pence and trump were dead, and I got a little nervous because fuck paul ryan. xD
But yeah, it's disconcerting. Around the time of the inauguration, maybe a bit after - not certain, there was a story i saw in the news about a man who shot (killed?) another man at a restaurant because he thought it was Donald Trump. There are a lot of unstable people who have been really riled up by the anti-trump fervor. I'm sure there have been unstable people who wanted Obama dead too of course, but i am not sure it was quite this widespread since mainly all those folks had egging them on is neocons like rush and o'reilley.
That's a quite shocking story. As I find it fascinating, and my wife actually does research on extremism, it would be quite interesting, considering that searches for related terms don't seem to come up with anything, if you could provide sources?
apparently i misremembered the location - it was not in a restaurant. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=shooting+thought+man+was+trump&ia=web
was thinking a little bit about your comment while i was working outside just now, and i remembered that i wanted to tell you that part of me is open to the possibility that the whole anti-trump media zeitgeist is itself a charade (because of just how shallow it is), that trump has been part of the shadow government's plan all along, that he isn't the populist hero his fans see him as but actually a wolf leading them to the slaughter (edit: was actually my initial position on the election early on). However, if that's the case then I'm not sure how we overcome whatever dystopian plans they have in store - if things are that bad... short of escaping the planet and setting up a comparably technologically advanced society elsewhere.
~ is actually a covername for the HMCS Tildes project, a secret space colony ship. The purpose of the site is to find the most cooperative potential colonists who can live with only text-based communications...
I was personally really enjoying that politics weren't huge here. I feel like this is such a typical thing for someone who supports Trump to do honestly. Find out who's in their camp and start ruining the fun...
Edit: ok, I'm the troll? I'd suggest y'all fire up Google. Do some real digging, steer clear of forums where people's behavior is extremely visible and their persona meticulously crafted...
I think it's inevitable for politics to show up on this site, especially given the current environment. Better that we have this discussion now, than later. Also your comment is a bit uncivil for lack of a better word. I myself trust Trump as far as I can throw him (I'm not a particularly athletic guy), but given how most everyone on this thread appears to get along and refrain from the insults kinda shows that this guy isn't here to 'ruin the fun'.
I mean, I'd say that what I said was pretty tame. And it kind of proves my point. You don't see anyone posting about being a liberal, concerned about who's 'with them.' So yea, I dunno sounds like a pot stirrer to me but I guess we'll find out.
Edit: Guys like OP get off on coming across like they can reach across the aisles and be the 'reasonable' more palatable version of a proud Trump supporter. Nothing this administration has done concerning people has been palatable or reasonable. There's no intelligent argument that can justify bigotry, nationalism, and racism. He'd love for you to believe there is though, and it sounds like he at least got you listening.
Hit the nail on the head man. This guy is so far up his own ass it defies belief. They try to infiltrate with innocuous looking posts like this and, inevitably, T_D type folks end up spewing racist bullshit and crying free speech as they try to squelch anyone who disagrees with them.
lmao. Fair enough. I guess I can be the ooga booga evil trumper killing the site with attempts at engaging people in civil conversation about politics. :P
Here we go. As far as bigotry and racism go per your comments about it... Most Trump supporters have a serious issue with recognizing the causes and effects of privilege, as well as what bigotry and racism really are, how they present themselves, and the insidious ways they've gone underground in our culture and still greatly impact the lives of minorities.
Most Trump supporters can't even admit that being born white is a massive advantage that leads to privileges that others who aren't will never get to enjoy just for being who they are. Most Trump supporters seem to be ok with a vice president who supports gay conversion therapy, and a president who ignores experts in the military and instead chooses to ban trans service members to score points with his base.
Those are two reasons alone I'd never throw my weight in behind someone like Trump or Pence, and that's just what's on the surface, and are things we've known for a long time. People who toy with other's lives to deliberately score points with their bigoted base disgust me, especially when they go after already marginalized groups. People who can continue to support someone despite all that also disgust me. They may not think they're bigoted, but they are, deep down.
Personally, I think Trump supporters like the bullying, and that's frightening. That's the man's entire ideology, bullying. How anyone could support someone who stands for nothing but themselves and hurting other people to get ahead is beyond me.
Tag me as a troll all you want. I'm telling the truth. Republican policies are harmful to the majority of people on the income spectrum, and their continual policy choices repeatedly show that they don't care even though everyone knows it.
Please keep in mind about half the voting public votes R. Might be a good idea to understand why.
Oh, I undertand why. Allllll of the other reasons people vote Republican are not lost on me. The ability to back a party that purposely, transparently and cruelly, hurts its own citizens no matter what your other reasons are is unfortunate to me. I don't find it justifiable. And since this is the internet and not the real world, I can be as idealistic as I'd like.
Look you may believe that they hurt their own citizens, but I really doubt most conservatives believe that. People always believe themselves to be a good person.
But they actually do, so whatever they convince themselves of doesn't really matter. Ignorance is no defense when it comes to supporting things that intentionally hurt others with policies and legislation. The fact they can't even see that is literally the root of the problem when it comes to not recognizing privilege. If they were capable of that, or cared, they'd legislate differently. Which is why you have to surmise that while some may be truly ignorant, other are well aware and support those efforts regardless.
And as far as OP goes, I've found some questionable stuff that supports my idea that they're well aware of what they're doing.
