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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

It's rather disturbing to see this trend of fracturing society in the US along racial lines. People like Spencer are just a symptom of the underlying cause. Extreme wealth and opportunity disparity between "real (rural white) America" and the more diverse, tolerant urban areas has reached a fever pitch, as evidenced by this previous election. The only true solution is compassion and outreach. Maybe we could use these untold billions flowing through VC coffers to promote economic growth and inclusion to these forgotten populations? That would do far more to bring alienated people into the fold of a progressive society than shutting them out for their political views, no matter how satisfying it may be from a sense of "moral justice".

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Economic pain leads to racism, xenophobia, and extreme political fanaticism anywhere it's felt. Take any nation and systematically de-industrialize and liquidate its middle class and interior the way the USA has done and you will reliably produce either fascism or totalitarian socialism every single time. It's as close to a deterministic cause and effect as you ever see in history. Which way it goes depends on whether the totalitarian right or the totalitarian left produces the most compelling demagogues.

Given America's leanings I think the right-wing type is more likely in the USA.

When I heard about the Flint water crisis my first thought was "fascism is coming and people are going to die."

The total "why do they not eat cake?" cluelessness of coastal big city dwellers on this issue is much more alarming and infuriating to me than the neo-Nazi wackos and Pepe-slinging trolls. The American interior is collapsing and it's been happening for over a decade. This must be what the USSR was like in the 1980s during the lead up to the fall of the Berlin wall. People in Moscow were probably surprised by the fall of communism but I bet nobody else was.

I found it quite interesting to tour an alt-right newsroom, not what I was expecting at all. Many of their viewers want simple, effective solutions, eg. reject all Chinese imports until they cease producing Fentanyl despite that it is apt to not work.

Ignoring that the working class is badly hurting in this country is what has gotten us to this place. Where Trump and Bernie offered hope of a brighter future, Hillary stated she was out to kill industries[1]. People are being forced to the right as that is all that is on the ballot, you've got the Democrats running Corporatist Republicans, while the Republicans have gone toward Fascism with a strong bootlicker mentality.

1 - http://www.weeklystandard.com/clinton-were-going-to-put-a-lo...

>eg. reject all Chinese imports until they cease producing Fentanyl

Haha, seriously? That'd be the diplomatic equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on Moscow; our real MAD with China is economic.

I guess that's the issue in a nutshell, huh? Insular and stubborn facetiousness on one side, derisive sneering on the other. What d'you do about that? How do you engage in an atmosphere like that? Is it even possible anymore?

Pretty much, I thought it was an insane prospect, but that is what sells that audience, action.

Hilariously, in a sad way, that speech from Hillary was full of compassion and good ideas for "Trump voters" and it was spun, entirely falsley as the moment of sneering condescension.

People repeated all the time that Hillary had no solution for these people, when she did. She literally described it in the paragraph of that speech that that line was taken from.

That's why I don't blame the voters, but blame the people who spread the propaganda like that. Even people on HN appear to be stupid enough to fall for it (or cynical enough to spread it). So really, what hope is there for facts and reality to triumph?

The missing context:

"Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right. Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities.

So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?

And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.

Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.

So whether it's coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America. We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the '90s, more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history.

Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope.

So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work."

Imagine being so cynical as misrepresent a multi billion dollar offer of help to a struggling community.

No, she didn't.

If your house is burning you don't want the fireman to talk about how they are going to work to improve building codes. You want them to put water in it right f'ing now.

Her language is that of a building inspector, not a fireman or an EMT. Trump's rhetoric was about specific immediate action to tackle an emergency.

Trump won by making such claims. He didn't mean it and his proposals were pretty shallow but at least he acknowledged the crisis and put forward credible sounding specific measures like terminating TPP and renegotiating NAFTA. This "right f'ing now" rhetoric is why he won. The alt-right, while noisy, is not that big. Trump won by carrying traditionally Democratic Midwestern counties because he said he would do something about the liquidation of the middle class, not by appealing to "fashy" nuts and 4chan shitlords.

Are you saying Trump's lies were more believable than Clinton's truth?

I agree, and I've already said I blame the propagandists that we have instead of a media that actually serves the people.

It wasn't me that mentioned the alt-right, and it's the propaganda being piped in by Fox and Sinclair that I had mostly in mind. They've totally screwed their viewers since they hit the air. It's more like mass elder abuse than a news channel.

Yes, sort of. When you are in a crisis you want specific things to be done right now. Trump promised that while Clinton offered vague wonky rhetoric that sounded like empty platitudes. She is far better qualified to actually do something but she didn't communicate that she really gets the magnitude of the problem.

If Clinton had acknowledged the magnitude of the economic and social crisis afflicting the interior and then offered e.g. a 10 point plan of specific actions to help she would have won, possibly by a large margin.

They're targeting production which is wise but they never ask who's the one filling out the orders for the production queue (hint: Wall Street). If they want to do anything to stop the death toll of Fentanyl they should also demand a 90% tax on all sales of Fentanyl at the wholesale level. That way they hit the companies that are making and selling the drug. Mind you, that has about as much chance of happening as their suggestion but it hits the companies who are the culprits of the mass addiction epidemic.

