Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This all day.

I'm sick of going back and forth with Sebby who seems to think his "the robots are coming from us all" is the only message that has merit. As far as I'm concerned, this article sums up pretty much every issue we're having right now. The fact that the national narrative is: Democrats don't understand the white working rural class, is the biggest con pulled on this country within the last however many decades.

Everyone should read the whole article, but it's going to take a lot to convince me that these aren't the problems this country is facing:

The honest truths that rural, Christian, white Americans don’t want to accept and until they do nothing is going to change, are:

-Their economic situation is largely the result of voting for supply-side economic policies that have been the largest redistribution of wealth from the bottom/middle to the top in U.S. history.

-Immigrants haven’t taken their jobs. If all immigrants, legal or otherwise, were removed from the U.S., our economy would come to a screeching halt and prices on food would soar.

-Immigrants are not responsible for companies moving their plants overseas. Almost exclusively white business owners are the ones responsible because they care more about their share holders who are also mostly white than they do American workers.

-No one is coming for their guns. All that has been proposed during the entire Obama administration is having better background checks.

-Gay people getting married is not a threat to their freedom to believe in whatever white God you want to. No one is going to make their church marry gays, make gays your pastor, accept gays for membership.

-Women having access to birth control doesn’t affect their life either, especially women who they complain about being teenage, single mothers.

-Blacks are not “lazy moochers living off their hard earned tax dollars” anymore than many of your fellow rural neighbors. People in need are people in need. People who can’t find jobs because of their circumstances, a changing economy, outsourcing overseas, etc. belong to all races.

-They get a tremendous amount of help from the government they complain does nothing for them. From the roads and utility grids they use to the farm subsidies, crop insurance, commodities protections…they benefit greatly from government assistance. The Farm Bill is one of the largest financial expenditures by the U.S. government. Without government assistance, their lives would be considerably worse.

-They get the largest share of Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

-They complain about globalization but line up like everyone else to get the latest Apple product. They have no problem buying foreign-made guns, scopes, and hunting equipment. They don’t think twice about driving trucks whose engine was made in Canada, tires made in Japan, radio made in Korea, computer parts made in Malaysia…

-They use illicit drugs as much as any other group. But, when other people do it is a “moral failing” and they should be severely punished, legally. When they do it, it is a “health crisis” that needs sympathy and attention.

-When jobs dry up for whatever reasons, they refuse to relocate but lecture the poor in places like Flint for staying in towns that are failing.

-They are quick to judge minorities for being “welfare moochers” but don’t think twice about cashing their welfare check every month.

-They complain about coastal liberals, but the taxes from California and New York are what covers their farm subsidies, helps maintain their highways, and keeps their hospitals in their sparsely populated areas open for business.

-They complain about “the little man being run out of business” then turn around and shop at big box stores.

-They make sure outsiders are not welcome, deny businesses permits to build, then complain about businesses, plants opening up in less rural areas.

-Government has not done enough to help them in many cases but their local and state governments are almost completely Republican and so too are their Representatives and Senators. Instead of holding them accountable, they vote them in over and over and over again.

-All the economic policies and ideas that could help rural America belong to the Democratic Party: raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, infrastructure spending, reusable energy growth, slowing down the damage done by climate change, healthcare reform…all of these and more would really help a lot of rural Americans.

What I understand is rural, Christian, white America is entrenched in fundamentalist belief systems, don’t trust people outside their tribe, have been force fed a diet of misinformation and lies for decades, are unwilling to understand their own situations, truly believe whites are superior to all races. No amount of understanding is going to change these things or what they believe. No amount of niceties is going to get them to be introspective. No economic policy put forth by someone outside their tribe is going to be listened to no matter how beneficial it would be for them. I understand rural, Christian, white America all too well. I understand their fears are based on myths and lies. I understand they feel left behind by a world they don’t understand and don’t really care to. I understand they are willing to vote against their own interest if they can be convinced it will make sure minorities are harmed more. I understand their Christian beliefs and morals are truly only extended to fellow white Christians. I understand them. I understand they are the problem with progress and will always be because their belief systems are constructed against it. The problem isn’t a lack of understanding by “coastal elites” of rural, Christian, white America. The problem is a lack of understanding why rural, Christian, white America believes, votes, behaves the ways it does by rural, Christian, white America.

http://forsetti.tumblr.com/post/1531...nt-the-problem

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

In the good timing department: today we learned that the Trump Foundation filed documents admitting that it engaged in self-dealing in 2015 and unspecified years in the past.

Media sure blew that one up for him before the election, huh?

As for your links, did you actually read that second one? I mean, come on. One night's news was dedicated to multiple sexual assault allegations against a presidential candidate, and one single poll asked about it. And this is equated to emails from a campaign staffer on a campaign that had nonstop wall-to-wall coverage of it's emails for more than a year.

