The Trump effect

[JimC]

I define my political position as the perfect, rational centre, with offensive, nasty idiots to my right, and crazed maoists to my left...

[Hermit]

Strange how 'liberal' has so many meanings. Ours is the complete opposite of yours.

As in Dutch? Liberal in English means - The Cambridge dictionary offers:

respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behaviour:

(of a political party or a country) believing in or allowing more personal freedom and development towards a fairer sharing of wealth and power within society

The illiterate unwashed masses who think their opinions are as valid as Darwin's, Hawking or the average PhD simply because they have one seem to think it means anyone who doesn't agree with their bigoted and ignorant views.

Liberal parties well we have only one the VVD are right wing conservatives who want to maintain the old free order.

1(politiek) voorstander van een zo groot mogelijke vrijheid op economisch en cultureel gebied, van een zo gering mogelijke overheidsbemoeienis

A proponent of the greatest possible freedom in economic and cultural areas with as limited as possible government intervention. (my translation).

In Germany, at least when I lived there many a moon ago, "liberal" had both meanings. Social liberals were, as the name suggests, socially tolerant. Economic liberals, as that name suggests, were in favour of running the economy as free from governmental regulation as feasible.

It's much the same in Australia even though our second biggest party, named Liberal Party, is neither. When Robert Menzies, who went on to become our longest serving Prime Minister, founded it, it was profoundly socially conservative, while in the economic sphere it ran on a mix of extreme mercantilism (our tariff barriers were of Himalayan proportions) and corporate/agricultural socialism. So when we talk about liberalism in Australia, not only do we distinguish between social and economic liberalism, we also need to specify whether we are talking about "big L liberalism" or "small l liberalism".

[Hermit]

I define my political position as the perfect, rational centre, with offensive, nasty idiots to my right, and crazed maoists to my left...

All centrists are closet fascists.

[JimC]

Stalinist!

[cronus]

Trump is lowering the IQ of any who consider the twat a genuine alpha male. Might be a entire nation doing that somewhere, I don't know, but here it is clear he's a twat. Too many tweets make a twat...someone said, it appears to be true.

https://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/201 ... nev-years/

[Hermit]

Stalinist!

Thanks for confirming my statement. Self described centrists will accuse any democratic socialists of being the mirror image of themselves at the other end of the spectrum.

I shouldn't really laugh. At all. This is very, very serious. But I can't help it. The predictability of closet fascists just too funny.

[JimC]

Do you really think I was being serious?

[Hermit]

Do you really think I was being serious?

Yes! Yes indeed!

Well, exactly as serious as I was when I wrote that all centrists are closet fascists.

[Scot Dutchy]

Strange how 'liberal' has so many meanings. Ours is the complete opposite of yours.

As in Dutch? Liberal in English means - The Cambridge dictionary offers:

respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behaviour:

(of a political party or a country) believing in or allowing more personal freedom and development towards a fairer sharing of wealth and power within society

The illiterate unwashed masses who think their opinions are as valid as Darwin's, Hawking or the average PhD simply because they have one seem to think it means anyone who doesn't agree with their bigoted and ignorant views.

Liberal parties well we have only one the VVD are right wing conservatives who want to maintain the old free order.

1(politiek) voorstander van een zo groot mogelijke vrijheid op economisch en cultureel gebied, van een zo gering mogelijke overheidsbemoeienis

A proponent of the greatest possible freedom in economic and cultural areas with as limited as possible government intervention. (my translation).

This translates as 'libertarianism' in English I would suggest. The English version suggests a degree of social justice and fairness in general but withe an emphasis on personal liberty. Perhaps it is a matter of the subtlety being lost in translation.

Libertarianism is unknown here. The "Liberalen" support also the social state. so have nothing in common with any 'classic' American liberalism. The party is also quite young finally appearing in 1966 after the break off of the more central right party D'66 (Democracy 66). This country never had a right wing party in the parliament never mind government.

[pErvinalia]

How are they right wing if they support the social state?

[Scot Dutchy]

How are they right wing if they support the social state?

That is the conundrum of Dutch politics. The social state is not part of politics. Our left wing parties would be considered by 42 to be extreme socialist verging on communist. Even the VVD realises the effectiveness of a good working social state. Health, education and social services are never in the political arena.

[Forty Two]

I'm sure we have always had our share and I wouldn't put it down to Trump being a cause in all honesty. Rather he seems to be a symptom of or an example of a view that an uninformed opinion and one based on ignorance is as valid as anyone else's - that seems to me has been emboldened over recent years.

Well, in a sense, an opinion of one person is "as valid" as anyone else's. Just believing oneself to be informed, or believing someone else to be ignorant does not make one's own opinion more valuable than the allegedly ignorant person's view.

The reason is that it's not really feasible to make rulings on who is more or less ignorant or informed than someone else. That's the whole point of a democracy. We don't live in an aristocracy or under a Platonic Philsopher King. And, people are not required to defer to their betters, or those who claim to be more informed.