I have to agree with @Brian. What many folks might not realize is of the people who vote, about half always vote for one side or the other.
Do you want to have a discussion now about what you find compelling about the Trump administration? Because I'm interested.
It's certainly true that tribalism is a big thing. I would hazard to say that most people are not rational about politics at all (nor hardly anything else in life). There will always be people who even when faced with compelling arguments, evidence, etc. will simply go with what they or their group/family have always gone with. I've been reading Scott Adams' Win Bigly recently and realizing just how few of our (most of us) decisions are actually rational.
And sure, if you like. :] I'm not sure i have a simple list put together with the best reasons or whatever, but here are some things off the top of my head. I'd say that I believe that he's got America's best interests at heart, that he's highly skilled as a persuader, he's been doing a miraculous job of running the gauntlet of propaganda and attacks the establishment has been attempting non-stop, consumer confidence is high (despite the elevation of the federal funds rates), unemployment is low, we're on the verge of peace and a denuclearized north korea, he appears to be continuing to work to secure the border wall, he got rid of the TPP,... i could probably go on lol.
He's not perfect - a better president could exist - but I think so far he's literally the stuff Legends are made of.
I don't have the time or energy to address your post point by point, but I do have a question. How important is respect for others, decency, and humanity for you in the leader of your nation? Is it not important to you at all and so Trump is a non-issue? Or do you believe he embodies those ideals? Someplace in the middle? Why?
All three of those are important in a leader! They aren't necessarily the most important attributes though depending on the situation. Your questions seem to imply that President Trump lacks any of those qualities, which I would disagree with - but it is understandable why you might feel that way given the way he is portrayed by propaganda and in echo chambers.
Take the Yanny and Laurel thing, for example. It's kind of fitting that this phenomenon was popularized recently - two people can listen to the exact same sound, and hear completely different things. Their experience of reality is able to be entirely different. The "green needle"/"brainstorm" one is even cooler because you can actually change what you hear based on what you intend to hear, or what you expect to hear. Try it out if you haven't already.
Okay, so keeping that phenomenon in mind, think about the thing that was in the news just recently about Trump calling MS-13 gang members "animals". CNN, ABC, NPR, etc. intentionally misrepresented the story as him calling Mexican immigrants animals, which is a completely different thing.
If you fell for that one, did you also fall for the Charlottesville hoax? You know, where it was reported that Donald Trump said the white supremacists carrying tiki torches, saying anti-jewish slogans etc. were fine people? In actuality, his "both sides" was not about antifa and the tiki torch brigade, it was about what the event was originally - the confederate statue, the people who wanted it to be removed and the people who wanted it to stay.
There are quite a bunch more of these where people see the same thing, but experience it in a different way (especially depending on what media they are consuming on the topic).
I don't hang out in political echo chambers, and I don't watch CNN, MSNBC, or the like, and I still think he lacks those qualities. I listen to his words and watch his actions.
I feel the same way.
When I'm judging a politician, I look at his finances, his voting record, his donors, his life history, and what he specifically writes, says, and does. I ignore every other source of information. I've never needed them after doing all of that.
Trump strikes me as something of a Machiavellian man-child, driven on pure ego. Oddly enough that's the same vibe I get from Hillary, even though her record is far better than his and she's clearly smart as a whip - while Trump is a creature of instinct, not brains. I dislike both of them because of their financial connections - they are both super-wealthy bought and paid for politicians, and that's a major red flag for me.
Trump's done the world a great favor, though. He's managed to piss off everyone regardless of their political affiliations. Angry is good. Angry gets shit done - as all the republican blowhards losing across the country in their formerly safe districts are finding out, much to their chagrin. I just wonder how long the angry can sustain - seems like it never lasts long enough to make any permanent, lasting, meaningful changes to the system.
I'm also rather sure that if the democrats manage a majority, they'd find a way to fuck that up, too. It seems to me like most of our politicians are actually part of the 'corporate' party, even if their ties are a different color.
I hope you’re right about the anger. Democrats continue to look weak in the leadership department with shallow benches and no apparent plan going into mid terms.
The only reason I consistently vote for them is they at least pretend to represent people instead of companies.
There is some good news. We all love to rail about the dangers of gerrymandering, but there's one danger that is supremely good for us, and bad for those rigging the system - and they don't even know it.
When you take voters from your 'safe' district to shore up your 'losing' district into a 'weak' district, there's a cost - that 'safe' district is now also a 'weaker' district. It turns out that the margins for this are ridiculously close almost everywhere in the country, even in traditionally deep red or blue areas.
If some major event manages to bump voter turnout by more than the safe margins (usually 5%-10%) then the gerrymandering has the opposite of the intended effect - you now lose the 'weaker' safe district because you've intentionally undermined it. You've effectively rigged the election against yourself, because you underestimated the turnout.
This is the real reason for that blue wave we've been seeing, and why republicans that were utterly unassailable have been so satisfyingly, regularly unseated all year long. Trump himself is solely, directly, and personally responsible for all of this, because he just can't help being such an insensitive prick and general unsympathetic hardass. He offends everyone everywhere on a daily basis.
Prepare for a record breaking bloodbath in 2018 with the house going more blue than it has been in a very long time. The republicans will still control it, of course, but they are in for a serious wake-up call. Let's hope these new representatives are a better class of person than the ones they will be replacing. Perhaps we can make a little progress and get the parties talking again.
