American politics are deeply, fundamentally classist.
Those who want to sound high-class (or are) adopt the rhetoric of the liberals. The working class go Republican.
You know what? Screw it, I don’t even want to pull up data on this. If you don’t believe me, go stick your head back in the sand and believe whatever you want. Tell yourself that you despise conservatives because they are Bad People and not because they are Low Class and not Good People Like You. And conservatives can tell themselves that they hate liberals because liberals are Bad People who Hate Americans.
In reality, of course, most people are good people (except for the one who work in HR, who should all be shot–NAHRALT, of course.)
When people hear that I write about “politics” they tend to assume that this means that I enjoy reading/debating about electoral politics. The truth is that I basically hate electoral politics.
Most of what passes for “political debate” is really just tribal signalling. Tribal signaling need not be wise, thoughtful, or factually correct; it need only signal “my tribe is better than your tribe.” I might be able to stand this kind of inanity if I felt comfortably a member of one of the big tribes and basically hated (or had no friends in) the other tribe. Of course, I have to have friends from across the economic system.
Working class and prole whites are convinced that elite whites hate them. Elite whites are convinced that prole whites hate just about everyone. And blacks, Muslims, etc., are probably pretty concerned about proles hating them, too. Family members are voting for the people they think are on their side against those bad people on the other side. Friends are voting for different people whom they think are on their side against those bad people on the other side.
Almost no one I’ve talked to is voting for a particular side because they’ve undertaken a careful study of the particular issues under discussion and decided that one of the candidates has the best policies. How many Democratic voters agree with Hillary’s stance on the Iraq War? How many Republicans agree with Trump’s opinion on the same?
The most vocal Trump supporter I know was talking about how we need to do more for immigrant children coming from Latin America just last year, and has told me that they don’t actually want to see anyone deported. They just hate liberals, and they are voting for Trump to stick it to the liberals.
People frequently get into these verbal messes where one person makes a generalized statement–say, “Cats poop in litterboxes,” and someone else counters (often very agitated) with “Not all cats! Some poop in my flowers!” And the first person invariably responds, “YES I KNOW.”
The American political debate this election cycle has devolved into one, long, continuous discussion of this nature. Trump says something about a group of people–Mexicans, illegal immigrants, Muslims–and Dems respond with “But not all X!”
This is exemplified by the Democrats inviting the parents of fallen American soldier Humayun S.M. Khan to speak at their convention:
To summarize this debate in internet terms, the Trump side is saying, “Muslims are terrorists,” (and “Illegal immigrants are criminals.”) The Hillary side is responding, “Not all Muslims–some Muslims are patriotic war heroes who died for America.” (Also, “Not all illegal immigrants.”)
Of course, given that there are 3.3 million Muslims in the US, it would be very strange indeed if none of them were brave and heroic. Even Donald Trump can probably do the math on that and figure out that it is statistically very likely that some Muslims are in the military and some have died there.
This is not the real argument.
It is obvious that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists (and the majority of illegal immigrants are not criminals or rapists, except for obviously having broken immigration law,) because if they were, we’d have about 2 million terrorists on our hands, and again, even Donald Trump (and his supporters,) can tell that we don’t have 2 million terrorists.
The Trumpian argument, therefore: Illegal immigration is, on net, bad for Americans, because illegal immigrants are disproportionately uneducated and criminal compared to Americans and legal immigrants. Islamic immigration is, on net, bad for Americans, because Muslims are disproportionately likely to commit terrorist attacks.
Likewise, the Dem’s response of “Not all Muslims” (and illegal immigrants) is not their true response. As has been pointed out, if someone handed you a bag of M&Ms and told you that only one of them was poisoned, you probably wouldn’t proclaim, “Not all M&Ms!” and proceed to eat them. Likewise, if I told you that most of the people sitting in the next room were perfectly nice people, but one of them was a serial killer, you would not be eager to enter that room. Even Hillary Clinton wouldn’t want to go in there, and wold probably call the police and ask them to thoroughly investigate everyone in that room. And the guy with the M&Ms.
The Dems’ real argument: Muslim immigration is, on net, positive for society. More generally, all immigration, (legal and illegal,) is a net positive for society.
We could of course test such suppositions–first we would have to assess the environmental and long-term impacts on the present population of adding, say, a million more people living at first world levels, which according to all of the environmentalists I’ve ever talked to, must be considered a net loss to humanity due to increased fossil fuel consumption.
Too many people when discussing immigration seem to default to an “infinite growth is best!” model, which obviously does not account for the fact that we live on a finite planet with finite resources. Even if we suppose that we could live in much more cramped environs than we currently do (people in suburban America could cram themselves into Tokyo-style apartments,) I don’t really want to, and I consider having much less space a massive decrease in my quality of life. So merely adding people for people’s sake is not, IMO, a good idea.
But by the same token, trying to freeze all of the world’s populations exactly where they are probably isn’t a good or worthwhile idea–at the very least, some of those folks out there are probably excellent folks whose presence in my country would be of great benefit to me.
So we also have to compare adding a million people from Group X to adding a million of some other group–say, Pygmy refugees, British doctors, Iranian atheists, Venezuelan beauty queens, mathematicians of any nationality, Mormon Americans, etc.
But such arguments tend to make people uncomfortable, first because they are technical arguments that don’t appeal to the emotions, and second because trying to enumerate the worth of people strikes too close to valuing some people more than others just because of their ethnicity, which most Americans are very opposed to. (Even if, in fact, the average American would be better off with an immigration policy that specifically preferenced certain traits.) So we are left with one side proclaiming “[Group] does X!” and the other side strenuously opposing, “Not all X!”
I am trying to think through some ideas that have been slowly percolating. Any thoughts/comments welcome and encouraged.
I propose first that we can divide politics–on either side of the Red/Blue tribe divide–into “high” and “low”. High politics are those of the upper classes, the rich, the folks who already have power. Low politics are the concerns of rest of us.
“High” is not necessarily better or more important than “low.” They are just different.
To explain better, I want to draw an analogy with Free Northerner’s distinction between “Nerds” and “Geeks”:
One man did a statistical analysis of the usage of the words and how they correlate with other words. He defined them as such:
geek – An enthusiast of a particular topic or field. Geeks are “collection” oriented, gathering facts and mementos related to their subject of interest. They are obsessed with the newest, coolest, trendiest things that their subject has to offer.
nerd – A studious intellectual, although again of a particular topic or field. Nerds are “achievement” oriented, and focus their efforts on acquiring knowledge and skill over trivia and memorabilia.
