Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm sorry about your gene pool. But is there any reason to write this here other than to re-emphasize the stereotype that all Trump voters are knuckle dragging troglodytes?

I mean, I get it... It's fun to make fun of the dimwits. Makes you feel like the better person, creates a sense of community (someone here will surely give me an atta boy for writing this!).

But aren't you just feeding similar minded folks empty calories by doing this sort of thing? You aren't changing that bigoted person's mind. A person making that statement is past saving, in many regards. He's interesting and relevant why?

Doesn't it make more sense to focus on the Trump voters who voted for economic reasons? These are people a lot of whom voted for Obama in 2008. These are people many of whom are actually thinking about issues and figured Trump was the better bet. And for a lot of them, he was.

Now, of course, you can write these people off as nihilists of a sort who'll happily deal with an odious, racist leader in exchange for stock market gains or low taxes. But in doing that, you're ignoring your real enemy here.

There are loads of reasons small business owners almost always vote Republican. I needn't list them here. Some of it has to do with GOP defunding of one particular agency small business owners fear and detest. Some of it has to do with the perception that GOP regimes unlock "animal spirits" and create growth. Some of it has to do with people believing GOP control leads to easier lending and better rates. The reasons are myriad. And that's just one sector of the Trump voters - small business owners. The list of reasons other groups of people voted for Trump, and vote for GOP candidates more generally, could go on for volumes.

I don't say this to deflect focus from the bigots. The pure, hardened bigot vote is always there for the GOP. But they're incurable. You can talk, talk, talk, but nothing changes these people. The real discussion of Trumpism, and how it might be countered, requires a focus on the complex reasoning of those who voted for him for economic and policy reasons. These people are thinkers. They are rational actors. What made them pull the lever is far more important than what made a moronic bigot pull the lever.

When you continue focusing exclusively on Trump's most lurid followers, I think you take a form of bait. To have that discussion repeatedly and elevate the bigoted sentiments of that slice of his voters comes at cost of ignoring and letting off the hook those who voted for Trump for self-serving economic reasons. And they're a much bigger piece of the Trump coalition heading into 2020.

You probably wouldn't call that particular relative Trump's most lurid follower. He's a regional president for a financial institution you would have heard of, with an Ivy League MBA. But he is a Charles Murray style believer that whites have superior IQs, thinks that is just a genetic fact, and objects to being called a racist because in his view he is not being discriminatory just stating facts. He feels broadly disgruntled that his own children have to compete with African Americans for college seats, and is convinced they are at a disadvantage because of it, and resents that he is expected to hire diversely in his own operation. And, sure, he also likes getting tax cuts for him and his buddies.

I also have some of Trump's most lurid followers in my gene pool.

This kind of white conservative victimization thing, with its attendant racism, is core to Trumpism and is often part of the Republican elite's perspective, not just the flannel clad Trump rally attendee you think of as lurid. Here's some good background on its historical roots, in a few short tweets: https://twitter.com/LarryGlickman/st...10326027976709

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

You probably wouldn't call that particular relative Trump's most lurid follower. He's a regional president for a financial institution you would have heard of, with an Ivy League MBA. But he is a Charles Murray style believer that whites have superior IQs, thinks that is just a genetic fact, and objects to being called a racist because in his view he is not being discriminatory just stating facts. He feels broadly disgruntled that his own children have to compete with African Americans for college seats, and is convinced they are at a disadvantage because of it, and resents that he is expected to hire diversely in his own operation. And, sure, he also likes getting tax cuts for him and his buddies.

I also have some of Trump's most lurid followers in my gene pool.

This kind of white conservative victimization thing, with its attendant racism, is core to Trumpism and is often part of the Republican elite's perspective, not just the flannel clad Trump rally attendee you think of as lurid. Here's some good background on its historical roots, in a few short tweets: https://twitter.com/LarryGlickman/st...10326027976709

Sebby has this notion that economic insecurity and bigotry are two separate things. That link I posted yesterday says they are intertwined:

Two popular explanations have emerged post-election: 1) economic anxiety, and 2) racial resentment. Many commentators have argued that a sense of economic loss drove many white working-class voters toward Trump. Meanwhile, here at the Monkey Cage, Michael Tesler has explained that support for Trump was especially linked to racial resentment.

