Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by pErvinalia » Thu May 07, 2020 11:14 am

You only have to look at the thread title here to draw a parallel so I won't labour the point.
The thread title neither says nor implies anything about limiting anyone's rights. Wtf are you talking about??
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu May 07, 2020 11:20 am

You'll need to give me a bit more to go on I'm afraid.
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by pErvinalia » Thu May 07, 2020 11:25 am

You don't know what you wrote? Your meaning was clear, and it is totally off-base.
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu May 07, 2020 12:51 pm

No, I know what I wrote, I'm just not sure why, if my meaning was clear, you are asking me what I'm talking about? To be charitable, I just think you're being too literal as a far as that one sentence goes. Overall I think it's pretty clear that I'm questioning whether setting up a kind of simple dichotomy between 'clever' and 'stupid' people in this context is wise, or useful, or perhaps counter productive even if it's understandable to some extent.
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Thu May 07, 2020 9:00 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
Thu May 07, 2020 10:59 am
Trigger Warning!!!1! :
Seabass wrote:
Wed May 06, 2020 7:36 pm
Brian Peacock wrote:
Wed May 06, 2020 7:04 pm
Seabass wrote:
Wed May 06, 2020 6:02 pm
Brian Peacock wrote:
Wed May 06, 2020 5:44 pm
That's good. What does he say about freely conflating Trump supporters with Nazis?
I don't know, but it's probably unfair to Nazis. They didn't have the benefit knowing beforehand where Nazism leads.
That's disingenuous. You haven't really engaged with any of my points and again just pop out these insinuations that I'm soft on fascism simply because I'm challenging what I see as an over-simplistic view which actively targets the wrong people as 'the problem'. I've pointed out where and how I think you're conflating Trump supporters/voters with Nazis and why the justifications for your rage against them appears circular. You could talk about that if you like.
Did you miss my post where I explained why I've made some of these comparisons?

viewtopic.php?p=1862735#p1862735

Please disabuse yourself of the notion that I think people who voted for the NSDAP are two dimensional movie villains.
I did read that on page 5, but I took it as a repetition of your justification for conflating Trump supporters/votes with Nazis - something we got into when you explicitly compared Trump supporters to Nazis after applying the 'Trumpzis' label earlier on in the conversation. As I've already implied, I feel you were too eager to invoke the spectre of the Nazi's as an emblem of clear moral hazard in order justifies your concerns, your anger, and your fears about the future as self-evident or unquestionable.

Let me be quite plain: I don't dispute your sincerity or that you have good cause to be concerned. In fact I think you have every reason to be concerned. I'm concerned as well, and I think I've said enough in recent times about capitalism, neo-liberalism, nativism, and fascism etc for you to know deep down that implying I don't take such things seriously, or even that I'm soft or ambivalent about them, is, frankly, a bit of a cheap shot.

Were you around in those heady post-God Delusion days when some people were encouraging atheists to call themselves 'Brights'? Well if you weren't then I can assure you it was actually a thing for a while. It strikes me that, in part, we define some aspects of our identity by what we are not? By being encouraged to identify as a 'Bright' we were being encouraged to not just distinguish ourselves from the religious but to declare that we were intelligent and serious - that we 'Brights' are not the stupid ones.

This never sat well with me as a term for those reasons. I wasn't the only one though, and it never really caught on. But the reason it didn't sit well with me was because, having once been of a religious bent, albeit a soft kind of religious, it didn't ring true that my own prior religiousness was a function of my relative intelligence or cognitive capacity - which is to say that when I abandoned religion, which I did casually and with hardly any effort, I don't think I became a more intelligent, clever person, nor di it lead me to thinking that I was once a less intelligent, stupider person. Religion was just something that was around, that everybody else seemed to have no problems with, something I just followed along with, absorbing bits here and there but otherwise not really paying much attention to it. It was something I just did, more a set of practices than a solid belief system - and it had singing and cake, of which I'm still a great fan to this day.

