The smug style in American liberalism • Hacker News Board

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#211

Post by Nursie » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:03 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #206

Nursie wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that attitude sums up the problem nicely. Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron. I disagree fundamentally - if you stop regarding the 'other side' as 'other', as stupid, as meritless, and start to consider their opinions when making policy, well we might make progress.

>Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron. It's wrong to think that everyone who disagrees with you on anything is a moron. It's also wrong to deny the existence of morons who occasionally do moronic things. I mean, we are talking about a group of people who held a referendum, knowing that the vote would be close, and then didn't even have a plan for what to do afterwards. The country is in chaos a…

A last minute, failed attempt to do something a few months before a referendum that they comfortably and smugly assumed they would win easily. No plan was made because the people in a position to make one didn't want to and assumed victory.

All this after AFAICT two decades of ignoring or belittling people for their deeply held views.

That doesn't really cut it and so we get the result we got.

Personally I neither think the country is in chaos nor do I believe that a vote for Brexit is a mark of idiocy. And even if I did I would try to recognise that I share a country with such folk and have a duty to take their views into account. The catastophising and continued moralistic judgements are another symptom of this poisonous thought pattern.

Brexit was the breakpoint, but the preceding decades of smug politics are what got us there.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#212

Post by gaius » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

lintiness wrote: post #132

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...

the true irony of the romney hatred is he's probably the best qualified and most moral candidate the country's ever seen.

Well if you forget Thomas Jefferson.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#213

Post by ozzy6009 » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

xupybd wrote: post #97

gozur88 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

1. The USA has the best doctors and hospitals. The marginal benefit to having better doctors and hospitals is completely dwarfed by their higher prices. Would you be willing to pay 2x to have a 5% better chance of no complications on a surgery for a rare condition? Well the USA does exactly that.

2. The USA subsidizes drug development for the rest of the world. All the R&D happens here, and the only reason so much money is spent on this R&D is because the drug companies can charge maximum price to Americans. Other countries negotiate as a block to lower prices. This is great for those countries (cheaper drugs) and the drug companies (marginally expanded markets), but it increases the fraction of money from the US going to that R&D.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#214

Post by dopamean » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

clifanatic wrote: post #184

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…

I remember my Facebook feed from 8 years ago - my liberal friends were celebrating, and my conservative friends were disappointed, but trying to be (somewhat) conciliatory. Now, my conservative friends are celebrating but my liberal friends attitude is "screw America, I hope you choke in your own vomit, you racist bastards".

This is a meaningless, useless anecdote. My experience eight years ago was that conservatives were foaming at the mouth in anger when Obama won. They had literally just spent the last year calling him the antichrist and saying that he was literally not American. And today my experience on facebook is literally frowny emojis from liberals and not much else.

Edit: LITERALLY

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#215

Post by rbehrends » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

Sacho wrote: post #199

rbehrends wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When pollsters call the preference falsification continues. I don't buy this. Sam Wang had projected Clinton winning the popular vote by 4.0% (+/- .6%). She's currently projected to win the popular vote by about 1% (the Electoral College margin is an artifact of the electoral system and unrelated to voting preferences). That means that maybe 1 in 60 Americans voted differently from what the polls predicted. So, whi…

Sam Wang called a Trump win practically impossible: https://twitter.com/samwangphd/status/788544053059153924 http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/11/05/poll-expert-i-wi... http://election.princeton.edu/2016/10/10/some-secrets-are-no... Specifically the last link exhibits the smugness this article is talking about. Here's a quote from it: > This seems like a good time to reveal one of the Princeton Election Consortiu…

As you may have noticed, I pointed out myself that the polls were wrong. My point wasn't that they were right, but that the amount by which they were off contradicted claims that more than a small minority of voters were hiding their preferences from pollsters.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#216

Post by foldr » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #211

foldr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron. It's wrong to think that everyone who disagrees with you on anything is a moron. It's also wrong to deny the existence of morons who occasionally do moronic things. I mean, we are talking about a group of people who held a referendum, knowing that the vote would be close, and then didn't even have a plan for what to do afterwards. The country is in chaos a…

A last minute, failed attempt to do something a few months before a referendum that they comfortably and smugly assumed they would win easily. No plan was made because the people in a position to make one didn't want to and assumed victory. All this after AFAICT two decades of ignoring or belittling people for their deeply held views. That doesn't really cut it and so we get the result we got. Personally I neither th…

>No plan was made because the people in a position to make one didn't want to and assumed victory.