That's some great evidence you've got.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I have no polling, but I don't think swing voters care so much about that issue.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I think what GGG was saying, accurately, is that when you posted that, you were in the middle of an exchange about something else entirely.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

In Minnesota, cities and counties are not allowed to levy income or sales taxes on their own. The state reserves that power to itself and collects all of those tax revenues, which it then distributes to municipalities in what is unfortunately called "Local Government Aid." There's no "aid" to it. It's the cities' cut of sales and income taxes, but Minneapolis gets more of it than a small town does, so the GOP, which just re-took both houses of the legislature, will again try to slash it. They did the last time they were in charge, leading to significant property tax increases all over the place (counties and cities can do their own property taxes).

To which I want to propose that instead of LGA, we just keep all tax revenues in the cities and counties where they are collected. See, good folks of the red exurbs and rural areas, just how gigantically fucked you guys would be without money from Minneapolis and St. Paul to pay for all your shit. You bastards think it's the other way around, but it's not and it wouldn't take you long to realize it.

We could do the same thing at the federal level as far as I'm concerned too.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Frankly, I'm sick of going back and forth with you. I would question whether you think the negative press Trump generated by himself based on the shit he actually said every single day should be offset by a manufactured "corruption" issue that the press seized on like a dog with a fucking bone. I would question whether you think the timing of (bullshit) negative revelations makes the relative amounts of negative coverage irrelevant. But you'll probably tell me about how the Democrats didn't address robots enough and Trump promised imaginary jobs.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I was pregnant with monoamniotic-monochorionic twins right before the Texas 20 week ban was passed. My pregnancy was extraordinarily risky. Basically, the embryo split AFTER the amniotic sac was developed and so both twins were in the same placenta. If I had carried them to viability, they would have been delivered prematurely via C-section at 32 to 34 weeks. But their chances were always very, very small. As soon as I found out what sort of pregnancy I was dealing with, I knew that termination at any point, including past 20 weeks, was something I may have to consider. It was a heartbreaking situation to be in, but it was one that belonged to me and my family with the advice of our doctors. Why the legislature (who didn't even get that their "20 week ban" actually means 22 weeks by thew way we count pregnancy because the first two weeks are BEFORE fertilization) needed to be involved I'll never know.

Fortunately(?), their hearts stopped beating around 9 1/2 weeks and I didn't have to make any decisions other than D&C or wait for natural miscarriage. I went with D&C.

I haven't been able to get pregnant since.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This is an awful story. I'm sorry you had to experience this ordeal (including thinking about terminating).

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

The bigger point is that whether the press was harder on Trump than Clinton from an editorial viewpoint, it happily gave him lots and lots of free coverage for whatever he was saying, because people watched and read when he was the subject. Trump knew this very well, and was expert at grabbing that attention. Since the mainstream press generally thinks its job is to report, rather than to impose its own views, any editorial bias was de minimus compared to the value of the free time and eyeballs it gave Trump. (And this wasn't initially a Democratic complaint -- look at what happened to Trump's rivals in the primary.)

Now, predictably, Sebby will say that Trump did a better job of playing the media, and that's just how the game works.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Yes, what he said. Very sorry to hear this.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

The Gallup data I suggest you look at goes pretty deep into many of those issues.

The reason Hillary was seen as extreme in your circle is because they are used to people like Cruz lying to them and they believe him: http://www.politifact.com/texas/stat...backs-unlimit/

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Oh, shit, I'm sorry.

My heart goes out to you and Mr. Replaced Texan.

I have a fair bit of rage at those who characterize every D&C as an abortion....

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Relatedly:

"According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America’s economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country’s economic activity last year.

Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy."

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Huh. And, fwiw.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I am very sorry for your loss.

I have experienced pregnancy loss in several ways: a missed miscarriage after we had seen the heartbeat, an ectopic, one of the chicklets had a twin that we lost towards the end of the first trimester, and more early losses than I can even recall. Diagnosed with recurrent pregnancy loss. Support for those who have experienced pregnancy loss has become one of the primary charitable causes we support.

I didn't make it to my D&C with the missed miscarriage and that was without a doubt the worst day of my life.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Thank you. I'm also very sorry for your losses. It's awful to go through.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I am also so sorry for this.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

A comment on the Forsetti piece posted by Thurgreed.

There is far, far more truth in the article than most people realize. I qualify as a coastal elitist. I am the poster boy for coastal elites. Born in NYC suburbs, Ivy education, career in Washington.