It'd be somehow oddly satisfying to me if history records that the republican party began with Lincoln and ended with Trump. That'd cement his place in history as a world-net-positive force and be a very fitting end to that chapter of American history.
I sincerely hope that you're right.
There's no 'hoax' and this is EXACTLY why T_D type people are looked down upon. You're trivializing racism, bigotry, and the violence that these morons commit. There's no conspiracy at work here: just a fucking deeply narcissistic moron and the people too dumb to realize he's fucking over our future.
I'm not sure i understand. How does pointing out the media hoax about trump's statements trivialize racism, bigotry, or violence?
I'm sorry but you cannot possibly be serious .
Why do you believe that?
Why do I believe that what happened last August in Charlottesville wasn't a hoax? Because I followed the Unite the Right rally and the subsequent riot very closely. You are, of course, free to believe whatever you want. However, I have no desire to hear about why you believe this.
I think you may have misunderstood. Did you read the comment you were responding to initially? The hoax was not that the tiki torch marching happened in charlottesville, the hoax was that trump said the tiki torch people were "fine people", which never happened.
"Fine people on both sides" I saw the video.
How do you respond to everything going on with the Mueller investigation?
I think seeing the best in people is fine, and sure, he may have the appearance of all the things you desire in a leader, but is he actually living that? Does the data and stories around him actually support what he says and does?
Ultimatey this is the question I would like to know. I love America just as much as the next guy and its really weird to see the Republican platform get behind this guy. Im not advocating for some mccarthyism or anything, but recognizing Russian meddling in elections has got to take some priority.
Sorry for late response! Trying to keep up with all of the replies and got caught up in replying to the top messages in my "unread messages" screen, before realizing i should probably start at the bottom for the earliest ones. :P
I believe the Mueller investigation is a sham intended purely to obstruct and create fuel for anti-trump propaganda. Mueller has far too many conflicts of interest to be anything like an objective investigator, he's expanded his investigation far beyond his initial mandate, and it has the appearance of basically a witch hunt. The "Russian Collusion" narrative has fallen apart with no evidence after months of investigation. With the revelations that Obama used the DOJ and FBI to plant a spy in Trumps campaign, used the fake Steel Dossier to wiretap Trump - despite knowing it was fake, etc. etc. all of which is far worse than Watergate, the whole thing just looks like a desperate attempt by the establishment swamp to do anything they can to obstruct and attack.
Dude you're really chill and very cool. Thanks so much for answering questions and taking critique. But that's some bonkers beliefs you got going on there. It's just so much to handle man. I would try to argue against it but honestly I have no confidence it would have any effect.
I would love to just live your life for a bit and understand how you came to this conclusion.
Yeah it's a really difficult thing for people I think. It really reminds me of when i stopped being a christian as a teenager - it was difficult to conceive of the possibility that what I had accepted just matter of fact might be completely different. I think that's called a paradigm shift. Not saying that my view is the right or true one objectively, because I can't know - but it's definitely a different reality from the one most people here seem to be experiencing.
And thank you for the kind words. I think anything less than chill and very cool would have gone very badly here. xD but I am just being me under challenging circumstances (boatloads of messages from people who think I'm wrong :P )
I'm pretty sure you're opinions are far enough... right? left? somewhere? that you likely won't get a whole lot of folks who agree with you on political issues. Which probably sucks. I imagine it can probably feel like you're a bit on the outside and I don't want you to feel that way. I don't want anyone to feel that way.
Although I'm pretty sure we have radically different beliefs, I still choose to believe that your views are what you believe to be the best for everyone. I think you should definitely change up your sources a bit and maybe open your mind to some other ideas, but I still believe that you're probably a good person. So I'm not gonna be a dick to you or anyone else.
I think it's less about Trump, and more about obliterating a large, criminal money laundering empire that Trump just handed to the DOJ on a silver platter. When warrants are issued that cut through attorney-client privilege, that's a sign that multiple levels of legal authority (federal, state, local, attorneys-general) have all seen incontrovertible evidence of criminal activity of some kind - perhaps not Trump's personal activity, but certainly some of the people around him.
I'll reserve judgement until I see the evidence - but I am quite sure this is no sham investigation.
I would reconsider calling it a sham unless 5 guilty pleas and 17 indictments is something you consider a sham.
no evidence after months of investigation - That's not how investigations work. They save evidence for courts, not news papers. They don't get warrants for people like Cohen without evidence.
fake Steel Dossier - odd talking point since, while not all of it has been verified obviously, many parts of it have been.
Also, it's interesting that this investigation is always painted as "Trump's Russian Collusion" when in fact, it's an investigation into Russia's meddling into our election - which every intelligence agency in America, and many abroad, believe happened. Trump talks as if its all about him - and it might be but not directly; but because he would also be involved in the crimes being investigated. So, again, how is this a sham? This isn't even going into the tremendous amount of circumstantial public evidence against Trump and his inner circle.
For those who tagged this as a troll or a flame, why? Is @mumberthrax trolling and I'm just not seeing it? It seems like this is his legitimate belief.
Beliefs being stated as facts is what got the first (my?) troll tag. The whole point of an investigation is to gather evidence and come to some kind of conclusion that can then be treated as fact. Anyone on either side not being fully supportive of fact finding is a troll in my view.