… The statistical analysis comes to this conclusion:
In broad strokes, it seems to me that geeky words are more about stuff (e.g., “#stuff”), while nerdy words are more about ideas (e.g., “hypothesis”). Geeks are fans, and fans collect stuff; nerds are practitioners, and practitioners play with ideas. Of course, geeks can collect ideas and nerds play with stuff, too. Plus, they aren’t two distinct personalities as much as different aspects of personality. Generally, the data seem to affirm my thinking.
FN also includes this graphic, from Burrsettles’s article, On “Geek” vs. “Nerd”:
Or to put it more plainly:
(also from Burrsettles)
There is a great deal of overlap between “geek” and “nerd” culture, otherwise no one would bother trying to distinguish between them–no one makes graphs on the difference between “motorcycle culture” and “chefs,” not because chefs never ride motorcycles, but because they are very distinct groupings. Geeks and nerds, by contrast, lie on a sort of personality continuum, where the main difference is probably IQ. (Though obviously some of the semantic distinctions are random, eg, “goths” under “nerd” and “#Linux” under “geek.”)
To return to our original discussion, “nerds” are the “high” end and “geeks” the “low” end of a single culture. Nerds are (relatively) high-status, with paying jobs that advance the well-being of humanity. Geeks are low-status, with lower IQs (on average) and jobs that are not generally recognized as advancing humanity.
This doesn’t make it morally wrong or bad to enjoy comic books or Firefly; it’s just kind of low status to be obsessed with them.
Young people in search of their own place in the world often explore a variety of different cultures, marked by particular clothes, music, TV shows, etc. This includes geek culture, which many people enjoy in highschool/college, but find less time for as they get jobs, marry, have kids, and generally age.
Studying quantum physics is hard. I can’t do it. <1% of the population can do it. But almost anyone can play video games or watch Firefly. Lots of people can read comic books and put together a nice cosplay. These activities are fun and let people feel like they’re part of the same culture as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Caltech professors.
Let’s go back to politics.
I propose a similar division between “high” and “low” politics. For example, globalism is high Blue-tribe politics; trans rights are low blue-tribe politics. Most of the people who are actively involved in globalization are high-status people like diplomats, businessmen, or lawmakers. Most of the people actively fighting for trans rights are trans themselves or their lgbq-“allies,” all of whom are much lower status than businessmen.
On the right, nationalism is high politics (at least currently); anti-trans rights is low politics.
Basically, SJWs are low blue, and your traditional blue-collar Christian conservative is low red.
Just as lots of nerds enjoy videogames or Linux, so do high-status blues basically believe in a lot of SJW things, and high-status reds believe in a lot of conservative Christian things, but the beliefs do not absolutely overlap. High-status blues do not actually spend their spare time hanging out with trans people or poor blacks and Hispanics, though many SJWs do (or are.)
Likewise, the Republican leadership says it opposes abortion, but has actually devoted far more resources to killing Iraqis than to stopping abortion.
How much of low politics do high class people actually believe in, and how much is just vaguely associated with them? How much do they use as a bludgeon against others without actually believing?
Low politics are very easy to get a handle on, because the vast majority of people talk about them–the vast majority of us aren’t part of the top 1%, after all. They’re also entertaining. But what about high politics?
Right now, I’d say it’s nationalism vs. internationalism. But I’m sure it’s more than just that.
Don’t say positive things about the ingroup that make the outgroups look bad by comparison
“Conservatives”–mostly white males–are the “ingroup”
(I am aware that “outgroup” and “ingroup” are not necessarily the best words here, because liberals use a funny definition of “ingroup” that is more “ingroup to America” than “ingroup to themselves.” We could also phrase this as “dominant majority” vs. “less-powerful minority,” or just “cis-het WASP males,” but there are issues with this phrasing, as well.)
I’m not sure what the rules of Conservative Club are, as it is much harder to inspire an angry conservative Twitter mob than a liberal one. Likewise, liberals (or at least Democrats) are the folk who’ve been violently attacking people at political rallies, not conservatives:
So the best I’ve come up with so far is that outgroups don’t get to criticize the ingroup, as exemplified in the re-branding of “french fries” as “freedom fries” following French criticism of the US plan to bomb Iraq. In general, conservatives believe that it is acceptable to say negative things about others so long as they are true, and it often doesn’t occur to them that others might think elsewise. (This leads to the perception that conservatives are rude.)
(Hrm. I think in general, conservatives respond more strongly to [perceived] physical threats, eg, Bush launching the War on Terror following the 9-11 attack vs. Bill Clinton not bombing anything after the first Al Qaeda bombing of the WTC, or the recent hoopla over Target letting trans people use the bathroom they self-identify with.)
The liberal demand that you never, ever say anything bad about the outgroups explains some otherwise inexplicable results, like Scott Alexander–an LGBT friendly, polyamorous, asexual, atheist Jew who basically agrees with basic SJW theses that blacks and women are oppressed in various ways–getting called “right wing” just because he is willing to say that sometimes SJWs are really mean to people who probably don’t deserve it and critically examine the data on black crime rates. Since “SJW mobs are sometimes mean” and “blacks commit disproportionate quantities of crime” are both statements that reflect negatively on these groups, they are forbidden under #1.
See also the liberals’ response that Donald Trump is “racist” for saying negative things about illegal aliens, like that they have broken the law. To say anything negative about outgroups is “victim blaming.”
This argument does not work with liberals.
This also explains why attempting to be a “moderate” doesn’t work with liberals–if you say something like, “I think both sides have their good and bad points,” then you have again violated rule #1. Conservatives, however, tend to be okay with such statements.
Conservatives tend to disagree with the liberal belief that there exists an “outgroup”–they believe that whites and blacks, men and women, etc., are basically treated equally in modern America. Some of them think that liberals are unfair to conservatives, eg, people who sue bakers for declining to bake gay marriage cakes.
Scotts argument against SJWs is simply that they are not nice to other marginalized groups, like autistic shut-ins or lower-class whites. (Actually, I don’t remember if Scott has specifically argued that SJWs are against low-class whites, but the argument has been made rather abundantly in various places.) This argument works if one is truly committed to helping all outgroups, but fails if the outgroup is specifically defined as “not whites/men” (see rule #3.)