So why am I mentioning that? Well, what the 'Bright' thing brings up for me are issues around identity, in this case an attempt at a manufactured or constructed identity, but one which nonetheless seems intent on acting as more than just an identifier for some group of people (like, say, 'filatelist') - one which instead acts as a signifier for distinguisher of types or kinds of people, and in particular a distinguisher which elevates one group, our group, the 'Brights', above the other group, their group, the 'Dolts'.

I mean, if we are the intelligent, favourably cognitively endowed ones then is it wise or even safe to let the idiots make decisions or act on our behalf? Shouldn't 'Brights' be asking if 'Dolts' are even capable of making decisions on their own behalf, what with them being stupid an' all? I mean, some of them might be clever enough but they're still 'Dolts' aren't they? Should people like my former self, who are probably just saying and doing what they see everybody else around them saying and doing, let alone those fully committed to their doltish ways, not have their say, status, opportunities, and/or autonomy limited, for our good as well as their own - the stupid fuckers? You only have to look at the thread title here to draw a parallel so I won't labour the point.

This is what I was touching on when I implied that this thread was indulging in identity politics, which is a kind of politics I essentially locate as being 'from the Right' - though it's fair to say that it covers all political bases these days. In this regard identity politics is essentially that which is carried out on the playing fields of the Right and undertaken by their rules - which is one reason why I've been keen for you to articulate what actual good you think you're achieving by joining that game - even accepting that you don't think you are.

I mentioned Carl Schmitt before in relation to this. I've brought him and his ideas up before so I'll just quote something I posted not that long ago...
Brian Peacock wrote:
Mon Jul 15, 2019 5:58 am
...

The early 20th century political philosopher Carl Schmitt said that all politics (the big-P kind of Politics; The Political) boiled down to a distinction between friend and foe. The thing that defined a "foe" for him was not someone you were necessarily politically opposed or resistant to but someone that, when it came down to it, you'd be willing to see worse off than yourself; someone you'd be willing to let suffer, or; someone you could and would throw to the wolves. By comparison a "friend" was anybody who wasn't a "foe", such that your "friends" shared an "identity" - your identity.

For Schmitt this turned all political activity into a project that started with trying to figure who did and didn't share your identity: who was and wasn't your political friend. Schmidt didn't invent so-called 'identity politics' but he was among the first to articulate a description of the Political in terms of which identities, which "thems", you wouldn't necessarily mind being treated badly or being absent from society.

He didn't stop there of course, he went on to argue that it didn't really matter if the distinctions between friend and foe were reasonable or strong or valid in any kind of factual sense, only that they were believable and offered people a framework they could believe in - and when people did believe that 'the other lot' existed as a distinct identity who could have their status downgraded or be excluded from society then it becomes a lot easier to imagine that those who see you as 'the other lot' are probably just as happy to see you done down as your are them.

For Schmitt this was why it was vitally important to politically organise around your own identity: not only in order to oppose 'that other lot' who might want to treat you as shitty as you'd treat them, but also to ensure that your identity was protected by actively resisting 'the other lot' pre-emptively in order to make sure that your identity always stood on the top of the pile when it came to treating people in shitty ways.

Yeah, Carl Schmidt, the father of 'identity politics', was an actual, massive, bonafide Nazi, and one of the things his 'philosophy' shows is that Fascism always starts with the assumption that it's OK for some people to be regarded and treated in the kind of shitty ways we wouldn't tolerate or accept being treated ourselves - and we all know where that ends eh?

