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The smug style in American liberalism

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Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#91

Post by maxerickson »

xupybd wrote: post #76
ant6n wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you say abortion is an issue that feels like a Holocaust to you. To me racism and xenophobia are the the things that fuelled the actual Holocaust. I tried to outline some of the racism inherent to Trump further up. To be honest, I don't understand conservative Christians love for republicans. They preach social darwinism, often they preach fear of others. Is it all based on this notion that "The left also treat…

This is one of the things I don't understand about modern politics, morally conservative always seem to go towards extreme capitalism and morally progressives tend to go towards socialism. Personally I'm more middle of the road on socialism VS capitalism. But I tend to vote and align with parties on their moral stance. Even though Trump appears to have a crappy personal Moral standard his policies at least align more…

This is one of the things I don't understand about modern politics, morally conservative always seem to go towards extreme capitalism and morally progressives tend to go towards socialism.

A cynical and maybe excessively nasty answer is that people that just care about lower taxes have pandered to moral conservatives in order to get tax cutting representatives elected.

The more nuanced answer is probably that there has been a coalition for 30-40 years along those lines. I think over the next several elections, those alignments are going to shift in a big way. Trump doesn't come from the historic coalition, Sanders almost won as an outsider in the Democratic primary. The parties are not well aligned with the electorate.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#92

Post by jahewson »

ant6n wrote: post #62
xupybd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of what you call racism from Trump. I haven't been following him super close (not American), but from what I've seen he wants to tighten up immigration. It's my understanding that this is not racism, but protectionism. Here in NZ it's very hard for people to immigrate here (I have had friends have to leave) but we don't associate racism with tight immigration policy.

The Huffpost did a round-up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-exam... For example there were proposals to not allow Muslims to immigrate to the US. There was calling Mexicans 'criminals' and 'rapists'. Beating of black people at Trump rallies (which he endorsed). This shows up this night on my twitter feed: "I am at a Trump rally in Manhattan, and thousands are chanting 'We hate Muslims, we hat…

I want to agree with you but Muslims are not a race. Neither are Mexicans for that matter. And being Islamaphobic and xenophobic genuinely is different from being racist. Perhaps not very different, but different nonetheless.

N.B. The chant you mention was in fact a hoax.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#93

Post by maxerickson »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #64
ant6n wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a fair bit of arguing with the folks here on HN, it's interesting because it doesn't match the echo chamber I have on twitter or facebook. There seem to be a lot of Trump supporter here, which I find very surprising. This idea keeps coming up again and again that using the word 'racist' in the context of the Trump campaign is essentially name-calling, an insult. The problem is, racism is a big, big, big iss…

Using 'racist' in the context of criticizing Republicans is just name-calling. Bush displayed no open racism, bullied no one, and was not xenophobic. Same for Romney. Yet the anti-Trump language is just a more hysterical version of the anti-Bush and anti-Romney language. At some point the term "racist" came to mean "insufficiently left wing". This happened because left wing types called every Republican "raaacciiiiis…

Trump is looking to get about the same amount of votes as Romney.

Clinton is getting a lot less votes than Obama got.

So there is an alternative explanation there, that rather than one group of people getting sick of shrill accusations of racism, a different group of people just doesn't like Hilary Clinton all that much.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#94

Post by jessaustin »

On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me."

What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years.

It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak.

He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style.

W's was perhaps a more subtle dominating response to the Smug, but at this point we can't say it was different than Trump's. Both of them went to school with the Smug. They know what it represents both to itself and to the majority of the nation. Neither of them buy into it themselves, unlike e.g. Romney.

Democrats lose when the Republican candidate has an authentic and rhetorically effective response to the Smug. Now that it's happened twice, at least some Republicans will remember it the next time around. Democrats will either do the hard work of excising this from their ideology and communication, or they will lose in the same way again.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#96

Post by soft_dev_person »

gadders wrote: post #87

It's not just America - see the responses after Brexit as well. The major claim seems to be that most people are just not intelligent enough to have voted correctly.

After Brexit, the smugness continued. Remain supporters took the campaign for a revote that got millions of signatures as a sign people were regretting, but obviously the signatures mostly were from people who had voted to remain.

Still, "they regret it already" was the message spreading throughout Europe for a while. I recently saw some research stating that a very small percentage had changed their mind about the vote, and they came more or less equally from both sides. So no, no significant regret noticed.

Not sure why I'm writing this. It just seems that the people seeming to vote rationally are completely irrational when it comes to judging the other side. Did we collectively lose the skill of empathy?

We need to understand this or we'll be repeating these mistakes forever.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#97

Post by xupybd »

gozur88 wrote: post #22
M_Grey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well good news! Now you won't have it at all. Wait until you try medical bankruptcy on for size.

Sure, because anyone can afford $2500/month. It's practically free.

Why is healthcare so expensive in the states? People seem to focus on private Heath insurance vs Obama care. But neither should be so expensive. Why are other countries able to provide way cheaper care?

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#98

Post by cafard »

jessaustin wrote: post #94

On November 6, 2000, during his final pre-election stump speech, Bush explained his history of political triumph thusly: "They misunderesimated me." What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years. It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak. He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style. W's was perhaps a more subtle dominating response to the Smug, b…

You aren't wrong, or not all wrong. However, you must consider a) that Nader made a very large difference in 2000, and b) that Trump got to run against Hillary Clinton. She is intelligent and able, but she has been a handy target for conservative media for twenty years now, and a good deal of that stuck with voters.

"Both of them went to school with the Smug"; well, yes, and some would find it curious that our populists come from Yale and Penn.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#99

Post by jahewson »

xupybd wrote: post #76
ant6n wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you say abortion is an issue that feels like a Holocaust to you. To me racism and xenophobia are the the things that fuelled the actual Holocaust. I tried to outline some of the racism inherent to Trump further up. To be honest, I don't understand conservative Christians love for republicans. They preach social darwinism, often they preach fear of others. Is it all based on this notion that "The left also treat…

This is one of the things I don't understand about modern politics, morally conservative always seem to go towards extreme capitalism and morally progressives tend to go towards socialism. Personally I'm more middle of the road on socialism VS capitalism. But I tend to vote and align with parties on their moral stance. Even though Trump appears to have a crappy personal Moral standard his policies at least align more…

The simple explanation is that the left won't touch socially conservative ideas, leaving the right free to pander to that base. Combine this with policies that look like tax cuts to the casual observer and you've got a winning formula, despite that fact that the socially conservative electorate isn't interested in libertarian capitalism at all.

Just look at how Trump changed his views on abortion to pander to the social conservatives, and as a consequence won huge evangelical support.

So the right has taken the attitude that they don't care about morals, they'll adopt any policy which allows them to win so they can go about pushing the agenda of liberal capitalism for the benefit of themselves. Sure, there are some genuine moralists on the right too - but none of those just won an election.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#100

Post by humanrebar »

rorykoehler wrote: post #65
scarmig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I do have plenty of foreign policy disagreements in particular with him. But he's the best we've had in living memory. Liberalism has had a smug aspect as long as I've been alive, but at this point that aspect has metastasized to something worse. The norms that have developed are toxic to progressive movements. They certainly alienate people, but beyond that they make it so you don't even have the institutional c…

I agree with everything you have said. Obama is a thoughtful type and a great orator. I'm sure he would have liked to enact some of the change he promised but he didn't. In many ways America regressed further under his watch and this is the outcome.

You're too kind to Obama. Obama did troll his opponents on many occasions (like saying snarky things about birth certificates). He ran on a better type of politics, but he gave up on it very quickly, to phrase it charitably.
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