Well, he clearly says "I believe." I think you missed his entire point, though. He said that the purpose of the Mueller investigation is to
not for any fact finding.
I guess my mind boggles at the combination of belief before data/facts and that the purpose of the investigation is not to find facts - therefore invalidating the only potential source of facts and leaving the belief unchallenged.
What is there left to do but smile and say "Nice weather we're having..."?
My feeling exactly.
It's a little confusing to me as well, but I guess it makes sense - those are tags which I guess serve as what downvotes mean on reddit, e.g. "I don't like this" - and obviously I responded in a way that was not very persuasive (I wasn't trying to be, just was answering plainly in response to the general question about the mueller investigation). I guess I should consider whether i should speak plainly and openly on here, or if I should try to be all reddit-y and argue everything and try to win the political discussion. :P
Speak openly - but, please, support your statements with facts and data. If there is no actual, vetted facts/data yet, then voice support for your side and say you'll wait for the process to run it's course. (I would give the same advice for the other side circlejerking over every rumor...)
Undermining or overpromoting an investigation is like a scientist determining what they want the result to be before doing the actual test/experiment. It is more than bad science, it is a really bad way to run a country.
I mean, that's a fair request - but i didn't say what i said because i wanted to argue or debate people on it, nor say it because i thought it would on its own mean anything beyond my own feelings. I was asked how i felt about the mueller investigation, and I responded with a summary of my feelings and impressions. Maybe that sounds like a cop out or whatever, but *shrug*. If you really do want me to spend a few hours to dig through links and put together a report just for you, I can - but I doubt very much it would change your mind or the mind of anyone else here. At best I'd expect about four people to pick it apart and feel satisfied that I and my report have been pwned, and that all is well with the world. :P
I took a time out and then reread the thread again... and you are correct, you were asked your opinion and I troll tagged your response... something I feel I should apologize for.
I disagree with your opinion and your view of the subject with the energy output of a thousand suns, but my tag was inappropriate.
(Edit, hey, you can untag stuff, very cool!)
Yes the tribalism and divisive identify politics need to stop. I doubt we'll see eye-to-eye on these things, but I respect that you have your own opinion and so I'll share mine.
I thought about reading Scott Adam's book, but I think I've had enough from reading his blogs. I followed him a bit after Trump got the nomination. I think of what you said the only point I'd concede is that Trump is a remarkable persuader.
Trump is a known entity (I keep having to remind my younger friends of this). He has a long history of acting in his best interest, being terrible with his businesses to the point US banks won't lend him money, ripping off every one he can, being deeply involved with persons associated with the La Costa Nostra and the Russian mob, and being embarrassingly self-absorbed.
Regarding the economy, those things may be true and there is an undeniable "Trump effect." The tax bill definitely helped the economy and I liked the part about cutting corporate tax rates, but the politicians showed their true colors by giving the elite a permanent tax break while setting an expiration date on the cuts for joe six-pack.
I'm waiting to see what happens with North Korea. Kim seemed to be up to his old tricks last week. I've no idea how pulling out of the Iran deal was a good idea and even the administration's arguments were milquetoast.
I think he's a Nixon but he may turn out to be a Reagan. Neither of which I particularly thought were good presidents, one just got away with their crimes while the other didn't.
I'll parrot what I've heard Scott Adams saying again (I'm a big fan of that guy if it isn't painfully obvious), that Kim Jong Un is negotiating already, what he's asking for is reasonable - a cessation to joint military drills of US and south korea near north korea - and easy to fulfil. Him posturing in this manner makes him look strong to his people, which is good. Most importantly, the fact that he wants to make a deal, and appears to have some competence at it is a good thing for everyone.
I think Dennis Rodman deserves a medal for giving Kim a copy of The Art of the Deal as a birthday gift. :P People on /r/The_Donald reacted with "nooo, don't give him that much power!" about rodman giving him the book, and I laughed, because deal-making is a far better way to conduct conflicts than military engagement and button-hovering. (edit: in case it isn't clear, I'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheek about his negotiating ability coming from the book alone - but it may have at least helped him to understand how Trump operates)
Kim and more importantly China want the US to leave the peninsula. This is what they’ve always wanted. If Trump gives him that then he loses the stand-off that’s been in place since the armistice.
I also find it terribly ironic that he’s seeking to do this as it’s akin to the Iran deal that he just said is bad, but in your scenario we’re giving away even more.
Bush was exactly where Trump is with Kim right now and it went south so I’m not holding my breath.
To steal a redpill euphemism - it's Trump's ability to maintain frame that gets him the level of admiration he has with certain people.
Put simply - imagine an object floating through space. Now imagine every kind of debris that this object ever encounters colliding with it and going off in a different direction, while the object continues on its original trajectory, completely unaltered or damaged in any way by all of the collisions. That's 'frame' in a nutshell. Some call it 'sticking to your guns' or stoicism, but there's something in human nature that predisposes humans towards respecting people who have this quality on some subconscious level.
see also: The Power of Positive Thinking by Normal Vincent Peale.
I think that a forum for politics, where people can discuss ideas sensibly and seriously would be a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, I think that's extremely difficult online, as the anonymity and group mentality that forms will tend to lead to polarising viewpoints that promote the extreme over the moderate opinion.
If there is a way to promote moderate and sensible discussion then great, but I am honestly unsure how that could possibly happen.