Examining our data from the GenForward Survey, we find a hybrid explanation. First, white millennial Trump voters were likely to believe in something we call “white vulnerability” — the perception that whites, through no fault of their own, are losing ground to other groups. Second, racial resentment was the primary driver of white vulnerability — even when accounting for income, education level or employment. ...

Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.

So what was? Racial resentment.

Even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, region and a host of other factors, white millennials fit Michael Tesler’s analysis, explored here. As he put it, economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment; rather, racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. We found, as he has in a larger population, that racial resentment is the biggest predictor of white vulnerability among white millennials. Economic variables like education, income and employment made a negligible difference.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Sebby has this notion that economic insecurity and bigotry are two separate things. That link I posted yesterday says they are intertwined:

Isn't all of this based upon surveys- "Can I ask you some questions? Who'd you vote for? Why?"

Given that a decent percent of employed people would not answer the phone- another decent percentage who accidentally answered would say no to question 1- and another decent percentage who did vote for Trump would lie about question 2, how can you extrapolate percentages from answers to question 3?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Sebby has this notion that economic insecurity and bigotry are two separate things. That link I posted yesterday says they are intertwined:

That link is mind-numbingly dumb. The section you cited might be one of the least clear things ever written - basically a semantic shell game where the words racist and economic anxiety are juggled quickly and then a deus ex machina is offered stating: It's all about racial resentment!

I feel stupider for having read some of it.

But forget that for now. What's more important is your statement that I see racial resentment and economic anxiety as unique. Well, they are unique. But I have never and would never say that they don't overlap. Of course they do. So you can retire that straw man.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

That link is mind-numbingly dumb. The section you cited might be one of the least clear things ever written - basically a semantic shell game where the words racist and economic anxiety are juggled quickly and then a deus ex machina is offered stating: It's all about racial resentment!

I feel stupider for having read some of it.

But forget that for now. What's more important is your statement that I see racial resentment and economic anxiety as unique. Well, they are unique. But I have never and would never say that they don't overlap. Of course they do. So you can retire that straw man.

Your response to GGG was, don't talk about the lurid racism, talk about the economic anxiety. If the two are strongly correlated and likely causally related, your reaction to avoid the subject of racism doesn't make sense to me. I'm sure you have some smart rejoinder to that, so let's hear it.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Your response to GGG was, don't talk about the lurid racism, talk about the economic anxiety. If the two are strongly correlated and likely causally related, your reaction to avoid the subject of racism doesn't make sense to me. I'm sure you have some smart rejoinder to that, so let's hear it.

I'm not avoiding racism at all. I've said at least ten times in the past two days alone, 33% - 40% of Trump voters are bigots of one type or another.

I'm saying that bigotry and economic anxiety are not given equal time. Everyone jumps on the bigotry thing because it's clickbait. It's offensive, it divides, it's red meat for both sides. It's emotional. Our lazy media loves it and focuses on it endlessly.

If we gave equal time to economic anxiety and bigotry, we'd actually better understand Trumpism.

But while this would provide a much better picture of what Trumpism involves, I'm still not sure it would be complete. The 800 lb. gorilla in Trumpism is the non-struggling economic voter who simply calculates that Trump is the better bet. That's a difficult animal to understand, and I suspect the press doesn't much like assessing those creatures because those people are post-politics. They aren't paying attention. They're simply making rational choices that they think will help themselves and their families. If people start thinking like that too much... if they become exhausted with politics and start ignoring it... well, what would our 24/7 news media, and the countless websites that follow politics all day long and run clickbait stories to sensationalize the mundane and create division do to attract eyeballs?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm saying that bigotry and economic anxiety are not given equal time. Everyone jumps on the bigotry thing because it's clickbait. It's offensive, it divides, it's red meat for both sides. It's emotional. Our lazy media loves it and focuses on it endlessly.

Here's the thing. I don't take very seriously the economic anxiety expressed either by my bank President relative or my cop relatives. Yeah, cop relatives with little education who, with OT, make north of $250K a year. Sure, economic anxiety is why they use those nasty names for immigrants.

I do take seriously the economic anxiety of soy farmers (what my grandparents did). But post 2016, pre-2016, they had experienced a long stretch of good years.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Here's the thing. I don't take very seriously the economic anxiety expressed either by my bank President relative or my cop relatives. Yeah, cop relatives with little education who, with OT, make north of $250K a year. Sure, economic anxiety is why they use those nasty names for immigrants.

