2 hours ago, Jamie_B said:

 

 

How relevant is this with 4% unemployment and inflation around 5%? Corporate price gouging and horseshit propaganda have convinced low-information voters that we're in some kind of desperate economic depression.  It's not 1938 out here by a long shot.

 

This concept of some utopian past that was stolen from us by a mysterious & evil "Other" (immigrants) is Fascism 101.

 

Motherfuckers are mad because they can't afford to UberEats every meal or had to cancel Amazon Prime.  We're collectively spoiled as fuck, the slackwits voting for Trump aren't anything close starving.  They're sitting on double mortgages and can't afford to fill up their 3 MPG dualie trucks they use as a daily commuter but that's got to be someone else's fault.  This "hungry children" stuff is ridiculous.  If their kids are suffering it's more likely because their idiot parents let them get smallpox because they think the vaccine would give them autism. They're mad at the world because they're total fucking losers and Trump gives them an excuse to blame everyone else for it.

 

 

55 minutes ago, T-Dub said:

 

 

How relevant is this with 4% unemployment and inflation around 5%? Corporate price gouging and horseshit propaganda have convinced low-information voters that we're in some kind of desperate economic depression.  It's not 1938 out here by a long shot.

 

This concept of some utopian past that was stolen from us by a mysterious & evil "Other" (immigrants) is Fascism 101.

 

Motherfuckers are mad because they can't afford to UberEats every meal or had to cancel Amazon Prime.  We're collectively spoiled as fuck, the slackwits voting for Trump aren't anything close starving.  They're sitting on double mortgages and can't afford to fill up their 3 MPG dualie trucks they use as a daily commuter but that's got to be someone else's fault.  This "hungry children" stuff is ridiculous.  If their kids are suffering it's more likely because their idiot parents let them get smallpox because they think the vaccine would give them autism. They're mad at the world because they're total fucking losers and Trump gives them an excuse to blame everyone else for it.

 

 

 

Americans' views of the US economy largely negative | Pew Research Center

4 hours ago, Jamie_B said:

 

Americans' views of the US economy largely negative | Pew Research Center

 

Exactly, people think the economy is in shambles because a handful of companies are price gouging at the grocery store.

 

Over 1 in 3 rate themselves as poor. That's absurd. Like I said, spoiled af.

Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US

 

Download and read the pdf. Pretty good argument and based on 2016 and 2020.

Big Lies and Little Progress: Reviewing Four Years of Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class”

                            WEIRD

18 hours ago, Homer_Rice said:

Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US

 

Download and read the pdf. Pretty good argument and based on 2016 and 2020.

 

3 things jumped out at me re: their assessment of social capital

 

1. They mark the decline with people disengaging 1965-1970 & while they also mention "multiculturalism", I think there's an elephant in the room re: the civil rights movement.

 

2.  The tendency to blame wealth stratification on anything or anyone but the most wealthy.  IDK if that's our self-image as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" but it's remarkable how the worse this problem gets, the more angry people become at everything else.  This also relates to the distrust in the justice system & government at large as we watch these same billionaires flaunt their contempt for the law.  I have to wonder if people feel more envy than anger there, too.  We've got a Presidential candidate with dozens of fraud convictions worth billions of real United States dollars while others go to jail (or worse) over unpaid parking tickets.

 