So for me, if we can find a way to have a sensible forum, where it doesn't turn into a bunch of low effort memes or hate filled posts, then I would welcome it. I suspect that it would either have to be very heavily moderated or it would quickly descend to the lowest possible denominator and if it is heavily moderated, then people would claim that there is bias and that their viewpoints are being censored.
Just allowing political groups seems like it'll just lead to what exists on reddit being recreated. In you look at Imzy (now sadly deceased) among the first communities created were political ones by the same people that run the same groups on reddit or elsewere and they were immediately just the same as existing ones. We don't need that here, it already exists elsewhere and honestly I think it tends to poison sites.
I'd much rather spend my time talking to you about TV, fishing, gardening, movies, technology or a million areas where who you voted for several years ago in a completely different country to the one I live in, doesn't matter.
Unbiased moderation is tricky, but we have made attempts at this sort of thing with our system of laws for example. We put checks and balances, and people still wriggle through with corruption, but largely it's far superior to the law of the jungle in someplace like somalia. I think that Deimos is serious about making the trust system work, and appears to be trying to grapple with the danger of potential abuse of power that may come with it. IMO having moderator actions be as transparent as possible is one essential element, like public moderation logs, as well as having extremely clear unambiguous rules for how moderation is conducted, AND having an engaged community that watches the watchers through the public moderation logs - and being empowered in the event of misconduct. All of that needing of course to be protected to prevent the massed being whipped up into a frenzy over trumped up charges - the public logs and unambiguous moderation rules would help in nipping groundless allegations of misconduct in the bud.
Couple this with a benevolent dictator like Deimos, assuming he and the rest of the admin team act with integrity and wisdom, I think moderation could be set up in an easy, fair, and functional way.
there's a lot of value in chatting about gardening, fishing, technology, etc. and in my opinion if we can carve out a space here on Tildes where people can try to have conversations about things they disagree about without producing flame wars and trolling - which i think anyone would agree would be quite a rare feat - then there is practically a responsibility to use it for discussions of important things where the rest of the world is just flaming and not engaging in dialogue or making progress in resolving conflicts.
I have many problems with the online Trump-supporter community. It seems to have arisen from concentrated efforts on the far-right targeting impressionable young men on the internet--e.g. Bannon co-opting "Gamer-Gate" and StormFront secretly invading/brigading online communities. I think it really twists your worldview. I've noticed, OP, that you openly refer to your own news sources as, "propaganda," and you probably think that this makes you more self-aware than people who call their primary media, "news." Really, though, I think you're making a false equivalency. You are constructing a situation where no information is truly reliable, so you get to choose what is true. You therefore believe that an investigation that has indicted multiple people and gotten several guilty pleas is a, "sham," despite the evidence I just stated, while at the same time believing that Obama personally directed the DOJ to put a spy in the Trump campaign despite there being absolutely no evidence for any part of that.
You're telling me there is objective reality, it can be known, and you're on the side that knows what it is, and also Steve Bannon did gamergate.
hmm. :P
I said Bannon co-opted it, which he did, and which he explicitly said he did: "You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."
I gave a couple concrete examples of how you in particular have ignored evidence of one thing because you didn't wanted to believe it, and another thing that is unsubstantiated by any evidence but you believe it because you want it to be true. Please address those points before setting up a pseudo-philosophical straw-man.
I was thinking about this interaction a bit ago and realized I was in the wrong to use both sarcasm and twisting your statement into a more extreme/absolute. I'm sorry.
You're right that Bannon made those remarks, and it is probably true that Gamergate did change a lot of people's views on media distortion/propaganda. I don't believe that Bannon has the power to "activate" gamers the way he seemed to declare he could - and his WoW thing is definitely not Gamergate. If you were to ask the people on /r/kotakuinaction if they felt Bannon had any influence on them, they'd laugh as I did when i read your comment. Some of them might have been reading breitbart more since they were one of the only larger professional outlets really reporting on media manipulation/fake news, but I am not certain that that is anything like the conspiracy theories about him having co-opted the gamer demographic.
I will say that Milo did a good job of connecting with gamers, and bannon was smart enough to have milo work for him as a journalist. Again, there's an ounce of truth in the conspiracy theory, but it just isn't anything like some nefarious co-option as far as I can see.
It's also true that there are legitimate racists on the internet, and it's definitely true that they have been and continue to attempt to influence people who support President Trump. It doesn't help that people who hate trump-supporters constantly call them racist and bigoted etc., which itself pushes some of them further into that. But again, it just isn't anything near as widespread as some people like to suggest for clicks - as far as I can tell.
I don't know how to respond to the direct attacks you've made against me personally. I don't want to create a huge argument since this is supposed to be a place for civility, but you have insulted me and that isn't acceptable to me. I've apologized for my sarcasm and misrepresentation of your bannon statement, and as a gesture to help reinforce that I've addressed your assertion about a stormfront conspiracy, and I think that's sufficient for now.
Anyone can tell that redditors - or, the political and social posts that are pushed on reddit- are pretty much all 'left-wing.' I think it's easy to say that t_d commenters, for example, are all toxic based on a brief glance through the sr or what happens to a comment of anything somewhat unaligned with their ideals, but it's also easy to forget that the 'left-wing' subs, which are the ones that are defaulted to every new user, do a very similar thing. Now I'm not here to analyze political srs from reddit; my point is that I think that the reason these echo chambers form is due to how the site, in general, is run. ~, on the other hand, looks like a very promising place for civil, balanced political discussion to occur. That being said, almost any political discussion is worthless in the end. So it may be very possible here, but I'm not sure if it really has a place here.
