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Comment by rm999 | Hacker News Reader

> Micro-aggression, safe spaces, trigger words

I think you're missing some perspective on this; a small % of activists on the left (mostly on college campuses) do not represent the trends of liberals in the USA. I can't think of a mainstream Democrat who considers these serious causes (including liberal ones like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren).

The reality is the left has been making huge inroads on social causes in the last eight years - in fact, this may be the primary enduring legacy of the Obama years. The public perception of gay marriage, police violence against blacks, and marijuana use have all drastically shifted and led to very real changes that won't be undone. I wouldn't call this overplaying their hands.

Also, I wouldn't extrapolate much from this election. Obama is a fair bit more liberal than Hillary and is extremely popular compared to her.

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It's not just a small percentage of activists. I'm 21, and I live in Ohio, which Trump won by 9 points, and it seems like a huge portion of people about my age are proponents of these ideas, on or off of college campuses. People call things "white" as in insult, they constantly say things like "white people have no culture", and really do seem to believe that all evil in the world is the result of things white men do. Anyone who tries to disagree with them gets shouted at and accused of being a long list of terrible buzzwords. As someone from a very poor family who didn't have great opportunities, this shit is infuriating. It basically seems like some sort of cancer is rapidly metasticizing and there's not much of anything that can be done about it. There's 0 willingness to have a discussion about anything.

Huh, out on the West Coast I've only encountered a minor amount of this coddling "it's all white racists fault" BS on college campuses. I've expected more, but the worst I've seen is pronoun related (aka "What's your pronoun?"), which I respond to with schlee, cause fuck tracking someone else's pronoun, that is not my job. Use what you want, don't try to force me to remember your shit (name, pronoun, etc)!

In my personal experience there seems to be a pretty big difference based on the age. People who are like 26 are much less aggressive about it than people who are 18-22.

Sounds like the trope "anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head" still holds true.

Considering how dumb/immature the average product of an American high school is at 18, I'm not surprised they think like that (and are aggressive about their beliefs) Also, considering how some choose to treat college like an extended party, they carry over the same traits to 22.

But hopefully, the job market hitting them in the face after graduation beats some liberal bullshit out of them.

Also, class warfare and money will always trump identity politics and all that social justice BS. If there's anything the US can get behind it's their hatred of the poor (yes, well-off left are just as guilty of this, just more implicitly)

Sounds like "if the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" view of the world. People throwing "white" as a slur, then react like a victim when someone opposes. Hypocrisy over 11, but sadly fixing it would take psychotherapy, because they're prone to this behaviour not having any prospects/purpose in life.

and then there's the question of how many therapists would validate this thought process? And how much will that number increase?

>People call things "white" as in insult, they constantly say things like "white people have no culture"

I'm black and I wish folks realized that stuff like that needs to kept behind closed doors. I'm not one of those black folks that tries to twist the definition of racism such that it can never be applied to us. It's ironic that lots of the same folks who talk about "micro-aggressions" are purveyors of them.

I'm white and I call things white as an insult when they offend me for cultural reasons. There are some behaviors I associate with white people that are unpalatable to me, and I call them out, when I might avoid the cultural call-out to other cultures because a) they are relatively more oppressed than my (white) culture and b) I do not see the interior of that culture all day every day, as an outsider to it; I decline to arrogate myself that way.

>It's not just a small percentage of activists. I'm 21, and I live in Ohio, which Trump won by 9 points, and it seems like a huge portion of people about my age are proponents of these ideas, on or off of college campuses.

This is just a personal anecdote. I'm 23, also live in Ohio, and went to a very liberal private school. I have never met a single person who has un-ironically said these things.

Yeah, I would imagine things are milder than they have been in my experience. But I've heard people say the phrase "white people have no culture" upwards of 10 times by several different people, the majority of whom were white themselves, which is a little mind boggling.

>a small % of activists on the left

A vocal minority + rapid societal change + social media echo chambers = reactionary backlash = Donald Trump presidency

>I wouldn't extrapolate much from this election

I would. 60+ million people voting for a man as odious and unprepared as Donald Trump says a whole lot to me. That and pretty much total Republican domination on the state level. The GOP is one state house away from being able to call a new constitutional convention[1].

1: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a50672/st...

>I would. 60+ million people voting for a man as odious and unprepared as Donald Trump says a whole lot to me.

Let me rephrase: you are extrapolating the wrong thing when you say the "liberals drastically overplayed their hand" and then use this election as evidence.

Obama almost certainly would have annihilated Trump (his support in rural swing states is much stronger than Hillary's), and he's more liberal than Hillary. For all we know, Bernie could have done decently. Hillary's downfall is that she's seen as an out-of-touch corrupt establishment politician, which Trump (and Obama) were not.

Hillary's problem is that she's just not likable, in the sense that people are not going to get excited to vote for Hillary.

Obama got people excited. He had a message he got out to people and they responded in a huge way. I'm really not sure what Hillary's was.

Trump got a different set excited. Sure some are deplorable. A lot are just republicans. A lot are people who just want their lives to be as good as they used to be, or their parents were.

Hilary's problem was that she was a warmonger allied with the banks.

I've seen tons of facebook groups full of people sharing fake articles with absolutely nothing to back it up, it happened on both sides but the stuff about Hillary was completely off the wall yet people lapped it up.

> public perception of gay marriage

Although Obama was opposed to gay marriage when elected, I will say that this is an issue that the progressives have driven into the public consciousness.

But Trump will be the first elected President to support gay marriage when entering office.

> police violence against blacks

There are far more protests about police violence against blacks now.

I mean, if you call not openly campaigning against it support, I guess. His campaign didn't throw them many bones.

I think changing the mindset of Republicans will have the most impact. If we had another candidate they would have made "defending traditional family" a stump issue.

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