Rule #2 is a more recent innovation, but follows obviously from #1. It explains, for example, why liberals have become reluctant to say anything positive about whites, especially historical ones, unless they can simultaneously also say something positive about women and/or minorities.
For example, any book of notable scientists/inventors/innovators must now include Ada Lovelace, who single-handedly built the first iMac; Jane Goodall, who discovered gorillas; and Amelia Earheart, airplane-crashing pioneer; but you are unlikely to find the names of Niels Bohr, the nobel prize winning father of quantum physics who helped 7,000 people escape from the Nazis and helped build the first atomic bombs; Ignaz Semmelweis, who saved the lives of millions of women by discovering that doctors were infecting by examining them with dirty hands after dissecting corpses; or even Jonas Salk, the guy who cured polio.
On a recent family trip, Suzanne Sherman discovered that slavery, rather than historical contributions, has become the dominant tour-guide narrative at landmarks like Monticello, Montpelier, and Colonial Williamsburg:
While waiting outside of the Peyton Randolph House, we were informed that the tour would cover the home itself, its rooms, architecture, and a brief description of the family who lived there. After that, the tour would concentrate on the many slaves who served the Randolph family, what life was like for them, and the hardships they were forced to endure.
When I inquired if the tour guide would inform us of the philosophical and numerous political contributions the Randolph family made in Colonial Virginia and in the founding of the American republic, the guide shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, indicating he would not. One of the other guides, a man portraying a slave, admonished me, “We’re not gonna sugarcoat anything.”
Peyton Randolph … presided over the first Continental Congress, was a leading figure opposing the Stamp Act and was the first American to be called “Father of his Country.” …
Edmund Randolph … became the aide-de-camp for General Washington, served in the Continental Congress, and was the Governor of Virginia during the Philadelphia Convention. He was one of the drafters of the Virginia Plan, served as attorney general under President Washington, and was secretary of state after Jefferson resigned. I find it incredible that this family was not worthy of discussion.
In all of the paintings Elihu Yale is wearing and surrounded by sumptuous fabrics. … In the second and third paintings we see an unidentified attendant. Much like the wearing of exquisite clothes suggested, placing a servant in a portrait was an articulation of standing and wealth. But when we look more carefully at these two paintings we notice that in addition to the fine clothes the servant and page are wearing they also happen to have metal collars and clasps around their necks. What we are seeing in each painting, then, isn’t a servant or a page, but a slave.
We are fairly certain that Elihu Yale did not own any slaves himself, but there’s no doubting the fact that he participated in the slave trade, profiting from the sale of humans just as he profited from the sale of so many actual objects that were part of the East India trade empire. … In fact, when we look at the paintings it is safe to assume that Elihu Yale was a willing participant in that economy. Since he could have selected anything to represent him in these paintings we can conclude that he chose to be depicted with enslaved people because he believed this narrative would best signify his wealth, power, and worldliness. …
Good morning and welcome, Class of 2019, family members, and colleagues sharing the stage with me. …
About one in twelve of you has been assigned to Calhoun College, named, when the college system was instituted in the 1930s, for John C. Calhoun—a graduate of the Yale College Class of 1804 who achieved extremely high prominence in the early nineteenth century as a notable political theorist, a vice president to two different US presidents, a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman and senator representing South Carolina. …
Calhoun mounted the most powerful and influential defense of his day for slavery.
From Pew Research Center, Muslim Views on Morality
Yale has no heroes to be proud of or to inspire its students to emulate, only bad people whose portraits must be hidden away and whose names must be publicly excoriated.
The demand that you never say anything bad about the outgoup leads to some odd responses, especially when two outgroups are in conflict. “Muslims” and “gay people” are both outgroups, and Muslims tend not to approve of gay marriage (by a tremendous margin,) but to say so is considered saying something negative about Muslims (even though Muslims themselves probably don’t think so.)
In response to the recent murder of 49 gay people by a Muslim, a liberal friend brought up Christians who kill people or commit terrorism (eg, the IRA,) and stated that we can’t judge an entire religion based on the actions of a few. The idea that, as a practical matter, these two groups might not get along very well simply isn’t considered.
The push to not say negative things about the outgroup probably increases in direct response to outgroup members doing something worth condemning, which may explain why both ends of the American political spectrum reported more favorable views toward Muslims after 9-11 than before it:
From Pew Research Center, “Ratings of Muslims rise in France…”
Since we happen to live in a democracy, if your first priority is gay rights, then you should logically be opposed to the immigration of future voters who are strongly opposed to gay rights. (Fred Phelps, on the other hand, ought to be thrilled.) But the LGBT coalition has hardly cast its lot in with Trump’s, eg, Donald Trump’s post-Olando appeal to LGBT voters roundly rejected:
Donald Trump’s appeal for support from LBGT voters after the Orlando terrorist attack fell flat with gay rights activists, who said his vows to protect them from homophobic Islamic terrorists were just more of the divisive and bigoted rhetoric they have come to expect from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. …
Mr. Brown and other gay rights activists said all minority groups have to stick together in opposition to Mr. Trump.
Michael Farmer, deputy development director of the LBGT advocacy group Equality Florida, said gay voters can’t trust Mr. Trump.
“If you’re somebody who holds bigoted views about one minority, who’s to say that you won’t hold them about another minority?” he said. “Folks who deal with these issues, people in minority communities, have got to stand together. Muslims, gay people, African-Americans have got to stand against the disgusting views that Donald Trump holds.”
As a practical matter, Trump might think gays are AIDS-infected perverts, but I highly doubt he plans on rounding them up ISIS-style and executing them. At most, he might allow bakeries to turn down gay cake orders, a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things.
It’s no secret that politicians make a lot of campaign promises that they don’t keep. Bush Senior promised not to raise taxes; Bush Junior promised not to engage in nation building; Bill Clinton promised to give everyone health care; Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education and not to deal with terrorists–like Nicaraguan Contras.
(Reagan apparently also once stated that “Trees cause more pollution than cars,” which makes me seriously concerned about the judgment of the American people.)
And Obama made promises like, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what,” and “I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be the president of the United States of America.”
Obviously there are many reasons campaign promises get broken, from outright lying to naive overconfidence in the president’s powers.