3. Anecdotal but I don't entirely agree with the idea that rural/smaller communities have stronger social capital.  Having lived in cities as well as tiny towns in the middle of nowhere, I find the latter may have stronger institutions but they only serve their own narrow section of the population.  Some people do get very involved in church groups, bass tournaments, or high school sports but all these places are alienating if those aren't you're thing.  You better at least fake it with one of them or you risk being ostracized.  They also lack things like parks or libraries where people can interact without any sort of gatekeeping.   By contrast the cities offer community of all kinds, for a much broader and more accessible range of hobbies or interests where your background or how many generations your family has lived in Pigsknuckle County aren't limiting factors. Not sure if the authors think it's more important to have a large % of the local population involved in the same activities when it may be preferable to have something available to everyone, even if it's in smaller groups.  Beyond that, the decline in this sense of unity they're referring to in small towns is dramatic.  Community groups on social media for small towns are an absolute shitshow of drama and finger-pointing. People in the cities tend to more mind their own business, which isn't necessarily the same thing as disengagement.  Oddly I also find urban strangers more approachable due to the constant interaction.  You can't help but come in contact with people very different than yourself & you either learn how to be generally polite & respectful while holding your own, or you get mad about it and move out to some homogeneous little enclave to fall into an echo chamber (a shift that had dramatically redistributed populations by 1965).  That makes it very tempting to blame those now-rare markedly different people for all life's ills because you're unlikely to encounter them and have your prejudices challenged. 

 

Can't shake the impression that this lost social capital they're lamenting was dependent on disenfranchised underclasses.  Now that this underclass has grown to cross all those old ethnic/cultural/religious lines the 1% requires the rest to fight amongst themselves in order to exist.  It's not hard when the majority of them are conditioned to feel entitled because they're of the same ethnic/cultural/religious groups as that 1%.  Much easier to blame the out groups that are easily identified as different and convince yourself they're what's standing between you and become a one percenter yourself. 

I don't have time right now, but I think these remarks are worthy of response. I will say, right off the bat, that it appears that you didn't read the entire paper. It's a pretty cold, dispassionate argument. It's a straightforward, numbers-crunching (in the way only political scientists can love) examination of a variety of factors which seeks to explain just why we have ended up in this place. No lamenting going on at all.

 

Lol. It's also an example of why I shifted my major from Political Science (and English) to History and Philosophy.

 

You may be interested in reading a book or two by Michael Lind. He's conservative, but offers a lot of insightful arguments in a coherent way.

 

This election is going to be close when it shouldn't be. Why is that?

7 hours ago, Homer_Rice said:

I don't have time right now, but I think these remarks are worthy of response. I will say, right off the bat, that it appears that you didn't read the entire paper. It's a pretty cold, dispassionate argument. It's a straightforward, numbers-crunching (in the way only political scientists can love) examination of a variety of factors which seeks to explain just why we have ended up in this place. No lamenting going on at all.

 

Lol. It's also an example of why I shifted my major from Political Science (and English) to History and Philosophy.

 

You may be interested in reading a book or two by Michael Lind. He's conservative, but offers a lot of insightful arguments in a coherent way.

 

This election is going to be close when it shouldn't be. Why is that?

 

I did read it (even the mapping at the end, which was very interesting re: AZ where I now reside), and I did get an overall sense of a paradise lost, small town America nostalgia wafting through their argument - which is absolute catnip for people enamored with white Christian nationalism.  Again, having lived in extremely remote places, towns of a few hundred, and some of the largest cities in the US I don't entirely agree with some of their conclusions.  I stand by my criticism that their concept of "social capital" is based on a homogeneous form of unity & social engagement that was predominantly white, middle class, and Judeo-Christian.  As I said, the fact that they chart the breakdown as starting 1965-1970 to me points to a very obvious cause of this social/civic separation.

 

So, in answer to your last question, I'd say it's largely because that class system is no longer maintaining those barriers that kept people in comfortable bubbles.  In some cases because the middle class is no longer almost entirely white, but unfortunately more so because the middle class is dramatically shrinking. This gets particularly caustic with people as applied to the urban poor, which for the last, I'd say century (?) was considered the realm of minorities in ghettos. I think this is why we see the far right raging about violence in cities like Chicago when (eg) Indianapolis has a higher murder rate. We desperately need someone else to blame other than our masters.  More to the point, maintaining the status quo for the people at the top requires this newly disenfranchised white former middle class to always punch down. The strict racial & class divides that were a fundamental part of this nation from the very beginning are still ingrained in our culture and social systems.  Thus, a crude populist demagogue promising to put minorities back in "their place" is very appealing.  What I find truly unfortunate is how that multiculturalism was considered a great strength almost unique to the US - when those multiple cultures were still mostly white (Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc).  As that became multiracial and not just a matter of cultures or varying European nationality, we see the suburban white flight culminating in the more separated society they're lamenting.