The thing is, how does one counter that kind of ideology of identity, because when it comes to MRAs, Alt-Righties, white-nationalists and white-supremecists, neo-Nazis and Fascists we're already dealing with people who are involved with and invested in a conflict of identities - a conflict between their identity and everybody else? And reason and history shows us that when someone who has basically declared war on you comes knocking at the door then inviting them in for cup of tea and a chat isn't a very sensible thing to do.
As I said earlier, the kind of questions asked at the end there are tricky with no ready, off-the-shelf pat answers. That list of reprobates (MRAs, Alt-Righties, white-nationalists and white-supremecists, neo-Nazis and Fascists), which I now lump together as 'ideological exceptionalists,' embody and represent identity politics. When they gain a foothold in our communities we have every right to be concerned. When we see them prosper we have every reason to be frustrated. And when they march down the high street chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" we have every right to be angry, to oppose them and, where necessary, to resist them. There's no giving them a 'fair hearing' or granting them an automatic free speech right to express their views, because their rhetoric is merely a precursor to actions which would oppress and exclude others from the community - in some cases structurally, in some cases forcibly, and in some cases murderously. However, I don't think that we can succeed in overcoming them by 'out identifying' them as it were - again that's just playing their game on their field by their rules.

Perhaps now you can understand why I'm reluctant to endorse blanketing Trump supporter/voters as imbeciles, as 'Dolts', as fascists, as 'Trumpzis', and how that kind of rhetoric applied to an entire demographic might actually be counter-productive and push people toward identifying with more extreme ideologues who are more than willing to exploit their concerns and fears?
Yes, Brian, I understand all of that. We're all brainwashed with all sorts of nonsense when we're young, and that can become part of our identity. Religion, political ideology, sports team, party affiliation, our locality or region (eg southerner, New Yorker...). In fact, I have stated multiple times that US politics is not about policy and really about cultural tribalism. You responded in agreement to one of those statements, so now I'm wondering what you think I meant by that.

The problem with this, taken to its logical end, is if say Stephen Miller identifies as a white supremacist, and I criticize him or insult him, then I'm the one who's doing identity politics and am therefore a bigot. At some point it becomes counterproductive to be tolerant of intolerance. One famous example of this is of course Nazi Germany, hence the comparisons.

As I've said before, I've already gone through the "Republicans aren't that bad" phase of my life. I have Republicans in my family and I have friends who are ex-Republicans. This insanity is something all sane Americans have to deal with. For me, this isn't some abstract, foreign, silly thing that I can watch with bemusement from across the ocean. You're a white guy living in Britain and I'm a yellow guy living Trumpmerica. The stakes are a bit higher for me. The Fox News fantasy realm is insane and terrifying, and the Republicans are working tirelessly day and night to drag the rest of us into it. I'm just fed up, Brian. And I'm not the only one. I don't know what else to tell you. Civility is dead in the US. Republicans killed when they chose this thing:

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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Thu May 07, 2020 9:02 pm

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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by JimC » Thu May 07, 2020 9:20 pm

The real question here seems to be how deeply racist and right-wing attitudes have seeped into your average Trump voter, or are they voting for Trump because their economic circumstances made them deeply angry at a perceived elite that doesn't care about them? Are there well-structured surveys which can tease this out?
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Thu May 07, 2020 9:40 pm

JimC wrote:
Thu May 07, 2020 9:20 pm
The real question here seems to be how deeply racist and right-wing attitudes have seeped into your average Trump voter, or are they voting for Trump because their economic circumstances made them deeply angry at a perceived elite that doesn't care about them? Are there well-structured surveys which can tease this out?
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2 ... -data-say/
he Brookings Cafeteria podcast last week discussed the role President Trump’s racist rhetoric has played in encouraging violence in America. Predictably, some podcast listeners responded skeptically on Twitter, doubting the association between Trump and hateful behavior. It would be naïve to think that data will change many individuals’ minds on this topic, but nonetheless, there is substantial evidence that Trump has encouraged racism and benefitted politically from it.

First, Donald Trump’s support in the 2016 campaign was clearly driven by racism, sexism, and xenophobia. While some observers have explained Trump’s success as a result of economic anxiety, the data demonstrate that anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, and sexism are much more strongly related to support for Trump. Trump’s much-discussed vote advantage with non-college-educated whites is misleading; when accounting for racism and sexism, the education gap among whites in the 2016 election returns to the typical levels of previous elections since 2000. Trump did not do especially well with non-college-educated whites, compared to other Republicans. He did especially well with white people who express sexist views about women and who deny racism exists.