Dial it back to 2008 and Ron Paul had at least as much coverage as Trump and Bernie Sanders combined - and the comments were universally more conservative. Reddit practically built his moneybombs. Forums do evolve and change. Reddit's got a much larger userbase now, and Ron Paul is considered a heretical racist, not a reasonable conservative.
The levels of toxicity we see on reddit now, however, weren't present back then. There was still plenty of negativity to go around, but it hadn't devolved into the current all-out-war between multiple opposing hate groups like T_D and WayOfTheBern. Political discussion itself was destroyed on reddit by all of these opposing groups who continued to talk past and insult each other.
I am still a bit miffed at the evolution of the tea party. Most people don't even remember what it was before the Kochs co-opted and subverted it. How does one maintain a movement when it's that easy to buy it out? :/ If the republicans turn into libertarians, we're all a lot better off - and good riddance to the red party of hatred. Looks like that's going to take a lot longer than we thought.
Eh - I think the tea party got robbed, though they did put up a decent fight. OWS though - they did a lot of the damage to themselves with their silly drum circles. Look, that's fine for a forum, but if people can't negotiate with a leader or three in a human conversation that isn't being interrupted every second by some nitwit with yet another pointless, distracting demand - they aren't going to negotiate, or even take them seriously. OWS failed to simply communicate.
One other thing I've never quite understood about that...
Why didn't the bailout just go through the people? Just pay off the bad loans and debts. The banks still get paid, but now, people also get to keep their homes and other investments. Instead we just gave it to the companies that created the problem - directly. It seemed to me like the taxpayers got double-charged at both ends of that transaction.
That's more or less what TARP was supposed to do, although without the loan forgiveness. Instead they bought the loans and modified the terms via the MHA program. You can see a statement of recent results from MHA here: https://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/reports/Pages/Making-Home-Affordable-Program-Performance-Report.aspx
Of course TARP did a bunch of other shit, but, well. "Politics"
I am curious why you believe it's worthless.
Politics is an extremely important part of human society - it dictates our future centuries, millennia from now - and the internet is the first technology that has allowed humanity to collectively think about and make decisions about politics almost-instantaneously ever.
If people should not have political discussions at all, then how would democracy even work? :P
Because the nuance of human discussion, where you have to sit down with someone and look them in the eye, and have a conversation with them, are entirely lost when you do it on the internet.
Ah that's a fair point. It's definitely different in online forums because it's so different than what we've evolved to do as a social species - none of the nonverbal, instinctual cues are present in online interactions. I do wonder if that will make a come-back with higher quality VR - though I am a sort of neo-luddite in some ways about that sort of technology... but i digress.
It does seem that it depends on the venue though. I skimmed the post that Deimos linked elsewhere here, and it makes some interesting arguments... I think it depends on what game people involved are playing, what the rules are, and what selection mechanism is in play to decide who is playing the political conversation game. A public, open subreddit like /r/neutralpolitics is different than a private chat room, or invite-only website, or basically any other specific communication context/mechanism online. you know, like, patterns are not real - they're just observations, not necessarily predictors. Or like people saying history repeats - it doesn't repeat, it's just there are some things that are similar, but with a thousand and one new ever-changing variables it is never the same.
That does seem to be a particularly American outlook. The US seems (from outside) to be tired of its own politics which I find very disturbing.
However I would argue that, although the internet has allowed humanity to speak collectively, it has slowed the pace at which collective decisions are made.
I'm very very extremely tired of US politics but I stay informed so I can form an opinion. Like in all countries I've grown up being taught one thing and then watched adults held in the 'highest regard' do the opposite while espousing values they obviously don't believe in. I feel like the hypocrisy is particularly bad in the United States but I could be wrong.
I can fight an agenda but when it's just lies on lies on lies coming out of every politicians mouth no matter party, and it all seems so rigged it's easy to get exhausted. If politicians were allowed to be real people, with flaws, or change their opinions because they grow as a person, I'd find it way more palatable.
Me too, but a lot of what is going on in the US is not confined to the US. We are seeing a rise in nationalism and tribalism across the west that hasn't been seen since before WWII. I find that interesting. Where did it come from? Is it just a natural response to western society becoming more progressive? The political spectrum is shifting to the polar opposites more than in any time in recent history. Again, this isn't confined to the US. What is driving us apart, and how will we bridge that ever widening gap?
Keeping the bigger picture in mind is the only way I can survive paying attention to politics. As you said, it can be so exhausting. I could never actually be a politician. I couldn't operate that way. But these maneuverings and corruptions are as they ever were. They unfortunately seem to be a natural part of politicking.
But if you step back from the minutiae and the details of the persons currently in power, you can see that things are very interesting right now (in the sense of the dubious Chinese curse, perhaps).
The evidence coming out of the intel community is very much that it’s been engineered in the US, the UK, and France to benefit Russia.
Personally I think what we're seeing are baby boomers frantically scrambling to keep the world as they know it because they're terrified of what the world will change into socially (within 10 years when they start to fall out of power entirely) and how it'll economically impact them.
