How Half of America Lost Its F***ing Mind
cracked.com
cracked.com
I'm an African American software engineer who grew up in a medium size factory city (100K people). I went to a private predominately white school and church growing up, of course now I work with people of all ethnicities in a major metropolitan area,so I thought I thought I was the farthest thing from being prejudiced.
After reading articles like this one during this election cycle, I had to take a step back and realize that I was also guilty of looking down on the people he described as the Trump supporter and that I had my own prejudices. I've never had any reason to interact with poor people from any other race and didn't think about their perspective. Everyone I interacted with that wasn't Black were either people I went to private school with (meaning by definition they weren't poor), worked with (meaning other IT people), or lived and worked around (the top 20% of income earners).
And the article is correct. At least politicians and the media pay lip service to inner city poverty, no one does even that much for poor people in small towns. If I were part of that demographic I would be going for a politician too that wanted to blow the whole thing up.
already the media constant trump bashing is entrenching camps on each side instead of promoting understanding of and the outcome is going to be bad for democracy either way, whether he wins or lose.
the result of which will be an anti-political movement of which you've never seen the likes hitting in the next three cycles, with extremely unpredictable results in the fight between the entrenched establishment and the newcomer reactionaries
Look no further than Italy as a case study. America is circa at where Italy where in the early nineties.
Well, in your (and, self-servingly, my) defense, prior to last week or so I may have been a lot more gracious. But after hearing Trump essentially admit to sexual assault, and then listening to his supporters contort themselves to excuse it, it's pretty tough for me to sympathize.
At this point I wonder if Trump wasn't right, and that he couldn't just start shooting people in the street and still retain his support.
Unfortunately, group identity is a remarkably powerful thing. When I look at someone like Berlusconi or Duterte or Trump (and I could continue to list folks... you can probably guess where it ends), it makes me realize what people are willing to excuse or tolerate if it means continuing to cheer for their team or demean folks who aren't on theirs. It's pure, unadulterated factionalism.
This applies to so many areas of life. Look around you at your workplace. Most of your coworkers that you'd consider part of your "group" are probably very much like you, but most people have some one thing that makes them unique.
For example stereotypical Silicon Valley:
- young - white - male - plays video games - likes to drink beer with colleagues - religiousness isn't part of their core definition of themselves - socially liberal - etc.
Most people don't check all those boxes. They miss one. They don't drink, do sports instead of videogames, are evangelical Christian, et cetera.
Yet they're still part of the team. But notice that those attributes aren't all that similar? A white guy whose hobby is urban dance instead of video games still fits in. A black guy who plays video games fits in, but a black guy who is into urban dance is a gangster.
Someone who has his charisma but not his baggage may end up winning the nomination - and that person may be even worse from a Republican standpoint.
I really expected commenting on a highly political article like this on a site liked cracked.com to degenerate quickly.
The article doesn't deem either side as evil.