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The smug style in American liberalism

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Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#171

Post by pessimizer »

CalChris wrote: post #112
wojcech wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I pointed out above, the status quo is actually pretty good. For you. And me. But we are not the majority. The majority does not benefit from automation, globalisation etc. as much as you and me. And it doesn't matter if in absolute terms we are all better of(for which citation would be needed, specifically for the lowest income bracket), it matters that the benefits of this new age are not spread around to thos…

"I love the poorly educated." This wasn't about the economy at all which is pretty good. This was a demagogue preying on gullibility. Y'all just elected him, citation unnecessary.

When you say that to your own supporters what you're saying is "I know that some of you don't have as much education as you may have wanted. You're welcome here, and will be listened to."

Instead of that, the Democrats ran on "stupid people are mad because they are poor. We smart, enlightened people should make them shut up, and show them that this isn't their country anymore." i.e. "We will herd the poorly educated."

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#172

Post by hash-set »

Pretty much sums up why I'm no longer involved in higher education.

I also tend to think a lot of liberals are mentally ill, but I concede that you can't begin a dialog with that assumption. The PC movement on campuses today is a dead end and will thus die or higher education will die. Their choice.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#173

Post by hash-set »

rorykoehler wrote: post #54
scarmig wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disclosure: I'm a Hillary voter, after much internal fretting about voting third party or writing in Obama. Looking at the reactions on my Facebook feed, the large majority of people seem to be taking from this experience the learning that Trump voters are all disgusting misogynistic racist pigs, and America deserves to be damned for its sins against the pro-Clinton media orthodoxy. It's tiring, because in terms…

Obama is a huge part of why this happened. He promised change and delivered empire.

Obama failed to even fundamentally pretend to enforce the laws of the land.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#174

Post by taserian »

czottmann wrote: post #127
tnmrnis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The similar thing is happening all over europe right know. Right-leaning voters don't want to identify themselves because the negative social implications can be quite significant. Also the west seem to have lost its debate culture. These days most debates of conservatives and progressives in shouting 'commie' and 'racist' at each other. In a good debate you wanna help your opponent to give the best possible argument…

> Also the west seem to have lost its debate culture. That, more than anything.

Debate competitions have devolved into some sort of speed-talking, where the number of arguments that the opponent needs to address is more important than the substance of the points themselves.

There's a RadioLab episode about that at http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/ An example they use is that if a debater A has six points in his speech that need to be addressed, and the opponent B only addresses four, A wins by default, since there were two points that were unaddressed.

It reminds me a lot about this election, where there's so much polluting the discourse that there's no time to address the substance (and it plays better to the audience, as Moonves stated).

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#175

Post by hash-set »

crispyambulance wrote: post #156
rorykoehler wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Promises were made. Why they weren't kept is irrelevant. Edit: to clarify this is not my personal position but more a reflection on how I see the electorate behaving.

... yes, "promises" are how people defend their vote, and now we're going to get a front-row seat to see what happens to "promises" when the bullshit artist, Trump, is in charge.

Yeah, see you really need to listen to yourself? That article says it all. Now he's a bullshit artist because he can't possibly be competent since he's ostensibly a conservative. It's a fallacy.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#176

Post by pessimizer »

majewsky wrote: post #108
CalChris wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, if you look up in the dictionary you'll find that deficit and debt are distinct words: debit: something that is owed or that one is bound to pay to or perform for another deficit: the amount by which expenditures or liabilities exceed income or assets http://www.dictionary.com/browse/deficit http://www.dictionary.com/browse/debt The Federal deficit was about $1.4T when Obama started and its about $600B now…

Only tangentially related, but I'm amazed by the absolute value of the US deficit. The German federal deficit used to be around 10-20 billion € (now down to zero) and everyone was crying over how horribly high it is. (I know that Germany is smaller, but it has at least a fourth of the US population.)

We have run massive trade deficits since Reagan. Those ultimately either have to show up as national debt or personal debt. After 35 years, we're nearly maxing out both. Germany has a trade surplus (basically doing the same thing to the rest of the EU.)

edit:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/national-income-account...

http://www.dw.com/en/italian-pm-renzi-lashes-out-at-german-t...