If we treated everyone better socially and otherwise then everyone is going to elevate, and it's going to be an even tighter job market. For now they run government and they hold the strings but eventually they won't, and this nationalism bullshit shift will die out within 20 years.
Unfortunately, we'll be fighting my generation, older millennials who the boomers have managed to brainwash. Thankfully younger millennials are in the mix. 10 years til we start taking over, and five years after that younger people can help us clean out the rest.
Interesting. I'm not sure I had noticed that phenomenon. I'll have to pay closer attention to the speed of decision-making. It has been becoming clearer to me that a lot of times the people in charge seem to wait to see what the general public things, where the overton window is, so to speak, before doing something - at least in terms of american politics and business. I'm not sure what the root cause of this is (it's probably a combination of many variables) but it may be related to what you've observed - though i don't know how much of that is purely perception management through media companies.
To clarify, when I said political discussions, I intended to specify that I was talking about the large-scale 'discussions' that occur online in places like reddit, twitter, etc.
Of course politics is very important; there's not much of a debate there. I just believe that large-scale 'discussions' are useless. Personally, most of my political and social beliefs were formed based on my 'innate ideals' and research. Never have I seen someone have their mind changed when another says, simplified, "abortion should be illegal" or "we need more lgbt rights." On a lot of issues, the decision is usually made once, only to be changed by some personal experience or research.
Looking back, maybe right now is the best time for a politics group since the website is very small which facilitates civil discussion, but as the site grows, maybe not so much. (Of course there could be some way to maintain this, but idk of any way.)
ahh i see. Yeah that makes more sense. Just having a platform where people are yelling their conclusions at you is not persuasive unless you're already predisposed to accept those positions. There's more to discussion though than the fare you see on /r/politics for example. :P
I think that the issue is that, especially on a pseudoanonymous forum, it becomes less about convincing the person you're engaged with to see things your way, and more about winning and looking better or smarter than the other guy for other people to see. People like winners, and tend to go with them - even better if there's a group of people who are already following and agreeing with the lame debate "winner" who pwns the loser outgroup member.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I haven't felt attacked here yet despite being an obvious minority on a very contentious subject. I think that's a good sign that there's something here that is worth looking at.
Back on reddit, I was reading a lot of concern about the 'speech-filters' from free speech advocates. Although I consider myself pro free speech in the sense that there should be no government restraint or punishments attached to speech, I see lots of value in having some restraint on a site like this. I think that's a big distinction. It's a good common ground between reddit and voat; any outsider can see that the opposite extremes on each don't foster good quality discussion. Also, I'm very glad that you haven't been attacked so far since it was annoying seeing this happening on the common news and politics subs.
Sort of off-topic ramble ahead: I was moderately active on Voat before the FPH and coontown exoduses from reddit. It was a nice community, much like Tildes is now. We had civil disagreements, no flame wars. The worst problems we had were two trolls, amalek and mgtow iirc. who were more comical than bothersome. I was in the process of drawing up a document I had dubbed The Civil Voater's Agreement, which was going to be sort of like a reddiquette but which people could sign their names to in a symbolic non-binding gesture, like a ritual, to help foster the kind of courteous and free culture that dominated the site at the time. But before i had time to get over my retardation and inexperience with such a project and finish it, the reddit rejects came in and the old culture was wiped out.
I hope this doesn't happen to Tildes. Voat right now is not the utopian bastion of free speech - it is not the same as reddit in its heydey before /r/reddit.com was shut down.
I remember those days well. I even pitched everything tildes is based on to Atko and talked with him several times about it - that's part of the reason that downvotes over there don't appear until you've earned them, and that you can't give out more downvotes than upvotes on Voat. It was an early effort to curb the negativity before it arrived.
The Voat admins didn't get it. The reddit admins didn't get it, and I pitched it all to them years before anyone else, even before the blackout. The only team I've ever talked to that had their ears and eyes firmly open was the tildes team, and Deimos has taught me a thing or two about this stuff as well.
The negativity will come to tildes eventually. That's just what happens as a place grows. What will define this website is how we deal with it when it arrives. I think the focus on civility and good-faith engagement is the key - and the willingness to kick all of the trolls, shills, bots, and just plain assholes off of the forum until they shape up.
arguing won't change anyone's mind. when someone is put in the position of defending what they believe they almost never, as close to never as you can get, come out of the argument believing in their beliefs any less.
political discussion can be very fruitful, but political arguing never is. almost all political discussion on the internet eventually devolves into arguing past each other, so I don't really see any value in trying most of the time
That does seem to be a particularly American outlook. The US seems (from outside) to be tired of its own politics which I find very disturbing.
However I would argue that, although the internet has allowed humanity to speak collectively, it has slowed the pace at which collective decisions are made.
Edit: not sure how this got double posted, soz.
I don't share my support for Trump outside my nuclear family. I attended primarily liberal schools and work in a primarily liberal field, and thus keep quiet for my own safety more than my reputation. It only takes one person to feel a little too strongly about my political beliefs to become a major problem.
As to why I still support him, there has yet to be one news "report" or event that was both credible and unforgivable. Trump has done things undesirable and dishonest both before and during his presidency, but so do most if not all other politicians. Whether they're greedy or foolish, all people have badness. I don't consider Trump's badness any worse than Clinton's or Pence's.
