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Comment by natrius | Hacker News Reader

Cleaving off 40% of America is not a recipe for progress. When Trump shows his people how they're getting blacklisted from the economy, that isn't going to make them want to riot less. Our culture of progress has become entirely about excluding dissenters until they submit, and it's not working anymore. We've given up on convincing the people who have all the weapons, and now we're going to start hurting them economically. Good luck, y'all.

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>Cleaving off 40% of America

I'm going to be a bit pedantic; that's 40% of eligible, who intend to vote, and self select into responding to polling. That is nowhere near 40% of Americans. Its important not to conflate relative support of political candidates with American sentiment at large, sometimes they diverge strongly.

But I more or less agree with your general point. But I would counter that while we are at the height of political fractiousness, it may not be worthwhile to spend a lot of time trying to convince people. It may be more effective to succeed with good ideas, like trade and liberal immigration, and pluralism then invite your former opponents to enjoy the benefits later. Maybe...

To illustrate your point even further: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/01/us/elections/n...

Edit: of course, this is for the primaries, but many folks will vote along party lines no matter what.

This article from an infotainment site is the best write-up I've seen on where a lot of Trump's support comes from. Applies to Duck Dynasty's success as well imho.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...

Media and many businesses are excluding and mocking a huge chunk of America. I deal with that chunk on a regular basis. Most are decent, hard-working people with different political views is all. A small percentage of them are as bad as portrayed in some category. You wouldn't think that from how liberal organizations or media portray them. Huge untapped market for politics and business if people market it the right way. The shocking thing is lack of Republican candidates really appealing to them. Even business people as I can think of plenty Republican founders and executives that make a better President than Trump. Mind-blowing.

>When Trump shows his people how they're getting blacklisted from the economy, that isn't going to make them want to riot less.

How are they getting blacklisted by the economy? Project Include has the right to choose who they associate with.

>Project Include has the right to choose who they associate with.

As does anyone else who blacklists.

That's just nonsensical, and you've defined anything with membership as a "blacklist". What makes a blacklist a blacklist, is the list of "undesirables"; you don't just get to point to any body with membership and define all non-members as "blacklisted".

Why am I blacklisted from using your money?

Also, obligatory mention that "blacklist" and "whitelist" are racist terms, and mention of similar spirals of idiocy such as [0] and [1].

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801646

[1] - https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185

Again, as you seem not to have understood my point, you are not blacklisted, you have not been invited. There is a difference you're welcome to ignore, but don't be shocked when people don't take your complaints seriously.

It was a joke.

Sorry, Poe's Law, my bad.

Can't the list in a blacklist be defined by intension (like the set of people who support Trump), or does it have to be by extension (like the set of people whose name is on a literal list)?

There are two larges groups of people who are voting for Trump regardless of anything he does (as he said: he could shoot people down on 5th avenue and these people would still vote for him). The largest group of them are Republicans who will always vote Republican. My beef with these people is that I wish they were a little more loyal to our country's values than they were to their party, but fundamentally I've got no real problem with them.

The second group are all white nationalists. They honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim, that Jews control the banks and media, that immigration is bad for the country, etc.

These people I have no problem with blacklisting.

Those two groups overlap substantially (making the latter group a subset of the former was rather the point of Republican strategy beginning with Nixon's Southern Strategy, which exploited Johnson's support for civil rights legislation to try to peel that group off from the Democrats, who'd they'd supported since "White Nationalism" made a real go at having an actual nation; the Democrats have certainly lost them, but the Republicans haven't reliably captured all of them, though they've done a fair job of it.)

What percentage of the population do you think really identifies as white nationalist?

Out of the 40% that support Trump, the numbers I've seen are that roughly 10% support his identity politics. They might not call themselves white nationalists, but they are attracted by someone "telling it like it is" with respect to immigrants, inner cities, etc.

IOW, a very large part of Trump's core supporters are simply Republicans that will vote for him because he is at the top of the Republican ticket. They would also have voted for Rubio or even Kasich. They don't like a number of things he's said or done, but they will vote for the Republican before they vote for a Democrat (especially Hillary Clinton).

The minority, though, are not really Republicans -- they are truly a right wing nationalist cohort that is very attuned to things like Trump's "David Duke who?" initial response to his endorsement.

With respect to the other comment about Republicans reaching out to these people: the Southern strategy is a 50-yr old strategy that the Republican party has consciously and publicly tried to move away from in the last 8 years as demographics have made it less and less likely to deliver the Whitehouse. Yes these people have been loosely attached to the Republican party, but as the Republican party moves away from them, they've also moved away from it.

The natural thing, if we didn't have a legally supported two-party system, would be for a Marie Le Pen style nationalist party to form behind Trump.

40% of America is not interested in Trump. 57% of America isn't even voting, and significantly less than half of the remainder are supporting Trump. Of those, you'd be a bit thick to assume that more than half are doing it out of any meaningful support for him, rather than ideology or despising the alternatives.

As for, "people who have all the weapons", unless they have tanks, an air force, a navy, and AA capability, they're still just idiots with popguns who were already joining militias and similar groups en masse over the last 8 years; appeasement does not work.

You should do some research into the demographics of the various combat arms roles in the US military.

If you're suggesting a military coup in this country, you're dreaming.

Funny you should say that, since you're the one hallucinating something other than what I wrote.

> As for, "people who have all the weapons", unless they have tanks, an air force, a navy, and AA capability, they're still just idiots with popguns who were already joining militias and similar groups en masse over the last 8 years; appeasement does not work.

I know people say that, but let's not forget, our armies are still only good fighting traditional armies (like we did in WW2). We are still no good in invading and not-killing civilians (which would be the ultimate priority in a SHTF/TEOTWAWKI scenario).

Earlier this year 5 cops were shot down by a veteran who got agitated by the shootings of African Americans by the police. If SHTF scenario happens, a lot of veterans would be in control of the militia groups, training people, guiding them (pretty much the same thing which is happening in Iraq/Syria, except much worse).

No I am not predicting a civil war or a rebellion, just saying that among all the countries I could bet on regarding a civilian population's ability to defend itself, Americans are as armed as they need to be in case such a situation arise.

Yep. My thoughts exactly.

Excellent point.

I think the point is that there's no way you can win over hardcore Trump supporters. The Nazis and white nationalists that have rallied to him are a lost cause.

The point is to show the much larger group of people who are just going along with him, or considering it that this violent, racist, misogynist set of behaviors and beliefs is not acceptable.

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