 

I don't think they're wrong, I just think they're shying away from one of the root causes.

 

I will add Lind to my reading list.  I'm currently working on that Politics of Heroin which I think you recommended.  Must admit I'm skimming through the WW2 and Vietnam-era stuff I was already familiar with, hoping to get deeper into our later involvement in the shift from SE to Central Asian drug trade.  I might have to bust out my copy of Ghost Wars (maybe the best "road to 9/11" book I've found) again to see how that timeline in Pakistan matches up.

“Put Them in Trauma”: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda

 

They plan to go after not just other politicians on the other side, but career public servants who have served under both parties. 

Trump is a “gift from God” and a statesman in the realm of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison?

 

Dear God, what is this man smoking 🚬?? 😂

In bits and pieces:

 

I don't think I suggested that book, it's been at least 25 years and more since I thought (with any depth) about the CIA and the drug trade. Did I suggest it in an off-handed way, maybe, but I don't remember doing so. The only McCoy book I have in my library is "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power."

 

On books: I highly recommend Lawrence Goodwyn's work on 19th century populism. Highly. Also, Thomas Frank is pretty good, too, with a more modern context. So, an historian, and two authors across the spectrum.

 

On why the election is so close when it ought not to be:

 

This is my view, which I'll start with a rhetorical question: When was the last time you voted when there was a clear, positive, message for "Good" to vote for? My first presidential election was Carter in 76 and I have never cast a ballot that was not a choice between "evil" and "lesser evil." Personally, I'm tired of it, it's morally compromising and I'm done. And, BTW, since when is genocide a "lesser" evil. My conscience won't support that anymore.

 

I read this, this morning, gives a thorough view from his POV: "It's Harris's Race to Lose...

15 hours ago, Shebengal said:

Trump is a “gift from God” and a statesman in the realm of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison?

 

Dear God, what is this man smoking 🚬?? 😂

Lol. These guys are too much:

 

Quote

He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”

 

Now, I personally think that both Jefferson and Madison are over-rated, but it is (kinda) true that Trump falls into that tradition in American History. Yet, what gets me is all this "Marxist takeover" crapola. First of all, Marx would fucking flip out at how his name is being abused by his so-called supporters--and in fact he did late in his life when people tried to impose historical determinism on him. Second, name me a Marxist alive today who is a threat to anything, except maybe the coffee pot down the hall in the professor's lounge when they are having a bad day.

 

Edit, to add: Oh, and don't even bring Lincoln into the conversation. Lincoln would split Trump like a rail. In fact, just last week I re-read his early Lyceum speech (1838); it's a really good and refreshing bit of fresh air.

I don't know what document you read, but I'm prompted, again, to suggest something methodological to you. It's a shame you've ignored all my previous suggestions, but that's your prerogative. Here goes:

 

"If you want to be good at reading between the lines, you have to be good at reading the actual lines first."

 

You have a strong tendency to be hyperbolic and to distort the messages of other people and, in this case, writings. You did it to me not to long ago and I told you to knock off the bullshit. You do it here, too.

 

There's no "elephant in the room" in this document; that's just a poor hypothesis on your part.