Even more alarmingly, there is a clear correlation between Trump campaign events and incidents of prejudiced violence. FBI data show that since Trump’s election there has been an anomalous spike in hate crimes concentrated in counties where Trump won by larger margins. It was the second-largest uptick in hate crimes in the 25 years for which data are available, second only to the spike after September 11, 2001. Though hate crimes are typically most frequent in the summer, in 2016 they peaked in the fourth quarter (October-December). This new, higher rate of hate crimes continued throughout 2017.

The association between Trump and hate crimes is not limited to the election itself. Another study, based on data collected by the Anti-Defamation League, shows that counties that hosted a Trump campaign rally in 2016 saw hate crime rates more than double compared to similar counties that did not host a rally.

The data analysis discussed above has centered on correlations; they are suggestive of a link between Trump and racist attitudes and behavior, but do not actually demonstrate that one leads to the other. However, there is also causal evidence to point to. In experiments, being exposed to Trump’s rhetoric actually increases expressions of prejudice. In a 2017 survey, researchers randomly exposed some respondents to racist comments by the president, such as:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Other respondents were exposed to a statement by Hillary Clinton condemning prejudiced Trump supporters. Later in the study, the respondents were asked their opinion of various groups, including Mexican people, black people, and young people. Those who had read Trump’s words were more likely to write derogatory things not only about Mexican people, but also about other groups as well. By contrast, those who were exposed to Clinton’s words were less likely to express offensive views towards Muslims. Words do matter, and data prove it.

Unfortunately, there is little reason to expect this research to have much impact on public attitudes; increasingly, partisanship skews what Americans think qualifies as racist. But there is no excuse for avoiding clear, accurate descriptions of American political dynamics. When the data show that President Trump’s support stems from racist and sexist beliefs, and that his election emboldened Americans to engage in racist behavior, it is the responsibility of social scientists and other political observers to say so.
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Thu May 07, 2020 9:56 pm

JimC wrote:
Thu May 07, 2020 9:20 pm
The real question here seems to be how deeply racist and right-wing attitudes have seeped into your average Trump voter, or are they voting for Trump because their economic circumstances made them deeply angry at a perceived elite that doesn't care about them? Are there well-structured surveys which can tease this out?
I read this book not too long ago. This guy collected a bunch of data, conducted a ton of interviews, and what he found was that overwhelmingly, the sentiment from poor, white, rural America is that they don't want their hard earned tax dollars going to black and brown people who in their minds don't contribute. We're talking about destitute, broken down white people ON GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE who are dying from some corporation dumping toxic shit in their communities, but what terrifies them is the evil government taking their hard earned money and giving it to "moochers" and "welfare queens". It is IMPOSSIBLE to overstate the damage that Fox News, Breitbart, Limbaugh, and Coulter have done to this country.
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Thu May 07, 2020 9:59 pm

JimC wrote:
Thu May 07, 2020 9:20 pm
The real question here seems to be how deeply racist and right-wing attitudes have seeped into your average Trump voter, or are they voting for Trump because their economic circumstances made them deeply angry at a perceived elite that doesn't care about them? Are there well-structured surveys which can tease this out?
It's not ALL racism though, obviously. Some people just vote Republican by default because that's how things are where they grew up. It's the stupid cultural divide happens inevitably in FPTP. It's a mistake, however, to think that race issues aren't a HUGE factor contributing to this mess...
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Tero » Wed May 20, 2020 12:50 am

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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by pErvinalia » Wed May 20, 2020 1:14 am

Yep
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Svartalf » Wed May 20, 2020 10:18 am

yeah, you understand, religious freedums trump (pun intended) necessities of public health.
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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Wed Oct 07, 2020 4:49 am

What are Trump supporters thinking? A Late Show sent Triumph the Insult Comic Dog to do a focus group with actual Trump supporters to find out what they think about some fake Trump campaign ads.


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Re: Trump Supporters are Imbeciles

Post by Seabass » Fri Oct 09, 2020 4:15 am

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." —Voltaire
"They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved." —Sebastian Gorka

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