Home › Forums › Financial Markets/Economics › It’s a bad day for human beings
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zk.
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December 23, 2016 at 5:24 PM #804592December 23, 2016 at 5:26 PM #804591
zk
ParticipantThis is one of the things his constant lying and erratic tweeting gets us:
“We’re just operating in this world where you cannot believe the things he says,” said Eliot Cohen, a foreign policy expert and former George W. Bush administration official at the State Department. “It will have large consequences for our allies and our adversaries, and it’s going to greatly magnify the danger of miscalculation by all kinds of people.”
Absolutely pathetic. What a loser. Could you trump voters really not see this coming?
December 23, 2016 at 6:59 PM #804593spdrun
ParticipantDecember 31, 2016 at 11:46 PM #804719ParticipantTrump tweet:
“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”
This is our president, for god’s sake. How is anybody going to have any respect for a person who says such things?
You idiots have elected a child. And a douchebag loser child, at that.
January 1, 2017 at 10:46 AM #804723FlyerInHi
Guest[quote=zk]Trump tweet:
“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”
This is our president, for god’s sake. How is anybody going to have any respect for a person who says such things?
You idiots have elected a child. And a douchebag loser child, at that.[/quote]
ZK, i was talking to a liberal friend who said we need to consider the reasons the deplorables voted for Trump. His parents are deplorables.
My reaction was “are you kidding me, that will just enable them”.
Enabling the deplorables is not the solution; and being diplomatic while they spew out vile shit is worse. We need to treat the deplorable like we treated the Societ Union with cultural and economic superiority. Let them fall behind and suffer under Trump and eventually they will come crawling.
January 2, 2017 at 8:29 AM #804729Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
ZK, i was talking to a liberal friend who said we need to consider the reasons the deplorables voted for Trump. His parents are deplorables.
My reaction was “are you kidding me, that will just enable them”.
Enabling the deplorables is not the solution; and being diplomatic while they spew out vile shit is worse. We need to treat the deplorable like we treated the Societ Union with cultural and economic superiority. Let them fall behind and suffer under Trump and eventually they will come crawling.[/quote]
Not sure how I feel about your plan, but I disagree that they’ll ever “come crawling.” The right-wing noise machine will have them convinced either that they’re doing great because of trump and the republicans in congress (even as they’re drowning) or that it’s all liberals’ fault that they’re drowning.
The last 30 years of right-wing propaganda has their heads so full of bs and rabid, insane hatred of liberals that they’d die before they’d come crawling to liberals. I mean that quite literally.
January 2, 2017 at 9:05 AM #804730GuestZK, they are already coming crawling that’s why they’re angry. Their pride has been hurt.
It’s like the Russian or the Chinese. They want to live like us, but their media is fanning anti-Americanism. Granted, we are arrogant in our superiority which is not helpful. But the best is entitled to self-confidence.
They are coming crawling in terms of electric cars, solar and renewable energy, gay marriage…. at least the smart ones are.
And as far as the dumb deplorables, fuck them. Let fracking polute their drinking water while we enjoy low energy prices. Let them become opiate addicted without health insurance. Let’s enjoy the life of the coastal elites and not worry about the deplorables.
Of course, as nice people, we welcome all immigrants, foreign and domestic. I don’t really care what goes on in the red states. But the people who immigrate to California (or big cities like Atlanta or Dallas) are coming crawling.
January 2, 2017 at 10:47 AM #804733Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
Of course, as nice people, we welcome all immigrants, foreign and domestic. … I don’t really care what goes on in the red states. [/quote]Those seem contradictory. If we’re nice people, we care what goes on in the red states.
You seem to want to believe that coastal elites and immigrants are superior to red staters. That is contradictory to your claim of being a nice person. Humans are humans, and, to a very large extent they have what they have, both materially and culturally, due to where and when and under what circumstances they were born. Don’t be so sure you wouldn’t be a trump-votin’ redneck if you were born in an Alabama trailer park to a gun-totin’, confederate-flag-wavin’ pick up truck-drivin’ daddy and a church-goin’, fox news-watchin’ breitbart-readin’ mama. Daddy and mama have been regurgitating the propaganda they see on tv to you your whole life. All your friends and neighbors (and probably your governor and your senators and your congressman) hate Obama and liberals and gun-taking-away Clintons. All your life you’ve been told government is the enemy. Government is keeping us down. Godless poindexters trying to tell you how to live your life. You sure you’d bust right out of that and head for the coast and start dressing fancy and drinking lattes and voting for Sanders? Probably you wouldn’t, maybe you would. But your average person, and even most smarter-than-average people, wouldn’t. Not because they’re bad people. Because they are who they are and have what they have largely due to when and where and in what circumstances they were born.
The problem isn’t the people of the red states. They’re human beings same as the rest of us, and they are who they are mostly due to circumstance. The problem is that they’ve been emotionally manipulated (mostly by the right-wing noise machine) for over a generation. The problem is that the manipulators get away with it.
Sure, I call trump voters idiots. And I do believe that they are. But that doesn’t mean that they’re different from or worse than most humans. Most humans are idiots in that they believe what they want to believe rather than what they can see with their own eyes. Most humans are idiots in that it’s easy to manipulate them to want to believe (and therefore to believe) whatever you (the manipulator) want them to believe.
I wouldn’t know how to go about changing or eliminating that manipulation. But, if you are a nice person and you want to help people, the way to go about helping people in red states, in my opinion, would be to do something about the manipulation that makes people vote against their own interests (if you can figure out a way to do that).
January 2, 2017 at 11:19 AM #804734GuestZK, i agree.