But I was thinking today about campaign promises–and arguments–that people voting for the candidate outright treat as false. For example, when Bush Jr. promised not to engage in nation building, Republicans did not rear that he would actually refrain from invading other countries. To the extent that anyone thought much about this promise at all, it was probably taken more as a claim to dislike the way Bill Clinton went about intervening in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. (Interesting that in all three of these cases, Clinton intervened on behalf of Muslims,) rather than the entire idea of invading other countries.
Anyone who seriously believed that Al Gore would have been a country-invading hawk and Bush Jr. an isolationist dove based on “the legacy of Clintonian nation-building” vs. Bush’s campaign promises must have been sorely disappointed–but I have never met anyone who claims to have held such views.
More recently, I’ve seen Democrats arguing that Hillary Clinton is a “conservative hawk” for her support of the Iraq War and other military interventions in the Middle East, and “a Republican” for her speech on “super predators” during the ’90s crime wave, her support for anti-crime policies that lead to the mass incarceration of African-Americans, and ’90s support of DOMA,
Meanwhile, the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, claims to have been against the Iraq war.
As I mentioned two posts ago, you can construct all sorts of “liberal” arguments in favor of Trump. “SJWs have been suppressing freedom of speech by suing bakers for refusing to bake gay marriage cakes, so Trump will restore free speech.” “Population growth => environmental destruction, and American population growth is being driven almost entirely by immigration. Therefore, if you care about Global Warming, we must Build the Wall.” “Racist, exploitative employers would rather hire illegal immigrants whom they can force to work at less than minimum wage without any benefits or safety precautions than hire blacks, whom they hate. Immigration has destroyed jobs and wages for America’s poorest and most discriminated against minorities so the 1% can get richer. Build the Wall!” “Jeb Bush wants to get into WWIII with Russia. Hillary Clinton supports the Iraq War. Only Trump will save us from nuclear armageddon!” “Amnesty for illegal immigrants punishes all of the legal immigrants for obeying the law.” “Muslims tend to favor very conservative stances on free speech, abortion, gay marriage, women, etc., so Trump’s plan to halt Muslim immigration is really in defense of liberalism.”
Of course, no one actually buys these arguments; certainly Trump’s supporters have no fear that he is secretly a raging SJW whose true concerns are the environment and African Americans. Likewise, no one on the liberal side is really afraid that Hillary Clinton will actually act like a Republican, launch Iraq 3 and promote an anti-gay and anti-black agenda. No one was really afraid that Bush Jr. would be a dove or that Obama wouldn’t help his fellow blacks. Come election day, Bernie Bros will turn out for Hillary, and Ted Cruz’s supporters will line up for Trump.
Why this disparity between what candidates say (or what people say about them) and what we actually believe?
I propose that the answer is fairly simple: tribalism. Once a candidate has established their tribalist credentials (or has the tribe securely arrayed behind them,) nothing they can say will convince members of the other tribe to vote for them, even if they are actually saying things that are explicitly meant to.
Die-hard Democrats aren’t going to vote for an evil Republican just because he happens to spout a few transparently glib platitudes on liberal values, nor will die-hard Republicans vote for an evil Democrat for the same reason.
But moderates can be swayed.
During the primaries, a candidate has to convince members of their own party to vote for them. At this stage, we should expect debates over who is the “true” liberal or “true conservative” as candidates try to outdo each other in a bid for their party’s dedicated, die-hard voters.
By the general election, candidates assume the support of their own party; they are now fighting for the nation’s moderates.
So Bush Jr. downplays his conservatism (branding himself a “compassionate conservative” and promising to eschew nation building,) in order to sound more like a moderate. The Gore campaign did similarly, leading Ralph Nader to loudly assert that there was no real difference between the two. Of course there was; in retrospect, it is almost unimaginable that a Gore presidency would have turned out identical to Bush’s.
Obama also campaigned as a moderate–he did not need to explicitly vow to pursue a pro-black agenda to get 99% of the black vote. Blacks already knew he was on their side; only moderates needed convincing.
Trump can take a position that is significantly more dovish than both the other major Republican primary candidates and Hillary Clinton and pundits still act like they think he is the most likely candidate to get into a major war, just because his personality yells “I will bomb my enemies back to the stone age.” (Meanwhile, no one takes seriously the other Republican primary candidates’ promises to get into WW3 with Russia–everyone assumes they are just lying to shore up support from their own side.)
Trump is not playing the primaries; as the front-runner, he is playing the election.
This brings us to the interesting dynamics of the Clinton/Sanders race. At the beginning of the primaries, Clinton likely believed, quite reasonably, that she was a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination. So Clinton has been playing her endgame for some time, trying to build up a record and reputation as a moderate–even a hawk–who can appeal to moderate conservatives.
Then came Sanders, who suddenly made her actually fight for the nomination. Sanders positioned himself as the “true liberal”–even a socialist–against Hillary’s supposed “conservatism.” The tactic has worked well for him; since Hillary can’t out-socialism Bernie, she has been forced to become more explicitly SJW as a result:
“If we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?”
“No!” shouted her audience.
“Would that end sexism?”
“No!”
“Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?”
“No!”
“Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”
“No!”
“Would that solve our problem with voting rights, and Republicans who are trying to strip them away from people of color, the elderly, and the young?”
“No!”
This isn’t Hillary claiming not to favor socialism so much as claiming to be even liberaler than Sanders.
Likewise, the Republican party establishment, before Trump entered the race, assumed that one of their front-runners would get the nomination, and so put their money behind three candidates with Hispanic credentials (Cruz and Rubio are actual Hispanics; Jeb is married to one and speaks Spanish,) in order to play the general election endgame and try to win the Hispanic vote away from the Democrats. This failed, however, to inspire Republican voters, who are rather crucial for wining the primaries.
Thus the eternal debate between candidates who appeal to their bases, and candidates who appeal to moderates. The more explicitly tribalist (Red Tribe or Blue Tribe) candidates motivate their base to turn out; the moderates attract more mainstream and cross-aisle votes.
Has anyone done a study on whether candidates with stronger support in the primaries (folks like Dean or Sanders, had they gotten the nomination,) do better or worse in the general election?
“But wait,” I hear you saying, “Isn’t this the beginning?”
Mainstream American conservatives (perhaps all conservatives) are essentially reactive. Not reactionary, mind. That word has a different meaning in this context. Just reactive.
Liberals come up with new ideas, and conservatives react by opposing them. Liberals are high-class, in-party; their ideas make it into university curricula and influence the nation’s movers and shakers. By the time conservatives (who do not usually run in liberal circles, nor read much from university presses,) notice a liberal idea, it has already become quite widespread. And nothing makes an idea seem old and passe quite like having it suddenly associated with the out-party, the politically low-class and uncool folks who vote Republican.
