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What I Heard from Trump Supporters

blog.samaltman.com

501–510 of 906 posts

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#501
post #490

What another guy heard from Trump supporters: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a53275/trump-melbourne-...

These are both important. I think the Esquire take (figure out what the people who go to rally's are after) has more coverage than Sam's, but the tension is super fascinating. Most people I know who voted for Trump are unsettled by the extreme populist rhetoric. You can see it in the answer's Sam got. They tend to discount what they hear on TV covers when they're justifying a stance, either because the media is biase…

I still find it ironic that Republicans, who are very keen on the notion of individual responsibility in general, seem so shy about taking responsibility for what they voted for. It's not like he hid his big bag of -isms during the campaign.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#502
post #265
post #40

This one gave me the most pause: > “Silicon Valley is incredibly unwelcoming to alternative points of view. Your curiosity, if it is sincere, is the very rare exception to the rule.” Substitute "Silicon Valley" for any major liberal enclaves, like universities and cities, and I think you see the same thing. I am skeptical by nature and try to take a scientific view of new ideas. However I feel like I get shouted down…

> People start throwing link after link of facts and don't want to even reason about ideas. It's hopeless and I end up keeping my mouth shut. So, you take a contrarian view. People respond with facts. So, where's the problem? You don't like the facts? Don't want to hear them or what exactly?

People respond with long lists of facts, but do not bother to reason about them or put them in context, instead presuming that there is only one way to interpret the facts - the way that supports their preferred narrative.

And keep in mind that there is a difference between fact and "fact". It is a fact that a scientific instrument recorded a certain value or that a particular person voiced a particular opinion. Everything beyond that - that the instrument is working as intended, that the person's memory and reasoning and honesty can be trusted, that the data point is representative of similar situations, that it is at all relevant to the question at hand - has some amount of uncertainty associated with it.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#503
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote your comment, and encourage all who did to post the reason, politely please. Perhaps "No one" is a little too strong, but I think the general gist of what you're saying may be fair. I am not familiar with the reasons for property damage in Berkeley. Can you post links? Anything you can provide that would make it easier to evaluate the viewpoints of all involved at Berkeley?

It might be more productive to just not ascribe all of Antifa's actions to Berkeley or its student body.

Do you have any evidence to back up the outrageous claim that the rioters at Berkely weren't primarily its student body? Or is that just what you heard on CNN and chose to believe unquestioningly?

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#504

None of this is particularly surprising, but it is sobering to hear it from the horse's mouth. Insane racist sexists didn't win this election for Trump; dogma did. One can no longer openly discuss certain extremely important topics (is there something inherently wrong with Islam as a belief system? Is Black Lives Matter doing good or bad things? Are women really paid less than men for performing the same work?) witho…

> it's that very fatigue which seems to be one of the factors which drove people to vote for a truly awful leader.

I don't understand this reasoning. Why would someone who hates being unfairly called a bigot go and vote for a bigot? If I hated it when people called me a socialist, I wouldn't vote for Bernie Sanders!

What seems more likely is that bigotry is fairly common and a lot of people are bigoted in ways they don't necessarily realize.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be honest; I don't entirely understand it, either. The general sentiment is that she's a crook and corrupt to a much, much greater degree than other politicians.

Conservative talk radio, and other similar media, have spent decades vilifying her. According to them, she has helped her husband prey on women, has had people killed to cover up crimes, is trying to push for a takeover of the US by the United Nations, and much, much more. Not much of this is connected to reality, but that just doesn't matter.

The part about her helping her husband prey on women has at least some truth to it. There's no shortage of women over the decades who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault; I think it's rather silly to claim that Billy is completely innocent. So just as with any rapist, a woman who insists on staying married to such a man and backing him up in public can be seen as "enabling" him.

Honestly, I don't think all this anti-Hillary stuff is unfair either. There's no shortage of Democrat politicians who do NOT have all the baggage that either Bill or Hillary have accumulated over the years. What kind of dirt does anyone have on Al Gore, for instance? Conservatives might disagree about his environmental claims, and some people might still be mad about his ex-wife's record lyrics labeling campaign (but he and Tipper got divorced some time ago, so I think it's unfair to hold him to that now), but that's about it. I've certainly never heard of him sexually assaulting women. And I can say the same about most Democratic politicians, famous or not. So why did the DNC insist on picking a candidate with so much baggage? They're really the ones to blame for losing this election.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#506
post #52

Trump won largely because of disenfranchised blue collar caucasians resonated with him. Watching the witch hunt over the last 2 months you would think it would be anything but that. Fake news (just call it propaganda), russian hackers, 4chan memes and white supremacists have all received the majority of blame. I'm curious to whether the Democrats will ever come to terms with reality here, or will they just double dow…

No one wants rational debate. In the case of UC Berkeley students, it's easier to cause property damage because an alleged Nazi (an entirely slanderous claim, btw) is given a platform to speak. No one wants to wade through the muck and find out what opposing viewpoints are actually saying. Edit: And the people scoffing at my comment and hitting the downvote button are only proving my point.