Now, there are times when your point there rings quite true, like when a person who quite obviously doesn't know anything starts opining on a topic, and is trying to argue with someone who is in the best position to know the information. Like when students tried to tell Ray Bradbury that the main point of Fahrenheit 451 was government censorship and they told him, to his face, that he was wrong when he explained the actual main point he was making when he wrote Fahrenheit 451. There you have a clear case of people in a worse position to know what the author himself was talking about.

However, in general, in day to day life, you and I have no real understanding of which of us is "ignorant" and whether one or both of us is "informed." Generally, both of us are informed to some degree, but never completely, as it is almost impossible to have read and understood all the issues on any topic. People tend to have different understandings of the facts, and different levels of knowledge, and different biases each. They start with different premises, assume different facts, and end with different conclusions. Add to that the difficulty in actually communicating ideas, with some people not being very capable or interested in communicating ideas clearly and understandably, and the fact that we often misunderstand what someone else is trying to say - we use words and phrases differently - we jump to conclusions sometimes - and sometimes we turn arguments or discussions into fights, looking to win as opposed to persuade or understand.

So, I think it's hard to really suggest that Trump is emblematic of a trend to view ignorance as equivalent to knowledge. I think it's more accurate to say that people get to different opinions by virtue of a different understanding of what the world is and what the facts are.

It's like a fact check I read yesterday about something Trump said. Trump said that he signed the largest tax cut in American history. ABCNews fact checked and said triumphantly that this was a big "lie" that he told. Why? Because to ABCNews there was a way to look at the tax cut to show that it was not the biggest tax cut in history, because it was not the biggest "as a percentage of GDP." And, they are right about that. However, why does ABC News think that the measure of the size of a tax cut is only properly measured "as a percentage of GDP." If we say that this year there were more car accidents than ever before in the last 40 years, that would not become a "lie" simply because it might not be the most car accidents ever "as a percentage of total population." The absolute numbers are also true. So, he wasn't "lying" because the tax cut is, in fact, the largest - in dollars - in history. So, who is "ignorant" and who is "informed?"

[Seabass]

Well, in a sense, an opinion of one person is "as valid" as anyone else's.

Opinions that are built on lies and falsehoods aren't worth dogshit.

[Forty Two]

Well, in a sense, an opinion of one person is "as valid" as anyone else's.

Opinions that are built on lies and falsehoods aren't worth dogshit.

Well, of course, but it's relatively rare that someone bases their opinions on a clear lie or falsehood. Something that everyone can tell is a lie or false is generally not something anyone, even the relatively ignorant, use as the basis for their viewpoints.

What is more common is that there is a difference of opinion.

I gave the example of the ABC News factcheck which declared that Trump "lied" about his tax cut being the biggest in history. They declared that to be a lie, because there were two other tax cuts that, when you use the numbers to calculate the ratio of tax cut dollars to total GDP dollars, that ratio (percentage of GDP) was bigger for the two other tax cuts. So, Trump "lied," they say. The tax cut was "not the biggest ever" they say. However, they did not point out that Trump was accurate in claiming that it was the biggest in dollars. It was the biggest. They called him a liar, because he did not base a judgment on the size of a tax cut by its relation to GDP.

So, whose opinion is built on lies and falsehoods? Whose opinion is worth dogshit?

The answer is, neither. Both are correct opinions as to what the facts are, and when you analyze the conclusions reached based on the factual premises, they are both correct. The only incorrect statement is that Trump "lied." He didn't lie.

[Hermit]

ABCNews fact checked and said triumphantly that this was a big "lie" that he told. Why? Because to ABCNews there was a way to look at the tax cut to show that it was not the biggest tax cut in history, because it was not the biggest "as a percentage of GDP." And, they are right about that. However, why does ABC News think that the measure of the size of a tax cut is only properly measured "as a percentage of GDP." If we say that this year there were more car accidents than ever before in the last 40 years, that would not become a "lie" simply because it might not be the most car accidents ever "as a percentage of total population." The absolute numbers are also true. So, he wasn't "lying" because the tax cut is, in fact, the largest - in dollars - in history. So, who is "ignorant" and who is "informed?"

Minor point: In its State of the Union fact check ABS news did not triumphantly declare anything, nor did it use the word "lie" once. You just made that up. It did place the tax cut claim into the "false" pigeon hole, whereas I would have stuck it into the adjacent one, "Mostly Spin".


Absolute numbers are also true, indeed, but they are called "absolute" here because they are taken out of context, and context adds meaning you can't see by looking at the numbers in isolation from everything else. So I regard the two "truths" as not equal. The person spouting absolute numbers, no matter whether they are about tax cuts, road accident fatalities, or anything else, is engaging in spin doctoring. In that sense, an opinion of one person is not as valid as anyone else's. They are not qualitatively equal opinions. Looking at the context that surrounds a bald number, be it GDP, distance travelled per person per total population or whatever else is relevant, is better information.