I do take seriously the economic anxiety of soy farmers (what my grandparents did). But post 2016, pre-2016, they had experienced a long stretch of good years.

If those cops are saying the racist stuff that other relative said, I'd say they're just garden variety bigots. They clearly have no economic anxiety, so they're just voting their racist tendencies. They are incurable. Forget about them.

The 800 lb gorilla in Trumpism is not the bigot, or the economically insecure person. I think, and I could be wrong, it's the smart, thoughtful person who rationally calculates that Trump is the better choice for him.

In the past this would be called a pocketbook voter. But I think it's more complex than that. I think there are a lot of smart, rational voters who look at politics, think its a dysfunctional mess and simply vote for their own interests. Rather than examine these people as parts of the population, it might be better to examine them as individual actors who no longer feel connected to the rest of the population. They are people who see our political system as a joke and thus "draw the circle smaller." They think shorter term and focus not on what's better for their community, or their state, or their party, or the country, but instead focus on simply taking care of their families.

When there's upheaval like 2000 crash, followed by the 2008 crisis, followed by inequality, volatility, and so much insecurity all over the world, people tend to hunker down. They refocus on themselves. They also don't mind authoritarians so much. They'll give anything for stability.

Those, I think, are the huge numbers of people who don't show up in Trump's polling numbers.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm not avoiding racism at all. I've said at least ten times in the past two days alone, 33% - 40% of Trump voters are bigots of one type or another.

I'm saying that bigotry and economic anxiety are not given equal time. Everyone jumps on the bigotry thing because it's clickbait. It's offensive, it divides, it's red meat for both sides. It's emotional. Our lazy media loves it and focuses on it endlessly.

If we gave equal time to economic anxiety and bigotry, we'd actually better understand Trumpism.

But while this would provide a much better picture of what Trumpism involves, I'm still not sure it would be complete. The 800 lb. gorilla in Trumpism is the non-struggling economic voter who simply calculates that Trump is the better bet. That's a difficult animal to understand, and I suspect the press doesn't much like assessing those creatures because those people are post-politics. They aren't paying attention. They're simply making rational choices that they think will help themselves and their families. If people start thinking like that too much... if they become exhausted with politics and start ignoring it... well, what would our 24/7 news media, and the countless websites that follow politics all day long and run clickbait stories to sensationalize the mundane and create division do to attract eyeballs?

You are a one-trick dumbass pony. You've settled on your number when it comes to racism and believe that the major issue when it comes to voting Trump is something else. We fucking get it.

But you need to stop acting like an enormous amount of energy hasn't been, isn't, and won't continue to be spent on why voters vote Trump, moved from Obama to vote Trump, vote against their economic interests to vote Trump, ignore their once-sacred moral imperatives to vote for a fucking porn star-fucking racist piece of shit. "They aren't paying attention." "If we gave equal time to economic anxiety..." Jesus fucking Christ. Where the fuck do you live that this shit hasn't been unpacked and studied from every fucking angle? Just because you don't agree with the studies that point out that race plays a much larger role than you're willing to allocate doesn't mean (i) it's not true or (ii) that everything else has been or is being ignored.

TM

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

You probably wouldn't call that particular relative Trump's most lurid follower. He's a regional president for a financial institution you would have heard of, with an Ivy League MBA. But he is a Charles Murray style believer that whites have superior IQs, thinks that is just a genetic fact, and objects to being called a racist because in his view he is not being discriminatory just stating facts. He feels broadly disgruntled that his own children have to compete with African Americans for college seats, and is convinced they are at a disadvantage because of it, and resents that he is expected to hire diversely in his own operation. And, sure, he also likes getting tax cuts for him and his buddies.

I also have some of Trump's most lurid followers in my gene pool.

This kind of white conservative victimization thing, with its attendant racism, is core to Trumpism and is often part of the Republican elite's perspective, not just the flannel clad Trump rally attendee you think of as lurid. Here's some good background on its historical roots, in a few short tweets: https://twitter.com/LarryGlickman/st...10326027976709

I’ve read the Powell Memo. Some of the connections Glickman makes make sense. Some do not. But anyone citing the memo for any reason is a positive. That document has done a shitload of damage and should be studied as one of the most effective articulations of corporate arrogance ever drafted. It reads like corporations are divinely created entities.