No plan was made by long-term Brexit supporters either. Where is Nigel Farage's plan? What useful suggestions has Boris Johnson made?

>And even if I did I would try to recognise that I share a country with such folk and have a duty to take their views into account.

We did take their views into account, as I said. The Conservative government bent over backwards to accommodate them.

The strategy you're proposing (engagement) was tried and has failed. It only had the effect of making Brexit seem more reasonable than it really was. Now we are in a position where the electorate have done something insane, and yet are in a position to demand that we take their insane views seriously.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#217

Post by aninhumer » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #206

Nursie wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that attitude sums up the problem nicely. Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron. I disagree fundamentally - if you stop regarding the 'other side' as 'other', as stupid, as meritless, and start to consider their opinions when making policy, well we might make progress.

>Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron. It's wrong to think that everyone who disagrees with you on anything is a moron. It's also wrong to deny the existence of morons who occasionally do moronic things. I mean, we are talking about a group of people who held a referendum, knowing that the vote would be close, and then didn't even have a plan for what to do afterwards. The country is in chaos a…

>So the public insisted that they do something ridiculous.

The public aren't the ones who decided to have a referendum, the government are. If you're arguing that it was moronic to hold a referendum with no clear plan for one of the possible outcomes, I totally agree, but that's not the public's fault.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#218

Post by iainmerrick » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

hash-set wrote: post #187

dkrich wrote: post #168

Bravo. Full disclosure, I voted for HRC. However, I've been saying this to my liberal friends for the entire election cycle. The message from of all of my liberal Facebook friends has been some derivative of: "Hear me out. We know Hillary isn't the best candidate, but you have to vote for Trump. If you don't you're a racist misogynist. Also, if you vote for a third party candidate, you are basically voting for Donald…

I'm just curious how old you are because I lived through the Bill Clinton years and it was appalling how bad the Clintons were. Their legacy from Arkansas all the way up the Pay to Play Clinton Foundation has been completely consistent--to bend and break the law everywhere possible if it is to their benefit to do so and then engage in cover ups, blackmail, and possibly murder to get away with it. They are a modern da…

Then the leaks started dropping and we got a small window in a large world of corruption. Did none of this occur to you?

It seemed to me more like a very large window onto what turned out to be a pretty small world of corruption. I don't have an axe to grind but I've never seen a straight answer as to what her "crimes" supposedly are.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#219

Post by goostavos » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:16 PM UTC

emless wrote: post #119

cronjobber wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is definitely the preference falsification election. I agree. In fact, the point at which I started to think that Trump could win was Hillary's "Basket of Deplorables" blunder. It was a blunder because the way she phrased it, she put far too many in that basket. Paradoxically, because people believed what she said —that there are many Deplorables— she might have initiated the very preference cascade that cost…

With the risk of sounding "smug", I think most of this thread offers a poor analysis of the election. The reason Trump won is, presumably, to a large extent that he managed to make his message more relevant. If this election would have been about schools, even in the same context, he most likely wouldn't have won and the deplorables comment wouldn't have mattered or even happened in the first place. We've seen this i…

It doesn't sound smug, it just sounds massively over simplified and assumed.

The reasons for Trump's win probably varies wildly from region to region and person to person. Anecdotally, I know several who voted only because he was _not_ Hilary, not due to any message resonance. Hell, I mean, personally, despite being politically closest to Hilary on paper, I had no intention of voting for her, and none of those reasons had anything to do with Trump.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#220

Post by squozzer » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

Where I think this approach has been especially disastrous has been climate change. When people challenged the facts - which I don't entirely believe but the potential outcome is too serious to just blow off - they were humiliated and discredited, sometimes viciously.

When people challenged the feasibility of solutions - ditto.

Which in my mind signaled the worst - the desire to break resistance was stronger than the desire to persuade. Which led to a belief that maybe something more sinister was in the cards - a la Pol Pot's killing fields.

Not a reasonable belief but when you see others dehumanized for questioning the know-it-alls, it's understandable.