> Britain tried being "open" but it backfired in a big way.
Care to elaborate?
> the united states continues to be culturally very open and meritocratic.
Hmm... tell that to Trump, the frontrunner for one of your two parties.
Care to elaborate?
> the united states continues to be culturally very open and meritocratic.
Hmm... tell that to Trump, the frontrunner for one of your two parties.
Also, consider the shitstorm over Syrian refugees. Just a few years of dealing with the kind of illegal immigration Americans have faced for decades, and Europeans got really racist really fast.
When I was in Berlin in 2009, I regularly encountered opinions from Berliners regarding mostly Turkish immigrants that wouldn't be unlikely to hear from a good-ole boy in Appalachia talking 'bout them damn Mexicans... But then there were also people drunks I encountered on May Day that were dancing and chanting Obama. Weird contrast.
I do believe it's going to get a little ugly dumping that many immigrants into such homogeneous populations.
When you see that Trump is polling at 31% or whatever, keep in mind that 31% of early Republican primary voters is a pretty small number of people. With a more normal candidate you might take that as being in some way representative of the wider population, but Trump is probably not going to gain much more support than he already has, since he's so extremely polarizing.
Ahh yes, glad to see there is still civil discussion on ycombinator.
I think Trump (and to a lesser extent Sanders) is only a preview. We'll see a full-blown fascist or hard-line socialist candidate eventually if this doesn't reverse.
I also wasn't meaning to badmouth blue collar folks. On the contrary, I was trying to communicate just how much anger there is out there outside of BubbleLand. Sometimes you have to be hyperbolic to get your point across and get people to wake up and see what's happening. The middle of America has been in a depression since 2000... that's going on 15 years.
I doubt that's true; that 31% is with the conservative establishment pouring an order of magnitude more money into the campaign of establishment candidates (particular Jeb Bush) that are getting no traction despite the vast spending; there's already signs that significant parts of the establishment are coming around to Trump of the least-bad viable candidate (and others parts of the conservative establishment going to Cruz, who is similarly situated with regard to the establishment, and likewise seeing success despite the vastly greater spending and conservative establishment support for other candidates that are not gaining traction).
When the flood of conservative establishment resources that has been deployed against Trump/Cruz begins being split by Trump and Cruz -- and most of it finally lines up behind one of them if, as seems likely, they secure the party nomination -- they'll do much better than they do with those resources opposing them.
Trump's politics are reactionary, and play on a fear that the demographics and culture of the US are becoming too open and "meritocratic." His success is actually a sign that this phenomenon exists, and that people are terrified of it.
As a big business New Yorker, I suspect he'd be a lot more of a centralist on many issues than anyone else in the race right now, possibly on either side of the aisle.
His politics are actually reactionary, yes.
> I am not sure I have a good sense of what his actual policies would be.
Whether his actual policies would be reactionary is a different question from whether his actual politics are reactionary.
> Saying things that he's said about immigration might appear reactionary, but I'm not sure it's not as much a play to Peoria, where the lower and middle class whites that still make up the majority of the electorate are feeling the pain of globalization and the erosion of their traditional economy.
Sure, its populist; that doesn't stop it from also being reactionary. (Sanders, likewise, is populist, but rather the opposite of reactionary.)
I don't think he's dishonest about it. There's just in general copious amounts of what they used to call "free-floating anxiety" and somebody's gotta exploit it. I think he's sincerely trying to help. I would hate to be him if he ever figures out this won't work.
The problem is media in general, and media in general is not incented to report widely on the problems of media in general. I suppose it would be considered too frivolous, but I think teaching some entry-level media criticism skill to, say, junior high kids would go a long way towards making this less of a thing.
I at least tried to make sure my kids knew this and had basic algebra skills with an eye towards being able to enforce some degree of rigor. I'm happy with the results, but it really confused them while I was telling them this.
At one point, I'd have said Canada does not have this problem but since then, it's started.