Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I suspected the last few of your posts were brought to us by the good monks at Chimay. Had a certain looseness to them.
There's not much point beating this dead horse any further. We'll never agree why HRC lost. But for all the same reasons we'd have mocked the Trumpkins for complaining the election was rigged had they lost, we could mock the HRC supporters for spraying blame in all directions but inward.
This thing happened. It isn't going away, and the broader movement behind it is much bigger than a mere election. And that's not going away any time soon.
You, me, almost all of us here... We've enjoyed the benefits of a system that has left a shitload of people in the dust. We thought we could ignore them, or dismiss them with statements like, "well, there are winners and losers in trade..." We thought we could write them off with statements like, "technology ultimately creates more jobs than it eliminates," while coyly ignoring the speed with which it does the latter and the glacial timeline over which it does the former. We've bought into silly Kennedy Era notions like "education will fix it all."
Trump grabbed in excess of 25% of the Latino vote. He stole a huge chunk of the union vote. He won 42% of women.
If you want to look for the true fault lines, and not buy into the "it's mostly racism and sexism" bullshit sold to "the marks" (your term), look at people with assets versus people without. That's where I think the significant split lies. Also look at who's in business for themselves, and who's in small business versus working as a cog in a big business.
The people without assets had nothing to lose voting for Trump. Hillary was bringing more of what Obama and Bush had brought them -- a managed decline, rather than hope of a real job. The people with assets, with capital - people like us - had something to lose. We benefit more from globalism and tech, which delivers to investors at cost to domestic labor. The people who are in business for themselves, who feel acutely and directly the impact of an ever more intrusive state, in the form of licensing strictures and regulation, and compliance bullshit, had much to gain with Trump. The people in jobs at large concerns - the kind of people here - have never felt the direct hand of regulation and compliance concerns on their backs. (They may deal with it, but they don't suffer a hit to the bottom line because of it.)
Who here but Hank actually has to make a payroll every week? I'm not sure any of us are really qualified to explain this phenomenon. But to start flinging blame around without serious looking inward, at your own side's failings - and I mean your side's often limited and tribalist thinking, not the failings of HRC as a candidate - is useless sour grapes. The thing is done. Blame is useless. Try to make the best of it.
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Just for the record, I wasn't drinking and I couldn't see your face, but you got at least part of my meaning. You were pissing me off, most immediately because when I respond to something you say you change your tune. Either Hillary Clinton is particularly corrupt or all politicians are corrupt -- you say things without seeming to care what you mean. Which, I suppose, is symptomatic, because the underlying issue is that I care about what happened this week, maybe too much, and you are at least pretending not to.
If you are going to mock me for spraying blame in all directions but inwards, then you haven't been reading what I've been posting. Which was the point in the preceding paragraph. Actually, it's pretty plain that you haven't been reading, because the only person I called a "mark" was you, and wasn't for the way you voting, but for your mindless repetition of alt-right talking points that you can't be bothered to defend.
Elections are big, complex affairs, and there is plenty of blame to go around. I blame, in no particular order
- Anyone who voted for Trump
- My cousins who call Obama "Kenya"
- Anyone who pretends to be a libertarian and who voted for Johnson instead of against Trump, especially in a state where it might have made a difference
- Anyone who voted for Jill Stein
- Anyone who didn't vote
- Anyone who wouldn't vote for Hillary because Bill cheated on her
- Republicans, for many things which paved the way for Trump
- Obama, for not finding a way to make Republicans pay for their obstruction, and for failing to build institutions around his desire for change
- the Democratic Party, for all sorts of failures
- Hillary, though I suspect she did her best
- the media, for its promotion and normalization of Trump, and for the many fake scandals that dominated its coverage of Hillary
- Justice Roberts and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court, for getting rid of key parts of the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for Republican legislatures to make it harder for people, especially Democrats, to vote
- James Comey, for selfishly injecting himself into the presidential race
- the Electoral College, for handing the Presidency to an incompetent Republican who did not win the popular vote the second time in sixteen years
- myself, for not having done more
- many more, I'm sure
"Blame is useless"? Only if you don't give a shit. I do. And you actually do too, which is why your schtick is so irritating this week.