BTW, if you are the “homophobic uncle” or “racist grandma” at family functions, try to turn this into a secret power: make ideas sound bad just by talking about them. Global warming? Caused by immigrant-driven population growth! Rising wealth inequality? Clearly capitalists would rather hire illegal immigrants than pay blacks a living wage–build the wall! You support Hillary Clinton because she voted for the Iraq war! Etc.
Report back to me if it works. I’m curious.
But back on subject: the upshot of this is that by the time the Republicans notice something and start making a big deal out of it, it is already too late. The trends are already in place and moving inexorably against them.
Back in the ’80s, we witnessed the rise of the “Christian right;” throughout the 90s, “conservative” and “Republican” were synonymous with “Evangelical Christianity.” They ran on platforms that included banning abortion, reinstating prayer in school, replacing the theory of evolution with Biblical creationism in school textbooks, and general opposition to “Godless liberals.”
They have failed pretty spectacularly. While they have made some piecemeal hacks at abortion, it is still basically legal through out the country. Creationism and “Intelligent Design” have both been struck down as unconstitutional due to being blatantly religious. And you probably know the story on prayer in school even better than I do.
(This is a little disappointing coming out of a party that could count among its recent accomplishments normalizing relations with China, nuclear reduction treaties with the Soviets, and overseeing the peaceful collapse of the entire USSR.)
Conservatives of the ’80s and ’90s could tell that the country was becoming increasingly secular, and reacted accordingly by trying to force it back to religiosity. Unfortunately for them, increasingly religious => fewer and fewer people who are even interested in their religious agenda. Despite the fact that abortion is still legal and school prayer is still illegal, even conservatives have moved on to other priorities.
During Bush II, Republicans launched a big push to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The measure failed; gay marriage is now not only legal, but constitutionally protected.
No one bothered with passing an anti-gay marriage amendment back in the ’50s, when Republicans could have actually gotten the numbers necessary to do it. Since the vast majority of people thought homosexuality was immoral, there was no push to legalize gay marriage, and so no one would have bothered with passing amendments against it. Once enough people were in favor of gay marriage to put it on the national agenda, the trends were clear: soon the majority of people would favor gay marriage, and an amendment did not pass.
It was the last, desperate thrashing of a cornered beast.
Today, people have noticed–finally–that America’s demographics are changing.
Of course, the time to do something about this was before the demographics changed. In 1900, the US was about 88% white, 12% black, and <1% Hispanic. Today, whites are 64%, blacks are still 12%, and Hispanics are 16% of the population. (Asians and others comprise an additional 8%.)
According to the census bureau, in 2012, American infants were 50% white and 50% non-white–about 25% of American children are now Hispanic.
The time to care about changing US demographics was 1965, when LBJ and Ted Kennedy’s Immigration and Naturalization Act quadrupled the number of (legal) immigrants per year from 250,000 to 1 million. 1975 and 1985 would also have been good years to start caring.
In 1950, there were 500,000 Hispanics in the US. Today, there are 5o.5 million. Even if you built a wall between the US and Mexico yesterday and deported 11 million illegal immigrants, that would still leave 39 million newcomers and their children whom you cannot get rid of.
By 2050, the US will be less than half white, and American children will be only 40% white.
Interestingly, the last time a Democrat won a majority of white votes was 1964–LBJ. Republicans have been the “white” party–though they may not have realized it–since 1968.
But this does not mean that whites vote overwhelmingly for the Republicans. Even blacks occasionally vote for Republicans–about 5% of them voted for Bush II. As whites near 50%, even 10% voting for the Democrats will consign Republicans to the losers, while an identifiably “white” party will have difficulty attracting non-white voters.
No matter how much effort the Republicans put into attracting white voters (and likely they will put a great deal of effort into it over the next few elections,) the numbers are moving against them.
You can’t maintain a majority with a shrinking % of the population. (Though, of course, we are talking about a process that will take decades.)
But we live in a two-party system, and the system will re-assert itself with a new set of balanced coalitions that can win, perhaps a system that pits Hispanics and Asians against whites and blacks, or some other random thing. (I am not guessing.) But that won’t happen until the Republicans are weak enough that Democrats can safely split.
A lot of people are talking about the Trump candidacy “realigning” or “reshaping” the American political landscape and things like that. Like why would traditionally blue-state voters in places like NY vote for a guy who’s also carrying traditionally red-states like Kentucky? Is the whole Albion’s seed-style ethno/political makeup of the nation breaking down after nearly 400 years?
Nah.
Look, when it comes to politics, conservatives are basically just reactive. There are some smart conservatives, of course–I’d wager they do well in fields like economics, finance, sports broadcasting, and military strategy–but conservatives overall do not dominate the production of new social ideas. It’s the liberals, somewhat by nature, who keep coming up with ideas like, “What if we let women have abortions?” “What if we all took LSD?” “What if we didn’t eat animals?” or “What if we let gay people get married?”
So the conservatives devote themselves to opposing whatever the hell cockamamie scheme the liberals have come up with this time.
During the Cold War, I’m pretty sure the conservative opposed the liberals on the grounds that the liberals were commie peaceniks who weren’t doing enough to ensure that we would win the nuclear war against the USSR.
By the ’80s, conservatives were visibly concerned about shifting national attitudes toward religion, especially as it impacted things like abortion, divorce, the teaching of evolution in schools, whether local governments could make religious displays, etc. “Talk radio” became an important bastion in the “Religious Right,” which by the mid-90s had won a sweeping victory in Congress.
When people talk about how no president has ever been so hated as Obama, I wonder if they remember just how much the right hated Clinton.
And what did they hate him for?
Because he represented degenerate, godless atheism. (Never mind that Bill Clinton is probably actually Christian; that doesn’t really matter.)
Reagan and Bush I may have been religious conservatives, but religious conservatism was not a big part of their campaigns. By contrast, Bob Dole, Bush II, and mildly, Mitt Romney, all ran on the religious right platform, with strong planks based on ideas like “ban abortion” and “make sure gay marriage stays illegal.” Bush II even managed to establish an “Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”
Meanwhile, though, liberals were changing. The big liberal push of the past 8 years has not been atheism; atheism has largely won already and atheists have wandered off to fight other battles, taking to the streets to protest racism. Thus the campus protests, the Black Lives Matter campaigns, the increasing push for open borders. Today, Germany; tomorrow, the US. Today’s liberals are, first and foremost, anti-racists.