I’m just being the opposite of the deplorables. You’re better than me in that you’re kind and understanding.
I just feel that sometimes you have to walk away from hopeless situations and not bother. I only have so much compassion and i prefer to reserve it for people who deserve it (in the same vain as the deplorables who are driven by opposition to people they perceive as underserving).
And you’re right, we are humans, and my attitude makes me the same as the deplorables. But such is the fate of humans.
As far as getting rid of manipulation, it’s all about education. Good parents would want their kids to learn and better themselves. But deplorables don’t want science and modernity for their kids. They want god and guns, and ignorance.
In contrast, I have met many immigrant parents. My new cleaning lady is Cuban. She doesn’t speak English but all she wants is a good education for her son. I respect that and I have more compassion for her family than deplorables who have many more advantages but are angry and riled but by Fox News.
To people who want it “like it is” we should say “if you’re feeling disrespected, there’s a reason for that.” That’s the language they speak and the one they understand.
January 2, 2017 at 12:27 PM #804736
Rich ToscanoKeymasterExcellent post, zk….
January 2, 2017 at 12:48 PM #804737GuestZK, did you read Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance? I just ordered it.
JD Vance believes that hillbilly culture is deplorable and it’s not a structural problem of poverty. So I guess, it’s a matter of personal responsibility and pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. It’s up to the hillbillies to reject their own culture and seek enlightenment like the author did.
January 2, 2017 at 3:17 PM #804738JerseyGrl
Participant…..”But deplorables don’t want science and modernity for their kids. They want god and guns, and ignorance.”
Some do, not all.
Vance was on Face the Nation yesterday, along with a group of diverse, young guests. I wasn’t familiar with his book but I’m going to check my library for it.
My dad grew up in Appalachia (eastern PA/coal mines). After the Army he never went back. There were (are) no jobs there. The people who stay in these little towns and villages are often too frightened to leave. They cling to their “culture” (clans) and succumb to welfare and drug addiction. They don’t trust the government but they’ll take the check each month. If they voted for Trump and think he’ll bring them jobs they will be disappointed.
January 2, 2017 at 4:27 PM #804739Anonymous
Guest[quote=JerseyGrl]My dad grew up in Appalachia (eastern PA/coal mines). After the Army he never went back. There were (are) no jobs there. The people who stay in these little towns and villages are often too frightened to leave. They cling to their “culture” (clans) and succumb to welfare and drug addiction. They don’t trust the government but they’ll take the check each month. If they voted for Trump and think he’ll bring them jobs they will be disappointed.[/quote]
The stereotype is rooted in reality.
I grew up in coal country just outside Appalachia and also spent some years of my youth in the industrial valleys of Youngstown and Pittsburgh.
I’m proud to say that my rust-belt kin did not fall for the Trump snake oil, but of course many others there did.
There is a tremendous nostalgia in these places for the past, but I doubt that many Trump voters in these regions truly believe that he or anyone will bring back industry as it was. They all know.
The mines are completely gone, many of them because there is simply no coal left. The mills are gone as well, replaced by shopping centers or empty tracts of toxic land. It would take decades of massive investment to build anything close to the economy that existed in the 1970s.
Even if it could be fixed, Trump cannot do it in four years – everybody knows that. He can’t do it in eight years either and there is no successor to this new messiah. He is one of a kind.
Ultimately the rust-belt Trump supporters all know that he won’t fix anything. They chose him out of spite. Like Michael Moore said, he simply represents a big “fuck you” to the institutions that many believe stole their prosperity.
We may pay a high price for this expression of defiance. And if the rust-belt bears the brunt of that price, I won’t pity them.
January 3, 2017 at 9:59 AM #804745Guest[quote=harvey]
They chose him out of spite. Like Michael Moore said, he simply represents a big “fuck you” to the institutions that many believe stole their prosperity.We may pay a high price for this expression of defiance. And if the rust-belt bears the brunt of that price, I won’t pity them.[/quote]
I agree that the Trump vote is out of spite.
Before I say more, let me try to adhere to high intellectual standards exhibited by ZK. Sure, the country is diverse; there are people of all stripes all over. Generalizing about rust belt deplorables is simplistic. But those people are the incremental voters who swung the electoral college for Trump.
Those guys have some gall. They want to tear us down because their time is past.
They are too good for public policy (Bill Clinton had our own “emerging market” policy that went nowhere) or government help. Yet, they feel condescended to by “coastal elites” who want to help. Who’s too mighty for assistance and compassion here?
Furthermore, those guys feel that there are no structural problems of poverty. The solution is just more bootstrapping and deregulation. Does it ever occur to them that their lands were developed because of government policy?
Even their own kin who made it to wealth and power (politician, business people and intellectuals) are against any policy that would bring economic development. Bootstrapping and free markets, they say. The free markets will magically bring back prosperity.
Ok, then. They shall have what they want. Give it to them like it is. And more bootstrapping, of course. Failure then becomes failure of the individuals. Ok good, we, coastal liberals, can wash our hands of responsibility. Sayonara, arrivederci. Fancy globalist that I’m am, I’m going to have a latte and then Pad Pak Ruam (mixed veggies) for lunch.
January 5, 2017 at 8:58 AM #804759GuestZK,Interesting article, if you have not yet read.
81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Yeah, he’s so godly.
We should treat them like Trump treats everyone, so they get a taste of what they voted for.There should be a movement to boycott red areas. I’d rather go to Mexico than flyover America.
I will not forgive Trump supporters. They are like apartheid South Africans, or southern segregationists. This generation must live in shame until they die. Only the next generation will be forgiven; and even then, they will bear some residual shame.
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