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The smug style in American liberalism

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Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#221

Post by foldr »

aninhumer wrote: post #217
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…

>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.

I mean that the public insisted that we leave the EU by voting to leave the EU. Just because someone asks a silly question doesn't mean that you have to give a silly answer.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#222

Post by ant6n »

BakaRakuda wrote: post #78
ant6n wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That twitter thing you just linked, did you read the replies under it? I'm not 100% sure of the context. But it looks like it's fake. @SRowntreeNews @WALTBACON Dude that's a fake account. Don't RT that garbage. @aobrien7 good catch, thanks @SRowntreeNews This is fake, @michaeldweiss. Part of disinfo network spreading false rumors. They were very active during Euro soccer riots. -- If thats case aren't you just perpet…

> ...aren't you just perpetuating a narrative...

Uh, no. I wrote that something 'showed up on my twitter feed', implying it's unverified. Last night there wasn't a way to verify it, it merely seemed plausible. In any case, the Huffpost article sufficiently makes the case.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#223

Post by antisthenes »

aaronchall wrote: post #202
bambax wrote: post #151

Wow. This article was published on April 21st, before the end of the primaries. > Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a m…

It's not the first time he's been wrong. Krugman has lived his life in a liberal urban academic bubble and has no idea what the rest of the USA is like. We would do well to remember that when we have the misfortune to come across his writings in the future.

I've been talking to a few liberal friends this morning who have no frame of reference outside of living on one of the USA's coasts all their lives.

The perceptual bubbles are very real for both sides, and to someone who has been on both sides of the aisle - they're terrifying; because breaking through the bubble is exceptionally hard and costly, doubly so if that person is already an established adult.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#224

Post by Sacho »

rbehrends wrote: post #215
Sacho wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dedicated most of my post trying to describe how much Sam Wang was assured despite "just" a 4% margin, how big it actually is. That may have clouded my real point.

In my last paragraph, I tried to put forth a theory that leaves the preference interpretation valid. What do you think about it?

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#225

Post by iainmerrick »

ozzy6009 wrote: post #213
xupybd wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

2 is a good point, but I don't think 1 is correct.

I've heard that Cuba has the best doctors, and they often play a crucial role in emergency aid to other countries.

For quality of health care overall, the US is just a solid middle ranker when it comes to life expectancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... That's only one metric, of course, but it seems like an important one.

It seems like the US pays about 3x more (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...) for moderately worse outcomes.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#226

Post by aninhumer »

foldr wrote: post #221
aninhumer wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I mean that the public insisted that we leave the EU by voting to leave the EU. Just because someone asks a silly question doesn't mean that you have to give a silly answer.

People voted in the way that best expressed their beliefs given the choice as presented. If they'd voted remain, the government wouldn't have said "Oh I guess that was a poorly defined referendum, let's work out a proper plan and have another." they'd have used it as an excuse to ignore the issue.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#227

Post by MaysonL »

reefoctopus wrote: post #41
MaysonL wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rate of increase of health care costs has been significantly lower since Obamacare passed than it was before.

I do not believe this is true. Please cite your sources.

Medical Care - Bureau of Labor Statistics Data[0]: default is 10 year view, but changing it to 2000-2016, and adding yearly data, see [1]

[0]http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SAM?output_view=pct_1...

[1]http://imgur.com/a/lUR7o

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#228

Post by wcarron »

ams6110 wrote: post #183
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to meet a Trump voter who didn't meet that criteria. Just because people don't like to be described in a certain way doesn't mean that it doesn't describe them. Trump didn't win because of any sort of liberal catechism. He won because the media has done a bang up job of scaring the crap out of the average citizen about immigration and terrorism while pimping his brand because he's a perverse curiosity in a s…

I know some Trump supporters who are neither racist nor homophobic nor misogynistic. I also know Hillary voters who will drop the "N" word talking about blacks. You can't really divine who a person is by who they vote for.

Yeah, but there are strong statistical correlations between party affiliation and personal/moral views. Example: Trump voters generally support repealing abortion. They also are heavily white, and either old. or young and poorly educated.

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#229

Post by drzaiusapelord »

pron wrote: post #182
yummyfajitas wrote: post #35

This is definitely the preference falsification election. Those who know me on HN know that I'm an outspoken proponent of unorthodox ideas. I'm regularly shouted down, called racist/evil/etc, downmodded and flagged on HN. I also get a steady stream of private emails: "I wouldn't say this publicly cause of the bullies, but that .gov link with all the data does seem to support you. I think you might be right, I need to…

> Apparently in the privacy of a voting booth, people are willing to express their true beliefs. It appears that Trump won because of working-class people in the Rust Belt, who repeatedly got the short end of the stick by the neoliberal policy of both parties. Democrats should have had their backs, but they'd abandoned them, instead, serving the "professional meritocracy". He did not win because of spoiled, well-off…

> who repeatedly got the short end of the stick by the neoliberal policy of both parties.

I agree with this assessment of voter outrage due to economic issues in the rust belt and elsewhere, but now what? Walmart isn't buying smartphones made domestically that cost 8x what the ones in China cost because Walmart can't sell them. I can see the complaint, but its a bit like voting against hurricanes and tornadoes. They're bad and we don't like them, but we can't legislate them away.

I think Trump's playing up global trade as a conspiracy against "good hardworking people" is fairly disingenuous. Instead of accepting a long changed global economy and re-training these people into the service level sector, they seem to think a little protectionism will suddenly bring back the booming factory work of the 1960s and 70s. Trump has badly misled these people for his own gain. Worse, Trump's own companies are managed in a way against the interests of these people (anti-union tactics, buying Chinese steel, lack of investment in poor rural communities, etc). Trump just follows the laws of economics everyone else does. How does he propose something that even he and his companies would never do?

Re-training and investment in the service sector is exactly what Xi Jinping in China is attempting because he knows other Asian nations will continue to successfully poach his manufacturing due to their lowered cost of labor. Meanwhile in the more advanced economy here in the US, we're somehow going to try to compete with factory work in places like Vietnam which has a monthly wage of $145? What did these people vote for other than another empty suit who had made promises he simply cannot deliver?

Re: The smug style in American liberalism

#230

Post by foldr »

jahewson wrote: post #92
ant6n wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's worth bearing in mind that the US is a much more racialized society than the UK. We don't think of 'Mexican' or 'Muslim' as racial categories. But they de facto are racial categories in the US. That may not be very logical, but then neither are most Trump supporters. How many of them do you think are able to carefully parse the distinctions between 'Latino', 'Mexican' and 'illegal brown person'?

And of course, racism very often comes wrapped up in other prejudices which are thought (rightly or wrongly) to be more respectable. All of the groups Trump has targeted are groups that just so happen to consist mostly of people who aren't white. They're the groups that, in the public imagination, are responsible for the loss of an imagined homogenous White America.

Trump can't say "I want a white America". But the people who do want this haven't had any difficulty picking up on his hints.

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