 

To claim that the authors have a  "tendency to blame wealth stratification on anything or anyone but the most wealthy" is not only not supported in the document, it's also absurd. In fact, their argument claims that:

Quote

"We will analyse for the first time the link between social capital, interpersonal inequality and long-term economic and demographic decline in America’s communities, on the one hand, and the rise in pro-Trump populist vote, on the other. The aim is to show that the surge in pro-Trump populism in the US may not have come from, as suggested by Putnam (2000), low social capital or high interpersonal inequality (at least, at the local level), or their combination. We argue that a fundamental driver in the swing of votes towards Donald Trump is a factor that has remained relatively unnoticed not just in Putnam’s Bowling Alone, but also in much of the literature on the rise of populism in the US;: the long-term economic and demographic decline of American towns and rural areas and the related rise in interterritorial inequality.

The role of these three factors in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections are assessed, by considering the increase in votes for the Republican Party between the 2012, on the one hand, and the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, on the other—the Trump margin—at the county level.

We hypothesise that low social capital alone is unlikely to have triggered the swing of voters to Donald Trump and that interpersonal inequality at the local level is unrelated to increases in Trump’s vote share. We propose that it is precisely the long-term economic and demographic decline of the places that still rely on a relatively strong social capital that is behind the rise of populism in the US. Strong, but declining communities in parts of the American Rustbelt, the Great Plains, and elsewhere, reacted at the ballot box to being ignored, neglected and being left-behind.

The results of the analysis show that increases in populist vote in the US are fundamentally driven by the economic and demographic decline of strongly cohesive midtown and rural America. These places still have greater levels of social capital than more dynamic and unequal areas of the US. This social capital has played a role in the swing of votes within communities driven by a growing feeling of frustration, increasingly known as the rising geography of discontent (McCann, 2020) or the politics of resentment (Cramer, 2016). In small cities and rural areas of the US, scattered predominantly across the Rustbelt and the Great Plains, the rise in populist vote represents a reaction of strong communities in which individual losses are identified with collective losses. These so-called ‘places that don’t matter’ (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018) have had enough of seeing their people leave and their jobs go and have used the ballot box to exact revenge on a system they consider offers little to them. By contrast, the more dynamic, mainly urban, areas of the US, where society is often less cohesive, where there is less social capital and where interpersonal inequalities are significantly higher, have, for the moment, shunned the calls of populism."

 

and it concludes thusly:

 

Quote

"Two decades ago, Putnam (2000) warned that American democracy was at risk from the twin challenges of the decline in civic engagement and social capital on the one hand, and the rise in interpersonal inequality on the other. More
Americans bowling alone and engaging to a far lesser extent than before in local communities and an increasingly divided society from an economic perspective represented a twin threat to the democratic institutions that had been built since independence.

Sixteen years later his forecast materialised with the election of Donald Trump, an outsider and political novice with strong populist tendencies, who first stunned the Republican Party elite by securing its presidential nomination, and then went on to beat the Democratic party candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the November 2016 election.

Yet, the election of a candidate that, by shaking the system, has stretched American democracy to the limit, may have had little to do with declining social capital and rising interpersonal inequality and much more with the long-term employment and population decline of many formerly prosperous American communities. These communities are precisely those where social capital—the very form of capital that, according to Putnam (2000), was supposed to provide the glue for America’s democratic institutions—has held stronger than elsewhere.

This is what this paper has shown." [pg. 477]

 

What they are saying is precisely, and I'll use my own words, is that the de-industrialization of our country (the which began roughly 1965-1970, btw) has destroyed strong communities and those left behind, who didn't move away, resent that and many shifted towards a more populist outlook.

 

That's all. No more, no less. Nothing about the civil rights movement, nothing about lamenting, nothing about the composition of social capital. You've interjected a whole bunch of stuff into an argument which, by design, does not go into your speculations, or mine, or those of anybody else. It's a bog standard bit of political science work, including the jargon, which seeks to understand why people voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

 

This study isn't about "right and wrong." It is about exploring one aspect of this phenomenon which hasn't been developed before. And, imho, they do a pretty good job of it.

3 hours ago, Homer_Rice said:

I don't know what document you read, but I'm prompted, again, to suggest something methodological to you. It's a shame you've ignored all my previous suggestions, but that's your prerogative. Here goes:

 

"If you want to be good at reading between the lines, you have to be good at reading the actual lines first."