The Republican establishment–folks like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson–fell so flat with voters precisely because most of them were still harping on religious issues like abortion and war with the Russians that were a concern with Reagan’s and Bob Dole’s voters, not today’s.
Today’s conservatives do not exactly want to come out and declare themselves racist bigots–in fact, the vast majority of them don’t see themselves as racists, and many are quite vehemently opposed to racism. This makes people reluctant to say anything negative about blacks, which gets instantly called out as racist. But you can still say things about immigrants, especially illegal immigrants. There’s just enough plausible deniability (both for others and yourself) to claim that you are not opposed to Mexicans, per se, you are just opposed to people breaking the law and think that if the law exists, then it ought to be enforced or else it is unfair to the people who did obey it. And for that matter, many of them really aren’t opposed to Mexicans; they are just broke and unable to find work and have enough brains in their heads to figure out what a massive flood of low-wage workers does to their chances of finding a well-paying job.
Of course, in the backs of people’s minds, it is not just about immigrants; it is also about BLM protestors, the November terrorist attacks in Paris, and the conviction that if elected, Hillary Clinton will follow in Angela Merkel’s footsteps and invite a million Muslims to the US.
This is why they say, “I don’t hate blacks; I don’t hate Mexicans. I just hate liberals.”
No “open borders;” decrease low-IQ immigration in favor of high-IQ immigration
Decrease paperwork/bureaucracy/over-legalization/unnecessary government (or civil) intrusions into people’s lives
1 & 3 have been priorities for approximately forever; on point 2, I’ve changed over the past decade from favoring the libertarian position of fully open borders to favoring the “Hive Mind” hypothesis that the nation’s well-being depends on our % of smart people.
Number 3 may require explanation–there is just a tremendous amount of overhead gumming up everything. I think small business owners get this–every new regulation ends up being yet another hour they devote to paperwork instead of business. The net result is that regulations are, effectively, a form of taxation–a tax on time and ability to act.
I don’t think the general impression that it is nigh-impossible to get stuff done these days is just an illusion.
Imagine, for a moment, running a small business in the late 1800s. There were no payroll taxes, no insurance requirements, no pensions to keep track of, no deductions, no environmental impact surveys, no chance of getting sued over the ethnic/gender composition of your workforce, far fewer licensing requirements, etc.
Not that I want to die in a fire or from drinking polluted, feces-laden water, but there is a cost-benefit tradeoff to every regulation.
The Empire State Building, for example, was built in little more than a year, between January 22, 1930 and April 11, 1931. Wikipedia does not tell how much time–if any–was spent getting building permits prior to construction, but does note that the architectural plans were drawn up in two weeks.
By contrast, after the 9-11 attacks, folks began drawing up architectural plans for the new WTC building in 2002 and finally finished their plans, 3 years later, in 2005. Construction began a year later, in 2006, and finished in 2013. Tenants were finally allowed to move in yet another year later, in 2014–a mere 12 years after the project began.
The WTC cost an estimated 3.9 billion, or about $1,500 per square foot (in 2007). The Empire State Building cost $637,172,100 in 2016 dollars, or $283 per square foot. (Assuming square footage is calculated the same way for both buildings.)
On the plus side, it looks like no one died in the construction of the new WTC, whereas 5 people died building the ESB (though it looks like two people almost died and had to be rescued by the fire department.)
In a more mundane example, we frequent a local park with a new playground and a lovely, unoccupied restaurant building. It has stood unoccupied for several years, ever since the park opened. Every day hundreds of children and their parents play here; all summer thirsty children and their parents would love to buy lemonade and hot dogs and snow cones, but no one sells them.
Finally an enterprising Mexican appeared with a cart, selling corn on the cob and lemonade. Why corn? I don’t know, but it was good corn. Did he have a license? Was he legally allowed to have his cart there? Probably not; he disappeared after a couple of months.
Now there is no one selling lemonade; the restaurant is still empty.
The legal/judicial system is horribly inefficient. Consider the time, expense, and stress endured by a person falsely accused of wrongdoing in attempting to establish their innocence. False accusations should not destroy innocent people’s lives, but they do.
A female acquaintance of mine was accused of domestic violence and arrested by the police. The whole matter was bogus and the police dropped the case without even going to trial, but in the meanwhile she lost her job, was evicted from her apartment, lost numerous friends, had to spend a tremendous amount of money (and time) dealing with the case, and faced the possibility of actually going to prison. Basically, it ruined her life.
A friend who had started a small tech company was sued by a much larger company for patent infringement. The friend won the case, because none of the tech they used had anything to do with the patents in question, but the expense (and time they had to spend on it,) nearly destroyed the company.
The average person has neither the skills nor the expertise to defend themselves in a patent case; they must hire a lawyer, and lawyers aren’t cheap. Larger corporations can afford to throw bogus IP infringement cases at smaller companies until the cows come home or the smaller companies are driven out of business–obviously not how we want free-market economic competition to work.
As for #1: I don’t want to die in Syria. I don’t want my friends or relatives to die in Syria. I don’t want other Americans to die in Syria.
I suspect the chance of war is, from lowest to highest:
Sanders < Clinton < Trump < other Republicans
Trump has a belligerent personality, which makes me worry that he’d start or get involved in a war, but from what I’ve seen so far of the debates, he is ironically less inclined to get into a war than the other Republican candidates.
My impression of Open Borders sentiment:
Trump < other Republicans < Sanders < Clinton
Trump’s plan to build a wall seems a bit 30 years too late if you’re worried about Mexican immigration, (and enforcement might cost more than the migrants, anyway,) but Clinton and Sanders seem likely to greatly expand low-IQ immigration.
Nobody campaigns on an anti-paperwork platform, but Trump seems like the kind of guy who’d hate regulations on businesses.
The Democrats have the good luck to have two candidates they can feel truly enthusiastic about–Hillary as the first serious female presidential candidate; Sanders as the first Socialist. After all, when’s the last time you heard someone say, “I’m a Democrat, but I don’t believe in female empowerment/expanding social programs to help the poor”?
Republicans, by contrast, are amusingly divided over Trump. Sure, he’s the front-runner (as of when I wrote this,) with a fairly sizeable lead over the other candidates. And Trump’s supporters tend to be very enthusiastic, which is a good thing for getting your votes to actually make it to the polls come election day.
