Thought provoking read

[Guinevere]

Thank you Joe.

[Econoline]

I'm pretty sure you don't consider me an "enemy", liberty...and I've already pointed out that I'm neither "coastal" nor "elite". I think what you--and a lot of others--ignore is that "liberals" are a sizable minority in every so-called "red state". For instance, in the last election almost 40% of the voters in Louisiana chose Hillary Clinton. (And in Michigan it was 47.3% Clinton/47.5% Trump/5.2% "other".) Not everyone--even in the strongest Republican enclaves--bought into the myth that Democrats were "elitists" who had no sympathy for the white rural poor. (And conversely, of course, there was a sizable minority of Trump voters even in solid "blue" cities like NYC and Chicago. Go figure.)

I recently heard Trae Crowder (a.k.a. "The Liberal Redneck") interviewed on a CBC (that's Canadian, if you don't know) radio show, and the host asked him something like, What's something you wish our Canadian listeners knew about the American South? His reply: "I am not a unicorn. I'm not really all that unique, honestly--and that's very surprising to a lot of people. I've never tried at all to act like the stereotypical version of the South isn't real, or doesn't exist, or that those people don't exist. They exist. What I've always wanted people to understand is that they don't represent the entire South, and it's not a supermajority either. You know, you can visit the South and you will be fine."

Here's another interview with him I just found online, from just after the election, which speaks directly to the topic of this thread:

• What do you think could bring the working class back to the Left?
  I jokingly tweeted on Tuesday night, “I wish the left would’ve lied to poor white people at least a little, because it sure worked for Trump.”
  
  But really, the reason it worked is because he spoke directly to what mattered to them personally. Their jobs are gone—the Rust Belt, manufacturing, all that stuff is left, and we’re in a position of turmoil. I don’t think those jobs are ever coming back, no matter who’s in office, that’s the way the industry is going. It’s not going to work if you tell them that, though.
  
  I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know. It’s a question for the ages. I think being honest with them about where we’re headed is not shit they want to hear.
  
  When manufacturing jobs don’t return, what will they think of Trump?
  He’ll deflect, and they’ll find somebody else to blame, and his supporters, they’ll buy that shit too, if you want my prediction.

I pretty much agree with his assessment: the problem is not that the Clinton campaign didn't address the economic problems of the rural white poor; the problem is that they didn't tell these people what they wanted to hear. What they wanted to hear was lies, and Trump recognized this and told them what they wanted to hear.

So, does it show more respect to tell someone the truth, or to tell them the lies they want to hear?

[Crackpot]

So the answer is you're fucked deal with it? I think that's the message they've got.

[Gob]

In the mining towns of Nottinghamshire where I am from, the debate again is about Brexit, and even former striking miners are voting leave. The mining communities are also worried about the lack of secure and paid employment, the loss of the pubs and the grinding poverty that has returned to the north. The talk about immigration is not as prevalent or as high on the list of fears as sections of the media would have us believe. The issues around immigration are always part of the debate, but rarely exclusively.


From my research I would argue that the referendum debate within working-class communities is not about immigration, despite the rhetoric. It is about precarity and fear. As a group of east London women told me: “I’m sick of being called a racist because I worry about my own mum and my own child,” and “I don’t begrudge anyone a roof who needs it but we can’t manage either.”

Over the past 30 years there has been a sustained attack on working-class people, their identities, their work and their culture by Westminster politics and the media bubble around it. Consequently they have stopped listening to politicians and to Westminster and they are doing what every politician fears: they are using their own experiences in judging what is working for and against them.

In the last few weeks of the campaign the rhetoric has ramped up and the blame game started. If we leave the EU it will be the fault of the “stupid”, “ignorant”, and “racist” working class. Whenever working-class people have tried to talk about the effects of immigration on their lives, shouting “backward” and “racist” has become a middle-class pastime.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... referendum

[Econoline]

So the answer is you're fucked deal with it? I think that's the message they've got.

Well, that may be the message they got, and the message you got, but I guarantee no Democrat ever said those words. Even if there was a statement to the effect that "Those jobs are not coming back" there was always something in there about money for education or retraining for "new jobs for the new century" or "jobs to repair our aging infrastructure" or something of the sort. If people chose not to believe this and chose instead to believe a reality-show celebrity who said, "NO! TRUST ME! Those jobs ARE coming back!"...well, whose fault is that? Sure, Trump may be a genius for figuring out exactly what people desperately wanted to hear, but just saying something doesn't make it true. People should have remembered his signature phrase, the words he said over and over, the words that made him a TV star, the words that epitomized his true area of expertise--the words "YOU'RE FIRED!"