Oddly, my closest lifelong friends are the thirty or so people who passed through my combat platoon lo these 45 years ago. They are, by and large, flyover state people who are utterly incapable of realizing that the government is the only reason they have even a semblance of middle class life. They scapegoat. They blame the government for their failure to move up the economic ladder, notwithstanding that virtually every one of them that did get a college education got it at a state university for a pittance. They cannot understand the enormous changes of globalization. They only know that they are worse off than their parents, they don't come home to an Ozzie and Harriet marriage, and their kids have even fewer prospect than they did.


Generalizations are always flawed, but even those in this group who aren't fundamentalist know nothings have a willful blindness to the causes of their situation. In the run-up to this year's reunion, these men who I love were vehement Trumpeteers on social media. My closest friend in the group, a Californian, decided it was best if he didn't attend. I agreed, and stayed away.

There is one point in the Forsetti article I would personally disagree with. I WOULD come for their god damn guns, in the sense that civilians should not have AR 15s. I would tighten penalties on gun owners who don't secure their weapons. I know, first hand, what these machines can do. If your unemployed, bullied, meth addled son gets your semiautomatic rifle and sprays his high school it, you have committed murder. But that's just a coastal elitist view.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This. And also thank you for sharing. Somehow (:rolleyes:) in inherent difficulty in these choices doesn't seem to get much focus.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Yeah, that's making the rounds, but no, she shouldn't be challenging the results. How would that even work?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm also very sorry you guys had to go through that.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Here's the things (aside from robots that are going to make us all destitute while awash in cheap robot-produced goods): they don't have to be. Move to a city. Teach those kids languages. See if they can do STEM stuff. Those kids can/will have lots of chances.

I was thinking this morning about what would have happened at gun control been premised on an individual right to bear arms, but expressly predicated on the need for a well-regulated militia. Like, aim for the court reading the 2nd amendment as prohibiting regulation of guns that places an undue burden on organizing a militia for the defense of the nation.

A militia might need an AR 15, but it likely also would need the person bearing it to be registered and trained and the weapon and ammunition for it closely tracked and it's storage secured. I could live with a broader range of civilian weapons being available if they have to maintained similar to how I imagine (with little basis or experience) they are in the military.

Probably wouldn't have changed the outcome or appeased the gun nuts in any way, but likely is closer to the spirit of the founder's intent (if one cares about such things which one probably shouldn't).

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Understanding them is a worthwhile endeavor, I guess. But isn't it more productive to find ways to properly message them? Trump just manipulated them without a hell of a lot complex marketing. One would think the Democratic Party, with far more resources, could similarly do so.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Take their guns all you want, but don't take my drones. They'll defend my home and castle against all those neanderthals with AR 15s.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'm so sorry for what you went through. When I was 19 I had a D&C to remove an embryo whose heart had stopped and I was so wracked with grief I literally didn't move from the couch for 2 weeks after. My sister finally got me up to rejoin the world. I was grief-stricken, and even though there was a huge part of me that didn't even want the baby in the first place, I didn't feel any relief.

I can't imagine what it would be like if you were actually happy to be pregnant. Big hugs to you, RT. That is heartbreaking.

[Abortion was not legal in Canada at the time -- would become legal later that year]

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

This is a follow up: https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to...0ba#.jghzkl2y3

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Yeah, but why should we discuss this when we can argue about about the "war on women," the "war on Xmas," who should use what bathrooms, whose "religious liberty (whatever the fuck that is) is being violated, who needs trigger warnings and safe spaces, who's a sexist, who violated email protocol, who had ties to Putin, what constitutes "cultural appropriation," or what the cast of Hamilton thinks about a VP who believes gays can be "cured" of their genetically wired sexual persuasion.

See a trend? We'll do almost anything - divert ourselves with every form of decadent and frivolous debate possible - to avoid looking at the graph you posted.

What elephant? I see no elephant. Let us stop talking of this elephant. It's getting in the way of me asserting all of my grievances!

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

"Should" is like "deserve." You've seen the end of Unforgiven.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I'd rather the Democratic Party focused on concrete ways to make their lives better, and then communicated that.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Donald Trump, speaking Sebby's language:

“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”

Bannon too:

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

I hope this person is wrong.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

There is very little anyone can do for these people. The sole thing I can conceive of is a guaranteed income, and that's not politically possible.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Of course it's politically possible. After four years of seeing Trump and Republicans do jack sh*t for them, working-class Americans are going to be ready for something else, and if we've learned anything in this election, it's (a) that confident predictions about what's politically possible are worthless, and (b) when voters are dissatisfied with where they are, they may go for just about anything.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Not if we become an authoritarian dictatorship in the interim, as that bit of doom porn you offered suggests we will.

