721–730 of 1001 posts
A President who considers Climate Change a hoax. I am now really afraid for mankind.
Only 70% of America believes that climate is changing. This will keep rising and soon people will focus on this. I think in 2 years Trump will acknowledge climate change too. He will have to.
It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…
I thought about your text a few hours. Because some of it sounds really right, but somehow it also feels strange. You say, if I understand you correctly, that the rural voter is the majority, and that we should finally start to listen to his needs, ideas, fears and dreams. And I agree that we should listen to the majority and figure out how to make most people happy. But exactly this "rural voter" is not the one who…
Perhaps rather than taking this tact (which we've seen a million times):
> Rural voters aren't smart. They vote based on feelings and ignore the stuff that actually matters (which I can identify better than they can). They're simple folks that just need simple stuff, but they're frequently tricked into voting against their interests by the other party.
You could consider something like this:
> Rural voters have different values than mine. My perception of their intelligence is irrelevant because I know there are intelligent people who share their views. Maybe if their viewpoints were taken seriously instead of dismissed outright as sexist and xenophobic, we could win their votes (or at least not cause such high turnout for the opponent) next time around.
Realize that Republicans can identify demographics that frequently vote for Democrats the same way. Take that first paragraph above and sub in "black people," "hispanics," and "women." See how incredibly offensive it is now? That's how "rural voters" feel when you post things like this.
Please stop calling people you don't agree with racist and sexist. It's wrong, it's mean, and it does not seem to have the desired effect. Human beings are basically good. We are trying to go about our lives and do the best we can. The vast majority of us are neither sexist nor racist.
Where does this rhetoric come from? Trump has made remarks that are inherently racist and sexist, whether you agree or disagree with him.
Jeez, everybody is all bent out of shape on this. The Republican establishment hate Trump nearly as much as they hate Clinton so with Republicans controlling The House and The Senate how much "damage" is President Trump going to be able to do. The really interesting part of all this was reading Scott Adams blog who proposed the idea that Trump is a master persuader (probably this is just a fancy name for populist). H…
For one Trump will give them at least one, more likely two even more Supreme Court Justices, so some of the most right-wing conservatives we've seen in the past half century will decide the law of the land for the next twenty to thirty years. The Republicans will have control of all three branches of government for the next few years and there is a whole lot that they can do with that. As a foreigner, what worries me…
This event and Brexit are proof that you cannot shame people into voting how you want. Calling them bigots over and over just galvanizes them if anything.
No it's not. They are merely two data points. Look at Germany. I guarantee you Merkel is going to be reelected next year. Okay, the AFD is going to gain some power but it is outright impossible for them to win the election. But this isn't just about the AFD. What the experts and the media forced down the throats of the people is that there is no alternative to what's currently going on. SPD, Grüne, Linke, FDP don't e…
Merkel is also relatively popular with many non-CDU/CSU voters because her policies all in all have been very moderate. She's generally perceived as very static despite having had to deal with the economic crisis, the refugee situation and now Brexit.
The rise of the AfD is largely a result of conservatives (who probably would have voted CDU/CSU otherwise) being upset with Merkel's handling of the refugee situation. The far left still hates her because she's a conservative, the far right hates her because she's too liberal. She's in the sweet spot where her policies are just balanced enough nobody can propose any sane alternatives that don't sound like almost exactly what she's been doing and any criticism either sounds petty or hyperbolic.
The problem for the SPD is that they alienated their leftist demographic under Schröder (leading to the rise in popularity of the Linke) and later with the coalition government aside the CDU/CSU. Aside from traditional party loyalists they're now directly competing with the CDU/CSU for conservative voters.
The only thing that concerns me is that the CSU is taking a lesson from the revival of the AfD (which was pretty much doomed to fail when the Euro crisis waned but was rekindled by the refugee situation) and is now spouting even more populist xenophobic rhetoric than usual. Considering how much disproportionate influence the CSU traditionally holds in the Union, this might spell trouble for the CDU internally.
As an anecdote: I would never have voted for the CDU (I've previously voted for Linke and the Pirate Party) but unless one of the other parties surprises me with a great candidate, I would probably vote to re-elect Merkel.
Also this wasn't as much a vote _for_ Trump it was a vote _against_ Hillary. The Democrats had this election in their pocket, if it only wasn't for their corruption. They should have really stopped and paid attention to what happened with Bernie Sanders. That wasn't just something to shrug off, it should have been a stopping moment. I believe Bernie would have had no problem winning against Trump. Also I really liked…
As someone followed this election from India - I'll compare 2014, India's Right-wing party election with this one , my thoughts: * Ruling party tried to seek vote by projecting opposition candidate as evil, Instead of selling their own-accomplishment to the people. (Exactly the similar case with Current Indian PM in 2014.) * US Main Stream Media is corrupt. They didn't understand they can't fool people anymore, thank…
First - Trump is not Modi. Modi is much better and experienced leader than Trump (or Clinton). I like Trump too. Second - The entire election season was nasty. US is now seeing the real face of democracy with diversity. Third - The voters did not have a great choice. If the elections were to occur like India, it would have ended up in a hung parliament. And that would be the worst thing to happen. Fourth - Would you…
As someone followed this election from India - I'll compare 2014, India's Right-wing party election with this one , my thoughts: * Ruling party tried to seek vote by projecting opposition candidate as evil, Instead of selling their own-accomplishment to the people. (Exactly the similar case with Current Indian PM in 2014.) * US Main Stream Media is corrupt. They didn't understand they can't fool people anymore, thank…
First - Trump is not Modi. Modi is much better and experienced leader than Trump (or Clinton). I like Trump too. Second - The entire election season was nasty. US is now seeing the real face of democracy with diversity. Third - The voters did not have a great choice. If the elections were to occur like India, it would have ended up in a hung parliament. And that would be the worst thing to happen. Fourth - Would you…
The Baltic Republics vs. the rest of the USSR. Just FYI, since I assume you're not very familiar with these countries: this kind of lumping together the so-called "Baltic Republics" with the "USSR" is generally very offensive to Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, who have nothing to do ethnically or culturally with Russia and generally view the Soviet era as very dark times. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were invad…
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were parts of Russia for 300 years with small omissions. It is longer than the time of existence of the United States. So they have a lot cultural and ethnical similarity with Russia. But yes, they try to ignore it officially.
Probably the only thing this tells us is that the US is a very young nation. 300 years is a blip compared to how long European peoples have been around.