[Econoline]

Okay, here's an article with some actual facts and polling data to refute the opinion piece by "senior correspondent" John Daniel Davidson which started this thread. It turns out the typical Trump voter looks much more like oldr_n_wsr than like wesw or liberty.

• • Blame Trump’s Victory on College-Educated Whites, Not the Working Class

  Reporters seeking to understand his voters should head to the suburbs.
  BY ERIC SASSON | November 15, 2016
  
  The autopsies of Hillary Clinton’s loss in last week’s election keep pouring in, and the cause of death is nearly unanimous: The white, rural, working class voter did it.
  
  Townhall’s Matt Vespa called it “the revenge of the white working class,” Politico the “Revenge of the rural voter.” Clinton, according to CNN contributor and historian Stephanie Coontz, “was simply unable to present herself as a forceful defender of everyone who has been left behind by the march of globalization, professionalization and the emergence of a new just-in-time, winner-take-all economy.” And Cracked’s David Wong, in an article with nearly ten million views, explains why rural voters came out so strongly for Trump: “To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. ‘Are you assholes listening now?’”
  
  It’s true that the white working class was instrumental in delivering Trump the White House. In the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Clinton underperformed Barack Obama among white working class voters, and this cost her the electoral college. Had about 100,000 of these voters across the three states voted for her instead of Trump, she would be president–elect now, instead of sitting on a possible two-million vote Pyrrhic popular vote victory.
  
  The failure to engage the white working class has been described as a grave tactical error, and that may well be true, given the slim margin of victory in swing states. But the media’s obsessive focus on this voting bloc would leave you to believe that Trump’s voters largely live in areas hit by the decline in manufacturing, are suffering from economic anxiety, and turned out last Tuesday to voice their disdain for smug urban elitists. But this narrative paints a misleading picture of the typical Trump voter, and by doing so, lets off the hook an entire class of voters who are at least as responsible for Trump’s victory: middle-class and wealthy suburban whites, who also came out in droves for Trump and who make up a larger part of his coalition.
  
  The average Trump voter is not poorly educated or unemployed, nor does he live in a rural area. Back in May, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver punctured the myth of the “working class” being Trump’s voter base: In exit polls of 23 states from the primaries, all showed a higher median income for Trump supporters than the national average, usually around $70,000.Exit polls last week, while not definitive, reveal that both college-educated white men and college educated white women voted for Trump by much higher than expected margins.
  
  While it is true that many rural voters who backed Obama in 2008 and 2012 voted for Trump this year, these voters hardly comprise the majority of Trump’s 60 million votes, as rural voters made up only 17 percent of this year’s electorate. Most rural voters generally vote Republican anyway. Clinton’s decision not to target these voters may seem foolhardy in hindsight, but these voters have not been a key Democratic demographic for many decades. Moreover, as a longtime member of the Washington establishment, Clinton was always going to be a hard sell to these voters in a change election.
  
  The voters Clinton really lost—the ones she was targeting and relying on for victory—were college-educated whites. Most polling suggested she would win these voters, but she didn’t, according to exit polls: White men went 63 percent for Trump versus 31 percent for Clinton, and white women went 53-43 percent. Among college-educated whites, only 39 percent of men and 51 percent of women voted for Clinton.
  
  Clinton’s strategy made sense. Trump’s negatives among this group, which normally leans Republican (Romney won them by six points), were pretty high in polling. What’s more, these people hadn’t suffered under Obama; they’d thrived. The kind of change Trump was espousing wasn’t supposed to connect with this group.A massive Gallup study in August revealed that the typical Trump supporter has “not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed.”
  
  Perhaps, then, these Trump voters are the most deplorable of them all. They’re not suffering or desperate, and have no concrete reason to hate the status quo or to feel like they are in decline. They understand that Trump is manifestly unprepared to be president, have heard his many lies and insults, yet voted for him anyway. And without them, Trump wouldn’t have won. The media ought to focus on their motivations, too—and reporters won’t even have to fly to Youngstown to find them.

[Crackpot]

Econo they've sat through 8 years of "hope and change" getting neither do you really think they don't know the jobs aren't coming back? The best they can reasonably hope for is a halt to the decline and possibly a slight production boost that will bring a few of the jobs back. In short a reprieve from staring into the future oblivion that they've been looking at for the last 20 years?