Re your relative, his lack of basic scientific literacy (he probably doesn’t even know Murray’s arguments) puts him in the lurid camp. That you’ve an MBA doesn’t mean you aren’t a fool. (I could cite endless examples supporting the argument that an MBA can actually make one into a fool, but that’s a different discussion.)

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Re your relative, his lack of basic scientific literacy (he probably doesn’t even know Murray’s racist, bigoted, moronic arguments) puts him in the lurid camp.

I'd say he knows that mother-fucking racist bigot's half-assed racist arguments quite well, and shares them. Murray is a great example of the racist shitheads dominating the Republican party, who need to be called racists regularly, shamed for the fucking bigots they are, and invited to crawl under a fucking rock with the rest of their white-robed brethren.

And I fixed your post.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I'd say he knows that mother-fucking racist bigot's half-assed racist arguments quite well, and shares them. Murray is a great example of the racist shitheads dominating the Republican party, who need to be called racists regularly, shamed for the fucking bigots they are, and invited to crawl under a fucking rock with the rest of their white-robed brethren.

And I fixed your post.

I'm willing to bet that a person so clueless on matters scientific that he'd argue one race is superior to another has not read many books on the subject.

The reason I said he probably doesn't know Murray's arguments is because Murray has become a totem for racists. They cite him, but they don't really know what he said. They just think he argues one group is superior to another.

He doesn't. I've not read the Bell Curve and don't have a desire to do so because it doesn't interest me. But I did hear Murray speak on a few podcasts and explain that he was not comparing groups of people exclusively on genetic heritage, but instead looking at groups within societal context. What this means is that, admittedly, he was considering the conditions in which certain people grew up. I didn't know that. I also hadn't considered that the man isn't actually even a true scientist, but an anthropologist. This places a lot of what he says in the dubious bucket, as anthropology is the podiatry, or astrology, of science. The only less rigorous field might be economics.

So whatever you think of Murray, you should think less of the people who cite Murray. Because chances are, they don't even understand the theories they think are "scientific" justifications for their bigotry.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm willing to bet that a person so clueless on matters scientific that he'd argue one race is superior to another has not read many books on the subject.

The reason I said he probably doesn't know Murray's arguments is because Murray has become a totem for racists. They cite him, but they don't really know what he said. They just think he argues one group is superior to another.

He doesn't. I've not read the Bell Curve and don't have a desire to do so because it doesn't interest me. But I did hear Murray speak on a few podcasts and explain that he was not comparing groups of people exclusively on genetic heritage, but instead looking at groups within societal context. What this means is that, admittedly, he was considering the conditions in which certain people grew up. I didn't know that. I also hadn't considered that the man isn't actually even a true scientist, but an anthropologist. This places a lot of what he says in the dubious bucket, as anthropology is the podiatry, or astrology, of science. The only less rigorous field might be economics.

So whatever you think of Murray, you should think less of the people who cite Murray. Because chances are, they don't even understand the theories they think are "scientific" justifications for their bigotry.

I have read the Bell Curve, as well as other Murray publications, as well as more recent stuff he has written trying to do to women what he has done to African-Americans and Hispanics.

You're hearing retroactive attempts by Murray to distance himself from his writings, which he does in some contexts but not in others. Put him in front of the audience he prefers, he drops the qualifications.

Murray is an irredeemable manipulative little shit of a white nationalist.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I have read the Bell Curve, as well as other Murray publications, as well as more recent stuff he has written trying to do to women what he has done to African-Americans and Hispanics.

You're hearing retroactive attempts by Murray to distance himself from his writings, which he does in some contexts but not in others. Put him in front of the audience he prefers, he drops the qualifications.

Murray is an irredeemable manipulative little shit of a white nationalist.

I'll have to take you at your word there, because the Bell Curve seems best used as a doorstop.

He is amazingly polite in interviews. It is disarming.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'll have to take you at your word there, because the Bell Curve seems best used as a doorstop.

He is amazingly polite in interviews. It is disarming.

It is the role in Republican politics that used to be covered by Bill Buckley. The polite bigot who lets suburban Republicans feel superior because he criticizes people for their skin and their grammar.