This is an excellent opportunity to test that "Noise" tag.
ayyy, finally someone else. Thank you for helping me to feel a bit less alien here. :P
Regarding safety, the fear is very real. With all of the videos of trump supporters being beaten up etc., living in even a mildly liberal city means it's too risky to own a red MAGA hat for example. :/ I'd love to be open about how happy I am for the focus on fixing america's issues, but I don't want to get shot. On the internet at least I can keep my identity somewhat anonymous and be open about what I think/feel.
My god you are disgusting. Those MAGA hat wearing folks are literally running cars into people who disagree with them and somehow you feel like the victim. You're pathetic, your cause is pathetic, and this entire post is unbelievably transparent.
I'm not sure i understand - what do you mean it is transparent? What is it that I am doing here if not what I say I am?
I found a link yesterday that was mostly confirmation bias, but still a surprisingly pleasant read in a Tilde announcement thread on reddit yesterday. It's an interactive article about the decay of goodwill in the world. 30 minutes is a significant investment, but I hope someone somewhere enjoys it.
Many groups, not exclusively extremists, seem to fear judgement or even penalty in America. Tildes may not be paradise, but I hope it'll be a little better than the current standard.
The article: http://ncase.me/trust/
The comment I found it in: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/8kez6p/tildes_by_former_reddit_dev_invite_only/dz8a56h/
Ah yeah, that one is pretty fun to play with/read. Saw it here a few days ago.
It reminds me a little of something Jordan Peterson said once, I'm paraphrasing but iirc he said something like "the way you play the game is act as if everyone is playing by the rules, and when they don't you slap them, then help them back up and keep playing". Or perhaps more poetically this bit where he's concluding his final Maps of Meaning 2017 lecture
Where he says basically that the proof of the validity of the strategy is revealed in its execution, you say "I'm going to act as if being is good", and that acting as if the rules work basically manifests the game to work by the rules.
It's a bit abstract and generic, and real life has far more variables than a game theory simulation (and people are a little more predisposed genetically for cooperation than the simulated characters on that site), but I think the gist of it is probably functional.
I think there's a good middle ground here.
I think having a Politics group for talking policy and various other things, with an active moderation team steering debate into topics rather than just having news blasts... That could work.
If the group is focused on the story de jure of the day, then that's something that'll devolve into name-calling and fights.
So rather than a 'Politics News' group, why not have a 'Political discussion' group where the topics are limited to a few debates a day?
Sure it'd require more moderating but it'd at least be policy discussion rather than news story after news story.
@BuckeyeSundae made a thread along those lines on nuclear energy. It seemed to work well; lots of interesting discussions, and I learned a lot about the new generation of nuclear power stations.
See that'd work well.
Have the community give various policy questions/debate topics, where the moderation team pics X number for discussion for the week and then discuss.
I much prefer talking about political policy over anything else. It's just an idea, but I think that'd be a political group that'd be able to stay away from flaming each other and then focus on debating rather than cheap talking points and name calling.
Yeah, I think it has potential.
It might not stop flaming with really contentious issues, though. I'm trying to imagine a policy discussion about abortion, for example. Even if it isn't about a current event (like the new gag rule or a new state restriction), I think it'll get heated quickly.
I think it might, but staying away from super divisive things like that (at first) wouldn't be a bad idea.
Topics to start off could be policy things like 'should the US be a world policing force for international stability' or 'Senate Bill XYZ increases the military budget by --%, should defense money be spent in a more intelligent way?'
They're just ideas, but I think stuff like this would actually foster interesting conversation.
Oh mumber...
Hey! Small world! Hope things are going well for you and yours. :)
Hey <3 yeah, doing great. Rokku moved here two days ago and is now sitting behind me grumbling that his PC isn't working after rebuilding it from the flight :P
I'd be all for Making America Great, but it never has been great before, and I doubt Trump is going to do it. While I did mark Trump on my ballot, I did so only to avoid the risk of getting Clinton.
You don't believe that America has been a leader in the technology revolution that humankind has experienced? That our constitution has been one of the most influential documents in history? That the concept of enshrining individual liberty and free expression which are practically uniquely american are a valuable contribution to society? That the war to end slavery was novel or valuable (there are places on this planet which still practice slavery to this day)? That the prosperity of the United States was ever anything great? That the concept of America as a melting pot and a tossed salad, where diverse ideas and peoples can live and work together to create something greater than the sum of its parts, is great?
I could go on. America has had its issues and sins - in my opinion it is still overcoming some of them - but from my vantage very few countries have been of greater value or significance to this planet than the USA.
Yes it is. And the person you support is trying to destroy it. Most lately with his claim that he can pardon himself.
The concept is fantastic, but the US has never practiced it as a rule.
And how many consumer products that people in the US buy are made by that slave labor.
The US still practices slavery, it's just changed form.
For the rich. A country that has as much money as the US has no business continuing to line the pockets of the rich while there's a homeless and poverty class that the current majority party actively fights against helping.
Excuse me? Didn't the president you support actively condemn the football players that took a knee during the anthem in order to try to raise awareness of racism and violence against black people?
This is all beside the fact that the biggest threat to the entire human race right now is global climate change, which Trump stupidly believes to be a Chinese hoax when every peice of evidence we have points directly to it being real and caused by humans. And in the face of that, he's trying to prop up the coal mining industry.
http://www.traditionalmass.org/articles/article.php?id=13&catname=7