Seriously what message do you think you're sending by saying the jobs aren't coming back? Get retrained? For what job? In small towns there isn't anything else. Except maybe a claim of back pain a disability check and a prescription for oxy. At least that way they can keep the house a while longer.

What they need is a real alternative jobs to replace those that have been lost. I spent ten years in staring in the face of potential unemployment and then unemployment with no job prospects. Luckily at the time I was young enough to not have any long term debts and a girlfriend/fiancé/wife who had good stable and steady work to keep me from despair.

Tell me again how telling people in a bad situation that it isn't going to get better is not going to be recieved as a big "Fuck You" again?

[oldr_n_wsr]

Why aren't you the "coastal elite" yourself, older? You live in Long Island, and you went to college and sent your kids to college. You own a home. You saved money.

I am coastal but far from "elite". The "rednecks" here on LI call me the urban redneck. Rednecks here are the last bastion of fishermen, crabbers, lobsterers, tradesmen, craftsmen and the like. They can't afford to donate to a charity but they donate time and labor and their shirt off their back. They are usually too busy working to get involved in protests and civil unrest.

I go to the lake house and the people up there are phenominal when it comes to giving of themselves. And I am not saying there are not "liberals" who are not giving, just my observation that those who have the least seem to give the most (of themselves). Call a redneck friend to help move a couch or roto-till the yard and they are there. Call a liberal friend and they will send the illegal immigrant they have who does their yardwork. (just kidding but not really as very few of my friends are what I would consider liberal)

My father was a tool and die maker, mom was a home maker. I went to night school to get my BSEE but was designing electronics long before getting the piece of paper. The piece of paper did gain me a raise and a bonus. For some reason, electronics design came easy to me. I could have just as easily become a carpenter as woodworking comes easy to me. As does home repair/remodel and doing things myself. That I was able to fix/build/repair things myself brought me personal and financial rewards.
Skrimping when we were young newlyweds with child on the way. We decided that she would be a stay at home mom while I would work as much overtime as possible so that we could possibly maybe go out one night a month AND save a bit for the kids college education and afford the ridiculuos Long Island School taxes.
I was and still am conservative with my budget. I expect the gov to be the same. I want as little gov interference in my life as possible. I don't want to be told which type of toilet to buy nor which lightbulb nor type of gas can nor what type of health insurance. I don't want my lawnmower automatically turn off if I take my hand off the handlbars nor my lawn tractor to shut off if I get out of the seat.
Government should be as limited as possible. It should not be the cradle to grave, take care of us organization that it seems to be becoming.

Because NO ONE in Middle American went to college, or sent their kids to college, or owns a home, or has savings??

Where did I say that no one in middle America went to college and saved money and owns home?
College, money, savings do not make one an elite. Attitude makes one an elite. And I see that attitude more pronounced on the east coast (sub)urban areas. Cant' speak for the west coast as I have never been there, but reading newspapers and people who post here I don't think it is too far a stretch. Where I don't see the attitude much is in the interior of the country. Even just 3 hours west of NY city. Upstate NY, etc. When I do see that attitude in those areas it is usually a person who has moved there from the urban coast. And why did they go there? The taxes are too high where they used to live.

"If only people thought the way I do they would see the light" makes one an elite.

Do you see how absolutely ridiculous this attempt at division is, and how little sense it makes?

I make no attempt at division, I observe it, every day especially when I go to the lake house in bum-F%$# Pa. When I go hunting/fishing upstate NY.
Even out here on the east end of Long Island meeting with the locals, you know those people who live on the north and south fork of the island 24/7/365, not just on sun soaked weekends. They are the reason suffolk county went trump.

Interesting article econoline.
But I do think liberty is college educated.
Don't know if wesw is. I suspect not, but college is not needed for many jobs. I'll take a plumber who learned his craft from doing rather than one who read books about it. Same with any tradesman.
And I am sure wesw could teach me how to weld among other things.


ETA
And I agree with a lot of what Crackpot has been saying.

[Crackpot]

Incidentally imagine telling someone in the situation I described that they have "white privilege".

[Lord Jim]

That's just because they don't understand that they have white privilege CP...

The best way to persuade them to vote for your candidates is to patiently explain to them how they do in fact have white privilege...