 

You have a strong tendency to be hyperbolic and to distort the messages of other people and, in this case, writings. You did it to me not to long ago and I told you to knock off the bullshit. You do it here, too.

 

There's no "elephant in the room" in this document; that's just a poor hypothesis on your part.

 

To claim that the authors have a  "tendency to blame wealth stratification on anything or anyone but the most wealthy" is not only not supported in the document, it's also absurd. In fact, their argument claims that:

 

and it concludes thusly:

 

 

What they are saying is precisely, and I'll use my own words, is that the de-industrialization of our country (the which began roughly 1965-1970, btw) has destroyed strong communities and those left behind, who didn't move away, resent that and many shifted towards a more populist outlook.

 

That's all. No more, no less. Nothing about the civil rights movement, nothing about lamenting, nothing about the composition of social capital. You've interjected a whole bunch of stuff into an argument which, by design, does not go into your speculations, or mine, or those of anybody else. It's a bog standard bit of political science work, including the jargon, which seeks to understand why people voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

 

This study isn't about "right and wrong." It is about exploring one aspect of this phenomenon which hasn't been developed before. And, imho, they do a pretty good job of it.

 

To be clear, the comment about blaming everyone else but billionaires for being "poor" was not directed at the authors. I'm referring to the absurdly racist anti-immigrant "took our jobs" and "welfare queen" nonsense going around - punching down, which is a major part of Trump's appeal.

 

They mark the start of this shift as 1965-1970. That naturally makes me think "What was happening in that time period?" Maybe I'm wrong to think it was the culmination of the civil rights legislation of the 50's-60's and the public reaction to those shifts . But  industrialization was ancient history by then, wasn't it? They only mentioned "multiculturalism" once or twice IIRC, which - call it hyperbole - means, essentially, "Americans being forced to tolerate nonwhites in normal day-to-day life." My bad I suppose but I never see that term used in a positive sense. No one is being forced to eat hummus.

 

Really though the only thing that gave me pause was their assertion that smaller towns tend to have stronger social capital. I'm going to dig a little deeper into just how thats being calculated because my experience with that "small town pride" stuff is that it runs very shallow and turns ugly very easily. I'm sure you've seen me blast PFF enough, I like to know where these numbers are coming from. The methodology warrants a reread here.

 

Other than that Id humbly ask you to not be so dismissive if I don't immediately draw the same conclusions as you from something like this. I don't have an extensive education in political science so some of these terms etc are new to me, as are certain assumptions about their veracity - or the topic in general.

 

It's good to question and challenge things even when they come with charts and stuff, no? 😆

Tough love, incoming. Take it as you will.

 

You are a bright guy. That's clear. But you are undisciplined and prone to flights of fancy. It's a shame because if you took the time and spent the effort to work on the mundane stuff like a solid, foundational personal epistemology, you really could be a positive force.

 

This last post of yours is just another load of you justifying your preconceived notions. I'm not dismissive of you because you "don't immediately draw the same conclusions as you [i.e. me] from something like this." The only conclusion I drew from this is that I thought it was a good argument. I'm challenging you to do better because you are capable, but seemingly unwilling. I shouldn't have needed to pull the author's thesis and conclusions out and quote them. They are so obviously pronounced in the actual document that anyone reading in good faith would have sussed 'em out.

 

Knock off the bullshit and become the person you are capable of being.

Oh, and by the way, your remarks about social capital are mistaken. You admit that yourself when you suggested that you have (had) to modify your behavior in small town living. That's a sign of bending to the general zeitgeist of the community. The which, possibly battered and beaten down by 50 years of economic decline very often caused by de-industrialization, is still somewhat insular and strong, even if the demonstration of that zeitgeist is unappealing. Populism, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad, but it is a phenomenon which occurs when people are feeling left out, left behind, and betrayed. Read Goodwyn.