I can definitely see this relationship, especially given America's past dynamics. There are some interesting evolutionary perspectives on the utility of altruistic punishment and the link to egalitarianism. Rather, inequality can be one of the main drivers that explain collective punishment in addition to drivers for group cooperation. If you really think about it, a lot of hard-left and hard-right policies could be presented in this way: I, along with my group or associated groups, are at a significant disadvantage compared to "some other group of people or individuals". Or in another sense of the perspective, there is a subgroup that is taking advantage and freeloading off of some advantages that are meant for our group to which we have certain standards of behavior. Altruistic punishment might be considered one of the tools for punishing and reinforcing behavior that is ideal to the group(s).

I've also come across some research on how a lot of this can be drawn from how a society sits on the individualism-collectivism scale.

Yup. And letting-them-eat-cake tendencies are pretty prominent on HN across the board; see every vague discussion of UBI as a condescending solution to some future problem of automation, with scarce attention paid to the real decimation of non-tech industry throughout America. People whose way of life and work have been destroyed turn to proto-fascism like clockwork throughout history, and it doesn't matter how precisely you want to define "blame" to assign responsibility to one group or another: the bad times are coming, and they're going to affect everyone.

I'll say that among leftists and even market anarchists this has been the problem discussed at length for at least the last five years since some of us (myself included) come from flyover country (Kansas for me). Some of us tried to talk sense to the Democratic party but it seems they're too busy hamming it up for the Silicon Valley VCs who want to use identity politics as part of their marketing campaigns to sell another phone or app. They don't seem too interested in solving the disease of capitalism since they're still flush with cash from their SV donors.

Historically though, and even today, the biggest impediments to progressive social programs have been racism. DuBois has good analysis on this with regards to white planters during slavery and reconstruction. Welfare queen stereotypes and even employment incentives carry opposition on racial grounds today.

'tolerant urban areas'

LOL

> The only true solution is compassion and outreach.

It's way too late for that. The battle lines have been drawn by the right and the rules of engagement have been set by the left. The country will continue to fracture until one side wins or cries uncle. I can tell you this much, the right are not going to be the ones to cry uncle. The left continues to back them father into the corner. They have no other options left.

> The left continues to back them father into the corner. They have no other options left.

I'm unsure how this is the case based on both houses in Congress and the presidency controlled by Republicans.

Democrats control a few states and major metros, but that's it. The left is who is cornered at the moment. And it will only get worse if establishment Democrats don't recognize the serious damage they've done to their party and step aside for populists (like Bernie Sanders and others who pass his litmus test); given no other option, those who are desperate in the US will continue to vote for whomever offers them a lifeline, regardless of the chance that lifeline is legitimate.

The Republicans in congress aren't doing anything with that control though. For example they backpedaled on their Obamacare repeal promises when they had a chance to actually do it. They are more and more looked upon as part of "the swamp" or "establishment" and not really seen as conservatives, with a few exceptions.

I agree with you that they're wasting the power that they have, but they do indeed have the power at the moment.

The problem with attempting to repeal the ACA is that it leaves enough Republicans vulnerable in midterms that they don't dare repeal it, hence the inability to get the votes necessary.

Don't confuse ideology with self-preservation.

The Democratic Party establishment would rather have prime seats on the titanic than let Bernie Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard lead the party forward.

in Victor Davis Hanson's words they've been reduced to a "municipal party". Pretty evocative phrase.

Not being able to be openly hostile to minorities and other disadvantaged groups is now considered "backed into a corner".

Edit: Thanks for the down votes. But let's consider how ridiculous this notion of the right being "backed into a corner" is. Let's look at facts 1. Most politicians at the state and local level are white and right wing 2. Most business leaders are white and many of them are right leaning 3. Votes have been systematically stolen from left leaning parts of the country via gerrymandering and voter restrictions 4. Rural and white parts of the US are overwhelmingly over represented in the US government via Electoral college, Senate, and state representation 5. Over the last 20 years in two separate occasions the left had the won the popular vote but didn't get the Presidency. In conclusion - LITERALLY ALL INSTITUTIONAL POWER STRUCTURE IN THE US is owned by the right. But somehow they are backed into a corner.

Unless the GOP is willing and ready to fund right wing militias to be their official paramilitaries this is not going to get much further. The fact Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have explicitly called out the far right groups means this push for some kind of Civil War 2 is dead. Unless you get Tea Party heads to side with you on this it's going to be a one sided conflicted where the FBI and ATF do another house cleaning of the militias and other far right groups. Even the GOP remembers the OKC bombing, so they're not going to let that happen again because it would completely show them as a paper tiger.

The major policy point of contention is border policy with Mexico. Even in just the last 12 months, the left has become more enamored with open borders. Bernie was chastised during the primaries for making some statements in support of immigration restriction, a reflex from an old left veteran. It's hard to imagine a Democratic candidate making that mistake today.

With relatively free flow of people across the southern border, birthright citizenship, and family reunification, Democrats won't need white working class votes much longer. For a certain segment of the white working class and sympathizers, they see this as an existential threat to their political power. They also compete with freshly arrived Mexican immigrants directly in the labor market, who tend towards working-class professions.

Migration across the southern border would have to be paused for some time to reunify a fractured national identity and reduce the demand for Trump-type nationalists. But as long as the left sees the potential for permanent electoral victory with sufficiently rapid demographic change, that's unlikely to happen.

The sad bottom-line is that race-oriented politics is likely to be a growing force over the next decade.

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