What gave you the idea that the anarchist vandals who dress up in masks and smash stuff are Berkeley students, or that they have any personal animosity towards whatever speaker vs. just liking the chaos.

These are pretty much the real-world version of 4-chan trolls. It’s a mistake to associate them with any other group, or to assign them a coherent political ideology.

They’re a constant thorn in the side of left-leaning groups in the East Bay, who pretty much all wish they would go away. They show up uninvited to non-violent events and make a ruckus, helping nobody.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#507
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We are unwelcoming to people who are factually wrong. This comes up from time to time here on HN. I don't buy the whole CO2->Global Warming->Catastrophe thing, and I regularly get down votes here if I try to make arguments to the contrary - even science based arguments. I think a lot of people on the left try to hide behind some kind of false consensus as to what is "better", "morally superior", or "factually corr…

Your "belief" is not based on evidence. Full stop. Name any dead, famous scientist. They upended the scientific conventional wisdom and accepted truth. If you could do that, you'd be in the history books. You can't. It's like arguing with he time cube guy, but not about what he is gonna publish next Tuesday, but the future of the human race in the balance. Do you get now why it is infuriating?

[deleted]

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#508
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We are unwelcoming to people who are factually wrong. This comes up from time to time here on HN. I don't buy the whole CO2->Global Warming->Catastrophe thing, and I regularly get down votes here if I try to make arguments to the contrary - even science based arguments. I think a lot of people on the left try to hide behind some kind of false consensus as to what is "better", "morally superior", or "factually corr…

Your "belief" is not based on evidence. Full stop. Name any dead, famous scientist. They upended the scientific conventional wisdom and accepted truth. If you could do that, you'd be in the history books. You can't. It's like arguing with he time cube guy, but not about what he is gonna publish next Tuesday, but the future of the human race in the balance. Do you get now why it is infuriating?

Great, I look forward to reading your peer reviewed papers.

Do you have a published climate model I I can run through its paces?

Until you do, all your protestations that you have 'evidence' for your beliefs are bullshit, in the technical sense of the term.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White Christian (Mormon) straight male

Thanks for the reply. I imagine that being part of the majority demographic in Utah makes daily life more comfortable than it was in San Francisco, no? (Not making excuses for other people's poor behavior anywhere.)

I honestly don't think much about demographics either place. Maybe that's because I'm the majority (I think) in both places; I don't know. It doesn't enter my calculus.

San Francisco is generally more accepting of almost everything, and I love that, but when it comes to political ideology I ironically find it intense, unaccepting and extreme. It feels like anything goes in SF, so long as you're not on the right politically. (I don't even consider myself super duper on the right, just not allll the way on the left)

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will play out poorly. The coalition on the right is full of cracks that could be exploited to split them up. Trump actually exploited one of those cracks to get himself the Republican nomination. When the left comes in to pour moral superiority all over people, it fills those cracks in like glue. People who would have otherwise split from Trump are sticking to him because the left is chopping at everything. The sm…

>he coalition on the right is full of cracks that could be exploited to split them up. Trump actually exploited one of those cracks to get himself the Republican nomination. When the left comes in to pour moral superiority all over people, it fills those cracks in like glue. People who would have otherwise split from Trump are sticking to him because the left is chopping at everything. Your assumption is that Donald…

> Your assumption is that Donald Trump forged some kind of political coalition. He didn't.

You are incorrect about my assumption, but correct that Trump did not forge a coalition. The coalition existed before him and largely held its nose because members of it did not have any other options.

My assumption is that both political parties are large, standing broad coalitions of voters with differening interests that are together mainly as a consequence of the two-party system. Which means that they each contain elements that can (and occasionally do) flip party.

Trump exploited a crack in the Republican coalition that had formed over immigration, which was a wedge issue between the "pro-business" type Republicans that are "part of the establishment" and the party base. He also identified other wedges, like military adventurism. That, along with lack of a sufficiently strong opponent in the other 16 people who ran, enabled him to win the GOP primary, even though Trump has very little to no interest in "conservatism."

There were enough Republicans put off by his lack of "conservatism" (e.g. the lack of interest in the agenda of other parts of the GOP coalition) that they were willing to vote for someone else. But because the Democrats had nothing but contempt to offer those voters, they either stayed home, held their nose for Trump anyway, or voted for third party candidates like "Egg McMuffin."

Those divides in the GOP are not going to go away. Those voters are out there, waiting to be picked up by somebody. They may be as much as 20% of that party, which is enough to tip future elections towards the Democrats forever if they play their cards right. But that's going to be an opportunity that isn't going to be exploited as long as the Democrats are playing "resistance" as their strategy.

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