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#177

Post by jessaustin »

cafard wrote: post #161
jessaustin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Johnson seems to have gotten more votes than Nader; Johnson and Stein together definitely did so. In many of the "battleground" states, Trump's margin is totally swamped by third-party numbers. The observations you've made about Clinton aren't news to anyone. The fact she was nominated anyway , with her only primary opposition coming from outside the party, after the DNC had let it be known to all potential opponents…

I upvoted you. However, I think that Clinton was seen as the safe candidate: she had name recognition, she didn't scare Wall Street. That is not wholly the same as being the candidate of Smug. I trust that the Democratic Party will understand that it has run out of ideas. Will the Republicans know what to do? It strikes me as quite possible that Trump's qualities could be those of a one-term president.

Was that "didn't scare Wall Street" or was it "had accepted tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street"? If Wall Street gets final vet, the Democrat party has changed from the days of FDR. (OT: will they or any of the other Clinton Family Foundation donors ask for refunds?) The inability to see how conflicts of interest look from outside is a Smugness that has afflicted Democrats and Republicans both.

Trump could definitely be a one-termer. I could see him getting bored and letting Pence take over, or deciding to campaign for someone else in his cabinet, or even figuring out something so terrible that it will finally make evangelicals vote against him. Or, he could be like Reagan and W, just let his people handle everything, and sail on to a second term.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#179

Post by yummyfajitas »

foldr wrote: post #166
yummyfajitas wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's people calling Romney racist: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/8/27/1124649/-Romney-Goes... http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/07/romney-accused-... https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/romney-faces-challenge... https://thinkprogress.org/romney-dog-whistle-obamas-philosop...

Romney being a racist was not a major (or even minor) theme of Obama's campaign. I don't think you can really be suggesting that alleged racism on the part of the Republican candidate was as big an issue in the previous election as in the present one (where the Republican candidate made widely publicized explicitly racist statements).

I agree that the "$republican is literally hitler", "$republican is racist", etc, is more hysterical this time around. I attribute that to Trump being blatantly on the wrong side of the culture war [1].

I'm just saying that "XXX republican is racist" has lost it's meaning due to overuse. The boy has cried "hitler" about Bush, Romney, etc, and the villagers will no longer come running.

[1] I recommend reading Moldbug's article on the topic: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-... The tl;dr; is that while Bush and Romney were Brahmin Republicans, Trump is very clearly a Vaisya, leading to vastly more hysteria.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#180

Post by artimaeis »

xupybd wrote: post #66
ant6n wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, I don't buy it. I don't believe it. I listen to how Trump talks, how Trump supporters talk, all the racism, the sexism, the xenophobia, it's just not right. There's no excuse. It's the beginning of fascism. Btw, I'm German. (I've lived in North America for more than ten years)

Trumps treatment of women in the past makes my skin crawl, as an individual I think his behavior on that count is despicable. But if I were given the option of Hillary or Trump I'd vote Trump. I might be wrong but I've not heard him say anything that is racist. No doubt there are some that are supporting him because they're racist, that doesn't mean all are. On that note I would love someone to prove me wrong and sho…

> "There are issue like abortion, that to me are like the holocaust. I know most don't agree with me on that, and I can understand that they don't see a fetus as a life, I get it. But imagine for a second that you were firmly convinced that a fetus was as much a life as a new born."

Okay, so here I am - lifelong progressive Democrat. And I'll open up to this discussion.

So, I'm believing that at the moment of conception a full viable life is formed. And that life has the full rights and protections afforded by the State (both federal and all levels beneath).

Let's start with the simple route - the parents are happy to have the child, are financially capable, and medically sound for delivery. In this nothing is different from how it is today. A healthy child is born to a happy family.

Our differences seem to come from all the complications in the process.

Let's start with an understandable one - the life of the mother is in danger if she delivers the child. This is a horrifying decision. Does the state force the delivery of the child and thus condemn the mother to death? Is not one of the roles of modern medicine to protect people from death? This is, after all, why we now give birth in hospitals.

So, before I go further arguing with myself - what's your rationale as a conservative Christian on that scenario? Is it really as simple as "protect the child's life at all costs"?

For what it's worth - I don't think anyone's an idiot for being on the conservative side. I think a lot of the issues we struggle with in this day and age (such as abortion) are just far more complicated and intricate than most give credit for.

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