2 hours ago, Homer_Rice said:

Oh, and by the way, your remarks about social capital are mistaken. You admit that yourself when you suggested that you have (had) to modify your behavior in small town living. That's a sign of bending to the general zeitgeist of the community. The which, possibly battered and beaten down by 50 years of economic decline very often caused by de-industrialization, is still somewhat insular and strong, even if the demonstration of that zeitgeist is unappealing. Populism, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad, but it is a phenomenon which occurs when people are feeling left out, left behind, and betrayed. Read Goodwyn.

 

Not a term I was familiar with & it struck me as a bit loaded. Who this social capital serves depends on if the rally is for a canned food drive or the Klan. They're both a form of community involvement, if that's what it means. So if someone appeals to those lacking it, whether it's Bernie or Trump probably depends on the former. (Not a Bernie Bro but that's also a form of populism, isn't it?) Why are people choosing to isolate instead of interacting, hell with either one, & then losing their damned minds getting mad about it? Fear?

 

Some people choose to donate pork & beans when others would rather burn a cross on someone's lawn. Why is multiculturalism scary or, as they seem to be saying, alienating? Why does city = lawless hellhole in so many minds like their only interaction is an armed excursion to Costco?

 

If it's about self-isolation COVID had a massive impact as well. "China bad" when half the shit we own ..

 

Just boggles my mind that 1/3rd of our population thinks they're poor. Compared to who, when, and where?! We're insatiable consumers that throw shit through the drive-thru window if they're out of Ghost Pepper aioli - fucking crazy to think that lifestyle would sustain itself.

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Homer_Rice said:

Tough love, incoming. Take it as you will.

 

You are a bright guy. That's clear. But you are undisciplined and prone to flights of fancy. It's a shame because if you took the time and spent the effort to work on the mundane stuff like a solid, foundational personal epistemology, you really could be a positive force.

 

This last post of yours is just another load of you justifying your preconceived notions. I'm not dismissive of you because you "don't immediately draw the same conclusions as you [i.e. me] from something like this." The only conclusion I drew from this is that I thought it was a good argument. I'm challenging you to do better because you are capable, but seemingly unwilling. I shouldn't have needed to pull the author's thesis and conclusions out and quote them. They are so obviously pronounced in the actual document that anyone reading in good faith would have sussed 'em out.

 

Knock off the bullshit and become the person you are capable of being.

 

Hey that's fair, no offense taken. Sometimes the sarcasm from bullshitting about football seeps through over here. I take it seriously but the absurdity of American politics at the moment makes that challenging if not at times impossible. Such a lamentable clown show. Sometimes bullshit is the best I can do with that - ridicule is the most potent form of antifascism I know of, failing education. Sorry if you're catching strays there, I'll try to dial back the reactionary stuff.

 

Also thhat might be light reading for you but takes me longer to digest. I said I read it, not that I understood it! 😅

 

Not that MAGA cares what he does but WTF was this?  This is who you're voting for?

 

 

 

 

So do ppl generally think POTUS has an inflation thing in the Oval, like a thermostat they adjust or something?  Is there a separate one for gas prices?  Couldn't be the execs sitting in board rooms at P&G or Kroger. 

 

You know what, we should cut back what little taxes those folks pay & get rid of Medicare, Social Security, overtime pay and the National Parks.  And deport all the non-whites of course.

 

That'll fix it!

 

Watching these political ads it's worth mentioning again:

 

Crime rates have been steadily falling since the 90's.  The last time they jumped was after the COVID restrictions were lifted, but have been down every year since.

 

In case facts matter at all to a bunch of scared white folks 2000 miles from the border

 

 

tf is this

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, T-Dub said:

 

tf is this

 

 

 

 

And the right criticizes Kamala Harris’ word salads? That’s not a word salad. That’s a 7 layer word casserole 🥘 that makes no sense whatsoever.