[Crackpot]

On average white privileged exists. Just as on average everyone lives in a city. The problem comes when you take what is true on average and apply it as a universal truth.

[Econoline]

I guess I understand what people mean when they talk about "white privilege" but that's not a term you have ever heard, nor will ever hear, me use.

"If only people thought the way I do they would see the light" makes one an elite.

By that definition Donald Trump and most of his followers are "elite".

[Crackpot]

I wasn't accusing you of it. I was merely trying to point out how "leftist" language serves to alienate people even if (and perhaps even more so) they don't mean it.

[BoSoxGal]

There are folks in this world who have an "I've got mine, and if I got it, you should be able to get yours too, and any reasons you give why you can't are simply whiny snowflake excuses."

Those kind of folks are Trump voters, and yes, it includes plenty of educated white men and women. And of course they're not one tiny little bit racist in their heart of hearts. Never.



I saw many humans on whom there were no clothes.
I saw many clothes in which there were no humans.
~ Rumi

[oldr_n_wsr]

There are folks in this world who have an "I've got mine, and if I got it, you should be able to get yours too, and any reasons you give why you can't are simply whiny snowflake excuses."

I would say there are more that are saying, "leave me alone and I'll get it, do it myself, and if you need, I'll help you do the same"
They also can be heard saying:
"But If all you are going to do is sit there and complain about your situation in life, then you are a whiny snowflake"

[BoSoxGal]

Right, because that's what people are doing . . . just sitting around whining. There aren't any people working their asses off at 1, 2 or even 3 jobs and barely making ends meet. If they aren't doing well, it must be because they didn't budget or plan properly, like you did.

[liberty]

I'm pretty sure you don't consider me an "enemy", liberty

No, not an enemy, it is hard to dislike someone like you liberal or not.

[liberty]

I guess I understand what people mean when they talk about "white privilege" but that's not a term you have ever heard, nor will ever hear, me use.

"If only people thought the way I do they would see the light" makes one an elite.

By that definition Donald Trump and most of his followers are "elite".

That is true, but so was FDR. It not that important whether or not someone came from money or not. What is important is does he or she for that matter care about the hold country not just the liberal elite. My people need well paying factory jobs so one Parent can stay home and supervise the children. We can have those jobs; not exactly the olds jobs, but ones where robots do the work and people maintain them. With robots we could compete with third world wage slave.

[Lord Jim]

it is hard to dislike someone like you liberal or not.

You're just not trying hard enough...

[Guinevere]

If being "the enemy" means I support and defend the Constitution of the United States (as I have so sworn on multiple occasions); believe everyone should have access to good free (tax-payer supported) public education; want safe drinking water, clean air, and to slow or stop sea-level rise and other impacts of global climate change; believe you can marry who you love, regardless of gender or race; believe that no one should face discrimination in jobs or housing or access to justice because of their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, national origin, or age; and believe every citizen deserves an unfettered right to vote, then yes, I am the enemy and I'm damn proud of it.

And oldr, I suggest you broaden your thinking and move outside of your bubble. You're judging people based on how they apply their talents, without knowing anything else about them. Sure, I can fix my toilet, shovel my own snow, assemble my own IKEA bookcases, but no, I'm not a carpenter or an electrician or an engineer, and I hire people to do that kind of work for me and contribute to the local economy by paying them good wages to do that work. You're judging people who have a different skill set than you do, because they are different. Because I always loved to read, and write, and talk, and argue and I was good at it, I ended up in law school. But that doesn't make me "elite" as compared to someone whose skill is more mechanical, and who is good with their hands and is in the trades. Why can't we respect and appreciate that we all have different skills, and hopefully are able to use those skills in work that is satisfying and allows us to support our families (however it is that we define "family"). And working at a desk isn't a piece of cake compared to working with your hands. We work long grueling hours too (and it's neither easy nor healthy to spend so many hours sitting at a desk, on the phone, and/or on a computer), we face tons of competing priorities and pressures. I don't even have complete control over my schedule -- when a court says, be present, I am present, regardless of what else I've got planned. As for volunteer work, in my observation there is no one group that has the edge on volunteering, and if you think otherwise, you should get out more. Speaking for myself, I volunteer based on my skills and where I can help most. So I may not be building homes, but I'm in court defending women and children from their battering spouse, who is trying to batter them again using the court system to try and avoid paying support, or sitting on a local board, or helping kids learn how to read, or sorting food at a for pantry, and yes, even sometimes, writing a check.