Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
Which one of Thurgreed's list could any one of us have changed?
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The list:
Quote:
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Comey acting the fool, Russia undermining our entire system, the natural, racist swing in the opposite direction from a smart, black President, idiots like you voting third party in a very close and important election, social media, Fox News garbage, bullshit Republican hit-job Hillary investigations, etc.
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1, 2, 6, 7: Unchangeable
3, 4, and 5: Changeable
But the list is incomplete. Add to it:
Lost blue collar jobs
Condescension by mainstream media creating resentment in middle America
Ignoring the lost jobs and societal collapse among the blue collar Trump demographic
Media narratives stating everything is great while 65% of the country can't muster $1000 in savings for an emergency
Refusing to be honest with the losers in the global economy (offering them bullshit salves like retraining for 55 year olds who've lost factory jobs)
Bailing out Wall Street and leaving homeowners to fend for themselves
Refusing to even talk about automation's impact on low skill workers
The list could go on forever. But it comes down to a simple proposition: We ignored the Trump voters. In some regards, that's warranted. The bigots should be ignored. And the affluent Trump voters are just greedheads. But a lot of Trump voters were people harmed by our economic policies on trade. We lied to them, we pretended they did not exist, and we figured somehow, eventually, they'd either fade away or assimilate into the new economy.
We were wrong. They came back to bite the country in the ass. And now it's too late to be honest with them. We can't tell them there is no fix for them -- that they are victims of a new economy and 'thur jubs ain't comin' back. No, now a con man has given them the false hope that those jobs can come back, that they can go back to 1956, and that they have a right to be angry and use their anger on perceived enemies (immigrants, minorities, etc.).
You want to bitch about third party voters enabling Trump? Well, here's who enabled Trump: You, me, and everyone else who ignored the economic carnage taking place in his base. A base far larger than the third party voters of the last election. And a base without which Trump could never have won the office.
I hear white conservatives bitch about BLM like it's a new thing ("Obama caused it!"). The only response to that is, "No. It's a thing that's been brewing forever. And it finally boiled over." Same applies to the Trumpkins.