But the Republican leadership appears to be losing its shit over the matter.
If the Trump contingent should succeed in this endeavor, the party would not emerge refreshed or improved; it would be summarily returned to where it was languishing back in early 2009. And if that should happen? Well, suffice it to say that it would be an unmitigated, unalloyed, potentially unsalvageable disaster. For the first time in years, the Right’s defenses would be completely destroyed, perhaps never to be rebuilt. …
Now is the time to throw everything at Trump, and to stop this disaster in its tracks. Will our children wonder why we were so reluctant?
Incidentally, when I say “everything,” I really do mean everything. Tomorrow night, as they stand on either side of Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz must find their resolve and all-but-machine-gun the man to the floor.
I feel like the author needs a reassuring pat on the head. Don’t worry, your children really won’t care who you voted for in the primaries when they were five.
A group of Republicans is moving quickly to research ballot-access requirements for independent candidates in case Trump wraps up the GOP nomination next month.
Sure, Trump is loud and rude and disreputable, but more importantly, he came out of nowhere to upset the Republican front-runners simply by loudly opposing illegal immigration from Mexico.
Speaking naively, the odd thing is not that Trump opposes illegal immigration, (which is, after all, illegal because people oppose it,) but that no one else was making it a prominent part of their platforms. But in retrospect, in a field where the establishment darlings were Cruz, Rubio, and Jeb–two Hispanics and one guy married to an Hispanic–it seems clear that the Republican elites had decided on a strategy of courting Hispanics.
After all, if Dems have black voters, why shouldn’t Repubs have Hispanics? Hispanics are 17% of the population (compared to Blacks at 12 or 13%)–nothing to sneeze at, demographically.
The problem with this strategy is that while liberal whites may get excited about the prospect of voting for a suitable black or female president, conservative whites aren’t excited about the prospect of voting for the nation’s first Hispanic. The Hispanic Vote might “save” the Republican party by helping it to victory in future elections, but conservative whites care more about their own self-interest than the continued existence of a particular political organization. Let it go the way of the Whigs; life will go on regardless.
The Republican field before Trump entered the race was almost shockingly dull and uninteresting–not good for winning. While I have nothing against (or for) Jeb as a person, who in their right mind would consider him for president? Is the party so lacking in leadership and foresight that the best they can come up with is literally the little brother of the previous Republican president and son of the Repub. before that? No, a good leader should go to waste just because other members of his family were also talented, but there are a great many positions besides president in which a truly talented person can serve his country–Secretary of State, Attorney General, Supreme Court Justice, governor, etc.
That people find the Trump’s success at all surprising is, well, strange. What, Republican voters aren’t keen on illegal immigration? I am shocked, absolutely shocked! It is like discovering that Democrats think that Black Lives Matter. What else shall we learn, that Libertarians favor individual freedom?
The Republican leadership is in direct opposition to its own base. The leaders want to promote their pro-Hispanic strategy; the base is anti-immigration. Hypothetically, Hispanic voters who are legally in the country might resent people who break the law to do what they jumped through hoops and worked to do legally, but as a practical matter:
People who oppose illegal immigration often oppose legal immigration;
People who oppose illegal immigration are often opposed to Hispanic migrants in general;
Hispanics immigrants may simply desire more Hispanic immigration, without caring about the legal details.
All of which makes the Trump campaign potentially problematic for the Republican elites.
The Founding Fathers never intended for the President to be all that big a deal–each state was supposed to basically do its own thing and mind its own affairs, Congress was supposed to take care of the matters that required interstate coordination, and the President was just supposed to be there for those times when we really needed a single guy to do something, like present a coherent foreign policy to foreign sovereigns.
Since then, of course, the Presidency has increased both in power/scope and in the amount of attention people pay to it. People who can’t be bothered to vote for the mayor or city council that runs their cities somehow find time to watch endless news coverage of presidential debates, buy t-shirts and tote bags promoting their favorite candidates, and broadcast their presidential preferences all over every social media platform they have available to them.
I was reading this morning about cuts to the services disabled people receive in Oklahoma, and (as you might expect) more generally about economic malaise throughout Appalachia.
Whether Obama or the Democrats can do anything about joblessness in Greater Appalachia is a matter of some debate; whether they should is another. But people have gotten so fixated on their hatred of the President and the Democrats more broadly that they are willing to vote blindly for the Republicans, whether the Republicans actually accomplish their goals or not.
The inverse is also true in liberal areas, where people vote Democratic because they hate Republicans.
This fixation on hating the president instead of paying attention to and trying to improve one’s own community is a kind of poison. At best, it’s a worthless distraction; at worst, you give up your own self interest in order to symbolically defy someone living in another part of the country.
Reuters/Ipsos polling reveals a remarkably high level of approval for nearly all the provisions of the act, often in the 80 percent range, even though respondents oppose the legislation, commonly known as “Obamacare,” by 55 to 45.
Chances are, the average person has no idea what is actually in the bill; support or disapproval is based entirely on political identity–if you think abortion is bad, then you think “Obamacare” is also bad; if you think abortion is good, then you probably think Obamacare is also good.
Of course, this is an idiotic way to determine health care policy.
You know best your own business; second best, your friends’ and loved-ones’ businesses; worst, strangers’. We do the most good by serving our local communities–caring for our families, helping our friends, cleaning up our own streets and being decent to others. But instead we spend our energy watching TV and complaining about health care plans we don’t understand. We want to “fix” schools we’ve never set foot in, without the slightest idea what’s wrong with them. We invade other countries and expect them to thank us for the favor.
And who wins?
You? Me?
Probably not.
How many years of Republican voting have resulted in a preservation of anything Republicans hold dear? Job, society, religion?
The “rural purge” in American TV was the cancellation, between 1969 and 1972, of “everything with a tree in it.” Wikipedia lists 26 shows that were purged, everything from Lassie to Gunsmoke to Red Skelton. Some of these shows were probably declining anyway and would have been cancelled sooner or later, but most, like Hee Haw (#16 in the ratings), or Red Skelton (#7) were doing quite well.
According to Wikipedia, CBS’s original plans called for Gunsmoke–a TV and radio success since 1952–to be canceled at the end of the 1970-71 season, but Gunsmoke kept defying them by doing things like coming in #5 and #4 in the Nielsen Ratings; it didn’t get canceled until the end of the 1974/5 season, when it came in #28.