In seriousness, I agree that Trump will likely be out on his ass in four years. But the guaranteed income thing will still be difficult. I think the idea has a lot of promise. But it is an admission that Capitalism is becoming obsolete. That's a tough sell.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Sometimes I post things here because I agree with them, and sometimes I post things because they are interesting and deserve a read. I trust you will not deny that Trump has strong authoritarian characteristics. He is essentially narcissistic, not ideological, and it's all about him.

My view right now is that he would love to be a dictator, but that he is not competent enough and will be constrained by our institutions, especially Congress. Also, he's not particularly popular. His administration is going to feature a lot of poor decisionmaking, partly because he doesn't have comprehensive policies (see above re ideology) to get everyone marching in the same direction, partly because he is hiring loyalists who are out of their depth, and partly because he likes to foster backstabbing among his underlings that ensures his relevance and primacy.

In short, I think he is a would-be authoritarian who will not be able to consolidate power. But I didn't think he would be able to win the general election, because I thought he would split the GOP, and I was wrong about the extent to which Republicans would swallow their objections to him and line up behind a bigoted, incompetent reality-TV star simply because it offered them a chance to win. For that reason, I'm worried that I am again underestimating him, and that he will be able to maintain power effectively because he will divert concerns about his self-dealing and mismanagement by scapegoating immigrants, minorities and elites. He does have a knack for that. Fool me once, etc.

It's not that capitalism is obsolete, it's that the promise that a rising tide would lift all boats has proved wrong in practice. It could work but it doesn't, because the system is rigged to make sure that few share the gains. Republicans' relentless efforts to redistribute upwards, and to block things that government might do for the common good, are a big part of the problem. For example: in theory, cross-border trade generates societal benefits and the government can protect those who get left behind; in practice, Republicans (and some Democrats) make sure that no one is taxed to enable the latter to happen. So Democrats need to find new ways to make sure that no one gets left behind.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You cannot tax the winners in trade (or tech, which I believe is the much bigger job killer) adequately enough to cover the general obligations govt promises to all of its citizens, and also provide special relief to provide a dignified life to those unique millions suffering as result of tech and trade. There's simply not adequate $$$ there.

I'll also note, though I agree with your assessment regarding trade and tech making so many people obsolete, it's quite a cold and defeatist policy to give up and just pay the economically useless for breathing. I prefer a massive debt workout. Cancel all unsecured and student debt. Wipe out the overhang holding us back and transfer trillions from banks and investors straight into Main Street's pockets. I mean, if we're going to talk guaranteed income, we might as well go full radical, no?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

It's not politically possible because one party has no interest at all in doing anything for them, except, now apparently, pander to their racism and xenophobia.

To be fair, it's not clear that the other party would be particularly keen on the idea under past leadership either, but it may well be moving in that direction.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

No, it's an admission that the laissez faire form of capitalism that's dominated both parties over the past two and a half decades is becoming obsolete and the type of capitalism that the rest of the developed world has, and we had before we started dismantling it in 1980, was probably closer to the right track.

It bugs me when leftists say that capitalism is inherently exploitative and unequal. I mean, ours is, but it doesn't have to be. Stronger worker protections, more redistribution and stronger safety net may even be able to make us richer in the aggregate, but even if not, can make us better off as a whole. Especially if everyone has access to health care.

But bankers hedge funders would need to be happy with fewer billions, so...

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

You can. You mean you won't (and we won't).

So you're not interested in those who can't compete in a modern economy and instead want a hand out to the middle/upper middle class? Because cancelling student debt is wonderful for people like us (actually, I just paid the last of mine, so not me personally) and does nothing for the rural or working class poor.

They'd probably get some benefit from cancelling credit card debt, but again, the bigger debtors are going to have bigger incomes, meaning you're again going to disproportionately benefit those who are better off.

Then then there's what you mean by "cancel." If you mean have the government assume, you're probably talking about bigger obligations than UBI scheme. ETA: Numbers pulled off the internet suggest total credit card and student debt to be around $2T, which is enough to give $6,250 to every person in the U.S.

If you literally mean "cancel," you're going to have a signification taking issue (I think) and you're going to create a significant bank run.

I don't know why you think there's de-leverage still to happen or that what's currently holding back growth is a lack of available credit. Doesn't feel like credit is hard to come by to me. And we've already had a bunch of deleveraging (did I mention I paid off my student loans?).

There's nothing particularly radical about guaranteed income.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Sure you can. Look at the Scandinavian countries.

Look, the economy is still growing. The problem is not that the economy is stagnant. The problem is that the gains are not shared.

Instead of paying people for breathing, pay people for some kind of work, whether it's picking up litter, painting roofs, or digging and filling holes. What you are describing is a one-time hit. What I am groping towards is a different social compact.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

And now Jill Stein is raising money for a recount. http://www.wkow.com/story/33783289/2...t-in-wisconsin