The entire cast was stunned by the cancellation, as they were unaware that CBS was considering it. According to Arness, “We didn’t do a final, wrap-up show. We finished the 20th year, we all expected to go on for another season, or two or three. The (network) never told anybody they were thinking of canceling.” The cast and crew read the news in the trade papers.[26]
Gunsmoke was replaced with Rhoda and Phyllis. Rhoda did well for two seasons; then it cratered. By season 5, it had sunk to #43 and was cancelled. Phyllis made it for an impressive two whole seasons, ending at #40.
If ratings didn’t drive the purge, then what did?
Advertisers.
Advertisers wanted TV shows that appealed to young people with money to spend and tastes to shape, not old people whose tastes and incomes were already fixed. (The same dynamic that lead tobacco companies to try to market cigarettes to children.) Everything that appealed to the wrong demographics–old people, rural people, poor people–got the axe. They were replaced with “relevant”show like All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the Brady Bunch Comedy Hour, which everyone agreed was awful.
Amusingly, Congress–which tends to be full of old people–was upset about all of its favorite shows getting cancelled and replaced with programs aimed at 20-something single women and hippies. According to Wik:
The backlash from the purge prompted CBS to commission, perhaps somewhat facetiously, a rural family drama for its Fall 1972 schedule, but the network scheduled it in what it thought would be a death slot against popular series The Flip Wilson Show and The Mod Squad, allegedly hoping the show would underperform and head to a quick cancellation. Instead, The Waltons went on to run for nine seasons, reaching as high as second in the Nielsens and finishing in the top 30 for seven of its nine years on air.
Dude lives in a trash can.
Mary Tyler Moore only lasted for 7 seasons.
I suspect something similar happened in the late 80s/early 90s as the grittiness of our degraded cities, reflected in shows like Taxi, Sesame Street, and Welcome Back Kotter, began to distress watchers instead of inspire them, and networks began focusing on suburban comedies like The Cosby Show and Full House, but I have yet to find any articles on the subject. (This trend may have reversed again once Giulliani cleaned up NYC, resulting in shows like Seinfeld and Friends.)
“If you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative when you’re old, you have no brains.” — Variously misattributed
While I wouldn’t describe younger me as a total idiot, there are certainly a great many things that I know now that I didn’t know back when Joe Camel ads were a thing or when I attended candle lit vigils for Darfur. That’s part of growing up and getting older: hopefully you learn something.
What happens when most TV programming for 40 or 50 years is intended to appeal primarily to people who don’t yet know much about the world?
It took quite a bit of rumination to come up with something better than “obviously they have trouble telling when the wool is being pulled over their eyes,” and “small children tend not to notice the pattern of kids’ TV shows making the black character the smartest one.” (I’d make a list except I don’t care that much, but I’ll note that even LazyTown, an Icelandic TV show, does it.)
So the non-obvious effect: People massively over-estimate the percent of the country that agrees with liberal values, and then are shocked by reality.
Basically, TV–a few cable stations excepted–functions like a great big liberal bubble.
27% of Americans–20% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans–favor deporting illegal immigrants. 39% of Americans favor amending the Constitution to end birthright citizenship; 41% believe immigrants are, on net, a burden.
17% believe the Bundy-led militia takeover of a building in Oregon was just.
60% of Republican primary voters think the US should should ban Muslims from entering the US; 45% of Democrats agree, so long as you don’t mention that it was Trump’s idea.
44% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 don’t know which country America gained its independence from. (Also, while 85% of men know the answer, only 69% of women managed the same feat.)
57% of Americans see the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride, rather than racism; 43% oppose removing the Confederate flag from government buildings.
31% of Americans believe it is immoral to be transgender; 59% believe trans people should use the bathroom that corresponds to their birth gender.
If your perception of “normal” is based on the sitcoms you see on TV, chances are good that virtually all of these stats are surprising, because they don’t feature many young Earth creationists who fly the Confederate flag and want to start WWIII with Russia.
But given the structure of our electoral system–Republicans pick a candidate; Democrats pick a candidate; everyone gets together and we vote for the Republican or the Democrat–there’s a very good chance that about half the time, the president will actually agree with a variety of the positions listed above (except he’s pretty much guaranteed to know who we fought in the Revolution.) If you think that’s an absolutely horrible outcome, I recommend either advocating for massively changing the structure of the electoral system, or investigating some form of Neocameralism.
One of the more amusing experiences of the past few months has been watching people–both Democrats and Republicans–express outrage, shock, and confusion at Donald Trump’s success. Who could have predicted that “kick out illegal immigrants” might attract more voters than “Let’s all die in a war with Russia”? (Clearly not anyone paid to understand which issues appeal to voters.)
“It’s time we punched the Russians in the nose.”–Presidential candidate Gov. John Kasich
“Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it,” blurted Christie: … Yes, we would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling … we have in the Oval Office … right now.”
Carly Fiorina would impose a no-fly zone and not even talk to Putin until we’ve conducted “military exercises in the Baltic States”
There are a lot of people who would describe Trump as “literally Hitler” (which seems a little unfair to a guy whose daughter is Orthodox Jewish,) for wanting to deport illegal immigrants, temporarily halt Muslim immigration, and create some kind of Muslim registry, at least until we have fewer incidents like the San Bernardino Christmas Party shooting.
But on the scale of human suffering, I guarantee that a war with Russia would be far, far worse, and yet no one is protesting against that possibility, screaming that those candidates are going to start WWIII, nor even mildly concerned that the “mainstream” Republican candidates are so completely off their rockers, they make Trump look like a pacifist. (Here the Rand Paul supporters would like to point out that their candidate is also sane.)
Perhaps political commentators have become accustomed to Republicans starting wars and the threat of nuclear armageddon. Killing foreigners is a normal part of the Republican agenda–but trying to keep them out of the country? That’s completely novel. (Or at least, we haven’t done it since the 20s.)
Or perhaps people are mad because Trump is vocally anti-liberal and garners much of his support from people who hate liberals, and liberals had not realized just how many people really hate them.
Liberals must not get out very much.
I didn’t actually intend this to turn into a Trump post, but the subject is popular thee days. Had I written this in 2004, I’d have discussed the two young women I had just spoken with who swore up and down that George Bush couldn’t win reelection because “no one likes him.”
(As always, this blog makes no official political endorsements.)
